Dan Peterson

“Can there be any valid criticisms of the Church?” I’ve posted a response to the challenge at least twice, and I’ve been attacked each time for what I wrote, by people who plainly didn’t understand what I wrote and, it seems, couldn’t be bothered to try to understand it.

I’ve recently read several German-language books, including Anton Grabner-Haider and Peter Strasser, Hitlers mythische Religion: Theologische Denklinien und NS-Ideologie (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2007). I actually have mixed feelings about the overall thesis of the book.

On May 21, 1991, I called my friend Dr. Ioan Petru Culianu at his office at the University of Chicago to discuss a project he wanted to collaborate on with me. His secretary answered. "I'm sorry," she said, but he was murdered earlier today."

The Book of Mormon offers at least two really good examples of such ancient simile oaths or simile curses.

I think that the image is serving for many as a kind of Rorschach test, and that their responses probably tell us more about them than about the person in the portrait.

I’m so very grateful to our filmmaking team of Mark Goodman, James Jordan, and Russell Richins, and to Mitch Davis, who wrote the initial script for the dramatic film, and to all of the donors and volunteers and other contributors who made Witnesses.

I’m really pleased to see interreligious tolerance and religious liberty emerging — as they manifestly have over the past decade or more — as major themes in the public messages of leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Since the mid-twentieth century, scholarly studies of the literary craftsmanship of biblical texts have revealed considerable insights into the intended purposes of the authors of these scriptural narratives.

Links to new articles of interest.

Mira Fox asks a good question: “Mormonism and Judaism are dominating television. Is that good for representation?: ‘Under the Banner of Heaven,’ ‘Unorthodox’ and numerous other shows focused on minority religions have premiered recently. But their portrayals aren’t always flattering.”

Writing is one of the greatest inventions or discoveries or gifts in the history of humanity. With just a few simple symbols — twenty-six in English — a virtual infinity of thoughts can be expressed, and not only expressed but conveyed across time and space.

The Latter-day Saints who settled southern Alberta had come here because they had been sent by the Church. They didn’t come for land or wealth, but because they were faithful and obedient.