Examining Bill Reel’s false accusations against me

(Yes, I know I said I was going to take a break from blogging for a bit. This is important enough that I felt I needed to make an exception.)

I’ve struggled for over a week about whether or not to write this blog post. I’ve been falsely accused by an ex-Mormon critic of the Church in a way that attacks my character. He has publicly presented fabricated evidence to misrepresent me as a supposed racist who is purportedly involved in a conspiracy to cover up my real identity by using the online persona of a fictitious African-American man.

In a situation like this, any explanation I offer is unlikely to placate those who are predisposed to believe the worst about me, people I know, and the gospel we affirm. And talking about it risks drawing more attention than it would otherwise receive or merit. Regardless, publishing the truth may result in at least some good.

I apologize for the length of this post, but the details are complex and require a full examination.

July 9, 2022: Robert Boylan’s “Richard Nygren” remark

I have previously explained, in writing and in a video interview, the facts behind the “Richard Nygren” comment made by Robert Boylan in his July 2022 YouTube podcast. I was aware of Robert’s remark, but—other than posting Robert’s video on this blog—I did not repeat his comment, nor did I do anything to disseminate or promote it. I simply moved on. (And, to be honest, largely forgot about it.)

March 31, 2023: Bill Reel’s first public accusations

On March 31st, ex-Mormon podcaster Bill Reel first accused me, via his Facebook page, of “having lurked the internet under the false identity of an African American Person of Color from Alabama named Richard Nygren.” (Screenshot.) He declared that he always considered me and others who defend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints against critical attacks to be “crooked weasels” who “always protect the Church at any expense[,] but impersonating people of a race you are not seems to be a whole other category of unhealthy deception.” Addressing me personally, Reel wrote, “If this isn’t true[,] I would welcome you explaining yourself and helping us figure out why the profile of [Richard Nygren]…used to be the exact same profile of no one other than Mike Parker?”

At that time, I had no idea what Bill Reel meant about lurking on the internet under the name Richard Nygren. I have never impersonated or used the online identity of any person of color, including the fictional Nygren.

According to one of the links in his Facebook post, Reel sourced his information from a virulently anti-Mormon message board, the same one where my real identity had been revealed earlier in March. (No, I’m not going to provide any links to that site. It’s the same one that Daniel Peterson refers to as the “Peterson Obsession Board,” so that’s what I’ll call it.)

That same day (March 31st) I attempted to contact Bill Reel via Facebook Messenger (screenshot), in person, by voicemail, and by SMS text message. In each of these instances, I denied that I have ever claimed to be Richard Nygren or any other Black man. I told him that his claim bordered on libel and requested that he delete his Facebook post and issue a retraction and an apology. He responded to me via SMS text later that day; he ignored my requests for a retraction and pressed me to explain my involvement. I had no information to give him other than it was Robert Boylan who made the original statement and that I had never claimed to be Richard Nygren or any other Black person. I simply didn’t know what he was talking about.

It wasn’t until Reel went public with his “evidence” two weeks later that I learned what he believed he had on me.

April 15, 2023: Bill Reel’s YouTube livestream

On the afternoon of April 15th, Bill Reel and Steve Pynakker co-hosted a 2 hour, 45 minute YouTube livestream titled “LDS Apologists & The Invention And Coverup Of Richard Nygren,” in which they went through the evidence of my perfidy as they understood it.

In their discussion, Reel referred to a March 26, 2023, YouTube livestream interview with Pynakker, Jonathan Neville, and ex-Mormon Kerry Shirts. Shirts has his own YouTube channel called “The Backyard Professor” and posts frequently on the Peterson Obsession Board as “Philo Sofee.” (Reel and Shirts share the distinction of being ex-Mormons who were formerly associated with FAIR.)

According to Reel and Pynakker:

[38:40] REEL: On March 25th, Steve Pynakker informed his followers that he and Jonathan Neville would be on the Backyard Professor’s show the following day, and [Mike] Parker notified the host, Kerry Shirts, just before showtime that he would be in the chat for that show. Would they be reporting on Peter Pan’s identity? He had to have had the thought. Regardless, he writes this blog post on the same day as the show. Maybe before I read what he says here, would you mind just telling a little more of that story, how that all unfolded?

[Skipping a bit of Pynakker’s explanation of how he came to do the Shirts/Neville podcast and how he learned my identity.]

[40:18] PYNAKKER: A couple days later I announced that I’m going to be co-hosting with Jonathan Neville, and in my mind what happened is, right before—um, Kerry Shirts tells me earlier in the day; I don’t remember the exact thing—I think he actually said before we were taping that, “Yeah, by the way, Peter Pan is going to be in the discussion.” I thought, “Oh, that’s very interesting.” And then also we had started connecting the dots because just a few hours before this episode goes live, this is when he [Mike Parker] announces who he is he gives his identity at that point.

This misinformation is the origin of Reel’s accusation against me.

