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.
Today, we’re excited to announce the latest offering from Faith Matters Publishing, following our previous books All Things New by Terryl and Fiona Givens, Restoration by Patrick Mason, and Better Than Happy by Jody Moore. This book is called The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom of Our Divine Mother, and was written by Kathryn Knight Sonntag. It is a truly beautiful book and a great read.
As Christians, we look forward to resurrection after death into a state of wholeness and joy. But understanding resurrection as occurring only in the next life can prevent us from experiencing the fullness of life that Christ offers us here and now. What if we looked at resurrection as a process that can begin now as we allow Christ to live in and through us? This week, we invited our friend Adam Miller to talk about his book An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ Before You Die.
There is almost certainly someone in your life who is struggling with OCD, and it could be much more severe than you might imagine. OCD is a serious mental illness, and it’s very common for OCD sufferers to experience severe depression and even suicidal thoughts. In a religious setting, it is quite common for OCD to manifest in extreme and very unhealthy scrupulosity.
We talk a lot about the “self” in our culture, and in our faith. We use terms like selfish, selfless, true self, false self, self care, authentic self, etc. Many social commentators observe that the modern era (and maybe particularly the post-modern era) has produced a pervasive secular “cult of the self.” The advent of social media in the past decade has only fanned the flames of a preoccupation with self, complete with the “selfie.”
The perennial struggle to read and understand the Hebrew Bible--that strange and wonderful collection of books we call the Old Testament--has captured our collective attention this year as we dive back into its pages. The text presents profound challenges and questions to Christians and to people with modern sensibilities generally. Among those challenges are stories and accounts of what seem to be divinely sanctioned violence.
We’ve been working hard to gather voices that could help us process the ongoing atrocities that the Russian government has inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. Like you, we’ve wondered what the reality is like on the ground in Ukraine right now, how we can help, and if our faith might have something to offer in terms of how we approach what’s going on, both in our hearts and with our hands.
As parents, how can we help our children find and cultivate their inner compass? We often do a pretty good job of giving our kids an idea of what God and others expect from them. But nurturing an enduring love of things like truth, beauty and goodness and helping them engage their world from a deep sense of their true identity is the great challenge of parenting. How can we help our children become a beautiful expression of their spiritual natures?
Like you, we’ve been watching in horror as Ukraine has been faced with a brutal and unprovoked invasion. We’re in awe of the courage of the people of Ukraine and stand firmly with them as we pray that freedom and peace will prevail. We are working on bringing together some voices to help us think through these events in the very near future.In the meantime, we thought we would share a recent conversation we had with our good friend Terryl Givens about his new book, The Doors of Faith, which comes from a series of very popular campus-wide lectures Terryl delivered at Brigham Young University.
Many people were disturbed by the remarks of Brad Wilcox, a member of the Young Men General Presidency, given at a recent tri-stake fireside in Alpine, Utah. In addition to denigrating other religions, whom he characterized as “playing church,” his remarks on the history of denying the priesthood to Black members shocked many listeners. Brigham Young University quickly condemned his comments and Wilcox issued a public apology.
As we have collectively turned our attention to the study of the Hebrew Bible, what is known to most Christians as the Old Testament, we at Faith Matters turn our attention to a perennial question: Who actually wrote these books? We plan to have at least a few conversations in the coming year on how to engage the Hebrew Bible.