Feminism
Introduction
Dialogue has played an important role in Mormon women’s history, including marking the birthplace of modern Mormon feminism in 1971, and continuing to be a hub for groundbreaking work on women’s history, feminist theology, and cultural analysis of gender in the LDS tradition. There are at least eight issues dedicated to this topic from 1971 to 2019, in addition to many standalone articles. Find these below.
Dialogue Topic Podcasts: Feminism
Featured Issues
Dialogue co-founder and co-editor Eugene England was based at Stanford in California, but he visited Cambridge, MA, in 1970. Claudia Bushman remembers walking with England and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich on the Harvard campus one evening and pausing near the Widener Library: “I just blurted out that there should be a women’s issue of Dialogue and that we had a group who could put it together.” According to Bushman, England liked the idea: “I expected more of a hard sell,” she recalled, “but he just immediately agreed and said to go ahead with it.” The result was the now famous “Pink Issue” of Dialogue. It was edited, illustrated, and written by that group of women in Boston. It marks the official beginnings of modern Mormon feminism. Devery Anderson has written: “The pink issue was the first public sign that a feminist movement within modern Mormonism had been born.” The editors of Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, Joanna Brooks, Rachel Steenblick, Hannah Wheelwright, wrote, “The ‘Pink Issue’ of Dialogue, as it would later be known, struck a warm, frank, and bold note to mark the beginning of a new era in Mormon women’s history”
The Winter 1981 Issue is the ten-year anniversary of “Pink Issue”. Sometimes called the “Red Issue,” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Claudia Bushman return. In the intervening ten years, both finished PhDs with six children and became professors. Feminism continued to transform society and rip at the church over the last decade. In the Red Issue, there is an attempt to reset after the tumultuous decade by declaring what a Mormon feminist is: “A feminist is a person who believes in equality between the sexes, who recognizes discrimination against women and who is willing to work to overcome it. A Mormon feminist believes that these principles are compatible not only with the gospel of Jesus Christ but with the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “ This Winter 1981 Issue was more than just a nice retrospective. It also set out a bold new agenda after ten years of feminist thought. The next generation wanted to talk about even more substantive issues. And right here in Dialogue, forty years ago, Mormon feminists broke another taboo—raising the question of women and the priesthood for the first time in print.
Summer 1994 brough another special issue on women’s topics. In it, Janice Allread published her foundational piece on Heavenly Mother, “Toward a Mormon Theology of God the Mother.” History still needed (and still needs) to be expanded in Martha Sonntag Bradley’s “Seizing Sacred Space,” Women’s Engagement in Early Mormonism and David Hall’s “Anxiously Engaged: Amy Brown Lyman and Relief Society Charity Work, 1917-45”, which informed his later full-length biography of Lyman, an indispensable work of what women’s authority in the church was like before correlation.
In the Fall 2003 Issue we get another full issue on women’s issues. It was exactly a decade after the September Six, as well as after more excommunications, like Janice Allred’s later that decade. This issue hints at the continuation of old questions, as well as starting to take the question in new directions. There are contributions from more than twenty scholars on three topics: Women and the Priesthood; Women and Missions; and Sexuality and the Women’s Movement in Mormonism. Some of my good friends have articles in this issue, which came out just as I was finishing my masters degree. There are also essays from others assessing what had happened to the movement, including a discussion of Lavina Fielding Anderson’s excommunication. Claudia Bushman also offers a key essay on the origins of Exponent II and the early days of Mormon feminism in Boston. The turn to sexuality I think marks an especially interesting development. Melissa Proctor’s “Bodies, Babies, and Birth Control” is still one of the most important articles on this topic. In it, Proctor studies the messages sent to women, officially and unofficially, by the Church and how those messages were received. For those interested in the women in the priesthood question, this issue provides important milestones for that conversation. In the panel, Dialogue published Todd Compton’s “‘Kingdom of Priests’: Priesthood, Temple, and Women in the Old Testament and in the Restoration,” William D. Russell’s “Ordaining Women and the Transformation from Sect to Denomination,” and Barbara Higdon’s “Present at the Beginning: One Woman’s Journey.” Looking at the history and contemporary conceptions of priesthood, the panel gave new looks at women and the priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Bushman’s 2003 essay on the history of Exponent II set the stage for really telling the history of modern Mormon feminism. Forty years after that conversation in Harvard Yard, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich published “Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism.” This article is really crucial because it retells LDS feminist history that had often seen LDS women as reacting to feminist thought, or being influenced by it, but Ulrich shows that Mormon women were co-creating feminist approaches to religion. She writes, “Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it. Constructing a timeline of key events reinforced the point. In 1972, the year Rosemary Radford Ruether introduced feminist theology at the Harvard Divinity School, Mormon feminists were teaching women’s history at the LDS Institute of Religion in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” It also offers a fuller and more contextualized history of early Mormon feminist groups, and some reflection on early Mormon feminist interaction with Dialogue. Mormon women were passive actors, but leaders and co-creators of religious feminism.
Winter 2014: For an excellent roundtable discussion, check out “Three Meditations on Women and the Priesthood” (Winter 2014): C.J. Kendrick, Rosalynde Welch, Ashmae Hoiland. And a year before her and co-editors put out Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, Joanna Brooks published “Mormon Feminism: The Next Forty Years” (Winter 2014). Brooks talks about the period from 1970s Mormon feminism in Boston to the present and imagines what needs to be part of the future. She identifies five areas for Mormon feminism: theology, institutions, racial inclusion, financial independence, and spiritual independence.
The Spring 2019 Issue carefully considers the temple as women discuss recent changes in beautiful and profound ways. Includes Kathryn Knight Sonntag discussing “The Mother Tree: Understanding the Spiritual Root” and Jody England Hansen considering “Women and the Temple.” It also presents a special interview with Maxine Hanks. This issue also includes nine poets such as Rachel Steenblik, Mette Harrison, Linda Kimball, and Teresa Wellborn.
Spring 2020: In this issue, guest-edited by Exponent II, we asked women to write about claiming power. We hoped that writers would think creatively about the idea of power, including traditional forms of authority in an organizational hierarchy but also going beyond this sometimes-limiting definition. We wanted women to examine their engagement of power within their families, wards, workplaces, and selves. We were interested in the way Mormon women are using their power to empower other marginalized groups. Includes pieces by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Claudia Bushman, Amanda Hendrix-Komoto and many more.
Featured Articles
She Simply Wanted More: Mormon Women and Excommunication
Amanda Hendrix-Komoto
Dialogue 56.3 (Fall 2023): 109–123
As an adult, I learned that 1993 represented a kind of death for members of the Mormon studies community. Since the 1970s, Latter-day Saint women had been challenging the limited role the Church provided for female spirituality.
In September 1993, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excommunicated several scholars who had challenged the Church’s positions on gender, sexuality, and the family. In her 1992 book Women and Authority, for example, Maxine Hanks had argued that the refusal to grant authority to Mormon women created a church that denied female spiritual power and expected women to find meaning in a male god with a “male body.” She believed that women would experience the recognition of female spiritual power not as “something new” but as “a loosening of bonds” that would allow them “to use something they had always had.” It would be “a spiritual liberation.”[1] D. Michael Quinn, another excommunicated member, had written an article demonstrating that the practice of polygamy within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had not ended with the Second Manifesto.[2] Lavina Fielding Anderson had spent hundreds of hours compiling examples of Latter-day Saint leaders using their ecclesiastical power to intimidate intellectuals into silence.[3]
Like many scholars of my generation, I had no idea that these excommunications happened or how important they would become. My mother had just decided that I was old enough to stay home alone, and I reveled in my freedom. I spent much of my time after school watching Murphy Brown and Ghostwriter. I was obsessed with Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Rufio from Hook. My life, of course, was not perfect. The year 1993 was also a time of mourning for my family. My uncle Christopher died in November of that year at the age of seventeen. My great-grandfather died less than a week later. Although he was ninety-four, his death hurt just as much as Christopher’s. My great-grandfather was one of the few people who seemed to understand me. He complimented my drawing skills, told me that I had a beautiful singing voice, and encouraged my love of reading.
As an adult, I learned that 1993 represented a kind of death for members of the Mormon studies community. Since the 1970s, Latter-day Saint women had been challenging the limited role the Church provided for female spirituality. The excommunication of Sonia Johnson, an outspoken ERA supporter, was the Church’s response to the challenges the feminist movement offered the Church in the 1970s and 1980s. According to poet and former Dialogue editor Mary Bradford, Johnson became “a folk figure of sorts”—“a litmus test of loyalty on the one hand and a symbol of revolution on the other.” She claimed that Johnson was “almost as ubiquitous as the Three Nephites.”[4] In 1995, the Church responded to the expansive theology of feminists like Maxine Hanks and Margaret Toscano with “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” It reiterated the Church’s fundamental belief that “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God” and that gender roles are eternal.[5]
As time passed, the September Six became a symbol of the numerous ways in which the Church disciplines Latter-day Saint intellectuals. Kristine Haglund has written that “the ugliness of the 1990s” meant it was “never again . . . possible for an earnest Mormon with academic ambitions and liberal political inclinations to believe that her religion, her scholarship, and her activism belong integrally to Mormonism.”[6] Although Haglund was writing specifically about the literary scholar Eugene England, many people regarded the September Six with a similar sense of loss. Their disciplining caused an entire generation of Latter-day Saint scholars to pause before writing. Although I was only a child when they occurred, the disciplinary hearings shaped my own experience as a Mormon historian. This essay is my attempt to reckon with the legacy of the Church’s decision—both in my own life and for the field of Mormon studies as a whole.
As with many scholars of Mormonism, for me, Mormon history is family history. I was born into an interfaith family. My father was a seventh-generation Latter-day Saint whose ancestors had converted in upstate New York before moving with the Saints to Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and finally, Utah and Idaho. My mother’s family, on the other hand, combined Catholicism with folk belief in the fae. Her grandmother held meetings of the Portneuf Community Club in her home. Members read tea leaves and performed “spiritual work.”
According to my mother, my father left the Church long before it instigated disciplinary measures against the September Six. He had served as president of his high school seminary in the late 1970s but lost his faith after the death of his newborn child in 1981. Family members describe him flitting between atheism, a kind of reconstructed Mormonism, and general Protestantism for much of their marriage. By the time I was born in 1983, he no longer felt the need to bless his children in an LDS ceremony or raise them within the Church. He and my mother divorced four years after I was born. My mother’s family distrusted the Church after experiencing years of discrimination as one of the very few non-Mormon families in the area. My father was largely absent. As a result, I learned about the Church as a child through the writings of people like Sandra and Jerald Tanner. The Christian bookstore in the heavily LDS town of Pocatello, Idaho, had an entire section devoted to anti-Mormon pamphlets. As teenagers, my friends and I giddily perused its shelves. It felt like a transgressive act against a Church that controlled our lives even though none of us were members or believed its truth claims.
It wasn’t until graduate school that I became interested in a more nuanced version of Mormon history. I first started attending the annual meeting of the Mormon History Association (MHA) in 2009. The consequences of the Church’s decision to discipline the September Six shaped my perception of Mormon studies. The University of Michigan immersed its graduate students in a culture that valued women’s studies. At the Mormon History Association, however, I discovered that the aftermath of the September Six had decimated the study of Mormon women’s history. Although there were important women scholars present, including Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Laurie Maffly-Kipp, and Sarah Barringer Gordon, men far outnumbered women at the meeting.[7]
By the 1970s, Latter-day Saint women had begun to question the Church’s privileging of male careers and spiritual power. Claudia Bushman has described the trepidation and excitement with which Latter-day Saint women greeted the wider feminist movement. She gathered with a group of educated women in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1970s. In her introduction to the 1971 “pink issue” of Dialogue, Bushman wrote that they had “no officers, no rules and no set meeting time.” They rejected many of the claims of the nascent feminist movement but “read their literature with interest.”[8] The women who produced the pink issue of Dialogue insisted that they were not radicals and claimed to be “shocked by [the] antics” of their more “militant” sisters.[9] Their rejection of extreme “antics” distanced them from controversial figures like Sonia Johnson. Over time, however, the discussions the group had about women’s lives radicalized some of the participants. Bushman described the excitement of being part of a group of women who were “working together, engaged in frontline enterprises, researching, thinking, and writing for ourselves.” She wrote just a sentence or two later that they “felt invincible.”[10]
While Latter-day Saint women were meeting in Boston, a similar group coalesced in Utah County. Feminists from Orem, Provo, and the surrounding areas met at Brigham Young University before being banished to the public meetings spaces in Provo in 1979 for their support of the Equal Rights Amendment. Like their Boston sisters, the women did not see themselves as “radicals.” According to historian Amy L. Bentley, the women “identified strongly with the LDS Church and concerned themselves with ‘family’ issues.” Their meetings covered a wide range of topics—“sex discrimination, depression among Mormon women, political lobbying, the rhetoric of polygamy, female bonding and networking, a history of sexual equality in Utah, growing up black in Utah, suicide, rape, planned parenthood, historian Juanita Brooks, the legitimacy of responsible dissent, the John Birch Society, and the pamphlet ‘Another Mormon View of the ERA.’”[11] Together, the women who met in Boston and Provo created a definition of faithful Mormon feminism. Faithful feminists argued for change and sought to improve women’s lives. They did not, however, challenge the legitimacy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or its emphasis on traditional family values.
The growth of feminist consciousness among Latter-day Saints led to a flowering of women’s history. A coterie of Latter-day Saint scholars combed the archives of the Woman’s Exponent to understand the place of Mormon women within the first wave of feminism. In 1982, Kenneth Godfrey, Audrey Godfrey, and Jill Mulvay Derr published Women’s Voices, a collection of excerpts from women’s diaries that allowed Latter-day Saints to see the contributions that their grandmothers and great-grandmothers had made to the Church.[12] In time, the flowering of Mormon women’s history provided evidence that Latter-day Saint women had once spoken in tongues, healed each other’s bodies, and even prophesied. Inherent in many of these women’s scholarly writings in the 1980s was an acceptance of Church hierarchy—they weren’t “radicals,” they insisted. Although these Mormon feminists believed that Church had previously minimized women’s experiences in its history, they reaffirmed the authority of male leaders. Individual Mormon feminists could publish about their own lives and research early Mormon women’s history. They did not, however, explicitly challenge the Church’s authority.
In the 1990s, some feminists began to pull on the more radical threads of Mormon feminism. In 1992, for example, Margaret Toscano called for the “transformation of the entire Mormon priesthood” so that it recognized both male and female spiritual power. She believed that the resulting Church would be a better reflection of the kingdom of God, a place she believed was populated with “priestesses and priests, with equal right to know and speak in the name of the Godhead.”[13] Although she was not excommunicated until 2000, she too faced a disciplinary council in 1993. The Church’s distrust of feminists extended to some of the women who had been involved in the groups formed in Boston and Provo in previous decades. The same year that the Church excommunicated the September Six, Brigham Young University denied a proposal to have the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich present at its Women’s Conference. Ulrich had been a prominent part of the Mormon feminist movement in Boston and received a PhD from the University of New Hampshire. Her work on colonial New England marked her as an important scholar of early American material culture and women’s lives.[14]
In choosing to discipline feminists like Margaret Toscano and Maxine Hanks, Church authorities demarcated the boundaries of acceptable Mormon thought. They suggested that scholars could not directly challenge the Church hierarchy or its emphasis on the traditional heterosexual family. Sara Patterson has written that excommunication allowed Mormon scholars to reject the association of adulthood with heterosexual timelines marked by marriage and reproduction.[15] The non-Mormon scholar Sara Jaffe has argued that the milestones white Americans associate with adulthood are “based on outdated assumptions about class and gender.”[16] Both authors use the term “queer time,” theorized by Jack Halberstam in the early 2000s, to represent a future in which heterosexual timelines no longer define individual lives.[17] Toscano and others called for a radical reimagining of the Church that undid hierarchies so that men and women could flourish. They imagined a future in which marriage and family would not be the only meaningful demarcations of people’s lives. In September 1993, however, the Church reasserted the importance of the family and submission to the Church hierarchy. The publication of the family proclamation two years later underscored this point.
The lack of women scholars that I saw at MHA in the 2010s seems to me directly related to these excommunications. Mormon studies already offered few rewards to women. Although there were women faculty at BYU and within the Church History Department, hiring committees often preferred to give positions to men, whom they assumed were primary breadwinners and thus needed income to support their families. Women also faced limited opportunities for advancement within BYU and the Church History Department. The threat of excommunication made Mormon history even less attractive as an area of study. By the 2000s, it was apparent that there was a second “lost generation” within Mormon studies. This time it was made up not of novelists from the period following World War II but of the scholars who might have been if the Church had not excommunicated the September Six.[18]
The arrested development of Mormon feminism has been deeply painful for Mormon women. In preparation for this reflection, I spent several days reading the memoirs and blogs of Mormon feminists. So many of their stories are about the difficulty of fitting their lives into the narratives that the Church has written for them. In East Winds, for example, Rachel Rueckert describes the painful disjuncture that she felt between her desires for her life—which included traveling to India, walking the Camino de Santiago, and ultimately becoming a writer—and the expectation that she marry young.[19] In some ways, Rueckert’s writing is a plea that she be allowed to play in “queer time”—to develop herself even if it comes at the expense of a traditional Mormon life. Likewise, a blogger at Feminist Mormon Housewives lamented in an essay on being a stay-at-home mother that she had never been encouraged to “[consider] anything else.” She found that the Church’s insistence that being a stay-at-home mother was the “best thing” for her children was a hollow promise. Although she wanted to fulfill the expectations others had for her, she found the thought that being a mother to small children was the “best thing” that would ever happen to her “depressing.”[20] She simply wanted more.
In addition to reading published narratives, I also asked Mormon women on Twitter what they felt was the biggest tension between their faith and their feminism. The people who answered expressed frustration with the limited vision that the Church offered them—a vision that they did not believe was in accordance with Mormon theology or scripture. One woman wrote that the Church’s theology offered women an opportunity to be “co-creators and co-equal gods” but was unable to fulfill the grandeur of those promises in everyday life. Instead of honoring the creative nature of female spirituality, the Church often “siloed” women and limited their power.[21] Another woman saw the “logical conclusion” of Mormon doctrine as “full partnership and equality” for men and women. Instead of being offered a breathtaking vision of female potential, however, she found herself mired in a “sexist, patriarchal structure that defies both [Mormon] doctrines and the teachings of Christ.”[22] I came to see these women as petitioners asking the Church to allow them to experience the fullness of the gospel. Latter-day Saint feminists have found themselves in an awkward position. Although they believe that the LDS gospel offers an expansive view of the eternities in which women have equal power to men, they find the current reality of the Church restrictive.
As an outsider to Mormonism, I hope that feminist scholarship continues to flourish—for personal as well as academic reasons. Because I cannot be excommunicated, I often comment on women’s reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ issues in the LDS Church. But insiders need to be able to do this work as well. Of course, the excommunication of the September Six did not fully arrest the development of Mormon feminism or the study of Mormon women’s history. The current generation of Mormon scholars has built upon their work. Scholars like Christine Talbot, Andrea Radke-Moss, and Rachel Cope have continued to write interesting books about Mormon history, even though they are some of just a few women doing so.[23] Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A House Full of Females has shown scholars outside of Mormon studies what a close, careful analysis of polygamous family structures can tell us about nineteenth-century America.[24] Hannah Jung has examined how the federal government disciplined Mormon families using birth certificates, gossip, and formal legal structures.[25] Blaire Ostler and Taylor Petrey have applied queer theory to the study of Mormonism.[26] Rachel Hunt Steenblik and Kristine Wright write beautifully about feminist theology and ritual practice.[27] Recently, the work of Elise Boxer, Farina King, Sujey Vega, and Janan Graham-Russell has challenged Mormon scholars to take a more intersectional approach to their studies and recognize the inflection of race in Mormon women’s experiences.[28] Joanna Brooks, whose 2012 memoir The Book of Mormon Girl made her the face of Mormon feminism, has published extensively on the Church’s role in promoting white supremacy and settler colonialism.[29] Kate Holbrook’s work integrates material culture and food into the history of Mormon women, while others like Amy Hoyt and Melissa Inouye have expanded their studies beyond the United States.[30]
When I first began studying Mormon history in the late 2000s, it seemed as though the Church was opening up its history. Other scholars frequently asked how the Church had responded to my scholarship. They assumed that the Church hierarchy would try to deny me access to the archives and limit my ability to ask important questions about race and sexuality. I told anyone who asked that I found the Church to be open and welcoming. Recently, however, I feel like the Church hierarchy is retrenching. Discussions of scholars being asked to make their research conform with LDS doctrine and calls for “musket fire” make me pause when I answer that question now.[31] In the past, I felt as though the Church was completely open to discussing difficult questions, and the specter of the 1993 excommunications was receding. I’m not so sure anymore. It’s possible the September Six represent both the past and future of Mormon studies.
This saddens me. I want my Mormon sisters to have access to a fulfilling theology. While I was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, my own church congregation called a divorced single mother as our pastor. Because I had grown up in conservative southeastern Idaho, I had few examples of female spirituality or leadership as a child. As a child of divorced parents, I believed my family was broken. In my new pastor’s sermons, she spoke about the pain of her husband’s rejection and the peace that she found in a gospel that promised she was loved in her imperfection. She talked about the challenges of being a single mother and the difficulty she had in seeing herself as beautiful. She saw me in my uncertainty and assured me that I was loved as I was. Her words were gospel for me in a way that no man’s could have been.
Mormon theology offers a similarly empowering vision to its women members. For some women, Rachel Hunt Steenblik’s poetry has captured their experience of hungering after God. She describes women as searching for God “the way a baby roots for her mother’s breast.”[32] This vision is somewhat limited. It does not necessarily capture the experiences of childless, queer, or trans women, or even women who find breastfeeding to be an awkward, cumbersome experience. For many women, however, reading Steenblik’s poetry is an experience in being “seen.” The threat of Church discipline, however, is always present. As I read the memoirs, poetry, and tweets of Mormon feminists, what I want most for them is a church that recognizes their prayers and their activism as a fundamental part of the kingdom of God rather than a challenge to the Church hierarchy and potential disciplinary council.
Note: The Dialogue Foundation provides the web format of this article as a courtesy. There may be unintentional differences from the printed version. For citational and bibliographical purposes, please use the printed version or the PDFs provided online and on JSTOR.
[1] Maxine Hanks, “Introduction,” in Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, edited by Maxine Hanks (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), xxvii–xxviii.
[2] D. Michael Quinn, “LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 9–105.
[3] Lavina Fielding Anderson, “The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology (1992),” in Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, edited by Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, and Hannah Wheelwright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 189–92.
[4] Mary L. Bradford, “The Odyssey of Sonia Johnson,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 14, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 23.
[5] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign, Nov. 2010, 129.
[6] Kristine L. Haglund, Eugene England: A Mormon Liberal (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021), 23.
[7] For their works, see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1991); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017); Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri, eds., Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America, 1630–1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp and Reid L. Neilson, eds., Proclamation to the People: Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008); Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, ed., American Scriptures: An Anthology of Sacred Writings (New York: Penguin Books, 2010); Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010).
[8] Claudia Bushman, “Women in Dialogue: An Introduction,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 6, no. 2 (Summer 1971): 5. I have a copy of the pink Dialogue and have reflected on this quotation before. I was reminded of it, however, while preparing for this essay by reading Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 43, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 49.
[9] Bushman, “Women in Dialogue,” 5.
[10] Claudia Bushman, “My Short Happy Life with Exponent II,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 186, quoted in Ulrich, “Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism,” 52.
[11] Amy L. Bentley, “Comforting the Motherless Children: The Alice Louise Reynolds Women’s Forum,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 23, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 47.
[12] Kenneth W. Godfrey, Audrey M. Godfrey, and Jill Mulvay Derr, eds., Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992).
[13] Margaret Toscano, “‘Put on Your Strength, O Daughters of Zion’: Claiming Priesthood and Knowing the Mother (1992),” in Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, edited by Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, and Hannah Wheelwright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 188.
[14] “Brigham Young Rejects Pulitzer Prize Winner as Speaker,” Chronicle of Higher Education Feb. 24, 1993.
[15] Sara M. Patterson, “The Straightjacket of Times: Narrating D. Michael Quinn,” in DNA Mormon: Perspectives on the Legacy of Historian D. Michael Quinn, edited by Benjamin E. Park (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2022), 40.
[16] Sara Jaffe, “Queer Time: The Alternative to ‘Adulting,’” JSTOR Daily, Jan. 10, 2018.
[17] J. Jack Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: NYU Press, 2005).
[18] For an article on the original “lost generation,” see Edward A. Geary, “Mormondom’s Lost Generation: The Novelists of the 1940s,” BYU Studies Quarterly 18, no. 1 (Jan. 1978): 89–98.
[19] Rachel Rueckert, East Winds: A Global Quest to Reckon with Marriage (Newburgh, Ind.: By Common Consent Press, 2022).
[20] Thunderchicken, “The Imbalance of Stay-at-Home Motherhood,” Feminist Mormon Housewives (blog), Mar. 23, 2015.
[21] Kristine A. (@_Kristine_A), “Our potential versus our reality. Co creators and co equal gods working together to plan form and create without false hierarchies imposed,” Twitter, Dec. 29, 2022.
[22] Joy Grows (@thrifty_joy), “the biggest tension for me is that we don’t actually follow our doctrines to their logical conclusion—full partnership and equality,” Twitter, Dec. 28, 2022.
[23] Christine Talbot, A Foreign Kingdom: Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852–1890 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Andrea Radke-Moss, “We Also Marched: The Women and Children of Zion’s Camp, 1834,” BYU Studies Quarterly 39, no. 1 (Jan. 2000): 147–65; Andrea Radke-Moss, “Silent Memories of Missouri: Mormon Women and Men and Sexual Assault in Group Memory and Religious Identity,” in Mormon Women’s History: Beyond Biography, edited by Rachel Cope, Amy Easton-Flake, Keith A. Erekson, and Lisa Olsen Tait (Lanham, Md.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017), 49–82; Rachel Cope and Zachary McLeod Hutchins, eds., The Writings of Elizabeth Webb: A Quaker Missionary in America, 1697–1726 (State College: Penn State University Press, 2019).
[24] Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870 (New York: Vintage Books, 2017).
[25] Hannah Jung is currently a PhD candidate at Brandeis University, where she is finishing a dissertation on secrecy within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
[26] Blaire Ostler, Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction (Newburgh, Ind.: By Common Consent Press, 2021); Taylor G. Petrey, Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
[27] Rachel Hunt Steenblik, Mother’s Milk: Poems in Search of Heavenly Mother (Newburgh, Ind.: By Common Consent Press, 2017); Rachel Hunt Steenblik and Ashley Mae Hoiland, I Gave Her a Name (Newburgh, Ind.: By Common Consent Press, 2019); Jonathan A. Stapley and Kristine Wright, “Female Ritual Healing in Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 37, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 1–85.
[28] Elise Boxer, “‘The Lamanites Shall Blossom as the Rose’: The Indian Student Placement Program, Mormon Whiteness, and Indigenous Identity,” Journal of Mormon History 41, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 132–76; Farina King, “Diné Doctor: A Latter-day Saint Story of Healing,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 54, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 81–85; Sujey Vega, “Intersectional Hermanas: LDS Latinas Navigate Faith, Leadership, and Sisterhood,” Latino Studies 17, no. 1 (Mar. 2019): 27–47, and Janan Graham-Russell, “Roundtable: A Balm in Gilead: Reconciling Black Bodies within a Mormon Imagination,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 51, no. 3 (2018): 185–92.
[29] Joanna Brooks, The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of An American Faith (New York: Free Press, 2012); Joanna Brooks, Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Gina Colvin and Joanna Brooks, eds., Decolonizing Mormonism: Approaching a Postcolonial Zion (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018).
[30] Kate Holbrook, “Radical Food: Nation of Islam and Latter-day Saint Culinary Ideals” (PhD diss., Boston University, 2014); Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye and Kate Holbrook, eds., Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart (Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2023); Caroline Kline, Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2022); Amy Hoyt, “Maternal Practices as Religious Piety: The Pedagogical Practices of American Mormon Women” in Women and Christianity, edited by Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan and Karen Jo Torjesen (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2009).
[31] Tamarra Kemsley, “BYU Faculty Members Urged to Align Their Teaching, Research Better with LDS Tenets,” Salt Lake City Tribune, Jan. 29, 2023; Haley Swenson, “Crushingly Cruel,” Slate, Sept. 3, 2021.
[32] Steenblik, Mother’s Milk, 148.
[post_title] => She Simply Wanted More: Mormon Women and Excommunication [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 56.3 (Fall 2023): 109–123As an adult, I learned that 1993 represented a kind of death for members of the Mormon studies community. Since the 1970s, Latter-day Saint women had been challenging the limited role the Church provided for female spirituality. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => she-simply-wanted-more-mormon-women-and-excommunication [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-11-14 02:38:43 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-11-14 02:38:43 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=34921 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Quoted at the Pulpit: Male Rhetoric and Female Authority in Fifty Years of General Conference
Eliza Wells
Dialogue 55.4 (Winter 2021): 1–50
While much has changed for women in the Church over the last half-century, much remains the same. Women consistently make up less than 3 percent of quotations in general conference. They are still described in terms of their appearance and relationship status; sermons about how they should live are the domain of male authority; their own representatives in the Church spend much of their time at the pulpit repeating male leaders’ words.
Listen to the Out Loud Interview about this article here.
In her 2020 address to the worldwide membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Primary general president Joy Jones declared, “President Russell M. Nelson taught, ‘It would be impossible to measure the influence that . . . women have, not only on families but also on the Lord’s Church, as wives, mothers, and grandmothers; as sisters and aunts; as teachers and leaders; and especially as exemplars and devout defenders of the faith.’”[1]
Though it certainly may be impossible to measure women’s influence on families, it is to some extent possible to measure the influence that leaders like Jones and Nelson believe women have on the Church. Jones’s speech, delivered at the Church’s semiannual general conference, exemplifies a long tradition of Latter-day Saint rhetoric, particularly in her use of quotation. In her eleven minutes at the pulpit, Jones quoted current Church president Russell Nelson four times, previous Church presidents three times, scripture six times, and a previous apostle once. Additionally, in the middle of her speech, a video played of Nelson speaking to a group of children. In all, though almost one third of Jones’s address about women’s roles was focused on other people’s voices, women were not among her selected sources.[2]
This article argues such quotation choices reflect Church leaders’ views on authority. When the most powerful leaders in the Church use their limited time in the spotlight to highlight someone else’s words, they send a signal about how that source should be perceived. The quotation patterns in fifty years of general conference addresses reveal that, despite increasingly vocal commitments from Church leaders to the equal though separate status of women and men, those leaders continue to treat female voices as less authoritative than male ones.[3] Church leaders quote men more than sixteen times for every one time they quote a woman. Even taking into account the expected effects of the Church’s overwhelmingly male scripture and all-male priesthood hierarchy, women are quoted less, cited less, and acknowledged less than one might expect from an organization whose president recently told women, “We need your voice teaching the doctrine of Christ.”[4] This article contends that their treatment of these voices is indicative of women’s status in the Church more broadly.
Background and Research Methods
General conference plays an important role in the Church and in its members’ lives. It is frequently the site of development and affirmation of Church doctrine, policy, and culture. At conference, leaders deliver what are understood to be divinely inspired messages on how members should act and think about their relationship to God. Members are frequently instructed in Sunday meetings in the weeks preceding conference to pray to receive answers to personal questions during conference, with the idea that God will speak to them individually through their highest leaders. Afterwards, the sermons are published in Church magazines and used as the lesson material in local meetings for the next six months, ensuring that what is said in general conference makes its way through the entire Church.
As such, studying conference talks is critical to understanding Latter-day Saint theological and practical beliefs. It is also significant when considering women’s place in the Church. While Mormon feminists have worked tirelessly to amplify women’s voices, the voices that define the Church and its interests to members continue to be the primarily male speakers in general conference. The status and experiences of women in the Church cannot be fully understood without examining the Church’s most powerful men and their messages as delivered in its most influential forum.
In particular, such a study requires paying attention not just to the content of general conference talks, but to how that content is packaged. As sociologists Gary and Gordon Shepherd note in their groundbreaking studies of general conference, meaning is found not just in the content and themes of any given talk but in the “rhetorical modes in which themes are expressed.”[5] Women’s place in the Church can be understood not just through what leaders say to and about women—and they say a lot!—but in how they frame and support what they have to say.
My research explores these questions by analyzing quotation practices in general conference between 1971 and 2020. I read every April[6] session talk given by a member of the First Presidency or Quorum of the Twelve Apostles during those decades. I also read every talk by a female leader given in the April general session during that time period (thus, between 1984 and 2020).[7] In order to understand how quotation dynamics vary by leadership position, gender, and audience in the modern Church, I also read every talk given by any leader in any session between April 2016 and April 2020. For each address, I documented every quotation,[8] including what was cited, the number of words in each quotation, and the way the speaker verbally introduced each quotation. This totaled more than 12,700 quotations over 1,100 talks.
The rhetorical practices of general conference, like its format and structure, have changed over time. Nineteenth and early twentieth–century leaders would extemporize for hours; modern translation and global broadcasting have necessitated timed, prewritten addresses.[9] This is the backdrop to my choice to focus on the period between 1971 and 2020. Many substantial technological changes happened in the 1960s: conference was first translated simultaneously in 1962,[10] first broadcast to Europe in 1965,[11] and first televised in color in 1967.[12] Though speakers were still adjusting to these changes in the 1970s, the era of spontaneity was over, and leaders were aware of themselves as speaking to a much larger audience than those sitting before them. Additionally, transcripts and video recordings of general conference are available for that entire period on the Church’s website,[13] providing definitive sources for those addresses.[14] The quotations used in these carefully crafted speeches for a global audience provide a window into Church leaders’ views on gender and authority.
Understanding Quotation: Audience and Authority
Quotation is a common rhetorical practice that serves many different functions: spicing up a narrative, providing exact wording, or lending legitimacy to one’s own argument. As every student of high school English literature intuitively knows, this last function is particularly important. Anthropologist Ruth Finnegan writes that quotation “enables a writer to stand in alliance with revered words and voices from the past and . . . endow oneself with something of their authority.”[15] Speakers in general conference constantly use quotation in precisely this way, positioning their ideas as (for example) the continuation of teachings from other Church leaders. In general conference, the rhetorical force of a quotation relies on the source of a quotation just as much, if not more, as the content of that quotation.
Scholars have sometimes used quotation in general conference as evidence for which sources general authorities were personally reading.[16] Conference quotation patterns cannot be understood only in these terms, however. This is the case first because of quotation’s rhetorical function. With limited time and such a significant audience, conference speakers must be understood as carefully selecting their quotations for both content and source. Indeed, a look at the footnotes reveals that speakers in general conference frequently use sources specifically designed to achieve that purpose. Many draw upon references like Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, which collects acknowledged sources of wisdom like historical leaders or the anonymous proverb.[17] This is one indication that conference speakers look for quotations to include in their talks as quotations, rather than, say, encountering those writers during research on some topic.[18] The sources that appear in general conference are deliberately chosen with the spiritual and institutional goals of the Church’s highest leaders in mind.
The second reason to understand speakers’ quotations as deliberately selected for their audience is that the changes in quotation in general conference over time (see table 1 below) cannot be explained merely by changes in individuals’ reading habits. Because apostles and prophets occupy those roles until their deaths, the composition of leaders speaking in conference changes slowly.[19] Even as the membership of this group remains largely the same, their quotation patterns change significantly.[20] Not only do the same leaders collectively quote different sources over time, but they also frame their quotations of those sources differently for their audience. Though whom leaders quote is indeed an indication of whom they privately take to be authoritative or interesting, it is also a public decision.
Consider the fifteen most frequent sources of quotation from the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency in the 1970s and how that list changed in the 2010s (table 1). Both are clearly a reflection of the sources that matter most to the Church and its members: scriptures and prophets handily top each list. But the changes in these sources’ popularity is striking. Quotation of current prophets and apostles, for example, has increased dramatically,[21] while presidents of the United States have gone from the top ten to zero. These changes in sources can be understood at least in part as a reflection of a change in audience. While general conference’s availability in the 1970s was limited beyond the United States,[22] it is now internationally broadcast to communities without much besides their Church membership in common. Church leaders and their quotation practices are responsive to their audience.
Table 1: Change in Most Frequent General Session Citations from Members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, April 1971–1980 and 2011–2020a
1971–1980 | 2011–2020 | Net change (percentage points) | Percent change | |
New Testament | 31.5% | 23.4% | -8.0% | -25.6% |
Doctrine and Covenants | 16.1% | 16.4% | +0.3% | +1.9% |
Book of Mormon | 12.6% | 21.5% | +9.0% | +71.3% |
Old Testament | 11.8% | 7.4% | -4.4% | -37.4% |
Pearl of Great Price | 4.8% | 4.4% | -0.5% | -9.6% |
Past Prophets | 3.2% | 4.4% | +1.2% | +38.0% |
Anonymous Sources | 2.9% | 0.2% | -2.7% | -94.3% |
Past Apostles | 1.9% | 1.9% | 0.0% | -1.8% |
Joseph Smith | 1.8% | 2.8% | +1.1% | +59.0% |
US Presidents | 1.3% | 0.0% | -1.3% | -100.0% |
Hymns | 1.3% | 2.5% | +1.3% | +99.2% |
Current Prophet | 0.8% | 2.8% | +2.1% | +260.3% |
The First Presidencyb | 0.6% | 0.4% | -0.2% | -39.4% |
Current Apostles | 0.5% | 1.1% | +0.6% | +131.0% |
Members of the Church | 0.5% | 1.5% | +1.0% | +211.8% |
a. Total citations for 1971–1980; 1,904; for 2011–2020: 1,832.
b. Speakers will sometimes quote statements put out by the First Presidency (the prophet and his two counselors) as a unit. This is distinct from citations of any one of those members.
While there is much to explore in these trends beyond their application to gender, this article focuses on quotation as a reflection of authority in order to explore women’s status in the Church. Quotation is a rhetorical practice in which speakers reveal beliefs about their audience. When choosing to quote from certain sources, speakers indicate two things: first, that they believe their audience will accept that source as authoritative, and second, that they themselves support that source’s authority.
Broadly, a source is more authoritative to an audience the more that members of that audience would believe a claim or obey an instruction (or seriously consider doing so) because it came from that source, regardless of their prior views about the content of the claim or instruction. Sources can be authoritative in many different ways. Conference speakers must navigate secular and ecclesiastical authority as well as many varieties of spiritual authority.[23] What broad-scale conference quotation patterns demonstrate is how weighty these different sources of authority are in their context.
Rhetorically effective quotation requires choosing sources with one’s audience in mind.[24] The sources that general conference speakers choose, then, reveal features of the Latter-day Saint community, at least as those leaders understand it. A previous United States president might be an authoritative source to Americans, but citing one would not help one’s persuasiveness overseas. How often various choices are made reflects the expected effectiveness of those appeals for members. This indicates that the sources cited more are, on the whole,[25] considered more authoritative in the Latter-day Saint context, while the sources cited less are less so. For this reason, the term “authority” functions broadly in this article to refer to the weight of a certain source’s status, not the reason for that weight.
Effective quotation must also be balanced by the speaker’s own views about the source. If someone crafting a speech knew that her audience put great trust in, say, mainstream media sources, but she herself did not think that trust was merited, she would not quote that source to bolster her argument even if it would be persuasive. Conference quotation patterns thus reveal both leaders’ beliefs and their hopes about their community. The sources cited most frequently are not only the sources audiences trust but also the sources leaders want their audience to trust. In the mouths of the Church’s most powerful leaders, such support through quotation can even increase a source’s authority.
Because leaders’ use of sources reflects their beliefs about their audience, studying how Church leaders quote women sheds light on how those leaders perceive women’s authority in the Latter-day Saint community. Because speakers affirm authority through quotation, whether and how speakers quote women in general conference is indicative of those leaders’ commitment to women’s authority and equality. In this way, leaders’ treatment of women in their general conference addresses provides a meaningful window into the status of women in the Church more generally.
Why Quote Women?
Examining what conference quotation says about women in the Church is significant for two reasons. First, it is relevant for broader feminist projects involving concepts like equal representation of and respect for women. Second, it reflects on the Church’s realization of its own values.
This article takes feminist commitments on board, arguing that women’s underrepresentation in general conference is a problem to be fixed. Because Church leaders support a different model of womanhood than many feminist and secular sources propose, however, some might worry that it is misguided to evaluate the Church’s discursive practices by such standards. But the ways leaders engage with female voices in general conference can also be examined in light of their own stated commitments. Church leaders throughout the years have preached that women and men are equal, though separate. Church president Spencer Kimball told men in 1979, “The women of this Church have work to do which, though different, is equally as important as the work that we do. Their work is, in fact, the same basic work that we are asked to do—even though our roles and assignments differ . . . Our sisters do not wish to be indulged or to be treated condescendingly; they desire to be respected and revered as our sisters and our equals.”[26] Other speakers throughout the years have mirrored that language and those sentiments, down to Relief Society president Jean Bingham’s 2020 declaration of “the eternal truth that men’s and women’s innate differences are God given and equally valued.”[27]
Quotation as a rhetorical device sends messages, and those messages can reinforce or undermine the actual content of the talks in which they appear. This article will argue that, even if it is not their intention, leaders’ quotations of women in general conference marginalize women in the Latter-day Saint community rather than portray them as worthy of respect and value. Insofar as this study shows that conference quotation practices fail to live up to an equal standard with respect to gender—and especially insofar as inequality is not the aim of Church leaders—it provides both an internal and external critique of those practices. If the Church is to live up to its creed, leaders must reexamine which voices they choose to emphasize and how they do so.
It is crucial to note that claims about women’s and men’s equal value do not translate easily into claims about equal authority, especially in an ecclesiastical setting. Women’s ecclesiastical authority in the Church is, of course, limited because they are not ordained to priesthood office. While leaders have recently asserted that women have both “priesthood power” and “priesthood authority,”[28] this distinction is contentious, and women’s authority is instead most often spoken about (as in the Nelson quotation that began this article) in terms of “righteous influence.”[29] The source of this influence is attributed to women’s caring nature[30] and “unique moral compass.”[31] Discussions of these kind emphasize women’s spiritual rather than ecclesiastical authority.
Conference quotation, however, is not limited to sources with ecclesiastical authority. If quotation were just about appealing to authorities in some sense higher than one’s self, one might expect prophets to quote mostly other prophets and scripture, but prophets also quote current and past apostles, as well as secular poets and historical figures.[32] Poet William Wordsworth, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, and New York Times columnist David Brooks have all been quoted multiple times by prophets and apostles.[33] Additionally, because conference addresses focus on how members should live their lives and understand their relationship with God, leaders might have reason to reference other acknowledged sources of spiritual authority, like women. As Bruce McConkie wrote in 1979, “Where spiritual things are concerned, as pertaining to all of the gifts of the Spirit, with reference to the receipt of revelation, the gaining of testimonies, and the seeing of visions, in all matters that pertain to godliness and holiness and which are brought to pass as a result of personal righteousness—in all these things men and women stand in a position of absolute equality before the Lord.”[34]
These types of assertions should lead to some degree of gender balance in quotations whose sources are not selected for their ecclesiastical authority. Indeed, given frequent conference claims about women’s superior moral sensitivity, one might expect leaders who profess such views to draw on women more frequently than men in some contexts. In a sermon about how to understand one’s relationship with God and live a moral life, the sources of insight McConkie listed ought to be just as open to women as to men, regardless of their ecclesiastical status. Despite this, a righteous woman’s influence is rarely the kind of authority conference speakers are interested in drawing upon.
Men Quoting Women
When looking at gender in general conference, the big picture numbers are striking. In April general sessions between 1971 and 2020, members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (hereafter referred to inclusively as “apostles”) quoted specifically male sources[35] 3,264 times. This does not include the male-gendered deities, Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father, who were quoted 1,968 times.[36] In that same period, female sources were quoted 197 times.
This imbalance is huge, but not surprising—the perhaps natural consequences of an all-male priesthood and hierarchical structure that places over one hundred men at a time in positions more powerful than the most powerful female leader. Latter-day Saint scripture is also almost entirely male: the Book of Mormon has almost 250 named individuals, but only six of those are female, and only two women actually speak in the text. Given the Church’s broader position in a patriarchal society, it is also not surprising that the poets, historical figures, and non-Latter-day Saint leaders they quote would also be overwhelmingly male.
Though it may not be surprising, the lack of female representation is troubling, especially once the trends are broken down further (table 2). Altogether, female voices comprise 2.1 percent of general conference quotations in this sample. Looking only at 2011–2020, this number increases slightly: to 2.7 percent. By the same measure, explicitly male voices other than Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ account for 35.5 percent of conference quotations, going down to 31.7 percent between 2011 and 2020. This decrease is entirely due to leaders verbally attributing fewer quotes from scripture to male voices[37]—if scriptures are excluded, quotation of men goes up from 14.8 percent over fifty years to 18.1 percent of all quotations in the final decade of my sample. Examining only quotations from specific people, removing quotes from scripture[38] and not clearly gendered sources,[39] reveals that more than nine out of ten of the individuals quoted in general conference are men.[40]
Table 2: Gendered Citations in April General Session Address by Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency, April 1971–2020a
Total Female | 2.1% |
Total Maleb | 35.5% |
Scripture (Not Gendered) | 36.1% |
Jesus Christ | 20.1% |
Male Scripturesc | 17.8% |
Past Prophets | 6.1% |
Other Male Sourcesd | 5.8% |
Apostles | 3.7% |
Church Publicationse | 2.7% |
Non-Gendered Sourcesf | 2.0% |
Current Prophets | 2.0% |
Other Female Sources | 1.7% |
Godg | 1.2% |
Female Church Leadersh | 0.2% |
Female Scriptures | 0.2% |
Male Church Leadersi | 0.2% |
Couples | 0.1% |
a. Total citations: 9,200.
b. Here and throughout, Male totals do not include citations of Heavenly Father or Jesus Christ.
c. A quotation is counted as Male or Female Scripture if the verbal citation attributes the quotation to a man or a woman. “1 Nephi 3:7 reads” would be labeled Scripture, but “Nephi wrote” would be labeled Male Scripture. Scriptural quotations that were not verbally cited are not categorized as Male or Female. The Male and Female Scripture categories do not, however, count the numerous quotations that are verbally attributed to Christ through or to a gendered individual (except for one section in the D&C addressed to Emma Smith, all of those are male); those are categorized as citations of Jesus Christ.
d. Other Male Sources and Other Female Sources include all quotations whose gender can be determined from footnotes or verbal citations that do not fit into other categories. All secular gendered sources are included here, as well as quotations from church members outside of the highest levels of church leadership.
e. The category of Church Publication includes documents like The Living Christ, The Family: A Proclamation to the World, the Handbooks, etc. (mostly written by men). It also includes all songs from the Hymnal and the Primary Children’s Songbook except when the verbal citation references a gendered author.
f. Non-Gendered Sources are all the sources whose gender could not be determined from the footnote or the verbal citation that do not fit into another category. Examples of non-gendered sources include quotes from newspapers and magazines that did not include authors, anonymous sayings, the dictionary, musicals, individuals without names or gender identification, etc.
g. Quotations verbally attributed to Jesus Christ or the Lord were categorized as citations of Jesus Christ, while other citations verbally attributed to divinity, including references that were ambiguous between God the Father and Christ, were categorized as citations of God.
h. Female Church Leaders includes all quotations from women occupying the general presidencies of the Relief Society, Young Womens, and Primary.
i. Male Church Leaders includes all quotations from men who are general authorities or members of the Sunday School and Young Mens presidencies but are not apostles.
Women’s absence becomes even more visible in quotations from sources with high-level Latter-day Saint ecclesiastical authority.[41] Of those, female leaders of the Church make up 1.9 percent of quotations. Ninety-eight percent of the leaders that apostles quote in general conference are men. This amounts to a mere twenty-one citations of female Church leaders by its highest authorities; ten are from Eliza Snow, and six of those are her hymns. In this sample of five decades of talks, a current female leader of the Church was only quoted to an audience that included men once, when apostle Dallin Oaks quoted Relief Society president Linda Burton in the 2014 priesthood session.[42] In fifty years, an apostle never quoted a current female leader in an April general session. Current male leaders, meanwhile, were quoted 257 times in that same period. It is worth noting, however, that male leaders who are not apostles (such as members of the Seventy) have been quoted even less frequently than female leaders (thirteen times as opposed to twenty-one).[43] Apostles’ quotational emphasis on the authority of the institutional Church is entirely on its highest level—the level they themselves occupy. Because women are entirely excluded from that level, they are also excluded from consideration as ecclesiastical authorities.
It may seem that the gender imbalance in general conference is thus a result of women’s limited ecclesiastical authority. However, as discussed above, there are many other kinds of authority on which conference speakers draw, and leaders frequently make claims about women’s moral and spiritual authority. Though women are excluded from the most important leadership roles, Church leaders have encouraged them to be “contributing and full partner[s]” with men rather than “silent . . . or limited partners.”[44] Outside of leadership roles, then, one might hope for gender parity.
However, this is not the case. Even when apostles quote sources who do not have ecclesiastical authority, they consistently prioritize male voices over female ones. Of the individuals quoted in conference who are neither scriptural nor high-level Church leaders, fully 77 percent of them are male. This number is changing over time, but not always equitably: between 2010 and 2015, 58.6 percent of quoted individuals without scriptural or high-level ecclesiastical authority were male; between 2016 and 2020, 69 percent were male.[45] Representation of women, at least on this measure, has significantly[46] increased since the 1970s, but this is happening neither quickly nor consistently.
There are two important caveats about these patterns. First, these statistics are the product of hundreds of talks by almost forty different apostles over fifty years. They are not the product of any one person’s conscious decision, and certainly no speaker selects his quotations with these broad patterns in mind. The average apostle quotes eleven times in a single talk, not nearly enough to cover all the categories of sources presented here.[47] These patterns are also the structural default, the rhetorical norm for conference addresses, and individual speakers are unlikely to choose to deviate widely from them. This, however, makes it even more necessary to examine and bring them to light.
Second, the consistent overrepresentation of male quotations in general conference can be explained in part by the overrepresentation of men in the worlds of ecclesiastical, scriptural, and cultural authority that conference speakers inhabit. The Church’s all-male priesthood, male-focused scriptural canon, and patriarchal cultural context all play a role in muting women. The non-ecclesiastical sources cited by speakers include a greater number of well-known male writers and historical figures than female ones because many more men have historically been given the opportunity to become famous. There are also fewer conference talks and books on Church doctrine written by women. When thinking about the available sources leaders have to draw upon, women are consistently underrepresented, though not so dramatically as they are in quotation practices.[48] In any case, this is only an explanation for these patterns, not a justification of them. The Church consistently emphasizes members’ responsibility to choose the right even when “the world” and those around them push in opposing directions. Leaning on excuses about cultural norms is unfair to leaders by refusing them the ability to choose differently.
The persistent failure of apostles to quote women is a persistent failure to acknowledge women as authorities. This tells us something about the way they see their audience: when leaders do not feature women’s voices, they indicate a belief that the community they are addressing would not view those voices as authoritative. They also affirm that belief. If the Church truly values women’s voices, its leaders must take responsibility to do so themselves. Rather than being contributing and full partners, women are silent in general conference, limited by prophets and apostles. Not only do women speak less frequently in conference because of the restricted leadership roles available to them, but they are heard less frequently because other speakers choose to amplify male voices instead of female ones in their quotation practices. Women’s silence here indicates a broader inability to be heard within the Church.
Women Above the Footnotes
Analyzing not just which sources leaders select but how and where they present those sources is key to understanding quotation’s rhetorical role. Even when conference speakers choose to quote women, they engage in rhetorical techniques that further reflect women’s lack of authority in the Church. Male leaders minimize women’s presence and influence by frequently mentioning their appearance and relationship status and infrequently giving their names.
Conference talks are written to be spoken. Understanding this is essential to understanding conference quotation because listeners, unlike readers, depend on authors to include information about when and who they cite in the body of the text rather than leaving it to parentheticals and footnotes (many readers may not scour the footnotes either). Embedded quotes go unrecognized by conference listeners unless speakers make a deliberate effort to frame them by changing their tone of voice or giving a verbal citation that provides an introduction to the quote. “1 Nephi 1:1,” “a young woman,” “it is said,” and “our beloved prophet, Russell M. Nelson” all function as verbal citations when spoken during an address. These citations can serve not just to indicate the source but to add to or explain its credentials: the common “our beloved prophet” preface does precisely that, as do additions like “prominent writer,” “one of my eminent business associates,” or “faithful wife and mother.” Verbal citations provide the information a speaker thinks the audience needs to understand and respect the source of a quotation.[49]
1. Acknowledging and Anonymizing Women
If the source of a quotation plays a significant part in its selection, speakers are likely to verbally cite as fully as possible the sources that they take to be most authoritative. To see how women are acknowledged beyond the footnotes, each gendered non-scriptural quotation can be sorted into one of three categories based on the way a source was verbally cited: complete, incomplete, or none (table 3). A complete verbal citation indicates a specific individual. Both partial and full names were counted as completely verbally cited: “President Spencer W. Kimball,” “Bishop Williams,” and “Liz” are all complete. An incomplete verbal citation indicates only that the speaker is quoting someone. All quotations that were verbally cited but had no name attached counted as incomplete. “The poet,” “a dear sister,” and “a business executive” are incomplete verbal citations. The nones are quotations that were not verbally indicated at all by the speaker.
The data on how different sources are verbally cited aligns with expectations in terms of the Church’s most authoritative sources. The current prophet is completely verbally cited 94 percent of the time, and past prophets are verbally cited nine out of ten times. Similarly, apostles are completely verbally cited almost eight out of ten times, and non-apostle leaders are completely verbally cited six out of ten times. Female leaders of the Church, though rarely quoted, are completely verbally cited 95 percent of the time: when speakers cite female leaders, it seems that they do so deliberately and want their audience to know.[50] This suggests, interestingly, that female Church authority does have weight in this context despite its infrequent representation.
Table 3: Completeness of Gendered Verbal Citations of Different Sources in General Session Talks by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, April 1971–2020
Prophet (558 total) | Apostle (338 total) | Current Prophet (184 total) | Male (530 total) | Female (155 total) | Female Leader (21 total) | Male Leader (15 total) | |
Complete | 90.5% | 79.3% | 94.0% | 62.5% | 51.6% | 95.2% | 60.0% |
Incomplete | 1.8% | 6.2% | 0.5% | 24.9% | 42.6% | 4.8% | 33.3% |
None | 7.7% | 14.5% | 5.4% | 12.6% | 5.8% | 0.0% | 6.7% |
However, the opposite is true with women outside of Church leadership positions. Whereas non-leader men are completely verbally cited 62 percent of the time, non-leader women are only completely verbally cited 51 percent of the time, the lowest of any of those categories. They are also by far the highest, at 42 percent, of any group for incomplete citations. Between 2016 and 2020, women were quoted as named sources outside of narrative contexts only six times in front of men. In contrast, forty men who held no position of high-level leadership in the Church were quoted and named in non-narrative contexts in that time period, thirty in the general session. Non-leader men are significantly[51] more likely to be completely verbally cited than non-leader women. These numbers demonstrate how men and women with the same level of ecclesiastical authority—local or none—are treated differently in terms of their authoritativeness for Church members. Not only do leaders quote women much less frequently than men, they often minimize their presence even when they do quote them.
Again, part of this is due to the fact that more of these non-leader men than women are famous historical figures. However, speakers are more likely to name men than women even when those men are not well known. When quoting family members, regular church members, or writers who are not household names, speakers frequently name their male sources while leaving out the name of their female sources. These trends occur side-by-side, often in the same talks. In his 2015 address, apostle Quentin Cook quoted a woman, Carla Carlisle, and described her as “one of my favorite writers” without naming her or revealing her gender through pronouns in the talk itself—while naming and quoting several men in the same talk.[52] Even though Cook seems to personally admire Carlisle, his reluctance to reveal her name or gender compared with his willingness to name and gender male sources suggests that her gender might decrease her legitimacy as a source.
2. Quoting Beautiful Wives and Mothers
The content of incomplete citations also reveals a great deal about women’s authority. Incomplete verbal citations have to do all the work in describing the credentials of a source. All the audience knows about the source comes from that verbal citation—they can’t bring in any background knowledge about the individual involved. It is telling, then, that speakers treat men differently than women in this sphere as well, tying women’s authority to their relationship status or their physical appearance.
Table 4 shows the incomplete verbal citations from apostles in the general session in 2017–2020. These years are a microcosm of a pattern that is consistent through the last fifty. Women are most frequently cited in their capacities as relations, with more than one out of three of all incomplete verbal citations referring to a woman’s relationship or family status. Men’s relationship status, meanwhile, is only mentioned in 8 percent of incomplete verbal citations, all in their capacity as fathers. Their calling in the Church is mentioned with about the same frequency (7.6 percent), while their employment status is used as a credential 41.7 percent of the time. Verbal citations recognize women’s careers only 6.2 percent of the time—not a surprise for an organization that was still frequently preaching against women’s employment into the 2000s—and their Church calling only 1.5 percent of the time. These numbers are particularly striking given that these sources are already anonymous. Evidence has already been presented that conference speakers are more likely to name men than women: the actual number of men who are cited in their capacities as local Church leaders, for example, is even higher.
Table 4: Incomplete Verbal Citations from Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency, April 2017–2020
Female | Male |
A faithful wife and mother | One observer |
Two LDS women | One writer |
A dear sister | A fourteen-year-old boy |
A single sister in her mid-40s | One friend of nearly 20 years, whom I admire greatly |
A beautiful, vibrant young wife and mother | A temple president |
A beautiful young returned sister missionary | One frustrated writer |
Their precious mother | One historian |
In these incomplete verbal citations, and elsewhere in conference talks, women are also far more likely to be the subject of adjectives such as “dear,” “precious,” and “beautiful,” as seen above, as well as “lovely,” “wonderful,” and “sweet.” In verbally citing the women they quote as beautiful and lovely, speakers connect to a tradition of conceptualizing female spirituality through the lens of female attractiveness, implicitly—and explicitly, in the form of the speaker—evaluated by men. Just like a Hollywood movie where the main character is gorgeous and the villain is inevitably scarred or ugly, in conference talks, righteous women are beautiful women. None of those adjectives (or correlates like “handsome”) are regularly applied to men, who are instead more likely to be described as “wise” or go without evaluative adjectives entirely in favor of authoritative credentials in the form of careers or Church callings:[53] consider Gary Stevenson’s story about “a beautiful, vibrant young wife and mother [who] was a scrappy Division 1 soccer player when she met and married her dental student husband.”[54] Women are specifically described as “young” fully three times as often as men, further depriving them of authority by minimizing their life experience. If anything, these trends have increased over time, particularly the use of “beautiful” to describe anonymous women. These verbal citations further undermine women’s ability to stand as equals in their community. By contrast, men occupy a variety of positions in and outside of the Church and have a range of authoritative credentials available.
Conference quotation practices serve to diminish female authority.[55] Not only are women quoted significantly less frequently than men, but the ways in which women are quoted serve to further mute their voices. Women are anonymized and described with diminutives rather than with authoritative credentials. They are included as the wives of husbands while men are the leaders of organizations in and outside of the Church, despite the fact that conference speakers frequently encourage men to be good family members[56] and women to step up as community leaders.[57] These quotation patterns play into tropes that undermine leaders’ professions of gender equality.
Gendered Audiences and Gendered Topics
The data presented thus far have only been from members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the general session. The general session is open to everyone, but leaders also historically spoke at gender-segregated priesthood and women’s sessions each year. When investigating how quotation patterns from the Church’s top leaders shift in different sessions, it becomes apparent that these leaders are very aware of gender. Their awareness leads them, however, to continue privileging male voices. What is more, when these leaders are speaking on the topic of gender, they assert male authority more strongly than ever.
In the last twenty years, First Presidency members have used quotation differently when speaking to different audiences (table 5). Looking at quotations across the general, priesthood, and women’s sessions, several interesting trends become visible. First, past prophets are a more popular source in the priesthood session than in either of the other two, but the current prophet is cited far more in the women’s session (a statistically significant[58] difference).[59] Men are quoted more in priesthood (40.6 percent) compared to the general (36.8 percent) and women’s (36.6 percent) sessions. However, non-leader men experience a drop of almost six percentage points when speakers are addressing only women.[60] Similarly, women are quoted less in the priesthood session (1 percent)[61] than in the general session (2.6 percent), and the most in the women’s session (3.7 percent).
Table 5: Gender Distrubtions by Session of Citations in Talks by Members of the First Presidency, April 2001–2020a
General Session | Priesthood Session | Women's Session | |
Total Female | 2.6% | 1.0% | 3.7% |
Total Male | 36.8% | 40.6% | 36.6% |
Scripture | 34.7% | 35.1% | 28.8% |
Jesus | 18.9% | 16.7% | 20.4% |
Male Scripture | 15.8% | 12.5% | 16.2% |
Past Prophet | 5.8% | 14.1% | 5.2% |
Other Male Source | 8.7% | 8.0% | 2.6% |
Apostle | 4.3% | 5.0% | 3.7% |
Church Publication | 3.3% | 3.2% | 5.8% |
Non-Gendered Source | 1.8% | 3.2% | 4.2% |
Current Prophet | 2.1% | 0.6% | 8.9% |
Other Female Source | 2.5% | 0.8% | 2.6% |
God | 1.9% | 0.2% | 0.0% |
Male Leader | 0.0% | 0.4% | 0.0% |
Female Leader | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.0% |
Female Scripture | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.0% |
Couple | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.5% |
a. Total General Session citations: 726; Priesthood: 524; Womens: 191
These numbers are an acknowledgment that the gender of a source matters. If leaders were not aware of the gender of their sources, there would not be this kind of variation between sessions. These numbers are also, then, an acknowledgment of audience. When Church leaders speak to women, they seem to find their audience less willing to take men’s voices seriously without high-level Church authority; hence the drop in quotations of non-leader men. However, when the Church’s highest leaders speak in the general session, they appear to think those male voices will be almost as respected as with an all-male audience. This indicates that men are still in some ways the perceived audience, or perhaps the more important one, in a mixed-gender group. And, as a group, men are perceived to grant female voices significantly less authority than male ones.
The notable increase in citation of the current prophet in women’s session by men is almost certainly due to the fact that quotation practices are responsive to topic as well. When discussing the origins of the Church, speakers are more likely to quote Joseph Smith; when discussing the sins of the world, secular news sources are used more frequently. In the women’s session, speakers are more likely to discuss being a woman—but they are most likely to quote men, not women, to make their case.
The Church has become increasingly concerned with gender and sexuality as society has become more permissive toward same-sex relationships and less “traditional” models of the nuclear family, both of which (history of polygamy aside) the Church rejects. Speakers often use their time in general conference to address these issues, with growing frequency and urgency. Talks entirely devoted to discussing gender,[62] from speakers of any rank, have increased dramatically in the twenty-first century. Between 1970 and 1989, which included the contentious period of the Church’s fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, ten talks were given solely[63] on gender. In the 1990s, there were eight. In the 2000s, there were twenty-three; in the 2010s, there were twenty-five. The pattern appears to be set to continue. Though some leaders are more focused on these issues than others, the high rate of talks about gender is not due to just a few. Every prophet since Gordon Hinckley (who became president of the Church in 1995) has delivered multiple addresses on gender, as have fourteen different apostles.
Every decade, just over half of the talks about gender are given in the general sessions. The rest are usually addressed to women: eight in the 2000s, and ten in the 2010s. Attendees of the priesthood session have been the recipient of talks specifically focused on gender only twice a decade in that fifty-year period.[64] Though “gender roles” sounds gender inclusive, these conference addresses generally are not. While discussions of sexuality are disproportionately aimed at gay men,[65] gender is a women’s issue. True manhood will sometimes make an appearance, but good womanhood is the primary focus of these addresses, even when delivered to men. One might assume, then, that this difference between the men’s and women’s sessions would be due to female leaders’ focus on gender roles, but this is not the case. Only four of the eighteen talks about gender in the women’s session between 2001 and 2020 were given by women. The rest were given by the First Presidency. This is not to say that women do not speak often about gender roles; women gave eleven of the twenty-six talks about gender in the general session in that time period. But the prophet and apostles speak on these topics far more often than any other group, and it is notable that they do so far more to women than to men. Male conference speakers who are not apostles almost never devote their talks to the subject.
In the context of authority in the Church, such patterns make sense. Because gender is the subject of developing Church doctrine, only the most powerful leaders have the appropriate ecclesiastical authority to make claims about these issues. When all such leaders are male, this means that discourses on gender are a male domain, regardless of how egalitarian their arguments may be. Quotations in these talks, though small in number (101 in this subset), provide further evidence of this. In talks by the First Presidency about gender between 2001 and 2020 (table 6), quotes from current leaders are much higher than in the First Presidency’s total average (shown in table 5). Members of the First Presidency quote the current prophet nearly six times more frequently when they are talking about gender (14.9 percent) than they do on average (2.5 percent).[66] The six total citations from female sources represent a higher percentage (6.0 percent) than elsewhere from these speakers, but female leaders of the Church are not among those quoted. Specifically male voices, in comparison, still make up nearly 40 percent of the total.
Table 6: Gender Distribution of Citations in Talks about Gender and Sexuality from Members of the First Presidency, April 2001–2020a
Scripture (Not Gendered) | 25.7% |
Jesus | 19.8% |
Current Prophet | 14.9% |
Male Scripture | 9.9% |
Apostle | 9.9% |
Non-Gendered Source | 5.9% |
Other Female Source | 4.0% |
Prophet | 3.0% |
Church Publication | 3.0% |
Female Scripture | 2.0% |
Couple | 1.0% |
Other Male Source | 1.0% |
a. Total citations: 101
It is perhaps surprising that leaders choose to rely so much more heavily on men’s voices when talking to women about how to be good women. This can be seen as both an appeal to established authority and an attempt to establish it. Gender and sexuality are two issues on which church members find themselves most at odds with mainstream Western culture, so leaders must increasingly support their arguments with the weightiest religious authorities. On the other hand, many church members are also at odds with Church leadership about these issues, with increasing numbers of young people leaving the Church over its position.[67] In continually emphasizing the current prophet’s authority by citing him, these speakers are working in part to maintain the Church’s jurisdiction over these topics. Quotation is one tool to enforce male hierarchical church authority when addressing the issues that most threaten it.
This reliance is stronger than ever in the Nelson era.[68] Oaks’s 2019 address at the women’s session quoted Nelson eight times out of twelve, along with the First Presidency and past Church president Kimball.[69] Eyring also used Nelson as three of his five total quotes (the other two from scripture) in his 2019 talk on gender, telling women to “remember President Nelson’s perfect description of a woman’s divine mission—including her mission of mothering.”[70] Neither speaker drew on women’s voices to describe women’s divine mission or anything else.
When looking at gender-segregated sessions, it becomes apparent that the gender of both audience and source inform leaders’ quotation practices. It also becomes clear that leaders consistently prioritize men. Though conference speakers seem to believe that women see men without ecclesiastical authority as less authoritative than men do, that belief does not impact their quotation practices when men as well as women are in the audience. In this way, they treat their male listeners as more important than their female ones. Though apostles tend to quote women more often when talking to women, they also quote male leaders more often when talking about women. Women’s voicelessness elsewhere in the Church culminates in apostles’ choices to exclude female voices and prioritize male leaders when talking about womanhood.
Women Quoting Men
In the previous sections, this article has examined quotation patterns only from members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency. Women have been quoted less, acknowledged less, and, by implication, seen as less authoritative than men. The highest authorities of the Church have indirectly used their voices in general conference not to elevate women but to emphasize male power, especially in the spaces that impact women most. These patterns also have an impact on how female leaders perceive themselves and their audience. The same analysis of quotation patterns from female leaders’ conference talks reveals that women also treat female voices as less authoritative than male ones—including their own.
On average, female leaders spend the greatest percentage of their talks quoting, more than any other group of conference speakers. Between 2016 and 2020, members of the First Presidency spent 15.5 percent of their talks on quotation,[71] while members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spent 18.6 percent of their time quoting. Male leaders in other positions spent 16.9 percent of their time quoting, and female leaders spent 21.4 percent. These differences are both statistically significant[72] and revealing. When the leaders who spend the most time using their own words are the most powerful, it is telling that the leaders who spend the least time doing so are female.[73]
Not only do women spend more of their time than male leaders repeating others’ words, they also spend even more time quoting male sources than male leaders do. Like the First Presidency, women’s talks about gender include a heavy emphasis on quotations from the current prophet and other leaders. The women’s talks in the April 2020 session were perhaps the starkest possible example of this pattern: two of the three female leaders spoke on gender roles, and video footage of church president Nelson speaking was also inserted in the middle of their addresses. (Neither of the talks about gender roles given by male leaders had video segments.[74])
This pattern of female speakers focusing on male voices is not limited by topic, however. Since female leaders began speaking regularly in the general sessions (1988–2020), 5.7 percent of female leaders’ quotations in the general sessions were from female sources, while 42.0 percent of them were from male sources (table 7). Between 2011 and 2020, female leaders quoted men 46.6 percent of the time—fully fifteen percentage points higher than the frequency with which apostles quoted men in the general session during that same time period (31.7 percent). Even when they are quoting women, female leaders treat them as less authoritative than similarly positioned male sources: female leaders completely verbally cite 68.4 percent of their male sources with no ecclesiastical authority, but only 47.8 percent of their non-leader female sources. This is a greater disparity than in apostles’ talks (shown in table 3). In the women’s session, where female leaders quote women the most (13.2 percent of the time), they still quote men more than twice as frequently as they quote women (30.9 percent). Between 2016 and 2020, almost eight out of ten gendered quotations from female leaders have been male. By comparison, male conference speakers in other leadership positions[75] in those years quoted men 40.7 percent of the time in the general session and 32.2 percent in the priesthood session, while quoting women 1.9 percent of the time to their mixed-gender audience and not once to their all-male one.
Table 7: Breakdown of Gendered Quotations in April General Session Talks Given by Female Leaders, 1988–2020a
Total Female | 5.7% |
Total Male | 41.9% |
Scripture | 28.4% |
Male Scripture | 12.3% |
Jesus | 11.8% |
Past Prophet | 9.8% |
Apostle | 9.8% |
Church Publication | 8.6% |
Current Prophet | 6.8% |
Other Female Source | 3.9% |
Other Male Source | 3.2% |
Non-Gendered Source | 2.7% |
Female Leader | 1.4% |
God | 0.5% |
Female Scripture | 0.4% |
Couple | 0.2% |
a. Total citations: 559
If quotation in general conference is about drawing upon the authority of quoted sources, it might be surprising to see female leaders quoting male sources so often instead of even more authoritative sources like God or the scriptures. Indeed, female leaders tend to quote Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ less frequently (12.3 percent of the time) than apostles do (19.7 percent between 1988 and 2020).[76] Women are not just quoting any male source, however: they are overwhelmingly quoting male Church leaders in an appeal to institutional authority. This is increasing over time: between 1988 and 2010, 19.8 percent of female leaders’ quotations came from male leaders, but between 2011 and 2020, that number went up to 37.5 percent—twenty-two times the percentage of their quotations that comes from female leaders. Of these citations, women are quoting current leaders sitting on the stand behind them fully two out of three times. In this way, at least, women’s access to authority is mediated by male priesthood holders rather than coming directly from God.
Comparing this to quotation patterns from male leaders who are not apostles indicates that female leaders’ emphasis on apostles’ authority is not just due to women’s lower leadership positions. Between 2016 and 2020, non-apostle leaders quoted current and past apostles 19.4 percent of the time.[77] This is more frequent than apostles’ own quotations of fellow apostles in this time period (16.5 percent), but far less frequent than female leaders’ quotations of apostles (28.2 percent). Of the leaders they quoted, non-apostle men also quoted living apostles less frequently than women did (57.8 percent as opposed to 61 percent). Just because these male leaders are not quoting apostles as often as women are does not mean that they are less comfortable with male authority, however: 95 percent of their gendered citations in the general session are from men, as are 100 percent of their gendered citations in the priesthood session. Where non-apostle men have not quoted a woman once in the April priesthood sessions over those five years, 11.9 percent of their quotations in that session are from men without any ecclesiastical authority. Male leaders consistently treat male voices as authoritative, but they do not draw upon male ecclesiastical authority to the same extent that female leaders do. It appears that even the most powerful female leaders in the Church need to appeal more frequently to ecclesiastical authority because they do not themselves have the same access to it as men.
Female leaders’ quotation of apostles and prophets might be seen as their own active affirmation of male authority, deliberately directed at a potentially skeptical female audience. However, it is difficult to imagine that female leaders are even more invested in the maintenance of the prophets’ and apostles’ authority than those men are themselves—that is, the fact that female leaders quote male leaders more than any other group of speakers (and female leaders only 2 percent of the time) looks more like an attempt to draw on male authority to bolster their own credibility. Instead, female leaders’ quotation patterns indicate an investment in promoting female authority: when speaking to an all-female audience,[78] they quote both regular women and female leaders far more frequently than men do when addressing only women. The drop in quotations of women when men enter the audience, however, suggests that female speakers may not believe they have the power to follow through on that investment in a broader Church setting.[79] These quotation patterns indicate that the highest-ranking female leaders of the Church continue to rely upon male priesthood authority in order to be taken seriously, by women and by men. Male leaders’ quotation patterns reveal that women lack authority compared to men in the Church; female leaders’ quotation patterns are a direct result.
Conclusion
Those concerned with the role of women in the Church can cite a litany of statements from Church leaders over the last fifty years that claim that the Church both empowers women and relies upon empowered women.[80] In 2015, for example,[81] then-apostle Russell Nelson quoted Boyd Packer’s 1978[82] encouragement to women, saying, “We need women who are organized and women who can organize. We need women with executive ability who can plan and direct and administer; women who can teach, women who can speak out.”[83] As prophet in 2019, Nelson reaffirmed, “As a righteous, endowed Latter-day Saint woman, you speak and teach with power and authority from God. Whether by exhortation or conversation, we need your voice teaching the doctrine of Christ. We need your input in family, ward, and stake councils. Your participation is essential and never ornamental!”[84]
Intentionally or not, these same leaders consistently engage in rhetorical practices that undermine these stated commitments. The overwhelming imbalance in quoting men and women reveals conference speakers’ belief, conscious or otherwise, that their audience respects male voices more than female ones. While much has changed for women in the Church over the last half-century, much remains the same. Women consistently make up less than 3 percent of quotations in general conference. They are still described in terms of their appearance and relationship status; sermons about how they should live are the domain of male authority; their own representatives in the Church spend much of their time at the pulpit repeating male leaders’ words. Despite leaders’ claims that women speak and teach with power and authority, their quotation practices diminish that authority and frequently deny women the opportunity to speak at all.[85] Quoting women more is one opportunity for leaders to practice what they preach and affirm female authority to the worldwide Church. Quotation in general conference matters because general conference matters: it is the most important event on the institutional Church calendar, with millions of members viewing the talks live and many more engaging with them repeatedly in Church magazines and Sunday curricula over several years. Short of small and large changes to the leadership structure of the Church, general conference is one key avenue through which leaders could demonstrate that women’s participation in the Church really is essential. Right now, their quotations show, it is not even ornamental.
Note: The Dialogue Foundation provides the web format of this article as a courtesy. There may be unintentional differences from the printed version. For citational and bibliographical purposes, please use the printed version or the PDFs provided online and on JSTOR.
[1]This research was made possible by a Chappell Lougee Scholarship in summer 2017 and a Major Grant in summer 2018 from Stanford University. I would like to thank Lee Yearley, Kathryn Gin Lum, and Robert Daines for supporting those grants, Tom Bryan for help with the statistics, and Peter Bryan, Anita Wells, Rosalynde Welch, Gordon Blake, Tyler Johnson, members of the Cambridge First Ward Relief Society, and Dialogue reviewers for thoughtful comments on various drafts.
1. Joy Jones, “An Especially Noble Calling,” April 2020.
[2]. A young girl spoke briefly in the filmed meeting with Nelson.
[3] Though terms referring to sex (female/male) and terms referring to gender (women/men) are not equivalent, they are used interchangeably in this article.
[4] Russell Nelson, “Spiritual Treasures,” October 2019.
[5] Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd, “Modes of Leader Rhetoric in the Institutional Development of Mormonism,” Sociological Analysis 47 no. 2 (1986): 127, original emphasis. Statistical analysis of general conference rhetoric is becoming more popular: others who have recently engaged on this front include Quentin Spencer and blogger Ziff at Zelophehad’s Daughters.
[6] Though general conference happens twice a year, because of time constraints I chose to only study one session per year. Because the April conference often falls on Easter or the anniversary of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, the New Testament and Joseph Smith may be overrepresented in my data. However, my analysis of trends and changes over time should not be impacted, because those events happen every April.
[7] In 1984, the recently released Relief Society and Young Women’s presidencies were invited to give short farewell talks. This marked the first time women had spoken in the general session in more than fifty years, but women did not become regular speakers until 1988.
[8] I only counted direct quotation: ideas that were paraphrased or attributed to a source without actual words from that source were not documented. I also did not count dialogue within narratives, though I did count quotations by characters that explained the “moral of the story,” as well as stories that were told entirely in someone else’s voice.
[9] The actual process of writing and editing conference talks is opaque. Many people other than the speaker might contribute to any one address. Spencer Kimball’s biography, for example, includes a story about Emma Lou Thayne reviewing a draft of his address to the first women’s session, where he apparently adopted many of her suggestions. Edward Kimball, Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 167. Even potentially ghostwritten conference talks, however, should be seen as written from the position of the speaker’s authority.
[10] Richard Armstrong, “Researching Mormonism: General Conference as an Artifactual Gold Mine,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 30, no. 3 (1997): 164.
[11] Sheri Dew, Ezra Taft Benson: A Biography (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1987), 380.
[12] Armstrong, “Researching Mormonism,” 164.
[13] “Conferences,” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
[14] The audio of the original delivery and the transcript later published in Church magazines will sometimes differ in small and large ways. I chose to rely on the published transcripts, which Church spokespeople have claimed represent the “speaker’s intent.” See for example “LDS Church Addresses Changes Made to Pres. Packer’s Talk,” Ksl.com, October 8, 2010.
[15] Ruth Finnegan, Why Do We Quote? (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2018), 284.
[16] For one persuasive example of this technique, see Taylor Petrey, Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
[17] This practice is much less common now than it used to be, likely in part because of the way the internet has changed source availability. For uses throughout the years, see for example Marvin Ashton, “Roadblocks to Progress,” April 1979; Thomas Monson, “Building Your Eternal Home,” April 1984; James Faust, “The Power of Self-Mastery,” April 2000; Joseph Wirthlin, “The Abundant Life,” April 2006; and Thomas Monson, “Preparation Brings Blessings,” April 2010.
[18] One particularly interesting feature of Bartlett’s is that it is organized by the person who said the quotation rather than topic, so speakers who cited it would have to be looking for the source. However, it is possible that speakers use these collections for citations only, rather than finding quotations within them.
[19] For example, of the fifty general conferences in my sample, Thomas Monson spoke at forty-seven of them.
[20] Changes involving a population over time can happen for many reasons. For example, the population might change as it ages, or because the composition of the population changes, or because various events impact all members of the population. I argue that many changes in conference quotation can be attributed to this last source. Again, shifts in conference quotation happen more quickly than cohort changes in Church leaders, and though these leaders are all aging, the age range between the group is often as high as thirty years in the decades covered here. These broad-scale changes in general conference are unlikely to be due solely to changes in private attitudes among speakers.
[21] While percentage changes can look particularly dramatic when they are changes in small values, these particular changes are worth noting. For context, between 1971 and 1980, the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency quoted current apostles nine times and the current prophet fifteen times; between 2011 and 2020, they quoted current apostles twenty times and the current prophet fifty-two times.
[22] Armstrong, “Researching Mormonism,” 164.
[23] Latter-day Saint thinkers have long acknowledged the different roles played by scripture, prophetic pronouncements, and personal revelation in Church doctrine and practice. See, for example, David Holland, “Revelation and the Open Canon in Mormonism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, edited by Terryl Givens and Philip Barlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Other scholars make additional distinctions. Holbrook and Reeder’s At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2017) notes that women draw on authority from their Church positions, their expertise, their experiences and conviction, and their access to the Holy Spirit. Writing about the early Church, Jonathan Stapley distinguishes between “ecclesiastical authority, derived from Church office; liturgical authority, derived from membership in the Church to participate in general rituals of worship; and priestly authority, derived from participation in the Nauvoo Temple liturgy or cosmological priesthood.” Jonathan Stapley, The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 85.
[24] Finnegan, Why Do We Quote?, 57.
[25] Though conference speakers sometimes quote sources in order to disagree with them, this is quite rare.
[26] Spencer Kimball, “Our Sisters in the Church,” October 1979.
[27] Jean Bingham, “United in Accomplishing God’s Work,” April 2020.
[28] Bingham, “United in Accomplishing God’s Work.”
[29] “Influence” frames a woman’s power as something that manifests in others’ words and actions rather than in her own words and actions.
[30] See, for example, Gordon Hinkley, “The Women in Our Lives,” October 2004.
[31] Nelson, “Spiritual Treasures.”
[32] C. S. Lewis was only quoted seven times in my sample, less than other figures like Alexander Pope, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
[33] I did not set out to collect data on race, but it is notable and unsurprising that people of color (setting aside questions about race in the scriptures) are referenced in general conference far less than even women. In my sample, of the eighty-one named individuals not in Church leadership who were quoted more than once in the April general session by apostles, only one was not White: Abie Turay, who was quoted in Henry Eyring, “Is Not This the Fast that I Have Chosen,” April 2015.
[34] Quoted in Dallin Oaks, “Spiritual Gifts,” March 1986.
[35] I counted male sources as those that were either gendered male by a speaker’s verbal citation or footnoted citations from men.
[36] In what follows, quotations attributed to Heavenly Father or Jesus Christ are never included in the male/female ratios. However, divinity in the Church is not outside of gender. See, for example, D. Todd Christofferson, “Let Us Be Men,” October 2006. Readers are encouraged to consider the impact of an embodied male divinity on these quotation patterns and on the Church. No potentially quotable texts are attributed to Heavenly Mother or to the male-gendered Holy Ghost.
[37] Even with gender-neutral verbal citations, the scriptures quoted continue to have been almost entirely written by men.
[38] This includes God, Jesus, Male Scriptures, Female Scriptures, Not Gendered Scriptures.
[39] This includes Non-Gendered, Church Publication, and Couple.
[40] Women make up 9.73 percent of 1,801 total citations.
[41] This includes Past Prophets, Current Prophets, Apostles, Male Church Leaders, and Female Church Leaders.
[42] In that same talk, Oaks also quoted three past Church presidents, three apostles (two living), The Family: A Proclamation to the World, the D&C, and Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. See Dallin Oaks, “The Keys and Authority of the Priesthood,” April 2014.
[43] Current non-apostle male leaders have, however, been quoted in the general session three times.
[44] Spencer Kimball, “The Privileges and Responsibilities of Sisters,” September 1978.
[45] Out of seventy and sixty-five total citations, respectively.
[46] Women are cited significantly more frequently in 2010–2020 than overall (using a one-sided t-test, p=0.004). However, women are not cited significantly more frequently in 2016–2020 than overall (p=0.254).
[47] Some quote far more often than others: Neal Maxwell averaged twenty-four quotations per talk (almost all scripture), while Richard Scott averaged 4.5.
[48] While women make up less than 2 percent of quotations of Church leaders, for example, they make up closer to 5 percent of conference talks.
[49] One initial difficulty with using verbal citation to assert women’s authority is the lack of authority titles for women in the Church. Though there has been a recent push to refer to female presidents as presidents, women were not referred to as “President X” in my sample.
[50] One additional way to determine the authority of a source is to look at the average length of quotations from that source. In a quotation from an authoritative source, what matters most is the presence of the source, rather than what is said. This is borne out by the data, as the current prophet has the lowest average word count of all non-scriptural sources. (In part because of a frequent conference pattern of weaving short phrases from scripture into one’s talk, scriptural sources had the lowest average word count of all sources.) Non-leader women have the highest average word count of all groups. This indicates that when women are quoted, they are quoted for content—meaning, again, that they are not quoted for source. The average length of quotes from women is also in part because of the frequency of narrative quotes from women.
[51] Using a two-sided t-test, p<0.0001, t=4.902.
[52] Quentin Cook, “The Lord is My Light,” April 2015.
[53] It is worth noting that leaders have become more reticent about using career status as a credential over time.
[54] Gary Stevenson, “A Good Foundation Against the Time to Come,” April 2020.
[55] These patterns are present in many elements of conference talks besides quotation: leaders often tell stories that consistently mention women’s appearance, feature them only in their familial roles while men are discussed in a variety of settings, anonymize women even when they are the main characters of the story, and so forth. One memorable example was Cook’s 2011 talk, “LDS Women are Incredible!” (taking its title from a Wallace Stegner quote), which told the story of Young Women’s leaders digging through a young woman’s purse and finding items inside that demonstrate her spirituality, attention to personal hygiene, craft-making creativity, and ability to be “a HOMEMAKER!” Quentin Cook, “LDS Women are Incredible!,” April 2011 (original emphasis). Such a story would never be told about a man.
[56] See for example James Faust, “Father, Come Home,” April 1993; L. Tom Perry, “Fatherhood, An Eternal Calling,” April 2004; D. Todd Christofferson, “Fathers,” April 2016.
[57] See, for example, Dallin Oaks, “The Relief Society and the Church,” April 1992; D. Todd Christofferson, “The Moral Force of Women,” October 2013; Russell Nelson, “Sisters’ Participation in the Gathering of Israel,” October 2018; and Henry Eyring, “Covenant Women in Partnership with God,” October 2019.
[58] Using a one-sided t-test, p=0.00001.
[59] Note that women’s session data is only from the First Presidency; members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles more frequently quote the current prophet, but they do not speak in women’s session and so are not represented here. It might be that citations of the current prophet are lower in the priesthood and general sessions because the prophet usually speaks in those sessions, while he has only spoken at every women’s session more recently. This might be part of the story; however, as shall be shown below, there is also a difference in content in the talks given at the women’s and priesthood sessions that accounts for a greater number of citations of the current prophet. In the last few years, the current prophet has been frequently cited in the women’s session even when he is present.
[60] This difference is statistically significant: p=.02 using a one-sided t-test.
[61] The 0.2 percent appearance of female leaders in the priesthood session is due entirely to a story narrated by Eliza Snow in James Faust, “Perseverance,” April 2005.
[62] I use gender to cover talks dealing with both male and female gender roles and sexual orientation. Speakers usually tie sexuality closely to gender roles: heterosexual marriage is a key element of required masculinity and femininity.
[63] Gender and sexuality were mentioned in more than ten talks: homosexuality and women working outside the home, in particular, made their way onto several litanies of modern-day evils. However, gender was the primary topic of only a few of those addresses.
[64] I did not count addresses about being good priesthood holders as talks about gender unless the speaker also mentioned maleness. Where leaders have repeatedly insisted that all women are mothers, whether or not they actually have children (see for example Nelson, “Sisters’ Participation”) men’s relationship with the priesthood is not discussed in the same terms.
[65] See Petrey, Tabernacles of Clay, for a more extensive discussion of this issue.
[66] This difference is statistically significant: p<0.0001 using a one-sided t-test.
[67] Jana Riess, The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
[68] Citations of Nelson make up 7.7 percent of apostles’ quotations in general sessions since his calling as prophet, while the current prophet made up only 2.0 percent of quotations in previous years. Monson, the prophet preceding Nelson, was quoted 2.2 percent of the time. Nelson is quoted significantly more than other prophets (p<0.0001, t=11.8 using a two-sided t-test) and significantly more than Monson (p<0.0001, t=8.32 using a two-sided t-test).
[69] Dallin Oaks, “Two Great Commandments,” October 2019.
[70] Eyring, “Covenant Women.”
[71] This is measured by dividing the total word count of the address with the total word count of quotations within the address. It may not map exactly to speaking time.
[72] Women spend a significantly greater portion of their talks in quotation than other groups of leaders (p=0.002, t=11.9 using a two-sided t-test) and the First Presidency spends significantly less than other groups (p=0.04, t=2.7 using a two-sided t-test).
[73] It may be surprising that apostles quote more than other male leaders, but this can be attributed to other rhetorical differences. For example, male leaders who are not apostles tend to spend a larger percentage of their talks telling stories rather than discoursing authoritatively, which reduces the number of quotations in their addresses.
[74] The only other video appearance that conference was in Nelson’s address, which was not about gender. He showed a video of himself in the Sacred Grove.
[75] Members of the Presiding Bishopric, Presidency of the Seventy, Quorum of the Seventy, or presidencies of the Young Mens and Sunday School.
[76] This ratio has remained relatively stable over time.
[77] Apostles are the only group of leaders that consistently quote each other. Non-apostle men quote each other only 0.2 percent of the time.
[78] Excepting, of course, the First Presidency members on the stand.
[79] Alternatively, this drop might indicate that female leaders do not believe that female voices should be treated authoritatively by men. This seems unlikely given their presence in general conference and on mixed-gender leadership panels, however limited that presence may be.
[80] Whether leaders’ views of female empowerment are indeed empowering is another question.
[81] See also Spencer Kimball, “The True Way of Life and Salvation,” April 1978; and Gordon Hinkley, “Live Up to Your Inheritance,” October 1983.
[82] Boyd Packer, “The Relief Society,” October 1978.
[83] Russell Nelson, “A Plea to My Sisters,” October 2015.
[84] Nelson, “Spiritual Treasures.”
[85] Dorice Elliot, “Let Women No Longer Keep Silent,” in Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, edited by Maxine Hanks (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 209–11.
[post_title] => Quoted at the Pulpit: Male Rhetoric and Female Authority in Fifty Years of General Conference [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 55.4 (Winter 2021): 1–50While much has changed for women in the Church over the last half-century, much remains the same. Women consistently make up less than 3 percent of quotations in general conference. They are still described in terms of their appearance and relationship status; sermons about how they should live are the domain of male authority; their own representatives in the Church spend much of their time at the pulpit repeating male leaders’ words. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => quoted-at-the-pulpit-male-rhetoric-and-female-authority-in-fifty-years-of-general-conference [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-11-14 23:46:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-11-14 23:46:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=31423 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Assuming Power
Linda Hoffman Kimball
Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 53–57
Some feel that “smashing the patriarchy” is the ultimate goal of what they define as “feminism.” That is not my opinion. Each of us—female and male—have power given us to serve and lead, speak out and nurture, preach doctrine, and clean the bathrooms in the ward building.
Podcast version of this Personal Essay.
I am the youngest of three sisters, reared as a Protestant in the Illinois suburbs of Chicago. My mother was a nurse who returned to working when I was in my late elementary school years. Her mother was a nurse, too, a Swedish immigrant who arrived in Rockford, Illinois, at the age of ten in 1890.
My mother was creative, generous, and hospitable. Throughout my school years, we hosted guests through various international programs from Germany, Argentina, Japan, and Iran. When I was twelve, my sisters, mother, and I traveled to see my mother’s relatives who still lived in Sweden and then went on a whirlwind tour of Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, France, and England.
Mom had the loudest voice and strongest opinions in the household. She was determined and committed to her sometimes eccentric opinions. She had a unique approach to allergies, believing that any ailment—from car sickness to cancer—could be attributed to something ingested or inhaled from the environment. For example, she was convinced that my unsettled tummy after car rides to my grandparents’ house in Chicago (which I attribute to being squashed between my parents in the front seat and driving forty-five minutes on bumpy roads) was a reaction to my grandmother’s gas stove and gas heating, to which I was surely too sensitive.
Armed with her strong beliefs, Mom petitioned the school board in our town to allow me to go to high school a year early because the middle school being built would have gas heating, which she insisted would have a deleterious effect on my health. I went to high school a year early. After earning straight As my first term, the school board decided I was officially a freshman and didn’t have to do any catch-up work.
Because there were no boys in our family, I just assumed that girls could do whatever they wanted to if they put their minds and hearts into it. My dad was as good a chef as my mother, and Sunday dinners were always his delicious domain. They both had honorable jobs making the world better. Gender didn’t count for much other than which bathroom I used at school. And as far as racial distinctions went, and as far as Christ was concerned, that had surely been settled long ago. I brought home 1960s civil rights songs from junior Bible camp and sang them joyfully: “And before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free!”
I read the scriptures as my pastors and my own questions led me—seeking truth from the Good Book (and balking at some of Paul’s wilder sexist remarks just as I balked at some of my mother’s odd conclusions). The words to John Oxenham’s hymn “In Christ There Is No East or West” led me along my path:
In Christ there is no east or west,
in him no south or north,
but one great fellowship of love
throughout the whole wide earth.
Join hands, disciples of the faith,
whate’er your race may be.
All children of the living God
are surely kin to me.
I was a faithful Christian girl who had, as the Protestant parlance pronounced, a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” (I have been Jesus’ girl for as long as I have conscious memories. I still am.) I was very involved in our church’s youth group and served as its president. Despite it still being the 1960s, I seriously considered becoming a pastor “when I grew up”—at that time a rare and radical profession for women.
During my senior year in high school, I became close friends with an LDS girl in my class whose family had recently moved to our town from Utah. She and I found we had a lot of common ground in matters of faith. She invited me to her house for dinner and to meet the missionaries. When they asked me if I wanted to learn even more about Jesus Christ, I said, “Of course!”
Ten months later, as a freshman at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, I felt I would never get a satisfying answer to the dilemma in front of me: did God want me to become Mormon? I was happy and fulfilled in my Protestant faith. The concept the Mormons (as they were then called) taught that the gospel contains all truth[1] was exciting and compelling. It was not a question of “by their fruits ye shall know them” because in terms of quality of character, I recognized there were spiritual giants in each place. There were also the kooky kind of “fruits” on full display in both traditions, too.
During an October visit from two missionaries at my freshman college dorm I had a pivotal experience that gave me a jolt of grace and love beyond anything I had previously experienced. It granted clarity that assured me God wanted me to become a Mormon.
At first, I interpreted the transcendence of that encounter as “Yes, it’s true!” Over the course of the intervening decades, I have come to realize that I didn’t (and still don’t) understand what the “it” in that exclamation refers to and what the adjective “true” fully means. Regardless of my constant wrestling with words and their meanings, I still consider that experience in my dorm room as among the “true-est” experiences I have ever had. It changed my life if not my blood type and continues to shape my journey of faith.
After I waited for two years (attending Cambridge’s university wards and even holding callings), my parents were persuaded that this was not just an adolescent whim and allowed me to be baptized, three days shy of my nineteenth birthday.
The LDS women I first encountered in New England were dynamic, eager, outspoken, questing, accomplished women. These included, among others, Claudia Bushman, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Judy Dushku, Grethe Peterson, Nancy Dredge, Jill Mulvay, Carrel Sheldon, Cheryl DiVito, Judy Gilliland, and Mimmu Sloan. A half-generation older than I, they were the embodiment of what I thought all Mormon women (and men, for that matter) would be—articulate, advocates of equal rights for all, and full of faith in Christ.
As part of an institute class these women researched the lives of the nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint foremothers, compiled their results, and published a book called Mormon Sisters in 1976.[2] They also launched a new iteration of the nineteenth-century periodical Woman’s Exponent for LDS sisters and christened it Exponent II—basing it on the “twin pedestals of Mormonism and Feminism” as they had seen exemplified in the lives of Eliza R. Snow, Emma Hale Smith, Patty Bartlett Sessions, Martha Hughes Cannon, Emmeline B. Wells, and others.
I remember walking past an institute class in Cambridge. I heard Judy Dushku saying that when her colleagues at the college where she taught asked her, “How can you be a Mormon and a feminist?” she replied, “Of course I’m a feminist! It’s because I’m Mormon!” To me that sounded just right. Shouldn’t everyone—male and female—be a feminist if it means allowing each individual to achieve “the measure of their creation”?
Soon I was illustrating for Exponent II, then writing articles and eventually a column, and attending or presenting at Exponent retreats in lovely New England settings.
In September 1979, President Spencer W. Kimball gave an address called “The Role of Righteous Women.” In it he said:
Much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because many of the good women of the world (in whom there is often such an inner sense of spirituality) will be drawn to the Church in large numbers. This will happen to the degree that the women of the Church reflect righteousness and articulateness in their lives and to the degree that the women of the Church are seen as distinct and different—in happy ways—from the women of the world.[3]
I wanted to be “righteous” and “articulate.” The way I understood it, LDS women I knew weren’t “claiming” power from anyone else’s domain. They were examples of owning the power inherent in them as daughters and heirs of God.
When, as a new mother, I moved with my husband Chris to Hyde Park on Chicago’s South Side, I met more examples of women (and men) who understood the amazing potential God has invested in each of us. Throughout the decades I discovered soulmates among more LDS women. My sister-friend Cathy Stokes, an African American convert to the Church, was straight-talking, outspoken, committed to the gospel (and Gospel music)—and was not-to-be-messed-with. Others continued to lead, guide, and walk beside me as examples of Christlike women-in-action.
Cathy Stokes is the one who introduced me to a hymn from her previous Baptist tradition. I often hum and sing its refrain. It’s called “Plenty Good Room”:
Plenty good room, plenty good room,
plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom,
Plenty good room, plenty good room,
Just choose your seat and sit down.
Over the course of many decades of Church membership I have, of course, discovered that sisters in the Church vary in their attitudes and confidence in recognizing, owning, and asserting their God-given powers. Not all women were nurtured on the laps of confident, committed women. Not all of them grew up under the influence of strong-minded mothers in a house full of females and a non-hierarchical father. There are aspects of our LDS culture that subtly—or directly from the pulpit—have been tainted by “the philosophies of men mingled with scripture.”[4] There remains a lot of long-standing toxic rhetoric that women are somehow “less than,” subservient, or in need of covenantal “safety hatches.”
Some feel that “smashing the patriarchy” is the ultimate goal of what they define as “feminism.” That is not my opinion. Each of us—female and male—have power given us to serve and lead, speak out and nurture, preach doctrine, and clean the bathrooms in the ward building. I’m sure there are others who feel that distinct rules and roles must be enumerated and enforced. I generally diffuse the discontent that stirs in me by reminding myself that each of us approaches life from our own quadrant of the Myers–Briggs personality scale. Some like rules. Some function better with hazier boundaries. (That doesn’t resolve all the hurdles I come across in my life as a committed misfit among the Latter-day Saints, but it provides enough buffer of charity to keep me moving forward.) As I have assumed from my earliest years, Christ is our example. Can we hear him calling us as he did in 3 Nephi 10:4: “How oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and have nourished you?” I am persuaded that part of my (and, I believe, our Church’s) current task is to ensure that there is, in fact, “plenty good room” in God’s kingdom. Let us acknowledge our power from our divine heritage. Then let’s choose our seat and sit down.
Note: The Dialogue Foundation provides the web format of this article as a courtesy. There may be unintentional differences from the printed version. For citational and bibliographical purposes, please use the printed version or the PDFs provided online and on JSTOR.
[1] Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1997), 16.
[2] Claudia Bushman, ed., Mormon Sisters (Cambridge, Mass.: Emmeline Press Limited, 1976).
[3] Spencer W. Kimball, “The Role of Righteous Women,” Oct. 1979.
[4] Hartman Rector Jr., “You Shall Receive the Spirit,” Ensign, Jan. 1974.
[post_title] => Assuming Power [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 53–57Some feel that “smashing the patriarchy” is the ultimate goal of what they define as “feminism.” That is not my opinion. Each of us—female and male—have power given us to serve and lead, speak out and nurture, preach doctrine, and clean the bathrooms in the ward building. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => assuming-power [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 01:44:30 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 01:44:30 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=27874 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Women in Workplace Power
Barbara Christiansen
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 143–157
Women’s work has always been multifaceted and applied across all aspects of human experience. Women have filled many roles: queen, mother, inventor, artist, healer, politician, caretaker, prophet. Women’s voices have been loud and quiet, sometimes invisible but always present, on the vanguard or on the margins, leading, pushing, making change.
Women’s work has always been multifaceted and applied across all aspects of human experience. Women have filled many roles: queen, mother, inventor, artist, healer, politician, caretaker, prophet. Women’s voices have been loud and quiet, sometimes invisible but always present, on the vanguard or on the margins, leading, pushing, making change. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => women-in-workplace-power [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 01:48:01 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 01:48:01 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=25890 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Mormon Women in the Ministry
Emily Clyde Curtis
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 129–142
Interview with Brittany Mangelson who is a full-time minister for Community of Christ. She has a master of arts in religion from Graceland University and works as a social media seeker ministry specialist.
Interview with Brittany Mangelson who is a full-time minister for Community of Christ. She has a master of arts in religion from Graceland University and works as a social media seeker ministry specialist.
[post_title] => Mormon Women in the Ministry [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 129–142Interview with Brittany Mangelson who is a full-time minister for Community of Christ. She has a master of arts in religion from Graceland University and works as a social media seeker ministry specialist. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => mormon-women-in-the-ministry [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 01:49:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 01:49:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=25888 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Utah
Amanda Hendrix-Komoto
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 33–47
In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an attempt to restore menstrual cycles that anemia, pregnancy, or illness had temporarily “stopped.” Women living in the twenty-first century are unable to access these earlier understandings of pregnancy because the way we understand pregnancy has changed as a result of debates over the criminalization of abortion and the development of ultrasound technology.
On a shelf in my office, I have a small red container marked “Chichester’s English Red Cross Diamond Brand Pennyroyal Pills.” I bought it in a moment of curiosity after learning that Utah’s newspapers once advertised abortion pills. The inside of the tin features a woman reclining on a moon. She promises consumers that Chichester’s pills “are the most powerful and reliable emmenagogue known” and are “safe, sure and always effectual.” Students rarely, if ever, notice the box, which sits in front of a Christmas ornament honoring Jeannette Rankin, an early female politician and pacifist from Montana, and next to a potato scrubber. Even if they did, it is unlikely that they would guess that it was a container for abortion pills.
Since graduate school, I have been friends with several women whose academic work focuses on reproductive justice. In a particularly poignant piece, my friend Lauren MacIvor Thompson connects a man “punching his wife when she didn’t undress fast enough for sex” to his support for a fetal heartbeat bill.[1] Although I have been interested in the history of abortion and contraception for several years, I have not joined my colleagues in publishing on the subject. I feared that I would not be able to write a piece that was interesting to both academics and popular audiences and that the politically divisive nature of the topic would alienate people I needed to support me as a junior scholar.
My friends’ engagement with public history, however, has convinced me of the need to engage with wider audiences. On social media and in an article published in the New York Times, for example, MacIvor Thompson has argued for the importance of detailed historical analysis when discussing abortion and birth control. Her deft exposition of the coded language that women used to discuss abortion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries demonstrates the need for historical expertise when analyzing women’s history.[2] Discussions of abortion and birth control within Latter-day Saint communities, however, often lack the historical awareness for which MacIvor Thompson and others have called.[3] This essay is an attempt to provide an overview of scholarship on the history of contraception and abortion as it relates to Latter-day Saint women.
Before the mid-nineteenth century, most people did not consider a fetus to be “alive” before it quickened, nor was first-trimester abortion illegal. Most authorities considered birth control and abortion to be under the purview of midwives and part of women’s health care.[4] Latter-day Saint understandings of women’s bodies and pregnancy closely mirrored those of other Americans at the time. In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an attempt to restore menstrual cycles that anemia, pregnancy, or illness had temporarily “stopped.” Women living in the twenty-first century are unable to access these earlier understandings of pregnancy because the way we understand pregnancy has changed as a result of debates over the criminalization of abortion and the development of ultrasound technology. Reconstructing this history is important, however, because it provides a context for our own discussions of women’s bodies and reproductive rights. Too often, these discussions are ahistorical, and Latter-day Saints and their neighbors act as though society has always understood women’s bodies, pregnancy, and the origins of life in the same way.
One of the things that I have learned from my colleagues is that abortion was once fairly common and unremarkable. Until recently, there was no way for a woman to know for certain that she was pregnant until she felt the baby quicken or move. A woman whose period had stopped might be experiencing malnutrition or illness, or she might be pregnant.[5] If women saw the cessation of their menses as a sign of ill health, they could take medicine to restore their menstrual flow. Sometimes these medicines induced an abortion; at other times, they likely provoked menstruation in women who were anemic or malnourished. It was impossible to distinguish between these two outcomes. As historian John Riddle argues in his own discussion of the issue, a medieval woman “could not possibly know whether she had assisted a natural process or terminated a very early pregnancy.” Nor would she have framed the question in that way. In the medieval period, women and doctors did not see “pregnancy” as starting “at conception or implantation.” [6] Indeed, early signs of pregnancy were ambiguous. According to an online exhibit by Tatjana Buklijas and Nick Hopwood, women in the medieval and early modern periods lived “perched between good growth and evil stagnation” of their bodily fluids.[7] The authors make the same point as Riddle about differing definitions of pregnancy and the inability of women in that time period to differentiate between an early abortion and late menstruation. The ambiguity in which women lived was a part of their daily experience and points to the gap between their experiences and ours.
Women have long practiced contraception and abortion. John Riddle describes an affair between a Catholic priest and a widow in fourteenth-century France that has provided scholars with information about late-medieval birth control. Inquisition records suggest that the priest often brought “with him [an] herb wrapped in a linen cloth” whenever they had sex. He placed it on “a long string,” which hung from her neck “between [her] breasts.” It is unclear how exactly the herb worked, but Riddle argues that the priest likely placed it in her vagina.[8] Although the priest was eventually accused of heresy, these accusations should not blind us to the existence of birth control in medieval Europe. Medieval women used a variety of contraceptive methods, including the withdrawal method, to prevent pregnancy.[9] A ninth-century medical text also contains directions for restoring the menses.[10] Centuries later, women in the nineteenth-century United States used teas made from pennyroyal to induce miscarriages. One of my students tells a story of her rural Wyoming grandmother making her own pessaries in the 1930s, which an unfortunate visitor once mistook for treats (much to his dismay).[11] What these examples demonstrate is that knowledge circulated between women in a variety of places and contexts about how to prevent pregnancies and how to use items from their kitchens to do so.
Understandings of abortion and pregnancy began to change in the mid-nineteenth century. Male physicians launched a campaign to redefine how women thought of their bodies and abortion.[12] Historians like Jennifer Holland, Leslie Reagan, and Judith Leavitt have argued that the campaign was ultimately about the prestige of male doctors and academics who sought to establish themselves as authorities over women’s reproductive health.[13] In the 1850s, the American Medical Association (AMA) began a campaign to criminalize abortion and discredit midwives. In an article on “criminal abortion,” the AMA asserted “the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being” and urged people to protect that life.[14] The famous American phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler accused a particularly famous purveyor of female pills of “destroying the lives of both mothers and embryo human beings to an incredible extent.”[15] He advocated for her arrest in print. “If human life,” he wrote, “should be protected by law—if murderers should be punished by law’s most severe penalties—she surely should be punished, and her deathly practice be at once arrested.”[16] In the second half of the nineteenth century, states began to pass laws criminalizing abortion. It is important to note here, as Holland has done, that the emphasis on the “life” of the fetus “was not a result of any advancements in embryonic knowledge. In fact, there were none during these campaigns.”[17]
The first generations of Latter-day Saints developed their understanding of pregnancy during this tumultuous time period. Their understandings of the body, however, do not fit easily within this timeline. On the one hand, Latter-day Saints believed that the soul was not created at the same time as the physical body. Instead, they believed that the soul existed before it became embodied in human flesh.[18] Orson Pratt, for example, argued in 1853 that human souls “were present when the foundations of the earth were laid” and “sang and shouted for joy” as they watched creation. He believed that an individual’s body became enjoined with their soul in the womb.[19] Two decades later, Brigham Young identified quickening as the moment when a fetus became alive during a funeral sermon for a Latter-day Saint named Thomas Williams. He told the mourners that “when the mother feels life come to her infant, it is the spirit entering the body preparatory to the immortal existence.”[20] These statements by Young and Pratt were perfectly consonant with the understandings of pregnancy widely accepted during the early modern period, which had placed the beginning of life at quickening and accepted abortion in the first trimester as a return of menstruation.
Latter-day Saint leaders, however, also made speeches denouncing abortion despite the fact that their theology did not necessarily require doing so. In 1867, Young explicitly decried attempts to avoid infanticide through “the other equally great crime.” Some scholars have interpreted his statement as a reference to abortion, but he could also be referring to birth control.[21] In 1884, Erastus Snow lauded Latter-day Saint women for refusing to patronize “the vendor of noxious, poisonous, destructive medicines to procure abortion, infanticide, child murder, and other wicked devices.”[22] Snow and Young never explicitly define abortion, but it appears that they accepted the arguments of the American Medical Association decrying abortion even as they rejected their position about when life began.
It is important, however, not to just examine the sermons and speeches of elite Latter-day Saint men. Although Latter-day Saint leaders railed against abortion, there is evidence that some of their female followers took medications to regulate their periods and did so without much censure. In 1896, a Latter-day Saint female physician named Hannah Sorensen published an obstetrical textbook designed to provide women with information about their bodies. She had attended medical school in Denmark in the 1860s before converting to the LDS Church and traveling to Utah, where she set up a practice.[23] Sorensen accused the Latter-day Saint patients she saw in her practice as having “a terrible misunderstanding in regard to foetal life.” Perhaps with dis belief or even disdain, she wrote, “Many believe it is no sin to produce abortion before there is life, but there is always life.”[24] Her descriptions of her encounters with Latter-day Saint women suggest that some of them agreed with their contemporaries that quickening represented the soul coming into the body of an infant and did not see early abortion as a moral issue.
Like their counterparts throughout the United States, Utah newspapers advertised abortion pills. Increasing restrictions on abortion and birth control meant that the advertisements used euphemisms to refer to the pills’ effects, but they were ubiquitous. A quick newspaper search using the database Newspapers.com reveals advertisements in a long list of Utah newspapers, including the Salt Lake Tribune, the Daily Enquirer (Provo), the Standard (Ogden), the Wasatch Wave (Heber), the Ephraim Enterprise, the Broad Ax (Salt Lake City), the Transcript Bulletin (Tooele), and the Deseret Evening News (Salt Lake City).[25] Reed Smoot, a future Utah senator and member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, owned a drug company in Provo that sold Mesmin’s French Female Pills. An ad in the Provo Daily Enquirer styled the pills “The Ladies’ Friend” and promised “immediate relief of Painful, and Irregular Menses, Female Weakness etc.”[26] The Deseret Evening News assured women in 1910 that Dr. Martel’s Female Pills could be found “for sale at all drug stores.”[27] And, as a final example, a British convert named William Driver stocked Dr. Mott’s Pennyroyal Pills in his store in Ogden, Utah.[28] Although I have been unable to find a direct statement from a Latter-day Saint woman describing her experience taking female pills, it is likely that some women did so. Otherwise, Hannah Sorensen would have had no reason to lodge her complaint and Latter-day Saint businessmen would not have stocked them.
Sorensen found this situation troubling. In her obstetrical text book, she dismissed the idea that it was “no sin” to have an abortion before quickening by arguing that “life” existed “from the moment of conception.”[29] She also tried to convince Latter-day Saint women of the rightness of her position by giving classes on the subject. The notes that women took during her lectures and classes give us a window into changing Latter-day Saint attitudes about women and pregnancy. The George Teasdale collection contains the notes that Rosa B. Hayes took while listening to Sorensen lecture in 1889. Her notes locate the origins of pregnancy in the first moments after conception. Immediately after this event, she notes, “great changes take place in the system, causing many little troubles and ailments.”[30] “All ther [sic] nature,” she continued, “is in sympathy with, and lends assistance to develop the new being.”[31] She encouraged any pregnant woman to “ask Him to help her observe all the rules of nature, keep her mind placid, and contemplate on the future of her offspring.”[32] Women were to avoid eating “pork, pickles, beans, onions, bacon, unripe fruit, mustard, horse radish, cabbage, tea, coffee and all other stimulants.”[33] Sex was also forbidden as was her usual routine of “hard work.”[34] This new understanding of pregnancy encouraged women to see their bodies as vessels for potential life. It is difficult to know how Latter-day Saint women as a whole responded to Sorensen’s lectures and classes. While women like Rosa Hayes welcomed Sorensen’s information, others likely rejected it as nonsense. The latter were unlikely to leave records of their opinions.
By the late nineteenth century, attitudes surrounding abortion had already begun to change. Within a few decades, Latter-day Saint women would experience increased pressure to have large families. The Relief Society Magazine published a series of statements from members of the Quorum of Twelve on birth control in its July 1916 issue. Rudger Clawson called the decision to limit family size “a serious evil”—“especially among the rich who have ample means to support large families.”[35] Joseph Fielding Smith argued that “it is just as much murder to destroy life before as it is after birth.”[36] Likewise, Orson F. Whitney wrote that “the only legitimate ‘birth control’ [was] that which springs naturally from the observance of divine laws.”[37] The frontispiece featured a collage of young children and infants as an explicit argument for the value of children. It is difficult for women born in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries to imagine how women living in earlier time periods experienced pregnancy. Modern photography and ultrasound technology have transformed how we understand early pregnancy. In 1965, Life magazine published an emblematic set of photos of the fetus. The images invited people to imagine fetuses at each stage of development. One depicted an eighteen-week-old fetus, in the words of one historian, “radiant and floating in a bubble-like amniotic sac.” The same historian continues, “It is the image of a sleeping infant, eyes closed, head turned to the side, petite and glowing against a black background flecked with star-like matter.”[38]
Around the same time, doctors began to “see” inside the womb using ultrasound technology. Newspapers around the United States printed articles about the innovation’s promise: one woman from a Boston suburb discovered that she was having twins; a doctor in Colorado urged its use in conjunction with amniocentesis to diagnose Down syndrome; and an Alaska hospital used it to predict difficult deliveries.[39] Ultrasound has given us the illusion of direct access to the womb and has created the idea that the infant is a separate patient from its mother.[40] Before the mid-twentieth century, women did not have access to these technologies and saw early pregnancy as an indeterminate state.
It is difficult to recapture the uncertainty that existed around early pregnancy in the nineteenth century. It is impossible to remove ourselves from the technologies and cultural concepts that shape our relationships to our bodies and pregnancies. I became pregnant with my second child at a difficult time in my life. I had just started a tenure-track job and was struggling to connect to people at the university. After I took the pregnancy test, I remember thinking that no matter what happened that it would be me and this child. My thoughts were directed at an embryo that was just a few weeks old. Although I like to imagine those thoughts as completely my own, they were made possible by decades of imagining the fetus as a separate being. Changing understandings of pregnancy have also shaped how Latter-day Saints relate to their bodies. Like their non-Mormon sisters, Latter-day Saint women initially placed the beginning of life in the womb at quickening and likely used a variety of herbal remedies to regulate their periods and pregnancy. Debates over abortion in the second half of the nineteenth century politicized women’s control over their bodies and created the idea of conception as the moment in which individual human lives began. The current stance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on abortion is that “human life is a sacred gift from God” and that “elective abortion for personal or social convenience is contrary to the will and the commandments of God.”[41] It is important to remember, however, that Latter-day Saints have not always agreed on when life began and, as a result, have not always accepted that early abortion is a sin. It is important to ground our discussions of abortion and reproductive rights in a historical context. Too often, these conversations proceed as though our understandings of women’s bodies and the nature of life within the womb are self-evident.
[1] Lauren MacIvor Thompson, “Women Have Fought to Legalize Reproductive Rights for Nearly Two Centuries,” History News Network, June 9, 2019, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/172181. Dr. MacIvor Thompson has also pointed out in private conversations with me that heartbeat is inaccurate and puts the word in quotation marks in her own article. At six weeks of gestation, the fetus does not have a fully formed heart. Instead, what we see on an ultrasound is the electrical activity of the cells that will eventually become the heart. For a full explanation of the misleading nature of the term “heartbeat” and its use in contemporary politics, see “Doctor’s Organization: Calling Abortion Bans ‘Fetal Heartbeat Bills’ is Misleading,” Guardian, June 5, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/05 /abortion-doctors-fetal-heartbeat-bills-language-misleading.
[2] See Lauren MacIvor Thompson (@lmacthompson1), “1/Good morning! I am compelled to write my first ever tweet thread because @CokieRoberts on @NPR this morning stated that she could not find abortion ads in 19thc newspapers and therefore historians are just playing at pro-choice politics,” Twitter, June 5, 2019, 6:26 a.m., https://twitter.com/lmacthompson1/status/1136247963817304064; and MacIvor Thompson, “Women Have Always Had Abortions,” New York Times, Dec. 13, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/13/opinion/sunday/abortion-history-women.html.
[3] I have chosen to use the Church’s style guide as much as possible for this article. Since I am not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it seemed important to try respect the Church’s wishes as much as possible, especially when dealing with a sensitive topic such as this one.
[4] Tatjana Buklijas and Nick Hopwood, “Experiencing Pregnancy,” Making Visible Embryos (website), http://www.sites.hps.cam.ac.uk/visibleembryos /s1_1.html.
[5] John M. Riddle, Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 26.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Buklijas and Hopwood, “Experiencing Pregnancy.”
[8] Quoted in Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, 22–23.
[9] Maryanne Kowaleski, “Gendering Demographic Change in the Middle Ages,” The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, edited by Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 190.
[10] Jessica Cale, “Sex, Contraception, and Abortion in Medieval England,” Dirty, Sexy History (blog), July 17, 2017, https://dirtysexyhistory.com/2017/07/30/sex -contraception-and-abortion-in-medieval-england/; Hunter S. Jones, et al., Sexuality and its Impact on History: The British Stripped Bare (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword History, 2018), 62.
[11] Andi Powers, “Bitter Lessons,” High Altitude History (blog), Mar. 8, 2017, https://historymsu.wordpress.com/2017/03/08/bitter-lessons-andi-powers/.
[12] Jennifer L. Holland, “Abolishing Abortion: The History of the Pro-Life Movement in America,” American Historian, Nov. 2016, https://tah.oah.org/november-2016/abolishing-abortion-the-history-of-the-pro-life-movement-in-america/.
[13] Holland, “Abolishing Abortion;” Leslie J. Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); and Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
[14] Cited in D. Brian Scarnecchia, Bioethics, Law, and Human Life Issues: A Catholic Perspective on Marriage, Family, Contraception, Abortion, Reproductive Technology, and Death and Dying (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2010), 280.
[15] Orson Squire Fowler, Love and Parentage: Applied to the Improvement of Offspring (New York: Fowlers and Wells, 1852), 68.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Holland, “Abolishing Abortion”; Reagan, When Abortion was a Crime; Leavitt, Brought to Bed.
[18] Terryl L. Givens, When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
[19] Orson Pratt, “The Pre-existence of Man,” Seer 1, no. 2 (February 1853): 20. Thank you to Matthew Bowman for pointing me toward this source.
[20] Brigham Young, July 19, 1874, Journal of Discourses, 17:143.
[21] Brigham Young, Aug. 17, 1867, Journal of Discourses, 12:120. See Peggy Fletcher Stack, “Surprise! The LDS Church Can Be Seen as More ‘Pro-Choice’ than Pro-Life on Abortion. Here’s Why,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 1, 2019, https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/06/01/surprise-lds-church-can/; and Lynn D. Wardle, “Teaching Correct Principles: The Experience of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Responding to Widespread Social Acceptance of Elective Abortion,” BYU Studies Quarterly 53, no. 1 (Jan. 2014): 112.
[22] Erastus Snow, Mar. 9, 1884, Journal of Discourses, 25:111–12. Although I have consulted the Journal of Discourses for these citations, many of them have been previously refenced by Lester Bush, and readers would do well to reference his work. See Lester E. Bush, Jr., “Birth Control among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 10, no. 2 (1976): 12–44.
[23] Robert S. McPherson and Mary Lou Mueller, “Divine Duty: Hannah Sorensen and Midwifery in Southeastern Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 65, no. 4 (1997): 336.
[24] Hannah Sorensen, What Women Should Know (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon & Sons Company, 1896), 80.
[25] In this case, I used Newspapers.com to find these examples, but a similar search could be performed using Chronicling America (chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) or any number of sites.
[26] Advertisement, Daily Enquirer 7, no. 88, Apr. 10, 1893, 2, available at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42896775/.
[27] Advertisement, Deseret Evening News, Sept. 12, 1910, 9, available at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42896791/.
[28] Advertisement, Standard, May 2, 1893, 2, available at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42896809/.
[29] Sorensen, What Women Should Know, 80.
[30] Rosa B. Hayes, Midwife Instruction Book, 1889, p. 24, George Teasdale Papers, box 21, folder 5, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[31] Ibid., 24.
[32] Ibid., 26.
[33] Ibid., 29.
[34] Ibid., 31.
[35] “Birth Control,” Relief Society Magazine 3, no. 7 (July 1916): 364.
[36] Ibid., 368.
[37] Ibid., 367.
[38] Ann Neumann, “The Visual Politics of Abortion,” The Revealer (blog), Mar. 8, 2017, https://therevealer.org/the-patient-body-visual-politics-of-abortion/ For the original images, see Lennart Nilsson, “Drama of Life Before Birth,” Life, Apr. 30, 1965, 54–71.
[39] Respectively, “Ultrasound Tells Mom ‘Twins Due,’” Ogden Standard-Examiner, Nov. 14, 1971, 12, available at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42901981/; Joanne Koch, “Tests are Urged for Late Pregnancies,” Daily Times-News (Burlington, N.C.), Jan. 28, 1976, 11A, available at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42902070/; and Diane Simmons, “Hospital Squeeze is Result of More Patients, More Deliveries,” Fairbanks Daily News, Mar. 24, 1976, A-11, available at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42902070/.
[40] For analyses of the role ultrasound has played in changing pregnancy, see Barbara Duden, Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn, translated by Lee Hoinacki (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Malcolm Nicolson and John E. E. Fleming, Imaging and Imagining the Fetus: The Development of Obstetric Ultrasound (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); and Sarah Dubow, Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
[41] “Abortion,” Gospel Topics, accessed Sept. 29, 2019, available at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/abortion?lang=eng.
[post_title] => The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Utah [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 33–47In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an attempt to restore menstrual cycles that anemia, pregnancy, or illness had temporarily “stopped.” Women living in the twenty-first century are unable to access these earlier understandings of pregnancy because the way we understand pregnancy has changed as a result of debates over the criminalization of abortion and the development of ultrasound technology. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-other-crime-abortion-and-contraception-in-nineteenth-and-twentieth-century-utah [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-10 23:03:52 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-10 23:03:52 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=25875 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Multiculturalism as Resistance: Latina Migrants Navigate U.S. Mormon Spaces
Brittany Romanello
Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 5–32
I cannot help but smile when she calls me hermana, her “sister.” Her reference to me signifies a dual meaning: I am not only like a family member to her, but additionally, the term hermana is used among Spanish-speaking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons) to signify solidarity and integration with one another.
I cannot help but smile when she calls me hermana, her “sister.” Her reference to me signifies a dual meaning: I am not only like a family member to her, but additionally, the term hermana is used among Spanish-speaking members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons) to signify solidarity and integration with one another. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => multiculturalism-as-resistance-latina-migrants-navigate-u-s-mormon-spaces [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 21:37:37 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 21:37:37 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=25872 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Mother Tree: Understanding the Spiritual Root of Our Ecological Crisis
Kathryn Knight Sonntag
Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 17–32
But the experience of women as women, their wilderness crescent,
is unshared with men—utterly other—and therefore to men, unnatural.
But the experience of women as women, their wilderness crescent, is unshared with men—utterly other—and therefore to men, unnatural. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-mother-tree-understanding-the-spiritual-root-of-our-ecological-crisis [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 21:37:31 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 21:37:31 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=23344 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Condemn Me Not
Jody England Hansen
Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 17–32
I do not lend the weight of truth to the language of ritual. Such language is symbolic. But even in the context of symbolism, language that is so preferential toward men and dismissive of women—especially when such language more aptly demonstrates the bias of the writers than the purpose of the ritual—needs to be removed.
I do not lend the weight of truth to the language of ritual. Such language is symbolic. But even in the context of symbolism, language that is so preferential toward men and dismissive of women—especially when such language more aptly demonstrates the bias of the writers than the purpose of the ritual—needs to be removed. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => condemn-me-not [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 21:39:13 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 21:39:13 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=23343 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
LDS Women’s Authority and the Temple: A Feminist FHE Discussion with Maxine Hanks
Maxine Hanks
Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 45–76
A Feminist Family Home Evening discussion with Maxine Hanks regarding women in the church as seen through temple theology.
Editor’s note: The following is taken from a Q&A discussion that followed a presentation on “LDS Women and the Temple in Historical Context.”
Provo, Utah, February 25, 2019[1] (excerpted and edited for length and clarity)
Dialogue: It’s a rare pleasure to get together with Maxine Hanks for a private discussion about the place of women in the LDS Church. She has done research and writing in Mormon studies for a long time, and she’s been standing on the front lines of Mormon feminism for more than three decades. I know you all—as Mormon feminists— have questions for her about feminist issues in the Church, and her thoughts about the temple. I also asked her to share some of her personal journey with us.
Maxine: Thanks, I’m happy to answer any questions or discuss what- ever topics you have in mind. First, to give some background, in 1992 I published a book about the history of Mormon feminism and women’s relationship to priesthood and theology.[2] I found feminist voices from the beginnings of the Church to the present; women like Emma Hale Smith, Eliza R. Snow, and Emmeline B. Wells were talking about their own authority independent of men’s, and their own relationship to priesthood. I used women’s writings from the Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes, the Woman’s Exponent, Exponent II, Relief Society Magazine, Mormons for ERA, Algie Ballif Forum, Mormon Women’s Forum, Voice club at BYU, and other sources. I republished a few feminist articles and asked feminist scholars to write new articles about LDS women’s history and theology for the book. I also interviewed women and men to collect their experiences with the divine feminine.
So, it was a lot of new and bold feminist research in one book at a time when most Mormons didn’t even use the word “feminist” in public. The result was that five of my writers and myself faced Church discipline; four of us were in the September Six.[3] We lost our Church membership, but we knew that was the risk and the price for publishing feminist work that questioned traditional or institutional views at that time.
Today all that information is mainstream on the internet, often used or cited by LDS historians, scholars, and members. So, nineteen years later, I came back to the Church in 2012. I felt compelled to do that for my own healing, as a feminist historian and theologian in the Church. I wanted to foster belonging for myself and others who’ve been silenced or disciplined for feminism or scholarly work.
I didn’t recant anything I’d said or written in the past or change my feminist views or work. I simply wanted to restore my membership, as I am. Obviously, I had help from supportive Church leaders. It was one of the best decisions of my life. This week is the seventh anniversary of my rebaptism. It’s been extremely healing and allowed me to explore a new territory of faith and ministry.
In the 1990s, we were navigating new territory by publishing Mormon feminist history and theology. We were talking about women’s relationship to priesthood in public; yet we couldn’t do that without danger of Church discipline then. Today it’s commonplace to talk about women’s priesthood and theology in public; everyone is doing it. I’m not saying it’s entirely safe, and some feminists still encounter leaders who try to silence or discipline them. Yet Mormon feminism is now understood as inherent in our history and culture. It’s normal, mainstream.
Now, I find myself sharing women’s history and theology in Church as a temple-going member because we realize that women’s theology has been there the whole time, embedded in Mormon origins. You can read it in the original Relief Society Minutes and other historic feminist writings on the Church web site. Today, members want more information about women’s history and theology. My ward asked me to share research about women’s relationship to priesthood. I see tremendous positive change and hunger for women’s theology. I anticipate more feminist work and healing in the Church to come. I’ve seen major changes in my lifetime. I know that policy can shift dramatically.
For example, when I was young, I wanted to be a missionary, but women were told not to apply, so I had to push and wait for approval to submit my application in June 1978. A few days later, the Church announced a revelation extending priesthood to black members. It was so sudden, so huge, it blew our minds and changed the Church overnight. I remember wondering if women might someday get the priesthood too. I entered the missionary home in Salt Lake just before October General Conference in 1978, where I voted with thousands of members to accept priesthood ordination for black men and extend all priesthood and temple blessings to black women.
That same week I first received my endowment in the Salt Lake temple, before leaving to serve a mission in the South where I worked in black neighborhoods. So the Church voted to lift the priesthood ban against blacks one week before I went to teach in black homes. My first experience on arrival in the mission was the baptism of a black woman. The meaning of that event was enormous, knowing she could have all the blessings, rites, and ordinances of the Church.
Fast forward to October 2013, a year after my rebaptism in the Church. I returned to the Salt Lake temple for the first time since October conference of 1978, a span of thirty-five years. Coincidentally, it was October General Conference weekend again, in 2013. It was also the same weekend that Ordain Women held their first action on Temple Square. Many of my close friends were involved in that event. I was supportive of them in many ways, yet my place was in the temple that weekend rather than on Temple Square.
When I went through the endowment that day in October 2013, a black man filled the role of Jehovah, and he also took me through the veil. So, for me that day, God was black. It was extraordinary, realizing that in 1978 there were no black people in the temple, but in 2013, God was black. Afterward, I called Darius Gray to tell him about it, and we both cried. For me, the shift in my temple experience between October 1978 and October 2013 signified a major healing in the Church. And, I thought that day, if God can be black in the temple, surely God can be female there, as well.
Being in the temple that day coincided with an historic call for women’s ordination outside. It was a watershed moment, a shift in Church consciousness about priesthood, like the change in 1978. Feminists on Temple Square were seeking priesthood and reclaiming the word “ordain”—because historically LDS women had possessed both. Women had received five or six kinds of ordinations from 1830–50—in ministry, the Relief Society, and the temple. Yet yet in LDS tradition those were female priesthood offices, women’s own line of authority. That weekend, I felt my place was inside the temple recovering my ordinations. It was an example of how we each have our own unique role or place to be. I found empowerment privately in the temple by seeking my endowment, while my friends on Temple Square found empowerment publicly by seeking entrance to priesthood meeting.
So that’s enough background. I’d like to hear from you all—about your own path, where you’re at, and how you feel about the temple or the Church.
FHE: I’m impressed that you find the temple empowering as a feminist. Can you elaborate more on how you find it empowering, personally?
Maxine: Sure, when I first entered the temple in 1978, I was surprised to discover that it wasn’t about marriage. All the men were sitting on one side, and all the women were sitting on the other side, rather than in couples. So, I didn’t feel awkward being single. That was a big deal in the 1970s, given the intense pressures to be married and have kids. I was trying to find out who I was, independent of marriage. The temple ceremony was about our individual relationship with God, not about couples. It was about my own path to God, not marriage. It was my own initiation into sacred rites. I was thrilled by all of that. I never saw the temple ceremonies through the lens of marriage or being dependent on a husband. I received the initiatory and endowment feeling empowered and consecrated to God, not inadequate or incomplete in any way. I didn’t pay attention to the one or two brief references about a husband because they didn’t apply to me nor to the ceremony. The initiatory and endowment are inductions into priesthood and your own ascent to God. That’s empowering.
I had a spiritual experience about priesthood in the temple, my first time in 1978. When I was “set apart” as a missionary, I felt something tangible conferred on me, a spiritual authority or mantle that stayed with me throughout my mission experience. However, when I went through the initiatory and endowment in the temple, I felt a bigger spiritual mantle descend on me, of the priesthood. I had no idea what type of priesthood it was, but I knew spiritually that I had just received priesthood in some form. I had no historical knowledge of that idea in 1978, it was only a spiritual sense, yet I knew it was real. And that sense of priesthood stayed with me all through my mission, and beyond. It gave me confidence and ability to minister, with power. In fact, my experience in the temple that day in 1978 drove me to research women’s priesthood and theology in the 1980s.
Today, I love the symbolism of the ritual, the spiritual and esoteric meanings. The endowment is a rite of redemption, a sacred pattern of salvation—about the soul’s descent from the realm of God, its awakening within the fallen world, and its ascent back to heaven. This is the archetypal journey of the soul, to discover its true self or nature, the “hero’s journey” through departure, testing, and return. It feels ancient, like entering a mystery rite in a temple from another time. I love the initiation rites and white vestments of temple priesthood. I see them as ordination rites into “highest and holiest priesthood,” and the fullness or “pleroma” of the Gods.
I see the endowment as an inspired midrash of Genesis that finishes or completes the theological story of Adam and Eve. It redeems them from the Fall via gnosis or spiritual knowledge of their divine identity, which returns them to God’s presence. It also redeems us, the human family, along with Adam and Eve, via knowledge of our true identity as divine beings, co-eternal with God, which brings us into communion with God. I see Adam and Eve as theological beings. They emerge from an androgynous being of clay, “Adamah” whom God divides into male and female humans, Adam (man) and Havah (life) before they fall into mortality. They are archetypal figures representing duality—male and female, masculine and feminine, physical and spiritual, mortal and eternal aspects of human being. The temple rites unite men and women in rituals that integrate the masculine and feminine and resolve duality into unity. On a literal level it joins couples in sacred marriage. On a theological level it returns the fallen human to heaven, marries the genders, mends duality, unites the mortal and eternal, reunites our souls with God. On a psychological level it symbolizes the integration of parts of Self into wholeness, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious the alchemical marriage of self, or “individuation.”
FHE: You talked about how you’re in the Church, you left for a long period then came back and there was something different. Where I’m at right now, I have historical background and knowledge, and personal experience through feminism, that I know is true, but I know that the Church is not there. Every time I go to church, it’s just like this pain—it hurts, that tension I always feel. It’s not like I want to leave the Church, but it’s so hard to be there and see where we could be yet where we are. Could you speak to what was different exactly that second time, of being back in the Church, and how you deal with those tensions?
Maxine: Yes, I wrestled with that dilemma for years before I returned. Could I really go back or not? I had a whole list of things I didn’t agree with or didn’t support. Then, I had a spiritual sense of reassurance that it would all work out okay because it was simple—“you need them, and they need you.”
It’s been better than I imagined. It works because I find a spiritual connection or resonance with members seeking God in our lives. Sure, we sometimes have different views on theology or doctrine or history, but that’s true at a scholarly conference or a family reunion. I don’t expect anyone to hold my view. I don’t go to church for shared ideology, I go for the shared spiritual experience of a group of souls gathered to pray and seek God’s love, light, inspiration. That works.
Also, returning works because enough had changed to create a new relationship. I didn’t go back to something I left behind, I went forward to something new. In twenty years’ time, I evolved and so did the Church: everything had changed. The Church is now publishing topics and materials that caused my exit—women’s feminist history and theology are online and in new books. Compared to 1993, this is Camelot. BYU offers feminist classes with theories and topics that Cecelia K. Farr and Gail Houston were fired for teaching, even a minor in women’s studies. BYU professors and LDS leaders share views that were once feminist and talk about women’s priesthood in public. There are still points of disagreement between my views and Church curriculum or policies, but those our opportunities to work on our relationship. However, today I find a higher degree of compatibility with the Church than before, which is encouraging.
I feel empathy for your dilemma—feeling pained or alien at church. There are days when I can’t avoid the distance between my view and theirs. So I focus on our bond as human beings, our shared spiritual struggles. That dissolves the social gaps. We’re all God’s children seeking our true home. Belonging can be situational depending on your ward and leaders. Yet I think one key to belonging is your own empowerment, within. That’s not something anybody can give you or take away. It’s your connection to God. Every person who tries to shut you down is an opportunity to strengthen your connection to God.
It’s also an opportunity to practice ministry, by addressing others’ fears. One day, I was quoting from the “Doctrine of Inclusion” in Relief Society and a sister objected to my sharing something secular. I explained that it was Elder Ballard’s talk in the 2001 Ensign, and she was truly grateful to know about it. Another time, I was teaching the Young Women about Miriam, Moses, and Aaron as the three prophets who led Israel together. The bishop looked doubtful and worried, so I read Exodus 15:20–21, Micah 6:4, and Numbers 12:1–8, which consoled him. The young women loved it, they were saying, “Miriam was a prophet? That’s so cool!” It empowered them.
FHE: In the Doctrine and Covenants, it seems like Joseph Smith in certain places asserted his ultimate authority to quell attempts at receiving revelation from people who weren’t the prophet. You seem to view him as someone who wanted his authority checked or balanced by other leaders. Do you think that’s a more accurate view of him than this authoritarian version of him in scriptures?
Maxine: I see both sides of Joseph—the authoritarian and egalitarian; they both show up in his relationships and leadership, and his dictation of scriptures. Everything is filtered through his personality, his lens. Some passages in the D&C speak in ominous patriarchal authoritarian voice and other passages speak with a sublime spiritual quality of wisdom. Section 132 reflects the best and worst of Joseph’s prophetic voice—it asserts his authority over Emma and threatens her with destruction if she doesn’t practice polygamy, yet it envisions a true equality of Gods, the equal exaltation of men and women in heaven. Joseph radically empowered women in ministry and priesthood, yet disempowered or harmed women in polygamy. I see both as real. Regarding who gets to receive revelations—in D&C 28, Joseph appeals to that story in Numbers 12 that I was teaching the Young Women—about God appearing to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. They’re all prophets, but Moses has a different relationship: “With him I speak face to face clearly.” This definition of prophetic role is invoked in D&C 28:2–3, and D&C 8 to answer the question of who gets to receive revelation. Joseph’s revelations are saying that we all have visionary or prophetic potential but we each have different callings, offices, and abilities.
Anyway, I recognize both sides of Joseph, positive and negative, the inspired and tragically flawed. It’s not realistic to choose one extreme, saying Joseph was only an abuser, or always pious. There’s evidence for both, but neither is the sum total of him. Joseph had higher visions of life and people that lifted them to new heights; yet he also harmed people. We need to see both sides, I think.
FHE: We got a new stake president and they invited him and his wife to speak. They didn’t allot specific time to either. His wife took two minutes and he took twenty. I had this thought “Why are you sitting down? Take your time.” It was her decision. There’s no doubt there’s this patriarchal system, but we’re half the problem I think, if we’re not rising or claiming our own power.
Maxine: I agree
FHE: I ask myself all the time—how do I feed into this patriarchal system? I think this has been indoctrinated in me since I was two. How do I, as a woman, claim my power, even if that system wasn’t there? I don’t know if I would rise to claim it.
Maxine: That relates to empowerment, which I see as inner validity or authority. I call it the “inner ordination” from God, who loves you and gave you existence. Your validity comes from your own eternal spirit. We peel back layers of social conditioning to discover we are divine beings of light—and how precious we are, how deserving to be ourselves and express our unique existence in this world. You have a divine right and responsibility to find your own voice and place. Validity is truly inner. Others can certify us with status, office or degrees, but where it happens is inside.
This is the lesson I learned outside of the Church. I took a path of ministry seeking ecclesiastical ordination, yet I found it in the solitary journey of self, alone with God. I experienced the inner spiritual ordination. Once you find that spiritual anointing or chrism or grace, you’ve got it and nobody can extinguish that, unless you let them. That’s what enabled me to come back to Church and find my authentic space neither shut down nor driven out.
You don’t have to leave the Church like I did, to find inner ordination—it’s a private process, between you and God. It doesn’t matter where you’re located. Once you experience the inner chrism, you’re empowered, regardless of what others do. The Gospel of Philip describes this beautifully—“when it is revealed, then the perfect light will flow out on every one. And all those who are in it will receive the chrism… And none shall be able to torment a person like this, even while he dwells in the world... The world has become the Aeon (eternal realm) . . . fullness for him . . . it is revealed to him alone.[4]
This passage is talking about the mystery of the “bridal chamber” within us, where our soul discovers its oneness with God’s divinity. That’s what Joseph Smith was talking about in his King Follett sermon, and in the temple endowment—that when we discover God’s spirit is like ours, we “ascend” to God. He said that was the whole purpose of temple rites—our ascent. I think this unity of our spirit with God’s, or “bridal chamber,” is a higher meaning of the temple rites. The “celestial marriage” necessary for exaltation with God may be our own soul’s relationship or oneness with God. On a literal physical level, a sealing rite between two human beings at the altar is incredibly beautiful and real, sanctifying a relationship of soul mates. Yet it also has symbolic meaning about recovering your spiritual union with God, which is eternal and core to your being. You and God are made of the same uncreated light—“intelligence or the light of truth was not created or made” (D&C 93:29). So at the innermost level, you are married to God.
FHE: That really helps a lot, thank you. Ok, then how do you handle it when someone objects to the views you share or your way of participating?
Maxine: I validate both sides, theirs and mine. There’s no fight when both sides are valid. We’re both children of God, I honor that, which allows us to be different. If someone has a problem with me, I talk with them to figure it out together. If that doesn’t work, I go home and pray for more insight, to see what I’m not seeing. Sometimes I’m prompted to hold my position, other times to concede. Conflict can relax when your refuge is found in God, not in approval from the other person. I try to find higher wisdom and listen, hear it.
FHE: I’m appalled that you were even excommunicated. I know it was a different time, but something I’ve been talking about with my roommates is that it still happens. Like that former bishop [Sam Young] who was excommunicated for publicizing the problem of sexual abuse. I find myself a little bit in fear of excommunication because my stake president has taught and made homophobic comments. So, in my own stake, in my own ward, I don’t feel safe to express myself. I feel like there’s so much inconsistency, depending on who your local leaders are, you can be excommunicated for anything. I don’t want to keep reinforcing this patriarchal mess.
Maxine: That’s an awful place to be in, that fear of discipline; it’s not fair or healthy. You don’t want to feed into that dynamic of fear. How do we break out of that? We change the dynamic from fear to compassion. We stop seeing each other as the enemy; in reality we’re spiritual siblings, and we need each other. That was the shift I made between 1993 and 2012. I changed my view of male leaders, which in 1993 was polarized. I lacked compassion for them, I thought they were the enemy. Seven years later, when working together on the Olympics, I realized they weren’t the enemy—they were my brothers. That radically changed our relationship to a far more realistic and positive one. This came up recently with Gina Colvin in New Zealand. She and her bishop got into a polarized tension that felt unsolvable, and excommunication seemed unavoidable. Then it completely reversed at the last minute. She did deep soul searching and praying, while hundreds of friends wrote letters to her stake president and bishop. Their perspective of Gina shifted to realizing she wasn’t the enemy—she needed their support. They told her, “We should be building a bridge with you, not a wall.” The discipline dissolved.
It’s a whole different narrative to find an unexpected bridge between feminists and male leaders. It reminds me of that scene from Indiana Jones, where he has to step into an abyss, relying only on faith that he won’t fall—then suddenly an unseen bridge appears. There’s an invisible bridge hiding between us and the opposite side. It’s Christ, the true mediator. If we pray for His help, an invisible bridge may appear. A bridge doesn’t mean you give in, go along with the other side. You have to find your own position first, you can’t find a middle ground or a bridge without both sides holding their own ground. Then, in that tension between two different places, a bridge can appear—if you’re both seeking a vision beyond your own positions. When I returned to the Church, my leaders and I were in unknown territory, wondering how do we do this? We both turned it over to Christ and the invisible bridge appeared. That’s the best answer I have for the fear between feminists and leaders.
FHE: What do you think is the best way to communicate frustrations to the Quorum of Twelve or the First Presidency—the decision makers—in a way that won’t turn them off or invalidate your own voice, but that actually inspires changes? We have these conversations only in small, very safe groups, with people who think like us. I am pained by not seeing Heavenly Mother in the temple and I’ve talked to many people who have that same pain.
Maxine: I feel that pain too, every time I’m in the temple.
FHE: What do you think is the most effective way to communicate that there is a large sector of the church population that has that frustration? Are the decisions makers aware of how widespread our frustration is on that, or other issues?
Maxine: Leaders in Relief Society, the Quorum of Apostles, and Public Affairs are all listening to women, including feminists, they’re hyper-aware of women’s concerns and complaints, and using that info for positive changes, which will continue. Public voices are noticed, read, considered. They also pay attention to private letters; they read their mail and often respond. I didn’t learn that until 2012.
How can you be heard without taking it so far you are alienating? Since they are paying attention, you don’t have to overstate or hammer your point. Just be honest and thoughtful, pray about it, and share information they can use. You can simply record a podcast, write a blog, or an article—like our discussion tonight for Dialogue.
For example, when Lester Bush wrote an article in Dialogue about the exclusion of black members from priesthood, it was 1973, not a progressive time. Yet President Kimball read and studied that article; his copy of Dialogue was covered with red marks.[5] That article prompted him to pray about the topic, and he received a revelation, changing the Church policy about black members.
FHE: In my previous ward I was put on a do not ask to speak or teach list, which I didn’t know until my current bishop told me about it. He called me to be a teacher for the Saints book, which I was so excited about. Anyway, this bishop shared with me experiences that he’s had with Heavenly Mother in the temple.
Maxine: What a great bishop.
FHE: He really is. Yet, there are many who abuse their power or are stuck in their white male privilege and have no idea what’s happening in our lives.
Maxine: That’s a vestige of women’s lost authority which male leaders subverted, starting with Brigham Young in 1845, then priesthood correlation in 1908–1970. Eliza R. Snow held onto female authority until her death in 1887. One of her last statements asserted “The Relief Society is designed to be a self-governing organization . . . to deal with its members . . . instead of troubling the Bishop.”[6] From Emma to Eliza to Emmeline, women were organized to work through the R.S., not through male leaders. It was a female line of authority from the ward to the top of the Church, where the Relief Society President and LDS President conferred. So, I don’t see a solution, other than restoring the Relief Society’s full authority.
FHE: I’ve been really trying to navigate this. I was open with my ministering brothers about all my struggles then I went to my bishop and I feel this fear, at the core—is God sexist? I know that in my communion with Him, He’s not, and She’s not, and They are not. I want to thank you for bringing in so much history and the spirit of our male and female Gods to show there is no sexism in the true plan of it all.
Maxine: I really believe our history reveals a theology of gender equality, on all levels of the Church, from missionaries to ward and stake leaders, to the temple rites, to male apostles and female disciples. That blueprint of equality keeps me going.
FHE: Learning more about that gives me the strength to try to find my place. If you could share more of your experience of how to negotiate that equality—it seems like you have the inner ordination that you talked about. You gave me words for what I’m trying to find and trying to understand. I want to be a change maker in every part of my life, but I can’t do that in the same way in the Church. Or, at least I don’t know how to. Some of us live our lives at this higher level of equality so we’re trying to bring the Church there. But how do I or how do you do that? What do you choose to say or not to say? Can you expound on that?
Maxine: First, I remember that we’re all learning and growing together. So, I pray for help and it comes. The best advice I can give is turn to God. Also, you’re a lay minister, every member is confirmed or“ordained” to the ministry, according to D&C 25. We’re all co-ministering the ward and stake, so what we do affects many others. Too often we focus on what we lack, not seeing the power of our voice or participation. Being aware of your effect on others enables you to be a better minister. Also, learning ministry skills is crucial, for every member and leader. I studied ministry and chaplaincy, to learn what it means to minister. It’s not about trying to convert anyone, or provide any answers. Ministry is giving others support to find their own answers. It’s listening to them and learning what they need in this moment. When you do that, you’re ministering.
A minister is a facilitator for others to work through their struggles. You hold a safe space for them to dig deep, face fears, hard issues, private trials. If they aren’t safe to deal with whatever comes up, that’s not ministry—which is unconditional support to face life’s hardest moments and not be alone. We all need someone to hold that space for us. You never know when you might be the only one who can do that for another person.
When you need ministering, choose someone you trust who will listen to your struggle and honor where you’re at, not judge you or impose their views on you, but allow you to find your own breakthrough. Ministry is knowing the difference, between our needs and others’ needs, so we don’t impose or transfer our views onto another, and we don’t allow them to impose their views onto us.
FHE: One of the things I love about the changes in the temple was that it took things that I was not able to reconcile in my relationship with God and adjusted most of them. It’s kind of confirming the relationship I have with my Heavenly Father. But it’s also given me pause to wonder about the other side of that. I don’t want to think that my relationship with God is what is right for the Church—or, that every thought I have is from the spirit or is doctrinal.
Maxine: Yes, it’s healthy to know the difference between your own personal path and the collective path of the Church, and not impose them on each other.
FHE: I know the answer to this is building a relationship with God and the spirit and learning how it’s talking to you. Is there a time, an experience you could share when you went too far, or realized that there was a boundary?
Maxine: Yes, my excommunication. On one hand, I definitely felt divine guidance to compile the book, I felt aided by higher wisdom. On the other hand, I could have navigated the book’s relationship to the Church more sensitively. I was out of sync with the Church, ignoring the chasm between my position and the Church status. It’s important to recognize where the group as a whole is located, relative to where you are as an individual—and to deal with both, not just your own.
The freedom to follow your own path is a gift from God. It’s crucial to listen to your soul and follow its call—don’t shut it down. Yet that’s different from the group journey. The individual and the group each have their own developmental journey. Both deserve respect.
I was at odds with the Church in my twenties, thirties, and forties, but now I’m more in sync with it than I’ve ever been, which amazes me. Still, there are differences between my perspective and the Church’s, which I honor. My interpretation of women’s history and priesthood overlap a great deal with Church materials, yet they may never fully align. I honor my own work and inspiration by writing and publishing, and I honor the work of the Church by supporting its efforts to empower women.
FHE: Your work in the past, your research and writing received some backlash. I recently did some historical research on a difficult aspect of Church history and I started to get backlash from people at BYU about it and it made me a little afraid to continue with it. I was wondering how you continued with your work in face of external pressure and backlash against it?
Maxine: I’m so sorry to hear that. Is it the department that’s having a hard time, your professors?
FHE: No, it’s peers.
Maxine: It’s often peers who put pressure on us, since they want us to be where they are. Are they more conservative than you are?
FHE: Yes.
Maxine: That’s hard. Peers can be intolerant sometimes. Backlash is often shadow projection and scapegoating, which can be destructive, harmful. It’s wise to protect yourself; don’t own projections. You’re the expert on you. Stay close to God, find others who support you, and stand firm in the truth of who you. Then just keep being you and doing your own work.
I try to heal the conflict via common ground. I look for areas where we agree, to build bridges, while allowing our differences. But if others’ efforts are harmful or unethical it’s time to stand firm, not compromise. I get backlash from critics about my return to Church membership.
Critics focus on the problems, harms, what’s wrong with the Church. Seeing the Church’s shadow is necessary, but it can go too far, consume you. I grew tired of talking about the problems long ago. I focus on the inspiring and empowering aspects of LDS theology and practice because that’s where I prefer to work these days, that’s where the life is.
FHE: You mentioned not depending on authorization from others. I’ve been thinking about that in the context of the temple changes and the role of revelation in the temple changes, or at least in the way the temple changes were released. What do you think of that intersection and how that plays into progression?
Maxine: So, the intersection of revelation and change?
FHE: Yeah, with revelation, when it actually happens, or how a lot of women already have been living or believing these things prior to the “revelation” of these changes.
Maxine: So, how do we view a new revelation, when it changes or reverses past policy that negatively shaped our lives, or didn’t shape our lives because we didn’t believe it?
FHE: Yes.
Maxine: Should we base our beliefs and decisions on current teachings that may change? That’s a crucial question in a Church that gives great authority to current revelation, teachings, and policies. The simple answer is—if a new revelation or teaching or policy is healthy and positive, it’s worth supporting. Obviously, it’s wise to choose teachings that resonate God’s love, feed our souls and improve our lives, over teachings that harm lives or shut down souls. The burden of safety is on us, to discern true or good teachings from erroneous ones.
This returns to the question of who can receive revelation. Leaders receive inspiration for their Church callings. Members receive inspiration for their own lives. The responsibility for our decisions is ours and ours alone. Leaders have authority over Church functioning but not over members’ lives. From an early age, I took my questions and decisions to God, rather than to my parents or to the Church. A few times, my parents or the Church were right, and I was wrong, but I made my own decisions. When I followed my own conscience, things went well, but when I followed others’ advice against my intuition, I regretted it, majorly. When we give our decisions over to someone else, we lose our divine guidance.
FHE: As a follow-up comment, I approach things in a similar way. I study religious history, specifically the Reformation and I somewhat identify as a Reformation spiritualist—the institution isn’t what is going to shape me, it’s going to be my relationship with God and my understanding of theology.
Maxine: Well, they both shape us, profoundly, but it’s our decision how much we let the Church or God shape us. That means taking responsibility for our spiritual progression, as Joseph Smith envisioned and the endowment implies. LDS faith relies on revelation, both personal and institutional, in tension with each other. This tension is always presenting itself. Church revelation leads one direction and your inspiration may lead another direction, until you’re out of sync with the Church, and you have to decide how far you’re willing to go. I was willing to follow my own spiritual path outside the Church— that was my decision. Excommunication was a revelatory “shattering of the vessels” opening a doorway to new knowledge and realms I had never known, with overwhelming positive results. Likewise, my spiritual path back home to the Church was equally revelatory and transforming. I don’t regret either path, at all. So, our relationship with God may take us out of sync with the Church, or back into sync with it—depending on where we feel God is calling us. I value both equally—my relationship with God and with the Church.
FHE: I have two very separate questions. My first question is, kind of touching on what was discussed before. I feel like I’ve sensed for a long time a kind of a benevolent sexism. How do you address that one, when your sex has kind of put you on a pedestal? And the perfectionism that goes with it, you know, is this weird thing.
Maxine: Gender in the LDS Church is complex. The dual tendencies of sexism and feminism are in tension with each other in Church history and ministry. This requires separating the sexism from the feminism in our tradition.
Women’s status in the Church reflects both tendencies of feminism and sexism. We have a gendered ministry, which can be experienced as feminist or sexist—depending on who’s managing it. Female ministry that is defined and managed by women themselves is “difference feminism” (a focus on women’s different needs as a gender). Yet when female ministry is defined and managed by men, that’s sexism, patriarchy. If men uphold gendered spheres, then manage both male and female spheres, that’s sexism, patriarchy. Female identity is defined by women themselves.
LDS tradition has an empowering theological blueprint that combines both gendered and ungendered authority, both separate and inclusive ministry, which evoke both difference feminism and equality feminism (a focus on women’s equality with men), in balance with male authority. This original blueprint placed women in parallel partnership with men, from the ward level to the top of the Church. Yet this theological gender balance has been obscured by organizational sexism accrued over time. Our blueprint of gender balance is skewed by male privilege, which diminishes the gender equality embedded in our theology.
Yet, the theological blueprint for equality envisioned by Joseph and Emma is still visible in the Church today. We have an ungendered lay ministry of men and women preaching, teaching, leading, and managing the congregation together. We have a gendered ministry of women and men working in separate spaces and authority for gendered mirroring and mentoring. We have an inclusive temple ministry that brings men’s and women’s gendered authority together in an inclusive priesthood order.
Women’s gendered authority was established in 1830–44, via a series of “ordinations.” In 1830, Emma Smith was “ordained” to lay ministry and high Church office of Elect Lady. [D & C 25] In 1842, the Relief Society presidency were “ordained” to “preside over the Society . . . just as the Presidency, preside over the church.”[7] In 1843, women were “ordained” as a “Priestess to the Most high God” in the temple, and also “ordained” to the “fullness” or “highest & holiest order of the priesthood” in the temple.[8] Additionally, in 1850, Louisa B. Pratt was “ordained” a full-time missionary, which was an ungendered office.[9] Today, women leaders in the ward, the Relief Society, Young Women, Primary, and in the temple still have their own offices, authority, keys, revelation, and “setting apart” or ordination to lead the gendered ministry of the Church. These are ways women are ordained.
If women were ordained by men giving them Aaronic and Melchizedek orders and offices, women’s authority would come from men rather than from women’s connection to God. Our LDS tradition of female seers, visionaries, societies, ladies, presidents, counselors, boards, prophetesses, priestesses, and mother god arose from women’s own spirituality, inspiration, and innovations, as feminist theology. There is a hidden narrative within the dominant history of men’s authority, where women’s own relationship with God gave rise to their authority. Women shaped Mormon origins and development via their own spirituality and agency.[10] Lucy Mack, Emma Smith, Mary Whitmer, Eliza Snow, Sarah Kimball, Zina Young, Bathsheba Smith, Emmeline Wells all envisioned, organized, and led women’s ministry. Joseph Smith didn’t give them spiritual power—they had it themselves.
FHE: I do think it’s a pretty consistent observation that benevolent patriarchy intrudes on us. Just all the pedestaling of women and overgeneralizations—like “my wife can do no wrong” or “women do everything better.” I feel like there are weird dynamics that feed into this, there’s anxiety, and lack of recognition of women’s reality.
Maxine: Yes, the need to pedestalize and generalize women erases their individual voice, agency. Gender differences can’t be generalized, and that’s not the purpose of separate gendered space, which is to explore that gendered identity. Benevolent sexism claims to value female gender then co-opts it. Some feminists toss out gendered spheres altogether saying, ‘Men and women should have all the same options, just treat us all the same.’ Yet research shows that women and men need gendered space, as well as inclusive space, for growth. LDS Church ministry wisely uses both gendered and inclusive spaces, which provide balance. On one level we have inclusive ministry and authority. Men and women both are confirmed to the lay ministry, then set apart or ordained to whatever callings, roles, or offices they receive. We have inclusive worship spaces—sacrament meeting, Sunday school, youth activities, stake and general conference, and the temple endowment where men and women receive the same vestments and rites, culminating in the celestial room, which brings everyone together.
On another level, we have gendered ministry and authority that focus on the needs of women or men as a group. Research on female development and education shows that women learn and perform better in female settings. Relief Society and the Young Women program provide gendered space for women to process female identity and ministry. The women’s session of general conference does the same.
Also, the temple initiatory rites are sacred female space for consecrating women’s personal relationship to God, which includes the Mother. The Church provides both gendered and inclusive spaces for women’s and men’s spiritual development. However, some of our women’s ministry and female spaces are under the direction of men—which erodes the purpose of gendered space. This is due largely to changes made by Brigham Young in 1845, when he asserted men’s authority over women in the Relief Society and the temple—and we’ve been stuck there ever since.
FHE: Thanks for that explanation. My second question has to do with the positive outlook. We talked about President Kimball, his healing of the Church. I resonate with President Nelson bringing back some of the same kind of beautiful, prophetic, hopeful statements. How do you think changes in the temple, now and future, will potentially function with how women in the Church can have a more influential role in the growth and movement of the Church?
Maxine: That’s a big question and topic, because women’s status in the temple is connected theologically and historically to women’s status in the Church. Temple priesthood and Church ministry affect each other because the temple priesthood was the culmination of ministry and priesthood in the Church. Women’s ministry began in 1830 and grew through stages in Kirtland 1833–36 and Nauvoo 1842–44, building upon itself until it culminated in temple priesthood 1843–44. We need a full recovery of women’s 1830–44 ordinations and authority in the Church, along with a full recovery of women’s ordination rites in the temple prior to 1845. Only that will complete the picture of women’s original authority and its blueprint for equality and fullness.
Originally, in 1843–44, women were “anointed and ordained” to priesthood in the temple. For example, in 1843 Joseph and Emma were “anointed & ord[ained] to the highest & holiest order of the priesthood (& Companion) D[itt]o).”[11] In 1844, Heber and Vilate Kimball were both anointed and ordained as “Preast and Preastest unto our God.”[12] Likewise Eliza R. Snow reported that women were made “priestesses unto the most high God.”[13]
However, in January 1846, this ordination rite was drastically changed by Brigham Young and re-administered to couples who had received the original rites under Joseph Smith. Brigham Young re- anointed Heber C. Kimball, “a king and a priest unto the most high God” but re-anointed Heber’s wife Vilate “a queen and priestess unto her husband” with all blessings “in common with her husband.”[14] Likewise Brigham Young was re-anointed “a king and a priest unto the most high God” while his wife Mary Ann was re-anointed “a queen and priestess unto thine husband” and “inasmuch as thou dost obey his counsel” would receive ”exaltation in his exaltation.”[15]
This catastrophic change removed women’s direct personal relationship with God, and subordinated women’s priesthood under her husband’s. Women were no longer a priestess to God, but a priestess to their husband, exalted through him, not through God. Women’s own authority as “priestesses to the most high God” was erased. Also gone was women’s direct unmediated relationship with God.
This temple change in 1846 was only part of a larger diminishment and erasure of women’s authority and priesthood that occurred immediately after Joseph Smith’s death in 1844. Brigham Young erased women’s independent authority and priesthood in both the Relief Society in 1845 and the temple in 1846, subverting both under men’s authority and priesthood.
Women had been “ordained” not only in the temple, but also ordained in the Relief Society. The Relief Society president was a prophetess with keys to receive revelation for the women and their organizations. This included revelation about the Divine Mother, as Eliza R. Snow received in October 1845. Joseph Smith didn’t articulate much about female orders or offices or theology of the Mother, because he left those tasks to the women themselves. Joseph turned the key of revelation over to female leaders to receive their own direction from God to define women’s priesthood order and offices.[16]
It might be the ultimate patriarchal act if men claimed revelation from the Mother to define female theology. I think it shows great wisdom that male leaders haven’t done that. In 1991, President Hinckley admitted that regarding the Mother in Heaven, he could find no precedent for prayers to “her of whom we have no revealed knowledge.”[17] I remember thinking what an honest confession that was from a leader of a worldwide religion—no knowledge of our divine Mother? I saw his admission as an opening for female leaders to receive revelation from Her.
Today in 2019, new changes to the temple ceremony are beginning to address and reverse the historical loss of women’s direct connection to God. We have been waiting for this needed correction since 1845–46. Today in the temple, instead of men and women making different covenants (men to “God” and women to “husband”) they make the same covenants and they both make their covenants directly with God. No longer are women queens and priestesses their husbands; now they are queens and priestesses in the new and everlasting covenant, which refers to the fullness of priesthood and gospel—not to marriage.[18]
This change recovers women’s parallel status with men from their subordination under male authority, and it restores women’s direct unmediated relationship with God. This is a momentous and welcome change. It corrects women’s loss of authority—to a degree. However, it doesn’t restore their full ordination as a “priestess to God” nor the full individuality of their priesthood. We have yet to recover women’s original and independent authority in both the temple and the Relief Society, and to yet discover the fullness of both.
However, this change is an enormous move in the right direction. The restoral of women’s original rites and ordination to priesthood in the temple could reverberate onto women’s preparatory ministry in the Church—the Relief Society, and Young Women—encouraging a full restoration and articulation of our historic female ministry and ordination. The keys, ordinations, orders, and offices of Relief Society and Young Women could return from the pages of our history, along with women’s sacred rites and ordinances, including blessings and healings. Perhaps we could also recover the presence of our Mother in the temple, the female Elohim. We have an extraordinary women’s ministry of theological equality that has survived and is still functioning—even though perhaps not fully self-aware, named, or articulated, and not fully enacted or empowered, yet.
FHE: Amen. Can I say thank you for fighting for us, for paving the way? Thank you for coming back. I feel inspired by your example and your spirit. I’m interested in your faith transition and progression. It doesn’t seem like you ever lost faith in God or in Christianity or the restoration, even. How was that in your twenty years away? And do you think there’s a spot in Mormonism for just cultural Mormonism?
Maxine: Yes, there are countless people who are inactive LDS yet still identify as part of the “Mormon” tradition culturally or ethnically. I think there’s space in Mormon culture to be whoever or wherever you are in the Mormon journey.
Actually, I went through a journey of extremes, beginning on my mission in the 1970s, then going inactive from Church in the 1980s, then publishing my book and leaving the Church in the 1990s, then finding oneness with God in the 2000s, then returning LDS in the 2010s. Each decade held a new paradigm. I went through many stages including atheism, agnosticism, gnosticism, and mysticism, which taught me to find my own light in the face of emptiness and darkness. It was gnostic Christianity where I found my inner spiritual core; and in the Christian liturgical year, I found my spiritual formation path. I found oneness with God, exactly as Joseph Smith described it in the King Follett sermon. Then I felt spiritually called to come back to the LDS Church and bring everything I’d learned, to see if I could integrate it all, somehow. I thought, “thanks a lot God, that’s a big job,” but I’m back, and trying to integrate it.
Long story short, I honor everyone’s journey of the soul. Nobody can tell you how it’s supposed to go; the map is within you. All you can do is try to listen to your highest most reliable guidance and see where it takes you. My path gave me what I was looking for, everything I wanted and needed. It transformed me. I would not have been able to come back and do what I’m doing now if I hadn’t taken that journey. And it’s not over, the inner path is still moving me forward into new knowledge and larger vistas, every year.
Dialogue: Thank you everyone for this great conversation. Before our closing prayer, I have a couple of final questions. One is, if you could go back and talk to the young feminist Maxine—trying to navigate and come to terms with her religious community and spiritual self—what would you tell her? The other is, what other changes do you see happening that you’re inspired by or excited about in the Church?
Maxine: I would tell her, don’t doubt yourself, have confidence in your work, you’re on the right path, go for it. You deserve the best things in life, college degrees, a career, a great husband. Do not diminish yourself.
What am I excited about? All the new women’s history coming from the Church, resources and books from Kate Holbrook, Jenny Reeder, Lisa Tait and other Church historians, and the Joseph Smith Papers.
I’m excited about the new ministering emphasis in the Church, which evokes the 1830 lay ministry in D&C Section 25, where the promises given to Emma are ours. Every member is a lay minister, and we’re beginning to grasp the power of that and learning how to minister. I’m excited to see women’s ministerial authority coming back and I hope we recover the “fullness” of 1842–44. I can’t imagine a more exciting time in the Church and Mormon studies, as we’re recovering our women’s history and our empowerment.
I’m excited for you young women and men because of where you’re at right now—the knowledge and sophistication you have is far beyond anything I had at BYU in the early 1980s. The courage and verve of your generation, where you’re starting from is so powerful, you can do anything.
Today, you have freedom we did not have, freedom to find your- selves, to be what you want to be, to express yourselves. You have tremendous opportunity. I hope you seize it and dare to be yourself fully, share with the world what only you can bring to it.
Thanks for letting me share some of myself with you tonight.
Note: The Dialogue Foundation provides the web format of this article as a courtesy. There may be unintentional differences from the printed version. For citational and bibliographical purposes, please use the printed version or the PDFs provided online and on JSTOR.
[1] Feminist FHE (Family Home Evening), first organized in Provo, Utah in 2012, by Hannah Wheelwright, and restarted in 2017 by Tinesha Zandamela, is a group of young Mormon Feminists that meets and talks about the intersections between Mormonism and Feminism. Since its founding, the group has spread to other locations. Current Feminist FHE (Provo) organizers include Laurie Batschi, Halli Bowman, Sydney Bright, Mallory Matheson, Jenna Rakuita, Rebecca Russavage, Charlotte Schultz, and Olivia Whiteley.
[2] Maxine Hanks, Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992).
[3] Contributors to the book who were excommunicated: Maxine Hanks, Michael Quinn, Lavina F. Anderson in 1993; Janice M. Allred in 1995 and Margaret M. Toscano in 2000; Lynne K. Whitesides was disfellowshipped in 1993. The September Six were six scholars and feminists all disciplined in 1993.
[4] The Gospel of Philip, translated by Wesley W. Isenberg in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, edited by James M. Robinson (New York: Harper Collins, 1990), 139–60; the text is available online.
[5] Rebecca England related this story to me on Nov. 13, 2018. “Jordan [Kimball, grandson of Spencer] and I found the marked-up Lester Bush article in SWK’s copy of Dialogue when we were sorting through their house on Laird Dr. after Camilla’s death. When he studied an article, SWK would underline in red pen or pencil—red underlining, meant he studied the article carefully. None of the other Dialogues or articles were marked up like that. We looked through all the Dialogues to see if any others were marked up similarly and none were except Lester Bush’s article. So, it made a strong impression on both of us. This would have been about 1989. We mentioned this in a conversation in 2009 and Greg Prince followed up with questions. One of Jordan’s cousins inherited the Dialogue.”
[6] Eliza R. Snow, “To the Branches of the Relief Society,” Sept. 12, 1884, Woman’s Exponent 13, no. 8 (Sept. 15, 1884): 61.
[7] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, Mar. 17, 1842, 7, The Joseph Smith Papers.
[8] Phinehas Richards diary, Jan. 22, 1846, LDS archives, and “Meetings of anointed Quorum [—] Journalizings,” Sept. 28, 1843, both cited in D. Michael Quinn, “Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843,” in Hanks, Women and Authority, 368, fn. 20, fn. 25.
[9] George Ellsworth, ed., The History of Louisa Barnes Pratt (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1998), 100-10, 128; available online.
[10] Maxine Hanks, “‘A Beautiful Order’—Revisiting Relief Society Origins,” LDS Church History Symposium, Mar. 3, 2016, session 3A; also Maxine Hanks, “Visionary Sisters and Seer Stones,” Sunstone Symposium, Kirtland, Ohio, 2015; also Ian Barber, “Mormon Women as Natural Seers: An Enduring Legacy” in Hanks, Women and Authority, 167–84. Also see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835–1870 (New York: Knopf, 2017).
[11] Joseph Smith, Diary, Sept. 28, 1843, LDS Church Archives; Meetings of the Anointed Quorum, Sept. 28, 1843, both cited in Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, eds., Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed 1842–1845: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2005), 25–26.
[12] Anderson and Bergera, eds., Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed, 54.
[13] Eliza R. Snow, “An Address,” Woman’s Exponent, 2 (Sept. 15, 1873): 62.
[14] First entry in the “Book of Anointings,” Jan. 8, 1846, quoted in David John Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship (San Francisco, Calif.: Smith Research Associates, 1994), 87–88.
[15] “Book of Anointings,” Jan. 11, 1846, quoted in Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness, 88–90.
[16] “He spoke of delivering the keys to this Society . . . I now turn the key to you in the name of God . . . and intelligence shall flow down from this time” (Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, Apr. 28, 1842, 36–37, The Joseph Smith Papers).
“Those ordain’d to lead the Society, are authoriz’d to appoint to different offices as the circumstances shall require” (Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 8, 38, 40, The Joseph Smith Papers).
[17] “I have looked in vain for any instance [of] a prayer to ‘our Mother in Heaven . . . I may add that none of us can add to or diminish the glory of her of whom we have no revealed knowledge” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “Daughters of God,” Gordon B. Hinckley address, Oct. 1991, https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1991/10/daughters-of-god?lang=eng).
[18] “‘The new and everlasting covenant is the sum total of all gospel covenants and obligations. . . . Marriage is not the new and everlasting covenant’ . . . This covenant includes all ordinances of the gospel” (Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980], 158; Packer is here citing Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 1 [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954], 156).
[post_title] => LDS Women’s Authority and the Temple: A Feminist FHE Discussion with Maxine Hanks [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 52.1 (Spring 2019): 45–76A Feminist Family Home Evening discussion with Maxine Hanks regarding women in the church as seen through temple theology. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => lds-womens-authority-and-the-temple-a-feminist-fhe-discussion-with-maxine-hanks [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-04 18:41:56 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-04 18:41:56 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=23348 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Roundtable: When Feminists Excommunicate
Mette Ivie Harrison
Dialogue 50.1 (Spring 2017): 183–192
I am concerned about the ways in which I see patriarchy swallow up the demands of feminism and use them against women. Each time we gain som
I am concerned about the ways in which I see patriarchy swallow up the demands of feminism and use them against women. Each time we gain som [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => roundtable-when-feminists-excommunicate [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 21:43:16 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 21:43:16 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=18976 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Roundtable: Shifting Boundaries of Feminist Theology: What Have We Learned?
Maxine Hanks
Dialogue 50.1 (Spring 2017): 167–180
This tendency to rewrite Relief Society history continued from the
1850s into the 1990s.
This tendency to rewrite Relief Society history continued from the 1850s into the 1990s. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => roundtable-shifting-boundaries-of-feminist-theology-what-have-we-learned [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 21:44:43 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 21:44:43 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=18977 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
“The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making
Fiona Givens
Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26
Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself.
Any church that is more than a generation old is going to suffer the same challenges that confronted early Christianity: how to preach and teach its gospel to myriad peoples, nationalities, ethnic groups, and societies, without accumulating the cultural trappings of its initial geographical locus. As Joseph Milner has pointed out, the rescue of the “precious ore” of the original theological deposit is made particularly onerous, threatened as it is by rapidly growing mounds of accumulating cultural and “ecclesiastical rubbish.”[1] This includes social accretions, shifting sensibilities and priorities, and the inevitable hand of human intermediaries.
For Joseph Smith, Jr., the task of restoration was the reclamation of the kerygma of Christ’s original Gospel, but not just a return to the early Christian kerygma. Rather, he was attempting to restore the Ur-Evangelium itself—the gospel preached to and by the couple, Adam and Eve (Moses 6:9). In the present paper, I wish to recapitulate a common thread in Joseph’s early vision, one that may already be too obscure and in need of excavation and celebration. Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself. His manner of producing scripture, his reconceived doctrine of the Trinity, and his hopes for the Nauvoo Women’s Relief Society all attest to Joseph’s proclivity for collaborative scriptural, theological, and ecclesiastical restoration.
Though Smith was without parallel in his revelatory capacities (by one count he experienced seventy-six documented visions),[2] he increasingly insisted on democratizing that gift. As one scholar remarked, “Joseph Smith was the Henry Ford of revelation. He wanted every home to have one, and the revelation he had in mind was the revelation he’d had, which was seeing God.”[3] Richard Bushman has noted how “Smith did not attempt to monopolize the prophetic office. It was as if he intended to reduce his own role and infuse the church bureaucracy with his charismatic powers.”[4] This he principally effected through the formation of councils and quorums equal in authority—and revelatory responsibility—to that which he and his presidency possessed.[5] Most remarkable of all, perhaps, was Smith’s readiness to turn what revelations he did receive and record into cooperative editing projects. With his full sanction and participation, the “Revelation Books” wherein his divine dictations were recorded bear the evidence of half a dozen editors’ handwriting—including his own—engaged in the revision of his pronouncements.[6]
It was in that work of scriptural production that Joseph recognized that theological reclamation necessarily entailed fracturing the Christian canon to allow for excision, emendation, and addition. Arguably, the most important work of reclamation and re-conceptualization is Joseph’s understanding of the nature and attributes of the three members of the Godhead whose own collaborative work and glory are “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). Smith believed that the true nature and attributes of the Trinity, the truly “plain and precious things,” were either buried, revised, camouflaged, or expunged from the biblical text (1 Nephi 13). Part of his reclamation entailed a restoration of the Divine Feminine together with a revision of contemporary conceptions of priesthood power and authority in conjunction with “keys” Joseph believed had been lost following the advent of Christianity. Joseph saw himself as midwife in the restoration of the priesthood of the Ur-Evangelium. Within this framework, he envisioned collaborative roles for women and men within the ecclesiastical structure and ministry of the nascent LDS Church, evidenced in partial form in the initiatory, endowment, and sealing rites of the LDS temple.
Reclamation of Divine Collaboration
In answer to William Dever’s question “Did God have a Wife?” the LDS faith responds with a resounding affirmative.[7] Relatively recent excavation of the symbols and modes of worship attributed to the Divine Feminine both within and outside the ancient Hebrew tradition, together with salient clues within the biblical text, are helping to support Joseph’s reclamation of God, the Mother, from the textual absence to which she has been consigned. As Joseph’s theology never emerged ex nihilo, neither is it reasonable to infer his re-introduction of the doctrine of Heavenly Mother to be without canonical and, given Joseph’s penchant for rupturing boundaries, extra-canonical precedent. Joseph showed himself to be quite happy trolling every possible resource in order to reclaim what he considered was most plain and precious (D&C 91:1).[8]
Joseph’s theology was Trinitarian, but in a radically re-conceptualized way. A conventional trinity, in its thrice-reiterated maleness, could never have produced the collaborative vision of priesthood that Joseph developed. It is, therefore, crucial, for both historical context and theological rationale, to recognize that Joseph reconstitutes the Godhead of Christendom as a Heavenly Father who co-presides with a Heavenly Mother. In 1878, Apostle Erastus Snow stated: “‘What,’ says one, ‘do you mean we should understand that Deity consists of man and woman? Most certainly I do. If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself . . . I must believe that deity consists of man and woman. . . . There can be no God except he is composed of man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, or ever will be a God in any other way, . . . except they be made of these two component parts: a man and a woman; the male and the female” (emphasis mine).[9] In his 1876 general conference address, Brigham Young suggested a strik-ing equality within that Godhead, when he talked of “eternal mothers” and “eternal daughters . . . prepared to frame earth’s like unto ours.”[10]
Prescient but not surprising, therefore, is the merging of Smith’s reconstituted Godhead with the traditional Trinity. Elder Charles W. Penrose drew an unexpected inference from Joseph’s new theology when he suggested an identification of the Holy Spirit with Heavenly Mother. He responded to a Mr. Kinsman’s assertion that “the members of the Trinity are . . . men” by stating that the third member of the Godhead—the Holy Spirit—was the feminine member of the Trinity: “If the divine image, to be complete, had to reflect a female as well as a male element, it is self-evident that both must be contained in the Deity. And they are. For the divine Spirit that in the morning of creation ‘moved upon the face of the waters,’ bringing forth life and order, is . . . the feminine gender, whatever modern theology may think of it.”[11] Penrose may have been relying upon Joseph’s re-working of the creation narrative in the book of Abraham, where “movement” is replaced with “brooding”—a striking image of a mother bird during the incubation period of her offspring. (One remembers in this context Gerard Manley Hopkins’s lovely allusion to the Holy Spirit who, “over the bent/World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”)[12]
Even though recorded third-hand, the following account suggests that the prophet, Joseph, while not expressing the same identification as Penrose, was projecting the same reconstituted heavenly family:
One day the Prophet, Joseph, asked [Zebedee Coltrin] and Sidney Rigdon to accompany him into the Woods to pray. When they had reached a secluded spot Joseph laid down on his back and stretched out his arms. He told the brethren to lie one on each arm, and then shut their eyes. After they had prayed he told them to open their eyes. They did so and saw a brilliant light surrounding a pedestal which seemed to rest on the earth. They closed their eyes and again prayed. They then saw, on opening them, the Father seated upon a throne; they prayed again and on looking saw the Mother also; after praying and looking the fourth time they saw the Savior added to the group.[13]
V. H. Cassler has written, “What we have taken as absence was presence all along, but we did not have the eyes to see it.”[14] Even within our tradition, glimpses of Smith’s radical innovation have neither been sufficiently recognized nor appreciated. One such unrecognized symbol resides on the threshold of the celestial room in the Salt Lake Temple. Just above the veil on the west wall stands a remarkable, six-foot statue of a woman, holding what looks very much like a palm frond. She is flanked by two easily discernible cherubs to whom she is linked by gar-lands of colorful, open flowers. While chubby cherubs are ubiquitous in Renaissance art and could, therefore, be mistaken as merely decorative, the number and placement of the cherubs in the celestial room of the temple draw one back to the majestic, fearful Cherubim—guardians of the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies of the First Temple. The Lady of the Temple is positioned at the portal of the veil—the representation of the torn body of the Lord, Jesus Christ—through which all kindred, nations, tongues, and people shall pass into the celestial kingdom (Hebrews 10:20, Matthew 27:50–51). The original statue was purchased by Joseph Don Carlos Young, who was called by the Church Presidency to succeed Truman O. Angell as decorator of the temple interior. Young purchased the winged statue named “The Angel of Peace” and two cherubs on a visit to New York in 1877. However, during a dream vision one night Young recorded: “I felt impelled to remove the wings. Now I saw a smile and expression that I never saw before and I can now allow this . . . to be placed there.”[15] The enigmatic lady’s station at the veil of the temple, replete with crucifixion imagery, makes it unlikely that she represents Eve. Mary, the mortal mother of the Lord, is a possibility, given her maternal relationship to the Messiah. However, the Lady’s presence at the entrance to the celestial room, representing the celestial kingdom, suggests someone else. There are several key clues as to her possible identity.
Of note is the palm frond the Lady is holding. Anciently, trees were a potent symbol of Asherah, God the Mother.[16] In fact, the Menorah—the seven-branched lamp—that is reputed to have given light in the original Holy of Holies is fashioned after an almond tree, covered in gold—representing the Tree of Life spoken of at the beginning and end of the biblical text.[17] Not only are flowers fashioned into the Menorah: open flowers are one of the temple’s primary decorative motifs.[18] Palm trees also were closely associated with the First Temple with which the interior was liberally decorated together with cherubim: “And it was made with cherubims and palm trees, so that a palm tree was between a cherub and a cherub; and every cherub had two faces” (Ezekiel 41:18).[19] Palm fronds also play a conspicuous role in Jesus’ Passion—in particular his dramatic entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the day that begins the week ending in the crucifixion and resurrection of the Savior. The thronging crowds, waving and throwing palm fronds beneath the hooves of the donkey carrying the Messiah, “chant a Hoshi’ahnna’ (Hebrew “Save Us”)—a clear indication that many, if not all, the Jews present recognized that the man astride the donkey was the promised Messiah.[20] The palm fronds together with the chant suggest a recognition on the part of the thronging masses of the presence of the goddess Asherah—the Mother of the Lord—whose primary symbol is a tree.[21]
Asherah, or the Divine Feminine, is referred to in Proverbs 3:18 as the “Tree of Life.” Her “fruit is better than gold, even fine gold” (Proverbs 8:19). Those who hold her fast are called happy (a word play on the Hebrew ashr). It can be assumed, therefore, that Asherah and Wisdom (Sophia in the Greek) are different names for the same deity.[22] According to the book of Proverbs, Wisdom/Asherah is the name of the deity with whom “the Lord founded the earth” (Proverbs 3:19–20). Before the world was, She was. “Long life is in her right hand; /in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life” (Proverbs 3:16–18). Latter-day Saints are enjoined to search for her in the opening chapters of the Doctrine and Covenants because Wisdom holds the keys not only to the mysteries of God but to eternal life (D&C 6:7, 11:7).
Interestingly, the biblical association of Sophia with the Tree of Life finds powerful echo in the Book of Mormon narrative. Nephi begins the account of his vision by expressing an ardent desire to “see, and hear, and know of these things, by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of God unto all those who diligently seek him [God]” (1 Nephi 10:17, 19). Nephi’s narrative starts in the company of the Spirit, who immediately draws his attention to the Tree of Life—“the whiteness [of which] did exceed the whiteness of the driven snow . . . the tree which is precious above all.” Mary, the mortal mother of the Messiah, whom Nephi sees following the vision of the tree (the Asherah), is similarly described as “exceedingly fair and white” (1 Nephi 11:13, 15, 18). After Mary is “carried away in the Spirit for the space of a time,” she is seen bearing the Christ child (1 Nephi 11:19–20). This association of Christ’s birth with the Tree of Life, with its echoes of a Divine Feminine, is not unique to the Book of Mormon. The oldest known visual representation of the Madonna and Child effects the same conjunction. In the Roman catacombs of St. Priscilla, a fresco dated to the second century depicts the mother and child, with a magnificent Tree of Life overarching both.[23] Immediately following Nephi’s vision of Mary and the Christ child, he watches “the heavens open, and the Holy [Spirit] come down out of heaven and abide upon [Christ] in the form of a dove” (1 Nephi 11:25–27). It does not appear to be coincidental that both “Spirit” and “dove” are gendered female in Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic.
Augustine also finds his theological heart strings pulled by the pro-vocative power and logic of the Holy Spirit as in some sense the Wife of the Father and Mother of the Son: “For I omit such a thing as to regard the Holy Spirit as the Mother of the Son and the Spouse of the Father; [because] it will perhaps be answered that these things offend us in carnal matters by arousing thoughts of corporeal conception and birth.”[24] At about the same time, the early Church Father, Jerome, interpreting Isaiah 11:9 in light of the Gospel of the Hebrews, noted that Jesus spoke of “My mother the holy spirit.”[25] Even though Jews returning from the Babylonian captivity were essentially monotheistic, there are suggestions that their belief in a deity that comprised the Father (El), the Mother (Asherah), and the Son (Yahweh) from the First Temple tradition and before persisted. For example, in 1449 Toledo some “conversos” (Jewish converts to Christianity) were alarming their ecclesiastical leaders by refusing to relinquish certain tenets of their previous faith: “In as much as it has been shown that a large portion of the city’s conversos descend-ing from the Jewish line are persons very suspect in the holy Catholic faith; that they hold and believe great errors against the articles of the holy Catholic faith; that they keep the rites and ceremonies of the old law; that they say and affirm that our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ was [a] man of their lineage who was killed and whom the Christians worship as God; that they say that there is both a god and a goddess in heaven.”[26] As Margaret Barker has stated: “It has become customary to translate and read the Hebrew Scriptures as an account of one male deity, and the feminine presence is not made clear. Had it been the custom to read of a female Spirit or to find Wisdom capitalized, it would have been easier to make the link between the older faith . . . and later developments outside the stream represented by the canonical texts.”[27]
Reclamation of Ecclesiastical Collaboration
The reciprocal synergy of the Godhead was a catalyst—or at least precursor—to Joseph’s quest for a universal collaboration of male and female. On March 17, 1842, he took another momentous step in that direction. At that time both male and female members of the Church were actively engaged in the construction of the Nauvoo temple. Women collaborated in the enterprise primarily by contributing financially and by providing the masons with clothing. In addition, they saw to the needs of impoverished members arriving daily seeking refuge. As the number of women engaged in support of temple construction and relief efforts grew, a group of them, at the instigation of Sarah Kimball, formed the Ladies’ Society of Nauvoo. Eliza R. Snow drafted the constitution and by-laws and then took them to Joseph, who, while applauding the enterprise, suggested the ladies might prefer something other than a benevolent or sewing society. He invited the sisters to “meet me and a few of the brethren in the Masonic Hall over my store next Thursday afternoon, and I will organize the sisters under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood.”[28] In other words, just as the male society had been organized after the pattern of the priesthood, the women of the church would form a female society, with Joseph’s sanction and blessing, after the same pattern.
Like the men before them, the women were to be organized under the umbrella of the priesthood “without beginning of days or end of years” (Moses 1:3). Joseph further stipulated: “the keys of the kingdom are about to be given to them [the sisters], that they may be able to detect every thing false—as well as to the Elders.”[29] While it has been argued that the expression “keys of the kingdom” in regard to women refers solely to their initiation into the ordinances of the “greater [or] Holy Priesthood” in the temple, Joseph seemed to attribute to women a priestly standing. In other words, he acted on the assumption that in order to access the priesthood that “holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God” together with the temple ordinances in which “the power of godliness is manifest,” one would already need to be a priest (D&C 84:19–22). At least, there is evidence that this is how Joseph understood access to priesthood power and authority.
On March 31, 1842, Joseph announced to the inchoate Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, first, his recognition that collaboration between men and women was key to spiritual and ecclesiastical progress—“All must act in concert or nothing can be done,” he said. Second, “the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood” as delineated in Doctrine and Covenants 84 (given in Kirtland on September 22 and 23, 1832). And, third, in order to accomplish the above, “the Society was to become a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day—as in Paul’s day.” Eliza R. Snow understood that the women’s Society or priesthood would enable women to become “Queens of Queens, and Priestesses unto the Most High God.”[30]
Joseph’s conception of female authority may have been tied to his understanding of the New Testament. That women as well as men held Church offices in “Paul’s day” has become apparent with the recent, more accurate translations of the Greek New Testament and research into early Christian ecclesiology. In Ephesians chapter four, Paul enumerates the gifts of the Spirit imparted by the Lord before His ascension: “some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to maturity” (Ephesians 4:11–13). Women as well as men were to be found in possession of each of these “gifts.” Peter Brown demonstrates that, unlike pagans and Jews, “They [Christians] welcomed women as patrons and . . . offered women roles in which they could act as collaborators.”[31]
In his letter to the Romans, Paul sends greetings to Andronicus and Junia (perhaps Julia), commending them for their faith and stating that “they are prominent among the apostles.”[32] Later writers would masculinize the name, but Chrysostom in the late fourth century had no problem praising “the devotion of this woman” who was “worthy to be called an apostle.”[33] In the second book of Acts, Luke records the following: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” (Acts 2:17–18). The apostle Paul considered the gift of prophecy one of the greatest spiritual gifts: “Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts,” he said, “and especially that you may prophecy [for] those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Corinthians 14:1, 3). Indeed, Orson Pratt stated in 1876 that “there never was a genuine Christian Church unless it had Prophets and Prophetesses.”[34] It is, therefore, not surprising to find them mentioned in the New Testament. In Acts 21, we learn that the four unmarried daughters of Philip the evangelist possessed “the gift of prophesy” (Acts 21:8–9).
The primary role of evangelists was to teach the death and resur-rection of Jesus Christ. Raymond Brown has noted that in the Gospel of John, the Samaritan woman serves “a real missionary function,” while the women at Christ’s tomb are given “a quasi-apostolic role.”[35] As Kevin Giles puts it, “the Synoptic authors agree that it was women who first found the empty tomb. And Matthew and John record that Jesus first appeared to women. The encounter between the risen Christ and the women is drawn as a commissioning scene. The Lord says, ‘Go and tell my brethren’ (Matthew 28:10, cf. John 20:17). The women are chosen and commissioned by the risen Christ to be the first to proclaim, ‘He is risen.’”[36]
Deacons are also listed among the offices in the nascent Christian Church, and women are also included. In his letter to the Romans, Paul commends Phoebe, “a deacon or minister of the church at Cenchreae” (Romans 16:1). The terms “pastors” and “teachers” are joined grammatically in Ephesians 4:11. It appears that the term “pastor” in the New Testament was the universal term referring to spiritual leadership. Among the female pastor-teachers, Priscilla is singled out for her theological acumen, instructing (together with—possibly her husband—Aquila) the erudite and eloquent Apollos of Alexandria “more accurately . . . in the way of God” (Acts 18:18, 24–26). Significantly, of the six times this couple is mentioned, Priscilla precedes Aquila in four of them—according her prominence over Aquila either in ministry or social status—or both. Rodney Stark stated in his book The Rise of Christianity that “It is well known that the early Church attracted an unusual number of high status women . . . . Some of [whom] lived in relatively spacious homes,” to which they welcomed parishioners.[37] Priscilla is not the only woman mentioned in connection with church leadership. In addition to Priscilla we learn of Mark’s mother (Acts 12:12), Lydia from Philippi (Acts 16:14–15, 40), and Nympha in Paul’s letter to the Colossians (Colossians 4:15). The apostle John addresses a letter to the Elect or Chosen Lady and her children (congregation) in 2 John 1:1. All apparently function as leaders of the Church.
The title translated as “Lady” in the New Testament is the equivalent to the title “Lord,” generally denoting social standing but possibly, in an ecclesiastical sense, denoting someone in a position of church leadership.[38] According to Stanley Grenz, the nascent Christian Church “radically altered the position of women, elevating them to a partnership with men unparalleled in first-century society.”[39] It appears that Joseph was engaged in the same endeavor in mid-nineteenth-century America. During the inaugural meeting of the Relief Society, after reading 2 John 1:1 Joseph stated that “this is why she [Emma] was called an Elect Lady is because [she was] elected to preside.”[40] While it can be argued that the aforementioned are all gifts of the Spirit that do not necessarily involve priesthood, there is evidence that Joseph saw the Spirit as directing the implementation of these gifts into specific priesthood offices.
I mention these historical precedents because it is clear that Joseph Smith was aware of them and that they influenced his directive to Emma that “If any Officers are wanted to carry out the designs of the Institution, let them be appointed and set apart, as Deacons, Teachers &c. are among us.”[41] On April 28, 1842, after reading 1 Corinthians 12 to the Society, he gave “instructions respecting the different offices, and the necessity of every individual acting in the sphere allotted him or her; and filling the several offices to which they were appointed.”[42]
And so we find that the striking degree of collaboration between men and women in the early Christian Church is replicated in the founding of the LDS Church. In this regard, Bishop Newel K. Whitney’s words are significant: “It takes all to restore the Priesthood . . . without the female all things cannot be restor’d to the earth.”[43] This implies a much broader role for women in the Church structure than temple service alone. In Joseph’s journal account following the Female Relief Society meeting of Thursday, April 28, 1842, he writes: “Gave a lecture on the pries[t] hood shewing how the Sisters would come in possession of the priviliges & blessings & gifts of the priesthood—&c that the signs should follow them. such as healing the sick casting out devils &c.”[44] Commenting on Doctrine and Covenants 25, which Joseph read at the inaugural meeting of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, he stated that Emma “was ordain’d at the time, the Revelation was given”—that is, Emma was ordained not by man but by God to the position of Elect Lady (“and thou art an elect lady, whom I have called [or chosen]” [D&C 25:3]) as Joseph was ordained/chosen by God to the position of First Elder. It is clear from Emma’s remarks two years later at the Female Relief Society meeting of March 16, 1844, that she recognized that her ordination to the position of Elect Lady with its attendant power, privileges, and authority were divinely bestowed: “if thier ever was any authourity on the Earth [I] had it—and had [it] yet.”[45]
The second Relief Society president, Eliza R. Snow, who gained and retained possession of the Nauvoo Relief Society minutes, also recognized that Emma’s authority to preside over the Female Relief Society gave the women’s organization independence: “The Relief Society is designed to be a self-governing organization: to relieve the Bishops as well as to relieve the poor, to deal with its members, correct abuses, etc. If difficulties arise between members of a branch which they cannot settle between the members themselves, aided by the teachers, instead of troubling the Bishop, the matter should be referred to their president and her counselors.”[46] Reynolds Cahoon, a close affiliate of Joseph, understood “that the inclusion of women within the [ecclesiastical] structure of the church organization reflected the divine pattern of the perfect union of man and woman.” Indeed, Cahoon continued, “the Order of the Priesthood . . . which encompasses powers, keys, ordinances, offices, duties, organizations, and attitudes . . . is not complete without it [the Relief Society]”).[47]
The source of women’s ordination, Joseph suggested, was the Holy Spirit. He understood the women to belong to an order comparable to or pertaining to the priesthood, based on the ordinance of confirmation and receipt of the Holy Spirit. To the Nauvoo women, he suggested that the gift of the Holy Spirit enabled them to “administer in that author-ity which is conferr’d on them.”[48] The idea that priesthood power and authority were bestowed through the medium of the Holy Spirit was commonly accepted among both Protestants and Catholics at that time. The nineteenth-century Quaker, William Gibbons, articulated the broadly accepted view that “There is but one source from which ministerial power and authority, ever was, is, or can be derived, and that is the Holy Spirit.”[49] For, “it was by and through this holy unction, that all the prophets spake from Moses to Malachi.”[50] The Reformed Presbyterian Magazine cites this “holy unction” as “not only the fact but the origin of our priesthood” claiming to be made “priests by the Great High Priest Himself . . . transmitted through the consecration and seal of the Holy Spirit.”[51]
Such a link between the priesthood and the gift of the Holy Spirit is traced back to the early Christian Church, based on two New Testament passages. In John 20, the resurrected Christ commissions His disciples to go into the world proclaiming the Gospel, working miracles, and remit-ting sins in the same manner He was sent by His Father—through the bestowal of the Holy Spirit: “As my Father has sent me, so send I you. When he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:21–23). Peter preached that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). And so to the Relief Society sisters Joseph “ask’d . . . if they could not see by this sweeping stroke, that wherein they are ordained, it is the privilege of those set apart to administer in that authority which is confer’d on them . . . and let every thing roll on.”[52] He called this authority “the power of the Holy Priesthood & the Holy Ghost,” in a unified expression.[53] Elsewhere he stated that “There is a prist-Hood with the Holy Ghost and a key.”[54] Indeed, Joseph presses the point even further. In a Times and Seasons article, he wrote that the gift of the Holy Ghost “was necessary both to ‘make’ and ‘to organize the priesthood.’”[55] It was under the direction of the Holy Spirit that Joseph was helping to organize—or, more accurately, re-organize—women in the priesthood.
For Joseph, the organization of the Female Relief Society was fundamental to the successful collaboration of the male and female quorums: “I have desired to organize the Sisters in the order of the Priesthood. I now have the key by which I can do it. The organization of the Church of Christ was never perfect until the women were organized.”[56] It was this key Joseph “turned” to the Elect Lady, Emma, with which the gates to the priesthood powers and privileges promised to the Female Relief Society could now be opened. The injunction given to recipients of priesthood privileges in Doctrine and Covenants 27 could, therefore, also apply equally to the nascent Female Relief Society to whom the keys of the kingdom were also promised.[57]
The fact that the Female Relief Society was inaugurated during the same period and setting as the founding of the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge is helpful in understanding its intended purpose. Joseph had been raised to the Third Degree of Freemasonry (Master Mason) the day before this auspicious meeting.[58] And a plausible argument has been made that the prophet considered the principal tenets of Masonry—Truth, Friendship (or Brotherly Love), and Relief—to be in complete harmony with the reclamation of the Ur-Evangelium.[59] It can, therefore, be argued that Friendship, “the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism,” formed the sacred bond between the male and female priesthood quorums in their efforts to proclaim truth, bless the afflicted, and alleviate suffering by providing relief as they worked side by side on their united goal to build the Nauvoo temple, assist those in need, preach the Gospel, excavate truth, and establish Zion.[60]
The organization of the female society also finds instructive parallels with the creation story in the books of Genesis and Abraham. Abraham states that “the Gods took counsel among themselves and said: Let us go down and form man in our image, after our likeness; and we will give them dominion. . . . So the Gods went down to organize man[kind] in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them” (Abraham 4:26–27). In the second biblical creation narrative, Eve is created after Adam when it was decided by the Gods that “it was not good for man to be [act] alone” (Genesis 2:18). After Adam and Eve were organized they were given the family name of Adam. He “called their name Adam” (Genesis 5:2; Moses 6:9). Adam is the family name, the couple’s surname. (One can note here the precedent set by “God” as a family name evidenced in the appellation: God, the Father; God, the Son; and God, the Holy Spirit). Erastus Snow’s remark bears repeating here: “Deity consists of man and woman. . . . There never was a God, and there never will be in all eternities, except they are made of these two component parts; a man and a woman; the male and the female.”[61]
The divinely decreed identity of the couple, Adam, is one of complementarity, two beings separated by a creative act and then reconstituted as one by divine sacrament. Only later does the name Adam come to denote the individual male rather than the couple. It is, perhaps, in this context of Adam as the family name that the following scripture from the book of Moses should be read: “And thus [they were] baptized, and the Spirit of God descended upon [them], and . . . [they were] born of the Spirit, and became quickened. . . . And they heard a voice out of heaven, saying: [ye are] baptized with fire, and with the Holy Ghost. This is the record of the Father, and the Son, from henceforth and forever; And [ye are] after the order of him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity. Behold, [ye are] one in me, [children] of God; and thus may all become my children” (Moses 6:65–68).
