Two Funeral Requests

April 21, 2024 By Dan Peterson

Me, at Yellowstone — In the sunset of my life: Here I am, with Yellowstone National Park’s Grand Prismatic Spring and the Midway Geyser Basin in the background. (If you look really, really carefully, you can see distant steam rising.) I realize that I mar the beauty of the photograph, which was taken two or three years ago by my wife with her mid-quality iPhone camera, but it seemed an appropriate day on which to temporarily suspend my general “No Me in the Photograph” rule.

In our sacrament meeting today, the ward choir performed “Be Still, My Soul.” The words were translated by Jane Borthwick (1813-1897) from the original German of Katharina von Schlegel (b. 1697), and the exquisite music (from Finlandia) was written by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). If you’re unfamiliar with it, you can listen to one or more versions online, including a performance by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square:

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
in every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heav’nly Friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
to guide the future as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
all now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Be still, my soul; the hour is hast’ning on
when we shall be forever with the Lord,
when disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul; when change and tears are past,
all safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

It’s a song that I’ve loved for years. If I had my wish, I would have it performed at my funeral, which, statistically speaking, cannot be too many years off. And here’s another one that I love and that I would request for my funeral. It’s not in the hymnbook, but you can find it in several places online, including here and here. The lyrics were set to music written by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904), from the famous “Largo” theme that is played on an English horn in his Symphony No. 9 (From the New World), Op. 95.

Going home, going homeI am going homeQuiet like, some still dayI am going home

It’s not far, just close byThrough an open doorWork all done, care laid byNever fear no more

Mother’s there expecting meFather’s waiting tooLots of faces gathered thereAll the friends I knew

I’m just going home

No more fear, no more painNo more stumbling by the wayNo more longing for the dayGoing to run no more

Morning star lights the wayRestless dreams all goneShadows gone, break of dayReal life has begun

There’s no break, there’s no endJust a living onWide awake with a smileGoing on and on

Going home, going homeI am going homeShadows gone, break of dayReal life has begun

I’m just going home

These two songs give beautiful expression to matters that are at the very heart of my faith.

But who am I kidding? When I take my leave, I’ll probably be lucky to have more than half a dozen people (beyond my immediate family) at my funeral service. And there will very likely be a virtual chorus online, singing “Na na na na! Na na na na! Hey hey hey! Goodbye!”

I mean — and I apologize for mentioning something so crude — I received an email many, many years ago in which the anonymous author vowed someday to urinate on my grave, so I don’t expect that my passing will be met with universal grief. For one thing, the weirdly obsessive personal hatred over at the Peterson Obsession Board has been boiling for roughly twenty years now. It’s still bubbling, and there’s no particular reason to expect it to cool off within the next two decades. By which time, given the statistical realities, I’ll very probably be gone.

But the fellow who vowed to desecrate my grave, at least, will be deeply disappointed even if he follows through on his oath. Because I won’t care. Whether on my view or on his atheistic view, it will make absolutely no difference to me.

The L.A. Temple — The Los Angeles California Temple by night. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Since I’ve already mentioned the Peterson Obsession Board here, I suppose that it won’t do any more harm to respond to the latest popular attack there. (Two of that board’s emissaries have written to me directly, albeit anonymously, challenging me to answer their complaints.)

I’m a hypocrite and a fraud because _____________ . (Fill in the blank according to personal taste.) There are, of course, innumerable reasons to anonymously but publicly and repeatedly brand me a fraud and a hypocrite. In this most recent iteration of the charge, though, I’m a hypocrite and a fraud for the specific reason that, having witnessed Frenchy Morrell’s sorrow at his long separation from his wife and then, subsequently, having learned that he had died, I nevertheless didn’t act to have them sealed in the temple. So, plainly, I don’t really believe in the efficacy of temple ordinances and/or I don’t really care about such lesser folks and/or I was merely exhibiting my vanity and claiming some sort of religious superiority by relating their story. Or something to that effect.

How, it is demanded, can I explain or justify my inaction?

Here is my understanding of current Church policy, drawn from online information published officially by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints under the title “Submitting Names for Temple Ordinances”:

Temple ordinances can be performed for the following:
• Direct line ancestors – (parents, grandparents, great-grandparents etc., and their
families)
• Biological, adopted, and foster family lines
• Collateral family lines – (uncles, aunts, cousins, and their families)
• Descendants of your ancestors
• Possible ancestors with probable relationship example: people with the same surname
in a small town or village. . . .

Requesting temple ordinances for people not related to me
Published September 16, 2020
Please do not request temple ordinances for someone you are not related to unless you have
obtained permission from a close living relative. A close relative is an un-divorced spouse, adult
child, parent, or sibling. . . .
Having received permission from a person, prior to his/her death, to perform their temple
ordnances after their death, does not qualify as getting permission from the closest living
relative. Permission from the closest living relative is still required. . . .

To perform ordinances for a deceased person who was born within the last 110 years:
• The person must have been deceased for at least one year.
• You must either:
A. Be one of the Closest Living Relatives, defined as:
• An Un-divorced Spouse (the spouse to whom the individual was
married when he or she died)
• An Adult Child
• A Parent
• Their Sibling (brother or sister)
B. Or obtain permission from one of the Closest Living Relatives

Having never known nor even met any other member of Frenchy Morrell’s family, and having met Frenchy himself only once, briefly and years ago, and being neither his undivorced spouse nor his adult child nor his father or mother or brother or sister, I had no right under the rules of the Church to submit his or his late wife’s name for temple work. Moreover, I’m not only not among his closest living relatives, I don’t even know any of his closest living relatives. My contacting them out of the blue as a stranger seeking permission to perform an unfamiliar religious ritual on behalf, essentially, of two total strangers wouldn’t have made much sense to them even if I were somehow able to find those closest currently living relatives.

Temples are springing up around the globe. I’m confident that the work for Frenchy and Wanda will be done, and in the not too distant future.

This is just more disingenuous silliness from my Malevolent Stalker and his small claque over at the POB. And, of course, my response won’t make any difference to them. They’ll simply (and shortly) open up a new angle of attack. But I thought it worthwhile, at the least, to confirm my understanding of Church rules regarding the submission of names for temple ordinances. So it wasn’t a waste of time at all.

Yes to Heavenly Reunions

April 19, 2024 By Dan Peterson

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Land of Nephi? — In the Guatemalan highlands, near Antigua
(Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge.)

“The Unwritten Debates in Moroni₁’s Letter,” written by Morgan Deane

Abstract: Moroni₁’s letter in Alma 60 is not simply an angry and intemperate screed against the government; it also responds to arguments about just tactics (what modern readers would call ethics) taking place among Nephite leaders at this time. Moroni₁’s letter argues for his preferred strategies of active defense and ambush, while interpreting defeat as a failure of leaders. His rhetorical strategy is particularly noteworthy for associating his Nephite opponents’ hopeful trust in the Lord with the passive resistance of the king-men, and shifting blame for defeat away from his strategies and onto his political opponents. Overall, Moroni₁’s arguments exemplify sophistication and debate within Nephite thought.

[Editor’s Note: This paper is adapted from chapters 4–6 of Morgan Deane, To Stop a Slaughter: The Book of Mormon and the Just War Tradition (self-published, Venice Press, forthcoming, 2024).]

“Interpreting Interpreter: Captain Moroni’s Hidden Debates,” written by Kyler Rasmussen

This post is a summary of the article “The Unwritten Debates in Moroni₁’s Letter” by Morgan Deane in Volume 61 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.

The Takeaway: Deane suggests that Moroni’s letter to Pahoran argues implicitly against taking a passive approach to military threats—and in favor of placing the blame for defeat at the hands of political leadership—in response to debates that may have been taking place within the Nephite political and military hierarchy.

