At Last She Said It

Some things in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seem to be changing more regularly than they have in the past. Many members have lived through decades where it felt like almost nothing changed in our meetings, curriculum, and official messaging, so this evolution comes with a diversity of feelings. How might Church leadership help members move forward more easily? Could adjusting the way these inevitable shifts are introduced increase clarity, unity, hope, and even anticipation for what the future may bring? Episode 261 addresses this and other topics—including listener voicemails—in a conversation about a little of everything.

In Episode 259, Susan and Cynthia ask Mer, Zinah, and Carol, What Do You Say? It's the second installment of ALSSI's wide-ranging conversations with wise Latter-day Saint women. Each guest answers randomly selected questions about their memories, insights, and beliefs through stories of their personal lives and experiences.

Is there a richer text for Christians than the Beatitudes? Yet we don't all think or teach about them the same way. Many Latter-day Saints talk and teach about them as a list of saint-like attributes to which we should aspire, traits that will bring us closer to God and eventual exaltation. But Nadia Bolz-Weber suggests, "What if the Beatitudes aren't about a list of conditions we should try to meet to be blessed? What if they are not virtues we should aspire to? What if Jesus saying 'blessed are the meek' is not instructive but performative—that the pronouncement of blessing is actually what confers the blessing itself?'" In Episode 257, Cynthia and Susan 'dance with the scriptures' in an attempt to discover new ways of seeing and engaging with these familiar verses.

In Episode 255, Cynthia and Susan ask Aubrey Chaves, Debbie Squires-Coleman, and Darice Auston, "What Do You Say?" It's 3 wide-ranging conversations with wise Latter-day Saint women answering questions about their memories, insights, and beliefs through stories of their own lives and experiences.

When Latter-day Saints hear the phrase "Purity Culture," they may associate it more with evangelical churches than with our own. LDS talks and lessons focus on words like virtue, modesty, morality, and chastity to describe our ideals. But regardless of the specific words used, the messages are the same. Therapist C.A. Larson points out, "Purity culture is a moral control system that ties worth to sexual behavior, especially for women. [...] Purity culture in the LDS Church is institutional, enforced through interviews, modesty rules, and silence around consent." In Episode 253, Cynthia and Susan welcome C.A. back to ALSSI for a discussion about Purity Culture: what it is, its psychological and emotional impacts, and its systemic connection to sexual abuse. It's a conversation that makes space for grief and anger, and identifies healing paths. C.A. explains, "Healing is not about becoming more sexual or less sexual. It is about embracing our agency...relearning consent, trusting bodily signals, separating worth from obedience, reclaiming choice, going slowly and allowing ambivalence. You don't owe your body to doctrine, and you don't owe your healing to anyone else's timeline."CW: sexual abuse

For 6 years, Susan and Cynthia have been asking podcast guests, "What do you know?" In Season 11, they'll be asking a variety of Latter-day Saint women new questions about their memories, insights, and beliefs, with a card game called, What Do You Say? Episode 251 introduces the game as C & S break out the decks of cards for a fun and wide-ranging conversation of questions and answers.

Latter-day Saints consider ours to be a non-credal religion, yet nearly all our Articles of Faith begin with the phrase, "We believe...." We're asked questions about our specific beliefs in official interviews where our temple worthiness is dependent on the answers. But what happens when one's beliefs shift over the course of time? How much does subscribing to a specific set of theological convictions matter when it comes to individual members' lives and relationships? In Episode 249, Cynthia and Susan kick off a season of conversations about big ideas by discussing one of the biggest: Belief.

Curiosity should feel foundational for Latter-day Saints—it's the birthplace of our religious tradition. Any member of the Church can recite the story of young Joseph Smith seeking wisdom he lacked. Curiosity is where any search for God—or for anything beyond ourselves—begins. It's an open stance that can help us get comfortable when we find ourselves unexpectedly dropped into liminal space. Empathy has its origin in curiosity, as does creativity. All of this makes it a perfect wrap for our series of discussions centering change and transition. In Episode 247, Susan and Cynthia explore curiosity. It's a season finale conversation that bridges to our upcoming Season 11 focus: Big Ideas.

Every four years, D&C 132 comes around for study again. If you ask a Latter-day Saint woman what she keeps on her metaphorical faith "shelf," there's a good chance polygamy will be there. It's mostly ignored in contemporary church conversations and teachings, a murky doctrine wrapped in a historical wound that continues to fester, easier to ignore than to heal. Many friends and family members won't even share their true feelings about it with each other. But what are the consequences of our silence around polygamy? How long can we collectively carry this enormous weight we never allow ourselves to set down? Bonus Episode 245 is a rerun of Susan and Cynthia's original conversation about polygamy with Channing and Elise from The Faithful Feminists podcast, an honest exploration of where we've been, where we are, and where we might go next.

Each Latter-day Saint's path looks different, a combination of unique experiences, choices, and challenges. No matter how insistent our culture may sometimes feel, no woman fits in a mold. "I think my life began with holding dissonance," explains comedian Whitney Call. "I grew up in a very faithful LDS family...but a little squidgy around the edges. We would go to church and activities every week, and we'd watch the Simpsons together on Sunday nights. We'd bear our testimonies to each other, and we used crude humor about sex." In Episode 243, Cynthia and Susan are joined by Whitney for a wide-ranging conversation about all of it—how it started, how it's going, and one thing she knows right now (or did at the time of recording). CW: pornography, sexuality

Was Joseph Smith a mystic? Searching for the term 'mysticism' on the Church website yields, "See: False Doctrine, Sorcery, Superstitions; Traditions of Men." So it's no wonder many church members haven't thought much about mysticism—the role it may have played in Joseph's experience, or how it might inform their own everyday lives or transform their spiritual practices. But poet Kathryn Knight Sonntag describes it differently: "Trusting the groundless ground, trusting that the darkness or the chaos or the unknown place actually is deeply full of knowing and love and purpose. And that it's ultimately the path into apotheosis. It's ultimately where we begin that journey of becoming divine." In Episode 241, Kathryn joins Susan and Cynthia to explore the concept of mysticism. What might it look like for Latter-day Saints to step off the prescribed map and onto the sacred ground of our own lives in pursuit of personal encounters with God?

"Differentiation of self is being a unique individual while maintaining connection with people you love," explains Dr. Julie Hanks. "We've been trained, particularly as women, to be enmeshed—to feel other people's pain for them. And that does no one any good. It doesn't help them, and it doesn't help us." On Episode 239, Dr. Hanks joins Cynthia and Susan for a conversation about enmeshment. It has been a core theme in her 30 years of practice as a therapist in Utah, working with families in which "the boundaries are not clear at all and everything's everyone's business." So why are some Latter-day Saints prone to focusing too much on the lives and choices of their children or other family members? Does our church have teachings that actually promote family enmeshment?