Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 128

“Contending without Contention”

    ***   I’m very tardy in mentioning it — I’m a bit occupied over here, with little free time and far out of sync with North American time zones — but a new article appeared at noon on Friday in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:   “Contending without Contention,” […]

Where the hills are alive with the sound of music

    ***   We spent the day in and around Salzburg today.  (That is to say, we spent it in Austria.)  This is a place that I have genuinely loved since I first came here in 1970, and it was very pleasant to see familiar places again — including two favorite bookstores.   First, […]

Are Latter-day Saints immune to doing great evil?

    Back in July 2018, I wrote a newspaper column devoted to the question “Was Adolf Hitler religious?”  My answer to that question was that he was not religious.  Certainly not in any common understanding of the term, whether Christian or simply theistic.  I’ve sometimes been challenged on my answer, but I stand by […]

Extremes

    ***   With several friends, we spent a substantial part of yesterday visiting the former Nazi concentration camp of Dachau, which is located in what is now pretty much a pleasant suburb of Munich.  Fifty-two years ago, I was scheduled to visit Dachau with a group of recent high school graduates during my […]

Propaganda Film

    ***   With his kind permission, though somewhat belatedly, I share this response by Jim Bennett to the last installment of the Andrew Garfield FX/Hulu miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, with which, I’m told, I’m utterly obsessed, and which, I’m told, has reduced me to an impotent twitching rage.  Please note that […]

A born peasant at large in the royal Residenz

    ***   Come, Follow Me — Old Testament Study and Teaching Helps: Lesson 25, June 13-19: 1 Samuel 8–10; 13; 15–18 — “The Battle Is the Lord’s” Jonn Claybaugh has generously provided yet another concise set of helpful notes for students and teachers of the scriptures.   Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me Old Testament […]

Cobble and Other Stones

    ***   I first visited Munich in 1970 and have been back a few times since.  But I’ve seldom really concentrated on the city itself.  Typically, I’ve stayed in the vicinity and focused on Austria or the Bavarian Alps.  Today, though, with our friends from the cruise ship and with another couple, friends […]

A stray memory of an almost regretted victory

    ***   I was elected student body president at my high school.  Here’s a note about that:   I had never, I think, held (or run for) an office in student government.  (My memory is actually a bit fuzzy on this point:  It’s possible that I once served on a class council.  I […]

From “England’s green and pleasant land”

    ***   And now for a new item on the website of the Interpreter Foundation.  Actually, it’s not quite new.  It went up yesterday, Saturday, at 7 PM.  But I’m out of sync with North American time zones and not always at my computer, so this is the best that I’ve been able […]

Paying our respects to St. André and St. Émilion and to other Saints

    ***   We spent yesterday morning with friends looking around the Cathedral of Bordeaux — or, more precisely, the Cathédrale-Primatiale Saint-André de Bordeaux.  Dedicated to St. Andrew the apostle, recognized by UNESCO for its importance and important position along one of the French pilgrimage routes to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela, and […]