Dan Ellsworth

Faith Crisis: Presentation and Resources

What is faith crisis?

What are some possible responses to the experience?

What are some healthy ways of reframing faith crisis?

Is a positive outcome possible?

What are some helpful resources for people in faith crisis?

In this presentation, we cover these questions and more. And if you would like personal help working through faith crisis, we’re happy to link you with people who can help! Just send a note using the feedback form.

Slides available for viewing and download:

Critical Thinking: a Primer for Latter-day Saints

Is critical thinking destructive to faith?

How can we fortify our own thinking skills and learn to spot errors in common criticisms of our faith?

This presentation offers a simple primer on critical thinking; slides are available for viewing and download here:

Latter-day Saint Epistemology

None of the following statements make something untrue.

“Cannot be confirmed to my satisfaction”

“Does not reflect my personal experience”

“Does not reflect the experience of people around me”

“Does not meet my personal standard for validity”

Presentation on Belonging

Why do we sometimes feel like we don’t belong?

Who is responsible for belonging?

What are things that individuals and institutions do that decrease people’s sense of belonging?

What are reasonable expectations for ourselves and others?

These are discussion points in our presentation on belonging, based on Ben Pacini’s briefing to BYU-I faculty. Slides, discussion, and resources below.

Changing the Church

Does the church need to change?

Yes. the church has changed a lot over the years, and will continue to evolve into the future.

But what specifically needs to change, and why? And what are good and not-so-good ways for members to think about change in the church? What do we as human beings bring to the equation?

Below are the presentation, our discussion of the slides, and some of the resources cited in the presentation.

Reflecting on Van Halen

A couple of weeks ago on a work trip I spent time with a coworker friend I hadn’t seen since before COVID; he’s a guitarist, and in our catching up we talked about the sadness of losing Eddie Van Halen in 2020.

Getting Along < Shared Belief < Conversion

The Book of Mormon is an absolutely remarkable text of religious psychology. At various points in the text, certain terms are used to make fine distinctions between very specific states of mind and heart. And the consequences of these states of mind and heart are spelled out in terms of social trends in communities.

When I say I know the Book of Mormon is true, part of that statement includes my conviction that it conveys real history of real people and real phenomena. The other part of that statement is that its unique picture of religious psychology is accurate. This morning, my reading in 3 Nephi reinforced this conviction in me.

A God of Order in a World of Chaos

Why are we here?

There are many answers to that question, even among groups of people who hold the same religious beliefs.

But a good representative statement from Evangelical Christianity is found in pastor Rick Warren’s best-selling book The Purpose-Driven Life:

The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.

…You exist only because God wills that you exist. You were made by God and for God—

Christ and the Second Arrow

My sacrament talk delivered on 4-24-22:

Repentance: Hebrew word teshuvah: “turning,” or reorientation
Greek word metanoia: conversion, transformation

These notions of repentance are different from saying sorry and trying to stop sinning.

Three Writing Samples

When scholars talk about authorship of scripture, sometimes they look at changes in tone, genre, setting, or perspective as evidence of multiple authorship.

Below are three samples of my own writing that inform my thinking about this. The total time span of these samples is roughly 25-30 years. If you didn’t know it was me, is there any way you would guess that these are the same author?

Scholars often describe a big problem in the field of Biblical Studies, a lack of external controls. In other words, they make judgment calls about shifts in genre, tone, perspective, setting, etc. indicating multiple authorship, without looking at known examples of these things in other places. Well, here’s a personal example. We could also do this exercise with restoration scripture, or with artistic materials like poetry and music. For example, U2’s October sounds nothing like Zooropa, but it’s exactly the same band, just 12 years apart. As people evolve, their communications evolve.