living faith books

George B. Handley’s Living Faith lecture is now available to watch online: “Humanities and Belief: Reflections on the Call to Faithful Scholarship”

I’m a religious person. I also consider myself to be an intellectual.

Rosalynde Welch of the Maxwell Institute’s new advisory board introduces our latest book, One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly, which is officially released today.

In this excerpt from One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly Ashley Mae Hoiland writes about a touching conversation about Jesus.The latest book in the Living Faith series lands November 1. You can preorder on Amazon, or pick up a copy at Deseret Book and other LDS bookstores. In the meantime, we'll post a few more book excerpts here. Just click the active links in the Table of Contents.

Ashley Mae Hoiland is a creative writer, which is another way to say she’s a storyteller. Her forthcoming book in the Living Faith series shows what happens when a Latter-day Saint with a Master of Fine Arts degree brings her academic training to bear on her personal faith.I’ve worked on a lot of books here at the Maxwell Institute and I admire many things about each of them. But none have personally moved me as much as Ashmae’s One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly. Her stories about missionary work, friendship, doubt, family life, and other topics begun to change my perception of the world, noticing the godly in places I wouldn’t have noticed before.You can preorder the book on Amazon or pick up a copy at Deseret Book and other LDS bookstores when it comes out on November 1. In the meantime, I’ll be posting a few sneak peeks at the book here. Just click the link in the Table of Contents.In today’s sample, Ashmae writes about an unexpected lesson she learned from a missionary companion in Uruguay.

During the October 2015 General Conference of the LDS Church, President Russell M. Nelson delivered “A Plea to My Sisters,” calling for women in the church to raise their voices: “My dear sisters, whatever your calling, whatever your circumstances, we need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out…Married or single, you sisters possess distinctive capabilities and special intuition you have received as gifts from God…Take your rightful and needful place in your home, in your community, and in the kingdom of God.” President Nelson’s plea seemed serendipitous. Literally days earlier I’d first spoken with Ashley Mae Hoiland, a Latter-day Saint artist and author who seemed like a good fit for the Maxwell Institute’s Living Faith book series. Her book, One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly, is scheduled to come out this November, just a little over a year after we heard President Nelson’s plea. It will be the first Institute monograph ever written by a woman.Like the other books in the Living Faith series, Hoiland’s is the product of her academic background combined with her faith. Hoiland earned her master of fine arts degree at Brigham Young University, and her book is an experimental collection of stories, meditations, poetry, and original art. She’s speaking out, as President Nelson requested, and her voice will be welcome not only to women in the church, but also to men who stand to gain so much from their perspectives. His plea for women to speak up assumes there will be ears willing to listen.Practically all Latter-day Saints can recite by heart the first four principles and ordinances of the gospel. Faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost each seem neatly connected like sturdy rungs on a ladder in the fourth Article of Faith. But the article points beyond itself—these are only the first principles and ordinances. In our age of geographically precise GPS navigation we search in vain for a divine itinerary precisely outlining the safe route back to our heavenly home. In the gospel of John, Jesus employs a striking poetic device to describe a disciple’s life beyond the first principles and ordinances: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)One Hundred Birds is closer to Jesus’s description than to the Article of Faith. Hoiland’s personal vignettes, interspersed with her original poetry and art, are loosely grouped according to familiar gospel themes like faith, redemption, and hope, in addition to often-overlooked gospel themes like creativity, laughter, mourning, and beauty. This might challenge readers who are more comfortable following a linear narrative from beginning, middle, to end, but it’s more representative of life’s messiness. The disciple’s life can be unpredictable and surprising, often escaping the linear logic of lists. It’s more like an open canvas than a paint-by-numbers worksheet. As President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has suggested, we bring our unique perspectives to this task to the benefit of everyone: “Sometimes we confuse differences in personality with sin. We can even make the mistake of thinking that because someone is different from us, it must mean they are not pleasing to God. This line of thinking leads us to believe that the Church wants to create every member from a single mold–that each one should look, feel, think, and behave like every other. This would contradict the genius of God….As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are united in our testimony of the restored gospel and our commitment to keep God’s commandments. But we are diverse in our social, cultural, and political preferences. The Church thrives when we take advantage of this diversity and encourage each other to develop and use our talents to lift and strengthen our fellow disciples.” With the eyes of an artist, Ashley Mae Hoiland has come to see how holiness saturates everyday life. With the mind of a writer she translates that holiness onto the page so we can catch glimpses of that holiness more clearly. Not leaving the first principles and ordinances behind, she invites us to feel the wind blowing where it pleases. It is ours to spread our wings and learn to fly. * Keep watching the Institute’s blog (subscribe to it at the bottom of the page) as well as our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds for pre-order information and updates—including a sneak preview of One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly: The Art of Seeking God in the coming weeks.

