Faith Matters

Most of us can probably recall a verse or two from the book of Psalms—something comforting, or words inside a hymn we know. But Psalms is the longest book in the Bible, and tucked inside this same book of scripture are psalms of rage, cursing, and despair that are a lot harder to make sense of.
Today, Dr. Ellen Davis joins us to talk about this ancient, essential book, and describes the Psalms as a kind of script for the full range of human experience before God. The Psalms, she says, expose “all parts of our soul for healing.”
In this conversation, Ellen, who has spent years translating the Psalms, shows us just how expansive this ancient prayer book really is. She calls the Psalms a kind of “First Amendment” for the life of faith: permission to bring everything before God. Even the shape of the book reflects that, with lament gradually giving way to praise by the book’s end. Ellen also takes us beneath some familiar translations with words like nefesh, usually rendered “soul.” Ellen says this actually probably means something closer to our whole embodied self, challenging the idea that our spiritual lives are somehow separate or at odds with our physical ones. It’s another way the Psalms widen our sense of prayer—it’s a vision spacious enough to hold our grief, our anger, our bodies, our silence, and our joy, trusting that all of it belongs in our relationship with God.
Dr. Ellen F. Davis is the Amos Ragan Kearns Distinguished Professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Duke Divinity School and the author of several books exploring scripture and the life of faith, including extensive work on the Psalms.
The RESTORE:CONNECT Agenda is now live! Check it out at faithmatters.org/restore, and be sure to get your ticket before September 1—that's when registration for individual sessions will open, and some of these sessions will fill up fast! We can't wait to connect with you this Sept 24-26. See you there!

Job is probably one of the most difficult and haunting books in scripture, and this summer as we read it together, we wanted a guide—so we invited Mike Petrow back to join us. With doctoral degrees in psychology and mythological studies, Mike helps us understand Job as an ancient text, and as a story that continues to speak in our own lives.
Today Mike takes us straight into one of the most striking turns in this story: Job’s friends show up in his deep suffering, and one by one try to defend God with tidy theology, debate him out of his grief, and ultimately accuse him of bringing this suffering on himself. But then God show up and finally speaks, rebuking the friends and declaring that it is Job—the one who questioned, lamented, and wrestled—who has spoken truthfully. Mike unpacks what that reversal means for anyone who’s ever felt like their questions made them the problem.
And then there’s Job himself: a good man who loses everything. Mike walks us through what this ancient story has to teach us about our own doubt, grief, and the sacred work of asking questions—showing again how honest questioning can be the threshold to a richer spiritual imagination and deeper faith.
Dr. Mike Petrow is the host of The Healer With a Thousand Facesand one of the lead hosts on the Everything Belongs podcast with Father Richard Rohr. He’s the Manager of Formation for the Center for Action and Contemplation, a jungian spiritual director, and a certified grief and trauma counselor. And we are so thrilled to share that he’ll be joining us live at Restore:Connect this year!
We hope this conversation is nourishing and sparks lots of new insights for you as you study the book of Job this month.
The RESTORE:CONNECT Agenda is now live! Check it out at faithmatters.org/restore, and be sure to get your ticket before September 1—that's when registration for individual sessions will open, and some of these sessions will fill up fast! We can't wait to connect with you this Sept 24-26. See you there!

