I first posted this blog entry on 14 September 2017.  Because of some recent exchanges, I think it advisable to repost it:   A reader of this blog who is deeply alienated from Mormonism and, I think, from theism generally, has posed an important question in a comment.  I think it’s worth replying to his challenge in an actual blog entry, rather than merely in the “comments section.”  He is responding to my recent description of myself — one of many... Read more

    I’ve already reported briefly on Scott Gordon’s extremely effective presentation on the so-called “CES Letter,” with which the final afternoon session of the 2019 FairMormonConference began:   “Welding Another Link in Wonder’s Chain”   Wendy Ulrich was the second speaker of the afternoon, addressing the topic of “Women, Men, and Priesthood Power.”  She takes a thoroughly orthodox view of the topic, but set about to demonstrate how women do in fact share in the power of the priesthood.... Read more

    It being Friday, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship has published yet another new article.  That new article is Professor Nathan B. Oman’s “Welding Another Link in Wonder’s Chain: The Task of Latter-day Saint Intellectuals in the Church’s Third Century”   Abstract: This is a challenging moment for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints. Both its efforts at retention and missionary work are less effective than they have been in the past. At this moment, what is... Read more

    This morning’s session commenced with a really excellent and superbly illustrated presentation by Brian Hales, entitled “Supernatural or Supernormal? Scrutinizing Secular Sources for the Book of Mormon.”  He laid out the various secular explanations that have been offered for the production of the Book of Mormon and explained their crippling problems.  “I don’t find any of these theories plausible,” he said.  At one point, my wife leaned over to me and said “This is the best summary I’ve... Read more

    René Krywult’s “Fear Leads to the Dark Side: How to Navigate the Shallows of (Mis)Information” opened the last portion of the Thursday afternoon session of the 2019 FairMormon Conference.   René offered very practical advice about how to deal with challenges to one’s faith, intermingled with his own autobiography as a boy growing up in Vienna with a convert mother who occasionally reverted to Catholicism and encountering anti-Mormon writing already in his early teens.   In a very... Read more

    Larry E. Morris opened the Thursday afternoon session with a very important discussion of “The Eight Witnesses.”  I haven’t seen Larry since he departed his position as an editor with the Maxwell Institute in order to take up editorial work with the Joseph Smith Papers project, so it was good to see him again.  However, he has been enviably prolific since then, even though Amazon.com has unfortunately mingled his work with that of another author bearing the name... Read more

    I missed this 30 May 2019 blog post from Matthew Roper.  (I was traveling overseas.)  In it, though, Matt provides some useful additional resources for evaluating the claims of Mr. Jonathan Neville and calls attention, as I myself have recently been doing, to the important Neville-Neville Land blog.  Here is Matt’s blog entry, which bears the same title:   “Neville-Neville Land”   I’m simply astonished at Mr. Neville’s evident desire to attack and demonize those who don’t share... Read more

    Now available, on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:   Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 33: “Be Perfectly Joined Together”   The Interpreter Radio (audio) Roundtable above, for Come, Follow Me New Testament Lesson 33, “Be Perfectly Joined Together,” covering 1 Corinthians 1-7, was extracted from the 4 August 2019 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show. (It was also stripped of commercial and other interruptions.)  Participants in this roundtable were Neal Rappleye, Jasmine Rappleye, Stephen Smoot and Hales Swift.  The complete 4... Read more

    In their presentation “‘Time Vindicates the Prophet’ – An analysis of criticisms raised against the Book of Mormon during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and the status of those allegations in 1844, 1930, and 2019,” Matt Roper and Kirk Magleby laid out what they contend is the growing convergence between the Book of Mormon and cutting edge Mesoamerican research or, more precisely, the rapidly decreasing number of seeming “anachronisms” in the Book of Mormon text.  Their big announcement, though, concerned the... Read more

    In the last presentation of the morning, Elizabeth Kuehn talked about “The Lives and Letters of the Twelve Apostles and their Wives during the Second British Mission, 1839-1841.”   She began by noting the severe gender imbalance in Latter-day Saint historiography — an imbalance that, it must be noted, is scarcely confined to Latter-day Saint historiography.   The missionary couples represented in the correspondence that she discussed were:   Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball Willard and Phoebe Carter... Read more