In Good Faith

Eid Mubarak! Today, we are inviting you to a casual conversation with two students at Brigham Young University who participate in Ramadan. They speak to their experience with fasting, how Eid is celebrated in their culture, and why they believe.

Sama Salah is the President of the BYU Arab Student Association. The BYU Arab Student Association is the official club for BYU Arab/North African students and alumni. She studies business at BYU. Sama's mother was a past guest—you can listen to that discussion in episode 4.

Tala Alnasser is the newly elected BYU student body Vice President. With President Sarah Sun, she hopes to inspire students at Brigham Young University with the motto "Becoming BYU." She is studying public relations and French at BYU.

Steve chats with Rachel Whipple, Shahab Saeed, and Kimberly Applewhite Teitter about what God's love means in their different traditions. Guests share scripture, hymn, and personal experience to help illustrate God's love.

Rachel Whipple is an attorney and Provo City Councilor, and a former Research Fellow at the International Center for Law and Religion Studies. She is also a member of the Provo Awakening Valley Sangha Board of Directors.

Shahab Saeed is a business and community leader in Salt Lake City. He has served as a Trustee for Intermountain Healthcare System’s corporate board and as a faculty member for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the American Hospital Association. He is a practitioner of the Baha'i faith.

Kimberly Applewhite Teitter, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist, a published author, an adjunct professor, and an entrepreneur in the Salt Lake City area. She is also a wife and a mother to two daughters and is the director of the Debra Bonner Unity Gospel Choir in Utah. She is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Rachel Whipple

Welcome to our Love of God mini-series! We began with interviews from David N. Moore and Keyvan Guela. Now, we revisit conversations from past episodes that touch on God's love.

This episode is organized roughly into a discussion of discovering God's love, learning to love those around us, how God's love is manifested through a certain prophet or messenger, and what we do in our daily lives to show God our love to God. We introduce guests of different religions and listen to what the love of God means to them.

Thank you for remembering these conversations with us—hear more from each guest in past episodes of In Good Faith.

Continuing our love of God mini series, Steve speaks with Keyvan Guela about the Baha'i concept of love and Keyvan's personal experience of feeling God's love through the care of the people around her.

Keyvan Guela is is the Founder and Executive Director of Center for Global Integrated Education (CGIE), a non-profit Baha’i-inspired educational organization, which explores oneness of all humanity. She has served for two years as the producer and host of a two-hour weekly live radio show for the Persian community in Southern California, focusing on the role of the psychology of spirituality in personal and social transformation. She is originally from Iran.

Welcome to our Love of God mini-series! To kick it off, host Steve speaks with Rev. Dr. David Moore about the origin story of David's podcast, how to feel God's love, and learning to walk.

The Rev. Dr. David Moore (he / him) is leads Santa Barbara’s Beloved Community Church, and also Jesus Collective, an online community that fosters wholeness and equity by healing relationships and cultural divides. He co-hosts “God is not an a**hole” with Kerry Connelly.

BYU's IFSA came to the In Good Faith studios to talk to Steve about their community projects and motivations.

Dr. Andrew Reed teaches comparative religion courses and church history. He is the Chair of the BYU Council for Interfaith Engagement and an organizer and participant for the Jewish - Latter-day Saint academic dialogue or read the latest piece written for the Religious Education Review (Fall 2017). He founded the BYU Interfaith Student Association in 2018.

Dr. Mike McKay is an associate professor of religion in the Department of Church History and Doctrine. He is a former historian/writer for the Joseph Smith Papers Project. He teaches World Religions, History of Joseph Smith, Doctrine and Covenants, and Foundations of the Restoration.

Grace Chipman, from Canada, is a History major and Global Women’s Studies minor.

Janai Wright, from Texas, is Philosophy Major and and was the 2023 BYU Intern at the Woolf Institute.

Katelyn Boyer, from Massachusetts, is an International Relations, co-president of the IFSA, and participant in the Boise Interfaith Seminar 2023: Alleviating Poverty Through Service and Scholarship trip.

Steve sits down in studio with Drs. Esther-Miriam Wagner and Emma Harris from the Woolf Institute of Cambridge University to discuss why the British don't "do" religion and how their institute hopes to change that attitude.

Dr. Esther-Miriam Wagner is the Executive Director of the Woolf Institute and Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge. She is an Affiliate Lecturer at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and teaches on the MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies: Muslim-Jewish Relations at the University of Cambridge. She chairs Woolf Institute panels and webinars, including the Institute's How to talk about … series, which among other topics, has considered Religious rights and Freedom of Speech and Humor and Religion.

Dr. Emma Harris is the Director of Grants Management and Alumni Relations at the Woolf Institute. Emma has led strategic and operational plans for teaching at the Woolf Institute. Between 2018 and 2022, she managed the Diversity in End of Life Care training program and led on the development of the Woolf Institute publication, Diversity in End of Life Care: A Handbook on Caring for Jewish, Christian and Muslim Patients.

Steve and Heather chat about their upcoming TV documentary on BYUtv. Get the app or find the channel on ROKU.

Today, Steve talks with Rabbi Dr. Shaul Praver, a first responder at the tragic Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. Praver was a leader in helping to heal the community in the aftermath. For his community work he has earned the Samaritan Medal of Peace and Humanitarian Accomplishments and was named one of the 50 most influential American Rabbis by Newsweek magazine, both in 2013.

We are not going into graphic detail, but be advised, as there are discussions of children dying and gun violence in today's episode.

This week, we hear from Rev. Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Dr. Susan M. Shaw. They speak with senior producer Heather Bigley about their book, "Surviving God: A New Vision Through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors." While the interview is not graphic in any way, be aware that we're discussing a difficult topic.

Rev. Dr. Grace Ji-Sun Kim is a professor of theology at Earlham School of Religion and author, coauthor, or editor of numerous books, most recently Spirit Life; Invisible; and Intersectional Theology. She has served on the American Academy of Religion's board of directors, is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and is the host of the Madang podcast from The Christian Century.

Dr. Susan M. Shaw is professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University. She is author of Reflective Faith: A Theological Toolbox for Women (2014) and God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home, and Society (2008) and general editor of the four-volume Women's Lives Around the World: A Global Encyclopedia (2018).