A friend shared the above Instagram account of one Dan McClellan, who is – according to his bio – a PhD in theology & religion specializing in conceptualizations of deity, scripture & religious identity. At his blog, he says, “I currently work as a scripture translation supervisor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, and I adjunct teach in the Ancient Scripture Department at Brigham Young University.”
The above video was shared with me specifically, but you can see the sheer volume of his work. The crux of his perspective is to share academic perspectives of extinguishing misinformation on the internet. In the above, Dan addresses the idea that Christmas and Easter are Christian holidays stolen from existing pagan holidays. You can watch it yourself, but basically he says there are lots of websites out there with misinformation, and there’s no real proof that the church ripped off the dates and put Christ on them instead of what the original celebrants gathered to fest.
I find McClellan to be quite interesting to listen to. What bothers me is that he speaks from a position of authority, staking claims without a large amount of citations, just claims that there aren’t many resources to backup the claim that December 25 or the date of we give to resurrection is somehow something that Christians stole for their own because Christians wanted to continue to celebrate the dates that they were already accustomed to.
Continue reading “Will Dan McClellan become our savior?”
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