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This Wednesday, at 4 PM, Utah time

This Wednesday, at 4 PM, Utah time

Last updated on: September 15, 2026 at 12:15 am by Dan Peterson

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This Wednesday, at 4 PM, Utah time 2026-09-15T00:15:31-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Emma Smith, played by Camrey Bagley Fox, speaks with Brigham Young (off camera here) , who was portrayed by John Donovan Wilson, on location for the 2024 Interpreter Foundation film Six Days in August. (See https://witnessesfilm.com/.) Still photo courtesy of James Jordan

The latest episode of the Interpreter Foundation’s series of mini-documentaries went up earlier today, and I hope that you’ll enjoy it: “Feed Them, Don’t Fight Them? — Becoming Brigham, Episode 34.” It is co-hosted (as these episodes typically are) by Camrey Bagley Fox, John Donovan Wilson, and an unidentified diversity hire who was forced upon the filmmakers in order to bring them into compliance with the quota requirement that is imposed by some obscure federal regulation (“The Talentless Hack Equality Act of 2014,” if I’m not mistaken).

The link that I supply in the paragraph above will take you to Meridian Magazine, which features the weekly episodes of Becoming Brigham. There you will also find another installment of Meridian‘s series of faith-promoting anecdotes related to family history research: “Family Records That Refused to Disappear.”

V. Stanley Benfell (1962-2026), from his obituary

I knew Stan Benfell, though not especially well. News of his death shocked me nonetheless, and his death is a considerable loss, not only to his family and friends but to Brigham Young University: “BYU associate VP killed in accident mourned by family, friends and students: Kennedy Center director Stan Benfell wrote openly about how faith helped him in his struggle with anxiety” His obituary can be found here.

A 2014 aerial view of Washington National Cathedral (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Here is something that you might want to watch on Wednesday. I’m certainly going to make the effort to do so:

And here are two passages that I expect to hear from President Oaks this coming Wednesday afternoon/evening:

“Far from being a weakness, reconciling adverse positions through respectful negotiation and coalitions is a virtue.”

“The goals of both sides are best served by resolving differences through mutual respect, shared understanding, and good faith negotiations.”

It’s an important message for a dysfunctionally and unpleasantly polarized time in American politics and public discourse. And President Oaks’s appearance in Washington DC may also (with many other elements) represent a partial fulfillment of the prophecy (the “White Horse Prophecy”) that was allegedly spoken by the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1843, that the Constitution of the United States would one day “hang by a thread . . . as fine as the finest silk” and that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the “White Horse”) will step forward to save it. The historical record regarding the alleged prophecy is unclear and indecisive, its precise wording and meaning are debatable, and it certainly isn’t part of the official doctrine of the Church. But there may perhaps be truth in it.

I could not possibly be more pleased and gratified if, as it ultimately happens, our role turns out to be centered on reconciliation and making peace. μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί, ὅτι αὐτοὶ υἱοὶ θεοῦ κληθήσονται. “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9).

Jakarta, which (alas) I’ve visited only once (and briefly), is the capital of Indonesia, the most populous Islamic nation. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image) Alfred Russel Wallace spent many years in what is now Indonesia, exploring and gathering specimens, experiences, and data. He also wrote on topics both natural-historical and anthropological, especially regarding the Sarawak region. However, Indonesia didn’t look like this back in his day.

As I noted here about a week ago, I’ve been reading rather intermittently in Michael A. Flannery, Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2018). And I want to report that I’ve been finding it — or, perhaps better, increasingly interesting.

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) has generally been recognized as the co-formulator, with Charles Darwin, of the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Although they became (and, more or less, remained) friends, it seems pretty well established that Wallace was the goad that spurred Darwin on to rush his seminal 1859 book On the Origin of Species into print, and it’s arguable that it was, to some degree at least, Wallace’s increasingly obvious disagreement with Darwin regarded the nature of human mind and consciousness that motivated the latter’s publication, in 1871, of The Descent of Man. (See page 60 of Nature’s Prophet.)

The falling out between Wallace and Darwin became public in the April 1869 issue of the Quarterly Review, in which Wallace was reviewing Charles Lyell’s latest edition of Principles of Geology and Elements of Geology.

Wallace began by suggesting that natural selection cannot account for either sentient life or the “higher intellectual nature of man.” While natural selection certainly can and does explain growth, development, and reproduction, it is incapable of extending its explanatory power to consciousness and most certainly not to the special mental and moral capacities of human beings. (52)

Here are the words of Wallace himself, who was, it should be kept in mind, very far from being an orthodox Christian (if, indeed, he can be termed a Christian in any meaningful sense at all):

Such, we believe, is the direction in which we shall find the true reconciliation of Science and Theology on this most momentous problem. Let us fearlessly admit that the mind of man (itself the living proof of a supreme mind) is able to trace, and to a considerable extent has traced, the laws by means of which the organic no less than the inorganic world has been developed. But let us not shut our eyes to the evidence that an Overruling Intelligence has watched over the action of those laws, so directing variations and so determining their accumulation, as finally to produce an organization sufficiently perfect to admit of, and even to aid in, the indefinite advancement of our mental and moral nature. (cited on page 53)

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