“An Exceptional Example of the Richness of Church History,” written by Susan Easton Black

Review of Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Emer Harris & Dennison Lott Harris: Owner of the First Copy of the Book of Mormon, Witness of the “Last Charge” of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2023). 235 pages, 67 illustrations, appendix, references, $29.00 (paperback).

Abstract: Jeffrey Bradshaw has, in a single well-researched volume, provided a gift to those interested in the lives of early Church members. In Emer Harris & Dennison Lott Harris, Bradshaw brings out of obscurity the remarkable life of one of Martin Harris’s brothers and illustrates the contribution of that life to the initial decades of the Restoration.

Jordan's image of Zuccola — Michael Zuccola as the young David Whitmer in the Interpreter Foundation theatrical film, “Witnesses” and the Interpreter docudrama “Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon”
(Still photograph by James Jordan)

In other news: I recommend this very brief TikTok item to you and to all your family and friends: “David Whitmer Testifies of the Book of Mormon”

I routinely see a very great deal of online nonsense about Joseph Smith’s legal and courtroom experiences. This should help raise the level of discourse on the subject: “The Joseph Smith Papers Project Releases ‘Legal Records: Case Introductions’”

“Do Latter-day Saints really attend church more often? Smartphone data may hold answers: A University of Chicago researcher found that about 1 in 345 Americans are weekly church-attending Latter-day Saints”

Where my parents' bodies lie — A view of Rose Hills Memorial Park, in Whittier, California, where my parents and paternal grandparents and many other of my relatives are buried. It’s sacred ground for me.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Slightly more than three weeks ago, I recounted the little story — not for the first time — about an encounter that my wife and I had with a sorrowing widower whom we met while we were visiting the cemetery in Southern California where the bodies of my parents rest. (See “Elegiac Thoughts On Why It Matters So Very, Very Much.”) As always, my Malevolent Stalker — who is maliciously creative but not stupid (at least, not in the conventional sense) — has attempted to twist that little story into a yet another redundant demonstration that I’m callously cruel, hypocritical, and just generally depraved and of monstrously bad character. (I’m not inclined to get into the details here. The myth that he has tried to create — backed by revelations from supposed “informants,” no less — is so convoluted that I honestly don’t even quite understand what I’m supposed to have done, or why I did it. Or didn’t do it. Or something. Anyway, it’s bizarre, and it’s flatly false. But, weirdly, the Stalker’s fictional tale even includes one of the regular commenters here, who apparently serves — somehow — among my “lackeys.” Maybe I’ll tell my “lackey”; I think he would be amused.)

“Folks,” gushes the Stalker’s talentless Mini-Me wannabe while obsequiously licking his Master’s boots, “you just can’t make this stuff up!” To which the obvious answer is, “Clearly, you can.”

Anyhow, one of the accusations launched in this particular Stalker attack on me is that, when I expressed happiness at the fact that — as I believe — Frenchy Morrell has finally been reunited with his wife, Wanda, who had died nearly three decades before, I was lying. (Since I’m always lying, of course, I’m not sure why this particular lie should be news. But then, I can’t really make sense of the Stalker’s thinking on any level, so why should I hope to understand him this time?)

How does he know that I was lying? Because, being a Latter-day Saint, I know that Frenchy Morrell won’t be reunited with his wife, since they weren’t sealed for all eternity in a Latter-day Saint temple. (I think, in fact, that I’m supposed to feel contemptuously superior about this, and to rejoice in the inferiority of non-Latter-day Saints. Or something like that. I haven ‘t really spent a lot of time studying the Stalker’s demonology. I don’t even know whether he genuinely believes it or whether it’s some kind of gaslighting joke — and, after approximately two decades of it, I don’t particularly care.)

So I think that I’ll state here what I actually think about this question: No, Frenchy and Wanda hadn’t been sealed in a Latter-day Saint temple. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t see or know each other in the world of spirits. Absence of a temple sealing simply means that spouses are no longer married (“till death do us part,” after all) and that families aren’t organized any more as families. (But vicarious temple dealings can and will be offered to all who have gone on before us.) However, I’ve read hundreds upon hundreds of accounts of near-death experiences in which those who have entered into the next life have been met upon their arrival by previously deceased spouses and other family members. So I have absolutely no doubt that Frenchy was greeted by Wanda, and that they were reunited after their long separation. Which is wonderfully good news. And eventually, they will be offered the opportunity to have their marriage made eternal.

Tissot had seen the place — A depiction of Christ delivering the Sermon on the Mount by James Tissot (1836-1902)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image

Finally, as is my frequent practice here, I close with something from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™: “Zion with God’s Most Unlikely Children: My Journey to The Other Side… Academy,” written by our friend Joseph Grenny. At their request, my wife and I organized — and accompanied Joseph and a number of other leaders of The Other Side Academy (TOSA), including Dave Durocher, on — a tour of Egypt back in January. Just in case I haven’t been clear enough heretofore, please permit me to try again: Both my wife and I had already been deeply, deeply, deeply impressed by what is going on at TOSA and its related undertakings. And we came away from that Egyptian tour more deeply impressed than ever before. It’s one of the most amazing things that I’ve ever seen.

Offense and Defense

March 11, 2024 By Dan Peterson

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A football game — A Sunday visitor to the United States from an alien planet might be pardoned for deducing, at certain times of the year, that football is the central ritual of America’s national religion.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I think that apologetics, as such, is inevitable. Stripped of specifically religious elements, it’s merely the defense of a position. Scholars defend positions all the time, as they should. So do all the rest of us.

Whenever there is disagreement — e.g., over religion, politics, political candidates, even favorite restaurants or best vacation destinations — there will be affirmative statements and there will negative ones. “The food is wonderful there.” “Maybe, but the service is really, really slow.” “It’s such a pretty place.” “It’s too crowded.” “Senator Foghorn’s foreign policy stance toward the Duchy of Grand Fenwick seems to me very effective.” “I disagree, it relies too much on repeated nuclear strikes and too little on regular deliveries of fresh-baked blueberry pies.”

That is more or less what I have in mind when I distinguish, as I commonly do, between “positive apologetics” and “negative apologetics.” But I want to be very clear about that distinction, as I use it.

By “negative apologetics,” I don’t mean attacking other positions, let alone other people — to say nothing of nastiness and mean-spiritedness. (When I speak of “offense,” I’m not counseling that we be “offensive.”) I realize that my image, in certain quarters, is that I’m a vicious, hardhearted, conscienceless, polemical hack. But even if that characterization were accurate — which I’m halfway inclined to contest — it would have nothing at all to do with what I’m saying here.

What I mean by “negative apologetics” is defending a position — whether that position be religious or not — against attack. It is comparable to playing defense in football. In baseball, it’s what one team is doing when the other team is “at bat.” They’re trying to prevent a score. I judge “negative apologetics” to be essential, and I regard it as just as justifiable, both morally and intellectually, as what I’ve called “positive apologetics.”

What, though, is “positive apologetics”? What I mean by the term is the provision of affirmative reasons for accepting a proposition or adopting a belief. It is what we often call advocacy. One might compare it to a football offense or to being “at bat” in a baseball game.

I see no reason to regard one as legitimate and the other as illegitimate. And, although some claim that no form of apologetics is legitimate, well, I see absolutely no reason to agree with that.

Suppose that Scientist X argues that nature is more important than nurture in the formation of human personality. He cites evidence and reasons to support his claim. In that case, he is doing something essentially like positive apologetics. Is there anything wrong with doing so? Not that I can see.

Faced with Scientist X’s claim, Scientist Y disagrees, and he publishes an article disputing Scientist X’s evidence and reasons.

