532: Micah Nickolaisen Pt. 1 - Micah's Faith Journey

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2015

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Micah Nickolaisen has been an important participant in the Mormon Internet for the past three years. His activism began in 2012 as co-founder of both the "A Thoughtful Faith" and the "Exploring Sainthood" podcasts/communities - both of which sought to encourage thoughtful and faithful LDS Church activity/participation.

After losing his faith/confidence in the LDS Church in 2013, and in reaction to the Kate Kelly and John Dehlin excommunications in 2014/2015, Micah co-led several projects which sought to bring attention/visibility to problems within in the LDS Church. Micah co-founded the "Strangers in Zion" project, wherein LDS Church members were encouraged to request disciplinary councils (in lieu of resigning their membership). Micah was also a co-founder of the recent "Any Opposed" initiative wherein several LDS Church members expressed vocal opposition to church policies/practices during the April 2015 LDS General Conference.

In this three-part interview Micah discusses his early years of strong devotion to the church. He then discusses his participation as a pro- and then a post-Mormon activist. In the final episode, Micah discusses his newfound interest in the formation of secular communities for post-religious individuals (e.g., Sunday Assembly and Atheism 2.0).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners.
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0:19.0	All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.
0:29.0	Thanks for your support.
0:32.0	The Kindly Light of Myth in Circling Glue
0:36.0	Leigh Kinele Light of Myth in Circling Glue
0:43.0	Leigh Thou Me on the Night is Dark and I am far from home.
0:54.0	Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John Dallin and it is... what is the date today, Micah?
1:03.0	21st April 21st, 2015. It's somewhere around 8.20pm. We're coming to you live from Utah State University campus in Logan, Utah.
1:19.0	I'm here interviewing someone who I've been wanting to interview for a super long time and I am so very excited to present to you today Micah Nicoliason.
1:32.0	Some of you may know Micah but my guess is many of you won't know him by name and so I'll just tell you briefly a little bit about him to hook you into this podcast.
1:42.0	Micah sort of burst onto the scene of the Mormon Internet when I put out a call for someone to start a podcast called A Thoughtful Faith, which was named after Phil Barlow's book from the 80s, which was an attempt to, you know, to try and help people find a way to stay in the church faithfully but also as an informed Mormon.
2:11.0	Micah along with Sarah Collette who interviewed me a couple years ago, teamed together to form a Thoughtful Faith podcast and how many episodes did you guys do Micah?
2:22.0	I think when Sarah and I stopped, I think we were somewhere in the 40s, I think.
2:29.0	Yeah, so he did at least 40 episodes of a thoughtful faith.
2:33.0	Then he and Sarah broke off and started a new podcast with a similar kind of focus called Exploring St. Hood, which continues to this day as a thriving Thoughtful Faithful Facebook community as does a Thoughtful Faith by the way, which Gina Colvin now runs.
2:51.0	Then ironically, and that'll be part of our fun discussion, Micah, after being sort of a poster boy for staying in the church, lost his faith in the church.
3:04.0	And so we're going to talk about that.
3:07.0	And subsequently to that, Micah, his sort of been a major player behind the scenes on at least two major projects.
3:16.0	One was called Strangers in Zion, which was an effort to basically say, you know, if the church is going to start communicating people, you know, who wants to volunteer to initiate their own disciplinary councils.
3:33.0	And so Micah went through his own disciplinary council. We could talk a little bit about that.
	...

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