A Thoughtful Faith - Mormon / LDS

Sara Hughes-Zabawa returns to discuss Fowler's Stage Two: The Mythic Literal stage.

We discuss the power of story and mythology as important tools of meaning meaning-making.  Rather than see them as inducements into lives of unreality, we celebrate the universal human need for signs, symbols, and stories.

Direct download: Sara_Hughes-Zabawa_Stage_Two_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:29am NZST

Mormon feminist writers and commentators Sara Katherine Staheli-Hanks and Tresa Brown Edmunds respond to the MTC President sex-scandal, and generally to the problem of sexual abuse in the LDS Church.

Direct download: Tresa_Skish_final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:46pm NZST

Laurie Dipadova-Stocks, a former Stake Relief Society President; Royleane Otteson, a former Ward Relief Society President, and Laurie Lee Hall a former Stake President and now an excommunicated transwoman attending Relief Society discuss women's ministry in the LDS Church.

They speak candidly about what has gone wrong and how it can be fixed.

Direct download: Womens_Ministry_final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:23pm NZST

A couple of years ago Jena and Glyn Jones sold up everything they had and went on the road on a hunch that God had a mission for them.   On their last dollars, and to their great surprise they ended up parking their RV in Short Creek and from there everything changed.

Today, they are directors of the Short Creek Dream Center located in Warren Jeffs' compound.   Little did this family of Pentecostals ever foresee that their service and mission would be to the apostate FLDS community.

Direct download: Hilldale.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:14pm NZST

Faith change or Impasse is often met with a resistance to our early life stories of the Divine.   

In this Lent series episode #3 Katie Hagen and Steve Otteson talk about rediscovering Jesus, finding new stories of the Christ and their journey to discern the theologies that support their awakenings.

Direct download: Hagen_Otteson_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:40am NZST

In this episode, Jana Spangler (Salt Lake City) and Peter Bleakley (London) have a hard conversation about what is troubling the LDS Church and they seek to grapple with these questions. Is there any hope for change in the LDS Church?  Should the church change?  What could change?  Who could bring that change?  And whether or not change in the LDS Church is even worth hanging around for?

Direct download: Spangler_and_Bleakley_Audio.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:04pm NZST

Thomas Merton poses a question for Lent, "Where do we turn for Forgiveness?"

In this panel discussion from the 'Mormon Lenten Study for Mormons', Jennifer Koski, Sara Bybee Fisk and Elisabeth Boothe join me to revisit the idea of forgiveness as a practice that includes both grace and lament.   Far from being a legal calculation based on justice, forgiveness offers the world wholeness in an unfathomable divine calculation.

Direct download: Lent_Forgiveness_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:56am NZST

William V. Smith joins me to discuss his forthcoming book, ‘Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants:  The Plural Marriage Revelation.’

Section 132 continues to be a thorn in the side of the LDS church, yet it is the foundation for much of Mormonism’s temple, marriage, gender, and family theology.   Bill and I discuss the social and historical context out of which section 132 emerged, how to read the text, and how it can be understood.

Direct download: William_Smith_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:50am NZST

Lindsay Denton, Melissa Beh and Josh Brazier and I are members of a Lenten Study Group for Mormons.  Together we discuss the journey into renewing our spiritual practices.  We talk about  Lent and how it serves as an ideal time for contemplation and the renewal of our faith lives.

Direct download: Lent_Panel_Ash_Wednesday_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:33pm NZST

Who is God, Blaire?   

Thus, begins a discussion that unsettles, moves, disrupts our taken for granted conceptions of the Divine.   

The God of process theology doesn't entirely fit the script of the male, authoritarian, patriarchal, unchanging, anthropomorphic God written into the contemporary LDS curriculum.  But it does fit an early Mormon emergent theology that brings God closer to the chaos and change of humanity.  To be God and human, Blaire argues, IS to change.

Direct download: blaire_ostler_final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:23am NZST