It would be rather odd if Scientist X, while still holding his view, were to chastely decline to defend his position, declaring such defense morally illegitimate. But if he were to respond by attempting to rebut Scientist Y’s objections, he would, in that case, simply be doing a form of negative apologetics.

It is entirely legitimate to argue that the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon are credible. Such an argument would be positive apologetics. It is every bit as legitimate to seek to rebut claims that Oliver Cowdery denied his testimony, that Martin Harris was an unstable loon, or that David Whitmer isn’t a reliable source. In each case, the counterargument would be negative apologetics.

And that is what I mean by the terms.

Thus, to restate my opinion as clearly as I know how to do: Both positive and negative apologetics are, in my judgment, entirely legitimate — just as offense and defense are entirely legitimate in football and just as both batting and fielding are entirely legitimate in baseball.

Looking southward across BYU — A south-looking view of part of the campus of Brigham Young University, from the BYU website. During my more than three and a half decades of teaching at the University, I had hundreds and hundreds of students.

Over at the Peterson Obsession Board, denigrating and mocking Stephen Smoot (presumably because he threatens their position) is a popular occasional pastime, as is, much less frequently, lionizing Dan McClellan (because they esteem him, whether correctly or not, as a potent weapon against Latter-day Saint apologetics and Latter-day Saint beliefs). Recently “Dumb-Dud” and my Mini-Stalker have teamed up there to use me in this game, and I think that I need to contradict their abuse of me (and of Brothers Smoot and McClellan) now, before it settles into the record as being true:

Supposedly, I have somewhere pronounced Dan McClellan the best student that I ever had. But Steve Smoot, they say, also took several classes from me while he was a student at BYU, and so, therefore, my identification of Dan McClellan as my all-time best student must surely fill Brother Smoot with shame and jealousy and sadness.

However, I don’t believe that Steve Smoot ever took a class from me at BYU. (He can correct me on that if I’m wrong.) And I have never said that Dan McClellan was the best student that I ever had at BYU. I’ve never even said that about anybody privately. Nor would I ever say it publicly — not least for the very reason that I wouldn’t want to cause other good students to feel relatively devalued. I’ve said, yes, that Dan was a very good student. But I haven’t crowned a “best student ever,” not even in my own mind. There are several past students who, if I ever cared to do so, would definitely be in the competition.

Apostle Patrick Kearon — Elder Patrick Kearon, of the Council of the Twelve (LDS. org)

“Elder Patrick Kearon Shares Ramadan Greeting with Muslims around the World”

I join my greeting with his. I’m aware that this blog has at least a few Muslim readers around the world, and I wish them all a Ramadan Mubarak, a Ramadan Kareem.

Of Nuance

November 16, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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A pensive JS — On the set of “Six Days in August,” Brigham Young ponders what to do in the aftermath of the assassination of Joseph Smith.

Why do I pay attention to the Peterson Obsession Board? My nickname for it explains the reason. I look in on the POB several times each week because, on a daily basis for something like the past fifteen years — in other words, for however long it has existed — I have been a regular target there and, arguably, the single principal target, for criticism, mockery, and, yes, character assassination and defamation. It’s the only anti-Mormon website to which I pay any kind of regular notice, and that is entirely because, every single week of every single year, and pretty much daily, I’m a significant target there.

The late Richard Lloyd Anderson, an admirable scholar and truly a saintly man if I’ve ever met one, was profoundly and strikingly indifferent to attacks on his scholarship and on himself. He wasn’t even curious about them and he paid no attention to them. If I ever mentioned to him something unpleasant that I had read about him, he would simply chuckle and move on to something that interested him more. On the only two occasions that I can recall offhand where he responded to criticisms, he did so because I pestered him into doing so. I always found his attitude amazing, and I cannot claim such indifference. I am curious about the accusations (of unethical and even illegal acts, cruelty, incompetent buffoonery, brazen dishonesty, and the like) that are made about me.

I respond to them relatively rarely, though. (To take two very recent examples: The suggestion from the always-mendacious Everybody’s WC that I’m gleefully happy about civilian deaths in Gaza is too contemptible to merit response, and my Malevolent Stalker’s claim that I’ve expressly declared my intent to make Six Days in August an anti-Community of Christ film is a flat-out lie. As he knows perfectly well, I’ve explicitly said the contrary, and more than once.) Replying to such accusations could easily become my full-time job. That is why, many years ago, I gave up responding over at the POB itself. Answering accusations and defending myself did no good and was wasting too much of my time.

Sometimes, though, an issue is raised at the POB that isn’t about me — they do also discuss topics other than Daniel Peterson there, and, on rare occasions, even do so relatively substantively — to which I think it worthwhile to respond. In this regard, I see the POB as a helpful and efficient way of monitoring the currently popular themes among secularizing critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I’ve long since ceased to look for serious dialogue with the folks there. When I participated on the POB, the discussions, such as they were, invariably descended into criticisms of my honesty and personal character. It was boring. Even now, though, the criticisms of me and of what I say here on this blog, which they watch faithfully, every day, rarely rise above the disappointing, when they reach even that level.

Take, for example, the recent back and forth about whether Brigham Young was a homicidal tyrant and a bully, which I contended (and continue to contend) is a crude caricature. (In deference to the folks over at the POB, let’s call this judgment of Brigham Young, that he was a homicidal tyrant and a bully, the Nuanced View, or NV.) In support of the NV, the proprietor of the POB (who has also favored the Spalding Manuscript theory for the origin of the Book of Mormon, and may still do so) recommended a list of four nineteenth-century specimens of potboiler anti-Mormonism, which he apparently regards as fully trustworthy historical documents with regard to Brigham Young

I countered with what, in order to distinguish it from the Nuanced View, we might call the Simpleminded Whitewashed View, or SWV. In my exposition of the SWV — and true to my failure to recognize historical nuances — I contended that Brigham Young was a complex figure and I suggested, among other books, a pair of academic biographies of Brigham Young, by the respected professional historians Leonard Arrington and Thomas Alexander, that one might wish to read in order to obtain a more balanced view of the man and his life, “neither of which,” I said, “can fairly be classed as an uncritical hagiography.”

Here are a couple of my other previous comments, from my first post (“Some thoughts on reading about Brigham Young”) and my second post (“Brigham Young, homicidal tyrant and bully?”) on this topic:

“A full-orbed view of any given historical topic must pay attention to negative and critical accounts. Of course. But it isn’t obliged to give them full faith and credit.”

“Was Brigham, by our enlightened and educated twenty-first-century standards, a rough-spoken frontiersman whose rhetoric and whose views on race and criminal justice and many other issues sometimes jar us? Absolutely. But that’s only part of the truth about him.”

As could confidently have been predicted, the tut-tutting about my espousal of a Simpleminded Whitewashed View of Brigham Young has continued.

According to what might be called the Nuanced View of me, why do I mention the full name of Wife No. 19 as Ann Eliza Webb Dee Young Denning? It’s because, for some quite inscrutable and seemingly irrelevant reason, I suddenly want to stigmatize all divorced people as unreliable — and not because the thrice-divorced Ann Eliza’s behavior toward her husbands before and after Brigham Young (and toward her son thereafter) seems, as Hugh Nibley pointed out decades ago, to say something directly relevant about her.

I didn’t recommend those five Simpleminded Whitewashed books as a counterpoint to the Nuanced View (which, remember, is that Brigham Young was a homicidal tyrant, bully, and thug). Oh no. It seems that I cannot countenance any criticism of Brother Brigham or any other leader of the Church of Jesus Christ, living or dead. And only hagiographic treatments of them should be read. Brigham Young may have been called “the Lion of the Lord” by some of his contemporaries, but I want to insist that he was a flawless and perfectly saintly lamb. Moreover, I don’t feel any obligation to be fair, or understanding, or nuanced in my view of Brigham Young, Church leaders, and the history of the Church as a whole. They were and are perfect. And anyone that I perceive to be criticizing or attacking the Church is, by definition, unjustified and wrong, and perhaps even mentally ill, and my response to such a person will always be robotic and predictable.

