{"id":99153,"date":"2023-03-10T13:18:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T20:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=99153"},"modified":"2023-03-10T13:18:49","modified_gmt":"2023-03-10T20:18:49","slug":"in-the-land-of-the-long-white-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2023\/03\/in-the-land-of-the-long-white-cloud.html","title":{"rendered":"In the Land of the Long White Cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>
New Zealand or Aotearoa (\u201cThe Land of the Long White Cloud\u201d) is famous for many things, including sheep and wool. It should also be famous among Latter-day Saints for the wonderful history of the Church that has occurred there.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new article, this one a review<\/em> article, has been published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn New Zealand: Even More Faithful Latter-day Saints,\u201d<\/a> written by Louis C. Midgley<\/a><\/p>\n

Review of Selwyn K\u0101tene, ed.,\u00a0Let Their Light So Shine: Mormon Leaders in New Zealand<\/em>\u00a0(Wellington, NZ: Huia Publishers, 2021). \u201cForeword\u201d by Charles A. Rudd (pp. vii\u2013viii); \u201cPreface\u201d by Peter Lineham (p. ix\u2013x); \u201cIntroduction\u201d by Selwyn K\u0101tene (pp. 1\u20133); \u201cContributors\u201d (pp. 215\u201318); \u201cGlossary\u201d (and \u201cMormon Terms\u201d) (pp. 219\u201321); \u201cIndex\u201d (pp. 222\u201330). NZ $30.00 Hardbound.<\/p>\n

Abstract:\u00a0<\/strong>This is a review of the third in the series of books of essays on what Selwyn K\u0101tene again calls \u201cMormon Leaders in New Zealand.\u201d This volume as at least as excellent, if not even better, than the other two volumes, which received very favorable reviews. Every effort must be made to preserve and publish an accurate history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> in New Zealand\/Aotearoa. Such effort is to be praised, especially when it is set out in such a handsome and exceptionally well-edited and published version as one finds in this entire valuable series. Despite this and the two other previous volumes in this series, there are yet more Latter-day Saints whose stories of faith and dedicated service in building the Kingdom of God in this beautiful land must be told in future volumes of this truly remarkable series.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Landscape<\/a>
A New Zealand landscape from Wikimedia Commons (public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Please permit me to recount one of my own experiences from a visit to New Zealand quite a few years ago.\u00a0 First, though, a preliminary note:<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said here on several occasions, I grew up in a part-member family in southern California.\u00a0 My mother was a fairly marginal member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who had grown up in St. George.\u00a0 My father was a nominal Lutheran who had been born and raised in an immigrant Scandinavian family in rural North Dakota.\u00a0 I began to interest myself in the Restoration as an early teenager, largely on my own.\u00a0 (Eventually, I was able to baptize my father, and my parents became fully active in the Church, which led, among other things, to my father\u2019s serving in a bishopric and to our family\u2019s sealing in the Los Angeles California Temple.)<\/p>\n

When I began to take an interest in the Gospel, I decided to attend early-morning seminary.\u00a0 I think that it was probably there that I first encountered the well-known story of Elder Matthew Cowley (1897-1953), who served as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles from 1945 until his early and unexpected death.\u00a0 As a very young man, Elder Cowley served as a missionary among the M\u0101ori of New Zealand, where he gained both a life-long love for Polynesians in general and for the M\u0101ori in particular and where he evidently gained a remarkable mastery of the M\u0101ori language.\u00a0 He continued to be involved with New Zealand and its people for the rest of his life, and also gained a reputation as a worker of miracles among those very faithful people.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I was once over in New Zealand giving lectures and firesides on the North Island and being taken around by none other than Professor Louis C. Midgley and his wonderful wife, Ireta.\u00a0 (They were serving as CES missionaries there, directing the Lorne Street Institute of Religion in Auckland.)\u00a0 At one point, we attended Sunday services at a Latter-day Saint ward \u2014 sadly, I can\u2019t remember where it was \u2014 which included participation in a high priests group meeting after the conclusion of sacrament meeting.\u00a0 We were all seated around a large seminar-style table (perhaps in a high council room) waiting for the meeting to start.\u00a0 Or maybe it was when Professor Midgley and I were asked to introduce ourselves.\u00a0 Many if not most of those around the table were M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n

