Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 46

“Stephen Burnett versus the Eight Witnesses”

  I want to call this new article to your attention:  Neal Rappleye and Stephen O. Smoot, “Stephen Burnett versus the Eight Witnesses: An Exercise in Mature Historical Thinking,” Religious Educator 25/2 (2024).  Stephen Burnett has long been a favorite weapon among critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often deployed (especially […]

The Great Apostasy, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, etc.

  The reviews of Six Days in August continue to roll in from The Usual Suspects.  And, of course, they’re all negative — and, also of course, none of the reviewers has actually seen it.  (Who says there’s no such thing as prophecy?)  The film is shallow and dishonest propaganda, plodding and dull, a whitewashed […]

Big News

  Interpreter Radio Show — July 21, 2024 For the 21 July 2024 installment of the Interpreter Radio Show, Bruce Webster, Robert Boylan, and Kris Frederickson discussed Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon lesson 33 and a variety of topics including upcoming events and concerns about the ownership of farmland by the Church. Their conversation […]

“Bread of Life, Living Water”

  In sacrament meeting on Sunday morning, my ward sang one of the new hymns that will eventually be included in the revised hymnal of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It is entitled  “Bread of Life, Living Water.” Along with many other such hymns and, for that matter, very many other aspects […]

Courage and Sorrow

  One of the great moments at the current Summer Olympics in Paris, one of the most impressive displays of heroism, was not an athletic one.  It had nothing directly to do with sports, and it won’t — alas! — win a gold medal.  It was Céline Dion singing “Hymne à l’amour,” a song that […]

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, etc.

  As, according to credible reports, the Interpreter Foundation continues to fade and its website and journal continue to stagnate, here are four new articles that have just appeared: “LDS Perspectives on the Atonement?” written by Blake T. Ostler Review of Deidre Nicole Green and Eric D. Huntsman, eds., Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Atonement (Urbana: […]

Remembering the Dead

  A new Interpreter Foundation video short was posted earlier today.  Entitled “The Book of Mormon Came from Somewhere!” it features Professor Steven C. Harper of Brigham Young University: Please give it a quick look and, if you like what you see, please share it with others!  We want to get these out among the people. […]

It’s been an unusually good Pioneer Day!

  Utahns and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be aware of the fact that today, 24 July, is Pioneer Day.  It commemorates the 1847 entry into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake of Brigham Young and the vanguard company of the “Mormon pioneers.”  Not coincidentally, the Interpreter Foundation […]

Getting the word out

  The Interpreter Foundation has published yet another short video feature that has been drawn from its 2022 docudrama Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.  This one, featuring Professor Steven C. Harper, bears the title “Eyewitness Testimony Regarding Book of Mormon Translation”:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jVPlJB... I invite you to watch it and to share it (along […]

The reviews are pouring in!

  The former president of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, slightly more than a year out of office, delivered perhaps his most famous speech at the Sorbonne in Paris on 23 April 1910.  Although its formal title is “Citizenship in a Republic,” it is probably more widely  known as “The Man in the Arena.” His […]