"A Thoughtful Faith": Inaugural Episode

A Thoughtful Faith is a Mormon Stories affiliated podcast that features the stories and perspectives of intelligent, thoughtful believers who maintain faith despite their awareness of and/or struggles with common challenges and issues. Though some of these issues will be discussed, our focus is not necessarily the troubling aspects of our history, culture and doctrine, but rather how our guests navigate and own their individual perspectives.

We hope to examine faith and Mormonism in a way that responds to the assumption that if you are truly informed about the complexity of this faith tradition, including its origins, history, culture, and doctrine, that sincere, authentic belief and participation becomes unsustainable.

Mormon women seeking greater equality

Excerpts of Mormon women seeking middle ground to greater equality, Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune.  These panels are available to view online here.

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For some Mormon feminists, there can be only one goal on the road to gender equality: priesthood ordination.

At the same time, lots of LDS women are perfectly comfortable with the roles they believe God assigned to them, including motherhood and nurturing.

Now comes a third and, some suggest, growing group of women somewhere between these two poles.

NBC Rock Center special, and the role of women

Excerpts of How dare you even mention women and ordination on national television? Or, inside the NBC Rock Center special on Mormons, by Joanna Brooks, AskAMormonGirl. The NBC Special can be viewed here.
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"Nice job taking a hit on your church by complaining about ordination. Did God discriminate against men when he gave women vaginas?  Why can't men have babies?  So why can't your daughter pass the sacrament? Or be a prophet?  I guess that too must be oppression of the woman right?"

[Q]uestions like these are the ones I've gotten aplenty after my three-soundbite appearance in the Mormons in America special.

Women and the LDS Church: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Conference

Women and the LDS Church: Historical

and Contemporary Perspectives Conference

August 24 - 25, 2012

Fort Douglas, Officer's Club Theater

Sunstone: Pillars of my Faith

Pillars of My Faith 2012

This year's Pillars of My Faith session featured historian Don Bradley and theologian Maxine Hanks who talked about their journeys out of and then back into the LDS Church.

Don Bradley is a writer, editor, and researcher specializing in Mormon origins and an MA candidate in history at Utah State University. He is also the author of The Lost 116 Pages: Rediscovering the Book of Lehi, forthcoming from Greg Kofford Books.

Listen to his presentation.

Maxine Hanks is a feminist theologian and lecturer, researching gender in religion, particularly Christian and Mormon theology. Her call to ministry has taken her from serving an LDS mission to serving as clergy or chaplain at Holy Cross Chapel for 13 years, where she launched the chapel preservation project and wrote its history.

Listen to her presentation.

Call for change in women's roles

From a report on the FAIR conference: LDS apologists tackle same-sex attraction, women's issues, Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune

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Neylan McBaine described changes the LDS Church could make to enhance the participation of its female members.

"There is a tremendous amount of pain among our women regarding how they can or cannot contribute to the governance of our ecclesiastical organization," said McBaine, founder of the online Mormon Women Project and associate creative director for LDS Church-owned Bonneville Communications, which produces the "I'm a Mormon" campaign. "The pain is real."

McBaine cited a 2011 survey of 3,000 Mormons who had left the church, which reported that 47 percent cited women's issues as a "significant" reason for their loss of faith. Among women respondents, that percentage climbed to 63 percent, and 70 percent for single Mormon women