One of the men at the table asked me, \u201cDo you know who the man is who\u2019s sitting next to you?\u201d\u00a0 I replied that no, I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 \u201cHave you ever heard the story of Matthew Cowley raising a young M\u0101ori boy from the dead?\u201d\u00a0 I said that yes, I was very familiar with that famous story.\u00a0 \u201cWell,\u201d he said, pointing to the sixtyish-looking gentleman at my left, \u201cthat\u2019s the boy.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cAnd sometimes,\u201d one of the other M\u0101ori brethren chipped in, inspiring laughter all around the table, \u201cwe wish he hadn\u2019t<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was astonished.\u00a0 The story of Matthew Cowley and that M\u0101ori boy was a piece of almost-legendary Church history with which I had never imagined having direct personal contact.\u00a0 But I did.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really, really looking forward to returning to New Zealand<\/a> next February.\u00a0 Please consider joining me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Highest<\/a>
Aoraki, or Mount Cook, in New Zealand
Photo by C. M. Lynch (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I now conclude the quotation from Alister McGrath,\u00a0Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology,\u00a0<\/em>The 2009 Hulsean Lectures, University of Cambridge ( Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) that I began yesterday in my blog entry \u201cJoseph Smith and the Architecture of Genesis.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Frankly, this passage won\u2019t be fully comprehensible unless you\u2019re acquainted with the first part of the quotation, which I shared yesterday:<\/p>\n

It will be clear that Dawkins and Noble represent the functional status of genes in completely different ways.\u00a0 The same limited scientific information is interpreted in totally different manners: in both cases, however, what is essentially a metaphysical interpretation of the gene is being presented as scientific fact, as if it were on the same level as empirical statements.\u00a0 Dawkins and Noble cannot both be right.\u00a0 Though both base themselves on the same observational statement, they import and impose quite different metaphysical assumptions upon it.\u00a0 Their statements are thus empirically equivalent, having equally good grounding in observation and experimental evidence.<\/p>\n

So which is right?\u00a0 How could we decide which is to be preferred on scientific grounds?\u00a0 As Noble observes, \u201cno-one seems to be able to think of an experiment that would detect an empirical difference between them.\u201d\u00a0 The question of the metaphysical presuppositions and consequences of evolutionary thought is entirely legitimate, and is of considerable interest.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it is important to be clear that discussion of this issue is often muddied by confusion over the status of the metaphysical dimensions of evolutionary thought.\u00a0 The challenge facing anyone interested in reflecting on the cultural, religious, ethical, and theological implications of biological evolution is to separate the observational evidence from the accumulated detritus of metaphysical speculation.\u00a0 (39)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 A new article, this one a review article, has been published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship: \u201cIn New Zealand: Even More Faithful Latter-day Saints,\u201d written by Louis C. Midgley Review of Selwyn K\u0101tene, ed.,\u00a0Let Their Light So Shine: Mormon Leaders in New Zealand\u00a0(Wellington, NZ: Huia Publishers, 2021). \u201cForeword\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":69823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9221,5643,34893,1809,289,34902,6994,2905,1812,1815,7113,5640,34890,4369,788,55,1667,2208,177,20946,34899,34896],"class_list":["post-99153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alister-mcgrath","tag-aotearoa","tag-bountiful-travel","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-darwinism","tag-darwinism-and-the-divine","tag-dawkins","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-latter-day-saints","tag-lds","tag-lds-church","tag-maori","tag-matthew-cowley","tag-miracle","tag-mormon","tag-mormonism","tag-mormons","tag-new-zealand","tag-richard-dawkins","tag-selfish-gene","tag-selwyn-jones","tag-selwyn-katene"],"yoast_head":"\nIn the Land of the Long White Cloud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    A 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