Faith Matters

This week, wards across the United States will be having a really unique 5th Sunday discussion centered on the Constitution, moral agency, and peace-building. So today, we wanted to reshare a conversation that originally aired in 2021. In this episode, Faith Matters co-founder Bill Turnbull joins Judge Thomas Griffith, an expert in constitutional law, to explore the Constitution and the rapid erosion of goodwill and trust in American politics, including among Latter-day Saints. Judge Griffith...

Transcribed - Published: 28 May 2026

They call him the Mr. Rogers of farming, and I think you’ll understand why. Karl Ebeling spent 33 years as a chemical engineer before feeling an undeniable pull back to the land and to a childhood love of farming that had never really left him. He combined his love of the earth with desire to help and heal and founded Eden Streets in 2020, a community farming initiative that helps individuals relaunch their lives and cultivate community through farming. Karl has watched first hand as th...

Transcribed - Published: 24 May 2026

Today, we’re honored to share a conversation with Tish Harrison Warren on her beautiful brand new book, What Grows in Weary Lands. From the very first pages of this book, Tish gives us language for something so familiar. She writes about aridity—those seasons of spiritual drought, exhaustion, or distance from God, when prayer feels flat, faith feels heavy, and the life we once found nourishing suddenly feels barren. Then she also introduces us to the ancient idea of acedia—what the Dese...

Transcribed - Published: 17 May 2026

Today, as we celebrate our mothers and motherhood, we’re exploring the symbols of our Divine Mother hidden throughout ancient Christianity, and what it might mean for each of us—men and women—to cultivate and integrate divine femininity into our own souls. Our guests are Kathryn and Bob Sonntag, who joined us at Restore last year for a powerful session on ritual, wisdom, and our Divine Mother. Today, we’re bringing that conversation to everyone. Together, we explore where the symbol of the Mo...

Transcribed - Published: 10 May 2026

Today, we’re really excited to share a special episode with Jeff Strong on his new book, Torn: Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn From Them. Research suggests that roughly 40% of formerly active, faithful members have stepped away from the Church in the last twenty-five years—and the pace is accelerating. Jeff Strong is asking why. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, he’s found that, again and again, disaffiliation is rooted in unmet spiritual needs, strained trust...

Transcribed - Published: 3 May 2026

Hey everyone, this is Aubrey from Faith Matters. Today’s episode is a personal one for me—and probably for many of you—especially if you’ve ever found yourself deferring to someone else’s inspiration, or noticing a tendency to believe that someone else’s knowing is more trustworthy than your own. Our guest, Deidre Nicole Green, is a professor at Graduate Theological Union and a theologian and scholar whose work explores gender, faith, and the Christian life. The starting place for this discus...

Transcribed - Published: 26 April 2026

Today, we’re honored to share a conversation with Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, a New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of Outreach, a ministry for LGBTQ Catholics. His new memoir is called Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest. And yes, he held every one of those jobs before he found his calling. But beneath the laughs, this book is really about the slow, unglamorous, often uncomfortab...

Transcribed - Published: 19 April 2026

Today we’re exploring a tender question so many parents are carrying: how do we help our kids grow in faith when we’re still figuring it out for ourselves? And underneath that—what if we get it wrong? What if we hand them something they’ll spend years trying to untangle? Today, we’re joined by pastor, author, and researcher Meredith Miller, who has spent her career thoughtfully engaging these questions. Her book, Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn’t Have to Heal From, offers a grounded a...

Transcribed - Published: 12 April 2026

Today we’re asking: what do you do when someone you love tells you they’re leaving the Church? What do you say? How do you stay grounded and connected when the stakes feel high or you’re caught off guard? We sat down with two longtime friends of the podcast—authors and researchers Joseph Grenny and Jeff Strong—to explore these high-stakes moments when someone is ready to talk about their shifting faith. Drawing on research from over 500 real-life conversations about faith transitions, Joseph ...

Transcribed - Published: 2 April 2026

We live in a world that prizes activity: being productive, staying in control, always doing something. So when life brings seasons of waiting—through illness, loss, or circumstances we didn’t choose—it can feel unsettling, even threatening to our sense of self. But what if those seasons are actually inviting us into a deeper understanding of God? Today, we’re joined by Terryl Givens to explore an extraordinary book called The Stature of Waiting by W.H. Vanstone. Vanstone noticed something hid...

