Lucifer's Lantern

  Dallin H. Oaks’s talk “Reading Church History” reflects a defensive stance toward the discipline of history. Rather than encouraging open historical inquiry, Oaks frames church history as something to be read through faith, not skepticism.  He warns against what he calls “secular” or “critical” readings that might lead believers to doubt prophetic authority. His argument assumes that divine purpose supersedes historical context and that imperfect records should not shake testimony. There are several issues with his approach. 1. Scientific Uncertainties Oaks opens by discussing how media coverage around church history can be unreliable because of incomplete scientific evidence—clearly referring to the Mark Hofmann forgery scandal then unfolding. He warns against assuming early reports are accurate. Fair point. The irony is that he was right for the wrong reasons: Hofmann’s documents were forgeries, but his warning served more to defend the church than to protect truth. ...

       All right. So, for this post today, I’m going to be talking about a pretty sensitive subject. And that’s going to be satanic ritual abuse and potential ties to leadership of the Mormon church.      It should go without saying that this is going to be a little bit more of a sensitive subject. I’ll say up front that I have no intention of diving into specific examples—detailed descriptions of what satanic ritual abuse looks like—outside of broad definitions. My goal is just to give an idea of what makes ritual abuse a little bit different than regular abuse (for lack of a better word). Consider this your heads up that this is going to be a sensitive subject.      I typically wouldn’t really give this type of subject very much attention. I certainly never planned on making a post about it. But I did have an interesting conversation the other day with an LDS content creator that I message with sometimes. I was a little surprised whe...

  I would probably say that the Book of Mormon is one of the most heavily criticized pieces of literature ever put into circulation. These criticisms go back even before it was published. From the moment Joseph Smith claimed he had access to an ancient record that God needed him to translate, people began theorizing about its origins. They criticized Joseph Smith, questioned his motivations, and doubted his inspirations. Once the Book of Mormon was published, critics finally had the text itself. Since then, it has been torn apart, analyzed, and debated for nearly 200 years. If you want to dive into these criticisms today, you face an overwhelming mountain of material to sift through. That’s where I want to narrow the focus a bit by recommending one book: Studies of the Book of Mormon by B. H. Roberts.   (affiliate link) I recommend it for three reasons. First, it presents excellent criticisms of the Book of Mormon . Second, the controversy surrounding its content and pub...