Introduction and the Mormon Online Landscape

John Dehlin [00:00:06] Well, thanks so much. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate that. It's an honor to be here in front of you today. My wife and I were in New York, Manhattan last week. We went and saw Wicked. Have any of you seen Wicked? Wicked is a new Broadway show that talks about. It's the prequel to the wizard of Oz. So it talks about how the. The Wicked Witch of the west became Wicked. So I thought in honor of her, I'd rename my presentation today Podcasts and wikis and blogs. Oh my. In the spirit of wizard of Oz. So why am I here today? The truth is I'm new to this whole space that I'm talking about. I attended Sun Tsune in August and made a little presentation to the board and to the dialogue board about, you know, what the heck, aren't you guys on the web in any significant way. And since then, I've started a blog now, a couple blogs and a few podcasts. So I'm pretty much only two months into this. There are actually a couple people here that I'll embarrass pretty soon that are sort of grandfathers in this movement. Even though it's about two years old, right? Maybe three at the most. But the main reason I'm here is because once upon a time, a few souls helped me. I had the same mission president as Phil. I didn't know your mission president served two missions, but I served in Guatemala and we were the second highest baptizing mission in the world. And we baptized over 800 people a month. Some months, most of them were 8 to 10, sometimes 7 to 10 year old children. And I confronted my mission president about it. He punished me for confronting him about it. And so when I came home to byu, it was a really hard adjustment for me to sort of take what was the culmination of everything I had lived for and see it turn out that way. So Ted Lyon, who's the son of T. Edgar Lyon and the colloquium class that I was in, and Lamont Tullis, who I don't know if any of you would remember at all, and a few other professors really helped me make it through that time. So I didn't just completely leave the church. Fast forward a bit. A few years back, I was called to be a seminary teacher here in Seattle when I was working for Microsoft. And I started studying church history in depth. And my first reaction was to try and talk to somebody about it. But I found that family and church really weren't the places to go. I had subscribed to Sunstone earlier But, you know, you can't go to the web to find anything. I didn't know anyone who was involved in Sunstone. I didn't have the magazine sitting there. So I went to the Web. And what I found on the web was pretty shocking. Made me want to leave the church again. Fortunately, again, some kind souls helped me through it. So I kind of ask myself, now, who can we help now that doesn't know to look to us? That's sort of my question. That's why I'm even standing in front of you today, because I'm pretty convinced there's a lot of people who need the help but don't know where to find it and are not finding it where they are, are going. If they don't come to us, where are they going? And I've sort of done a little illustration, a really crude illustration, and I presented this to the Sunstone board in August. But think of this as our church. And let's say that 95 to 97% of the people are completely happy in it. But if we have 5 million Mormons who are actually attending church or consider themselves Mormon, and you do 2 to 5%, that's between 100 and 250,000 people that aren't comfortable with the church. And so they're struggling with it and considering leaving or falling out, so to speak. And we know the retention rates aren't great, and so those are people falling. Sunstone and dialogue exists. And this isn't to cast aspersions on Sunstone and Dialogue, but I don't think that people are able to make the natural transition there sometimes. And I consider these trampolines trying to save them from falling out. In terms of community, it's just too far removed. How many people know about the Seattle symposium? How many people come to Salt Lake to attend the symposium? And there's no web presence. So where's the community for a new person to join or to get to know Eugene England or Lowell Bennion or, you know, Martha Bradley or whoever, you know, too far. And then for many people, that the level of discussion is just too high. It's just too high for them. They pick up even a Sunstone and it's like, this is. Why are they saying 500 words when I need 10, you know, and that's not a. It's what it needs to be. But I don't know that. I do believe that there's a hole that isn't reaching some people. And so where are they going? They're going to angry Internet Mormon Groups and there are a lot of them. Probably the most popular one is called Recovery for Mormonism or exmormon.org when they link to my blog. I don't think there's any other blog that drives more traffic than this one. I think this is the juggernaut on the Internet in terms of Mormonism and it's an ex Mormon website. Here they are blogging all sorts of recent developments in the news of why the church is false. And they have A list of 220 plus stories of people bearing their testimonies on why the church isn't true and why they left, etc. And I believe these people are, many of them are really good, sincere people who just weren't able to find the right role models or examples or information or mental frameworks to work through. Because I don't feel a lot of happiness here. And that's what it comes down to. If someone's going to be happy leaving the church, I want them to find their happiness. But if they're going to find bitterness and anger, then I want to see if there might be some middle ground. And so with that, I also ask myself a couple other questions. Who are the future custodians of Sunstone? You look around, especially in Salt Lake, there were a lot of gray hairs, which is not a bad thing, or no hair. But who are the young people who are going to succeed? You all, basically, and some of you are here maybe, but it might not be the proportion that we might need. And