PODCAST · religion
Faith Matters
by Faith Matters Foundation
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.
Episodes
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A Careful Mending of the World: Paige Crosland Anderson
Today we’re sharing a conversation with Paige Crosland Anderson, an award-winning abstract artist who wrote a beautiful essay for Wayfare Magazine’s special Advent issue. Paige builds her paintings in layers: she paints, paints over the paint, sands everything down, and paints again until the…
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The One Thing Necessary, with Thomas McConkie
Today we’re excited to welcome back Thomas McConkie to celebrate a new season of another Faith Matters podcast he hosts: One Heart, One Mind. Together, we dig into the story of Mary and Martha, which he recently explored in an episode there. Drawing on decades of contemplative practice, Thomas’s...
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Are We Fasting Wrong? an episode of Proclaim Peace with Reverend Adam Russell Taylor
If Isaiah has ever felt impenetrable, start here. With Come, Follow Me taking us into Isaiah over the next couple of weeks, we’re sharing a special crosspost from Proclaim Peace, which is another Faith Matters podcast that we produce with Mormon Women for Ethical Government. In this episode, Jen...
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How to Give a Great Sacrament Meeting Talk | Isaac Richards and Ben Crosby
Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chaves from Faith Matters. Maybe some of you relate to the stomach-dropping feeling I get when I’m asked to speak in church. If you’re anything like me, those 12 minutes can loom over your whole week. Today, Ben Crosby and Isaac Richards join us to talk about how to...
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Casper ter Kuile: The Future of Spirituality
Today, we decided to bring back one of our favorite conversations with Casper ter Kuile, because he'll be joining us this next week, September 24th through 26th, at Restore:Connect. Casper has spent years exploring the changing landscape of spiritual life in America, especially the new ways that...
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Surrender Over Striving: Colette Lafia
Today we're joined by Colette Lafia, a spiritual director, poet, and author whose newest book Leaving the Shore: Experiencing Poetry as Prayer invites us into a different way of meeting the divine than we might be used to. Much of our faith language often centers on effort—perseverance, pressing...
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A Theologian's Conversion | Dr. John White
Today we're joined by John White, a theologian and ethicist who is currently Research Fellow at BYU's Maxwell Institute — and who has a fascinating and unexpected story that led him to convert to the Church just under a year ago. For over a decade, John was a tenured professor of practical…
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Impossible to Miss: How God Finds Us Anyway | Thomas McConkie at Restore 2025
Today we’re bringing you a session we loved from last year’s Restore with Thomas McConkie. There’s a particular overwhelm I know that often comes with learning something new—a low-grade worry that I’m already missing something, forgetting the important pieces, not going to be able to hang onto it...
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The Art of the 25-Minute Lesson: Patrick & Melissa Mason
This week, we're asking: how do you fit a full Sunday School lesson into twenty-five minutes? Our worldwide church is shifting to shorter lesson blocks, and teachers everywhere are feeling nervous. Isaiah in 25 minutes? What do you cut, what do you keep? Today we're sitting down with Patrick and...
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Unfiltered Before God: Praying the Psalms, with Ellen Davis
Most of us can probably recall a verse or two from the book of Psalms—something comforting, or words inside a hymn we know. But Psalms is the longest book in the Bible, and tucked inside this same book of scripture are psalms of rage, cursing, and despair that are a lot harder to make sense of....
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Job and the Truth About Suffering: Mike Petrow
Job is probably one of the most difficult and haunting books in scripture, and this summer as we read it together, we wanted a guide—so we invited Mike Petrow back to join us. With doctoral degrees in psychology and mythological studies, Mike helps us understand Job as an ancient text, and as a...
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When Your Child Comes Out as Gay: A Story of Belonging, Faith, and Family with Dave and Kirty Zimmerman
When Dallin Zimmerman was four years old, he memorized every Article of Faith. As a teenager, he studied Portuguese and Spanish, and had long been the family's peacemaker — a bright, fun-loving light that people gravitate toward. Today he's serving a full-time mission in South America. And at...