In Moses, we learn that Eve labored with Adam. They worship together. They pray together. They grieve the loss of Cain together. Together they preach the gospel to their children (Moses 5:12). The right to preside over the human family was given jointly to Eve and Adam, as were the sacred rights of the temple: “And thus all things were confirmed unto [the couple] Adam, by an holy ordinance” (Moses 5:59). The sacerdotal nature of “ordinance” implies that Adam and Eve were also to collaborate in the powers inherent in priesthood. They were both clothed in holy garments representing the male and female images of the Creator Gods. Adam and Eve, therefore, represent the divine union of the God, El, and His Wife, variously known as Asherah (The Tree of Life), El Shaddai (God Almighty),[62] Shekhina (The Holy Spirit),[63] and Sophia (Wisdom). As Heber C. Kimball said, “‘What a strange doctrine,’ says one ‘that we should be taught to be one!’ I tell you there is no way for us to prosper and prevail in the last day only to learn to act in Union.”[64]
It is this union that Joseph appears to be attempting to restore with the organization of the Female Relief Society. The Nauvoo Relief Society minutes indicate that Joseph considered himself to be authorizing the women of the Church to form an institution fully commensurate with the male institutions he had organized earlier. The name the founding mothers chose for their organization was the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, possibly suggesting their recognition that what was being organized was the full and equal counterpart to the already operating male priesthood quorums.[65] John Taylor’s suggestion to name the female quorum “The Nauvoo Female Benevolent Society” in lieu of the Relief Society presidency’s proposal “The Nauvoo Female Relief Society” was rejected outright by the female presidency. “The popularity of the word benevolent is one great objection,” adding that we “do not wish to have it call’d after other Societies in the world” for “we design to act in the name of the Lord—to relieve the wants of the distressed, and do all the good we can.”[66]
It appears likely that the second president of the Female Relief Society recognized exactly that. As Eliza R. Snow told a gathering of Relief Society sisters on March 17, 1842, the Relief Society “was no trifling thing, but an organization after the order of Heaven.”[67] Indeed, Eliza later stated:
Although the name may be of modern date, the institution is of ancient origin. We were told by our martyred prophet, that the same organization existed in the church anciently, allusions to which are made in some of the epistles recorded in the New Testament, making use of the title, “elect lady”. . . . This is an organization that cannot exist without the priesthood, from the fact that it derives all its authority and influence from that source. When the Priesthood was taken from the earth, this institution as well as every other appendage to the true order of the church of Jesus Christ on the earth, became extinct, and had never been restored until now.[68]
In her poem, “The Female Relief Society: What is it?” Eliza expresses her understanding that the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo is the legitimate counterpart to the male organization by emphasizing the word “order” in the sixth and last stanza. She does so by enlarging the word in such a way that it immediately draws attention to itself, implying that she understands the “Relief Society” to be an order of the priesthood.[69] The “Chosen Lady”: Emma is so called “because [she was] elected to preside” as Joseph, the First Elder, was also elected to preside.[70] In the words of President John Taylor, “this Institution was organiz’d according to the law of Heaven—according to a revelation previously given to Mrs. E. Smith, appointing her to this important calling—[with] . . . all things moving forward in . . . a glorious manner.”[71]
The female counterpart of the priesthood would be linked to that of the male order in the appropriated grand fundamental of Masonry: friendship. One could construe that the name for the women’s organization, “The Female Relief Society, was chosen with the Masonic fundamentals of “truth,” “friendship,” and “relief” in mind—therefore empowering the female and male organizations to work together in mutual support, encouraging each other and meeting together in council—patterned after the Divine Council presided over by El, El Shaddai/ Asherah, and Yehovah. If that collaborative vision did not yet come to fruition, it did not go unnoticed by those who constituted the second generation of Relief Society sisters who were very familiar with the founding events of their organization; Susa Young Gates wrote that “the privileges and powers outlined by the Prophet in those first meetings [of the Relief Society] have never been granted to women in full even yet.”[72]
In turning “the key” to Emma as president of the Female Relief Society, Joseph encouraged Emma to “be a pattern of virtue; and possess all the qualifications necessary for her to stand and preside and dignify her Office.” In her article for the Young Woman’s Journal, Susa Young Gates, in her recapitulation of Doctrine and Covenants 25, reminds her young, female readership that Emma was not only called to be a scribe but a “counselor” to the prophet and that she was “ordained to expound the scriptures. Not only set apart but ordained!”[73] With Emma in possession of the keys to preside over the Female Relief Society, it was now possible to create a “kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day—as in Paul’s day.”[74] As in the ancient church of Adam and Eve envisioned by Joseph and, as in the early Christian Church, women would share the burdens of administering the affairs of the kingdom together with ministering to their congregations, the sick, the poor and the needy, and proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ.[75]
Indeed, Relief Society sisters performed a vital role in their min-istrations to the poor and the sick—including the pronouncement of blessings of healing. For example, Helen Mar Kimball Whitney records being blessed at the hands of Sister Persis Young, Brigham’s niece, who “had been impressed by the Spirit to come and administer to me . . . She rebuked my weakness . . . and commanded me to be made whole, pronouncing health and many other blessings upon me. . . . From that morning I went to work as though nothing had been the matter.”[76] At the Nauvoo Relief Society meeting of April 28, 1842 Joseph Smith had promised that “if the sisters should have faith to heal the sick, let all hold their tongues, and let every thing roll on.”[77] Women and men would also be endowed to perform the saving ordinances performed initially in the Masonic Lodge and then in the newly constructed Nauvoo Temple in order to redeem “all nations, kindreds, tongues and people” culminating in the sealing of the human family to each other and to the Divine Family, thereby fulfilling their collaborative roles as “Saviours on Mount Zion.”
As Susa Young Gates noted, “there were mighty things wrought in those long-ago days in this Church. Every great and gracious principle of the Gospel—every truth and force for good—all these were conceived and born in the mighty brain and great heart of that master-mind of the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith, the development and expansion of these truths he left to others” (emphasis mine). Susa then added that Joseph “was never jealous or grudging in his attitude to woman. . . . He brought from the Heavenly store-house that bread of life which should feed her soul, if she would eat and lift her from the low estate of centuries of servitude and ignominy into equal partnership and equal liberty with man.”[78]
[1] Joseph Milner, The History of the Church of Christ, vol. 2 (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1812), v.; Joseph Milner, The History of the Church of Christ, vol. 3 (Boston: Farrand, Mallory, and Co., 1809), 221.
[2] They are treated in Alexander L. Baugh, “Parting the Veil: Joseph Smith’s Seventy-Six Documented Visionary Experiences,” in Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations 1820–1844, edited by John W. Welch and Erick B. Carlson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University and Deseret Book, 2005), 265–326.
[3] Interview Kathleen Flake, “The Mormons,” PBS Frontline/American Experience (Apr. 30, 2007), retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/flake.html.
[4] Richard Bushman, “Joseph Smith and His Visions,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, edited by Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 118.
[5] This practice is most clearly evident in his revelation on priesthood, D&C 107.
[6] See The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, Manuscript and Revelation Books, Facsimile Edition, edited by Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C. Harper (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2009).
[7] William Dever, Did God Have a Wife? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005).
[8] Among Joseph’s reading material is Willam Hone, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament (London: Hone, 1821). For Smith’s library, see Kenneth W. Godfrey, “A Note on the Nauvoo Library and Literary Institute,” Brigham Young University Studies 14 (Spring 1974): 386–89.
[9] Erastus Snow, Mar. 3, 1878, Journal of Discourses, 19:269–70.
[10] Richard S. Van Wagoner, ed., Complete Discourses of Brigham Young (Salt Lake City: Smith-Petit Foundation, 2009), 5:3092.
[11] Women in Heaven,” Millennial Star 64 (Jun. 26, 1902): 410, retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/millennialstar6426eng#page/408/mode/2up. Penrose, who was editor at the time this editorial was written, is likely the author.
[12] Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” Poems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 70.
[13] Abraham H. Cannon, Journal, Aug. 25, 1880, LDS archives, quoted in Linda P. Wilcox, “The Mormon Concept of a Mother in Heaven,” in Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Lavina Fielding Anderson, eds., Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 66; see also Maxine Hanks, Woman and Authority (Salt Lake: Signature, 1992).
[14] V. H. Cassler, “Plato’s Son, Augustine’s Heir: ‘A Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology’?” Square Two 5, no. 2 (Summer 2012), retrieved from http://squaretwo. org/Sq2ArticleCasslerPlatosSon.html.
[15] Joseph Don Carlos Young, Private Notebook (no date; no pagination), currently in the possession of Richard Wright Young, grandson of Joseph Don Carlos Young, quoted in Alonzo L. Gaskill and Seth G. Soha, “The Woman at the Veil,” in An Eye of Faith: Essays in Honor of Richard O. Cowan, edited by Kenneth L. Alford and Richard. E. Bennett (Provo: Religious Studies Center, 2015), 91–111.
[16] Daniel Peterson, “Nephi and his Asherah: A Note on 1 Nephi 11:8–23,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 2 (2000): 16–25, 80–81.
[17] See Exodus 25:31–37, 37:17–22; Zechariah 4:1–3; Genesis 2:9; Revelation 22:2. See also Margaret Barker, King of the Jews: Temple Theology in John’s Gospel (London: SPCK, 2014), 34–38. Biblical quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[18] See 1 Kings 6:18, 29, 33.
[19] See also Ezekiel 40:16, 31.
[20] See John 12:12–13. The Hebrew for “Hosanna” is “Hoshi’ahnna” meaning “Save us” as noted in Margaret Barker, The Gate of Heaven (Sheffield: SPCK, 2008), 84.
[21] William Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 101.
[22] E.g., Proverbs 1:20.
[23] See photographs of the fresco at Catacombs of Priscilla, http://www.cata-combepriscilla.com/visita_catacomba_en.html.
[24] Augustine, The Trinity, Book VII, ch 5. My gratitude to Rachael Givens Johnson for alerting me to this passage.
[25] Margaret Barker, The Mother of the Lord, vol. 1: The Lady in the Temple (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 104.
[26] Kenneth B. Wolf, “Sentencia-Estatuto de Toledo, 1449.” Medieval Texts in Translation (2008), retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/canilup/toledo1449. My gratitude to Rachael Givens Johnson for sharing this quotation with me.
[27] Barker, Mother of the Lord, 331.
[28] Sarah M. Kimball, “Auto-Biography,” Woman’s Exponent 12, no. 7 (Sep. 1, 1883): 51, retrieved from http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/WomansExp/id/10872/rec/17.
[29] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 38, retrieved from http://josephsmith-papers.org/paperSummary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book.
[30] Eliza R. Snow, “An Address,” Woman’s Exponent 2, no. 8 (Sep. 15, 1873): 63, retrieved from http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/WomansExp/id/15710/rec/31.
[31] Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 145.
[32] Romans 16:7.
[33] John Chrysostom, “Homilies on Romans 31,” in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament, VI: Romans, edited by Gerald Bray (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 358.
[34] Orson Pratt, Mar. 26, 1876, Journal of Discourses 18:171.
[35] Raymond Brown, “Roles of Women in the Fourth Gospel,” Theological Studies 36 (1975): 691–92.
[36] Kevin Giles, Patterns of Ministry among the First Christians (Victoria: Collins Dove, 1989), 167.
[37] Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1997), 107.
[38] For example, 2 John 1:1, 4, 13; 3 John 1:4.
[39] Stanley R. Grenz and Denise Muir Kjebo, Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 78.
[40] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 9.
[41] Ibid., 8.
[42] Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith (Orem, Utah: Grandin Book Company, 1991), 115.
[43] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 58.
[44] Joseph Smith, Journal, Apr. 28, 1842, in Andrew H. Hedges, et al., eds., Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843, edited by Dean C. Jessee, et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 52 (hereafter JSP, J2).
[45] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 126.
[46] E. R. Snow Smith, “To Branches of the Relief Society (republished by request, and permission of President Lorenzo Snow),” The Woman’s Exponent 27, no. 23 (Sep. 15, 1884): 140, retrieved from http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/WomansExp/id/33963/rec/1.
[47] Quoted in Jill Mulvay Derr, Janath Russell Cannon, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1992), 39, 50.
[48] Ehat and Cook, Words, 115. As Ehat and Cook point out, there seems little alternative to reading the “confirmation” in his expression as a reference to the gift of the Holy Ghost (141).
[49] William Gibbons, Truth Advocated in Letters Addressed to the Presbyterians (Philadelphia: Joseph Rakenstraw, 1822), 107. Quoted in Benjamin Keogh, “The Holy Priesthood, The Holy Ghost, and the Holy Community,” Mormon Scholars Foundation Summer Seminar paper, Brigham Young University, Jul. 23, 2015, n.p.
[50] Gibbons, Truth, 85.
[51] “Hours With Holy Scripture,” The Reformed Presbyterian Magazine (Edin-burgh: Johnstone, Hunter & Co, 1866), 45. Quoted in Keogh, “The Holy Priesthood, The Holy Ghost and the Holy Community.”
[52] On April 28 Joseph again visited the Relief Society meeting and discoursed on the topic of “different offices, and the necessity of every individual acting in the sphere allotted to him or her.” Given what follows it is evident that Joseph is addressing the different spiritual gifts allotted to each member of the community. For, he continues that “the disposition of man [is] to look with jealous eyes upon the standing of others” and “the reason these remarks were being made, was that some little thing was circulating in the Society,” com-plaints that “ some [women] were not going right in laying hands on the sick &c,” instead of rejoicing that “the sick could be heal’d” (Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 35–36).
[53] Ehat and Cook, Words, 7.
[54] Ibid., 64 (emphasis mine).
[55] Joseph Smith, “Gift of the Holy Ghost,” Times and Seasons, Jun. 15, 1842. Quoted in “The Holy Priesthood, The Holy Ghost and the Holy Community,” Keogh.
[56] Sarah Kimball, “Reminiscence, March 17, 1882,” in The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History, edited by Jill Mulvay Derr, et al. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 495; emphasis mine.
[57] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 40; D&C 27:13–18.
[58] Cheryl L. Bruno, “Keeping a Secret: Freemasonry, Polygamy, and the Nauvoo Relief Society, 1842–44,” Journal of Mormon History 39, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 159.
[59] Don Bradley has illuminated these connections in “The Grand Fundamental Principles of Mormonism: Joseph Smith’s Unfinished Reformation,” Sunstone (Apr. 2006): 32–41.
[60] Ehat and Cook, Words, 234.
[61] Snow, Journal of Discourses 19:266.
[62] For example, Exodus 6:3. For a discussion of Shaddai/Shadday as a female name, see Harriet Lutzky, “Shadday as a Goddess Epithet” in Vetus Testamentum 48, Fasc. 1 (Jan. 1998): 15–16.
[63] Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 3rd ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), 105–06.
[64] Heber C. Kimball, Nov. 29, 1857, Journal of Discourses, 6:102.
[65] Considering the male priesthood to be the “Male Relief Society” is no stretch. The profound influence of Masonry on Smith, his choice of the Masonic Lodge for organizational purposes, the association of Masonic thought with “Relief,” and the women’s choice to employ that term explicitly in their organization’s name, all suggest that the male organization was effectively in Smith’s conception a “male Relief Society.”
[66] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 11–12.
[67] Eighth Ward, Liberty Stake, Relief Society Minutes and Records, 1867–1969, vol. 1, May 12, 1868. In First Fifty Years, 270.
[68] Eliza R. Snow, “Female Relief Society,” Apr. 18 and 20, 1868, in First Fifty Years, 271 (emphasis mine).
[69] Eliza R. Snow, “Female Relief Society of Nauvoo: What is it?” in First Fifty Years, 135.
[70] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 9.
[71] Ibid., 14.
[72] Susa Young Gates, “The Open Door for Women,” Young Woman’s Journal 16 (Mar. 3, 1905): 117; retrieved http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/YWJ/id/14738/rec/16.
[73] Gates, “Open Door,” 116.
[74] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 22.
[75] Ehat and Cook, Words, 110.
[76] Helen Mar Whitney, “Scenes and Incidents at Winter Quarters,” Woman’s Exponent 14, no. 14 (Dec. 15, 1885), 106, retrieved from http://contentdm. lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/WomansExp/id/12881/rec/69.
[77] Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, 36.
[78] Gates, “Open Door,” 116.
2016: Fiona Givens, “‘The Perfect Union of Man and Woman’: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 49 No. 1 (2016): 1–26.
Givens argues that one of the things that Joseph Smith was trying to restore was teachings taught to Adam and Eve, in particular men and women working together. Givens also highlighted the existence of Heavenly Mother.
[post_title] => “The Perfect Union of Man and Woman”: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 49.1 (Spring 2016): 1–26Central to Joseph’s creative energies was a profound commitment to an ideal of cosmic as well as human collaboration. His personal mode of leadership increasingly shifted from autocratic to collaborative—and that mode infused both his most radical theologizing and his hopes for Church comity itself. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-perfect-union-of-man-and-womanreclamation-and-collaboration-in-joseph-smiths-theology-making [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-28 18:45:51 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-28 18:45:51 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=18872 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 1: Definitions and Development
Roger Terry
Dialogue 51.1 (Spring 2018): 167–180
The issue of authority in Mormonism became painfully public with the rise of the Ordain Women movement.
The issue of authority in Mormonism became painfully public with the rise of the Ordain Women movement. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => authority-and-priesthood-in-the-lds-church-part-1-definitions-and-development [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 21:51:19 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 21:51:19 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=19081 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 2: Ordinances, Quorums, Nonpriesthood Authority, Presiding, Priestesses, and Priesthood Bans
Roger Terry
Dialogue 51.1 (Spring 2018): 167–180
In the prequel to this article, I discussed in general contours the dual nature of authority—individual and institutional—and how the modern LDS concept of priesthood differs significantly from the ancient version in that it has become an abstract form of authority that can be “held” (or withheld, as the case might be).
In the prequel to this article, I discussed in general contours the dual nature of authority—individual and institutional—and how the modern LDS concept of priesthood differs significantly from the ancient version in that it has become an abstract form of authority that can be “held” (or withheld, as the case might be). [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => authority-and-priesthood-in-the-lds-church-part-2-ordinances-quorums-nonpriesthood-authority-presiding-priestesses-and-priesthood-bans [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 21:52:29 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 21:52:29 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=19114 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Struggle for Female Authority in Biblical and Mormon Tradition
Cory Crawford
Dialogue 48.2 (Summer 2015): 1–57
Although race and gender are connected in 2 Nephi 26:33, the historical origins of the gender ban have not yet been addressed with the same degree of attention in Church discourse.
Although race and gender are connected in 2 Nephi 26:33, the historical origins of the gender ban have not yet been addressed with the same degree of attention in Church discourse. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-struggle-for-female-authority-in-biblical-and-mormon-tradition [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:01:50 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:01:50 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=9321 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Mormon Feminism: The Next Forty Years
Joanna Brooks
Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 167–180
Brooks talks about the period from 1970s Mormon feminism in Boston to the present and imagines what needs to be part of the future. She identifies five areas for Mormon feminism: theology, institutions, racial inclusion, financial independence, and spiritual independence.
Brooks talks about the period from 1970s Mormon feminism in Boston to the present and imagines what needs to be part of the future. She identifies five areas for Mormon feminism: theology, institutions, racial inclusion, financial independence, and spiritual independence. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => mormon-feminism-the-next-forty-years [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 21:53:36 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 21:53:36 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=9360 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Mormon Feminist Perspectives on the Mormon Digital Awakening: A Study of Identity and Personal Narratives
Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan
Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 47–83
This study examines online Mormon feminists’ identities and beliefs and their responses to the Mormon Digital Awakening. This is the first published survey of online Mormon feminists, which gathered quantitative and qualitative data from 1,862 selfidentified Mormon feminists.
This study examines online Mormon feminists’ identities and beliefs and their responses to the Mormon Digital Awakening. This is the first published survey of online Mormon feminists, which gathered quantitative and qualitative data from 1,862 selfidentified Mormon feminists. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => mormon-feminist-perspectives-on-the-mormon-digital-awakening-a-study-of-identity-and-personal-narratives [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:12:12 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:12:12 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=9362 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
A Letter to My Mormon Daughter
Courtney J. Kendrick
Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 79–84 One day you’ll probably hear the name Kate Kelly. And you’ll probably ask me my thoughts about her and her work with Ordain Women and her subsequent excommunication.
In Light
Ashley Mae Hoiland
Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 89–94
The day the missionaries came to our house in 1988, a rainbow fell across the sky in our neighborhood on the hill. I stood on the ledge of the bathtub and curled my fingers on the windowsill to pull my scrawny body up to see.
The day the missionaries came to our house in 1988, a rainbow fell across the sky in our neighborhood on the hill. I stood on the ledge of the bathtub and curled my fingers on the windowsill to pull my scrawny body up to see. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => in-light [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:07:46 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:07:46 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=9365 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Mormon Priesthood Against the Meritocracy
Rosalynde Welch
Dialogue 47.4 (Winter 2014): 85–90 Defenses of the male-only LDS priesthood generally pursue a combination of three approaches: ground the practice in ancient scripture, secure it in Restoration history and tradition, or justify it through its sociological effects on gender culture and family formation in the present day.
Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research Conference: To Do the Business of the Church: A Cooperative Paradigm for Examining Gendered Participation within Church Organizational Structure
Neylan McBaine
Dialogue 45.3 (Fall 2012): 70–83
I will be talking today about how women fit into the functional structure of LDS church governance; but, unlike many of the others speaking today, I do not have advanced degrees in my subject, nor do I consider myself an academic
I will be talking today about how women fit into the functional structure of LDS church governance; but, unlike many of the others speaking today, I do not have advanced degrees in my subject, nor do I consider myself an academic [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => foundation-for-apologetic-information-and-research-conference-to-do-the-business-of-the-church-a-cooperative-paradigm-for-examining-gendered-participation-within-church-organizational-structure [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:09:44 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:09:44 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=9561 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated)
Kevin L. Barney
Dialogue 41.4 (Winter 2008): 121–147
In this essay, I shall begin by describing what we can learn about our Mother in Heaven from the scriptures. I then will draw from those descriptions some (very modest) suggestions for how we might actually worship, or at least honor, Her in ways that should not be considered offensive or heterodox by traditionalists. This essay is therefore a little exercise in religion-making. It is my hope that I will be able to express my mediating thoughts in a way that will not be deemed offensive by those of either school of thought on the subject.
A belief that, in addition to a Father in Heaven, we also have a Mother in Heaven is to my eye not one of those doctrines that one simply must accept in order to be a faithful, committed, temple-attending Mormon. One is perfectly free to disavow the idea if one so chooses. My impression, however, is that even today belief in a Mother in Heaven is by far the mainstream position of contemporary Mormons. Originating in the nineteenth century, the concept was upheld early in the twentieth century by the 1909 First Presidency Statement on the Origin of Man and was given recent support by “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” in 1995. The mainstream position on Her existence was perhaps best expressed by Gordon B. Hinckley: “Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. That doctrine rests well with me.”[1]
If most of us agree that a Mother in Heaven exists, then why has discussion of Her been so controversial, even resulting in disciplinary actions in a few cases? My perception is that people tend to see this matter in one of two very different ways. Those who are more liberal-minded and open to feminist thought see the concept of Mother in Heaven as a wonderful, revealed doctrine of the Prophet Joseph and are very frustrated that we do not actually do anything with that knowledge. Those who are more traditional and conservative (certainly the majority) may sympathize with that frustration, but they are also of the view that we simply do not know any-thing about Her beyond the mere fact of Her existence. People in this camp therefore tend to see those who strive to make the doctrine meaningful in Church life as engaging in New Age syncretism in a misguided effort to fill the lacuna. As a moderate, I can see and empathize with both perspectives.
To borrow a rhetorical question posed by B. H. Roberts in the context of his Book of Mormon studies, “Is there any way to escape these difficulties?”[2] I believe there is. What I wish to propose is a middle, moderate path, a compromise of sorts. The scripturally based knowledge that I believe we can glean about our Mother in Heaven will surely be less than liberals might hope for—but it will also be more than nothing, which is the historic state of affairs. We can glean that knowledge only by applying the tools of scholarship, a method with which conservatives may not be entirely comfortable. But at least this knowledge derives in a certain way from our own canonized scriptural tradition.
In this essay, I shall begin by describing what we can learn about our Mother in Heaven from the scriptures.[3] I then will draw from those descriptions some (very modest) suggestions for how we might actually worship, or at least honor, Her in ways that should not be considered offensive or heterodox by traditionalists. This essay is therefore a little exercise in religion-making. It is my hope that I will be able to express my mediating thoughts in a way that will not be deemed offensive by those of either school of thought on the subject.
My basic insight is this: We think that we have no knowledge about our Mother in Heaven because we assume that such knowledge must come from modern sources, our premise being that of course there is no knowledge about Her in the Bible itself. It would be nice if there were a clear and direct modern revelation, say a Doctrine and Covenants 139, articulating with clarity Her nature and attributes and how we are to worship Her. Needless to say, no such text exists. But what I am going to suggest is that knowledge of Her is available in our canonized scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. Although information about Her is pre-served in the Old Testament and associated literature, it is hidden in such a way that it requires scholarship to excavate it. And Mormonism is one of the few traditions, if not the only one, that has the resources within itself to take advantage of this knowledge for contemporary religious purposes.
One place to begin our story is with the work of Boyd Kirkland on the development of the Mormon understanding of God.[4] Kirkland argued that the current Mormon convention of equating God the Father with Elohim and God the Son with Jehovah (Yahweh), derived from the 1916 First Presidency Statement drafted by James E. Talmage, matches neither biblical nor nineteenth-century Mormon sources. This conclusion is in general true canonically (i.e., for the biblical text as redacted in its final form), and for a long time I assumed the same thing across the board. I began to rethink this issue only when I was introduced to the work of the independent Methodist scholar, Margaret Barker,[5] which in turn led me to a more recent trend in the scholarship of ancient Israel of seeing the monotheism we associate with Israelite theology as coming only at the end of a long line of development. Kirkland acknowledges such a development to a certain extent, but he sees it as a simple movement from an earlier stage of monolatry to extreme monotheism. The more recent trend in scholarship is to see the development as more pro-found, beginning with a polytheistic pantheon much like that of the Canaanites.[6]
According to this view, at first the Hebrews worshipped a small pantheon consisting of the high god El, his consort (scholar-speak for “wife”) Asherah, their sons Yahweh and Baal, and the other (less important and often unnamed) sons of the Gods. Just as the Mormon understanding of God developed over time (as Kirkland documents), this early pluralistic understanding of God also developed over time in the movement toward monotheism. Baal was a very similar deity to Yahweh and therefore was excluded from the pantheon very early to make way for Yahweh’s claims. El was more complementary to Yahweh in his characteristics, so he and Yahweh were simply merged into each other (resulting in the compound name Yahweh Elohim, rendered “the LORD God” in the King James Version). The other sons of the Gods became angels—still divine beings, but a lower class of being than the dominant Yahweh.[7]
The understanding of Asherah changed over time in response to these developments. At first She was the wife of El, the mother and pro-creator of the Gods. As El was merged into Yahweh (around the tenth century B.C.E.), Asherah came to be viewed as the consort, not of El, but of Yahweh. For instance, an inscription at Kuntillet ’Ajrud in the northern Sinai, fifty-five miles northwest of Eilat, dating to roughly the ninth to eighth centuries B.C.E., states: “I have blessed you by Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah” [brkt ’tkm lyhwh shmrn wl’shrth].[8] Eventually, the functions of Asherah were also absorbed into Yahweh’s; then, in an effort to put a stop to any independent worship of Her, reformers linked Her polemically to (the now thoroughly discredited) Baal, despite the fact that such a linkage does not seem to have had any historical basis. This reform movement against the worship of Asherah took place from the eighth to the sixth centuries B.C.E.; and by the time of the conclusion of the Babylonian Exile, the worship of Asherah as such had been stamped out.
Although the formal worship of Asherah was eventually stopped, arguably Her memory did not cease to exist altogether; rather, it was kept alive under other names and guises. Her worship continued, but the understanding of Her was transformed over time in one of two broad ways. First, there was a tendency to associate her with some important human mother figure, such as Eve and, later, Mary, as human representations of the Hebrew Goddess. The other way in which She was transformed was to see her as a spiritualized agent or characteristic of Yahweh. Over time, as the Hebrews began to conceive of God less and less in anthropomorphic terms and more and more as an abstraction, the need for personified mediating entities between God and humans increased. These entities were originally conceived of as Yahweh’s attributes or emanations (sometimes called hypostases), but they eventually developed into angel-like beings who act within the physical world and serve as intermediaries between God and humans. Examples are divine Wisdom (chokmah), God’s Presence (shekinah), and God’s Spirit (ruach).[9]
There is information about Asherah ready to be mined from the Old Testament text, but none of it is really clear or straightforward. The most direct references derive from the reform period and are therefore negative in nature. There are also a number of possible positive allusions to Asherah in the text that were only partially obliterated by scribal redaction over time. So while the evidence is limited and difficult to work with, Mormonism at least has the resources to be able to look past the canonical form of the text to the prior (positive) worship of Asherah. For one thing, we are not biblical inerrantists; it is well established in our tradition that many “plain and precious things” were removed from the text over time by redactional and scribal activity. Normally I find myself in the position of arguing against resorting to this principle as a crutch in the absence of any actual evidence for such textual and historical manipulation; but where, as here, there is actual evidence for such manipulation, our openness to this principle allows us to see and recognize it without being blinded by a commitment to the text in its final form. For another thing, our restorationist impulse means that we are very open to looking at the earliest form of a belief or worship practice, as opposed to being beholden to the later, more evolved form. As Joseph expressed in his King Follett Dis-course, he was interested in finding the original conception of God and then working forward from there, as opposed to trying to work backwards from the current conceptions:
In the first place I wish to go back to the beginning of creation. There is the starting point in order to know and be fully acquainted with the mind, purposes, decrees, and ordinations of the great Elohim that sits in the heavens. For us to take up beginning at the creation it is necessary for us to understand something of God Himself in the beginning. If we start right, it is very easy for us to go right all the time; but if we start wrong, we may go wrong, and it is a hard matter to get right.[10]
Faithful LDS scholars have a strong motivation to take the recent non-LDS scholarship regarding Asherah as the Hebrew Goddess very seriously. If they have any interest in propping up the contemporary Mormon image of Elohim as a father deity and Jehovah as a separate son deity (and they do), then they must recognize that Asherah is an integral part of that scholarship. And given that the existence of such a Mother in Heaven figure was apparently taught by the Prophet Joseph, it is certainly in the interest of apologetically oriented LDS scholars like me to take this scholar-ship and Asherah herself with the utmost seriousness.
At this point I would like to briefly survey what the scriptures teach those with eyes to see and ears to hear about our Mother in Heaven. As I have already suggested, She is not nameless, but She had (and has) a name: Asherah. The word ’asherah appears forty times in the Old Testament (see Appendix A), sometimes referring to the Goddess directly, but more often referring to Her cult object—apparently a wooden pole that represents a sa-cred tree (like the Tree of Life) which acts as an allusion to the Goddess her-self. In the King James Version (KJV), the Hebrew word ’asherah is always represented by the English word “grove,” following the mistranslations of the Greek Septuagint (alsos) and Latin Vulgate (lucus, nemus). Although when referring to a cult object ’asherah may have occasionally been used to refer to a single living tree (but not necessarily a grove of trees), the word is sometimes modified in some way by such verbs as “make” (’asa), “build” (bana) and“erect”(natsab), indicating that it was a manmade object representing or symbolizing a tree, and not an actual living tree.
The difference between the KJV and the modern New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), may be illustrated by 2 Kings 23:4:
KJVAnd the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove [’asherah], and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel. |
NRSV The king commanded the high priest Hilkiah, the priests of the second order, and the guardians of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah [’asherah], and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. |
Where the KJV incorrectly renders ’asherah as “the grove,” the New Re-vised Standard Version correctly transliterates this word as the proper name “Asherah.” In this case, the reference is directly to the Goddess, as the term is singular and is part of a sequence with other deities: Baal and the Hosts of Heaven.
While some Old Testament passages like this one refer directly to the Goddess, more common are indirect allusions to Her by way of Her cult object, as in Deuteronomy 7:5:
KJV But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves [’asherim], and burn their graven images with fire. |
NRSV But this is how you must deal with them: break down their al-tars, smash their pillars, hew down their sacred poles [’asherim], and burn their idols with fire. |
In this case, the plural form (with the masculine ending -im) is in parallel with “pillars” and “idols,” thus indicating that the reference is specifically to the cult object of the Goddess.
According to the Old Testament, those who advocated the worship of Asherah include the people during the period of the Judges (Judg. 3:7), Jeroboam I (1 Kgs. 14–15), Rehoboam (1 Kgs. 14:23), Asa’s mother Maacah (1 Kgs. 15:13), Ahab (1 Kgs. 16:32; cf. 1 Kgs. 18:19), Jehoahaz (2 Kgs. 13:6), those in the Northern Kingdom before its downfall in 722 B.C.E. (2 Kgs. 17:10, 16), and Manasseh (2 Kgs. 21:3, 7). Those who rejected such worship include Gideon (Judg. 6:25–30), Asa (1 Kgs. 15:13), Hezekiah (2 Kgs. 18:4), and Josiah (2 Kgs. 23: 4, 6, 7, 14, 15).
The explicit references to Asherah in the Old Testament are all negative and reflect the polemical view of the reformers. We do not have explicit texts from the period before King Josiah’s reforms articulating a positive view of Her worship. The sheer number of such negative references, however, coupled with archaeological findings, attests to the great popularity of her worship and the difficulty of totally suppressing it during the reform period. But there are also a handful of passages that, while not explicitly referring to Asherah, seem to reflect the prior positive view of her and her worship. I will briefly describe ten:[11]
- Genesis 1:26–27.
And God said,
let us make man in our image,
after our likeness:
and let them have dominion over [the animals]. So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God created he him;
male and female created he them.
The parallelism of the passage suggests that the image (tselem) of God was both male and female. The introductory formula with its plural forms appears to reflect a pantheon, and although the Priestly author who wrote the first chapter of Genesis would not have intended it, being profoundly monotheistic himself, he appears to have made use here of older material reflecting the original plural Hebrew conception of God. The implication of this passage is that men and women were created male and female in the image of God, which is also male and female.
- Genesis 21:33. The KJV reads: “And Abraham planted a grove in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the LORD, the everlasting God.” A more literal rendering might be: “And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of Yahweh El Olam.” Note the combination of the divine names “Yahweh” and “El,” together with Olam “Eternal [lit. (of) Eternity],” an epithet of El. The final form of the text as it has been preserved has no direct mention of Asherah, but it seems likely that this planting of a sacred tree by the patriarch Abraham was an act to venerate Her.
- Genesis 30:13. The KJV reads: “And Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed: and she called his name Asher.” It has been suggested that what she really said was not “happy am I” [be’oshri, lit. “by (or with) my happiness”], but “by Asherah” or “with Asherah’s help” [be’asherah], Asherah being a fertility goddess. The traditional way of taking this, “by/with my happiness,” is very awkward. The name of the Goddess, Asherah, is very similar to the word for “happiness,” so it would have been a simple matter for scribes to remove Asherah’s name from the narrative by replacing it with the noun for “happiness.” Invoking the name of a deity in childbirth was common, and the normal form of such an invocation is with the b- prefix (meaning “by”) Leah uses here. Leah had similarly exclaimed “by Gad” or “with Gad’s help” upon the birth of her son (through her handmaid Zilpah), whom she duly named “Gad.” Gad was the god of luck worshipped in Phoenicia and Canaan. In this theory, the name of Leah’s son Asher would simply be the masculine form (without the feminine –ah ending) of the Goddess’s name.[12]
- Genesis 49:25. Jacob’s blessings to his sons includes an invocation to Yahweh (v. 18), followed by an invocation to El (v. 25) including the common El epithet Shaddai (“almighty”) used in parallel with “El.” This verse also bestows the blessings of Breasts-and-Womb, which was known as an epithet of Asherah.[13]
- Proverbs 3:13–18. One form into which Asherah worship was transformed was as Lady Wisdom (Hebrew chokmah) in Proverbs 1–9. It has therefore been suggested[14] that there is an intentional word play on the name of the Goddess in an inclusio we find in Proverbs 3:13–18. An inclusio is a type of distant parallelism between material at the beginning of a section of text and that at the end of the section, thus framing or bracketing the material in the middle. These six verses form a discrete block of text. In verse 13 is “happy” (a word that is very similar to “Asherah” in Hebrew) and “Wisdom” (the designation of the Goddess as She was transformed). Five verses later in verse 18 is the expression “a tree of life,” a characteristic of Asherah paralleling the word “Wisdom” (v. 13) and a repetition of “happy” (v. 13). As the parallel elements are given in inverted order, this particular inclusio is chiastic in nature:
A. happy [v. 13; ‘ashre]
B. Wisdom [v. 13; chokmah]
[Framed material in verses 14 through 17]
B. a tree of life [v. 18; ‘ets chayyim]
A. happy [v. 18; me’ushshar (same root as ‘ashre)]
That “Wisdom” appears in parallel with “a tree of life,” long associated with Asherah as a sacred tree, tends to suggest the association of Wisdom with Asherah. The word play on the name Asherah in the Hebrew word “happy” tends to confirm that association.
- Proverbs 8:22–31. Another illustration of the recasting of Asherah as personified Lady Wisdom is in this passage, quoted below from the NRSV:
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
- Isaiah 6:13. The Revised Standard Version (RSV) of this passage reads: “And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains standing when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump.” The reference to “a tenth” appears to be an allusion to Judah, the tribe which was not taken as part of the Assyrian conquest. This tenth would not entirely escape but would be punished also in the Babylonian captivity. Yet even then a righteous remnant would re-main, from which Israel could once again grow and flower. Thus, the end of the verse reflects the concept, common in Isaiah prophecies, of a re-turning remnant. For example, Isaiah 7:3 states that Isaiah had a son symbolically named Shear-jashub (“A Remnant Shall Return”).
Although the general meaning of the passage seems clear enough, the text itself is obscure and has apparently been corrupted. Many scholars believe the relative particle ‘asher, translated “whose” in the text above, was originally a reference to Asherah. These scholars would emend the end of the verse to read: “like the terebinth [of the Goddess] and the oak of Asherah, cast out with the pillar of the high places.” (Both the RSV an-notation and the New English Bible do so.) That is, Judah would be cut off and burned the way a sacred tree or an Asherah pole was hewn down and burned during the reform period. These scholars would simply delete the obscure last sentence, “the holy seed is its stump,” and thereby remove the concept of the return of a righteous remnant from this verse.
If these scholars are correct in seeing here an allusion to Asherah, and if they are incorrect in deleting the last line, we have a plausible explanation for the corruption in the text. In this reading, the prophet was in-deed using the cutting down of an Asherah pole or a sacred tree to illustrate Judah’s captivity by Babylon. He goes on, however, to argue that the stump of a sacred tree was still considered holy and could regenerate into a new tree. As a reform prophet, Isaiah would not have used this imagery to support Asherah worship; rather, he appears to have been using com-mon Israelite beliefs about Asherah worship to make a point about the ultimate return of a righteous remnant of Israel. Later scribes, apparently of-fended that the prophet would have used Asherah worship to illustrate a positive prophecy of the return of Israel, even as a literary device, modified the text to avoid this association.
- Hosea 14:8 [Hebrew 14:9]. This verse in the RSV reads: “O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit.” The line rendered “It is I who answer and look after you” is a translation of the Hebrew ani ’aniti wa’ashurennu (the “you” of the RSV is literally “him” in the Hebrew, referring to Ephraim). The meaning of the line as it stands is obscure. Some scholars suggest here a conjectural emendation to ’ani ’anato wa’asherato, meaning “I [Yahweh] am his Anat [another Canaanite goddess] and his Asherah,” which would then restore the parallelism of the first two half-lines in the verse. Even if one does not follow these scholars in emending the text, at the very least there seems to be a word play on the names “Anat” (possibly understood during the Israelite period as another name for Asherah) and “Asherah” in the Hebrew text as it exists. That there is such an allusion to Asherah here can be seen particularly in how Isaiah 27:9, which is based on this passage, makes explicit reference to ’asherim “Asherah poles.” True, the prophet here is arguing against Asherah worship as part of the reform movement. But he does so gently, by having Yahweh assume Her attributes. Yahweh tells Ephraim that He (Yahweh) will fulfill the historic role of Anat/Asherah in the future for Israel. Yahweh is like a sacred tree (as is Asherah); the source of fertility is not Asherah, Goddess of fertility, but Yahweh Himself. While perhaps not a positive allusion to Asherah, this passage does illustrate how Yahweh co-opted Her functions during the reform period.[15]
- Ezekiel 8:3. This passage reads: “and the spirit . . . brought me to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy [sml hqn’h hmqnh].” (See also v. 5.) This “image” is generally assumed to be a statue of Asherah present at one time in the temple. The expression “image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy” makes little sense. It has been suggested that the real designation of this figure was sml hqnh, “the image of the creatress,” consort to Yahweh, who is called “creator [qnh] of heaven and earth” in Genesis 14:19. If this suggestion is correct, then “image of jealousy,” sml hqn’h, is a word play used to avoid mentioning the (at that time) forbidden “image of the creatress.”[16]
- 1 Nephi 11:8–23. In this passage the Spirit shows to Nephi the tree which his father had seen, beautiful and white beyond description. Nephi tells the Spirit: “I behold thou has shown unto me the tree which is precious above all.” The Spirit asks Nephi what he desires, and he responds that he wishes to know the interpretation of this tree that had been shown to his father and which he now beheld himself. Instead of straightforwardly answering his question, the angel shows Nephi a vision of a virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins, whom the angel identifies as the mother of the Son of God. And then Nephi sees the virgin with a child in her arms, whom the angel identifies as “the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father!” At this point, the Spirit asks Nephi the same question Nephi had previously asked him: “Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw?” To the modern reader, the tree seems irrelevant to the vision of Mary, but Nephi replies that he now knows the meaning of the tree: “Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; where-fore, it is the most desirable above all things,” to which the angel responds “Yea, and the most joyous to the soul.”
How did a vision of the virgin Mary and her child answer Nephi’s question about the meaning of the tree? To the modern reader, the connection seems utterly obscure. Why would the virgin be portrayed in some sense as a tree and the child as the fruit of the tree?
In what to my mind is surely one of the most remarkable articles ever published in Mormon studies, Daniel C. Peterson answers the question by pointing to the tree symbolism of Asherah, the divine mother figure of ancient Israel.[17] What seems to us to be no connection at all was im-mediately apparent to Nephi once he beheld the virgin and her baby. Peterson’s article is not only a probing exegesis of the Book of Mormon pas-sage but also a very able survey of recent Asherah scholarship from an LDS perspective.
What information about Asherah in Her specifically Hebrew context can we derive from the scriptural canon? At this point, I shall attempt to synthesize some scripturally based propositions about Her. Needless to say, these insights are but a few pieces from a much larger jigsaw puzzle (without the picture on the box); we can see Her through the scriptures only through a glass darkly. I shall also offer a few suggestions for how we might actually include Her within our worship.
The subtitle to this essay—“Without Getting Excommunicated”—suggests some basic parameters for my suggestions. First, no idolatry. At least part of the reason that the Deuteronomist reformers worked to sup-press Her worship is that over time Her worship was corrupted by idolatrous practices, much like the Nehushtan or brass serpent-pole, which, although originally fashioned by Moses and entirely unobjectionable, eventually came to be worshipped idolatrously and was therefore destroyed. That is, it was the manner of worship and not the object itself that was objectionable. So I will not suggest pouring out drink offerings to Asherah poles or any such observance. Second, no public prayer. Given that President Hinckley has forbidden public prayers addressed to Mother in Heaven,[18] that instruction represents the current policy of the Church, although I suggest a partial, small exception below. And third, the practices I suggest are modest reconceptualizations of practices we already engage in, or practices that would be viewed as innocuous to an outside observer, or private practices meant for the home.
- Name and titles. I personally regard it as very significant that we actually know the name of our Mother in Heaven: Asherah. In the ancient world, knowing the name or etymon of a god was very important, and just having this small bit of information helps us to personalize Her rather than leaving Her in the realm of unknown and distant abstraction.
What did “Asherah” mean? Here, as often in the Old Testament, we must distinguish between popular and historical etymology. It seems likely that Hebrew-speaking Israelites would have understood the name as meaning “Happiness, Blessedness,” from the verbal root ’ashar, the basic meaning of which is “to go straight on, to advance,” whether in a literal or a metaphoric [“in the way of understanding”] sense. In the piel verb stem, the verb has the developed meanings “to set right, righten” and from there “to pronounce happy, call blessed.” In this view, “Asherah” would be a nominal form of this verb. Indeed, early modern Hebraists understood the word in just this way.[19]
Although I have focused on the small bits of information we can glean about Her from the Old Testament, a more extensive body of knowledge is available in the older Ras Shamra tablets, written in Ugaritic, a Canaanite dialect. The Ugaritic vocalization of “Asherah” was “Athirat,” which traditional scholarship interprets as deriving from the longer ex-pression, rbt ’atrt ym (“She Who Treads on the Sea).” More recent scholarship prefers “Lady Athirat of the Sea,” thus keeping Her name intact. A more recent understanding of the historical linguistic etymology of “Athirat” (and thus Asherah) is that it means “Sanctuary.”[20] This interpretation is also supported by Her epithet qdš (Ugaritic Qudshu, Hebrew Qodesh), meaning “Holy Place, Holiness.”
Although the epithet “Breasts-and-Womb” appears in the Old Testament (Gen. 49:25), Canaanite literature ascribes other epithets to her that are not in the Bible: “Lion Lady,” “Creatress of All the Gods,” and “Mistress of Sexual Rejoicing.” Early Israelite belief may have continuity with at least some of this earlier Canaanite mythology; but for purposes of this paper, I want to focus specifically on what we can learn from our canonical scripture. I make, however, an exception for Her principal title: Elat. Although this title is attested only in Ugaritic and not in Hebrew, it fits logically with what we otherwise know about her. “Elat” is El with the archaic -at feminine ending. “El” appears in the Hebrew Bible, both as the proper name of the Most High God and as a generic term for God; although the normal Hebrew feminine ending is -ah, the archaic -at ending also appears in biblical Hebrew, apparently paralleling the feminine nebi’ah, which generically means “prophetess” but, as used specifically in Isaiah 8:3, means “Mrs. Prophet” (i.e., Isaiah’s wife). So the title “Elat” can mean both generically “Goddess” (in her own right) and specifically “Mrs. El” or “Mrs. God” (in relation to El Himself).
A small gesture of deference to our Mother might be to name a child in Her honor. It probably would not do to name a daughter something like Chokmah (just think of the therapy bills), but there are a couple of names that would work as honorifics of Her in our culture: Asher for a boy (the masculine form of Her name) and Sophia for a girl (Greek for Wisdom).
- Creation. In Proverbs 8:30 quoted above, Lady Wisdom reports that She was present during the creation and assisted with it. In the NRSV, this passage reads: “then I was beside him, like a master worker.” The KJV mistranslates this verse as: “then I was by him, as one brought up with him” (meaning “like a child”). The key term in the Hebrew is ’amon, meaning a master craftsman, artificer, or architect. Thus, this passage portrays Wisdom as a skilled craftsman working beside Yahweh in creating the world. This concept fits readily into Mormon thought, since we understand the creation not as the work of a single deity, but rather as the collaborative effort of a small pantheon working together.
This passage also has numerous parallels with the creation account from Genesis 1. How did the author of Proverbs conclude that Wisdom was present at the creation and assisted in its work? One possibility is KJV Genesis 1:2: “and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Some translations interpret the Hebrew expression as “a mighty wind was blowing across the surface of the water.”[21] The Prophet Joseph, however, suggested another version in Abraham 4:2: “and the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the waters.” This phrasing is not only part of our modern scriptural canon, but it likely also reflects academic knowledge Joseph gained from Professor Joshua Seixas in Hebrew classes at Kirtland. The Hebrew word here is merachepheth, a participle from the verb rachaph, “to hover.” That verb appears in Deuteronomy 32:11, where a mother bird broods (or hatches out) her young. The Syriac cognate means “to brood over, to incubate.” When this concept is associated with the fact that the Spirit (Ruach) of God was perceived as a transformation of “Asherah” in later Hebrew thought, Genesis presents a mysterious feminine metaphor for part of the creation process. Possibly this association is what led the author of Proverbs to portray Wisdom as present and active in the creation.[22]
- Sacred trees. Asherah was most profoundly represented in the scriptures with various forms of tree symbolism, beginning in the Garden of Eden. Prominent in the garden is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In Mormon theology, the Fall is actually necessary for human moral development. As is often expressed, the Fall and the Atonement were not Plan B, a band-aid to remedy a great mistake, but rather Plan A, intended all along. The Fall had both positive and negative effects. The Atonement remedies the negative effects, while the positive effects remain intact. Therefore, in Mormon thought, Eve is not the great scapegoat of all humanity, ruining our one chance at true happiness, but rather the moral heroine of the story, who by a flash of insight or intuition saw the necessity of partaking of the fruit. The fruit of this tree made human beings “wise” and, thus, was the source of wisdom. The story also mentions an-other sacred tree, the tree of life, from which Adam and Eve were separated after the Fall.[23]
The fact that Abraham planted a tree in honor of Asherah (Gen. 21:33) acquires new significance in light of Asherah’s association with tree symbolism. As Peterson discussed in “Nephi and His Asherah,” we should expand the Asherah-tree symbolism to the Book of Mormon as well; think, for example, of the allegory of the olive tree or of Alma’s experiment comparing faith to the planting of a seed. Indeed, in the Mormon “liken-unto-us” pesher reading of Ezekiel 37, which we take as referring to “sticks” of Judah and Joseph representing the Bible and Book of Mormon, the key word in the passage is ets, which literally means “tree” (or “wood”). We therefore can view each volume of scripture as a tree, meaning a source of divine wisdom.
In addition to reading the scriptures with greater sensitivity to possible connections between tree symbolism and our Mother, how might we apply this knowledge in Her worship? First, I suggest that we reconceptualize how we think of our Christmas trees. Just as Peterson demonstrated that the tree of Nephi’s vision represented the mother of the Son of God, the babe being the fruit of the tree, so it seems a very natural ex-tension of that idea to see the decorated trees erected in our homes each December as representing the Christ child’s mother—hence, indirectly the Mother of us all. Since the practice of putting up Christmas trees originated from a pagan fertility symbol that had to be reconceptualized in the first place to give it a Christian meaning, giving the tree our own reconceptualization would not be treading on inviolable ground. And, of course, putting a Christmas tree up each December is entirely unobjectionable in our culture, a practice at which no one would bat an eye. But seeing the tree as a symbol of our Mother may be a source of satisfaction to those who long to acknowledge Her in some way.
A second possibility would be to take a page from the minor Jewish holiday (minor in the sense that there are no restrictions on working), Tu Bishvat.[24] The name “Tu Bishvat” refers to the fifteenth day of the month Shevat in the Jewish calendar (bi- is a preposition, and tu represents two Hebrew letters used to form the number 15 in lieu of Arabic numerals). Tu Bishvat originally was the last date in which fruit could be taxed that year. Fruit ripening after Tu Bishvat could be assessed for tithing only for the following year (and since Mormons also tithe, this is a regulation we can understand and relate to). But over time, this day has taken on greater significance. This holiday is one of the four Rosh Hashanahs (“New Years”) mentioned in the Mishnah, the basis of the Talmud. Tu Bishvat is the Rosh HaShanah La’Ilanot “new year of the trees.” Today it is celebrated as the birthday of the trees, with a symbolic eating of fruits and with active redemption of barren land by planting trees. People express their ecological concerns and their desire to reconnect themselves to nature. It has become a kind of Jewish Earth Day. Certainly a day when we were to plant trees (and extrapolating that specific action to a broader concern with protecting and nurturing this earth’s environment), seems to me a very natural way to honor our Mother in Heaven.
- Artistic representations. Although the Hebrew Bible itself has only hints about the worship of Asherah in ancient Israel, the archaeological record is much richer and is not burdened by the polemical perspective of the Josian and other reformers. William Dever’s remarkable recent book, Did God Have a Wife?, is an excellent source of archaeological evidence for ordinary Israelites’ common worship of Asherah.[25] In antiquity there was a rich tradition of iconic representation of Asherah.
I have a modern copy of an ancient Asherah pillar base figurine[26] on the bookshelf in my living room. Such figurines were absolutely ubiquitous in ancient Israelite homes. Mine features a woman’s head and breasts, but the bottom of the figure is shaped as a smooth cylinder, representing the trunk of a tree, the Goddess’s symbol. She is not an idol to me; I do not worship it, and She sits next to French gargoyles, Greek Ortho-dox and Roman Catholic icons, an Etruscan charioteer, a statue of the Greek Goddess Hygeia (the goddess of health), and a Nauvoo sunstone. Mormons tend to be more pragmatic than, for instance, some very conservative Christians or Jehovah’s Witnesses, about allowing such artistic representations of deity. Therefore, there is nothing inappropriate about having such a visual reminder in one’s home. In addition, those who have artistic talents could make their own, modern representations of our Mother.
- Fertility, childbirth, and lactation. It should come as no surprise that Asherah was originally a fertility goddess. Fertility, childbirth, and lactation were among the very gravest concerns of ancient women—liter-ally matters of life, death, and familial survival. These issues remain crucial even in our own day, when infertile couples routinely spend thousands of dollars attempting to successfully have children of their own.
This is the one area where, to my own eye at least, private prayer to our Mother in Heaven might be countenanced. I personally have never prayed to Her under any circumstances and do not feel the need to do so. And certainly there is nothing wrong with praying in our normal fashion to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ for help with these issues. But Yahweh absorbed what were originally Asherah’s fertility functions and the scriptures preserve Leah’s prayer to Her in successfully giving birth to one of the sons of Israel. If a couple or a prospective mother were to feel the need to address our Mother directly in prayer in this particular type of circumstance, I personally would not find it offensive. These are, of course, very private matters, and I am assuming that any such prayers would not become a matter of public knowledge. Consequently, such prayers should not adversely affect others who might not approve of such a prayer being offered in their presence.
Of course, President Hinckley’s counsel on this subject did not expressly distinguish private from public prayers, and many people would not be comfortable circumventing that direction. And I have no authority in the Church to suggest anything otherwise. So those who may wish to engage in such prayers will need to consider the matter carefully and take responsibility for their own actions. I am simply reporting that my own sensibilities would not be offended if a woman or couple, desperate to conceive, were to address their Mother in Heaven in their prayers.
- Healing. Popular culture routinely portrays the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (and, by extension, the tree of life) in the Garden of Eden as an apple tree. But in Jewish tradition, the tree of life was most commonly an olive tree, which makes sense given that tree’s important role in Middle Eastern culture.[27] I have long thought it significant that we give healing blessings using consecrated olive oil, which is the fruit of the tree of life, therefore most appropriate to the task, and at least in part a symbol of our Mother’s nurturing concern for our health and well-being.[28]
- Happiness. Even though “happiness” was not the true etymology of the name “Asherah,” Israelites doubtless understood the name to have that meaning. Therefore, there was a tendency to create word plays using “happiness” in situations associated with the Goddess. Sometimes “happiness” was substituted for her name to avoid mentioning Her at all. Therefore, passages in the Old Testament that refer to happiness should be read closely with these possibilities in mind, and, as Peterson rightly notes, the same sensitivity in reading happiness passages should also be extended to our reading of the Book of Mormon text. There may well be nuggets of information about the Goddess hidden in such passages awaiting discovery by a diligent reader.
- Wisdom. Since Asherah was recharacterized as personified Wisdom, we should read passages referring to wisdom with an eye attuned to possible nuanced allusions to the Goddess. In particular, we should read with care the whole of the Wisdom Literature (in the Old Testament, this would include Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes).
In the Jewish tradition, study is perceived as a kind of worship.[29] I have suggested some topics to look for in a fresh and close reading of scripture. Appendix B is a bibliography of non-LDS literature on Asherah as an Israelite Goddess. Though not exhaustive, it is sufficiently extensive to al-low any diligent student to become acquainted with the most concrete in-formation we have about how the ancients viewed Asherah and Her nature. Let no one complain about a lack of knowledge on this subject without first rolling up her sleeves and digging into the many resources avail-able that give us some genuine insight into our Mother in Heaven.
Just as the specific practice of planting trees to honor Asherah can be generalized to broader concern with the environment, we may also extrapolate from wisdom specifically to a broader concern for education and intellectual striving. Just as She would want us to protect this earth She helped to create, so, too, like any mother, She would desire for us to broaden our minds and learn the wonders of the universe to the extent we are able.
- Temple service. I see the crowning way to worship our Mother in Heaven as engaging in temple service, whether as workers or as patrons. The connection between our Mother and the temple was and is pro-found. Consider, for instance, the following points:
- “Asherah” means “sanctuary,” “holy place,” and is thus, essentially, a synonym for temple.
- During times favorable to Asherah worship in ancient Israel, there was a statue or other image of Her prominently displayed in the temple.(This image was removed during times unfavorable to Her worship.)
- The menorah was a stylized almond tree and probably a symbol of the Goddess. It burned olive oil, which also was Her symbol.
- The two cherubim atop the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies were identified as Asherah and Yahweh.[30]
- Our modern temple ritual revolves around a creation drama, in which Asherah participated as a master craftsman.
- The Garden of Eden narrative prominently features two sacred trees (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life), both of which represent Her.
- One of the most prominent ways that ancient Israelite women worshipped Asherah was by weaving textiles that were then used in the temple.[31] It is not entirely clear what these weavings were—perhaps wall hangings or veils.
In 1985, I graduated from law school and moved to Chicago to be-gin my career. The Chicago Temple was dedicated not long after we arrived. Relief Society sisters in the area had made altar cloths with fine needlework for the temple’s altars. It seems to be a very close analog to a specific way in which Israelite women worshipped their Mother in Heaven.[32]
In short, I can think of no finer, more profound way to worship our Mother in Heaven than to participate in temple worship. And I have never known a bishop or stake president to excommunicate anyone for spending too much time serving in the temple.[33]
See PDF version of this article for Appendix A: The 40 Specific Occurrences of "Asherah" in the Old Testament and Appendix B: Bibliography of Non-LDS Literature.
[1] Gordon B. Hinckley, “Daughters of God,” Ensign, November 1991, 100. The 1909 statement reads: “. . . even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages and aeons, of evolving into a God.” The 1995 statement reads: “Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents . . .” For the history of the idea in its Mormon context, see Linda R. Wilcox, “The Mormon Concept of a Mother in Heaven,” in Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective, edited by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Lavina Fielding Anderson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 64–77.
[2] George D. Smith, “‘Is There Any Way to Escape These Difficulties?’: The Book of Mormon Studies of B. H. Roberts,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 94–111.
[3] My survey of scholarship on the ancient Hebrew pantheon is to some extent personal and subjective, as virtually all of the propositions I shall make can be and have been debated by scholars. The picture I will paint simply reflects my sense of the situation based on my reading of the literature.
[4] Boyd Kirkland, “Elohim and Jehovah in Mormonism and the Bible,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 77–93; and his “Jehovah as Father: The Development of the Mormon Jehovah Doctrine,” Sunstone 9 (Autumn 1984): 36–44.
[5] See in particular Margaret Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992). For an appreciation of Barker’s work from an LDS perspective, see Kevin Christensen, “Paradigms Regained: A Survey of Margaret Barker’s Scholarship and Its Significance for Mormon Studies.” Occasional Papers, No. 2, edited by William Hamblin (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2001). I acknowledge that Barker’s scholarship is controversial and that not all LDS scholars are enamored with it. See, for example, Terrence L. Szink, “Jerusalem in Lehi’s Day,” FARMS Review 16, no. 2 (2004): 149–59. While Barker happened to be my point of entree to scholarship on the ancient Hebrew pantheon, recent scholarship on this subject is both extensive and broadly based. See Appendix B, “Bibliography of Non-LDS Literature.”
[6] The Israelites and the Canaanites lived contemporaneously at the same place with approximately the same culture. The Canaanites also ante-dated the Israelites; scholars refer to Canaanites during the Iron Age as Phoenicians. Many scholars take the position that the Israelites did not conquer the Canaanites but rather simply arose from among them indigenously. The Hebrew language originated as a Canaanite dialect.
[7] In general, see Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990).
[8] John Day, “Asherah,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1:483–87. This article is a summary of Day’s longer study, “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105, no. 3 (1986): 385–408. There are a couple of similar Syro-Palestinian inscriptions of the same pattern referring to “Yahweh and His Asherah.” It is unclear whether the reference to “Asherah” in these inscriptions is meant to refer directly to the Goddess or to Her cult object, a wooden pole representing a sacred tree, since proper names in Biblical Hebrew normally do not take a pronominal suffix (the “his” of the English translations). If the reference were to Her cult object, the allusion to Her would be indirect but nonetheless present.
[9] On the further transformations of Asherah, see in particular Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 3rd ed. (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1990).
[10] Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2 (1978): 199, as quoted in Kevin L. Barney, “Six Key Concepts in Joseph Smith’s Understanding of Genesis 1:1,” BYU Studies 39 no. 3 (2000): 124.
[11] This material is adapted from my unpublished internet essay, “Do We Have a Mother in Heaven?” http://www.fairlds.org/pubs/MotherInHeaven.pdf (accessed July 11, 2007) [Editor’s Note: Link in original PDF no longer works; updated link provided in hyperlink].
[12] W. L. Reed, “Asherah,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by George Butterick, 5 vols. (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1982), 1:251; Patai, Hebrew Goddess, 296–97 note 15.
[13] Smith, Early History of God, 16.
[14] Ibid., 95.
[15] Day, “Asherah.”
[16] Barker, The Great Angel, 54.
[17] Daniel C. Peterson, “Nephi and His Asherah: A Note on 1 Nephi 11:8–23,” in Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World: Studies in Honor of John L. Sorenson, edited by Davis Bitton (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1998), 191–243. His shorter, popularized version appeared as “Nephi and His Asherah,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 9, no. 2 (2000): 16–25. The title is a word play on a series of Syro-Palestinian inscriptions that refer to “Yahweh and His Asherah.”
[18] “However, in light of the instruction we have received from the Lord Himself, I regard it as inappropriate for anyone in the Church to pray to our Mother in Heaven.” Hinckley, “Daughters of God,” 100.
[19] Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon (1907; rpt., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1979), 81.
[20] See the discussion in Tilde Binger, Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), 142–46.
[21] So for example “an awesome wind sweeping over the water” in E. A. Speiser, Genesis: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Vol. 1 of THE ANCHOR BIBLE (New York: Doubleday, 1962), 3.
[22] Given that Asherah’s particular role was as procreator and given this particular maternal metaphor of brooding over the waters, one might be tempted to suggest that Her particular role in the creation had to do with the biological creation of life, which indeed originated in the deep. But this would, of course, simply be a speculation.
[23] It is possible, as some scholars have speculated, that the two trees were originally one and the same and were separated only for the dramatic needs of the story.
[24] See Kevin L. Barney, “Happy Tu Bishvat,” By Common Consent, February 3, 2007 (accessed July 22, 2007). When I first learned of this holiday from an article in my local paper, one of the congregations celebrating the holiday was Congregation Ets Chayyim, Hebrew for “Tree of Life.”
[25] William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005). For reviews of the book from an LDS perspective, see Paul Hoskisson in BYU Studies 45, no. 2 (2006): 186–89, and Alyson Skabelund Von Feldt, “Does God Have a Wife?” FARMS Review 19, no. 1 (2007): 81–118.
[26] I purchased this particular five-inch replica for $22 plus shipping from http://www.sacredsource.com over the internet.
[27] Although I was not present, Andrew C. Skinner gave a presentation on the olive tree’s position as the preeminent tree of life in Jewish tradition, concluding that many impressive connections help establish the core idea that the tree of life is the most desirable of all things. This presentation was given at a symposium on the tree of life on September 28–29, 2006, sponsored by the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU. See the report in “Symposium Explores Widespread Tree of Life Motif,” Insights: An Ancient Window 26, no. 5 (2006): 1, 3–4.
[28] For some interesting introductory commentary on historic Mormon practices of using olive oil in healing, see Jonathan Stapley, “The Evolution of Anointing the Sick,” June 8, 2005, http://www.splendidsun.com/wp /annointing/ [“annointing” is as per original] (accessed July 22, 2007) [Editor’s Note: This link no longer works], and Jonathan Stapley, “Consecrated Oil as Medical Therapy,” both on By Common Consent, April 17, 2007 (accessed July 22, 2007).
[29] Jacob Neusner, The Glory of God Is Intelligence: Four Lectures on the Role of Intellect in Judaism (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1979).
[30] See, e.g., Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 67–95.
[31] See 2 Kings 23:7, which reads in part in the KJV: “by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove” [lit. “where the women wove houses (bottim) for Asherah”], where the meaning of bottim is uncertain.
[32] Some Mormon women are offended by having to veil their faces in the temple. I have argued elsewhere that the veil can be understood as a symbol of resurrection. Kevin L. Barney, “The LORD Will Swallow Up Death Forever,” By Common Consent, September 7, 2006 (accessed July 22, 2007). Another possibility relevant here might be to understand the veil in terms of the weavings women made in honor of Asherah in the ancient temple. The woman’s veil can be seen as a microcosm or model version of the larger veil of the temple.
[33] There remain two significant issues concerning the nature of our Mother in Heaven that the information I have been able to tease out of the text is not really sufficient to answer. Here I will give my opinion (for whatever it may be worth) on these issues, with the understanding that it is simply speculation on my part. First, is our Mother an embodied being or a spirit? I realize some Mormon feminists like to equate Her with the Holy Ghost, thus making a trinity of Father, Mother, and Son. That arrangement has a certain appeal. And, as I have argued, one of the ways Asherah was reconceptualized was indeed as God’s Spirit. But I think it is oversimplistic to equate Asherah with the Holy Ghost. Although I do see an echo of Her in the Holy Ghost, I believe that in actuality She is an embodied being in exactly the same sense that the Father is an embodied being. Indeed, the “logic” that President Hinckley mentioned would seem to require embodiment. Furthermore, embodiment fits both the anthropomorphism of the ancient Israelite pantheon (and its Canaanite precedents) and our modern view of God the Father possessing a tangible, physical body of “flesh and bone” (D&C 130:3). In my view, God the Mother is similarly embodied.
