The Book of Mormon prophet Alma was on the wrong path. But much like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, Alma experienced a shocking vision that changed everything. His sermons are the product of a person who understood what it meant to receive the grace of Christ and have a mighty change of heart.

In this episode, Mark Wrathall joins us to talk about his brief theological introduction to the second half of the book of Alma. For more about the brief theological introductions series, go to mi.byu.edu/brief.

About the Guest

Mark Wrathall is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Corpus Christi College. He works on the phenomenology of agency and religious life, and is interested in the temporality of human existence. He is the author of Phenomenology and Human Existence (forthcoming with Oxford University Press), Heidegger and Unconcealment (Cambridge University Press), and How to Read Heidegger (W. W. Norton). He has edited numerous volumes, including The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon and Religion After Metaphysics.

Margaret Bendroth has spent a good deal of her life trying to remember the past, and trying to help others remember, too. To Bendroth, memory is more than sentimental and history is more than a list of dates and names. Bendroth says remembering is a religious and spiritual practice. In this episode, she joins us to discuss her short but stunning book, The Spiritual Practice of Remembering.

About the Guest

Margaret Bendroth is executive director of the Congregational Library in Boston, Massachusetts, and a historian of American religion. Her books include The Spiritual Practice of Remembering, The Last Puritans: Mainline Protestants and the Power of the Past, and Growing Up Protestant: Parents, Children and Mainline Churches.

Watch Dr. Bendroth’s Maxwell Institute Guest Lecture here.

This episode features Melissa Inouye, a self-proclaimed “bald Asian American Latter-day Saint woman scholar,” talking all about her “ventures through life, death, cancer and motherhood (not necessarily in that order)”—which happens to be the subtitle of her latest book, Crossings. It’s part of the Maxwell Institute’s Living Faith book series.

About the Guest

Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2011 and served as a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Auckland. She previously served as an associate editor of the Mormon Studies Review and now works for the Church History Department with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is author of two books: China and the True Jesus: Charisma and Organization in a Chinese Christian Church (Oxford University Press) and the imposibly-titled Crossings: A Bald Asian American Latter-day Saint Woman Scholar’s Ventures through Life, Death, Cancer & Motherhood (Not Necessarily in that Order).

Alma is an idolatrous man in the Book of Mormon, a wicked man according to the text—until an angel’s rebuke leads to his repentance and then two decades of righteous service in realms both political and religious. But even then, Alma’s past haunts him.

Kylie Nielson Turley talks about her brief theological introduction to the book of Alma, chapters 1 through 29, in this episode. For more about the brief theological introductions series, go to mi.byu.edu/brief.

About the Guest

Kylie Nielson Turley has taught writing, rhetoric, and literature classes since 1997 at Brigham Young University, where she emphasizes a literary approach to the Book of Mormon in her Literature of the LDS People course. She has published articles on Alma, LDS “home literature” fiction and poetry, and Utah and LDS women’s history. She is also the author of numerous personal essays.

The Book of Mormon has important things to say about how we say important things, according to David Charles Gore. He’s author of The Voice of the People: Political Rhetoric in the Book of Mormon (Maxwell Institute, 2019).

Gore says it’s not enough to be in possession of the truth. We also have to know how to share it in ways that actually reach other people’s hearts. The Book of Mormon seems to be a cautionary history in this regard, calling readers to develop what Gore calls an “ethic of mournful wakefulness.”

Gore’s Maxwell Institute Guest Lecture is available here.

About the Guest

When railroads started making their way across the western frontier of the United States in the 1800s, many Americans thought it would destroy the religion known as “Mormonism.” Brigham Young, then-president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, disagreed, declaring, “It must be a damned poor religion if it can’t stand one railroad!” Young turned out to be right. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints not only survived, but flourished in its mountain home. But it didn’t emerge from its railroad battles unchanged.

In this episode, Dr. David Walker joins us to talk about his latest book Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West. It’s a more fascinating and more humorous story than you might expect, so stay with us.

About the Guest

Jane Manning James stood out among early Latter-day Saints as one of few black converts. She was baptized into the Church as a free black woman in Connecticut and migrated to Nauvoo with her family, where she soon found herself working in the prophet Joseph Smith’s home. After his death, she traveled west with the Saints and lived the rest of her life as a faithful member—though she was denied participation in the Church’s most sacred practices.

Through the years, Jane Manning James has been left out of books on African American history, women’s history, histories of the West, and until more recently, she was even left out of histories of her own church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Dr. Quincy Newell recently published the first scholarly biography of this remarkable Latter-day Saint. The book is called Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-century Black Mormon. Dr. Newell joins us to talk about it in this episode.

Images of Jane discussed in the episode are available in the transcript.

About the Guest

Quincy D. Newell is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College. She is co-editor of the Mormon Studies Review and author of Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon.

This episode continues our special series of episodes on the Maxwell Institute’s brief theological introductions to the Book of Mormon. In his book on Mosiah, philosopher and theologian James E. Faulconer untangles a complicated narrative—a fragmentary history about a fragmented people, written by a record keeper obsessed with unity. Faulconer unpacks what King Benjamin had in mind in speaking of the “mysteries of God.”

About the Guest

James E. Faulconer is a professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University and a senior research fellow at the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Faulconer’s area of expertise is twentieth-century and contemporary European philosophy, especially the philosophy of religion. In addition to writing scholarly books and articles, he is the author of the Made Harder series of scripture study questions and Scripture Study: Tools and Suggestions.

We live in an age of polemics. Choices are presented as mutually exclusive and we are given little time to listen. You are either secular or religious. You either believe in the exclusive truth of your own religion or you believe that truth is everywhere—or nowhere. The battle over truth rages on. But what if truth were a child? What if we pursued a relationship with the truth and each other in more caring ways?

Dr. George Handley joins us in this episode to talk about his book, If Truth Were a Child. If you’re a church leader who is looking to connect better with the flock, or if you’re one of the sheep who feels undernourished, George Handley has important things to share with you.

About the Guest

George B. Handley teaches interdisciplinary humanities at Brigham Young University, where he also serves as the associate director of the Faculty Center. He received his BA from Stanford University and his MA and PhD in comparative literature at UC-Berkeley. His scholarly publications and creative writing focus on the intersection between religion, literature, and the environment. His books include the memoir Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River, the novel American Fork, and two collections of essays in the Living Faith series entitled If Truth Were a Child and The Hope of Nature.

This episode continues our special series on the Maxwell Institute’s Brief Theological Introductions to the Book of Mormon. Literary scholar and theologian Sharon J. Harris investigates the messy middle era between the genesis of the Nephite people and their reorganization under King Benjamin. What keeps things—relatively—together through Enos, Jarom, and Omni? Harris uncovers the personalities, concerns, and patterns of righteousness and wickedness that are often overlooked in these short books.

The authors of our brief theological introductions are “seeking Christ in scripture by combining intellectual rigor and the disciple’s yearning for holiness.” Learn more at mi.byu.edu/brief.

About the Guest

Sharon J. Harris is an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University. She studies early modern literature, focusing on how it intersects with music. In addition to literary studies, Dr. Harris has published on theology, the Book of Mormon, and the history of Latter-day Saint singles wards. She holds degrees from Brigham Young University, the University of Chicago, and Fordham University and has worked in public education, nonprofit arts administration, and academic publishing.