Claim OwnershipFaith Matters
Subscribed: 2,304Played: 111,815
Subscribe
© 2025 Faith Matters
Description
Faith Matters offers an expansive view of the Restored Gospel, thoughtful exploration of big and sometimes thorny questions, and a platform that encourages deeper engagement with our faith and our world. We focus on the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) tradition, but believe we have much to learn from other traditions and fully embrace those of other beliefs.
304 Episodes
Reverse
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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, ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
oh my gosh, this is so good! Loved it!
As far as addressing the fear of not being together in the next life... I really do feel it is a matter of Faith. Yes, God is bound by laws, but I've come to believe that we don't really know how everything will be in the next life. Good will keep His promises. things will be wonderful. We will feel comfortable and happy in whatever degree of glory where we land. It will be what is right for us and our loved ones for them. God is loving, just, and merciful. It will be good. It's not a race.
I could listen to Josh's voice all day.
Love you Kate, an inspiration to us all
The audio on this episode is TERRIBLE, unless Terryl Givens has taken up beatboxing as a hobby. Save your ears and maybe watch this episode on YouTube instead... Also, don't expect to hear much from the author highlighted... it's a one man show and the invited author is not allowed the space to speak much. :/
Wilcox said that as he has looked for God everywhere, he has discovered that great hearts and great minds see in the different religions more of their similarities than their differences.
Remarkably insightful and expansive thinking from Michael Wilcox about the discovery of truth and goodness in so many traditions and faiths and art forms around the world and throughout history. A wonderful analogy using a compass that has one fixed foot and that has another discovery foot that can draw large circles of truth and goodness around our fixed foot (though that fixed foot may also be called to shift some at times when our searching asks for yet bigger circles of discovery and embrace). A footing that fears or discounts the truths that may be present in other religions or traditions will tend to draw small circles around the fixed foot, while the confident and secure footing will generously seek truth and goodness in many forms and traditions and will draw big circles to encompass them.
LaShawn Williams for president!!🥳 Please let her speak her truth from the pulpit! We need her voice, her truth, her beauty and her testimony!
looking forward to more content