Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1250

“How to Shrink Your Church in One Easy Step”

    Every major American church that has taken steps towards liberalization on sexual issues has seen a sharp decline in membership:   http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/21/h...    

“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”

    We saw a performance of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers tonight, which, although it took place in the DeJong Concert Hall at BYU, was a SCERA (community theater) production.   They did an excellent job.  The singing was quite good.  The dancing was excellent.   I haven’t seen the play for many years, but vaguely [Read More...]

A progress report from Utah during BYU Education Week

    Yesterday, after my second Education Week lecture on evaluating historical evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus (“The Collective Witness of the Original Twelve”), my wife and I headed up to Salt Lake City for a “Broadway across America” performance of Wicked.   My wife has seen Wicked before, in Denver and Los [Read More...]

Und you vill LIKE it!

    You’d better get with the program, all you reactionaries and moral lepers out there!   http://national.deseretnews.com/artic...   And make sure that, while you’re complying, you smile.    

“Reflections on that letter to a CES director”

    A transcription of my remarks at the 2014 FairMormon conference, held a couple of weeks ago at the Utah Valley Convention Center in  Provo, is now up online:   http://www.fairmormon.org/perspective...   I’m grateful for the work of Roger Nicholson, a stalwart at FairMormon, and Jann Cahoon Campbell, an associate for several years at [Read More...]

“The very surprising language of the Book of Mormon”

    http://www.deseretnews.com/article/86...    

I myself really, really liked Elder Bednar’s speech yesterday, but . . .

    Some aren’t particularly thrilled with exhortations from leaders of the Church (most recently, in yesterday’s notable speech from Elder David A. Bednar, of the Council of the Twelve Apostles) to use social media and the internet as means of sharing the message of the Gospel.   I, however, was delighted.   A subsequent necessary clarification: [Read More...]

Evil, Open and Unashamed

    ISIS, or ISIL ( الدولة الإسلامية‎) – the self-described “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” or, in alternative translation, the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” — claims to speak for and to represent Islam as a whole.   It does not.   Islam isn’t a nihilistic cult of death.  Neither theologically nor historically. [Read More...]

“Meet the Mormons”

    In his remarkable speech about social media yesterday, Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve announced the forthcoming film, produced by the Church, entitled Meet the Mormons:   http://meetthemormons.com/#/filter-al...   Church leaders are hoping that the film will be widely seen, and they’re counting on bloggers, tweeters, owners of websites [Read More...]

Okay lecture, good food, and a supremely important family event

    A rather good day.   This afternoon, I delivered my first of four BYU Education Week lectures on historical arguments for the resurrection of Christ.  Today’s lecture, “The Witness of the Gospels,” went okay.  I wasn’t overly pleased with it; this particular lecture is, by a considerable distance, the most complex, and, as [Read More...]