A year-end report and Christmas letter

Last updated on: December 11, 2025 at 4:38 pm by Dan Peterson

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A year-end report and Christmas letter 2025-12-11T16:38:51-07:00 Dan Peterson

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Since the Salt Lake Temple is undergoing major renovations and Temple Square is being significantly reconfigured, the area is a major construction zone at the moment, and will be so for at least a bit longer. This is how it looked during the Christmas of 2008. The Conference Center is the low building in the upper lefthand corner of this Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph. It’s much larger than it looks here.

I wrote the Christmas letter below for the Interpreter Foundation’s volunteers and donors. It went out two or three days ago, and I think that sharing it here might now be appropriate:

Dear friends:

We’re in the thick of the Christmas season. It can be a hectic time of the year, but it’s also a wonderful occasion, if we handle it well, to think about the things that matter most to us, including family and the unspeakably good news of God’s gift of His Son. We wish you a joyous holiday and the best possible New Year.

We’re also approaching the end of 2025. Accordingly, on behalf of The Interpreter Foundation, I want to review some of the past year’s highlights and preview one or two things that we anticipate for 2026. Please think of it as something of an annual report.

It’s been another productive year. You may already have noticed the complete redesign of our website. If you haven’t yet done so, please feel free to give it a thorough going-over, because the changes aren’t merely cosmetic: Our treasure house of books and articles and other materials has grown enormously since the Foundation was launched in 2012, and this new design makes them far more manageable and more easily searchable. It will serve us and you for years to come. If you discover any bugs (and there could well be some; it’s been a massive overhaul), please let us know.

Happily, our basic effort—essentially the heartbeat or pulse of the Foundation—has continued steady through the extensive redesign: That’s our flagship publication, Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. By the end of the year, the Journal will have published 66 articles totaling more than 1,800 pages. (Continuing the record that we’ve maintained since the very beginning, we didn’t miss a single week. By the end of 2025, the Foundation will have published at least one article weekly for 701 consecutive Fridays. And indeed, as in prior years, there were some weeks in 2025 when the Journal published more than just one article.) Additionally, many of the year’s articles were accompanied by Kyler Rasmussen’s “Interpreting Interpreter” summaries, which now appear online in both written and video form.

Volume 65 deserves special mention: It’s an important collection of articles by Matt Roper reflecting the results of a multiyear research project. They examine elements of the Book of Mormon that, ever since its first publication in 1830, have been cited by critics as anachronisms and, thus, as evidence against the book’s authentic antiquity. How do those issues stand today? (Hint: The Book of Mormon looks better than ever.)

Moreover, by the end of December, the Foundation will also have published six books—in seven volumes—for the year 2025:

Abraham and His Family in Scripture, History, and Tradition: Proceedings of the Conference held May 3 & 10, 2025 at Brigham Young University, 2 vols., ed. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Thompson, Matthew L. Bowen, and David R. Seely
The Pearl of Great Price: A Study Edition for Latter-day Saints, ed. Stephen O. Smoot (published in association with Scripture Central)
*In God’s Image and Likeness 3: The Family of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar,*by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Thompson, and Matthew L. Bowen
*Blessed is He That Endureth to the End: Studies in Honor of Noel B. Reynolds,*ed. Matthew Bowen and John Gee
The Temple: Seership, Craftsmanship, and Fellowship: Proceedings of the Seventh Interpreter Foundation Matthew B. Brown Memorial Conference, The Temple on Mount Zion September 28, 2024: Temple on Mount Zion Series 8, eds. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and Stephen D. Ricks
“Look Unto Abraham and Sarah,” by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Thompson, and Matthew L. Bowen

Between them, these six books will total slightly less than 3,000 pages, and more books are in the pipeline for 2026.

As noted above, The Interpreter Foundation convened a conference on Abraham and his family in May 2025, which resulted in two published volumes. At the end of May 2026, we will convene a conference on the “small plates” of the Book of Mormon; it too will result in a published set of conference papers.

