Mormon Studies Council

Christie Frandsen

Christie Frandsen is the chair of the Mormon Studies Council. Christie was born in Havre, Montana and raised on Indian reservations in Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, and Arizona where her father was a range conservationist in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She received a BA degree from BYU, summa cum laude, majoring in ancient scriptures. She also studied at Duke Divinity School. She is the mother of 11 brilliant children and grandmother to 22 beautiful and precocious grandchildren.

A gifted writer and teacher, Christie taught early morning seminary and Institute classes at USC and Occidental College for 20 years and is currently a writing tutor for young students. Her publications include articles and essays in The Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Mourning With Those Who Mourn and the Ensign magazine, as well as the book Climbing Jacob’s Ladder, chronicling her experience losing a young son to cancer. She and her husband Russ received the Honored Alumni Award from Brigham Young University in 1996 and were guest lecturers for the College of Humanities.

Christie is a devoted community organizer in La Canada Flintridge where she has lived with her family for over 30 years. She served for 35 years as a Girl Scout leader, serving simultaneously in many leadership positions in the Council.  She has also held a multitude of leadership positions in the PTA, and for the past 10 years has organized the annual Baccalaureate service for all the high schools in her community. Prior to her appointment as Chair, Christie served as a member of the Mormon Studies Council and on the Board of the Howard W. Hunter Foundation.

Matthew Bowman

Matthew Bowman is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and associate professor of religion and history at Claremont Graduate University. He is the author of a number of articles about religion in the United States, and of the books The Mormon People: the Making of an American Faith (Random House, 2012), The Urban Pulpit: New York City and the Fate of Liberal Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2014), and Christian: The Politics of a Word in America (Harvard University Press, 2018). With Kate Holbrook he edited the essay collection Women and Mormonism: Historic and Contemporary Perspectives (University of Utah Press, 2016).  He holds a PhD from Georgetown University. His research interests include twentieth century American religion and culture, the concept of the secular and modern American religion, and professional basketball.

Blaine H. Evanson

Blaine H. Evanson is a partner at the international law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 2003 and from Columbia Law School in 2006, and after law school served as a judicial clerk for Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Blaine’s law practice is focused on appellate litigation; he has handled several dozen appeals in federal and state courts across the country, including in the Supreme Court of the United States. Blaine also serves on the board of directors of the Orange County Legal Aid Society and the J. Reuben Clark Society, and has taught courses on constitutional law and appellate advocacy at the University of Southern California and Loyola Law Schools. Blaine served as a missionary in the Germany Frankfurt Mission of the LDS church, and has served in a variety of church callings, including as bishop of the South Pasadena Ward in Southern California. He and his wife, Robin, are the parents of four children.

Lynn Forester

Lynn Forester has been living and serving in Claremont her entire adult life. After ushering her own four children through its public schools, she has spent the past two decades working with the students of Claremont High School in the office of student government and activities. Her efforts were honored when the Claremont Unified School District named Lynn their Employee of the Year in 2014. She has served two terms as a Human Services Commissioner for the city, and continues to be deeply involved with local youth through her work at the high school and through her church.

John Forester

John Forester has deep roots in Claremont and the Pomona Valley. A lifelong resident who can remember way back to when lemon groves outnumbered residential tracts, he attended Brigham Young University after graduating from Claremont High School. Returning after college, he raised his family of four children in his hometown. John has run small businesses here and been deeply involved in church and community sponsored volunteer work benefiting local youth, the elderly, schools, and various under-served members of the community.

Morgan McKeown

Morgan McKeown is a graduate of Dartmouth College and USC Marshall Business school, and currently works for a global medical device company. His international positions have taken him to many parts of the world, including three years living abroad in Singapore while managing an Asia Pacific division of his company. He has dabbled in Mormon studies as a hobby for many years, and has enjoyed being a part of the efforts at Claremont since 2014. His other hobbies include songwriting, playing the guitar (both real guitar and air guitar), traveling, wrestling with his children, and snowboarding. He has held various responsibilities within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints such as missionary (in Buenos Aires, Argentina), primary teacher, Elders Quorum president, Gospel Doctrine teacher, and Ward Mission Leader. He currently serves as the First Counselor in the Bishopric in his ward in Irvine, California.

Maclane Heward

Maclane E. Heward has been a full-time religious educator since 2009. He has primarily worked in the Seminaries and Institutes program, most recently as an assistant director at the Utah Valley Institute of Religion, where he has focused on creating and solidifying discipleship in Jesus Christ. He is excited to continue that pursuit at BYU where he was hired in the summer of 2023. He graduated from BYU with an undergraduate degree in public relations and a master’s degree in religious education. He studied under Patrick Mason at Claremont Graduate University and received his PhD in the history of Christianity and religions of North America in 2019. Maclane and Maria are the parents of five children. They currently reside in Cedar Hills, Utah, where they watch Cooper’s hawks and great horned owls raise their chicks.

Suzanne Midori Hanna

For 35 years, she taught graduate classes in marriage and family therapy and designed the only master’s program in the U.S. to be dual-accredited in marital and family therapy and social work. During this time, her students included the daughter of share-croppers, former gang members, interdenominational clergy and immigrants from Iran, Romania, Nigeria and Botswana. She has also been involved in federal, state and local projects dedicated to mental health practices for the traumas of underserved Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Her current projects involve trauma treatment, sibling development and LDS church history in South Africa.

She is the author of The Practice of Family Therapy: Key Elements Across Models, (5th ed.) and The Transparent Brain in Couple and Family Therapy: Mindful Integrations with Neuroscience, (2nd ed.). As a life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she has been especially interested in the intersections of culture, race, religion, class, and sexuality. She is now a service missionary in the Bonita Canyon (Persian) Branch in Southern California.

Caroline Kline

Caroline Kline is Research Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of the Center for Global Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. She holds a PhD in religion from CGU, and her areas of interest include contemporary Latter-day Saint women’s communities, feminist theory, and oral history. Her book, Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness (2022), explores Latter-day Saint women’s lived experiences in Botswana, Mexico, and the United States.