A Thoughtful Faith - Mormon / LDS

Join Sarah Hughes-Zabawa in this guided meditation to accompany our discussion about Fowler's Stage Five.

Direct download: Stage_Five.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:54pm NZDT

Sara Hughes-Zabawa and I discuss a spirituality that pays attention to both the church's tendency to spiritually wound and spiritually enliven. We discuss Fowler's Stage Five in the context of spiritual practice and suggest those moves that we can make to support our living with a complex spirituality that refuses the easy binaries and judgements of either/or and right/wrong.

Direct download: Sarah_Stage_Five_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:51pm NZDT

Royleane Otteson joins me to discuss how to be a faithful witness to another's spiritual journey.  Using the Advent reading of Elizabeth and Zechariah as a story of community witness,  we unpack what friendship means to those of us who have embarked on our own journeys of spiritual seeking.

Direct download: Advent_3.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:31am NZDT

Without any effort to contextualize or indigenize the LDS Church in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Māori are often asked to accept ways of being that get imported from Utah.  This 'Utah' worldview is too often presented to LDS Māori as the way Jesus Christ would do things and is called the 'Gospel Culture.'   

But the effect of the 'Gospel Culture' is to alienate Māori from those ways of being that support Māori well-being.   This lack of interest in Māori ways of being Mormon bears all of the hallmarks of religious and spiritual colonization.


Dr. Byron Rangiwai, Dr. Nepia Mahuika and TeRata Hikairo discuss LDS Church practices, policies and discipline through the lens of Tikanga Māori.  

Direct download: Maori_CD_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:45pm NZDT

Advent marks the beginning of the Church year, and Jody England Hansen and Melissa Beh join me to discuss the Way of Love as part of our Advent Study series.

This week we found ourselves discussing the feminine journey of the Way of Love and that defining moment when two surprised and expectant mothers (Mary and Elizabeth) meet to affirm each other's journey with blessing.

Direct download: Advent_2_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:48am NZDT

Lawyer Tim Kosnoff, recently remarked that he thought that churches largely were harmless.  That was until he uncovered a system of cover-ups, and he witnessed first hand the immoral and callous lengths that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will go to deny the rights of sexual abuse victims to seek justice.

Tom and Juliette were an ordinary family in Michael Jensen's Mormon community when they were asked to provide a home for him.

What they didn't know was that they were harbouring a paedophile with prior convictions and numerous criminal allegations of sexual assault and abuse against him.  What surprised and horrified them was that their church leaders had known of his abuses for years and they said nothing.

With Tim Kosnoff at their side, they took the LDS Church on in court and what they experienced was shocking and life-changing.

Direct download: Juliette_Tom_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:01pm NZDT

In the United Kingdom, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a registered Charity overseen by the Charity Commission.  This means it is must provide a public benefit and it needs to be transparent.

But the LDS Church in the UK is anything but transparent and rather than present the accounts to its membership for discussion it observes the mandatory public reporting regulations but doesn't tell all interested parties of its availability.  And there's good reason because a decent look at the accounts reveals a concerted effort to carry on its activities in the United Kingdom as if it were a US corporation sole with no public accountability.

In this discussion, Chris Mace joins me once again to dive into the public record to see what the latest figures and sums reveal about the LDS Church's financial operations in the United Kingdom.

Direct download: Chris_Mace_Update_UK_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:55pm NZDT

A few years ago, Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan set about trying to find out something about the relationship that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have with their temple garments.   Around 4,500 Mormons responded to their question "What do your garments mean to you?"

Out of the survey data emerged some very strong themes, and to discuss their research Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan join me for a very interesting discussion about Mormon underwear.

Direct download: Ross_Finnigan_Temple_Garments_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:23pm NZDT

Mark Pugsley is a lawyer in Salt Lake City Utah who specialises in recovering money lost by investors due to bad advice or misconduct.
He has represented victims of investment fraud and unsuitable investment recommendations in civil litigation, whistleblower cases, and receivership (clawback) cases for over twenty years.  

Mark reports that Affinity Fraud is a big problem in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community and he’s repeatedly called on leaders of the LDS Church to be more proactive in warning church members that they need to carefully evaluate investment opportunities on their merits, regardless of who is pitching them.

Direct download: Mark_Pugsley_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:34pm NZDT

Sara Hughes-Zabawa offers a guided meditation to accompany our journeys into Stage Four:  The Individuative-Reflective stage of faith.