Pay attention, folks, and learn. Behold! That is nuance.

Posted from Richmond, Virginia

In Hurricane

October 2, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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Courtesy of Russell Richins, a still photograph from the set of “Six Days in August,” currently in production near Rochester, New York

Over on the Peterson Obsession Board, there is a poster who goes by the pseudonym Everybody’s WC, or something of that sort. One of his odd specialities through the years has been inventing fictions about me that, unless and until he’s called on them, he tries to pass off as true. Among his most egregious lies was claiming to have been an unbelieving bishop who went on one of the tours that I led to Israel in order to observe at first hand my buffoonish antics and my shameless falsehoods. But that’s only one among many such instances. It’s pretty safe to assume, whenever he pretends to know me well or to have damning inside information on me from, say, my neighbors, my university colleagues, my former Maxwell Institute associates, my fellow volunteers in the Interpreter Foundation, and so on — he’s claimed all of these on various occasions — that he’s either lying or, much less likely, that he’s being played.

A few days ago, supposedly on the basis of intelligence from his supposed network of supposed informants, Everybody’s WC revealed to his eagerly credulous marks that relations between me and Mike Parker (aka “Peter Pan”) have grown frosty because of my refusal to come to Mike’s defense when his identity as the person behind the invaluable Neville-Neville Land blog came to public light. Since that was the first that I had ever heard of such “frost,” I wrote to Mike to ask him about it and to inquire whether he needed me to act in some way or to do something that I hadn’t. This is his reply, which I share here with his kind permission:

Now that I’ve picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard that I was wheezing, I can say no, there’s nothing that I need from you.
Honestly, where do these people get this stuff? There is not even a shadow of a thread of truth in his claim.

Not surprisingly, a gullible member of the audience for whom Everybody’s WC performs responded very quickly by reminding them of a previous act of similar disloyalty on my part: When my late and lamented friend Bill Hamblin was involved in an informal but public online debate with a prominent non-Latter-day Saint academic about the historicity of the Book of Mormon, I did not come to his assistance despite the fact (as they imagine it to be) that he was being badly beaten and publicly humiliated. This, of course, further confirms the verdict of Everybody’s WC, that I am [an unrepeatable epithet].

However, back in the day when that claim about my alleged disloyalty to Bill was all the buzz at the Obsession Board, I dropped a note to Bill about it. I explained to him that I had judged him to be doing just fine in his back-and-forth with Professor X, and that I hadn’t thought that he needed any help. Still, I asked, had he felt that I had let him down? Quite seriously and honestly, I wanted to know. No, he responded. He hadn’t needed any help, and I hadn’t let him down at all or left him twisting in the wind.

(I expect that the usual suspects will claim that I’m lying about that exchange with Bill, but it’s authentic. It’s just that I have literally thousands of notes from Bill and see little value in spending the time to comb through them all in order to find it: The Obsession Board would just dismiss it anyway.)

Mostly, I don’t respond to the myth-making of my Malevolent Stalker and of his less-talented wannabe, Everybody’s WC. Doing so in every case would be the equivalent of a full-time job, and not a very satisfying one. Now and again, though, I feel that I need to flatly deny some of the allegations, lest, unchallenged, they become a permanent part of my online “biography.” I apologize for taking the time and space here for so unworthy a subject.

MAAY just before marring BY — Mary Ann Angell, at her wedding with the widower Brigham Young

To change the tone pretty completely, here’s a wonderful undertaking at Brigham Young University that you might find of interest. It is headed up by my friend and former department chairman, Professor Dana Bourgerie: “The Cambodian Oral History Project”

And here’s something new on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Interpreter Radio Show — September 17, 2023

In the 17 September 2023 episode of The Interpreter Radio Show, Bruce Webster, Kris Frederickson, and Robert Boylan discussed Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 42 during the first hour and then were joined during the second hour by Janiece Johnson to discuss her new book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. You can listen to or download the 17 September 2023 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show at the link provided just above.

The “New Testament in Context” portion of this show, for the Come, Follow Me New Testament lesson 42, “I Can Do All Things through Christ Which Strengtheneth Me” on Philippians and Colossians, will also be posted, separately, on Tuesday, October 3.

The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.

These archived recordings have been edited to remove commercial breaks.

they're actually married, of course — Newly married, Brigham Young and Mary Ann Angell Young walk home together.

We are briefly down here in southern Utah in order to attend the open house, tomorrow, of the renovated St. George Utah Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This pioneer temple, the oldest still functioning in the Church, holds a special place in my heart and in the history of my family, as well as in the history of the Church itself. We’re staying with friends, former neighbors, who have moved down this direction. The view from their house (in just about every direction) is perfectly astonishing. (Their backyard vista probably covers about 170 degrees. And the view from the front of the house is magnificent, too.) On a partly cloudy day that has been washed clean by rain, we watched the light of the descending sun move across Pine Valley Mountain, the peaks of Kolob Canyon, and a broad expanse of Zion National Park. We enjoyed dinner out on their veranda. It’s difficult to say which was better, the food or the view.

Posted from Hurricane, Utah

“Religion builds hospitals. Science builds hydrogen bombs.”

September 21, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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What the bomb left — The fruits of science? This photo shows Hiroshima after the explosion of the atomic bomb there on 6 August 1945.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

A few days ago, I published a post here in which I replied to the silly atheist slogan “Science flies men to the moon. Religion flies planes into buildings.” Responding to my response, an occasional participant on the Peterson Obsession Board who does not appear to be as reflexively hostile to theism as many of the others there — an (American?) physicist teaching in Germany who has never been a Latter-day Saint — offered an alternative slogan: “Religion builds hospitals. Science builds hydrogen bombs.” Given his profession as a physicist and the recent box office success of the biographical film Oppenheimer, it’s a fairly obvious riposte. And it’s certainly at least as “true” (which is to say, at least as much of a caricature and very nearly as false) as the first one.

However, one of the regulars on the Obsession Board quickly answered that the revised slogan isn’t really available to Latter-day Saints, since the (greedy, unfeeling, uncharitable) Church doesn’t build hospitals.

But this is deeply misleading. As the Wikipedia article on “Intermountain Health” explains, “Intermountain Health [initially “Intermountain Healthcare”] was founded on April 1, 1975, after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated fifteen hospitals, as a system, to what would become Intermountain Health.” Moreover, the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ positively overflows with examples of the Church not only providing humanitarian aid around the globe but donating cash and medical equipment and the like to clinics in impoverished areas. I’ve been posting account after account after account here of such donations.

In a curiously related matter, I read a post online at another location in which a critic blamed Utah’s high rates of obesity and diabetes on Latter-day Saint culture. Others immediately joined the chorus of condemnation. So l looked up data, by state, on obesity (also here, where Utah ranked thirty-seventh of the fifty states) and diabetes.

My question is whether the folks who make such allegations ever consult anything, before they post, beside their burning hostility toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Girls' camp girls — The fruits of religion: Three authentic young Latter-day Saint women at a girls’ camp
(LDS.org)

I’m always astounded when I see confident declarations that there simply were no Book of Mormon plates. One might imagine, given the consistent testimony of multiple, seemingly credible eyewitnesses to the literal, tangible, physical existence of those plates, that folks who flatly deny that existence would want to cite some evidence or present some kind of an argument.

