Mormon Mentality - Thoughts and Asides by Peculiar People

By ESO

Jun. 11th, 2010 at 9:55 am

I don’t think I realized until I was in college that Dialogue and Sunstone were a different sort of publication than church magazines and anything from Deseret Books. I had thought they were LDS-themed publications aimed at adults, just like The Ensign. All my life, my dad had been receiving them in the mail, and he had a stack of back issues by his bed to prove it. While I was on my mission, my dad occasionally sent a copy of an article from those publications that he thought might interest me.

Being at BYU helped me figure out that those Sunstones or Dialogues were NOT received in every LDS home. I can understand why. Some people just aren’t that interested in supplemental reading, others may have felt they did not have the time (and the stack beside my dad’s bed shows that he didn’t really, either), maybe the subscription price was a barrier, and there is probably a very significant portion of the adult English-reading LDS population who has no idea such publications even exist. Of those who do know, I am sure there are a good number who are not interested in the topics covered or the way they are covered. I get that.

I guess I view the Bloggernaccle as my version of my dad’s supplemental reading. Reading here, however, requires less of an attention span. And money. And you get to talk back. I often send links of specific posts to friends and family I think might be especially interested, and they frequently enjoy what they read. But they don’t get sucked in to the bloggernaccle. They generally don’t comment or come back on their own. I wonder what the difference is between those of us who, let’s be frank, spend A LOT of time around here and those who find something better to do. Any ideas?

1. annegb

Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 10:32am

I first read Dialogue when Bill and I got married and I helped him pack up to move in with me. He had a bunch of old issues of Dialogue that his ex-wife had collected. I was fascinated! I didn’t know there were people who thought along the same lines as I did—more intelligently, but still. The article that stands out for me was that Liahona-Iron Rod thing. I eventually threw them out feeling guilty but I felt a little bit validated.

Normal is not a good word. I use it all the time and wish I were “normal” but more and more I’m coming to a belief that normal is whatever’s normal for you. Because there are people who say my reaction to something isn’t normal until they experience what I’ve experienced and hey—suddenly, it’s not as abnormal as previously thought.

A lot of people obsess about blogging—I sure did!–at first because it’s such a breath of fresh air. But eventually return to “normal” and perspective and real life and diapers. But continue to participate, learn, grow and if you’re like me, make a fool out of oneself occasionally.

I really loved Elder Bednar’s article about the internet in June’s Ensign. I think he puts it in perspective. It would be food for thought here.

Mormon blogging gives a home to those of us who might be a bit different from most of the strictly orthodox active members of one’s ward and it does make me feel less alone.

2. John Mansfield

Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 11:34am

“there is probably a very significant portion of the adult English-reading LDS population who has no idea such publications even exist”

Your explanations for the lack of general interest probably cover well the bulk of Latter-day Saint non-interaction with those magazines. I never heard of them until I went to college and saw them on the racks of the BYU bookstore. As an example of how small a corner of the already small Mormon world this is, my father-in-law was in graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin at the same time as Robert Rees, Dialogue’s second editor, and also Helaman Pratt Ferguson; thirty years later, his daughter (my wife) was in the same ward in LA for three years with Rees’s son Bobby; she was also in middle school orchestra together with Dialogue’s current editor. Such webs of connection are likely easy to find among much of Dialogue’s readership, no more suprising than that I sould open Physics of Fluids and find an article by an old colleague.

For folks within that world, though, Dialogue can still be problematic. My father-in-law subscribed from the beginning up until 1991 or so. When I asked him about his collection, he said that like most things it was mostly chaff with some grain and pointed me to some particularly valuable articles. He stopped subscribing, though, when it published on changes in the temple endowment in a way he considered a violation of trust and covenant. He couldn’t support that. He continued subscribing to Sunstone; though it has the more problematic reputation, it didn’t rush out to share confidences from within the temple.

One of the first copies of Dialogue that I bought, included a piece by F. Ross and Mary Kay Peterson on taking up the editors’ reigns. I was left with the understanding that they viewed the magazine as a venue for people who felt some tension, maybe antagonism, between themselves and the church.

3. sylvia

Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 11:45am

It’s a shame that both of these publications are marginalized – I’m surprised they’re available in the BYU bookstore! One of my friends in grad school told me that his stake president dad had subscriptions to both. I don’t think that’s a likely situation nowadays.

When I was overseas I had an electronic subscription to Dialogue, and always bought the pink “women’s issue.” I have a few issues of Sunstone, and contributed to the Sunstone Foundation, but more out of loyalty to a friend who’s on the board more than anything else.

4. ESO

Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 1:07pm

annegb–Yeah–I guess those of us who spend so much time here are just not so well-adjusted at church. We probably have ample evidence of that!

John Mansfield–interesting idea about the webs of people; now that you say that, I realize that my uncle had been published there and a favorite BYU professor–I guess I am right at the edge of a web. I wonder if I did a poll of my ward what percentage would be aware of Dialogue or Sunstone. My inclination is that it would be less than 10%, but I really have no idea.

Sylvia–I am not sure that subscriptions like that would be viewed as problematic. The SPs I know well are the kind of guys who would read either; perhaps more an issue is to have time to do so as a SP.

5. Devyn S.

Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 3:09pm

I love both of them, but was always told when growing up in Utah how “evil” those publications were and those who read them were headed to Apostasy…

6. MCQ

Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 6:55pm

People who hang out here are smarter. That’s it. Surprised you had to ask.

7. queuno

Sun, Jun 13, 2010 @ 12:20am

My in-laws were in the mix when Dialogue was created. That went a long way to refining my knee-jerk BYU-infused opinion about the intentions regarding Sunstone and Dialogue. The fact that my in-laws were no longer involved with Dialogue also said volumes. Anyway, I’ve always enjoyed stumbling across the the thoughts of a professor from my major in Dialogue (where you would not expect them to publish).