Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's July 30, 2025, and today we have a very special rebroadcast of a Mormon stories classic. And let me just give you a little background.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] So when I was at Brigham Young University back from 1987 to 1993, there was a really important magazine called Sunstone Magazine that covered Mormon history, Mormon news, Mormon current events, Mormon culture, Mormon art, et cetera. And it was for sure one of the most influential things in my life at the time. It's where I learned about the Paul H. Dunn scandal. It's where I learned about the baseball baptisms. It's where I learned about the George P. Lee scandal. It's where I Learned about the September 6th.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] And yeah, Sunstone magazine at its peak had over 10,000 subscribers. And before the Internet, it was for sure the way that people found friends and community and support for a Mormon faith crisis. So this year, August of 2025, Sunstone is celebrating its 50th anniversary. And so I'll be speaking at the Sunstone Symposium in a couple days on, you know, reflecting on the Mormon Internet over the past 25 years, but also just, you know, this is a time for us to celebrate Sunstone and its importance and its history. So back in 2007, I interviewed Albert Peck. And Albert Peck was the editor of Sunstone magazine from, from 1986 to 2001.

John Dehlin [00:01:42] Probably the longest, one of the longest serving editors of Sunstone magazine, if not the longest serving editor of Sunstone. Sunstone was started by a couple people whose names you've probably never heard of. Scott Kinney and someone else. Then Peggy Fletcher Stack took Sunstone over and for several years ran both the magazine and the symposium until she left to go work for the Salt Lake Tribune. And then Albert took it over and sort of 1986 to 2001 was, I would say, the most influential, the most successful, the most powerful time of Sunstone. Sunstone was so powerful that Dallin H. Oaks issued a condemning it. But obviously 1993 was the year I graduated from BYU.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] It was also the year of the September 6th. So Sunstone, super important. There wouldn't be a Mormon Stories without Sunstone. Albert Peck is one of the most lovely and thoughtful and intellectual people you'll ever hear from. This interview has only gotten a few thousand views because it was released so long ago. And then also we chopped it up into three or four parts and you know, that doesn't make sense. We did that back in the day where ipods had a minimum capacity. So what we've done is we've remastered the audio, we've brought the four parts together as a single episode and we're re releasing it in 2025 because we think you'll really value the history, but also because we, we want you to all know about the important Sunstone Magazine and the Sunstone Symposium are for the world.

John Dehlin [00:03:15] So what you're going to see is Albert Peek, a giant in the history of Mormon studies of Mormon thought of Mormon, publishing of Mormon Symposium. And you're going to hear the story of kind of the rise and fall of Sunstone Magazine. Sunstone Magazine no longer publishes. They may still do some online stuff, but really the only main remnant of Sunstone these days is the Sunstone Symposium. That's really important. So if you watch this before, you know, Friday or Saturday, come to Sunstone. You can meet me, you can hear my talk. There's other great, fantastic people who come to Sunstone. It's like Mormon Comic Con. And you know, Sunstone hopefully will be around for a long, long, long time.

John Dehlin [00:03:54] So support Sunstone. But most importantly, I hope you enjoy this historic interview of me interviewing Albert Peck. And just know the audio is not good, the color is not good. This was back when I didn't know anything about audio or video. But I still think it's a, it's a historic, important interview. So check it out, check out Sunstone and please give me your feedback. Let me know if you enjoyed if you enjoy these classic episodes. If you want to see us do more, please comment on what you how you liked Albert, what you thought about it. If you have questions about it and I'd love your feedback, email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com or comment on Spotify or on YouTube.

John Dehlin [00:04:32] Subscribe and like the channel. Thanks for the donors that make all this possible. And now please enjoy my interview from 2007, I believe with Albert Peck, former editor of Sunstone Magazine and former director of the Sunstone Education Foundation.

Elbert Peck's Background and Path to Sunstone

John Dehlin [00:04:50] Tell us your name.

Elbert Peck [00:04:51] Albert Eugene Peck.

John Dehlin [00:04:54] Yeah, tell us a bit about your childhood, growing up and your early years in the church that led to your interest in Sunstone.

Elbert Peck [00:05:04] Well, I was born in Utah, but

Elbert Peck [00:05:05] I spent my junior high and high school years in suburban Washington, D.C. which had a big influence on me particularly I got it awakened me intellectually and socially, particularly my government and civics classes, Thomas Jefferson and people like that. So I sort of became a child of enlightenment and believed in pursuing truth wherever it went. And I Guess I was later influenced by the Vietnam War and Watergate, events like that. I went to byu, so I don't know how far you want me to go. Yeah, that's good.

John Dehlin [00:05:51] In your early years, let's say high school, early college, the faith or the testimony that you had, where was it rooted? Was it rooted in spiritual experience? Was it rooted in sort of intellectual conviction? Was it rooted in just the culture and the heritage you brought with you? The early testimony that you remember having, how was it composed or structured?

Elbert Peck [00:06:15] I think primarily it was fundamentally social. I grew up in great wards with great mentors and scoutmasters, and I loved that community and I loved the people and I thought the church was true. Although I had, I guess, in my teenage years a lot of cultivated spiritual experiences like youth conferences and taking family group trips to church history sites in New York and places where we'd have little family group testimony meetings with about eight different families. And those were all formative. So by the time I ended my teenage years, I knew the church was true. And I think I had a better than average understanding of the doctrines.

Elbert Peck [00:06:58] I remember thinking at one point that it I knew everything about the church and it all made it was logically consistent. I wouldn't say I was an intellectual then, but I was intellectually curious. And when I hit byu, I liked thoughtful presentations. I sort of fell in love with Hugh Nibley. And I really liked the exploration of Mormon history and Mormon studies because it was just a learning more about how God works among our people and celebrating that.

Elbert Peck [00:07:34] So by the time I went on my mission in the mid-70s, I discovered BYU studies and even subscribed to that while I was a missionary, which was like, I was the only person on my mission who really read that sort of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:07:48] Where did you serve?

Elbert Peck [00:07:49] California. Nevada.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] Just out of curiosity, which ward did you grow up in?

Elbert Peck [00:07:58] The D.C. area, the McLean Ward and then the Vienna ward.

John Dehlin [00:08:02] So Virginia.

Elbert Peck [00:08:02] In Virginia, yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] So did you. How was your mission? What was your mission like?

Elbert Peck [00:08:10] I guess I actually had two missions because I had a change of mission precedents and a change of mission boundaries halfway through my mission. That gave me two missions and two mission presidents, and it was a great experience. The first one was very strict and rule bound, and I bristled under that. But I fell in love with the work and the people, and it was a great ocean of spirituality for me. And the second part, the new mission president kind of liked me. I was on a fast track of leadership and I fell in love with the missionaries and moving the work of the mission. And. And that was a great experience. I had no complaints about my mission.

John Dehlin [00:08:48] After your mission, did you return to byu?

Elbert Peck [00:08:50] Went back to byu, took a bunch of honors classes.

Elbert Peck [00:08:54] And that kind of piqued me intellectually and

Elbert Peck [00:09:00] ran into some friends who wanted

Elbert Peck [00:09:02] to form a study group to study Mormon things, which interested me very much. And members of that group were Gary Bergera and Ron Prittis, Scott Dunn. And each time we met, people would have to make a presentation. We'd all rotate that. And Gary would read a paper that he was going to present at the Mormon History association, or Sunstone. We went as a group to my very first Sunstone meeting. And I was, wow. It was the second symposium ever held.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] What year was that or era? Late 70s, early 80s?

Elbert Peck [00:09:43] Yeah.

Elbert Peck [00:09:44] Yeah, exactly. The first symposium was like, 79, I think. So this may have been 1980. And I remember someone pointing across. This was at the University of Utah, pointing across a plaza and saying, that's Peggy Fletcher. She's the person who organized it. Like, wow, she's a big person.

Elbert Peck [00:10:06] Later, a lot of members of that

Elbert Peck [00:10:07] little group I belonged to started an independent newspaper at BYU called the Student. Excuse me, the Seventh East Press. I was the first editor of that newspaper, and that was a sensation at byu. We dealt with lots of intellectual issues. Gary Bergera wrote a theology column for the newspaper. And I met a lot of BYU faculty and became more close to them than I ever did as a student.

John Dehlin [00:10:36] Who are some of these faculty at BYU that you met in your close with?

Elbert Peck [00:10:41] I got to know them. People like Arthur Bassett, even Don Norton, a very conservative person in the English department, where I first really met face to face. Hugh Nibley. Who else? Did I meet there? Once a week or whenever we came out with a paper. We meant to be weekly, but we never were.

Elbert Peck [00:11:00] I'd take a stack of them and go and deliver them to faculty's offices, and they all say, come in. Come in and sit me down and talk to me. Jim Faulkner would do that. In political science, Lou Midgley would do that.

Elbert Peck [00:11:14] A lot of these were very conservative people, but they celebrated the idea of a vibrant intellectual forum on campus run by students. And who else got to know Maren Morrison and the students? She ran the student programs for the university.

Elbert Peck [00:11:33] Probably dozens of faculty in the German department got to know Alan Keel, Scott Abbott. I don't think Scott was there yet. I got to know him later. It's where I first met Gene England.

John Dehlin [00:11:49] Ted Lyon.

Elbert Peck [00:11:50] No, I didn't know Ted Lyon.

John Dehlin [00:11:55] So BYU professors were actually there Was a number of them excited about the 7th East Press?

Elbert Peck [00:12:00] They were static about it, more so than the students were. I think the reverse was true with the paper that succeeded that Student Review. But here the faculty were just thrilled about it and encouraged us on in doing the 7th East Press.

John Dehlin [00:12:12] How many years did that go on while you were there?

Elbert Peck [00:12:14] The 7th East Press, I ran that

Elbert Peck [00:12:16] for one school, one full school year, and it was a traumatic thing. We lived in an apartment building. In the front room was the Office of Student Review. So it was like 24 hours. And it was kind of sort of burning me out. But in the process of doing that, Peggy Fletcher, who was always looking for help at Sunstone, came down and kind of invited us up and met us, and we ran an interview with her in the newspaper. And then she recruited me to come and work for her. So I left the 70s press and went and worked for Peggy. She was having a second publication by Sunstone called the Sunstone Review, which was a combination book review and news magazine, Mormon News Magazine.

Elbert Peck [00:12:55] She hired me to be the managing editor of it. So for another year, I was managing editor of that under Peggy Fletcher, and we ran a symposium in the summer. I was involved in that and wrote my first editorial for the Sunstone magazine and was kind of tutored and mentored and became very good friends with Peggy in that process. So that's how I ended up in Sunstone. I left doing Student review and moved back to Washington where my family was still, and got a job there.

Elbert Peck [00:13:30] I'd come out in the summers for the symposium, and I was listed in the masthead as a national correspondent. And once driving home from a symposium. This was like in 85, I guess. Yes. No, 84. Jay Bybee and I were driving home from a symposium across the country, taking my brother's car home, and we were talking about how great the symposium was and how nice it would be to have to have one in Washington, D.C. so he was a columnist for Sunstone, and I'd worked for Peggy. And so we called her and she gave us permission to organize what was the first regional Sunstone symposium in Washington, D.C.

Elbert Peck [00:14:09] that was really a great event. Three of us, Jay and I and a woman named Alison Bethke, met each week and came up with our dream team of who we want to speak and found out all the Mormon intellectuals in Washington, and there were quite a few because Mary Bradford had run Dialogue from Washington. So she had quite a network that we hooked into, as well as a lot of other people. And the three people we wanted to have were like Hugh Nibley and Jan Shipps and Leonard Darrington, three big names back in the early mid-80s. And they all came and we had 600 people there and it was a wonderful event and I planned it the next year. By the time the one happened in the next year year I'd agreed to come to Sunstone as a full time editor.

Elbert Peck [00:14:59] As a full time employee, no, full time editor.

Elbert Peck [00:15:01] Peggy had gotten married in the meantime and decided, well, her husband decided he didn't want to be Mrs. Sunstone. And so they were leaving Sunstone. And she called me throughout the fall of 1985 asking me to come and take over Sunstone from her. And how is to told her no because I'd seen how running because she was publisher and editor and running the business side and the editorial side had just ground her down and burned her out. I'd seen her spend 18 hours there, 10 o' clock at night calling people on the phone begging for money. She just couldn't do it all. And I wasn't going to burn myself out like Peggy did.

John Dehlin [00:15:42] What was your job before joining Sunstone full time?

Elbert Peck [00:15:47] I had a job in Montgomery County,

Elbert Peck [00:15:48] Maryland as a community planner for their city planning department.

John Dehlin [00:15:56] So what changed your mind about joining?

Elbert Peck [00:16:00] Well, since I said no.

Elbert Peck [00:16:04] In the meantime they punted and hired Daniel Rector to be a halftime business manager for Sunstone. Since they didn't have anyone else really to turn to, they organized a group of four people to be head of the transition. Four people from the board of trustees which included I think John Ashton, Kent Frogley, J. Bonnerichi and I can't remember who the fourth person was, maybe Mary Beth Raines. They had decided to basically turn Sunstone over to Daniel Rector.

John Dehlin [00:16:37] This tell us about Daniel.

