Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 71

A deathbed coincidence?

    As Christmas approaches, and as your indecisive tension mounts about what you ought to give to your spouse, your children, your parents, your cousins, your neighbors, your pickle ball partners, the mailman, your ministering brother and sister, those to whom you minister, your congressperson, and random passersby, the Interpreter Foundation can help.  Choose […]

Of quasars and Jesus

    In case you haven’t seen or read it yet:  “The First Presidency’s 2023 Christmas Message.”  And please note that the annual annual First Presidency Christmas devotional broadcast is scheduled for a week from today, on Sunday, 3 December 2023.  And then, of course, there’s this:  “Temple Square Offering Christmas Experiences for 2023 Season: Lights […]

Notes on Shared Death Experiences

    While we were in Virginia recently, we not only took the time to visit some Civil War battlefields but to take family members to Jamestown — the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, famously associated with Pocahontas — out by Williamsburg, and, in the other direction, to Carter Mountain, near Charlottesville.  In […]

Mormon, Zeniff, and Limhi

    I hope that you and yours had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday (where applicable). Over the past couple of days, the following note was sent out to the Interpreter Foundation’s email lists and went up on the Foundation’s websites: We are approaching Giving Tuesday and the month of December, when the hearts of many […]

Giving thanks for dirt and for air

    Happy Thanksgiving! Both of these columns appeared in the Deseret News in connection with Thanksgiving 2019.  Although I have a few more of these, they are (mercifully) the last of the Thanksgiving-themed columns that I intend to resurrect here this year:     As we in the United States approach the national Thanksgiving […]

Three for the Eve of Thanksgiving

    Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  “Conference Talks: From Temple to Church: Defining Sacred Space in the Near East,“ presented by David Calabro on Saturday, 7 November 2020, as part of the Interpreter Foundation’s 2020 Temple on Mount Zion Conference: “In this paper, I propose to revisit the question posed […]

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow

    Newly posted on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:  Interpreter Radio Show — November 5, 2023 Spencer Kraus, Martin Tanner, Brent Schmidt, and Hales Swift were the discussants for the 5 November 2023 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show. They discussed Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 49, criticizing Church leaders, upcoming conferences, […]

“Both of the earth and of heaven”

    I’m finally finding a few stolen moments in which to begin reading Richard Lyman Bushman’s newest book, Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), and here is a chain of related passages from it that I would like to share with you: As his [Joseph Smith’s] account made […]

From the land of Jefferson Davis

    You might justly view yesterday’s blog entry here as a full-length installment from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™.  In a very real sense, that is exactly what it was, and I hope that you’ll take the opportunity not only to buy something yourself but to call the opportunity to […]

Giving Machines!

    As you’ve probably noticed — I’ve scarcely been subtle or coy about it! — we are in the process of making a theatrical movie under the title of Six Days in August, and I’m urgently seeking additional funds for the completion of that venture, for which the actual filming is now approximately 82% […]