Maxwell Institute Conversations are special episodes of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, hosted by Terryl Givens and created in collaboration with Faith Matters Foundation.
In this episode Terryl Givens sits down with Margaret Blair Young to talk about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Congo, faith transitions, spiritual healing, writing, and more.
About the Guest
Margaret Blair Young is an American author, filmmaker, and writing instructor who taught for 30 years at Brigham Young University. She’s written with Darius Grey about early black Latter-day Saints and her latest project is a film about more recent black converts in Africa. The film is called Heart of Africa.
The post MIConversations #6—Terryl Givens with Margaret Blair Young, “The deep waters” appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.
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Julie K. Allen is a professor of comparative literature at Brigham Young University and author of Danish, But Not Lutheran: The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity, 1850-1920. Before coming to BYU she held the position of Paul and Renate Madsen Professor of Danish in the Scandinavian Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This year marks forty years since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began, once again, to ordain black members of African descent to its priesthood. Forty years since the church began administering it sacred temple ordinances to black women and men. Over the past forty years the body of scholarship on race and the Church has expanded, with the biggest advances happening over the past ten years.
Max Perry Mueller is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska. He is author of 
Chantelle Squires is producer and director of Jane and Emma. Among other things she also produced and directed “Reserved To Fight,” a feature length documentary that aired nationally on PBS. She won an Emmy for her work on the third season of “The Generations Project” with BYUtv.
Melissa Leilani Larson wrote the screenplay for Jane and Emma. She’s written and produced a number of plays including “Little Happy Secrets” and “Pilot Program,” some of which appear in the book 
Thomas F. Rogers is a noted playwright, essayist, and scholar who taught Russian at Brigham Young University from 1969 to 2000. He also served as director of the BYU Honors Program in the 1970s. From 1993 to 1996, he was president of the LDS Church’s Russia St. Petersburg Mission, the subject of his memoir A Call to Russia: Glimpses of Missionary Life (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 1999). Subsequently, he and his wife, Merriam, served in the Stockholm Sweden Temple. From 2007 until his release in 2014, Rogers was a traveling LDS patriarch assigned to the LDS Church’s Europe East Area. He is author of 
What comes to mind when you hear the term “American Christians”? Most people today think of the so-called Religious Right, a loosely knit group of conservative Christians who oppose legal abortion, favor gun rights, and hail Ronald Reagan as one like unto Moses. Matthew Bowman’s latest book is a wake-up call, reminding us that there’s no such thing as American Christianity. There are Christianities, ranging from conservative to liberal, all over the political spectrum.
Matthew Bowman is Associate Professor of History at Henderson State University. He is the author of The Mormon People, and a new book called Christian: The Politics of a Word in America from Harvard University Press.
Kate Holbrook is Managing Historian of Women’s History at the LDS Church History Department and co-editor of At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women and the award-winning The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History. She also co-edited Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives and Global Values 101: A Short Course. For her dissertation work on religion and food, she received the first Eccles Fellowship in Mormon Studies at the University of Utah. Her current projects include a history of the LDS young women organization and a monograph on LDS foodways.
On the surface, forgiveness seems like such a simple concept but it can be one of the most difficult things we ever do. Maybe someone in your life has hurt you and you’ve never been able to forgive them. Maybe you’ve hurt someone else and they haven’t forgiven you. Maybe it’s time to see if that can change.
Mpho Tutu van Furth served as executive director at The Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation from 2011 to 2016. With her father, Desmond Tutu (former archbishop of South Africa, chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient), she co-authored The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World (HarperCollins, 2015). In 2014, the father and daughter pair started the 
Steven L. Peck is an evolutionary biologist, poet, and novelist. He is a professor of biology at Brigham Young University. Peck grew up in Moab, Utah and lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah.