I published this column in the Deseret News for Christmas 2016:   Behind the tinsel and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, beyond Santa Claus, Christmas represents an enormously serious claim—the incarnation of God or, literally, God’s “enfleshment.”  “And the Word was made flesh,” says John 1:10, “and dwelt among us.”  It’s a proposition unique to Christianity among the Abrahamic religions; Judaism and Islam make no such claim about the divine.   In the first chapter of Genesis, God repeatedly… Read more

    The anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred a week ago.  Perhaps I just missed it, but I didn’t notice much mention of that anniversary.  Nor did I say anything about it.  So I offer, here, something of a small atonement for that oversight:   With two colleagues with whom I still work and with whom I served in the Switzerland Zürich Mission back in the late Cretaceous Period, I saw the movie Midway a couple of… Read more

I’ve been wrestling with some impenetrably puzzling Patheos glitches. In the end, I’m simply deleting this post because I can’t fix it.   Read more

    Continued from “Memories of interreligious “trialogue” (II)”:   I enjoyed the 1993 Jewish/Christian/Muslim dialogue (or “trialogue”) meetings in Graz, Austria, and was pleased to be invited to rejoin the group for its 1994 meetings, to be held in Jerusalem.   One proposal from the “trialogue” leadership, given the Latter-day Saint multibillionaire Jim Sorenson’s involvement as an essential backer of the project, was to hold the 1994 meetings in Brigham Young University’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.  The Jerusalem… Read more

    The discussants for the 8 December 2019 edition of the Interpreter Radio Show were Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Mike Parker. Their conversation covered the First Presidency’s recent statement on refugees as well as thoughts on the Christmas holiday. Also included was a roundtable on the upcoming Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon lesson #1 on the Title page and Introduction of the Book of Mormon:   Interpreter Radio Show — December 8, 2019   ***   Here are two… Read more

    This is a Christmas season column that I published in the Deseret News back in 2017:   Literally central to the worship and organization of the wandering camp of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai was what the King James Bible calls “the tabernacle of the congregation.”  (The Jewish Publication Society translation terms it “the tent of meeting.”)  According to Numbers 2:2-33; 3:21-38, the tribes of Judah, Issachar, and Zebulon were to pitch their tents to the tabernacle’s… Read more

    Roughly a decade ago — I would need to check to be precisely sure — the then editor of the Deseret News, Joe Cannon, invited me to write a Latter-day Saint-oriented weekly column for the paper under the series title of Defending the Faith.  A couple of years thereafter, I proposed an additional bi-weekly column on world religions to the Deseret News that I would write with my BYU colleague Bill Hamblin.  They accepted the proposal, so Bill… Read more

    Traditionally, several of us from our neighborhood would be up there for this concert, with a wonderful dinner beforehand at The Roof, and maybe staying overnight at a nearby hotel:   “Christmas Season Celebrated at Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concerts: Guest artists Kelli O’Hara and Richard Thomas headline performances”   Alas, though, my wife and several of the other ladies who normally plan and organize the annual tradition are in Europe at the moment.  Today, to be precise, they’re in… Read more

    A new article has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.  It was written by John Gee:   “Conclusions in Search of Evidence” Review of Jana Riess, The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). 312 pages. $29.95. Abstract: Riess’s book surveying the beliefs and behaviors of younger members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was supposed to compare the attitudes of younger… Read more