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LDS History

FairMormon Conference Podcast #51 – Scott Hales, “The Exodus and Beyond: A Preview of Saints, Volume 2: No Unhallowed Hand”

February 11, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2019-Scott-Hales.mp3

Podcast: Download (79.2MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Scott Hales, The Exodus and Beyond: A Preview of Saints, Volume 2: No Unhallowed Hand

You may also be interested in FairMormon Conference Podcast #49 – Angela Hallstrom, “Women’s Voices in Saints Volume 2” and FairMormon Conference Podcast #39 – Matthew McBride, “Answering Historical Questions with Church History Topics,” which are mentioned in the presentation.

Scott A. Hales has been a historian/writer for the Church History Department since 2015. He currently works as a writer and story editor for Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, the new four-volume narrative history of the Church. He has a BA in English from Brigham Young University and an MA and PhD in American Literature from the University of Cincinnati. He has published scholarly articles on Mormon and American literature in several academic journals, including Religion and the Arts and The Journal of Transnational American Studies. He currently lives in Eagle Mountain, UT with his wife and five children.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, LDS History, Podcast, Polygamy, Prophets, Resources

FairMormon Conference Podcast #50 – Matt Roper/Kirk Magleby, “Time Vindicates the Prophet”

January 17, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019-Matt-Roper-and-Kirk-Magleby.mp3

Podcast: Download (90.7MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Matt Roper/Kirk Magleby, Time Vindicates the Prophet

Transcript available here.

Matthew P. Roper (M.S. in Sociology, Brigham Young University) was a resident scholar and research assistant for the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Studies at Brigham Young University. He is now a Research Associate at Book of Mormon Central.

Kirk Alder Magleby is the Executive Director of Book of Mormon Central.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: Anti-Mormon critics, Archaeology, Bible, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, Evidences, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Geography, Joseph Smith, LDS History, LDS Scriptures, Podcast, Questions

FairMormon Conference Presentations to go with the “Introductory Pages of the Book of Mormon” Come Follow Me Lesson

January 5, 2020 by Trevor Holyoak

This is a little late, but it came to me while sitting in Gospel Doctrine today that we have had several good FairMormon Conference presentations over the years that go along with today’s lesson. Perhaps they can still be of benefit to someone in their personal study. Here are the ones that came to mind:

  • In 2004, the late historian Richard Lloyd Anderson gave a talk about the Book of Mormon witnesses, entitled “Explaining Away the Book of Mormon Witnesses.”
  • In 2017, Keith Erekson, who is the director of the Church History Library, talked about “Witnessing the Book of Mormon: The Testimonies of Three, Eight, and Millions.”
  • And in 2019, Daniel Peterson spoke about the little known women who were also witnesses of the Book of Mormon as part of his presentation on “‘Idle Tales’? The Witness of Women.”

Filed Under: Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Lesson Aids, Women

Book Review: The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture

December 19, 2019 by Trevor Holyoak

Most members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have probably never thought of the Pearl of Great Price as controversial. The Book of Mormon, yes—it has been under attack practically since the night Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith. Yet, Givens and Hauglid [1] use this book to argue that the Pearl of Great Price is even more so. Unfortunately, the majority of the effort goes into attempting to prove the point, and it leaves the book less than faith-promoting. It does have some bright spots, however.

The book begins with the assertion that “without the Book of Mormon, the Church of Jesus Christ would lose its principal evangelizing tool and its most conspicuous sign of Smith’s prophetic vocation but relatively little of its doctrine.… With the Doctrine and Covenants, the church would lose a good bit of its ecclesiology—organization templates and guidelines for church government and its offices—but would not suffer a devastating loss of the deeper theological underpinnings of its faith.” [2] I found these statements to be very surprising. The Book of Mormon has enough unique doctrine in it for Tad Callister to devote an entire chapter of his recent book to it, and in several places Givens admits that doctrine found in places like the Book of Moses was first taught in the Book of Mormon. In addition, the Doctrine and Covenants contains a great deal of unique doctrine, in spite of the removal of the Lectures on Faith (which the book points out is commonly thought to have been the Doctrine of the Doctrine and Covenants). A comparison of our edition with that of the Community of Christ shows some of what would be missing without it.

The book goes on to make its point: “Mormonism, in other words, is absolutely inconceivable apart from this collection of scriptural texts that provided the faith’s theological core from the beginning but only received canonical recognition in 1880. At the present moment, controversies regarding multiple accounts of Smith’s ‘First Vision,’ as well as the origins of the text of the Book of Abraham, have brought unprecedented attention to this hitherto largely neglected work. The consequence is that the Pearl of Great Price represents at one and the same time the greatest vulnerabilities and the greatest strengths of the Church of Jesus Christ.” [3] As I argue below, this is quite an overstatement. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture

Filed Under: Anti-Mormon critics, Apologetics, Bible, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, Book reviews, Doctrine, First Vision, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Prophets

FairMormon Conference Podcast #49 – Angela Hallstrom, “Women’s Voices in Saints Volume 2”

December 2, 2019 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019-Angela-Hallstrom.mp3

Podcast: Download (78.6MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Angela Hallstrom, Women’s Voices in Saints Volume 2

Transcript available here.

