Saints Podcast

Angela Hallstrom, a writer and former member of the Saints project who is also a General Editor of volume 3, talks to us about Emmy Cziep and her escape from Czechoslovakia as World War 2 began. Angela shares insights into the researching and writing of Saints as we also discuss President J. Reuben Clark and his efforts to improve religious education in the Church.

Tensions were high amongst Mexican Saints in the 1930s and 1/3 of the membership left the Church. James Goldberg, a writer and historian and Elisa Pulido, a Visiting Scholar at Claremont Graduate University, joins us to talk about the state of the Church in Mexico and what caused the split.

Harold B. Lee saw himself as an "inexperienced farm boy from a small town in Idaho." In this episode Brian Cannon, a professor of history at Brigham Young University, and Jeff Anderson, an archivist in the Church History Department, join us to share their insights into Harold and the birth of the welfare program.

Tarienne Mitchell, a professional archivist, and Scott Hales, the lead writer and a General Editor of Saints Volume three, join us in this episode to discuss marginalized Latter-day Saints and the ways in which they lived the gospel. We talk about how Latter-day Saints in different areas of the world maintain their faith despite the hardships they faced.

In this episode we discuss William and Clara Daniels who found a way to serve in the Church while Black Latter-day Saints experienced prejudice and were restricted from holding the Priesthood. Matt McBride and Ben Spackman join us to talk about the Daniels' and a major debate regarding evolution and science between prominent church leaders Joseph Fielding Smith and B. H. Roberts.

The Great Depression in the 1930s had a global impact with significant impacts for the Church and its members. Jill Mulvay Derr and Joseph Darowski join us to discuss the financial crisis and the ways that the Relief Society and Church leaders responded to it.

German Latter-day Saint Helga Meiszus is one of the characters we follow through much of the book. In this episode Lark Evans-Galli, a folklorist and biographer of Helga joins us with Jed Woodworth, the managing historian of the Saints project, to discuss the lives of Helga Meiszus and church president, Heber J. Grant.

Scott Hales, the lead writer and a General Editor of Saints, Volume 3, joins us to discuss the Church's efforts to expand its operations in South America. We also talk about German Latter-day Saint Otto Schulzke and the changing leadership role that American missionaries played in Europe.

Church education undergoes some major changes in the 1920s. Kenneth Godfrey and Casey Paul Griffiths, scholars and authors on the subject of religious education, share their insights into the challenges facing Church Education and the instigation of the institute program in the United States.

Scholars Frederick Williams and Jeremy Talmage join the podcast this week to talk about the genesis of the Church in South America and the efforts of Church leaders to start the work. In this episode we also discuss the restrictions faced by Black church members across the world and the implications it had on them, including the accompanying prejudice from hate groups.