Summary
2012 FAIR Conference
The 14th annual FAIR (FairMormon) Conference was held on August 2 and 3, 2012 at the South Towne Exposition Center in Sandy, Utah.
The FAIR Conference is an annual event that brings together scholars, apologists, and interested individuals from a variety of areas. Each comes with a unique perspective on history, science, or theology, and all come with a desire to help defend the gospel and share evidences of its truth.
Joshua Johanson
Navigating the Labyrinth Surrounding Homosexual Desire
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Bio
Joshua Johanson is an outspoken advocate for Mormons with same-gender attraction (SGA). His life experiences have been featured in the Mercury Times and were published in the book Gay Mormons?: Latter-day Saint Experiences of Same-Gender Attraction. He has been involved in several groups dealing with SGA, including Evergreen, Exodus, People Can Change, and most heavily in North Star, where he has contributed a significant amount of website content. He got his start in apologetics through writing and editing Wikipedia articles and became involved with FAIR in 2009. He has written extensively on the FAIR wiki about homosexuality and has recently finished working on an eight-segment podcast series dealing with issues surrounding Mormonism and homosexuality. He was actively involved with Proposition 8 while living in the Bay Area. He received his MA from the University of Washington in Computational Linguistics.
John Sorenson
Reading Mormon’s Codex
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John L. Sorenson is professor emeritus of anthropology at Brigham Young University. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in archaeology from BYU, a master’s degree in meteorology from the California Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Los Angeles.
He originated the program in anthropology at BYU, heading it for fourteen of his twenty-four years of faculty service. His primary academic and professional emphasis was in sociocultural anthropology, including many years as an applied anthropologist. Among other positions, he served as director of social sciences at General Research Corporation in Santa Barbara, California, in the 1960s and later founded Bonneville Research Corporation in Provo, Utah. He is the author of more than 200 publications.
Despite following a variety of other professional interests throughout his career, Dr. Sorenson never lost his strong interest in Mesoamerican archaeology, the subject that first drew him to anthropology. Since his retirement from BYU in 1986, he has concentrated his research and writing in that area.
One of the key figures in the early development of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (now part of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship), Dr. Sorenson served for several years as the editor of its Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. His 1985 book An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon, published by FARMS and Deseret Book, has become the most influential treatment of Book of Mormon peoples and history in their Mesoamerican context.
Dr. Sorenson and his late wife, Kathryn, reared nine children. In 1993 he married Helen Lance Christianson, mother of nine. They reside in Provo, Utah.
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Neylan McBaine is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Mormon Women Project and associate creative director at Bonneville Communications, the agency behind the Church’s “I’m A Mormon” campaign. A Yale graduate and experienced marketer, she is also a published religion writer and author of How to Be a Twenty-First Century Pioneer Woman.
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Royal Skousen is Professor of Linguistics and English Language at Brigham Young University. In 1972 he received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He has published four books on linguistic theory, including three on exemplar-based linguistics: Analogical Modeling of Language (1989), Analogy and Structure (1992), and Analogical Modeling: An Exemplar-Based Approach to Language (2002). He has also taught at the University of Illinois, the University of Texas, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Tampere in Finland as a Fulbright lecturer. In 2001 he was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute in the Netherlands. More recently, he has published on the quantum computing of analogical modeling, notably “Quantum Analogical Modeling” (2005) and “Quantum Analogical Modeling with Homogeneous Pointers” (2010), both available at www.arXiv.org.
Since 1988 Skousen has been the editor of the Book of Mormon critical text project. In 2001 he published the first two volumes of the project, namely, typographical facsimiles for the original and printer’s manuscripts of the Book of Mormon. From 2004 through 2009 he published the six books that make up volume 4 of the critical text, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon. This work represents the central task of the Critical Text Project, to restore by scholarly means the original text of the Book of Mormon, to the extent possible. In 2009, using the results of volume 4, Skousen published with Yale University Press the culmination of his critical text work, The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text. He is currently writing volume 3 of the critical text, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon. The third part of that volume, covering the grammatical editing of the Book of Mormon, has now been written and typeset. The first two parts—one dealing with the history of the manuscripts and the editions and the other with the nature of the original text—are in preparation. The entire volume, it is planned, will be available in about three years.
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An African-American Latter-day Saint speaker and writer, Darius Gray was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the mid-1960s and then attended Brigham Young University for a year. After that he transferred to the University of Utah. He worked for a time as a journalist.
President Gray was a counselor in the presidency of the Genesis Group when it was formed in 1971, then served as president of the group from 1997 to 2003. He was also the director of the Freedmens Bank Records project for the Church’s Family History Department and is a frequent speaker on African-American genealogy, Blacks in the Bible, and Blacks in the LDS Church. Along with Margaret Blair Young, he coauthored the trilogy Standing on the Promises, a poignant portrait of Black LDS pioneers.
President Gray has made presentations throughout the United States and in 2007, he appeared in the PBS documentary, The Mormons. In February 2008, he made an invitation-only presentation at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. President Gray has also served as a developer of the websiteblacklds.org and as a member of the advisory board of Reach the Children, a humanitarian organization designed to help people in Africa.
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Brian C. Hales is the author of Setting the Record Straight: Mormon Fundamentalism and also Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations after the Manifesto, which received the “Best Book of 2007 Award” from the John Whitmer Historical Association. In addition he co-authored the 1992 publication The Priesthood of Modern Polygamy: An LDS Perspective, and is webmaster of mormonfundamentalism.com. Brian works as an anesthesiologist at the Davis Hospital and Medical Center in Layton, Utah, where he serves as Secretary of the Medical Staff. He also served as President of the Davis County Medical Society in 2009.