Direct download: Stage_Four.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:31am NZDT

Sara Hughes-Zabawa returns to discuss one of the most emotionally and spiritually challenging stages in Fowler's Stages of Faith;  the development of an Individuative-Reflective Faith.   In high demand or fundamentalist faith traditions Stage Four is poorly understood and often poorly responded to by families,  hurch friends and leadership.

Sarah calls for the celebration and normalisation of the individuative-reflective stage of faith and for more openness and acceptance of its necessity in everyone's spiritual becoming.

Direct download: sarahughes-zabawa_Stage_Four_final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:27am NZDT

As my interview with spiritual trauma therapy specialist Kathleen Shannon will indicate, a definition for religious abuse is difficult to nail it down.  But according to Caswell and Swindle (2018) religious abuse occurs within three categories. 

  1. Abuse perpetrated by religious leaders.
  2. Abuse perpetrated by a religious group.
  3. Abuse with a religious or spiritual component.

There is a good amount of literature about religious and spiritual abuse and what comes up, again and again, is that firstly, religious abuse is ubiquitous in conservative and fundamentalist faith traditions.  And secondly, religious abuse has a profound effect on personal well being and mental health.

In this interview, Kathleen and I will be talking about the dominant forms of religious abuse which are:

  1. Power-posturing and authoritarianism
  2. Double Talk and hypocrisy.
  3. Lifestyle rigidity and a preoccupation with performance.
  4. Top-down communication and the control of doubt and dissent.
  5. Image control and the pressure to keep everything looking sweet.
  6. The tendency to think that everyone has to wrong but your group.
  7. Legalism.
  8. The extra religious tax on women.

What’s interesting in this interview is that as two people who come from two different backgrounds we soon realise that we have a great deal in common.  Which begs many questions about what is going on society that Christianity that denominations have been captured by a form of church that has great potential to cause harm.

 

 

Direct download: kathleen_shannon_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:41pm NZDT

Jan Tyler has been an active campaigner for women's rights since the early 1970's.

Her first job was at Weber State University as the Women's Dean.  It was there that she met the incoming President, Joseph Bishop.  He became so problematic that she eventually hired a lawyer and took out a discrimination case against him.

She was later employed by BYU where she went head to head with Dallin Oaks (the then president) over women's rights.   She took three top Utah State administrators to court over sex discrimination.  And as the head of the coordinating committee for the Utah International Women's Year convention in 1975, she stood for women's rights against a 13,000 strong Mormon contingent who were hell-bent on disrupting the proceedings.  

Jan went on to champion the cause of women and Mormon women in one of the most patriarchal and conservative states in the USA. 

Her story is one of plucky and determined resolve to support women's rights in the face of institutions, culture and even her own faith tradition.

 

Direct download: Jan_Tyler_V2_final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:31am NZDT

Sam Young was recently excommunicated from the LDS Church.  His sin was 'advocating' for a change of policy to prevent Church Leaders from asking children sexually explicit questions.  He had collected the testimonies of hundreds of abuse victims,  but this was not enough to prevent his ousting.   Sam's Disciplinary Council and Stake President were more disturbed by his challenging the Church leaders than they were by the hundreds of instances of abuse he presented to them.

In this interview, we explore the spiritual journey that brought Sam to a reckoning with the church to which he has given his life.

Direct download: Sam_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:52pm NZDT

LDS sacrament meetings are decidedly low church but without the possibility of any variation or innovation - anywhere in the world.  And it's been that way for decades.

Bradley Burgess a convert to the LDS Church from South Africa, is a graduate of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. A professional organist and church musician, Bradley currently serves as the full-time Associate Director of Music and Worship Arts at a large North Carolina Methodist Church. He joins me to discuss his hope for an ecumenical model of LDS worship that draws on the best of other Christian traditions.

Direct download: Burgess_final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:58pm NZDT

It comes as no surprise that the Roman Catholic Church is suffering a crisis of credibility over its handling of cases of church-related and clergy perpetrated sexual abuse.

Dr. Rocio Figueroa was involved in uncovering cases of serial sexual abuse in Sodalico, a conservative Roman Catholic society in Lima, Peru by its founder Fernando Figari, its vicar Herman Doig and other senior leaders of the movement.  In doing so she encountered institutional cover-ups and denials that caused her own dark night of the soul.

Drawing on the research relating to sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church Rocio joins me to discuss the conditions that enable sexual abuse in religious contexts.

Rocio specializes in issues related to women's studies, and reciprocity between men and women. In the Holy See she was responsible for the Women’s section in the Pontifical Council of Laity (specifically creating networks between the different international Catholic associations which promote the dignity and value of women).