One of the last things I heard Linda Adams say was “I just love the smell of a freshly printed book!”It was a little over a month ago when I delivered a copy of the book she’d recently co-edited for the Living Faith series, Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand by Thomas F. Rogers. I watched with satisfaction as she thumbed through the pages, inspected the binding, examined the font, and turned to each of the black and white images of Tom’s paintings. She remarked how different a book always seems from the manuscript pages editors spent countless hours scouring—it doesn’t feel entirely real until you hold that bound copy in your hands, feel the heft of it, breathe it in.Linda was being treated for cancer during much of the Expand project as she worked together with me, Tom, and her co-editor Jonathan Langford. In spite of health struggles, she remained a methodical and deeply interested editor who brought decades of experience along with deep personal faith to the work. I believe Expand meant a lot to her not only because she’d been a longtime personal friend of Tom’s, but also because the book so frequently speaks to people who don’t always feel comfortable in the Church’s mainstream. Linda was a single parent for over forty years while professionally teaching, editing, and mentoring. She became very well-known in LDS publishing circles and in the Mormon History Association community. She provided some needed friendship and advice when the Maxwell Institute began developing the Living Faith series in 2012.Linda peacefully passed away on Sunday afternoon, July 17. We are grateful for the time she spent working with the Institute on Tom’s book and on a few projects we hope to complete in the future. Our thoughts and prayers are with her friends, family, loved ones, and with Linda herself, who we expect is having her own blessed reunions at the moment, perhaps bringing the smell of freshly printed books in her wake.

Robert A. Rees is a visiting professor of religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He announces today’s release of Thomas F. Rogers’s Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand, a spiritually and intellectually stimulating collection of essays, articles, letters, poetry, and art exploring faith, reason, charity, and beauty. The latest in the Maxwell Institute’s Living Faith book series is now available at LDS book retailers and Amazon. In a world (and sometimes the church itself) in which the head and the heart are often divided, Thomas F. Rogers has sought his entire life to unify and harmonize his own and others’ hearts and minds through his teaching, writing, and devoted service to Christ. Tom has been a blessing and a gift to me. There is no better way to summarize his life. His marvelous new collection of essays, letters, and lectures—Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith, Reason, Charity, and Beauty—is also a blessing and a gift.In 2001 when I edited Why I Stay: The Challenges of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons I placed Tom’s essay “It Satisfies My Restless Mind” at the beginning. It seemed not only to capsulize what I hoped the volume would accomplish (give thoughtful expression to deep devotion), but to set the tone for the entire collection. I’m pleased to see it included in this collection along with other inspiring personal expressions of Tom’s thinking and believing I’d not encountered before, divided into four themes: faith, reason, charity, and beauty, each of them informing the others.The Maxwell Institute has also published a companion website to the book featuring the collected plays of Thomas F. Rogers.Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand reveals what a rare modern disciple Tom is—a man who is as rigorous in his pursuit of the life of the mind as he is in his devotion to the riches and wonders of the spirit, and a disciple who is as comfortable with his liberal politics as he is with his conservative community. Like Joseph Smith, Tom has sought truth by being willing to “prove contraries.”What has impressed me about Tom as much as anything over the years of our friendship is his erudition—the sophistication of his religious, scholarly, and creative mind. Tom reads widely and deeply, which is also how he thinks—and believes. In fact, this collection is an education in the humanities—a discipline so easily denigrated in contemporary culture despite being essential to our survival as a civilization by encouraging responsible critical and speculative inquiry. Just as the humanities are often coupled with the arts because they are so complementary, so are they in Tom’s life. As a creative artist (a playwright, poet, and painter) Tom shows in Expand that it is possible to celebrate the imagination as well as the mind—to create beauty and meaning as complements to faith and reason. It brims with intelligence, personal candor, honesty, and openness. Perhaps it is Tom’s role as a teacher (and, as with all good teachers, perpetual student) that comes through most in these essays.Out of so many excellent pieces in Expand, it is not possible to select only one. But the following quote is among my favorites, not only because it epitomizes Tom’s thinking but because he exemplifies it in his life—a life of balanced devotion to faith, reason, charity, and beauty: “The urge to take an extreme position in either direction for the sake of the certainty we would all naturally prefer may be the greatest failing of our race.” Humility—intellectual and spiritual—is a hallmark of Tom’s work and his life as a disciple of Christ.In his epigraph on the humanist Sir Thomas More, the poet J. V. Cunningham, wrote: Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead Who would not cut the Body from the Head. Fortunately, Tom Rogers—who also would not cut the body or heart from the head—is very much with us still. What’s more, his insights will live on in this valuable collection to the blessing of younger generations of readers. May he continue to thrive and bless us with his many gifts for years to come!