Elbert Peck [00:16:40] Daniel was a great guy. Never seen a person with more self confidence than chutzpah really believed he could do almost anything. He had a strong interest in Mormon theology, but as a career he bounced around. He sold used cars, he sold this, he'd done this, he'd done this. And he sort of came to Sunstone just because he really needed a job. But he liked Sunstone.

John Dehlin [00:17:02] Wasn't he the son of someone prominent, is that right?

Elbert Peck [00:17:05] Yes. His father was Hartman Rector Jr. A member of the 70 in the church. So his dad was a general authority which helped Daniel and hurt Daniel sometimes. So Daniel agreed to do it and a lot of people said, well, you need to get somebody, you need to get somebody, you need to get Elbert. And I was coming out for the Mormon History association which was being held in Salt Lake. And the night before the mha, Peggy was having her farewell banquet, which I was also going to go to. And they were also going to announce the new head of Sunstone, which would be Daniel.

Elbert Peck [00:17:41] So while there for that week, Daniel and Bonnar Richie lobbied me very hard to come and take over to be the editor of Sunstone. Peggy was publisher editor. Daniel would be the publisher, I would be the editor. And Bonner was a person who I'd always respected so much. He'd given a talk that so and so published that had a huge impact on me.

John Dehlin [00:18:06] Which talk was that?

Elbert Peck [00:18:07] It was the individual and institutional church. It was a B.H. roberts Society lecture that Peggy published. And so I pondered that whole thing. I prayed about it a lot. I remember during once when I was walking around Temple Square, whether or not I should take Sunstone or not, just diverging career paths. I was sitting down on a planter and also in this pre recorded music of the Tabernacle Choir started singing. And there was this hymn. I can't remember the title of the hymn, but there's a line in it that says, within the kingdom of his might, all is good and all is right. Something like that. And it just hit me that if I do Sunstone and it's within the kingdom, it's an acceptable choice.

Elbert Peck [00:18:58] And then I felt this spiritual prompting

Elbert Peck [00:19:00] that told me it's okay to take Sunstone. It's not like God wanted me to take Sunstone, but it was an okay decision as long as I continued on a spiritual path. And so I decided, okay, I'd do it. And I went and told them I'd do that. We weren't very clear on the delineation of duties. And I guess in pitching it to me, Daniel particularly had pitched that we'd be an equal team. He'd be publisher and I'd be editor. And that caused a little friction later on because we hadn't clearly delineated that. So I came to Sunstone, and Sunstone was broke and beaten up and had no money. And supporters were all disillusioned because the last year of Peggy's tenure, she'd had no money and had been so burned out she'd come out with like two issues in a year.

John Dehlin [00:19:58] What were the subscription rates when you first joined? Do you remember roughly? Was it 1,000? Was it 500? Was it.

Elbert Peck [00:20:07] No, it's probably. It may have been 4,000, maybe 3,000 something.

John Dehlin [00:20:16] In what ways? Was it a mess or struggling or sort of?

Elbert Peck [00:20:21] Well, we had donors were disillusioned thinking

Elbert Peck [00:20:23] the organization would fall apart. In the years Peggy's last tenure, the board of trustees and people trying to save Sunstone were thinking of, like bagging the magazine altogether and just having the symposium, which was paid for itself, money wise, and some magazine was a drag. And Peggy, this visionary, would plead and beg, she would not give up on the magazine. And so we inherited the magazine Symposium. And we liked both of those. But there was like zero money. Not only zero money. We were hugely in debt. Peggy Daniel's first two years at Sunstone or three years, was basically paying off Peggy's debts. Every time we go to a printer to print something, they'd say, oh, yeah, they tell us this. After they accepted our printing job, they call us and say, we've discovered in our files that you guys owe us

Elbert Peck [00:21:14] $5,000 for some old magazine which you

Elbert Peck [00:21:17] never paid us for. You took the magazine and ran off on.

Elbert Peck [00:21:20] And before we give you this current thing, well, you have to pay us

Elbert Peck [00:21:23] for the old one. And Daniel was. I mean, that happened weekly. We were just paying huge sums. And once after the symposium, we had a ton of money for us, maybe $10,000 in the bank and some old debt person we owed from Arizona sequestered our funds and took them all from the bank. So we were broke after the symposium.

Elbert Peck [00:21:47] And on top of that, we owed

Elbert Peck [00:21:50] maybe $60,000 to the IRS because Peggy, in trying to make ends meet, would choose to pay people's weekly payroll rather than paying the IRS what she owed for deducting their taxes from their payroll. So we had a demanding schedule that we had to meet to repay the IRS loan. And we had to get magazines out, had to be confident, and we had zero money. It was hard. And we lived in a terrible place and we worked in a terrible place and didn't have any money, and we were working for almost nothing.

John Dehlin [00:22:24] How did you keep your spirits up?

Elbert Peck [00:22:27] It was a cost. Those were some of the most best

Elbert Peck [00:22:30] times of my life.

Elbert Peck [00:22:31] It was really fun. Daniel and I liked each other so much and worked so well.

Elbert Peck [00:22:36] I talked to him about the issues

Elbert Peck [00:22:37] I was debating on the magazine.

Elbert Peck [00:22:38] He cared so much about the magazine.

Elbert Peck [00:22:39] We had great conversations which really improved

Elbert Peck [00:22:42] to have someone to talk to.

Elbert Peck [00:22:43] And he was working with all the other issues. Fortunately, because of a previous job I had I knew database which our subscribers list was on. Daniel knew nothing about it, so I was able to work on our subscriber list. And Daniel would write fundraising letters and new subscription letters and run them by me. And we'd have. It was A great collaborative experiment and experience and it was just great times with no money and the wolf always beating out the door.

Vision and Goals for Sunstone Magazine

John Dehlin [00:23:12] So when you joined, did you have a hope or a vision or an aspiration? It doesn't need to contrast with what came before. Did you have a hope or an aspiration or vision that you wanted to carry forward or did you have a new vision or hope or aspiration that you wanted to sort of, you know, have as being your imprint for your tenure?

Elbert Peck [00:23:33] Well, first of all, I just wanted

Elbert Peck [00:23:34] to carry the torch very well because I'm in awe of Peggy Fletcher. She's one of my personal heroes and she has this wonderful mind with great ideas and she's always stretching further than she has ability and resources.

Elbert Peck [00:23:47] And I had caught on to a

Elbert Peck [00:23:49] so many of those ideas and wanted to help see them realized. And Scott Kenney, I didn't know personally when I came, but I also held him in awe. So part of it was just carrying the tradition.

Elbert Peck [00:24:00] But there were some things I wanted

Elbert Peck [00:24:01] to do which were not unusual from what people had done before. I had developed a great interest in biblical scholarship and wanted to introduce more of Mormonism to that. Peggy and Scott had both had similar interest in that and Daniel had interest in that. So, so we instituted a scripture lecture series that met once a month and went along with the church's curriculum. And we brought in critical studies into scripture studies both in the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants.

Elbert Peck [00:24:29] And that was something we both loved doing.

Elbert Peck [00:24:32] And it was really fun.

Elbert Peck [00:24:34] And I like, I mean, people always

Elbert Peck [00:24:38] think they're trying to reinvent this, but it's a continued problem. I wanted to bring in more what I guess gets classified as faithful voices to Sunstone than Peggy was able to do. And I was able to do that because I'd been at BYU so much, involved with 70s press and stuff. I knew a lot of these faculty members. So those first few years we signed up tons, dozens and dozens of BYU faculty members for the symposium program and got them to write and speak, write for the magazine. Even Hugh Nibley, who was willing to do magazine and Sunstone sessions, who are

John Dehlin [00:25:17] some of the faithful voices that you could really rely upon or that you felt were an important balance to the more liberal, left leaning aspects of Sunstone.

Elbert Peck [00:25:27] Yeah, well, that's a bad dichotomy, as

Elbert Peck [00:25:29] you no doubt realize.

Elbert Peck [00:25:29] Liberal faithful, because Gene England is very liberal and he's very faithful. And at that time Gene was participating,

Elbert Peck [00:25:35] painting more in Sunstone than he'd ever done before. For his own quirky Dynamics? Well, people like David Whitaker in the BYU archives who dealt with the Mormon collection. People like Jim Faulkner, people like Art Bassett in humanities, Jim Faulkner in philosophy. Evelyn Lou Midgley would participate. Even people in the History Department and some people from the Smith Institute. Jill Durer would participate. You just go through a symposium program. There were a lot. And they'd write book reviews for us. They'd write articles, they'd speak at the symposium, they'd respond to sessions in the symposium. It was really fairly easy in those late 1980s to get BYU people involved,

Elbert Peck [00:26:27] which is part of my vision.

Elbert Peck [00:26:28] Daniel's vision was to have it. We kind of wanted everyone who had an intellectual interest in Mormonism to be in the tent talking to each other and listening to each other. I sort of believe that that's a naive philosophy, but it certainly was my guiding philosophy on that.

Elbert Peck [00:26:45] In terms of other things I did at Sunstone in those early years, we revived a lot of traditions that I liked that had been dropped by whatever reason over the years. Like in the early Sunstones, they would regularly publish plays, and they hadn't in the last half decade. And so we revived the publishing of plays, and we published more poems than had been published in the past and found ways to frame them. So they used to dedicate a whole page to a poem in a magazine, which meant you couldn't give them print many poems because you couldn't dedicate many pages to a whole poem. But by creating space at the end of articles, we could do more poems.

Elbert Peck [00:27:29] Once Jean England criticized me for just using poems as filler, and that hurt because we were working very hard to create space to put poems in. So then we came up with the idea of putting icons on top of the poems and putting more blank space around them to make it to frame the poem better so it wouldn't look like we were just using them as filler.

Elbert Peck [00:27:52] There are a bunch of other magazine things that we did, old traditions that we revived. I guess one of the things that wasn't new to Sunstone but was really new to the magazine was cartoons. Sunstone, under Peggy, had published three cartoon books by Calvin Grandahl, but he wasn't a regular feature in the magazine.

Elbert Peck [00:28:14] And we recruited Pat Bagley and Calvin Grondahl to have Mormon cartoons in each issue. And then we put tons of other cartoons. That was a major contribution of ours.

John Dehlin [00:28:27] Are there any cartoons that stand out as your favorite or that you really. We could probably go back and interlay some of them over your description of them. That's putting you on the spot. But no.

Elbert Peck [00:28:36] Yeah, well, cartoons actually became one of

Elbert Peck [00:28:39] our most controversial problems.

Elbert Peck [00:28:41] But

Elbert Peck [00:28:44] I just left a lot of

Elbert Peck [00:28:45] Cal Grondel, so there's tons of them.

John Dehlin [00:28:48] So what role were you hoping Sunstone would play within Mormonism? What was your vision for. Let's say that in a soup there's salt and there's carrots and there's beef or whatever. There are lots of ingredients. What was the role that Sunstone played in the ingredients to Mormon culture or the Mormon experience?

Elbert Peck [00:29:10] I came to articulate this more later, but it was inherent in my early approach. It was the idea of an open forum, which was a place where people can come and speak truth as they understand it. Scholars and laity, people who have experiential truth to tell and people have academic research and non Mormons who are interested in Mormon studies or. Or who can do reflections to bring them on us, that will help us. And in that discussion by people who upbelief and people who do not believe, but honest civil discussion, it can produce some fruits that might be helpful to Mormonism.

Elbert Peck [00:29:47] But we really didn't have, and I didn't have a study in the Arch like the church needs this. Although I believe the church needs something like that. It was primarily for the people who'd be interested in. I always believed that the subset of Mormonism that would be interested in this should grow and grow and grow because the number of college educated Mormons each year were growing and growing. And even if we just took a few of those who had true intellectual curiosity, Sunstone should be on a growth track.

Elbert Peck [00:30:17] And that sort of played out a little bit in the late 80s when we came, I came in 86 Daniel and I came and Daniel was rigorous in trying to get new subscribers and would send out these promotional letters and bring them in. And it was bringing in money. And we were growing and growing. At our peak about the time Daniel left or just a year before he left, I guess we had 10,000 subscribers.

Elbert Peck [00:30:53] And a lot of those came from. We published this issue when Apostle Native American George P. Lee, now Apostle 70, quit the church and he wrote a handwritten manifesto of why he was leaving and criticized the church. And because we also kind of have a news portion of the magazine, certainly I felt a need to sort of be a magazine of record for the important things that happened. We published George Lee's letters, which in my mind were really kind of crazy, but showed people what a crazy guy he was.

Elbert Peck [00:31:35] Well, it turns out tons of Mormons wanted to read those letters. Very faithful Mormons and they were willing to plunk down $30 for, for a subscription just to get the issue that had the George P. Lee letters. It was pre Internet days. They couldn't read them online.

Elbert Peck [00:31:52] We got several thousand subscribers just from that promotion. In fact, that may be the only

Elbert Peck [00:31:58] issue of Sunstone that was reprinted. We printed it again to use it just as a promotional magazine so the

John Dehlin [00:32:04] newspapers wouldn't print them.

Elbert Peck [00:32:06] Well, they printed excerpts from them, but they didn't print the entire thing. So it was like a long, long thing. That was very helpful and brought in tons of subscribers. A couple years later, the journalist Lynn Packer wrote his article about Paul Dunn and his fabricated stories.

Elbert Peck [00:32:34] Sunstone has an intimate history involved in that. I'd heard through rumors at BYU that Lyn Packer, because he used to be, he was once a journalist and professor at byu, that he had all this stuff on Boyd K. Packer, on Paul Dunn. And I asked him to come and present it at the symposium. And he sent us this paper which was just this angry diatribe full of facts, but he'd call him liar, liar, pants on fire in the paper and stuff. And Daniel and I didn't feel like we could just let him speak. That tone of attack about Paul Dunnett needed to be more dispassionate journalism.

Elbert Peck [00:33:13] So we didn't let him give the paper at the symposium. And Lyn, being a good journalist, sold his research basically to the Arizona Republic. And they bought his research and his information and wrote their own story rather than going with his.

John Dehlin [00:33:31] And

Elbert Peck [00:33:33] when the story broke, then we decided to be what Sunstone does best, perhaps, rather than a breaking news journal, which we're not a reflective voice. So we took the Lynn Packer article, which had more than the Arizona Republic series did, and we edited it down. And then we reprinted the Arizona Republic things.

Elbert Peck [00:33:56] And then we invited a bunch of

Elbert Peck [00:33:58] people to reflect on the Paul Dunn stories from many different angles. We had a person who's in the English department in Iowa, who's not a Mormon, who's dealt with how people tell stories and they're full of non truths. And we had Mormon historians and man in the street and lots of different people reflect on it, which made the segment on Paul Dunn grew and grew and grew so much that it was very large. And so we put it on the COVID And then. And this was also in pre Internet days, there were all these jokes that were running around about Paul Dunn because of this. And people didn't have the Internet, but fax machines were very popular then. And so they were like a Mormon samizdat where these cartoons were being faxed all around the church.

Elbert Peck [00:34:51] So we thought we would document that

Elbert Peck [00:34:52] part of this Mormon subculture of the Paul Dunn episode. And because the thing had taken so much space, I didn't want to dedicate a page or two more to the Paul Dunn things. And we had a lot of empty space at the end of all these little articles we had about Paul Dunn. So I spread the cartoons out and in our introductory part of that, we said, these cartoons are here just to document what was happening at the time. And we're just reproducing them. We didn't commission them. Well, no one reads the introductory thing.

Elbert Peck [00:35:26] And Daniel printed a huge number of that Paul Dunn issue, thinking that it would be a great promotional issue the way the George P. Lee one had been. And lots of people got upset both about the. The volume of space of the magazine we dedicated to it, they thought. But they were just also mad about any discussion of Paul Dunn. And then the cartoons made them think that we were attacking Paul Dunn and that was our motives. And so people were mad at us for beating up on Paul Dunn. And I guess there was a big difference between being an excommunicated general authority who people didn't have such an emotional attachment to like they did with Paul. Paul Dunn.

Elbert Peck [00:36:07] And if he's excommunicated.

Elbert Peck [00:36:10] George Lee.

Elbert Peck [00:36:10] Yeah, George Lee. They didn't have the emotional attachment like

Elbert Peck [00:36:13] they did with Paul Dunn, who'd been a very popular speaker for decades.

John Dehlin [00:36:16] He was fellowshipped or censured, but not.

Elbert Peck [00:36:18] Yeah, well, we don't know the actual

Elbert Peck [00:36:20] discipline on him, but he wasn't excommunicated, at least publicly.

Elbert Peck [00:36:25] And so George Peeley is excommunicated. So you can find out the dirt about that scoundrel. But Paul Dunn's a little more questionable

Elbert Peck [00:36:32] and you like him better anyhow. And so people are mad at you

Elbert Peck [00:36:37] and he's not excommunicated.

Elbert Peck [00:36:39] Had he been excommunicated, they may and publicly known that that was the case. They may have welcomed the issue, but they didn't. So we got people canceling subscriptions over that.

Elbert Peck [00:36:52] And when Daniel sent out this promotional letter, which was like the same letter

Elbert Peck [00:36:56] that he'd sent out with George P. Lee, except changing Paul Dunn for George P. Lee. We had a week where we couldn't do anything in the office except field phone calls from people who weren't subscribers but were just mad at us. And they were calling on a toll free 800 number which was costing us money.

Elbert Peck [00:37:13] And they just yelled at us. And there were like four or five

Elbert Peck [00:37:17] of us in the office all the time, always taking phone calls for this whole week. And people were just furious at us for that issue.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] So you felt. I mean, there's a sense to where you could look at that as a. Like the buzzards or the vultures circling on the carcass. I'm sure that wasn't your intent, but I'm sure it could have easily been viewed.

Elbert Peck [00:37:34] The people who were calling us were not subscribers.

Elbert Peck [00:37:36] They were the average member whose names. Daniel would acquire these mailing list names. There was a very Mormon magazine called this People, and he'd trade and get their subscriber list, and then he'd get the BYU studies list, and then he'd get.

Elbert Peck [00:37:49] He just got a lot.

Landmark and Controversial Issues

Elbert Peck [00:37:50] Every mainstream kind of Mormon list he could get. We would send promotional letters inviting them to take Sunstone. So these were people who, many of them had never read of Sunstone before, but they read this promotional letter, and they do think we're a buzzard taking advantage of him. I'm actually proud of the content of that issue. I think the collection of essays are reflective and sensitive and very good on the topic. Even some of our best supporters, though, however, thought it was too much. It was a disproportionate. Disproportionate for the issue.

Elbert Peck [00:38:23] Even after all the years and really thinking about those, I don't think that was the case. I think it was an important issue that really needed to be discussed, and Sunstone was the only place that it was discussed. And that is one of the main jobs that Sunstone does. It allows for that kind of discussion on issues that are basically taboo. Newspapers report it when it happens, and then on. And where else is there a reflective forum? Certainly before the Internet, there was no other place but Sunstone, and it did a good job, I think.

John Dehlin [00:38:56] Any other landmark issues that really come to mind as being either controversial or inspirational or groundbreaking, I'm sure you're proud of them all. But any others stand out in your mind?

Elbert Peck [00:39:13] Well, there are articles I wince at, and certainly some covers I wince at, but nothing of the magnitude of the Paul Dunn issues. There were topics that were perennial topics throughout the magazine.

John Dehlin [00:39:24] What were some of those?

Elbert Peck [00:39:27] Well, the tension between the intellectual and the institutional church. I mean, that was. It had begun before us with the fight over the church historians in the Camelot years and Sunstone under Peggy. She started, and we continued a whole series discussing that, but then it spilled over into general intellectuals, and lots of people got involved in that topic. David Bowen, political science professor at byu, wrote numerous articles. He started on the history thing and kind of moved into the intellectual thing. And of course, people like Paul to would write and speak about it. Michael Quinn and it became just a perennial topic. And the emotional pitch of it crescendoed over time as the church disciplines increased too.

Elbert Peck [00:40:18] But there were a lot of faith

Elbert Peck [00:40:19] promoting things I'm really proud of. Ed Kimball, the law professor at BYU and President Kimball's son and biographer, was on our board of trustees. He and Bonaricci are good friends and he was very good. I enjoyed his counsel, which he gave regularly.

Elbert Peck [00:40:41] And he actually recruited articles for us. Something more Faith Promoting Nature. He dug up this article on Spencer Kimball and the service station guy, this inactive Mormon who President Kimball would patronize his service station and recruit him to be active again. It's quite a little touching story. And then he got us this other article.

Elbert Peck [00:41:03] I don't know if he got us this one by this guy who wrote about President Benson in his last years. I personally thought was a little zany as an article, but a lot of people found it very touching and endearing.

Elbert Peck [00:41:16] Those were fun projects. I don't know if I'm especially more proud of them than anything else, but I have. I have a quirky fondness for them in my heart. I liked our Pillars of Our Faith, which is a perennial favorite and some very good ones. I really liked Eloise Bells and Kathleen Flakes.

John Dehlin [00:41:39] Any presentations during the symposiums that stand out as being important or inspirational or controversial, let's say pre1993.

Elbert Peck [00:41:52] Does anything stand up?

Elbert Peck [00:41:56] Every symposium has its memorable moments and there's great stories.

Elbert Peck [00:42:00] You have to get me saying them.

Elbert Peck [00:42:01] I guess the one which.

Elbert Peck [00:42:03] I don't know if Scott talked about this. This was in 1989. Elder Oakes had given his talk on Alternate Voices, which was clearly about Sunstone and maybe not exclusively, but you know. And so we had a panel to talk about that. And that was a fiery night. I moderated the panel and I guess this was 1979, the 10th anniversary of the symposium. 89. Thank you.

Elbert Peck [00:42:36] Back at the.

Elbert Peck [00:42:39] Back at the University of Utah. And I remember that night, it's Matterania. And we had Levina Philly Anderson on it and Marie Cornwall. And then Larry Young. Was Larry Young on it? No, no, someone else. Who else was it? I can't remember. And Orson Scott Card. And Orson Scott Card was one of the people I was so proud of. He had been an early contributor to Sunstone during the Scott Kenny years. He was prolific, so much so that he had four or five articles in one issue that he ghostwrote under different names because he had so many articles. He even once reviewed his own play under a different name in the magazine.

Elbert Peck [00:43:22] But he dropped off. But I liked Scott and really worked

Elbert Peck [00:43:27] hard in getting him to write, and he agreed to be a columnist for the Met magazine. He chose the name for his column, A Changed man, meaning he's sort of a born again mainstream Mormon, whereas he'd been a little liberal before. And he wrote very provocative columns that offended a lot of people, but a lot of people were damn glad he was in the magazine. So he was on his alternate Voices panel and trying to get people to speak intelligently about this. And Marie Cornwall spoke and gave this. She's a professor of sociology at byu. She gave this little speech where at the end she says, and we're just

Elbert Peck [00:44:04] like matches with our kids with our matches in our hand, ready to strike them. It was not clear what the metaphor

Elbert Peck [00:44:09] was, whether we're going to burn down the church or what. But it was an incendiary metaphor.

Elbert Peck [00:44:15] And then the other BYU faculty member,

Elbert Peck [00:44:17] who was that, I can't remember right

Elbert Peck [00:44:19] now, and Marie, then they realized they

Elbert Peck [00:44:21] may get in trouble for their BYU connection. So, like, they shut up.

Elbert Peck [00:44:24] So I'd have Lavina, who would say more provocative things, and Scott Card, who would say provocative things. And I turned to the BYU faculty

Elbert Peck [00:44:33] of Countering things because the sociologists are really good at putting things in a

Elbert Peck [00:44:38] context, and they would, like, just be mum. So we had these two people, and then it turns out Scott Card and Lavina had this history when they both

Elbert Peck [00:44:47] worked at the Ensign years ago, where they hated each other. And so we had this little cat. Cat fight between them.

Elbert Peck [00:44:52] Now we're just trying to moderate. And then Scott Card says something about how he'd been so good friends with

Elbert Peck [00:44:59] Scott Kenny in organizing and founding Sunstone, but now he's really sad about how Scott Kenny. The journey he'd taken. And turns out they hadn't talked in years. And Scott Kenny's in the audience.

Elbert Peck [00:45:13] When it's time for audience comments, Scott

Elbert Peck [00:45:16] Kenny comes up and makes this little response to Scott Card.

Elbert Peck [00:45:19] So they're having this thing, and then Scott Card is keeping saying provocative comments,

Elbert Peck [00:45:23] saying, you guys don't understand the brethren. And he's trying to defend the church. And Ron Pridus started booing, and people

Elbert Peck [00:45:31] around him started booing Scott Card.

Elbert Peck [00:45:34] It was a session that just got out of control.

Elbert Peck [00:45:36] The more moderate voices just shut up.

Elbert Peck [00:45:39] Because they didn't want to get in trouble with their employer.

Elbert Peck [00:45:43] Later that night, as I was walking

Elbert Peck [00:45:44] Scott Card to his car, he says, these are not my people, Albert. They booed me. They actually booed me.

Elbert Peck [00:45:53] I said, oh, it's just Ron Priddis.

Elbert Peck [00:45:55] You have a fight with signature books anyhow over the book you and Kyle Grondal did. And he says, I don't know. These are not my people. I'm not ever going to come again. I said, lots of people like you think of the Washington symposium, which you've come to. He really liked that. He says, well, maybe I'll do the regional symposium. But he never did anything ever after that, which was sad because one of

The Sunstone Symposiums and Key Contributors

Elbert Peck [00:46:17] the things I really wanted to do

Elbert Peck [00:46:18] when I came to Sunstone was increase a discussion about building Zion, which was a passion of mine at the time. And Daniel Rector supported me in that. And so we organized a theme symposium, maybe the only theme symposium Sunstone's ever had on Zion.

Elbert Peck [00:46:35] And we got Scott Carr to come

Elbert Peck [00:46:36] out and speak, speak at it. And he so enjoyed that experience. And there were so many BYU faculty and even church employees who spoke at that. And some of them got in trouble for doing that afterward. And Scott liked it so much, but it was not well attended because it was held in Provo. And so we were losing money on it. And Scott put a couple thousand dollars on his American Express to help pay our hotel bill.

Elbert Peck [00:47:01] So I have really high moments with him.

Elbert Peck [00:47:03] And then that totally meltdown at that symposium on the alternate voices, any other

John Dehlin [00:47:11] funny or inspirational or charged symposium presentations worth mentioning that come to mind? No pressure. That was a fun story.

Elbert Peck [00:47:21] Yeah. Doug, man, you have to get me going.

Elbert Peck [00:47:23] I could just tell them because all of them have. Go for it, go for it.

Elbert Peck [00:47:28] Well, one of the things I introduced at the.

Elbert Peck [00:47:30] At Sunstone was for the symposiums. I really wanted to position us as faithful people discussing the church rather than as malcontents. And so I introduced like prayers at the symposiums, opening and closing prayers at the sessions, which it's hard to believe that now, but that was a controversial act. I don't think I've had more people come up to me in the hallways and criticize me for turning Sunstone into sacrament meeting.

Elbert Peck [00:47:59] And at the very first one where Carolyn Pearson spoke while. Was that a session,

Elbert Peck [00:48:06] she was promoting her book that had just come out on the death of her ex husband from aids. What's that book titled?

John Dehlin [00:48:13] No More Goodbye. No, no, no, I'm sorry. Goodbye, I love you.

Elbert Peck [00:48:16] Goodbye. I love you. And she's really quite a self promoter and you have to admire that. And a single woman now. But Dan had scheduled her for the day and Hugh Nibley to speak that night. And Carolyn insisted that Hugh Nibley be bumped. And so it was put upon me and I was in Washington at the time to negotiate that so Hugh wouldn't be so miffed that he would cancel. And we were able to do that.

Elbert Peck [00:48:39] So we had this evening session with Carolyn Pearson.

Elbert Peck [00:48:42] This was like 1986 I guess.

Elbert Peck [00:48:46] And it's probably the largest Sunstone symposium

Elbert Peck [00:48:49] ever session ever held. It was the ballroom at then the Sheraton, which is now the Hilton I guess. And it packed the room to overflowing And Carolyn speaks and Marty Bradley, who was a member of the board was chairing that session. And she was so nervous about introducing the prayers that she. She didn't really have a vocabulary or presiding style to do it naturally she felt like she was making a dramatic statement so she skipped over the prayers. So we didn't have prayers at the time.

Elbert Peck [00:49:25] But Carolyn speaks and she is so

Elbert Peck [00:49:29] melodramatic in her speaking style, you know, and the room is just packed with huge gay contingent and huge feminist contingent and then just people who are interested in Carolyn. I mean There must be 3,000 people in this room just crammed and she did so melody dramatic and the high pitch was just. I don't know. Just remember that. I've never seen a session so high pitched as that.

John Dehlin [00:50:00] In terms of her voice or in terms of just the tension in the room?

Elbert Peck [00:50:04] In terms of the tension in the

Elbert Peck [00:50:05] room and the faithful people wanting to hold on. The Carolyn they knew at BYU who wrote all her beautiful poems. The feminists holding on to the feminist Carolyn and the gays holding on to the gay friendly Carolyn. And they're not really all getting along but there's nothing spoken that was dramatic. But Carolyn's style is so melodramatic. She doesn't speak in complete sentences, she speaks in phrase fragments.

Elbert Peck [00:50:33] And then I said to him and

Elbert Peck [00:50:36] you know, punctuated with these dramatic pauses and sighs and heavy, heavy laden words. It was quite an evening.

John Dehlin [00:50:50] Talk about Eugene England and your memories of him, both interacting with him and in whatever interaction he may have had with either writing articles or presenting at SunSpace. If you have a story or two,

Elbert Peck [00:51:01] I have a lot of Gene English stories. One of my all time favorite people and one of the most frustrating people in the world to work with because Gene is naive and idealistic. I mean he really believes that proving contraries truth will be Made manifest. And if you get people together, they will talk. And he's tried that so many times,

Elbert Peck [00:51:19] and they will talk. And if they understand each other, something will happen where truth will emerge from

Elbert Peck [00:51:24] the synthesis of them. And that doesn't happen often, or maybe even usually often they fully understand the other person. They still disagree and even hate.

Elbert Peck [00:51:34] But Gene's always pushing for that naivete. I would say the worst thing that

Elbert Peck [00:51:42] ever happened to Gene England was the word processor. As he got older and as technology increased, his papers became longer and longer. Any thought he had, any quote, anything,

Elbert Peck [00:51:56] he would just throw in.

Elbert Peck [00:51:57] So they'd become these 80, 90 hundred page papers and he'd like to give them. He'd want not only 90 minutes, but two hours to present a paper, you know, and then if he couldn't, he'd want to publish the whole thing. And they were just long things. I remember the California symposium where he was giving the evening plenary sessions, a closing one, and he spoke for more than two hours. And even his die hard faithfuls were just dead. But every word was important to Gene because he loved ideas and words.

John Dehlin [00:52:31] How could you capture Gene for a new generation that has never even thought of Bruce Armaconki, let alone Eugene Englund? How could you tell a new generation his personality or importance to our heritage and history within Mormonism? What did he represent? What did he embody to you? What was his legacy?

Elbert Peck [00:52:54] Gene believed in ideas and he was more of a crossfighter. So he promoted issues that he thought were important. You know, blacks in the priesthood, which he inherited from his mentor, little Penyon, and peace issues, particularly peace issues. And so he had this genius for presenting things that would kind of rile you up to want to care. And he cared so much and he was fantastic. Never was a better person. Titling his papers, which basically the title tells you everything you almost need to know. Why the church is as important as the gospel, why the church is as true as it is gospel, which was a great call for the importance of community and socializing in the church.

Elbert Peck [00:53:47] But the most important thing about Gene,

Elbert Peck [00:53:49] which really only lives in his generation, is his enormous generous spirit. I mean, when he called you my friend, you never had a higher honor in the world. And he didn't take things personally if you disagreed with him or yelled at him for doing something. Never would a person repent more fast and more genuine and want to have love cover everything, all the differences. And he was stubborn, he was sure of his ideas and he would push them and always challenge these things and believed in them. And. And you liked that about him, even though you disagreed with him. And he liked everyone, he wanted to include them all. And he's a true Christian person who was smart and intelligent and his passion and his care for the ideas, he was just terrific.

John Dehlin [00:54:48] If you had to lift up, let's just say three or four more people as important or representative for what Sunstone was trying to be while you were working, who are some of the other people that a new generation should come to know through their writings or speeches or just their personalities? Do you have even two or three people that you would say that you could describe and maybe tell a story about? Sort of like if there were trading cards, like baseball trading cards for your Sunstone years, who would be on those cards and describe each one?

Elbert Peck [00:55:30] Well, I suppose they're big names for their writings. And the personality is Lowell Bennion. I consider it one of my greatest blessings of Sunstone is to get to know Lowell Bennion. He was very thoughtful in his writings and he had this sociology training from the 30s and yet he never spoke like he had that training. But you can see that sociological perspective coming through all his theology writings. And he, like Gene, believed that the outcome was the most important thing. What we did and what we thought, how he acted. And he would use his theology to push those things A little more honest sometimes in his theology, but not completely. Lowell would say it's more important to promote the kind of God that promotes goodness in us than it is to adhere to the actual teachings of the Bible about God.

Elbert Peck [00:56:30] So

Elbert Peck [00:56:32] he'd be a little more. He's not a pure academic.

John Dehlin [00:56:35] He's pragmatic.

Elbert Peck [00:56:37] He is very pragmatic. And the pragmatic that he wants is life full of richness and spirituality and creativity and interconnectedness and service and love and grace. And you live that in a community. And I mean Lowell, he may not have believed that the Book of Mormon was historical. It's hard to tell really. But you read his writings on the Book of Mormon and the themes that he's pulling out from it are all those very good works kind of themes.

Elbert Peck [00:57:04] And just a great guy to be around. He liked being around little banion. My heroes, I guess, are more of the people who were more did more for people and building the organization than the writings like Leonard Arrington. He's a first rate booster of people. He believed in the careful, thoughtful stuff, study of history and of Mormonism and he'd encouraged people to do that all the time. Every year when we sent out the Symposium flyer. The first registration for the symposium that came back was Leonard Arrington's. And he did that so intentionally. It wasn't just that he was a type a person who always had to take care of those things immediately.

Elbert Peck [00:57:53] I think he wanted to make the point that I'm supporting you and I'm there with you. It was such a joy to get Leonard's registration in the mail. And he'd always write letters encouraging people to do things. And you asked him to do something. He was very willing to help. Once I asked him to review a book and he said let me think for a moment.

Elbert Peck [00:58:14] And then he said, I don't think I can review that book, he says, because I think I would have to give it a bad review. And it wouldn't be very helpful for that person to have a bad review from Leonard Arrington because of his position in the society. He says other people could give him a bad review and that'd be fine. But Leonard would really use his position to try to boast people up and encourage the growth of other intellectuals. Just a great guy.

John Dehlin [00:58:50] How about a couple women?

Elbert Peck [00:58:52] The next woman I was going to

Elbert Peck [00:58:53] say was Esther Peterson, but she didn't have a lot to do with Sunstone. But so it's probably not the kind of person you want. Lavina Fielding Anderson is just a wonder, you know, she's also just this fomentor and this organizer who is loving and gracious and kind and fun to be with, you know, passionate and she's caring. And that is the biggest tragedy of excommunications is Lavina. She's such a true believer. And despite what the church saw, these criticisms of her, that they couldn't see her really good hearted motivations behind that is very, very, very sad.

Elbert Peck [00:59:32] She's incredible. Peggy Fletcher of course is just a God to me. I love Peggy with all my heart. And, and it was her passionate idealism that came through. She had this vision and she wanted to do it and she would push for it and push for it and she'd get all these rich men, people who like to be involved in the cause and stuff to support it. But she really cared about ideas and consequences. She's a little cause fighter from the 60s and Mormon scholarship became her cause. She was terrific.

Sunstone's Historians and Intellectual Community

John Dehlin [01:00:08] How about who represents history? Sort of the historian, the archetypal historian for what you think emerging historians should strive for,

John Dehlin [01:00:23] or one or two.

John Dehlin [01:00:24] You don't have to say the. But is there anyone you could lift as saying their history was something that you think was exemplary? Their approach or their rigor.

Elbert Peck [01:00:35] Well, I'm a big fan of Jan

Elbert Peck [01:00:37] Shipps, who's a great personal friend and who I've gotten to know through Sunstone and other things. I like Jan because she's one of the few people who really take the big picture. And most of her, I think her greatest work is not yet published. It's her work in progress on the 20th, the church in the late 20th century, post World War II church. But she really gets Mormonism on the big picture. Whereas most Mormon history is about a person, a biography or about a time period and they get involved in little details, Jan just has a huge scope and she really can get inside of what is happening.

Elbert Peck [01:01:16] Why are we doing correlation? What is the difference between correlation and just administrative reform? And yet they're all leaping, lumped together. And she really can sort out what's happening in Mormonism better than anyone I know. She's incredible. I think Mormonism, Mormon history, the writing of Mormon history for the most part has been pretty insular and parochial sometimes. It's very excellent scholarship that is written by and for Mormons.

Elbert Peck [01:01:43] So I respect the people who are trying to write for a non Mormon audience as well as a Mormon audience like Kathleen Flake. I think she came late to Mormon history in her career. I think she really has great promise. And.

Elbert Peck [01:02:03] I lament that Ron Walker was not able to write his multi volume biography of Hubert Grant. He's a great storyteller and those early chapters that he gave at mha, at least one was published in Sunstone during Peggy's years were great. What happened to it? Well, the archives were closed and you couldn't read the Grant correspondence or manuscripts or collection anymore. So basically ended the research.

John Dehlin [01:02:33] You had to stop researching. Some of our viewers will know that 1993 was sort of a crucial and defining moment for Sunstone in not potentially all positive ways. So can you discuss the events and the environment that led up to August and September of 1993 and your involvement in it, how you were trying to manage it, what you experienced about it, the events themselves and the aftermath? It's a big question, but we've got at least 30 minutes.

Elbert Peck [01:03:17] Well, we'll see.

Elbert Peck [01:03:18] Okay.

Elbert Peck [01:03:20] I don't know how far back you

Elbert Peck [01:03:21] want me to go.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] Give whatever context you think would be informative for future generations.

Elbert Peck [01:03:26] Well, I think there's an inherent institutional

Elbert Peck [01:03:29] conflict between the church and any independent organization. So that's the first context that needs to be put in. I mean, the church was nervous with this People magazine which was a Very faithful Mormony magazine. They were nervous with farms, which was kind of doing their bidding, or at least some of their bidding.

Elbert Peck [01:03:50] They just don't like.

Elbert Peck [01:03:51] They're nervous with Bookcraft, the Mormon publisher, which they bought. Deseret Book, bought out, which was out. Deseret Book booking Deseret Book.

Elbert Peck [01:04:00] They just don't like that.

Elbert Peck [01:04:02] And so that's the first context that they're nervous with any independent thing that they don't have control over. And that's probably just inherent in organizations and for whatever reasons is aggravated in the church. And then the tension with intellectuals goes way back, goes back to the Godbeites, goes back to Scott's grandfather, Scott Kenney's grandfather, E.E. ericson in the 1930s when J. Reuben Clark slammed down his social works and goes back to Fawn Brody and Juanita Brooks and the tension that the church had with dialogue in the 1960s in a priesthood meeting, even President Harold B. Lee counseled people not to read it. And that nervousness was always with Sunstone 2.

Elbert Peck [01:04:54] It was kind of low level on

Elbert Peck [01:04:55] the radar, but it was always there from when Scott went and talked to his old mission president, Boyd K. Packer. And Peggy would have her tensions when she was there. And in the early 80s, Gordon Hinckley as counselor, the only active counselor in the first presidency, would make comments about the critics inside and outside the church. They're nervous of them. They don't appreciate any main contribution they can have.

Tensions with Church Leadership

John Dehlin [01:05:25] Did you say there were actual direct conversations between Scott or Peggy and general authorities during the time Sunstone was alive about Sunstone's role or its approach? Do we know if there were any direct conversations?

Elbert Peck [01:05:37] Did Scott tell you when he went to Boyd K. Packer?

John Dehlin [01:05:39] No.

Elbert Peck [01:05:40] Boyd K. Packer was Scott's mission president.

John Dehlin [01:05:42] Right. He told me that.

Elbert Peck [01:05:43] And when he was organizing Sunstone, he went and had a meeting with Boyd K. Packer.

Elbert Peck [01:05:50] Get Scott to tell you about that

Elbert Peck [01:05:51] or he actually has written about in that little in the Sunstone history on his section, on his time.

Elbert Peck [01:05:58] So yes.

Elbert Peck [01:05:58] And Peggy had talked to some general authorities. Peggy's related to general authorities. Her great grandfather was Heber J. Grant.

Elbert Peck [01:06:10] So when Daniel and I came to

Elbert Peck [01:06:11] Sunstone, we wanted to. To be more faithful.

Elbert Peck [01:06:14] We wanted to have everyone in the tent speaking.

Elbert Peck [01:06:16] We got all these BYU professors coming and we are getting more subscriptions from mainstream Mormons.

Elbert Peck [01:06:24] And Gordon Hinckley was even increasing his comments about his passing comments about critics

Elbert Peck [01:06:31] inside and outside the church. He would say, we don't need them. We don't listen to them. Elder McConkie had given his talk about the caravan moves on and the yapping dogs who get left behind. So Daniel and I decided to go have a meeting with President Hinckley, who was a counselor at the time, and invite him to speak at a symposium.

Elbert Peck [01:07:00] And because I think primarily because of

Elbert Peck [01:07:03] Daniel's dad being a general authority, we got this interview, this must have been in 1987 or 86, one of the two. And President Hinckley took us in his office and sat down, was warm and friendly and congenial. And I proposed the question to him, the invitation to him.

Elbert Peck [01:07:28] He goes, no, no, I've got.

Elbert Peck [01:07:30] I don't need to speak there. Thank you, but no to the invitation. And so I came back again and said, well, you know, you don't really speak in a lot of detail about your reservations about the critics outside the church. Couldn't you come and speak a little more in detail to these people so they could understand your reservations and everything.

Elbert Peck [01:07:49] He says, no, I have all the forms to speak.

Elbert Peck [01:07:51] And I say just what I want to say, you know. And then he turned on us and says, I've got some questions for you.

Elbert Peck [01:08:01] And he says, who called you to this?

Elbert Peck [01:08:06] Who called you to this?

Elbert Peck [01:08:08] You know, yes, a man must be called by authority in order to preach the gospel, you know, who called you to Red Sunstone, you know. And we responded, you know, man must

Elbert Peck [01:08:17] not be called in all things.

Elbert Peck [01:08:18] You can do a lot of things

Elbert Peck [01:08:19] on your own, independent free will and sort of stuff.

Elbert Peck [01:08:21] And he kind of nodded, like, that's a good response. And I can't remember the other questions, but there was, like, on the spot,

Elbert Peck [01:08:27] he would come up with these three or four rhetorical questions he put to us. And he put them in a genial way, like, these are just things I think you need to consider, you know.

Elbert Peck [01:08:40] And then I said, you know, I

Elbert Peck [01:08:42] really do think Sonestone can help the church. And I hit a button with that one.

Elbert Peck [01:08:46] He goes, oh, I've heard that argument before. Peggy Fletcher used to tell me that Sonstone could really help the church. He says. And then he says, you know, but like the time she was friends with Ken Woodward, that religion editor at Newsweek, and she showed him all around when he was doing his article on the MTC and the missionaries. We don't need help like that. And then he says, I know Petra's family. And he recited his genealogy. And her grandfather is a senator, her uncle's a senator. Her mother is a. A Bennett. No, her mother's not Bennett.

Elbert Peck [01:09:27] Yeah.

Elbert Peck [01:09:28] And her Mother's a Bennett, her father's a Fletcher, and they're related to all these people. And grandfather and her uncle, her great uncle was his missionary companion. Gordon Hinckley's missionary companion. And then after reciting her genealogy, which he knew intimately, what you get from

Elbert Peck [01:09:45] all these old time families here in Utah, everyone knows everyone who's connected in their lines. He says, considering who her family is, she should know better.

Elbert Peck [01:09:57] You know, she was. And so the thing ended and Daniel, he was really kind of overcome with love for Gordon Hinckley, who I don't think President Hinckley comes across genially in

Elbert Peck [01:10:08] his speeches and stuff, I don't think is a very demonstrative person in terms of his affections.

Elbert Peck [01:10:13] Daniel went up to him and embraced

Elbert Peck [01:10:15] him and I watched as Pinkley kind

Elbert Peck [01:10:18] of hesitantly embraced him back and so I hugged him too. And then as we left, I remember saying to Daniel as we were leaving

Elbert Peck [01:10:26] the church administration building, you know, well, at that minimum he has to say,

Elbert Peck [01:10:33] I don't agree with those guys and I think they're wrong headed in their approach, but their motives are good and

Elbert Peck [01:10:37] they're trying to do good.

Elbert Peck [01:10:39] And Daniel said, yeah, that's probably what

Elbert Peck [01:10:42] his final conclusion would be.

Elbert Peck [01:10:44] Boy, were we wrong. John Ashton, whose father was Marvin J.

Elbert Peck [01:10:53] Ashton and John was a liberal on

Elbert Peck [01:10:55] our Sunstone board, came back to us

Elbert Peck [01:10:58] a couple weeks later furious. And Marvin Ashton, John Ashton said to

Elbert Peck [01:11:06] us, quit trying to talk to those guys. Just leave them alone. They're never going to get it. And the more you talk to them, the madder you make them, you know. And I was of a different mindset at the time.

Elbert Peck [01:11:17] I said, because we were sending them all complimentary issues.

Elbert Peck [01:11:21] And John said, stop sending them the magazine, he says. And I said, well, you know, if they can't be part of the conversation, at least it's healthy for them to overhear it and to know what people are saying. He says, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. They don't overhear the conversation, they just find things to get mad at. He says they'll look through an issue and maybe there are four or five greatish articles that could appear in the Ensign. And you don't get any credit for this, you just get pinged for the one mad. And the more mad ones they get, I'd say, but isn't it better for them to read the whole article than just to read highlighted parts that someone sends them and where they just read those highlighted quotes? He says, no.

Elbert Peck [01:11:57] You say, no, it's not.

Elbert Peck [01:11:59] They don't think like that. All they do is they're trying to defend the church, and they just get mad that they see things that they think are wrong, particularly if they can't. You won't stop when they tell them to. So Daniel and I thought, well, John

Elbert Peck [01:12:12] probably knows more than we know. After all, his father's an apostle.

Elbert Peck [01:12:19] But we didn't want to just stop

Elbert Peck [01:12:20] sending them the magazines because then they would say, why aren't we getting these anymore? Now they don't want us to know what they're saying.

Elbert Peck [01:12:27] So we found a way to that.

Elbert Peck [01:12:30] We thought we were very clever.

Elbert Peck [01:12:32] We would send out a form letter saying to everyone. You know, we got all these complimentary

Elbert Peck [01:12:38] issues to send to people, and we're very happy to send them, but, you

Elbert Peck [01:12:41] know, we don't want to send magazines

Elbert Peck [01:12:43] to people, to people who don't want them.

Elbert Peck [01:12:46] So here's a return card. Could you just check, please continue sending me this or not, and send it back.

Elbert Peck [01:12:52] So it's their choice, sort of.

Elbert Peck [01:12:55] And I remember the day we got back in Mass, all of the cards

Elbert Peck [01:13:03] from the apostles, they'd all been checked by the same blue pen.

Elbert Peck [01:13:07] It's like they talked about us in a quorum. They said, okay, John, you collect the

Elbert Peck [01:13:10] cards and send them all back. Or the executive secretary.

Elbert Peck [01:13:12] They were all just perfectly checked by the same hand, same pen, same kind of check. Whereas it was a mixed bag from the 70s. Some 70s would say, yes, I appreciate

Elbert Peck [01:13:23] you sending this to me.

Elbert Peck [01:13:24] And others would say, no, no, no.

Elbert Peck [01:13:26] They didn't all get the memo that the 12 did.

John Dehlin [01:13:29] Did you have the signature of the members of the 12?

Elbert Peck [01:13:31] No, no. They had their name on it.

Elbert Peck [01:13:34] I guess maybe we put. I can't remember.

Elbert Peck [01:13:36] We probably put their mailing label on it or something.

John Dehlin [01:13:38] So they were paying attention. They wanted to keep getting it.

Elbert Peck [01:13:41] Now, the 12 did.

Elbert Peck [01:13:41] The 12 all said no. A few 70s said yes.

John Dehlin [01:13:45] The 12 all said no.

Elbert Peck [01:13:46] All said no. All checked by the same pen, all no. It's like one person filled out all of their cards. They turned in all the cards to one person, and they all filled out. I'd like to know that story. But some 70 said yes, although many said no. But it shows you how out of

Elbert Peck [01:14:04] touch some people are. The Relief Society presidency sent the cards back.

Elbert Peck [01:14:09] Checked, yes. With flowing, flattering comments. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:14:12] Thank you.

Elbert Peck [01:14:13] Appreciate the good work you're doing. So all the 12, and most of the general authorities were no longer getting the magazine, which is probably a good thing, but probably too Late then a year later or so 1987, this would have been. No, 1987 was the alternate voices talk

Elbert Peck [01:14:39] by Dallin Oaks warning people against critics inside and outside the church.

Elbert Peck [01:14:47] And then there were changes made in the temple endowment. And a lot of the press reported

Elbert Peck [01:14:55] those changes in the temple endowment around

John Dehlin [01:14:57] 1989, 90, something like that.

Elbert Peck [01:14:58] 1889, 87 was the alternate voices. 89 was the temple endowment. It's like these two year increments as you lead up to the crescendo. And lots of newspapers reported the changes in the temple of Dalmas, the elimination of the blood oaths and the slitting of the throat and stuff, and getting rid of some certain things. We in our little news section often reports how the media are covering the church. And so we. They did a news story about the news coverage of the changes in the temple. We didn't really report in any detail what was happening, what was actually changed in the temple. But after that, shortly after that issue came out with that news story,

Elbert Peck [01:15:52] I

Elbert Peck [01:15:53] was called in by my stake president who upbraided me very strongly for having run that article. So I said it was bad judgment and breaking of my temple covenants.

Elbert Peck [01:16:08] I tried to have a discussion with him like, well, why don't you actually

Elbert Peck [01:16:10] covenant in the temple and what's your covenant not to reveal? We didn't reveal any of those things that didn't matter to him and he really didn't want to discuss it. And he took my temple recommend away.

Elbert Peck [01:16:21] So I went in the next day

Elbert Peck [01:16:22] to the office and told Daniel about that and Daniel and we talked about what to do about that. And then a couple days later I also asked my stake president, now, were you told to do this? Have you had any conversations with anyone about this? He says, no, no one has told me to do this. I haven't received any conversations. It's just for some time I've been concerned about having the stake member of my stake do sunstone. And this has broken the back. But then a few days later, Daniel's state president called him in and had a similar conversation, a little more polite and took Daniel's recommend. So clearly this thing was organized from

Elbert Peck [01:17:01] the top, which later I happened to

Elbert Peck [01:17:03] run into my area president. I was with Gene England at some conference and our area president was there and Gene was saying, hey, let me

Elbert Peck [01:17:10] introduce you because Gene liked this area president to Elbert Pecker on sunstone. And Gene didn't know about our temple

Elbert Peck [01:17:15] recommends being taken, but the area president clearly knew. And he said to me as he Shook my hand. He says, I know about everything that's been happening to you and Daniel. And he says, let me tell you, it came from far above me.

Elbert Peck [01:17:30] So my stake president lied through his

Elbert Peck [01:17:32] teeth to me, which he lost all credibility with me at that moment. Daniel's parents were abhorred that his recommend was taken and really hounded him to get it back. And so because of his dad and mom, Daniel worked very hard in meeting and talking to his stake president. And a year later had his temple recommend restored. Maybe a little after that, Daniel left Sunstone. But I didn't want to ever talk to that stake president again. So we just let it go. I didn't have a temple recommend. Daniel and I had decided to keep that secret. We didn't want to become martyrs for the cause, be publicized about.

Elbert Peck [01:18:16] But a few of our friends found

Elbert Peck [01:18:18] out about it, and our good friend Pat Bagley, the cartoonist, told the reporter at the Tribune. And so she wrote a story about it and it appeared in the press, much to our chagrin. So our temple recommends were taken.

Elbert Peck [01:18:36] And the way I sort of see

Elbert Peck [01:18:38] the church doing these things is they. I think the brethren feel like they sent clear messages through Elder Oaks talk through the taking of the temple recommends. And then there's becoming Hinckley talking to you.

Elbert Peck [01:18:53] That was private. But yeah, I think they feel, and

Elbert Peck [01:18:56] I've heard reports where they say, you

Elbert Peck [01:18:58] know, the true saints, only a whisper

Elbert Peck [01:19:00] and only a hint and they'll follow it. And the more or less faithful ones that even tell them explicitly, they won't follow it anyhow. And clearly we weren't following the whisperings or the gentle counsel of President Hinckley.

Free Expression and the September Six

Elbert Peck [01:19:13] And so I think they're getting more

Elbert Peck [01:19:14] and more frustrated at the same time.

Elbert Peck [01:19:19] They're probably hearing more about Sunstone.

Elbert Peck [01:19:21] The number of our readers have increased to 10,000 by now. I think we have a lot more visibility. They probably have more people in Salt Lake talking and asking them about Sunstone. And also the number of BYU faculty involved in the symposium, which I think one symposium was like 60 or 70.

Elbert Peck [01:19:43] Fact.

Elbert Peck [01:19:43] BYU people were in a symposium program. I think that troubled them too. Like, we're paying these people and we're supporting these people. And so there started to be increased pressure not to let BYU people do it. BYU was going through its

Elbert Peck [01:20:08] 10 year

Elbert Peck [01:20:09] review process and they wrote into it that we don't want people to speak at Sunstone or write for dialogue. But BYU faculty still would speak in large numbers. I think the brother and I were nervous about exposure. And then we published the George P. Lee letters, which I'm sure they didn't appreciate. And then we published the Paul Dunn issue, which they didn't appreciate. So leading up to 1993, there's probably on the Brethren's part an apprehension that we need to do something about Sunstone. Our more quiet, gentle attempts haven't been responded to. And this cancer is growing.

Elbert Peck [01:20:56] I'm sure that all happens. And then comes the Sunstone Symposium of

Elbert Peck [01:21:02] 1993, which turned out to be, I

Elbert Peck [01:21:09] was going to say a little wild, but turned out to have a lot

Elbert Peck [01:21:13] of sessions in it that the Brethren were very upset with. It also happened to coincide with the Salt Lake Tribune deciding to hire a reporter who would have a beat in religion. They happened to hire Peggy Fletcher, and she filed a lot of stories in the newspaper about speeches at the symposium.

Elbert Peck [01:21:35] And as a good journalist, which she

Elbert Peck [01:21:37] is, you cover the controversial stories. You don't cover the boring stories, you know.

Elbert Peck [01:21:41] And so things that would have been

Elbert Peck [01:21:43] contained within the symposium now had a broader announcement in that context.

Elbert Peck [01:21:50] So Dave Knowlton gets off the plane

Elbert Peck [01:21:56] and comes back and gives his talk, which is about what's happening to the church in South America and the missionary program there.

Elbert Peck [01:22:07] And you can almost take the statement

Elbert Peck [01:22:08] on symposia that comes out a month later and identify which symposium session they're talking about point by point. What's his name?

Elbert Peck [01:22:22] Who?

Elbert Peck [01:22:22] The columnist for the Deseret Noose, who's now Jewish and lives in Texas. What's his name?

John Dehlin [01:22:29] Jolly.

Elbert Peck [01:22:30] Yeah, Clifton Jolly.

Elbert Peck [01:22:31] Clifton Jolly proposes something for the symposium. Up until that point, Clifton Jolly had been a columnist for the Deseret Noose, you know, so we thought, great, we

Elbert Peck [01:22:41] want a Deseret News person in the magazine. As an aside, my philosophy in organizing symposiums had been to spend almost all

Elbert Peck [01:22:50] my time recruiting moderates and faithful people, so called faithful, but moderate voices in the church and conservatives, if we could get them.

Elbert Peck [01:22:57] And I did spend a lot of

Elbert Peck [01:22:58] time recruiting the liberals because we got plenty of them coming in on their own.

Elbert Peck [01:23:02] So we're happy. Clifton Jolly makes a proposal.

Elbert Peck [01:23:07] Daniel missed the alert signal when Clifton said to him, I don't. Just before his session, I don't want my session to be recorded, which we don't record, and disseminate them without their permission. So we didn't record it and Peggy

Elbert Peck [01:23:22] didn't report it, but it was still reported back to the Brethren. And in that, Clifton, who knew he was going through a midlife crisis and

Elbert Peck [01:23:29] in the process of leaving the church

Elbert Peck [01:23:31] very angrily, and his whole thing is an attack on the Church and on the church culture. And in the talk, he says, well, even something like Sunstone is just not good. After saying how the whole church was bad and we'd spend our time better if we just paired everyone up and went off in the cars and fucked each other like bunnies.

Elbert Peck [01:23:52] And it goes on and on. And then he crescendos to his concluding line, which is about the current president of the Church. He says, well, Ezra, you fucked us again in the sense of presentation. Which all. But there's some, no doubt, someone in the audience who's taking notes because the Church used to send people to regularly go and report on what happens in every symposium, who sends it back to the Brethren. So the line in the Saint, Maryland, Symposium about speaking Neil and using bad language about the Brethren and stuff, that's Clifton Jolly. And there were other sessions which, if

Elbert Peck [01:24:24] I looked at it, I could remember them all.

John Dehlin [01:24:27] There was the women with Margaret Toscano

John Dehlin [01:24:29] and Lavina and Michael Quinn about.

John Dehlin [01:24:32] Was it if the women have had the priesthood since 1840?

Elbert Peck [01:24:35] That's right. Michael Quinn's statements. Yes, in that session, particularly Michael Quinn's

Elbert Peck [01:24:38] statements in that session, you know,

Elbert Peck [01:24:42] come up. The Brethren had been sort of moving already in places, which is because Margaret

Elbert Peck [01:24:50] Toscano had been called in earlier that year where they explored the possibility of having a disciplinary court about him, about her.

Elbert Peck [01:24:59] And so that August, a couple of weeks, two weeks after the statement on

Elbert Peck [01:25:05] symposia, the Thursday afternoon or Friday after the Brethren meet in their meeting in the room, they issue their statement on symposia. And it's curiously issued by the Council of the First Presidency and the quorum of the 12. Most statements come out from the First Presidency.

Elbert Peck [01:25:28] My take on why that was issued

Elbert Peck [01:25:30] by them is that at that time, you had a weakened prophet pretty much out of it. And when that happens, the authority of the First Presidency and the councilors diminish and you revert back more to collegial. And so they were speaking collectively as 15, because they really couldn't speak on a new topic as three. I happen to be on a family beach trip in North Carolina when that statement is issued. And I get a phone call from Peggy wanting a quote for the newspaper about it.

Elbert Peck [01:26:10] So that's sort of why I think

Elbert Peck [01:26:13] the statement was issued.

Elbert Peck [01:26:14] But all of those reports from the

Elbert Peck [01:26:16] symposium that came at such a time, the Clifton Jolly, the David Knowlton, you're right.

Elbert Peck [01:26:20] The Michael Quinn and the feminist quotes,

Elbert Peck [01:26:22] and there were a couple other. They just said, these people now have Gone over the top.

John Dehlin [01:26:27] I'm sorry to interrupt, but I haven't known the history. And so I always just assumed you, as the editor, would have been reviewing all these things ahead of time and that you would have even been complicit in some of the anger and rage that was starting to emerge. I've gone back and listened to a lot of these presentations and I heard comments about.

John Dehlin [01:26:48] I was trying to use this title, but the editors told me I had to use this title.

John Dehlin [01:26:53] There were three other presentations we wanted to present that were actually more angry,

John Dehlin [01:26:57] but they were denied.

John Dehlin [01:26:58] And so this is the only one we've got. I mean, so all I'm trying to say is, from what I understand, you were really trying to make sure that the tone was respectful or as respectful as possible. But that's just.

John Dehlin [01:27:08] I'm not trying to.

Elbert Peck [01:27:09] No, that's right.

Elbert Peck [01:27:11] That's true.

Elbert Peck [01:27:12] I mean, we didn't know what Dave Knowlton was going to say because I like Dave Knowlton. His anthropological look on Mormonism from South

Elbert Peck [01:27:18] America, which we published several popular articles of his, which I really liked.

Elbert Peck [01:27:22] And he basically came right off the plane and, oh, they threatened Dave Knowlton for harming. Doing damage to the missionaries, potential damage to the missionaries.

Elbert Peck [01:27:31] That was the line from the statement on his.

Elbert Peck [01:27:34] So we didn't know what he was going to say and we didn't really

Elbert Peck [01:27:36] know exactly what Clifton Jolly was going to say, which that's true.

Elbert Peck [01:27:39] That's part of the dynamic of an

Elbert Peck [01:27:41] open forum, is sometimes people say things that are irresponsible.

Elbert Peck [01:27:45] You try your hardest to get responsible

Elbert Peck [01:27:47] speakers, responsible voices, and sometimes that trust is violated.

Elbert Peck [01:27:52] But my personal view was my whole

Elbert Peck [01:27:56] approach to dealing with this tension with the church is I sort of have griefs rather than grievances, and I get

Elbert Peck [01:28:01] sad rather than mad.

Elbert Peck [01:28:02] I want to have.

Elbert Peck [01:28:03] And I like these people and I disagree with them. So I always want us to have

Elbert Peck [01:28:06] to be more respectful.

Elbert Peck [01:28:07] And so we do tone down. Well, the more boring sessions, we try

Elbert Peck [01:28:11] to tone up their abstracts to get

Elbert Peck [01:28:12] people to go to them, but the more inflammatory things, we try to tone down their titles. And I think an open forum doesn't

Elbert Peck [01:28:20] mean anyone can say anything. It means any topic is not off limits. You don't censor because of the topic and you don't censor because of the person. And like Michael Quinn, because you're excommunicated, you can't speak, but you do select

Elbert Peck [01:28:38] based on quality of thought and thoughtfulness and respectful language, because that respectful language builds dialogue, disrespectful language, no matter how

Elbert Peck [01:28:49] right you are, alienates people. And that's always been my inclination to try to get people to do that. And.

Elbert Peck [01:28:56] And I often wonder, did I not censor people more?

Elbert Peck [01:29:01] And would that have served the cause in the longer run? And that's a

Elbert Peck [01:29:09] complex

Elbert Peck [01:29:12] process because Sunstone is this organic social organization where people feel a right to be involved and they're part of the community. And it's hard to tell a Lavina or a person, you can't speak at all. Sometimes you can say that topic, really? Not that the topic is wrong, but you're dealing with it needs to be a little more rigorous and a little more respectful, and you can have that kind of conversation with them, but you

Elbert Peck [01:29:38] don't want to be banning everyone just

Elbert Peck [01:29:40] because you're killing the organization that way rather than killing it the other way. But my own personal style would be much more tempered than some of the things that happened.

Elbert Peck [01:29:50] And that's where we're facilitators of a

Elbert Peck [01:29:51] group of people, and we're not the controllers of the group of people.

Elbert Peck [01:29:55] You can only have such an impact so far. And the Mormon side was getting more and more high pitched, and people were complaining.

Elbert Peck [01:30:04] Whereas early on, behavioral scientists like Barna Ricci, who probably started the whole thing in Sunstone with his institutional individual church, he certainly introduced the phrase the institutional church, where people start talking about the institutional church and you could criticize how we act dysfunctionally as an institution without necessarily criticizing God and the divinity of the church.

Elbert Peck [01:30:31] And that kind of just grew as

Elbert Peck [01:30:32] people were saying, this doesn't help, this doesn't help. And feminists really picked up on criticism of systematic institutional processes. And gays were starting to do the

Elbert Peck [01:30:42] same thing, and then abuse victims were starting to do the same thing. And so you found an audience, you found more speakers who liked to criticize the church organizationally.

Elbert Peck [01:30:56] And some of them were more amateurs than others. And you found an audience who was like, wanting to hear that conversation more. It was kind of a. And so that's building up to the time.

Elbert Peck [01:31:09] And because of the things like alternate

Elbert Peck [01:31:11] voices talk and other talks, you see

Elbert Peck [01:31:15] in the symposium, more and more people

Elbert Peck [01:31:17] defending the rights of intellectuals and more

Elbert Peck [01:31:20] and more of them defending the right

Elbert Peck [01:31:21] to speak freely in the church.

Elbert Peck [01:31:23] And that's kind of an outgrowth from the Camelot years. Although, ironically, the people who fought the

Elbert Peck [01:31:28] Camelot wars, who were a lot of them in the Smith Institute and other people, had pretty well made their peace with the church by the time the September 6 event came along. And they were not very sympathetic with what was happening there. May even thought Sunstone had gone too far. It's hard for people to make judgments because they all make judgments on such limited knowledge. They hear about one session or they hear about two sessions even and say,

Elbert Peck [01:31:55] oh, they're over the top. If they're doing that sort of stuff,

Elbert Peck [01:31:57] they shouldn't be allowed to and they shouldn't be happening. They're judging the whole from a very few.

Elbert Peck [01:32:05] I should tell one more story before that.

Elbert Peck [01:32:07] September 6th, before Daniel left, he'd run into Elder Packer in the park.

