Summary
2013 FAIR Conference
The 15th annual FAIR (FairMormon) Conference was held on August 1 and 2, 2014 at the Utah Valley Convention Center in Provo, 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.
Michael R. Ash
Shaken Faith Syndrome, Part Deux
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Bio
Michael R. Ash is a veteran staff member of the FAIR, former weekly columnist for the Mormon Times, and current columnist for Meridian Magazine. He has presented at six of the past fourteen FAIR Conferences and has written more than 200 articles defending the faith. He has been published in the FARMS Review, Sunstone, Dialogue, and the Ensign, and appears in the FAIR DVDs on the Book of Abraham as well as one addressing DNA and the Book of Mormon. Michael is the author of Shaken Faith Syndrome: Strengthening One’s Testimony In the Face of Criticism and Doubt and his second book, Of Faith and Reason: 80 Evidences Supporting the Prophet Joseph Smith. Michael and his wife Christine live in Ogden and are the parents of three daughters and the grandparents of six.
Ronald O. Barney
Joseph Smith’s Visions: His Style and his Record
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Ronald O. Barney is Executive Director of the Mormon History Association. He worked for 33 years as an archivist and historian before retiring from the LDS Church History Department in 2011. He was Associate Editor of the Joseph Smith Papers and Executive Producer of the Joseph Smith Papers television series. His books on Mormon history have won several awards. He lives in North Salt Lake, Utah, with his wife Marilyn. They have three children and ten grandchildren.
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Kristine Wardle Frederickson, Ph.D., teaches history, religion, and women’s studies at Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University. She is the author of Extraordinary Courage: Women Empowered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a columnist for the Deseret News, with research and publications focused on Victorian England, Latter-day Saint history, and women’s issues.
Maxine Hanks is a theologian, author, and lecturer specializing in gender and religion, particularly in Christian and Latter-day Saint theology. She has lectured at numerous institutions including the University of Utah, Harvard Divinity School, and Brigham Young University, and is the author or editor of several influential works on Mormonism, feminism, and religious history. A former fellow at Harvard Divinity School and the Utah Humanities Council, Hanks is widely published and frequently consulted in media and academic circles. After a period of ministry and chaplaincy following her excommunication in 1993 as one of the “September Six,” she returned to full fellowship in the Church in 2012.
Valerie M. Hudson is Professor and George H.W. Bush Chair at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, specializing in foreign policy, security studies, gender and international relations. A widely published scholar and co-author of Bare Branches and Sex and World Peace, she is a principal investigator of the WomanStats Project and was named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers.
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.
Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D., is a psychologist, author, and founder of the Sixteen Stones Center for Growth, offering seminar-retreats on forgiveness, loss, and spirituality. She holds degrees from the University of Michigan, UCLA, and BYU, and is the author of several books including The Temple Experience and Forgiving Ourselves, and a former president of the Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists.
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Ralph C. Hancock holds degrees from BYU and Harvard, and has taught political philosophy at Brigham Young University since 1987; he is also President of the John Adams Center for the Study of Faith, Philosophy and Public Affairs, an independent educational foundation (johnadamscenter.org). His most recent book is The Responsibility of Reason: Theory and Practice in a Liberal-Democratic Age (Rowman & Littlefield), and a new edition of his Calvin and the Foundations of Modern Politics has recently been published by Saint Augustine’s Press; he has also translated numerous works from French. Dr.Hancock is also a contributing editor of the quarterly Perspectives on Political Science and an editor at the online scholarly journal SquareTwo.org, which addresses public affairs for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Ralph and his wife, Julie, are parents of five children and grandparents of ten.
