I announce to you a great joy: The Interpreter Foundation has a new website!
You can admire it here. Please bookmark it for future reference.
I would like to thank all those who worked to make this a reality. I don’t have all the names and I apologize for that, but I do want to mention Allen Wyatt, Alan Sikes, and Ryan Knowlton and to acknowledge all of the excellent work that they’ve put into this.
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Appearing for the first time on the new website is a presentation by Dr. Matthew Bowen of Brigham Young University – Hawaii under the title of “Enos — Wrestling a Man and Seeing God’s Face”:
I’m personally delighted at this because, while the presentation was given at the home of our generous and good friends (and fellow ward members) Dr. Lynn Dayton and Senator Margaret Dayton, just down the street from our house, my wife and I were in Jerusalem that night. But now, like many of you, we have a chance to see it.
Thanks to Tom Pittman and Steve Densley, as I understand it, for their work in recording Matt Bowen’s presentation. It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing, but they rose swiftly and well to the occasion. I really love and appreciate the many people who make the work of Interpreter possible.
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As you may have noticed, I’ve now posted several items on the burning issue of a review by Steve Densley (“Should We Apologize for Apologetics?”) and a response to it by folks at Greg Kofford Books.
For my comments on the topic heretofore, arranged in chronological order, see:
“Constructing advertising copy and jacket blurbs: art or science?”
“‘A very important contribution to the study of Mormon theology. . . . marvelous'”
“Some people just never get jokes.”
“The Inevitability of Positive and Negative Apologetics”
I’m reliably informed that these comments embody and illustrate the deep “animosity” that this matter has aroused in me — noticeable even beyond the volcanic rage in which I spend most of my ordinary waking hours — and I trust that my mounting anger will be apparent to even the most casual reader.
Anyhow, Brian Whitney, whom I’ve previously introduced here as a blogger and as an employee of Greg Kofford Books, has now — appropriately, on Halloween night — posted a blog entry about this situation:
“The ghoulish tactics of Dan Peterson and fiendish apologetics”
Incidentally, I hope that all of you had an enjoyable Halloween. I certainly did. One of the great things about . . . well, about being me is that I don’t have to dress up for the holiday. By my very nature, I terrify not only small children but great strapping adults. There’s something about heartlessness and total depravity that just seems perfectly suited to Halloween. It’s my kind of night.
Anyway, I recommend Brian’s blog entry. I think that there’s merit in his distinction, within scholarship regarding Mormonism, between
1. Negative apologetic
2. Positive apologetic
3. Devotional/pastoral
4. Secular/academic
5. Critical/skeptical
I must say, though, that I’m much more favorable toward “negative apologetic” scholarship than he is. But I agree that all such brands of scholarship are legitimate. Even the “critical/skeptical” variety has its uses, provided it’s actual scholarship and not mere nonsense (of the Ed Decker/Bill Schnoebelen/Loftes Tryk variety), even from the standpoint of a believer. Fawn Brodie, for example, obliged Latter-day Saint scholars to do real work in order to counter her assertions. She may or may not have intended to do us good, and she certainly did harm to the faith of more than a few believing Latter-day Saints, but, in the end, Mormon scholarship benefited from her challenge.
However, I’m simply too angry to continue writing at the moment. I think I’ll go torture kittens or something.
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