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Has Politics Become Your Religion? with Pete Wehner
Today we’re honored to share a conversation with Peter Wehner. We want to acknowledge that this conversation explores territory that is going to feel personal, political, and, probably at some points, challenging. Our hope that it creates honest and faithful wrestling where where we need it.…
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Pete Enns: The Sin of Certainty
Today we’re pulling out one of our favorite episodes from the archives. Our guest is Pete Enns, a well-known bible scholar and the Abram S. Clemens professor of Bible Studies at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. In recent years, Pete has become well known for several highly popular books,...
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Permission to Rest: Melissa Mason and Amanda Ford
Today we’re joined by two thoughtful therapists, teachers, peacebuilders, and friends, Amanda Ford and Melissa Mason. Together with their spouses, Patrick Mason and Chad Ford, Melissa and Amanda have dedicated years to the work of building peace in families, communities, and faith spaces. But in...
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Ryan Burge: The Vanishing Church
Today we’re joined by Ryan Burge, one of the country’s leading data analysts on religion and politics, to talk about his new book, The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us. For decades, we’ve measured the decline of American…
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Declare Independence from Enmity: Patrick Mason at Restore 2025
As we approach America's 250th birthday, we're reminded that every generation inherits the responsibility of shaping the nation's future. At a moment marked by fear, division, and distrust, the invitation to become peacemakers has never felt more urgent. Today, we're sharing a powerful message…
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Robin Ritch: Using Friction to Grow
Today we're delighted to share a conversation with Robin Ritch about her new book, Using Friction to Grow: Stories of Strength and Resilience. Many of us spend our lives trying to avoid friction. We want our faith to feel clear, our communities to feel supportive, and our spiritual lives to move...
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Witnesses from the Margins: Tom Christofferson and Darius Gray
Today we’re sharing a special conversation courtesy of our friends at Lift+Love. This is a conversation recorded at their first ever Gather Conference in 2023, the world’s largest Christ-centered gathering of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and those who love them. In this session, two men sat down...
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Sacred Stories: Three Gay Latter-day Saints, Three Paths | Alisha Anderson, Steven Kapp Perry, & Ben Schilaty at Restore
Today we’re honored to share a special session from Restore 2025 featuring Steven Kapp Perry, Alisha Anderson, and Ben Schilaty—three gay Latter-day Saints who have each taken different paths, and who share a deep commitment to following God with honesty, courage, and faith. In this on-stage...
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Judge Thomas Griffith: Is the Constitution Hanging by a Thread?
This week, wards across the United States will be having a really unique 5th Sunday discussion centered on the Constitution, moral agency, and peace-building. So today, we wanted to reshare a conversation that originally aired in 2021. In this episode, Faith Matters co-founder Bill Turnbull joins...
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The Earth Wants to Heal You: Karl Ebeling
They call him the Mr. Rogers of farming, and I think you’ll understand why. Karl Ebeling spent 33 years as a chemical engineer before feeling an undeniable pull back to the land and to a childhood love of farming that had never really left him. He combined his love of the earth with desire to…
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Tish Harrison Warren: What Grows in Weary Lands
Today, we’re honored to share a conversation with Tish Harrison Warren on her beautiful brand new book, What Grows in Weary Lands. From the very first pages of this book, Tish gives us language for something so familiar. She writes about aridity—those seasons of spiritual drought, exhaustion, or...
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Ritual, Wisdom, and our Divine Mother: Kathryn & Bob Sonntag
Today, as we celebrate our mothers and motherhood, we’re exploring the symbols of our Divine Mother hidden throughout ancient Christianity, and what it might mean for each of us—men and women—to cultivate and integrate divine femininity into our own souls. Our guests are Kathryn and Bob Sonntag,...
