Secret Lives, “Mormon” Wives, And Some Upcoming Events

Balanced Rock, in Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah. A Wikimedia Commons public domain photo by Thomas Wolf.

Jeffrey Mark Bradshaw and Steve Densley created the following report of upcoming Interpreter Foundation events — above and beyond the Foundation’s weekly publication of articles and its weekly two-hour Interpreter Radio Show — for this afternoon’s iteration of the regular monthly virtual meeting that the leaders of the various organizations hold to coordinate matters between FAIR, Interpreter, Scripture Central, and the B. H. Roberts Foundation. I added a little bit to the report. Please recall that, according to some very reliable anonymous external evaluations, the Interpreter Foundation is basically dead and irrelevant:

25 September 2024, at 7 PM. FREE Behind the Scenes with Cast FIRESIDE. SCERA Center for the Arts, 745 S State St, Orem, UT. This event is ticketed, but tickets are free. Click the eventbrite link here to get yours now!

Interpreter Foundation Mesoamerica Tour Lecture Series.

18 September: “Palenque World Tree,” Allen Christenson
25 September: “Potential Volcanic Activity Related to Events in the Book of Mormon,” Benjamin Jordan

Past lectures can be viewed here.

26 September. “Sneak peek” early screenings of Six Days in August in Cinemark theaters in Ogden, Provo, West Jordan, American Fork, Salt Lake City, Sandy, Orem, Draper, and Farmington.

28 September 2024 Temple on Mount Zion (TMZ) Conference: Seership, Craftsmanship, and Fellowship, BYU Tanner Building, room 251. Speakers and session chairs: Bowen, Bradley, Bradshaw, Calabro, England, Gimenez Rappleye, Kraus, Olsen, Rappleye, Ricks, Schmidt, Smith, Thompson. See https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2024-temple-on-mount-zion-conference/ Co-sponsored by BYU Dept of Humanities, Scripture Central, and Fair. Grateful to Scripture Central and Fair for help with publicity and to Scripture Central for help with video production.

October 2024: Release of two video features on the life of George L. Mitton. For information on his recent book: Joseph Smith and Our Preparation for the Lord’s Final Judgment, see https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/joseph-smith-and-our-preparation-for-the-lords-final-judgment/

October 2024: Availability of proceedings of TMZ 2022: Plates, Patterns, and Patriarchs. Speakers: Griggs, Barker, Zinner, Plant, Smoot, Larsen, Bowen, Bradshaw, Stay, Ricks, Calabro, Kraus, Thompson. See https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-plates-patterns-patriarchs/.

7 October. “Sneak peek” early screenings of Six Days in August in Cinemark theaters in Ogden, Provo, West Jordan, American Fork, Salt Lake City, Sandy, Orem, Draper, and Farmington.

9 October (Private), Six Days in August premiere.

10 October, general roll-out of Six Days in August into theaters.

October–November 2024: Media campaign for Not By Bread Alone (NBBA) video feature on Willy and Lilly Binene and the Saints of Luputa in conjunction with the release of Saints, volume 4, which features their story. For other recent posts and videos in English and French, see https://notbybreadalonefilm.com/ . Thanks to Fair for scheduling a session on NBBA during their recent conference. Thanks in advance to Scripture Central and Fair for their assistance during this upcoming media campaign.

October-November 2024: New collaboration between Interpreter and Scripture Central on French content for their video channel, hosted by Christian Euvrard. See https://www.youtube.com/@AuCentredesEcritures

18 October, Daniel Peterson to record interview with Samuel Wilkinson for future posting.

Interpreter Foundation Mesoamerica Tour Operated by Book of Mormon Tours 22 October 2024 — 4 November 2024

November 2024: Availability of a book with exciting and inspiring new research findings on last few years of the Prophet’s life and teachings in time for Come, Follow Me 2025: Joseph Smith: A Life Lived in Crescendo. Contributors: Jensen, Goodman, Gardner, Givens, Baugh, Bradshaw, Faulconer, Thompson, Hales, Cope, Tait, Hawkins, Grow, Bentley, Welch, Addams, Esplin. See https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/joseph-smith-a-life-lived-in-crescendo/

November 2024: Availability of a book chronicling the latest finding in Book of Mormon Old World geography and other evidences: Into Arabia: Anchoring Nephi’s Account in the Real World. Authors: Aston, Ellis, Rappleye. See https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/into-arabia/

3 May 2025 and 10 May 2025: Major event (on two successive weekends) bringing forth latest scholarship on Genesis 12–24 and the Book of Abraham: Conference on Abraham in Scripture, History, and Tradition, including non-Latter-day Saint scholars. Thanks in advance to Scripture Central and Fair for their contributions and publicity for this event. Additional information forthcoming.

Delicate Arch up close sdofpsdkfpsokfspo — Delicate Arch, in Utah’s Arches National Park
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo by Thomas Schoch)

This item was just posted today on the never-changing and essentially comatose website of the Interpreter Foundation: Hugh Nibley Observed: “Hugh Nibley and Me,” written by Don Norton

“I was a semi-literate Idaho farm boy, something of a loner, when, in my mid-teens, I discovered Hugh Nibley’s late-1940s articles in The Improvement Era. Nibley had answers to questions I had about the Restoration in general and especially the Book of Mormon, a volume which I had only sampled and which was then very little talked about in the Church. I became an avid reader of Nibley’s articles in Church periodicals.”

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Hugh Nibley Observed, edited by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/hugh-nibley-observed/.

Double Arch, in Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I subscribe to a little free service that provides me with a daily sampling of domestic (and some international) links pertaining to the term Mormon. For the past several weeks, my daily feed from that service has been dominated by links about the Hulu miniseries Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Sometimes, every single link in the daily list has pertained to the miniseries.

Perhaps you haven’t heard about it? Ah, then please permit me to help: Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is, umm, about a representative group of devout young Latter-day Saint women and their idealistic quest to challenge oppressive traditional gender stereotypes and overly restrictive taboos in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to struggle their way to freedom. Or something like that. Right?

Anyway, here is an article by the redoubtable Jacob Hess that, without mentioning Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, is nonetheless relevant to some of the issues raised by the miniseries: “The overlooked, fatal flaw of research promoting the ‘benefits’ of nonmonogamy: A reliance on short-term survey research for highly charged questions like polyamory will always be sorely limited in appraising the full (long-term) truth of a matter”