John Hamer comes from a family who has long been a part of the Latter-day Saint movement. Once a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, today, John pastors a bustling downtown Toronto Community of Christ congregation. …
We shouldn’t be more worried about Faith Crisis than we are about our response to it. A poor response to faith crisis can cause spiritual havoc and immense emotional damage. From our LDS cousins (who have had their own institutional…
David Hayward is popularly known by his cartoons, his blogs and his books as The NakedPastor. He started his ministry typically enough as a seminarian, an ordained minister and a pastor. But when David began to experience his own faith…
When Maxine Hanks returned to the LDS Church after being excommunicated with the September 6 in 1993, she returned to the LDS Church having taken a spiritual formation pathway in the Gnostic tradition. One of her great passions upon her return…
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…
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…
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there’s often a very large gap in the theological or doctrinal understanding of the garment, and the lived experience with wearing one. Predictably, Mormons will simply say that garments are…
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,…
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. Abuse perpetrated by religious…
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…
