Historian Rachel Cope has spent countless hours studying the lives of the people in early church history.

She has come to see the Book of Scripture we know as Doctrine and Covenants as a study in conversion.

As she puts it, from the Doctrine and Covenants we learned that conversion can make meaning out of devastation and trauma.

Loss in suffering carve out a place for conversion and the healing that accompanies it."

Devastation and trauma, loss and suffering.

These are things that have become all too familiar to Rachel in recent years

as she has dealt with a heart-wrenching medical condition

that has stretched her to her very limits. And maybe that's why she's able to see these

revelations from the Doctrine and Covenants now in a very different light.

Rachel Cope received a Ph.D. in American history with an emphasis in women's history and religious

history from Syracuse University. Rachel is a scholar of women's spirituality and conversion

in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and works as an associate professor of church history

and doctrine at BYU.

Rachel is deeply committed to raising awareness for obstetric fistula victims throughout the global south. Her new book, The Slow Work of God, is available in Desirept bookstores now.

This is All In, an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

I'm Morgan Pearson, and I am so honored to have Rachel Cope on the line with me today.

Rachel, welcome.

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Well, Rachel, I told you this in an email, Rachel,

but I quoted you recently speaking down at BYU, Hawaii, and your quote was one of my favorite

parts of my talk. And so it was so fun when I learned that you had just had a book come out.

And I wish, I'll tell you this, I wish that I had had the book beforehand

...