Maxwell Institute Podcast

Perhaps you’ve experienced moments of doubt about your religious faith. Or maybe you’re one of the people who find doubt to be a more frequent companion in your spiritual life. Either way, doubt can be unsettling and uncomfortable. Biblical scholar Peter Enns suggests that part of the problem is that many Christians have come to prize certainty as a hallmark of true faith in God. His new book is called The Sin of Certainty. Drawing on history, scripture, and personal experiences, Enns argues that believers can handle the most difficult questions if they stop needing to be right all the time and instead focus more on trusting God. “Doubt,” he writes, “is only the enemy of faith when we equate faith with certainty.” About Peter Enns Peter Enns is the Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania. His books include Inspiration and Incarnation, The Bible Tells Me So, and The Evolution of Adam. His most recent book is called The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Ou

James L. Kugel is one of the foremost scholars of the Hebrew Bible of our time. Kugel recently visited BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute to talk about his work and about the relationship between religious faith and scholarship about scripture. Kugel is an orthodox Jew and biblical scholar who became somewhat legendary for revisiting ancient paradigms. When he taught at Harvard, one of Kugel’s students said the professor began a course by offering a disclaimer to the class: “If you come from a religious tradition upholding the literal truth of the Bible, you could find this course disturbing.” Kugel tells the MIPodcast that isn’t exactly the case—there’s much more to the story. About James L. Kugel A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, James L. Kugel is the author of more than eighty research articles and fifteen books, including The Idea of Biblical Poetry and the best-selling book How to Read the Bible, which received the National Jewish Book Award for the best book of 2007. Kugel was the

“Be fruitful and multiply.” According to the book of Genesis, these are the first words God speaks to humanity. People have understood these words over the centuries as a commandment to procreate, and the ability to bear and raise children has been understood as a divine blessing. But what about people who can’t bear children due to biology or circumstance? Biblical scholars Candida Moss and Joel Baden teamed up to write a book about the different views on infertility and families found in the Bible. From the apparently barren matriarchs of the Old Testament like Sarah and Rachel to Paul’s efforts to forge a new family in Christ, biblical views are more diverse than you might expect. Moss and Baden tell the story in their book Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness. Not only do they clarify ancient perspectives on infertility, they also provide ways to create a more supportive religious environment for women and men experiencing infertility today. About the Guests Ca

What good is a dead body? How have humans cared for dead bodies through the ages and why do we do it? What do dead bodies tell us about the things we value most and about the things we’re afraid of? All of us will be dead bodies someday, so these questions are relevant for everyone. The answers constitute what cultural historian Thomas Laqueur calls “the work of the dead.” Laqueur dug into records both ancient and contemporary to craft his fascinating new book The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. About the Guest Thomas W. Laqueur is the Helen Fawcett Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He’s written histories about the human body and gender. His latest book is The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. The post The Work of the Dead, with Thomas W. Laqueur [MIPodcast #51] appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

In some ways it’s been a lonelier than usual summer at the Maxwell Institute. Since it was founded in 2006 we’ve had the privilege of hosting the Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture, a remarkable research opportunity that is somewhat legendary for the people that have passed through it, like Reid Neilson of the Church History Library, Patrick Mason and Kathleen Flake who hold chairs in Mormon Studies at universities on the east and west coast, and the Institute’s brand new executive director, Spencer Fluhman. Students, scholars, junior faculty—a variety of different people come together to study a particular aspect of Mormon culture or history and then write working papers to share some of the things they discovered and prompt further research. In lieu of the seminar this year the Institute hosted a scholars’ colloquium in honor of Richard Bushman, the Mormon historian who started the Summer Seminar back in 1997 when he was working on his acclaimed biography of Joseph Smith. Richard is still active in his studi

When the Protestant Reformer John Calvin published his book Institutes of the Christian Religion in the 1500s, he couldn’t have anticipated the incredibly different purposes his book would come to serve long after he died and was buried somewhere in an unmarked grave by his own request. The Institutes was a blockbuster in Calvin’s day, but why, hundreds of years later, did it wind up playing a part in debates about apartheid in South Africa? How did the exact same book manage to help some people justify racial discrimination, but also help others powerfully oppose it? Bruce Gordon answers that and other questions in this episode about his new biography of John Calvin’s Institutes. Special Episodes: “Lives of Great Religious Books” This ongoing series of MIPodcast episodes features interviews with authors of volumes in Princeton University Press’s impressive “Lives of Great Religious Books” series. Leading experts examine the origins of books like the Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita, Augustine’s Confessions

What do you know about African American religious history? Julius H. Bailey joins us in this episode to talk about his new overview, Down in the Valley: An Introduction to African American History. Bailey’s book operates on a few different levels. The ground floor contains a general story beginning with African traditional religions. It moves through slavery and religion, the rise of Christian black churches and other religious movements like Islam, through the Civil Rights movement and up to the present time. Another level of the book focuses on how that historical story has been told in different ways. This episode is about the diverse history of African American religions and the diverse histories of that history. About the Guest Julius H. Bailey is professor of religious studies at the University of Redlands in California. His books include Around the Family Alter: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Down In the Valley: An Introduction to African American Religious History.The post