Second, is God the Mother one or many? One could make an argument for a plurality of Mothers. In the Canaanite pantheon, El had multiple consorts; and in nineteenth-century Mormonism when polygamy was actively practiced and defended, having plural wives may have seemed like the more natural arrangement. In my conception, however, there is only one Mother in Heaven to match our Father in Heaven. Such uniqueness is consistent with the Israelite evidence, which worships only Asherah in contradistinction to the multiple consorts of the Canaanite pantheon. Further, in my view a single Mother in Heaven is more consonant with contemporary Mormon thought.
[post_title] => How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated) [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 41.4 (Winter 2008): 121–147In this essay, I shall begin by describing what we can learn about our Mother in Heaven from the scriptures. I then will draw from those descriptions some (very modest) suggestions for how we might actually worship, or at least honor, Her in ways that should not be considered offensive or heterodox by traditionalists. This essay is therefore a little exercise in religion-making. It is my hope that I will be able to express my mediating thoughts in a way that will not be deemed offensive by those of either school of thought on the subject. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => how-to-worship-our-mother-in-heaven-without-getting-excommunicated [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-03-30 23:32:10 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-03-30 23:32:10 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=10013 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Dialogue 43.2 (Fall 2010): 45–63
Reading these books in relation to my own life taught me something I should already have known. Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it.
Reading these books in relation to my own life taught me something I should already have known. Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it.
[post_title] => Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 43.2 (Fall 2010): 45–63Reading these books in relation to my own life taught me something I should already have known. Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => mormon-women-in-the-history-of-second-wave-feminism [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:33:42 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:33:42 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=9768 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
My Short Happy Life with Exponent II
Claudia L. Bushman
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 191–1933
Claudia Bushman and others reflect back on Exponent II.
Claudia Bushman and others reflect back on Exponent II. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => my-short-happy-life-with-exponent-ii-4 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:33:24 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:33:24 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=10644 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Bodies, Babies, and Birth Control
Melissa Proctor
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 159–175
In this paper I will explore official and unofficial messages that theLDS church has sent to girls and women about childbearing during the twentieth century and the effect those messages have had on women’sreproductive choices.
When I grow up I want to be a mother and have a family,
Janeen Brady[1]
One little, two little, three little babies of my own.
Of all the jobs for me I'll choose no other, I'll have family,
Four little, five little, six little babies of my own.
For over a century little girls in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have grown up hearing messages like those taught in this song that was popular when I was in Primary: babies are wonderful, have as many babies as you can—at least six—and motherhood is the only work you should choose. Following the same theme, lessons with titles like "Motherhood, a Divine Calling," which stress childbearing as a woman's first duty, are taught to sixteen and seventeen year old girls in their Sunday classes.[2] Until the late nineties Relief Society manuals included regular lessons on women's sacred responsibilities as mothers, often with a reminder that women are accountable to God for how well they fulfill this important calling. Such messages are ubiquitous in the programs, lessons and talks for women in the LDS church.
In this paper I will explore official and unofficial messages that the LDS church has sent to girls and women about childbearing during the twentieth century and the effect those messages have had on women's reproductive choices. First, I will examine the theological framework of these messages, which appears in all commentary and which grounds the issue as a basic principle of LDS belief. Next, I will chronicle some of the most influential statements made by leaders of the church regarding family planning, noting the widely divergent pronouncements over time and the various interpretations of the principle those pronouncements represent. Third, I will investigate actual family planning practices among 200 active women in the church during the twentieth century. My analysis will be based on women's real decisions and lived experiences as expressed in their own voices. Finally, I will assess how closely these women's practices correspond to the pronouncements made by church leaders. It will be important, as part of this assessment, to discuss the ways in which these women have negotiated their relationship with the institutional church regarding their reproductive choices.
The Principle
On the most fundamental level any position taken by LDS church leaders on the issues of motherhood and childbearing has its source in LDS theology. Such theological warrants come from canonized scripture and LDS beliefs about pre-mortal and post-mortal life.[3] All theological justification behind statements on the family is rooted in the first chapter of Genesis. 'And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."[4] Latter-day Saints see Adam and Eve not only as their literal historical ancestors, but also as prototypes of each man and woman on earth. What was commanded by God for the primal couple "is still in force"[5] for their descendants since "that commandment has never been altered, modified, or canceled."[6] In fact, as the commandment to multiply and replenish is understood to have been temporally first of all commandments to Adam and Eve, so it has taken on the meaning of being the first, or primary, commandment to all married couples.[7]
Beyond interpretations of Genesis, commentary about family planning is also based on uniquely LDS belief. According to LDS theology there are myriads of Heavenly Father's spirit children still awaiting mortal bodies. In a famous and often quoted statement Brigham Young explained, "There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty?—to prepare tabernacles for them: to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked. . . .It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can."[8] According to Brigham Young then, we are to make as many mortal bodies as we can for the spirits who are waiting their turn on earth. Leaders of the church also remind us that "The family concept is one of the major and most important of our whole theological doctrine. Our concept of heaven itself is little more than a projection of the home and family life into eternity."[9] Thus, it is common to hear that "the ultimate treasures on earth and in heaven are our children and our posterity."[10]
These doctrinal precepts, which together have been called a "pronatalist theology," constitute the basic principle upon which all statements by church leaders regarding childbearing are founded.[11] The principle is that procreation is a good that should be pursued. But, what does the principle mean in practice? The principle of procreation says nothing about how soon, how often, or how many children one must have. Except for the implication to have more than one child, there is no quantifier inherent in the principle.[12] What then does the principle indicate about contraception? Although principles are basic, unchanging truths that have moral implications, principles must be interpreted to be applied. Interpretation of principle is no simple task. In fact, interpretations of the principle of procreation have been as varied as the people whose statements set church policy.
The Pronouncements
Most statements about fertility regulation from church leaders in the nineteenth century were vague and only euphemistically referred to contraception. Brigham Young warned against "attempts to destroy and dry up the fountains of life"; Erastus Snow likewise worried about the Saints "taking villainous compounds to induce barrenness and unfruitfulness" and told them not to use "devices of wicked men and women" that caused "apparent sterility."[13] During the nineteenth century, however, parenthood for the majority was assumed. As positive encouragement, various blessings of posterity, such as long life, were promised as rewards.
One of the earliest extended statements employing negative motivation explicitly to counsel against birth control was made by George Q. Cannon in 1894.
There is one thing that I am told is practiced to some extent among us, and I say to you that where it is practiced and not thoroughly repented of the curse of God will follow it. I refer to the practice of preventing the birth of children. I say to you that the woman who practices such devilish arts . . . will be cursed in their bodies, cursed in their minds, cursed in their property, cursed in their offspring. God will wipe them out from the midst of this people and nation.[14]
Although the "most significant limitations on Mormon family size may well have been infant mortality and maternal morbidity,"[15] President Cannon's statement implies that members of the church had already begun using methods to avoid parenthood.
By the first two decades of the twentieth century, contraception had become a topic of much discussion. This interest may have been partly due to the 1901 church statistical report that indicated that the LDS birth rate had dropped significantly. Although the emphasis on population growth was not explicitly referred to as an objection to contraception, in an official statement Joseph F. Smith wrote, "I do not hesitate to say that prevention is wrong." President Smith linked contraception with negative results in the larger society. He wrote, "It brings in its train a host of social evils. It destroys the morals of a community and nation. It creates hatred and selfishness in the hearts of men and women. . .it causes death and decay and degeneration instead of life and growth, and advancement."[16]
As strong as these statements sound to contemporary ears, LDS attitudes during this time did not differ largely from mainstream America. Even Theodore Roosevelt worried about the decline in the American birth rate and popularized the then common expression "race suicide" to condemn contraception.[17] Between 1910 and 1920 there was great furor and debate over this issue nationally. By 1913 feminist activist Margaret Sanger had organized a national movement to legalize birth control and free American wives from compulsory childbearing and enforced maternity.[18] Although Sanger was considered a radical, many women supported the movement in varying degrees.[19] According to Susa Young Gates, even within the Relief Society, the subject caused "animated and sometimes heated discussions."[20] Due to the sisters' interest in this debate, Gates, editor of the Relief Society Magazine, requested statements from the church. After publishing commentaries from six apostles in 1916, she asked the First Presidency if they approved of these statements. In response, the First Presidency gave their "unqualified endorsement and commended the sentiments to members and nonmembers. . .everywhere."[21]
These statements, all publicly endorsed by the First Presidency, include, among other things, a specific prescription for family size. Elder Rudger Clawson wrote, "woman is so constituted that, ordinarily, she is capable of bearing, during the years of her greatest strength and physical vigor, from eight to ten children, and in exceptional cases a larger number than that. She should exercise the sacred power of procreation to the utmost limit."[22] Joseph Fielding Smith stated, "[W]hen a man and woman are married and they agree to limit their offspring to two or three, and practice devices to accomplish this purpose, they are guilty of iniquity which eventually must be punished."[23] Elder George F. Richards likewise wrote unequivocally, "My wife has borne to me fifteen children. Anything short of this would have been less than her duty and privilege."[24]
Elder David O. Mckay issued warnings about the consequences of contraception for the marriage relationship. He wrote, "The desire not to have children has its birth in vanity, passion and selfishness. Such feelings are the seeds sown in early married life that produce a harvest of discord, suspicion, estrangement and divorce."[25] President Joseph Fielding Smith warned about the eternal consequences of contraception in the next life warning that "those who attempt to prevent their offspring from coming into the world in obedience to this great command, are guilty of one of the most heinous crimes in the category. There is no promise of eternal salvation and exaltation for such as they."[26] He later clarified, "Those who willfully and maliciously design to break this important commandment shall be damned. They cannot have the Spirit of the Lord."[27]
Should prevention of children be medically necessary to preserve the health or life of the mother, some counsel was given. Elder Orson R Whitney wrote, "The only legitimate 'birth control' is that which springs naturally from the observance of divine laws, and the use of procreative powers, not for pleasure primarily, but for race perpetuation and improvement. If this involves some self-denial on the part of the husband and father, so much the better for all concerned."[28] In an earlier statement, Joseph Fielding Smith had stated that even in cases of sickness, "no prevention is legitimate except through absolute abstinence."[29] In its letter, the First Presidency makes an even stronger suggestion than abstinence within marriage. "It is so easy to avoid parenthood, if people wish to do so. . . . Men and women can remain unmarried. That is all there is to it."[30]
During the twenties and thirties the topic of birth control received little attention from the leaders of the church in official statements.[31] The relative silence may have been due to an initial increase in the birth rate in the 1920s. Nevertheless, both Mormon and non-Mormon birth rates declined steadily from 1933 to 1935,[32] which was most likely a result of economic necessity caused by the depression. Despite the dictates of the church regarding having a large family, the economic reality mitigated such behavior.[33] Polls from the period show that the majority of American women believed in birth control.[34] LDS women were no different. A 1935 poll of 1,159 Brigham Young University students shows that 89% said that they believed in birth control of some form.[35]
During the 1940s the church again spoke out on the issue. In a December 1942 essay in the Improvement Era, John A. Widtsoe outlined the forbidding consequences of using contraceptives. He wrote, "Since birth control roots in a species of selfishness, the spiritual life of the user of contraceptives is also weakened. Women seem to become more masculine in thought and action; men more callous and reserved; both husband and wife become more careless of each other."[36] As in the earlier statements solicited by Gates, Widtsoe emphasized family size, writing that "[W]omen who have large families are healthy throughout life. . . . [L]arge families are the most genuinely happy," and reminded members that to "multiply and replenish the earth means more than one or two children."[37] For all of these pro-family directives and strong condemnation of birth control, Widtsoe explained that when ill health makes birth control necessary, "careful recognition of the fertile and sterile periods of woman would prove effective in the great majority of cases. Recent knowledge of woman's physiology reveals the natural method for controlling birth."[38] Widtsoe's comments indicate the beginning of a shift in attitudes toward sexuality since this is the first time anything other than marital abstinence is condoned to prevent conception.[39] Despite Widtsoe's progressive thinking, his article did not represent major changes in Mormon leaders' official stand.
The baby boom that followed World War II in the 1950s and 1960s influenced the size of Mormon and non-Mormon families alike. LDS families averaged four or more children even though it seems that birth control continued to be widely used among church members.[40] Although no significant shifts occurred during the fifties, subtle changes were taking place. In 1960 President Hugh B. Brown broadened the acceptable reasons for prevention by the use of just one word. He wrote, "The Latter day Saints believe in large families wherever it is possible to provide for the necessities of life. . .and when the physical and mental health of the mother permits."[41] Although Brown explicitly advocated the pro-family principle and indicated that large families were more desirable, including mental health as a consideration in family size created more space for individual variation than any previous statement. There were competing views at this time from church leaders, however. In 1958 the un-official but standard reference work Mormon Doctrine was published, in which Bruce R. McConkie quoted Joseph Fielding Smith, saying, "Those who practice birth control . . . are running counter to the foreordained plan of the Almighty. They are in rebellion against God and are guilty of gross wickedness."[42] While acknowledging the liberal perspective of Brown, one must be clear that McConkie's views were more common among church leaders, who continued their general condemnation of contraception.
With these few exceptions, during the fifties and early sixties, church leaders made very few statements on this topic. This is remarkable when viewed against the larger American landscape. By the mid-1950s there was a growing concern regarding overpopulation, which contributed to a revival in Neo-Malthusian efforts at population control. At the same historical moment, the first oral contraceptive became easily available. In 1960 the birth control pill was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and quickly swept the nation. Over the next five years, federal funds were set aside for birth control and thirty-six states established family planning programs.[43] Birth control had won public support. By 1965 both the national and the LDS birth rates had dropped to record lows, rates lower even than in the depths of the depression.
Although various leaders denied the population explosion, there was no official response to the birth control pill from the church hierarchy until April 1969 when the First Presidency sent a formal letter to bishops and stake presidents. This statement, often called a "masterpiece of diplomacy," has been since used by people on all sides of the opinion spectrum to justify vastly differing family planning practices.[44] Nevertheless, phrases such as "it is contrary to the teachings of the Church artificially to curtail the birth of children," and "those who practice birth control will reap disappointment by and by" make the statement seem conclusive on the subject of birth control despite the controversy about what the ambiguous word "artificial" may or may not mean.[45] Although other phrases such as "the mother's health and strength should be conserved," and "married couples should seek inspiration and wisdom from the Lord" ostensibly mitigate the stronger statements, the explicit overall directive remains clear.
This letter precipitated a deluge of sermons on the same topic.[46] That same month, Elder Ezra Taft Benson gave explicit counsel, "The world teaches birth control. Tragically, many of our sisters subscribe to its pills and practices when they could easily provide earthly tabernacles for more of Father's children. There are couples who think they are getting along just fine with their limited families but who will someday suffer the pains of remorse when they meet the spirits that might have been part of their posterity."[47]
Spencer W. Kimball was one of the most vocal opponents of birth control at the time. In a 1971 General Conference address he said, "loud, blatant voices today shout 'fewer children' and offer the Pill, drugs, surgery, and even ugly abortion to accomplish that. Strange the proponents of depopulating the world seem never to have thought of continence!" Besides the continued theme of advocating abstinence as the only acceptable fertility regulation, President Kimball frequently associated the Pill with abortion. Speaking to the Relief Society in 1975, President Kimball said, "Much that comes to your consciousness is designed to lead you astray. It is to tempt you. . . .[T]here is the pill. There is abortion." Later in the same talk, President Kimball said, "Those things that endanger a happy marriage are infidelity, slothfulness, selfishness, abortion, unwarranted birth control. . .and sin in all of its many manifestations."[48] Along with his counsel "not to postpone parenthood" or "limit your family as the world does," President Kimball elsewhere taught that "sterilization and tying of tubes are sins."[49]
Pronouncements on the principle of procreation were not limited to the 70's, however. Church leaders have continued to stress the command "to multiply and replenish the earth." As recently as 1993 Elder Dallin Oaks quoted President Kimball in General Conference, saying, "It is an act of extreme selfishness for a married couple to refuse to have children when they are able to do so. How many children should a couple have? All they can care for! Exercising faith in God's promises to bless them when they are keeping his commandments, many LDS parents have large families."[50] In 1995 the First Presidency and Council of the Twelve issued the Proclamation on the Family which states that, "God's commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force."[51] Likewise, there are still occasional reminders from the pulpit that postponing children for educational or economic reasons is not condoned.
Although an examination of the basic principle of procreation and the history of pronouncements from church leaders on contraception provides theological and historical context for contraception among Latter-day Saints, the personal dimension needs attention in order for us to fully understand the issue. What effect have the principle and pronouncements had on the women of the church in terms of their daily practices? In what ways have the pronouncements influenced their deliberations and decisions? How have the women of the church understood the principle?
The Practices
In order to begin to answer some of these questions, I conducted an Internet survey during July of 2003 in which approximately 200 women participated, ranging in age from 22 to 92. Although all consider themselves active and faithful members of the LDS church, they have made very different reproductive choices. As with any survey, there are limitations to mine. The sample number is not statistically significant and, therefore, cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about LDS women as a group. Furthermore, I did not control for education, income, or location of residence, all of which can play a role in birth rates and childbearing practices. Nevertheless, in these women's responses distinctive patterns do emerge regarding family planning attitudes. As a member of the church, each woman has inherited both the principle of procreation and a cultural context informed by a long history of strong pronouncements that necessarily affect the way she acts and interacts within her community.
Although I was predisposed to organize these narratives into the two most obvious groups: those who use birth control and those who don't, the complex interweaving of motives and purposes in the stories I received defied such simplistic categories. Therefore, I found it more true to the women's responses to divide the surveys into groups that reflect their priorities and the source they appealed to in determining practice. Thus, distinctive and sometimes contradictory practices exist regarding contraception within each group.
First Group: Prioritizing Pronouncements
The first group among the women is comprised of those who prioritize the pronouncements of the prophets. Responses that fall into this general category show deference toward church leaders and a desire to be obedient. Making their decisions accordingly, most of these women choose not to use birth control. Carolyn from Washington (age 51) writes,
"I made the decision to leave how many children I had up to the Lord. I had seven. I have never regretted that decision. After listening to and reading what the prophets had to say, it seemed to me that the decision was not really up to me, based on my needs, but a decision to be made by consulting the Lord seriously and prayerfully, and that children should never be postponed or avoided for selfish (monetary) reasons." Such responses are not limited to older women who were bearing children during the years—70s and 80s—when church leaders were making their strongest statements against birth control. Rachel from Arizona (age 28) writes, "I am presently a few weeks from having my seventh baby. My oldest child is nine years old. We have chosen to leave our contraception, or lack thereof, in the hands of the Lord. We have read many times the quotes by many prophets and leaders of the church throughout the years. We feel they are very clear when they say that the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth is still in full force."
Some women emphasize perspective in their narratives. Louise from Arizona (age 56) narrates an experience that is similar to many responses I received. She writes, "38 years ago my husband and I were struggling college students. It was the days of The Pill and we were waiting until things were "better" to start our family. President Joseph Fielding Smith gave a talk in General Conference about not putting off having a family—I cried through most of it. The next day my pills disappeared. Less than a year later, the Lord blessed us with a beautiful daughter. Over the next twelve years, we added five more daughters and one son. We didn't always have the fanciest or finest, but one of the greatest things we ever gave them was one another." Joalene from Arizona (age 57) likewise writes, "We were married by President Kimball, when he was an apostle. He counseled us not to put off having a family. We had nine children in the next fourteen years and still managed to get a professional degree. There were times when I thought I was going to go crazy. My perspective became even clearer when our youngest son got his patriarchal blessing and was told that our family was organized in the pre-existence."
Interestingly, even women who are now in their childbearing years quote statements made decades ago, but with important additions. Jennifer (34) from Washington writes, "We feel that having children is a sacred duty and to refuse is, as Joseph R Smith said, a violation of our sealing covenants we have made. That being said, it is a matter of intense prayer and fasting and consultation." Despite the strong word "violation" she quotes from Joseph R Smith, Jennifer's modification to the statement allows some room, at least, for "consultation." In contrast, Marta from Japan (age 33) writes, "My husband and I have six children. We have been married for ten years and have seen many ups and downs, but we have never used birth control. We strive to live by covenant, not convenience, and to follow the counsel of the prophets, who have said on many occasions not to put off your family for schooling and 'to live together naturally and let the children come.'"
Other women followed their leaders not out of deference but under duress, and sometimes with mixed feelings. Norma from Florida (age 50) writes, "We had two sons, starting immediately after we were sealed. At that time in our stake you didn't get a recommend unless you were using no birth control. I don't regret a moment. On the other hand, had we waited until my husband completed his education, we would have been able to better provide for our family." Norma doesn't regret her children, but she admits that she may have made different decisions had there not been adverse consequences for using birth control. Rochelle from Utah (age 40) writes, "From the time I can remember I have heard from the pulpit that it is our privilege and our duty to bear children and raise up families to the Lord. As a young woman there was part of me that presented one gender giving this counsel to the other gender while acknowledging that the mother would bear the greatest responsibility in nurturing these children. There seemed to be no forum for the gender being counseled to give feedback or to voice their concerns, to be heard. I still struggle with this. However, I am nothing if not obedient, and I love my children."
Beyond following the prophet, some women complied with their local leaders' counsel or even suggestions from other ward members. Stacey from California (age 52) writes, "When my husband and I were newlyweds in 1978, we decided to wait for a while to begin our family. However, a few months after our marriage. . .the elder's quorum president chastised me for waiting to have children. He told me that I was being disobedient to Heavenly Father's commandments. I'm not usually timid about standing up for myself, but for some reason, perhaps out of respect for his "stewardship" over us, I decided to change our plans. I became pregnant soon after, and although I love my son with all my heart, I still regret listening to this man." Describing a similar situation, Melody (age 42) writes, 'After our second child, a sister in the church told us that if we were to choose birth control, we would lose our temple recommends and good standing in the church. At the time it terrified me, and we went on to have seven more children. We have struggled financially all these years. I wonder if we would have been better off to have four or five children and be able to offer them more."
Interestingly, the follow-the-prophet method of family planning, in which pronouncements are highly valued, resulted in some women's choosing to use birth control. Judy from Utah (age 37) writes, "We were wisely advised by our stake president at the time of our marriage to be conscientious in our family planning. He told us that it is not healthy for a woman to have baby after baby, but rather to let the body heal and prepare properly and be healthy." Ann from North Carolina (age 62) writes, "President David O. McKay said that children are a blessing. So I decided that if a child would not be a blessing in my life, I should not have a child." Still other women want more specific guidance. Renee from Minnesota (age 34) writes, "Sometimes I wonder how many children the Lord wants us to have. I'm not sure how it all works, as far as.. if I don't have more children, am I denying a spirit to be born into our family when it was pre-ordained to be mine? I wish the Prophet would give us clearer direction in that area. I know we are supposed to use our free agency and be prayerful about the issue, but it would be nice to have more concrete words from the Lord."
Second Group: Prioritizing Personal Revelation
The second group among the women's narratives includes those who identify their personal religious experience as playing the most important role in their reproductive decisions. These women value the principle of procreation itself. They show a deference to what is perceived to be God's commandment on the subject, and they often refer to "multiplying and replenishing" in their narratives. Women in this group may also point to LDS theology about the pre-mortal world as motivation. While some of them cite official counsel, they do not necessarily look to prophetic pronouncement as the only legitimate interpretation of the basic principle. These women feel enabled through their personal experience with the divine to interpret the principle for themselves.
Some of these women still decide not to use birth control. Desiree from Florida (age 47) writes, "Deciding to have six children was Heavenly Father's idea, not ours. What gives me strength is knowing that Heavenly Father told us both at separate times that this was His desire and did so in a way that we could not deny or ignore it." Kila from California (age 46) writes, "I love my children, all eleven of them. They range from 28 to 23 months. I worry about the fact that if I didn't have my children, where would these spirits go? To a druggie, prostitute, or be in a child abuse situation? I always try to go to the temple and ask the Lord if there are any more up there waiting to join our family. Lately he has informed me that there is one more coming soon. I'm willing to follow his direction. I tried to talk the Lord into letting me adopt my last one, but that is not the answer for me at this time."
As we might expect, there are also women who feel endowed with power from God to interpret the principle themselves who do choose to use various forms of birth control. Angie from Arizona (age 47) writes, "I have always felt the decision to have or not to have children is a choice made by the couple with the help of the Holy Ghost. Birth control is a personal choice. Permanent solutions like tubal ligation and vasectomy are also personal choices. This, like other decisions, is a matter of faith and prayer." Although Angie emphasizes personal choice, individual decision is not removed from the Holy Ghost, faith, and prayer. Some women received specific spiritual impressions regarding their family planning. Tauna from Colorado writes, "When we started praying about starting a family, we both felt the same answer, 'start trying in January.' We used birth control when prompted; we stopped using it when prompted. No matter what method you use to prevent or promote pregnancy, as long as it is done with prayer and guidance from our Heavenly Father, you are doing it correctly."
Third Group: Prioritizing Reason
Other women do not report significant spiritual experiences surrounding their childbearing decisions, but instead emphasize the role of reason in their personal interpretation of the principle. Heather from Florida (age 50) writes, "Some things you simply know are true, and I believe that there are many reasons for couples to practice birth control." Becky from Canada (age 62) writes, "Contraception should be used. I believe that God gave us a brain and expects us to use it." Kathy from California (age 45) writes, "We stopped at four because we thought it was important to use common sense when it comes to having children." Sometimes other factors play a role in choosing contraception. Marilyn from Utah (age 69) writes, "We did discuss birth control and used it, of course. I still don't know what Joseph Fielding Smith was talking about, but we got over that. We didn't want a baby every year. We couldn't take care of them! It wasn't good for my health. It just didn't fit." Other women mention the need for birth control in order to experience healthy intimacy in marriage. Nancy from Minnesota (age 46) writes, "Contraceptives can be a part of spacing a family if a couple is going to have an enjoyable sex life." Many sisters refer to their emotional or mental health as a reason for using birth control. Toni from Arizona (age 40) writes, "We used birth control to space our children so that I wouldn't be an emotional wreck." Besides these themes, low-income, poor health, and marital strife were also cited as legitimate reasons for birth control among women in this group.
Despite the abundant anti-contraception rhetoric of the late 1970s and 80s, many of these women who were bearing children then chose to use birth control.[52] Many felt their own interpretation of the principle of procreation was as valid as pronouncements from the hierarchy. In some instances personal revelation from God or individual circumstances even overruled general pronouncements made by church leaders. How do we make sense of the discrepancy between the leaders' pronunciation and the practices of the people?
One possible answer is that LDS women have taken prophetic pronouncements given to the body of the church as general guidelines that must be applied by individuals in different ways appropriate to their various situations. This can also become necessary when women are faced with dilemmas caused by the policies themselves. For example, several women pointed out that while church leaders have discouraged birth control, they have also discouraged debt. Many of these women chose smaller families in order to follow the precept of self-sufficiency.
Another possibility is that women are committed to the pronatalist principle, which they perceive as eternal doctrine, but not necessarily to the anti-contraception pronouncements, which may be viewed as temporary policies. Two consistent statistics seem to support this theory. First, although there has been a movement toward greater conservatism in attitudes, polls over time show that LDS women as a group have consistently believed in and used birth control of various kinds. Second, despite the widespread use of birth control, LDS women tend to have higher fertility rates than do other women. This is true even when socioeconomic factors like income and education are considered.[53] The data indicate that LDS women may use birth control to space children but not to prevent children altogether. While many of the women in my survey used birth control, none of them advocated childlessness; those with three children or fewer felt the need to explain why they didn't have more. The theory that LDS women as a group are pro-birth control while at the same time being pronatalist is supported by an ongoing, unscholarly, yet still revealing, Internet poll. The poll indicates that 39% of members "think that we should follow the Proclamation on the Family by only using birth control rarely. Family size can have limits so long as we multiply before we reach them."[54]
Having children is an aspect of the Mormon experience that is very public. Unlike repentance, one's experience with God in prayer, or one's understanding of the Atonement, how many children one has is hard to hide. How soon, how often, and how many are questions that can be used as a gauge of one's religious commitment or lack thereof. For this reason it is not surprising that one pervasive thread which appeared in these narratives is the feeling of being judged by others. Although several women reported feeling judged by the world for having too many children, much more common among the respondents, whether they had small or large families, was the feeling of being judged by other LDS women for their choices. The narratives report feeling judged for having too few children, not having children quickly enough after marriage, not having children often enough, and also for having too many children. Although no women specifically attributed their reproductive decisions to feeling judged, it is difficult based on the surveys to wholly reject a causal relationship between social interaction and decisions regarding family size. It is also important to note that the immediate local social context in which one lives, worships, socializes, and serves plays a major role in LDS women's lives. While none of the women explicitly recognized this as a factor contributing to family size, the very preponderance of surveys that report feelings of pressure or judgment must be considered somewhat influential.
It may be partly in response to these kinds of judgments that church leaders have made fewer direct statements about family size in the last ten years. Certainly, they are more sensitive when they speak about family size. In her most recent talk, Carol B. Thomas of the General Young Women's Presidency manifests this new sensitivity. Quoting the song "When I grow up I want to be a Mother," with which I began this paper, Thomas recites the first and second line as written, including the prescription for, "one little, two little, three little babies of my own." However, she edits the third and fourth line, entirely omitting “four little, five little, six little babies of my own."[55] The omission implies a much smaller expectation for family size than was assumed by the song's author in the 1980s.
The most recent edition of the General Handbook of Instructions, issued in 1999, represents the most progressive guidelines on family planning that have ever been given to the church. Some noteworthy, new counsel in the statement includes cautioning members against judging each other on their family planning decisions and an implicit indication that the nurturing of children is a responsibility of both mother and father. Most interesting for this discussion perhaps is the last sentence in which sexual intimacy is given a legitimate role for more than procreation as a "divinely approved . . . means of expressing love and strengthening emotional and spiritual bonds between husband and wife." Besides the fact that this sentence represents a reversal from implications of previous statements, it also implies the use of birth control. For all the statement's innovation, however, one sister has interpreted the changes differently. Marta from Japan wrote, "It is true that little is said about this today, but it is our feeling that the actions of church members as a whole have nearly silenced the brethren on this matter, for if they speak out against birth control now, they will condemn nearly the entire church." While it is true that no public statement from any prophet has positively recommended the use of contraceptives, the General Handbook of Instruction indicates that the approach to this topic among church leaders have changed substantially since the early days of the church. As for church members, they have effectively voted on the subject of birth control.[56] Meanwhile, there are many other reproductive issues, such as surrogate motherhood and in-vitro fertilization, about which explicit pronouncements have not been made and for which church policy is still undetermined. As technology advances, these issues will only multiply. Perhaps these issues, like birth control, will be determined by the practices of the people and their understanding of the deeper principle as much as by official pronouncements.
[1] Janeen Brady, "I Want to be a Mother," Beloved Songs (Salt Lake City: Brite Music Inc., 1987), 10-13.
[2] Lesson 6, MIA Laurel Manual 2 (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1984).
[3] In the Temple endowment ceremony, there are also strong positive injunctions to have children, which indicate that multiplying and replenishing the earth enables one to have joy in this life. Since these statements are relevant to LDS interpretations of Genesis, I will limit my analysis to the scriptural text.
[4] Genesis 1:28.
[5] Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966), 85.
[6] Ezra Taft Benson, Conference Report (April 1969): 12.
[7] It is interesting that only Genesis 1:28 is ever used in reference to family planning, especially since other Old Testament passages are stronger and more explicit. Take the example of Onan (Gen. 38:8-10), who provides a clear example of withdrawal with contraceptive intent. Not wanting to give offspring to his brother, he withdrew, showing his selfish unwillingness to honor his levirate duty. The text clearly indicates that what he did was evil in the sight of the Lord and that the Lord slew him for it.
[8] Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 4:56.
[9] Hugh B. Brown, Relief Society Magazine (December 1965): 885.
[10] Dallin H. Oaks, "The Great Plan of Happiness," Ensign (November 1993): 75.
[11] Tim Heaton, "How Does Religion Influence Fertility?: The Case of Mormons," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25, no. 2 (1986): 248-58.
[12] Ironically, one multiplied by one is only one.
[13] Journal of Discourses, 12:120-121, 20:375, 26:219.
[14] George Q. Cannon, Deseret Weekly, 1 Oct. 1894, 49: 739; reprinted in Gospel Truth (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1987), 379.
[15] Lester Bush, "Birth Control among the Mormons: Introduction to an Insistent Question," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 10, no. 2 (Autumn 1976): 18.
[16] Joseph F. Smith, Improvement Era 11 (October 1908): 959-61.
[17] Lester Bush, "Birth Control among the Mormons," 20.
[18] Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (New York: Cornwall Press, 1920), 11.
[19] In her autobiography, Sanger says, "Never was there a more interesting demonstration of mental attitudes of a people than I found east and west of the Rocky Mountains on that tour in the spring of 1916." (Margaret Sanger, My Fight for Birth Control [New York: Ferris Printing Co., 1931], 145.) Interestingly, that was the same year that Gates published official statements in the Relief Society Magazine.
[20] Susa Young Gates, Relief Society Magazine 4 (1917): 68.
[21] The First Presidency, Relief Society Magazine 4 (1917): 68.
[22] Rudger Clawson, Relief Society Magazine 3, no. 7 (July 1916).
[23] Joseph Fielding Smith, Relief Society Magazine 3, no. 7 (July 1916).
[24] George F. Richards, Relief Society Magazine 3, no. 7 (July 1916).
[25] David O. McKay, Relief Society Magazine 3, no. 7 (July 1916).
[26] Joseph Fielding Smith, Relief Society Magazine 3, no. 7 (July 1916).
[27] Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1955), 2: 85-89.
[28] Orson F. Whitney, Relief Society Magazine 3, no. 7 (July 1916). Notice that this quote assumes that women have no sexuality. If abstinence is necessary for birth control, then the husband must use self-control, implying that abstinence would not require self-control by the wife.
[29] Joseph Fielding Smith, Improvement Era 11 (October 1908): 959-61.
[30] Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund, Charles W. Penrose, Relief Society Magazine 4, no. 2 (February 1917): 68-69.
[31] There were exceptions. B. H. Roberts wrote a lengthy essay on marriage in 1928.
[32] Bush, "Birth Control among Mormons," 24.
[33] Lee L. Bean, Geraldine P. Mineau, Douglas L. Anderton, Fertility Change on the American Frontier (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 251.
[34] Peter Smith, "The History and Future of the Legal Battle over Birth Control," Cornell Law Quarterly 49 (1963): 274-303.
[35] Harold T. Christensen, "The Fundamentalist Emphasis at Brigham Young University: 1935-1973," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 17, no. 1 (1978): 53-57. 53% said they believed in birth control by artificial means.
[36] John A. Widstoe, "Should Birth Control be Practiced?" Improvement Era (December 1942).
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.
[39] David O. McKay followed Widtsoe in saying, "When the health of the mother demands it, proper spacing of children may be determined by seeking medical counsel, by compliance with the processes of nature, or by continence." From "Statements of the General Authorities on Birth Control," Department of Religion, Brigham Young University.
[40] Bush, "Birth Control among Mormons," 26.
[41] Hugh B. Brown, You and Your Marriage (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1960), 135-36.
[42] McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1st ed. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958), 81.
[43] Ibid., 289.
[44] This phrase is not original, but I have lost track of its source. If, by chance, you know its author, please contact me through Dialogue.
[45] The reference to "self-control" makes it clear that abstinence is the only approved method of contraception and even then, only when the mother's health and strength re quire it.
[46] The letter, mostly a summary of past statements including material from Joseph F. Smith in 1917, did not represent anything new.
[47] Spencer W. Kimball, Conference Report (April 1960).
[48] Spencer W. Kimball, "The Blessings and Responsibilities of Womanhood," Relief Society General Conference, October 1 and 2,1975; Ensign (March 1976): 70.
[49] Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982), 325.
[50] Dallin H. Oaks, "The Great Plan of Happiness," Ensign (November 1993): 75.
[51] President Gordon B. Hinckley as part of his message at the General Relief Society Meeting held September 23,1995, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
[52] Although Tim Heaton and others have suggested that Mormon fertility and family planning practices are related to a particularism pronatalist theology, this essay has shown that the clear and common anti-contraception rhetoric must be included in any analysis of past practices.
[53] Tim Heaton, "How Does Religion Influence Fertility?" 248-58.
[54] www.lds-mormon.com/polls as of 10/23/03
[55] "Strengthen Home and Family," Ensign (May 2002): 94. She continues with the rest of the verse, however, which includes the ethno-centric idea that good mothers bake cookies, give yellow balloons to, and sing pretty songs for their children.
[56] Bush, “Birth Control among Mormons,” 33.
[post_title] => Bodies, Babies, and Birth Control [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 159–175In this paper I will explore official and unofficial messages that theLDS church has sent to girls and women about childbearing during the twentieth century and the effect those messages have had on women’sreproductive choices. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => bodies-babies-and-birth-control [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-29 21:57:46 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-29 21:57:46 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=10638 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
"Kingdom of Priests": Priesthood Temple and Women in the Old Testament and in the Restoration
Todd Compton
Dialogue 36.3 (2003): 53-80
Compton considers priesthood as portrayed in Old Testament texts and how women are underrepresented in today’s discourse.
In this paper I will attempt to consider priesthood as portrayed in Old Testament texts. One of the common fallacies of historical interpretation is to base our understanding of an early phenomenon on later under standings and institutions, which generally reflect a changed, developed point of view and which may have gained wide currency for any number of reasons. The earliest documents, reflecting a somewhat unfamiliar state of things, are then treated with benign neglect, at best. In religion, an institution often achieves a successful doctrinal-historical synthesis (after years or decades or centuries of difficult work, development, and change), but then institutional historians project that synthesis back into early history. If one analyzes the early documents carefully, however, the pattern of development and change is clearly found. In my opinion, the institutional church could regard the process by which the church came to its synthesis as an inspiring story of man seeking guidance from God and getting it bit by bit, step by step, through a process of human striving (including possible mistakes) mixed with divine revelation. Looking at the earliest sources is first a matter of scholarly honesty (and of course, honesty is never antithetical to the gospel); second, it provides an au thentically faith-promoting view of men and women's struggles as they receive guidance from God, step by step, line by line.
Mormonism started out as a "restorationist" church—intending to restore the realities of the Old and New Testaments to nineteenth-century America. It arrived at a powerful, successful synthesis throughout the nineteenth century, culminating in the doctrinal teachings of Joseph F. Smith and James E. Talmage; but then, Mormons—in matters of Biblical interpretation—began projecting their twentieth-century synthesis of the gospel into the Old and New Testaments. This has prevented them from experiencing the full complexity and beauty of the scriptures so important to early Mormons, and it has led them to a less than perfect understanding of the Biblical backgrounds of many key Mormon doctrines.
In the case of priesthood, for instance, early Mormons, leaning more toward Catholicism than the Protestants who surrounded them in frontier America, developed a strong emphasis on ecclesiastical priesthood. Indeed, the concept of priesthood found in the Old Testament contains aspects of the Mormon doctrine and practice of priesthood, but not the totality. In this paper, I will attempt to look at the Old Testament view of priesthood in its own terms.[1] Then I will discuss the implications of the Old Testament view of priesthood for Joseph Smith's restoration of temple worship in Kirtland and Nauvoo, open to both males and females, with no limitation to the male.
We will see that priesthood in the Old Testament was overwhelmingly connected with sanctuary and temple, cult and ritual. The Old Testament priest, an especially holy and pure person serving as a mediator between God and man, was virtually always connected with a temple and performed ordinances connected with it—sacrifice, purification, prayer. As priesthood was introduced for the purpose of the temple, according to Exodus, only priests entered the temple. As priests were exclusively male, no females entered the temple. This was the priesthood which Joseph Smith had as Biblical paradigm when he restored the Old Testament concept of temples. How he dealt with the issues of temple, priesthood, and women is one of the most significant, interesting, and least understood stories in Mormon history.
I. Priest and Temple Service
The question of priesthood in the Old Testament is extremely complex.[2] I accept that different editors and strands of tradition contributed to the Pentateuch and the books of the Old Testament, and that later editors used early texts and sources, and put their own stamp on them. However, I do not accept the details of any particular scholar's interpretation as authoritative or final.[3] One of the basic textual strands scholars have posited in the Pentateuch is a "priestly" source, P, which emphasizes matters relating to the priests, temple, and ritual. Julius Well hausen, in his classic of source criticism, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel,[4] argued that the institution of priesthood was entirely post-Exilic; however, later scholars have taken issue with this position and have concluded that pre-Exilic traditions in P have historical valid ity.[5] Scholars have emphasized that the priesthood changed from pre monarchy, to monarchy, to post-exile. According to N. H. Snaith, "There are many passages in the Old Testament which show that the Aaronic priestly caste of later days was a development from a very different state of affairs. Once, all Levites were priests and not the sons of Aaron only. Earlier still, it was not even necessary to be a Levite in order to be a priest. Any man could be a priest, provided that he had been properly consecrated."[6] For the purposes of this paper, it is enough to note that even in the early history of the priesthood, there was always a close connection between priest and sanctuary. See for example, a text often cited as evidence for early priesthood, Judges 17-18, the story of Micah's Levite. Micah had a shrine and had his own son serve in it, but when a Levite moved into the area, "Micah inducted the Levite, and the young man became his priest and remained in Micah's shrine" (Judg. 17:12). Here Levites, not just descendants of Aaron, serve as priests; and when a Levite is not available, non-Levites can serve. But the priest's connection with sanctuary is basic.
A place to start for gaining an understanding of priesthood in the Old Testament is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. They give accounts of the "preliminary," movable temple in the wilderness, the "Tent" (in the King James version, "Tabernacle"), the description of which is revealed by God in Exodus 25-27. Inside the Tabernacle the holy of holies, containing the ark of the covenant, is behind a curtain; on the other side of the curtain is a larger room with altar of incense, table of acacia wood, and lamp. Pillars delimited an outer court, and in this court was a bronze basin and an altar on which sacrifices could be performed. This pattern was later followed when a stationary temple was built in Jerusalem.
Then in Exodus 28:1, the Lord instructs Moses, "You shall bring for ward your brother Aaron, with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests." After the temple pattern is revealed, priests must be consecrated to serve in it. To begin the consecration, they must be washed at the door of the tabernacle (Exod. 40:12). A long description of the special vestments of the priests follows in Exodus 29, including a "fringed [checkered, NRSV] tunic of fine linen. . .the headdress [turban, NRSV] of fine linen. . .[and] the sash of embroidered work" (Exod. 28:39)[7] The priests are then anointed (Exod. 40:15; Lev. 8:10, 30). "This their anointing shall serve them for everlasting priesthood throughout the ages."[8] Sacrifices are also part of the ordination of Aaron and his sons. Blood was taken from a sacrificed ram and put on the "ridges" of the priests' right ears, on the thumbs of the right hand, and on the "big toes of their right feet"; the rest of the blood was dashed "against every side of the altar round about." This rite strikingly illustrates how the priest was tied to the sanctuary (Exod. 29:19-21).
In Exodus chapters 30 and 31, some of the rites and duties priests carried out in the temple are revealed. According to the Bible dictionary included in the LDS Bible, "The priest exercised his office mainly at the altar [within the innermost temple court] by offering the sacrifices and above all the incense [at the altar within the temple building]."[9] In blessing the priestly Levite tribe, Moses says, "They shall offer You incense to savor / And whole-offerings on your altar" (Deut. 33:10). Sacrifices were often rituals of atonement for the sins of the people. According to the book of Numbers, when non-priests (though Levites) offered incense in the temple, they were destroyed (Num. 16-17). Aaron and his sons are priests and can enter into the tabernacle proper; Levites can perform lesser duties connected with the temple, but "they must not have any contact with the furnishings of the Shrine or with the altar, lest both they and you [Aaron and his sons] die" (Num. 18:3). "You and your sons shall be careful to perform your priestly duties in everything pertaining to the altar and to what is behind the curtain. I make your priesthood a service of dedication; any outsider who encroaches shall be put to death" (Num. 18:6-7). In the later temple in Jerusalem, only the high priest went behind the curtain, the "veil," to the Holy of Holies, and he did it only once a year (Lev. 16). Entrance into the temple is strictly only for those who hold priesthood.
The Hebrew word for priest is kohen. The etymology of this word is not completely certain, but the most commonly attested Hebrew cognate is kun, which means "stand (before God)," "serve," or "lay down, set forth (a sacrifice)." Ritual service to God in the sanctuary is emphasized.[10]
While priests in the Old Testament had functions beyond temple and ritual service (which we will touch on briefly below), temple and temple related ritual were central. Cody, author of the standard book on Old Testament priesthood, writes that "priestly duties and activities varied somewhat, but primary in the early period, and always basic, was the idea that a priest is a person attached to the service of God in a sanctuary, God's house."[11] Dommershausen, in his article on kohen in the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, lists as the priests' first function, "Guarding the sanctuary." The earliest priests "were thus charged with guardianship of the sacred precincts and what went on there. Sacrifices are offered by the worshippers themselves, but the priests are permitted to take a portion of the offerings for their sustenance."[12] "The priestly ministry is thus primarily an altar ministry," he writes.[13] Ringgren, de scribing the priests before Solomon's temple, writes, "In the pre-monarchic period, the priest appears as the attendant of a sanctuary and a giver of oracles."[14]
The priest's cultic duties—largely tied up with the sacred place and structure, the temple—included animal sacrifice, burnt offerings, cereal offerings, incense offerings, "wave" offerings, firstfruit offerings, atone ment sacrifice, "replacing the bread of the presence on the Sabbath (Lev. 24:8), dressing lamps in the holy place (Ex. 30:7), maintaining all the temple appurtenances, sounding the festal trumpets (Num. 10:8, 10), and 'blessing in the name of Yahweh' (Deut. 10:8; 21:5; 1 Chron. 23:13)."[15]
Priests alone entered the temple and its innermost court to perform ordinances. Non-priests, carefully ranked in sacrality, were allowed only into the outer courts of the temple. Josephus gives descriptions of the Jerusalem temple which show this system of increasing sacrality with only priests officiating in the sacred center.[16] The outermost court has been designated by moderns as the "Court of the Gentiles" because both Jews and Gentiles were allowed to enter into it. Within this was the court which Gentiles were forbidden to enter on pain of death. In Jewish War 5:193, Josephus refers to this as the "second court" and the "holy place." There was one gateway to this court "through which those of us who were ritually clean used to pass with our wives" (Antiq. 15:419). In Jewish War 5:199-200, he describes a special court on the east called "the women's court." Then there was "the sacred (court) which women were forbidden to enter, and still farther within was a third court into which only priests were permitted to go. In this priests' court was the temple, and before it was an altar, on which we used to sacrifice whole burnt-offerings to God. Into none of these courts did King Herod enter since he was not a priest and therefore prevented from so doing. But with the construction of the porticos and the outer courts he did busy himself. . . the temple itself was built by the priests in a year and six months" (Antiq. 15:419-21). Only priests entered the temple building; only priests entered the court surrounding the temple building.[17]
II. Other Functions of Priests
Cody explains that the Hebrew priest was "server or minister of God in the sanctuary," just as there was a regal minister in a palace.[18] Growing out of this function were other duties of priests, including divination and teaching, both functions showing the priest's role as intermediary between God and the people. In a discussion of the Old Testament priest, de Vaux mentions "the priest and sanctuary," then moves on to "priests and divine oracles," "the priest as teacher," "the priest and sacrifice" (actually an aspect of temple work), and "the priest as mediator."[19] Priestly consultation of oracles was only found in the early history of the priesthood; although this was a prophetic function, it was very limited even in early days of the priesthood, usually involving casting lots for answers with the Ephod or Urim and Thummim.[20] When "prophetism" became dominant in Israel, prophets (usually not priests) ascertained the will of Jehovah through very different means, through visions and moral in sight. Tensions sometimes arose between the prophets and priests, and prophets could accuse priests of not teaching the law, or teaching it in sincerely for gain (Jer. 2:8, cf. Mic. 3:11).[21] Other prophets were priests themselves (such as Ezekiel) or closely connected to priests.
Teaching by priests is attested in Deuteronomy: "They [the priestly tribe of Levi] shall teach Your laws to Jacob and Your instructions to Israel" (Deut. 33:10). In Deuteronomy 31:9, Moses instructs the priests to recite the Law every seven years at the Feast of Booths. Yet even the priest's teaching relates to his temple, cultic functions: Ezekiel (Ezek. 44:23-24) writes that priests "shall declare to My people what is sacred and what is profane, and inform them what is clean and what is unclean. . .they shall preserve My teachings and My laws regarding all My fixed occasions." Teaching the people concerning pure and impure will allow the people to bring the correct sacrifices to be offered when they need to be cleansed of sin or impurity.
III. Who Could Become a Priest?
Only a select few were allowed to become priests in ancient Israel. Many of the reasons for disqualifying a person from priesthood in the Old Testament, based on laws of ritual purity, were contradicted by Jesus's later teachings of compassion, "justice and mercy," inclusiveness, and sincere religious feeling.
First, as we have seen in Exodus, only Aaron and his descendants could hold priesthood. This reflects an understanding that Levites—descendants of the tribe of Levi—were confined to serving as lesser temple functionaries, and were ambiguously priests. The other eleven tribes could not hold priesthood of any sort. Since priests were by definition holier than other men, they were "holy" by heredity, rather than through ethical and spiritual qualities. Other passages in the Bible suggest that at one time, all Levites could be full priests. Still, even with Levites included, this is an exclusive, hereditary view of priesthood.
In addition, within the tribe of Levi and family of Aaron, ritual purity or standards of physical perfection were necessary. Disabled per sons—the blind, lame, or a man "who has a limb too short or too long," or who is "a hunchback, or a dwarf, or who has a growth in his eye, or who has a boil-scar, or scurvy, or crushed testes"—could not serve as priests: "[H]e shall not enter behind the curtain or come near the altar, for he has a defect. He shall not profane these places sacred to Me, for I the Lord have sanctified them" (Lev. 21:16-23, Deut. 23:2-3). If a priest were physically imperfect, he would "profane" the sanctuary.
In the Old Testament, holiness was to a remarkable extent reckoned by laws of ritual purity. All Israelites were required to live by these laws and to seek atonement or purification through sacrifice if they participated in a ritual defilement, such as touching a dead person. Priests, who had to serve in the temple, were to live by even higher standards.[22] They were not allowed to marry a widow or a divorced woman (Lev. 21:7, 14)—perhaps a commentary on the perceived impurity of a woman who is not a virgin, or the assumption that a divorced woman had been put away because she had been sexually sinful; however, they might marry the widow of a fellow priest by Ezekiel's time (Ezek. 44:22). If a daughter of a priest "defiles herself through harlotry," she defiles her father (and by extension, the institution of priesthood), and she is to be "put to the fire" (Lev. 21:9).[23]
As we examine such views of ritual purity, we can see how revolutionary were Jesus's teachings rejecting reliance on such conceptions and directing the religious person to moral, ethical principles and to greater inclusivity as having central religious importance.[24]
What is said about women and priesthood, if anything, in the Old Testament? It is striking how separated women are from priesthood in the standard Old Testament understanding of the role: "We. . .hear occasionally of female prophets" (2 Kings 22:14; Neh. 6:14) writes Dommershausen, "whereas there were never any female priests in Israel."[25] Thus, women never entered the temple (recall Josephus's description of the Court of Women outside the inner courts of the Jerusalem temple), which is another way of saying they were not priests.
What were the reasons for such a ban of women from the temple and from priesthood? One might simply accept that Hebrew culture at the time was openly, unselfconsciously patriarchal. Important roles in the community were given to men without question or reflection. However, we have also seen how women—divorced daughters of priests—could be seen as impure because of their sexuality. A woman in childbirth was also regarded as impure for seven days if she bore a male, for two weeks if she bore a female! (Lev. 12:1-5) Some scholars have suggested that because of menstruation and childbirth, a woman would always be disqualified from acting as a priest. Milgrom writes, "The woman's ineligibility for the priesthood is based on purely practical grounds: the impurity of her menses disqualifies her from serving for one week out of every four (and as much as three months during parturition)."[26] Vos mentions that women generally began having children soon after reaching puberty, and thus would have found it difficult "to find time for the full-time profession of the priesthood."[27] This is a practical, rather than a theological, explanation.
Some scholars have argued that certain evidence suggests that women once had some connection with cultic (i.e., priestly) functions.[28] For instance, women performed cultic singing and dancing (Exod. 15:20; 1 Sam. 18:6, 21:11). Nevertheless, the Old Testament overwhelmingly portrays woman as separated from serving in the temple and from priesthood.
IV. Priesthood in the New Testament
Priesthood in the New Testament is not the focus of this paper, but I will look at it briefly.[29] First of all, priesthood during the ministry of Jesus was essentially a continuation of Old Testament priesthood: It fo cused on serving in the temple, it was hereditary (the favored family of Zadokite priests traced their lineage back to Aaron; Levites were sub servient priests), and priests sometimes served as teachers in Israel. The Sadducees were a priestly party whose name derived from Zadok. There were tensions between Jesus and the priests of his day—for instance, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite are viewed in a negative way.[30] However, while Jesus might denounce individual priests or groups of priests as unworthy of their office (which reminds us of tensions between prophets and priests in the Old Testament), he did not reject the priestly system.[31] For instance, after he healed the leper in Mark 1:44, he instructed him to "go and show yourself to the priest" to offer Mosaic offerings for cleansing. John the Baptist was of priestly lineage and his parents were viewed sympathetically.
When the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the institutions of priesthood—Sadduccees, priests, Levites—came to an end. Pharisees, teachers not priests, gradually became dominant religious leaders, and they gave rise to the system of rabbis.
What of priests and priesthood in the early New Testament church? The initial surprise for LDS readers, whose doctrine and practice includes such an overwhelming emphasis on priesthood, will be how in frequently priests and priesthood are mentioned in the context of the early Christian church. Mormons may read priesthood into early church offices: For instance, they may assume that the offices of apostle, bishop, and pastor included priesthood. However, the New Testament text does not use the word "priest" or "priesthood" in this context.[32] Some scholars believe that the early Christian church was in a "process of separation" from "all association with the priestly and sacrificial institutions of Judaism."[33] They emphasized the prophetic over the priestly traditions in the Old Testament.
Nevertheless, the early Christians came to re-interpret priesthood in the light of Jesus's teachings and the destruction of the Temple. The one book in the New Testament that is largely concerned with priesthood, Hebrews, emphasizes Jesus's priesthood.[34] In other passages of the New Testament, priesthood seems to be applied to the whole church, a radical contrast to the hereditary priesthood of the Old Testament. Peter, for in stance, writes, "Like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. . . .You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people" (1 Peter 2:5, 9).[35]
V. Restoration: 1836–1845, Kirtland, Ohio and Nauvoo, Illinois
The Mormon religion is restorationist. Joseph Smith—and generations of Mormons after him—felt he was restoring and revalorizing institutions and experiences from Biblical times. Another term for this kind of religion was Biblical primitivism: restoration of the "primitive" church (i.e., in the Sixth Article of Faith, we read, "We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church").[36] Mormonism was not alone in nineteenth century America in striving to restore Biblical realities. Many Protestant groups, such as the Campbellite movement and even Methodism, were likewise striving to regain the Biblical ecclesiastical forms and purity of spirit. However, Mormonism was distinguished by its thoroughgoing and literal restorationism and by the fact that it paid attention to both Testaments rather than focusing mainly on the New Testament as did many Protestant groups.
Joseph Smith was especially influenced by the Old Testament, and many characteristic Mormon institutions have their primary pattern in the Old Testament: prophet, temple, priesthood, polygamy. In the case of Protestant restorationism, priesthood was not an emphasized institution, except in generalized, non-hierarchical form (Luther's "priesthood of all believers").[37] This was partially a reaction against Roman Catholicism where hierarchical and authoritarian priests were an important part of the ecclesiastical framework. As we have seen, the New Testament does not use priesthood terminology in referring to officers of the early Chris tian church. Only the book of Hebrews is largely concerned with priesthood, and then mainly with Jesus's priesthood. So this Protestant lack of interest in institutionalized priesthood is an interpretation of the New Testament that is entirely possible.
Joseph Smith, on the other hand, developed a theological under standing fairly close to that of the Roman Catholic Church, accepting authoritative priesthood as the structure of the church. This emphasis on priesthood is what one might expect from someone strongly influenced by the Old Testament. For a leader concerned with temple restoration, as was Smith, it would be logical that priesthood would have to be restored with temples. A temple would need people to enter it and carry out its rites and ordinances. As we have seen, in the Old Testament the priest is above everyone who performs ritual service at the temple.
The Kirtland temple is something of a proto-temple in Mormonism: It was referred to as the House of the Lord, not a temple, at the time of its building and early use.[38] Nevertheless, in later Mormonism it was accepted as a temple, and certainly some of the rituals first performed in it, including a proto-endowment, later became part of Mormon temple ritual.
For our purposes, the most important aspect here was allowing women to enter the Kirtland temple; we will discuss this more thoroughly in relation to the Nauvoo endowment and temple experience. Women entered the temple and participated in the charismatic meetings inside the building. For example, Presendia Huntington Buell (later Kim ball) wrote, 'At another fast meeting I was in the temple with my sister Zina." As the congregation prayed, kneeling, they heard "from one corner of the room above our heads, a choir of angels singing most beauti fully." Buell wrote, "We were also in the Temple at the pentecost."[39]
Another important event was the restoration of washing and anointing as a temple ordinance.[40] These ordinances first took place on January 21, 1836, when the First Presidency and a few other church leaders received their washing outside the temple, then moved into the temple, where they anointed their heads with oil.[41] Later, other male members of the church, including "priests, teachers, and deacons," received this same washing and anointing. That this was regarded as a restoration of events from Exodus is shown by a statement by Oliver Cowdery: "[they] were annointed [sic] with the same kind of oil and in the manner that were Moses and Aaron."[42]
The church subsequently moved to Missouri (where plans for temples in Independence and Far West did not reach fruition), then to Nauvoo, Illinois. In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith directed the building of a major temple and began to introduce further temple ordinances. While he did not live to see the temple completed, he presided over the first performance of a number of ordinances that have since become the basis for modern Mormon temple practice.
Smith did not introduce these ordinances publicly, but—in keeping with the Mormon concept of an esoteric temple (and in keeping with the Old Testament idea of a temple where Gentiles were strictly excluded from entrance into even the inner courts of the temple, let alone the building)—he introduced them to a small, elite group of trusted followers, starting on May 4, 1842. This group was most commonly called the Holy Order or Anointed Quorum, but it had a number of other names, among them simply "Quorum" or "Priesthood."[43] And Holy Order, in fact, was a term closely associated with priesthood. The Book of Mormon refers to "the high priesthood of the holy order of God" (Alma 4:20, cf. 2 Nephi 6:2), and in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Melchizedek priesthood is referred to as the "holy order of God" (D&C 77:11, 84:18).[44] Likewise, D&C 84:18 mentions Aaron, so the Holy Order was again seen as a restoration of Aaron's priesthood—not, confusingly, the LDS Aaronic priesthood, but the "high priesthood" which Aaron received and which Mormons refer to as the Melchizedek priesthood. These naming references to Holy Order, "Priesthood," Quorum, and Anointed Quorum show clearly and explicitly that this quorum was a priesthood organization. Since the ordinances introduced in this group were temple ordinances, it was entirely fitting, given Old Testament practice, that this had to be a priesthood group. In the Old Testament, as we have seen, to enter the temple and perform rituals in it or just outside it, one had to be a priest.[45]
Once again, as in the Kirtland House of the Lord, members of the Anointed Quorum received a washing and anointing just before receiving the ordinance called the endowment.[46] In addition, during the endowment they were given ritual temple clothing associated with priesthood.[47] A conservative historian has described the rites of the Holy Order ("Joseph Smith's private prayer circle"):
They were initiated into the [Anointed] Quorum through a "washing and anointing" that symbolized the spiritual cleanliness and progress they sought to attain. At the meetings [of the Holy Order], dressed in special priesthood robes, they went through the endowment ordinances that consisted of religious instruction, learning certain symbolic "signs and tokens," and taking upon themselves sacred covenants pertaining to their personal lives and conduct. All this was held to be a most sacred part of the restoration of the "ancient order of all things." They also participated in fervent prayer concerning the problems of the day.[48]
It was at this point that Joseph Smith was faced with one of the most momentous and least understood decisions of his prophetic mission. The Holy Order was a pre-temple group: They met in a space that was a sort of temporary temple, like the Tabernacle, and the ordinances they were given were meant to be performed in the temple. Thus, the group was explicitly a priesthood group, a quorum, with ordinances that were regarded as restorations of the priesthood ordination ceremonies of Aaron (as high priest) and his sons (as priests): washing, anointing, investing in priestly clothing. Thus, they became priests who were qualified to enter the sanctuary.
Now, with full temple ordinances available and a major temple nearing completion, how would Joseph Smith view women in this context? As we have seen, introducing women into the temple by Old Testament definition would have made them priests, and so no women were al lowed to enter the temple anciently. Certainly, Joseph Smith had not included women in any of the offices of the Aaronic or Melchizedek priesthoods, as they had been understood up to this point. One might have expected Smith to follow the Old Testament pattern and let only men enter the temple.
What Smith in fact did, with little fanfare, is shown by an entry in his diary that recorded an Anointed Quorum meeting: 'At 7 eve met at the Mansion's upper room front with W L[aw] W M[arks]. Beurach Ale [Joseph Smith] was by common consent and unanimous voice chosen President of the quorum and anointed [second anointing] and ordfained] to the highest and holiest order of the priesthood (and companion [Emma Smith]) Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Geo Miller, N K. Whitney, Willard Richards, John Smith, John Taylor, Amasa Lyman, Lucien Wood worth, J M. Bernhisel, Wm Law, Wm Marks. President led in prayer that his days might be prolonged, have dominion over his enemies, all the households be blessed and all the church and world."[49] Thus, Emma Smith was introduced into the Anointed Quorum; she was also anointed and ordained "to the highest and holiest order of the priesthood."
More women were introduced into the Quorum in subsequent meetings. Heber C. Kimball, for instance, wrote on January 20, 1844, "[M]y wife Vilate and menny feemales was recieved in to the Holy Order, and was washed and inointed by Emma [Smith]."[50] Brigham Young wrote in his diary, on October 29, 1843, that Thirza Cahoon, Lois Cutler, and Phebe Woodworth were "taken into the order of the priesthood."[51]
Joseph Smith, thus, introduced women into temple ritiual—a revolutionary action, given the Old Testament's complete ban on women entering the temple. However, this action also has significant implications with regard to priesthood, for we have seen that entrance into the temple and service therein inescapably defines the central aspect of priesthood in the Old Testament.
For those who may have difficulty accepting that entrance into the temple has such a meaning, we should look at important aspects of the temple ordinances Joseph Smith shared in the Anointed Quorum meetings. Washing and anointings were always the beginning of the series of temple rites he introduced. We have seen that washing and anointing in Exodus was a rite of ordination to priesthood, and we have seen that the early Latter-day Saints understood these as restorations of the washings and anointings given to Aaron and his sons.
In addition, another crucial part of the rites revealed by Joseph Smith was clothing in special robes. I will not describe these in detail, but it has been accepted that these temple robes are based on the descriptions of priestly robes in the Old Testament (though not on the high priestly robes, which are more elaborate). Hugh Nibley, in his article "Leaders to Managers: the Fatal Shift," wrote: "There is another type of robe and headdress described in Exodus and Leviticus and the 3rd Book of Josephus' Antiquities, i.e. the white robe and linen cap of the Hebrew priesthood, which have close resemblance to some Egyptian vestments. They were given up entirely however, with the passing of the temple and were never even imitated after that by the Jews. Both their basic white and their peculiar design, especially as shown in the latest studies from Israel, are much like our own temple garments."[52] In Exodus, donning those priestly clothes was a part of the rite of ordination to priesthood. "Next you [Moses] shall instruct all. . .[those skilled in making clothing], to make Aaron's vestments, for consecrating him to serve Me as a priest . . . .They shall make those sacred vestments for your brother Aaron and his sons, for priestly service to Me" (Exod. 28:3-5). By the standards of the Old Testament, when women are clothed in such priestly clothing, they are being given a consecration to priesthood.
Furthermore, early church leaders clearly and unselfconsciously connected women with priesthood in their statements. Joseph Smith told the Relief Society that he was "going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests as Enoch's day."[53] Perhaps he was looking forward to their en trance into the temple and participation in ordinances within it.[54] On February 1,1844, Kimball "Myself and wife Vilate was announted Preast and Preastest [Priestess] unto our God under the Hands of B. Young and by the voys [voice] of the Holy Order."[55] Of course, in entering the Holy Order, women entered a group that was called "Priesthood" and "Quo rum" and even "the Quorum of Priesthood."[56] It is hard to escape the logical inference that the group was a priesthood quorum. All of this makes perfect sense in the light of Joseph Smith restoring temple and priesthood, and introducing women into the temple, giving them the same consecration rites—washing, anointing, and clothing in ritual clothing, rites of ordination to priesthood in Exodus—as men.
This restoration of temple and related ordinances with women included is one of the most remarkable aspects of Smith's work of restoration in the modern dispensation. One might have expected only men to enter the temples, to receive washing, anointing, and ritual clothing, and to perform rites in the house of the Lord. With little fanfare, Smith introduced women into the temple, to equally receive washing, anointing, and ritual clothing, perform rites in the house of the Lord. Yet that intro duction had enormous implications for how a Mormon might look at the connection of women and priesthood.
In addition, the inclusion of women in temple service shows that Joseph Smith often did not restore Biblical institutions completely and precisely. Though he restored many aspects of temple and temple rites (such as washing, anointing, and clothing) modeled on Biblical patterns, introducing women into the temple is absolutely contrary to Biblical practice because women were never accepted as priests in Jewish tradition and culture.
A significant divide between LDS conservatives and liberals exists on the issue of women and priesthood, with conservatives generally affirming that women and priesthood are concepts which are absolutely and strictly separated.[57] Liberals, on the other hand, tend to believe that women could have priesthood, have indeed had priesthood since 1843, or that priesthood could be defined in such a way as to include women.[58]
The liberal-leaning Community of Christ (RLDS) church has openly recognized the priesthood of women and now has women at every level of priesthood, including apostle.
I believe the most important argument for the connection of women and priesthood is based on the absolute justice of God and on an ethical, non-legalistic view of priesthood (we remember that both in the Old and New Testaments, inspired writers hoped that God's people, all of them, would be a kingdom of priests).[59] However, it is striking how much evidence there is from Mormon history to suggest that Joseph Smith and early church men and women accepted a connection of women and priesthood.[60] Bringing women into the temple—into a priesthood quo rum, into the performance of priestly ordinances—is one of the most re markable aspects of Joseph Smith's restoration of the temple.
[1] I will quote from Tanakh: A New Translation of The Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1985). I also use Michael Coogan, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
[2] For general introductions to priests and priesthood in the Old Testament, see George Buchanan Gray, Sacrifice in the Old Testament: Its Theory and Practice (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1971, orig. 1925), 179-270; Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962, orig. 1957), 1:241-49; Han Joachim Kraus, Worship in Israel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966, orig. 1962), 93-100; H. Ringgren, Israelite Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966, orig. 1963), 204-19, 324-30; Aelred Cody, A History of Old Testament Priesthood (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1969) and "Priests and High Priest," in Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, eds., The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 608-11; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions, trans. John McHugh (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961, orig. 1958,1960), 345-405; Gary A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan, eds., Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (Sheffield, U.K.: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Press, 1991); Richard A. Henshaw, Female and Male, The Cultic Personnel: The Bible and the Rest of the Ancient Near East (Allison Park, Penn.: Pickwick Publications, 1994), 24-28; Moses Buttenwieser, "Priest," in The Jewish Encyclopedia, 12 vols. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1905- 1916), 10:192-97; Menahem Harem, "Priests and Priesthood," in Cecil Roth, ed., Encyclopedia Judaica, 16 vols. (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1971), 13:1070-86; Merlin D. Rehm, "Levites and Priests," in David Noel Freedman, et al., eds., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:297-310.
[3] Once again, I accept this kind of textual analysis within a context of faith in God's inspiration behind the totality of scripture (and I accept that no scripture is infallible, but a combination of God's inspiration and human weakness and cultural limitation). See James Barr, "Modern Biblical Criticism," in Metzger and Coogan, The Oxford Companion to the Bible, 318-24. I am interested in "canonical criticism," which is concerned with the "the final text, not in earlier stages that have led up to it," (324) but canonical criticism must still work with source, form, and redaction criticism.
[4] Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (Edinburgh: Black, 1885), 121-52.
[5] See R. Abba, "Priests and Levites," The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 4 vols. (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962) 3:876-89.
[6] "The Priesthood and the Temple," in Thomas Walter Manson, A Companion to the Bible (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), 418-43, 418.
[7] See Menahem Haran, "Priestly Vestments," in Roth, Encyclopedia Judaica, 13:1063- 69; Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), ad loc.
[8] Lev. 8:12, 30; Exod. 29:41, 30:30, 40:15. See E. Kutsch, Salbung als Rechtsakt (Berlin: Verlag Alfred Topelmann, 1963), 1-26; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible series (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 553-56. Milgrom feels that the royal anointing took place after the pattern of the anointing of the high priest, thus making the king a priest of sorts.
[9] "Priests," in The Holy Bible (SLC: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1979), 753.
[10] See W. Dommershausen, "kohen," II, in Joannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Joseph Febry, eds., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 12 vols, trans. David Green (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans: 1995, orig. 1982-84), 7:60-75, 66.
[11] Cody, "Priests and High Priest," 608.
[12] Dommershausen, "kohen," 66-67. See also, de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 348: "Every priest was chosen and installed to serve in a sanctuary."
[13] Dommershausen, "kohen," 69.
[14] Ringgren, Israelite Religion, 205. See Judg. 17,1 Sam. 1-4, 7:1; Josh. 3.
[15] Dommershausen, "kohen," 69-70.
[16] See Antiq. 15:419ff.; 8:95ff.; Jewish War, 5:184ff. Trans. Thackeray. Cf. C. T .R. Hayward, The Jewish Temple: A Non-Biblical Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1996), 142-43.
[17] In the ancient world, the ground surrounding a temple was part of the sacred space it was associated with. Nevertheless, we can see by Josephus's description that there were degrees of sacrality: The innermost, highest sacrality was found within the building and was reserved for priests. Gentiles and women were allowed some limited contact with the temple's sacrality, but only at the outer fringes.
[18] Cody, "Priests and High Priest," 609.
[19] de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 348-58. Dommershausen lists the two other major functions of the Old Testament priest, beyond "guarding the sanctuary" and the closely related "cultic duties" (which are primarily performed at the temple), as "dispensing oracles" and "teaching."
[20] For a discussion of these methods of oracular consultation, see Ringgren, Israelite Religion, 205-6; Kraus, Worship in Israel, 97; de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 352; Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, 507. According to Milgrom, the Urim and Thummim were only consulted in the Holy of Holies near the Ark, so this form of revelation is connected with the temple.
[21] See S. H. Hooke, Prophets and Priests (London: Oxford, 1938). Adam C. Welch, Prophet and Priest in Old Israel (London: SCM Press, 1936); H.L. Ellison, The Prophets of Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1969), 26-28, 112; Marvin A. Sweeney, Ezekiel: Zadokite Priest and Visionary Prophet of the Exile (Claremont, CA: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 2001).
[22] For the Levitical "Holiness Code" (accepted by scholars as a separate stratum in the Pentateuch, "H"), see David P. Wright, "The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity," in Ander son and Olyan, Priesthood and Cult, 150-82.
[23] The NRSV grimly translates this as "she shall be burned to death." For historical examples, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, Anchor Bible series (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1811. For similar punishments, see Deuteronomy 22. If a lay woman was found not to be a virgin when she married, she was stoned at her father's home, showing the father's perceived culpability.
[24] Mark 7:1-23; Matt. 15:1-20. Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8, Anchor Bible series (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 454.
[25] Dommershausen, "kohen," 74. See also see de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 384, "no woman ever held a place among the Isrealite clergy"; Clarence J. Vos, Women in Old Testament Worship (Delft: Judels & Brinkman, 1968), 192-93. For further on female prophets in the Old Testament, see Vos, 174-97, and Grace I. Emmerson, "Women in Ancient Israel," in R. E. Clements, ed., The World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 371-94, 374-76. These are Deborah (Judg. 4:4), Huldah (2 Kings 22:14), Noadiah (Neh. 6:14), and Isaiah's wife (Isa. 8:3); see also Ezekiel 13:17 and Joel 3:1.
[26] Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22,1811. See Lev. 15:19-24: Menstruation caused a woman to be unclean for seven days. De Vaux, Ancient Israel, 2:348; Vos, Women in Old Testament Wor ship, 193; Judith Romney Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah (Ox ford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 162-65; Ruth B. Edwards, The Case for Women's Min istry, in the Biblical Foundations in Theology Series (London: SPCK, 1989), 27; Donald G. Bloesch, Is the Bible Sexist? Beyond Feminism and Patriarchalism (Westchester, 111.: Crossway Books, 1982), 41.
[27] Vos, Women, 207.
[28] See Gray, Sacrifice, 184-93; 203-4; Henshaw, Female and Male, 27, who cites especially, Vos, Women in Old Testament Worship; Ismar J. Peritz, "Women in the Early Hebrew Cult," Journal of Biblical Literature 17 (1898): 111-48; Mayer I. Gruber, "Women in the Cult ac cording to the Priestly Code," in Jacob Neusner et al., eds., Judaic Perspectives in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 35-48; Johannes Pedersen, Israel, Its Life and Culture, 2 vols, trans. Mrs. Aslaug Muller (London: Oxford University Press, 1926-1940), III/IV:166ff.
[29] See M. H. Shepherd, Jr., "Priests in the NT," Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 3:889; Albert Vanhoye, Old Testament Priests and the New Priest: According to the New Testament, trans. J. B. Orchard (Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's Publications, 1986, orig. 1980).
[30] Luke 10:31-32; cf. Matt. 3:7.
[31] Shepherd, "Priests in the NT," 890.
[32] Cf. Rev. 1:6, 5:10, 20:6; Exod. 19:6 ("a kingdom of priests and a holy nation"); Isa. 61:6. These last two scriptures show that even in the Old Testament there was a non-exclu sive view of priesthood, as extended to all members of God's community. See also Ernest Best, "Spiritual Sacrifice: General Priesthood in the New Testament," Interpretation 14 (1960): 273-99.
[33] Shepherd, "Priests in the NT," 890.
[34] See John M. Scholer, Proleptic Priests: Priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Sheffield, U.K.: JSOT Press, 1991). While Scholer sees Hebrews as referring to Jesus explicitly as a priest, he argues that the cultic language of Hebrews, applied to the book's readers, also implies that members of the church have priestly aspects.
[35] Cf. Rev. 1:6, 5:10, 20:6; Exod. 19:6 ("a kingdom of priests and a holy nation"); Isa. 61:6. These last two scriptures show that even in the Old Testament there was a non-exclusive view of priesthood, as extended to all members of God's community. See also Ernest Best, "Spiritual Sacrifice: General Priesthood in the New Testament," Interpretation 14 (1960): 273-99.
[36] See Jan Shipps, "The Reality of the Restoration in LDS Theology and the Restoration Ideal in the Mormon Tradition," in The American Quest for the Primitive Church, ed. Richard T. Hughes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 181-95; a version of this was reprinted in Shipps's Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 229-43.
[37] See Kathryn H. Shirts, "Priesthood and Salvation: Is D&C 84 a Revelation for Women Too?" Sunstone 15 (Sept. 1991): 20-27.
[38] Gregory A. Prince, Power from on High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1995), 122, n. 24.
[39] Interview with Presendia Kimball, quoted in Edward Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom (New York: Tullidge & Crandall, 1877), 207-8. The Kirtland temple was used for general church meetings and for schools, and was thus an "open" temple.
[40] See Donald W. Parry, "Washings and Anointings," in Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 5 vols. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1992), 4:1551.
[41] See Dean Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith (SLC: Deseret Book, 1993), 2:155-59; Prince, Power from on High, 125-26,184.
[42] Oliver Cowdery, "Oliver Cowdery's Kirtland, Ohio 'Sketch Book,'" Leonard Arrington, ed., Brigham Young University Studies 12 (1972): 410-26, 419, entry for Jan. 21,1836; see also Prince, Power from on High, 184.
[43] For the Holy Order/Anointed Quorum, see Devery S. Anderson and Gary James Bergera, "A Season in Prayer": Meetings of Joseph Smith's Quorum of the Anointed, 1842-1845 (forthcoming), which attempts to supply all the primary sources; D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake: Signature Books, 1994), 399-402, 491-519, 634-54; Andrew Ehat, "Joseph Smith's Introduction of Temple Ordinances and the 1844 Succession Question," master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1982.
[44] See discussion in Quinn, Origins of Power, 114.
[45] Heber C. Kimball seems to summarize the whole endowment as an ordination to priesthood. He wrote that in June [May] 1842, "I was aniciated into the ancient order was washed and annointed and Sealled and ordained a Preast. . .in company with nine others, Viz. Josph Smith, Hiram Smith [and others] . . ." On the Potter's Wheel, 55-56.
[46] Prince, Power from on High, 186, citing History of the Church 5:2; Brigham Young Manuscript History, May 4,1842, LDS Church Archives; L. John Nuttall diary, Feb. 7,1877, LDS Church Archives, with excerpts available on New Mormon Studies CD-ROM (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998), see "Temples" section. This is quoted in David John Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship (San Francisco: Smith Research Associates, 1994), 39.
[47] See Evelyn T. Marshall, "Garments," in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 2:534-45, who properly refers to LDS temple clothing as "priestly robes"; Ebenezer Robinson, "Endowment Robes in Nauvoo in 1833-44," The Return 2 (Apr. 1890): 252-54, see also Quinn, Origins of Power, 350. Carlos E. Asay, "The Temple Garment: 'An Outward Expression of an Inward Covenant,’" Ensign (Aug. 1997): 19-23; Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple (SLC: Deseret Book, 1980), 75-79.
[48] James B. Allen, Trials of Discipleship: The Story of William Clayton, a Mormon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 127, cf. Quinn, Origins of Power, 114; Alma P. Burton, "Endowment," and Allen Claire Rozsa, "Temple Ordinances," in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 2:454-56; 4:1444-45.
[49] Joseph Smith diary, Scott Faulring, ed., An American Prophet's Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake: Signature, 1989), 416.1 reproduce some but not all of Faulring's annotations.
[50] "Strange Events," in Stanley B. Kimball, ed., On the Potter's Wheel: The Diaries of Heber C. Kimball (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates, 1987), 56, cf. Prince, Power from on High, 204.
[51] Brigham Young, diary, LDS Church Archives, as quoted by D. Michael Quinn, "Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843," in Maxine Hanks, ed., Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism (Salt Lake: Signature Books, 1992), 365-410, esp. 368.
[52] Hugh Nibley, "Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift," Dialogue 16 (Winter 1983): 12-21, 13. See also Hugh Nibley, "Sacred Vestments," in Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos, ed. Don E. Norton (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book/FARMS, 1992): 91-138. For these temple robes and priesthood, see pp. 97,102.
[53] Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, Minutes, LDS Church Archives, at March 30, 1842.1 consulted this in a microfilm copy at Lee Library, BYU; Andrew Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, The Words of Joseph Smith (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1980), 110. See discussions in Jill Mulvay Derr, Janath Russell Cannon, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Women of Covenant: the Story of Relief Society (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 42, 53; Quinn, "Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood," 365.
[54] Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. James Mulholland et al., 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1902-1912; revised edition, 1956), 4:492-93. See also Derr, et al., Women of Covenant, 53, where Joseph Smith connected the "kingdom of priests" generalized concept of priesthood with the completion of the Nauvoo temple.
[55] "Strange Events," in Kimball, On the Potter's Wheel, 56. This is probably a reference to the "fullness of priesthood" ordinance (see Prince, Power from on High, 187-92). 56. William Clayton diary, Feb. 3, 1844, LDS Church Archives, see George D. Smith, ed., An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 125.
[56] This is probably a reference to the "fullness of priesthood" ordinance (see Prince, Power from on High, 187-92). 56. William Clayton diary, Feb. 3, 1844, LDS Church Archives, see George D. Smith, ed., An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 125.
[57] See Rodney Turner, Woman and the Priesthood (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Com pany, 1972). See a review of this by historian Claudia L. Bushman, "Women: One Man's Opinion," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 7 (Winter 1972): 85-87. Bushman states that Turner writes "from a scarcity of information," then "distorts the sources he has."
[58] Important contributions are Anthony Hutchinson, "Women and Ordination: An Introduction to the Biblical Context,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 14, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 58-74; Margaret Merrill Toscano, "The Missing Rib: The Forgotten Place of Queens and Priestesses in the Establishment of Zion," Sunstone 10 (July 1985): 16-22; Linda King Newell, "The Historical Relationship of Mormon Women and Priesthood," Dialogue 18, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 21-32; Melodie Moench Charles, "LDS Women and Priesthood," Dialogue 18, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 15-20; Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Lavina Fielding Ander son, eds., Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Linda King Newell, "Gifts of the Spirit: Women's Share," in Beecher and Anderson, Sisters in Spirit, 111-50; Paul and Margaret Toscano, Strangers in Paradox: Explorations in Mormon Theology (Salt Lake: Signature, 1990), 179-97; Margaret Toscano, "If Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843, Why Aren't They Using It?" Dialogue 27, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 219-26; Quinn, "Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood"; Bushman, "Women: One Man's Opinion"; Hanks, Women and Authority: Re-Emerging Mormon Feminism, which includes important essays by Meg Wheatley, Ian Barber, Lavina Fielding Anderson, Carol Lynn Pearson, Sonja Farnsworth, Edwin Brown Firmage, Marian Yeates, and Margaret Toscano; Shirts, "Priesthood and Salvation: Is D&C 84 A Revelation for Women Too?"; Prince, Power From On High, 201-10.
[59] Needless to say, Joseph Smith did not restore the hereditary aspects of Old Testa ment priesthood or the ban of lame or physically imperfect persons from priesthood or temple.
[60] I accept Gregory Prince's cautions that many offices that Mormons connect with priesthood, such as apostle, stake president, or bishop, were not associated with women in early Mormonism. (Power From On High, 201-10.)
[post_title] => "Kingdom of Priests": Priesthood Temple and Women in the Old Testament and in the Restoration [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 36.3 (2003): 53-80Compton considers priesthood as portrayed in Old Testament texts and how women are underrepresented in today’s discourse. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => kingdom-of-priests-priesthood-temple-and-women-in-the-old-testament-and-in-the-restoration [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-03-30 23:36:40 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-03-30 23:36:40 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=10620 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Ordaining Women and the Transformation from Sect to Denomination
William D. Russell
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 61–64
Over the past forty years the top leadership of the Community of Christ church (until recently the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ o f Latter -Day Saints) has gone through significant changes in religious thought. I have contended elsewhere that the decisive changes occurred in the 1960s.
Over the past forty years the top leadership of the Community of Christ church (until recently the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ o f Latter -Day Saints) has gone through significant changes in religious thought. I have contended elsewhere that the decisive changes occurred in the 1960s.
[post_title] => Ordaining Women and the Transformation from Sect to Denomination [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 61–64Over the past forty years the top leadership of the Community of Christ church (until recently the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ o f Latter -Day Saints) has gone through significant changes in religious thought. I have contended elsewhere that the decisive changes occurred in the 1960s. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => ordaining-women-and-the-transformation-from-sect-to-denomination [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-11 21:10:52 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-11 21:10:52 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=10622 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Present at the Beginning: One Woman's Journey
Barbara Higdon
Dialogue 36.3 (Fall 2003): 99–193
ON NOVEMBER 17,1985, MANY RLDS (now Community of Christ) congregations witnessed the sacrament of ordination to priesthood office
ON NOVEMBER 17,1985, MANY RLDS (now Community of Christ) congregations witnessed the sacrament of ordination to priesthood office [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => present-at-the-beginning-one-womans-journey [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:42:16 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:42:16 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=10623 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
An Expanded Definition of Priesthood? Some Present and Future Consequences
Margaret Wheatley
Dialogue 34.4 (Winter 2002): 319–325
But the fact that we must look at organizational dynamics before we can begin to understand the issues that would be raised by expanding priesthood to include women is an apt commentary on the complex and sometimes confused role that priesthood authority has come to play in the modern church.
But the fact that we must look at organizational dynamics before we can begin to understand the issues that would be raised by expanding priesthood to include women is an apt commentary on the complex and sometimes confused role that priesthood authority has come to play in the modern church. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => an-expanded-definition-of-priesthood-some-present-and-future-consequences [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-20 00:17:10 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-20 00:17:10 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=10872 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Dancing Through the Doctrine: Observations on Religion and Feminism
Cecilia Konchar Farr
Dialogue 28.3 (Fall 1995): 1–12
As American feminist thinkers and organizers, we’ve walked a long road since then, a road that has led us farther and farther away from religious discourse and Christian justification. Our reasons have been good: We didn’t want to limit or exclude. We didn’t want to direct all feminists down a single philosophical path.
As American feminist thinkers and organizers, we’ve walked a long road since then, a road that has led us farther and farther away from religious discourse and Christian justification. Our reasons have been good: We didn’t want to limit or exclude. We didn’t want to direct all feminists down a single philosophical path.
[post_title] => Dancing Through the Doctrine: Observations on Religion and Feminism [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 28.3 (Fall 1995): 1–12As American feminist thinkers and organizers, we’ve walked a long road since then, a road that has led us farther and farther away from religious discourse and Christian justification. Our reasons have been good: We didn’t want to limit or exclude. We didn’t want to direct all feminists down a single philosophical path. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => dancing-through-the-doctrine-observations-on-religion-and-feminism [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:44:38 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:44:38 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11498 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
If Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood since 1843, Why Aren't They Using It?
Margaret Merrill Toscano
Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 231–245
In the brief essay
which follows, I do not reassert the arguments supporting women's right
to priesthood, but focus on certain problems raised by the assumption that
women have priesthood authority.
In the brief essay which follows, I do not reassert the arguments supporting women's right to priesthood, but focus on certain problems raised by the assumption that women have priesthood authority. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => if-mormon-women-have-had-the-priesthood-since-1843-why-arent-they-using-it [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:55:56 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:55:56 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11692 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Toward a Feminist Interpretation of Latter-day Scripture
Lynn Matthews Anderson
Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 197–230
I am astonished that it took so many readings and a focus on the question of using gender-inclusive language in the simplified version to discover something that should have been obvious to me from the beginning: females scarcely figure or matter in our sacred books.
I am astonished that it took so many readings and a focus on the question of using gender-inclusive language in the simplified version to discover something that should have been obvious to me from the beginning: females scarcely figure or matter in our sacred books.
[post_title] => Toward a Feminist Interpretation of Latter-day Scripture [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 197–230I am astonished that it took so many readings and a focus on the question of using gender-inclusive language in the simplified version to discover something that should have been obvious to me from the beginning: females scarcely figure or matter in our sacred books. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => toward-a-feminist-interpretation-of-latter-day-scripture [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 22:57:17 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 22:57:17 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11689 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Anxiously Engaged: Amy Brown Lyman and Relief Society Charity Work, 1917-45
David Hall
Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 83–153
Believing that a more
efficient approach could be used to the church's advantage, he proposed
that the Relief Society organize a social service department where these
new techniques could be tested and implemented.
Believing that a more efficient approach could be used to the church's advantage, he proposed that the Relief Society organize a social service department where these new techniques could be tested and implemented. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => anxiously-engaged-amy-brown-lyman-and-relief-society-charity-work-1917-45 [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 23:02:47 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 23:02:47 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11672 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
"Seizing Sacred Space": Women's Engagement in Early Mormonism
Martha Sonntag Bradley
Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 69–82
Zina, like many other early converts to Mormonism, was a child of the Second Great Awakening.
Zina, like many other early converts to Mormonism, was a child of the Second Great Awakening. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => seizing-sacred-space-womens-engagement-in-early-mormonism [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 23:04:15 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 23:04:15 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11670 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Toward a Mormon Theology of God the Mother
Janice Allred
Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 15–40
It would seem that Mormons who have believed for over a hundred years in the real existence of the Goddess, the Mother in Heaven, should be far ahead of other Christians in developing a theology of God the Mother. However, our belief in her as a real person puts us at a disadvantage. If the Goddess is merely a symbol of deity, as the male God is also a symbol, then certainly God can be pictured as either male or female with equal validity.
“What kind of a Being is God?” inquired Joseph Smith. “I will tell you & hear it O Earth! God who sits in yonder heavens is a man like yourselves . . . It is the first principle to know that we may converse with him and that he was once a man like us, and the Father was on an earth like us.”[1] He also said, “If men do not comprehend the character of God they do not comprehend themselves.”[2] Today Mormon women say, “If I do not comprehend the character of God the Mother, I cannot comprehend myself.” They ask, “What kind of a being is she?’ From Mormon theology there is one thing we can conclude: she is a woman like us; she has a woman’s body. Without it she could not be our mother.
Feminist theologians have demonstrated the need for the feminine principle in our concept of deity. They have argued that picturing God as male leads to valuing masculine attributes, values, and experience over feminine ones and contributes to the oppression of women. The symbol of the Goddess is necessary, they say, to affirm the goodness of the feminine, to enable women to claim their female power, and to acknowledge the goodness of the female body. Ironically, the vast majority of them do not believe that the Goddess possesses a real female body.
It would seem that Mormons who have believed for over a hundred years in the real existence of the Goddess, the Mother in Heaven, should be far ahead of other Christians in developing a theology of God the Mother. However, our belief in her as a real person puts us at a disadvantage. If the Goddess is merely a symbol of deity, as the male God is also a symbol, then certainly God can be pictured as either male or female with equal validity. Joseph Smith, after asking what kind of a being God is, asked his congregation, “Have any of you seen or herd him or communed with him?”[3] For Mormon theology this is a very important question. God must reveal himself or we have no knowledge of him. Must we then wait for a revelation of the Mother before we have any knowledge of her? The answer is both “Yes” and “No.” We must be aware of the possibility of idolatry, of creating her in our own image, of making her into what we conceive the perfect woman should be, of using our images of her to control or manipulate others. On the other hand, we should also recognize the importance of our own seeking after God. Comprehending ourselves is as vital to comprehending God as comprehending God is essential to comprehending ourselves. Our own experiences, our loneliness, our communion with others, our sorrows, our joys, our sins, our striving for righteousness, our demand for justice, our finding forgiveness, our reaching out to God for knowledge and comfort are all experiences with the divine. And we should not assume that there has been no revelation of the Mother or that waiting for her to reveal herself need be entirely passive.
In this essay I attempt to reinterpret the Mormon concept of the Godhead. This interpretation is based on three convictions. I believe that God the Mother is equal to God the Father in divinity, power, and perfection. I believe that God, both Father and Mother, is deeply involved in our mortality and immortality. I also believe that God the Father has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Although he is male, for me he is an adequate model. He modeled many roles for us-father, mother, teacher, friend, son, lover, servant, lord—and also many attributes. If he were the only God, he would be enough. But there is another god and she has a woman’s body like mine. I want to know her, not simply as a model, but as a person. That she is God as well as woman is as important for men as it is for women as it affirms the equality of male and female and of masculine and feminine attributes and values. At the same time I must add that I am in no way whatsoever attempting an official reinterpretation of LDS doctrine; that prerogative rests solely with the leaders of the church. I am interested simply in offering a possibly new understanding and appreciation of the Mother based on my own reading and personal reflection.
The doctrine of the Godhead presently taught by the Latter-day Saint church is that the Godhead consists of three distinct individuals or personages. These personages are God the Father, his son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. Each of these individuals has. a particular mission in relation to humanity; God the Father is the father of all the spirits of mortal beings. He is the ultimate source of all power and knowledge, and the other two members of the Godhead are subordinate to him. Jesus Christ is the Son of the Father; he is the first born of the spirit children of God and the only begotten of the Father in the flesh. This enabled him to become the Redeemer and Savior of humankind. Because of his death and resurrection everyone will be resurrected, and through his atonement all who repent and believe in him will be forgiven of their sins and receive eternal life. Jesus represents the Father and acts as his agent. The Holy Ghost, unlike the Father and the Son who possess bodies of flesh and bone, is a personage of spirit He is one of the spirit children of God the Father and has the mission of revealing truth and testifying of the Father and the Son. He is also called the Comforter because he gives peace, hope, and comfort.
Although Mormons believe that we have a Heavenly Mother, she is not included in the Godhead. Does this mean that she is not also God? Does this mean that she has no mission to perform in relation to our mortal probation, that her role is restricted to giving birth to our spirits and nurturing us in our premortal lives? I find such conclusions unacceptable. God the Mother must be equal to God the Father; she must play an equally active role in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man and woman.
I believe that a serious acceptance of the existence of God the Mother requires us Mormons to re-examine and reinterpret our doctrine of the Godhead. I also believe that such a re-examination must be firmly grounded in the scriptures. I acknowledge that there is no direct information given about God the Mother in the scriptures. However, both the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants teach that some revelations have been withheld. The Book of Mormon tells us of revelations given to a few which the prophets were not permitted to write or which they were commanded to seal up until a later time, and the Doctrine and Covenants speaks of knowledge “that has not been revealed since the world was until now; a time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many gods, they shall be manifest’’ (121:26, 28). One God that has not been manifest is the Mother. Surely this is a promise that she will be revealed. Also the fact that she is not directly revealed in the scriptures does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the scriptures have nothing to say about her. Indeed, new revelations always demand a reinterpretation of scripture and permit us to see things and understand things in ways we previously could not.
To re-examine our doctrine of the Godhead I examined all the references to deity in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. I then attempted to work out relationships between different names of deity without using traditional Mormon assumptions about the nature of the Godhead but simply relying on the evidence of the text. I recognize that every reader has her own prejudices and hidden assumptions as well as the ones she shares with the various groups she belongs to, and that it is not possible to approach a text completely objectively; however, perhaps something may be gained by trying. I do not hope to present a complete or final interpretation of the Godhead as given in the scriptures I reviewed. Such a result is neither possible nor desirable. However, I do hope to present an interpretation which fits the text better than the one we presently subscribe to.
I did not begin my study without a hypothesis. My study of the scriptures. over many years had presented me with several passages I found difficult to harmonize with the view of the Godhead I had learned from LDS seminary and church manuals and publications. The first passages that struck me were the teachings of Abinadi. He repeatedly taught that God himself would redeem his people and make an atonement for their sins (Mosiah 13:28, 32, 33; 15:18, 19; 16:4). He explained that God was both the Father and the Son (15:2–7) and concluded his testimony by saying, “Teach them that redemption cometh through Christ the Lord, who is the very Eternal Father” (16:15). The most obvious interpretation of Abinadi’s words is that God the Father and Jesus Christ are two names for the same being. There are other scriptures in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants which plainly teach the same concept. My initial hypothesis, then, was that God the Father and Jesus Christ are one individual. Do the scriptures bear this interpretation? Are there any which present difficulties for it?
The most common names for deity in the scriptures are God, the Lord, the Lord God, and Jesus Christ. Others include the Holy One of Israel, the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Father, the Eternal Father, the Son of God, the Lamb of God, the Only Begotten of the Father, the Creator, and the Almighty. I have excluded all terms referring to the Holy Spirit as these will be discussed later.
Jesus Christ, Lord and God
The names God and the Lord are used synonymously throughout the scriptures, often being used together as the Lord God. “God” is the generic term for deity, the Supreme Being, the translation for the word El or Elohim in the Bible. The personal name for God in the Bible is YHWH which is translated as “the Lord” or “Jehovah.” The Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants seem to follow this usage. “God” is more often used when general information about deity is being given, for example, “O how great the holiness of our God” (2 Ne. 9:20), and “the Lord” is used when specific acts and words of God are given, for example, “I have received a commandment of the Lord that I should make these plates” (1 Ne. 9:3).
It is possible to show that the names God, the Lord, Jesus Christ, the Holy One of Israel, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah, and the Creator all refer to the same Supreme Being in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. Every major prophet in the Book of Mormon taught this.
Writing of his vision, Nephi said, “And the angel said unto me again: Look and behold the condescension of God! And I looked and beheld the Redeemer of the world” (1 Ne. 11:26, 27). Literally condescend means to come down with. According to the angel the condescension of God is the Redeemer. So Nephi learned exactly what Abinadi later taught, that God himself would come down among his people to redeem them. Nephi also wrote, “For if there be no Christ, there be no God; and if there be no God we are not, for there could have been no creation. But there is a God, and he is Christ, and he cometh in the fulness of his own time” (2 Ne. 11:7). Jacob declared, “He also hath shown unto me that the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, should manifest himself unto them in the flesh” (2 Ne. 6:9); and:
O how great the holiness of our God! . . .
And he cometh into the world that he may save all men if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of all men . . . And he suffereth this that the resurrection may pass upon all men . . .
And he commandeth all men that they must repent, and be baptized in his name, having perfect faith in the Holy One of Israel, or they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God .
. . . for the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel has spoken it (2 Ne. 9:20–24).
King Benjamin, in his great sermon to his people, said:
The Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst men, working mighty miracles, . . .
And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body . . .
And he shall be called Jesus Christ ... the Creator of all things from the beginning (Mosiah 3:5, 6, 8).
He concluded his teachings with these words: “I would . . . that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, . . . that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things in heaven and earth, who is God above all” (5:15).
I have already mentioned that Abinadi taught that God himself would redeem his people. “And were it not for the atonement which God himself shall make for the sins and iniquities of his people, . . . they must unavoidably perish” (Mosiah 13:28). Speaking of those who have part in the first resurrection, he declared, “They are raised to dwell with God who has redeemed them; thus they have eternal life through Christ . . . being redeemed by the Lord” (15:23, 24).
Alma wrote, “And now, the plan of mercy could not be brought about except an atonement should be made; therefore God himself atoneth for the sins of the world” (Alma 42:15).
The word of the Lord came to Mormon saying, “Listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God” (Moro. 8:8).
When he visited the Nephltes, Jesus Christ introduced himself: “I am Jesus Christ . . . I am the God of Israel and the God of the whole earth” (3 Ne. 11:10, 14). Prophesying of the remnants of the house of Israel, he said, “And they shall be brought to a knowledge of the Lord their God, who hath redeemed them” (20:13). His disciples “did pray unto Jesus, calling him their Lord and their God” (19:18).
Moroni wrote of the vision of the brother of Jared in which he saw Jesus. “And he saw the finger of Jesus . . . he knew that it was the finger of the Lord; Wherefore having this. perfect knowledge of God, he could not be kept from within the· veil” (Ether 3:19–20).
The Doctrine and Covenants is in harmony with the Book of Mormon in using. the names God, the Lord, Jesus Christ, Jehovah, the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Savior all to refer to the same God. Section 1 is given by the Lord. In verse 20 he says, “But that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the Savior of the world.” Section 6 begins, “Behold, I am God,” and in verse 21 the same speaker declares, “Behold, I am Jesus Christ.” In D&C 18:47 we read, “Behold, I am Jesus Christ, your Lord and your God, and your Redeemer.” Other passages read: ‘‘Listen to the voice of Jesus Christ, your Lord, your God, and your Redeemer” (27:1); “Verily thus saith the Lord, your God, your Redeemer, even Jesus Christ” (66:13); “For the Lord is God and beside him there is no Savior” (76:1);
. . . as God made the world in six days, and on the seventh day he finished his work and sanctified it, and also formed man out of the dust of the earth, even so in the beginning of the seventh thousand years will the Lord God sanctify the earth, and complete the salvation of man, and judge all things, and redeem all things . . . and the sounding of the trumpets of the seven angels are the preparing and finishing of his work . . . the preparing of the way before the time of his coming (77:12);
“We saw the Lord . . . and his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters, even the voice of Jehovah” (110:2).
Meaning of “The Father”
My study of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants shows that it is consistent with the text to interpret the names God, the Lord, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the Creator, and Jehovah as all referring to the same being. My initial hypothesis was that all the names of God refer to the same being. The only names that posed any difficulty were those referring to the Father or the Son. Since it is easy to establish that the names referring to the Son also refer to Jesus Christ, it could be concluded that all the names of God except “the Father” refer to Jesus Christ. However, this leads to the conclusion that “God” and “the Son of God” are the same person. Indeed, for this reason most Mormons usually think of God as God the Father. But I have shown that “God” consistently refers to the same being who is Jesus Christ. A close examination of all the occurrences of the name “the Father” in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants suggests that it cannot be consistently maintained th.at the Father and the Son are simply two separate individuals. “The Father” seems to have several different meanings.
In many verses the Son is called the Father, implying that the Father and the Son are the same person: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (2 Ne. 19:6); “And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning” (Mosiah 3:8); “He said unto them that Christ was the God, the Father of all things” (7:27); “Teach them that repentance cometh through Christ the Lord, who is the very Eternal Father” (16:15); “Now Zeezrom saith unto him: Is the Son of God the very Eternal Father? And Amulek said unto him; Yea, he is the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth, and all things which in them are” (Alma 11:38–39). The resurrected Jesus said to the Nephites, “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in Heaven, is perfect” (3 Ne. 12:48). If Jesus were speaking of two individuals it would be more natural for him to use “and” rather than “or.” The commas enclosing “ or your Father who is in heaven” make this phrase an appositive explaining “I” rather than a compound subject. Also the verb is singular rather than plural. Finally, “And because of the fall of man came Jesus Christ, the Father and the Son” (Morm. 9:12); and “Behold, I am Jesus Christ. I am the Father and the Son” (Ether 3:14).
Sometimes the Father and the Son seem to be spoken of as two separate beings, but closer examination of the text shows them to be the same person. In section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord Jesus Christ) says, “But if ye enter not into my law ye cannot receive the promise of my Father which he made unto Abraham.’’ Here Jesus seems to refer to his Father as someone separate from himself. However, there are many references that show that Jehovah was the one who covenanted with Abraham. The next two verses confirm this. “God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham . . . Was Abraham therefore under condemnation? Verily I say unto you, Nay; for I, the Lord commanded it’’ (vv. 33–35). This also shows that the Lord sometimes speaks of himself in the third person.
Sometimes ‘‘Father” seems to be an alternate name for God or the Lord. This poses a problem for my interpretation only when Jesus is the one speaking. However, again he may simply be referring to himself in the third person, saying that as the Father, the premortal Christ, he did and said! certain things. This may have been the case when he visited the Nephites as the resurrected Lord. He talked to them about the covenants which the Father made with the house of Israel, with Jacob, and with Abraham, but it was the Lord God Jehovah the same being who would become Jesus Christ, who covenanted with Abraham, Jacob, and the people of Israel (3 Ne. 20:27, 1 Ne. 15:18). Jesus gave the Nephites. the same teachings which he gave the Jews in the Sermon on the Mount. In these he often referred to “your Father in heaven.” Since Jesus’ purpose in this sermon was to teach people how to live and about their relationship with their Father in Heaven rather than to reveal who he was, we cannot conclude that the Father he referred to was necessarily a different person than himself.
However, there are some passages in which the most natural interpretation is that the Father and the Son are two separate beings. These passages refer to the relationship between the Father and the Son. In the Book of Mormon most of these occur in the accounts of the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to the Nephites. Jesus tells them that he suffered the will of the Father, that he glorified the Father, that his doctrine was given him by the Father, and that his Father commands all to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. He also talks about commandments which the Father gave him, says the Father sent him, talks of going to or ascending to his Father, and prays to the Father. In the Doctrine and Covenants the Lord or Jesus Christ speaks of the kingdom of his Father and those whom his Father has given him, says that he has done the will of the Father, claims to be our advocate with the Father, pleads for us before the Father, and says that no one will come unto the Father but by him.
How are we to understand such passages in light of our discovery that the Lord, God, and the Redeemer are one being? Should we reinterpret Lord-God-Redeemer passages in light of Father-Son passages or should we reinterpret Father-Son passages in light of Lord-God-Redeemer passages?
To attempt to answer these questions I will discuss the few scriptures which attempt to explain the relationship between the Father and the Son. Only in two places in the Book of Mormon and one place in the Doctrine and Covenants is the question directly addressed. These passages all assert that they are discussing one being and explain why he is called the Father and the Son. First, let us look at Mosiah 15:2–5.
And because he dwelleth in flesh , he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—
The Father because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son—
And they are one God, yea the very Eternal Father of heaven and earth. And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God . . .
Verse two says that because God will dwell in mortal flesh he will be called the Son of God. Verse 5 interprets verses 2–4 by equating the Son to the flesh and the spirit to the Father. The Son subjects himself to the Father by subjecting the flesh to the spirit or his mortal self to his eternal self. Abinadi says nothing about the LOS church’s current belief that Jesus is called the Son because he is the literal Son of God the Father in the flesh nor does he assert that Jesus receives his power to redeem and resurrect because his mortal father is God. According to Abinadi Jesus’ power to redeem and resurrect comes from himself, his spirit being the Spirit of the Eternal Father himself.
The second passage in the Book of Mormon explaining the relationship between the Father and the Son occurs in 3 Nephi 1:14. Here the Lord, the premortal Jesus, tells Nephi, the son of Nephi, that he will be born the next day. “Behold, I come unto my own, to fulfill all things which I have made known unto the children of men from the foundation of the world, and to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son—of the Father because of me, and of the Son because of my flesh.” There is an interesting echo of Abinadi here. Abinadi said that the will of the Son would be subjected to that of the Father, but the Lord says that he comes into the world to do the will of both the Father and the Son. “Of the Father because of me,” the Lord says, which means that he is the Father, “and of the Son because of my flesh.” Here the Lord asserts that he is already a god of spirit and flesh and that the spirit and flesh are in harmony. Understanding the Lord’s words as a comment on Abinadi’s words, we conclude that “the Father” can mean “God the Eternal Father, a being of spirit and immortal glorified flesh” or it can refer only to the spiritual part of God’s eternal being, and that “the Son” can mean either “God the Eternal Father, a being of spirit and immortal glorified flesh,” putting the emphasis on the flesh to distinguish the person of God from the Spirit of God, or it can refer to God as a mortal being dwelling among people to redeem them from their sins, or it can simply refer to the body of God.
Doctrine and Covenants 93 agrees with Abinadi in equating the Father with the spirit and the Son with the flesh. Verses 3–5 read:
And that I am in the Father and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one—
The Father because he gave me of his fulness, and the Son because I was in the world and made flesh my tabernacle, and dwelt among the sons of men.
I was in the world and received of my Father, and the works of him were plainly manifest.
Note the parallel construction of verse 3 with the words of Abinadi and the words of the Lord. All explain why the Lord is both the Father and the Son. In section 93 the Lord says that he is the Father “because he gave me of his fulness.” In verses 16 and 36 we learn that “he received a fulness of the glory of the Father” and the “glory of God is intelligence or, in other words, light and truth.’; Verses 9 and 11 call the Redeemer “the Spirit of Truth” which came and dwelt in the flesh. Thus in section 93 “the Father” seems to mean “the Spirit of God.” Verse 17 substantiates this conclusion.” And the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him.” According to Joseph Smith the Father cannot dwell in a person’s heart because he has a body of flesh and bones (D&C 130:3, 22). Although the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit, it also cannot dwell in a person’s heart.[4] Our bodies can only be inhabited by our own spirits. Therefore, if the Father dwelt in the Son, “the Father” must mean the spirit body of God and the Son and the Father must constitute one eternal being.
However, “the Father” seems also to sometimes nave a meaning beyond the personal spirit of God. Verse 23 of section 93 reads, “Ye were also in the beginning with the Father; that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth.” Here the Father is called Spirit and the Spirit of truth; the Redeemer, as was pointed out, is also the Spirit of truth. “The elements are the tabernacle of God; yea, man is the tabernacle of God” (v. 35). The terms God and the Father in such passages seem to mean a spiritual substance or power that: pervades all things. The Lord says, 11I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (v. 2). In section 88 this concept is amplified.
. . . he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth.
Which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ...
Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space--
The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things (vv. 6–7, 12–13).
“The Father” or “God” or “the Spirit of God” or “the Spirit of the Lord” may mean this totality of spirit or a portion of it.
“Spirit,” “intelligence,” “light,” and ‘‘glory’’ seem to be synonymous terms. A spirit or a personage of spirit is an individual being organized from spirit and given independence (D&C 93:30). Spirit is a unifying principle, but if it could not be divided up into separate spheres, there would be no existence.
Understanding that “the Father” can mean either “God the Eternal Father, a personage of spirit tabernacled by immortal glorified flesh/’ or “the personal spirit of God,” or “the totality of spirit which emanates from God” illuminates some of the more difficult Father-Son passages. “I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one,” could be interpreted to mean, “I am in the totality of spirit which emanates from the Father and the individual spirit personage of the Father dwells in my body, thus I am the Eternal Father.’’
The scriptures in which Jesus speaks of those who believe in him becoming one through him seem to require a different interpretation. For example, “that they may become the sons of God, even one in me as I am one in the Father, as the Father is one in me, that we may be one” (D&C 35:2). This speaks of many distinct individuals, each with his or her own spirit and body, becoming one. What does this oneness mean? Jesus explains it by comparing it to the oneness he has with the Father. But I have shown that the Father and Jesus, when the Father is an individual, are the same individual. To attempt an interpretation of this passage and offer another meaning for the term “the Father11 I will examine a revelation given to Joseph Smith and several other scriptural verses.
Joseph Smith received this revelation probably in 1833. It was not written down but was related by Orson Pratt in 1855. It is given in the form of questions and answers.
“What is the name of God in the pure language?”
The answer says,” Ahman.”
“What is the name of the Son of God?”
Answer, “Son Ahman—the greatest of all the parts of God excepting Ahman.”
“What is the name of men?”
Sons Ahman,” is the answer . . .
This revelation goes on to say that Sons Ahman are the greatest of all the parts of God except Son Ahman and Ahman.[5]
In this revelation “ Ahman” seems to be equivalent to God or the Father as the totality of spirit since Son Ahman and Sons Ahman are parts of Ahman. Son Ahman, Jesus Christ, is an individual, a personage who is embodied since “Son11 refers to the flesh. As the greatest of all the parts of Ahman, he is creator of all things, ruler of all things, the God we worship. This revelation calls men and women “Sons Ahman.” However, it may refer to exalted beings rather than mortal ones. To support this idea I offer the following reasons.
In Doctrine and Covenants 76 Joseph Smith describes the celestial glory and those who will receive it.
They are they who are priests and kings, who have received of his fulness, and of his glory;
Wherefore, as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God—
And he makes them equal in power and might and dominion.
And the glory of the celestial is one, even as the glory of the sun is one (vv. 56, 58, 95, 96).
Those who inherit celestial glory are called gods or sons of god. Christ has made them equal and has given them all things; they are one in him. As gods or sons of god, being embodied celestial beings, they are the greatest of all the parts of God excepting Son Ahman and Ahman.
And thus we saw the glory of the celestial, which excels in all things—where God, even the Father, reigns upon his throne forever and ever;
Before whose throne all things bow in humble reverence, and give him glory forever and ever (vv. 92–93).
Celestial beings receive of the fullness of the Father through Jesus Christ. As many individuals partaking of one glory they may also be called the Father. With this additional meaning of “the Father” I can now offer a possible interpretation of D&C 35:2. “They may become the sons of God” means “inherit celestial glory”; “even one in me” means ‘‘become equal in power, might, and dominion, receiving all things from Jesus Christ”; “as I am one in the Father” means “as I am one among the celestial beings”; “as the Father is one in me” means “as the celestial beings have been made one by me”; and “that we may be one” means “that we may all dwell together in celestial glory.”
The Mother in the Godhead
Having reinterpreted “the Father,” we now look for the Mother. She is present in the scriptures, but she is hidden; even as we do not see light in a room but see the room and all things in it by the light which is present, so is she in the scriptures.
Nephi explains why Jesus was baptized: to obey the Father in keeping his commandments and to set an example for us. “And he said unto the children of men, Follow thou me” (2 Ne. 31:10). In Doctrine and Covenants 132:6 the Lord reveals a “new and everlasting covenant . . . [which] was instituted for the fulness of my glory; and he that receiveth a fulness thereof must and shall abide the law.” The new and everlasting covenant is the covenant of eternal marriage. As we have seen, those who inherit celestial glory receive a fullness of God’s glory and are called gods. According to the revelation on eternal marriage, those who do not marry by the new and everlasting covenant and are not sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity; and from henceforth are not gods,11 but those who do marry by the new and everlasting covenant and are sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise #shall ... be gods, because they have all power.” If the Lord requires us to keep the law of celestial marriage to become gods, then Jesus himself must certainly keep it. The laws he institutes are to make us like him. In the celestial glory all are equal; therefore the daughters of God are equal to the sons of God and God the Mother is equal to God the Father in power, might, and dominion.
If the gods are divine couples, then we can assume that God himself is also a divine couple, that God the Father, as a being of spirit and body, is eternally joined to God the Mother, also a being of spirit and body. “The Father” then must also mean “the Mother” as “sons of God” certainly includes II daughters of God.”
This suggests another way of interpreting the Godhead. The Father is the divine couple, Father and Mother, each possessing a spirit and a glorified body. They must together be the source of light or spirit which permeates all things. If the name “the Father” refers to the union of the two personages who together are God, then perhaps the other two names in the Godhead refer to them separately. As we have seen, 11the Son” refers to the flesh, so the Lord or Jehovah, as the embodied God, is the Son. But the name “the Son,” as Abinadi points out, more specifically points to his mission as the Redeemer, to his taking on himself a mortal body to redeem us from sin. Perhaps, then, the Holy Ghost is the name of the Mother which refers to her work among us in mortality.
One objection that has been made to the suggestion that the Holy Ghost is the Mother is that the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit but the Mother must have an immortal, glorified body as the Father does. Indeed, this same objection is likely to be raised against the idea that Jesus is God the Father. If Jesus is God the Father, it will be argued, then he must have had an immortal, physical body before he took on himself a mortal body. But many Mormons will object that the scriptures teach that the resurrected body and spirit are inseparably connected, so Jesus must have been a personage of spirit before he became a mortal man and thus he could not have been God the Father. However, given the teachings of Joseph Smith about the importance of the body—that all beings with bodies have power over those who do not, that it was necessary for us to obtain bodies to become like God—it is impossible that Jesus, the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Holy One of Israel could have been what he was and have done all he did without a body. Although a resurrected person is not subject to death in the sense that his body and spirit will separate without his will or control, it may be that he has the power to separate his body and spirit if he so desires.
Is there any scriptural support for the view that the premortal Jesus had a body of flesh and bone? I have already discussed the passage in 3 Nephi where the premortal Jesus speaks of his flesh. In the New Testament Jesus says to the Jews, “For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself”; and “I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again’’ John 5:26, 10:17–18). This could refer not only to his power to lay down a mortal body and take it again as an immortal body, but also to his power to lay down an immortal body and take on a mortal body. The best evidence that the premortal Jesus had a physical body is in Ether 3. When the brother of Jared sees Jesus Christ he sees his immortal physical body.
And the veil was taken off from the eyes· of the brother of Jared, and he saw the finger of the Lord; and it was like unto flesh and blood . . .
And he saith unto the Lord: I saw the finger of the Lord, and I feared lest he should smite me; for I knew not that the Lord had flesh and blood.
And the Lord said unto him: Because of thy faith thou hast seen that I shall take upon me flesh and blood . . . (3:6, 8–9
This is usually interpreted to mean that the brother of Jared saw the spirit body of Jesus because he said, “I will take upon me flesh and blood.” But, as Joseph Smith taught, an immortal body is a body of flesh and bone without blood, so it was necessary for the Lord to correct the brother of Jared. However, it is significant that the brother of Jared thought it was a body of flesh and blood. Many people have seen spirits and they never mistake them for bodies of flesh and blood. Jesus told the brother of Jared, “Behold, this body, which ye now behold is the body of my spirit” (Ether 3:16). A spirit body is composed of spirit. Mormons use the term spirit body to emphasize the fact that we believe spirit is a substance, but body of my spirit” implies the body is not of the same substance as the spirit, that is, it implies a physical body belonging to the spirit. Jesus continued,” And man have I created after the body of my spirit.” The creation of man and woman includes the physical creation. Moroni comments, “Jesus showed himself unto this man in the spirit, even after the manner and in the likeness of the same body even as he showed himself unto the Nephites” (v. 17). Usually this is interpreted to mean that this man saw the spirit of Jesus Christ. However, as Joseph Smith taught, it is necessary to be quickened by the spirit to see God in the flesh (D&C 67:11). Therefore this could simply mean that the brother of Jared was in the spirit when he saw Jesus. “Even after the manner” must mean in the same way, which included seeing and touching. “And in the likeness of the same body” is usually interpreted to mean that the physical body which the Nephites saw was in the likeness of the spirit body which the brother of Jared saw. However, this passage is also consistent with the interpretation I offer. The body which the brother of Jared saw was not identical to the body which the Nephites saw, although they were both in the likeness of Jesus’ spirit. Moroni emphasizes that “he ministered unto him even as he ministered unto the Nephites.” Jesus ministered to the Nephites as their God, a being of flesh, bone, and spirit.
If it was possible for the Lord to lay down his immortal body to take on mortal flesh, then surely it is also possible for the Mother to lay down her immortal body to become the Holy Ghost.
The scriptures refer to the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Christ, the Comforter, and the Spirit of truth. Two possible meanings that we have ascertained for these names are the personal spirit of Jesus Christ and the substance or power that emanates from God and pervades all things in differing degrees. The scriptures do not make it clear whether the Holy Ghost is an individual being or a power. However, there are several passages which declare that the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost are one God. How are we to interpret this? The official doctrine of the LOS church at this time is, as has been pointed out, that they are three distinct individuals. I have tried to show from the scriptures that the Son is one individual, who is also called the Lord, God, and our Redeemer, and that the name “the Father,” when it refers to one individual, refers to the same person who is Jesus Christ. The Holy Ghost could also be interpreted as the power of God, since Jesus refers to himself as the Spirit of truth and the names “my Spirit,” “Spirit of the Lord,” “Spirit of God,” etc., are actually used more frequently than and often synonymously with the Holy Ghost. Thus the names “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Ghost” could all refer to one individual God, but I would argue that this interpretation would also require us to recognize God as Mother, Daughter, and Holy Ghost.
There are, however, reasons to believe that there is an individual being, a god distinct from Jesus Christ, called the Holy Ghost who has a special mission to perform among humans. Nephi taught his people that the words of Christ are given by the power of the Holy Ghost. “I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of angels ... Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore they speak the words of Christ” (2 Ne. 32:2–3). The connection between angels and the Holy Ghost is interesting. Angels are messengers of God who are seen as well as heard; whoever is ministered to by an angel knows he has seen and heard a being distinct and different from himself. The Holy Ghost, however, speaks to the mind and heart (D&C 8:2). It is sometimes difficult to distinguish her voice from our own inner voice. The reason she is not dearly pointed out as an individual in the scriptures is because she does not often manifest herself as an individual distinct from ourselves. It is also possible that there are many spirits working with the Holy Ghost to perform her work.
Jesus, during the Last Supper, spoke of two distinct comforters; one he called the Holy Ghost and the Spirit of Truth, the other he also called the Spirit of truth. Joseph Smith taught that the Second Comforter was Jesus Christ himself.[6] He also taught that the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit who is also God who also has a distinct mission to perform for us even as the Son atoned for our sins.[7]
Everlasting covenant was made between three personages before the organization of this earth, and relates to their dispensation of things to men on the earth; these personages, according to Abraham’s record, are called God the first; the Creator; God the Second, the Redeemer; and God the Third, the witness or Testator.[8]
But numerous scriptures testify that the being who would become Jesus Christ created the earth. And in Moses 6:8–9 we read, “In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; in the image of his own body, male and female, created he them.” If God created male and female in the image of his own body then God the Creator must be the Divine Couple, a Man with a male body and a Woman with a female body. If God the Creator is the Divine Couple and God the Redeemer is the male part of the Divine Couple, then it is reasonable to conclude that God the Witness or Testator is the female part of God the Creator.
God himself came down among the children of men to redeem his people. He sacrificed his immortal body and took on himself a mortal body to become one of us and suffer the pains and sorrows of mortality. He sacrificed his mortal body so that he might conquer death and bring about the resurrection of all humanity and he suffered the pains of all our sins so that we might be redeemed.
God herself came down among the children of women to succor her children. She sacrificed her immortal body to be with us; she remains a spirit so that she can always be with us to enlighten, to comfort, to strengthen, to feel what we feel, to suffer with us in all our sins, in our loneliness and pain, and to encircle us in the arms of her love. She bears witness of Christ and leads us to him, teaching us of their will so th.at we might partake of eternal life in their kingdom.
Prophecies of the Revelation of the Mother
We find the Mother in the scriptures, then, wherever they speak of the Holy Ghost, but of course they do not identify the Holy Ghost as our Mother. When will she be revealed? Do the scriptures prophesy of her revelation?
Joseph Smith taught that in the last days many things would be revealed. The purpose of this is to bring about a whole and complete and perfect union. In order to do this, lost and hidden thlngs from past ages will be revealed as well as things which never have been revealed (D&C 128:18). The Lord told Joseph Smith, “God shall give unto you knowledge by his Holy Spirit, yea, by the unspeakable gift of the Holy Ghost, that has not been revealed since the world was until now” (121:26). The clause “that has not been revealed since the world was until now’’ is usually considered to modify “knowledge.” However, it could also modify “the Holy Ghost,” yielding “The Holy Ghost has not been revealed since the world was until now/’ that is, in the last days. However, whether this interpretation is admitted the Lord says that there is “a time to come in the which nothing shall be withheld, whether there be one God or many, they shall be manifest” (v. 28). So the Holy Ghost, either as one with God or one of many gods, will be revealed in the last days. Therefore we should look for prophecies of her revelation among the prophecies of the last days. We should not expect to find any plain prophecies. Prophecies of the future are usually metaphoric, allusive, and suggestive rather than plain and since the Mother herself is hidden in the scriptures, we can expect that prophecies concerning her appearance will be even more hidden.
I will discuss two dusters of metaphors which I believe refer to the Mother: the arm or the hand of the Lord and the bride of the Lord. In speaking of the last days Isaiah prophesied, “The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations” (Isa. 52:10). In the Book of Mormon Nephi, Abinadi, and Jesus all refer to this prophecy and it is referred to four times in the Doctrine and Covenants. What is the meaning of “arm of the Lord" or ‘hand of the Lord?” What is to be revealed in the last days? To discover this I undertook a rhetorical analysis of all occurrences of the phrase “arm of the Lord” or “hand! of the Lord” in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants.
There are a. number of passages which indicate that “arm of the Lord” or “hand of the lord” denotes the means by which the Lord carries out his purposes or accomplishes his work. For example, “It is the hand of the Lord which has done it” (Morm. 8:8); ‘‘being directed continually by the hand of the Lord11 (Ether 2:6); “he extended his arm in the preservation of our fathers” (Mosiah 1:14); and “my arm is stretched out in the last days to save my people Israel” (D&C 136:2). Of course, we regard such passages as metaphoric; we do not think that the hand or arm of the Lord is literally accomplishing the work. By what means, then, does the Lord carry out his purposes? To determine this I looked for parallel constructions that might explain or interpret “arm of the Lord” and found several such passages.
“I call upon the weak things of the world ... to thrash the nations by the power of my Spirit; and their arm shall be my arm11 (D&C 35:13–14). Since they are to accomplish their work by the power of the Lord’s Spirit, the arm of the Lord is the Spirit of the Lord.
‘‘For I the Lord have put forth my hand to exert the powers of heaven” (D&C 84:119). This tells us that what is done by the hand of the Lord is done by the powers of heaven.
“Thus the Lord did begin to pour out his Spirit upon them; and we see that his arm is extended to all people who will repent and call upon his name” (Alma 19:36). This verse equates the Lord’s pouring out his Spirit to extending his arm.
“He was taken up by the Spirit, or buried by the hand of the Lord” (Alma 45:19). Again the hand of the Lord is equated to the Spirit.
Having identified “Spirit of the Lord” or “power of my Spirit,” or “Spirit11 to mean “arm of the Lord” or “hand of the Lord,” I checked to see if this was a plausible interpretation for all occurrences of ‘‘arm of the Lord” or “hand of the Lord” and found it to be so except in the few cases where a literal interpretation seemed to be required.
The Spirit of the Lord is not necessarily the personage of the Holy Ghost, so something more would seem to be required to show that the prophecy that the Lord will make bare his holy arm in the eyes of all nations is a prophecy of the revelation of the Holy Ghost or Mother in the last days. I have one more interpretation to offer to show that the prophecy that the Lord will make bare his holy arm in the eyes of all nations is a prophecy of the revelation of the Mother. Isaiah’s prophecy reads, “For the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God” (52:9–10). In his visit to the Nephites, Jesus rendered the prophecy as:
For the Father hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem.
The Father hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of the Father; and the Father and I are one (3 Ne. 20:34–35).
Joseph Smith taught that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Second Comforter and that when anyone obtains this last comforter he will have Jesus himself appear to him from time to time and that he will manifest the Father to him and they will together visit him.[9] If the Lord or the Father comforts his people, he appears to them and he also reveals the Father to them. Since the Father is also the Divine couple, the manifestation of the Father could mean the revelation of the Divine Couple, and “The Father hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations” could mean that Jesus reveals himself as the Father and his divine wife as the Mother. Doctrine and Covenants 97:19 supports this interpretation. “Zion is the city of our God, . . . for God is there, and the hand of the Lord is there.” This implies that “the hand of the Lord” is indeed a person whose presence in Zion is as important as God’s.
Interpreting “the Father” as “the Divine Couple” also suggests an interpretation for scriptures which assert that Jesus is on the right hand of the Father or God. These scriptures may picture the Father and Mother standing or sitting side by side and Jesus is on the right and she is on the left. Thus either the Son or the Daughter, the Father or the Mother could be called the arm or hand of the Lord.
The second cluster of metaphors which I believe point to the revelation of the Mother are those of the marriage of the Lamb. Jesus called him.self the bridegroom (Matt. 5:19) and gave two parables, the Marriage of the King’s Son and the Ten Virgins, in which he compared the Second Coming to a wedding and himself to the bridegroom. In the Doctrine and Covenants he refers to himself as the bridegroom five times in connection with the Second Coming. Will there be a real wedding at the Second Coming or is the wedding merely figurative?
The most detailed account of the marriage of the Lamb is in Revelation. Before Christ descends to the earth John hears a voice saying., “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come., and his wife hath made herself ready11 (19:7). The bride is usually interpreted to mean the church of God or the people of Israel. John calls the bride the new Jerusalem (21:2., 9–10). But a figurative meaning does not preclude a literal one. John also says., 11And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.” Since the Fall brought about the separation of many things—God from humanity, male from female., body from spirit, individual from community, faith from reason—the Millennium will bring all things into a new unity. But the Fall also brought about the separation of God from God, Father from Mother. Isaiah declared:
Yea, for thus saith the Lord: have I put thee away, or have I cast thee off forever? For thus saith the Lord; Where is the bill of your mother; s divorcement? To whom have I put thee away, or to which of my creditors have I sold you? Yea, to whom have I sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have you sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away (2 Ne. 7:1).
Our Mother exiled herself voluntarily to be with us. The Mother is identified with the Child: she also took our sins on herself.
In Revelation 12:1 John describes the Divine Mother. “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” A great dragon made war on her and she fled into the wilderness where the dragon continued to make war on her and her children. Joseph Smith in his translation of the Bible said that the woman was the church of God. The images of the sun, moon, and wilderness are also found in a description of the church given three times in the Doctrine and Covenants.
That thy church may come forth out of the wilderness of darkness, and shine forth fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners;
And be adorned as a bride for that day when thou shalt unveil the heavens (109:73–74).
One metaphorical meaning of “wilderness” is given by the Lord. “Behold, that which you hear is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness—in the wilderness, because you cannot see him-my voice, because my voice is Spirit” (D&C 88:6). The wilderness where the Mother is exiled is the realm of the Spirit which we cannot see. The description 11fair as the moon” and “clear as the sun” and “terrible as an army with banners” reminds us of the glorious woman in heaven “clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet,” her power denoted by the crown of stars on her head. Again Mother is identified with Child. She cannot come out of the wilderness adorned as a bride to meet her bridegroom until her child is sanctified. “But first let my army become very great, and let it be sanctified before me, that it may become fair as the sun, and clear as the moon, and that her banners may be terrible to all nations.” The description” fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners” is taken from the Song of Solomon where it describes the bride of the king. If the Song of Songs is interpreted as an allegory of the hierosgamos or marriage of the divine male and female, this further supports the view that the marriage of the Lamb is literal as well as figurative and that the Mother will be revealed “adorned as a bride for that day when God shall unveil the heavens” and be reunited with his divine spouse.
As the time for the revelation of the Mother draws closer we should expect that some people will receive visions or voices or feelings which manifest her presence and her mission. I would like to share one such experience with you. My husband David and I were driving home to Provo after having been in Denver for David’s twenty-fifth high school reunion. I will give David’s account of what happened.
The time in Denver was good, along the lines of recovery as I felt, but better than I anticipated. No close friends were there but after a time I felt kinship with many I met again. I felt a great desire to celebrate the lives of these friends and comfort those who had discovered that their lives were not exactly what they had anticipated they would be. It was a ti.me of reaching out with love and understanding. The epiphanal experience came on the way home. It was about noon. Janice was driving—she had been since Denver—and I was reading to her from Margaret’s and Paul’s book [Strangers in Paradox]. I got to a part of the book that overwhelmed me suddenly: “Rather each is cast in the Image of the Mater Dolorosa, the mourning mother who imposes upon herself a voluntary exile in order to wander with, and comfort her children, mourning and grieving in the veil of tears.” At th.is point I felt tears welling up inside of me and I choked on, “She is like Rachel weeping for her children. She is De . . .”
I couldn’t control my voice; I couldn’t go on. I wept for a while and then said, ur am very touched by this.” Janice said, “It’s more than that. It’s revelation.” I said, “She is here with us. She is in the back seat with us and . . .”
What was I feeling? I was saying inside myself, “This is what I want—to comfort in this veil of tears, to nurture, not to advance myself. This is what I have always wanted.” Yearning towards her, I cried out in my heart, “I want to share your loneliness and sorrows. How can I? Oh, that I could comfort with you!”
I realized that she was not in the back seat. She was around me and before me. With tear fogged eyes I saw her fill the horizon in front of me. I couldn’t go on reading. Tears were on my cheeks. I am not usually so overcome with feelings. I rarely cry. I stopped wondering if Janice would wonder why I was having such trouble going forward. I began wondering if I could remain on earth. I was being expanded and it was joyful—and it hurt!
This was not just empathy for the Mother. This was epiphany. She is here! I felt such love and identification for her and her work and rapture at her presence.
What would I tell Janice? What could I tell her? Finally I regained control and found out.
“I’ve given my heart to the Mother. She was here and I wasn’t sure that I would go on living.”
Worshipping the Mother
One question which has received a great deal of attention is whether we should worship the Mother and, if s01 how? The question is important to those who sincerely believe that our Heavenly Mother is God, while those who believe that only the Father is really God tend to view the answer as self-evident (of course, we worship only God the Father) and the question as presumptuous., This is not surprising since fundamentally to worship God means to acknowledge that the being we worship is God. When Jesus first appeared to the Nephites they thought he was an angel. But after he told them that he was Jesus Christ, they fell to the earth. Jesus then invited them to feel the prints of the nails in his hands and feet. After they had done so, they all fell down at his feet and worshipped him. They worshipped him because they knew he was their God and the God of the whole earth, the light and life of the world who had atoned for their sins. Whether we should worship the Mother, then, depends on whether we know her and know who she is. We have not been commanded to worship her as we have God the Father. Worship demands a distance; he is the transcendent God, while she is the immanent God. She bears witness of him and leads us to him. Without her with us we could not see him as the Almighty God. However, once she has been revealed to us and we see and understand that she is also God, then we also, in the most fundamental way, worship her. There is no question whether we should worship her; no one can allow us or forbid us to worship her. We simply do.
