PR by the seat of my pants
Yesterday I got a call from Julia Duin, the religion editor at the Washington Times. She sounded frantic; apparently a deadline was nipping at her heels. I smiled, remembering my own frenetic years in journalism.
For about 20 minutes, she fired questions at me, which I answered the best I could on the spur of the moment. But when we hung up, I realized I had no idea what the column was supposed to be about. All I could do was wait.
Well, here’s the column. All in all, I like it. Though I must admit, I don’t consider Sunstone the “bad boy” of Mormonism (I’ll let Glenn Beck have that title 
). I think Duin was just surprised enough to find an independent Mormon magazine (though I told her about the many others we have) that she just figured we must be rebels. But, to quote me: “We take Mormonism seriously, but we still like to have fun.”
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April 16th, 2009 at 10:29 am
I think column is quite good. Of course, your quote doesn’t really *say* a whole lot. Column soundbites generally fall in to that category — it can often be depressing to talk to a reporter or editor at length and then see your expertise and experience and opinions reduced to a sentence or two. This isn’t a criticism of your performance. Rather a recognition that taking Mormonism seriously can mean a lot of things as can liking to have fun.
I also think Matt B. over-dramatizes things a bit. “The great problem” — really? The latter part of his quote works well, though.
Congratulations on the media placement. Next up: a spot on the Glen Beck show! (just kidding).
April 16th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
great article. congrats!
April 16th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Wm Morris,
I find it funny that in your first paragraph you lament that column soundbites too often reduce one’s “expertise and experience and opinions” to “a sentence or two” and then follow that up with a dismissal of Matt’s comment as “over-dramatiz[ing] things a bit.” Perhaps giving him the benefit of the doubt that you apparently give everyone else is in order here.
April 16th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Well done, Stephen!
April 17th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Christopher:
When everything gets reduced to soundbites the importance of adjectives and superlatives and qualifiers intensifies. I think Matt Bowman is great. I enjoy his work. I think he overemphasizes in this case. That’s all I’m saying. Okay, so I’ll say a little more than that…
I work in PR. I am involved in the field of Mormon studies. When those two collide, I am very often going to have something to say about. And with the increasing exposure that those in the field are getting in the media, I think it’s important to interrogate the results a bit in the hopes that we can all learn from how the media deals with us peculiar folk. True, it might have been better to say some of this in private e-mails. And so I’ll be more careful with what I say and when and where I say it. And if anyone (with whom I am at least an acquaintance) ever receive a media inquiry and wants some advice or a sounding board, shoot me an e-mail.
Of course, in the case of Matt’s quote, I suspect it’s less an issue of soundbites (he is an incredibly well-spoken individual who is an excellent representative of academic-oriented Mormonism — I am a great admirer of his work in a couple of web forums that he and I used to frequent. And I think he knows that) and more that we simply disagree. Even then I think it’s quite healthy for us to bring that up when it happens.
So I’ll throw it back to everybody else. Do you all agree that “The great problem in Mormon culture is the tension between intellectualism and faith”? Perhaps it is. My initial reaction was that by using the definite article and the adjective great, he overstates. A better construction would be “There is a tension between intellectualism and faith for many Mormons.” or “One of the major problems in Mormon culture is the tension between intellectualism and faith.”
And really, if I thought about it and discussed it in some detail, I might even agree that it is “the great problem.” But what I’m trying to point out is that, yes, long interviews get boiled down into soundbites. Reporters pick and choose and even sometimes fudge words and combine sentences and phrases. And, no, in an such an interview you can’t delve in to all the qualifiers and context that we’d use in an academic discussion of the topic. But that’s all the more reason to be measured in what you say.
I’m about to leave for a road trip so probably won’t be able to respond for a couple of days, but I will check in when I can.
April 17th, 2009 at 7:40 am
William, I had the same response to that particular sentence (“The great problem . . .”), but I also realized that it was uttered in context with a lot of other things. Is it *a* great problem? Yes. But *the* great problem in all of Mormon culture? No. One little article can make a great deal of difference.
I should have emailed you, William, before I had my interview with the Rexburg Standard Journal! (It’s no Washington Times, but Irreantum will take what we can get
.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Good to see that time spent at the Utah County/Orem Daily Journal and the College Times is paying off for somebody.
April 17th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
The main thing that makes me uncomfortable is the idea (which seems to be prevalent at Sunstone) that the greatest embarrassment to our religion is the stereotype that we are “blindly obedient.” If I may make a broad (and consequently only partially accurate) generalization, it seems that the Sunstone crowd is much more horrified at that prospect than they are worried, say, that someone might doubt their dedication to Jesus Christ. Their first priority is to make the point, as loudly as possible, that they disagree with LDS leadership on a lot of things. They think that this will increase the world’s respect for us, by showing that there are Mormons who believe the First Presidency was wrong about Prop 8, or by showing that not all Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be.
In the rush to portray themselves as the intellectual crowd, these people often patronizingly portray the bulk of Mormons as Jell-O eating, Republican-voting, minivan-driving sheep who can’t think for themselves.
Admittedly (and ironically), this is a caricature of Sunstone. But to the degree to which it’s true, it is unfair to those of us believe, vote, and think as we do, and would rather represent ourselves than grant Sunstone a disproportionate voice.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Travis,
I do not think you understand the purpose of Sunstone and similar outlets. They are a forum, or place, for those that want to express their own thoughts about a culture that they love in a somewhat different way.
Your generalization of the Sunstone crowd (whoever the hell that is) is “it seems that the Sunstone crowd is much more horrified at that prospect than they are worried, say, that someone might doubt their dedication to Jesus Christ” is no different than the generalization that all Mormons are “Jell-O eating, Republican-voting, minivan-driving sheep who can’t think for themselves.” Of course, there is nothing wrong with minivans or Jello.
I worry somewhat that many worry more about my dedication to Prop. 8 than my dedication to Jesus Christ. For you, this is likely one in the same. For me, it is not.
Maybe we should just not worry so much about what others think of us.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Back to “The great problem in Mormon culture is the tension between intellectualism and faith.” If the emphasis is placed on the world “culture” in this sentence, than I think its true. There are many in the LDS culture who are outright afraid of intellectuals. But I suspect most who read it will think “religion” rather than culture. I surely don’t see a great conflict in the doctrine between intellectualism and faith. Ah, I’m defining intellectualism as the pursuit
of knowledge from sources beyond the church jurisdiction.
Next, Just a reminder: The “Sunstone crowd” is no crowd. I don’t say this because there aren’t many people in it, but because the people who you’d classify as the crowd tend toward individualism. Seems to me the founder of the faith was an individual–and I’m not talking about Joseph Smith, but Jesus Christ. He didn’t care what the leaders of his church thought either. People are attracted to Sunstone for a variety of reasons. My attraction began because the magazine published lit fiction.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Chris, that is why I was very careful to point out that my comments were a generalization, a caricature, and partially inaccurate. It is certainly not true of all Sunstone contributors and subscribers that they see themselves as the opposition to a stifling, oppressive church leadership, but that’s how it often comes across. Consider this from the article:
“We help people feel they are not alone if they are not in total lock step with the church and its ideology,” Mary Ellen Robertson, Sunstone’s outreach director, told me. “People would never otherwise know there are folks who loathe the idea of Mitt Romney in the White House or who disagree with the church on gay marriage.”
I get the impression that Sunstone sees itself as the sole voice of diversity and free thought in an otherwise strictly homogeneous culture. It also seems to suggest that people who choose to oppose the First Presidency on certain issues should be supported and validated in their views.
On the one hand, you worry that I think that dedication to Proposition 8 and to Jesus Christ is one and the same. On the other hand, Sunstone seems to think that dedication to Proposition 8 and to Mitt Romney is one and the same. Mitt Romney may represent the Mormon mainstream to which Sunstone sees itself as an alternative, but he had no endorsement from the LDS Church. But the First Presidency signed a letter requesting that members support Proposition 8. Big difference.
Is it possible to be dedicated to Jesus Christ and not to Proposition 8? I think so. Is it possible to be a Mormon and COMPLETELY dedicated to Jesus Christ, yet only selectively dedicated to obeying those whom we sustain as prophets, seers, and revelators and the representatives of Christ, when they make a request of us in their capacity as such? Perhaps Sunstone would be the best forum to discuss that question.
April 17th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
William – do I know you from somewhere else? I’m trying to grasp where you might have seem my work (other than the blogs). Shoot me an email if you’d like.
Anyhow, I more or less stand by what I said. (I think there might have been an “among,” for what it’s worth, before the “the,” but honestly this was several days ago; who remembers?) Though I’ll add the caveat that Duin asked me to comment on something like how Sunstone DC served the community who were attracted to it; my answer was in that context, and describing those people. And I think the second half of the quotation is as important as the first.
Ironically, I think that I’m less a fan of the column than William is. I saw the word ‘freethinkers’ in the first sentence and cringed a little bit. I think this is less a problem with Duin – who is a sympathetic and talented writer – than it is with the deeply tired narrative that she more or less stumbled upon and immediately sank into. This narrative divides the Mormon world into two types, the obedient collective and the questioning individualists. It then associates certain good or bad traits, buzzwords, and ideologies – even the status of ‘faithful’ or ‘believer’ – with one camp or the other. All of this is an oversimplification, and I think the column unfortunately perpetuates this adversarial dichotomy.
Now, it’s true that over the past twenty years or so Sunstone itself has become something of a symbol of that culture war. But I spent a fair amount of time talking with Duin about the work I did on Sunstone DC, the panels I put together, the crowd I hoped to (and did) attract. Many of the attendees had no idea what Sunstone was before they heard about it from me. This I thought was great. Not, necessarily, because that meant I could make new Sunstone-ites out of them or rally them to transform the institution; indeed, Sunstone for good or ill is what it is and it would take a few fairly radical shifts before it sheds the symbolism attached to its brand, shifts I’m not convinced it wants to, should, or even can make.