An active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Brian has fulfilled many Church callings and is a former full-time missionary. He has presented at the Mormon History Association meetings, Sunstone Symposiums, and the John Whitmer Historical Association meetings on polygamy-related topics. His articles have also been published in Mormon Historical Studies, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and the Journal of Mormon History. In addition to his historical works, Brian has authored three books on doctrinal themes entitled The Veil (Cedar Fort, 2000), Trials (Cedar Fort, 2002), and Light (Cedar Fort, 2004). Brian published the three-volume Joseph Smith’s Polygamy by Greg Kofford Books in 2013.
Ugo Perego
Book of Mormon Genetics: A Reappraisal
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Dr. Ugo A. Perego received a BS and a MS in Health Sciences from Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah) and a PhD in Genetics and Biomolecular Sciences from the University of Pavia (Pavia, Italy) under the mentorship of Professor Antonio Torroni. During the past decade, he has given nearly 200 lectures on DNA topics relating to population migrations, ancestry, forensics, and history (including LDS history). Ugo has also authored and co-authored a number of publications, including the recent: “Joseph Smith, the Question of Polygamous Offspring, and DNA Analysis” (in Craig Foster and Newell Bringhurst’s The Persistence of Polygamy, 2010); “The Initial Peopling of the Americas: A Growing Number of Founding Mitochondrial Genomes” (in Genome Research, 2010); “The Book of Mormon and the Origins of Native Americans from a Maternally Inherited DNA Standpoint” (in Robert Millett’s No Weapon Shall Prosper, 2011); “The Mountain Meadows Massacre and “Poisoned Springs”: Scientific Testing of the More Recent, Anthrax Theory” (in International Journal of Legal Medicine, 2012); and “Rapid Coastal Spread of First Americans: Novel Insights from South America’s Southern Cone Mitochondrial Genomes” (in Genome Research, 2012).
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John W. “Jack” Welch was founding director of Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and, prior to August 2018, was the Editor-in-Chief of the periodical BYU Studies Quarterly. Welch was director of publications for the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History. While serving as a young missionary in Germany, Welch discovered many instances of the chiasmus literary form in the Book of Mormon. His finding, published in BYU Studies as “Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon” in 1969,[1] and subsequent publications have shaped scholarly inquiry into the linguistic aspects and historical origin of the Book of Mormon.
Welch received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from BYU (B.A. in History, M.A. in Latin and Greek).[2] He then studied at Oxford University as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.[3][4] Welch received a J.D. from Duke University.[5] He is the Robert K. Thomas professor of law in the JRCLS.
In 1979, Welch founded FARMS while working as a lawyer in southern California. He was a member of the board of editors for the Encyclopedia of Mormonism.[3]
Welch was a co-author of Religion and Law: Biblical-Judaic and Islamic Perspectives (ISBN 0931464390)
He is a contributing scholar for the Joseph Smith Papers Project.[6]
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Brant A. Gardner (M.A. State University of New York Albany) is the author of Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon and The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon, both published through Greg Kofford Books. He has contributed articles to Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl and Symbol and Meaning Beyond the Closed Community.
John Gee
Book of Abraham, I Presume
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John Gee is the William (Bill) Gay Research Chair and a Senior Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University.
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Rosemary Avance is a doctoral candidate and Fontaine fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research combines interests in religion, new media, and modernity by focusing on the role of the Internet in religious identity construction. She is particularly interested in the public performance of religion in and around media representations of ideal religious identity. To date she has focused her academic attention on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or the Mormons) and has published a paper on Mormon conceptions of modesty and cosmology in the Journal of Religion and Society, and a second paper in the Journal of Media and Religion on conversion and deconversion stories among Mormons. She is also interested more broadly in public culture, gender and the body, and the intersection of new media and traditional religion.
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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, The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Missing Contents of the Book of Mormon, is slated to be published by Greg Kofford Books in September.
Hartt Wixam
Perception and Reality: Then and Now
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Hartt Wixom is a retired professor and investigative reporter with a distinguished career spanning journalism, environmental advocacy, and authorship. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications from Brigham Young University and has completed postgraduate studies in history at the University of Utah. Wixom served as an outdoor sports writer and later as the first environmental editor for The Deseret News, and was the Rocky Mountain field editor for Field & Stream magazine from 1970 to 1975. He has authored numerous books on topics ranging from wildlife and conservation to Latter-day Saint history, including Critiquing the Critics of Joseph Smith, Profiles in Mormon Courage, and Jacob Hamblin: A Modern Look at the Frontier Life and Legend of Jacob Hamblin. His collaborative work with his wife, Judene, on When Angels Intervene to Save the Children recounts the 1986 Cokeville Elementary School hostage crisis, in which their son was a survivor. The book was later adapted into the film The Cokeville Miracle. Wixom and his wife reside in Ivins, Utah, and Cokeville, Wyoming, and are the parents of seven children.
Daniel C. Peterson
Of ‘Mormon Studies’ and Apologetics
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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.
Speakers
Brian C. Hales, Brant A. Gardner, Darius Gray, Dan Peterson, Don Bradley, Hartt Wixam, Jack Welch, John Gee, John Sorenson, Joshua Johanson, Neylan McBaine, Rosemary Avance, Royal Skousen, Ugo Perego
Topics
Apologetics, Black Latter-day Saints, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon Geography, Book of Mormon Textual Changes, Chiasmus in Scripture, Church Governance and Gender, Conversion and De-conversion Narratives, Directions in the Book of Mormon, Genetics and the Book of Mormon, Homosexual Desire and the Church, Mormon Studies, Polyandry in Early Mormonism, Temple Worship and the Lost 116 Pages
John Taylor Award
Each year, FAIR awards the John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award to a volunteer who made meritorious contributions to FAIR’s mission and outstanding personal efforts in helping defend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In 2012, the John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award recipients were Steven Densley and Cassandra Hedelius.