We also worship God through rituals. or ordinances. These connect us in some way to God and are the means through which we, by performing some action, receive blessings from him. All religions believe their rituals come from God. They are either transmitted from generation to generation or rediscovered or revealed by God himself. Some women look for ancient forms of Goddess worship to express their devotion to the Goddess. However, we as Latter-day Saints only need to re-examine the ordinances given us through Joseph Smith to see that she is present in all of them. We cannot worship him without her presence. Because they are one there is no ordinance through which we worship only him or only her. We are baptized to show our faith in him, but faith is a gift of the Spirit which testifies of Christ. We repent of our sins believing that he has atoned for them and we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost to sanctify us and reveal his will to us so that we may retain a remission of our sins. In partaking of the sacrament we remember him and he pours out his Spirit more abundantly on us. The temple ordinances, as Margaret and Paul Toscano have shown,[10] symbolize both the sacrifice of Christ and her veiled presence.
Jesus taught that doing the will of God is more important than formal worship; indeed, it is the truest worship because it requires our deepest commitment and expresses our truest desires, our essential being. “Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven” (3 Ne. 14:21). If we want to worship the Mother, we must do the work of the Mother, and if we do the work of the Mother, we worship her. Her work is the same as his work. They are one God. Nephi taught that the words of Christ will tell us all things that we should do and that the words of Christ are given by the power of the Holy Ghost (2 Ne. 32:5).
For Mormons the question of whether we should worship the Mother has focused mainly on whether we should pray to her. Those who think we should not pray to her point out that Jesus commanded us to pray to the Father in his name and conclude that the only acceptable form of prayer is to address God as Heavenly Father and end the prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. I have tried to show that Jesus is the Father whom we worship. In Doctrine and Covenants 93, which clearly teaches that the Son is the Father, the Lord says, “I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name.” ‘This means that Jesus Christ is the name of the Father which we should use when we pray to him and worship him. He has other names but we should call him Jesus Christ because that is the name through which we are saved. “Behold, Jesus Christ is the name which is given of the Father, and there is none other name given whereby man can be saved” (D&C 18:23). H the words are changed around a little this reads, “Behold, Jesus Christ is the name of the Father which is given.” Mormons usually interpret this verse to mean that Jesus Christ is the name given by the Father, which is also a true interpretation, but it obscures the more fundamental one.
Doctrine and Covenants 109 is the prayer offered by Joseph Smith at the dedication of the Kirtland temple, which he said was given to him by revelation. In this prayer he addresses God as “Lord, God of Israel,” “‘Lord,” “Holy Father in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of thy bosom,” “Holy Father,” “Jehovah,” “Mighty God of Jacob,” and “O Lord God Almighty.” All these names are names of Jesus Christ and this prayer is dearly addressed to him. It is concluded with a simple “Amen.” Nephi, in his account of his life, usually tells us that he prayed to the Lord, and we have seen that he identified the Lord as the one who would come to the earth to redeem his people. He also exhorts us to pray to the Father in the name of Jesus Christ (2 Ne. 32:9) and tells us to worship Christ (25:29). He does not distinguish between praying to the Lord, praying to the Father in the name of Christ, and worshipping Christ.
If we are to pray to Jesus, the question arises, “To whom did Jesus pray?” As a mortal man he prayed to the Father and as God among the Nephites he also prayed to the Father. But I have shown th.at the Father, the Man of Holiness, is Jesus Christ. Surely Jesus did not pray to himself. Perhaps the Father whom Jesus prayed to was the same being who on several occasions introduced Jesus as “My Beloved Son.” Who was this? The voice is described in 3 Nephi 11:3.
. . . and it was not a harsh voice, neither was it a loud voice; nevertheless, and notwithstanding it being a small voice it did pierce them that did hear it to the center, insomuch that there was no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake; yea, it did pierce them that did hear it to the very soul, and did cause their hearts to burn.
This description has several points in common with descriptions given of the voice of the Holy Ghost. It was a small voice but it pierced those who heard it to the center and it caused their hearts to bum. I believe that this being who bears witness of Jesus Christ is his Beloved, the Woman of Holiness, who is now the Holy Ghost. She calls him, "My Beloved, who is the Son.”
Should we pray to the Mother? Although we are not commanded to pray to her, we are commanded to pray with her. “He that asketh in the Spirit asketh according to the will of God” (D&C 46:30). And when we pray, we invoke her presence (19:38). And our prayers are answered through her. Understanding this, we certainly may address her directly in our prayers. However, prayer, unlike ritual, does not require a form given by God in order to be efficacious. In its most fundamental sense prayer is a reaching out for God. The deepest longings of our hearts, our strivings for goodness, our hearts broken by our sins and failures, the pains of our humanity, our hope for love, and finally our deepest desires to know God are all prayers to him and her.
Jesus taught us to pray to the Father, not to set up barriers between us and God, but to remove them. God is your Father, he taught us. You need not be afraid to approach him because he loves you. You are fathers yourselves, he reminded us; you know that you respond to your children’s pleas. “How much more will your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matt. 7–11) She is our Mother, a Mother who knows our needs before we can express them, a Mother who is here before we call out to her.
Which of you mothers, if your child cries out in the night, will not hear her cries and go to her and put your arms around her and comfort her? If you, then, being weak, know how to comfort your children, how much more does our Mother in Heaven comfort us when we stand in need of comfort?
Or which of you mothers, if your child is confused or has a problem, will not give him counsel? H you, then, lacking knowledge of the future, know how to counsel your children, how much more does our Heavenly Mother guide us when we ask to know what we should do?
Or which of you mothers, if your child asks you a question, will send him away? If you, then, being ignorant of many things, know how to enlighten your children, how much more does our Mother in Heaven give truth to those who seek it?
Or which of you mothers does not know that your children need you to be with them? If you, then, being selfish, will sacrifice to be with your children, how much more is our Mother, not in heaven, but here with us?
[1] Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1980), 344.
[2] Ibid., 340.
[3] Ibid., 344.
[4] Ibid., 173.
[5] Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, eng.: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854–86), 2:342.
[6] Ehat and Cook, 4–5.
[7] Ibid., 64.
[8] Joseph Fielding Smith, comps., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1968), 190.
[9] Ehat and Cook, 5.
[10] Margaret and Paul Toscano, Strangers in Paradox (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990), 265–91.
[post_title] => Toward a Mormon Theology of God the Mother [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 27.2 (Summer 1994): 15–40It would seem that Mormons who have believed for over a hundred years in the real existence of the Goddess, the Mother in Heaven, should be far ahead of other Christians in developing a theology of God the Mother. However, our belief in her as a real person puts us at a disadvantage. If the Goddess is merely a symbol of deity, as the male God is also a symbol, then certainly God can be pictured as either male or female with equal validity. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => toward-a-mormon-theology-of-god-the-mother [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-03-30 23:41:20 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-03-30 23:41:20 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11663 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology
Lavina Fielding Anderson
Dialogue 26.1 (Spring 1993): 23–82
THE CLASH BETWEEN OBEDIENCE to ecclesiastical authority and the integrity
of individual conscience is certainly not one upon which Mormonism has
a monopoly. But the past two decades have seen accelerating tensions in
the relationship between the institutional church and the two overlapping
subcommunities I claim—intellectuals and feminists.
THE CLASH BETWEEN OBEDIENCE to ecclesiastical authority and the integrity of individual conscience is certainly not one upon which Mormonism has a monopoly. But the past two decades have seen accelerating tensions in the relationship between the institutional church and the two overlapping subcommunities I claim—intellectuals and feminists. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-lds-intellectual-community-and-church-leadership-a-contemporary-chronology [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2023-10-19 23:08:38 [post_modified_gmt] => 2023-10-19 23:08:38 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11844 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Women's Stories, Women's Lives
Julie J. Nichols
Dialogue 25.2 (Fall 1992): 75–96
The personal essay, unlike personal journals, letters, and oral histories, is not an artless form. It transforms the raw material of personal experience in the double crucible of carefully chosen language and the light of mature retrospection.
[Because] so much of women's history . . . is sewn into quilts, baked in breads, honed in the privacy of dailiness, used up, consumed, worn out, . . . [reading and writing it] becomes essential to our sense of ourselves —nourishment, a vital sustenance; it is a way of knowing ourselves.
Aptheker 1990, 32
The personal essay, unlike personal journals, letters, and oral histories, is not an artless form. It transforms the raw material of personal experience in the double crucible of carefully chosen language and the light of mature retrospection. A finished personal essay requires revision—a literal re-seeing. Not only does the product enlighten and engage its reader, but the process of writing and revising also generates changes in the writer as she re-views herself, her place in her community, and the meaning of her experiences.
Carol Bly, author of a fine collection of essays, Letters from the Country, points out that in our time, women are socialized to write their stories: "We must write our stories so that we have them, as athletes must have muscle" (1990, 247). At the same time, Bly notes, men are discouraged from writing theirs, precisely because writing one's story requires a certain amount of evaluation and self-judgment. The implication is that, in writing their stories, women are already prepared to evaluate and judge, hence are better prepared to recognize and help counter the ills of a male-dominated world.
But certain aspects of the LDS culture can bar even women from enlightening themselves through personal narrative. Since 1984 I have taught English 218R—Introduction to Creative Writing, with an emphasis in literary nonfiction—at Brigham Young University. In these classes, I have watched men and women resist coming to terms with the contradictions of their lives. For Latter-day Saint women, in particular, such resistance comes from three general sources: lack of time, because setting aside large blocks of quiet, self-reflective time is difficult when you're busy rearing children, caring for a home, and more often than not, working; lack of knowledge about women's stories, which are infrequently mentioned in the scriptures and only recently making their way into Church lesson manuals; and fear of recrimination from family or from official sources for expressing negative emotions, dis agreement, or deviant thought processes.
Both men and women grapple with these problems, but Latter-day Saint women may feel more pressure to keep busy, write the family documents, perfect themselves, and nurture. The positive public image many women seek leaves little room for inevitable negative personal experiences or emotions.
In my classes, I try to help would-be memoirists overcome these barriers by providing structured time, abundant reading material, and plenty of theory and practice. Working together, we establish the personal narrative as the prototypical discourse (Langellier 1989, 243). We learn that telling a story forms the basis for all discourse. We read the works of women writers whose lives shape their material, from Julian of Norwich and Margery Kemp in the Middle Ages to Annie Dillard and Alice Walker in twentieth-century America, to Latter-day Saint women writers such as Emma Lou Thayne, Mary Bradford, and Helen Candland Stark. We perform writing exercises that allow memory and feeling to rise to the surface and find form in words. (The suggestions in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, and in Gabrielle Rico's Writing the Natural Way are my personal favorites.) Though these exercises are not always successful, when my students finally push through their resistance and produce fine essays similar to the ones that follow, we all reap remarkable rewards.
The first reward of producing a polished personal essay is pleasure—on many levels. Lorinne Taylor Morris took English 218R twice because the first time she took it, she struggled with an essay about her mother's death for months, saying to me several times, "I don't even know what I'm trying to say here." I encouraged her to continue to work with it, praising the understated tone and the importance of the story itself. When she finally came to a satisfactory ending, she said, "Now I know what I meant. I thought I was writing about how I always felt left out and how I tried to let my dad's efforts be enough. But I needed my mother to help me know who I was. I know that now. This is an essay about me as a woman."
Regeneration
Lorinne Morris*
*Student essays used with permission.
I was five years old when my mother died. Her death didn't seem to change my world much then. I just received more attention from relatives and neighbors, was all. In the two years since she had been diagnosed, she had evolved from my caregiver to a sick person whose bedroom I had to stay out of while the cancer ate at her body. I learned over those two years she could not care for me, so by the time of her death, I thought I had become used to living without her.
My father had begun taking over for Mother by making the family meals. He also woke us up and got us ready in the morning. I insisted on having my hair in ponytails like my two older sisters, and though he tried to part my hair into even halves and get the ponytails straight, they always came out crooked. After he left the bathroom I'd climb onto the counter and tug up on one ponytail and down on the other. It just wasn't the way it was supposed to be.
As the years passed my needs changed, and so did my father's role in my life. In junior high one day I received a wink from a boy who sat a row in front of me. My friends told me this was because he liked me and wanted "to go" with me, but I didn't know what "to go" with someone meant. I found Dad that evening outside doing chores just as the sun was setting and leaving just enough light to see his faint shadow. I guess he sensed the seriousness in my voice, because he put down the bucket of feed and sat on the upper rail of the fence while I unfolded the dilemma of my day. I can't remember now what he said, but it was dark before we came in.
When I became a quiet, emotional teenager, I realized my mother's death meant her absence from my life. During my high school years when I wanted some comfort, I often imagined what it would be like to have a mother. I would sit at night on the front steps and imagine my mother coming outside to sit by me. She would quietly open the front door, sit down next to me, and put her soft, middle-aged arm around me. I wasn't really sure what she would do next, maybe tell me not to cry or listen to me for a while. I would eventually stop my dreaming and go to find my dad.
But last summer the absence was relieved for a moment when I learned to bottle tomatoes. I used the old empty jars that had been on the shelves in my grandma's fruit room for years. They were covered with dust and spider webs. Some even had tiny dead bugs in the bottom. It took me hours to wash them all. Then I took them to a neighbor's house where she taught me how to blanch the tomatoes to remove the skins, then to quarter them and press them into the bottles. She showed me how to take a knife to remove the air bubbles before steaming them to seal their lids. Together we bottled over a hundred jars.
I took my bottled tomatoes back to my grandma's fruit room, and one by one I placed them on the dusty shelves. As I bent over, picked one of the bottles up, and placed it on the shelf, I saw my mother. Like me, she bent to pick up a bottle, placed it carefully, and stood back to admire the work she had done. At that moment she was there with me, doing the things she had done that I was now beginning to do. I understood that we are connected in ways that go far beyond death, and I whispered, "Welcome home, Mom," and she whispered, "Welcome home, Lorinne."
Pleasure, the first reward of a story well told, is not only cerebral but often physical—leaving both writer and reader feeling peaceful and relaxed. Lorinne experienced further pleasure; as she wrote, she discovered a new sense of herself, a sense that she belongs, even though her mother died long ago, to the community of mothers and daughters participating in rituals many Utah LDS mothers and daughters share. For the first time, she recognized her rightful place in that community.
Anthropologist Barbara Meyerhoff has formulated the notion of "the great story" (in Prells 1989), the set of stories by which we live our lives. LDS women may be centered by stories such as: "women should be in the home," "church attendance is a measure of spirituality," "families are forever," or "repentance and change are always possible." Lorinne's essay partakes of the "great story" that says, "Everyone needs a mother; no one can take a mother's place." Meyerhoff goes on to say that personal narrative is a "little story," a story that is true for one person rather than for an entire culture. People's "little stories" can have conservative or radical effects on the "great story." The following untitled essay by Kathy Haun Orr can be called conservative because it corroborates the "great story" that mothers are perfect. Like Lorinne's essay, it also provides pleasure—in this case, the pleasure of humor:
My mother can do everything. Every year my sisters and I got Easter dresses made especially for us, and dresses at Christmas for family pictures. She made the bridesmaid dresses for my oldest sister's wedding because they couldn't find any they liked in the stores. The dresses were lavender with white lace trim, tea length with a long, full ruffle and a v-waistline to match my sister's wedding gown. Then there's me: I've never even touched a sewing machine except to turn my mom's off when she forgot. The first time I sewed a button on was last semester when it came off my coat and my roommate wouldn't do it for me.
My birthday cakes were always decorated with whatever I requested, from Mickey Mouse when I was three to a two-tiered cake with frosting floral arrangements when I turned sweet sixteen. I did take a cake decorating class with my best friend our senior year of high school. I loved the class, and the teacher, but my roses looked like big lumps of lard, and my clowns always fell over like they were too tired to sit up.
My mother is the very definition of domestic goddess in the kitchen. Left overs taste great, everything's nutritious and yummy, and she can make desserts that make your mouth water just looking at them. Until I left home for college, the only things I could cook were toast, grilled cheese sandwiches, and chocolate chip cookies. When I got up to school, my roommates mocked me in the kitchen and gave me quizzes on all the different utensils and their true use.
My mother is into all sorts of crafts, like grapevine wreaths and quilts and the artwork for her silkscreening business. I know how to use a glue gun — I used one once to hem some pants.
Kathy concludes the essay by saying that despite the gaps between her mother's achievements and her own, her mother's love and encouragement are qualities she fully intends to pass on. The essay is fun to read and allowed Kathy to safely express her marginal position within a pervasive "great story."
Both these essays focus on a key role in a woman's life: the mother role. Being a mother is a pinnacle of accomplishment for a Latter-day Saint woman. Unconsciously or consciously, many LDS women examine their own propensities for this role with varying degrees of satisfaction or trepidation, seeking first (like Lorinne and Kathy) to connect with their own mothers and then to come to terms with the differences between their own mothers, their own individual leanings, and the "great story" about motherhood. Writing personal narrative encourages and facilitates this process.
It is especially liberating for my women students to realize that personal narrative needn't always agree with the "great story." According to Meyerhoff, the "little story" can also radically question the "great story." Often its power lies in its ability to interrogate and correct the inadequacies in the larger cultural narrative. When Nellie Brown was my student, she tried to write pieces about her frustration with what she saw as the voiceless, nameless position of women in the Church. Not until she wrote "There's No Place Like Home" (DIALOGUE, Spring 1992) was she able to connect her childhood experiences, which don't fit the LDS "great story" about women as good, nurturing mothers, and her current discomfort. In all of her efforts, Nellie sought to name the origins of her wounds and to find balm for them. It was this essay, written after our class was over, describing in fearful detail moments of abuse and denial, which finally had the power to initiate real healing. It is a moving and powerful piece in which Nellie interrogates two "great stories." The first is that mothers are perfect (Kathy's essay also corroborates this). The second is what Nellie's mother told her: little girls shouldn't speak about wrongs done to them. Fear of reprisal may have silenced Nellie until she wrote this essay, but her story powerfully imagines a better way. "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?" asks T. S. Eliot's Prufrock (1971, 4). Nellie and other writers like her do so dare, aiming to change the universe for the better. Toward the end of her essay, Nellie says:
I am ashamed of [these memories of cruelty.] [They] force me to admit that my mother was a child abuser. . . . I feel that I should say I love my mother, that she was a good woman just trying to do her best. . . . But I can't defend her. Saying those things doesn't change our relationship. It doesn't make the memories go away. . . . It doesn't change my fear of having children, . . . [N]ot because I can't overcome my past, but because maybe, without knowing, I haven't over come it yet. (1992, 5-7)
Writing the essay, for Nellie, was a step toward overcoming that past, a step toward creating a new future, a healing act that helps heal readers as well.
Personal narrative can also teach. Kristin Langellier notes that family stories may inspire or warn family members about the consequences of certain activities and also keep stories alive that are important to the family's solidarity (1989, 262). Such stories might begin with a question: why are things the way they are in this family or community? Telling personal stories that pursue answers may clarify complex questions. Beth Ahlborn Merrell's essay does just that.
No-Name Maria
Beth Ahlborn Merrell
Ten years after my own baptism I buried myself in the waters again . . . and again . . . and again. It was a great opportunity for me to recall the importance of baptism. I did my best to prepare myself, that the spirits waiting on the other side would not be mocked.
I was baptized thirty-seven times for Maria. She had no last name. No birth date or place. No family information. Only the location of her grave.
I inquired of these Marias. A temple worker told me that these Latin American women had been buried in graves without proper markings. Because there was no information, they were baptized with the symbolic name, Maria. I couldn't help but wonder if I had done any good in being baptized proxy for thirty-seven women who had no names.
Before leaving the temple, I received a printout with the information on the thirty-seven women I had served. No need looking over the names. All Marias. But I did look at the locations. Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua — almost all Central American countries. At the bottom of the list were five women from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. My heart jumped and burned.
August 29, 1924. Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Julia Eva Valasquez, seven years old, stood on the banks of the mountain river that ran through her family's estate. Her older brother, Roberto, fished while Julia twirled on the banks, watching the ruffled layers of her silk dress floating like magic in a rippling circle. Confident that she would dance with the best one day, she moved to the Latin rhythm that played inside her head. Bending close to the water, Julia smiled at the face she saw mirrored on the glassy surface of the pond: dark hair curled daintily around a heart-shaped face the color of creamy coffee. She flirted with her reflection, placing a lotus blossom behind her ear.
Julia never heard the revolutionist behind her. Perhaps the music inside her head played so loudly that it drowned out any snapping twigs that might have warned her of the silent murderer. One moment she was looking into the reflection of a smiling girl, the next she was seeing the reflection of a revolutionist raising a machete over her body. His double-edged knife whistled as it fell toward her head.
Instinctively she rolled, blocking the blows with her right arm. Roberto flew to protect himself and his sister, but his struggle was brief against the attacks made by men who came to proclaim their right against the suppression of Honduras' upper class. I've never heard anything about how my great-grandmother and Uncle Roberto found help. Roberto carried deep scars in his skull for life. Julia's dreams of dancing were shattered; she lost her right arm from the elbow. Their white mansion burned to the ground; their parents and siblings died in the flames.
I often wonder how my great-grandmother managed without two good arms and without the extended family support upon which Latins depend. But the details of my heritage are scarce. She died before I learned to speak Spanish. She died before my first-generation LDS mother taught her the gospel. She died without telling us the names of her parents and siblings. She died, and this is all I know of her life.
Records in Central American countries are incomplete at best. Government documents are burned periodically in the chaos of political revolutions. And when the fires die, the dead who leave no families are often buried in common, unmarked graves.
I look back at my printout. I asked to be baptized for a relative, but my mother told me it was impossible given our dead-end genealogy. I did not receive a heavenly visitation from a member of Julia's family; I have no physical proof that I served a relative in the temple. But in my heart I am grateful that gospel blessings are not limited to those who have proper burials or grave sites. I look forward to the day when I can perform temple ordinances for another no-name Maria.
In this essay, Beth understands that the rituals performed in the temple are not in vain. She also establishes connections with the community of her family, as did Lorinne and Kathy, as well as with the community of Latter-day Saints who work in the temple. Like Nellie, Beth also negotiates with a puzzling aspect of the "great story," and she asserts herself as a writer who can respond to her circumstances with a story that provides answers for her as it holds and moves its readers.
Further, by making her story a woman's story, Beth refutes the "great story" that assumes that canonized writings (scripture or official Church histories or manuals) are the only authoritative ones. Writing ordinary women's lives thoughtfully and imaginatively makes them extraordinary, gifts not only for posterity (the raison d'etre for most injunctions to write personal narrative) but also for interested contemporaries. Similarly and finally, a carefully written personal narrative can inspire other Latter-day Saints. Linda Paxton Greer's essay-in-progress is too long and still too rough to reproduce here except in summary, but her story is remarkable. She explains that she had seven living children and had just learned of her unexpected pregnancy with another when she was diagnosed with cancer that needed immediate and prolonged chemotherapy. Medical professionals advised her to terminate the pregnancy. Though both Church counsel and reason reassured her this was an acceptable way to save her own life, she furiously rejected such a course of action. Over several weeks she wept, consulted authorities, and prayed. Finally she had an experience in which she saw an image of herself interacting with her posterity and profoundly regretting the absence of one lost child. The image helped to clarify her path. She chose neither abortion nor chemotherapy; eight months later she gave birth to a large, healthy boy, her cancer in complete remission.
I do not see this an anti-abortion story. Instead it affirms the reality of the Spirit, even and perhaps especially for women in anguish about their roles as mothers. Women, too, are heirs to the gifts of heaven; it is a woman's privilege to defy "reason," conventional wisdom, or male authority, and to hold fast to her inner sources of light. Stories like this one belong in the Ensign, in Relief Society manuals, at the General Conference pulpit—as do all the essays recounted here, and myriad others written in my classes and elsewhere, and those as yet unwritten. For the Latter-day Saint, writing personal essays like these yields the rewards of pleasure; an increased sense of a valid place in the community; the opportunity to participate in the "great story," either conservatively or radically; and the chance to heal, teach, and inspire. Personal essays make available the "little story" and empower readers and writers to live fuller, more productive lives.
To overcome two obstacles to receiving these rewards —lack of time and lack of knowledge — LDS women (and men) can take classes, ask for or make for themselves protected time, and form writing and reading groups. They can make solitary commitments to write, read, and honor the personal writing of other women (and men). Writers can enter the essay contests offered by Exponent II and the Ensign, submit work to LDS and non-LDS publications, and require that more illustrative stories in Relief Society manuals be by and about women. But in order for that to happen, of course, the stories need to be discovered and written.
Overcoming fear, the third obstacle to producing personal narrative, may take more concentrated effort. It helps to know that even professional writers feel fear when faced with the task of writing personal narrative. When Bulgarian linguist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva was asked to contribute a brief sketch to a book of women's autobiography, she protested that it is nearly impossible to write about one's own life accurately: "The disturbing abyss between 'what is said' and undecidable 'truth' prevents me from being a good witness," she said (1987, 219). But, in spite of her discomfort, ultimately she agreed. Latter-day Saint writers, perhaps especially women, might take her words about personal narrative as their creed:
[post_title] => The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Women's Stories, Women's Lives [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 25.2 (Fall 1992): 75–96Should I shy away from it? I think of Canto III of Dante's Paradisio where the writer, having had visions, hurries to push them aside for fear of becoming a new Narcissus. But Beatrice shows him that such a denial would be .. . a mistake [precisely] comparable to the narcissistic error. For if an immediate vision is possible and must be sought, then it is necessarily accompanied by visionary constructions that are imperfect . . . fragmentary, schematic. . . . Truth can only be partially spoken. And it is enough to begin. (1987, 220)
The personal essay, unlike personal journals, letters, and oral histories, is not an artless form. It transforms the raw material of personal experience in the double crucible of carefully chosen language and the light of mature retrospection. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-extraordinary-in-the-ordinary-womens-stories-womens-lives [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-17 23:48:17 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-17 23:48:17 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=11960 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise
Lola Van Wagenen
Dialogue 24.4 (Winter 1991): 75–96
IMMEDIATELY UPON THE PASSAGE of territorial legislation enfranchising Utah's women in 1870, almost fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment extended the vote to American women, arguments erupted between the Mormon and non-Mormon community over the reasons behind this legislation.
Immediately upon the passage of territorial legislation enfranchising Utah's women in 1870, almost fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment extended the vote to American women, arguments erupted between the Mormon and non-Mormon community over the reasons behind this legislation. Since that time, historians have continued to disagree about the motives of the Mormon-dominated legislature. Some dismiss this early woman suffrage in Utah as a fluke; others believe Mormon women were passive recipients of the vote or pawns of the male leadership. Still others are convinced the act was progressive, the result of a generally egalitarian ideology.[1]
Amidst this array of opinions, it is somewhat surprising to find that what has been overlooked is the possibility that Mormon women themselves had a role in securing their suffrage. This oversight is no doubt due in part to the fact that Mormon women did not publicly draft petitions, nor did they hold public demonstrations to seek enfranchisement. As a result, many historians have concluded that they were not politically active until after suffrage, and then only in response to attempts to disfranchise them.[2] Had these scholars studied the actions of Mormon women within their church, a different view might have emerged.
There is ample evidence that Mormon women were not disinterested recipients of the vote. Their reaction to enfranchisement readily demonstrates their involvement. Moreover, they had not been politicized overnight: many were well prepared in 1870 to assume an active political role in their communities (Scott 1986-87). Both their religious and community activities politicized Mormon women and helped lead to the 1870 franchise. Although Mormon women did not openly seek suffrage, I believe they were activists in their own behalf, and their actions contributed to their enfranchisement. The record also shows that Mormon women were not totally isolated in far-away Utah. They engaged many of the same problems and sought similar solutions as did women's advocates in the States.
For Mormon women, 1870 signaled the end of a politicization that had begun in the 1840s and the beginning of a visible and aggressive political activism. This process occurred in three stages. The first began in Nauvoo, where some Mormon women were taught that all the doctrines of the restored gospel, including polygamy, signaled a new era for women. Promised equality and privileges greater than they had ever known, women participated in Church governance through the "religious franchise," the Church's method of voting (Cannon 1869; Gates n.d.; Gates and Widtsoe 1928, 7-9).
Clear evidence of a new era was most expressly manifest by the founding of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo in 1842. Sarah Kimball is credited with the original idea for the society, although the Prophet Joseph Smith blessed and sanctified the organization (Derr 1987; Crocheron 1884, 27; Derr 1976; Jenson 1901, 4:373). The Relief Society helped the sisters develop many of the same skills other American women were learning in similar benevolent associations (see Berg 1978). But in addition, Mormon women took their first united political action when they drafted—and delivered—a petition to the governor of Illinois seeking protection for the community of Nauvoo.[3] Sarah Kimball later claimed that when the Relief Society was established, "the sure foundations of the suffrage cause were deeply and permanently laid" (1892). In the upheaval following the death of Joseph Smith, the Relief Society was temporarily disbanded by Brigham Young. The Mormon sisters, however, resented giving up their organization and were firm in their conviction that they had specific powers in relationship to it. Angered by these assertions, Brigham Young lashed out saying, "When I want Sisters or the Wives of the members of the church to get up Relief Society I will summon them to my aid but until that time let them stay at home & if you see Females huddling together veto the concern and if they say Joseph started it tell them it is a damned lie for I know he never encouraged it" (in Derr 1987, 163).
The women, however, were steadfast in their belief that the Society was rightfully their own organization. They frequently asserted their convictions by quoting Joseph Smith's promise: "I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time" (Minutes, Nauvoo, 28 April 1842). The activism that Mormon women initiated in Nauvoo established a pattern of participation that defined the first critical stage of their process of politicization. By the time the Saints were forced to leave Nauvoo, an inchoate sisterhood had emerged, one that quickened on the Great Plains. Survival on the westward trek dictated cooperation among Mormon women, and many learned through that ordeal and what followed both leadership and independence.
The second stage of politicization dates from the Saints' 1847 arrival in the Great Basin to the end of the Civil War. It was a time of severe stress for Mormon women. Plural marriage, combined with the frequent calling of males on Church missions, left many women alone to provide materially and emotionally for the welfare of their families. In addition, Leonard Arrington has described this era as marked by "harsh hyperbole, offensive rhetoric and militant posturing" on the part of Brigham Young and federal officials. The passage of the 1862 Anti bigamy Act reinforced the national attitudes toward Mormons and polygamy (1985, 300). When that rhetoric was directed toward Mormon women, it appears, at best, insensitive and at worst anti-female (Evans 1980, 13). These were difficult years for Sarah Kimball, who taught school for several years under "very trying circumstances" and, according to an early biography, became "even more than ever convinced" of the need to change working conditions for women who were in competition with men. She saw "no other method that could be so effectual as the elective franchise" (Jenson 1901, 4:190). It is not clear, however, how broadly her sentiments were shared.
In spite of these difficulties and constraints, Mormon women continued their organizational efforts. They established a Female Council of Health in 1851 to discuss personal health matters and were active participants in the Polysophical Society, a western version of the lyceum which sponsored lectures by visiting scholars or dignitaries. Finally, on women's initiative, between 1847 and 1856, various forms of the Relief Society made brief reappearances in a decentralized and ad hoc form (Jensen 1983; Naisbitt 1899; Beecher 1975, 1). Throughout this second stage, 1847-65, women participated in various public efforts to help their own poor as well as Native Americans in the territory and promoted the health and well-being of other women. In these efforts, they learned to move forward carefully enough to avoid problems, but forcefully enough to break new ground.
The third stage of politicization ran from 1865 to the end of the decade. Though benign, the Utah War had been expensive for the Saints, and anti-Mormon sentiment was on the rise. Realizing that he had to find a less combative way to deal with the national government, Brigham Young began reassessing past economic policies and renewed an emphasis on cooperative efforts, including home manufacturing. In this climate, Mormon women worked for the permanent reestablishment of the Relief Society. Eliza R. Snow, President Young's most trusted female counsel, was not officially set apart as president of the "sisterhood" until 1880 but was authorized to reorganize the Relief Society in 1867 (Derr 1987, 172). "The time had come," she stated, "for the sisters to act in a wider sphere" (Minutes 1867).
While each ward Relief Society was officially under the "guidance" of the bishop, programs and priorities reflected the counsel of Eliza R. Snow and the vision of individual ward presidents. In the Salt Lake City Fifteenth Ward, Sarah Kimball was determined to prove that women could contribute economically to the community. She tenaciously promoted home manufacturing, which included a variety of homecrafts such as straw hats and handmade gloves as well as food items, and the construction of a storehouse financed, owned, and operated by women (Minutes 4 Jan., 15 Feb., 18 June, 16 July, 14 Aug. 1868). Her statement when the Salt Lake City Fifteenth Ward chapel's cornerstone was laid indicates her support for women's economic in dependence: "A woman's allotted sphere of labor is not sufficiently extensive and varied to enable her to exercise all [her] God-given powers . . . nor are her labors made sufficiently remunerative to afford her that independence compatible with true womanly dignity" (Minutes 12 Nov. 1868).
Whether Kimball, Snow, and others saw economic independence as a step toward political activity is unclear. However, Kimball thought it right for women to be independent, but she was careful not to appear too autonomous. Programs were always approved by local male authorities. Eliza Snow also promoted programs of self-improvement and instructed the sisters that the time would come "when we will have to be in large places and act in responsible situations" (Minutes 25 April 1868). At the same time, she consistently reminded women of their duty as wives and mothers and of the importance of obedience. Nevertheless, the practical experience in domestic commercial enterprises, the commitment to self-improvement, and the constant affirmation of their spiritual powers had produced a vibrant sense of sisterhood. The Relief Society provided a sanctioned setting in which to discuss women's rights and responsibilities.
By 1869, the success of various Relief Society efforts was gaining public attention in Zion—many men who had been skeptical began praising the women's accomplishments. Among the women, pride and growing self-esteem were palpable. Change was aloft in the community of Mormon women. As an example, in the past when they were portrayed in anti-polygamy attacks as degraded victims, Mormon women had chosen not to respond; now increasingly they came to their own defense.
Ironically, finding a way to end polygamy was the motivation behind the earliest proposal to enfranchise Utah's women. The underlying assumption among non-Mormons was that Mormon women would vote to end polygamy. This tactic was suggested by the New York Times in 1867 (reprint, Deseret News, 15 Jan. 1867; Beeton 1986, x)[4] and was subsequently introduced as a bill in the United States Congress. To the surprise of the bill's sponsors, both Utah's territorial representative and the press in Utah received the proposal favorably; as a result it was subsequently abandoned. But from this time forward, the issue of woman suffrage was increasingly discussed in the territory—by women as well as men.
January 1870 signaled a turning point in the politicization of Mormon women. They had strengthened the position of their most valuable activist organization, the Relief Society. Widening their sphere of activity, they had thoughtfully debated women's roles. Their gender consciousness appears clear. They had moved into a highly visible public arena that they energetically sustained for the rest of the century.
Two events mark 1870 as a watershed in the history of Mormon women and political activism. First, in early January three thousand women gathered in a "great indignation meeting" to protest anti polygamy legislation introduced in the national Congress. Then in February, acting Governor S. A. Mann, a non-Mormon, signed the woman suffrage bill passed by the territorial legislature. The circumstances surrounding these events show Mormon women as outspoken public activists in their own behalf.
The arrival in the territory in December 1869 of a new anti polygamy bill, the Cullom Act, propelled Mormon women into political activism. Among other things, the Cullom Bill stipulated that anyone believing in polygamy would be denied the right to vote or serve on a jury. Though the Saints no doubt knew the bill had been introduced in Congress, seeing it in print must have been a shock — both the substance and language were outrageous and insulting. In fact, a number of non-Mormons found the bill offensive and spoke against its passage (Deseret News, 9 March 1870).
Mormon women were especially outraged, which was nothing new, but now their response was boldly public. They called for a meeting 6 January to plan a women's public protest; in probability it was approved by Church leaders.[5] Sarah Kimball opened the discussion stating, "Mormon women would be unworthy of the names we bear or of the blood in our veins, should we longer remain silent." Eliza Snow added that it was "high time" for Mormon women to "rise up in the dignity of our calling and speak for ourselves." The group voted unanimously to hold a protest, and a committee drafted resolutions. After the resolutions were read and approved, the meeting took an even more aggressive turn. Bathsheba Smith stated that she was pleased with the actions thus far, then moved "that we demand of the Gov. the right of franchise." The women voted, and the "vote carried." Then Lucy W. Kimball, stating that "we had borne in silence as long as it was our duty to bear," moved that the women "be represented in Washington." Eliza Snow and Sarah Kimball were "elected as representatives" (Minutes, 19 Feb. 1870).
In response to such bold action, one might have expected newspaper headlines the next day to have read "Women to Seek Franchise from Utah Governor," or "Snow and Kimball Elected to Represent Mormon Women in Washington." Instead five days later, the Deseret News headline read, "Minutes of a Ladies Mass Meeting." The article, which included the comments by Sarah Kimball and Eliza Snow as well as a full copy of the protest resolution, blandly concluded: "Miss E. R. Snow, Mrs. L. W. Kimball and Mrs. B. Smith made a few very appropriate remarks expressing their hearty concurrence in the movement and in the measures adopted by the meeting." The article was signed by Sarah Kimball.[6] It fails to mention both the motion to seek the franchise and Eliza Snow's and Sarah Kimball's election as representatives to Washington.
This represents a fascinating editorial decision. While the organizing meeting minutes show solid evidence of the quickening political behavior of Mormon women, excluding both motions from the public record obscured their efforts from immediate public (and eventual historical) scrutiny. There are several possible reasons for the omission. The sisters themselves may have worried about appearing too aggressive or about using the Relief Society for their own agenda—accusations that had been leveled at Emma Smith in Nauvoo—thereby endangering the position of the Relief Society; or the women may have wanted to discuss their resolutions with the Brethren before announcing them publically. The discrepancy may also show one reason why Mormon women's political activities are so difficult to trace: the women were more interested in being effective than visual. A low profile may have been critical to their success, and they knew it. Clearly, however, Mormon women had been talking privately about suffrage, and prior to their enfranchisement they were trying to do something about it.
Another possible reason for not publicizing their 6 January action on woman suffrage was the immediately upcoming mass protest meeting, which needed planning. This "Great Indignation Meeting" held 13 January 1870, brought three thousand women to the Salt Lake Tabernacle to hear the "leading sisters" of the Church speak from its pulpit for the first time. Though the meeting's stated agenda was to protest the Cullom anti-polygamy bill, proceedings indicate that some Mormon women had come to see polygamy as a women's rights issue. Although nine of the fourteen recorded speakers spoke directly to the defense of polygamy without raising the issue of women's rights or suffrage, five did broach the topic. In a surprising opening remark, Sarah Kimball stated, "We are not here to advocate woman's rights but man's rights" (Deseret News, 14 Jan. 1870). The 8 February New York Times picked right up on her statement: "One of the speakers declared they had not met to agitate for "women's rights" but "men's rights"; as did the New York Herald: "In these days when women threaten to become tyrants, it is refreshing to read such earnest pleadings in favor of the rights of men" (in Deseret News, 16 Feb. 1870). Those anxious about the danger of "strong-minded" women would undoubtedly be reassured by Kimball's comment. Most likely, that was her intent. She did not, however, overlook women's interests. She ended her speech, noting that not only would the legislation "deprive our fathers, husbands and brothers" of their constitutional privileges, but "would also deprive us, as women, of the privilege of selecting our husbands, and against this we most unqualifiedly protest" (Deseret News, 14 Jan. 1870, emphasis added).
Ultimately the protest served a number of purposes. Mormon women at last had a chance to show the outside world that they were articulate and willing to defend their beliefs. The newspaper coverage was perhaps the most positive account ever given of Mormon women, and that reflected well on the whole community. The Ogden Junction on 23 March commented, "If the Cragin and Cullom legislative burlesques have no other good effect, they have drawn out the ladies of Utah from silence and obscurity, exhibited them before the world as women of thought, force and ability, who are able to make strong resolutions and defend them with boldness and eloquence."
The anti-polygamy campaign had unintended consequences for Mormon women as well. The protest meeting proved to Mormon men that the women could organize a successful public demonstration and could be, in a "wider sphere" of action, a valuable asset "to the cause of Zion." Mormon men could only applaud the women's public defense of polygamy. The women would not be accused of acting outside their appropriate sphere; defending polygamy became a sanctioned mechanism by which women increased their public participation.
Only four months before the meeting, Brigham Young had commented that he wished more women would assume their rights: "the right to stop all folly in [their] conversation" and "the right to ask their husbands to fix up the front yard" (JD 14:105; Evans 1980, 13). Obviously he was not grappling seriously with woman's rights or suffrage. However, almost immediately following the protest meeting, attitudes changed; male Church leaders moved in support of woman suffrage. Historian Leonard Arrington asserts that in the "aftermath" of the meeting, "Brigham and other Mormon leaders—both men and women — decided it would be helpful if the Utah legislature should pass an act granting woman suffrage" (1985, 364). By 12 February the territorial legislature had passed the woman suffrage legislation. Women actively lobbied acting governor S.A. Mann, and, a week later he signed the bill into law (Arrington 1985, 365).
At a subsequent meeting on 19 February at the Salt Lake City Fifteenth Ward, Eliza Snow suggested a committee draft an "expression of gratitude" to the acting governor (Minutes 19 Feb. 1870).[7] That task completed, the meeting became a "feast of woman's anticipations" (Tullidge 1877, 502). If this group shared a single political perception, it was that they had entered a new phase in the "era of women." Several speakers expressed their pleasure in gaining the vote, which they referred to as the "reform." Prescenda Kimball said she was "glad to see our daughters elevated with man," while Bathsheba Smith "believed that woman was coming up in the world." Other women expressed words of caution. Margaret Smoot said that she "never had any desire for more rights," that she had considered "politics aside from the sphere of woman." But Wilmarth East disagreed. "I cannot agree with Sister Smoot in regard to woman's rights," she declared, adding that she had always wanted "a voice in the politics of the nation, as well as to rear a family." Phebe Woodruff said she had "looked for this day for years. . . . [The] yoke on woman is partly removed," she noted, adding "Let us lay it by, and wait till the time comes to use it, and not run headlong and abuse the privilege" (Minutes 19 Feb. 1870).
For Sarah Kimball, however, suffrage was a turning point. She told the women that she had "waited patiently a long time, and now that we were granted the right of suffrage, she would openly declare herself a woman's right's woman." She then "called upon those who would do so to back her up, whereupon many manifested their approval" (Minutes 19 Feb. 1870). These are not the words of a woman who had been recently politicized. Moreover, the rights she was referring to were not religious rights, but the secular rights of women: political, economic, and social. It is hardly surprising that some women at the meeting were unready to "manifest their approval" and "back up" Sarah Kimball on woman's rights. Declaring oneself a "woman's rights woman" was no doubt a bold move for any woman. The implication is that Kimball now allied herself with the more militant American suffragists. The statement was so daring, in fact, that Sarah Kimball waited until after suffrage was granted to declare herself publicly.
Woman suffrage re focused the political activity of Mormon women. No sooner were they enfranchised than the outside world moved to disfranchise them. For the rest of the century, they were defenders of their own suffrage and were joined in that defense by many woman suffrage activists from the States. In turn, Mormon women were activists for the passage of woman suffrage for all women and were outspoken defenders of woman's rights. The degree of help that Mormon women received in return was uneven. Anti-polygamy activists tried to dissuade national suffrage advocates from defending woman suffrage in Utah, claiming that it only reinforced the power of the Mormon church and the strength of polygamy. As a result, support for Mormon women waxed and waned at various times for twenty-five years, and it differed between woman suffrage organizations and among individual suffragists.
Despite the efforts of many national and local advocates of women suffrage, in 1887 all women in Utah were disfranchised by a federal law designed to destroy polygamy and to reduce the political and economic power of the Church. Three years later the Mormons officially discontinued plural marriage and began a vigorous campaign to secularize political life and to secure statehood. In 1895 woman suffrage was vigorously debated during the constitutional convention, and despite fears that its inclusion might damage the bid for statehood, its advocates prevailed.
A month later national suffrage leaders, including a vigorous but aging Susan B. Anthony, were on hand to celebrate the victory with their sister-suffragists in Utah. In a tribute to Anthony, Sarah Kimball discussed the difficulty of the early years of the woman suffrage movement in Utah. She said that when she first read Anthony's publication the "Revolution" (1869), she would not have "dared to say the bold, grand things that Miss Anthony said. . . . That," she states, would have made her "so unpopular," she would have hardly "dared to shoulder it." She continued, "As time rolled on we were very careful" ("Conference" 1895).
If a single word could describe the operative mode for Mormon women, it would be "careful." They consistently guarded their words and actions to make sure the hierarchy never felt threatened or interpreted the women's goals as inconsistent with the goals of the church. But the women tenaciously defended their right to participate in the political process. They knew that success was essential, but it was equally critical to succeed in the right way. A year after they were enfranchised, the leading sisters wrote a circular stating that "God through His servants had conferred on us the right of franchise for a wise purpose. This privilege has been granted without our solicitation, and in this as well as in many other respects, we realize that women in Utah possess advantages greatly superior to women elsewhere" (Gates n.d.). The document is a good example of the careful way Mormon women operated. They bypass credit, express their gratitude, and yet secure their continuing activity, in this instance by claiming divine purpose for their enfranchisement. By deflecting credit for their achievements, however, Mormon women themselves contributed to the illusion that they were not agents in their own behalf. Hiding their agency was not uncommon for other nineteenth-century women, and it is not uncommon today. But is it one reason their political activism prior to 1870 has been overlooked.
Mormon women helped gain suffrage by being activists in their own behalf. Suffrage was not granted women in 1870 because of an overwhelming egalitarian impulse on the part of the Brethren; rather the usual pragmatic decision-making process was at work. Four months before women were enfranchised, the male leadership was still undecided about the wisdom of woman suffrage.[8] The women of Utah appear to have been enfranchised only after they had proved their potential for political usefulness. And, in fact, Mormon women did much to buffer growing criticism of the Church and of polygamy by securing the support of many non-Mormon suffragists and by presenting to the American public an alternative vision of Mormon woman hood. Between 1870 and 1890, Mormon women defended plural marriage as a First Amendment right and woman's rights issue, but they also continued to agitate for woman suffrage after polygamy was no longer a central issue. In 1895 when woman suffrage was restored, support for woman's political equality in Utah, while not unanimous, clearly was broadly based. Thus the advocacy of woman suffrage was more than just expedient.
By the time women in Utah were reenfranchised, Mormon suffragists had earned the respect and friendship of many of their sister suffragists, even though they steadfastly maintained the divinity of their church and continued to sustain and obey its male leaders. But apart from religious issues, when it came to political, economic, and social rights of women, Mormon women were, as Sarah Kimball would have said, "heart and hand" with the female activists of the world.
[1] Eleanor Flexner notes a difference between Mormon and non-Mormon interpretations of this event. Mormon historians, she states, see the enfranchisement as the "logical extension of an egalitarian attitude toward women basic to the Mormon creed." But to Flexner, a non-Mormon, woman suffrage was an interplay of other forces, the most significant being the need of the hierarchy to "enlist the help of women" against the passage of anti-polygamy legislation (1959, 165). In contrast, non-Mormon historians Mari Jo Buhle and Paul Buhle see woman suffrage in Utah as the act of a "progressive Mormon hierarchy" (1978, introduction); likewise Mormon historian Thomas Alexander states that woman suffrage was a reflection of "progressive sentiment in advance of the rest of the nation" (1970, 38), while another Mormon historian, Richard Van Wagoner, sees the activities of Mormon women as "orchestrated by the Mormon hierarchy" (1986, 109). Beverly Beeton concludes that Mormon women were "pawns" (1986, 37), and Anne F. Scott sees woman suffrage as "to some extent a gift from the male hierarchy" (1986-87, 10). Today, as in other aspects of Mormon history, the old line between Mormon and non-Mormon interpretations is becoming increasingly blurred.
[2] Several sources suggest but do not develop the idea of women's activism. See Arrington in Brigham Young (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985, 364-5). Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Carol Cornwall Madsen, and Jill Mulvay Derr, "The Latter-day Saints and Women's Rights, 1870-1920: A Brief Survey," Task Papers in LDS History, No. 29 (Salt Lake City: Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1979). Edward Tullidge, Woman of Mormondom (1877; Salt Lake City, 1975) states that women worked for passage but does not document the statement.
[3] Several hundred Mormon women signed the petition, which Emma Smith and other women then took to the governor. Joseph Smith attended a Relief Society meeting in August of 1842 and thanked the women for having taken "the most active part" in his defense ("Minutes," Nauvoo, Aug. 1842; Crocheron 1884, 3; Newell and Avery 1984, 127).
[4] Gary Bunker and Carol Bunker note that the first suggestion that woman suffrage could be an "antidote" to polygamy came from William Ray in 1856 (1991, 33).
[5] The Deseret News 9 March 1870. Sixteen years later, in 1886, Mormon women requested permission from President John Taylor to hold a similar meeting (Kimball, Pratt, and Home 1886).
[6] Two different essays by historians report on this part of the meeting, but neither refers to a vote on the suffrage motion or to Lucy W. Kimball's motion. Beverly Beeton states: "A 'Sister Smith' even demanded of the governor that women be allowed to vote. At the close of the meeting Eliza Snow ... " (1986, 31). Reported in this way, what happened becomes only one insignificant woman demanding the vote, rather than a motion made and passed by the whole Society. Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Carol Cornwall Madsen, and Jill Mulvay Derr state: "Later in the meeting one Sister Smith rose to move that 'we demand of the governor the right of franchise.' Whether the motion carried or not, and whether or not the demand reached the legislature is not known" (1979, 10).
[7] The 23 February Deseret News reported that after the meeting, a committee took the letter of thanks to the governor, who told the women "that the subject has been much agitated . . . [and] will be watched with profound interest." He hoped, he added, that "the women would act so as to prove the wisdom of the legislation." According to George A. Smith, "the ladies said they thought the Governor was about as much embarrassed as they were" (1870).
[8] For comments showing a lack of resolve on woman suffrage from both George Q. Cannon and Brigham Young, see Deseret News, 6 August 1869, and the JD 14:105.
[post_title] => In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 24.4 (Winter 1991): 75–96IMMEDIATELY UPON THE PASSAGE of territorial legislation enfranchising Utah's women in 1870, almost fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment extended the vote to American women, arguments erupted between the Mormon and non-Mormon community over the reasons behind this legislation. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => in-their-own-behalf-the-politicization-of-mormon-women-and-the-1870-franchise [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-17 23:41:46 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-17 23:41:46 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=12033 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Grammar of Inequity
Lavina Fielding Anderson
Dialogue 23.4 (Winter 1990): 83–96
This essay explores some of the strengths of deliberately choosing
to relate to our world with gender-inclusive language in three areas
The thoughtful and subtle philosopher Montaigne once remarked: "Most of the grounds of the world's troubles are matters of grammar" (in Auden and Kronenberger 1962, 155).
Now this is not just one of those terribly clever French writers being cute. He was expressing a principle that I, as a writer and editor, have come to see as a fact of our universe. The way we arrange words is determined by and, in turn, determines the way we arrange our reality. The labels we apply to people determine, in large measure, our relationships with them; but our relationships also reshape those categories and labels.
This essay explores some of the strengths of deliberately choosing to relate to our world with gender-inclusive language in three areas crucial to our religious life—our scriptures, our hymns, and our prayers. I recognize that not everyone is comfortable analyzing the way we speak or altering traditional forms of speech. That discomfort may become particularly acute in the discussion on prayer where I double the stakes: I urge not only using inclusive language, but also replacing the formal language of prayer with everyday speech. I make this double plea because I feel that one shift in understanding—including Mother in Heaven—cannot occur without the other—praying in the most familiar and direct ways we can.
Why am I urging this program of grammatical reform? Inclusive speech is not only ethically right but has profound spiritual consequences. How we read the scriptures and how we pray shape our relationship with our divine parents. It is a truism to say that we speak in ways that are familiar to us, but it is a painful thing to realize that the familiar speech of our religious experience excludes women. The mother tongue belongs to the fathers. For Latter-day Saints, familiar religious speech is the language of the King James and Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price. The scriptures are profoundly exclusionary. It is an agonizing paradox; but to the degree we love and use the language of the scriptures, we also love and use the language of exclusion.
Yet this is not my view of God. I feel to the very depths of my soul that the Savior's mission was to women as well as to men, that our theology embraces a divine couple, that the place of our Mother in Heaven is as secure as that of our Father in Heaven, and that a full understanding of godhood will eventually include an understanding of her powers, principles, and responsibilities.
I feel that women must be fully included in the gospel of Jesus Christ, not because the scriptural texts fully include them nor because our theology perfectly includes them but because any other pattern does violence to the fabric of the universe, distorting and misshaping the image of God that I strive, however imperfectly, to see and reach toward. When language becomes a veil, masking and disguising God, then it is imperative, as a matter of spiritual health, that language change. I think that the process, though arduous, will be accompanied by joy.
Inclusive Language in the Church
I had the instructive experience some time ago of reading through an entire conference issue of the Ensign (November 1988) looking specifically for messages of inclusion and exclusion. I would not particularly recommend this exercise, except as a research project, since it narrows one's focus. Nor is it the way I usually read conference addresses. However, I enjoyed spending this concentrated time with the conference texts, discovering points of agreement, feeling called to repentance by some talks, comforted by others, and being astonished by still others.
But with my particular assignment in mind, I looked for references to women and made lists. I excluded scriptural quotations because women are comparatively rare in the scriptures. In the interests of fairness, I also excluded references to Jesus and Joseph Smith. This particular conference happened to be the October 1988 conference, in which Richard G. Scott was made an apostle. I excluded references to him that were ritual expressions of welcome to the Quorum of the Twelve and references to President Benson that were expressions of support, appreciation for his presence, and so forth.
Here are the results of what I found:
- Except in the priesthood session, all talks were addressed equally to both men and women.
- When speakers quoted named individuals who were not scriptural personages, they quoted thirty-one men and five women.
- In examples and stories, thirty involved men only, nine involved women only, and seventeen involved men and women.
- Twenty men and two women were named.
Yes, the results were fairly lopsided. So what else is new? And furthermore, expressions of ritual indignation about the imbalance are actually pretty boring. Far more interesting are some additional observations:
One is that Michaelene P. Grassli, the Primary general president, spoke in the Sunday afternoon session with General Authorities on both sides. This is definite progress. This new custom is a trend which I'm happy to applaud along with the continued presence of the women organizational leaders on the stand.
Another cheering item is that about half of the General Authorities who referred to their wives called them by their names. I also consider this to be a helpful, hopeful trend since a name is an individual expression of personhood whereas "wife" (like "husband") is a role that is automatically created by marriage.
Even more significant in the good news department were the evident, serious, concentrated efforts of the men who spoke to use inclusive language in their remarks. For example:
- In Elder Neal A. Maxwell's eloquent address, he said: "Why do some crush and break the tender hearts of spouses and children through insensitivity and even infidelity?" and called them "pathetic men or women." The reference to "breaking the tender hearts" of course echoes the language of Jacob's strong denunciation of adulterous husbands in the Book of Mormon ("ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives," Jac. 2:35). Elder Maxwell has correctly noted that either spouse can commit adultery with the same devastating effects (p. 33).
- Elder David Haight rephrased a quotation from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich that had originally applied only to women so that it also included men: " 'I suppose every Mormon [man and] woman [have] measured [themselves] at one time or another against [their] pioneer ancestors'" (brackets his). Elder Haight also added a masculine example to parallel Laurel's feminine one. "Could I leave my wife and children without food or means to support themselves while I responded to a call to serve a mission abroad, or take these same innocent ones, dependent solely upon me for their survival, into hostile territory to set up housekeeping and provide a livelihood for them? Or, were I a woman, [and here's he's quoting Laurel's example], 'could I crush my best china to add glitter to a temple, bid loving farewell to a missionary husband as I lay in a wagon bed with fever and chills, leave all that I possessed and walk across the plains to an arid wilderness?'" (pp. 82-83). Yes, we all know that most pioneer women could probably not accurately be described as "solely dependent" and, in fact, usually managed to support those same husbands on missions while putting food on the table for their children at home —but it's quite obvious that a sincere effort to apply a principle of inclusiveness prompted Elder Haight's remarks.
- President Thomas Monson, in speaking at the priesthood session, referred to athletic teams of "young men and young women" (p. 44).
- President Howard W. Hunter reminded his listeners that "God knows and loves us all. We are, every one of us, his daughters and his sons" (p. 60). This language is particularly noteworthy because it specifies daughters and sons, rather than the more usual phrase "children of God," and also puts daughters first.
- Elder Richard G. Scott, in referring to the dedication of the Mexico City Temple, mentions the presence of "many of the men and women leaders of Mexico and Central America" (p. 76), a deliberate and inclusive specification instead of the more usual reference just to "leaders."
In short, I feel confident in affirming a sensitivity and courtesy on the part of General Authorities that manifests itself in real efforts to use more gender-inclusive language and to include women more visibly in the public rituals of general conference. Why, then, did I end up feeling those all-too-familiar and all-too-awful feelings of grief as I read the thoughtful and kindly messages of these sensitive and decent men?
The answer is that it has very little to do either with them or with me. The mechanisms of patriarchy are embedded deep in our culture and our language. I have long been dismayed at what the Church "does" to women, but I have been short-sighted. The Church neither invented the mechanisms of patriarchy nor shaped the grammar of inequity. The sources of oppression seep through the bedrock of our culture itself. That insight has brought me feelings of understanding and even forgiveness that are very healing.
However, it has not brought me acceptance. Inequity is wrong — ethically and morally wrong. If the wrong runs to bedrock, then correcting it cannot be done quickly and easily —but it must be done. I am not qualified to discuss political and economic strata in that bed rock, but I do want to explore the sedimentary accretions of its grammar.
I am going to use President Ezra Taft Benson's powerful closing address as an example. I do so with some hesitation, since I am aware of the real danger of making a person "an offender for a word," in the terms of Isaiah's rebuke of those whom he calls "the scorners" (Isa. 29:20-21). Not in a critical spirit, then, but to demonstrate the terrible irony that "feasting" on the words of the scriptures is a diet deficient in inclusiveness, let's look at that address. President Benson speaks to "my beloved brethren and sisters" and refers to "offspring of a loving God," children of God, members, parents, leaders, teachers, and families, all in gender-neutral language. But he also refers to "the agency of man" and "all mankind" and says (1) "God reveals His will to all men," (2) "I testify that it is time for every man to set in order his own house. .. . It is time for the unbeliever to learn for himself that this work is true," and (3) "In due time all men will gain a resurrection" (p. 87). Although he appropriately uses masculine references about the apostles Christ chose and about the president of the Church, there is no contextual reason for exclusionary language in the settings of the quotations I have just cited.
I am not, as I said, accusing President Benson of insensitivity or discourtesy to women. I am simply using his address to point out how deeply and strongly traditions of usage grip our language. Yet I believe that we cannot correctly understand either the God we worship or our own ultimate potential as gods as relationships of male-female inequity. If I am correct, then we must change those traditions and foster a new language of inclusion. But how? We will not find a complete answer to this dilemma in the scriptures, nor in our history, nor in our theology, although we can find support for an inclusionary position in all three. I believe that we must find the answer first in our own hearts, then turn outward with questions — not questions like "Why are things the way they are?" or "How can we make them or it change?" but "How can I behave so that my actions mirror the truth of what I feel in my heart?"
What are the implications of approaching our scriptures, our hymns, and our prayers with language that reflects our deepest convictions about the relationships that should exist among men and women and about our even more important relationship with God?
Reading the Scriptures to Include
An obvious beginning is to read the scriptures with inclusionary language. This is quite a bit easier than we might think. Our son, Christian, was, as I recall, about four and a half when I realized how adept he had become. Our bedtime story involved a rabbit in red overalls, and I said something like, "See the bunny? He's looking for something to eat." Christian, absorbed in the picture, commented absentmindedly, "Or she." At age eight, Christian had no trouble editing John 3:3 at normal reading speed to emerge as: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man [or woman] be born again, he [or she] cannot see the kingdom of God." Inclusionary language has already become, to a large extent, the familiar speech of our son, and we hope that he will learn to correct exclusionary language with the same reflex that he corrects incorrect grammar.
I might add that Christian is getting into the spirit of the thing at age nine and is lobbying to include children. Now, if a nine-year-old can successfully negotiate the grammar of this passage—"Except a man or a woman or a child be born of the water and of the Spirit, he or she cannot enter into the kingdom of God"—I think the rest of us just might be able to stumble along in his or her footsteps.
In addition to the very real psychological impact for women of consciously including themselves and for men of consciously including women, there are some theological advantages. Think, if you will, of Christ as the "Son of Man—and Woman."
Let us become editors—all of us. Let us shape our daily experience so that inclusionary language becomes our common speech.
Singing Our Hymns in a New Voice
My husband, Paul, who has received probably more attention and appreciation for his hymn texts in the new hymnal than anything else he has done in a list of quite considerable achievements, has observed wryly that more Mormons get their theology from the hymnal than from the scriptures. As a former English major, I would also observe that more Mormons get their poetry there as well. It is unfortunate, then, that our current hymnal, the first in two decades, made no visible effort to modify or reduce exclusionary language in its texts.[1]
It is more difficult to change words in many hymns than in the scriptures, however, since there are requirements of rhythm and, even more difficult, of rhyme to consider. Frankly, our family editings are not overly concerned with creating smooth alternative readings to the hymns; but our growing ability to spot and correct exclusive language as we sing along has enlivened many an otherwise lackluster song practice session. This month in our ward, we've been singing "Know This, That Every Soul Is Free" (no. 240), which includes those truly shattering lines: "Freedom and reason make us men;/Take these away, what are we then?/Mere animals . . . " As I recall, I sang "make us persons," Paul sang "make us human," and Christian sang "make us homo sapiens." Christian then continued with gusto, "Take these away, what are we then?/ Meer schweinchen . . . " (He had just learned the German word for "guinea pig" and was delighted to find such a good place to use it.) I think this memory may even replace that memorable Sunday when we all disgraced ourselves with giggles over a line that talked about how "faith buoys us up" and Paul triumphantly sang, "boys and girls us up."
Many uses of "man" or "men" in a hymn yield gracefully to such monosyllables as "we," "us," "all," or "souls," as: "Gently raise the sacred strain,/For the Sabbath's come again/ That we may rest ... " (no. 146). Or the line from "It Came upon the Midnight Clear": "Peace on the earth, good will to all .. . " (no. 207); "And praises sing to God the King, and peace to us on earth" (no. 208). I confess that I haven't found a graceful solution to the last line of "I Believe in Christ," which concludes: "When on this earth he comes again/To rule among the sons of men" (no. 134). Usually we just go for broke and recklessly cram in, "To rule among the sons and daughters of men and women."
I'd suggest experimenting with your own singing to find gender inclusive language that you feel comfortable with. I loved reading Kelli Frame's (1989) report of her glorious experience in singing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" with feminine pronouns ("She overcometh all/She saveth from the fall . . . "). At our last scripture study group, I tried singing it with inclusive pronouns: "They overcome it all/ They save us from the fall/ Their might and power are great./ They all things did create/ And they shall reign forevermore." It truly felt glorious!
Encountering Our Heavenly Parents in Prayer
A third area in which our language truly benefits from thoughtful reshaping toward a more inclusive reality is in our prayers. Here, I think grammar offers a single-stone solution to two hard-to-kill birds: the impediment of formal language and the fact that our public prayers are addressed only to God the Father.
I am not, at this point, urging that we pray to Mother in Heaven. I hope the time will come when we can address both of our divine parents in our public petitions; but for the moment, I propose a first step toward that solution. I think that the real obstacle to including our Mother in Heaven in public prayers is not theological as much as it is grammatical. We've all worked hard to master the intimate pro nouns and verb forms of seventeenth-century England. We have a real intellectual and emotional investment in the grammar of such prayer phrases as: "We thank thee that thou hast preserved us in health and dost maintain us before thee and pray that thou mightest continue so to do." Again, after putting in thirty or forty years, we hear such language as familiar speech. There is a shock in hearing, "We thank you that you have preserved us and do maintain us and pray that you will continue to do so."
I am firmly convinced, however, that we have confused reverence with grammatical familiarity and, as with inclusive language in the scriptures, it's simply a matter of saying the new words over and over until we get used to them. I suggest that we start praying privately in our own normal speech, using you and your. It will make these prayers more intimate, more natural, and more loving. It is a pleasant coincidence in our language that you is both a singular and a plural pronoun. I think that once we make the grammatical adjustment of hearing the ambiguous you, we can then tackle the theological problem of how many people it refers to.
There is, however, a political problem. (There usually is with grammatical points.) The Church has a policy on the language of public prayer. Those seventeenth-century pronouns and verb forms have become shibboleths of ecclesiastical respectability that are hard to dis place. When I worked on the Ensign staff, we prepared a special issue on prayer in January 1976. It included a message by Elder Bruce R. McConkie, "Why the Lord Ordained Prayer," that included ten points he thought essential in understanding prayer. In addition to such points as "ask for temporal and spiritual blessings" and "use both agency and prayer," he also insisted, "Follow the formalities of prayer."
Our Father is glorified and exalted; he is an omnipotent being. We are as the dust of the earth in comparison, and yet we are his children with access, through prayer, to his presence. . . .
We approach Deity in the spirit of awe, reverence, and worship. We speak in hushed and solemn tones. We listen for his answer. We are at our best in prayer. We are in the divine presence.
Almost by instinct, therefore, we do such things as bow our heads and close our eyes; fold our arms, or kneel, or fall on our faces. We use the sacred language of prayer (that of the King James Version of the Bible—thee, thou, thine, not you and your), (p. 12)[2]
This argument deserves some serious consideration. I do not question that Elder McConkie was absolutely sincere in what he said or that this description represents his experience. However, I honestly cannot say that my best prayers have always been uttered in "hushed and solemn tones." Many of my best prayers have been uttered when I've been all but speechless with fury, or sobbing with pain, or near bursting with delight. I know, because these are the prayers when I feel instantaneous and profound contact—not always answers, but unquestionably a fully understanding listener.
