DiaBLOGue

As a sixth-generation Latter-day Saint, I’ve grown up with Church history—it was a frequent topic of conversation whenever our extended family gathered. My second-great-grandfather, George Whitaker, wrote of working as a teamster for Parley P. Pratt when Nauvoo was abandoned in February 1846. Essentially, he’d crossed the ice with a load of Brother Pratt’s wives. The story of George Whitaker is well known. Carol Madsen used his story as an introductory chapter in her book Journey to Zion: Voices from the Mormon Trail.Other family histories whetted my appetite for more information about Church history.

In her editorial in the very first issue, Claudia Bushman wrote “Exponent II, posed on the dual platforms of Mormonism and Feminism, has two aims: to strengthen The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to encourage and develop the talents of Mormon women.” Years later, in an attempt to be welcoming to women wherever they were on the spectrum of belief and activity in Mormonism, we, as a board, vehemently discussed and re-wrote our mission statement, changing the phrase “Our common bond is our commitment to the Church and the women of the Church” to “Our common bond is our connection to the Church and our commit ment to women.” So, even though we questioned and diluted somewhat that first platform, we have always firmly adhered to the second, that of feminism. But Claudia was unknowingly throwing down a gauntlet by declaring our “modest little paper,” as she called it, to be feminist.

Last year was the fortieth anniversary of Exponent II, a “modest, but sincere,” as we called it, little newspaper begun in Massachusetts written by and for LDS women. That brings it within two years of the lifetime that the old Woman’s Exponent was published from 1872 to 1914. All indicators suggest that Exponent II will last longer than the earlier paper.