Why do you stay? How do you stay? Because the conversations on this podcast often highlight problems Latter-day Saint women have observed or experienced in their church lives, these questions come up a lot. Every so often, it’s helpful to check in with oneself for the current answers. In this episode, Cynthia and Susan discuss the process of staying: what that process looks like for them, and why they each continue to find value engaging with it today.

In the bonus episode, Susan shares Circles of Light, the essay in which the phrase ‘I’m in the process of staying’ originated.

Notes & Quotes:
Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin
In a divided America, James Baldwin’s fiery critiques reverberate anew, by Lavanya Ramanathan,Washington Post, 7/1/2017
Rebuilding from the Bottom Up, by Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, 5/22/2022
How to Be Spiritually Bold, Simone Campbell and Krista Tippet, On Being Podcast, 7/11/2015
Living Our Faith In All Circumstances, by Brian McLaren, Center for Action and Contemplation
4 Conflict Styles that Hurt Your Relationship, The Gottman Institute
“Hope is a Muscle”: Why Krista Tippet Wants You to Keep the Faith, by Clay Skipper, GQ Magazine, 7/21/2022
Restoration: God’s Call to the 21st Century World, by Patrick Q. Mason
Why I Stay 2: The Challenges of Discipleship for Contemporary Latter-day Saints, ed. by Robert. A. Rees (Contains Circles of Light essay)
Circles of Light, by Susan M. Hinckley, Sunstone Magazine, 4/8/2019

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” — James Baldwin

“Take the words <of James Baldwin> out of the 1950s, when they were published, and they could apply to the women in pink hats, the scientists, the Black Lives Matter activists, the climate-change believers and the LGBTQ-rights supporters.” — Lavanya Ramanathan

“Many Christians are not highly transformed people; instead, they tend to reflect their own culture more than they operate as any kind of leaven within it. I speak especially of American Christians, because I am one. ….We must rediscover what St. Francis of Assisi  called the “marrow of the Gospel.” It’s time to rebuild from the bottom up. If the foundation is not solid and sure, everything we try to build on top of it is weak and ineffective……. Perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise that so much is tumbling down around us. It’s time to begin again.” — Richard Rohr

“Can I tell you? I decided — you know how in the scripture it — Paul says how we’re one body? Not everybody is an ear, not everybody is an eye. So one day I was meditating, and I was trying to figure out what part of the Body of Christ I am. So I came up with this insight that I think I’m stomach acid, I think that’s my job.

It’s really important for metabolizing food.” — Simone Campbell

“I don’t have to choose between staying Christian compliantly or leaving Christianity defiantly. I can stay defiantly.” — Brian McLaren

“It’s not wishful thinking. It’s not assuming that things will turn out all right. It’s an insistence, looking at the world straight on as it is and rejecting the idea that it has to be that way, and then throwing your light and your pragmatism as much as your spirit at [that]. What does it look like if you don’t accept it? That’s how I think of it.” — Krista Tippet

“Rather than forcing us to choose Zion or the world, the Restoration challenges us to do the harder–and more rewarding–work of building Zion while also renovating the world.” — Patrick Mason (p. 74)