Posts Tagged ‘ mormon ’

73: “And the Survey Says…!”: Reflections on Mormon Disaffection, Marlin Jensen’s Remarks, Recent Articles on Mormonism’s Challenge in Better Facing Its History

February 8, 2012
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73: “And the Survey Says…!”: Reflections on Mormon Disaffection, Marlin Jensen’s Remarks, Recent Articles on Mormonism’s Challenge in Better Facing Its History

This episode is an attempt to aid in processing the current moment in which various Mormon-watching communities are beginning to digest the preliminary results that have recently been released from the Open Stories Foundation survey about why Mormons leave the church, which comes on the heels of remarks made in December at Utah State University by LDS Church Historian Elder Marlin Jensen and reported on in numerous recent news stories in which he reflects on the current disaffection crisis and the Church’s plans to help address it. What does the survey suggest? How might the LDS Church move ahead...

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72: Effecting Change in the Church

January 31, 2012
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72: Effecting Change in the Church

This episode features panelists who all are deeply involved with theLDSChurch, yet from their position of involvement in, and love and affection for, the church and those they worship and serve with, each of them acts as an agent for change. As one of the panelists, Carol Lynn Pearson, suggests in the podcast, don’t we all want to be a blessing to those we love? But while the idea of bringing about “change” being a way of “blessing” others flows easily from Carol Lynn and the other panelists, these two don’t equate this way for many Latter-day Saints who,...

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71: Make Love AND War!: Maintaining Positive Relationships During Faith Transitions—A Spiritual Framing

January 26, 2012
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71: Make Love AND War!: Maintaining Positive Relationships During Faith Transitions—A Spiritual Framing

This is an expanded version of the talk Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon gave at the Houston Region Mormon Stories Support Community conference held 20-21 January 2012. Using the biblical accounts of Jacob and the angel, and Jacob and Esau, as key texts, and organized around the central image of a “wrestling match” being simultaneously a fight but also an embrace, along with the idea of the close ties between making love and making war, the talk is geared toward providing ways of thinking about faith crises in positive ways–as integral parts of the larger human developmental journey–and then...

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70: Is the World Getting Worse?

January 17, 2012
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70: Is the World Getting Worse?

We hear them all the time, statements about the world “going to hell in a hand basket,” sighs and longings for “the good old days,” warnings of rampant moral decay and declarations to all who want to follow God that they are living in “enemy territory.” For those prone to depression and anxiety, such framings of the world and today’s moral and spiritual state exacerbate their struggles. For children, these notions feed fears and cause some to wonder if this world is really worth engaging. There are also dozens of other subtle ways that these kinds of assessments can...

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69: Patriarchal Blessings

January 10, 2012
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69: Patriarchal Blessings

One of Mormonism’s unique features is the patriarchal blessing in which LDS church members–generally mid-teens or older, though there is no official age limit–are given the chance to have hands laid upon their heads by an experienced and humble priesthood leader who has been set apart as a “patriarch” and to receive from him words of wisdom, inspiration, encouragement, guidance, and in many cases, prophetic-type pronouncements about possibilities for their lives, with some of these statements quite specific or unique. Most Latter-day Saints consider their patriarchal blessings wonderful treasures in their lives, and as containing words (as panelist Richard...

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67–68: The Happiness Puzzle

January 3, 2012
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67–68: The Happiness Puzzle

What seems like something very simple to answer–”What is happiness?” or even, “What makes me happy?”–turns out to be anything but easy. How much do our expectations or pre-conceived ideas about what will make us happy come into play? How does the number of choices we have affect satisfaction with our lives? How much of our happiness level reflects what we experience in the moments of our lives versus how we reflect upon our experiences–the stories we tell about them? How much do our relationships with family, loved ones, and people we enjoy being around contribute to our feelings...

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66: Spiritual Secrets of Addiction Recovery

December 28, 2011
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66: Spiritual Secrets of Addiction Recovery

As the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous discovered, something profound can happen when addicts invite God or a power higher than themselves into their lives and efforts at recovery. Through understanding addiction as a symptom of spiritual “dis-ease” and addressing recovery as an attempt to restore a healthy balance between one’s own ego and desires to run things versus the will and wisdom of God or the universe, AA and its Big Book and Twelve-Step offspring programs have saved countless lives. What are the spiritual principles at work in addiction recovery? Do addicts at their wits’ and wills’ ends discover...