In response to Pynakker’s claims, I make the following statements of fact:

• I had no advance knowledge that Pynakker, Shirts, and Neville were going to be on a YouTube podcast together. I don’t follow Shirts or Pynakker’s YouTube activities. (I’ve barely read any of what Shirts posts on the Peterson Obsession Board, and, except for a few pages of posts about my real identity, I’ve ignored the very outré conversations going on over there.)
• It is a complete coincidence that I happened to publish my March 26th blog post (“Questions and answers”) on the same day that the Pynakker/Shirts/Neville livestream took place.
• I did not indicate to anyone, including Kerry Shirts, that I would “be in the discussion” on their YouTube video. As far as I can determine, I haven’t communicated with Kerry Shirts for over ten years. The last email I wrote in which I even mentioned him was on February 13, 2013, in which I responded to someone who asked me what had happened to him by saying that he’d apparently become “something of an agnostic” (screenshot).
• I did not watch or participate in any way in the March 26, 2023, Pynakker/Shirts/Neville YouTube video.
• I first learned of the Pynakker/Shirts/Neville video from Jonathan Neville’s March 27, 2023, blog post about it. To the best of my knowledge, Neville did not announce his appearance on that livestream video ahead of time.
• On March 30, 2023, I published a blog post about the Pynakker/Shirts/Neville video. At that time I had not watched it, and I still haven’t watched it (except for a ten-second portion that someone else sent me as a YouTube link with a timestamp; see below). I linked to the video in my blog post, but my post focused on Neville’s lack of wisdom in having anything to do with Kerry Shirts, not on the content of the video.

I do not know where Kerry Shirts got the idea that I would be participating in that video. I can think of three possibilities:

1. Someone trolled Kerry Shirts by impersonating me or “Peter Pan,” and he sincerely believed it.
2. Kerry Shirts invented the claim that I would be participating in his YouTube livestream, either as a lie or as a joke directed at Pynakker.
3. Pynakker’s recollection of his conversation with Kerry Shirts is mistaken.

I’d like to give both Shirts and Pynakker the benefit of the doubt here and go with possibility #1, but I honestly don’t know what the truth is.

March 26, 2023: “Richard Nygren” appears in the Pynakker/Shirts/Neville video

In the Pynakker/Shirts/Neville livestream, someone appeared in the chat with the screen name “Richard Nygren” and using an avatar of comedian Dave Chappelle dressed as the rock star Prince (explicit content in that link). This person asked (in all caps), “Do you think you will ever sit down with Mike Parker over lunch and be friends?” (Timestamp 1:27:42.)

As I stated above, I did not watch (and have not watched) that video, nor did I interact with it in any way. The person who commented in that livestream as “Richard Nygren” was not me, and I had no knowledge of what took place in that livestream until I watched Reel and Pynakker’s April 15th livestream.

April 15, 2023: Steve Pynakker plays connect-the-dots

Returning to Reel and Pynakker’s discussion:

[46:09] REEL: So, then you guys do your show and this aired on the 26th of March 2023. Mike Parker has informed you guys—specifically Kerry Shirts—but he’s informed you guys that he is going to be participating in the chat of this show. He’s going to be in participating—I don’t mean necessarily interacting, other than he’ll be there, he’ll be watching the comments, he’ll be observing, and he certainly has ample opportunity to comment and to speak up. Strange thing happens in the middle of the show is that a comment comes on the screen from Richard Nygren with a picture of David Chappelle dressed as Prince, and the comment is, “Do you think you will ever sit down with Mike Parker over lunch and be friends?,” and whoever this person is—and again we can’t conclude conclusively that it is Mike Parker—but I want you to explain the context of this comment: Why this person is asking if Neville and Parker will sit down over lunch and be friends.

Reel then added that this had been a opportunity for me to “resolve the Nygren connection,” even though, as he admits, he couldn’t conclusively conclude that it was me in the chat. (Again, it wasn’t.)

[47:34] PYNAKKER: So this is what was so funny is I didn’t catch it at the time when it was live; I actually re-watched the episode the next day and I remember looking at the screen and thinking, “Oh my goodness.” I was like—that to me as I—immediately I made the connection, that’s Mike Parker commenting as Richard Nygren. That’s how I saw it; that was my immediate response. Now I can’t say for 100 percent certain, but if you look at the chat history, Richard Nygren is actually interacting during the chat as well. So we have Mike Parker, who—and I didn’t know all this, I mean, again, this is, a lot of this information was after I first figured this out was—he’s interacting with people. Mike Parker said he’s going to be in there. Why isn’t Mike Parker going in there and saying, “Hey, who are you? Who’s this Richard Nygren guy?‘ Or interacting or saying something? It just seems to me as you read this—this to me appears to be Mike Parker’s voice under the guise of Richard Nygren, and he seems to have some intimate knowledge—or if it’s not Richard, if it’s not Mike Parker, it’s somebody that’s close enough that they would feel they could ask, “Would you do lunch with him,” almost like asking for a friend, you know. So, either it’s somebody but I—my hunch is that’s Mike Parker.

And there is Reel’s supposed smoking gun: The day after the Pynakker/Shirts/Neville interview, Pynakker had a sudden realization that that was me posting as Richard Nygren in the chat. He says he “can’t say for 100 percent certain” that I was posting as Richard Nygren, but since I had purportedly told Kerry Shirts that I’d be there (again, I said and did no such thing), in his mind it was either me posting as Nygren or I was watching the video but didn’t speak up to deny that was me posting as Nygren. Neither Pynakker nor Reel ever considered the third possibility that I wasn’t in the chat at all.

Calumny may defame

As I have stated above and from the start, from the moment that Robert Boylan made a joke about fictional Black man to, in his own words, “tweak Heartlanders,” I have not used the name or identity of “Richard Nygren” anywhere for any reason. I didn’t even repeat his joke in any forum at any time. It happened, I wasn’t going to throw a friend of mine under the bus for a joke, and so I ignored it and went on with my life.

Bill Reel’s key piece of evidence that I “fabricated and perpetuated a fictional black apologist” and then engaged in a cover-up is based on a fallacious comment purportedly made by Kerry Shirts and an erroneous conclusion reached by Steve Pynakker based on that comment.

