Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, the former BYU star who earned multiple MVP awards and Super Bowl rings with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, ranks among the most famous members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Recently, though, Young has turned from tactics for victory on the football field to strategies for winning at life — namely by living his religion, following Christ, helping to heal others, and, ultimately, loving all people, no matter whether they are in their personal journeys, as God loves them.

Yes, he does draw on his gridiron experiences in his book “The Law of Love,” but he also reveals much about his own shyness, anxiety and insecurity.

On this week’s show, Young discuss a more expansive, more exultant and more exalting kind of love.

No one likes pain or poverty, bigotry or war, frustration or failure, disease or doubt, joblessness or homelessness or loneliness.

That includes this week’s “Mormon Land” guest, Melissa Inouye.

The Latter-day Saint scholar has endured more than her share of heartache. She inexplicably lost her hair at a young age and then, at 37, the marathon-running mother of four, was diagnosed with colon cancer, an affliction she has been suffering from and through ever since.

But as Inouye reminds herself and Latter-day Saints in her new book, “Sacred Struggle: Seeking Christ on the Path of Most Resistance,” a carefree, trouble-free world is not what humanity signed up for.

An easy earthly existence, under Mormon theology, was Satan’s plan, not God’s. Divine design, Inouye writes, calls instead for agency, personal growth, compassion and caring for others, and “living a life full of life” — the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, the hopes and the hopelessness — as God’s children learn to be more like their Heavenly Parents by following and finding Jesus.

On this week’s show, Inouye discusses this “sacred struggle” — including how she approaches the sometimes-problematic past found in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, her hopes for women in the faith’s still-present patriarchy, and how she and other members find joy in imperfect lives, imperfect bodies, imperfect families, imperfect communities, an imperfect church and an imperfect world.

Amid today’s polarized political scene, many Americans throw up their hands and say, like Patrick Henry, “‘peace, peace,’ but there is no peace. The war is actually begun.”

To some, the partisan divide seems deeper than ever — with no way to bridge it. Even religions sometimes seem to battle with other faiths, as well as those within a faith.

Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith America and author of “We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy,” has done a lot of thinking about how to overcome divisions. He is also an “impact scholar” at the University of Utah and will visit the Salt Lake City campus a few times each year during his two-year appointment.

Retired federal Judge Thomas Griffith, a Latter-day Saint convert, also bemoans the toxic divides that poison public debate and rip apart the fabric of U.S. society. Recently, the American Bar Association appointed Griffith a member of a newly created Task Force for American Democracy, whose aim is to push back against authoritarian tendencies in the country.

On this week’s show, Patel and Griffith — both hopeful if not optimistic — discuss how to bring peace to our trouble times and how members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a vital role to play in that quest, especially if they can become as accomplished at bridge building as they are at evangelizing.

Lots of national politicians are keen to learn how Mitt Romney may skewer them in McKay Coppins’ newly released biography, “Romney: A Reckoning.”

Coppins, a Brigham Young University alum who writes for The Atlantic, had access to the journals and emails, as well as candid interviews with the Republican Utah senator, who made history as the first Latter-day Saint to top a major party’s presidential ticket and first senator to vote to remove a president of his own party.

But because Romney and Coppins are both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is also a lot of Mormon-speak in the book. In it, the writer explores the way in which Romney’s faith became a political roadblock for him while, at the same time, providing him spiritual strength and comfort.

On this week’s show, Coppins share ways Romney’s beliefs shaped the man, how he faced the “Mormon moment,” why he lined up so boldly against Donald Trump, and what church leaders had to say about it all.

As the war in Israel and Gaza rages on with civilians caught in the violent crossfire, those watching from across the globe are asking what it must be like to live in such a conflict-ridden space. What does it mean to face possible violence every day?

Sahar Qumsiyeh can offer a firsthand description of how routine activities were affected by such a fraught environment.

Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian born in Jerusalem and raised Orthodox Christian outside of Bethlehem. She converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while receiving a master’s degree from Brigham Young University in statistics. She earned a doctorate from the Middle East Technical University in Turkey in the same subject, taught at various universities in the West Bank and worked for four years as a data analyst with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Jerusalem.

She currently teaches in the mathematics department at BYU-Idaho. She is also the author of “Peace for a Palestinian: One Woman’s Story of Faith Amidst War in the Holy Land.”

