https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... idays.html
Once again, Dr. Peterson is asking for money, but this time around, his asking is encroaching upon deeply problematic grounds. The very wise poster called Tavares Stanfield raises an important point:
Yes—why give to a garbage pile like Interpreter when you could give to the LDS Church, which, despite its many problems, at least does *some* charitable work? Dr. Peterson’s answer is stunning:I would suggest that donating to the Fast Offering funds of the Church is a more useful donation. We've been under the thumb of a worldwide pandemic for 18+ month. Certainly underprivileged Saints are more deserving of our charity. And the donation is tax deductible.
Where to begin? First of all: yes, it would be sad if operas, archaeological digs and so forth were to go away. But Interpreter? Would the world really be worse off if the Mopologetic flagship bit the dust?DCP wrote: At any time, whether now or pre-pandemic, a case can be made that the poor should be a higher priority for charitable donations than, say, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Opera, Ballet West, the Interpreter Foundation, or your alma mater.
But it would be really sad if art museums, opera companies, private colleges, conservation groups, ballet troupes, Shakespeare festivals, archaeological digs, and the like were to perish for lack of support.
Of course, what the Interpreter Foundation needs in order to function and flourish is a relative pittance. (And, yes, tax deductible. We're a 501(c)3 organization.) Interpreter certainly doesn't ask that people neglect the poor in their charitable giving, let alone that they omit their fast offerings. My wife and I haven't done either of those things, and we won't.
And then there's this intriguing passage, from the twelfth chapter of the gospel of John:
"2 So they made him a supper there: and Martha served; but Lazarus was one of them that sat at meat with him. 3 Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of spikenard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, which should betray him, saith, 5 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? 6 Now this he said, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the bag took away what was put therein."
"For," says Jesus in the story as told at Matthew 14 (specifically, verse 7), "the poor ye have always with you."
And then there is the comparison of donating to Interpreter with the anointing of Jesus, to which I can only say: wow. Either this is extreme—blasphemous even—disrespect, or DCP thinks he’s being “funny”—blowing the sort of “dog whistle” that his pals think is funny.
But the key issue is the one that Stanfield very rightly raised: Interpreter, in effect, is “competing” with the Church for donations. And when you consider the premium that the Church places on money, then you really have to see Interpreter’s aggressive fundraising as far more of a “threat” to the Church than Jonathan Neville and the Heartlanders. It’s one thing to say that the Brethren are wrong about doctrine. It’s quite another to steal money out of their pockets.