The Wonder of Scripture Lecture Series
This year, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship began hosting a Wonder of Scripture Lecture Series, every Friday at 11 AM. These lectures will be held in 3714 HBLL and uploaded to our YouTube channel for on-demand streaming. Watch past lectures here.
Please join us for these lectures, where scholars from across campus and the world will dive deep into scripture and its meaning.
Join us for the last Fall 2024 Lecture!
Kimberly Matheson
December 6, Lecture
Kimberly Matheson is the Laura F. Willes Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Her research centers on Book of Mormon theology, Christian contemplative practice, and the continental philosophy of religion. Kimberly holds a PhD in theology from Loyola University Chicago, an MTS in philosophy of religion from Harvard Divinity School, and a BA in ancient Near East studies from Brigham Young University. She is the author of Helaman: A Brief Theological Introduction (Maxwell, 2020) and sits on the boards of the Book of Mormon Studies Association and the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar.
Winter 2025 Wonder of Scripture Lecture Schedule
January
- 17 - Jared Halverson, BYU Professor of Ancient Scripture
- 24 - Rabbi Sam Spector, Rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, Salt Lake City
- 31 - Phil Barlow, Senior Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute
February
- 7 - Amy Harris, BYU Professor of History
- 14 - Morgan Davis, Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute
- 21 - Patrick Mason, Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University
- 28 - Mason Allred, BYU–Hawaii Associate Professor of Communication, Media, and Culture
March
- 7 - Ben Lomu, host of BYUtv’s “Come Follow Up”
- 14 - Kristian Heal, Senior Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute
- 28 - Rachael Givens, BYU Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities
April
- 4 - Adam Miller, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College
- 11 - Rosalynde Welch, Associate Director and a Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute
About the Winter 2025 Speakers
Jared Halverson
January 17 lecture
Jared Halverson is an associate professor of Ancient Scripture, coming to BYU after 24 years of serving in the Church Educational System. Raised in Texas and Southern California, he came to BYU originally as a Presidential Scholar and wide receiver on the football team, leaving to serve a mission in Puerto Rico and returning to teach at the Missionary Training Center. He earned a BA in History and an MA in Religious Education from BYU, and an MA and PhD in American Religious History from Vanderbilt University, focusing on secularization, faith loss, and anti-religious rhetoric. He is frequently involved with interfaith dialogue, has been a featured speaker in both devotional and academic settings from coast to coast, and hosts a popular YouTube channel and podcast called "Unshaken." He also works one-on-one with people around the world experiencing faith crisis.
Rabbi Sam Spector
January 24 Lecture
Rabbi Samuel L. Spector has been the rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in Salt Lake City since 2018. He was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. He attended the University of California, San Diego and graduated with Cum Laude honors with a B.A. in Judaic Studies. He received his Masters in Hebrew Letters and Rabbinic Ordination from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.
Prior to coming to Congregation Kol Ami, Rabbi Spector served as the Associate Rabbi of Temple Judea in Tarzana, California. He is currently a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and serves on the advisory board for the Salt Lake Chamber and the Christian Center of Park City.
Phil Barlow
January 31 Lecture
Philip Barlow is a Senior Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. Previously he was the inaugural Leonard J. Arrington Professor of Mormon History & Culture at Utah State University. His book-length writings on religion have contemplated such arenas as belief (A Thoughtful Faith for the 21st Century, editor), religion and “place” (the New Historical Atlas of Religion in America, with Edwin Scott Gaustad), and scripture (Mormons and the Bible). With Terryl Givens he is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Mormonism. He is the author most recently of Time for the Maxwell Institute series, Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants (Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book, 2024).
Amy Harris
February 7 Lecture
Amy Harris is a professor of history at Brigham Young University and an accredited genealogist. She currently serves as the coordinator of the Family History Bachelor’s Program. Her research focuses on families, women, and gender in eighteenth-century Britain. Her first book, Siblinghood and Social Relations in Georgian England: Share and Share Alike (Manchester, 2012) used both historical and genealogical methods to explore sibling relationships and their connections to political and social ideas of equality. Her most recent work, Being Single in Georgian England: Families, Households, and the Unmarried (Oxford, 2023) uncovers family dynamics beyond couplehood and parenthood to reveal how unmarried or childless people shaped family life, childrearing, and genealogical practices in the eighteenth century. Her most recent book is Redeeming the Dead for the Maxwell Institute series, Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants (Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book, 2024).