If this is how carefully they weigh evidence and devise arguments against the Church of Jesus Christ and its followers, then I think any reasonable person should sincerely question everything they say.

This is all it takes these days for someone like Reel to engage in character assassination that drives clicks on—and ad revenue from—a YouTube video (one that now has over 9,300 views).

Will I ever get the retraction and apology that I asked of Bill Reel on March 31st? I think that’s unlikely. I also think that it’s more likely that he and those who side with him will accuse me (falsely) of making up this explanation as just another part of the supposed cover-up. Even if I don’t get that apology, though, hopefully this blog post will clear up any confusion that people of good will have about this.

I’m willing to answer honest, sincere questions about this incident in the comments.

—Mike Parker [“Peter Pan”]
 

Taking a bit of a break

This week has taken a toll on me, emotionally and spiritually. And there may be more challenges ahead, if Jonathan Neville follows through on some of the things he told me he may choose to do.

I’m going to take a break from this blog for a bit to find some peace in the company of friends and family. I’ll be back in a bit, once I’ve recharged.

My thanks to the kind words of support that I’ve received by way of email messages and comments on this blog. They mean more to me than you can know.

Despite our dramatic differences and feelings of mistrust for one another, I do wish to thank Jonathan Neville for posting my responses to his comparison table. He published my reply over five individual blog posts (I, II, III, IV, and V). Needless to say, I take strong exception to his commentary on my replies—I believe that he has misconstrued almost all of what I wrote. Still, I’m grateful that he gave me the opportunity to respond and followed through by publishing it. My offer for him to write something that I will post on my blog remains open.

See you soon.

“We have always endeavored to cultivate a spirit of friendship, amity, and peace with mankind.… Rumor with her ten thousand tongues has always been busy circulating falsehood and misrepresentation concerning us, and men have frequently in the absence of correct information, entertained unfavorable opinions concerning us, and have spoken as they thought; but when they have been better informed they have regretted their course and have seen that calumny has been like a viper in our path, and has stung like an adder.” —Editorial, Nauvoo Neighbor, May 3, 1843, p. 2 [source]

—Mike Parker [“Peter Pan”]
 

The story of Neville-Neville Land, as told to Robert Boylan

Robert Boylan, who runs the blog and YouTube channel Scriptural Mormonism, graciously invited me to come on his video podcast and tell the story behind this blog. I took him up on the offer, and this was the result:

I harbor no illusions that this interview will satisfy the few but vociferous fanatics who recently have taken to attacking me and my character from a dark and execrable corner of the internet.

I trust, however, that honest people of good will—among whom I count many of my readers—will be interested in hearing how this blog began and why it exists in the first place.

As I mentioned in this interview, I tried to be accurate and fair when I described the beliefs and arguments of Jonathan Neville and others in the Heartland movement. If anything I said was inaccurate, please leave a comment below and offer a correction.

—Mike Parker [“Peter Pan”]
 

The “Richard Nygren” affair and some vile accusations against me

It has sadly become necessary for me to publish the following.

Recently, some thoroughly despicable—and borderline unhinged—individuals on the internet have been accusing me of being some sort of racist for purportedly pretending to be an African-American man by the name of Richard Nygren. (You can read one example of such an accusation in this screenshot from a Facebook post.)

Here is the truth about these claims:

• On July 9, 2022, Robert Boylan, who runs the blog and YouTube channel Scriptural Mormonism, interviewed Spencer Kraus about Kraus’s then-recently published reviews of Jonathan Neville’s books A Man that Can Translate and Infinite Goodness.
• At about the 5:20 mark in the interview, Boylan plugged Kraus’s blog, along with “Richard Nygren’s blog, Neville-Neville Land, a blog critiquing Jonathan Neville mainly but also other Heartland proponents, where he posts on the nickname ‘Peter Pan.’ Richard is one of only [a] few African-American apologists in the Church at the moment, and he lives in Birmingham, Alabama, so be sure to check those out.”
• At the time of the interview, Robert Boylan knew my real identity. I asked him about the “Richard Nygren” comment, and he told me that he made it up as “a little joke to tweak Heartlanders” because of some racist remarks that had published on the FIRM Foundation’s website. “Richard Nygren” is a fictional character.
• On July 19, 2022, I posted a link to the Boylan/Kraus interview. At that time, my real identity was not known publicly, so any attempt on my part to address Boylan’s “Richard Nygren” comment would have been untrue (if I confirmed it) or confusing (if I denied it). Instead, I simply wrote that the interview “goes into more detail about this blog than I’m comfortable with.”

Regarding recent claims that have been made about me, I unconditionally state:

• I have never claimed to be nor impersonated someone named Richard Nygren, neither openly nor as a “lurker” on the internet.
• I have never claimed to be nor impersonated an African-American or any other person of color.
• I have never used a profile or avatar of an African-American nor a person of color on any website or social media site. Any social media profiles of a Richard Nygren are either real people who coincidentally have the same name or fake profiles made by anti-Mormon critics to smear me.
• I have not attempted to shield myself from criticism or to prevent others from learning my true identity by doing anything above.

This affair merely demonstrates how gullible some anti-Mormons are, how incapable they are of assessing evidence, and how quick they are to libel people with whom they disagree based upon nothing more than rumors and gossip. This was one of the primary reasons that I chose for so long to use a pseudonym on this blog. I have little doubt that, after reading this, my very online critics will claim that I’m still covering up the real story.

