![\"Interpreter](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/03\/brian-hales-67.jpg\")
<\/a>(Courtesy of the Interpreter Foundation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Here is an interesting article by my friend Brian Hales and Michael Peterson (no relation) that was brought to my attention by another friend, Scott Gordon, the president of FAIR: \u00a0\u201cDoubt in the Digital Age: How a Perfect Storm of Random Forces Inflated the CES Letter Beyond Its Merits: What triggered the wide dissemination of the CES Letter? Examining a perfect storm of tech, naivety, and scholarly silence.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n I agree with their analysis. \u00a0The \u201cCES Letter\u201d is a very poor piece of work. \u00a0But I can testify from personal knowledge that, in the wake of the 2012 coup at the Maxwell Institute, many of us were still in stunned disarray and deeply discouraged and we weren\u2019t in a position to mount an adequate response to the wretched thing. \u00a0And we didn\u2019t have the resources or the venues that we needed.<\/p>\n Matters are rather different now, although we still have miles to go before we sleep. \u00a0The old FARMS is dead and gone. \u00a0The Maxwell Institute has long since traveled the way that its new leadership had chosen for it. \u00a0But FAIR is doing very well, and the Interpreter Foundation was established in 2012 to pick up the torch that the new Maxwell Institute leaders had tossed down. \u00a0We\u2019ve done it to the best of our ability, starting off initially with absolutely no resources, from scratch. \u00a0Yet again. \u00a0Book of Mormon Central, now Scripture Central, came along just slightly later.<\/p>\n If you want to see this work continue, and if you\u2019re still contemplating your possible year-end charitable donations \u2014 there\u2019s not much of the year left! \u2014 I hope that you will consider making at least a small tax-deductible gift to Interpreter, to Scripture Central, and\/or to FAIR. \u00a0Here is the letter that I sent out a few weeks ago to Interpreter volunteers, donors, and potential donors. \u00a0If you haven\u2019t read it, please give it a glance: https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/something-of-an-annual-report\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a recorded discussion that some will find interesting. \u00a0It was located by a reader here who was doing a bit of exploring in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122: \u00a0\u201cWhat If Our Democracy Can\u2019t Survive Without Christianity?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe New York Times<\/em> Opinion columnist David French, a lifelong evangelical, speaks to Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an atheist, about the role of Christianity in redeeming and supporting American democracy.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n On Saturday, we enjoyed a holiday-season party and meal with our longtime monthly reading group, the Gadianton Polysophical Marching and Chowder Society, which originated in Santa Barbara, California, sometime in the mid- to late 1960s. \u00a0(Among the founding members there were Davis Bitton<\/a>, Hal Moore<\/a>, and John L. Sorenson<\/a>.) \u00a0It and most of its members eventually moved up to Utah. \u00a0My wife and I were invited to join perhaps a year or two after I had joined the faculty at Brigham Young University. \u00a0We\u2019ve been involved with the group year in and year out now for, I think, the better part of four decades. \u00a0(\u201cOur lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream.\u201d [Jacob 7:26])<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>
I actually miss him; he was an interesting voice and a superb writer. \u00a0I hope he\u2019s alright.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a>