If you surveyed Americans, asking them to identify themselves as: A) Catholic B) Muslim C) Evangelical D) Mormon …and so on, an increasing number will select the very last option—none of the above. Study after study has shown a steady decline in religious affiliation, with one in five Americans identifying as “None.” Traditional religious believers watch these numbers with a bit of uneasiness, wondering why fewer people are connecting with institutional religions. But many Nones continue to value religion and spirituality even though they don’t want to belong to an organized church. In this episode, Elizabeth Drescher joins us to talk about her new book on this subject, Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones (Oxford University Press, 2016). Drescher surveyed thousands of people and directly interviewed around a hundred Nones to learn about their backgrounds, hopes, morals, and spiritual sensibilities. Her work allows us to become more familiar with some Nones in this episode of the Max

The New York Times Review of Books says Marilynne Robinson “is not like any other writer. She has created a small, rich, and fearless body of work in which religion exists unashamedly, as does doubt, unashamedly.” Robinson is perhaps best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead (2004). This year she received the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Her latest book is a non-fiction collection of essays on topics like science and religion, grace, and Christology. It’s called The Givenness of Things. In this episode we talk about writing, reading, faith, science, and theology. A complete transcript of this interview is available HERE. About Marilynne Robinson Marilynne Robinson is a critically acclaimed American novelist and essayist. She is currently completing her final year as Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her four novels are Housekeeping, Home, Lila, and Gilead, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. She has published multiple collections

Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2016 many people find it more difficult to believe than not? This is the question that Charles Taylor tackles in his massive book A Secular Age. In this episode, James K. A. Smith joins us to talk about Taylor’s work. What was it like to believe in God in the past and what is it like for many believers today—and how did we get from there to here? Whether you find it easy or difficult to believe in God today, you’ll find much food for thought in Smith’s book How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. About James K. A. Smith James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin College and author of How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. His latest book is called You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. He recently visited Brigham Young University to deliver a guest lecture sponsored by the Wheatley Institution. The post #45— How (Not) to Be Secular, with James K. A. Sm

Even if you’ve never heard of a Christian movement scholars call “the prosperity gospel,” chances are you know some of its most famous proponents, like Joel Osteen or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. “The prosperity gospel” is not officially associated with any particular denomination. It’s more a style of Christianity, one that emphasizes God’s desire to bless people—particularly and literally when it comes to wealth and health. Through your faith, you can become healthy and rich. When historian Kate Bowler set out to write the book Blessed: A History of the Prosperity Gospel Movement she found herself being pulled into the book’s narrative in surprising ways. Bowler recently published a powerful follow-up column to Blessed in the New York Times called “Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me.” She’s here to help us understand the frequently lampooned and incredibly influential prosperity gospel movement. About Kate Bowler Kate Bowler is assistant professor of American Religion at Duke Divinity School. She is the au

C. S. Lewis died in 1963 on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Before the decade was over, few expected his works to last. “We think Lewis’s star has risen and is about to set,” said one Catholic publisher. “His day is over. No one will be reading C. S. Lewis twenty years from now.” Even Lewis believed his apologetic works would soon go out of style. He’d be surprised to learn that over 3.5 million copies of Mere Christianity have sold since 2001. It’s one of the most beloved Christian books of the twentieth century, and it wasn’t originally intended to be a book at all. In this episode, award-winning Christian historian George M. Marsden tells the story of Mere Christianity‘s birth and explains its tenacious popularity since its publication in 1952. Marsden recently wrote the biography of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity for Princeton University Press’s “Lives of Great Religious Books” series. Special Episodes—“Lives of Great Religious Books” This ongoing series of MIPodcast episodes features int

In the land of Israel, rain falls during a single, crucial, season of the year beginning in October or November and continuing through the spring. Lives depended on successful harvests which depended on healthy rainfall. According to the Hebrew scriptures, weather proved God’s blessing or cursing the people of Israel: From the rain of the heavens, you will drink water— a land that the Lord your God seeks out perpetually; the eyes of the Lord your God are upon it from the year’s beginning to the year’s end.  If you heed My commands with which I charge you today to love the Lord your God and to worship Him with all your heart and with all your being I will give the rain of your land in its season, early rains and late, and you shall gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And I will give grass in the field to your herds, and you shall eat and be satisfied. (Deuteronomy 11.11–15, trans. Robert Alter) In this episode, Julia Watts Belser talks about how rain permeates some of the earliest rabbinic texts.

In the last episode we heard from three editors of a new book of Relief Society documents published by the LDS Church. Jill Mulvay Derr, Kate Holbrook, and Matt Grow talked about the origins of the Relief Society and why its activities were suspended in 1844. Today is the Relief Society’s 174th anniversary. In this episode we pick up where we left off as the Latter-day Saints begin to reestablish relief society in the Utah territory. You’ll hear about issues like polygamy and women’s suffrage. We also discuss the kind of impact the editors hope the book can have on how Mormons understand their history. We’re talking about The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History. Introductory matter and other material from the book is currently available at churchhistorianspress.org. About the Guests Jill Mulvay Derr is a retired senior research historian for the Church History Department. Kate Holbrook is a specialist in women’s history at the Church History Department. M