Tonight RFM and Bill Reel take a look at how Director of the Church History Library, Keith A. Erekson, frames apologetics, inoculation, and publicly frames the criticisms of the Church. What tone does he use? What approach does he take with the critic and their criticisms? What approach does he take with the issues? How does he interact with the members of the Church in terms of transparency? Vulnerability? Honesty? and Forthrightness? Is this an improvement or is it a deeper layer of deception? We do this by examining his recent Fireside w/ multiple stakes published on the Fredrickson Stake Youtube Channel
Keith Erekson is the head of the vaults where historical items are saved in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He and his two assistants are the only folks with unfettered access to these archives and storage.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Thanks for giving credit where credit is due. Brother Erekson was very open about several things (Joseph Smith drank wine?! AFTER the word of wisdom was received?!) and was willing to field questions in real-time.
With regards to his comment about “hiding” things from members in the Gospel Library App, I think he’s joking about the fact that a lot of members simply don’t look at Church publications very often… unless they’re asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting.
Concerning the church attorneys influencing BYU police department,. Doesn’t that mean then some violation of laws about a public agency influenced by private corp. and the BYU should loose their status as a public law enforcement agency? Also, has McKenna been offered an NDA by the church? Lastly, I presume Bishop has not been arrested because of statute of limitation.
I had a personal correspondence with Brother Erekson just last year. We actually talked for a couple of hours over Zoom. He came across as very open about various issues I asked him about and he seems like a genuinely good guy. He does try to put things in a faith promoting perspective, which is expected as a faithful member, but I was impressed by how he came across when I talked to him. He certainly didn’t try to downplay any of my concerns; in fact, he seemed to share many of them such as the history of treatment of black people by the church, or how Church artwork portrays certain things such as the translation of the Book of Mormon.
Thank you for putting this together. Looks like the video of the talk has been removed.
Interesting… It was there yesterday (Jan 21, 2021) at about 1:00 in the afternoon. I watched the whole thing.
Are you able to open it now?
No… it went down the memory hole I guess.
Please tell me RFM made a copy for us.
It was clear this was coming.
Very irresponsible to do a piece on it without backing it up and making a copy.
I think in the podcast they said there would be another link if the original was taken down.
Looking forward to seeing it.