Let's be fair.  Neither Joseph nor Brigham could be considered as good men in their care, affection, fidelity and love for their wives.  To the contrary, they were want to swap them, share them, manipulate them, ignore them, betray them and abandon them.   We might make much of Joseph's affection for Emma, but he broke her heart over and over again.

These were two men for whom the idea of a good husband had entirely eluded them.  And there was a terrible price to pay for all of the women who had to endure what could only be considered a despicable mischief.  

Joe Geisner joins me to discuss wives, sex, priesthood, power in Joseph's inner circle.

Maxine Hanks and I have a conversation about Christmastide. Christmastide runs from 25 December until early January.  More particularly we discuss the delicious idea of incorporating Mary  as more than just incidental to our celebrations. According to Maxine Christmas is Mary’s holy time.  Mary symbolizes so much more than the vessel through which the Christ child emerged into the world.  Mary is prophetic, priestly and queenly.

But getting to that reading of Mary requires a deeper way of engaging scripture so we begin with a conversation about hermeneutics and suggestions for deepening our reading of the Christmas story. And with another year to prepare perhaps this will help enrich our forthcoming Christmas celebrations.

Generation Y and Zeds are vexing for the traditional  church.  Author of ‘Losing Our Religion’ Christel Manning argues that Millennial and Gen Zed Nones (those born in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s)

“hold a wide variety of worldviews, ranging from deeply religious to highly secular, and transmit them in diverse ways. What ties them all together is a commitment to spiritual choice—a belief in the moral equivalence of religions and secular worldviews and in the individual’s right to choose—and it is that choice they seek to pass on to their children.”

In sociological speak, instead of having their identities ascribed or handed down and inherited, Gen Y’s and Zeds value elective identities and that includes religious and spiritual identities.

Dutch religious studies teacher and theologian Frank Brouwer joins me to discuss this fascinating question of how the young in Western Europe are responding to the deeper questions of life, how they understand the church and how, most interestingly, they are building their own spiritual literacy, on their own terms.

On the 17^th December, the Washington Post published an article about a former employee of Ensign Peak Advisors, (a not for profit corporation constituted under the direction of of the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).  The article tells of the whistleblower's complaint to the IRS alleging that Ensign Peak has failed to meet its charitable giving obligations.  According to the complaint, not one charitable distribution from the $100billion dollars that purportedly sits with Ensign Peak has been made during its 22 years of operation, which it is obligated to do as a supporting organisation with tax-exempt status.

Professor Sam Brunson, a tax law specialist at Loyola University, joins me in order to make sense of what the complaint to the IRS is all about and if and how it might be resolved.

David’s book 'The Complete Heretic’s Guide to Western Religion:  The Mormons' is not your usual snipe at faith that Atheists can bore you with.   His history of the Mormons is straight-shooting without being unfeeling; it's efficient without cutting too many corners, and it leaves one feeling both impressed and rightly appalled at the faith that gave us the 'Family’s Can Be Together Forever' and a disciplinary culture that would make God blush.

David Fitzgerald and I are unlikely conversations partners; me a theologian and spiritual formation enthusiast and he an avowed atheist. But, it’s one that seems to work well because we both have an appreciation for the absurd.  And Mormonism is brimming with absurdities. 

Mormon history, as it turns out,  makes its people and its past seriously interesting.

Jana Johnson Spangler, a recent graduate from Richard Rohr's 'Living School',  joins me to discuss the spiritual formation and potential richness of the place between the sometimes intractable institution, and the soul's organic growth.

We address the questions:  How do we manage and trust our growth when there is little in the way of a  healthy institutional response to our spiritual change?  How can we find our own faithful path through our faith crisis?

Brigham Young's status in the early LDS Movement needs to be understood in order to tackle the hard question of what gave him the right to claim the presidency,  particularly in light of the fact that it is now well known that the transfiguration of Brigham was a myth.   

Joe Geisner joins me to discuss Brigham's 'right' to succeed Joseph?

Bringing a philosophical eye to Mormonism helped author Brittany Hartley to appreciate the beauty and potential of Mormon thought as she came into her own questions about her ongoing affiliation. 

Unfortunately, Mormon thought kept alive by generations of curious Mormon intellectuals, can’t quite compete with the heft of Mormon authoritarianism.   When push comes to shove, the church’s direction is often decided by edict rather than drawing on the traditions own philosophical and theological resources.

Where one stands in relation to this tension between the Big ‘C’ Church’s bent toward authoritarianism, and the small ‘c’ church’s concern for keeping the Mormon theological conversation expanding and emerging is where the heart of faith crisis lies.  

Brittney’s book ‘Mormon Philosophy Simplified’ is a philosophically accessible treatise that excavates the best of what Mormonism continues to offer while not being naive that most of it will ever make it to the pulpit or to the Ensign. 

Cristina Rosetti is a Roman Catholic woman and scholar who is interested in Mormon Fundamentalism.

She joins me to discuss her own religious and spiritual path.  Oddly her inquiry into Mormon Fundamentalism comes out of an interest in how certainty shapes and creates religious identities.   Her scholarship in Mormonism was initially a way of helping her understand the relationship between faith and doubt, certainty and uncertainty

But, her questions of faith drew her into the world Mormon Fundamentalism and the way in which Mormonism has unfolded as highly schismatic and overly concerned with truth claims and authority.

In order to really understand the LDS Church, one absolutely needs to understand Mormon history.  There are few periods in Mormon history that are darker and more defining than the Mormon Reformation. 

In order to really understand the LDS Church, one absolutely needs to understand Mormon history.  There are few periods in Mormon history that are darker and more defining than the Mormon Reformation. 

Lindsay Hansen Park characterizes this period of Mormon history as best understood by imagining what you’d get if you introduced the wild, wild West to an Old Testament God. She further argues that the LDS Church today continues to be shaped by the unresolved violence that took place during that murderous time.