In Good Faith

Welcome to the first IGF episode of 2024! We are speaking with Pastor Jeff McCullough and Russell Moore. Jeff McCullough is the host and producer of the YouTube Channel Hello Saints, which records his journey as an evangelical pastor to learn about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Recently, Jeff and his wife Joy relocated to Utah. Jeff graduated from the private free-Methodist college Greenville University with a degree in audio and video production. Russell Moore is Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today and is the author of Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (Penguin Random House 2023). An ordained Baptist minister, Moore served previously as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and, before that, as the chief academic officer and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught theology and ethics. He also hosts the weekly podcast The Russell Moore Show and is co-host of Christianity Today’s weekly news and analysis podcast, The Bulletin.

Happy New Year! Join host Steven Kapp Perry and producers Heather Bigley, Lia King, Katarina Martinic, and Ashton Rowan in recounting 2023. They will each discuss some of their favorite interviews from the year, sharing a short soundbite from each. We are so grateful for every opportunity we have had in 2023, so thank you for following along. Stay tuned to see what we have in store for 2024—should be a great year!

Think of it as a family Christmas devotional: a little praise, a little witness, some tears, and some laughter, familiar, yet loose around the edges. We'll hear from Cherie Call, Paul Jacobsen, and Molly in the Mineshaft, as well as pianist Jared Pierce and Mark Geslison, who is the director of several student ensembles here at BYU. Our first hymn is "Once in Royal David's City", performed by Cayson Renshaw and Riley Davis. Cayson Renshaw is a singer-songwriter from the San Francisco Bay-area, currently based in Utah. He's joined here by guitarist and vocalist Riley Davis. See their performance on YouTube Next, Steve speaks with Mark Gelison, leader of the Celtic Ensemble for 30+ years, a student performance group at BYU, who will perform "O Come O Come Emmanuel." This year the ensemble includes, Emily Wall, Kaydie Gillam, Kate Reich, Brandon Torruella, Sarah Shipp, Rebecca Meiss, Eric Christensen, James Hecht, Owen Clarke, and Lawson Archibald. Following this performance comes 'Molly in the Mineshaft'. They play "Gesu Bambino" and "We Three Kings", arranged by Scott and Grace Monson from the contemporary folk ensemble. Molly in the Mineshaft is made up of Lucy Larsen, Grace Monson, Jordan Benson, Douglas Patterson, Talmage Haines, Alex Vincent, and Scott Monson. See their performance on YouTube. Then, Paul Jacobsen performs the spiritual "Go Tell it on the Mountain" for us in the studio. Paul Jacobsen is a singer-songwriter who performs independently but also with the Madison Arm and The Lower Lights. See his performance on YouTube. Mark Geslison returns with Mountain Strings, a student ensemble from BYU playing a medley of "The Holly and the Ivy"/ "Far, Far Away on Judea’s Plain"/"Joy to the World". Mountain Strings includes Madeline Charles, Arthur Prusso, Austin Johnson, Ellie Geslison, Emily Wall, Tyler Anderson, Christina Iverson. Next we're talking with Cherie Call, a singer-songwriter who brought us one of her own compositions, a modern Christmas song about modern challenges during the holiday season. Called "For Broken Hearts like Mine", this song is from Cherie's 2006 album Gifts. See her performance on YouTube. Finally, we end this special episode with a piano performance of "What Child Is This" from Jared Pierce, who also composed this arrangement and featured it on his 2021 album Christmas Piano. The In Good Faith Team wishes you a safe and happy Holiday.

In August, our team attended the 2023 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, Illinois. Since 1893, this interfaith conference has advocated for harmony and dialogue across religious traditions and their believers. This year, In Good Faith presented on a panel (see below for link). Now, we also get to share with you the impromptu interviews Steve conducted at the Parliament. He speaks first with Rev. Dallas Conyers and her efforts to combat climate change, an overarching theme at the Parliament. Dallas speaks about a series of consecutive incidents that put her life on hold: listen to how Rev. Conyers found healing through religious vigor and scripture. Steve then speaks with Jaxon Washburn, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and graduate of Harvard Divinity School. Jaxon walks us through how he became involved with the Parliament and why divinity school was the right choice for him.