Angela Hallstrom works for the Church History Department as a writer and literary editor for the four-volume history of the Church, Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. Prior to her work for the Church History Department, she taught writing at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. She received an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and is the author of the novel Bound on Earth, editor of the short fiction collection Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction, and has served on the editorial boards of BYU Studies, Irreantum, and Segullah. She and her husband are the parents of four children, and recently moved back to Utah after spending sixteen years in Minnesota.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, LDS History, Podcast, Polygamy, Women

FairMormon Conference Podcast #46 – Daniel Peterson, “‘Idle Tales’? The Witness of Women”

October 24, 2019 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/dcp2019.mp3

Podcast: Download (90.8MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held in August. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Daniel Peterson, “Idle Tales”? The Witness of Women

Transcript available here.

A native of southern California, Daniel C. Peterson received a bachelor’s degree in Greek and philosophy from Brigham Young University (BYU) and, after several years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo, earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr. Peterson is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, where he has taught Arabic language and literature at all levels, Islamic philosophy, Islamic culture and civilization, Islamic religion, the Qur’an, the introductory and senior “capstone” courses for Middle Eastern Studies majors, and various other occasional specialized classes. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on Islamic and Latter-day Saint topics–including a biography entitled Muhammad: Prophet of God (Eerdmans, 2007)—and has lectured across the United States, in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and at various Islamic universities in the Near East and Asia. He 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. Dr. Peterson is married to the former Deborah Stephens, of Lakewood, Colorado, and they are the parents of three sons.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: Bible, Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, LDS History, Podcast, Testimonies, Women

Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 9: December 1841 – April 1842

October 14, 2019 by Trevor Holyoak

Available from the FairMormon Bookstore

As we reach the last few years of Joseph Smith’s life, the Documents series volumes cover decreasing amounts of time while still requiring a significant number of pages. This volume covers five months in 595 pages. I’ve been told volume 15 will cover a mere five weeks.

Volume 9 takes place between December 1841 and April 1842. During this time, Joseph Smith opened a store, became vice mayor of Nauvoo, took over as editor of the Times and Seasons, joined the Freemasons, and helped start the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, all while continuing to sell land to incoming Saints, lead the church, and command the Nauvoo Legion. An estimated 70 percent of the documents in this volume were not published prior to the Joseph Smith Papers Project. The documents consist of letters, revelations (many of them personal, so not canonized), discourses, legal and business documents, minutes from meetings, and selections from the Times and Seasons. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Joseph Smith Papers, Documents, Vol. 9: December 1841 – April 1842

Filed Under: Book reviews, First Vision, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Masonry, Polygamy, Prophets, Women

FairMormon Conference Podcast #43 – Scott Gordon, “CES Letter: Proof or Propaganda?”

September 30, 2019 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019-Scott-Gordon.mp3

Podcast: Download (85.0MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held last month. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Scott Gordon, CES Letter: Proof or Propaganda?

Transcript available here.

Scott Gordon serves as President of FairMormon, a non-profit corporation staffed by volunteers dedicated to helping members deal with issues raised by critics of the LDS faith. He has an MBA from Brigham Young University, and a BA in Organizational Communications from Brigham Young University. He is currently an instructor of business and technology at Shasta College in Redding, California. Scott has held many positions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints including serving as a bishop for six years. He is married and has five children.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: Anti-Mormon critics, Apologetics, Book of Mormon, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Faith Crisis, Joseph Smith, LDS History, LDS Scriptures, Podcast

FairMormon Conference Podcast #42 – Tad R. Callister, “A Case for the Book of Mormon”

September 24, 2019 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019-Tad-Callister.mp3

Podcast: Download (69.8MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held last month. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Tad R. Callister, A Case for the Book of Mormon

Transcript available here.

Tad R. Callister was serving in the Presidency of the Seventy and as a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy when he was called as Sunday School general president. He has served in a number of Church callings including full-time missionary in the Eastern Atlantic States Mission, bishop, stake president, regional representative, mission president, and Area Seventy.

Brother Callister received a bachelor of science degree in accounting from Brigham Young University, a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of California–Los Angeles, and a master’s degree in tax law from New York University Law School. He spent most of his professional career practicing tax law. He and his wife Kathryn Louise Saporiti are the parents of six children.

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: Archaeology, Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine, Evidences, FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast

FairMormon Conference Podcast #40 – Don Bradley, “Joseph Smith’s First Vision as Endowment and Epitome of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (or Why I Came Back to the Church)”

September 9, 2019 by Trevor Holyoak

https://media.blubrry.com/mormonfaircast/www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019-Don-Bradley.mp3

Podcast: Download (74.9MB)

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This podcast series features past FairMormon Conference presentations. This presentation is from our 2019 conference held last month. If you would like to watch the presentations from our 2019 conference, you can still purchase the video streaming.

Don Bradley, Joseph Smith’s First Vision as Endowment and Epitome of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (or Why I Came Back to the Church)

Don Bradley is a writer, editor, and researcher specializing in early Mormon history. Don recently performed an internship with the Joseph Smith Papers Project and is completing his thesis, on the earliest Mormon conceptions of the New Jerusalem, toward an M.A. in History at Utah State University. He has published on the translation of the Book of Mormon, plural marriage before Nauvoo, and Joseph Smith’s “grand fundamental principles of Mormonism” and plans to publish an extensive analysis, co-authored with Mark Ashurst-McGee, on the Kinderhook plates. Don’s first book was The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Missing Contents of the Book of Mormon (being published soon).

Audio Copyright © 2019 The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc. Any reproduction or transcription of this material without prior express written permission is prohibited.

Filed Under: FAIR Conference, FairMormon Conference, First Vision, Joseph Smith, LDS History, Podcast, Temples, Testimonies

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