where are they getting their information? Is it through Sunstone subscriptions? Have we done a little percentage of what percent of the subscribers are 20 to 25, 30 years old? I don't know, I don't know. I'm kind of new to this game. But it's pretty clear what their community is, the young people who care about Mormon studies. So what I did is I went out to my blog and I asked, I said, hey everyone, I'm going to Seattle. I'm going to present on something that I shouldn't actually be presenting on because you're all more experts than me. So within the blogger community, the LDS blogger, NACL they call it, It's new. Isn't that amazing? So here are some responses. My attitude towards Sunstone is I get all I need of Mormon thought on the blogs now. There's actually a lot of high quality stuff on the blogs, so that's not such a horrible thing. But I do think that there's golden nuggets of articles and history that people could benefit from if they knew how to access it. But a lot of them don't feel like they should subscribe to Sunstone or Dialogue anymore. Another one said, I know many bloggers that think that Sunstone is kind of gray. That is mainly for old timers who think that things are like they were in the 70s. I think the unorthodox label is something Sunstone has to show they can get past. So this isn't new. We all know about this. I didn't even live through it. Most of you did. But it's important to just do a level set that the younger future people who are intellectual and interested in Mormon studies are not necessarily here. They're doing blogs and in what they call a blogger nackle. So a little bit of technology history. How many of you are sort of computer illiterate completely and just don't know much about computers at all? How many of you have spent time on a Mormon Internet forum? Anybody? Okay, how many of you have not? So an Internet forum is basically a place where you can go on the web to post questions or issues and then people can respond. There's no limit. And the website Exmormon that I showed you is an example. You just go up there, you post something and then people can reply to it. And then there's this big chronological list of posts. But the big difference between that and a blog is that blogs limit who gets to create the initial post. And we'll talk about that in a second. But Internet forum, anyone can post, anyone can reply. And there are lots of big players historically, although they're in decline, I'd say. And there's some here who might be able to speak to this more than I. But some of these are actually in decline as the blogs are taking off. But some of the names you may be familiar with View from the Foyer, zlmb, Mormon El Fair, aml, which my mom follows religiously, New Order Mormons Post Mormon, ex Mormon, etc. But I do think ex Mormon is by far the juggernaut among that group. Now, very quickly, how many of you have never heard of a blog or don't know what it is, or have never been to a blog? Raise your hand if you've never been to a blog. Okay, so just for those who don't know, the term was coined in 1997. It's an abbreviation for web log. Think of it as like a journal or a diary, a definition out of Wikipedia Web based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles normally, but not always in reverse chronological order. Blogger helps people Create blogs easily for free. It was launched in 1999 and they've evolved to allow things like people replying in syndication. We'll talk about that in a second. So let's just quickly talk about the anatomy of a blog. Jonathan Stapley here is a pioneer in the blogger knackle. Raise your hand, Jonathan. So I just wanted to recognize him. He is one of these young minds that I'm talking about. This is one of his sites. You have several sites, is that right, Jonathan? Blogger, nacl Times. It's newly launched, I'm told. But let's just talk about the anatomy for a second. You know, there's a title and usually one of the most important parts of a blog is a list of who the contributors are, because blogs limit who gets to actually create those initial posts. So here you'll see a list of the permabloggers. That's a term representing the people who are allowed to start the conversations. And so here, Justin Butterfield, Rusty Clifton, Steve Evans, John Fowles. A big old list. Now, there's also a very interesting term that I think many of you will find funny. It's called polyblogy. Is that right? Polyglogy. And what that's all about is these perma bloggers are somewhat incestuous. They several blogs have the same permabloggers amongst them. So these names you'll find on other blogs, but they kind of cut these deals where they blog on each other's blogs and people have reputations and it's a super interesting culture in and of itself. But that's what the term permablogger means. Another very important part of a blog is the reference to other blogs. So blogs will have what's called a blog role and it'll basically be links to other blogs. And it's a super important thing because the only way you get discovered is when people link to you. And the more they link to you, then they find you and they click on you and they come to your site. So there's this whole deal, do you negotiate with people so that you link to them if they link to you? And how do you get them to want to link to you without seeming too desperate, et cetera. But that's a super important tangible element of blogs. And some people guard their blog roles vary with much economy, let's say. So, you know, links to the most recent comments and then the meat of the blog is these posts. So you can see there's one here that was in October 13, October 11. So it's in reverse chronological order. And then finally there's always a link to comments right down there at the bottom. And if you click on that, it just takes you to detailed conversations. So imagine think of that as a conversation that happens to the original question or comment that's been posted. So if you take away anything from a blog, what hopefully is starting to come to your mind is that this is all about community. This is about