I have spoken with two attorneys about the defamatory claims made about me. They both agreed that what these individuals have written is repulsive, but they also both independently counseled me against taking legal action due to the difficulties of proving libel in Utah courts and the foreseeable expenses of protracted litigation.

My decision at this point is to simply try harder to understand and live the Savior’s teaching in Matthew 5:43–45.

This will be my only statement about this matter. [On April 7, 2023, I was interviewed by Robert Boylan about this blog. We discussed the Richard Nygren affair starting at 1:07:56.] I [usually] have more productive and interesting things to do than to battle with internet trolls.

—Peter Pan (Mike Parker)

Afterword: Immediately after publishing this post, a friend shared with me another Facebook post by Bill Reel (one of my accusers) in which he claims to have “reached out” to me, Stephen Smoot, and others “to see if any of them wished to speak to us,” but, according to Reel, “all have seemingly instead gone silent on the matter.”

Reel’s claims are completely false. I was the one who first reached out to him by Facebook Messenger, voicemail, and SMS text message, telling him in all three messages that what he had written about me was false and asking him to take it down and issue a retraction. He responded and we exchanged several messages. He ignored my repeated requests for a retraction. It is completely and wholly untrue that I “went silent.”

I have asked Stephen Smoot if Reel has tried to contact him, and he has told me that he’s received no communication from him.

Feel free to assess Reel’s honesty and good character for yourself.
 

Questions and answers

I’ve been mulling over this post for some time now. My identity was recently discovered and revealed, so this seemed like a good opportunity to introduce my (real) self and respond to some questions about this blog. These questions aren’t “frequently asked,” but I suppose one could still consider this to be a FAQ.

[On April 7, 2023, I was interviewed by Robert Boylan for his YouTube channel. That interview has additional information about me and this blog, and it can be seen here.]

Who are you?

My real name is Mike Parker. I’m an active, believing Latter-day Saint who has a profound belief in the truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Why have you been using the pseudonym “Peter Pan”?

The Peter Pan alias started as humorous idea when I decided to launch this blog in early 2019. Since I’d already decided on the name of the blog, the Peter Pan moniker seemed more clever and appropriate than using my own name.

I was open to revealing my real name at some point, but eventually this blog began to draw the attention of some unstable people in the Heartland movement, so the pseudonym eventually evolved from a in-joke to something that I used to provide a measure of protection for myself and my family.

What do you have against Jonathan Neville?

Nothing, honestly. This isn’t a personal issue for me. I’ve never met him, but I’m sure that he’s a loving husband and a swell guy.

(Except for that time he tried to blackmail me, of course.)

Then why do you maintain a blog called “Neville-Neville Land”?

The point of this blog is to examine Jonathan Neville’s claims, not to go after him as an individual.

The name of the blog is, of course, a pun. It’s meant to be humorous, not malicious. It’s no worse than Neville’s use of puns in the names of his own blogs, and it’s certainly better than the name-calling and demonization Neville himself has engaged in.

Did someone ask you to create this blog?

No, it was my idea from the start and everything I’ve written has been my own views and opinions. No one has ever asked or told me what to write about.

I hate to disappoint my detractors in the Heartland and anti-Mormon communities, but there is no grand conspiracy at work here. It’s just one guy and a keyboard.

Do you get paid to run this blog?

I haven’t received so much as a nickel from anyone for starting and maintaining the Neville-Neville Land blog. I don’t even use advertising to monetize this site.

You seem kind of obsessed with Jonathan Neville and Heartlanders. Can’t you just let people believe what they want to believe?

People are absolutely free to believe what they want to believe. Not all beliefs are true, though, and some beliefs are based on flawed reasoning, faulty methodology, or biased interpretation. To one extent or another we’re all prone to making such errors, but the Heartland movement is particularly afflicted by them.

Jonathan Neville has set forth specific propositions that are at odds with the historical record, at odds with what has been taught by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and at odds with careful analysis of the data. He’s free to believe whatever he wants to believe, but when he publicly advocates for his beliefs, then he opens himself up to review, criticism, and rebuttal.

I believe that his teachings will destroy faith and confidence in The Church of Jesus Christ and its divinely ordained leaders. As I wrote above, I’m sure that Jonathan Neville is a nice person, but his words are spiritually toxic. The Neville-Neville Land blog exists to expose and examine his teachings and the erroneous statements of others in the Heartland movement.

Also, based on specific things that Neville has said and done, I question his sense of good judgment in some matters.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

If you’re referring to a European swallow, then that would be 11 to 16 meters per second.

—Peter Pan (Mike Parker)
 

Neville-Neville Land 2022 year in review

The end of 2022 brings to a close the fourth year I’ve been publishing this blog. What started as something of a lark has developed into a full-blown escapade.

This year I published 48 posts examining the iconoclastic beliefs and assertions of Jonathan Neville and his associates in the so-called “Heartland” Book of Mormon movement. That’s down from 72 in 2021 and 74 in 2020. The reduced number of posts this year has been due mostly to (a) my increasingly busy schedule and (b) Jonathan Neville’s regular routine of regurgitating the same content over and over again, only using just ever-so-slightly different words. There’s only so many times that I can write about (to use just one example) his repeated fatuous assertion that people who don’t agree with him are “rejecting the teachings of the prophets.”

