As the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous discovered, something profound can happen when addicts invite God or a power higher than themselves into their lives and attempts at recovery. Through understanding addiction as a symptom of spiritual dis-ease and addressing recovery as an attempt to restore a healthy balance between one’s own ego and desires to run things versus the will and wisdom of God or the universe, AA and its Big Book and Twelve-Step offspring programs have saved countless lives. What are the spiritual principles at work in addiction recovery? Do addicts at their wits’ and wills’ ends discover secrets that are also at work in others' vital spiritual lives? Can non-addicts increase their own spirituality from interacting with recovering addicts and applying Big Book insights in their own spiritual journeys? However one ends up viewing the answers to these question, it's undeniable that powerful things happen in addiction recovery work that are worth close examination (along, of course, with proper celebration of the returns to joy in recovering addicts’ lives). In this podcast, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and recovering addicts Keith, John, and Bill discuss addiction and recovery, AA’s Twelve Steps, and the spiritual powers that seem to be unleashed in the interaction of addicts sharing and teaching another. They also introduce and discuss the LDS Church’s Addition and Recovery Program (ARP) that is modeled after AA’s Twelve-Steps but which has also adapted--in some ways successfully but still needing additional development--its approach to better match Mormon gospel teachings and to handle special concerns that arise when recovery programs become affiliated with institutions. The panel also discusses the special challenges Latter-day Saints often face in recovery, but also how the unprecedented levels of honesty and disclosure that operate in recovery work can help build even stronger LDS communities. Minute for minute, and right up to the very end, this is one of the most insight-packed episodes in Mormon Matters’ history. We hope you will enjoy it, learn from and feel blessed by it, and share it.

Elder Boyd K. Packer’s October 2011 General Conference encouragement to youth to not fear that because of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ they will not have a chance to have a full life, including having children and grandchildren, is the latest in what seems to be a trend among LDS leaders to de-emphasize the kind of apocalyptic thinking that was prevalent among Mormons even just a few decades ago. Yet class discussions during recent lessons in the priesthood and Relief Society manuals on the signs of the Second Coming, what will happen upon Christ’s return, the Millennium, and the Final Judgment all reveal that "we are living in the end times" thinking is still very much alive and well within Mormonism, with those doing most of the talking in classes still seeming to believe Christ’s coming and world’s end is immanent--perhaps even within their own lifetimes. Clearly it’s time for major discussions on this subject! What are the scriptural roots of the Christian expectation of Christ’s second coming? How do these match up with apocalyptic visions from other traditions? What unique ideas do Mormons bring to end-times thinking? Is the violent vision of the world’s end set in stone, or are there chances for human beings to change the outcome? If someone feels like she or he cannot believe scripture and teachings about the Second Coming literally, are there still positive framings about preparing for the end of the world or the idea of Christ coming that they might be able to adopt? In this episode, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Jared Anderson, Charles Randall Paul, and Kenton Karrasch dive deep into all of these issues and many others!

Mormons pray . . . a lot! Latter-day Saints are encouraged to have daily (twice or more) personal prayer, family prayer including children (in addition to parents praying together), prayers before meals, prayers for safety, and even other injunctions to "pray without ceasing." Mormon meetings and classes all open and close with prayer, and Mormons offer scripted prayers when blessing the emblems of the sacrament, when baptizing, and performing certain temple ordinances, and they offer blessings and other types of prayers in language that isn’t scripted but that must include certain elements. LDS rhetoric also often prescribes certain language forms or prayer while in particular physical postures as most appropriate for prayer. Clearly, Mormons are a prayerful people. But how much do Mormons really practice prayer? Are they encouraged to see prayer as a deep spiritual praxis? Certainly the scriptures and occasional messages from Church leaders point in this direction, but how many Latter-day Saints truly move much beyond a type of prayer practice that typified what they learned in their childhood and teenage years and into much more mature relationship with God that might even include protest, lament, confessions of disbelief, as well as the joyousness of deeper exposure and vulnerability, and coming into friendship with God and truly seeing themselves the way God sees them? In this episode, Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Joanna Brooks, Tresa Edmunds, and Jacob Baker examine Mormon prayer as it functions in LDS communal life and typical praxis, as well as discuss perspectives and practices they have incorporated or have been made aware of in their own journeys or wider reading and experiences. At several points in the podcast, they also pay particular attention to prayer as a possible praxis even for those undergoing faith crisis or transition, and who may have lost confidence in previous views of what God is like--or even if there is a God.

We Mormons have heard it countless times: "I know the Church is true?" But what does this mean? Heck, even more basic, what does "true" mean? In this podcast, host Dan Wotherspoon and panelists Joanna Brooks, Dennis Potter, and Rhett Tenney take a deep dive into these questions. Explorations include overviews of major philosophical approaches, especially those most relevant to thinking about religious beliefs and practices, the shifts in thinking that have revolutionized thought about the nature of truth in the past century, including strong recognition of the way we all inhabit discourses that shape our views of truth and the world, and theories from sociology about how social rewards and group cohesion rituals work to make our choices about what we believe and hold to be true anything but purely rational, or involving our simply "following the evidence." The participants also all reflect on the way they view Mormonism and their own spiritual journeys (for one of them, out of the church) understanding what they do about the many factors that feed into this what-used-to-seem-so-simple matter of "truth."