Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 39

“Pioneers of Africa” and the “Temple on Mount Zion”

  Last night, my wife and I watched a video — not quite an hour long — entitled Pioneers of Africa.  Directed by Marcy Brown and produced at least partially under the auspices of Brigham Young University, it’s about the limited, tentative, and awkward approaches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to […]

Points that we want others to take away from the project

  On 28 August 2024, I recorded a lecture in connection with the Interpreter Foundation’s approaching Mesoamerica tour.  It was entitled “The Importance, and Non-Importance, of Knowing the Geography of the Book of Mormon,” and it is now up on the Interpreter Foundation website.  Truth be told, it wasn’t one of my better outings — […]

Our Last Day at the Festival

  I’ve fallen a bit behind, so it’s high time to catch up: These two pieces appeared on Friday on the Interpreter Foundation’s completely comatose website: “Restoring Melchizedek Priesthood,” written by John S. Thompson Abstract: Church historical sources make four differing claims as to when, how, and by whom Melchizedek priesthood was restored. These seemingly […]

A Preliminary Response on Brigham Young’s Financial Dealings

  One or two folks have shown up on my blog attacking Brigham Young as greedy and corrupt.  Brigham enriched himself, they say, by giving himself interest-free loans from Church funds in order to establish businesses.  The lesson, supposedly, is that, if you want to become rich, you should become the head of a church. […]

Two Plays about Women Being Treated Badly

  Somewhat spontaneously — we didn’t make the decision until last night — we drove down to Cedar City today to catch as much as we’re able to catch of this year’s Utah Shakespeare Festival.  Owing to our crammed travel schedule last season, we were unable to attend.  Prior to that, though, we hadn’t missed […]

Why this next film?

  Mark Goodman, James Jordan, Russ Richins, and I had already been talking, while we were still working on Witnesses and Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, about what, if anything, we would like to do next.  We were actually pretty sure that, if we could, we wanted to do another film.  But what […]

“Ask God Whether It is True”

  Professor John Turner, a member of the faculty at Virginia’s George Mason University who is not a Latter-day Saint, is the focus of the newest very short video clip (“Ask God Whether It is True”) from the Interpreter Foundation.  These clips have been drawn from the 2022 Interpreter Foundation docudrama Undaunted: Witnesses of the […]

Necessary Notes on “Six Days in August”

  Correcting the falsehoods regularly purveyed by my Malevolent Stalker and his handful of zealous disciples over at the Peterson Obsession Board could easily be a full-time job if I permitted it to be.  Sometimes, though, I do find it advisable to publicly contradict their allegations and accusations.  Now is one of those times.  I’ll […]

Setting the Record Straight, Though Without Much Real Hope

  In our priesthood meeting today, we considered the address given by Elder Ulisses Soares of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles at the most recent annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It is entitled “Covenant Confidence through Jesus Christ.”  The passage in his remarks that most stood out […]

Demand It in Your Area!

  I’m pleased to report that a full video recording of the lectures given on Saturday, 10 August 2024, by Royal Skousen (“The Innovative and Revolutionary Book of Mormon Critical Text Project”) and Stanford Carmack (““The Archaic Language of the Original Book of Mormon”) has now been posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  “The […]