Part 40: CES Letter Testimony/Spiritual Witness Questions [Section D]
By Sarah Allen
The topic we’re going to cover today is one that I’m passionate about, and that’s personal study: study of the scriptures, study of Church history, study of the prophets, and study of the Gospel. Many if not all of the prophets of the Restoration have encouraged us to do our own studying in addition to the lessons we receive in Sunday School, Seminary, or Institute.
At church the goal is to learn the doctrine. Some history gets thrown in, particularly when we’re talking about the Doctrine and Covenants, but for the most part that isn’t the focus of our lessons. That’s something we’re meant to study on our own time. We’ll skim through the scripture verses we were meant to read that week, and we’ll go over some words of modern prophets that align with those scripture verses, but we don’t really dive in very deeply to most of the topics we cover each year because there are just so many. Many teachers only have time to hit the most important points and skim over the rest. [Read more…] about The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 40
Jenny Reeder is the nineteenth-century women’s history specialist at the Church History Department for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She has a PhD in American history from George Mason University, and an MA from New York University in history, archival management, and documentary editing. Jenny is on the Church Historian’s Press Editorial Board, the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts Advisory Board, the Mormon History Association’s book awards committee, and the editorial board of Mormon Historical Studies. She has taught at BYU Education Week and has been a featured speaker at BYU Women’s Conference, the BYU Easter Conference, and Time Out for Women. She recently published First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith with Deseret Book, and past publications include At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women and Witness of Women: Firsthand Experiences and Testimonies of the Restoration. She leads the “Discourses of Eliza R. Snow” project, collecting and publishing all of Snow’s sermons on the Church Historian’s Press website and a selection of discourses in an upcoming print volume.
Ben Spackman is a PhD candidate in American Religious History at Claremont. His dissertation examines the intellectual roots of LDS creationism and evolution in the 20th century. Prior to his work at Claremont, he received a master’s degree and did PhD work in Old Testament languages and literature at the University of Chicago. He is a guest editor of a special edition of BYU Studies dedicated to biological evolution and LDS faith, and writes at 
Daniel C. Peterson (PhD, UCLA) is a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at Brigham Young University and founder of the university’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. He has published and spoken extensively on both Islamic and Mormon subjects. Formerly chairman of the board of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and an officer, editor, and author for its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, his professional work as an Arabist focuses on the Qur’an and on Islamic philosophical theology. He is the author, among other things, of a biography entitled 