“I've been coming to Sunstone now for, I think, 15 or 16 years," said Bryan Buchanan, Mormon history enthusiast, "It's a good long chunk, and it's so fun to see Mormons of all different sorts interacting together.”
But hold on a second. Mormons of all different sorts? If you haven't been the the Sunstone Conference before, your confusion can be forgiven.
One attendant at the conference this year was a member of the Reformed Latter-Day Saints church, more commonly known as the Community of Christ.
"I think this is a very important space," she said. "So that everybody who has different ideas and different thoughts about religion can come together and share those thoughts and have it be a place where everybody is heard; there's not one right way to believe.”
At the Sunstone Conference in Salt Lake City, academics, community organizers, and artists led dozens of sessions united around the same theme: “There is more than one way to Mormon.”
Eric Phillips, writer and director, presented at the conference this year alongside a panel of folks who produced a podcast detailing the patterns of sexual abuse within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
“I see the conference as a deconstruction of what is this church," said Philips. "What is its history, what is its culture, and looking at it with clear eyes, instead of looking at it through whatever lens church leaders present to us to look at it through.”
While this conference was steeped in history, it also looked to the future. This was powerfully demonstrated by one group of community organizers representing the political group Mormons for a Better World.
Jay, a member of the group, describes their core identity as "Mormon theology that values the church's epistemological standard of continuing revelation.”
Mormons for a Better World are at this conference because they want to interpret the teachings of their faith to create a more progressive, inclusive society.
“If a person wants to use Mormonism to construct a worldview that is conservative," said Jay "that is, you know, evangelical-ish that oppresses people, or that is racist, you can use scriptures to interpret the world that way."
"What we're here to say is that, if you find that progressivism is more appealing to you, the plight of marginalized community matters to you, then there are plenty of Mormon scriptures and quotes from Mormon leadership that can help you support that worldview.”