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FairMormon Needs Your Help!

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Lehi’s Dream by Greg Olsen

There is a battle raging for the hearts and minds of those who have sincere questions about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, when many search for answers on-line they are more likely to find the mocking of the tall and spacious building than the scholarly answers we provide at FairMormon.  We need your help to change this.

How can you help us?  Join FairMormon as a Sustaining Member!

It only costs $25 a year and as a member your input and insights will be valuable resources in helping to improve FairMormon as a safe place to find answers.  We are asking you to help us on the front lines as we provide ammunition needed to defend our faith.  This ammunition comes in the form of constructive scholarly responses.

Simply click on this link https://www.fairmormon.org/store/product/sustaining-membership, “Add to the cart” and follow the steps to make the purchase.  As additional encouragement, Sustaining Members get a 20% discount at the FairMormon Bookstore, and FairMormon Conference Tickets.

As a bonus, if you join today we will send you a free, PDF copy of Michael Ash’s e-book, Bamboozled by the CES Letter. This insightful and sometimes humorous book explains why many of the complex issues presented by the CES letter are fundamentally flawed and do not accurately represent either Mormonism or the only logical interpretations of the data.

Please think about starting the year off as a 2017 Sustaining Member of FairMormon and becoming a defender of the faith.

Sincerely,

Tom Hatton

Director of Development at FairMormon

Thomas Eastwood Hatton can trace his Mormon roots back five generations to the hills of eastern Kentucky. He has a degree in Family Financial Planning and Counseling from Brigham Young University and owns an investment company. Tom and his wife Julianne are the parents of four adult children and nine grandchildren. They are rabid Wildcat fans and contributors to FairMormon.

FairMormon’s Content and Update Policy

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FairMormon stands as a witness of Jesus Christ and His restored Church. Our mission is to answer charges leveled against the Church, its leaders, teachings and practices.

We are an all-volunteer organization. We seek volunteers who agree with our mission and want to help. These individuals contribute with a full understanding of our mission, and know their work may be used or modified as needed in order to achieve our mission. They further understand that the purpose of volunteering is to defend the Church and not to pursue a personal agenda.

Because our priority is our mission and not ourselves, much of FairMormon’s content is generated collaboratively and not attributed to individuals. Some blogs, podcasts, and other content do have attributed authors. Because our volunteer resources are limited, not all content in blogs and podcasts can be carefully reviewed in advance. Therefore, sometimes it is necessary to edit, refine, or even remove already-published content in order to keep it consistent with our mission.

Many of our volunteers contribute content in other venues, such as on personal blogs, in scholarly publications, and in podcasts. When a current or former FairMormon volunteer publishes views that contradict the position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or accuses Church leaders of wrongdoing, malicious intent, and so forth, it may become confusing or harmful to FairMormon’s audience, and contrary to FairMormon’s mission, to maintain that volunteer’s content on our website. Because FairMormon is a trusted entity for many Latter-day Saints and sincere investigators, FairMormon must avoid endorsing external content that opposes our mission and the Church’s values.

FairMormon reserves the right to edit or remove content produced by attributed authors in order to ensure that we maintain integrity in our mission. When content is not attributed, there is generally no change to the content we make available to the public.

Our volunteers are never guaranteed their content will never be removed or edited. We try to make sure our volunteers understand that FairMormon’s mission is a higher priority than any individual’s wishes or feeling of pride in his or her contributions. We at FairMormon are not here for ourselves, but to serve the interests of the Lord and His restored Church. We defend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unapologetically in the hopes that our efforts will help sustain the faith of those who visit our site.

FairMormon on Social Media

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With the mission of FairMormon being the defense of the LDS Church, we find it necessary that a key element of defending our religion is the promotion of our mission and of our love for the Gospel of Christ. With valuable information and perspective, our voice is useless if it is nowhere to be heard.

In an effort to make our voice heard and to share our insight and give our love and support, all in an effort to defend the Gospel that we hold dear, we are embracing the counsel from Elder Bednar and will strive to “Sweep the Earth as With a Flood” and turn our attention more fully to social media. With that being said, we cannot accomplish this on our own. As with everything about the FairMormon organization, we rely heavily on your support and donations (as we are a non-profit organization). This will be no different. We rely on your help and support by helping us “go viral”.

