{"id":101987,"date":"2023-09-23T15:45:25","date_gmt":"2023-09-23T21:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=101987"},"modified":"2023-09-23T15:45:25","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T21:45:25","slug":"why-were-doing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/09\/why-were-doing-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Why we’re doing it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Joseph and Hyrum Smith, who have been in hiding, welcome the arrival of Emma Smith and Brigham Young in a scene from the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s film \u201cSix Days in August,\u201d which is currently in production. George A. Smith is at the oar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last night, my wife and I were privileged to attend and to participate in a reception and dinner celebrating \u201cMoroni Day\u201d that was sponsored by Scripture Central and held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Salt Lake City. \u00a0Roughly 550 people enjoyed a program that included the unveiling of two new statues of Moroni (late in his life and as a resurrected being) by the sculptor and plastic surgeon Steven Neil<\/a>; musical performances by Dallyn Vail Bayles<\/a>, Ross Boothe<\/a>, and Jenny Oaks Baker<\/a>; a program hosted by Jasmin Rappleye<\/a> and Stephen Jones<\/a>; and concluding remarks by Elder Ronald A. Rasband<\/a> of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had interesting conversations with a large number of people, including Don Bradley, Rick Turley, Elder Matthew Holland, Jack Welch, Noel Reynolds, Jeffrey Walker, Lanny Britsch, and the like. \u00a0I\u2019m very pleased at some of the things that I heard. \u00a0I\u2019m thrilled at what I learned about the Church-commissioned biography of Joseph Smith that was recently announced by President Dallin H. Oaks \u2014 see \u201cFirst Presidency Commissions New Biography of the Prophet Joseph Smith:\u00a0The book will be called \u201cJoseph the Prophet\u201d\u201d<\/a> \u2014 and was pleasantly surprised, as he himself was, by something that Jack Welch had just been given earlier in the day (which I will leave to him to talk about, when he\u2019s ready). \u00a0The Joseph Smith biography project will be a very big one, multi-year, and will take into full account the results of the monumental Joseph Smith Papers project that, after years of work, is now drawing to a close.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a>
Hyrum Smith, in a scene from the forthcoming Interpreter Foundation film \u201cSix Days in August\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Very unfortunately, our attendance at the Moroni Day celebration (\u201cCommemorating 200 years from Moroni\u2019s first appearances to Joseph Smith on September 21, 1823\u201d) prevented our watching Richard L. Bushman\u2019s concurrent keynote address for the FAIR LDS \u201cDefending the Book of Mormon Conference.\u201d \u00a0The conflict between the two is to be lamented, and I hope that similar clashes can be avoided in the future.<\/p>\n

And I haven\u2019t been able to listen to all of the \u201cDefending Book of Mormon Conference\u201d today, either. \u00a0Which I regret. \u00a0A stake assignment was one of the things that interfered \u2014 I\u2019m one of the narrators for a patriotic musical fireside that will take place tomorrow night at 7 PM, and we had a (casual) dress rehearsal for it today \u2014 and so I\u2019m relying on FAIR to get the videos of the talks and the full papers out as soon as possible. \u00a0There were some very good and clear discussions among the fragments that I was able to hear.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ES<\/a>
Emma Smith visits the Prophet Joseph while he\u2019s in hiding.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once again, I\u2019m grateful to Russell Richins and James Jordan for sharing still photographs with me from the filming that has been done thus far on the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s forthcoming Six Days in August<\/em> project. \u00a0I wish that we would be there on set, but we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Filming at Upper Canada Village in Ontario has now been completed, and the crew and the actors are now moving down to the Rochester, New York, area, where filming will resume early this next week.<\/p>\n

This, too, is a big project. \u00a0And I still need to raise more money for it to cover what, in the trade, is called \u201cpostproduction.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s fun to be able to toss such terms around as if I know what I\u2019m talking about. \u00a0But I\u2019m still scratching my head at the inattention that allowed all the contract materials to be drawn up without making even the slightest provision for furnishing me with lots of gold bling and a Lamborghini. \u00a0How in the world am I supposed to look like an authenticl movie mogul without tasteless displays of lavish wealth?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A close-up of \"Wilford Woodruff\"<\/a>
Wilford Woodruff listens to Sidney Rigdon, in a scene from \u201cSix Days in August\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is a logic to the sequencing of our films. \u00a0The Witnesses<\/em> project was designed to tell a story that, if it\u2019s accepted as true, demonstrates that God was really, genuinely, involved in the early events of the Restoration and that, accordingly, Joseph Smith really was a prophet who had been called<\/em> of God. \u00a0That\u2019s vitally important and absolutely fundamental.<\/p>\n