But all that aside I was pleased that Sunstone DC was attracting new people. People who wanted to talk about immigration in light of their religion, who had thought some about the relationship between faith and art, who were interested in how the LDS Church stacks up with other faiths in polling data or in the role Mormonism has played in American foreign policy or even (to flatter myself) in a close reading of the sacramental narrative in Luke 22. For these people, attending these panels, the experience was not connected to to this seemingly inescapable metanarrative of conflict between loyalty to the church and loyalty to one’s intellect that we’ve been flagellating ourselves with for two decades. And that’s because, in so many ways, there doesn’t have to be. That’s what I was trying to tell Duin.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Travis,
You are reading a lot into sound bites from a rather simplistic column.
I am not sure why anyone still thinks anything (let alone wastes thoughts on) Mitt Romney. Given that the article was in a Washington, DC newspaper I could see why these issues might come up.
“Is it possible to be a Mormon and COMPLETELY dedicated to Jesus Christ, yet only selectively dedicated to obeying those whom we sustain as prophets, seers, and revelators and the representatives of Christ, when they make a request of us in their capacity as such?”
Good question. Not sure if I can worry about that too much and still get my hometeaching done.
April 18th, 2009 at 7:49 am
I have to say that what struck me in the article was that the Apostles Duin talked to were more appalled of her reading Sunstone (an intellectually stimulating peer-reviewed journal) than Mormonism for Dummies… THAT is a sad commentary on the state of things.
For the record I’ve only read a couple of articles in Sunstone (a long time ago) so I’m not a part of “crowd”, but I do have the good sense to realize that we should be praised our intellectual pursuits not our availability to “Dummies”.
April 18th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
“The great problem in Mormon culture is the tension between intellectualism and faith”
Matt: I don’t think so. I suspect that it is THE great problem in Mormon culture for intellectuals and those that think about them. On the other hand, the thing that is the biggest problem for me is not necessarily the biggest problem, period.
April 18th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
BTW, in my opinion THE greatest problem in Mormon culture is that there are too many meetings and they last too long…
April 19th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Nate – Did you see my comment 12, in which I clarified the quotation in virtually the same way you did?
April 20th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Matt: I admit that I read comment 12 rather quickly, and no doubt missed your point. I agree with you completely about tired narratives, etc. and I’m happy to know that I agree with you about the great problem, etc. It reflects well on me ;->.
April 20th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Interesting question, William. The biggest problem in the Church for me is completely out of the Church’s control. That is, the difficulties (and boons) that come along with size.
One of the great debates that have arisen from the public schooling experiment is the relative merits of small verses large schools. Small schools don’t have nearly the resources large schools do, but large schools don’t have nearly the ability to take care of each individual student that small schools do.
The Church is much the same way. It’s large enough that it can provide resources smaller churches cannot, but it can’t give nearly the attention to individuals that smaller churches can. So when curriculum is made in the Church, it’s made as commonly applicable as possible so that it can reach and work with as wide an audience as possible. When talks are given on a national or regional level, they similarly stay as middle of the road as possible simply because so many people are listening.
Consequently, I think Church members tend to believe that this large-scale approach is the *right* approach (when it’s really just the approach the Church must take because of its size). Then, when they encounter other discourses that nourish them but seem to put them outside the mass discourse of the Church, they feel like they’re doing something “wrong” and begin to feel like outsiders.
I’m pretty sure that if you managed to get the ear of an apostle or 70 and talked with them about the new discourses you were encountering, they would converse with you in an integrative way. But the Church lesson manuals will not talk with you that way, neither will they coach a teacher on how to engage with you. Their job is to keep a huge church functioning, not engage in Socratic dialogue. So you have to be lucky enough to have a friend or local church leader who can help you integrate these different discourses.
I was lucky enough to find those friends. They were in the Sunstone and Dialogue communities. When I first came into these communities, I was feeling alienated, having found no integrative help from the Church, and therefore I was also feeling a little rebellious. I was probably somewhat like the people Travis described in his first comment. However, the more I was able to interact with people in this “small school” where individuals could be paid attention to, the more I was able to integrate the discourses I had once thought were competing.
I realize that wards are supposed to be the small schools within the Church, and I have heard of wards that perform this integrative function well. However, landing in one of these wards seems to be an act of pure luck — I’ve certainly never encountered them. Sunstone, therefore, is the small school that advertises the fact that we are here specifically to give people an individualized space to talk about the competing discourses in their lives, and hopefully integrate them. Because the world is not made up of strict dichotomies: you don’t have be either an evolutionist or a Mormon, or a new historicist or a Mormon.
May 26th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
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May 31st, 2009 at 9:10 pm
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