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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a new piece from the weekly Interpreter Radio Show:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me<\/em> Old Testament Lesson 20: \u201cRebel Not Ye against the Lord, Neither Fear\u201d <\/em>Numbers 11\u201314, 20\u201324<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me<\/em>\u00a0Old Testament Lesson 20,\u00a0\u201cRebel Not Ye against the Lord, Neither Fear\u201d<\/em> on Numbers 11\u201314, 20\u201324, featured Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye, and Hales Swift. That roundtable has now been extracted from the 3 April 2022 broadcast of the Interpreter Radio Show.\u00a0 An archived recording of the complete broadcast, shorn of extraneous interruptions, may be accessed at no charge at https:\/\/interpreterfoundation.org\/interpreter-radio-show-April-3-2022\/<\/a>. The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard each and every week on Sunday evenings between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640.\u00a0 Or alternatively, you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And I think that, amidst my jet-lagged travels (travails?), I may have failed to call attention to this, which features Steve Densley<\/a>, Matthew Bowen<\/a>, and Mark Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Interpreter Radio Show: Review of\u00a0Under the Banner of Heaven<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Under the Banner of Heaven<\/em>\u00a0is an 2022 American true crime drama television miniseries based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer. The miniseries will start this week. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding the book since it juxtapositions two histories: the origin and evolution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> and a modern double murder committed in the name of God by brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who subscribed to a fundamentalist version of Mormonism.<\/span><\/p>\n The book and miniseries were reviewed and discussed during the Interpreter Radio Show on Sunday, April 24, 2022, to provide a faithful context for them.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And, while we\u2019re under the banner of heaven, here are three fairly serious discussions of that new FX\/Hulu miniseries.\u00a0 The first and third of these links are from writers who are unaffiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Under The Banner Of Heaven\u2019 Adds Nothing To The Conversation On Religious Extremism\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFX\u2019s \u2018Under the Banner of Heaven\u2019 Adaptation Rejects Reductive Elements of Krakauer\u2019s Book, but Confirms that \u2018Mormonism Breeds Dangerous Men'\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Under the Banner of Heaven\u2019 Grapples With Contradictions of Faith: The new FX series suggests there is a thin line between believer and zealot; faith and madness; and, most provocatively, church and cult\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Over the years, I\u2019ve run into the comment \u2014 often, but not always, from embittered and hostile ex-Mormons \u2014 that the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a shallow faith, lacking any and all intellectual or cultural merit, satisfying only to unreflective middlebrow business types (if not, indeed, only to dimwits).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some years ago, Thomas Cahill was attempting, in his best-selling book\u00a0<\/span>How the Irish Saved Civilization<\/span><\/i>, to explain the ancient Manichaean religion, and in the course of his comments, insulted Latter-day Saints and their beliefs out of the sheer blue sky by saying something to the effect that Manichaeism, like \u201cMormonism\u201d today, had no depth in it that would satisfy a serious mind.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve heard the assertion many times, and I\u2019ve seen it several times just recently.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n My\u00a0Latter-day Saint Scholars Testify<\/a> website was launched, in part, as a response to Cahill\u2019s gratuitous and uncharitable remark.\u00a0 Under the pressure of other obligations, I\u2019ve let that project slide in recent years; I need (when and if I can) to crank it up again.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Probably the first problem that I see with the claim is that, in my judgment, it\u2019s simply not true. \u00a0(Of course, it might be responded that I\u2019m a conspicuously shallow mind myself, so who cares about my \u201cjudgment\u201d?)