Faith Matters

When BYU professor Eric Huntsman was growing up, he spent time among Catholics in Pittsburgh and Baptists in Alabama and came to love the different ways other Christian denominations worshiped Jesus. And one of his favorite ways that other Christians worshiped was during Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter Sunday. Over the years, Eric began incorporating many Holy Week traditions into his spiritual practice and found it helped him connect more deeply with the Savior and his atoning sacrifice.

To help other Latter-day Saints who may be interested in learning more about Holy Week and developing ways of celebrating it, Eric, along with co-author Trevan Hatch, has recently published a book called Greater Love Hath No Man: A Latter-day Saint Guide to Celebrating the Easter Season.
In today’s conversation, Zach Davis spoke with Eric about his journey as a disciple and scholar of Jesus, what traditional Holy Week commemoration looks like, and how Easter is a time when we can connect with our fellow Christian brothers and sisters.
Eric Huntsman is a professor of Ancient Scripture at BYU. In April of 2023, Eric began a two and a half year appointment of the BYU Jerusalem Studies Program, from where he joined us for this conversation. After initially researching Roman history, Eric’s scholarly efforts have focused on the life and ministry of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels, especially the Gospel of John.

Today’s episode was a tough one, to be honest. In the aftermath of a speech that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave recently to faculty and administration at BYU, we try to explore and understand why the message created such a firestorm. Among other things, the speech raised anew the Church's longstanding challenge in speaking to LGBTQ issues.

If you aren’t familiar with the speech that we’re talking about, don’t worry — we give a little more context once the discussion starts. The full transcript and video of the speech are available on the Church Newsroom website.
Most of the work we do in this podcast and at Faith Matters, generally, is to provide a forum where difficult issues can be explored in expansive ways through real dialogue and understanding, in a spirit of generosity. Doing that can be tricky on topics which feel particularly polarizing and raw.
Faith Matters is really trying to “broaden the circles” of our culture and community to help them become as expansive and inclusive as they can be—both for those who already feel super comfortable at Church, and for those that are trying to find a place to fit in. We definitely don’t always do this perfectly, and we’re sure we didn’t in this episode — so we really appreciate the grace we hope you’ll extend as we navigate this tricky territory.

As conversation partners, we brought on Patrick Mason and Tom Christofferson, both of whom have been close friends and advisors to Faith Matters for a long time. We felt like their perspectives would really help to round out both the theological and personal aspects of this issue, and we weren’t disappointed. We found their insights both realistic and reassuring, and as always, they modeled a Gospel and a Church that we’re proud to be a part of.

For this episode, we talked to Dr. Robert Rees. Bob has fit enough into his life to fill several lifetimes, so we can’t talk about everything he’s done, but we’ll give you some highlights here.

Bob has taught in humanities and Mormon Studies at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and several other institutions. He’s also been the editor of Dialogue, former Chair of the Sunstone Foundation, and has published a wide variety of scholarly articles, personal essays, editorials, and poetry. Bob is the editor of a book series called Why I Stay, which compiles essays by some really remarkable Latter-day Saints; the latest edition, Why I Stay 2, which contains essays from Carol Lynn Pearson, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, Phil Barlow, and others, was just released in April.

Bob is also one of the founders of The Bountiful Children's Foundation, whose mission is to nurture the potential of infants and toddlers to lead healthy, productive, and self-reliant lives by eliminating malnutrition.

We spoke with Bob about how we as Latter-day Saints can engage fully and faithfully with a world that’s in need of imaginative and optimistic discipleship. He embodies that ideal so perfectly, and we came away so inspired by his energy and enthusiasm for making the Church and the world better places.

Neylan McBaine’s book "Women at Church" started a lot of conversations and challenged many of our assumptions around how women can participate and lead in their wards and stakes. Seven years later, we thought it might be interesting to explore with Neylan how far we have come and where that future might lead.
Neylan founded Better Days 2020, and has become a leader in speaking and writing about women's leadership and the U.S. suffrage movement, with a specific focus on Utah and the West's early role in that movement. Neylan previously founded the Mormon Women Project, a wonderful digital library in which hundreds of Latter-day Saint women from around the world share their experiences of life in the Church.
In 2020, Neylan was named “Extraordinary Woman” of the year by the YWCA of Utah. Her book "Pioneering the Vote: The Untold Story of Suffragists in Utah and the West" won the Freedoms Foundation National Award.
Neylan grew up in New York, is a graduate of Yale University, mother to three daughters, and lives in Salt Lake City. She shared much of her personal story in a previous Faith Matters conversation with Terryl Givens in 2019.

In this episode, we spoke with Ganel-Lyn Condie, a popular motivational speaker, author and podcast host. She’s written several books and currently hosts two podcasts: “Real Talk - Come Follow Me” and “The Middle”.
We spoke with her about a couple of topics that she’s spoken and written about recently — first is her concept of “stewardship vs. ownership,” which is a really great insight into facing challenges without letting them become an identity. Secondly, we discussed the concept of “letting God prevail,” which was the focus of President Nelson’s October 2020 General Conference address.
We loved talking with Ganel-Lyn and found her to be extraordinarily authentic and approachable. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.
Show notes:
"Joy Even in Loss" with Lisa Valentine Clark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmH6n96SdE4
Ganel-Lyn’s website: https://www.ganellyn.com