 

Direct download: Rocio_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:57pm NZDT

Few institutions are more equipped to peek in on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with more understanding, sympathy and even critique than the Community of Christ.  They too have been dealing the same history with which the Mormons have been struggling.   But they are a generation or two ahead of the Mormons, suffering the natural convolutions and troubles that come from any institutional reckoning.  As a result, they know what it means to pay the price for, and then to enjoy the spiritual liberation that comes from squaring up to your tradition's past sins.

Andrew Bolton, a former apostle of the Community of Christ, joins me to discuss ‘the problem of Nauvoo.'

Direct download: andrew_bolton_final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:43pm NZDT

Tom Mikota has designed special effects on such blockbuster movies as Avatar, King Kong, Tintin etc.  But it wasn't until he was shoulder tapped to work on the 360 degree Joseph Smith film on Temple Square that things began to occur to him.  After a lifetime of faithful service, he was introduced to the contradictory first vision accounts that he was employed to represent as an employee of the church.

In this interview, we walk through Tom's faith crisis and we confront the question, 'Can I continue in the church without the trappings and social markers of orthodoxy?'

Direct download: Tom_Mikota_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:10pm NZDT

Tim Kosnoff is a US attorney who has spent the last two decades representing victims of sexual abuse.   His introduction to the  LDS Church and their lawyers was when he represented Jeremiah Scott who was sexually abused by a serial paedophile Frank Curtis.  His work, in this case, appears in Lisa Davis' legal thriller, 'The Sins of Brother Curtis.' 

This case has lead to a practice in which he has come to represent over 150 Mormon sexual abuse victims bringing him face to face with the Mormon law machine time and time again.  

Tim joins me to discuss his experiences as a representative and advocate for sexual abuse victims against the LDS Church. 

Direct download: Kosnoff_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:44pm NZDT

While Mormons claim Joseph Smith as the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is still very much Brigham Young's church.  Brigham's leadership was formative in shaping the LDS movements as it is today.   The husband of 55 wives Brigham's influence was more than organisational.  He was also responsible for establishing a patriarchal structure and suite of doctrines and practices that affirmed that loyalty to the highest priesthood office in the church was the church's primary orthodoxy, and the feminine role was to honour that priesthood.

So, what of those who directly inherited Brigham's legacy.  What of his female posterity?

Great, great, great granddaughters of Brigham, Kristen Jensen and Crystal Chamberlain along with the great great great granddaughter of Zina Huntington (one of Brigham's wives) join me to discuss what it means to have inherited Brigham's legacy along with the wounds of their grandmothers.  

Direct download: Granddaughters_of_Brigham_Young.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 7:58am NZDT

Duane Jennings is the author of the two-volume series "Stumbling Blocks and Stepping-Stones."

In this conversation, we consider (notwithstanding current LDS policy) an LDS queer theology through the Wesleyan Quadrilateral of scripture, reason, tradition, and experience.

 

Direct download: Duane_Jennings_Absolute_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:33am NZDT

In 1990 the Pace Memorandum reported the findings of General Authority Glenn Pace in which alleged victims described ritual abuse.  This was followed by a Utah State Legislature investigation in which hundreds of alleged victims were interviewed.   These testimonies were later dismissed as 'false memories.'

Yet, research indicates that the undermining of these testimonies was not best professional practice for the mental health community.  Tara Workman-Tulley is a Provo based therapist who specializes in complex trauma.  Many of her clients continue to report childhood experiences of ritual abuse that have uncanny similarities.

Tara joins me to discuss sexual abuse and sex trafficking in Mormon communities. 

Direct download: Tara_Tulley_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:56am NZDT

Benjamin Knoll and Cami-Jo Bollin discuss their new book, 'She Preached the Word:  Women's Ordination in Modern America.'

Their study uses novel survey data that reveals a surprising relationship between political orientation and an acceptance of women's ordination.   This, of course,  raises one of America's most pressing questions: How strongly are America's religious sensibilities shaped by their much polarized US political scene?

Direct download: Ben_Knowles_Cami-Jo_Bolin_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:37am NZDT

A meditation to accompany our thinking and feeling into how we once or are currently living in Fowler's Stage Three: Synthetic-Conventional Faith.

Direct download: Sarah_ZH_Stage_3_Meditation.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:50pm NZDT

Sarah Hughes-Zabawa rejoins me to discuss Fowler's Stages of Faith:  The Synthetic-Conventional Stage.

Stage Three is usually entered into during adolescence.   It's that stage in which we imagine that our views represent an accurate and faithful totality of truth.   This stage also sees us looking at institutions as the bearers of that truth, and we reward those institutions with our agreement and consent to their authority.  During this stage, we come to believe that there are goals to accomplish and in meeting those goals we'll please God and receive blessings.  But, as we'll discuss, stage three also has its complications.

