Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 188

“Witnesses” film, TONIGHT at 8 PM

    At least some of you, I think, will be interested in this, so I’m passing along pretty much all I know (and maybe more than I know).  I’ve just heard about it within the past hour or so :   Meridian Magazine plans to go live. 4h  ·  Join us LIVE as we talk with […]

Revision 8.11 Has Orson Hyde’s Prayer Been Fulfilled? The Jewish Gathering to Palestine

    Between the previous installment (Revision 8.10) and this one, considerable material is required to update and expand my capsule history of the Church in the Middle East and the Islamic world.  I will get to that.  In the meantime, I proceed with a glance forward, toward the future — which, since it remains […]

“Working out Salvation History in the Book of Mormon Politeia with Fear and Trembling”

    A new article appeared today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.  This one is by Alan Goff:   “Working out Salvation History in the Book of Mormon Politeia with Fear and Trembling” Review of James E. Faulconer, Mosiah: A Brief Theological Introduction (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2020). 135 pages. $9.95 (paperback). Abstract: The Maxwell Institute […]

The Official “Witnesses” Poster and Trailer Are Now Available

    The publicity campaign for the Interpreter Foundation’s Witnesses dramatic film is now underway.  Pandemic willing, we anticipate a theatrical premiere for the film in the summer of 2021.   We’re currently focusing our attention on the two-part, two-hour documentary — currently titled Undaunted: The Case of the Book of Mormon Witnesses — that […]

Shameful Incivility, Tribalism, and the Future of the Republic

    I hear that they held an election yesterday out in Georgia, and the results seem to be coming in just about as I expected.  I’ve also heard rumors about some sort of gathering today at the United States Capitol.   But I’m not going to say anything about either of those matters.  I […]

“If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less”

    I decided, this morning, to watch again the Interpreter Foundation’s first somewhat experimental venture into filmmaking, Robert Cundick: A Sacred Service of Music.  I hadn’t seen it for a while.   It’s just short of twenty-five minutes in length, and I was pleased  to find that I still like it very much and […]

“By Jan. 1, 2014 Interpreter will be dead.”

    Very nearly eight years ago, a sublimely self-confident pseudonymous critic on a small, extraordinarily nasty, and mostly atheist ex-Mormon message board took it upon himself to prophesy:   “By Jan. 1, 2014 Interpreter will be dead. . . .  Either totally dead or down to token ‘blog’ style postings.” (Bond James Bond, 25 January 2013)   I […]

An instructive disagreement at Oxford about the function of genes

    The first of Alister McGrath’s three earned Oxford University doctorates was in molecular biophysics.  The next two were in, first, theology and, second, intellectual history.  On pages 38-39 of Alister E. McGrath, Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), McGrath offers an excellent example of how the same bare scientific […]

Revision 8.10. “The BYU Jerusalem Center” (conclusion), plus diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East

    For some time thereafter, no matter how careful we were, some new and usually rather ridiculous charge would still occasionally surface. One amusing instance of this was the accusation published by an Orthodox Jewish newspaper in both Jerusalem and New York during October 1987 that the nefari­ous Mormons were using their building’s highly […]

“Two Essays on Sustaining and Enlarging the Doctrine”

    First of all, Happy New Year!  I hope that your 2021 will be a wonderful year, vastly better than the previous one (which shall remain charitably unnamed).  Live long and prosper!   I love new beginnings:   “More than resolutions: How religious holidays, traditions prompt remembering, reflection: Reflection, coupled with the notion of […]