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<\/a>Seventeen new temples! \u00a0That\u2019s more temples announced in one General Conference than existed in the entire Church when I was a teenager.<\/p>\n
The remarkable explosion of temple-building that commenced under President Gordon B. Hinckley continues at an even more rapid pace under President Russell M. Nelson. \u00a0Plainly, the effort is intended to make temples more accessible to Latter-day Saints in all areas of the world and, thus, to make temple worship more central to the lives of the Saints. \u00a0We are accelerating the work of redeeming the dead. \u00a0I had been looking forward to President Nelson\u2019s address yesterday afternoon, and I was certainly not disappointed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n The other day, I happened across a meme created by my Mini-Stalker over on the Peterson Obsession Board in which he had incorporated an old still photograph of my smiling visage. \u00a0He used the photograph to represent me as happy and gratified by Iran\u2019s recent barrage of missiles and drones against Israel. \u00a0I suppose the point of it is that I\u2019m an anti-Semite.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t quite understand why, over many years now, Mini-Stalker has apparently found continual public lying about me so very fulfilling.<\/p>\n Islamicist though I am, I have little to no sympathy for the Islamic Republic of Iran. \u00a0I\u2019ve spent time there, and my experience in the country, benign though it was for me personally and as much as I like Iranians and deeply admire Persian culture (about which I taught for decades), was, among other things, one of visceral dislike for fascism and totalitarianism.<\/p>\n Further, on this one-year anniversary of Hamas\u2019s brutal attacks against Israel, I simply say that nothing \u2014 absolutely nothing \u2014 can justify the horrors of that day. \u00a0Whatever grievances Palestinians may have against the Jewish state and against historical Zionism (and I think that they have some legitimate grievances), what happened on 7 October 2023 was utterly evil and repulsive. \u00a0No cause, no grievance, can legitimate the atrocities that were committed by Hamas in southern Israel a year ago.<\/p>\n I have visited Israel more times than I can count. \u00a0I\u2019ve actually lived there in Jerusalem, altogether, for about a year. \u00a0I\u2019m very familiar with many of the places that are routinely in the news these days. \u00a0I\u2019ve been many times over the decades to the Druze town in the Golan Heights, Majdal Shams, where, on 27 July of this year, twelve children were killed on a football field by a Hezbollah rocket. \u00a0I\u2019ve been to Kiryat Shmona, the northernmost city in Israel, many times. \u00a0It has largely been evacuated now under recurrent Hezbollah rocket bombardment. \u00a0My father, as I\u2019ve mentioned here on numerous occasions, participated in the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen, in Austria, and of its adjacent satellite sub-camp, Gusen, and I was raised from childhood to be acutely aware of the Holocaust and of a moral duty to remember it. I am a believing adherent of the only faith of which I\u2019m aware whose scriptural canon contains an explicit condemnation of anti-Semitism<\/a>. \u00a0When my Mini-Stalker insinuates that I\u2019m an anti-Semite and a bigot who takes pleasure in violence against Jews, that is nothing other than an illustration of his characteristic perennially shameless mendacity.<\/p>\n Tonight (Monday night) is your final opportunity to catch a showing of Six Days in August<\/em> <\/a>prior to its official general release into theaters, which will take place on the evening of 10 October \u2014 this coming Thursday. \u00a0Tonight\u2019s screenings will take place in nine Cinemark theaters along the Wasatch Front in Utah: \u00a0Salt Lake City, Ogden, American Fork, Draper, Farmington, Orem, Provo, Sandy\/Midvale, and West Jordan. \u00a0You can purchase tickets online, as well as at the theaters themselves: \u00a0Six Days in August<\/em> \u2013 Early Access<\/a><\/p>\n Last night, I received an email from the \u201cempty nesters\u201d group in my ward. \u00a0With absolutely no prodding or input from me or my wife, they\u2019re planning a movie night this coming Friday to attend Six Days in August<\/em>. \u00a0That pleases me very much, and I hope that other groups elsewhere will organize similar activities. \u00a0The film will, I think, generate interesting conversations among Church members over post-theater ice cream, and etc.<\/p>\n And I simply can\u2019t fail to mention, yet again, that the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s prior film Witnesses<\/em><\/a> (2021) is currently available at no charge for viewing online: https:\/\/vimeo.com\/824199556\/ecefc622ed<\/a>. \u00a0This is true internationally, as well as within the United States; thus far, I\u2019m aware of people who have been able to access the film in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Qatar, and the United Kingdom. \u00a0Witnesses<\/em> will remain available for viewing at no charge until Thursday, 10 October, the day on which Six Days in August<\/em> goes into general release. \u00a0Priceless. \u00a0If you can\u2019t make it to Six Days in August<\/em> this evening, Witnesses<\/em> would be good viewing material for Family Night.<\/p>\n I had a fun time last night, by the way, on the radio with Martin Tanner<\/a> (who was with me in the studio) and Brent Schmidt<\/a> and Hales Swift<\/a> (regular monthly participants who both joined us by telephone). \u00a0We discussed Mormon 1-6 for the first hour of the Interpreter Radio Show<\/a>; for the second hour, we talked about the just-concluded General Conference and . . . well, about Six Days in August<\/em>. \u00a0I deeply appreciate Martin\u2019s work as the organizer and manager of the Interpreter Radio Show, as well as its rotating cast of hosts and discussants.<\/p>\n This article by a law professor at Brigham Young University<\/a>, which appeared (of all places!) in the Salt Lake Tribune<\/em>, could have come from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122, but its proximate motivation seems to have been the unfortunate Hulu television series The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cVoices: We must stop sensationalizing faith in the pursuit of eyeballs and ad dollars: We cannot afford to remain silently faithful while allowing mainstream bashing of a known societal good.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Seventeen new temples! \u00a0That\u2019s more temples announced in one General Conference than existed in the entire Church when I was a teenager. The remarkable explosion of temple-building that commenced under President Gordon B. Hinckley continues at an even more rapid pace under President Russell M. Nelson. \u00a0Plainly, the effort is intended to make temples […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":102530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15670,24883,2905,37812,3403,788],"class_list":["post-107304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-semitism","tag-gusen","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-majdal-shams","tag-mauthausen","tag-mormon"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n