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65: LDS Views on Christ’s Second Coming and the End Times

December 20, 2011
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65: LDS Views on Christ’s Second Coming and the End Times

Elder Boyd K. Packer’s October 2011 General Conference encouragement to youth to not fear that because of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ they will not have a chance to have a full life, including having children and grandchildren, is the latest in what seems to be a trend among LDS leaders to de-emphasize the kind of apocalyptic thinking that was prevalent among Mormons even just a few decades ago. Yet class discussions during recent lessons in the priesthood and Relief Society manuals on the signs of the Second Coming, what will happen upon Christ’s return, the Millennium, and...

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64: Mormons and Prayer

December 13, 2011
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64: Mormons and Prayer

Mormons pray . . . a lot!  Latter-day Saints are encouraged to have daily (twice or more) personal prayer, family prayer including children (in addition to parents praying together), prayers before meals, prayers for safety, and even other injunctions to “pray without ceasing.” Mormon meetings and classes all open and close with prayer, and Mormons offer scripted prayers when blessing the emblems of the sacrament, when baptizing, and performing certain temple ordinances, and they offer blessings and other types of prayers in language that isn’t scripted but that must include certain elements. LDS rhetoric also often prescribes certain language...

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63: Oh Say, What Is Truth?

December 7, 2011
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63: Oh Say, What Is Truth?

We Mormons have heard it countless times: “I know the Church is true?” But what does  this mean? Heck, even more basic, what does “true” mean? In this podcast, host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Joanna Brooks, Dennis Potter, and Rhett Tenney take a deep dive into these questions. Explorations include overviews of major philosophical approaches, especially those most relevant to thinking about religious beliefs and practices, the shifts in thinking that in the past century have revolutionized thought about the nature of truth, including strong recognition of the way we all inhabit discourses that shape our views of truth...

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62: A Christmas Primer: Exploring the Nativity in Scripture, Legend, History, and Hearts

November 29, 2011
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62: A Christmas Primer: Exploring the Nativity in Scripture, Legend, History, and Hearts

This podcast episode examines the Christmas story as it traditionally gets told—but what do the scriptures actually say and not say about the birth of Christ and all the pieces of this familiar story? How do the Matthew and Luke accounts differ—even irreconcilably? What motives are behind the Gospel writers’ decisions to shape the stories the way they do? What about the Jesus’s place of birth and the reason the family was in Bethlehem (if they were)? Was there a great tax and registration? What about “no room at the inn,” the manger, the star, the magi, the story...

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61: Mormon Views on Satan and the Origins of Evil

November 22, 2011
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61: Mormon Views on Satan and the Origins of Evil

Most religions, cultures, and philosophies contain stories or theories about human evil and its origins. Some, including Mormonism, place a major portion of the blame for moral evil on a fallen angel, Lucifer, and his followers, who after being ousted from heaven become devils whose only desire is to thwart God’s plans and make loathsome humans as miserable as possible. What many Latter-day Saints don’t realize is how much their version of the war in heaven and the role of Lucifer, who becomes known as Satan, differs from that of wider Christianity, Islam, and the hints of the story...

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59: Mormon Messages about Priesthood, Fatherhood, Patriarchy, and More

November 8, 2011
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59: Mormon Messages about Priesthood, Fatherhood, Patriarchy, and More

In August, Mormon Matters hosted an important and fascinating discussion about messages Mormon women hear about their divine roles as mothers. What messages do Mormon men hear? Are they equally challenged to consider fatherhood their most important role, or do priesthood duties and responsibilities take first priority? Have messages about men’s roles evolved over the past several decades? In what ways does Mormonism support the institutions of power and attitudes about gender difference and roles of patriarchal societies? Why isn’t there as robust a discussion within Mormonism geared toward teasing apart cultural constructs from gospel truths as we see...

