![\"Lanai](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/07\/800px-Another_view_from_Lahaina_at_sunset_8705195358.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n You may perhaps have missed this:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cApple iTunes Features the Witnesses<\/em> Movie Trailer on the Front Page of their Movie Trailer Site\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n One critic, obviously in acute need of something, anything, negative to say about the Witnesses<\/em> film in response to the iTunes story, has demanded to know how the film\u00a0will help people who need food or clean water or comfort in sorrow or relief from disease or help with disability.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n To which, obviously, the answer is that it won\u2019t.\u00a0 Certainly not directly.\u00a0 The critic already knew this, of course.\u00a0 It was a rhetorical question, designed to elicit \u2014 to force \u2014 a negative reply.\u00a0 But the demand was a cheap shot.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Feeding the hungry, providing clean water to those who need it, supplying medical assistance to the sick, comforting those in need of comfort, and caring for those who suffer from disabilities \u2014 these are all very important things to do.\u00a0 Good things.\u00a0 But very few of us, if any, devote everything we have, all of our time and money and energy, to them, or even think that we should<\/em>.\u00a0 Even people who are deeply committed to helping the hungry and the poor go out to restaurants occasionally, own computers, surf the web, buy cars that exceed their needs and requirements, and, yes, watch movies.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a very potent argument against art museums and symphony orchestras that they don\u2019t provide clean water to African villages.\u00a0 Neither the Nature Conservancy nor the World Wildlife Fund nor Harvard Alumni furnishes anybody at all with either wheelchairs or antibiotics.\u00a0 But that surely doesn\u2019t mean that such efforts are without value.\u00a0 Is the existence of the Sierra Club an offense against the poor?\u00a0 Is endowing a music scholarship a crime against the homeless?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I wonder whether the person pretending to be indignant on such grounds about the Witnesses<\/em> project is equally outraged by donations to Planned Parenthood and\/or to Black Lives Matter.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I would be perfectly happy, of course, if Witnesses<\/em>\u00a0were to somehow cure cancer or put an end to poverty.\u00a0 It won\u2019t, though.\u00a0 But here\u2019s something for that critic to contemplate:\u00a0 Scores of studies indicate that religious people tend to give more to charity \u2014 more money, more time, more effort \u2014 than secularists do.\u00a0 And they don\u2019t only give more to their churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques.\u00a0 They give more to non-religious charities, as well.\u00a0 So perhaps our critic should be hoping that Witnesses<\/em>\u00a0will reach and persuade huge audiences that, becoming more religious as a result, will commit themselves more fully to charity \u2014 thus helping to put an end to thirst, hunger, disease, and disability.\u00a0 And might Witnesses<\/em> be able to give comfort to the afflicted?\u00a0 I expect so, although that wasn\u2019t the specific purpose for which it was created:\u00a0 Religious faith demonstrably provides comfort in times of sorrow and distress.\u00a0 If Witnesses<\/em> aids anybody to gain or to strengthen faith, it will thereby enable that faith to give comfort when comfort is needed.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I hope that the critic in question buys tickets for all of his or her friends and family and that he or she will attend the theater frequently to watch Witnesses<\/em>, so that the film will sink deeply into his or her soul.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n We explored the town of Lahaina a little bit more today.\u00a0 I\u2019ve come to Lahaina several times before, beginning when I was seventeen.\u00a0 But it was only on the last couple of visits that I began to realize the deep religious significance of the place for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.\u00a0 The overwhelming majority of those who visit Lahaina \u2014 whether Latter-day Saints or not \u2014 come for the shopping and the fast (sea)food and the fine dining and the night life.\u00a0 But this is the place \u2014 about two or three hundred yards off shore, roughly in front of the old Pioneer Inn, the Banyan Court, and the marina \u2014 where Elder Lorenzo Snow, then of the Council of the Twelve but a future president of the Church, drowned in 1864 and was restored to life, apparently through miraculous means.\u00a0 (He had been visiting the Latter-day Saint \u201cplace of refuge\u201d \u2014 the forerunner to Laie \u2014 on the island of Lanai, where things badly needed to be cleaned up.)\u00a0 More importantly, perhaps, it\u2019s the place where the young missionary George Q. Cannon \u2014 who would eventually serve as one of the Twelve and then as a counselor to four presidents of the Church \u2014 experienced a life-altering theophany, of which he testified for the remainder of his life.\u00a0 (See my 2016 article for the Deseret News<\/em>, \u201cRemembering the history of the LDS Church<\/a> on the Hawaiian Islands.\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Jonathan (or Jonatana) Napela, almost certainly the most important Latter-day Saint convert in Hawaii during the nineteenth century, was educated at the Lahainaluna School, located 500 feet above Lahaina town on the slopes of the old West Volcano.\u00a0 Founded in 1831, Lahainaluna is the oldest \u201cAmerican\u201d high school west of the Mississippi and, in its early prime, it educated the Hawaiian elite.\u00a0 We drove up to visit it and were not surprised to find it deserted on a Saturday in late June.\u00a0 Apparently, though, visitors are relatively rare and the gate was supposed to have been closed.\u00a0 After we had been walking for just a few minutes near the 1834 Hale Pa\u2018i<\/em> or \u201cHouse of Printing\u201d \u2014 the oldest building still standing on the campus \u2014 a car drove up.\u00a0 The woman in it asked if we needed help.\u00a0 We said No, and that we were merely sight-seeing.\u00a0 It turns that she is the current principal of the high school, which has 1007 students.\u00a0 An alarm had gone off, indicating movement on the campus where there was supposed to be none.\u00a0 We had a pleasant conversation.\u00a0 Just now, having looked her up, I find that she\u2019s a native of West Maui, a graduate of both Lahainaluna High School and \u2014 whaddya know \u2014 the Hawaii campus of Brigham Young University.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some of you will enjoy this 8.5-minute video:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s True : An Evangelical Pastor\u2019s Journey to Truth in the Mormon Church\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n You may not enjoy these items from the Neville-Neville Land<\/em> blog, but they\u2019re a necessary medicine:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThose who live in glass houses, pt. 13\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJonathan Neville and the limits of knowledge\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIs the Church neutral or not, Jonathan Neville?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n On a more upbeat note, here is a small sampling of items from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u00a9:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cInter-Religious Council of Ethiopia\u2019s Secretary General Visits Temple Square: The east African religious leader met with the First Presidency and visited Welfare Square, the Humanitarian Center and the Bishops\u2019 Central Storehouse\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n (The video is worth watching.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCarol F. McConkie Elected Vice President of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, Geneva\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cLatter-day Saints Around the World: Country Newsroom Websites, May 3, 2021: Featuring news from Canada, Russia, the United States, Peru and Mexico.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cChurch donates funds to help sex trafficking victims\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n From a gay Jewish atheist, with a focus on Utah:\u00a0 \u201cMeeting in the middle on religious and LGBTQ rights: There is a way to protect the LGBTQ community and people of faith if Americans would rediscover a passion for compromise\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n