FAIR

News from FAIR

Three Important FAIR Conference Presentations to Help Parents, Leaders, and Other Teachers of Children and Youth

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These three presentations are important to families and Church leaders of all faiths. We hope you will watch them and share them with your Latter-day Saint, and non-Latter-day Saint, friends.

Jeffrey Thayne – “Worldview Apologetics: Revealing the Waters in Which We Swim” (transcript)

Carl Trueman – “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution”

Ed Gantt – “Agentic Sexuality: How a Latter-day Saint Perspective Can Rescue Humanity from the Tyranny of the Abstract”

Jeffrey Thayne is from BYUI, Carl Trueman is with Grove City College and is an Orthodox Presbyterian, and Ed Gantt is from BYU.

This is a reposting from a previous blog to highlight the conference presentations.

Three Conference Presentations Now Available to Help Parents, Leaders, and Other Teachers of Children and Youth

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by Cassandra Hedelius

Late last year, I started brainstorming suggestions for who we could invite to present at the 2021 FAIR conference. We usually look for presenters to counter criticisms of the church on issues like polygamy, Book of Mormon translation, and race. But in addition to these, I wanted this conference to provide more immediately vital resources for parents, building on John Gee’s excellent presentation in 2020. Children are bombarded with not only explicit arguments, but very subtle messages that shape their imaginations and moral judgment in ways that make it very difficult to accept divine authority and parental guidance. I’m the mother of three young children, and my dearest hope is to succeed at building their faith in the Lord, His church, and the prophets and other leaders He calls. I was determined to find speakers that would significantly help me and other parents like me. 

Around that time, I started reading a new book by Carl Trueman: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. I was instantly captivated by Trueman’s skill at naming and explaining cultural forces that I had dimly intuited but never fully grasped. His bracing exposition gave me the consciousness and competence I need to shape my childrens’ worldviews instead of allowing them to be shaped by the world’s philosophies. [Read more…] about Three Conference Presentations Now Available to Help Parents, Leaders, and Other Teachers of Children and Youth

Recap of 2021 FAIR Conference

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Another conference has come and gone! Each year they seem to go by more quickly, even when more is added (besides going for 3 days, we also had a special Thursday evening presentation). We were glad to be able to have 300 people in attendance at our new venue after having an online-only event last year. We also did have a streaming option, which you can still take advantage of by purchasing one of our on-demand viewing options.

As always, there was a wide range of topics. This year they included subjects such as polygamy, Book of Mormon authorship, LGBT issues, women and the priesthood, the Wilford Woodruff papers, and how to discern between truth and fiction. Carl Trueman, author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, gave an excellent presentation to his first Latter-day Saint audience. You can view the full list of presentations in the conference program here.

Each day we did a free public stream of one presentation. On Wednesday, it was “Let’s Talk About Polygamy” by Brittany Chapman Nash. [Read more…] about Recap of 2021 FAIR Conference

“A Life Lived in Crescendo”: Selected Punctuation Marks of Joseph Smith’s Final Years – A “Come, Follow Me” Virtual Fireside Series

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Sponsored by
The Interpreter Foundation
Book of Mormon Central
FAIR

Beginning Sunday, June 27, at 6:00 PM

(Anniversary of Joseph Smith’s martyrdom)

True to the End: The Martyrdom
Presented by
R. Jean Addams

For more information, including schedule, presenters and live-stream links, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/a-life-lived-in-crescendo-firesides/

New Name and New Directions

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In 1997 a small group of Internet message board warriors started an organization named the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, or FAIR. FAIR was staffed by young, strident defenders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

However, our really cool name soon created problems.  People asked, “What does the word “Apologetic” mean?”[1]  “Why are you apologizing?” “What is it that you actually do?”

It was confusing. So that people weren’t always stumbling over our name, in 2013, we changed it to FairMormon. We thought of ourselves as Mormon, and we want the facts to be covered “FAIRly”. The name was perfect! As the then Vice President of FAIR, Steven Densley, exclaimed, “Hopefully this will be easier to remember and will allow us to spend more time doing apologetics rather than spending our time explaining what apologetics is.”[2] [Read more…] about New Name and New Directions

2020 Interpreter Foundation Conference

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Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

September 18-19, 2020
Due to the COVID-19 situation, this will be a live-streaming-only conference. For updates on conference details, watch this page

Presented by
The Interpreter Foundation
Brigham Young University Department of Ancient Scripture
Book of Mormon Central
FairMormon

[Read more…] about 2020 Interpreter Foundation Conference

Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

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2020 Interpreter Foundation Conference

 

Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

September 18-19, 2020
Brigham Young University, Tanner Building, Room 251
(If temporary COVID-19 restrictions preclude gathering on campus, we will hold the conference virtually. For late-breaking news, watch this website.)

Presented by
The Interpreter Foundation
Brigham Young University Department of Ancient Scripture
Book of Mormon Central
FairMormon

Because we believe that the Book of Moses includes authentic history, the possibility of evidence for that belief interests us as scholars. Although the primary intent of Joseph Smith’s translations is to meet the needs of modern readers, not to provide precise matches to texts from other times, we consider significant patterns of resemblance to ancient manuscripts that the Prophet could not have known and of unexpected conformance to conditions imposed by an archaic setting as potential indicators of antiquity that are best explained when the essential element of divine revelation is acknowledged. [Read more…] about Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses

Donate to FairMormon on Facebook for #GivingTuesday on Nov. 27 and it will be matched!

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Thanks for all the donations! We couldn’t exist without you! We were able to raise a total of $5,233 (before matching)!

If you would still like to donate, you can do it here at any time. Thanks for your help!

 

Today is #GivingTuesday! Facebook and PayPal are matching a total of up to $7 million of donations made through Facebook. Help us today by donating at https://www.facebook.com/donate/262507577691633/

There are no fees on donations — 100% of the donations go to FairMormon!

 

Shop our Thanksgiving Bookstore Sale and Support FairMormon While Getting 25% off!

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Remember the FairMormon Bookstore as you plan your “Black Friday” shopping, and you can save 25% on some great new releases while helping to financially support FairMormon!

Sale titles include:

(Please note that all titles listed are preorders.)

Most other titles available in our bookstore are also below retail price, so take some time to find other great selections, as well!