Direct download: Sara_Hughes-Zabawa__Stage_Four_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:38pm NZDT

In June 2014 Kate Kelly, the vocal spokesperson for Ordain Women, was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for apostasy.

Kate Kelly had led a high profile campaign including two actions on Temple Square in order to ask the President of the LDS Church to pray about whether or not women should be ordained.   This public petition that eventually included hundreds of women from around the world was met by a resounding silence and denial by the LDS leadership.  But it was Kate's excommunication that either catapulted women out of the church or aroused a new awareness in the faithful that the church they had thought of as benevolent had, in this case, acted vindictively and egregiously to support the supremacy of the patriarchy.

Katie Langston, Nancy Ross and Brittany Mangleson, women who arrived at an impasse after the excommunication and chose to pursue ordination in other faith traditions join me to discuss the impact of Ordain Women on them and the Mormon feminist community.

Direct download: Kates_Excommunication_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:53pm NZDT

Sabine (name changed) served faithfully in the church for years.  Then several incidents involving her children occurred causing her to act swiftly to protect them from bullying and shaming from adult leaders.   The result was a fall-out with her local LDS community followed by a request that she no longer enter the church premises.

Sabine's is one of many stories in which solvable interpersonal problems are compounded by poor pastoral practice, difficulties in dealing with interpersonal difficulties, an attachment to affirming the status of leaders and a subtle rejection of parents as the ultimate authority when it comes to their children.

Direct download: Sabine_Final_Two.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:17pm NZDT

Brian and Gina discuss the complexity of the experience of Mormonism when confronted with eyes wide open to both its past, its present and its changing contexts.

Direct download: Brian_Whitney_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:15pm NZDT

Mormons don't have a robust theology of the cross.  They are more inclined to say that, 'We celebrate the Living Christ, not the death of Christ'.  Though Mormons claim to be Christian this defining sign of Christianity is missing, while other symbols taken from Free Masonry are abundant.   Michael Reed, author of 'Banishing the Cross:  The emergence of a Mormon Taboo' joins me to discuss how this circumstance came to be.

Direct download: _Michael_Reed_The_Cross_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:29am NZDT

Derrick Clements and Gina Colvin get real about the price of motherhood in this somewhat Mormon flavoured review of Tully by Jason Reitman, starring Charlize Theron.

Direct download: Tully_CMMR_Edited_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:34am NZDT

In Part Two the World Ministry Tour of President Russell Nelson, Sister Wendy Watson Nelson, Elder Jeffrey Holland and Sister Patricia Holland comes under fire.

Direct download: Ministry_Part_Two_Bleakley_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:59pm NZDT

Peter Bleakley offers optimistic and enthusiastic commentary on the new ministering programme currently being rolled out to replace Home and Visiting Teaching.

Direct download: MinisteringPart_One_Bleakley_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:54pm NZDT

Gina and movie reviewer Derrick Clements discuss Love, Simon.

"Everyone deserves a great love story, but for 17-year-old Simon Spier, it's a little more complicated. He hasn't told his family or friends that he's gay, and he doesn't know the identity of the anonymous classmate that he's fallen for online. Resolving both issues proves hilarious, terrifying and life-changing."

Direct download: ep_5_-_Love_Simon.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:57pm NZDT

Dr Michael Ferguson is a research fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School.  He works at the intersections of culture and brain.   His active research includes cognitive neuroscientific investigations of intelligence, memory, depression, religiosity, depression and spiritual experience.

 

Michael joins Gina to discuss the relationship between religion, church, spirituality and God.   They go deeply into the question of where and how we feel the spirit, and how the spirit is ultimately an embodied experience.  

Direct download: Michael_Ferguson_Final_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:35pm NZDT

The Old Testament can be a bit confusing.   Biblical scholar Prof. David Bokovoy, joins Gina Colvin to discuss the things that are handy to know in order to really appreciate the Old Testament as a sacred text worth considering today.

Direct download: David_Bokovoy.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:33am NZDT

Historian Newell Bringhurst discusses the background to his seminal work, "Saints, Slave and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People Within Mormonism."

Originally published in 1980, Newell's important contribution to racial politics in the LDS Church is being republished by Greg Kofford books in light of the 40th year anniversary of Official Declaration Two, which extended the priesthood to 'all worthy men.'

Newell joins a chorus of scholars who argue that the Priesthood denial was less about Blackness than it was about White supremacy and as such isn't really worthy of the celebrations that the church intends in the coming months.  


