Wayfare
Meet the Early-Day Saints: A Wayfare Limited Series
Meet the Early-day Saints Episode 11: Work for the Dead, with Catherine Gines Taylor
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Meet the Early-day Saints Episode 11: Work for the Dead, with Catherine Gines Taylor

“Death was an immediate and visceral reality for early Christians. So much of their worship inclined their hearts to their dead, through ritual, ordinance, art, burial, and more.”

When Latter-day Saints think of “work for the dead,” we immediately think of performing ordinances on their behalf in temples. Dr. Catherine Gines Taylor shows that ancient Christians had a much more expansive understanding of what work for the dead could include, in ways that can resonate to the present. Through prayer, good works, memorial meals, vigil keeping, and in beautiful works of art, early Christians stayed connected to loved ones who had passed on. We discuss Taylor’s chapter, “Inclining Christian Hearts: Work for the Dead,” in Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints.

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About the Guest

Catherine Gines Taylor was the Hugh W. Nibley Postdoctoral Fellow at BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. She specializes in late antique Christian art history and iconography. She earned her PhD in art history at the University of Manchester. 

About the Host

Blair Hodges earned a bachelor’s degree in communications (journalism) at the University of Utah and a master’s degree in religious studies at Georgetown University. He hosts Fireside with Blair Hodges and previously hosted the Maxwell Institute Podcast at Brigham Young University.

Cover art by Charlotte Condie

Discussion about this podcast

Wayfare
Meet the Early-Day Saints: A Wayfare Limited Series
Welcome to Meet the Early-Day Saints, a limited series produced and hosted by Blair Hodges.
In Meet the Early-day Saints, Blair will take you on a journey through time to meet the earliest disciples of Jesus. You’ll learn from a wide range of esteemed Latter-day Saint scholars who reveal the similarities and differences between ancient Christian faith and ours today. Throughout the series, some of your common assumptions may be challenged and in the process you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Each guest is a contributor to the new book Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints, from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.
In our first episode, we ask what if the “Great Apostasy” wasn’t so great after all? Latter-day Saint scholar Jason R. Combs invites us to revisit our assumptions about the Christians who came before us. We discuss his chapter “Understanding Ancient Christians, Apostasy, and Restoration,” from the book Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints.