To come back on my earlier remark.
Yesterday I was at my lds friends place and saw that they had a subcription to a magazine called LDS LIVING.
Maybe some of you know it.

WEll someting like that in the ’80′s wasn’t allowed by the local Frankfurt ( the churches headquarters in Europe) offices, because of the decline of memberships of the official magazines.

The Horizon of Wilfried Decoo was a magazine like LDSLIVING and very adapted at the dutch/flemish live of lds members. Futuring acticles of members who they got involved wiht the church. Translations of lds authors etc etc.

Over here in Europe we gett dictate’s from Frankfurt offices now names are mention just said “Frankfurt dicided that……” YOu need to obbey that just like if something comes from Salt Lake.

Ofcourse the church cannot stop a privat run magazine like brother Decoo was doing at the time.
But I am sure that they have talked with him and the good person he is I am sure he listen.

If any doubt this . Brother Decoo is premanat blogger on this site and you reach as such.

Here in Holland or Europe there is still to much focus on Utah and all the experts overthere.
There is no mormon art in any for or fashion or a libarated think thank.
Such things are not promoted or sponsered or devalloped.

So yes It could be that I understand everything you all write about not good, but I see a big big gap here in Holland.
I am sure if I would to start a magazine like the sunstone or something like that and people would start to read I will be called to the stakepres office and in worscase scenario be excumunicated.

This last fear of mine has stopped me over the years to devallop my writing talent, but now I am in the phase of my live that I do not care about it anymore. And yes in the fall I will be starting my first writing course.

Elizabeth

This is part of the problem, in my opinion. Meridian caters to its band of faithful, the Sunstone/Dialogue/BCC set caters to its band of faithful on its own set of hot-button issues, and so forth. With the relatively small size of the English-speaking Mormon population (as compared to First Things readership), it’s just unsustainable. What’s the percentage of the Catholic or Jewish communities that subscribe to First Things or Commentary? Probably not that great. It’s a numbers things.

At any rate, I think that at present, the Bloggernacle fills this space at present. What’s the size of the active Bloggernacle community, with respect to the English-speaking active LDS community?

“Mormon intellectual” is commonly defined as “intellectual willing to discuss Mormonism” as opposed to “intellectual who is Mormon”. The problem with saying that there aren’t enough “Mormon intellectuals” is that the count only includes the first kind. I assure you that there are plenty of baptized-Mormon, intellectuals who can contribute to the discussion but are turned off by Dialogue/Sunstone and don’t “get” the Bloggernacle. How do you get those people to come in from the cold? A great deal of them would willing, able, and capable of discussing First Things-ish topics within a Mormon community, but are uncomfortable with the “Mormon intellectual” litmus tests. Sadly, I find many of them migrating toward Meridian.

I think it boils down to a numbers thing.

What keeps bringing me back to First Things is the way writers there frequently take up issues in the public square, then discuss them from a Christian perspective. Their erudition is engaged in a conversation about important questions of the day.

I would like to see Times and Seasons posts that critique culture and politics from a Mormon perspective. I’m a recent and thus far intermittent reader, so maybe more of that has happened than I’m aware of. . .

I think there are two schools of thought – Those that think CES should be largely devotional plus a handful of basic doctrines, and those that agree that the Spirit must be there, but that no one or no society can be saved any faster than he or they gain and implement knowledge of the celestial order of things. That requires a lot more study and pondering than the informal catechism of the Church.

Nate said, The real problem that would-be Mormon intellectuals face (and I place myself in this category) is not that we are the victims of crushing repression or social ostracism. Rather, the problem is that we really don’t have all that much to say. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Cassius, the fault is not in the stars of Mormonism but in ourselves that we are underlings

I think this is the main problem right now. This is why the “inside baseball” discussion you talk about are so unappealing, not the fact that they are “inside baseball”, but that they are just so uninsightful so much of the time. We rather need more of these “inside baseball” discussions so that we can get used to dealing constructively with disagreement, and build a corps of people with a shared sense of what Mormonism means for the wider world.

I don’t think institutional discouragement or apathy (by, say, BYU or the church) are the main problem in a direct sense, but I think if we ever want to develop a corps of thinkers with the horsepower to carry off such a magazine we need to have more institutional support for education, the kind of education that will produce such people. Even for that it is hard to say whether we have the intellectual horsepower among us at the moment. But there are a couple of things happening to support and nourish young people with an interest in the life of the mind.

Why isn’t Times and Seasons the Mormon First Things? It is the closest thing we have, isn’t it?

As Matt says, the market is just too small. Look at how Sunstone and Dialog struggle.

I would disagree with Matt in that I don’t think Meridian attempts to be a First Things. It’s clearly aimed at a different target audience. The editorial choices are just very different. It’s more aiming at something in between First Things and say that of LDS Living.