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…
Category: Belief Crisis
266a: Fowlers Stages of Faith: Developing a Healthy Individuative-Reflective Faith: Sara Hughes-Zabawa
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,…
265: Let’s Talk About Religious Abuse: Kathleen Shannon
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…
263: The Spiritual Journey that Led to an Excommunication: Sam Young
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…
260: Reckoning with the Corruption of Brother Joseph: Andrew Bolton
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 with the same history with which…
259: The Feasibility of Staying: Tom Mikota
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 First Vision Theater on Temple Square that questions erupted in him. After…
252: ‘It wasn’t God’s Will’: Reflections on the 4th Anniversary of Kate Kelly’s Excommunication
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…
251: Impasse: When your ward turns on you: Sabine
Sabine (name changed) had 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. The result was a fall-out with her local LDS community…
250: Living Honestly with Mormonism’s Past and Present: Brian Whitney
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. Brians’ Website: Mormonism in Context
246: “There’s a world of ideas competing for access to human brains”: Souls, Brains and the Divine: Dr Michael Ferguson
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,…