Faith and Reason Are Not Enemies. This Scholar Spent His Life Proving It. (with Casey Griffiths)

Casey Griffiths has spent his career helping thousands of students face the hardest questions in church history without losing their faith. He is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, has published dozens of books and articles on the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, co-hosts the Church History Matters podcast, and even holds a Guinness World Record. For fourteen years he lived inside the papers of a forgotten Apostle named Joseph F. Merrill, a physics professor who, Casey says, believed science and faith were two sides of the same coin. Casey came away convinced that faith and reason were never meant to be enemies, and that the people who lose their testimony over church history are usually the ones who know too little of it.

In this episode of Why We Believe, host Nathan Gwilliam sits down with Casey to trace the faith behind a lifetime of study. Casey shares the story of Joseph F. Merrill, who knelt as an eight-year-old boy to ask if the Church was true, heard nothing, and kept asking every night for ten years until the answer finally came the night before he left home. He explains why a cardboard version of perfect prophets does more harm than the real, flawed history ever could, and why he came to relate to the Apostle Peter more than he expected. He walks through the imperfect Saints who became his stepping stones to Christ. And when Nathan asks him why he believes, Casey does not reach for evidence or theology. He says the gospel of Jesus Christ makes him a better person, and that is reason enough.

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