Welcome to our 10-part series exploring Turkey as a crossroads of faith, a place where world religions have met, overlapped, replaced one another, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not. In today's episode we're exploring the history of Latter-day Saints in Turkey, one of many tiny minority religious groups finding a place and building community amongst a majority-Muslim population. The size of the present congregation would seem to point to a new missionary effort just getting a toe-hold in Turkey. But, in fact, American missionaries first came to the Ottoman empire in 1884. In this episode, we'll meet Takouhie Jensen, the great-granddaughter of an early Armenian convert. We'll also talk with a Turkish member living in Istanbul. And we'll meet a recent convert. All three will help us paint the picture of the past and the future of the Church in Turkey, the tensions that exist there, and the opportunities available. Please be advised that this episode includes stories of violence and war, some of them perpetrated against children.

This is episode 9 of our 10-episode series about the crossroads of faith in Turkiye, an ancient land a modern nation. In this episode we explore traditions of the local people and suss out the difference between culture and religion. First, we'll speak with Pinar Bayrack Toydemir, the founder of the Utah Turkish American Association (UTAA) and originally from Ankara, but now living in the Salt Lake City area. We'll also sit down with Zeki Tulak, who served as our guide in the Kapodokya area, and eat a traditional meal with Muzzafar and Essengul Arslan, organic farmers in the village of Avahi. We also speak with Vefa Bowen, a musician and Director of Cultural Affairs for the UTAA, about music from Turkey, and listen to her band Kechi play at the Living Traditions festival.

We have a special treat amid the Turkey series--book club is back! To follow up on Episode 7, host Steven Kapp Perry and senior producer Heather Bigley meet with Kevin Blankinship and Rasoul Sorkhabi to discuss the poetry of Rumi. The group discusses the geographical and cultural impacts on Rumi in 13th century Anatolia as well his esteemed writing style and influence. Rasoul Sorkhabi holds a PHD in geology from Kyoto University in Japan, as well as M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees from Jammu University in India. He has conducted geological studies in India, Nepal, Japan, Borneo, the Rockies and the Great Basin of the American West. He has also constructed a global database on sedimentary basins. He is currently a professor at the University of Utah. He reviewed Swallowing the Sun for the journal Interreligious Insight Kevin Blankinship is an assistant professor at BYU in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, teaching Arabic language and literature, Islamic civilization, and the Koran. He holds a Phd from the University of Chicago, an MA from UNC Chapel Hill, and a BA from BYU. Under the aegis of the Fulbright program, he lived and conducted researched in Morocco for a year.

This week we visit the tomb of Sufi mystic Rumi, who is one of the most popular poets the world over. We explore the relationship between Islam and Sufism, as well as the influence of Rumi on Muslims everywhere, not just Turkey. We speak with scholar Kevin Blankinship about Rumi's life and poetry and we visit with Sheikh Ahmet Sami Kuçuk in Konya, the city where Rumi settled over 800 years ago. We'll also observe the dervishes in their whirling trance. All up next on this episode of In Good Faith. Kevin Blankinship is a professor of Arabic and the medieval Middle East. He holds a PhD in classical Arabic literature from the University of Chicago and an MA in comparative literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kevin also spent a research year in Morocco as a Fulbright-Hayes scholar.

In this episode, we explore Islam in Turkey, a country that is now 97% Muslim, but for over a millennium was pre-dominantly Christian. We'll discuss how that transition took place, well into the rule of the Ottomans, with Professor Christine Isom-Verhaaren, and we'll meet a former Imam, Cemil Usta, who founded an afterschool program to teach girls how to recite the Koran. That recitation is like a performance, almost a song, and we'll hear Cemil Usta recite a section of the Koran as well. Check out our Youtube bonus video, exploring the Sulimaniye Mosque.

The Hagia Sophia is the most famous building in all of Istanbul. It's a marvel of 6th century architecture and it's still a marvel today. Originally a Christian cathedral, it was converted to a mosque when the Ottomans conquered Istanbul. In the 20th century, the building was turned into a museum and in 2020 it was converted back to a mosque by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. We visited during Eid when tourists and pilgrims lined up in a queue that looped around Sultanahmet Square. We also speak with Cecilia Peek about the Byzantine Empire that built the Hagia Sophia, with Christine Isom-Verhaaren about its conversion into a mosque, and with Cynthia Finlayson about the Hagia Sophia's influence on later architecture. Cecilia Peek is an associate professor of Classics and the current director of the BYU London Centre. She holds a PhD in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archeology from the University of California at Berkeley. Christine holds a PhD in Ottoman History from the University of Chicago and is author most recently of "The Sultan's Fleet: Seafarers of the Ottoman Empire." Cynthia Finlayson is currently the Director of the Ad-Deir Monument and Plateau Project in Petra, Jordan and Special Consultant to the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation’s Museum in Bethlehem on the West Bank. Cynthia holds a PhD in Classical and Ancient Art History and Archaeology with emphasis in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin from the University of Iowa.