Podcasts and their effect on spirituality and Testimony

1.) Have these been a help to you in keeping your faith?

2.) Have they increased your spirituality?

3.) Have they increased your testimony of the restored gospel?

4.) Please don’t flatter me, what do you see as your favorite? why? What is it about that particular podcast that keeps you tuning in.

Bill Reel

Obviously some podcasts of any site are more interesting or helpful than others. I have not been drawn to MormonExpression more than a couple times. In general I am not one to see outside influences as having a significant effect on my faith. My faith is my personal understanding, it can be shaped but since I have begun the process of rebuilding I am extremely careful about the grade of granite that I use in its construction. In other words it takes form very slowly and what is formed is not going anywhere easily – listening to diverse opinions has no effect on my personal beliefs.

1) yes they have been a help to me in expanding my views and learning about how my spirit siblings see things, but little direct effect on “my faith”

2) yes they have provided food for thought that has helped me grow my spirituality

3) yes they have helped me understand ways to define “restored gospel” to place it in the most positive light and seek after righteousness

4) Striking Mormon Expression from the list because I have not listened to it enough to say – I like all of them at different times depending on the guests and topic. I am drawn to topics such as what Terryl Givens covered in your recent interview, that was tremendous.

You can see I’m bucking a little at the wording of the questions and possible assumptions that the wording may imply. In my mind this comes from what Terryl G. was saying about true testimonies not being fragile things, and not being shaped by external forces. If they are then in my mind they are built on sand.

All that being said I do think there is a place for “traditional” friendly discussion, and your podcast can fill that space very well. I recognize most members will view things very differently from myself, and they may be offended more easily. Keep up the good work!

Like I said at NOM, if you are going to have a discussion of mormon themed podcasts, you need to include Infants on Thrones.

Best Mormon podcast going, IMO.

Why do I like IOT podcast.

Blunt honesty, good mix of faithful and NOMs and post Mormons…and just never afraid to call out apologists and call a spade a spade…mental gymnastics be damned.

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Every podcast, except for Mormon Expressions, have helped my testimony and spirituality grow. Mormon Expressions have made it much harder for me to want to stay in the church. The Facebook groups based off those podcasts are too much for me. Too many negative posts and comments that show up. I haven’t listened to those other podcasts in a while, but those three others I’ve always enjoyed.

Yeah, the good old gays are the best gays. 😆

Oh, yeah. I agree with you there, cwald, about the old ME podcasts. I was just referring to the episode where John Larsen got out of hand when discussing with a man from the church about Ezra Taft Benson’s talk on Fourteen Fundamentals of Following the Prophet. The way he expressed himself didn’t set very well with me about Mormon Expressions after that.

I am curious here to your perception of how LDS podacasts have effected your spirituality and your testimony.

There are multiple podcasts out there

MormonStories

MormonMatters

MormonExpression

Athoughtfulfaith

and of course mine MormonDiscussion – http://mormondiscussion.podbean.com” class=”bbcode_url”>http://mormondiscussion.podbean.com

Some are more faithful then others but each seems to validate the person struggling with reconciling the larger more complex narrative.

1.) Have these been a help to you in keeping your faith?

2.) Have they increased your spirituality?

3.) Have they increased your testimony of the restored gospel?

4.) Please don’t flatter me, what do you see as your favorite? why? What is it about that particular podcast that keeps you tuning in.

Bill Reel

1.) Have these been a help to you in keeping your faith?

I have listened to most of these podcasts at least once. I feel that these podcasts have aided me in treading water. I stumbled upon the Mormon stories podcast during the hardest times of my faith issues. I had also been studying psychology in school and the Fowler Stages of Faith I felt help me come to terms with what I was going through. I appreciated the fact that many Mormon podcasts including Mormon stories brought up the Fowler Stages of Faith. 2.) Have they increased your spirituality?

I feel that they have aided me in knowledge and coming to terms with some of the faith issues I had. Once I began to sort things out I was able to find peace and relax. I don’t feel that I am any more spiritual from any podcast. 3.) Have they increased your testimony of the restored gospel?

No. I once went from claiming that I knew everything about the restored gospel was true. I claimed knowledge. After the faith issues I came to realize that I do not know anything. I have faith in certain aspects of the religion. Perhaps that faith might grow further as time goes on. I don’t know for sure at this point. 4.) Please don’t flatter me, what do you see as your favorite? why? What is it about that particular podcast that keeps you tuning in.

I don’t feel that I have listened to enough mormondiscussion to really have good feel for what it is about. I only listened to the Transitional Phases of Faith episode. For some reason this episode cut out 9 minutes early. The 21 minutes that I did hear seemed interesting at first but then I found myself disappointed. Based on what I heard I was a little annoyed with the fact that there was this attempt to shorten, cut and remodel the Fowler stages of faith. It seemed to me that this alternative blue, red and green phases didn’t tell the whole story. It seemed like something straight out of an institute lesson. It seemed to me like the blue phase was Fowler Stage 1. The red phase was the painful transition between 1 – the tail end of 2 and the green phase was Fowler stage 3 where you still attend church, have a testimony but begins to decide to think on their own. Perhaps there was some Fowler stage 4 traits found in the red phase but It totally missed the portion of stage 4 where there is peace found outside of religion. It didn’t really address the fact the there is some much to be learned outside of religion. The Green phase totally misses out on the fact that there can be a wonderful happy form of faith where one does not need to have a literal belief of religion but rather a strong appreciation for what it stands for and the good that it can do for others. Then again the last 9 minutes was cut. Maybe within those 9 minutes it totally does address those things. Once those 9 minutes have been restored I can come to a true opinion of that particular episode. Out of all the other podcast choices I find MormonExpression to be a little more entertaining. There is a topic of discussion with a panel of people having a group discussion. I find Mormonstories to have more information. Even with a Superior sources of information Mormonstories has a tendency to be long winded. There is almost always multiple hour segments within each new episode. To listen to an entire episode I have to give up multiple hours. Luckily with upgrades of technology since the start of my journey I now have the ability to download the long episodes and put them on an mp3 player. I can listen to them on a nice long walk. I guess it is safe to say that Mormonexpression and Mormonstories are my favorite flavors of the Mormon related podcasts when I want to listen to them.