![\"Bolton](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/02\/The_Emigrants_statue_Albert_Dock_Liverpool_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_482942.jpg\")
<\/a>We met up with Kris Frederickson<\/a>, a member of the Interpreter Foundation board and an organizer and co-host of this Interpreter Church history tour of England and then went to meet our motor coach and our local guide and friend, Peter Fagg<\/a>, and the rest of our group \u2014 save two, who didn\u2019t arrive until dinnertime tonight after flight delays \u2014 at the Manchester airport. \u00a0Thereupon, we drove to the Liverpool Docks, where, walking about the area, we discussed the Beatles, yes, but mostly the Latter-day Saint converts \u2014 approximately 85,000 of them \u2014 who emigrated to Zion via Liverpool between the start of the Gathering in 1841 or so until it halted in the 1930s.<\/p>\n Liverpool was, for many years, the European headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. \u00a0It was also, by a considerable distance, the principal port of embarkation for members of the Church (and also for nonmembers of the Church, such as my Norwegian Lutheran grandmother) who were departing Northern Europe for North America. \u00a0Something of the flavor of the Latter-day Saint emigration can be discerned, though, in this eyewitness account that was written from London by an illustrious British novelist:<\/p>\n In June 1863, the passenger ship Amazon<\/em> set sail from London for America with nearly 900 Latter-day Saint emigrants aboard. \u00a0However, just before she weighed anchor, many Londoners\u2014including both government officials and clergymen\u2014came to take a look at the \u201cMormons,\u201d up close and at first hand, as well as at their traveling arrangements. \u00a0One of these visitors Charles Dickens, the famous author of such works, by that time, as\u00a0The Pickwick Papers<\/em> (1837), Oliver Twist<\/em> (1839), Nicholas Nickleby<\/em> (1839), The Old Curiosity Shop<\/em> (1841), Barnaby Rudge<\/em> (1841), A Christmas Carol<\/em> (1849), Martin Chuzzlewit<\/em> (1844), Dombey and Son<\/em> (1848), David Copperfield<\/em> (1850), Bleak House<\/em> (1853), Hard Times<\/em> (1854), Little Dorrit<\/em> (1857), A Tale of Two Cities<\/em> (1859), and Great Expectations<\/em> (1861). \u00a0He is generally regarded as one of the greatest novelists of Victorian England and, indeed, in all of English literature.<\/p>\n Dickens spent several hours aboard the Amazon<\/em>, quietly observing the Saints on the ship and interviewing George Q. Cannon, the English-born member of the Quorum of the Twelve \u2014 a native, in fact, of Liverpool \u2014 who was serving at the time as the president of the British Mission. \u00a0(Elder Cannon, who had played a pivotal role in opening the Hawaiian Mission and in translating the Book of Mormon into Hawaiian, would go on to represent Utah as a territorial delegate to Congress and to serve as a counselor in the First Presidency to Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Snow.)<\/p>\n A month or so after his visit to the Amazon<\/em>, Dickens published an account of his experience in an essay for the periodical All the Year Round<\/em> (4 July 1863), titled \u201cThe Uncommercial Traveller.\u201d\u00a0 In his essay, he remarked that virtually all of the emigrating Latter-day Saints were tradesmen and craftsmen and their families, people of the working class. \u00a0He was worried about what these British converts to \u201cMormonism\u201d might encounter when they actually arrived in Utah. \u00a0(He was surely familiar with the horror stories going around England at the time \u2013 which would continue for the next several generations \u2014 about the theocratic \u201cMormon kingdom\u201d in the remote North American west.) \u00a0But he was deeply impressed by what he had actually seen. \u00a0The emigration was thoroughly well-organized, calm, orderly.<\/p>\n \u201cI went on board their ship,\u201d he wrote, \u201cto bear testimony against them if they deserved it, as I fully believed they would; to my great astonishment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions and tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness. I went over the\u00a0Amazon<\/em>\u2019s side feeling it impossible to deny that, so far, some remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which better known influences have often missed.\u201d Of the Saints themselves, Dickens confessed that, had he not known they were Latter-day Saints, he would have described them as, \u201cin their degree, the pick and flower of England.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meanwhile, the dying if not altogether dead website of the Interpreter Foundation continues to not change. \u00a0Here are some of the most recent examples of its complete lack of change:<\/p>\n \u201cAnachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms,\u201d Chapter 3, \u201cMetals and Metallurgy,\u201d<\/a> written by Matthew Roper<\/a><\/p>\n [Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong> We are pleased to present chapter 3 from a book entitled Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms. It is presented in serialized form in this volume of <\/em>Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cInterpreting Interpreter<\/em>: (Non-)Anachronisms \u2013 Metallurgy,\u201d<\/a> written by Kyler Rasmussen<\/a><\/p>\n This post is a summary of the article \u201cAnachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms \u2014 Chapter 3: Metals and Metallurgy<\/a>\u201d by Matthew Roper in Volume 65 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em>. All of the Interpreting Interpreter<\/em> articles may be seen at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/category\/summaries\/<\/a>. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter<\/em> series is available at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n A video introduction to this Interpreter article is now available on all of our social media channels, including on YouTube at https:\/\/youtube.com\/shorts\/SgYKrb52OBE<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Takeaway:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0Roper continues his examination of claimed Book of Mormon anachronisms, looking at 16 different items related to metals and metallurgy. He concludes that 50% of these supposed anachronisms have received subsequent confirmation in the archaeological record, with and additional 4 partially confirmed, and 3 items that are yet to trend toward confirmation (iron smelting and steel in the new world, and silver money).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/a>\n