FAIR

Apologetics

Book Review: Faith is not Blind

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Available at a discount from the FairMormon Bookstore

Bruce C. Hafen was a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy until 2010 when he was given Emeritus status. Prior to that, he was a president of BYU-Idaho and dean of the BYU Law School. He also was recently the president of the St. George Temple. Marie K. Hafen, his wife, taught at BYU-Idaho, BYU, and the University of Utah, as well as serving on the Young Women General Board and on the Deseret News board of directors.

This book is an expansion of a talk they gave together at a BYU-Hawaii devotional on January 24, 2017, which was an updated version of a talk called “Love Is Not Blind: Some Thoughts for College Students on Faith and Ambiguity” at a BYU devotional on January 9, 1979. Since 1979, the Internet has of course come to be a new avenue for people to stumble across things that would destroy their faith, and much of the book focuses on that.

The Hafens suggest a three part model for understanding stages of belief that people might go through. First, is what they call “simplicity.” This is when people have an innocent faith and “tend to think in terms of black or white – there is very little gray in [their] perspective. And many youth and young single adults have a childlike optimism and loyalty that make them wonderfully teachable. They typically trust their teachers, believe what they read, and respond eagerly to invitations for Church service. New adult converts often have similar attitudes” (page 8). [Read more…] about Book Review: Faith is not Blind

FairMormon Conference Podcast #19 – Elder Kevin W. Pearson, “A Sacred and Imperative Duty”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This episode is a presentation from our conference earlier this year. If you would like to watch all the presentations from the 2018 conference, you can still purchase video streaming.

Elder Kevin W. Pearson, A Sacred and Imperative Duty

Written talk available here.

Elder Kevin W. Pearson
August 2018

Elder Kevin W. Pearson was sustained as a General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 5, 2008. At the time of his call, he had been serving as the president of the Washington Tacoma Mission. He previously served as a counselor in the Europe East Area, President of the Pacific Area, and as an assistant executive director of the Missionary Department. He is currently serving at Church headquarters as an area assistant with the North America Southwest Area. Elder Pearson also serves on the Communication Services Committee and Strengthening Church Members Committee.

Elder Pearson received a bachelor of science degree in finance from the University of Utah in 1981. In 1983 he received a master’s degree in business administration in corporate finance from Harvard Business School. Prior to his call as a mission president, he was working as the chief executive officer at Ingenix, Inc.

Elder Pearson has served in a number of Church callings, including full-time missionary in the Finland Helsinki Mission, stake missionary, elders quorum president, ward Young Men president, high councilor, counselor in a bishopric, bishop, and mission president.

Kevin Wayne Pearson was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on April 10, 1957. He married June Langeland in June 1980. They are the parents of six children.

Audio and Video Copyright © 2018 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Some 2018 FairMormon Conference Transcripts Now Available

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Our volunteers have been very busy transcribing the presentations from the conference held in August. The following transcripts are now available:

The transcripts for the remaining presentations will be posted here when they are available.

You can also still order the video streaming so you can watch the presentations on your computer, mobile device, or Roku.

Jaxon Washburn – Interfaith Work, and Being called on a Mission

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Jaxon Washburn is a remarkable young man that has done a great deal of outreach work as part of being on interfaith councils, and other organizations that support religious practice. His story is unusual in that, while Jaxon was raised for the first 12 years in what he describes as a traditional Latter-day Saint household, following his mother’s decision to leave the Church, he began to live a sort of double religious life studying and experiencing two different faith traditions on a regular basis.

Jaxon also shares how previous FairMormon Podcasts were instrumental in helping him to navigate his faith crisis and come to a testimony of the truth claims of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Having faithful and scholarly answers to critical questions provided him with a path through his questions, and have answers where anti-mormon literature was suffocating and depressing.

This unique experience led Jaxon to study many of the worlds religions, and, like Joseph Smith, found himself with the designs of finding out which of all the sects was the one God wanted him to align himself. Through considerable study, including listening to some past podcasts by host Nick Galieti for the FairMormon organization, Jaxon felt that he had gained a testimony of the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel, of its claims to prophetic leadership and the validity of the Book of Mormon as Scripture.

Arizona Interfaith Council - Jaxon Washburn
Some members of the Arizona Interfaith Council – including Jaxon Washburn

Jaxon came to the decision to place on hold his religious studies path in the halls of higher learning to serve a mission. In this episode he announces where he has been called, as well as some of the pilot program that he is involved with regarding language learning through the MTC. This episode features an powerful story of love, the importance of study in coming to a conversion, as well as the remarkable ways that life experience can guide us in the path that leads us back to our Heavenly Father.