Morgan Davis
February 14 Lecture
D. Morgan Davis is a Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He holds a Ph.D. (2005) in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Utah, an M.A. in history from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Brigham Young University. Dr. Davis was affiliated with the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI) from its inception in 1993, supervising the translation and publication of dual language editions of works from the classical Islamicate world. He served as the project’s director from 2010 until its transfer to Brill in 2017. Dr. Davis works in comparative scripture and comparative theology with a focus on Islam and the Latter-day Saint tradition. He is also the founder and co-editor of the Institute’s Living Faith book series.
Patrick Mason
February 21 Lecture
Patrick Q. Mason holds the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, and was previously the Howard W. Hunter Chair in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. He has written or edited several books, including Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict (Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book, 2021); Mormonism and Violence: The Battles of Zion (Cambridge University Press, 2019); What Is Mormonism? A Student's Introduction (Routledge, 2017); Out of Obscurity: Mormonism since 1945, co-edited with John Turner (Oxford University Press, 2016); Directions for Mormon Studies in the Twenty-First Century (University of Utah Press, 2016); and The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford University Press, 2011). He was a Fulbright Scholar in Romania in 2015 and is a past president of the Mormon History Association.
Mason Allred
February 28 Lecture
Mason Kamana Allred is an associate professor of communication, media, and culture at Brigham Young University–Hawaii. He earned his MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in German history and culture with an emphasis on film and media studies. Prior to joining the faculty of BYU Hawaii, he was a Historian and Editor with the Joseph Smith Papers project in the Church History Department. He is the author Weimar Cinema, Embodiment, and Historicity (Routledge 2017), Seeing Things: Technologies of Vision and the Making of Mormonism (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), and most recently, Seeing for the Maxwell Institute series, Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants (Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book, 2024). His interdisciplinary work has also appeared in venues such as JAAR, Jewish Studies Quarterly, Material Religion and Film History.
Ben Lomu
March 7 Lecture
Ben Lomu is a religious educator for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has been teaching seminary and institute for 20 years, and is currently an institute instructor at the Utah Valley Institute. He is also an actor and host of BYUtv’s “Come Follow Up”. He was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Mesa Arizona. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah studying sociology and criminology and earned a master’s degree from the University of Phoenix in education. He and his wife, Michelle, have been married for 21 years and are raising four children.
Kristian Heal
March 14 Lecture
Kristian Heal is a Senior Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. His research focuses on the reception of the Hebrew Bible in early Christian literature and worship. He took a BA in Jewish History from University College London, an MSt in Syriac studies from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Theology from the University of Birmingham. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Heal was the Associate Director of the Maxwell Institute (2017-2018), the Director of BYU’s Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts (2004-2016), and the editor of BYU’s Eastern Christian Texts Series (2002-2018). Dr. Heal is the author or editor of nine book, most recently Genesis 37 and 39 in the Early Syriac Tradition (Brill, 2023), and Narsai: The Homilies. Volume 1, which he edited with Aaron Butts and Robert Kitchen (Peeters, 2024).
Rachael Givens Johnson
March 28 Lecture
Dr. Rachael Givens Johnson is an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Brigham Young University. She received her Ph.D in history from the University of Virginia and focuses on themes of religious materialism, embodiment, and transatlantic cultural history, particularly peninsular and viceregal Spain, in the 17th-19th centuries. From 2022-2024, Dr. Johnson was a postdoctoral fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship studying themes of embodiment, immanence, and materialism in religious discourse of the 18th- and 19th-century transatlantic.
Adam Miller
April 4 Lecture
Adam Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. He earned a BA in Comparative Literature from Brigham Young University and an MA and PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University. He serves as the current director of the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar. Dr. Miller is the author and editor of many books in Philosophy and Latter-day Saint theology, including most recently, Mormon: A Brief Theological Introduction (Maxwell Institute, 2021), Original Grace (Deseret Book, 2022), The Christ Child (Deseret Book, 2024), and with Rosalynde Welch, Seven Gospels: The Many Lives of Christ in the Book of Mormon (Deseret Book, 2023) and Seven Visions: Images of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants (Deseret Book, 2024).
Rosalynde Welch
April 11 Lecture
Rosalynde Frandsen Welch is Associate Director and a Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Her research focuses on Latter-day Saint scripture, theology, and literature. She holds a PhD in early modern English literature from the University of California, San Diego, and a BA in English from Brigham Young University. She is the author of Ether: a brief theological introduction (Maxwell Institute, 2020), and with Adam Miller, Seven Gospels: The Many Lives of Christ in the Book of Mormon (Deseret Book, 2023) and Seven Visions: Images of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants (Deseret Book, 2024).