Although I judge them to be manifestly losing arguments, I can easily understand those who want to contend that all of the seventeen or eighteen witnesses (or more) who claim to have seen, hefted, and/or handled the plates were either hallucinating or lying. But one should probably advance some evidence and an argument to that effect, if one cares at all about being taken seriously. I can also imagine arguing that there were plates, but that they were in some sense bogus. In such a case too, though, one should probably at least nod in the direction of evidence and rational argument.

But to simply, complacently, announce — without even the slightest attempt to justify the assertion — that Joseph Smith never possessed any actual plates of any kind? That’s not worthy of being taken seriously. It’s not a serious position.

In response, I offer the relevant historical works of Richard Lloyd Anderson as a starter (notably Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses), as well as the films Witnesses and Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, the Interpreter Foundation’s series of Insights videos, and the Witnesses of the Book of Mormon website. After that, I can point to still more.

Godzilla recharging his batteries — A representative product of science — in this case, specifically of nuclear physics. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)

Let’s assume, for the moment and for purposes of discussion, that absolutely every accusation made against Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad is true, even the most lurid ones. (I have no particular reason, personally, to believe that any of the accusations is true, but I could easily be wrong.)

Over on the Peterson Obsession Board, my Malevolent Stalker is suggesting that I resign from my role in the Interpreter Foundation and with the Foundation’s Six Days in August film project because of the cloud that my close association with OUR and Tim Ballard has put them under. My close association? Somebody over there even described us as “close friends.”

But, so far as I’m aware, I’ve never met Tim Ballard nor even corresponded with him or spoken with him. I read about OUR’s efforts to liberate children from sexual servitude, thought it an exceptionally noble cause, decided to donate money to support it, and decided to invite others to do so. That’s it. (Also at about that time, I did the same with respect to what is now called the Bountiful Children’s Foundation.)

Baseless suggestions that I was attracted to OUR precisely because of its allegedly abusive and corrupt character — relatively recent charges that are, as yet, quite undemonstrated — are too contemptible to merit serious comment.

Another charge that is being leveled on the Obsession Board claims that the alleged actions of Tim Ballard are indicative of the evils done by religion. To which I respond, Really? Seriously? In the cases found in the illustrious Hitchens File™, the actions described are motivated by religious belief and, quite commonly, sponsored and/or organized by a religious organization. Can anybody seriously maintain that Tim Ballard became too physically intimate with women other than his wife (as some have charged, though thus far over his denials and without demonstrating it to be true, and without indictment, let alone conviction) in accordance with the teachings of his Church rather than in direct opposition to them?

A Genesee farmer and his family pose for a photo — A representative product of religion: A happy, faithful, nineteenth-century family — that of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. James Jordan persuaded them to sit for this informal family portrait — perhaps the first ever taken in color — during production of the Interpreter Foundation’s “Witnesses” film.

But let’s get back to some relatively recent materials from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:

That should do for now to give at least some slight sense of the horrors inflicted upon humankind by religions and religious people. When will it ever end?

Posted from Park City, Utah

A Baptismal Witness of the Covenant

September 15, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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dpsa[0908u7dgfya. m Ribble ordinances — A scene from the set of “Six Days in August: Baptisms during the mission of the Twelve to England

Two new articles went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:

“Witness of the Covenant,” written by Loren Blake Spendlove

Abstract: Although much has been taught about covenants in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, little attention has been given to the witnesses of those covenants. In this paper I focus on the importance of witnessing the covenants that we make with God — especially the gospel covenant — rather than on the process of making them. Instead of emphasizing the teachings of Latter-day Saint leaders and authors, I prioritize the standard works of the Church in my analysis of this topic. I begin with a discussion of covenants and witnesses in the Hebrew Bible, and then proceed with an examination of the same from the Book of Mormon. I identify the ordinances of baptism and the sacrament as witnesses of the gospel covenant and clarify that it is through the blood of Christ that we are cleansed from sin rather than through the waters of baptism. I conclude by observing the importance of faithfully witnessing the gospel covenant to serve God and keep his commandments.

“Interpreting Interpreter: A Baptismal Witness,” written by Kyler Rasmussen

This post is a summary of the article “Witness of the Covenant” by Loren Blake Spendlove in Volume 58 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.

The Takeaway: Spendlove outlines examples of “witnesses”—signs or tokens that accompany scriptural covenants—and argues that the ordinances of baptism and the sacrament are intended to be witnesses to covenants rather than the covenants themselves. He believes that covenantal witnesses should receive greater emphasis in gospel teaching, to the point that we could encourage individuals to enter a covenant to live the gospel even before being baptized.

ai87ytufghbjdkop'a;poyeuhf;vbeubvuejnbwnniejwj — Director Mark Goodman discusses a scene in “Six Days in August” with some of the actors.

Today is Day 5 of filming for the Interpreter Foundation’s new Six Days in August movie project — I’m grateful to Russell Richins and James Jordan for sharing still photographs of the work thus far — and the critical reviews are already rolling in!

Over at the Peterson Obsession Board, my longtime Malevolent Stalker points out that the clothing used in Six Days in August (which is primarily set in rural frontier America during the period 1828-1844) is embarrassingly similar to the costuming in our previous film, Witnesses (which is primarily set in rural frontier America during the period 1828-1844). But I have a defense against this complaint: Most people on the American frontier during the Jacksonian era of the early Republic were simply unable to afford the leopard-skin tights, sequined propeller beanies, leather lace-up Brunello Cucinelli hiking boots, Sergeant Pepper’s jackets with epaulets and tassels, and retro designer sunglasses that the Stalker favors for daily wear. We’re just trying to be accurate to the place and the period.

Mark sets up a scene — More direction from director Mark Goodman, from the set of “Six Days in August”

Coming home this afternoon, I was pleased to find among our mail a package containing two copies of a new book: Avram R. Shannon and Kerry Hull, eds., A Hundredth Part: Exploring the History and Teachings of the Book of Mormon (Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2023). An accompanying note explained that

This volume represents some of the more compelling articles on the Book of Mormon that have been previously published in numerous Religious Studies Center publications. Each has advanced the field of Book of Mormon studies in unique and innovative ways and have provided insights into the doctrine, history, and message of the Book of Mormon.

Here’s the background of the two editors:

Avram Shannon is an assistant professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He was born in Quantico, Virginia, and spent most of his young life in Virginia. He earned a BA in ancient Near Eastern studies from Brigham Young University (2007), a master of studies in Jewish studies from the University of Oxford (2008), and a PhD in Near Eastern languages and cultures with a graduate interdisciplinary specialization in religions of the ancient Mediterranean from The Ohio State University (2015).

Kerry Hull is a professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. He earned a BA in Spanish and BA in French in 1992 from Utah State University. He received an MS in applied linguistics from Georgetown University in 1993. He completed a PhD in linguistic anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. His academic interests include Maya linguistics and anthropology, Polynesian linguistics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and Maya epigraphic studies. He has conducted linguistic, ethnographic, and archaeological fieldwork in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. He specializes in the language and culture of the Ch’orti’ Maya of southern Guatemala.

The book — I doubt that any Bengali edition actually exists! — contains nineteen chapters, including an introduction by President Dallin H. Oaks and articles by such writers as (among others) Jared Ludlow, Andrew Skinner, Noel Reynolds, Jennifer Lane, Joseph Spencer, Jan Martin, Ugo Perego, Dana Pike, John Gee, Matthew Roper, and RoseAnn Benson.

I’m pleased to say that my own article on “Priesthood in Mosiah” is also included in A Hundredth Part, though not in the expanded form that I prefer, which appeared as Daniel C. Peterson, “Authority in the Book of Mosiah,” in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 18/1 (2006): 149-185.