identity, people having reputations. This is about people talking to each other, getting to know each other. There's banter that goes on, there's inside jokes, there's even internecine warfare that happens. But it's all about community. And then the final thing that I just want to call your attention to is something called an RSS feed. It's going to go over most of your heads. It's probably over my head, but I'll explain to you later what it is. But just know that every blog has one and it usually has a little XML orange rectangle or something that says RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0. It's a little bit confusing, but it's actually quite important. And I'll explain to you why. Now, what could a blog be used for, let's say, in the Sunstone or Dialogue sort of realm? Well, let's say that an author, Marty Bradley, has a new book out. Well, wouldn't it be great if a link to it, let's say, or a new article is out in Sunstone. What if someone would create a blog that say, hey, check out this new article that just came out in Sunstone, and then everyone would go download the PDF off of Sunstone, read it, and then they'd talk about it. And that's good for a lot of reasons. It drives attention to the article, communities get wrapped around it. It drives more subscriptions to Sunstone. Lots of good things can happen as a result of that. And then later, let's say in a subsequent post, you know, Marty Bradley's brought on or Levi Peterson to actually have a Q and A with the members of the blog. So they post some questions beforehand, then there's a response that happens, and then there's a big conversation that ensues about the book. Gregory Prince did this for dialogue and by common consent, and it was a pretty long, substantive, quite high quality post in my opinion. What's that? Times and Season. Was that right? Okay, so you know, other things that are really creative that haven't been done on location yet in the blogger nocl that I've seen. But let's say there's an upcoming event like the Sunstone Symposium. One of the things that would drive a lot of good buzz in the community, we would be if you guys wrote about your reactions to the presentations or wrote an outline of what the speaker said. And then you'd run off to a little Starbucks and log onto the Internet and you'd post your blog. Right. You know, an hour after you heard the presentation. And then those who can't come but want to stay informed could come and see what's being talked about and then comment about it. That's sort of on location. They did that at the Republican National Convention, the Democratic National Convention. They did it for General Conference. So several of the blogs would put, hey, here's the post about General Conference. Come make your comments. And then all throughout the day people are like, what did you think about Thomas Monson this or that? Oh, I think Boyd K. Packer is this or that, you know, and there's that whole conversation that ensues. So that's an interesting thing as well. And then like, let's say there's a big newsworthy event or whatever that could be advertised. So why are blogs relevant? Why are they sort of coming onto the scene? Well, with the software and the Internet services, they're pretty easy now to create and maintain. If I can do it, a lot of people can do it. You can actually pay a service 8 bucks a month and you just sort of fill out a couple forms and boom, you've got a blog. So it's actually quite easy, quite cheap. It differs from a web forum or Internet forum because you get to pick who starts the conversations and so you can drive quality up if you pick the right perma bloggers. Does that make sense? So you can keep a high level of quality conversation. It allows for two way communication. It's not just push, here's all the information. It's community. It's people replying and arguing with and saying, I didn't like this part of your book. Why not? It's a dialogue. So it's a community thing. It allows for aggregation, which I'll talk about later. And again, it's the community. So I don't want to totally drill too much into this, but if any of you are historians, apparently there was a blog called Metaphysical Elders which started around November of 2002. From that there was another one called Dave's Mormon Inquiry that came up about nine months later. Dave's I know, still blogging today. Times and Seasons was the first group blog which was not Just an individual blogging, but let's pick 10 people to sort of get this thing going. And I'm masquering this, but you guys can stay after and answer everyone's questions by common consent. You know, you know how in the scriptures that so and so begat so and so? Well, that's kind of how the blogger knocker works. Times the seasons begat by common consent, which then begat Millennial Star, not necessarily from by common consent, but from times and seasons. And then something called the Mormon Archipelago was created which is sort of a a federation of blogs, so to speak. And then ldsblogs.org was launched which is a web based aggregator of multiple blogs. You don't have to go to all the blogs, you can go to one central place. And the blogger NACL Times relaunched. And that's again thanks to John. So let's just talk quickly about the blogger nacl. Here's an individual blog called Viva Ned Flanders. If any of you watch the Simpsons, that's a nod to Ned Flanders from the Simpsons here. He shares with us that he's lost his job and he will blog for food if anyone's interested. Splendid sun is another blog and one of the most interesting is called Feminist Mormon Housewives. And this is actually quite popular blog. And I think it's worth noting for those of you who know young mothers who are interested in reconciling the priesthood with authority, with motherhood, with not having careers or maybe having careers in motherhood. That's what this blog apparently is all about. But there are the big three. There really are three major blogs right now in the blogger NACL Times and Seasons is perhaps the biggest. These aren't my quotes, these are quotes from other