Transcribed - Published: 29 March 2026

This version has the correct audio--thanks to those who let us know the last one wasn't right! From time to time we like to share episodes from other shows in the Faith Matters network that we think you’ll really love, and today we’re highlighting one of our new favorites from Article 13, the podcast hosted by Zach Davis. If you haven’t discovered it yet, Article 13 is one of the most beautifully produced things Faith Matters does. The title comes from the thirteenth Article of Faith an...

Transcribed - Published: 22 March 2026

From time to time we like to share episodes from other shows in the Faith Matters network that we think you’ll really love, and today we’re highlighting one of our new favorites from Article 13, the podcast hosted by Zach Davis. If you haven’t discovered it yet, Article 13 is one of the most beautifully produced things Faith Matters does. The title comes from the thirteenth Article of Faith and that really captures the spirit of seeking that you’ll experience in these episodes. These are rich...

Transcribed - Published: 22 March 2026

One of the real challenges of studying the Hebrew Bible is figuring out how to make sense of stories of divine violence—where a God of love seems hard to find. These passages raise real questions about the nature of God and what it means for us as we try to live faithfully. Our guest today is Riley Risto, director of Latter-day Peace Studies, who joined the Church after a powerful mystical experience while praying about the Book of Mormon, an experience that centered his faith on Jesus and sh...

Transcribed - Published: 15 March 2026

In today’s conversation, we explore creativity as a spiritual practice—not something reserved for artists, but a way of living. Our guests are Lisa Valentine Clark, a comedian, actor, and host of The Lisa Show, and James Rees—artist, educator, researcher, and passionate advocate for the arts. Both Lisa and James have spent their lives creating—in front of audiences on stages, in studios, in classrooms—and they’ve come to see that creativity does sacred work inside us. It gives form to what we...

Transcribed - Published: 8 March 2026

Today we’re grateful to share a conversation with our friend Tucker Boyle—a longtime seminary and institute teacher and the founder of Harmony Road Retreats, a nonprofit creating safe, supportive spaces for people in faith crisis. As a young missionary, Tucker fell in love with teaching the gospel and knew he wanted to become a full-time seminary teacher. He stepped into that role with his whole heart, and years later pursued a PhD, hoping to become an even better, more thoughtful teacher. Bu...

Transcribed - Published: 1 March 2026

We’re so excited to share a conversation that our friend and Executive Director, Zach Davis, had with Teresa Morgan, Professor at Yale Divinity School and a leading scholar of early Christian history. Teresa invites us to reconsider one of the most central words in Christianity: faith. She explains that for the first generations of Christians, “faith” didn’t mean signing on to a list of beliefs. It meant something more like trust—faithfulness, trustworthiness, the act of entrusting your life ...

Transcribed - Published: 22 February 2026

Today we’re so excited to share our conversation with Bruce Tift, author, psychotherapist and longtime practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism. This summer, our friends at Uplift Kids introduced us to Bruce’s fascinating book Already Free, and we’ve been thinking about it ever since. In this conversation, Bruce dives into some of the ideas in the book. He explores how to make peace with being human. He looks at two seemingly opposing paths—both Western and Eastern wisdom—and shows how each offers ...

Transcribed - Published: 15 February 2026

As we explore the Old Testament this year, we’ve found ourselves returning to a past conversation with our friend Terryl Givens. It felt grounding and expansive and we're really excited to share it with you again. The Old Testament can be incredibly rich—full of beauty, poetry, and profound spiritual insights. But it can also sometimes feel bewildering or even faith-shaking. We get glimpses of a loving, nurturing God—and turn the page to encounter a God that seems angry, even violent. It's a ...

Transcribed - Published: 8 February 2026

Hey everyone, this is Aubrey Chaves from Faith Matters. Today I’m excited to share my conversation with Katie Ludlow Rich and Heather Sundahl about 50 Years of Exponent II, their new book tracing the history of a space where Latter-day Saint women have engaged the most urgent questions of their time—while also honoring the dailiness of life. The roots of this effort go back to 1872, when women began publishing the Woman’s Exponent to speak for themselves and stay connected across distance. A ...

Transcribed - Published: 1 February 2026

We’ve all heard it called a sifting—the language that sometimes surfaces when someone is struggling or steps away from the Church. Wheat from tares, sheep from goats, a sorting in the last days that reveals truly elect. But today, our good friend and contributor Jeff Strong is back to invite us into a deeper reflection on that idea—and what he sees as the more essential question: Who is the Church for? Jeff shares how the way we answer that question has real implications—shaping how we resp...

