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This podcast series features past FAIR Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2025 conference held earlier this month. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.
This audio podcast version has been edited to make it easier for listening. If you would like to watch the full presentation, it is available here.
Daniel C. Peterson is the president of the Interpreter Foundation, which publishes the online periodical Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, produces books, convenes conferences, and sponsors a weekly radio program: https://interpreterfoundation.org. He and his wife were the executive producers of the 2021 theatrical film Witnesses and have served in the same capacity for its 2022 docudrama sequel, Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.
A native of southern California who earned his doctorate at UCLA after study at BYU, in Jerusalem, and in Cairo, he retired on 1 July 2021 as a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University, where he had taught since 1985.
Formerly director of research and chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), now BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, he is also a former president of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology and is currently a member of the board of the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy.
Dr. Peterson served in the Switzerland Zürich Mission (1972-1974), and, for approximately eight years, on the Gospel Doctrine writing committee for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also presided for a time as the bishop of a singles ward adjacent to Utah Valley University.
He is married to the former Deborah Stephens, of Lakewood, Colorado, and they have three sons and three granddaughters.
It was a good presentation, but I often feel like we spend so much time trying to defend Brigham Young and other 19th and 20th century prophets’ and apostles’ honor that we fail to really grapple with the real issue. Why in the 19th century was slavery even an issue that Christian nations were wrestling with? I think Ben Spackman captures the real essence of the issue in his Gospel Doctrine/Come Follow Me essay on Philemon. The essay pivots around what I think is one of the most compelling questions anyone has every asked about a difficult topic like slavery. “The problem … is that scripture fails to live up to a standard we see as ethically and morally cut-and-dried, and presumably eternal… What model of scripture, revelation, and prophets allows “God’s word,” God’s prophets, and Jesus himself to do or allow something so… inhuman?”
I recognize that Dr. Peterson’s presentation is largely motivated by Reeve, Rich, and Carruth’s book which isn’t delving deep into Biblical history trying to understand how slavery became a thing among the Israelites. It seems to me that this is the underlying issue that makes slavery such a difficult issue for believers.