It’s been sixteen years since Thomas F. Rogers reviewed Donna Hill’s biography of Joseph Smith, reflecting on the tendency to treat LDS history with great caution. Rogers wrote before the days of Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling and the Joseph Smith Papers Project. What is most striking about Rogers’s analysis of Hill’s biography in light of contemporary LDS culture is the way he associates historically responsible scholarship with the strength of community. A lack of healthy historical self-disclosure, he writes, can “breed loneliness and make us, more than it should, strangers to each other.”According to Rogers, good history matters especially when it helps us feel less alone: To those who in their turn selectively handle Mormon history and discourage our probing it in a number of areas, one needs to say (or at least to ask): Haven’t we been, if anything, overly cautious, overly mistrustful, overly condescending to a membership and a public who are far more perceptive and discerning than we often give them credit for? Haven’t we, in our care not to offend a soul or cause anyone the least misunderstanding, too much deprived such individuals of needful occasions for personal growth and more in-depth life-probing experience? In our neurotic cautiousness, our fear of venturing, haven’t we often settled for an all-too-shallow and confining common denominator that insults the very Intelligence we presume to glorify and is also dishonest because, deep down, we all know better (to the extent that we do)? Isn’t our intervention often too arbitrary, reflecting the hasty, uninformed reaction of only one or a couple of influential objectors? Don’t we in the process too severely and needlessly test the loyalty and respect of and lose credibility with many more than we imagine? Isn’t there a tendency among us, bred by the fear of displeasing, to avoid healthy self-disclosure—public or private—and to pretend about ourselves to ourselves and others? Doesn’t this in turn breed loneliness and make us, more than it should, strangers to each other? And when we are too calculating, too self-conscious, too mistrustful, too prescriptive, and too regimental about our roots and about one another’s aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual life, aren’t we self-defeating? This excerpt is from Thomas F. Rogers’s forthcoming book Let Your Hearts and Minds Expand: Reflections on Faith: Reason, Charity, and Beauty. It is the latest volume in the Maxwell Institute’s Living Faith series.Early birds who can’t wait until the June 14th release can pick up a copy of Expand for half price this week at the Mormon History Association conference in Snowbird, Utah. It’s our gift to the Mormon history community. The Maxwell Institute extends its sincere and continued gratitude for the women and men who passionately pursue Mormon history—those from the past, those in the present, and those yet to come. Don’t be a stranger. Stop by our booth and say hello.