Transcribed - Published: 25 January 2026

Today we’re joined by our friend Patrick Mason and filmmaker Robert Reynolds. Rob is the director and producer of the new docu-series An Inconvenient Faith—a project that’s already opening hearts and starting some long-overdue conversations. This series is raw and honest. It takes on some of the most difficult and tender topics in our faith tradition—things like women and authority, LGBTQ belonging, race and the priesthood, and lots more. And it brings together voices from across the spectrum...

Transcribed - Published: 18 January 2026

Today, we want to introduce you to another podcast in the Faith Matters Podcast Network called Sanctuary: Discovering the Temple, hosted by Larkin Swain. Larkin brings a candid, curious, and thoughtful approach to conversations about the temple, and this episode felt especially fascinating and timely as we begin a new year studying the Old Testament. In this episode, Larkin speaks with historical linguist Jared Lambert, whose work focuses on language development, temple theology, and how tran...

Transcribed - Published: 11 January 2026

Today we’re sharing a conversation with writers and filmmakers Sarah and Josh Sabey about their new project, The Bible Storybook, a two volume collection of 50 stories from the Old Testament. You might remember their Book of Mormon Storybook. Like those earlier volumes, this new project is guided by a simple and beautiful idea: “These are stories about a real God who loves real people”—people who are complicated, wounded, and doing their best to understand how God is working in their lives. F...

Transcribed - Published: 4 January 2026

Today we’re bringing you a conversation with Carl Richards, and we think this one might just change the way you think—and feel—about money. You might know Carl as The Sketch Guy from his decade-long New York Times column, where he offered disarmingly relatable insights about money using just cardstock and a Sharpie. For Carl, money isn’t about spreadsheets and savings accounts—it’s a mirror, reflecting to us what we value most deeply. And for this reason, he believes money sits at the center ...

Transcribed - Published: 28 December 2025

As we move into Christmas week, we wanted to offer something a little different. Today’s episode is a reading of “In the Bleak Midwinter,” written and read by Peter Conti‑Brown, and originally published in the Faith Matters magazine, Wayfare. It tells the true story of a Christmas that unfolded in unexpected ways—marked by absence, uncertainty, and pain. And yet, it’s also a story about how grace finds its way to us—through presence, through each other, and through the quiet mystery of ...

Transcribed - Published: 21 December 2025

Today, we’re thrilled to share a conversation with New York Times bestselling author and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin, where we explored one of her most practical and game-changing frameworks: the Four Tendencies. Gretchen explains that we all face two types of expectations—outer expectations, like a church calling or a request from a boss or family member, and inner expectations, like a personal goal or habit. She observed that people tend to respond to these expectations in one of four c...

Transcribed - Published: 14 December 2025

Today, in light of the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson which covers Official Declaration 2, we’re honored to share a conversation with W. Paul Reeve and Ramesus Stewart-Johnson about race, the priesthood and temple restriction, and what it really means to root out racism in our church community today. Since lifting the priesthood and temple ban in 1978, we have witnessed a great flourishing of the church, as multitudes have embraced the restored gospel in Africa and elsewhere. We can pause to ...

Transcribed - Published: 7 December 2025

Today, we’re so excited to share a conversation with our good friend and teammate at Faith Matters, Cece Proffit. If you’ve followed Faith Matters for a while, you’ve felt Cece’s influence—her energy, creativity, and care shape so much of what we do behind the scenes. And so today, we’re thrilled she’s stepping in front of the mic to talk about one of her very favorite subjects—Advent. In this conversation, Cece offers a beautiful and grounding introduction to Advent. If this tradition is new...

Transcribed - Published: 28 November 2025

Today we are so excited to share a session from this year’s Restore Gathering with Mallory Everton. Mallory is best known for her work on the sketch comedy show Studio C, and in this session, she asks a question she says she’s been asking her whole life: do Latter-Day Saints have a problem with laughter? She explores how in the context of spirituality, humor sometimes gets sidelined—dismissed as loud, irreverent, or frivolous. But she really pushes back on that assumption, flippin...

Transcribed - Published: 23 November 2025

We’re really excited to share this week’s episode with you—a conversation with scholar and historian, Matt Bowman. Matt is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and an associate professor of religion and history at Claremont Graduate University. In this conversation, he draws on ancient scripture to explore two archetypes that show up again and again: the prophet and the priest. The prophet, Matt says, is often a voice from the outside—someone who has had a powerful, personal enc...

