William Hamblin and Daniel Peterson continue to spew out the hatred and narrow-minded vitriol against non-Mormon faiths that have become at least Peterson’s stock in trade:
“Hinduism and India’s transformative ‘axial age'”
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Members of the Twelve on the road:
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As the late Christopher Hitchens liked to point out, religion poisons everything:
“Harvard Study Finds Teens Who Attend Church, Pray Have a Better Well-Being”
And, in case you missed it, here’s a link to a wonderful five-minute video:
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Some other stories that might interest you:
“Latter-day Saints Around the World Country Newsroom Websites September 28, 2018”
“Christmas in September — how a miraculous donation has helped the Hurricane Florence relief effort”
“How ‘Jane and Emma’ film puts racial tensions, Church history in the spotlight like never before”
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I note with sadness the death of Rosemary Brown, who, with her late husband Robert (who died in December 2017), produced a series of books under the title of They Lie in Wait to Deceive that challenged several of the luminaries of the Evangelical anti-Mormon industry back when it was at its zenith (with such inflammatory, disingenous, and sensationalised propaganda as the 1982 pseudodocumentary film The God Makers).
Ordinary Latter-day Saints in Arizona who stepped forward to defend their faith against unfair and often mendacious attacks, the Browns provided often devastating counterarguments and stripped such charlatans as the late “Dr.” Dee Jay Nelson and the late “Dr.” Walter R. Martin of their undeserved credibility (and of their phony doctorates).
Sometimes, the results were hilariously funny — though probably not to the impresarios of religious bigotry whose masks were removed:
Wayne Cowdrey, for example, was the co-author of a now deservedly forgotten book that purported to demonstrate that Solomon Spalding was the real author of the Book of Mormon. Cowdrey had no particular academic credentials for the work, so he claimed authority on the basis of the fact that he was a descendent of the Book of Mormon Witness and “Second Elder” Oliver Cowdery.
There was, of course, the minor problem of the difference in spelling between the names of Oliver Cowdery and Wayne Cowdrey. But that, Wayne Cowdrey explained, was merely a family variant.
However, there was another and rather larger problem: Oliver Cowdery and his wife had only one child. A daughter. Had she married, she would, in those horrible, sexist days, invariably have assumed the name of her husband, which would probably not have been Cowdery. So none of her children would have borne the name Cowdery. But she never married, and she had no children. Which pretty much entails the conclusion that Wayne Cowdrey cannot possibly have been a descendent of Oliver Cowdery.
Oops.
And then there was the matter of “Dr.” Walter Martin, who had dedicated his book The Maze of Mormonism “To my mother, Maude Ainsley Martin, a descendent of Brigham Young but a disciple of Jesus Christ.” So, once again, he possessed special authority to speak on Mormonism not only because he held a (bogus) doctorate but because he was, in a sense, of the fold. But genealogy is home turf for many Latter-day Saints, and it didn’t take long for the Browns to demonstrate that neither Maude Ainsley Martin nor Walter Ralston Martin could possibly be a descendent of the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thus, when the next printing of The Maze of Mormonism appeared, the dedication had been silently altered to the much more vague “To my mother, Maude Ainsley Martin, a relative of Brigham Young but a disciple of Jesus Christ.”
Heck, I’m a relative of Brigham Young — very, very distantly — as I am of both Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, Queen Elizabeth II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Martin Luther King. And both Maude Martin and Walter Martin are related to Genghis Khan.
Although Robert and Rosemary Brown are little known today and weren’t widely known even in the 1980s, faithful members of the Church owe them a debt of gratitude for their willingness to stand up for the cause of the Restoration, to sustain and defend the Kingdom of God, at an earlier time when — as it is today, although from a different angle — it was under severe attack. They gave of their time and their money and they put their reputations on the line, and they will be blessed for it.
Posted from Park City, Utah
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