people. I asked the bloggernacle to stereotype each of these blogs if they could. This is the first large group LDS blog. It's been stereotyped as being the adult blog. Lots of the perma bloggers, or all of them have either PhDs or JDs. I've heard her referred to as the 800 pound gorilla. Some have said, is it too big? You know, has the community got so unwieldy that no one knows anyone anymore? It's not like the old days. It's considered to be sort of middle of the road or acceptably orthodox. It has a reputation for having very good writers who have a broad set of interests that appeals to many people. It creates a good sense of community. Some feel like it's very insular and aloof, like I can't get them to respond to my emails at all. Even in preparation for this presentation, A lot of the blogs said, yeah, I want to talk about my blog. They didn't even. It's like, who are you, John Dehlin? I don't even know you. Not interested. So I've experienced a little bit of that, although they're busy. So, I mean, that's when we have success. That's what happens. And, you know, some are saying that they've plateaued now or on the Demise. I like the quote by Mark Twain, which says the reports of my imminent. My recent demise have been largely exaggerated. I think he said that. So whether or not he's really. It's really in demise, I think is open for question. But a lot of people are saying they want to see Times and Seasons have less prominence. A second one is By Common Consent, Aaron Brown. Would you raise your hand? There's Aaron. We actually went to BYU together. He's another granddaddy in the blogger nacl, so to speak. Both these guys are actually here in Seattle. By Common Consent is sort of an offshoot from Times and Seasons. It's known as the more liberal of the Big Three. It recently formed a partnership with Dialog, so Dialogue is actually going to be coming up with some perma bloggers to blog on. By Common Consent. Was this your quote? I think it was. The snarkiest, most sarcastic of the big blogs is the quote boisterous and irreverent at times, but I don't think that fairly characterizes it because it's a serious blog that has good conversations. We get accused of being apostate from all the usual quarters. And I have a quote about that in just a second that I think all of you will find funny. The final blog of the Big Three is called the Millennial Star. This was sort of the reaction to By Common Consent. It's more conservative, some of the things it's been described as the white bread of Mormon blogs. Plays it straight. And, you know, they actually contacted me and said, we want to blog about your podcast. And I found them to be more responsive, a little more responsive at times. That's just been my experience. Now, is there a meaningful difference between the Big Three? One of the perma bloggers said, if you were to carefully study Times and Seasons and By Common Consent, side by side, I think you would have a hard time finding a substantive difference in their leanings. And this is coming from them, not me. You know, that's subjective, but that's what someone said. Now, all these guys sort of think that they're different from Sunstone. They sort of say, oh, sunstone's that old thing. It's rebellious. It's got a bad reputation. You know, we don't want to fill ourselves with Sunstone, I hear a lot of the time. But I like this quote. Of course, to many LDS members, they're all liberal since they actually allow, propagate and facilitate free discussion. So they're quite liberal. Okay, so is there diversity? I thought this quote was funny. My main complaint is that the blogger Naka's idea of diversity is having a few perma bloggers who went to law schools other than byu. I don't think that's accurate because there are probably more Ivy League bloggers than BYU grads. But still, it's funny. Is this having a broad impact right now? Well, no. The answer is no. How many people do you know spend time on blogs? Most people still say, huh when I ask them if they know what a blog is. That's what one of the perma bloggers said. Another said, huh, I can't even get my parents to read my stuff. So we think we're really important and this is really significant. It is because we're forming a culture. But the truth is we're very early. So in my opinion, what's the real significance of the bloggernackl today? Here's another quote. Pay attention. This is a young mind. I think as more Americans become more nomadic than their parents, following jobs in school from state to state, we have to replace the traditional neighborhood community with. With a virtual one. Without the blogger knuckle, I wouldn't have a social network. This is the community of the young folks. This is what maybe Sunstone and Dialogue was in the 60s and 70s. This is where they're going, I think, at least in significant numbers. And there is uncertainty or even strong feelings against, in some instances, dialogue and Sunstone that we need to recover. And we'll talk about how we can do that. Any of you know James Carville? He was famous for this quote. It's the economy, stupid. I'm going to give one quote today that I hope I'm remembered by in the Sunstone community. It's the community, stupid. You know, why is this blogger thing important, this Internet web thing important? It's because it is the community of the young generation. It's the way they think. They were raised on tv, they were raised on ipods, music, whatever. And they're thinking cyberspace. And that's where the community is going to reside. And so if we ignore That I think we do it at our own peril. So what's the future? First is something called blog aggregators. Can you think of anything that you'd rather, less rather listen to as a blog aggregator? Well, I told you about all the blogs that are popping up, but let me just sort of try and illustrate that graphically. I'm going to now start showing you a webpage which has tried to assemble all the Mormon blogs on the Internet. Okay, count the pages with me.

What Blogs Are and How They Work

Mormon Blogs and the Bloggernacle

Guest [00:24:59] Ready?

