I missed this 30 May 2019 blog post from Matthew Roper. (I was traveling overseas.) In it, though, Matt provides some useful additional resources for evaluating the claims of Mr. Jonathan Neville and calls attention, as I myself have recently been doing, to the important Neville-Neville Land blog. Here is Matt’s blog entry, which bears the same title:

“Neville-Neville Land”

I’m simply astonished at Mr. Neville’s evident desire to attack and demonize those who don’t share his view of the geography of the Book of Mormon. I find it unaccountable and weird.

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Although it didn’t begin well at all, this turned out to be an absolutely wonderful story, and I commend it to your attention:

“A woman shared a cruel note that was left in her mailbox. She never imagined the kindness that would come next”

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Yesterday, in connection with the presentations by Angela Hallstrom and Elizabeth Kuehn, I commented that Latter-day Saint historiography has tended to neglect women, but that Latter-day Saint historical writing is not alone in that neglect. (See “Another note from today’s session of the 2019 FairMormon Conference.”) As if to illustrate my point, this article has now appeared:

“How Evangelicals Forgot Women’s History”

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The Thursday portion of the 2019 FairMormon Conference opened with a presentation by Jack and Jeannie Welch on “Parables of Jesus Revealing the Plan of Salvation.” Like their book The Parables of Jesus: Revealing the Plan of Salvation, on which the presentation was based, Jack and Jeannie’s remarks were beautifully illustrated with paintings by the Argentine Latter-day Saint artist Jorge Cocco Santángelo. They offered a sensitive and artistically-informed commentary on a number of the New Testament parables.

Next, Matthew Godfrey provided “Insights from the Joseph Smith Papers into John C. Bennett’s Dismissal from the Church.” He addressed such questions as

What were Bennett’s motives for affiliating himself with the Church in Nauvoo?

Why did Joseph Smith wait so long to expose Bennett?

How, when he did finally act, did Joseph respond to Bennett’s misconduct?

How did Bennett react? Why did Bennett’s separation from the Church seem to commence rather amicably but then suddenly become deeply bitter?

Matthew McBride was the final speaker before lunch, providing advice on the topic of “Answering Historical Questions with Church History Topics.” He gave a very helpful overview of the sorts of helpful resources that the Church History Department has been producing, more or less in conjunction with the publication of the four-volume Saints history. Very encouraging.

From one of the slides that he showed: “The Church iteself needs to actively tell its members about challenging aspects of its history. It is a duty we owe to the rising generations.”

He emphasized the importance of putting difficult matters in historical context, in an effort to avoid presentism

Posted from Provo, Utah