Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 43

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 […]

“But for Wales!”

  It’s Friday, so — once again, as happens with tiresome regularity, new materials have appeared on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: ““That They May Know That They Are Not Cast Off Forever”: Jewish Lectionary Elements in the Book of Mormon,” written by Bradley J. Kramer Abstract: It is not uncommon for Jews who […]

Moms for Liberty, BYU, and Banning Books

  I notice that there are some (including the lamentable Salt Lake Tribune — which, I’m told, is the only newspaper in America to have succeeded in depriving women of the vote — and  this) who are ginning up controversy about the fact that Tina Descovich, a co-founder of the conservative organization Moms for Liberty and, […]

A report from a long and busy Wednesday

  I was really busy yesterday — that’s why I didn’t post a blog entry for Wednesday — but I think that, for journalling purposes, I’ll write up a note on what I was doing. I spent the entire day with Larry Eastland , of what is now been renamed the John A. and Leah […]