The core of the Interpreter Foundation’s filmmaking team (from left to right: cinematographer and associate director James Jordan, director and co-writer Mark Goodman, and producer Russell Richins).
I’m falling behind in calling these new short Interpreter Foundation videos to your attention, so I will be highlighting not one but two of them today. The first (“A Witness in High Demand”) features Richard Lambert, the former Assistant United States Attorney who recruited me to serveas an expert witness in the federal prosecution of Brian David Mitchell (the kidnapper of Elizabeth Smart). He is also a serious student of Latter-day Saint history, and has been deeply involved in organizations that are focused on the subject:
The second of the short video features that I want to call to your attention today (“Joseph Smith’s Supporters: His Family”) features the popular and prolific Susan Easton Black:
I urge you to watch these short videos and to share them as widely you can. If you find that you like them, in fact, please consider watching and sharing the longer docudrama from which they are drawn: Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon. Help us, please, to make the strength of the testimony of the Book of Mormon witnesses more widely known across the membership of the Church and beyond!
Hugh Nibley at work on the Book of Abraham (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
“Because Egyptology is a rarified discipline that normally takes years of training, people may wonder just how good Hugh Nibley was at Egyptology. The simple answer is that he was quite good. The complicated answer is that he had his strengths and weaknesses, as all Egyptologists do. Let me explain.”
Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Hugh Nibley Observed, edited by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/hugh-nibley-observed/.
Joseph Smith, portrayed by Paul Wuthrich, at work in his garden in a scene from the movie “Witnesses.” Paul Wuthrich also plays Joseph Smith in the forthcoming film “Six Days in August.” Based upon research by Don Bradley and Joseph Brickey, though, it appears that Paul Wuthrich — good though he is — isn’t ACTUALLY Joseph Smith. (Still photo from the set of ‘Witnesses” by James Jordan)
It opens with a female Protestant pastor who was upset by a letter from another woman. The author of the letter demanded to know by what right she called herself a pastor, given that the New Testament pretty clearly seems to disallow female church leadership, or even women speaking in church. Further, the letter’s author wanted to know, why was she wearing her hair long and uncovered, when the Apostle Paul said that Christian women should either have short hair or keep it covered? The female pastor was upset by the letter. In fact, her congregation had already been thinking of withdrawing from the Southern Baptist Convention because of its unhappiness with the idea of women as preachers and pastors.
It strikes me, though, that the female complaining about women as pastors, etc., was raising very good issues.
Please don’t get me wrong: I have absolutely no problem with women wearing their hair long and uncovered in church. I have no reservations about women speaking in church. And I’m perfectly alright with women filling leadership roles within my church or, for that matter, anybody else’s church. I’ve said here before that, if a revelation were to be received authorizing the ordination of women, I would have no objection whatever to ordaining them. Would they do as well as men in priesthood offices? I think that the answer is an obvious Yes. And, arguably, they might in fact do much better.
But their ability isn’t the salient issue for me. Revelation is. And that’s why I think that the complaining woman raised solid issues in her letter.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is, in principle and in practice, open to continual revelation. Which means that we are not entirely bound by biblical precedents. We can and do easily say that some practices were simply the result of, say, first-century Jewish (or Roman) custom and, hence, that they are no longer relevant to us. And, speaking in purely objective terms, the Catholic Church is in a functionally similar position: Via the teaching magisterium of the Church, and particularly by means of councils of bishops and the ex cathedra authority of the Pope, drawing on “unwritten tradition,” the Catholic Church too is in a position to make changes that go beyond, or even (in some sense and to a degree) set aside biblical constraints.
But there are a host of Protestant churches claiming to use the Bible alone as their “creed.” “Where the Bible speaks, we speak,” goes a popular formula, “and where the Bible is silent, we are silent.”
So my question is, how can a group of Christians who claim to follow the Bible alone justify allowing women to lead or even to speak — or to wear long hair, uncovered — in church? Seriously, I’m curious. By what authority do they deviate from what seems to be clearly apostolic — at least, Pauline — teaching?
One of the many Interpreter Foundation satellites that are used to relay the Interpreter Radio Show around the globe. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the Interpreter Radio Show is the most popular broadcast program among several unreached tribes in the Amazon rain forest and in multiple regions on the continent of Antarctica, eloquently testifying to its broad demographic appeal. (NASA public domain photo)
For the 7 July 2024 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, the discussants were Martin Tanner, Hales Swift, and Brent Schmidt, and the focus of their discussion was on Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon lesson 31 and the U. S. Constitution in prophecy.
The recording of their conversation has been edited to remove commercial breaks and is now available at no charge for your enjoyment and edification. The “Book of Mormon in Context” portion of the show, for the Come, Follow Me Book of Mormon lesson 31, will also be posted separately on Tuesday, 23 July 2o24.
The Interpreter Radio Show can be heard Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640, or you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.
Jeff Bradshaw interviewed Théofile Iwoktan and his wife at their church building for the Interpreter Foundation’s Africa-focused video series “Not by Bread Alone.” “More beautiful stories,” he comments, “of the Lord’s hand bringing them out of poverty and hopelessness to the joy of service in the Gospel.”
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