Mormon apologetics meets Social Media

[_Simon Southerton]

(Dr. Shades here, using our "Temp. Admin." account.)

Simon: If you'd like to take Physics Guy's advice but make minimal changes, why not simply change the subtitle to "The Impact of the Internet on the Historical Claims of Mormon Scripture ?"

Excellent article, by the way!

Dr Shades, this crossed my mind straight after reading Physic's Guy's post. But I appreciate his insight. I might adjust the title and also take on board his suggestions.

I wanted to mention that my essay benefited enormously from a very thorough edit by Barry Richins, who is a retired professor of English/Spanish. We have become good friends in a very short time. A good editor is priceless and he has been very generous with his time

[_Doctor Scratch]

Simon:

I enjoyed your article, too, and think that you're getting some valuable "peer review" here as well. If I may make a small critique, you wrote:

The FARMS Review was renamed the Mormon Studies Review in 2012 and in 2014, Daniel Peterson, who has been a divisive figure in LDS apologetics for decades, was fired as editor of the Review, and FARMS effectively disappeared. A group of disgruntled apologists, under the leadership of Peterson, now publish their polemics in the online journal Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.

You may want to italicize the names of the journals. It may seem like a small detail (which it is), but you know who you're dealing with, right? Second, Peterson was not "fired" from the Review in 2014--it happened in June of 2012. And if memory serves, the name of the journal was officially changed to Mormon Studies Review in 2011. (It preceded Bradford's elimination of the "classic FARMS" Mopologists, and, indeed--If I recall correctly--it was something that they disagreed with and were angry about.)

One final point: I, personally, would not call 'Interpreter' an "online journal." It is basically a blog--that's how it began, and that is still essentially what it is, and how it ought to be defined. But I admit that's just my personal opinion.

[_Simon Southerton]

Simon:

You may want to italicize the names of the journals. It may seem like a small detail (which it is), but you know who you're dealing with, right? Second, Peterson was not "fired" from the Review in 2014--it happened in June of 2012. And if memory serves, the name of the journal was officially changed to Mormon Studies Review in 2011. (It preceded Bradford's elimination of the "classic FARMS" Mopologists, and, indeed--If I recall correctly--it was something that they disagreed with and were angry about.)

One final point: I, personally, would not call 'Interpreter' an "online journal." It is basically a blog--that's how it began, and that is still essentially what it is, and how it ought to be defined. But I admit that's just my personal opinion.

The titles of journals and books and several words are italicised in the version on my website. But when I pasted it into MD all that was lost. But point well taken. We are dealing with academics who focus on the bark of the tree and miss the forest of elephants.

I also agree that Interpreter is a blog pretending to be a journal. I think the more Mormons who read Interpreter the better.