John Dehlin [00:24:59] Here we go. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Still going. It's like the Energizer Bunny. Okay, so how in the world could you track all those blogs? How in the world could you keep up with them? It's overwhelming. And they're all on separate web pages, so you have to go to all these different places. Well, RSS aggregators attempt to make that easier. So I'm just going to show you one and show you how it works. In this instance, you install an application on your computer called an RSS aggregator. And then remember that little RSS feed that I told you about? It's a little link at the bottom of the page of the blog. You copy that link and you insert it into your RSS reader. So in this instance, I have categories. I follow instructional technology. So I've got a category there. There's Mormonism, there's technology, there's news. And under each category, you list, you subscribe to each of these blogs that you're interested in. And so now instead of having to go to your webpage and go to this webpage, go to that webpage, go to that web page. This is just pulling down all the posts from each blog in one central area. So if you want to, you can click on Sunstone Blog and see what the latest blogs are at Sunstone, and you can go through one by one. But if you want to, and this is the most important reason that I use this, if you just want to get a pulse for what people are talking about, what the conversations are, you want to scan through 30 or 40 blog posts just by the title to say, oh, that looks interesting. Oh, that's stupid. But that looks interesting. And you want to just scan it. What you do is you click on the higher level folder, and then all of a sudden it gives you a chronological listing of all the blog posts across all these blogs. So you can just scan down and go. Because a lot of people go, I don't have more time. I don't want to spend all the time there, but there may be two or three articles that you're interested in. So through an RSS reader, you can scan through those and just see the ones you want and quickly read them. So that's what that's all about. In addition, Jonathan's trying to make this easy for us as well. And so there are also web blog aggregators. So Mormon Archipelago or LDSblogs.org attempts to do that. And so they have various sections where they've decided which blogs that they're going to sort of feature. And as you scroll down the page, you'll see different buckets of blogs where you can just see at a high level what the conversations are Lately. I'm grateful for this site because I was given the fortunate opportunity to actually be included on this, and it drives a lot of traffic to my website, and I'm grateful for that. And a lot of people like to go here instead of trying to go to each website individually. So that's blogs in a nutshell. I don't think we should ignore them. The next thing is podcasts. How many of you have heard about podcasts? Raise your hand. How many of you have never heard of a podcast? How many of you actually listen to podcasts? Okay, so about maybe 10 to 20% of you. What's a podcast? Imagine it this way. What if you could be in your car or walking around and listen to the radio and listen to exactly a program that you wanted to hear. If you were a fisherman, you would listen to the expert fisherman in the world talking about what it's like for him to fish. Or if you're a motorcycle rider, you could listen to the expert motorcycle rider talk about his latest trip to Germany on his motorcycle. If you're into Mormon studies, you could listen to Armand Maass talk for an hour and a half on the angel and the Beehive, right? Or you could listen to Eugene England give a Sunstone symposium 20 years ago that we're rebroadcasting through Sunstone Classic. That's what a podcast is. Not only that, but it's being able for you to create your own radio program very cheaply and easily. It's actually very cheap and very easy to create your own podcast and make it available to the world. So that's what a podcast is, being able to pick who you want to spend your time listening to. And then imagine mowing your lawn. You're listening to, you know, Leonard Arrington, mowing your lawn. It's a cool thing when you're exercising, you're Listening to, you know, Mary Lithgold Bradford or whoever, I really appreciated it. When you're jogging, whatever. So that's what a podcast is. It sits on an ipod, but it doesn't have to have an ipod. So here's an ipod, but the requirements are very simple. All you need is a broadband Internet connection to download the files and then either Windows Media Player or itunes to actually listen to the program. You don't need to listen to it on a little device. You can just listen to it. If you have speakers, little headphone, headset, whatever, you can listen to it now, even though it doesn't require an ipod. If you have itunes and an ipod, that totally makes your world even more interesting. So what, I'll just show you really quick. I have itunes installed on my Mac, but you can also install itunes on your PC. Hopefully none of you are running Linux. If you are, come talk to me after the show. In the left hand corner, there's a little directory called podcasts, okay? And so you go to podcasts and you click on it, and then down here at the bottom there's something called podcast directory. And so you click on it, it takes you to an Apple website and there's a little search box and you say mormon and you click on it and all of a sudden you know, 10 or 12 or 15 Mormon podcasts show up. And then what you do is you say subscribe and you subscribe to it. And then all of a sudden it's going to start pulling down the latest radio shows or programs or podcasts down to your itunes. And that's cool. So you can see, here's the Mormon Stories podcast. There's five episodes. There's one on masonry and Mormonism where I interviewed a guy who's a 6th generation Mormon and like a 20th generation Master Mason. And he talks about why being a Mason has nothing to do with his testimony or it affirms it. I interview Armand Moss in a Sunstone podcast where I talk about the Mormon struggle with assimilation. And he talks about sect and cult and how it grows into a church and how it deals with assimilation versus maintaining a unique identity. And so these are cool. These