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Torn: A Conversation About Who We're Losing and Why, with Jeff Strong
Today, we’re really excited to share a special episode with Jeff Strong on his new book, Torn: Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn From Them. Research suggests that roughly 40% of formerly active, faithful members have stepped away from the Church in the last…
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Learning to Trust Your Own Inspiration: Deidre Green
Hey everyone, this is Aubrey from Faith Matters. Today’s episode is a personal one for me—and probably for many of you—especially if you’ve ever found yourself deferring to someone else’s inspiration, or noticing a tendency to believe that someone else’s knowing is more trustworthy than your own....
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Fr. James Martin, SJ: Moral Courage in an Age of Approval
Today, we’re honored to share a conversation with Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, a New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of Outreach, a ministry for LGBTQ Catholics. His new memoir is called Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker,...
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Nurturing a Faith Your Kids Don’t Have to Heal From: Meredith Miller
Today we’re exploring a tender question so many parents are carrying: how do we help our kids grow in faith when we’re still figuring it out for ourselves? And underneath that—what if we get it wrong? What if we hand them something they’ll spend years trying to untangle? Today, we’re joined by...
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What to Say When Your Kid Leaves the Church: Joseph Grenny & Jeff Strong
Today we’re asking: what do you do when someone you love tells you they’re leaving the Church? What do you say? How do you stay grounded and connected when the stakes feel high or you’re caught off guard? We sat down with two longtime friends of the podcast—authors and researchers Joseph Grenny…
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Terryl Givens: The God Who Waits
We live in a world that prizes activity: being productive, staying in control, always doing something. So when life brings seasons of waiting—through illness, loss, or circumstances we didn’t choose—it can feel unsettling, even threatening to our sense of self. But what if those seasons are...
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Won't You Be My Neighbor? An episode of Article 13
This version has the correct audio--thanks to those who let us know the last one wasn't right! From time to time we like to share episodes from other shows in the Faith Matters network that we think you’ll really love, and today we’re highlighting one of our new favorites from Article 13, the...
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Reading the Bible Through the Jesus Lens
One of the real challenges of studying the Hebrew Bible is figuring out how to make sense of stories of divine violence—where a God of love seems hard to find. These passages raise real questions about the nature of God and what it means for us as we try to live faithfully. Our guest today is…
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“Yes, And”: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice, with Lisa Valentine Clark and James Rees
In today’s conversation, we explore creativity as a spiritual practice—not something reserved for artists, but a way of living. Our guests are Lisa Valentine Clark, a comedian, actor, and host of The Lisa Show, and James Rees—artist, educator, researcher, and passionate advocate for the arts.…
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When Your Faith Breaks: Tucker Boyle
Today we’re grateful to share a conversation with our friend Tucker Boyle—a longtime seminary and institute teacher and the founder of Harmony Road Retreats, a nonprofit creating safe, supportive spaces for people in faith crisis. As a young missionary, Tucker fell in love with teaching the…
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When Faith Meant Trust, with Teresa Morgan
We’re so excited to share a conversation that our friend and Executive Director, Zach Davis, had with Teresa Morgan, Professor at Yale Divinity School and a leading scholar of early Christian history. Teresa invites us to reconsider one of the most central words in Christianity: faith. She…
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Bruce Tift: Already Free
Today we’re so excited to share our conversation with Bruce Tift, author, psychotherapist and longtime practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism. This summer, our friends at Uplift Kids introduced us to Bruce’s fascinating book Already Free, and we’ve been thinking about it ever since. In this...
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Terryl Givens: Wrestling with the Word
As we explore the Old Testament this year, we’ve found ourselves returning to a past conversation with our friend Terryl Givens. It felt grounding and expansive and we're really excited to share it with you again. The Old Testament can be incredibly rich—full of beauty, poetry, and profound...
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Choosing Community over Ideological Purity: Lessons from Exponent II with Katie Ludlow Rich & Heather Sundahl
Hey everyone, this is Aubrey Chaves from Faith Matters. Today I’m excited to share my conversation with Katie Ludlow Rich and Heather Sundahl about 50 Years of Exponent II, their new book tracing the history of a space where Latter-day Saint women have engaged the most urgent questions of their...