Transcribed - Published: 16 November 2025

Today we’re bringing you a special live episode recorded at the Compass Gallery in Provo with filmmaker Matt Whitaker. Matt is the director and one of the writers and producers of the new film Truth & Treason, which tells the astonishing true story of Helmuth Hübener—a 16-year-old Latter-day Saint in Nazi Germany. After secretly tuning into forbidden BBC broadcasts on his brother’s radio, Helmuth encountered a world of information that challenged everything he’d been told. He then set off...

Transcribed - Published: 12 November 2025

Today we’re wrapping up our week of Unpacking Polygamy with a very honest, illuminating and challenging conversation among three faithful friends: Bethany Brady Spaulding, Patrick Mason and Bill Turnbull. Together, they tackle the profound theological problems that polygamy presents, particularly as it is laid out in what is perhaps the most challenging scripture in our canon—Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. They compare and contrast Section 132 with what God has revealed else...

Transcribed - Published: 8 November 2025

Today we’re joined by Carol Lynn Pearson—poet, playwright, and author of The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy. With extraordinary honesty, clarity, and compassion, Carol Lynn shares her deeply personal perspective on this chapter of our history and why she believes polygamy was a great mistake—one that continues to “haunt the hearts and heaven” of many Latter-day Saints today. In this episode, we learn how she holds this belief alongside a deep devotion to her faith. She shares how it’s shaped her u...

Transcribed - Published: 7 November 2025

Today we’re welcoming back Patrick Mason for a conversation with author and historian Brittany Chapman Nash. In this episode, Patrick and Brittany explore what plural marriage looked like in the early Utah period—how it was lived, how it was taught, and why so many Latter-day Saints practiced it with such deep conviction. Brittany shares stories from women whose voices often go unheard, and helps us understand not just the spiritual and theological motivations behind polygamy, but the complex...

Transcribed - Published: 6 November 2025

Today, we’re honored to welcome Nate Oman—law professor, scholar, and co-founder of the pioneering Latter-day Saint blog, Times and Seasons. Our conversation begins with a bold idea: that experiencing a stupor of thought, or being troubled, is very often a prelude to revelation. For Nate, facing discomfort head-on—naming it and wrestling with it—has become a sacred part of his discipleship and a path to deeper faith. And so in that spirit, today we’re taking a hard and honest look at the doct...

Transcribed - Published: 5 November 2025

Today’s episode kicks off our five-part series Unpacking Polygamy—a deep dive into one of the most complex and sensitive topics in our church’s history. We hope you’ll listen to the full series, where you’ll hear from a variety of voices and perspectives that help illuminate this part of our shared story. To start us off, we’re honored to bring together two remarkable thinkers. Patrick Mason is a historian, author, and Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State Uni...

Transcribed - Published: 4 November 2025

Today, we’re sharing a conversation that feels especially urgent. In fact, we’d planned to release this episode later in the month—but this week, as a major hurricane moves through the Caribbean and the U.S. government shutdown is causing massively disruptive ripples in the daily life of countless families, we know so many are asking, What can I do? We hope this conversation offers real practical guidance and clarity for getting to work today. We’re joined by Sharon Eubank, author...

Transcribed - Published: 29 October 2025

Today, we’re bringing you what we think is one of the most important conversations we could be having right now. We’re talking with our friend and scholar Medlir Mema about artificial intelligence—and what it means for people of faith. Now whether you’re already fascinated by AI, cautious, or ready to turn this episode off, this episode is for everyone. Medlir makes the case that AI is a human issue. A spiritual issue. And that it’s urgent for people of faith to be asking how we can create an...

Transcribed - Published: 26 October 2025

We sometimes reduce “faith-promoting” stories to those tidy endings—where miracles show up just in time, doubts vanish, and testimony replaces tension. But sometimes growth begins when the script falls apart. For Susan Meredith Hinckley and Cynthia Winward, these stories are nourishing a faith that looks like trust and transformation. Susan and Cynthia are co-hosts of the At Last She Said It podcast and authors of a new book with the same title. They came to this work from different pa...

Transcribed - Published: 19 October 2025

Today, we’re sharing a conversation with Jeff Burningham—entrepreneur, former candidate for governor, and now author of a new book called The Last Book Written by a Human. This conversation begins with an unforgettable scene Jeff witnessed in India on the banks of the Ganges—a place where death, life, and the mundane all unfolded side by side. That image becomes a frame for everything we discussed: the reality of constant transformation and the deep human need for presence in the middle of i...