already exist. And the really cool thing though is if you get an ipod or some type of reader, all you have to do is plug it into your computer and it automatically puts those on here. So wherever you're going, driving the car, mowing your lawn, whatever, you have all these episodes, because this has a 60 gig hard drive or 40 gig hard drive, you have all those episodes waiting for you whenever you have some free time to actually listen to something. So that's the bonus. But you don't have to have it to enjoy the podcasts. So that's. That's enough about that. Now, what podcasts exist or existed before I started? Well, there were two big ones. The first one was Catholic Mormon Podcast, which is a podcast about how a Catholic and a Mormon got married, decided that the Catholic Church was the true one, and how they made that journey. So that's what Catholic Mormon's about. The Second one is thechurchisnotrue.com okay. Sponsored by a website called Joseph Live. Now, I know these guys. I've actually had one of them on my podcast to say, why are you an anti Mormon? Tell me about it. I don't believe in making enemies anymore. I've labeled people in the past and it's not working for me very well. And so I don't consider these guys enemies. But that's who's in the cybernet today doing stuff. There's also one that used to be called Latter Day Slant. He's now changed it to this Mormon Life. It's Dallas Robbins. I think he's been involved in Sunstone in the past. That's a more LDS friendly one. And then this is mine. It's called Mormon Stories. And the whole idea was let people tell their stories, whoever they are, wherever they're from. Let's just hear stories. I don't care if it's an anti Mormon, a master Mason, whoever my story. I just want to hear people tell honest stories about their experience with Mormonism so that people can come to a better understanding. Now, why are podcasts cool? I've already told you whether you're commuting, mowing the lawn, exercising, you can use that time if you want to, learning stuff. I believe that podcasts express emotion through the human voice that text can't always communicate. Also, it's easier, in my opinion, to just have someone sit down for an hour and talk than to try and convince them to write a really thoughtful post. Because people can talk a lot easier than to write well. So for me, it's very easy. And through this thing called Skype, I can interview Gregory Prince, who's in Maryland, over the Internet, and record it to my computer. And it sounds like he's in the same room with me. And I've done that. I've done two episodes on Gregory Prince, his book on David Obiket and the rise of modern Mormonism, and then a second episode on the Blacks and the Priesthood. And how David O. McKay dealt with. And I can do that. He could be in France and I could do it. So it's easy to get good content. And finally, the new generation expects multiple forms of stimulus, audio, visual, et cetera. And that's what a podcast does. So something coming soon is something called screencasts. Screencasts allow this presentation to be presented, but with the PowerPoint slides advancing on the screen as I'm talking. So it's not just my voice, but they're able to watch the PowerPoint slides in synchronization with my presentation. It's very easy to do. It uses micromedia Flash to actually render it. So it works across all the platforms. They're saying this is the killer app, but no one's talking about it yet. Or at least not broadly. But look for screencast to come soon. Now, what are my biggest concerns about the blogosphere and the podcast arena? To what end are we blogging? All these people are having all these conversations. Over time, they get archived and live in this big archive. Right, but to what end? Yes, it's good to have a community. Yes, it's good to talk about stuff. But is there a bigger goal that we can strive for beyond just building a community and having lots of conversations? I really think there is a feeling that these conversations are happening again and again and again across multiple blogs, and people get tired of them. It's the same thing that happened with Sunstone and Dialogue. The conversations happened early, and then as time went on. Sometimes people get tired of them. Could these conversations be more elevated if people start standing on the shoulders of the giants that come before them? So instead of retreading old issues from scratch, why not read a seminal article published in Dialogue or Sunstone about the black issue, about the Mother in God prayer issue or whatever, and then start a conversation after everyone's level set on a seminal article. But see, these people don't know where those articles are. They're not subscribers. And yeah, they're buried at the University of Utah website with Dialogue or Sunstone's got some past things, but it's just not easy to find stuff. How do you search for the right article? And there's so many articles, and you do a full text search, you get a million hits back on Google. So. And finally, and I'll. You guys can answer this afterwards, there are some phenomenal threads on these blogs, but fast forward six months, where are they? They're in the archives, buried with 100 other posts for that month. And how do you go find the Right. Nugget. So that that can be harvested in a way that's really going to be reusable to future generations who could build on this instead of start from the beginning again with the same old conversation. This is just my opinion, but it's kind of how I feel. So most importantly, how can Sunsona Dialogue and others capture the hearts and minds of the future generations? Those are my biggest concerns. So I have a dream. Okay. I actually have two dreams. So number one, imagine if we could harness all this Internet activity. All these people are volunteering their time to do this. They have wives or husbands and children, yet they're spending their evenings on these blogs now. It's a productive effort. I think it's admirable. But what if we could reorient this towards even a higher goal? Imagine with me, if you will, if we could create Mormon Studies, a pedia, something that lives on the web that's a centralized, categorized directory of let's say the top hundred issues in Mormon Studies. Blacks in the priesthood, polygamy, feminism, you know, abuse what Book of Abraham. Right. So now you know, this may exist. A lot of anti Mormon sites have this, right? Okay, FAIR kind of has this. But some people don't look to fair, an apologetic group as credible enough. Although I think there's a lot of credible people in fair. What if that existed as a directory? Okay. And from there we work together in the community so that each issue had, let's say, a 10 page white paper on the basics of the issue. Okay, you want to get up to be on the black issue. Here are the basic things you need to know. Elijah, Abel, Brigham Young, and a few quotes from General Discourses, et cetera, et cetera, take you through the 200 years. 