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Jeff Strong: Un-Sifting the Saints
We’ve all heard it called a sifting—the language that sometimes surfaces when someone is struggling or steps away from the Church. Wheat from tares, sheep from goats, a sorting in the last days that reveals truly elect. But today, our good friend and contributor Jeff Strong is back to invite us...
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An Inconvenient Faith: Robert Reynolds and Patrick Mason
Today we’re joined by our friend Patrick Mason and filmmaker Robert Reynolds. Rob is the director and producer of the new docu-series An Inconvenient Faith—a project that’s already opening hearts and starting some long-overdue conversations. This series is raw and honest. It takes on some of the...
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A Deeper Look at the Creation Story: an episode of Sanctuary with Jared Lambert
Today, we want to introduce you to another podcast in the Faith Matters Podcast Network called Sanctuary: Discovering the Temple, hosted by Larkin Swain. Larkin brings a candid, curious, and thoughtful approach to conversations about the temple, and this episode felt especially fascinating and...
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Finding Nourishment in the Old Testament, with Sarah and Josh Sabey
Today we’re sharing a conversation with writers and filmmakers Sarah and Josh Sabey about their new project, The Bible Storybook, a two volume collection of 50 stories from the Old Testament. You might remember their Book of Mormon Storybook. Like those earlier volumes, this new project is guided...
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Let's Talk About Money, with Carl Richards
Today we’re bringing you a conversation with Carl Richards, and we think this one might just change the way you think—and feel—about money. You might know Carl as The Sketch Guy from his decade-long New York Times column, where he offered disarmingly relatable insights about money using just...
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In the Bleak Midwinter, by Peter Conti-Brown
As we move into Christmas week, we wanted to offer something a little different. Today’s episode is a reading of “In the Bleak Midwinter,” written and read by Peter Conti‑Brown, and originally published in the Faith Matters magazine, Wayfare. It tells the true story of a Christmas that unfolded…
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The Four Tendencies with Gretchen Rubin
Today, we’re thrilled to share a conversation with New York Times bestselling author and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin, where we explored one of her most practical and game-changing frameworks: the Four Tendencies. Gretchen explains that we all face two types of expectations—outer expectations,...
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Rooting Out “It Was Right for Its Time” : Paul Reeve and Ramesus Stewart-Johnson
Today, in light of the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson which covers Official Declaration 2, we’re honored to share a conversation with W. Paul Reeve and Ramesus Stewart-Johnson about race, the priesthood and temple restriction, and what it really means to root out racism in our church community...
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Advent: A Season of Sacred Longing, with Cecelia Proffit
Today, we’re so excited to share a conversation with our good friend and teammate at Faith Matters, Cece Proffit. If you’ve followed Faith Matters for a while, you’ve felt Cece’s influence—her energy, creativity, and care shape so much of what we do behind the scenes. And so today, we’re thrilled...
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Humor as Wisdom: Mallory Everton at Restore
Today we are so excited to share a session from this year’s Restore Gathering with Mallory Everton. Mallory is best known for her work on the sketch comedy show Studio C, and in this session, she asks a question she says she’s been asking her whole life: do Latter-Day Saints have a problem with...
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The Prophet and the Priest, with Matt Bowman
We’re really excited to share this week’s episode with you—a conversation with scholar and historian, Matt Bowman. Matt is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and an associate professor of religion and history at Claremont Graduate University. In this conversation, he draws on ancient...
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"Truth and Treason" with filmmaker Matt Whitaker
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…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
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.
HOSTED BY
Faith Matters Foundation
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Faith Matters have?
Faith Matters currently has 352 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Faith Matters about?
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...
How often does Faith Matters release new episodes?
Faith Matters publishes regularly with 352 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Faith Matters?
You can listen to Faith Matters on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Faith Matters?
Faith Matters is created and hosted by Faith Matters Foundation.
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