Elbert Peck [01:32:14] Elliot Packer had run into his father

Elbert Peck [01:32:16] in the parking lot, but argued with Hartman Richter Jr. For not controlling his son more and getting him to quit Sunstone. And then I guess elder Hartman Rector Jr. Had had a conversation with Elder Oaks about this also. So Daniel got mad because he felt, why are these people giddy on my dad? My dad doesn't have. I'm an adult, my dad doesn't control me. So he called Elder Oaks and asked for an audience with Elder Oaks. This is after the alternate voices talk. So it's maybe 90, maybe 90, 91, maybe I'm getting all these years wrong, but it doesn't matter. So Daniel goes and has his audience with Elder Oaks. And it's very interesting. Elder Oaks had taken the current symposium program and had categorized everything as

Elbert Peck [01:33:06] non

Elbert Peck [01:33:07] theological or non religious. You know, something like environmentalism or something. And then he had, for all the others, he had a spectrum from apostasy to questionable to this to. To this too innocuous, and spread them out.

Elbert Peck [01:33:24] And for a while, Elder Packer came

Elbert Peck [01:33:25] in and joined the conversation with Daniel and Elder Oakes.

Elbert Peck [01:33:30] But Daniel, both of them were pretty

Elbert Peck [01:33:34] clear that on the far right of the spectrum, the far end of the spectrum was talking about the temple. That is the most radioactive thing you can do. And they said any discussion of the temple, any discussion of temple is off limits. And then theology was the next category. And theology is really a questionable project unless you're teaching the theology, the official theology of the church. And then they went on to history and other things. And when they were talking about theology, according to Daniel, Elder Packer said, well,

Elbert Peck [01:34:04] that's what their really agenda is.

Elbert Peck [01:34:06] They want to change the theology of the church.

Elbert Peck [01:34:08] And so I think they clearly see,

Elbert Peck [01:34:10] whereas certainly Daniel and I, most people, maybe most people at Sinson felt that this was a discussion group. They clearly saw it as an advocacy group trying to tell the brethren how to run the church and how it should be changed. So they were very defensive about that.

Elbert Peck [01:34:26] So they issued the statement on symposia, which brought a lot of response.

Elbert Peck [01:34:33] Gene England and Ed Kimball at BYU wrote a letter express explaining how the statement wasn't really about Sunstone because Sunstone doesn't do the things that they list in this statement and published it in the daily universe at byu, which I'm sure made the brethren furious at Gene.

Elbert Peck [01:34:51] And it became harder after that to get subscribers, became harder. And some people cancelled, but not many. To cancel a subscription requires an active act. And most humans are, like ourselves, lazy. They don't cancel a subscription. They just don't renew when it comes around.

Elbert Peck [01:35:16] And so renewals can start to drop after that. And it was harder to get the BYU people who we really liked, partly because they were academics and they raised our level of discourse as well as being moderates. And the year right after the symposium, there were a lot of academics who were mad at the statement on symposia who kind of girded up their loins

Elbert Peck [01:35:38] and said, if they can't do this, sign me up to speak this year there were just a lot of heroics

Elbert Peck [01:35:43] of faculty who would call and insisted to be in the symposium that year. And that was nice.

Elbert Peck [01:35:50] But that didn't last long.

Elbert Peck [01:35:51] It just became a hard battle. The sociology department at BYU once issued a letter from the whole department defending their participation in Sunstone because they thought it was good. But then a year or two later, when they had two empty vacancies in the department and neither of their candidates were accepted by the board of trustees, and they were told, well, we're basically punishing you for Sunstone, you know.

Elbert Peck [01:36:17] And so the people who didn't participate

Elbert Peck [01:36:20] in Sunstone really got, in the case of the faculty who did and said, you know, you're just killing our department. You know, we've got to be able to hire people and stuff like this.

Elbert Peck [01:36:28] And so there were a lot of

Elbert Peck [01:36:29] really hard institutional processes at BYU that made even the tenured, even most tenured people, feel like that they. It just wasn't worth the hassle of speaking at Sunstone. And anyone who didn't have tenure, I mean, that was like death. And later it really became part of the review process. You wouldn't even be given a slot at BYU if you'd spoken at Sunstone or you really had to show make a huge argument why you should be hired. So BYU pretty well dried up. And also other some mainstream Mormons

Elbert Peck [01:37:08] to

Elbert Peck [01:37:09] do something at Sunstone, to cross the line and say, I'll participate in Sunstone was Always an affirmative act.

Elbert Peck [01:37:16] But the emotional, social, theological, institutional threshold

Elbert Peck [01:37:21] of doing it was pretty low. And it didn't require a huge step to do that.

Elbert Peck [01:37:25] But afterwards, you were almost making a

Elbert Peck [01:37:28] statement about who you are vis a vis the church. And it's a huger wall to cross to do something with Sunstone.

Elbert Peck [01:37:34] And for most people, it's just not

Elbert Peck [01:37:36] worth even that internal emotional hassle, or

Elbert Peck [01:37:39] maybe the hassle with your spouse or.

Elbert Peck [01:37:42] Or your job. Some people told me who'd spoken years at Sunstone, I like Sunstone. I want it to continue. But I'm online to be a mission president in a year or two, and I don't want to ruin that chance. And I can't really blame them for making that kind of choice. But in the process, the breadth of the symposium narrowed and the number of subscribers to the magazine narrowed and the number of people who left who were angry at what was happening increased. And so you had the organizations like, oh, what's the organization? The Lavina,

John Dehlin [01:38:30] the one about abuse.

Elbert Peck [01:38:32] Yeah, but organizational abuse. It's kind of like the aclu. It'll come to me.

Elbert Peck [01:38:38] Shows you how far I pinned from all of the sources. So they rose up and presented more and more papers. And so the discussion, which had a defensive tone to it all of defending

Elbert Peck [01:38:48] our right to speak and defending this sort of. Would come up.

Elbert Peck [01:38:52] And those were hard times.

Elbert Peck [01:38:54] We lost a lot of support. And in the end, the brethren won. They certainly achieved what they wanted. They knocked Sunstone off of a growth model. And. And I think perhaps this was inevitable in some way. Certainly the details of the September 6th, the people being called into the excommunications, which was in 93, I guess the statement symposia came in 91, 93, Those.

Elbert Peck [01:39:31] Episode that was a hard time. That was the symposium again. And there I don't think you had a whole joint statement, a decision from the brethren of what to do. I think you had primarily Elder Packer deciding, well, they still haven't learned their lesson from the statement on symposia, but things start downhill after the statement on symposia. So we need to really show these people that there is a line and some of them have crossed it. So they picked out those people.

Elbert Peck [01:40:01] Some of them were for symposium things, some of them for articles that they had in the newspaper, quotes that they said in the newspaper. Some were just generally about their involvement. But one by one, person got called in for court.

Elbert Peck [01:40:19] And here again, see, the church is not happy with their independent voices. Whether you're conservative or Liberal because Avraham Gileadi, he was a personal friend. He was a personal friend of mine and I'd had him speak at Sunstone on occasion. But he's not a Sunstone kind of person at all. He's a very conservative theologian. I personally don't agree with his theology but he was slapped because they didn't like his very conservative interpretation of Isaiah.

John Dehlin [01:40:47] Who were the others and why were they? Who were the other? September 6th and why were they.

Elbert Peck [01:40:52] I think Lynn Whitesides who had been

Elbert Peck [01:40:54] a chair of the symposium for years,

Elbert Peck [01:40:55] I think it was for some statements

Elbert Peck [01:40:57] she said about women in a Tribune article.

Elbert Peck [01:41:00] Maxine Hanks I don't know the particular

Elbert Peck [01:41:03] thing but she said many incendiary comments in the newspaper as well as at the symposium.

John Dehlin [01:41:11] Her book on women in authority.

Elbert Peck [01:41:12] I don't think she was excommunicated for that book. That had been out for quite a while. But she was very much an advocate and almost an agitator like in the Mormon Women's Forum and some other things. Margaret Toscano for her theology, Lavina for her chronicling of the organizational abuses of the church. Michael Quinn for his statements on the church which were at the recent symposium. Oh, and that we published an article earlier about that same time by him in the magazine. What was that article about?

John Dehlin [01:41:48] Post manifesto polygamy?

Elbert Peck [01:41:49] No, that was early on. That was dialogue. That was ten years before that.

John Dehlin [01:41:55] It wasn't on spiritual gifts for women and that whole deal.

Elbert Peck [01:42:00] I can't remember what it was on. But with Quinn we published other articles. We published his article on baseball baptism which is a hard hitting history of the church in England in the early 60s.

John Dehlin [01:42:18] Magic, magic and folk magic stuff.

Elbert Peck [01:42:21] Yeah, they'd been early but the church

Elbert Peck [01:42:22] didn't like that either. And they certainly didn't like his hierarchy books. And there are plenty of things by Michael Quinn that I'm sure.

Elbert Peck [01:42:28] And by this time they'd already forced

Elbert Peck [01:42:29] him out of BYU and they were just now telling him enough is enough. We don't want you to have the imprimatur of being a believing member of the church. You can be a believing non member. All those people who got their notices and we hear about them one by one.

John Dehlin [01:42:48] Paul and Paul.

Elbert Peck [01:42:49] Oh of course, Paul Toscano, which he. His articles often about power and the church became increasingly strident and harsh about the brethren.

Elbert Peck [01:43:05] So they all got their articles one

Elbert Peck [01:43:07] by one and that was a hell of a month. Lynn Whiteside's court was first and we met. It was in the avenues and we met at the chapel, and we're on the street, and we had all these candles that we put on this little retaining wall.

Elbert Peck [01:43:21] It's got wax all over it.

Elbert Peck [01:43:23] And we spent the night singing hymns as someone would go in and out of the church to find out what was happening with her trial. Eventually she was disfellowshipped. Michael Quinn and Maxine Hanks chose not to go to their courts, so we didn't have vigils for them. Lavina wasn't going to go to her court, but she scheduled a little faith service vigil. Not at the time of her excommunication. It was at the White Chapel, up across the street from the state Capitol. They rented it, and we all went into that. And she had all these speakers, and we sang tons of hymns. And it was quite an electric evening, and highly charged and very passionate. People sing. I've never heard people sing hymns with such gusto. And then Paul's court at his stake center in Holiday

Elbert Peck [01:44:20] there.

Elbert Peck [01:44:20] The church by then had become more accommodating. They allowed us to run an extension cord out into the parking lot, and the court went on for the longest time. And there was an electronic piano there, and Ardine Watts pounded out hymns while everyone sang them with gusto. And people would come and bring donuts. And it was kind of a fun, bittersweet, dark comedy of a night while we waited to hear. And eventually it took so long, people went home, and then they came back in the morning, still waiting to hear the results of the Politus Conway excommunication. But it ground everyone down. Whoever thought you'd be standing holding vigils in church parking lots.

Elbert Peck [01:45:05] And the singing of the hymns took a bittersweet tone on those nights. And, you know, were we protesting the church, or we were just having solidarity with Michael Quinn, with Paul Toscano? You know, it was a fuzzy line. I remember writing about the ambivalence in the magazine and then getting this letter from Scott Card saying that he never could do anything for Sunstone anymore as long as excommunicates would speak at Sunstone like Levina. And he lamented that I was protesting my church in a parking lot.

Elbert Peck [01:45:42] Then a few years after that, symposiums

Elbert Peck [01:45:44] were very hard to recruit people for, And people became weary of Mormon studies a lot in the Sunstone group.

Elbert Peck [01:45:58] And many of them probably already were

Elbert Peck [01:46:00] on a journey that would eventually take them outside of Mormonism. That's a very common journey of intellectuals in any religious tradition. And this accelerated that journey for a lot of people. So a lot of the regulars no longer cared. And so you call them to even introduce people, and they go, oh, I'm tired of all this. I'm not going to the symposium. So you couldn't recruit new people to be in Sunstone.

Elbert Peck [01:46:26] The threshold was now so high. New people were just like, I don't

Elbert Peck [01:46:29] want to do that. And the old regulars were either tired or weary, or many of the people were just protecting their jobs at BYU or just not wanting to be part of it. And there were some who said, you know, I think the brethren are right. I think this has gone too far, and they go back to more mainstream Mormonism. But all of those trajectories reduced the pool of people who were doing Sunstone. Those were very, very difficult, very difficult years.

Financial Struggles and the Decline of Sunstone

Elbert Peck [01:47:02] And they were compounded by the fact

Elbert Peck [01:47:04] that Sunstone's finances were again in the toilet when Daniel left after his five years. He left in 91 or something like that.

Elbert Peck [01:47:14] He left right after, shortly after the

Elbert Peck [01:47:16] statement on symposia, or a year after that. Sunstone was flush

Elbert Peck [01:47:25] and totally out of debt.

Elbert Peck [01:47:26] Paid off all the debts we inherited from Peggy, which maybe were like $200,000 if you had them all up, it was a lot of money. The last of them were a $5,000 debt here and a $10,000 debt here. Daniel would. He was so incredible on the phone, negotiating with people. We'd owe them $15,000, and he'd say, well, I can pay you 3,000 now, or you'll just have to wait, and you may have to wait forever. And they'd really bargain them down to almost nothing to pay off the debts.

