Faith Matters

Today we’re sharing a special conversation courtesy of our friends at Lift+Love. This is a conversation recorded at their first ever Gather Conference in 2023, the world’s largest Christ-centered gathering of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and those who love them.
In this session, two men sat down together: Tom Christofferson and Darius Gray. Both are devoted Latter-day Saints who know what it is to love the Church while also having experienced real marginalization within it.
Darius Gray is a Black Latter-day Saint who was baptized on December 26th, 1964 — fourteen years before the revelation that lifted the priesthood and temple ban. He entered the waters of baptism knowing he could not hold the priesthood, and he built his faith anyway. He helped found the Genesis Group, he waited, he worked. And on a day in June 1978, everything changed.
This June, we’re sitting with what that means.
There is something powerful in Darius’s story—his rootedness, his patience, his refusal to let institutional limitation become the ceiling of his faith.
Tom Christofferson, as a gay Latter-day Saint, knows something about that too.
What you’re about to hear is a conversation between two men who have walked and who are walking long roads, who are holding hard questions, and who are bearing witness to a God whose work continues to unfold in their lives.
It is warm and honest and full of hope. We think you’ll find, as we did, that it stays with you.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.

Today we’re honored to share a special session from Restore 2025 featuring Steven Kapp Perry, Alisha Anderson, and Ben Schilaty—three gay Latter-day Saints who have each taken different paths, and who share a deep commitment to following God with honesty, courage, and faith.
In this on-stage conversation, Steve, Alisha, and Ben share personal and vulnerable reflections on what it means to seek God when the road ahead feels uncertain, and the courage it takes to keep moving forward in faith. They explore belonging, revelation, and the complexity of spiritual life as they describe discerning and following paths that looked very different from one another’s and the ones they once expected—often amid the pain of being misunderstood.
This session was a powerful reminder that God is at work in every life, and that each person's journey is sacred. 
As Ben shares near the end of the conversation, "The stories that truly matter are the stories of the LGBTQ people that you know in your lives." That's our invitation this month. We hope this conversation opens the door to deeper connection with people in your own life whose paths may look different than your own.
We’re grateful to Steve, Alisha, and Ben for their vulnerability and wisdom.

You'll hear Steve mention a short film at the beginning of this session that tells more of Alisha’s story. It’s beautiful and moving, and you can watch it here. You can also watch a video recording of this session, including a musical performance from Steve and his wife, on our YouTube channel or Substack. You can order Ben's book A Walk in My Shoes here.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.

This week, wards across the United States will be having a really unique 5th Sunday discussion centered on the Constitution, moral agency, and peace-building. So today, we wanted to reshare a conversation that originally aired in 2021.
In this episode, Faith Matters co-founder Bill Turnbull joins Judge Thomas Griffith, an expert in constitutional law, to explore the Constitution and the rapid erosion of goodwill and trust in American politics, including among Latter-day Saints. Judge Griffith sees the possibility of a serious crisis and believes that Latter-day Saints can and must play a critical role in healing today’s divides.
We’ve also compiled lots of additional resources that we hope will help as you prepare for this special Sunday lesson—you can find those on our website (faithmatters.org), and you can always find links to dig deeper into each episode in our free weekly newsletter. Thanks so much as always for listening, and we hope you enjoy the episode.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.

They call him the Mr. Rogers of farming, and I think you’ll understand why. 
Karl Ebeling spent 33 years as a chemical engineer before feeling an undeniable pull back to the land and to a childhood love of farming that had never really left him. He combined his love of the earth with desire to help and heal and founded Eden Streets in 2020, a community farming initiative that helps individuals relaunch their lives and cultivate community through farming. Karl has watched first hand as the earth does her healing work in the souls of men and women experiencing homelessness, addiction, or disconnection. 
Today, he joins us to talk about the gifts of creation, and what it might look like to, in Elder Causse’s words, “grow, enhance, and improve upon” them, and what that kind of stewardship does for our own souls.
I was deeply moved by Karl’s grounded wisdom, his reverence for the Earth and by the lessons he’s learning from the natural world about rhythms, relationship, belonging, and peace. 
With planting season upon us, we hope this conversation inspires you to step outside, put your hands in the dirt, and experience the way the natural world is reaching out to heal you.
You can find more from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on caring for the Earth here.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.

Today, we’re honored to share a conversation with Tish Harrison Warren on her beautiful brand new book, What Grows in Weary Lands.
From the very first pages of this book, Tish gives us language for something so familiar. She writes about aridity—those seasons of spiritual drought, exhaustion, or distance from God, when prayer feels flat, faith feels heavy, and the life we once found nourishing suddenly feels barren. 
Then she also introduces us to the ancient idea of acedia—what the Desert Fathers and Mothers sometimes called “the noonday demon.” It’s that restless belief that life with God would be easier somewhere else, sometime else, with different work, different people, a different church, or a new set of circumstances. It’s a restlessness that wants to escape the ordinary demands of love in search of some imagined future where spiritual highs are constant and faith feels effortless. 
But Tish says these experiences of aridity and acedia aren’t signs that something has gone wrong, in fact, they are experiences that Christians throughout time have understood to be a normal—even necessary—part of spiritual maturity.
In this conversation, she helps us see that the invitation in these weary seasons is not to force our way back into those spiritual highs, but to stay with prayer, to stay with the ordinary practices that have formed disciples for centuries, often staying with imperfect communities and relationships even after the shine has worn off and the brokenness becomes visible.
She makes the case that that maturity often looks less like finding the perfect place, and more like learning how God meets us in imperfect places through patience, repair, and the slow work of love.
Tish is an Anglican priest and author known for her award winning books Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night. Her new book, What Grows in Weary Lands, was released this week and is available on Bookshop.org, Amazon, or wherever books are sold. We are so grateful to Tish for coming on the podcast and we hope that you enjoy this conversation.
Join us on July 11 for the Wayfare festival! RSVP here.