Morris Thurston
“Kidnapping” at Palestine Grove: Missouri’s Final Attempt to Extradite Joseph Smith
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A graduate of Harvard Law School and a retired litigation partner in the global law firm Latham & Watkins, Morris Thurston currently serves as chair of the Dialogue Board of Directors and host of the Dialogue podcasts. He often lectures on the subject of memoir writing and co-authored, with his wife, Dawn, Breathe Life into Your Life Story: How to Write a Story People Will Want to Read. He has served as a contributor to the Joseph Smith Papers (Legal Series) and has been an adjunct assistant professor at BYU Law School. His article in BYU Studies titled “The Boggs Assault and Attempted Extradition: Joseph Smith’s Most Famous Case,” received an award of excellence from the Mormon History Association in 2010. He contributed a chapter to Why I Stay: The Challenge of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons (2011) and the foreword to The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes (2012). He and Dawn live in Villa Park, California and are parents of six children, two of whom are deceased, and grandparents of five. They are members of the Miller Eccles Study Group board and host the MESG Orange County meetings.
Seth Payne
Why Mormonism Matters: Pastoral Apologetics and the LDS Doubter
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Seth Payne is a life-long member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a proud theological liberal. In 2008, Seth graduated Magna Cum Laude from Yale University with an M.A. in Religion. At Yale, Seth focused his studies on theological and political ethics as well as Mormon Studies. Seth’s academic interest remains centered on practical ethics and their real-world application and, as a member of the American Academy of Religion, Seth has presented several papers on these topics at regional meetings over the past several years.
Robert Kirby
Why It is Important to Laugh at Ourselves
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Salt Lake Tribune humor columnist Robert Kirby was raised in a military family. After serving an LDS mission to South America, Kirby became a police officer. His law enforcement career was cut short in 1989 by the idiotic notion of becoming a writer.
Robert has written for the Tribune since 1994. His column appears every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. He is the author of six humor books, two novels, and a history book on Utah’s murdered police officers.
A confused grandfather, Kirby has three daughters and one wife. He lives with his long-suffering family in Herriman, where neighbors no longer speak to him on the record.
Lynne Hilton Wilson
Was Joseph a Product of the Second Great Awakening?
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Lynne Hilton Wilson lives in Palo Alto, California with her husband President Dow R. Wilson. She is mother to seven children—all with red hair. She graduated from BYU focusing on Nursing and the cello. When her youngest entered school, she finished off her graduate school to receive her MA in Religious Studies. Her thesis explored Christ’s birth narratives in the New Testament. She received her PhD in Theology and American History at Marquette University. Her dissertation focused on Joseph Smith’s understanding of the Holy Ghost compared to other 19th Century theologians. She is an adjunct professor at BYU and directs and teaches at the Menlo Park Stake institute (or better known as Stanford Institute). She is a research fellow for BYU Studies, the Maxwell Institute, and Interpreter. Lynne has been a volunteer in the Church Education System for the past seventeen years in France, Belgium, Wisconsin, and most recently in California. She a popular presenter at Education week and has also presented papers at the Society of Biblical Literature, Sperry Symposium, BYU Studies 50th Anniversary Symposium, RSC Easter Conference, and Stanford Friday Forums. She has several articles published on biblical studies and her first two books will be published in 2014.
Rosalynde Welch
Disenchanted Mormonism
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Rosalynde Welch is a member of the Frontenac, Missouri ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She holds degrees in English literature from Brigham Young University and the University of California, San Diego, where her dissertation focused on private conscience in early modern English literature. She writes on interreligious issues for the St Louis Post-Dispatch, and she blogs on Mormonism at Patheos.com and timesandseasons.org. Her writing has appeared in BYU Studies, Dialogue, Element, and other venues. Rosalynde and her husband John, together with their four young children, make their home in St Louis, Missouri.
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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.
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Dr. Mark Alan Wright was born and raised in Long Beach, California. He earned his BA in Anthropology from UCLA and received his MA and PhD degrees in Anthropology from UC Riverside, all with an emphasis on Mesoamerican Archaeology. He regularly conducts fieldwork in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize. His research interests include Classic period Maya ritual and religion, Mesoamerican writing systems, and the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Dr. Wright has been teaching in the Ancient Scripture department at Brigham Young University since 2007. He has spoken at academic conferences at Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Duke, UCLA, and many other institutions. He is on the board of trustees at the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum. His published articles include “The Cultural Context of Nephite Apostasy” (in Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture, 2012) and “According to Their Language, Unto their Understanding: Hierophanies and Theophanies in LDS Canon” (in Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, 2011). He is married to the former Traci Turner, who is currently an adjunct professor of History at Utah Valley University. Mark and Traci just welcomed their first child – a perfect little girl named Annika – in April of 2013.
