What Should I ask?
What’s an interesting interview question to ask a bunch of Mormons?
Here’s the background: As you know, I’m going to the Sunstone Symposium next week, and — since my panel topic is “Bridging Stereotypes through Blogging” — I thought it might be fun to bring some of my Mormon conference experiences to the atheist community. So I went to the Minnesota Atheists to offer to do a post-Sunstone interview for their radio show (which I was on last year, which you can listen to here). The Minnesota Atheists suggested that instead I take some recording equipment and report from the conference. (Naturally, I would not record any sessions.)
When I explained that the Sunstone Symposium gathers up some of the most diverse voices in Mormonism (from the polygamists to the liberals), one of the people in charge of the program suggested that I do a series of short interviews, asking a bunch of different people the same questions, perhaps one serious question and one funny question.
Any ideas?
Is there a single spiritual goal Mormons have?
What is it?
Is there one action a Believer can take to get there?
Yes, and On the issue of Gay marriage. Through the debating of this issue in the blogsphere, I read some L.D.S. responses where members who were otherwise ok with gay marriage give Thomas Monson’s opinion more weight. Why go against what you feel is right for someone else?
I guess one good question might be…what is it about Mormonism that gets you going (especially to symposia like Sunstone, regardless of activity, strength of belief, orthodoxy, etc.,)
I think that if you asked a wide enough range of people, you could get a variety of answers, see if it’s something unique to Mormonism, something that can be “sought” by others (for example, can atheist groups create this kind of camaraderie?) or if it’s something that *should* be sought out by others (if everyone’s sticking along because of some kind of Stockholm Syndrome…that’s not good, haha)
What does being a Mormon mean to you? (In a short response/one sentence) This seems like a good one for Sunstone, kind of in the same vein as what Andrew said.
What do you think has changed in mormonism (culture and doctrine) over the years? What have you seen change? What do you think will encourage more change in the future (do you want to see changes in the future?)
What kind of Mormon are YOU?
Thanks, guys — these are great!
I think I’ll probably ask something like “What does it mean to be Mormon/LSD?” “What kind of Mormon/LDS are you?” “Why?”
LSD eh? 😉
lol, a bit of a slip there… 😉