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In the beginning of August of this year I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Sunstone symposium which is a Mormon conference that I look forward to attending every year. One of the many reasons that I love the conference is that it is one of the few times you get to see such a diverse group of Mormons gathered together in the same building. Many from the Bloggernacle, Mormon podcast communities (which Michael Barker refers to as the Blabbernacle), Mormon Studies, and world of online Mormonism all gather together to discuss the topic of Mormonism.
Realizing that there would be so many of my favorite people attending, I decided to do short interviews with individuals at the conference. I was able to interview 34 fascinating people and thus I had to break it up into 3 parts. You can find the first episode that we did at Diverse Mormons Part 1. The second part can be found at Diverse Mormons Part 2. This is the final installment and I am very excited for you to hear it.
In this episode I have the pleasure of sharing the interviews that I did with Seth Payne, Dan Wotherspoon, Tresa Edmunds, John Homer, Brian Hales, Don Bradley, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, Van Hale, Bill Bradshaw, John Gustav-Wrathall, Brad Kramer, and Toby Pingree. The Questions asked were as follows. 1) Please state your name, tell a little bit about yourself, and plug any of the projects that you would like to publicize. 2) How long have you been attending Sunstone, and why do you believe it is beneficial to attend these types of conferences? 3) If you couldn’t be Mormon, what would you be? 4) What is one of your favorite aspects about Mormonism? 5) If you had to provide a critique against Mormonism, what would it be?
We would love to hear you thought in regards to the podcast episode, but we would also love to hear your answers to these questions, which you can share in the comment section below. Thank you so much for listening.
Brian Kissell
Brian Kissell has a deep love for Mormon podcasts, as they have been an extremely influential tool for him as he has traveled on this wonderful faith journey within the Mormon World. He believes in big tent Mormonism, and is interested in recognizing better ways to value and increase diversity, while simultaneously increasing our ability as a culture for differing individuals to talk to each other in more productive and healthy ways. Brian is also the host of a few other podcasts. One of these is a short faithful devotional podcast centered around Mormon quotes which can be found at Mormonquotes.wordpress.com. Another is a psychology podcast which can be found at Methodologyforpsychology.org.
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Gary Smith: 1. Buddhist 2. Focus on family 3. Becoming gay friendly (not just accepting).
Is there a part 4?
This was the final installment. Were you able to listen to all three episodes? What did you think? I am pondering whether I will do something like this again. Perhaps in the future I will ask these same questions to others at Sunstone in future years. Maybe I will do some of these at other conferences such as FAIR, Interpreter, Maxwell institute conferences, etc.
If I were to do it again, should I use the same questions, or think of some new ones?
I did listen to all three. I think it would be great if you did this again.
Unlike some people around here(?), I’ve only viewed/listened to a little of the (usually large amount) of material that the people you interviewed have put out, so it was nice to get to know them more. I really enjoyed hearing the more believing people answer question five and the less believing people answers question four.
I, personally, would like to hear amount the diversity of people going on in FAIR/working in the Maxwell Institute, ect because it’s not as obvious to everyone like Sunstone.
Can’t think of any new questions right, but these ones allow for alot of room to talk.
Look forward to more podcasts!
Thanks Gary! If you don't mind me asking, what are some of the things that you appreciate about Buddhism?