On this week’s show, Qumsiyeh talks about the current crisis, the tensions that led to it, and what Americans, and particularly Latter-day Saints, should know when discussing it. Her views are her own and do not represent those of her employer or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

For today’s faithful, believing, temple-recommend-carrying members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sipping a Chardonnay with their salmon entree would be unthinkable, off the table, a no-no.

They know that the faith’s Word of Wisdom health code strictly forbids consumption of alcohol.

But there was time in the church’s history when teetotaling wasn’t the order of the day. In fact, there was a time when Latter-day Saints not only drank wine but also produced it, sold it and profited from it — all with their prophet’s blessing and encouragement.

Indeed, southwestern Utah’s pioneer past was home to a church “wine mission.”

On this week’s show, Lindsay Hansen Park, a blogger, podcaster and executive director of the Sunstone Education Foundation, discusses Brigham Young’s wine mission — its roots, the success it enjoyed, the product it produced, the problems it encountered (and engendered), and the ultimate demise it met.

This past weekend, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held its biannual General Conference in Salt Lake City. In five sessions, held Saturday and Sunday, Latter-day Saints around the world heard sermons, instructions and announcements from their top leaders. Of the dozens to take the pulpit, just three were women: President Emily Belle Freeman, head of the global Young Women organization; her first counselor, Tamara Runia; and Amy Wright, first counselor in the children’s Primary general presidency.

This underrepresentation of female speakers isn’t new — or surprising — in the patriarchal faith, where top leadership is almost entirely male. Some longtime conference listeners, however, did point to a shift in the nature of the sermons given by Freeman, Runia and Wright — as well as other recent female speakers.

On this week’s show, Kimberly Applewhite Teitter discusses all that and more. Teitter is a licensed clinical psychologist in the Salt Lake City area and assistant director of the Debra Bonner Unity Gospel Choir. She was recently featured in the Deseret Book publications “Every Needful Thing: Essays of the Mind and Heart” and “No Division Among You: Creating Unity in a Diverse Church.”

When a spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offered a stinging rebuke of Tim Ballard, a fellow member and the charismatic founder of Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-human-trafficking organization, his defenders went ballistic.

They were especially incensed when the statement said M. Russell Ballard, acting president of the faith’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, disavowed Tim Ballard, who is no relation, and condemned the activist for using the senior apostle’s name in his fundraising.

It couldn’t have come from the church they love, these Tim Ballard devotees reasoned. They had to believe that it was some kind of fake news, or worse, a deep conspiracy.

Latter-day Saint historian Benjamin Park, though, had no trouble believing the church’s condemnation of OUR’s founder. He sees in Tim Ballard’s impressive following a link to many other far-right causes and conspiracy theories — and even possible schism.

Park, whose new book, “American Zion: A New History of Mormonism,” is due out in January, explores the larger issues he has observed within Tim Ballard’s movement and the implications of extreme conservative politics for the church.

In his new book, “Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History,” historian Richard Bushman calls the Book of Mormon, the signature scripture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a “book about the importance of books.”

One could also say that this book, which church founder Joseph Smith said he translated, sprang from plates that were about the importance of plates.

In this special live episode, celebrating the more than 300 “Mormon Land” shows, we talk about the “important” role these plates played in the rise of a global religion with the author, who also wrote the highly acclaimed “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.”

Joining him is his wife, scholar Claudia Bushman, the founding editor of Exponent II who edited “Mormon Sisters: Women in Early Utah” and wrote “Contemporary Mormonism: Latter-day Saints in Modern America.”

Together, the Bushmans discuss their research on Mormonism, church founder Joseph Smith, the evolution of women’s rights, the threats to Latter-day Saint community, the challenges and opportunities facing the global faith, why they think art is vital in the church, and a range of other topics.

Tickets for Mormon Land Live can be found here: givebutter.com/Vl1q3T

In September 1993, six Latter-day Saint scholars and activists were disciplined for their critical writings about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was an extraordinary confluence of events, one that has echoed down through the decades. The censures had a chilling effect on a generation of would-be Latter-day Saint scholars but within 10 years or so the church felt the impact of the internet, with its widespread distribution and democratization of information.

Now, 30 years later, many observers are assessing what happened that month and what its legacy has been in the global faith of 17 million members.

In her new book, “The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism,” Sara M. Patterson, a professor of theology and gender studies at Indiana’s Hanover College, puts the episode within a much broader, decadeslong cultural and theological debate over the nature of the Utah-based faith and its evolving narrative.

In this week’s episode, she shares her findings about those past events, how they continue to affect the present, and what they may portend for the future.