Among the significant developments this year in Neville-Neville Land, I would include the following:

• The most impactful event was the publication in the journal Interpreter of Spencer Kraus’s reviews of Neville’s two recent books, A Man That Can Translate: Joseph Smith and the Nephite Interpreters and Infinite Goodness: Joseph Smith, Jonathan Edwards, and the Book of Mormon. Neville’s theories on the origins and translation of the Book of Mormon have long needed to be examined in a detailed manner, and Kraus delivered the goods in two excellent essays.
  The editors of Interpreter graciously gave Neville the opportunity to respond to Kraus, and he did so in a 3,600-word response they published—after which he had the temerity to claim that Interpreter and other scholarly Latter-day Saint organizations “refuse to permit alternative faithful interpretations [of Book of Mormon geography] on their websites” and implied that these organizations are responsible for the declining growth in Church membership.
  Spencer Kraus responded to Neville in Interpreter, on his own blog, and in an interview with Robert Boylan, ably demonstrating that Neville misunderstands and misinterprets original sources and the arguments of those who criticize him.
• A key individual in the Heartland movement finally decided to engage my criticisms: On December 22, 2022, Rian Nelson of the FIRM Foundation wrote a blog post complaining about the way I characterize him and his associates. What followed was something approaching an actual conversation (see part 1, part 2, and part 3). Even though we didn’t come to an agreement, I am grateful to Rian for respectfully discussing some of our differences.
• Adding to the list of disturbing statements made by prominent Heartlanders, this year we saw David Hocking refer to Book of Mormon artwork approved by Church leaders as “visual pornography” and Kimberly W. Smith (who, in 2021, accused the Church of being “off course”) claim that Church members who follow the First Presidency’s counsel on vaccines have “fallen victim to a cult mindset.” (And Rian Nelson wonders why I say that he and his comrades are flirting with apostasy!)
• Adding to his long history of making dishonest statements, this year Jonathan Neville falsely claimed that the people he calls “M2Cers” and “SITH sayers” don’t want people to read his books.
• An important document came to my attention this year that refutes Jonathan Neville’s claim that Oliver Cowdery never said Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by placing stones in a hat and his claim that the “stone in the hat” stories were invented in 1834 by an anti-Mormon author. Both of those assertions are shown to be false by the January 29, 1831, diary entry of Richard NcNemar, who heard Oliver Cowdery preach in November 1830 that Joseph translated by using “two transparent stones in the form of spectacles thro[ugh] which the translator looked on the engraving & afterwards put his face into a hat & the interpretation then flowed into his mind.” Neville’s assertions continue to fall apart under the weight of documentary evidence.
• Finally, one of the worst people on the internet triumphantly claimed that he’s figured out my true identity, and yet he’s completely, hilariously wrong. Like, not even in the ballpark. But since he’s wrong concerning most things about which he arrogantly opines, I guess that’s to be expected.

Finally, here are the top ten Neville-Neville Land posts for 2022 by number of reads:

1. The First Presidency reviewed Saints before publication (July 27, 2022).
2. Jonathan Neville reacts to Spencer Kraus’s reviews (June 30, 2022).
3. President Nelson and the attention to detail in Saints (August 4, 2022).
4. Follow-up: The character of Stephen Reed (“TwoCumorahFraud”) (March 14, 2022).
5. “Doctor Scratch,” perpetual gadfly and blowhard (July 23, 2022).
6. Recommended watching: Spencer Kraus’s interview with Robert Boylan (July 19, 2022).
7. Peter’s hiatus and three brief notices (March 6, 2022).
8. Jonathan Neville’s latest folly: The Kinderhook Plates (March 30, 2022).
9. Spencer Kraus’s devastating review of Jonathan Neville’s A Man that Can Translate (June 17, 2022).
10. Rian Nelson pulls a Michael Scott (April 11, 2022).

Last year at this time, I wrote, “I see little evidence that Jonathan Neville will retreat from his extremist views in the coming year and bring himself more in line with the teachings of the prophets regarding the Book of Mormon and how the Prophet Joseph Smith translated it.” I’m saddened to report that I was right. However, 2023 brings a new year and new opportunities, so here’s hoping that more people will see through the transparent falsehoods of the Heartland movement in the coming year.

Happy new year!

—Peter Pan
 

“Doctor Scratch,” perpetual gadfly and blowhard

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog to bring you amusing developments over at DiscussMormonism.com.

An individual who calls himself “Doctor Scratch” has been criticizing Daniel Peterson and other Latter-day Saint apologists for over fifteen years now. Peterson refers to him as “my Malevolent Stalker,” and not without good reason.

Now, I have no problem with using a pseudonymous identity to make critical comments about well-known individuals. [ahem] In fact, I must give “Doctor Scratch” all the credit he is due for managing to keep his true identity a secret for a decade and half. That feat alone is impressive.

Scratch has recently set his sights on this humble blog, telling his followers:

“Neville-Neville Land” is a curious artifact of Mopologetics [“Mormon apologetics”]: one marvels at the sheer extent and obsessiveness of it. The blog began in February of 2019, and a new entry has been posted at least a couple of times per week since then, meaning that the total entries rivals the volume of [Daniel Peterson’s blog] “Sic et Non.” We are talking hundreds of entries—all devoted to one purpose: taking down Jonathan Neville, one of the chief proponents of the so-called “Heartland Theory.”

“Doctor Scratch, B.H. Roberts Chair of Mopologetic Studies”

I won’t dispute “Doctor Scratch’s” description of this blog, but I can’t help but notice what may be the veritable Marianas Trench of irony that he would call me out for “the sheer extent and obsessiveness” of this blog. This, from a man from whom obsessiveness herself hides her face in shame! Uncounted masses can only stand silent, their mouths agape, at his utter and complete lack of self-awareness.

