Episode 244 (Transcript): What About the Word of Wisdom? | A Conversation with Linda Hamilton

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener Kim Kershaw for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:

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LH: My thought is that,

CW: Go for it, Linda.

LH: This is, this is baked into Mormon doctrine 101,

SH: Okay.

LH: The idea that we can control our salvation and that we can control God and demand that he save us because we have done.

SH: Ding, ding, ding, ding

LH: X, Y, and Z. Because we have to have that tangible thing, that temple recommend in our hand that says God approves of me, I am worthy, I am going to heaven. But where’s Jesus? Where’s grace? Where’s the belief that we can grow and try and learn and actually use agency to make decisions for ourselves?

CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.

SH: And I’m Susan Hinckley,

CW: And this is At last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is, What About the Word of Wisdom, A Conversation with Linda Hamilton. Hello, Linda.

SH:Hi Linda.

LH: Wooh! Hi.

SH: We are so thrilled to have you.

CW: Totally thrilled to have Linda back.

She’s back in the house. Some of you might remember, Linda. She did an Embracing Your Journey episode that was 219. So to get Linda’s full story, you can go back and listen to that episode. But for the purposes of today, Linda, can you just give us a quick, like two minute bio of who you are and what actually brings you to this topic.

LH: Sure. So I am a historical fiction author. My debut book comes out in March, 2026. It is about Mormonism and polygamy.

CW: Woo.

LH: And I am also a grad student in history working on my master’s at Sam Houston State University. I am a mom to four kids. I have a wonderful husband who is a software engineer, tech guy, and we live in Southern California.

CW: Wonderful. Welcome back. So, we’ll be honest, people have asked us for five years to talk about the Word of Wisdom, and Susan and I are always like, what can we possibly say about this? ‘Cause it’s a hot mess, really. But Susan is going to attempt to at least intro our topic today. So take it away, Susan.

SH: I’ve been watching as the whole Latter Saint world has been watching the release of the new garments for women this week. That’s been happening the week that we’re recording this. And I can’t even really believe not just the lines around the block, but all of the hoopla around it that I’ve seen online and people talking about it. And I put garments in the same kind of category with the Word of Wisdom in some ways for this sort of unique external identifier of being a Mormon, right? If people don’t know that much about Mormons, they probably know polygamy, but they probably also know Mormons don’t drink or smoke, and Mormons wear this underwear. So these are the things that people tend to know about us. And, you know, it seems like for every general conference of about the past 10 years, I’ve seen this rampant speculation running around online that this is the time that they’re finally going to make it so that we can drink coffee.

And of course it never happens, but this seems to be so top of mind for some members. And even in my lifetime, I’ve seen some changes in this stuff. Growing up as a kid, lots of members in my extended family drank coffee.

CW: Same