Two new articles went up today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “The Nahom Convergence Reexamined: The Eastward Trail, Burial of the Dead, and the Ancient Borders of Nihm,” written by Neal Rappleye Abstract: For decades, several Latter-day Saint scholars have maintained that there is a convergence between the location of Nahom in the Book of Mormon and the Nihm region of Yemen. To establish whether there really is such a convergence, I set out to reexamine where... Read more
This just went up on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “The Temple: Ancient and Restored: ‘The Cosmic Mountain in Islamic Tradition,'” written by Daniel C. Peterson Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Ancient and Restored, Proceedings of the Second Interpreter Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference “The Temple on Mount Zion,” 25 October 2014 (2016) edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Donald W. Parry. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/the-temple-ancient-and-restored/. And these new... Read more
For Christmas, a neighbor gave us a new book by her brother. The book is Gary C. Lawrence, Millions Believe As We Do, But Haven’t Yet Found the Church: Conversation Ideas from a National Poll. Gary Lawrence is an active Latter-day Saint — currently, I believe, an ordinance worker in the Newport Beach California Temple — and a professional public opinion researcher (with a B.A. in political science from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in public affairs communication... Read more
I’ve recently shared three or four passages here with you from Hadley Vlahos, The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life’s Final Moments (New York: Ballantine Books, 2023). Here’s another one that I really liked, and that I think you might find interesting, as well: I’ve seen just as many patients who aren’t religious and don’t believe in an afterlife have end-of-life visitations from loved ones as I have those who do believe in a life after this one. Having said... Read more
As I mentioned in a recent blog entry, somebody in Modesto, California — I don’t know who it was — sent me a copy of a small and very accessible book a few days before Christmas: Hadley Vlahos, The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life’s Final Moments (New York: Ballantine Books, 2023). Ms. Vlahos is a still-young R.N., born and raised in Florida (I think) and still based there, and specifically a hospice nurse who attends to people who are... Read more
Our last church meetings of 2023 were, I thought, quite good. Our first sacrament meeting speaker today was a young woman from our ward who has interrupted her studies at Brigham Young University to accept a call to the Chile Antofagasta Mission. She spoke quite well and will, I think, be a wonderful missionary. Our bishop then spoke for the remainder of the meeting, making quite a strong plea for older people to serve as senior missionaries. (More... Read more
I would like to commend two recent blog entries by the redoubtable Jeff Lindsay to your attention. It seems particularly fitting to do so as we’re about to enter a new year for the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a curriculum that will be focused on the Book of Mormon: “Nephi’s Three-day Journey into the Wilderness: The Natural vs. the Naturalistic Reading” “The Glue of Forgiveness and the Anti-Nephi-Lehies (the People... Read more
My day yesterday (Friday) was completely booked, from morning until late at night, and I posted nothing. Which means that I failed to note that a new article appeared yesterday in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. And it was just a bit unusual: For the first time in the history of the Interpreter Foundation, I think, someone other than, well, me wrote an introduction for a volume of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and... Read more
I can’t say that I’m even slightly surprised by these findings, which are reported by the impressive Stephen Cranney. I’ve always tended to regard the self-description “I’m spiritual, but not religious” as rather vacuous. But it’s good — albeit, yes, admittedly quite sad — to see them backed by apparently solid data: “Less church, less prayer: Data challenges ‘spiritual but not religious’ mantra: The available data show that people who step away from formalized religion are also more likely to... Read more
Even at Christmas, the Interpreter Foundation continues to produce. Here, for example, is a sextet of very recent new items: “Conference Talks: Recovering the Language of Purity after the First Revolt“ The fourth “Temple on Mount Zion” Conference was held on Saturday, 10 November 2018 in the Tanner Building at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. The presentations were filmed, and both video and audio recordings of each presentation are available. The videos are currently available both at and on... Read more
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