Three Cheers for Excommunication!

Last updated on: September 22, 2024 at 10:08 pm By Dan Peterson

Well, the click-bait headline worked, didn’t it? Gotcha! But here are a couple of brief items before we get to that: Have you seen Six Days in August Official Trailer #2? Take a look. Apparently it’s more popular with women than with men, whereas Official Trailer #1 is evidently preferred by men more than women. The invaluable Jacob Hess strikes again: “National study finds Latter-day Saints are the faith community ‘most resilient to political division and polarization’: Strong prohibitions in... Read more

Changes in the interior of the Salt Lake Temple

Last updated on: September 21, 2024 at 3:13 pm By Dan Peterson

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My wife and I attended Scripture Central’s annual “Moroni Day” dinner and program last night in the Hyatt Regency in Salt Lake City. We enjoyed it (not least for the conversations with friends there both before and afterwards), and we were impressed — as we were intended to be! — by the scope of what our colleagues at Scripture Central are doing. Out of the wreckage of the old Maxwell Institute some wonderful things have emerged. It’s very possible,... Read more

“A Model for Looking Deeply and Deeply Looking”

Last updated on: September 20, 2024 at 3:56 pm By Dan Peterson

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If you’re located along the Wasatch Front, don’t miss the opportunity of seeing Six Days in August this coming Thursday night. There will be special early screenings in American Fork, Draper, Farmington, Jordan Landing, Ogden, Orem, Salt Lake City, and Sandy: Six Days in August – Early Access. Quite frankly, we’re offering these advance screenings in the hope of generating word-of-mouth publicity, buzz, for the film. This is an independent and non-profit movie venture. It has been funded entirely... Read more

Sneak Peeks Coming

Last updated on: September 20, 2024 at 11:20 am By Dan Peterson

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Here’s some really good news: A number of Cinemark theaters — in, I believe, Orem, Provo, American Fork, Draper, Midvale, Farmington, West Jordan, and Salt Lake City — will be running sneak previews of Six Days in August on the evening of Thursday, 26 September. That’s next week. Tickets for these special screenings are already on sale right now: Six Days in August – Early Access. Click on Thurs 9/26 and then click on the 7:00pm button, and... Read more

“A Frere ther was, a wantowne and a merye”

Last updated on: September 18, 2024 at 11:39 am By Dan Peterson

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I’ve just undertaken a project to slog gradually through Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. I’ve always intended to do it and, finally, I’ve made a start. I was really struck by a passage in the Prologue describing a rather worldly frere or friar that, I would guess, was modeled on actual fourteenth-century friars known to Chaucer, who was an acute observer of the social world around him. I won’t generalize, of course, to say that... Read more

Prediction is difficult. Especially about the future.

Last updated on: September 17, 2024 at 1:44 pm By Dan Peterson

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I want to remind you, yet again, of the Orem, Utah, fireside that is approaching in little more than a week now and of the Interpreter Foundation conference that will follow on the weekend thereafter, on the campus of Brigham Young University: “Unveiling History: Six Days in August Fireside” (Wednesday, 25 September 2024). Incidentally, I’ve just seen a 32-minute slide show, created by Russ Richins, the producer of Six Days in August, that will, as I understand it, be... Read more

The interesting hospitality rituals of great Homeric houses

Last updated on: September 16, 2024 at 8:20 pm By Dan Peterson

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It appears that the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, once one of the two flagship periodicals of the old Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and of its successor, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, is going the way of all flesh: The organizational changes at the Institute provide an opportune occasion to wind down production of its academic periodical, The Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. “The Journal was a vital home for... Read more

Tonight’s the Night

Last updated on: September 15, 2024 at 2:05 pm By Dan Peterson

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Along with Russell Richins, the producer for the Interpreter Foundation’s films Robert Cundick: A Sacred Service of Music (2017), Witnesses (2021), and Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon (2022), as well as for the forthcoming Six Days in August (2024), I will be a guest on this evening’s installment of the Interpreter Radio Show between 7 PM and 9 PM, Utah time. The first hour of the program, as I currently understand it, will focus on the Come,... Read more

Astounding Evidence for the Book of Mormon?

Last updated on: September 14, 2024 at 11:02 pm By Dan Peterson

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Somehow, I suspect that individual apostasy and immorality and other misbehavior may have been around since at least a little bit before The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The Times of London, though, seems to think that the Hulu miniseries is about a campaign by several young and idealistic crusaders for ecclesiastical reform, or something of that sort. And, suggests the Times, these insurgent feminist theologians are rocking the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to its very... Read more

“There are only two kinds of people in the end”

Last updated on: September 14, 2024 at 12:02 pm By Dan Peterson

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“Aftermath of the Martyrdom: Aspirants to the Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” written by R. Jean Addams Abstract: In the weeks, months, and years following the murders of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, several aspirants stepped forward to claim the mantle of the prophet. Who were these individuals with claims to the leadership of the church? What were their motives? How were these men able to inspire large numbers of saints to follow them? What... Read more

What does "Barnabas" mean?