Brigham Young is sick — but not of Mark Goodman’s directorial counsel!

Finally, I have no plans to move to Moab in the immediate future. But I was pleased to discover that Moab possesses one of the assets that are absolutely necessary to civilized life: at least one good Thai restaurant. With our friends, we enjoyed a really tasty meal at Thai Bella. I recommend it for whenever you’re there in Moab, or at Arches National Park, or at Canyonlands, or at Dead Horse Point. It’s a wonderful way to finish off a day of wonders.

Should heaven make a difference on earth?

May 28, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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Dr. Mary Neal — Mary C. Neal, MD
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

Mary C. Neal, MD, is an orthopedic surgeon (“fellowship-trained as a spinal surgeon”) who earned her medical degree in the School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and completed her orthopedic residency at the University of Southern California (USC). Like her husband, who is also a physician, she lives and practices medicine in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In January of 1999, she suffered a catastrophic kayaking accident on a river in a remote area of Chile and had an extraordinary near-death experience. She recounted that experience in To Heaven and Back, which reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Here, I will share some passages that I marked during my reading of Mary C. Neal, 7 Lessons from Heaven: How Dying Taught Me to Live a Joy-Filled Life (New York: Convergent Books, 2017.

A 2009 study conducted at the Pew Research Center demonstrated that more than 30 percent of Americans say that have “felt to be in touch with someone who has already died,” and nearly half of all Americans claim to have had a religious or mystical experience (defined as “a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening”), including 18 percent of self-described atheists, agnostics, and the secularly unaffiliated. What’s more, 13 percent claim to have seen or sensed the presence of an angel in the previous year, and at least 5 percent have had a near-death experience. (224)

In 7 Lessons from Heaven, Dr. Neal shares several stories other than her own. Here is one such account:

Lynn died on an operating room table and had a near-death experience. She saw her sobbing parents in a nearby room, but once she realized they would be fine, as she tells it now, she entered a horizontal tunnel leading to a bright light from which emerged two of her previously deceased and beloved dogs. They were radiating brilliance from within, and she felt nothing but gratitude when they came running to her and joyfully smothered her with kisses. They accompanied her as she walked toward a light that she described as a warm, loving thing that contained all colors. She saw many people, including her grandparents and an uncle; everyone glowed with an inner light. Before returning to her physical body, she was able to ask Jesus whether it was true, as her elementary-school teacher had told her, that she had been given a lifelong heart condition so she would have a cross to carry like He had. She heard the voice of Christ vibrate through her as He said, “No, this heart condition is a challenge to help you grow and stay compassionate.” (158)

And here is a brief account from “Justin,” in Fort Worth, Texas:

I worked for the phone company when I was a young man and got electrocuted one day when I was up on a telephone pole. The first thing I remember was looking down from somewhere in the sky and seeing one of my buddies doing CPR. I felt peaceful and surrounded by God’s love. When I started moving down a bright path, I recognized my grandpa. He told me to “go back,” and suddenly I was in the ambulance. I tried to tell my wife about this, but she told me that it was just because I hit my head. I never told anyone else until now, and that was thirty-two years ago. (224-225)

Another report comes from “Cindy,” in Midland, Michigan:

When I was three years old, I fell off a dock when no one was looking. I didn’t know how to swim and immediately sank to the bottom of the lake. I had the most loving encounter with Jesus. He held my hand while we talked but then told me I couldn’t stay.

Suddenly, I popped to the surface right by the shore. My brother laughed and said I was lying when I told him I fell in and met Jesus. So I kept it to myself for many, many years. I remember this like it was yesterday and have never forgotten how much love I felt. (225)

Permit me to just comment here that, although more than a few accounts of near-death experiences mention encountering Jesus, I’m inclined to think that, in almost all of these experiences, the personage who is met is not Jesus. Worldwide, there are something on the order of 335,000 deaths per day, which means that there are approximately 14,000 deaths per hour and not quite 250 deaths per minute. I understand that time may function rather differently in the next world, but I still doubt that Jesus is personally present in even a significant percentage of deaths. Indeed, most NDE accounts don’t report encounters with Jesus, though a fair proportion do mention a “being of light” who often remains unidentified but, when named, is sometimes variously identified (often with the name of a prophet or holy personage from the religious background of the person relating the experience). There are relatively few cases in which the personage explicitly and verbally identifies himself as Jesus. (Are there any? Probably.) I expect that, in very many of these cases, the dying individual who feels strong love and acceptance emanating from a glorious person simply identifies that person as the most holy figure he or she can name (e.g., Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna, etc.). Doctrine and Covenants 1:38 may be apropos here, with the Lord declaring that “my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.”

ETA: On the other hand, as a friend writes to remind me — I read both of Dr. Neal’s books quite some time ago, and am only now extracting my notes from this one — her own description of her experience seems clearly to indicate an encounter with Jesus. (I don’t have the book with me at the moment to look.) I have no reason to believe that such encounters don’t occur. In fact, I think they probably do. On a slightly different front, at least two other people claim that I’m now admitting that NDEs are all purely subjective or imaginary, but that isn’t my position at all. Quite the contrary. I’m simply saying that, when encountering a being of glorious light, perfect compassion, and supreme holiness, it’s entirely to be expected that near-death experiencers from Christian backgrounds would be inclined to identify that being as Jesus. And that there is actually sound theological reason (in the principle of divine investiture) for the “error.” (Over on the Peterson Obsession Board, my Malevolent Stalker says that I’ve accused NDErs of “lying.” Consider the source. No further response is necessary.)

Finally, I share a reflection from Dr. Neal that I found important:

Your life and mine today can look radically different because of the reality of heaven. Or you can decide you’re mildly intrigued by the stories . . . and walk away unchanged. If you walk, you would be deciding that every account, including mine, falls into the category of heartwarming stories — sweet, something you might even return to in the future, but not something that alters your thinking and remakes your heart and soul. . . .

I want to show you how your life can be different because of what you’ve discovered. I want to rescue you from a sweet but ultimately unimportant story time for grown-ups.

Make no mistake, this is extremely serious business. Today, I know without a doubt that this world is separated by the thinnest of veils from the next, and that both worlds belong to God. I know now that you and I already live right next to, even inside of, eternity, and that one day, the veil between it and time — along with all its schedules, clocks, tragedies, and eons of history — will vanish. On that day, everything that happened in time will be made good, right, and beautiful by God himself. (191-192)

Hearts of Darkness

May 22, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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These are great photos — James Jordan, Elder Willy Binene, Léon (driver), Jeff Bradshaw, and Russ Richins after returning to Mbuji-Mayi following a long jeep ride from Luputa.

Another note, inspired by John W . Welch, et al., eds., Knowing Why: 137 Evidences That the Book of Mormon Is True (American Fork: Covenant Communications, 2017), and very relevant to the two Interpreter articles that I mentioned in my blog entry for last Friday:

“What Is It to Speak with the Tongue of Angels?” (143-145)

2 Nephi 32:2 seems to suggest an implicit doctrine of human deification in the Book of Mormon — a text from which, critics have alleged, the Nauvoo-period teaching of human exaltation is wholly absent.

To this, I would add 3 Nephi 28:10, where the Nephite disciples are promised that “ye shall be even as I am, and I am even as the Father; and the Father and I are one.”

In an analogy to the transitive property of equivalence known from mathematics — according to which, if a=b and b=c, it follows necessarily that a=c — if the disciples will be like the Son, and the Son is like the Father, the disciples will be like the Father.

Congolese baptism — A group of members reenacting the baptism of Elder Binene and others in Lac Golf, Kolwezi.