Perhaps just as amusing, though, is that “Doctor Scratch” has proclaimed to his trained minions that he has cracked the case regarding my identity. In his message board post that goes on for a rambling 3,400 words (!), he connects all the dots and triumphantly proclaims that I, Peter Pan, am in reality Stephen Smoot. (The title of his exposé is “Stephen Smoot’s Vendetta.”)

I hate to break to the good Doctor, but I’m not Stephen Smoot. I’m not Daniel Peterson either, but we’ve been over that many times on this blog. And, since we’re on this subject, I’ll freely admit that I’m also not Spencer Kraus.

For over a decade-and-a-half, “Doctor Scratch” has been posting to online message boards supposedly inside information about Latter-day Saint apologetics. That he would go through all the effort to reveal my true identity and yet get it completely wrong demonstrates how reliable his other claims must have been.

This is the first and last time I’ll mention “Doctor Scratch.” His pompous posts are worth less than the time I’ve already given them.

—Peter Pan
 

An open letter to Stephen Reed, aka “TwoCumorahFraud”

Mr. Reed,

Please stop leaving childish and insulting comments on this blog. I won’t approve them to be published, and I’m tempted to flag them as spam.

Regular readers of this blog are already acquainted with your claims and your insolent manner, so please find another blog to harass, if you would be so kind.

—Peter Pan

Since I don’t have a photo to go with this post, here’s one of a Golden Retreiver puppy. Because everyone loves puppies. Even Stephen Reed, I’ll wager.

Neville-Neville Land 2021 year in review

2021 was the third year of operation for this humble blog. This year we published 72 posts—not including this one, which I was uanble to publish before the end of the year—examining the heterodox beliefs and assertions of Jonathan Neville and his comrades in the Heartland Book of Mormon movement.

Among the most significant developments this year, I would include the following:

• Jonathan Neville continued to sink lower in his personal behavior, first by comparing those who disagree with him to serial killer Mark Hofmann, then by implying that Daniel Peterson is like Satan (and using the language of the temple endowment to do so, no less). When Peterson noted Neville’s attack, instead of apologizing, Neville blamed Peterson for supposedly getting offended. If Neville wants to be taken seriously by the broader Latter-day Saint scholarly community, he should start by behaving like a decent human being.
• Neville persisted in distorting the truth, proceeding from faulty assumptions, and misrepresenting the views of people he disagrees with. He repeated his false claims that people are leaving the Church because of “M2C” and that “20 years ago, LDS scholars re-interpreted the historical evidence to reject what Oliver and Joseph said in favor of SITH.” He falsely asserted that Oliver Cowdery “never claimed revelation when he described the visit of John the Baptist, the translation of the Book of Mormon, or other events,” and he pressed on with his manufactured history of “M2C.” He also invented a new fraud that he calls “multiple working hypotheses.” He also continued to malign and misrepresent Church publications and Church employees, including the 2021 Come, Follow Me manual.
• Another major development this year was seeing Rian Nelson—author of Moroni’s America – Maps Edition, which was edited by Neville and based on Neville’s own book—go off the deep end with conspiracy theories about COVID‑19 vaccines, the 2020 election, and the “Deep State.” Even people who believe in the Heartland theory were pushing back against Nelson’s nuttiness. To his credit, Jonathan Neville publicly rejected Nelson’s positions on vaccines.

In keeping with tradition, here are the top ten Neville-Neville Land posts for 2021 by number of views:

1. Heartland research director: “The Church is off course” (January 28, 2021) [This was, by far, the most popular post this year, with more than twice as many views as the next-most-viewed post.]
2. Those who live in glass houses, pt. 12 (March 10, 2021)
3. Elder Gerrit W. Gong: “Father Lehi’s faithful descendants” live “in Latin America” (April 3, 2021)
4. Heartlanders push back against Rian Nelson’s nutty conspiracy theories (March 16, 2021)
5. Rian Nelson, the Heartland hoax, and conspiracy theories (January 20, 2021)
6. Rian Nelson rejects charges of Heartlander apostasy (July 21, 2021) [This post had the most comments this year.]
7. The desolate Heartland theory (February 11, 2021)
8. The identity of Peter Pan, and other issues Jonathan Neville is wrong about (April 8, 2021)
9. Oliver Cowdery and Lehi’s landing site (January 14, 2021)
10. Someone should really bring Jonathan Neville up to speed (March 24, 2021)

Sadly, I see little evidence that Jonathan Neville will retreat from his extremist views in the coming year and bring himself more in line with the teachings of the prophets regarding the Book of Mormon and how the Prophet Joseph Smith translated it. I hope I’m wrong about this, though.

—Peter Pan

My reaction to Witnesses

Tiger Lily and I finally took the opportunity to see the new film Witnesses tonight. It is very, very good, and I highly recommend it to all my readers.

Perhaps the film’s only flaw was that it didn’t include a depiction of Oliver Cowdery’s experience of seeing an angel who told him that the hill Cumorah in New York was the final battleground of the Nephites and who commanded him, in the name of God, to write Letter VII.

4/5 stars.

😉,

—Peter Pan
 

Many people are not asking (in case you were asking)

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post. Unlike Jonathan Neville, however, I’m not going to disengenuously claim that “many people ask why” because, honestly, no one has asked me why.

Even though no one has asked, I’ll tell you the reason anyway: I’ve been taking a bit of a break and enjoying life without giving much thought to the Heartland hoax. I’ll be back when I feel good and rested.

