Of milestones and mill stones

Last updated on: February 7, 2019 at 10:19 am by Dan Peterson

Of milestones and mill stones 2019-02-07T10:19:39-07:00 Dan Peterson

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Grindelwald, in the Berner Oberland region of Switzerland. (Wikimedia Commons photo)
I spent seven months of my mission in the Berner Oberland, which remains my favorite landscape in the world. The image has no actual relevance to this blog entry. I just thought that something beautiful was needed, in contrast to considerable ugliness.

The newest installment in my bi-weekly column for the Deseret News:

“A milestone in Latter-day Saint biblical scholarship”

***

A deeply painful story, but beautifully treated in this article:

“A Utah Orthodox rabbi said his childhood nanny sexually abused him for 10 years. Here’s why he decided to tell his story for the first time”

Perhaps it will inspire some others to come forward, if they need to.

For some additional reading on the case:

“Judge orders rabbi’s former nanny to stand trial on sex abuse charges”

“Elizabeth Smart reacts to Utah rabbi’s sex abuse testimony: ‘He’s a hero'”

From the Jerusalem Post: “Utah Chabad Rabbi Speaks Out about Childhood Abuse: Rabbi Avrohom Zippel said watching Jewish gymnast Aly Raisman testify in court gave him the strength to turn to police”

A bit of background on Rabbi Zippel, from 2014:

“Local Chabad rabbi first raised and trained in Utah”

***

Here’s a comment by another Patheos blogger on a situation of which some of you may have heard (and from which at least some critics of the Church have been hoping to generate a scandal):

“Did the Church Get Caught Covering Up a Sex-Abuse Crisis?”

I’ve been reluctant to call attention to the matter for several reasons. For one, I don’t think it indicative of a scandal in the Church and I don’t believe that all such stories need to be the stuff of screaming newspaper headlines and frenzied internet comment. I didn’t want to pour gasoline on the flames. Still, I’ve been considering a response to it, and now maybe I don’t need to do so.

I have been aware of the apparent perpetrator for many, many years, since the time, perhaps even before my mission, when I saw him deliver a spectacular performance at BYU in a dramatic version of Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” I believe that he was also a fellow student (several years older than I) in a philosophy of religion class taught by Truman Madsen. My wife knew him somewhat, as well, because she was a theater major. And, since then, I’ve had a few contacts with him in his role as a filmmaker. He is a brilliant guy, and this story has shocked and saddened me very much. I’m hopeful that, as it currrently seems, the (to me) incomprehensible offense attributed to him was a one-time lapse.

***

Speaking of unjust anti-Mormon critics who dream of creating scandals: I’ve noticed a new trend in the tiny fifteen-year-old colony of obsessive anti-Peterson commenters who thrive over at a predominantly atheistic and virulently anti-Mormon message board: Lately, they’ve ventured just a bit into genuinely dangerous legal waters by suggesting that I was run out of the Maxwell Institute in 2012 because of financial irregularities. Of course, if Brigham Young University had really found that I was embezzling money, I would not only have been booted from the Institute in 2012, I would have lost my job, faced criminal charges, and possibly have been excommunicated. There’s no truth whatever to these insinuations. But what do such critics care? Now, they hint, the Interpreter Foundation is my newest money-making scheme. (If so, it’s a really stupid one, since no officer of the Foundation is permitted to draw more than $500 in “salary” annually, and since no officer has ever drawn any such money at all. My wife and I are donors.)

Some are now claiming that our Witnesses film project is yet another mercenary effort to line my pockets. One even suggests that I’ve simply found an accomplice with whom I’ve invented a mythical film that will never see the light of day, that we then go out and raise funding for it, of which he pockets half and pays the rest to me in cash, under the table. Presumably in unmarked bills. I wonder whether these people have ever heard of laws regarding slander and libel. Perhaps, someday, they will. Anyway: For the record, I have received not so much as a single penny from the Witnesses effort, and there is no provision for me ever to do so. I’m working on it as a volunteer, because I believe in the cause. If we’re able to pull this off at the level of quality that I hope for and expect, that will be satisfaction enough for me. Just so everybody knows.

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