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Although the Latter-day Saint intellectual and cultural tradition is still young \u2014 we were, until fairly recently, a small and relatively rural group, concentrated and largely isolated in the Great Basin West \u2014 I think it\u2019s beginning to come along. (There were few if any genuinely great Christian literary figures, philosophers, artists, or composers, let alone architects, at a comparable period in early Christendom \u2014 i.e., around the early third century.) \u00a0To provide just three examples, I suggest a serious engagement with the works of Blake Ostler<\/a>, Terryl Givens<\/a>, and the late David L. Paulsen<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Moreover, I believe that there is enormous depth, as yet still largely crying out for exploration, in our doctrine. \u00a0As B. H. Roberts put it,<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I believe \u201cMormonism\u201d affords opportunity for disciples of the second sort: nay, that its crying need is for such disciples. It calls for thoughtful disciples who will not be content with merely repeating some of the truths, but will develop the truths; and enlarge it by that development. Not half \u2014 not one-hundredth part \u2014 not a thousandth part of that which Joseph Smith revealed to the church has yet been\u00a0unfolded, either to the church or to the world. The work of the expounder has scarcely begun. The Prophet planted by teaching the germ-truths of the great dispensation of the fulness of times. The watering and weeding is going on, and God is giving the increase, and will give it more abundantly in the future as more intelligent discipleship shall obtain. The disciples of \u201cMormonism,\u201d growing discontented with the necessarily primitive methods which have hitherto prevailed in sustaining the doctrine, will yet take profounder and broader views of the great doctrines committed to the Church; and, departing from mere repetition, will cast them in new formulas; cooperating in the works of the Spirit, until they help to give to the truths received a more forceful expression and carry it beyond the earlier and cruder stages of development.<\/strong> \u00a0(B. H. Roberts, \u201cBook of Mormon Translation,\u201d\u00a0Improvement Era<\/em>\u00a09\/9 [July 1906]: 713.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But, viewing the question from another angle, I can\u2019t help but think that the matter of \u201cdepth\u201d \u2014 if what is meant by depth<\/em> is simply the kind of complexity with which intellectuals and academics love to play and to show off \u2014 is largely irrelevant.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It would be fatuous in the extreme for someone sitting in a crowded movie theater to ignore a scream of \u201cFire!\u201d simply because it came from a lower class \u201crube\u201d or \u201cphilistine,\u201d someone whose hands are (ugh!) soiled with trade or calloused by manual labor, or because it was expressed in an uncouth way, or voiced in an unsophisticated accent, or unsupported by allusions to recent developments in critical literary theory.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I doubt that every early Christian was an elite intellectual, capable of holding his or her own with the philosophers of Athens or the scholars of Alexandria. \u00a0But so what?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Could the Greek sophists Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus, and Cratylus have tied their rough contemporaries Ezra and Nehemiah in intellectual knots? \u00a0Very possibly. \u00a0But what would that matter?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Moreover, admonitions to kindness, charity, service, and other such positive attributes are always worthwhile, even if they\u2019re dismissed as lacking \u201cdepth.\u201d \u00a0I would rather live in a society characterized by such qualities than among a colony of supremely clever intellectuals who lack them. \u00a0(That might actually be a good description of Hell.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And I have little patience for anybody disposed to reject the good news of Christ\u2019s resurrection, or of the appearance of the Father and the Son to Joseph Smith, on the grounds that these accounts lack intellectual subtlety. \u00a0Simple or not, if they\u2019re true they\u2019re of incomparable importance.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Posted from Jerusalem, Israel<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Here\u2019s a new piece from the weekly Interpreter Radio Show: \u00a0 Audio Roundtable: Come, Follow Me Old Testament Lesson 20: \u201cRebel Not Ye against the Lord, Neither Fear\u201d Numbers 11\u201314, 20\u201324 The Interpreter Radio Roundtable for Come, Follow Me\u00a0Old Testament Lesson 20,\u00a0\u201cRebel Not Ye against the Lord, Neither Fear\u201d on Numbers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28248,1038,1809,28245,28971,28236,28239,2905,1812,1815,7113,788,55,1667,1791,28242],"class_list":["post-94996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-andrew-garfield","tag-b-h-roberts","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-dustin-lance-black","tag-how-the-irish-saved-civilization","tag-jon-krakauer","tag-krakauer","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-latter-day-saints","tag-lds","tag-lds-church","tag-mormon","tag-mormonism","tag-mormons","tag-thomas-cahill","tag-under-the-banner-of-heaven"],"yoast_head":"\n