Years ago, my colleague and friend Louis Midgley drew my attention to an anecdote related by the eminent Protestant church historian Martin Marty.<\/p>\n

It conveys an important lesson.<\/p>\n

Marie de Vichy-Chamrond (d. 1780), the Marquise du Deffand, was a famous 18th-century French hostess, as well as a friend of Voltaire, Montesquieu and other leading intellectuals of the day. She was also a notable cynic and skeptic.<\/p>\n

Once, when she was discussing religious matters with the powerful Roman Catholic Cardinal de Polignac (d. 1742), he cited a purported ancient miracle. The martyr St. Denis, he told her, the first Christian bishop of Paris, had walked a hundred miles after his execution, carrying his head in his hand.<\/p>\n

Madame du Deffand immediately replied that, \u201cIn such a promenade, it is the first step that is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever one thinks of the tale of St. Denis and his supposed walk \u2014 for the record, I don\u2019t buy it \u2014 her response is very cogent.<\/p>\n

She meant, of course, that it\u2019s not the claim that St. Denis walked a hundred miles that poses a difficulty. (Most sources describe a walk of only about six miles, incidentally, with the saint preaching all the way.)<\/p>\n

The distance is immaterial, a historical quibble.<\/p>\n

The fundamental question is whether, after his beheading, St. Denis walked at all. If he did, the rest is mere detail.<\/p>\n

Martin Marty used the story to identify what is fundamental in the claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly as those claims have come under the lens of what he terms \u201cthe crisis of historical consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

This crisis, he said, has been caused by the skepticism and intense scrutiny of modern historical scholarship, which has been directed against virtually all traditional beliefs, religious and otherwise, around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy analogy,\u201d he wrote, \u201cif the beginning of the promenade of Mormon history<\/a>, the First Vision and the Book of Mormon, can survive the crisis, then the rest of the promenade follows and nothing that happens in it can really detract from the miracle of the whole. If the first steps do not survive, there can be only antiquarian, not fateful or faith-full interest in the rest of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever complaints there may be about women\u2019s roles in the church, same-sex marriage, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, attitudes on racial matters, church finances, the Indian placement program, imperfect leaders, or any number of other topics that tend to distract us \u2014 matters on which (please don\u2019t mistake me) I\u2019m confident that the church and its leaders can be adequately defended \u2014 the fundamental claims are really quite few.<\/p>\n

But if they are granted, other issues are largely mere detail.<\/p>\n

If \u2014 to borrow Martin Marty\u2019s two \u201cfirst steps\u201d \u2014 Joseph Smith\u2019s account of his First Vision is true, and if the Book of Mormon is genuine inspired scripture, many other important conclusions follow. There is, for example, a personal God. Jesus Christ is his atoning Son, who rose from the dead. The Bible is God\u2019s word. Life continues beyond the grave. We are morally accountable. Joseph Smith is a prophet, a credible and reliable witness to divine things. God\u2019s true church, accompanied by divine priesthood authority, has been restored to the earth. And so forth.<\/p>\n

But, even then \u2014 for some, at least \u2014 there remains another decision-point that can pose a problem: Suppose that we\u2019ve concluded, yes, that there is a personal God, that Jesus Christ is his atoning Son who rose from the dead, that Joseph Smith is a prophet, that God\u2019s true church, accompanied by divine priesthood authority, was restored to the earth. \u00a0The question then arises, Which, of the churches today that claim to possess that priesthood authority and to represent the Restoration that began with Joseph Smith, is the real<\/em> one?<\/p>\n

That is why it\u2019s so pivotally important to revisit the story of the rise of the Twelve to leadership after the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.<\/p>\n

We would very much welcome your help in bringing this project to full realization.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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