Additionally, during each week of 2025, various Interpreter Foundation volunteers joined together for the two-hour Interpreter Radio Show to discuss approaching “Come, Follow Me” lessons and other topics of interest.

We will retire our weekly radio show at the beginning of 2026. However, we’re excited to announce the launch, in its place, of a pair of new podcast series:

The first, a video podcast, will be called *Conversations with Interpreter.*Each week, this program will feature in-depth interviews with the authors of our latest journal articles, providing a unique opportunity to engage directly with the brilliant minds behind the scholarship you value. Our hosts, Avram and Thora Shannon, will explore the insights, discoveries, and faith-enhancing messages that these authors bring to their work, inviting thoughtful conversation that deepens understanding and inspires.

We are also launching a companion audio podcast, which will focus on interviews with authors of past articles. Hosted by Martin Tanner and Terry Hutchinson, this series will allow us to revisit some of the most important and impactful scholarship from our archives. It will give fresh life to foundational works and insightful perspectives, ensuring that they continue to reach and inspire a broad audience.

Each series represents our ongoing commitment to bringing rigorous and faith-affirming scholarship to you in accessible, engaging formats. We hope that you will enjoy these new ways to connect with the rich scholarship of the Interpreter Foundation and to join us in celebrating more than thirteen years of growth, learning, and deepening faith.

We will also launch a series of short documentary videos, *Becoming Brigham,*in January 2026. New videos will appear each week thereafter, featuring footage of historic sites and interviews with a wide variety of prominent scholars. They will offer fascinating background not only for the apostolic succession that occurred in August 1844 (and which was depicted in the Interpreter Foundation’s dramatic film Six Days in August) but cutting-edge insights on the life and leadership of Brigham Young thereafter, not shying away from difficult and controversial issues. (Use this link for information on some of our past films.)

Moreover, work on our documentary seriesNot by Bread Alone: Stories of the Saints in Africa continues, and many installments of it have already begun to appear in both English and French. (See https://notbybreadalonefilm.com/en/.)

This letter has already gone on too long, and I haven’t even mentioned Interpreter’s blog. But I shouldn’t close without calling attention to The Interpreter Foundation study tour of Victorian and Church historical sites that occurred in May 2025. And I’m happy to say that Kristine Frederickson and I, of the board of the Interpreter Foundation, will accompany a similar (but not identical) educational tour in May 2026, along with the remarkable English Latter-day Saint guide Peter Fagg. Rather more than the previous tour, this itinerary will cover not only early Latter-day Saint history in Britain but the rich history of British Christianity from late antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Reformation, leading up to the first arrival of Heber C. Kimball, bearing the Restored Gospel, in 1837. A video-series of historical lectures will precede the tour itself.

As you can see, The Interpreter Foundation is poised to be very productive again during 2026. We will continue to publish books and blog entries and weekly journal articles, to convene conferences and produce podcasts, and to create videos.

I’m gratified by what the Foundation has accomplished thus far, and I’m excited for the future. However, all of us recognize that none of this would have been possible without a multitude of dedicated volunteers and generous donor support. Thank you! And, once again, may you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

PS: If you haven’t made a gift yet this year or if you would like to make another donation, click on this link.

From the BYU movie’s official site. (Fair Use)

If you get the chance, watch BYU Television’s film about the creation of G. F. Händel’s great oratorio Messiah: http://byu.imodules.com/redirect.aspx?linkID=60353&eid=1273091. Even the New York Times gave the documentary a reasonably positive review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/arts/television/the-making-of-handels-messiah-on-byutv.html?_r=1. You’ll never hear the aria “He was despised” quite the same way again.

And, for what it’s worth, Mitch Davis and Mark Goodman and James Jordan and Sam Cardon, all of whom have contributed to the Interpreter Foundation’s films, were involved in this one, as well.

Not, I think, one of the “Mormon Wives” from the television show (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

From Cosmopolitan: “DeuxMoi Tipster Reports ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Is Working on a California Spin-Off: Is Whitney Leavitt involved, or?” “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” he chortled in his joy. I don’t think there’s anything that could possibly make me more happy.

Posted from Salt Lake City, Utah

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