A Baptist Theologian's Conversion | Dr. John White

Well, John, welcome. It's so good to finally meet you and we're so excited to have you on the podcast. So, thank you so much for doing this with us. Um, I think where I would love to start is to hear your story, hear about how you found yourself a new member of the

church. >> Yeah. So, my area of research is is ethics. And, um, I spent my whole life talking about how to form lives. Um, and I realized about three years ago that my life was kind of breaking up a little bit and it became this kind of this odyssey of reforming me and then finding

a more a more true self. >> And but I didn't know this was all happening at that time. It's easier to look back in rearview mirror and see that. Um, but I was at a conference uh at TCU, Texas Christian University. >> Yeah. >> Uh, it was Association for Moral Education. It's an annual conference

that I uh usually participate participate in and um I was there part of this session and I was presenting a paper on agape agape ethics a love ethic and uh in the audience unbeknownst to me >> was an LDS scholar and she was there to support uh uh someone she was mentoring who was my former graduate student. So I

taught in a divinity school or seminary >> and um my graduate student put this session together and she was in a doctoral program that my that Dr. Jana Nelson was was mentoring and she was a postoc at Harvard and at Baylor at that time. So anyway she was in the audience and um during my presentation I looked

out and there was this light visible light over this person. Uh it was bizarre arresting uh alarming. I didn't know what was going on. it it caught my attention. Anyways, uh as I was speaking and presenting, I just kept seeing this light and afterwards she started asking me questions. Fast forward, uh that