Transcribed - Published: 12 October 2025

Today we’re sharing Arthur Brooks’ keynote from Restore this last weekend. This message was so powerful—it will stop you in your tracks, and feels so essential for this exact moment. We believe it needs to be heard everywhere—in our homes, our communities, and across the country—so we’re sharing it with you now. This year we gathered at Utah Valley University for Restore, where just two weeks earlier Charlie Kirk was assassinated while addressing a large crowd. So soon after such horrific vio...

Transcribed - Published: 5 October 2025

This week, we’re sharing a special live episode of Proclaim Peace recorded in person at the Compass Gallery on Peacemaking and Discipleship with Jennifer Thomas and Chad Ford. We’re also excited to announce the first-ever Waymakers conference, REPAIR, is taking place October 23–25 in Provo, Utah. This is such an incredible opportunity to learn from world-class peacemakers leading intensive workshops to help us navigate the most challenging situations in our lives. If you feel frustrated or ho...

Transcribed - Published: 28 September 2025

This week, we're bringing you a special episode recorded live from the Restore gathering in 2024, where we were joined by Jared Halverson. This one one of my very favorite topics to hear Jared talk about. His session was on what he calls “contraries” or paradoxes that are inherent in a life of faith. His message feels especially timely this week. He offers the powerful image of the cross as a symbol of wholeness in our discipleship. One axis, reaching vertically, represents our connecti...

Transcribed - Published: 21 September 2025

Before we jump in, we wanted to acknowledge that so many in our community and across the world have been stunned and horrified by the murder of Charlie Kirk at UVU. It feels to us like a particularly difficult moment in this country, and we find ourselves grasping both for hope, and for the message to share in a moment like this. It’s in that spirit that we wanted to share this week’s episode — a conversation about belonging from the Faith Matters podcast Article 13. At their best, faith and ...

Transcribed - Published: 14 September 2025

This week, we’re re-sharing what we thought was an “instant classic” from last year’s Restore Gathering; a deeply personal and thought-provoking message about family, faith, and the complexity of life from Joseph Grenny, author of Crucial Conversations and co-founder of The Other Side Academy. Drawing from his own experience with his own “messy” family, Joseph speaks openly about moments of despair, like the heartache of watching loved ones—including his own children—struggle with addiction, ...

Transcribed - Published: 7 September 2025

You’ve probably heard the old joke—we caught it again recently on Ezra Klein’s show. A conspiracy theorist dies and goes to heaven. At the pearly gates, God tells him he can ask one question—anything at all. The conspiracy theorist says, “Who really killed JFK?” God replies, “Lee Harvey Oswald and he acted alone.” The conspiracy theorist pauses, nods, and says, “Wow. This goes higher than I thought.” The joke captures just how impenetrable conspiracy thinking can be. That’s part of what we’re...

Transcribed - Published: 31 August 2025

We’re excited today to talk about the temple. It’s a topic we love—one that sits at the heart of our faith—but because of its sacred nature, it can sometimes be difficult to explore openly. Our guest today is historian Jonathan Stapley, who has spent the past two decades studying the temple and its role in Latter-day Saint life. His new book, Holiness to the Lord, is coming out this fall, and it incorporates a remarkable collection of never-before-seen archival records. The book explores th...

Transcribed - Published: 24 August 2025

We’re so happy to welcome back Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife—someone whose voice and work have shaped our thinking in really lasting ways. Today we’re talking with Jennifer about her brand-new book, published by Faith Matters: That We Might Have Joy: Desire, Divinity, and Intimate Love. The book offers an honest look at how sexual intimacy can reveal the truth of a relationship—and how, for those willing to confront that truth, it can serve as the starting point for deep joy, spiritual ...

Transcribed - Published: 17 August 2025

Nearly 200 years ago, Joseph Smith gave us a holistic code of health called the Word of Wisdom. But over the next century, we largely reduced that revelation to a list of don’ts—one that came to define us as a church and serve as a kind of status marker within the Church. As we look ahead to the next hundred years, we’re asking: is it time to rethink how we see this revelation? Today, we face an overwhelming number of choices about what we put into our bodies—some deeply harmful, others...

Transcribed - Published: 10 August 2025

Today, we’re so excited to share a powerful session from last year’s Restore gathering, given by Astrid Tuminez, president of Utah Valley University. Astrid’s story is truly extraordinary. She was born in a small village in the Philippines and raised in the slums of Iloilo City. Her journey has taken her from Catholic convent schools to Harvard and Wall Street to leading a major public university—and throughout, she’s wrestled with what it means to belong and to find joy. Drawing from the B...

Transcribed - Published: 3 August 2025