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58: Obedience and Agency

November 1, 2011
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58: Obedience and Agency

Mormonism teaches the importance of being obedient to God and God’s will while at the same time emphasizing the bedrock fact of our individual agency. The gospel ideal is that we fully and knowingly submit our will to that of God, and in this way be obedient while still acting entirely out of our own agency. Of course, life is much messier than this, and the ideal hides from us a bit. How can we truly know God’s will and when we’re hearing God’s voice and not our own? Because of difficulties like this, one of the most common...

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57: LDS Young Single Adult Experiences Revisited

October 25, 2011
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57: LDS Young Single Adult Experiences Revisited

Mormon Matters episode 31 featured a panel discussion about the LDS Church’s struggle to meet the needs of many of its young single adults and some of the possible reasons why. Episode 33 then highlighted in a more personal way through first-hand accounts from two people in this group some of the tensions they face as singles in Mormon culture as well as in their own spiritual journeys. This episode revisits the LDS young single adult experience with new panelists—Kayela Seegmiller, Derrick Clements, and Megan Sanborn Jones—who each experience the gospel and both the blessings and the tensions of...

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56: Mormonism and Wealth

October 18, 2011
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56: Mormonism and Wealth

The recent Occupy Wall Street movement and its ongoing spread, along with the cover essay in the October 2011 issue of Harper’s that draws what the author of that piece sees as a direct link between Mormonism’s economic ideals and its rise in influence in society at large, and certain factions of the Republican Party in particular, provide excellent springboards for a great discussion about LDS views about wealth, prosperity, business principles, economic systems, cultural attitudes that sometimes suggest a connection between righteousness and personal prosperity, and much more. And that’s what this podcast episode contains. In dialogue with...

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55: Cult Claims and the Media

October 11, 2011
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55: Cult Claims and the Media

This week’s Mormon Matters episode discusses two stories from the past week: (1) The dust-up over and media slam-down of remarks made by Texas mega-church pastor and Governor Rick Perry supporter Robert Jeffress that Mormonism is a cult—does this episode represent a real shift in the tenor of the “Mormon Moment”?; and (2) the news that the LDS Church has recently sent out a survey that aims to understand how its members interact with today’s social media and view particular blogs, bloggers, and reporters—including two of this episode’s panel members, Joanna Brooks and McKay Coppins. The episode’s third panelist,...

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54: The Atonement in Mormon Thought and Experience

October 4, 2011
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54: The Atonement in Mormon Thought and Experience

The central claim of Christianity is that all human beings are “fallen,” held captive by sin, or are in some other way in a dire circumstance that can only be overcome through God’s aid, which comes through faith in the infinite love and sacrifice of God’s own son, Jesus Christ. According to the Christian tradition, this is the central truth of the human condition, and it is only through what has been labeled the Atonement of Jesus Christ that there is a way out. Throughout history, many Christians have celebrated their feelings of being rescued from the grasp of sin,...

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53: Mormonism and Capital Punishment

September 27, 2011
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53: Mormonism and Capital Punishment

The recent execution of Troy Davis brought to the front once more the issue of capital punishment, especially arguments about the very real possibility of executing the wrong person, the unreliability of eye witness accounts, law enforcement pressures for conviction, and the possible brokenness of many of the safeguards that are in place to assure that miscarriages of justice at this ultimate level do not happen. This podcast uses this moment of reflection to discuss Mormon attitudes about the death penalty, and especially what social and theological aspects of Mormonism play into these attitudes. It discusses things such as agency...

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52: Rebirth of the Student Review

September 20, 2011
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52: Rebirth of the Student Review

From 1986 to 1997, the Student Review enjoyed a wonderful run as BYU’s independent student newspaper, which at its peak published weekly and reached a circulation of 10,000. During its years, SR featured a cross section of news reporting, essays, and wonderful humor and satire, with some of its stories resulting in changes to campus policy, as well as impacting life in the wider community and state. As a result of some of its coverage of difficult issues, the publication occasionally rankled school administrators, sometimes even triggering official efforts to shut it down. A team of current BYU students...

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