If one is in just the right mood, the Peterson Obsession Board can be a weirdly amusing place, as well as a psychologically fascinating one. In recent days, the PO Board has taken predictably negative note of the Interpreter Foundation’s current film project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (See the photographs accompanying this blog entry, as well as those featured here, here, and here.)

Jeff Bradshaw, who serves as the Interpreter Foundation’s director of special projects and on its board, conceived the idea of a film project devoted to the emergence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the DR Congo. His fondness for the area and the stories of the Saints there comes naturally to him; between July 2016 and September 2019, he and his wife Kathleen served missions first in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and then in the DR Congo Kinshasa Temple. He is back in the Congo at the moment, along with Russell Richins and James Jordan, who previously served as, among other things, respectively the producer and associate producer of the Interpreter Foundation projects Robert Cundick: A Sacred Service of Music, and Witnesses, and Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, as well as the Foundation’s short Insights videos.

President Kimball's worldwide effect — Elder Willy Binene watching the reenactment of a scene in which a younger version of “himself” reads a life-changing passage in “The Miracle of Forgiveness”

We have enough money behind the project to do the filming there in the Congo, but have not as yet raised the money for post-production (e.g., editing the raw footage, adding music, dubbing, and the like). There is no plan to take the films to theaters but, otherwise, we haven’t decided how to distribute them. Perhaps the most likely scenario is simply posting them online and making them available online, as we did with Robert Cundick: A Sacred Service of Music. We have never seen them as a source of revenue; instead, they represent the sort of thing for which we use whatever revenue we generate (which comes mostly in the form of donations). We think that the story and the stories of the Congolese Saints are worth telling, and worthy of the attention of other members of the Church.

Binene marriage proposal, again — A crowd of local people watching the reenactment of Elder Binene’s marriage proposal to his wife.

As seen from the perspective of the PO Board, though, our effort to make a series of short films about the Church and its members in the DR Congo is an “incredibly smelly” exercise in “colonialism.” It’s also “incredibly slimy.” We’re using people there as mere “props” in order to tell a faith-promoting story. (It’s their story, of course, so I’m at a bit of a loss to know how we would be able to tell their story without featuring any people in it.) Our project is mere “exploitation and priestcraft.” Our interviews of Congolese members are actually “interrogations” and “lectures.”

This is all “disturbing” to posters on the PO Board, “if not outright distasteful.” “Distasteful at best, and connivingly racist at worst.” Interpreter is on “exceptionally thin ice” with all this, because the Foundation is “exploiting” impoverished Africans for “propaganda” purposes. One commenter describes himself as feeling “unsettled” about this horrible affair, and “uncomfortable” about the fact that, unlike the denizens of the PO Board, the poor Congolese have no idea what kind of horrible people are now seeking to “exploit” them. (The verb to exploit shows up repeatedly in comments on our film project.)

Elder Ndalamba Ilunga, a newly called Seventy from Lubumbashi, and his wife after having described their feelings at the announcement of a temple in their southern city.

The photos that I’ve shared here, says my Malevolent Stalker, glorify “leering” white males. In fact, notes another member of the PO Board, there is a distinct lack of adult male Congolese in the photos that I’ve shared — except, I suppose, for the blind tailor pictured in one of them, the jeep driver Léon, and Elder Willy Sabwe Binene and Elder Ndalamba Ilunga of the Third Quorum of the Seventy, and others — indicating to folks on the PO Board that the Church is enjoying very little success among men in the Congo. (Apparently, they’re under the impression that the photos I’ve shared heretofore offer a representative demographic sample of Congolese Church membership — which, on that assumption, appears to be mostly made up of young children.)

Damnably, Interpreter’s visiting trio of filmmakers is building no homes for people in the Congo during its roughly three-week stint there, providing no meals or clean water, nor even teaching any Church classes. “The apologists aren’t even bothering to claim that they’re doing something good for the people of the DRC.” With regard to the film project, they’re just “fooling around with drones” and, well, using that drone and their other equipment to gather footage for a set of films.

And what is Interpreter’s end goal? It is to “exploit” Africans in order to secure lucrative donations for the Foundation and, ultimately, pour moi. And, of course, to pay for our forthcoming “anti-Community of Christ Brigham Young biopic.”

Early DR Congo Sunday School class — Reenactment of an early Sunday School lesson in Kolwezi.

One commenter at the PO Board tried a couple of times to push gently back against some of these accusations. When viewed in the context of Africa’s historic experiences with such violent phenomena as Arab imperialism and subsequent European colonialism, he observed, Interpreter’s little film project seems “comparatively benign.” I thought that concession remarkably generous of him: Our greed-driven brutality will be fairly limited.

But the bottom line, most others agreed — and “bottom line” is very much the appropriate phrase here — is that both the Church and the Interpreter Foundation are “exploiting a foreign people for financial gain.” The Church’s “business model” for Africa is a form of “neocolonialism”: It is using BYU Pathway and the Perpetual Education Fund in order to secure cheap local education for Africans. And that sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t! The Church wants them to gain educations so that they can eventually occupy elite positions in business and government in such a way that the Church will accumulate power and influence. (One respondent grudgingly allows that the Church might be benefiting the Congolese a little bit. But he immediately points out that Mussolini supposedly made the trains run on time, and that even the Ku Klux Klan may have done some good somewhere, sometime.) The Church is setting up “franchise locations” so that it can harvest tithes from Africa that it can then feed into Ensign Peak Advisors back in Utah — which seems to be the very “definition of colonialism.” This is “so the poor church doesn’t starve to death in Salt Lake City.” And the Interpreter Foundation is following the Church’s wicked model: Our movie effort is “a purely ‘extractive’ project,” in which we’re “rolling in, filming some videos, and then heading back to the US to try and use the footage to milk donations out of people.”

PO Board commenters grant that the Church has expressed disapproval of the customary African practice of dowries, which tend to oppress young Africans economically and to discourage marriage and family formation. But don’t get carried away! This is not because the Church suddenly cares about marriage and families. No, the real motivation is that President Nelson and his cronies dislike the idea that all that dowry money stays local. Instead, they want it to come to the Church via tithing. Sure, the Church might invest a few “pennies” in Africa in order to get things going there, as seed money, but what Church leaders want is a “sustainable investment.” And “success,” as viewed from Salt Lake City, means a flow of tithes to Utah and, most importantly, to Ensign Peak Advisors. It is, plainly, “imperialism.” And, likewise, “The Interpreter Foundation is using the Congolese people to make a quick buck.” My own time, in fact, is dedicated to scheming about how to “extract the maximum dollar amount from prospective donors.”

A venerable Congolese Church couple — In the home of the Simon Mukadi Kakel Kat couple, Church pioneers in Kolwezi and Luputa.

One side issue, though: P.O. Board members want to know why I’m not there in the Congo. Hmmm? Inquiring minds, and all that. But, in fact, minds on the PO Board already know: It’s not because I’m not a professional filmmaker and would be essentially useless there. It’s not because my spoken French is, at best, mediocre. (By contrast, in addition to his two French-speaking missions in the Congo, Jeff Bradshaw served his first mission as a young man in France and Belgium and, subsequently, lived twice with his family in France.) It’s because the rural Congo lacks the five-star accommodations and dining that I require. This is “about DCP gorging himself on beef pizza or washing down two orders of tikka masala with a diet soda.”

Bad enough, you think? Ah, but it’s far worse even than that. Why am I not in the Congo? “It is,” says my Malevolent Stalker, “impossible to escape the racial implications here.” (He’s probably quite right that it’s impossible for him, at least, not to detect “racial implications here.” After all, it’s what he does.) “Has DCP traveled to any predominantly Black country?” he asks. (The answer, by the way, is Yes. And I loved both trips. I wonder whether my Malevolent Stalker has spent any time in majority-Black countries.)

