First of all, I wish a happy Fourth of July to everybody out there. Even to those for whom it isn’t Independence Day. Perhaps especially to our British cousins, who gave us this holiday. And, of course to our Canadian neighbors, our friends in Greenland, our other neighbors in Panama to the south, and my relatives in Denmark, who may all soon be celebrating it with us, whether willingly or not! Since the website of the Interpreter Foundation is... Read more
Some of you may have been wondering, even worrying, about what happened to our long-time resident atheist here, “gemli.” Well, I want to reassure you that he’s still out there. And, occasionally, he tries to post here. You don’t see him, but I do (if I choose to look). You may recall that he grew deeply, deeply tiresome because, after several initial years of politely and not very effectually challenging the consensus here and of being occasionally amusing, his... Read more
One of the reasons for the notorious fact that the Interpreter Foundation’s website rarely if ever posts anything new has now been revealed, with his characteristically piercing insight and financial acumen, by my Malevolent Stalker: The Foundation’s financial resources, you see, are largely if not entirely devoted to paying for my travel and my constant epicurean dining out. While driving up to Park City this evening, for example, my wife and I found a fine Latin American establishment in... Read more
One of the most spectacular acting performances that I’ve ever seen was in 1994, at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. (We had hoped to slip down there for two or three plays this week, but I’ve been a bit under the weather.) Even after thirty-one years, I still remember Gary Armagnac playing the horrifying title role in Richard III. Richard is one of the darkest villains in all of English literature, and Gary Armagnac did him full,... Read more
I want to share some passages that I marked a while back from Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates: A Cultural History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). The account of the golden plates as we know it is documented very early: The first known mention of the gold plates in writing occurred in the fall of 1828 in letters to Asael Smith, Joseph Smith Jr.’ s grandfather. Joseph Smith Sr. had not seen his father for... Read more
Incredibly to me, my father died twenty-two years ago today. Soon, it will have been a quarter of a century. I still miss him very much. Somewhat to my surprise, I still think about him every day. Certain sights always, invariably, remind me of him, sometimes for reasons that aren’t clear to me. There are many things that I would like to tell him, many questions that I would like to ask of him. Virtually all, if not absolutely... Read more
Our (superb) guide on the recent Interpreter Foundation Church history tour, Peter Fagg — whom my wife and I have known for years now, and who will also, if all goes according to plan, accompany us on a Christian history-themed tour of England in May of 2026 — shared these remarks with us while we were there a few weeks ago. We liked them so very much that we invited him to share them with the readership of the... Read more
Today, 27 June, is the 181st anniversary of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. I haven’t been looking for such things, but I have already seen one celebratory note about the murders. It was posted by a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it puts me in mind of Matthew 7:16-20. This article, written by Matthew Roper, went up earlier today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: Anachronisms:... Read more
I’ve begun writing down notes for the presentation that I plan to give on Friday, 8 August, at the 2025 FAIR Conference. And, by the way, the conference organizers have included a special discount code that folks can use in order to register for the conference at a reduced rate — which, the organizers say, is “just our way of saying thank you and making it easier for more people to attend.” The discount code that they’ve given to... Read more
Yesterday on social media, I noticed an attack by a former Latter-day Saint on the idea of a “great apostasy” of the early Christian church. I didn’t spend much time reading what he had to say, and I’m not specifically engaging with him here — I may or may not yet do so — but I thought that I might make a general comment affirming my confidence that there was, indeed, such a universal falling away. To me, the... Read more
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