Divorce affects over 50% of families in the Mormon community. The resulting trauma quickly buries family members in a swamp of shame and loss. It is possible to rise strong and wise after divorce and learn new “mountain climbing” skills. How can individuals reach out and assist others in this climb toward healing and growth? …
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2017
Why We Stay
This perennially well-received session features the stories of those who have chosen to remain active, dedicated Latter-day Saints even in the face of challenges to traditional faith. Robin Linkhart John Gustav-Wrathall Maxine Hanks Nathan McCluskey
Millennial Mormons: A Fundamentalist Perspective
Studies show that more and more youth are leaving religion, so what keeps young adults in a fundamentalist faith? This panel will discuss personal experiences of youth from from Christ Church Inc., a break-off group from the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB). Alia Peterson Katherine Horner Dana Peterson Caleb Horner Joshua Horner Jonathan Olsen Joseph Wright …
Revelation Through Hallucination
Given the unique psychoactive effects and abundant availability of myriad entheogens, there exists evidence that Joseph Smith used plant medicines to incite visions and personal revelations for himself and his parishioners. This model provides a much-needed naturalistic explanation for multiple instances of visionary experiences in Mormon history which have previously been explained with group-hallucination psychology …
Can We Talk? How to Facilitate Challenging Conversations with Those You Love (and Those You Don’t)
Family dinners, church, Facebook, work—all are rife with opportunities to have conversations about sometimes painful and divisive topics. And yet we usually avoid these subjects because we don’t know how to feel safe sharing what we really think. In this workshop, Jacob and Jay will teach proven methods to help bridge these troublesome waters while …
How the Restoration Experience Can Inform the Responsible Use of Scripture
Because of the legacy of Joseph Smith Jr., Latter Day Saint heritage churches have experience with scripture that is unique within Christianity. With the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith dictated whole books of scripture. By claiming the prophetic mantle, he dictated new revelations in God’s voice that were compiled into the …
An “Anthropic” Theodicy: Where There Is a Loving, All-powerful God, Must the Natural World Be as Violently Destructive of Life as Our World Is?
Natural disasters such as earthquakes spread misery, especially affecting the most vulnerable. How God allows this to happen remains a major obstacle to people’s faith. Could it be these are a necessary part in keeping a planet like the earth habitable? This presentation will explore the following argument: 1. Humans with rational free agency can …
Extraordinary Ordinary Women
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s well-known aphorism, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” was initially meant not to call attention to the importance of unconventional women’s lives, but to the importance of ordinary women’s lives. This panel will explore the lives of women, both ordinary and extraordinary, that help us better understand our past, give us insights into …
Your Spiritual Journey is Trying to Eat You!: A New Way to Tell Your Journey
Stories tell people; not the other way around. And it’s the same with spiritual journeys. How much of your spiritual journey is you, and how much of it is the force of a story? This presentation will analyze how spiritual journeys are usually told and how those kinds of stories can constrain our growth. Then …
(In)Active Mormon Women: An Ethnodrama
Inspired by her own faith journey, Janice created this play by interviewing fifteen inactive Mormon women through a group interview process called a story circle. The story circles were audio recorded, transcribed, and then compiled into a performance script—every word in the script comes directly from these women’s experiences following their spiritual journey away from …