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Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcasts where broadcasting live from holiday Utah, it's November 17th, 2017.

My name is John DeLin and we're really excited about the topic that we have in store today.

As some of you who follow Mormon Stories will know, we've been doing the series on what we're calling Neal Apologetics.

What I'm defining Neal Apologetics as is sort of a new apologetic movement in Mormonism that's different from classic Mormon Apologetics.

So when you think of classic Mormon Apologetics, think of sort of Hugh Nibbley, think of Daniel Peterson, think of Brian Hales, Fair and Farms, and the Maxwell Institute historically before the changes of late.

And it's basically attempts to defend Mormonism through science, sometimes some would say pseudoscience or not very high quality science. It's the reliance on sort of sometimes at hominem attacks to attack anyone who's willing to question the church.

And it's sort of apologetics that either gas lights or invalidates the doubting perspective. And we'll just call that classic Apologetics. Please check out our past two Mormon Stories episodes to understand that a little bit better.

We've been doing those with Dan Witherspoon of Mormon Matters podcast and we hope to have him back for more analysis of that.

But we're contrasting that with what we're calling Neal Apologetics. You can think of Neal Apologetics is the work of Patrick Mason with his book planted with Terrell and Fiona Givens with Richard Bushman, which is very much more a pastoral approach.

There's a lot of love, a lot of empathy for doubters and questioners.

And it's not so much an attempt to respond to challenges of the church's truth claims directly through the use of science. There's a heavy reliance on humanities.

And on just almost poetry and theology to sort of see if we can not only help people stay of the church, but also provide people with ways to see the church differently.

In no arena, I think has Neal Apologetics sort of been more influential in the church than this sort of dynamic of Terrell and Fiona Givens traveling around the world literally paid for by an organization that at one time was called the temple observatory group. I think they were called, which were a group of wealthy Mormons who pulled money to pay for the givens to fly all over the world.

And to do these types of workshops and retreats temple observatory group, I think was their name.

And so they've done this. And to some extent, it's really kind of a little bit secretive in behind the scenes.

But I think they might object to that characterization because I think in some cases these firesides have been advertised more broadly and just kind of open to the public.

And so what we're doing right now is we're actually going to bring on to more massage podcast two individuals who recently attended one of these Terrell and Fiona Givens firesides.

And the fireside that was held in Arizona, I believe, and we'll get more details about it. The fireside was held to discuss the new book that the givens have come out with.

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