A Thoughtful Faith - A Conversation With Philip Barlow Faith Matters podcast

Content provided by Faith Matters Foundation. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Faith Matters Foundation or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://staging.podcastplayer.com/legal.

Faith Matters »
A Thoughtful Faith - A Conversation with Philip Barlow

16h ago 58:02

MP3•Episode home

This week, we’re sharing a conversation with Phil Barlow about his new book, published by Faith Matters, called A Thoughtful Faith for the 21st Century. If that sounds familiar, it may be because Phil published the first volume back in 1986. That original collection included essays by Eugene England, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Francine Bennion, Richard Bushman, and others—each exploring what it means to live a spiritually and intellectually honest life within the Latter-day Saint tradition.

As Phil points out, challenges to faith are not new. Thoughtful people were wrestling with difficult questions decades ago in ways that still have power today. But, as he says, “the world has turned some” since then. The 2025 edition brings in a new generation of scholars and voices—Thomas McConkie, Melissa Inouye, Fiona Givens, Ben Schilaty, among others—who speak to today’s distinctive challenges while honoring the wisdom and foundation of those who came before.

At the heart of both volumes is an urgent and beautiful question: How can we hold together the integrities of our minds and our hearts and our spirits? That question—its weight, complexity, and quiet hope—sits at the center of this conversation today.

Phil brings so much humility and clarity, and in this episode we get to hear a little about what’s changed in his own faith, about the wisdom of surrendering the need to know, and why he still finds the Latter-day Saint tradition compelling, human, and a spiritual home he continues to choose with both heart and mind.

We’re so grateful to Phil for this conversation, and we hope you love it as much as we did. With that, here’s Phil Barlow.

Links for the show notes:

Purchase the book through Bookshop.org (https://bookshop.org/a/108982/9781953677242) Amazon (https://amzn.to/4mgJsCf) or anywhere you get your books.

Get a free look inside the book on our website: https://www.faithmatters.org/s/a-thoughtful-faith-vol-2

274 episodes

#Religion #Christianity #Faith Matters Foundation #Mormon #Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latterday Saints #LDS #Latterday Saints #Ethics #Morality #Philosophy