44: A Vital Legacy of Independent Mormon Thought: Dialogue and Sunstone

Published: July 27, 2011, 4:08 p.m.

b'The Sunstone Symposium that begins next week (3 - 6 August) provides a good springboard into a discussion of the history and focuses of two of the longest-running and most important entities in independent Mormon thought--Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and Sunstone (magazine and host of multiple conferences each year). In today\\u2019s Internet world with ever-increasing numbers of Mormon-themed websites, blogs, and podcasts, it is sometimes easy to forget that many of the most frequent topics under discussion in today\\u2019s forums have been debated and discussed in uncorrelated publications and gatherings for more than four decades, and that we who enjoy (or crave) these conversations today have an amazing treasure trove of wonderfully written, meticulously researched, and pioneering articles and essays that are definitely worth discovering, as well as thousands of thoughtful, dynamic, and many times funny or quirky discussions available in audio for free (or close-to-free) downloading. Please join Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon, along with Joanna Brooks, Dialogue editor Kristine Haglund, and Sunstone editor Stephen Carter, for a fun and informative tour of the history and contributions of these stalwart organizations and their offerings, along with some very thoughtful (not kidding here: listen!) comments about the ways the blogging/podcasting and print worlds each have important and separate functions and roles to play, but also how they can (and already do) benefit greatly from each other. In the first half hour, Joanna Brooks also pushes Kristine Haglund to share some of her own experiences growing up in a faithful but very "thinky" home in which Dialogue was always around and difficult questions in Mormonism were regularly discussed, with no topics off limits.'