This episode is practically geared towards LDS church school (BYU, BYU-I, BYU-Hawaii, LDS Business College, etc) students, prospective students, and their loved ones. In this, we include parents of students admitted to church schools or those who anticipate their children will likely go to church schools. In light of recent news regarding rape on BYU campus, many Mormons transitioning into unorthodoxy are asking what they can do to help.
Kristy and her husband Rolf (researcher who specializes in Educational Policy) combine their experiences at BYU and relative expertises in psychology and education to offer stories, advice, and hope. Kristy candidly shares her experience with Title IX as a naive BYU freshman experiencing sexual harassment, and she also reads from and analyzes another woman’s honor code letter (with permission). They discuss the implications of the “just world” hypothesis to which human cognition naturally gravitates, and what we can do about it once we notice it’s happening: responding either rationally (acceptance that bad thing happen to good people, doing what you can to alleviate others’ suffering) or irrationally (denial, justification).
Links mentioned in episode:
President Worthen’s video interview
Bednar’s “Quick to Observe” Talk on Women’s Earrings and Obedience
Lynn Robbin’s moist cookie devotional
Blaire’s story on Feminist Mormon Housewives
Kristy with her BYU ID taken in 2002 when she entered BYU as a freshman, and the year she was first sexually harassed by another student:
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Kristy interviews Marie and Kyle Elser about their marriage (they’ve been married 20 years and are a mixed-fiath couple), their faith journeys, and the facebook groups they founded and are administrators for to help mixed-faith couples. Another Testament of Marriage is for believing spouses, and Former Mormons with Believing Spouses is the other group. Fascinating couple!
Together the three of us also answer a question for an anonymous listener who is concerned about his marriage, and asked Kristy about how to handle a particular situation in which his wife (believing spouse) is concerned about him coming out as a non-believer for their children’s sake, specifically expressing to him that if they didn’t have children she would feel more comfortable with however he decided to live his new belief system (in terms of church attendnace, word of wisdom, etc). Their group for believing spouses is an excellent, confidential place to air such concerns and receive feedback from others who have been through similar emotions.
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Kristy and Rolf discuss some practical measures you can take for your mental health over this most special (pronouned: “spai-shul”) weekend now in April and in October (spoiler: start a tradition to get out of Dodge, preferably somewhere with no wifi).
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Katie Langston discusses her discovery of the mainline Protestant Christian perspective on Grace and the healing and growth it has brought into her life. She concludes with a reading of her beautiful essay The Perfect Space: Exploring the Promise of God’s Expansive Redemption.
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