In the meantime, here are three items of note:

1. Jonathan Neville has continued to push his conspiracy theory about the supposed coverup of the “true” identity of the angel who appeared to Mary Whitmer. Neville still refuses to grapple with the giant problem of Elder Garrit W. Gong’s October 2020 General Conference talk in which he affirmed that the angel was, indeed, Moroni and not Nephi. (Perhaps Elder Gong is part of the conspiracy?)
    
2. Contrary to what you may have heard, I’m not Daniel Peterson, so I haven’t had the opportunity to see the new film Witnesses yet. I’ve been told by several friends who have seen it that it’s very good, so I hope to catch it this coming weekend.
    
3. My network of informants has recently shared a juicy rumor with me that two individuals who are prominent in the Heartland community already believe in polygamy and are now “shopping around” for the right fundamentalist Mormon offshoot group to join. If true, this is quite significant and demonstrates my contention that the Heartland hoax is a “gateway drug” into apostate fundamentalist cults. I’ll share more information if and when this rumor is confirmed.

—Peter Pan
 

Email notifications from this blog will end July 2021

If you’ve subscribed to be notified by email when there are new Neville-Neville Land blog posts, that service will come to an end in July 2021, three months from now. The Feedburner plugin I’ve been using will be discontinued then:

I’m afraid that I don’t have a replacement for Feedburner’s email notification service.

I recommend using an RSS aggregator to follow this blog. My favorite—and the one I use to keep abreast of Jonathan Neville’s many, many blogs— is Inoreader.

—Peter Pan
 

More fan mail

I welcome all comments, especially ones that disagree with something I’ve written.

My only rule is that comments must be thoughtful. I don’t publish “drive-by” comments.

So, while I won’t be publishing the following comment, I do wish to demonstrate to “pahoran421” that I don’t censor, obviously or otherwise:

Jonathan Neville insists that “those who accept the New York Cumorah are happy to discuss their reasoning and are confident, not defensive.”

pahoran421’s comment doesn’t seem to be a good representative of his assertion.

Observation: your heading and comments are very snarky and seemed to be obsessed with Jonathan N., a historian.

Well, snark is certainly preferrable to smarm. Some people’s views are so false and/or dangerous that they deserve some snark.

Also, calling Jonathan Neville “a historian” is bit of a stretch. He’s more of a propagandist.

Readers don’t like that sneaky gotcha approach.

My viewer stats indicate that my approach appeals to at least some of my readers.

It reeks of contention and you know who that comes from.

You’re referring to 3 Nephi 11:28–30. The Savior’s instruction to the Nephites was that there shall be no “disputations among you concerning the points of my doctrine.” Certainly he didn’t mean to imply that no one should ever contend for the truth—he and his apostles contended with those who spoke falsely. Not all contention is evil; sometimes contending is at least necessary. (See Jude 1:3; Words of Mormon 1:14; Mosiah 10:19; Alma 2:31; Alma 17:34; D&C 18:20; D&C 112:5; D&C 117:13.)

The sad fact is that I contend for President Russell M. Nelson’s teachings as the living prophet, while Neville contends for his heterodox reading of the words of dead prophets.

You may be from the progressive Leonard Arrington wing of historians some of whom are still at BYU who spoke often of how they want to bring LDS history into the secular progressive era.

I checked, and in my personal library of 597 books on religion—139 of which are on Mormon history—I found five that were authored or coauthored by the late Leonard J. Arrington. So, I wouldn’t exactly consider myself part of some sort of cult of Arrington.

This assertion—which has recently come into fashion thanks to a wretched book full of conspiracy theories by Hanna and James Stoddard—is deeply troubling. The Church History Department is overseen by a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy (currently that’s Elder LeGrand R. Curtis Jr.) who reports to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Last year, Neville attacked an article written by Elder Curtis that was published in the Ensign. This kind of conspiracy-mindedness among Heartlanders is disturbing, to say the least.

The time of the separating of the wheat and tares is beginning…suggest you reconsider you[r] blogging approach and attitude so you can end up on the wheat side. At this point you are not.

Let me get this straight: “pahoran421” believes that my defense of the Church and its leaders against the scurrilous attacks against them being made by Jonathan Neville, perhaps along with my rejection of the false doctrines of “Heartlanders,” makes me a “tare” in the Savior’s famous parable—a tare that will be burned at the second coming of Jesus Christ.

I’m afraid we’re only now beginning to see how deep the psychosis of many Heartlanders really is.

—Peter Pan
 

Neville-Neville Land 2020 year in review

2020 was the second year of operation for this humble blog. This year we published 74 posts (75, including this one) examining the heterodox beliefs and assertions of Jonathan Neville and his comrades in the Heartland Book of Mormon movement.

Among the most significant developments this year, I would include the following:

• The Neville-Neville Land blog demonstrated that Jonathan Neville’s claims about how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon are in opposition to the public teachings of President Russell M. Nelson, President M. Russell Ballard, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Elder D. Todd Christofferson, President Wilford Woodruff, President George Q. Cannon, and Elder B.H. Roberts. Neville’s continued insistence that Joseph Smith never translated by placing a seer stone into a hat—which Neville ominously began calling “SITH” this year—ignores the context of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery’s statements in the 1830s and rejects the teachings of living prophets and apostles as well as the testimonies of Church leaders who knew Joseph Smith personally.
• Neville continued to openly criticize apostles and other general authorities this year, including Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve (see here and here for context), Elder LeGrand R. Curtis Jr. of the Seventy, and pretty much all Church leaders who have spoken in General Conference since 2007.
• Neville also continued to attack the Church’s official magazines for not teaching Heartlander beliefs. He literally accused the editors of the Ensign of using Orwellian methods to cover up the truth and recommended that investigators and interested nonmembers stay away from official Church publications because they supposedly teach falsehoods. He also continued to attack Saints, the new official Church history with a foreword by the First Presidency, for not teaching that the hill Cumorah in New York is the same hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon. He told his readers to not give credence to Saints because the Brethren supposedly don’t know what it contains.
• Neville also inexplicably defended critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like Wayne Cowdrey and John Dehlin. I’m seriously inclined to ask him whose side he’s on in the war for the souls of God’s children.