Direct download: Bringhurst_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:22am NZDT

"There's no point at which we can say, 'I've got it.'   Always and forever, mystery gets you.  Our searching for God is a search for symbols, analogies and metaphors.  All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe.  That's the best human language can achieve.

We must absolutely must, maintain a fundamental humility before the great mystery.  If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations, and never God."

So says Fr. Richard Rohr, and thus contemplates art historian and medievalist Professor Nancy Ross.  Nancy reflects on the place of art in religion in the West and how that has shaped her own spiritual development. 

 

Direct download: Nancy_Ross_final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:35pm NZDT

General Conference is often scheduled at the same time as Holy Week.  While there is much in LDS History to suggest that the formal organisation of the church occurred not coincidently with Holy Week of 1830, we are according to Bob Rees, still missing out on the most important season of the Christian year.

In this discussion, Bob and I share our passion for Holy Week and talk about how we would love to see it taken up in LDS liturgical and contemplative practice.

Direct download: Bob_Rees_Holy_Week_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:31pm NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

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 NZDT

A guided meditation from Sara Hughes-Zabawa to companion our reflections on Fowlers Stage 0-1.

Direct download: Final_GM_Fowler_One_SHZ.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:56pm NZDT

In thinking about Fowler's stages model, adults don't tend to discuss the childhood phases.  Yet, we all have parts of each stage present in us, whether some have been mostly passed through, and others are nascent.

In this series of podcasts with Sara Huges-Zabawa (LMSW) we revisit and consider each of these stages and their spiritual usefulness.  Sara also offers a guided meditation that helps us reconnect with their beauty and wisdom.

Stages 0-1 are worth considering, particularly as parents, as we navigate the spiritual and religious socialization of our children.  But they are also instructive for adults and thinking about them helps us make sense of our early faith beginnings. 

 

 

Direct download: Final_Fowler_One_SZH.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:51pm NZDT

How racist was Joseph Smith?  Can the LDS Church really claim Jane Manning James as an example of Joseph Smith's progressive ideals?  There's plenty of evidence to suggest that Joseph Smith had a theological imagination for Indigenous Americans, but what did he really think of African Americans?


Direct download: Max_Perry_Mueller.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:21pm NZDT

Co-authors Judith and James McConkie discuss their breakthrough  historical Jesus primer for Mormons;  'Whom Say Ye That I am?: Lessons from the Jesus of Nazareth.  

Direct download: McConkie_JJ_Historical_Jesus.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:38pm NZDT

Thomas McConkie offers a healing meditation.

Direct download: Healing.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:39am NZDT

Mindfulness teacher; author of ‘Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis’; and Founder of the Lower Lights Sangha, Thomas McConkie,  joins Gina to discuss contemplative Mormonism and some of the spiritual practices that are attached to the contemplative traditions.

 Thomas also offers January 2018’s guided meditation on ‘Healing’, and we chat about some of the resources available that support the Mormon contemplative community.

Direct download: TWM_January_Guided_Meditation.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:33am NZDT

With all of the chatter happening in Mormon circles about Prophets, Apostles and Presidents I talk to two people about prophets and prophecy.

In Episode 226, Rev'd Megan Herles-Mooar, an Anglican priest and theologian, talks about Walter Brueggemann's 'The Prophetic Imagination' and the role that prophecy plays in the life of the church.

In Episode 227, Chris Kimball the grandson of the 12th president of the LDS Church, Spencer W. Kimball, talks about what it means to have a Prophet in the family.

Direct download: Chris_Kimball_FINAL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:28pm NZDT

With all of the chatter happening in Mormon circles about Prophets, Apostles and Presidents I talk to two people about prophets and prophecy. 

Rev'd Megan Herles-Mooar is an Anglican priest and theologian.  We discuss Walter Brueggemann's 'The Prophetic Imagination' and the role that prophecy plays in the life of the church.

Chris Kimball is the grandson of the 12th president of the LDS Church, Spencer W. Kimball.  In this conversation, we talk about what it means to have a Prophet in the family.

Direct download: Megan_prophets_and_prophey_FINAL.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:16pm NZDT

Two former Bishops who have both experienced a faith crisis respond to the question:  'How can LDS leaders behave more sensitively and with more wisdom to those experiencing a faith crisis?'

Direct download: Ganesh_Rich.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:54pm NZDT

The 2018 A Thoughtful Faith Podcast theme is 'Faithful Change.'  Every month we provide a Homily, a meditation on spiritual matters.  For January Gina shares a reflection on Divine Absence.

 

Direct download: Homily_January_Final.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:39pm NZDT

1