Announcement—Call for Proposals for the 2007 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium
By Dan on Feb 7, 2007
We’re just now sending out the Call for Proposals for our 2007 Salt Lake Sunstone Symposium to be held 8-11 August at the Sheraton Salt Lake City Centre Hotel. Proposal deadline is 1 May 2007. For those interested in details about how to propose a session, here is the official Call for Proposals flier.
As the flier notes, this year’s special focus is “The Public Faces of Mormonism.” With Mitt Romney poised for a presidential campaign, with Harry Reid as the senate majority leader, with the four-hour Helen Whitney documentary on Mormonism past and present about to be debut on PBS in late-April and early May, with the formation of Mormon studies chairs at two major universities, with the rise of LDS blogging, with Benji winning this past season’s So You Think You Can Dance? and Ken Jennings still parlaying his record-breaking Jeopardy! run into a continued national profile, it seems Mormonism is and will continue to be in 2007’s national spotlight as bright perhaps as it was during the build-up to the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics. Given this profile, we felt it would be fun to explore today’s public faces in terms of individuals as well as emerging trends and movements. Plus, we felt this theme would dovetail nicely with and allow us to keep some of the momentum going from last year’s symposium focus on “Mormonism and Popular Culture.”
For those not familiar with Sunstone symposiums, even when we announce a theme or a special focus, we still very much welcome presentations on any theological, historical, contemporary moral or artistic issue that intersects with Mormonism. We hope you will submit a proposal!
Dan Wotherspoon
Sunstone
Is the symposium going to be more faith-building this time with any younger voices or will it still be the old guard, whining, hippie generation?
Comment # 1 by Michael | Feb 7, 2007 | Reply
Hi Michael,
We look forward to reviewing your proposal. In the mean time, you raise an interesting perception about Sunstone that we hope to discuss this afternoon. Look for a new blog post about this very issue shortly.
Comment # 2 by Rory Swensen | Feb 7, 2007 | Reply
Hi Michael,
If you’d like to check out recent symposium programs, I’d love to discuss Sunstone and its various foci with you. As you can imagine, I don’t accept your characterization in the least bit.
In his response, Rory makes an excellent point about being the change you’d like to see in the world… We do hope you’ll participate and help shift the balance to the kind of symposium you’d like to see. I think the shift toward explorations of faith and Mormonism’s best ideas and deepest insights is already well underway. I look forward to Rory’s promised blogpost and having this discussion in greater depth.
Best,
Dan Wotherspoon
Executive Director, Sunstone
Comment # 3 by Dan | Feb 7, 2007 | Reply
I am sorry you guys. I know you are try to change the make-up of the symposium and bring in fresh voices as well as what Dan terms “explorations of faith” but the events still tend to be critical, faith negating, and doubtful. There are many LDS members that can intelligently discuss issues without compromising faith (Brother Bushman being the prime example). Why can’t they be found? In my humble opinion, in order to make a significant change to the nature of the symposium, you will have to force the faith building issue. You will have to empty the water out of the organization before the oil can be poured in. You cannot continue to hope that both oil and water will mix. As we say down here in the south, it just ain’t gonna happen.
It really is a shame because Sunstone was not always so. In my BYU days (mid ’80s) the mag was a good way of getting more depth to my faith without comprising revelation or intellect. I cannot say it does so anymore.
Comment # 4 by Michael | Feb 7, 2007 | Reply
Michael:
My experiences with Sunstone, both the Symposium and the Magazine, during the past few years have been the opposite of yours. I’ve found very little whining and a whole lot of explorations of faith. I’m curious if your comments are based on personal experience with the Symposium and Magazine over the past few years? If so, I’m wondering which symposium sessions or which magazine articles struck you as whining, critical, or faith negating? I’d love to consider your comments seriously, but since you make a pretty sweeping generalization, its difficult to know how to respond except to say I disagree.
If you respond, please respond at Rory Swenson’s new blog post on Bushman and Sunstone as it addresses many of these questions and I’d like to see the conversation happen over there.
Comment # 5 by Matt Thurston | Feb 7, 2007 | Reply