When Dallin Zimmerman was four years old, he memorized every Article of Faith. As a teenager, he studied Portuguese and Spanish, and had long been the family's peacemaker — a bright, fun-loving light that people gravitate toward. Today he's serving a full-time mission in South America. And at thirteen, years before any of that, he sat down with his parents and asked a question that would shape everything ahead: "What if I'm gay?"
Today we're talking with Dave and Kirty, Dallin's parents, married 22 years, raising four kids, longtime Utah County residents. For more than three years, they kept Dallin's story private, scared of what they might lose, and of what it would cost Dallin if their community found out. Many of their questions remained unresolved. But eventually, the secret became too heavy to carry alone. 
So together, they helped Dallin share his story with trusted leaders in their ward, in a gathering of Young Men and Young Women leaders who had known him for years, he bore his testimony, and shared that he is gay. One by one, these leaders stood up, embraced him and assured him that he was so loved—and that he belonged. That moment marked the beginning of a new way forward, where isolation gave way to the healing that comes from being known and loved.
In this conversation, Dave and Kirty are remarkably candid about the fear they felt at first, the questions that still remain, and the unexpected ways this journey has transformed them—a journey that, as Kirty says, has become "the biggest blessing of their lives."
Dave and Kirty would be the first to tell you their story isn't a prescription for any other family's journey. But if you're a parent near the beginning of this path, or a leader wondering how to better love and support the youth in your ward, we hope you'll be inspired by their courage, their humility, and creativity.
You can find even more resources around this topic on our website, faithmatters.org.
The RESTORE:CONNECT Agenda is now live! Check it out at faithmatters.org/restore, and be sure to get your ticket before September 1—that's when registration for individual sessions will open, and some of these sessions will fill up fast! We can't wait to connect with you this Sept 24-26. See you there!

Today we’re honored to share a conversation with Peter Wehner. We want to acknowledge that this conversation explores territory that is going to feel personal, political, and, probably at some points, challenging. Our hope that it creates honest and faithful wrestling where where we need it.
Today, we explore what it means to follow Jesus in a time when political identities increasingly compete with religious ones. Pete argues that Christians have always faced the temptation to use the Bible to back up our own opinions rather than allowing the life of Christ to reshape us. He challenges us to consider how certainty may be blinding, explains that a healthy patriotism deepens our love of neighbor, and emphasizes the revolutionary nature of Jesus’s love for those on the margins and calls us to consider what all of this means for Christians today.
Pete has spent decades at the intersection of faith and politics, serving in three Republican administrations, including as a speechwriter and director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives to President George W. Bush. He’s now a contributing writer for The Atlantic and The New York Times. Throughout his career, he’s consistently challenged himself and others to think with moral seriousness, intellectual honesty, and Christian charity.
This conversation invited us to think more deeply about where our deepest allegiances belong. We found it thoughtful, grounding, and so worthwhile, and we hope you will too. And with that, we’ll jump right into our conversation with Peter Wehner.
The RESTORE:CONNECT Agenda is now live! Check it out at faithmatters.org/restore, and be sure to get your ticket before September 1—that's when registration for individual sessions will open, and some of these sessions will fill up fast! We can't wait to connect with you this Sept 24-26. See you there!

Today we’re pulling out one of our favorite episodes from the archives. 
Our guest is Pete Enns, a well-known bible scholar and the Abram S. Clemens professor of Bible Studies at Eastern University in Pennsylvania.
In recent years, Pete has become well known for several highly popular books, including How the Bible Actually Works, The Bible Tells Me So, and the book we discussed with him in this episode: The Sin of Certainty. In addition to his research and writing, Pete co-hosts the podcast The Bible for Normal People.
In The Sin of Certainty, Pete opens up about his own faith journey, including what he calls “uh-oh” moments — those moments that, as Pete says, “wreak havoc with our neatly arranged thoughts of God, the world, and our place in it.”
He makes the argument that a faith preoccupied with correct thinking can quickly become exhausting as we try to force disruptive experiences into our existing frameworks. Pete insists that there’s a different way—the way of listening to those moments and learning from them, even letting them change us—and discovering a faith that shifts from rigid certainty about God to a more open, resilient trust in God.
This conversation has really stayed with us over the years, and we are so excited to share it with you now.
You can also watch the presentation Pete gave at Restore 2023, "What Our Strange Universe is Telling Us About God and Faith," on our YouTube channel.
The RESTORE:CONNECT Agenda is now live! Check it out at faithmatters.org/restore, and be sure to get your ticket before September 1—that's when registration for individual sessions will open, and some of these sessions will fill up fast! We can't wait to connect with you this Sept 24-26. See you there!