This guest post is by Patrick Q. Mason, the Howard W. Hunter Chair in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. His book Planted is the newest addition to the Maxwell Institute’s Living Faith series. You can read an adapted excerpt at LDS Living. Planted is not the type of book I expected myself to write. I’ve always been an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have thus been interested in the spiritual welfare of my fellow church members. And I’ve always admired the thoughtful pastoral books by intellectuals such as C. S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eugene England, Adam Miller, and Terryl and Fiona Givens. But until about a year and a half ago I didn’t anticipate trying, however feebly, to join that august lineup.I went to graduate school to study American religious history, not Mormon history. Mormons turned out to be a big part of my dissertation, but I didn’t plan it that way. My first book The Mormon Menace is about late nineteenth-century anti-Mormon violence in the American south. I framed my analysis using Mormons as the object of study rather than as subjects in their own right. As I became more involved in recent years in the academic subfield of Mormon studies, due in large part to my professional position at Claremont Graduate University, I structured my teaching, research, and public interactions in such a way that, at least in my own mind, faced the broader non-Mormon world more so than my own church. I did this all with little to no cognitive dissonance—I suspect no more so than anyone else whose professional and personal lives share some points of commonality but are in fact rather distinct.Then a couple of years ago I was asked to give a “Why I Believe” fireside at the Los Angeles Temple Visitors Center. Shortly thereafter I joined Richard and Claudia Bushman in visits to Phoenix and Portland to talk about matters of faith and doubt in the contemporary church. I gave a series of similar firesides in southern California and Utah. During Q&A after the formal presentations, invariably someone would ask me, “Where can I buy the book?” I typically pointed them to other titles I admire and find helpful (such as Adam Miller’s Letters to a Young Mormon and Terryl & Fiona Givens’ Crucible of Doubt). But after several of these conversations I decided that perhaps I would have something to say that people might find helpful, and that a book would indeed be the best way to say it.Although informed deeply by my academic training, I don’t consider Planted to be an academic book. It won’t go on my professional vita or be part of my file for promotion at my university. This is me speaking as a Mormon to other Mormons, though I expect that a few other folks may profitably listen in to the conversation as well. It’s intended as an act of friendship, fellowship, and discipleship, not original peer-reviewed scholarship. I love the conversations I have in my professional community, but this is for the most part a conversation with my church community. Just as artists, bankers, and computer scientists have lives outside their chosen day jobs, so do scholars. Writing Planted was my main hobby for about a year. I probably need to get out more. . .Who is Planted for? On first glance, people naturally assume that it’s written to “doubters”—those in “faith crisis”—to assuage their doubts, answer their questions, and keep them in the church. But in fact I wasn’t particularly interested in writing a manual of answers I’ve crafted to other people’s gospel questions. I was far more interested in modeling a faithful yet critically self-reflective discussion for people at various points along the faith spectrum, from skeptics to true-blue believers, from those struggling to keep one toe in the church to the concerned bishops, Relief Society presidents, mothers, and grandfathers. Writing one book to multiple audiences was a challenging task, and insofar as I pulled it off I can thank the many people who gave me feedback along the way, most of all my Maxwell Institute editor Blair Hodges.I believe deeply in Paul’s metaphor of the body of Christ, with each part equally necessary to the functioning of the whole. I believe that the diversity of gifts in our human and church families is a blessing to draw strength from rather than a curse to be weeded out. I wanted to write a book that could speak to (and with) the whole body of Christ, not just one segment of it. I see the Restoration fundamentally as a project of bringing healing to a broken and fractured world (thanks to fellow scholar Phil Barlow for this insight). I wanted to offer whatever words I could to capture and promote that spirit of reconciliation, and indeed atonement, that I believe is at the heart of the gospel.Importantly, I intend Planted to be part of a grown-up conversation among grown-ups in what I hope is a grown-up religion. Perhaps more than anything I fear the juvenilization of Mormonism in which our religious knowledge and understanding often seems to be trapped somewhere between early morning seminary and EFY (however wonderful those things are—when you’re a teenager). I don’t believe that I learned everything I need to know in Primary or even in priests’ quorum. We build on childhood foundations in our secular knowledge but then move on to more mature and nuanced thought processes and models as we encounter a more complex world in our adult years. By the same logic, our religion should grow up with us. How we read scriptures when we are seven should change by the time we are seventeen, then again by the time we are forty-seven or seventy-seven. The same is true of how we think about prophets, or church history, or any number of other gospel topics. The principles of simple addition are no less true once we learn calculus—but you can’t build bridges or fly to the moon with grade school arithmetic.Adults can and should be sensitive about the proper time and place to have certain conversations. But just because a particular conversation perhaps shouldn’t occur in missionary discussions or even Gospel Doctrine class doesn’t mean it shouldn’t occur at all. Planted is my small attempt to foster more conversation within Mormonism. You might disagree with some of the points I make. Terrific! Let’s talk about it, with all the faith, generosity, learning, humility, and charity we can muster.

Today the Maxwell Institute is pleased to announce the publication of the latest book in our Living Faith book series, Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist. This guest post is from author Steven L. Peck. You can pick up a copy of Evolving Faith at Amazon, Deseret Book, the BYU Bookstore, and other fine LDS booksellers now. It’s available in paperback and digital formats (Kindle, Nook, and iBook).—BHodges I’ll be right up front. I’m a huge fan of evolution. I’m a professor at Brigham Young University where evolution is a big part of the curriculum. In fact, people are often surprised to learn that BYU actually has one of the best evolutionary biology programs in the nation.But I wasn’t always such a fan. When I was on my mission in Arkansas, I can remember, I was talking to a guy who said he believed in evolution and I said “Well, you can’t be baptized until you let go of that.” Because I was under the impression that evolution was definitely something forbidden. And I regret that now!After my mission when I got to BYU I was looking at textbooks in the bookstore. I came upon an evolution book and I thought “Oh, they’ll take this baby down!” And I was so shocked to find that it was just a straight-up evolutionary biology book. Soon I began to take classes in biology from some of the greatest professors I’ve ever had. They were men of faith (all of them were men at the time) who had a deep passion for evolution and who showed me that our faith and evolution were compatible. I think the most important thing I got in becoming a scientist was the sense that I didn’t need to choose between the two. This is important when you’re at a university presented with the massive amount of evidence for evolution and how beautiful it is—it’s really a beautiful theory. In fact David O. McKay said that. ((David O. McKay, “A Message for L.D.S. College Youth,” printed in BYU Speeches of the Year 1952 (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1952), 5–6.))Of course, there are some sticking points when we get down to particulars. But I think they’re worth wrestling with and wondering about. I don’t want watered down science and I don’t want watered down religion. I really want the fullness of both to inform my perspective. There’s a great quote from President Dieter F. Uchtdorf which I included in Evolving Faith‘s introduction that sets the stage for what I’m trying to do with this book:“Brothers and sisters, as good as our previous experience may be, if we stop asking questions, stop thinking, stop pondering, we can thwart the revelations of the Spirit. Remember, it was the questions young Joseph asked that opened the door for the restoration of all things. We can block the growth and knowledge our Heavenly Father intends for us. How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn’t get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew?” ((Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Acting on the Truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” February 2012 Worldwide Leadership Training address.))

