Welcome to the Latter-day Saint Perspectives Podcast. I’m your host Laura Harris Hales. I created this podcast over four and a half years ago. As I prepare to shutter the production, I am going to follow the example of fellow podcaster Nick Galieti and post an introductory episode explaining how this podcast got started, what I hoped to accomplish, and what you can expect as you listen. The story of this podcast began in June 2016. After co-authoring the book, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding and the website josephsmithspolygamy.org, my husband and I were asked to speak at a conference held in Sweden. After our presentation, I was approached by a local member, who mentioned he was grateful my husband and I as well as other conference presenters traveled so far to visit with the Swedish members. “We don’t have many options when we want to learn about church history,” he said. "Many of the books published in the United States are difficult to get ahold of he...
The Interview In this episode of Latter-day Saint Perspectives Podcast, Laura Harris Hales interviews R. Eric Smith and Matthew C. Godfrey about Know Brother Joseph: New Perspectives on Joseph Smith’s Life and Character, the new book that they coedited with Matthew J. Grow. The Joseph Smith Papers Project has published thousands of pages of transcripts, introductions, footnotes, and supplemental materials in recent years. The project’s print volumes have sold more than 200,000 copies, and last year alone, the project’s website, josephsmithpapers.org, had more than 650,000 unique visitors. Though the publications are aimed primarily at scholars, these numbers make it clear that Church members are the main consumers. Other recent Church publications, such as Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, have also made information from the Joseph Smith Papers available to many Latter-day Saints. Still, it is undoubtedly the case that the majority of Church memb...
About the Interview: Celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the Restoration has proven to be one of the few highlights of 2020 for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In commemoration, the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles issued a Bicentennial Proclamation that boldly affirmed beliefs in a restored church, restored priesthood authority (including priesthood keys), restored revelation through living prophets, and a restored fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This declaration affirmed church leaders’ consistent message regarding the importance of past revelations and the Latter-day Saint Church’s future path. President Russell M. Nelson and other apostles have repeatedly reminded members of the church that God’s work of restoration began with Joseph Smith, but it didn’t end with him. We believe in an “ongoing Restoration”—an organic, dynamic process by which God continues to breathe life into both the church and the world not just yesterday but today ...
Mark Ashurst-McGee discusses the story of the translation of the Kinderhook Plates by Joseph Smith, a curious episode in Latter-day Saint history.
About the Interview: Many relationships may be improved simply by practicing good communication skills. In this interview, Emil Harker discusses a program for improving our ability to communicate well in crucial conversations. Over the past 20 years, he has counseled thousands of couples on how to improve their marriages by applying 7 critical skills: Assuming Good IntentDefining and Accepting RealityCommunicating with the Desired Outcome in MindClear, Direct, and Sensitive CommunicationKilling CriticismsFencing ConflictDisarming Landmines Listen as Emil Harker discusses how we can improve our most important relationships. You can receive a free book by here on Emil's website: emilharker.com. About Our Guest: EmilHarker graduated with a master’s degree in family and marriage therapy in 1999 from Utah State University. He is a popular speaker for public and professional organizations and companies as he teaches his innovative communication and conflict resolution strategies from his...
About the Interview: The mayhem of 2020 has brought the Apocalypse to the forefront of many people’s minds, but for Latter-day Saints, this kind of thinking is nothing new. Christopher J. Blythe describes in his new book, Terrible Revolution: Latter-Day Saints and the American Apocalypse, how apocalypticism has presented itself throughout the church’s history. Blythe notes, “Latter-day Saints of the nineteenth century belonged to an apocalyptic tradition. Their very identity was entangled with the belief that society was headed toward cataclysmic events that would uproot the current social order in favor of a divine order that would be established in its place” (p. 8). Nearly 200 years later, that tradition is still alive within Latter-day Saint culture. In this episode, Christopher J. Blythe discusses how end-times narratives have evolved and been perpetuated not only through official Latter-day Saint leadership channels but also folk traditions and lived religion. About Our Gu...
The Interview: In this episode of the LDS Perspectives Podcast, Laura Harris Hales interviews Mark Ashurst-McGee, a co-editor of a new book, Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity. The Book of Mormon is well known, but there were several subsequent texts that Joseph Smith translated after the Book of Mormon. This collaborative volume is the first to provide in-depth analysis of each and every one of Joseph Smith’s translation projects. The compiled chapters explore Smith’s translation projects in focused detail and in broad contexts, as well as in comparison with one another. The various contributors approach Smith’s sacred texts historically, textually, linguistically, and literarily to offer a multidisciplinary view. While most of the contributors are Latter-day Saints, not all are. From its inception, the book was meant to be a scholarly work that anyone could read and engage in—whether a member of the Churc...
Dr. Matthew J. Grey discusses his research for his chapter, “Approaching Egyptian Papyri through Biblical Language: Joseph Smith’s Use of Hebrew in His Translation of the Book of Abraham.”
Dr. Thomas A. Wayment covers his research for his chapter “A Recovered Resource: The Use of Adam Clarke’s Bible Commentary in Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation.”
Daniel O. McClellan discusses the literary, historical, and rhetorical meanings of a popular verse in the Book of Mormon.