Jaxon on the World Religion and Tolerance Club
Jaxon (and other students) in the World Religion and Tolerance Club

To learn more about the mission where Jaxon will be serving his mission – click here.

Celebrating Two New Books in the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project: The Nature of the Original Language of the Book of Mormon

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Royal Skousen

On Tuesday, September 25, at 7 p.m., BYU Professor Royal Skousen will speak on the just-published The Nature of the Original Language, parts 3 and 4 of volume 3 of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. The lecture will include additional commentary by Stanford Carmack, Skousen’s collaborator in authoring and researching these two new books.

The presentation is free and open to the public. It will be held in the Assembly Hall of the Hinckley Center at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Parking is available after 6 p.m. in the large lot east of the Hinckley Center (Lot 16).

The lecture will be videotaped and made available in the weeks following the presentation. The event is sponsored by BYU Studies and the Interpreter Foundation. For further information, contact BYU Studies (801-422-6691 or [email protected]).

The two new books are now available for purchase from BYU Studies, the joint publisher of these books, along with the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS).

The Nature of the Original Language (NOL) continues the analysis of the Book of Mormon [Read more…] about Celebrating Two New Books in the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project: The Nature of the Original Language of the Book of Mormon

Book Review: 1,001 Facts About the Prophet Joseph Smith

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Available at a discount from the FairMormon bookstore

This is a short (151 pages) paperback book that contains 1,001 numbered paragraphs that chronologically narrate the life of Joseph Smith, essentially constituting a simple biography. “One of the main goals of this book is to tell the real story, while making it simple to read and understand. 1,001 Facts about the Prophet Joseph Smith is a history book for this generation. The entire book can be read in one sitting, or readers can jump around to different moments in the prophet’s life and learn about their favorite and the more fascinating events” (page 2). The author also intends the book to combat the anti-Mormon propaganda being spread on the Internet.

Here are several examples from the book that I thought were of interest: [Read more…] about Book Review: 1,001 Facts About the Prophet Joseph Smith

FairMormon Conference Podcast #12 – Scott Petersen, “Jesus Christ, the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever: A Restoration of Primitive Christianity”

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This episode is a presentation from 2017. If you would like to watch the presentations from the conference we had earlier this month, you can still purchase video streaming.

Scott Petersen, Jesus Christ, the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever: A Restoration of Primitive Christianity

Transcript available here.

Scott is the Executive Director of the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at BYU. Under his leadership the program has been ranked in the top five of all collegiate entrepreneurship programs for each of the past seven years, ranking #2 in 2016. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Omadi, Inc., a venture backed SaaS mobile CRM platform for workforce management, serving the towing/transportation markets. Scott is a long time entrepreneur having co-founded or partnered in building seven companies (harvesting four), including several current ventures. Additionally, he serves on several business and private foundation boards. In 2005, Scott published a significant work, titled Where Have All The Prophets Gone?, a historical, theological book on early Christianity using the Bible, the Pseudepigrapha, the Apocrypha, the Dead Seas Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Library, and all of the extant early Christian writings. In 2014 Scott published his second book, Do the Mormons Have a Leg to Stand On?: a Critical Look at LDS Doctrines in the Light of the Bible and the Teachings of the Early Christian Church. Scott and his wife Marilyn are the parents of 5 married children and they have 15 grandchildren. Scott serves as Stake President of the Provo Utah YSA 4th Stake.

Audio and Video Copyright © 2017 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

The 2018 FairMormon Conference in Review

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We had another great conference last week (it was our 20th!). This time it ran for 3 days. Some of the topics covered were lesser-known women’s stories in church history, the Gospel Topics Essays, stories of members of the church in India and Africa, the new Saints church history series coming out from the church, grace, the Book of Abraham, homosexuality, horses in the Book of Mormon, and how to help people having a faith crisis. We also had a general authority speak for the first time. Elder Kevin W. Pearson spoke about the good that FairMormon and other organizations are doing to help correct misunderstandings about the church, and that more voices are needed in the effort. Awards were given to Scott Gordon, Louis Midgley, and Michael Hickenbotham for their service, and a painting of “Mary Whitmer and Moroni” in honor of Lynne Hilton Wilson was unveiled.