The Church builds better than this. — Within the building, now a school for abandoned children, where the Church first met in Kolwezi,.

But here is the really pressing question: What will the Interpreter Foundation do with the massive profits that will somehow accrue from our short Congo-related videos? Will we donate even a tiny portion of our treasure hoard to the Congolese Latter-day Saints that we’re exploiting? “I think,” says one PO Board participant who has specialized for years in making up defamatory fictions about me, “the more likely outcome is that 100% of the money they make on this project will be used for DCP’s travel, meals and his anti-Community of Christ film, 6 Days in August.”

Of course, responds Kerry Shirts, another PO Board stalwart, “if DCP donates a laptop and a few pencils, and a few scratch pads of paper, it will be outdoing the donations of the church.”

Curious, I spent about fifteen seconds this afternoon in the relevant subfolder of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, and I came up with these four irrefutable confirmations of Mr. Shirts’s claim:

“LDS Charities $1M in Aid Will Help Those Suffering in DR Congo Crisis: Donation hits milestone with United Nations’ World Food Programme” (2018)

“Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Eliminated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Latter-day Saint Charities participates with partners in global effort” (2019)

“Church Gives Supplies to War Victims in Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo: One of the 12,000 grateful recipients remarked the donation ‘has given us back a smile and hope that we lost for a while.’” (2022)

“Church Joins Forces with Catholic Relief Services and Caritas to Help Refugees in Eastern DR Congo” (2023)

There are probably other stories that I might have found, but these four should suffice for weighing the reliability of Mr. Shirts’s allegation.

Neither the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints nor the Interpreter Foundation has ever viewed the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a lucrative source of wealth — except in the sense that its people are children of God and, in themselves, a treasure beyond price. The Church’s investments in regional temples and meetinghouses, its educational expenditures, and its humanitarian efforts are given in imitation of the Savior, “who went about doing good” (Acts 10:38), and not with any eye to financial payback. (Church leaders would be crazy, as well as evil, to seek to profit from the Congolese Latter-day Saints.) Similarly, the Interpreter Foundation wants to preserve the stories of the Saints in the Congo because we value them as our brothers and sisters. We have no plan to make a buck, whether quick or otherwise, by “exploiting” them, and we have no way to do so. The very accusation, I think, tells a great deal about those who level it against us.

A note on Latter-day Saint attitudes toward other religious faiths

April 20, 2023 By Dan Peterson

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Oakland viaduct in 1989 — The Cypress Street viaduct, in Oakland, California, following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

First, though, a thought about earthquakes and divine providence. I submitted this column to Meridian way back on 27 February, and I had to re-read it this morning to see whether I still agreed with it. (I do.) I’m grateful that it has finally appeared:

“A Purpose in Life’s Earthquakes”

No other planet in our solar system has plate tectonics, which seems to be unique to Earth. Other planets—exoplanets—revolving around other stars may possess similar geology but, if so, we haven’t found them. But why might plate tectonics, and specifically subduction, be vital for life on Earth?

I’m indebted to Bart Kowallis, whom I’ve known since we were on the same freshman dormitory floor at Brigham Young University prior to our missions, for his willingness to read the essay through before I submitted it. He’s not to be blamed for any surviving errors in the column, of course, but I wanted to be sure that I had committed no egregious or crippling scientific errors.

Christy Constitutional Convention — “George Washington Presiding at the Constitutional Convention”
(Howard Chandler Christy, 1939) (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

An important case with implications for religious liberty is currently before the Supreme Court of the United States. Here are two links regarding the matter:

“What the Supreme Court said Tuesday about working on the Sabbath: In its Sabbath case, the Supreme Court can clarify a confusing ruling from 1977. But at what cost?”

“Another key test for religious liberty”

A large number of outside individuals and groups have filed separate amici curiae (“friends of the court”) briefs in this case. If you would like to read the brief in support of the petitioner, Gerald E. Groff, that was jointly filed with the Supreme Court of the United States by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Anti-Defamation League, it is available here: No. 22-174 In the Supreme Court of the United States A quotation from the Prophet Joseph Smith is apropos here. He uses the term priests, of course, simply to refer to clergy of other faiths:

Priests cry out concerning me and ask “why is it this babbler gains so many followers, and retains them”? I answer, it is because I possess the principle of love, all I can offer the world is a good heart and a good hand. The Saints can testify whether I am willing to lay down my life for my brethren. If it has been demonstrated that I have been willing to die for a Mormon, I am bold to declare before heaven that I am just as ready to die in defending the rights of a Presbyterian, a Baptist or a good man of any other denomination; for the same principle which would trample upon the rights of the Latter day Saints would trample upon the rights of the Roman Catholics or of any other denomination who may be unpopular and too weak to defend themselves. It is a love of liberty which inspires my Soul, civil and religious liberty to the whole of the human race, love of liberty was diffused into my Soul by my grandfathers, while they dandled me on their knees; and shall I want friends? No.

(Joseph Smith, Jr., History of the Church 5:498, 9 July 1843, slightly less than a year before he and his brother Hyrum were assassinated by an anti-Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois)

Which reminds me very much of this:

“A recent religious poll highlights a unique Latter-day Saint quality we can be proud of: A phenomenon highlighted in a recent Pew survey could be a sign that Latter-day Saints are trying to be kind and nonjudgmental to those around them.”

In a recent tweet, McKay Coppins, a Latter-day Saint writer at The Atlantic, commented as follows:A fascinating (and kind of hilarious) finding in this Pew survey: Mormons are among the least popular religious groups in America. They are also the only group that expresses a net favorable opinion of *every other group,* including Muslims and atheists. pewresearch.org/religion/2023/. Or, as he summarizes it, “You probably don’t like us, but we like you!”

Pew chart — Fascinating data on several levels

A new entry has appeared on the unfortunately necessary Neville-Neville Land blog:

“Jonathan Neville tried to blackmail me”

I’m disappointed by the “personal” turn that things have now taken. Of course, it’s always been “personal” in a sense. As I’ve tried to say on multiple prior occasions, I’m quite unconcerned by “Heartland” geographical models for the Book of Mormon. I’m not persuaded by them, but I’m not especially upset that not a few others are persuaded. What concerns me is the tendency of some “Heartlanders” to regard Book of Mormon geography as a central doctrine of the Gospel and, accordingly, to cast public doubt on the loyalty to the Church, the Restoration, and the Gospel of those who publicly affirm views that differ from theirs. That’s why, alas, I’ve found the Neville-Neville Land blog “necessary.” It chronicles such poor and inappropriate behavior. And now I’m further dismayed by the gleeful willingness of at least two zealous “Heartlander” advocates to make common cause with avowed, vocal critics the Church, the Restoration, and the Gospel against those whose views on Book of Mormon geography fail to toe the “Heartland” line.

This new kerfuffle strikes me as a tempest in the proverbial teapot. As Gertrude Stein once wrote about Oakland, California, where she grew up, “there’s no there there.” Especially bemusing to me is the central role in it that is now being assigned to me both by Mr. Jonathan Neville and by my Malevolent Stalker and his epigones. I’m so peripheral to this story, as intrinsically insignificant as it is, that one would need a high-powered telescope even to see me from the periphery.

The operating principle over at the Peterson Obsession Board and in its suburbs, however, seems to taken from their revision of Amos 3:6: “Shall there be evil in a city, and Daniel Peterson hath not done it?”

A 2011 eruption at Mt. Etna — The entrance to Hell? Or merely the Utah state line?
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photo)

But let’s end on a genuinely chilling note from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:

“The Church and LifeMoves Help the Homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area: Latter-day Saints also donate time and labor to help prepare new “navigation center””