Maxine Hanks
Working With the Church: Another Narrative
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Maxine Hanks is a theologian and lecturer researching gender in religion, especially Christian and Mormon theology. She has lectured in gender studies at the University of Utah, and guest lectured at UVU, BYU, Weber State, Harvard Divinity School, Salt Lake Theological Seminary, and SLC Community College, as well as presenting at religious studies conferences. She studied Humanities, English, and Gender Studies at BYU and the U. of U., and studied History and Religious Studies at the U. of U., Harvard, and other schools. She was a fellow with the Utah Humanities Council and at Harvard Divinity School.
She has authored or co-authored several books including Women & Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, Mormon Faith in America, Getting Together With Yesterday, A History of Sanpete County, and was a contributor to Secrets of Mary Magdalene, Religion in America, and Latter-day Dissent. She has published articles, and edited many books, and contributed research or been cited in numerous books on Mormonism or religion. She has also created web resources about Mormon women.
She has served on several boards, including the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable, Orrin Hatch’s Women’s Council, the Utah Attorney General’s Safety Net Committee, Utah Issues, and Network, and has chaired Interfaith Week in Utah, plus sponsored many public programs on religion or women in religion. She has done corporate and professional consulting, and political lobbying, and has consulted for television and media projects, also appearing on ABC Nightline, PBS, A&E, CNN, BBC, and in TIME magazine, Vogue, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Boston Globe, Chicago Times, Associated Press, Reuters, and Utah media.
After leaving the LDS Church as one of the “September Six” in 1993, Hanks studied and served in ministry, clergy work, and chaplaincy in various settings, including at Holy Cross for 13 years. In 2012, she returned to membership in the LDS Church, where she serves in her ward Young Women’s Presidency, and as a VT supervisor.
Panel Discussion
The Loss and Rekindling of Faith
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Bio
Don Bradley is a writer, editor, and researcher specializing in early Latter-day Saint history. A former intern with the Joseph Smith Papers Project, he is the author of The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Missing Contents of the Book of Mormon and has published on topics including the Book of Mormon translation, early plural marriage, and the Kinderhook plates.
Janet L. Eyring, Ph.D., is a professor of TESOL at California State University, Fullerton, where she previously chaired the Department of Modern Languages. With expertise in second language pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment, she has served on statewide panels focused on improving education for English Language Learners in California.
Maxine Hanks is a theologian, author, and lecturer specializing in gender and religion, particularly in Christian and Latter-day Saint theology. She has lectured at numerous institutions including the University of Utah, Harvard Divinity School, and Brigham Young University, and is the author or editor of several influential works on Mormonism, feminism, and religious history. A former fellow at Harvard Divinity School and the Utah Humanities Council, Hanks is widely published and frequently consulted in media and academic circles. After a period of ministry and chaplaincy following her excommunication in 1993 as one of the “September Six,” she returned to full fellowship in the Church in 2012 and currently serves in her local Young Women’s presidency.
Daniel C. Peterson
Toward a More Effective 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
Michael R. Ash, Don Bradley, Ron Barney, Janet L. Eyring, Kristine Frederickson, Ralph Hancock, Maxine Hanks, Valerie Hudson, Robert Kirby, Neylan McBaine, Dan Peterson, Seth Payne, Morris Thurston, Wendy Ulrich, Rosalynde Welch, Mark Alan Wright, Lynne Wilson
Topics
Apologetics, Book of Mormon Geography, Faith and Doubt, Feminism in Mormonism, Humor in Religious Contexts, Joseph Smith’s Visions, Mormonism and Liberalism, Pastoral Approaches to Doubt, Second Great Awakening, Shaken Faith Syndrome, Women’s Roles in the Church
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 2013, the John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award recipient was Neal Rappleye.