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A Night on Broadway in Orem

A Night on Broadway in Orem

Last updated on: September 20, 2026 at 12:42 am by Dan Peterson

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A Night on Broadway in Orem 2026-09-20T00:42:13-06:00 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.

I hastily snapped this photograph of a painting in the hallway of the Mexico City Visitors Center during a visit there last year. There was no title that I could see, and nobody was around for me to ask, but I suspect that it’s an artist’s conception of a Nephite temple. I’ve never seen it before, but I like it quite a bit.

A new item went up earlier today on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Conversations with Interpreter: Kevin Tolley: Temple Themes in Jacob’s Sermon in 2 Nephi”:

In this episode of Conversations with Interpreter, Kevin L. Tolley speaks about his research into temple connections in Jacob’s sermon and especially with Jacob’s use of Isaiah. Dr. Tolley, who is a Coordinator for Seminary and Institutes, has been studying the idea of temples and temple themes in especially the Book of Isaiah, and the connection between the latter part of Isaiah and Psalms and priesthood. This paper, which was presented at a conference on the small plates held in early 2026 at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, brings that research into conversation with the Book of Mormon. Jacob, Nephi’s brother, was a priest and he gives his famous sermon in 2 Nephi 6–10 at the temple in the land of Nephi. Dr. Tolley intriguingly connects Jacob’s use of Isaiah with his priestly and temple focus.

Information about the conference and Dr. Tolley’s paper is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2026-small-plates-of-nephi-conference.

In Conversations with Interpreter, we join Avram and Thora Shannon as they talk with scholars who contribute to The Interpreter Foundation through articles, book chapters, and conference presentations. Together, they explore the insights, research, and faith that inspire these contributions and enrich our understanding of the restored gospel.

Avram is an Associate Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, specializing in the intersection of early Christianity and Judaism. He earned a BA in ancient Near Eastern studies from Brigham Young University (2007), a master of studies in Jewish studies from the University of Oxford (2008), and a PhD in Near Eastern languages and cultures with a graduate interdisplinary specialization in religions of the ancient Mediterranean from The Ohio State University (2015).

Thora is a scholar and writer with a passion for scriptural study and education. She received a degree from Brigham University in Near Eastern Studies, where she studied Hebrew and Arabic, including a study abroad in Egypt. She has presented multiple time at BYU’s Religious Education Symposium and has appeared on the Y Religion podcast.

Episodes will stream at noon on alternate Saturdays. Short clips from each episode will post on all of our social media channels twice a week.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at https://youtube.interpreterfoundation.org/ and our other social media channels on Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok.

The Noorda Center for the Performing Arts, on the campus of Utah Valley University, in Orem (fair use, I hope)

During the forepart of today and into the early afternoon, the board of the Interpreter Foundation held its quarterly meeting. Strangely, despite early prophecies years ago that the Foundation would soon die, it isn’t yet dead. No, not even close. Indeed, as evidenced by today’s discussions, there are lots of good things on their way. Among them, of course, is the ongoing Becoming Brigham series. If you’re just now discovering Becoming Brigham, be sure to watch not only the new installments but the previous episodes. And please call them to the attention of others who might be interested.

This evening, I joined with some members of my elders quorum for pizza. Then my wife and I attended an entertaining concert of show tunes excellently performed by Matthew Morrison and his small back-up instrumental and vocal band at Utah Valley University’s Noorda Center for the Performing Arts.

With Utah Valley University located even closer to us, to our north, than Brigham Young University is to us (to our roughly east southeast) — and BYU is only a short drive away — my wife and I are fortunate to live in an exceptionally rich place for theater and concerts and the visual arts. Indeed, UVU’s art museum is located within a very short and very easy walk of our home. Not bad.

And, speaking of theater, my wife and I attended at performance, this past Tuesday, of Pride and Prejudice. The version that we saw was adapted for the stage by Melissa Leilani Larson

On the evening that we attended, the role of Jane Bennet was performed by Jenna Ann Bagley, who turns out to be related to Camrey Bagley Fox, who portrayed Emma Smith in Witnesses and Six Days in August, and who is one of the co-hosts for Becoming Brigham. And who also, as it happened, was seated directly behind us in the theater.

An interior at Oxford University’s Divinity School, where Alister McGrath earned one of his three doctorates (Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0)

I’ve had multiple occasions here and elsewhere to mention the prolific Alister McGrath, an Anglo-Irish theologian who earned his doctorate in molecular biophysics from the University of Oxford before earning another Oxford doctorate in divinity and then yet another doctorate from Oxford in intellectual history. I want to share here a passage that I marked in Alister E. McGrath, Mere Apologetics: How to Help Seekers and Skeptics Find Faith (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books: 2012):

American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) spoke of “a meteoric shower of facts” raining from the sky. These facts are like threads that need to be woven into a tapestry, clues that need to be assembled to disclose the big picture. As Millay pointed out, we are overwhelmed with information, but cannot make sense of the “shower of facts” with which we are bombarded. There seems to be “no loom to weave it into fabric.” We need a way of making sense of this shower of information. Christianity gives us a way of bringing order and intelligibility to our many and complex observations of the natural world, human history, and personal experience. It allows us to integrate them, and see them as interconnected aspects of a greater whole. (93)

I agree with McGrath, and I will be sharing some additional quotations from him on a related set of themes over the next days and weeks.

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