1978, a little bit about, you know, Low Bennion or Leonard Arrington in the early 60s, whatever. It's the white paper that says let's level set so that you young person who wasn't reading Dialogue in Sun Sentu all that time can sort of get up to speed quickly and know the facts, hopefully as objective as possible. Okay, that's the base. And then we ask the apologetic folks and even the liberal or anti Mormon folks to write rebuttals to each one so that you not only get the hopefully vanilla view, but you get the reactions from each side that try and provide additional perspective. And then here's the most beautiful part. Ready for this? What if in each of these main topics there were links to the seminal Sunstone and Dialogue articles and Journal of Mormon History and BYU studies that inform this whole conversation. Because right now you want to go to Dialogue on the University of Utah website. You want to search for a topic in there, how many journals and how do you find the thing? And thousand million web pages. What if we were to say, hey, if you're going to talk about the issue of polygamy, here are the three articles of Dialogue and two and Sunstone. You just have to read. And then those were made available to all these young searchers who are going out to find this stuff because I'm telling you right now they're finding it on exmormon.org and other places. I think that would be a wonderfully beautiful contribution that we could all sort of work together to happen. What would do that? Community that seems crazy. There's a little operating system called Linux. Okay, Linux started by just some programmers who hated Microsoft and wanted to build a better operating system. Fast forward many years later. Virtually, you know, a ton of the code is written by volunteers. Now corporations have gotten in the mix, which isn't always a bad thing. But I was at Microsoft for many years. I sat in meetings with executives. They're very scared about Linux and very concerned about its penetration. It's capturing significant. Where is it, Paul? 10, 20% of the server web market share? Do you have a guess for web?

Podcasts, Film, and the Future of Mormon Media

Guest [00:40:25] It's higher than that.

John Dehlin [00:40:26] Yeah. Linux is significant. Written by volunteers. Who would think that a distributed community of volunteers who don't know each other could write an operating system? That would make Bill Gates scared here in Seattle. And that's what Linux has done, purely by volunteers. And then corporations came later. If you actually search the word Linux on Google, the first link you get is Microsoft saying get the fax because Linux is bad. Do you think Microsoft's scared about Linux? Look at how many hits there are. Billion hits. There's another project called the Open Directory project. It's like Yahoo, but volunteers from all over the world have made a directory of interesting web links based on categories. Now that may sound insignificant to you, but it's a very significant effort. Over 70,000 people have contributed in over 600,000 categories, all by volunteer. We could do that. What? You just go to dmoz dmoz.org and I can send you the link later. Dmoz.org but it's like a Yahoo made open source. So how would we manage the contributions? How many of you have heard of Wikipedia? Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. Over a million articles have been written by volunteers. If you go to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints article in wikipedia. It's like 30 pages long and it's all written by volunteers. Anyone can go up there and make a contribution. You don't even have to log in. You just go in and change something. And it has its flaws, but the fact that over a million articles have been written by volunteers should say something to you. And it's being translated in 10, 20 different languages. So this notion of people volunteering to get together to do something actually happens. There's how you can edit a post and there's how you can control and roll back. If you don't like a version that someone did, you can actually roll back to a previous one. And then how can you manage the quality? I'm not going to go into this, but there's a website called Slashdot which has an incredible system for gaining a reputation and then using that to help decide what content gets posted to the web. So this is my second idea. So there's this young burgeoning industry of Mormon filmmakers, right? What's their home? They may have a home, but why can't we be their home? Why can't. In parallel with the Sunstone Symposium every year, why can't we have a Sunstone Film Festival where we bring them and they show off their films and we encourage young artists? If you think of how much money Napoleon Dynamites made, or even Brigham City or whatever, there's a lot of money there. And if you think about potential funding opportunities for Sunstone or dialogue, if you get the right creative people together to write the right film, documentary, whatever it is, you could generate a significant amount of money with. With that investment. I know that there are people working on that right now. And just to sort of end, I want to play for you a video that I. That I created myself. It took me a couple days to make it. It's a short video. Please don't pay attention to the tone or the dialogue or any of the substance. But I just want you to, because I did. I wrote it really quickly. But I created this for two reasons. To learn how to do it, but also to be able to show people and have them start thinking about how we need to think in new ways beyond the written word. And so hopefully it'll work. Come, come to.