Please:

Share us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/fairmormon

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at @fairmormon

Follow us on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/+FairMormon

Follow us on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.com/FairMormon

Facebook: We would be very appreciative if you were to “share” us with your friends on Facebook. To do this, you can simply go to our Facebook page and up in the right-hand corner there is the option to “share” our page. If anything, share one of our posts that you find interesting. This helps us to generate more traffic.

Instagram: Instagram is a social media site of people, organizations and businesses who share their lives, thoughts, programs through pictures or memes. This is a “smartphone only app” and is generally more confusing for people of more “seasoned” generations to activate, so we will be giving more than just “sharing” instructions. To activate an Instagram account a person will need to download the app from their particular app store (it’s free). You can connect it through either your Facebook (recommended) or an email. The use of hashtags is a big feature of Instagram. Hashtags are a pound sign (#) immediately followed by a word or phrase (usually specific to the picture). The use and importance of hashtags is, you can click on any given hashtag and it will take you to every other picture or meme that used that particular hashtag. Once a person gets the hang of their use, they will begin to see how effective hashtags can be in promoting a certain picture or meme.

And if you can +1 and repin our posts on Google+ and Pinterest, respectively, that would also help spread our message.

We give you our continued thanks and appreciation for helping us in our neverending mission and duty of defending the gospel of Christ. The Internet is used for good and evil. With your help, we can do our part in using it for good of the gospel and of all mankind, in general.

Announcement: 2014 Temple on Mount Zion Conference

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–––From the Interpreter website–––

The Interpreter Foundation would like to announce a forthcoming conference, the 2014 Temple on Mount Zion Conference to be held in 251 TNRB (N. Eldon Tanner Building) on the campus of Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, on 25 October, 2014. This conference is sponsored by the BYU College of Humanities and Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages as well as The Interpreter Foundation.

The conference focuses on LDS conceptions of ancient and modern Temple theology as reflected in the Bible and LDS scripture. There will be thirteen presenters. You can see a list of presenters and schedule on the Program & Schedule page.

Program & Schedule

2014 Temple on Mount Zion Conference
Saturday, 25 October 2014, 8:45 am–5:45 pm
251 TNRB (N. Eldon Tanner Building)
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

8:45 am           Opening Prayer, Greeting—Donald W. Parry, presiding

9:00 am           Jeffrey Bradshaw: “What Did Joseph Smith Know about the LDS Endowment by 1836?”

9:30 am           Dan Belnap: “‘Let the Beauty of the Lord our God be Upon Us’: The Role of Visual Aesthetics in Ancient Israel’s Temple Worship”

10:00 am         Carli Anderson: “Enthroning the Daughter of Zion: The Coronation Motif of Isaiah 60-62”

10:30 am         Break

 

10:45 am         Carli Anderson, presiding

Stephen D. Ricks: “Prayer with Uplifted Hands”

11:15 am         David Calabro: “Joseph Smith and the Architecture of Genesis”

11:45 am         Stephen Smoot: “The Book of the Dead as a Temple Text and the Implications for the Book of Abraham”

12:15 pm         David J. Larsen: “Psalm 24 and the Two Yahwehs at the Gate of the Temple”

12:45 pm         Lunch break

 

1:55 pm           Greeting—David J. Larsen, presiding

2:00 pm           Ann Madsen: “Temples in the Margins: The Temple in Isaiah”

2:30 pm           Donald W. Parry: “Temple Themes in Cities of Refuge Texts”

3:00 pm           Matthew L. Bowen: “‘I Have Done According to My Will’: Reading Jacob 5 as a Temple Text”

3:30 pm           Break

 

3:45 pm           Stephen D. Ricks, presiding

John W. Welch: “Leviticus as an Archetypal Temple Template”

4:15 pm           John S. Thompson: “How John’s Gospel Portrays Jesus as the Way of the Temple”

4:45 pm           Shon D. Hopkin: “The Day of Atonement, the Mosaic Temple, and the Christian Sacrament of Communion: Links and Symbols”

5:15 pm           Daniel C. Peterson: “The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Qur’an”

5:45 pm           Concluding Remarks, Closing Prayer

This conference is sponsored by the BYU College of Humanities, the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages, and the Interpreter Foundation

LAST CHANCE TO BUY CONFERENCE TICKETS AT THE DISCOUNTED PRICE.