In keeping with the tradition set last year, here are the top ten Neville-Neville Land posts for 2020 by number of views:

1. FIRM Foundation accuses the Church of deceiving the elect (February 18, 2020)
2. Jonathan Neville still doesn’t get it (March 3, 2019)
3. When Heartlanders are unintentionally hilarious (February 29, 2020)
4. My latest example of “outrage theater” (May 15, 2020)
5. A response to Opie regarding Wayne May (July 26, 2020)
6. Jonathan Neville vs. Royal Skousen (January 19, 2020)
7. Wayne May and the apostasy of the Heartlanders (July 11, 2020)
8. President M. Russell Ballard, M2C/SITH intellectual (April 20, 2020)
9. Come, Follow Me 2021 doesn’t care about Jonathan Neville’s opinions (July 21, 2020)
10. Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, SITH intellectual (April 21, 2020)

Hopefully, 2021 will see Jonathan Neville back away from his extremist views and bring himself more in line with the teachings of the prophets regarding the Book of Mormon and how the Prophet Joseph Smith translated it.

—Peter Pan

We get fan mail

I welcome all comments, especially ones that disagree with something I’ve written.

My only rule is that comments must be thoughtful. I don’t publish “drive-by” comments.

So, while I won’t be publishing the following comment, I do wish to demonstrate to “TwoCumorahFraud” that I don’t censor, obviously or otherwise:

Jonathan Neville insists that “those who accept the New York Cumorah are happy to discuss their reasoning and are confident, not defensive.”

TwoCumorahFraud’s comment doesn’t seem to be a good representative of his assertion.

—Peter Pan

All quiet on the Heartland front

It’s been unusually quiet around these parts lately. This is partly because Jonathan Neville hasn’t posted anything of note for several weeks, and also because (of course) of the sudden change in the lives of most people because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’ll return with new commentary on the spread of the Heartland virus once there’s something to comment on. In the meantime, everyone stay safe and stay healthy!

—Peter

Top Neville Neville-Land posts of 2019

The Neville Neville-Land blog has seen a remarkable amount of traffic since we published our first post on February 6, 2019. Captain Hook and I have published 142 posts over the last eleven months, most of them responses to specific blog entries written by Jonathan Neville.

Here are the top ten posts of 2019 by number of views:

1. Jonathan Neville accuses Church missionaries of deception (July 12, 2019)
2. The Neville Land Manifesto (February 9, 2019)
3. The “fundamentals” of a heterodox faction within the Church (July 11, 2019)
4. Responsible scholarship and use of primary sources (February 9, 2019)
5. Evils and designs in the hearts of conspiring men (February 12, 2019)
6. The importance of using primary sources (February 10, 2019)
7. The Heartland hoax, or Neville through the looking-glass (March 22, 2019)
8. An example of Neville Land thinking (February 11, 2019)
9. Neville misrepresents speakers at the FairMormon conference (August 9, 2019)
10. When prophets testify but Neville doesn’t believe them (March 24, 2019)

Most of our high-trafficked posts are from early in the year. That’s almost certainly because the longer a post is active, the more views it can attract.

Although it’s not accurate to say that we’re looking forward to another year of refuting Jonathan Neville’s misrepresentations, poor scholarship, and logical fallacies, the Captain and I do promise to continue to respond to Neville throughout 2020.

—Peter Pan

The future of the Neville-Neville Land blog

Jonathan Neville has “accepted an assignment outside the U.S. and won’t be blogging for 10 months.”

With no new blog posts from him to critique until June or July 2020, I expect that new content on the Neville-Neville Land blog will appear only occasionally between now and then.

He has, however, indicated that “there are plenty of legacy blogs to recycle and nearly 150 I’ve written but never posted.” If he decides to publish any of these, Captain Hook and I may take to our keyboards. There may also be occasion to critically review Neville’s other publications or developments from the Heartland movement in general.

You can be informed of new content on this site by subscribing to our RSS feed with your RSS reader of choice. (If you don’t use an RSS reader or don’t know what one is, see here. They’re extremely useful for keeping track of new content on your favorite blogs.)

—Peter Pan

Ether 2:12

As Americans celebrate Independence Day today, let us also remember that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17) and the Prophet Joseph Smith declared that “The whole of North and South America is Zion.”

And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me. (D&C 98:5)

—Peter Pan

Happy Easter!

Captain Hook and I wish all the readers—or perhaps the reader—of this blog a happy Easter. This is the holiest day of the year for Latter-day Saints and all Christians, worldwide, driven by our hope of resurrection and eternal life made possible through the atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Although we have deep and substantive disagreements with Jonathan Neville concerning how to understand the geographic setting of the Book of Mormon, I know that we fully agree with him about the Book of Mormon’s core message that “there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent” (Mosiah 3:17).

—Peter Pan