Video Clip 1 [00:44:12] Wait. When I say the word Mormon, what is the first thing that comes to your mind from a Mormon's perspective? There are lots of great options to choose from. Let's. There's the Osmond brothers, not to mention Donny and Marie, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of the TV the Marriotts, Stephen R. Covey, Steve Young. And if you're into politics, take your pick. From the right there's Senator Orrin Hatch. And from the left there's Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. What's not to like? But in reality, for the average non Mormon, a few other mental images also bubble to the the top. Like, who was that Joseph Smith guy anyway? And what's with all the talk about angels in a golden Bible? And how about all that craziness in Utah? From Gary Gilmore to Elizabeth Smart? And last but not least, let's not forget about that whole multiple wives thing. What the heck is up with that? Yeah, Mormonism can conjure up all sorts of weird images and ideas in people's minds, but few things have troubled or affected me more than the time I discovered that many people associate Mormonism with racism. It happened in the spring of 2005. I was flying back to Salt Lake City after a business trip and happened to be seated next to a young Mormon man about to begin his two year mission to Portland, Oregon. After some small talk, I asked him if there were any questions regarding the church or its history that he felt uncomfortable dealing with as a missionary. After some time he responded, well, there is that whole black thing. You see, I've read the past statements by general authorities about why the blacks didn't deserve the priesthood. And at first they really troubled me. And don't get me wrong, I'm the last person in the world to be racist. But after working in the retail industry and between you and me, seeing how dishonest and immoral and just plain unsanitary those people can be at times, I guess I've come to understand why the early church leaders said the things they did about the blacks.

Video Clip 1 [00:46:47] That I am. I am. I am the luckiest.

Video Clip 1 [00:47:14] What if I been born 50 years before you? Growing up in heavily Baptist Texas, it was sometimes tough to be Mormon. Lots of parents didn't want their kids hanging around with me, mostly because of my religion. But hey, we're Mormons. Being discriminated against comes with the territory, right? We're used to it by now. So you can imagine how shocking it was to find out that we too, as Mormons, in spite of the persecutions against us, have also done our share of discriminating and that some of these beliefs continue to this day. When I heard this young missionary try to justify these racist statements, I wanted to pick him up out of his seat and scream, yes, these men are ordained. As prophets, seers and revelators. Yes, you've been told your whole life to follow the brethren, but you know what? They're human. They also make mistakes. They're also products of their time. You don't have to believe those racist teachings anymore. Most importantly, you can't be an effective emissary for Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace, if you believe that blacks are inherently inferior or cursed. It was then that I decided to make this film to let my people know of a few historical facts that, when taken together, can allow them to comfortably reject the racist teachings of our past without losing their overall faith. Well, here goes. Wish me luck.

John Dehlin [00:48:58] So. I don't like the tone. The substance could be a lot better, but hopefully in your mind you were thinking what you could do or what we could do together to create something of significance. And I think we could. So here's a quote of some hope from one of the bloggernackles out there. However, I know many are hoping that Sunstone reinvents itself right now. More so even than the orthodoxy question is the relevancy question. I don't think most see it as a terribly relevant as terribly relevant to modern lds, but he's hopeful. He's saying, I want to see this happen. And so Sunstone has entered the bloggernackle. Thanks to Dan and Mike and Molly and others who have been supportive, Sunstone now has a blog called sunstoneblog.org.com it's really early. We're not really into the blogging part of it yet. Right now we're just sort of posting the podcasts that get created. But it's there and we're going to make it better. We need permabloggers. We need people who will step up and say, I have something to say. I'd like to be a part. We'll have to be selective on that, but that's one of the things we're going to need. We also have two podcasts, Sunstone Podcast, Sunstone Classic Podcast. They're, I don't know, a few episodes up there right now. I think they're pretty good. Please check them out if you know someone who wants to be a guest. If you want to promote a book or an article, or if you've got a story to tell, we'd love to consider you as a guest for Sunstone Podcast. Here's why I'm optimistic about this deal. Think about the formula that we're now putting together at Sunstone. You take great authors, right? Great authors, good content. Great content. You have a print presence with the distribution already of 3,000 and name recognition, you add to that solid editorial, because editorial is what it's all about. If Sunstone ever struggled, it was because editorially things got really rough there for a while. Not in a bad way, but that's just how it ended up. And the reputation maybe wasn't as managed as it could have been, but I know Dan's really serious about that, and that's one of the reasons I'm willing to participate. And then you get the community that already exists, add it to the web community, and I think only goodness can come about as a result. That's the formula I see. Again, kudos to Dan and Mike and Molly for their support. And then finally I just. I can't add enough. This is the lesson I've learned in the blogosphere. If you want to get noticed, you've got to visit other people's blogs, not just send out emails, which is what I do. Blogging is primarily about community, so remember that quote. That's it. Thank you very much for your time.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.