*** Yesterday, I received this item (part of a longer solicitation from a would-be fundraising advisor) in my inbox. It reminded me that, yes, that dreaded time is almost upon us: Many nonprofits focus tons of their year-end efforts on Giving Tuesday. However, the data shows that Giving Tuesday is hardly the most important giving day of the season. In fact, it’s not even close. According to our data, Giving Tuesday efforts likely accounted for about... Read more
*** Here are a few links to articles that have previously appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. Perhaps you missed one or more of them: John Gee, ““Put Off Thy Shoes from Off Thy Feet”: Sandals and Sacred Space” Abstract: While many have written on ancient temples looking at the big picture, John Gee discusses one small detail on a single Egyptian temple from the New Kingdom. He focuses on depictions of Ramses... Read more
*** I would like to call your attention to a new website — rather quietly launched a week or two ago by the new B. H. Roberts Foundation — that, I think, represents the first fruits of an effort that could well prove to be very significant: https://mormonr.org/ *** I’m also going to share a quite irrelevant experience that I once had with the famed conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr., in the middle... Read more
*** I would like to call your attention to a short but important article in the December issue of the invaluable magazine First Things, written by Brendan W. Case, who currently serves as the associate director for research at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. It joins a very large and growing array of articles and studies that plainly seem to demonstrate the positive effects of religious belief and religious affiliation on... Read more
*** Two new articles went up today in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: Stanford Carmack, “Personal Relative Pronoun Usage in the Book of Mormon: An Important Authorship Diagnostic” Abstract: This study compares personal relative pronoun usage in the earliest text of the Book of Mormon with 11 specimens of Joseph Smith’s early writings, 25 pseudo-archaic texts, the King James Bible, and more than 200,000 early modern (1473–1700) and late modern (1701–1800+) texts. The linguistic pattern of... Read more
*** In my surfing of the web this evening during a brief break from more important tasks, I ran across a curious comment. Its author, obviously a disaffected member or former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, idly wondered why the Church is so “obsessed” — his or her word, not mine — with sex. Why does the Church care what consenting adults do with their bodies? Sex is, after all, merely a... Read more
*** First of all, Kyler Rasmusssen presses on with his Bayesian reflections on the Book of Mormon: “Estimating the Evidence Episode 19: On Uto-Aztecan” [Editor’s Note: This is the nineteenth in a series of 23 essays summarizing and evaluating Book of Mormon-related evidence from a Bayesian statistical perspective. See the FAQ at the end of the introductory episode for details on methodology.] Also new on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: Nibley Lectures: Come, Follow Me... Read more
*** Here’s a new item that’s just appeared on the website of the Interpreter Foundation, kindly supplied by Jonn Claybaugh: Come, Follow Me — D&C Study and Teaching Helps Lesson 47, November 15-November 21: D&C 133-134 — “Prepare Ye for the Coming of the Bridegroom” And this has also just one up on Interpreter’s website: Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me Doctrine and Covenants Lesson 47 “Prepare Ye for the Coming of the Bridegroom”: D&C... Read more
*** I’m delighted at this news, which comes right out of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File©: “Light the World Giving Machines Return During Christmas Season: Donations accepted at 10 US locations in 2021” And, while I was browsing in the Hitchens File©, I also came across this interesting piece: “US Muslims gave more to charity than other Americans in 2020” *** And some of you might find this... Read more
*** I’m looking forward to this, and I’ve marked Friday, 12 November 2021, on my calendar for it — at 2 PM, Utah time: “Catholic and Latter-day Saints Dialogue Event” Thanks to Cody Quirk for calling it to my attention. *** As the weather grows ever colder, nighttimes of sipping hot chocolate beckon. Amid all of the current pandemic and supply-chain issues, though, we shouldn’t complacently assume that marshmallows, a popular accompaniment to... Read more
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