DiaBLOGue

RadioWest intervews Board Member Gregory Prince on his upcoming Dialogue Fall article on “Gerontocracy and the Future of Mormonism.” From the RadioWest page:
Of the major U.S. religions, the LDS Church is the only one whose top leader serves until he dies. That wasn’t an issue in the 19th century when medicine rarely prolonged life after a serious illness. But today, researcher Gregory Prince says that as Church presidents live longer, they’re more likely to experience age-related conditions like dementia. It’s something he explores in a forthcoming article, and Tuesday, he joins us to explain what this “gerontocracy” means for the future of Mormonism.

Cross posted on The Exponent Blog
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought turns 50 this year. To honor this legendary Mormon publication, I’ve collected from various Exponent bloggers some thoughts about Dialogue‘s role in their lives and about Dialoguearticles that have particularly impacted them. MayDialogue continue on for another 50 years… and many, many more after that. 
 
April Young Bennett:
While researching background information for a Relief Society lesson, I read Jessie L. Embry’s 1982 Dialogue article, “Grain Storage: The Balance of Power Between Priesthood Authority and Relief Society Autonomy“. It was such an eye-opener for me! The article presents compelling evidence that Emmeline Wells and her counselors did not choose to sell several decades of grain storage to the United States government, but rather had their grain storage program sold out from under them by priesthood leaders without their knowledge, something I had not read before in either church published or independent histories. Daughters in my Kingdom, for example, says “the Relief Society sold 200,000 bushels to the United States government.”

Dialogue and the Dangerous, Beautiful Possibilities of Mormon Literature by Michael Austin
Cross-posted at the Association of Mormon Letters blog.
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought turns 50 this year. This is important for a lot of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with Mormon literature. But some of the reasons have a lot to do with Mormon literature, perhaps the most important being that the advent of Dialogue fifty years ago fundamentally altered the possibility space in which Mormon literature could occur.
This happened in two ways. In the first place, Dialogue was the first venue that regularly discussed Mormon literature as an academic discipline. During its first twelve years, Dialogue published four special issues devoted to Mormon literature  (here, here, here, and here), the last one being the proceedings of the inaugural meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters—an organization that was created largely by Dialogue’s earliest contributors.
To understand the significance of this, we have to imagine a world without blogs, e-mail, comment sections, Amazon, or Wikipedia.

Cross-posted at Professor Park’s blog. 
You do a lot of couch surfing as a broke college student. As I was traveling to conferences and archives I relied on the generosity of friends as well as friends-of-friends. I also tried to tap into the vast Mormon network. All to save a buck. I met a lot of great people this way, but it’s always an anxiety-ridden process because you know you are relying on the good will of strangers. There can always be moments of awkwardness.
But I remember once arriving at someone’s house, being welcomed into their living room, seeing an entire run of Dialogue issues displayed prominently on their shelves, and immediately feeling at home. The very presence of those print copies assured me that they were extended family. Even if they hadn’t read all of the articles between each of the covers, mere possession implied an allegiance to a particular sub-culture within the Mormon faith.
Being a Mormon of a certain stripe can be a lonely affair. Especially if you live away from the Mormon belt—where even if there’s a dogmatic and orthodox culture, there’s still a presence of like-minded members—you might be separated from other people anxious to discuss the complexities of being Mormon and modern. This problem has been partly alleviated through the bloggernacle and social media, but before those digital networks Dialogue was the primary mode of progressive Mormon belonging. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the journal in the Mormon tradition’s transformation over the past half-century. That alone justifies its celebration.