Each day, one presentation was live-streamed free on Facebook, where you can still watch the recordings. You can also watch them here:

  • Jenny Reeder: “Fire In My Bones”: Women’s Stories on churchhistorianspress.org
  • John Gee: Selling Our Birthright for a Mess of Pottage: The Historical Authenticity of the Book of Abraham
  • Elder Kevin W. Pearson: A Sacred and Imperative Duty

It’s not too late to purchase the streaming and watch the videos of the entire conference. After purchase, they will be available to view on any device with a web browser, as well as on a Roku box. You can buy it here.

We have had several articles published about the conference (this section will be updated as more appear):

Mike Ash, one of our volunteers who is a great photographer, has posted photos from the conference on our Facebook page.

Transcriptions of the presentations will be posted on our website after they are prepared by our volunteers.

The full conference schedule can be reviewed here.

 

Race and the LDS Church – What do we know, and how do we teach it?

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Russell Stevenson Mormon Scholar
Russell Stevenson – Author of “For The Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013

The LDS MissionCast is a podcast designed to educate and inspire in the great cause of Missionary Work. This episode is all about Race and the LDS Church. Some of the episodes of the LDS MissionCast feature content for those preparing to serve a full-time mission, some episodes are directed towards those that have returned home, or are wanting to be more inspired in member-missionary work. Episodes like this one are unique in that we occasionally need to take the time to learn the gospel, to learn our history better, so that we can better members of the church, and better ministers to those around us.

On June 1st, 2018 there will be a celebration in the conference center in Salt Lake City, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1978 revelation on the Priesthood, or Official Declaration #2. This topic is often referred to as being the “Priesthood Ban.” In an effort to explain or even justify this policy, it is common for members of the church to say things about this issue that are either wrong, possibly hurtful, incorrect, you name it. So we will spend some time in this episode learning the history, and coming to some understanding of this often controversial topic.

The scholar for this episode, Russell Stevenson, has dedicated years of his life to the study and understanding of the issues surrounding Race and the LDS Church. He talks about how his mission experience inspired this work, and informs much of what he does in his academic studies.

For further reference, please refer to the Race and the Priesthood essay at LDS.org


LDS MissionCast Podcast for Mormon Missionaries

10 Questions with Dennis B. Horne

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Cross-posted from From the Desk of Kurt Manwaring

I recently had the privilege to interview Dennis B. Horne.

Horne is the author of many books, including Bruce R. McConkie: Highlights from his Life and Teachings, Latter Leaves in the Life of Lorenzo Snow, I Know He Lives: How 13 Special Witnesses Came to Know Christ, and Determining Doctrine. A Reference Guide For Evaluating Doctrinal Truth.

Dennis B. Horne, Photo provided by Dennis Horne.

Kurt Manwaring: Welcome! Before we begin, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you first got interested in writing about religious topics?

I am an independent researcher and author. I grew up in Bountiful, Utah, and served a mission to Independence Missouri. I obtained my bachelors from Weber State University in Communications with an emphasis in broadcasting. I spent some ten years, off and on, working for two local Salt Lake City television stations before I went to work for the LDS Church twenty years ago. I have two wonderful wives (one of them deceased and on the other side of the veil for the last twelve years) and three daughters.

The spark of interest I felt for church history and doctrine when I attended Seminary grew into a roaring fire while I served a mission. That is where I first heard the other missionaries speak so respectfully and reverently of Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s teachings and testimony. He had passed away just a few weeks before I graduated from high school, and I had not had the sense to pay attention to his final famous (April 1985) General Conference address at the time he delivered it. Following my mission, and on the side while pursuing my degree, I voraciously consumed Elder McConkie’s writings and those of the other great doctrinal thinkers and authorities of the Church. I even became a small-time collector of Mormon books when I could afford it. I began assembling my own files, filled with talks and articles related to church history and doctrine. These books and files became my main interest outside of gaining my secular education. Fortunately, I came under the influence of two knowledgeable and wise CES men, who gave me invaluable counsel in how to approach my gospel and historical studies: what to feast on; what to be wary of and why; what to study for proper perspective, and where to find the purest and sweetest doctrine.

These formative years in my twenties helped me avoid a serious crisis of faith, such as what has become something of a fad today. During the decade of the 1990s I felt, rightly or wrongly, that I might become knowledgeable enough to begin considering the possibility of doing some writing. I loved good Mormon books and soon developed the desire to contribute to the field myself. How little I knew how difficult that would be.

Kurt Manwaring: What do you do for work and what is your writing schedule like? [Read more…] about 10 Questions with Dennis B. Horne