First of all, I want to thank the readers of this blog, who continue to read it, or at least to summon it up on their computer screens, despite my manifold (and manifest) incapacities. I read a couple of appraisals of myself online this morning that indirectly illustrate just how charitable and forgiving you are. According to one of those appraisals, which wasn’t making any particular effort to be kind, I’m immature, stupid, and entirely without class. According to the other, which is clearly trying to be sympathetic, I’m an uncomplicated sort who is unable to see historical nuances and who defends the Church as the result of something like an automatic, unthinking Pavlovian stimulus-and-response reaction.
So, again, thank you for dropping by this blog and reading entries here that must often, at the very least, make you blush with pained embarrassment for me.
From those who simply come to giggle, though, I ask for perhaps a shred of charity. You really shouldn’t mock the simpleminded.
And, of course, if you’re seeking a nuanced understanding of history, you should probably turn for that to the person who, still as of this morning, continues to cite Ann Eliza Webb Dee Young Denning’s Wife No. 19 as a balanced account of detailed and unprejudiced historical fact. I can only aspire to such penetrating historical insight!
We had a small gathering last night in the northern part of Utah Valley for donors and potential donors to the Interpreter Foundation’s Six Days in August film project. Among other things, we showed those present a number of scenes that were created during our recent filming. They were well received. Those assembled also had what proved to be the very great opportunity to hear from our Brigham Young (John Donovan Wilson) and our Mary Ann Angell Young (Twyla Wilson), who were magnificent.
When we cast Paul Wuthrich as our Joseph Smith in the Witnesses film project, we did so solely on the basis of his audition videos. We did not know, and we had no reason to expect, and (speaking for myself, at least) we had not even considered the possibility, that he would be a remarkably thoughtful, articulate, and willing offscreen spokesman for that project and for the message that we were trying to convey by it. But so he has turned out to be, and so he continues to be. And much the same can be said of our Emma Smith (Camrey Bagley Fox), to whom we also turned for the role of the interviewer in the short “Insights” videos that have flowed from the Witnesses project. (Incidentally, both Paul and Camrey feature in this new Six Days in August film, as well — though, spoiler alert!, Paul doesn’t last to the end of the story.)
I’m delighted to say that, in John Donovan Wilson and Twyla Wilson, we have again been extraordinarily fortunate. (Is it mere luck? I wonder.) We cast them on the basis of their performance in audition but, as it happens, they are gifted, thoughtful, and effective spokespeople for the intent and the undertaking of Six Days in August. Dare I say that we’ve been blessed? I think that I will. I feel very much that we have been blessed.
The allegation that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a kind of protected refuge for child abusers, and/or that it protects the perpetrators of child sexual abuse, continues to make the rounds as if it were unalloyed and unchallengeable fact. This presentation, given by Jennifer Roach at the most recent FAIR Conference back in August 2023, provides an informed, empirical, and absolutely indispensable perspective on that allegation and related matters: “Shedding Light on the Complexities: Understanding Abuse Within the LDS Church.”
For an interesting and somewhat related piece, see “Forgotten Study: Abuse in School 100 Times Worse than by Priests.”
Another continuing controversy is lucidly addressed in “The $100 Billion Question — A Conversation with Aaron Miller.” If this matter interests you, or if it concerns you or concerns someone you know, you should not miss out on the commentary offered by Aaron Miller.
Now, as is my occasional practice, I want to wrap things up today with a selection of deliciously horrifying abominations from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:
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