I loved working with Steve on Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist. Not only because I’ve been personally fascinated, entertained, and challenged by his work over the past few years, and not only because I consider him a mentor and a personal friend, but also because the Living Faith book series which I edit is, itself, an evolving work in progress which his book helped shape.The Living Faith series is for Latter-day Saints who hunger as much for intellectual as spiritual nourishment. Each book comes from an author who exemplifies what Saint Anselm called fides quaerens intellectum, or faith seeking understanding. Adam Miller’s Letters to a Young Mormon reflects the thinking and style of a Latter-day Saint trained in philosophy. Sam Brown’s First Principles and Ordinances bears the hallmarks of a physician, theologian, and historian rolled into one. That’s the pattern here. Each book is an outgrowth of its author’s professional (academic) and religious life.Unlike Letters and First Principles with their natural narrative arcs, Evolving Faith is an essay collection in two parts, the first containing more technical, scientific, philosophical pieces and part two containing more personal, sometimes humorous, pieces. Perhaps there’s a bit of the 2 Nephi conundrum here where readers confront dense landscape before things ease up. (There were actually a few even more technical essays that didn’t make the final cut and one piece that sneaked its way back in to part two.) Each essay stands alone, but perceptive readers will discern fascinating overlap. As a scientist and a believer, Steve discovered that this division is imprecise. Collectively, the essays model and invite deeper engagement with one’s faith and scientific ideas, as he describes in the introduction: “This book is not a systematic reconciliation of the claims and methods of science with religious faith. Instead, I offer my various writings as food for thought in order to invite other Latter-day Saints to faithfully explore the canyons of science and faith as I have done. Questioning is an important element of lifelong religious faith…Certainly some of the meditations and wanderings included here will become outdated as scientists—as they always do—update and refine current scientific findings. Soon enough they will view the world from even grander vistas than the one on which I currently stand. Yet, what I hope endures from this collection is the perspective that one can embrace both good science and the truths of the gospel without compromising either one. Both science and faith are important and valid lenses through which we come to understand the world and our place in it. While each essay in this book stands alone, together they represent my own evolving approach to dealing with questions of science and faith.” So who is this collection for? Not every reader will enjoy or benefit from each piece, but I believe many Latter-day Saints aren’t merely ready but eager to stretch their intellectual and spiritual faculties, to wonder while they wander alongside fellow Latter-day Saints like Steven Peck, Mormon biologist.Evolving Faith is for you.

This guest post is from Steven L. Peck, an associate professor of Biology at Brigham Young University. His book Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist comes out October 27, but you can pre-order your copy today.—BHodges

I’m very excited to announce that the next title in the Maxwell Institute’s “Living Faith” book series will be released on October 27. You can pre-order it on Amazon today. It’s Steven L. Peck’s Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist.

Shaun Maher at Meridian Magazine recently interviewed Samuel M. Brown, author of First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple. I recommend reading the entire interview, but here’s an excerpt to get you started. —BHodges

Samuel M. Brown joins us in this guest post describing his latest book First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple. The book is available now on Amazon.com and at fine Utah booksellers like Benchmark, Deseret Book, King's English, and Zion's Books. This Friday Brown will be at Zion's Books in Provo, Utah to read excerpts and sign copies. BHodges

Almost from the cradle, Latter-day Saint children are taught the basic principles and ordinances of the gospel: faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Missionaries teach these same things to people who want to know more about Mormonism. Thanks to repeated lessons and talks, they become more and more familiar the longer you're a member of the Church. But familiarity can lead to a peculiar kind of blindness in life and in religion. Proximity can lead to saturation. A fresh approach to otherwise familiar things can bring out their fragrance once again.