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Utah-Valley-Convention-Center-300x177Saturday, May 31 will be the last day to buy tickets at the discounted price for the FairMormon Conference in Provo, Utah. Tickets will still be available after that time, but at a higher price.

This year’s conference speakers include:

Daniel Peterson on the Letter to a CES Director

Hannah Smith: “Religious Liberty: What Latter-day Saints Need to Know to Preserve Our First Freedom”

Kerry Muhlestein: “The Book of Abraham and Unnoticed Assumptions: How everyone makes assumptions that determine how they view the Book of Abraham”

Russell W. Stevenson: Shouldering the Cross, or How to Condemn Racism and Still Call Brigham Young a Prophet

Ty Mansfield on sexual attraction and gender

Robert F. Smith: “The Preposterous Book of Mormon: A Singular Advantage”

Matthew Grow and Matthew Godfrey: “The Story Behind the Revelations: Using the Joseph Smith Papers to Better Understand the Doctrine and Covenants.”

Bob Rees: “Earl Wunderli’s Imperfect Book

Barry Bickmore: “Restoring the Ancient Church”

A panel discussion on family members who have left the Church.

and more. You can find the schedule on the FairMormon Website here:http://www.fairmormon.org/perspectives/fair-conferences/2014-fairmormon-conference

You can go directly to our bookstore page to purchase your Conference tickets here: 

http://bookstore.fairlds.org/product.php?id_product=1003

Or you can go to the main page at FairMormon.org and click on the FairMormon Conferences link.

Scroll to the bottom of the FairMormon 2014 Conference page for Hotel information at the Marriott, which is across the street. Book your hotel room now to secure your reservation. Your hotel room is separate from your conference registration.

VOTE TODAY FOR THE MORMON FAIR-CAST!

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Podcast: Download (1.3MB)

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Daily voting for the winner of the People’s Choice Podcast Awards starts November 1. On that day, fans can begin voting every day for their favorite podcast in each category at www.podcastawards.com. Voting will be open every day for 15 days, and FANS CAN VOTE ONCE EACH DAY in every category. Winners will be announced at the Podcast Awards Ceremony, which will be held at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas on Jan 5th, 2014.

To vote, go to the podcastawards.com and find the Mormon Fair-Cast entry. It is listed under the Religion Inspiration category, which is near the bottom of the page on the right. It is the third category up from the bottom. Click on the Mormon Fair-Cast entry. Then scroll down and enter your name and email address. Click on the button that describes you best (Listener, Podcaster, or Both.) For most of you that will be “Listener.” Then click on the submit button on the right.

The Mormon Fair-Cast won the award for best religious podcast in 2011, but lost in 2012 to the Ardent Atheist podcast. This year, let’s be more ardent than the atheists! Please spread the word by telling your friends. Even if we don’t win the voting, we hope this will raise awareness of the great resources we have. If we do win, it is even better. You can post a link with instructions on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus. Remind your friends to vote each day, and thank you for your continued support of FairMormon!

 

Administrative update: FAIR Blog user registration

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In an effort to more effectively manage the FAIR Blog, we will now require users to register before commenting.

You may register using your real name or a pseudonym (as long as your pseudonym is appropriate for an all-ages blog), but you must provide a verifiable email address as part of the registration process.

At this time we will continue to moderate all comments to help prevent endless debates, “drive-by” attacks, threadjacking, and so forth. Our intent is to hopefully loosen that up a bit in the near future so that only new commenters are moderated.

The usual rule against sockpuppets applies here — one user account per person, please.

FAIR blog and politics

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The FAIR blog is an occasional blog staffed by volunteers. Posts are typically driven by current events in Mormon apologetics and culture.

Sometimes Mormonism intersects with politics. During these times, the FAIR board and management wish to be sensitive to the political feelings of all Latter-day Saints. We expect posts to reflect even-handedness and a direct application to defending the Church.

This is not the place to discuss controversial political events that have only a marginal tie to Mormon culture and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There are other blogs that cater to that need.

With that in mind, FAIR managers have removed a recent post on the Arizona immigration law. We apologize to anyone who felt that post was not in keeping with the highest standards of FAIR, and commit to elevating the level of discourse here.