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“Continents waiting to be explored”

“Continents waiting to be explored”

Last updated on: August 30, 2026 at 7:27 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Continents waiting to be explored” 2026-08-30T19:27:42-06:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Raphael, “The School of Athens” (1505) In this painting, located in the Vatican Apartments, Plato (the older bearded man, shown gesturing upwards) walks with his younger student, Aristotle (who motions downward, suggesting how his philosophical approach would come to differ from his master’s). In the foreground, Michelangelo sits, looking downward, resting his head on his fist. Over toward the right border of the painting, the very young Raphael himself, wearing a black beret-like hat, looks directly at the viewer. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Blake Ostler, one of the most interesting Latter-day Saint voices alive, has a newly redesigned website, and I heartily commend it to your attention: Blake T. Ostler

And, speaking of interesting Latter-day Saint writers, here is the jacket endorsement that I wrote for Nathan B. Oman, Welding Another Link: Latter-day Saint Essays on Faith and Intellect (Greg Kofford Books, 2026):

Nate Oman is one of the best writers and most interesting thinkers in the Church. He’s thoughtful, widely read, intelligently committed to the faith that we share, and always worth careful attention. Readers of Welding Another Link will be rewarded with exciting glimpses of the richness still latent in the Restoration and of the intellectual adventures that await its faithful explorers.

At Amazon.com it also quotes me as saying that “We need more from him and more like him,” which I think I remember writing, and which sounds like the kind of thing that I would have said. Why it does’t appear on the book’s jacket, I don’t know.

Professor Oman is a (brilliant) former student of mine — I’m confident that my teaching provided the necessary foundation for every success that he has achieved since that time — and he is currently the Rita Anne Rollins Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School in Virginia.

On the campus of the College of William & Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, which was founded in 1693 (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Welding Another Link has now come from the press. I began reading it late last night and marking passages in it. Below, I quote one of the passages that I marked:

As an academic, I am a scholar of the common law. This is the vast corpus developed over the centuries by English and American judges that provides the basic rules of contract, property, and personal security. My legal studies have deepened my appreciation for Mormonism. It is not that my religion provides me with a set of neatly prepackaged answers to the endless succession of difficult choices that the law presents. It does not. Rather, studying the common law has given me a set of mental habits for thinking about my religion. Over the centuries, the common law has attracted a fair bit of intellectual tongue-clicking. T. F. Holland, a nineteenth-century legal intellectual, for example, derided the common law as “chaos with a full index.” Upon closer study, however, the common law has a subtle grasp of human nature and a complex internal order that belies the critics who see it as little more than a succession of historical accidents. Out of the welter of seemingly unrelated particular cases emerges something of great usefulness and even beauty.

Mormonism is, by historical standards, a very young religion, and when compared to the elaborate and subtle intellectual traditions that one finds, for example, within Catholicism and Islam, it seems disorganized and underdeveloped. For me, however, this is what lends my faith its intellectual excitement. To be a Latter-day Saint scholar is to stand on the threshold of a great adventure. Only rarely in human history is anyone vouchsafed the opportunity to be present at the birth of a new religious tradition, and while Mormonism is more than a century and a half old, that is, in historical terms, still new. My faith, however, is that Mormonism has the resources to grapple with the most difficult problems of life and mind. Like the common law, the apparently disorganized welter of Mormonism offers great intellectual opportunities to those who are willing to approach it with charity and respect. In the scriptures, teachings, and practices of the Restoration I find continents waiting to be explored. (10-11)

My sentiments, exactly.

The Phnom Penh Cambodia Temple was dedicated earlier today. (Photograph from the Newsroom website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Fair Use)

I cannot imagine a greater contrast than that between the newly dedicated Phnom Penh Cambodia Temple, in which the goal is to individually remember and to individually serve all those who have gone before, and the still relatively recent prior history of Cambodia, during which the Communist Khmer Rouge sought to eradicate whole classes of people — roughly a quarter of the nation’s entire population. So today is a truly grand day: “Latter-day Saint apostle dedicates Phnom Penh Cambodia Temple, where vision ‘draws heavenward’: Cambodia’s first temple brings peace to healing nation and opportunity to worship more often.”

Contrary to apparently common perceptions, this isn’t a photograph of a Latter-day Saint vehicle in downtown Salt Lake City. Rather, it’s a scene in modern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And still not Latter-day Saint. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph). The errors and the oddities in the AI documentary to which I refer below, however, are of a distinctly different kind.

I’m not especially interested in the content of this production, which is somewhat strange — though the first listed change does perhaps bear watching — but in the AI video that accompanies it: “5 Mormon Traditions That Are Quietly Disappearing in 2026” I lost track of the errors and the examples of sheer weirdness. (And please don’t miss the narrator’s shifts in accent.) If you have fourteen minutes to spare, you’ll really enjoy this. At least, I did. But then, if you only have fourteen minutes to spare, you would probably be better advised to spend them on one of the installments of Becoming Brigham, instead.

A group of local Latter-day Saints in front of the Aba Nigeria Temple, which was dedicated by President Gordon B. Hinckley in 2005. (Photo’s provenance unknown)

In a horror that emerges directly out of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™, Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been down in Colombia, threatening defenseless people who have already had to endure the terrors of a massively destructive recent earthquake:

“‘You Are Not Alone’: Elder Stevenson Ministers to Earthquake-Affected Saints: The Apostle and his wife bring comfort, testimony and an apostolic blessing to members in Cali, Colombia”

“Colombia Earthquake Relief Front and Center as Elder Stevenson Meets Cali Mayor: “Caring for those in need is at the very heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” the Apostle says”

And here’s another appalling item from the Hitchens File:

“‘They Just Need the Opportunity’: Church Education Blesses Lives in West Africa: Elder Gilbert highlights the growing impact of BYU–Pathway, Succeed in School and Global Education Centers across West Africa”

As if Africa hasn’t already suffered enough at the hands of White colonialists and Western imperialism!

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