Elbert Peck [01:47:57] But we'd hired a publisher who wasn't

Elbert Peck [01:48:01] really fit for the job. She's an incredibly wonderful person, great skills, but this wasn't her job. And after her year, we were back in debt, owing tons of money to the IRS again and owing a bunch of other money. And when she left, we didn't have any money to hire a new publisher. So I ended up doing the one thing I said I'd never do when Peggy offered me the job. I was editor and publisher because we

Elbert Peck [01:48:27] didn't have any money to hire anyone. And that was sort of the beginning

Elbert Peck [01:48:34] of my emotional decline.

Elbert Peck [01:48:37] I was energetic for those first few years, worked myself hard to pay off the IRS debt. And then we discovered not only did

Elbert Peck [01:48:45] we owe maybe 4, 40, $50,000 to the IRS, but she hadn't paid the hotel bill from the last symposium. And they wouldn't let us sign up for that.

Elbert Peck [01:48:56] They wouldn't let us hold the symposium

Elbert Peck [01:48:58] the next year until we paid off the old one and I had to pay the next year's symposium in advance.

Elbert Peck [01:49:03] So while I'm paying off the irs,

Elbert Peck [01:49:04] I have to pay two years of symposium and I have no money. But I did have a Sunstone American Express card. So sometimes I would like pay the IRS with American Express card, which would hold me for a month and then I'd have to like raise $10,000 to pay it off for the next month.

Elbert Peck [01:49:18] So then I could charge $10,000 more

Elbert Peck [01:49:21] to the IRS and eventually that little Ponzi game switch of bait to just hold everyone at bay for a year or two. I wasn't able to make my payment to American Express for a couple months. Eventually I did, and so they cancelled our card and I had this huge negative credit rating. But we made it through. So it was unfortunate that we were really in a tight ship when 1993 came around again. And that was to have to dig ourselves out a second time was just very, very hard. And with so many people who would personally express me goodwill but not be willing or able or want to do anything with Sunstone, that was very difficult.

John Dehlin [01:50:14] Tell us about learning about Daniel's Peasant.

Elbert Peck [01:50:17] Well, once again I was at a family beach trip in August in North

Elbert Peck [01:50:21] Carolina, and once again I had left Sunstone. So maybe it was 2002 or maybe the summer of 2001, 2001 or 2002. And so once again, Peggy Fletcher calls me for a quote, for a news story, and she's the one who tells me Daniel has died. That was very hard because Daniel was such a force of life. He greeted whatever he greeted. It was with wholeheartedness and massive energy. And I remember biking with him once. I was kind of a lazy, casual biker. And he said, let's go on a bike trip once. And as Pat Bagley once said, Daniel's idea is fun. It's like going up a 90 degree wall on your bike. He was just energy.

Elbert Peck [01:51:14] He loved outdoors.

Elbert Peck [01:51:15] He'd go skiing with his son and dog up Mill Creek Canyon every Sunday morning. That sort of became his church during the last few years of his life. And he loves to go mountain climbing and all sorts of outdoor activities. And he was doing, I guess, an activity that was a little too extreme for his ability or a little foolhardy. He was climbing with a person up a cliff, as I understand it, that was very steep.

Elbert Peck [01:51:46] This person who he was with was a very experienced climber, but who also liked to push things to the envelope. And Daniel was Following him. And apparently that person just heard a, uh, oh, and then that's all. Daniel fell and died in the fall off the cliff.

Elbert Peck [01:52:04] He has a beautiful wife, Lisa, and he had. They basically had two families. They had two children early on and then they had two children. It was a decade in between the first group and the second group. That was very hard.

Elbert Peck [01:52:19] I saw him in the parking lot at the symposium just before he died. And we spoke for like an hour, hour and a half. I think it was 2002, just standing in the parking lot. It was really a great conversation. And then he was gone in a couple of weeks.

Elbert Peck [01:52:37] That's how Daniel died. But he was living life to the fullest or a little over the top, but great guy, you know, you'd hate him to dim his light and live a longer life. So dim. But damn it, you wish he been just a little more careful.

Reflecting on Sunstone's Legacy and Lasting Need

John Dehlin [01:52:56] So as you look back now, are you proud of your time at Sunstone? Do you look back at with joy? How do you feel upon reflection, both personally and for the church about your contributions, yours and Dana's contributions?

Elbert Peck [01:53:12] Personally, it was a great time, you know, I mean, it was often very hard work and long hours and lonely nights in dark rooms working at computers and stuff.

Elbert Peck [01:53:22] But

Elbert Peck [01:53:24] it was such a rich time. You know, I'm kind of a little intellectual and so. And I'm a generalist. And so Sunstone allowed me to dabble intellectually in all sorts of disciplines from sociology to literature to history to anthropology. As you edit this and network with

Elbert Peck [01:53:42] these people, I met so many great

Elbert Peck [01:53:45] people and so many rich friendships and just wonderful souls who really cared passionately about things. And I mean, what a great job. I like a creative side and the magazine allowed some creativity and the pulling together of a magazine and particularly a symposium and is not just a logistical and organizational task, but there's a creative side of who would be the best respondent to this paper. And you try to identify just the right person from a different discipline who could put a different light on it. That's such a fun, creative thing. And you take the joy and the

Elbert Peck [01:54:18] one miracle that happens when those two

Elbert Peck [01:54:20] people do things and you're really just the behind the scenes person.

Elbert Peck [01:54:24] But that was great.

Elbert Peck [01:54:25] I loved doing all that, made great friends and worked hard and it was fun intellectually. My journey, my religious, spiritual journey, while I was a lot more Mormon at the beginning than I am now or was at the end, journeyed through that. And in that process, I sort of paralleled Sunstone altogether, which causes I Think some of the tensions in Sunstone. Now, if you look at the sunstone that Scott Kenney organized and the people who were there at Scott Kenney's day and even the early Peggy days, they were all true believers from byu and they were looking. When they say they want to do arts, they want to have arts that celebrate and explore Mormonism and history that celebrates and explore Mormonism and this sort of stuff.

Elbert Peck [01:55:13] And those people at that time would have never considered publishing many things by excommunicated Mormons or things that would undermine the faith. But they wanted critical studies and the

Elbert Peck [01:55:26] trajectory of all those people and all

Elbert Peck [01:55:28] the many other people who joined in that path have come now. So you have a very diverse sunstone. You have a sunstone made up of people who are true believers and go to church and pay tithing and go to the temple, people who sure believe but are not very active, and people who are cultural Mormons and people who are post Mormon or non Mormon or ex Mormons. And then you want to bring in

Elbert Peck [01:55:49] the non Mormon scholars. And it's such a diverse group.

Elbert Peck [01:55:53] And you know, as Art Bassett once said in an article he wrote, how much tolerance can we tolerate? You know, this is a much more diverse group. I came to see it, and I'm sure it's all politics is personal, so all philosophy is. I came to see this as Sunstone as an open forum, which I base that on the discussion of open forum in current American politics, which is you have a place where people come and talk and you want honest discussions from everyone who's interested in this conversation, whether they be non Mormon scholars or believing Mormons, this sort of stuff. And if they're civil and kind and

Elbert Peck [01:56:37] respectful and want to pursue.

Elbert Peck [01:56:38] Pursue knowledge and stuff, then things can happen here. And I would make the argument that

Elbert Peck [01:56:43] even a true believing Mormon believes that

Elbert Peck [01:56:46] that sort of space is healthy, even

Elbert Peck [01:56:48] though they're making space for people who aren't believing or almost who are atheistic.

Elbert Peck [01:56:53] And Gene England really came to tag on that, like, yes, that's what we

Elbert Peck [01:56:58] want and the ideal.

Elbert Peck [01:56:59] I think that's what Sunstone should be.

Elbert Peck [01:57:02] I don't really think it's possible for

Elbert Peck [01:57:03] one organization to be an open forum. You know, maybe it's possible for one country to be an open forum, but some people like the Nation magazine and others like the National Review, and they're going to go to ones they like. It's really hard to get those kind of people to talk together in the Gene England ideal, and they're not going to like it. People and they're going to be excommunicating each other within that, within the larger national forum. And one organization can't do that all. And I experienced that dynamic all the time.

Elbert Peck [01:57:31] There were during the first half of

Elbert Peck [01:57:33] my 15 year tenure at BYU. I went down to BYU every week like I did at 70s Press, and

Elbert Peck [01:57:38] would roam the halls and drop in

Elbert Peck [01:57:40] on faculty and just really immerse myself.

Elbert Peck [01:57:42] And I became.

Elbert Peck [01:57:45] I was surprised initially at how parochial even our best academics can be. You know, people would say to me, you know, that person over there in the English department, they don't understand things and they're wrong when they write about that, they're wrong about that. And they're really almost apostate. And we use such strong terms.

Elbert Peck [01:58:04] And they'd say, but when it comes to this area, their area of discipline,

Elbert Peck [01:58:09] the church is wrong and need to correct it.

Elbert Peck [01:58:11] And so many people see, except for the area in which they think about

Elbert Peck [01:58:15] carefully, everything else being okay in the church, which was a very interesting dynamic.

Elbert Peck [01:58:20] Related to that is everyone draws the

Elbert Peck [01:58:23] line of appropriateness just on the other side of where they are.

Elbert Peck [01:58:28] You know, like that card, that's fine,

Elbert Peck [01:58:30] but this is off limits.

Elbert Peck [01:58:31] It's sort of right where they are. So they have a hard time tolerating

Elbert Peck [01:58:34] someone who they see is on the other side. And there's always that kind of finger pointing and judgment going on. Very few people who would embrace them all. I guess the people who were so embracing of different views became my heroes. The Gene Englands and the Bonarichis, they had a lot more tolerance for that. But organizations get their vitality and maintain

Elbert Peck [01:58:58] their strength in life because a group of people are committed to what that

Elbert Peck [01:59:02] organization is about and they push it forward. And usually it's because they had a little cause aspect.

Elbert Peck [01:59:08] And I didn't like seeing Sunstone of

Elbert Peck [01:59:10] advocacy of certain causes.

Elbert Peck [01:59:12] We'd allow advocates to speak within our forum, but the only thing Sunstone was

Elbert Peck [01:59:15] an advocate for was an open, honest forum of civil discussion by responsible and thoughtful voices.

Elbert Peck [01:59:24] And actually there aren't that many people

Elbert Peck [01:59:25] who are committed to that idea. It's such an abstract idea. Most people are committed to their hobby

John Dehlin [01:59:31] horse,

Elbert Peck [01:59:33] whether it be gay rights or feminist issues or even Mormon history or something like that. It's a hard dynamic. And so I don't know where Sunstone's

Elbert Peck [01:59:44] going to go with those issues in this new Internet age.

John Dehlin [01:59:47] Do you think, if you were to give your best pitch for a continuing need for a place like Sunstone, what would you say today?

Elbert Peck [02:00:02] I think it's the job of an editor.

Elbert Peck [02:00:04] Well, there's two needs. Everyone craves community.

Elbert Peck [02:00:08] And one of the things that Sunstone gives, particularly through the symposium and people attending the symposium and now, I guess through Internet connections, is that connection with a person, with an individual, and you like being with them or you like talking to them online. And Sunstone helps provide that need. And that's an essential part of any sort of thing. But the other part is, I would say, I guess I use the word editor. And by that I mean, like, there's

Elbert Peck [02:00:38] a lot of

Elbert Peck [02:00:40] words out there in this world. And I take the New Yorker magazine because I know that the editors have discriminating tastes, and they may not print everything I would want to read, but usually what they print is something that I would be comfortable reading because it's rigorous in its thought, or it's good fiction or it's good poetry or its thoughtfulness.

Elbert Peck [02:01:05] So the editor is the filter. And anyone who's tried to look up

Elbert Peck [02:01:09] anything on Google knows the task, overwhelming task, of saying, oh, there are 30 million pages about this topic. I just want something that's of quality.

Elbert Peck [02:01:20] And if Sunstone, as good magazine editors do, becomes a filter so that you know that if I want to find

Elbert Peck [02:01:29] something else, if I go to Sunstone, there's a filter. I don't just have someone's offhanded blog,

Elbert Peck [02:01:36] and I don't have something. Whatever is through the Sunstone and perimeter

Elbert Peck [02:01:40] is filtered, and it's of quality of thought.

Elbert Peck [02:01:43] And maybe if it's a controversial topic,

Elbert Peck [02:01:45] it will provide me

Elbert Peck [02:01:48] quality of thoughts,

Elbert Peck [02:01:49] you know, a plurality of different perspectives

Elbert Peck [02:01:52] that are all thoughtful. That helped me sort of see the thing from many different perspectives. And it's a surehand. You know, you go to Wikipedia, but you wince because you're not sure whether it's right or not. Which is why I wish Encyclo Britannica were online free, because they referee and judge. Sunstone in the Internet age, I think,

Elbert Peck [02:02:16] needs to be that kind of filter and editor. And so when you enter it, you enter a thoughtful conversation.

Elbert Peck [02:02:22] I know that's hard to do because

Elbert Peck [02:02:26] to make those things work, you want to be interactive.

Elbert Peck [02:02:32] And if you're being interactive, then you

Elbert Peck [02:02:34] allow a lot of voices and comments and you get a lot of dumb comments. But there must be a way to

Elbert Peck [02:02:41] allow people to go to the quality

Elbert Peck [02:02:42] and still allow interactive conversation. But that's the role of an organization like Sunstone is a filter as well as an axis and points you to things that you want to find out.

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