Nor do I believe that we "instinctively" assume the posture of prayer. I may hold the world's record for length of term as a Sunbeam teacher, and I can state authoritatively that there is nothing instinctive about folding one's arms. Likewise, I don't think we instinctively use the "sacred language" of prayer. I think we instinctively try to use the most meaningful language we have, but people who are floundering around trying to decide between "wilt" and "wouldst" are not having a worshipful experience. They are having a confusing experience and, if the prayer is offered in public, probably an embarrassing one as well.
For that same issue of the Ensign in January 1976, the staff commissioned an article by a BYU professor of English called "The Language of Formal Prayer." It begins by quoting Joseph Fielding Smith's guilt-producing statement that the rise of modern translations of the scriptures that use "the popular language of the day, has, in the opinion of the writer and his brethren, been a great loss in the building of faith and spirituality in the minds and hearts of the people" (in Norton 1976, 44). From that point, the article is well written and engaging. It explains the rules for using thou, thee, thy, thine, and their accompanying verb forms and provides several useful quizzes to check knowledge and skill levels as the article progresses.
I remember liking the article very much in 1976; now, I'm rather shocked at myself. It is not that the article's quality has deteriorated in the meantime but that my feelings about how we should relate to God have changed. I recognize now that even in 1976, I was maintaining a rather complex double standard in my prayer speech. As a missionary a decade earlier in France, I had learned appropriate Mormon prayers which, as a matter of linguistic convention, use the intimate pronouns, tu-toi. These are, like their English counterparts of thee and thine, the only pronouns in French for singular you. French, again like English, uses the plural "you" (vous) on "formal" occasions whether one individual or several is being addressed. Missionaries were forbidden to tu-toi anybody except little children "as a matter of propriety"; but normal French-speakers tu-toi lovers, relatives, youngsters, chums, pets—and God.
Clearly, if the Church were being consistent about addressing God in the most exalted and formal speech available to them, French members and missionaries would have been counseled to use vous. They weren't, I believe, because the issue was not one of formality at all. The issue was one of having a special language —and in English, a now difficult, abstruse, and abnormal one—reserved for God. I am pleased that this is one cultural manifestation of Mormonism we have failed to export.
As I gained more familiarity and fluency in French, I began using French for my private prayers. I still remember how tender, how affectionate, how close it made me feel to God. Naturally I asked myself why my own language did not have quite this effect. As the daughter of two conscientious and thoroughly orthodox Latter-day Saints, I literally cannot recall ever having heard God addressed as you up to that point. I maintained the habit of praying in French for a full fifteen years after my mission because I cherished its intimacy. I feel a special love for Alison Smith, a convert of two weeks, because of her prayer in a University Second Ward sacrament meeting in Seattle two years after my return. Untutored in torturous King James English, she helped me realize that intimate prayer did not have to remain a solitary vice.
Since its founding, the Church has been attached to the King James Version of the Bible; but as Philip Barlow's (1989) careful and convincing essay establishes, that attachment is largely a historic accident—a combination of tradition and the personal preference, bolstered by the persuasive but illogical arguments, of J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
Similarly, the attachment of any special reverence or respect to thee and thou is based on historical ignorance, a reading backward into a perfectly ordinary grammatical construction of a magical meaning. The grammar text I studied as a junior at BYU makes this point perfectly clear.
The author, Paul Roberts, explains lucidly and even humorously an evolution in English that I am quoting at some length because I think it represents essential information:
In Middle English, the following forms occurred:
Singular Plural Nominative: thou ye Genitive [possessive]: thy, thine your, yours Objective: thee you The functional distinctions of the genitive forms were not quite what they are at present, but thou, thee, ye, and you correspond to I, me, we, and us. Since then two important changes have taken place.
The first is the elimination of the singular and the use of the plural for both numbers. This apparently stemmed from the custom of kings to use the pronouns we/us in referring to themselves. Since the king spoke of himself in the plural, it was thought polite and proper to address him in the plural. This token of courtesy was then extended in the upper classes to all those of superior rank. Then, since one often wishes to be polite to equals as well as to superiors, it became the regular second person singular pronoun among the courteous. For a long time thou/thee continued to be used for communication with inferiors and intimates. . . . English, however, eventually extended the polite form to all situations; this may indicate more courtesy or democracy among the English. At any rate, the old singular has all but disappeared, and the formal plural now serves both numbers. Thou, thy, thine, and thee are now used chiefly in addressing God in prayer. They lingered a long while in poetic language, but are little used, except humorously, by first-rate modern poets. (1954, 58-59)
The second tendency, he continues, is a trend toward simplification: the nominative j£ was annexed and overwhelmed by the objective you, and Roberts cheerfully predicts that the same thing would have happened to / and he, she, and it if left to their own devices, as the construction "Me and him will do it" demonstrates. "However," he sighs, "the efforts of elementary-school teachers have arrested the movement, or at least slowed it down" (1954, 59).[3] I might also add that Quaker plain-speech has simplified ruthlessly in the other direction. Thee is used for both nominative and objective cases: "Thee is a Friend" (rather than "Thou art a Friend") and "God gives thee health and strength."
My point is simple. There is nothing inherently "sacred" about obsolete though charming language. The eloquence and beauty of the King James Version deserve our study and love for those qualities—but not because they help us communicate better with God. God does not listen more approvingly to "Wilt thou bless us?" than to "Will you bless us?". In fact, he probably does not even have to listen more attentively, given his merciful promise to listen to the prayers of our hearts rather than those of our lips. That being so, requiring children, young people, and converts to make their petitions to the Lord in a fragmentary and foreign formal language reminds me uncomfortably of the situation the Savior condemned during his mortal ministry: "Woe to you. . . . You shut the kingdom of heaven in [people's] faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to" (Matt. 23:13, New International Version).
At home, we use the Revised Standard Version, the New International Version, the Phillips translation, and Good News for Modern Man (or Persons). These editions do not use inclusionary language but, as I've mentioned, we're handling that quite nicely on our own. Our intention is simple: we want Christian to understand the scriptures, to seek information from them, and to think about them. We want them to speak directly to him, to convey the spiritual experiences of others, and to be models of and catalysts for his personal spiritual experiences. We don't want the scriptures to lie in a category completely apart from all of his other learning experiences.
I think other people will enjoy the same experience. When Paul gave a Christmas Sunday School lesson a few years ago, he read the Luke nativity from the J. B. Phillips version and had several people come up and say, "That was so beautiful! Did you write it?" I suggest that reading the scriptures in an accessible translation will bring a freshness and immediacy to their message that we quite desperately need. From there, it is an equally logical and rewarding step to make them gender inclusive.
A related grammatical point is the argument that man is a generic which includes women as part of "all mankind." I concede that the term has, in fact, been so used and still is. But I don't buy the argument. Rather, I see man as a categorical noun, the existence of which implies a correspondent: man/woman. Other examples are husband/wife, parent/child, teacher/student, master/slave. Correspondence is not the same as inclusion. The category of husband predicts but does not include the category of wife any more than the category of child includes the category of parent.
It is an unfortunate historical and social fact that most of these categories connote hierarchy — subservience and superiority. Precisely for that reason, then, I think we should be both scrupulous and courteous in acknowledging the real existence of each category. If one category cannot exist without the other, then both deserve to be named. Grammarian Roberts, writing more than thirty years ago, reflects both the cultural understanding of that time and the problems which have been fully realized in the succeeding three decades: "The word man is ambiguous in that it may be masculine (a male human being) or common gender (any human being). In "Man was put into this world to suffer," man probably means both man and woman. In "Be a man," it means man, not woman. This ambiguity of man has encouraged the substantive use oi human" (1954, 51).
I think that it is much more graceful and practical to simply acknowledge that English contains both parallel terms and inclusive terms: brotherhood/sisterhood/siblinghood, mankind/womankind/ humankind, husband/wife/spouse, son/daughter/child. If we want to communicate gender, then let's use the marvelously specific tools our language gives us. If we want to communicate inclusion, then let's not use confusing gender-laden nouns which we must afterwards explain.
For example, a well-meaning attempt at being inclusive can paint the unwary speaker into this type of corner:
"This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." (Moses 1:39)
The word man as used above is generic. It includes man and woman, for, as Paul said, "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:11). (Hinckley 1988, 10)
I fully respect the speaker's intentions, but how could it possibly have escaped his notice that man could hardly have been so unquestionably inclusive if he had to use both man (definitely male in Paul's example) as well as woman to define it? I anticipate the inevitable, though probably delayed, day when we will be able to read that scripture as "to bring about the immortality and eternal life of people"—or souls, or human beings.
Reading the scriptures inclusively, singing hymns inclusively, and praying with inclusive language are quiet grammatical revolutions that will reshape our reality to make it more truly a partnering—an equal honoring of maleness and femaleness. But it will be inadequate without an underlying commitment, which must be renewed often, to inclusiveness. We must accept the realities of the world we live in and forgive where we can understand; but we must never, never acquiesce in justifying it.
As I read through those often inspiring conference messages, wondering why I felt so sad, I received my answer when I came to the greeting of an apostle to Elder Richard G. Scott, the newest apostle. It reads: "Elder Scott, I would just like to add my welcome to the others that have been given to you as you assume this great position. You are joining a unique quorum. It is made up of very common men with a most uncommon calling. There is a spirit, a unity, a devotion in this body like none other you will ever experience. We are excited to have you and your great talent and abilities with us in our quorum. Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!" (p. 73)
Then I knew the source of my sorrow. I will grieve before the Lord and I will not be comforted until those words can be spoken to a sister, as well as to a brother, before the Holy Parents of us all, until we can fulfill in our society the promise of Paul: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).
[1] I hope to see in print soon an excellent paper on exclusionary language in the hymns that Jean Ann Waterstradt, retired professor of English at Brigham Young University, delivered at the Association for Mormon Letters annual meeting 27 January 1990 at Salt Lake City.
[2] This position is not just a historical one but a very current one. The home teachers' message for February 1990, delivered by my visiting teachers along with the visiting teachers' message for the same month, concluded its remarks on prayer with: "We can show greater respect to Deity by using Thee instead of you, Thou instead of your, and Thine instead of yours." (Typescript in my possession.)
[3] A more recent grammarian, writing a decade after my BYU expert though still twenty years from our own time, provides a more elegant and thoroughly historical background:
A grammatical innovation, of somewhat questionable value, which is due to French influence, is the polite substitution of the plural for the singular in the second person. The origin of this custom is to be found in the official Latin of the later Roman Empire, in which a great person of state was addressed with "you" instead of "thou," just as, in formal documents, he wrote "we" instead of "I." The use of the plural "you," as a mark of respect, passed into all the Romanic languages, and from them into German, Dutch, and Scandinavian. It is a well-known fact that forms of politeness originally used only in addressing superiors have in all languages a tendency to become more and more widely applied; and hence in Europe generally the singular "thou" has, except in religious language and in diction more or less poetical, come to be used only in speaking to intimate friends or inferiors. In England, during the last two centuries, the use of thou, so far as ordinary language is concerned, has become obsolete; it is only among the speakers of certain local dialects that it continues to be employed even by parents to their children, or by brothers and sisters to each other. Our language has thus lost whatever advantage it had gained by having a polite as well as a familiar form of address; and unfortunately the form that has survived is ambiguous. There is a translation of the New Testament into modern English in which you is everywhere substituted for thou, except in addresses to the Deity. It is a significant fact that in one place the translator has felt obliged to inform his readers by a footnote that in the original the pronoun changes from the plural to the singular. The English language is, in respect of clearness, decidedly the worse for the change which has abolished the formal distinction of number in the second person of the pronoun and the verb. (Bradley 1967, 44-45)
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Mormon Women and the Right to Wage Work
Vella Neil Evans
Dialogue 23.4 (Winter 1990): 47–82
In this essay, I will analyze recent Church discourse against a pattern of constricting employment options for women and will discuss the implications of that pattern.
On 23 September 1989, President Gordon B. Hinckley offered the following challenge to Mormon women: "Get all the education you can. Train yourselves to make a contribution to the society in which you will live. . . . Almost the entire field of human endeavor is now open to women." He further cited Rachel Carson as an exemplar, "trained in her field and bold in her declarations" (1989, 96-98). A week later, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Council of the Twelve proclaimed, "The highest titles of human achievement —teacher, educated professional, [and] loyal employee . . . are earned under a uniform requirement of worthiness" by both men and women (1989, 20). After nearly a century of Church leaders' increasing disapproval of women's paid employment, these two addresses attracted considerable attention. The statements quoted, here taken from context, suggest real support for women's wage work. As analysis of the complete text will demonstrate, however, the speeches actually reflect subtle "shifts in spirit," not changes in Church policy.[1] In this essay, I will analyze recent Church discourse against a pattern of constricting employment options for women and will discuss the implications of that pattern.
From the time the Church was organized in 1830 until it was well established in the American West, most Mormon women participated in some exchange-value employment.[2] These efforts were usually necessary for survival, taken for granted by the community, and ignored in Church discourse. Some sisters were employed as domestics, tutors, midwives or nurses; but most labored on the family farm or business, took contract work into their homes, or sold or exchanged items that they had produced.
Advertisements for women seeking work appeared in local papers of the period, but the most extensive record of exchange-value effort is located in private journals and correspondence. Caroline Barnes Crosby recorded in her journal that when her family moved to Kirtland in 1836, she "braided near a hundred" palm leaf hats and earned seventy dollars in that "first season" (in Godfrey, Godfrey and Derr 1982, 50). While a young married woman in Nauvoo, Zina D. H. Jacobs noted that she knit mittens for twenty-five cents a pair and spun extra knots of yarn to "procure an honest living" (in Beecher 1979, 304, 318). And during the trek west, when a money economy was less practical, Eliza R. Snow wrote in her diary that she had made a cap for "Sister John Young" and was paid roughly two pounds of soap. She observed: "So much I call my own —I now begin once more to be a woman of property" ("Pioneer Diary" 1944, 113).
Others were much more energetic than Sister Snow. Historian Leonard Arrington notes that one California woman "helped build her house, doing all the work on the fireplace and chimney. . . . [She] cut wild hay along the river bottoms, and stacked it for the cows in the winter; she grubbed the brush, hauled manure on the land, sheared the sheep, plowed, planted, helped make the irrigating ditches, and spun and wove cloth." And when she wasn't otherwise occupied, the woman "took in washing" (1977, 50). All such efforts distinguished Latter-day Saint women from the American middle-class ideal of dependency and fragility that was popular at the time (see Welter 1966).
After the Church was established in the Utah territory, women continued their exchange-value activities. For some time, economic conditions remained unstable: impoverished converts drained community resources, crops and businesses failed, some polygamous men could not support all their wives and families, and non-Mormon merchants increasingly took advantage of the Mormon market. During this early Utah period, Brigham Young distinguished himself as the only Church president to persistently encourage women's exchange-value efforts. Quotations from his sermons reveal both his injunctions to women and also the range of justifications for their income-producing work.
In 1856 Brigham Young advised mothers to teach their daughters "some useful vocation," so they could "sustain themselves and their offspring" in the event their husbands left home either to serve Church missions or to devote their "time and attention to the things of the kingdom [of God]." Young noted that women's employment would prove the sisters "helpmeets in very deed" to their husbands and also contributors "in building up the [community]" (JH, 10 Dec. 1856).
Roughly ten years later, President Young advised women to take up work that would "enable them to sustain themselves, and [which] would be far better than for them to spend their time in the parlor or in walking the streets." He also advised women to take up printing, clerking, and retail selling to relieve the men who might as well "knit stockings as to sell tape" (JD 12:407). Along those same lines, in 1873 Brigham Young suggested that women had the strength to enter many male occupations but had been excluded because the men feared that women would "spoil their trade." He also criticized the "big, six-footer" man who sat sewing in a tailor shop while some women worked in the fields "plowing, raking and making hay" (JD 16:16-17). Thus men's need for greater freedom, community demands, women's skill at commerce, and the danger of indolent women justified women's wage work.
Young's most frequently cited statement concerning women's paid employment presents a somewhat different set of facts and values. On 18 July 1869, the President of the Church said:
We have sisters here who . . . would make just as good mathematicians or accountants as any man; and we think they ought to have the privilege to study these branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. We believe that women are useful not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or physic, and become good book-keepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and all this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation. These and many more things of equal utility are incorporated in our religion, and we believe in and try to practice them.[3]
JD 13:61
We should not infer from this that Brigham Young advocated paid employment as a principal career for women. He told his daughter Susa that even if she were to become the greatest woman in the world but fail in her duty as wife and mother, she then would have "failed in everything." On the other hand, Young also told Susa that anything she did after filling her primary assignments would contribute to her "honor and to the glory of God" (Gates 1930, 232). Thus Young supported female wage work only after domestic responsibilities had been fulfilled.
Given that qualification, however, the 1869 sermon is unexpectedly liberal. Young recognized the "privilege" of professional study but concluded that women were educable and as effective in practice as men. In addition, Young suggested that professionally trained women would serve society and develop an extensive range of natural female "powers." In this latter assertion, Young clearly ignored the prevailing nineteenth-century belief that women had limited, feminine "traits" and were destined to operate in a separate sphere from men.
Not many nineteenth-century women became mathematicians, pharmacists, or attorneys as Brigham Young suggested. On the other hand, several Latter-day Saint women distinguished themselves by studying medicine at eastern universities and then establishing successful medical practices among the Saints. The Relief Society operated its own hospital for twelve years and until 1920 maintained a nurses training program that trained a significant number of Mormon women. Others found work in the numerous Relief Society cooperatives or in more traditional commerce.
Brigham Young died in 1877, and his immediate successors addressed other urgent matters including the precarious financial condition of the Church, the increased federal prosecution of polygamy, and then the drive for Utah's statehood. In contrast to a male focus on church and state politics during this late nineteenth-century period, both the Woman's Exponent, the organ of the Relief Society, and the Young Woman's Journal, published by the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association, supported paid employment for Mormon women. Writers and editors were typically prominent women within the Church whose statements would appear authoritative to female readers (see Beecher 1982). In addition, the journals were widely read by Mormon women and the publications' support for wage work was thus well known.
An unsigned editorial in the 1 April 1877 Woman's Exponent, entitled "Be a True Woman,"[4] claimed that every job that opened for women was a "blessing" and urged readers to undertake the "real work"—an interesting comparison implied. On occasion, both the Woman's Exponent and the Young Woman's Journal supported women who worked for personal fulfillment, and both denied the exclusive, male breadwinner ethic. The Exponent observed that even those women "possessed of superior attainments" didn't like being "dependent altogether upon the . . . 'men folks,' but chose to earn some money on their own" ("Women" 1883). And the Journal stated that even "true women" no longer believed men should support them (Smith 1890). Both publications also assumed that women could manage two careers. The Exponent on 15 August 1877 specifically attacked the "pernicious dogma that marriage and a practical life work are incompatible" (p. 46) and elsewhere observed that if women were incapable of combining work and marriage, then neither could a "man do justice to any professional calling and prove a kind, affectionate, and loving husband" ("Head vs. Heart" 1874).
In response to warnings against creating a "third sex" and lost femininity, the Exponent concluded that the "large number" of employed women were "not brusque [or] masculine [but] wore bangs . . . ruffles and laces [and were] like the rest of woman kind" (N.V.D. 1892, 161). The most radical discourse ignored Brigham Young's dual career policy, which mandated motherhood and homemaking prior to, or in conjunction with, paid employment. In 1890 the Journal claimed that a woman "should have perfect liberty to follow the vocation which comes to her from God, and of which she alone is judge" (Smith 1890, 176). As early as 1873 the Exponent claimed that women were fully capable of deciding for themselves their life's work and concluded, "If there be some women in whom the love of learning extinguishes all other love, then the heaven-appointed sphere of that woman is not the nursery. It may be the library, the laboratory, the observatory" ("Education" 1873). These statements are significant because the writers stressed psychological benefits to women as a primary justification for women's work. In addition, some female leaders went so far as to suggest that a woman's personal decision, even if contrary to patriarchal assignments, could be correct for her.
As the Church moved into the twentieth century, internal schisms, the challenges of heterodoxy, and financial problems continued to demand the attention of the General Authorities; and sermons typically addressed issues of doctrine and accommodation. Articles from the Deseret News, however, indicate a marked decline of popular support for female employment during this time. For example, the 21 May 1904 Deseret Semi-Weekly News[5] reprinted an essay by F. M. Thompson which claimed, "The woman wage earner is under one aspect an object of charity, under another an economic pervert, under another a social menace." Thompson also charged that commercial labors undermined women's health, trained them to work like machines, and left them without necessary homemaking skills. The News concluded, "Women themselves are beginning to see a light, in which they may better appreciate their mission on earth." That mission was domestic.
At the turn of the century, large immigrant populations and smaller families in the so-called "native white stock" resulted in a popular concern over maintaining white supremacy and its traditional institutions. At the same time that a need for more white babies was perceived, however, middle-class women were increasingly visible outside their homes. Many entered commerce or higher education, some for financial reasons and others in response to feminist encouragement. Many more joined "ladies clubs" or participated in reform movements as part of the "social housekeeping" thought appropriate for women at the time. As a result of the discrepancy between the middle-class woman's assignment to produce a large family and her activities outside her home, religious and secular publications throughout the country examined the problem of "race suicide" and women's activities (particularly higher education and wage employment) that were thought to reduce fertility.
The Woman's Exponent and the Young Woman's Journal, however, continued to advocate women's wage work in varying degrees. Direct approval in the Exponent was less frequent and became more moderate; but the Journal maintained some direct support and provided indirect approval through role models. Lengthy feature articles were frequently devoted to female entrepreneurs and successful women in science, government, education, literature, the fine arts, and general business. In 1904, however, the Journal warned its youthful readers that a private income would give them "dangerous power" ("The Girl" 1905); and three years later lamented that if young women didn't damage their nerves in the paid labor force, they were likely to be "constantly besieged, after marriage, by the lure of gold" (Gates 1908). In such instances, the Journal identified negative consequences for women wage earners that did not accompany the male image.
In spite of such concerns, an increasing number of LDS women became commercially employed during World War I and the 1920s. By 1914, the relatively liberal Woman's Exponent had been replaced by the more conservative Relief Society Magazine, and support for Mormon women's right to work was somewhat attenuated. However, the Magazine ran a monthly feature that reported the varied efforts of working women and thus indirectly supported female employment. For example, in 1920 the publication recognized several dozen women for their achievements, including Jean Norris, a New York attorney appointed to the office of city magistrate; Lady Astor, who was elected to the British House of Commons; and Mrs. Yone Susuki, the "richest woman in the world," who employed thirty-five to forty thousand production workers and had an enlightened management policy (Anderson 1920).
During this same period, the Relief Society Magazine promoted cottage industry for its Latter-day Saint readers. In one article, Sylvia Grant advised women to earn "pin money" by cooking, sewing, knitting, telephone soliciting, addressing envelopes, and finishing film. Grant concluded that even when it was not "absolutely necessary" for a woman to make money, there was "ever so much satisfaction in earning enough to buy silver candlesticks instead of just ordinary ones" (1936, 572). Later, male Church leaders would denounce women who worked for luxuries.
The Young Woman's Journal maintained significant support for female employment until 1929 when it was absorbed by the Improvement Era. In 1927, for example, the Journal ran an extensive series on women's careers written by Agnes Lovendahl Stewart and entitled "What Shall I Do?" Among other suggestions, the magazine recommended teaching music (January), working in domestic arts and science (March), owning a beauty shop (May), and writing professionally (December).
In January 1929, the Journal told girls that setting a goal of economic independence was "vitally important" and reprinted the following with apparent approbation: "Many writers of today advocate the advisability of women continuing in their active outside profession even during the period when they are giving their best efforts to the home and family. They claim that a woman is a better wife and mother if she has these outside interests along with her home interests." Several paragraphs later, the article concluded that dual careers for women were "coming to be perceived as the wise plan for all women who would achieve, as well as to help others achieve, full personality" (Car roll 1929). Thus the sisters' publications defended women's work on the grounds that it served the community, the family, and the woman herself.
In contrast, during the same period, Latter-day Saint men maintained their disapproval. The 19 May 1928 Deseret News quoted J. Reuben Clark's Mothers Day sermon, delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Clark claimed that the famous women of history had been wrong to acquire prominence because in doing so, they had placed themselves "in the field of competition with men." Early issues of the sisters' publications had infrequently defined women's employment goals in terms of competition. For example, in 1876 the Exponent warned that women were "no longer willing to be trammelled by narrow conventionalities" and if men were "really superior," they should "move on" as there was "room higher up" (Emile 1876, 84). In 1890 the Young Woman's Journal contended that "where woman is the stronger, she takes the precedence of man"; and men should acknowledge women as their competitors in "the arts or trades" (Smith 1890). After the turn of the century, however, Mormon women gradually withdrew their support for competition between the sexes, while the men increased their disapproval of the practice.
During the Great Depression, almost all popular discourse condemned women's wage work because it took jobs away from men. The Depression ended with the onset of World War II, however. Between 1941 and 1945, over four million American women entered the workforce; and the national media promoted the move as patriotic. In contrast, Church discourse blamed working mothers for increasing juvenile delinquency and advised Mormon women not to seek paid employment during the war emergency. Instead, the Relief Society Magazine, the only remaining sisters' publication, advised women to volunteer in the war effort by planting victory gardens, preserving food, saving grease and cans for the war industries, and keeping their homes secure and attractive. The sanctity of home and family was a major concern, and the Magazine printed several variations on the following advice: "Keep home life in normal balance [and] so inviting" that adolescent girls, in particular, will not want "to roam the streets" (Williams 1942, 680).
The foregoing identify a value hierarchy which has buttressed arguments against women's paid employment for the last half century: a woman's obligation to nurture is greater than her need for income or self-fulfillment. The highest-ranking Latter-day Saint leaders have consistently supported this hierarchy, which was only indirectly challenged on the soft-news pages of the Relief Society Magazine from 1945 until its demise in 1970. Since the end of World War II, however, essentially all official Church pronouncements have discouraged wage work for women. For example, in 1961 Esther Peterson, President John F. Kennedy's assistant secretary of labor, claimed that a woman's place was where she was "happiest — and it can be at home, at outside work or both." The Deseret News responded that, "a woman's place is .. . where she can give the greatest happiness to others," and most women worked not because of the "high cost of living, but because of the cost of living high" ("Mother" 1961).
In a similar vein, the December 1969 Improvement Era explained that a "cardinal teaching" in Mormonism is that the "man is the head of the family. He is to be the bread winner" (Tuttle 1969, 108). In 1971, Elder Thomas S. Monson of the Quorum of the Twelve equated women's liberation with deception and denounced free child care and equal employment as "evils" of the women's movement (1971, 17). In 1977 the Church News claimed that working women were probably responsible for juvenile delinquency, broken marriages, and ultimately a "handicapped new generation such as we have never before seen in America" ("Preserving Femininity" 1977).
In scores of similar statements, marriage, parenting, and home making are authoritatively denned as both necessary and full-time obligations that offset a woman's right to wage employment. Paid activities which women term "self-fulfillment" have been officially re-defined as "self-indulgence." During the recent period of increasing options for most American women, contemporary Church leaders have cited a nineteenth-century theory of separate traits and spheres—which Brigham Young had rejected—to counteract twentieth-century feminism.
The feminist movement probably did not create Latter-day Saint women's interest in paid employment, however. In the late 1970s, as the effects of a national recession intensified, increasing numbers of Mormon women left their homes to join the paid labor force full- or part-time. The propriety of women's work became even more troublesome within the Church; but despite apparent need, Church leaders did not redefine the sisters' options. In 1979, during his final year of active public leadership, President Spencer W. Kimball published a reaffirmation of the sisters' domestic assignment in Woman, a book featuring treatises on role clarification for Mormon women by fifteen General Authorities. He stated that God intended the male to "till the ground, support the family, and give proper leadership" while the woman was "to cooperate, bear the children and rear and teach them" (1979a, 80).
During this same period, the Church advised women to prepare to earn a living "outside the home, if and when the occasion requires" (C. Kimball 1977, 59). However, male Church leaders have consistently emphasized the word requires and interpreted "true need" as divorce, widowhood, or the husband's long-term disability. For example, in the March 1979 Ensign President Kimball said that women should not earn the living "except in unusual circumstances. Men ought to be men indeed and earn the living under normal circumstances" (p. 4, emphasis added).
In addition, from the prosperity of the 1950s to the leaner years of the eighties, even women whose families were reared were directed into volunteer service rather than paid employment. In 1979, the Church News advised such women to take "extra classes at school" and engage in "charitable pursuits in which [they] may help the sick, read to the blind, assist the aged, possibly influence for good those who are delinquent" ("A Woman's Place" 1979). And President Kimball advised women whose children were "gone from under [the] wing" to "bless" others' lives and "help build the kingdom of God" (1979b, 14).
Concern over competition and perceived threats to male dominance may have prompted some men to promote compassionate rather than salaried work for Latter-day Saint women. Speaking to a fireside group in San Antonio, Texas, in 1977, President Kimball called mothers to "come home" to their husbands and families and to abandon the paid employment that created "an independence which is not cooperative" (in Benson 1987a, 7). Ezra Taft Benson, then next in line to lead the Church, told BYU students, "Men are the providers, and it takes the edge off your manliness when you have the mother of your children also be a provider" (in Anderson 1981, 18). And in 1979, Benson also warned women that competition with men would diminish their "godly attributes" leading them to "acquire a quality of sameness with man" including aggression and competitiveness (undesirable in women but desirable in men).
From 1979 to the present, Ezra Taft Benson has maintained that conservative stance. In 1981, he observed that "Adam was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow —not Eve. . . . Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's place is in the home." He also said women were unwise to disrupt their parenting even to "prepare educationally" for future emergencies that might require their employment (1981, 105). Two years later, Gordon B. Hinckley, speaking for the First Presidency, claimed that woman's real responsibility is "bearer and nurturer of children [while the] man is the provider and protector. No legislation can alter the sexes" (in Eaton 1983).
In February 1987, Benson, now Church president, told Latter-day Saint couples that while widowed or divorced women might have to work "for a period of time, . . . [a] mother's calling is in the home, not in the marketplace" (1987a, 5-6). At the church-wide, semi-annual priesthood meeting in October of that year, he told his male audience that the Lord had charged all "able-bodied [men] to provide for their families in such a way that the wife is allowed to fulfill her role as mother in the home." President Benson concluded that young married men, like "thousands of husbands" before them, could work their own way through school and have their families "at the same time" (1987b, 2-4). This directive obviously puts tremendous pressure on young Mormon men (who tend to marry young). It would seem to prevent many of those without affluent parents from participating in extensive graduate or professional training. At the same time, it indicates the strength of President Benson's injunction to the women to remain in their homes, even at the expense of their husbands' preferred occupations. Thus the last word from the highest Church authority is that family men should fill an exclusive breadwinner role. President Benson's 1987 addresses also draw to conclusion a century of constricting employment options for Mormon women.
Secondary patterns within these discourses also provide interesting information about gender stratification within the Church. As historian Larry Foster has previously noted, the Church has grown increasingly more Victorian in its attitudes towards women's roles (Foster 1979). Victorian feminine traits of gentility, patience, self-denial, purity, and other passive virtues fit an inherent nurturant role. Men have also delineated women's "natural abilities" and ecclesiastical, domestic, and secular duties. In contrast, women have never had the power to define men authoritatively or create policies for them. From time to time, however, women have defined themselves and their duties; and typically these self-definitions have been more complex and varied than have the male definitions of women.
Second, men and women justify women's roles in different ways. Male directives rely on revelation (a privilege of priesthood holders), Old Testament injunctions (given by male prophets), societal and Church needs (both structured and maintained by men). Women are also admonished to accept their male-defined roles or weaken their standing as "natural" women and faithful Latter-day Saints. In contrast, women leaders have made no claims to revelation for the Church at large. They have, however, considered their own interests and needs, and those of the women they know, when defining roles. Some women have questioned the notion of separate spheres and of unique mental and emotional traits for males and females. Some women claim that each sister can independently interpret God's will concerning herself.
Men, more than women, have also been openly intolerant of competition between the sexes, both in employment and in the right to define people and policies. This intolerance may reflect the value of power to some Latter-day Saint men. Certainly the effort to eliminate such competition has been visible within the last generation: women no longer publish independent journals, attend conferences called and designed by women alone, or present their own discourse to the Church until it has been reviewed and approved by men. Not surprisingly, women's official statements currently conform to the men's.
Against this backdrop of constricting options for women, the addresses by President Gordon B. Hinckley and Elder Russell M. Nelson take on significance. The first was introduced by a nostalgia for rural America and simple truths. I believe that President Hinckley spoke with unusual warmth at the 1989 General Women's Conference. He appeared appreciative of the sisters and concerned over women's domestic and financial well-being. In the presence of President Ezra Taft Benson, Hinckley encouraged extensive education for women and claimed that women had nearly unlimited choices for their endeavors. He did, however, wish marriage and freedom from "the marketplace" for all Mormon women.
Two weeks later, Elder Nelson claimed that the "potential for women" was greatest within the Church. In subsequent sections of his address, however, Nelson restricted that potential to a celestial salvation and a "divine mission" in which women place service to others ahead of personal need. Support for paid employment was confined by example to teaching school; and while Nelson praised the selfless efforts of his own favorite teachers (all unmarried as he identified them), he failed to recognize their relatively low salaries. Instead, he noted how the "vicarious ambitions" of those "humble women" had fueled his own efforts (culminating in a prestigious medical practice and powerful Church calling). Nelson ignored the irony of his own remarks, however; and his discourse suggests that woman's work, salaried or not, is literally serving man.
Most important, neither Hinckley nor Nelson recognized the financial realities for women today: Eighty-five percent of Mormon women will likely work for a significant period of time (Bernard 1990, 3). Between 5 and 10 percent of American women will never marry; most of these will support themselves and perhaps other family members as well. Many who do marry will find poverty in divorce. The Utah divorce rate currently exceeds the national rate of 50 percent.[6] Given that 67 percent of the people living in Utah are Latter-day Saints,[7] this information suggests that from 30 to 50 percent of Mormon marriages probably end in divorce. Most divorced women receive custody of their children but scant child support and no alimony for themselves. In addition, most Latter-day Saint women will outlive their husbands, some by many years. Many will marry men whose ability to provide will be impaired by illness or injury. Many will marry men who are, or will become, severely underemployed.
The accuracy of these claims is already apparent: Latter-day Saints comprise two-thirds of the population of the state of Utah. In apparent violation of counsel, however, in 1987 women made up 44 percent of Utah's labor force. Sixty percent of Utah women over the age of sixteen were working or looking for work. This is 4 percent higher than the national average. Fifty-eight percent of married women, 71 percent of women in child-bearing years, and 37 percent of women with preschool children were labor-force participants. According to the July 1989 Utah Labor Market Report, most of these women work or seek to
work out of economic necessity. Utah has ranked in the bottom quartile for per capita income for decades. Utah women earn less than two thirds the salary of their male counterparts and eleven cents less on the dollar than the average American woman. Utah women also constitute the largest single group of discouraged workers in the state (ULMR 1989).
The single-female head of household may be at greatest risk. Nearly 23 percent of all families in America today are headed by a single parent — typically female and typically poor ("U.S. Gets" 1990). Such families are increasing, and the increase is most pronounced among U.S. minority populations and in developing countries. Interestingly, the Church is growing fastest in just these minority communities and in third world countries, where women outnumber men as converts. However, neither President Hinckley nor Elder Nelson noted the extent of this population — Mormon women who must work, do work, and receive low pay.
Neither did President Hinckley or Elder Nelson address the psychological needs of women who work for personal satisfaction. President Hinckley admitted early in his speech that some Mormon women "hunger [for] attention and opportunity to express their talents"; and he seemed to promise freedom in such expression when he stated that "almost the entire field of human endeavor" was open to women. However, by wishing women freedom from paid work, he left this "recognition" of need without solutions. Thus real changes for women are found in the spirit of Hinckley's address.[8]
The Church's general proscription against women's wage work is problematic. As long as current social and economic conditions prevail, and as long as the Church idealizes early marriage, large families, and full-time mothering, most women will not prepare for work that will support them adequately; such work usually requires extensive training and/or sustained participation in the labor force. Instead, many women will continue in poorly paid work and then suffer if they are members of low-income households or if they become sole providers.
Without institutional support, Mormon mothers who need to work will struggle unnecessarily to combine parenting with wage employment. Women who resign positions simply to obey counsel may feel resentful and unfulfilled. Women without economic need who choose to work may feel rejected by an institution that claims to love and serve them.
In a gesture of true support of Church members, I would like to hear leaders address not only these alleged "women's" issues, but the range of human, work-related problems that define and constrain daily life. Is men's full-time employment and exclusive breadwinner assignment in the best interests of all concerned? Devotion to career has served the business community; does it serve individuals or the family? Does the Church condone the extended work week of the high paying careers that keeps many professionals—largely men—away from their families? No one has recently suggested that men might like to share their provider role, although Brigham Young recognized that interest. Young also recognized the wide range of women's abilities and the value employed women could provide to the community. During the nineteenth century, all Mormon women who contributed to the "kingdom" were termed "Mothers in Zion," even if they were single and childless. Thus woman's nurturance was given wider scope and women's options were increased. Such freedom might benefit all concerned at the present time.
Have Church leaders taken into account the strain on Mormon males to support a large family, contribute hours a week in church attendance and service, and nourish relationships with wives and children, relatives and friends? What about the problem of day care in families where both parents work?[9] I would like to see the Church make a serious and sustained effort to teach members that both mother and father in dual-provider homes must do their share of housework and child care.
Finally, Church leaders might understand that women's interest in wage work may be neither unwholesome competition nor dangerous disobedience. Work can express and define the self. Chosen freely, it reflects the diversity of women and their lives. Those who truly want to address the potential for women within the Church might consider these issues.
[1] I have lifted the statements cited from context and linked them together to summarize the elements of support. However, this concentration produces an exaggerated expression of approval. The complete texts are much more equivocal and ultimately provide slight, if any, increased support for women's wage work. In support of this claim, the lead editorial in the 4 October 1989 Salt Lake Tribune observed that while President Hinckley's message was welcome, the speech really reflected only a "slight attitude shift among the leadership of the Church" ("Condoning Women" 1989). President Hinckley further reinforced a conservative position at the Belle S. Spafford Social Work Conference, "Women in the Work Force," held in Salt Lake City on 23 February 1990.
[2] "Exchange value" signifies goods or services that are traded, exchanged, or sold as a part of a larger community economy. "Use value" work is consumed by the producer or limited to private or family consumption.
[3] The Church at the time also believed in and tried to practice polygamy, which allowed some women to leave their children and housekeeping duties to sister wives while they pursued their own education and careers outside their homes. In contrast, lack of childcare and domestic support prevent many contemporary women from combining a demanding career with marriage and family.
[4] Most of the Exponent citations which have no author are taken from editorials which would have been written by Lula Greene Richards from 1872 to 1877, or by Emmeline B. Wells from 1877 to 1914.
[5] During different periods, the News's distribution schedule and name varied. These variations do not indicate a different publication or change in ownership.
[6] KSL news anchor Dick Nourse reported on 1 November 1989 that the Utah divorce rate currently exceeds the national average of 50 percent. Exact figures on temple divorces are difficult to obtain, but they are probably lower than those for Mormon couples married outside the temple.
[7] This figure was provided by Don LeFevre of the church's Public Relations Department on 20 April 1990.
[8] President Hinckley reinforced a conservative position at the Spafford Social Work Conference the following February. There he agreed that rising expenses place difficult burdens on families; but he also claimed that working mothers are a "root cause" of many tragic and widespread social problems, including the breakdown of the family and increased crime. In addition, he said that women who work only for personal satisfaction are likely to pay a terrible price for that choice. See Tim Fitzpatrick, "Ellerbee, Hinckley Differ on Working Women," the Salt Lake Tribune, Saturday, 24 February 1990, B-l.
[9] The article “When Mom Can’t Be Home: Making the Best of Second Choice,” (Ensign, Feb. 1990, 16–21) by the General Presidency of Relief Society, is a first of its kind. More needs to be done along this line.
[post_title] => Mormon Women and the Right to Wage Work [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 23.4 (Winter 1990): 47–82In this essay, I will analyze recent Church discourse against a pattern of constricting employment options for women and will discuss the implications of that pattern. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => mormon-women-and-the-right-to-wage-work [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-17 22:59:33 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-17 22:59:33 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=12178 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Woman as Healer in the Modern Church
Betina Lindsey
Dialogue 23.3 (Fall 1990): 65–82
Evidence from Mormon women's journals, diaries, and meeting
minutes tells us that from the 1840s until as recently as the 1930s,
LDS women served their families, each other, and the broader community, expanding their own spiritual gifts in the process.
I went to my bishop to discuss some things that had happened in my life, and I asked him for a blessing. There were circumstances in my family—my husband was inactive, and I had an unusual position in our home. The bishop said I should call upon the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood to bless my family and those whom I loved and served. Not too long after, my son, who has serious attacks of croup, woke up one morning coughing. Within about five minutes, he couldn't breathe. I ran into the bathroom [carrying] him, turning on the shower to create steam, but he was turning blue and couldn't get any air. Someone called the ambulance. Meanwhile, my son was sitting on the toilet seat and I sat in front of him on the bathtub edge. Suddenly, in a natural, instantaneous response, I laid my hands on his head and said, "As E 's mother, I call on the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood. . . " and I blessed him. I had always prayed desperately for him during these attacks, but this was the first time I had ever laid my hands on his head and invoked the priesthood. While I was speaking, his head slipped forward from under my hands and fell on my lap. He was asleep! His breathing was even and relaxed. By the time we arrived at the hospital, they questioned why we'd brought him at all.
I'd given blessings before—with women, to other women—for infertility, alcoholism, and depression; but I'd never quoted priesthood authority until that morning with my son.[1]
I consider this woman to be a pioneer; but rather than exploring new terrain, she is rediscovering the vast landscape that was once the freehold of Mormon women—the domain of woman as healer—and from which, for three generations, women have been exiled. Evidence from Mormon women's journals, diaries, and meeting minutes tells us that from the 1840s until as recently as the 1930s, LDS women served their families, each other, and the broader community, expanding their own spiritual gifts in the process. Even now, the ward fast and the temple prayer circle symbolize the union of our spiritual community; for by uniting together to seek healing for others, we heal ourselves and our community.
But because the Church now defines blessing the sick as a function of priesthood authority, we all suffer from the loss of women's boundless potential as healers. One woman told me of her concern when her son needed an operation. Because her husband was "very private where the family was concerned" and apparently did not understand that he could pronounce a blessing alone, he refused to ask another elder to help him give the child a blessing, saying, "Let's just wait and see how it goes." The woman commented, "I would have felt better if my son had been given a blessing beforehand, but my husband wouldn't and I couldn't."
In the last decade or so, a growing number of LDS women are refusing to accept this externally imposed limitation. They not only desire to exercise such a gift but discreetly practice it. If women were authorized to exercise this gift openly, we cannot foresee the transformation that would come to them as individuals and to the Church collectively.
But I am not arguing that the General Authorities should grant women this authority. I affirm women's right to do so. I urge those who feel the desire, either to bless or to be blessed, to claim their right as a member of the "household of faith" and to lay hold of that gift.
This essay argues four points: (1) There is clear historical and scriptural precedent for women as healers. (2) The process and gift of healing are ungendered. (3) The Mormon health blessing contains ritual elements that resemble elements in the healing rituals of other cultures. (4) The Church could benefit collectively by officially recognizing the resource that women healers represent. I conclude by urging a broadening of women's service.
The Precedents for Mormon Women Healers
Since the founding of Mormonism, women have constituted an important spiritual and community resource through exercising the gifts of healing. I commend Linda King Newell's (1987) well-researched "Gifts of the Spirit: Women's Share," which traces the LDS tradition of women's spiritual gifts, particularly speaking in tongues and healing the sick. Indeed, our nineteenth-century foremothers give their sisters an unparalleled heritage of spiritual activism. It is a sacred tradition with which we should all become more familiar.
It begins in Nauvoo when the women of the Relief Society frequently pronounced healing blessings upon each other. Elizabeth Ann Whitney remembered receiving her authority to so act by ordination: "I was . . . ordained and set apart under the hand of Joseph Smith the Prophet to administer to the sick and comfort the sorrowful. Several other sisters were also ordained and set apart to administer in these holy ordinances" (in Newell 1987, 115).
The April 1893 Young Woman's Journal describes the healing gifts of Lucy Bigelow Young, a plural wife of Brigham Young and a St. George Temple worker:
How many times the sick and suffering have come upon beds to that temple, and at once Sister Young would be called to take the afflicted one under immediate charge, as all knew the mighty power she had gained through long years of fastings and prayers in the exercise of her special gift. When her hands are upon the head of another in blessing, the words of inspiration and personal prophecy that flow from her lips are like a stream of living fire. One sister who had not walked for twelve years was brought, and under the cheering faith of Sister Young she went through the day's ordinance and was perfectly healed of her affliction.
Newell 1987, 124
Nor did these women consider themselves to be radical innovators. Instead, they hearkened back to the scriptures to find the exercise of such gifts promised in abundant measure—and, what is more, promised upon condition of faith, irrespective of gender.
Women as Members of the Household of Faith
The promise of healing power comes directly from Jesus Christ to anyone born of the Spirit:
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues.
They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
Mark 16:17-18
Moroni corroborates that "all these gifts come by the spirit of Christ; and they come unto every man [or woman] severally, according as he [or she] will" (Moro. 10:17).
Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote in Mormon Doctrine, commenting upon gifts of the spirit: "Faithful persons are expected to seek the gifts of the Spirit with all their hearts. They are to 'covet earnestly the best gifts' (1 Cor. 12:31; D&C 46:8), to 'desire spiritual gifts' (1 Cor. 14:1), 'to ask of God, who giveth liberally' (D&C 46:7; Matt. 7:7-8). To some will be given one gift; to others another" (McConkie 1966, 314). "And again, to some it is given to have faith to be healed; and to others it is given to have faith to heal" (D&C 46:19-20). Women are clearly included within this injunction to "seek the gifts of the Spirit with all their hearts."
Although the contemporary Church does not theologically exclude women from healing—because all believers in Christ have access to the same gifts —they are excluded from performing the ordinance. This exclusion, as Newell carefully documents, is not a theological sanction but rather a matter of evolving Church policy (1987, 111-50). Because the Church has, since the 1960s, denned and correlated itself as a "church of priesthood" in what I believe is an effort to make men take their responsibilities more seriously, it has systematically excluded women from many gray areas, equating "adult male" and "Melchizedek Priesthood."
Healing by the laying on of hands brings together three sources of power: (1) God's power, transmitted through the conduit of human action; (2) faith, exercised both by the recipient and by those participating in the blessing; and (3) the healing power of the healer, a gift which is apparently an act of free grace from God to certain individuals who, in their turn, are free to exercise or withhold it.
There is no indication in Mormon theology that priesthood is, in itself, the healing power; rather, it is an avenue for exercising that power. Quite obviously, in earlier days of the Church, Melchizedek Priesthood was only one avenue. Women's faith was still another. It is difficult to estimate how many priesthood holders possess the gift of healing; but it seems that any worthy priesthood holder can serve as a conduit for God's power. It also seems likely that even when the priest hood holder is not worthy, a blessing pronounced upon a faithful member of the Church may still be heard and answered, due to the faith of the recipient or a loved one.
Restricting healing blessings to Melchizedek Priesthood holders only is a limitation on women's spirituality. One husband observed, "If one of the kids has a sore throat, I don't think it's time for a blessing. If they were in the hospital with a serious illness, then it would be different." His wife, however, felt differently: "I think a blessing can be a preventative to worse things to come. He says I worry too much. I feel helpless sometimes; and because he's the one with the priest hood, I'm put in the position of nagging him into giving a blessing he doesn't feel is necessary."
Another woman expressed dismay at the "routine" nature of priesthood blessings. When a woman in her ward became seriously ill, the first sister's husband administered to her but "for the next weeks, I and the other Relief Society sisters went into her home and nursed and took care of her and her children." When she recovered, this sister mentioned the event to her husband who gave her "a blank look because he didn't even remember the sister's name or administering to her."
She concluded, "I think it was the prayers and nursing by the sisters in the ward that healed her."
To my knowledge, there has never been a suggestion that women's faith is not efficacious, individually or collectively in healing; or that a woman's supplication for healing herself or another is inappropriate. Thus, contemporary Mormon women are not officially forbidden to heal; rather, they are forbidden to engage in the rituals of healing.[2]
An interesting example of the Church's uneasiness with women's exercise of the gifts of healing was an instance reported by David Miles Oman during the question-answer session at a Mormon Women's Forum lecture 8 June 1989. During his mission in France in 1972, he and his companion taught the gospel to a woman who "had the gift of healing":
The gift first manifested when she was a child, and she had laid her hands on a pet and it was healed. We gave her all the literature about the Church, and she read everything and joined, becoming a faithful member. The mission president visited her in regard to her gift of healing; and though he recognized her ability to heal.as a spiritual gift from God rather than [from] Satan, he requested she not use or demonstrate the gift for now.
We can speculate on the mission president's motives: a desire not to confuse members by having two sources of healing authority, a concern about the inevitable questions of appropriateness that would arise, even a desire to help the woman fit more swiftly into the conventional roles assigned an LDS woman. I wish I knew whether this woman accepted the limitation imposed upon her and whether she is still an active member of the Church.
Another woman I interviewed had been promised "the gift of healing in your hands" in her patriarchal blessing. She said, "I use the gift mainly for my own children and family, drawing out the pain with my hands. Afterwards, I sometimes feel drained. I haven't used the gift outside the family, though I find when I visit the sick I can talk with them, and my voice, in some part, soothes and helps them." I think with longing of the blessing this woman could be to her ward.
Church leaders emphasize "spirituality" and "worthiness" in calling upon gifts of the spirit; but for Mormon women, that emphasis becomes a double bind when the symbol and avenue for spiritual manifestations within the Church is priesthood. In essence, Mormon women become spiritually dependent on male priesthood holders for healing ordinances, even though Mormon theology gives them equal access to God's power. It is particularly ironic, in light of recent statements by Church leaders about the spiritual "superiority" of women, that the Church allows no official avenue for women to exercise this superiority.
The Mormon Healing Ritual
Virtually every society has created a ritual for attuning an individual with a divine source as a channel of healing or other important spiritual gifts for the community. Ritual use of language and symbols is central in such empowerment rituals, because symbols both represent and objectify power.[3] Within Mormonism, consecrated oil and the ritual language of the ordinance occupy this important place. Sacredness attaches to both the oil and to the language. They communicate power, awaken faith, and enhance the individual's sense of personal empowerment.
Mormon healing prayers do not have a rigid form, although they must contain important ritual elements. The instructions in the Melchizedek Priesthood Personal Study Guide —which were identical in each manual I checked between 1980 and 1988 —did not give exact wordings or sample prayers, probably to avoid an over-reliance on terminology in and of itself. The first step is consecrating the oil:
Olive oil should be consecrated before it is used to anoint the sick. A good grade of olive oil should be used. No other kind of oil should be used. Those holding the Melchizedek Priesthood should consecrate it and set it apart for its holy purposes. One man alone can do this.
- Hold the open container of olive oil.
- Address our Heavenly Father as in prayer.
- State the authority (Melchizedek Priesthood) by which the oil is consecrated.
- Consecrate the oil (not the container), and set it apart for the blessing and anointing of the sick and the afflicted.
- Close in the name of Jesus Christ.
In administrations to the sick:
This ordinance is done in two parts.
Anointing
One Melchizedek Priesthood holder anoints with oil as follows:
- Anoint the head of the sick person, using a small amount of oil.
- Lay your hands on the person's head.
- Call the person by name.
- State the authority (Melchizedek Priesthood) by which the ordinance is performed.
- State that you are anointing with consecrated oil.
- Close in the name of Jesus Christ.
Sealing the Anointing
Two or more Melchizedek Priesthood holders lay their hands on the head of the sick person. One of them speaks as follows:
Lay Hold 1988, 153-54
- Call the sick person by name.
- State the authority (Melchizedek Priesthood) by which the ordinance is performed.
- Seal the anointing that has already taken place.
- Add such words of blessing as the Spirit dictates.
- Close in the name of Jesus Christ.
Within Mormonism as with any religious or cultural tradition, the ritual effect of using traditional language is an empowerment; the person speaking words that have been spoken many times in similar settings is also putting himself or herself in touch with the power that has operated in those previous settings. I would argue that priesthood mediates power from a divine source to the human setting by distinguishing key structural symbols and moving them into a proper relationship to allow power to flow through them. In other words, an ordinance creates order. In healing, the priesthood power to establish order through ritual lies at the root of the healing process. (See McGuire's discussion, 1988, 213-39).
This priesthood ordering or alignment was often extended through the use of physical objects when the healer was distant from the source. We see a scriptural example of such "portable charisma" in Moses' brazen serpent, which had the power to heal any Israelite bitten during the plague of serpents (Num. 21:8-9). A modern example occurred in July 1839 in Nauvoo and Montrose during a malaria epidemic. Joseph Smith, who had been healing the sick, was waiting to return to Nauvoo when a father asked him to heal his three-month-old twins:
Joseph told the man he could not go, but he would send someone to heal them. He told Elder Woodruff to go with the man and heal his children. At the same time he took from his pocket a silk bandanna handkerchief, and gave it to Brother Woodruff, telling him to wipe the faces of the children with it, and they should be healed; and remarked at the same time: "As long as you keep that handkerchief it shall remain a league between you and me." There were many sick whom Joseph could not visit, so he counseled the twelve to go and visit and heal them, and many were healed under their hands.
HC 4:4-5
In his book Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, D. Michael Quinn cites additional examples of healing handkerchiefs, including those of Lorenzo Snow, Newel Knight, and Caroline Butler. Quinn also notes the fascinating incident of Joseph Smith consecrating the cape belonging to Caroline Butler's husband "for healing purposes, and several generations of the Butler family regarded the cape as having power in itself to heal" (Quinn 1987, 222).
Consecrated Oil
Consecrated oil, which is usually blessed for its healing function in quorum meetings as a semi-private act of a united brotherhood, is the only ritual object currently involved in healing. Women, by being excluded from priesthood meetings, are not witnesses to the consecration.
Some faithful Mormon men regularly carry oil with them in tiny pocket-size vials. Women may be responsible for seeing that the family medicine chest contains a current supply of consecrated oil; but because they were barred from using oil at the same time they lost the privilege of giving blessings, they are also distanced from the close proximity that some men retain to this holy object. Consecrated oil is part of the washing and anointing portion of the temple ritual for women, as for men; but the increasing strictness surrounding anything temple related has made the use of oil for women even less accessible, rather than more comfortable and familiar.
The Laying on of Hands
The second part of the ritual is the laying on of hands and the pronouncing of the prayer of administration in which, even though the wording is not specified, certain elements must appear, as cited in the handbook. Laying on hands is an important part of the healing ritual. To the best of my knowledge, all Mormon prayers outside of the temple are pronounced with arms folded and hands clasped except for four: confirmations, ordinations to the priesthood, settings apart, and blessings of healing. Women, as non-priesthood-holders, participate in none of these, so even the ritual posture—a circle of men with their hands on the head of the recipient — is associated with male priesthood functioning.
Many of the women I've talked to express hesitancy about laying hands on someone's head because they are afraid that assuming this "priesthood posture" will be seen as inappropriate. Some of them avoid the problem by establishing physical contact in other ways during the pronouncing of a blessing: hands on shoulders, holding hands, etc.[4]
A precious twentieth-century document for Mormon women is a written form of the blessing to be pronounced in a washing, anointing, and sealing before childbirth. It was recorded in the minutes of the Oakley (Idaho) Second Ward Relief Society between 1901 and 1910. This excerpt combines the use of consecrated oil, ritual language, and the laying on of hands:
We anoint your back, your spinal column that you might be strong and healthy no disease fasten upon it no accident belaff [befall] you, Your kidneys that they might be active and healthy and preform their proper function, your bladder that it might be strong and protected from accident, your Hips that your system might relax and give way for the birth of your child, your sides that your liver, your lungs, and spleen that they might be strong and preform their proper functions, . . . your breasts that your milk may come freely and you need not be afflicted with sore nipples as many are, your heart that it might be comforted.
Newell 1987, 130-31
The blessing continues, in what could be a revelatory tradition for women in modern times. Nineteenth-century blessings — and obviously this one as well — involved the anointing and blessing of the area of the body mentioned in the blessing, a depth of ritual that now exists only in the temple. The question of propriety is no doubt one reason why male leaders of the Church accepted the administration of women to each other and why laying hands on only the head of the recipient accompanied the narrowing of pronouncing blessings to males. (I have no information which change came first.)
Authority
The portion of this prayer quoted by Linda Newell does not specify the authority of the women. Some contemporary women who give blessings circumvent the problem by developing another category of blessings: the "mother's" blessing. One woman, a single parent to whom the idea of women holding priesthood seemed "spooky," admitted giving her son a mother's blessing. A guest speaker at a Young Woman's values night in my ward, said, "My husband travels a lot on business; and sometimes when he's gone, if a child is sick, I give a mother's blessing." She quickly added, "It isn't like a priesthood blessing."
Alternatively, some endowed women have blessed others by invoking "the authority with which we were endowed in the temple" or "by the power of our united faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." Still others invoke the priesthood of their husbands. A friend of mine who is a gifted healer reports, "I've given my husband a blessing, and I lay my hands upon him and cite his priesthood authority, which I share." The mother who blessed her croupy son invoked the Melchizedek Priesthood without specifying who held it.
Modern Consequences of Women's Healing
Imagine with me a scenario in which LDS women could serve each other with the spiritual rituals of healing blessings—important in physical health—and blessings of comfort and counsel—important in mental health.
An immediate result would be to strengthen the Church at large by increasing the spiritual autonomy of more than half its members. One single woman expressed her frustration at the "inaccessibility" of blessings, due to the inaccessibility of priesthood holders. She describes her ward's demographics as "180 families which are mostly single women" and "about twenty priesthood holders." She has had no home teachers during the five years she has lived in the ward. The "home teaching" is done by visiting teachers, by special permission. "And if you're sick, it better be on Wednesday night because you can only catch the bishop on Wednesday."
A second immediate result would be an increase of faith because women would be released from the very real and very crippling fear that they are "doing something wrong" and may be punished by the community. It breaks my heart to hear of beautiful experiences like the two that follow where, even as the women experience the unquestioned outpouring of the Holy Ghost, they still draw back fearfully.
One woman told me about a time when she was twelve and her father was dying from Lou Gehrig's disease. Early one morning, her mother called her awake — her father had quit breathing. She ran down stairs to be with him while her mother called the bishop and the family.
Somehow I felt I could do something about it. I held his hand in mine and sincerely prayed as best a twelve-year-old could do. After a moment, his eyes opened. He looked at me and asked, "What did you do? My lungs lifted and I could breath again." He said he'd been fighting to live all night and felt like he should give up. It was a very humbling thing, and we both knew that the Spirit had worked through me. A few months later, he did die; but we were all better prepared for it by then.
I hadn't labelled it as a healing blessing until years later when I was listening to a lecture about experiences like this in the Church. I've always felt a need to "heal hurts" of others. I would like to have the option to use that power, but I'm not sure what makes it okay to call on it. It seems the natural thing to do. I would like to have that permission.
In the second example, a Relief Society president, concerned about some sisters with serious physical and emotional problems, asked if they would like some of the sisters to come and pray with them.
They all thankfully agreed. I called sisters in the ward who were close to them —friends and visiting teachers —and arranged for baby-sitting for a half hour or so. The sisters made every effort to be there. Some left work. We knelt in a circle, and I said the prayer. It was a deeply spiritual experience for everyone involved, and I would have liked to have put my hands on their heads as I prayed; but I felt we were on the edge as it was, with no priesthood [holder] present.
Broadening Women's Service
It is ironic, given the tradition of Mormon women's healing, that the new tradition makes women apprehensive and fearful about using their spiritual gifts. How can we encourage Mormon women to cross the borders of timidity and comfortably use these gifts in the service of others?
While the ordination of women would remove objections to women performing the ordinance of administration and overcome the hesitancy many Mormon women feel about practicing healing, ordination is not an event they can control or bring about. Rather than wait for women's ordination, I think it is wiser to concentrate on what women themselves can do.[5] I would hope that women who feel drawn to healing would "earnestly seek" this gift and prayerfully exercise it, appropriately uniting with those who have the complementary gift of faith to be healed and strengthened by those who have the gift of faith in the Savior.
I would also hope that women would break the silence of the last three generations regarding the exercise of this gift and share their experiences with each other and with selected men in appropriate ways. We need to tell each other stories, not only the stories of our forefathers and their healing experiences, but also our own.
Some may feel that if such sharing becomes "public," it will be seen as a "publicity stunt." I have talked with literally dozens of women about this topic. Although many —not all —feel disappointed at their exclusion from the Church's official healing rituals and some who are aware of the history resent the injustice, none are angry at the Church or inclined to use a healing occasion to try to embarrass the Church or put public pressure on it. In fact, I would suspect that anyone prompted by such a motivation probably would not be a successful healer.
Moroni promises: "All these gifts of which I have spoken, which are spiritual, never will be done away, even as long as the world shall stand, only according to the unbelief of the children of men. . . . Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must be hope, there must be charity" (10:19).
Unbelief is not the reason Mormon women no longer practice the gift of healing. Rather, there exists much faith but no legitimate avenue to exercise it. Even though the Relief Society motto is "Charity Never Faileth," the Church's distancing of its women from blessing circles has diminished Moroni's vision of faith, hope, and charity to plates of chocolate chip cookies and tuna casseroles. Mormon women are trained for private charity, Mormon men for public priesthood power. Those in one realm are required to close their eyes to the other realm. The disconnection of charity from power, unfortunately, ensures that charity is powerless and licenses power to be without charity.
The instructions in Doctrine and Covenants 46:7-9, which preface the list of gifts given to the members of the Church, contain important cautions. One of these cautions is against sign-seeking, self-aggrandizement, or other unworthy personal motivations. But the other important caution is against being deceived "by evil spirits, or doctrines or devils, or the commandments of men." I agree that these cautions against self-deception and temptation are important; I wonder if the warning against "the commandments of men" may also be a caution against our own traditions that may unnecessarily limit and restrict us. For certainly, the rest of that introduction is a celebration, a promise, and an encouragement to exercise spiritual gifts:
But ye are commanded in all things to ask of God, who giveth liberally; and that which the Spirit testifies unto you even so I would that ye should do in all holiness of heart, walking uprightly before me, considering the end of your salvation, doing all things with prayer and thanksgiving. . . .
. . . And that ye may not be deceived, seek ye earnestly the best gifts, always remembering for what they are given;
For verily I say unto you, they are given for the benefit of those who love me and keep all my commandments; and [her] that seeketh so to do; that all may be benefit that seek or that ask of me. . . .
[1] I personally collected all of the accounts used here from the individuals who were directly involved. However, because healing blessings are officially assigned to men who hold the Melchizedek Priesthood and because many Mormon men feel uneasy about autonomous action by women, many Latter-day Saint women feel vulnerable in speaking openly of giving and receiving blessings from women. To preserve their anonymity and to respect their privacy, I use no names in any of the contemporary accounts of healing blessings by women which I quote.
[2] The exclusion does not specifically forbid women's participation. Rather, women are silently excluded by the instructions of who may participate and how. The current policy on blessings of healing and blessings of comfort and counsel appears in the General Handbook of Instructions (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, March 1989), pp. 5-4 and 5-5:
Normally, two Melchizedek Priesthood holders administer to the sick. A father who holds the Melchizedek Priesthood should administer to sick members of his family. He may ask another Melchizedek Priesthood bearer to assist.
If no one is available to help, a Melchizedek Priesthood holder has full authority to both anoint and seal the anointing. If he has no oil, he may give a blessing by the authority of the priesthood.
The ordinance of administering to the sick should be performed at the request of the sick person or someone who is vitally concerned, so the blessing will be according to their faith (see D&C 24:13-14). Elders who are assigned to visit hospitals should not solicit opportunities to administer to the sick.
A person need not be anointed with oil frequently for the same illness. If a priesthood holder is asked to give a repeat blessing for the same illness, he usually does not need to anoint with oil after the first blessing, but he may give a blessing by the laying on of hands, and by the authority of the priesthood.
The ordinance of administering to the sick is performed in two parts as outlined in the Melchizedek Priesthood Leadership Handbook. That handbook also contains specific instruction on other ordinances, including conferring the priesthood and ordaining to a priesthood office, setting a member apart in a calling, dedicating graves, and dedicating homes.
Father's Blessings and Other Blessings of Comfort and Counsel
Fathers (for their families) and others who hold the Melchizedek Priesthood may give blessings of comfort and counsel. Fathers may give their children blessings on special occasions, such as when the children go on missions, enter military service, or leave home to go to school. A family may record a father's blessing for family records, but it is not preserved in Church records. A father's blessing is given the same as any blessing of comfort and counsel (see Melchizedek Priesthood Leadership Handbook).
[3] In a recent study of contemporary healing in America, Meredith McGuire points out that "power is a fundamental (if not the fundamental) category for interpreting healing. . . . [E]ach type of healing group has distinct beliefs about the loci of the power to heal (or to cause illness), as well as different ideas about ways to channel or control that power" (McGuire 1988, 227).
[4] The practice of laying on of hands is not uniquely or distinctively Mormon. The practice is known worldwide and across time. Its sources are unquestionably the intuitive and instinctive gestures of comfort that we offer a hurt child: laying a palm on a feverish forehead, kissing a scrape well, patting a weeping child. The formal laying on of hands is the oldest form of ritual healing, known to virtually every religion. Rock carvings in Egypt and Chaldea (Iraq) and cave paintings in the Pyrenees that are 15,000 years old depict individuals in a formal attitude of laying both hands on another. The Roman emperor Vespasian (A.D. 70-79) had the reputation of healing blindness, lameness, and mental illness with a power in the palms of his hands. The Spanish conquistadores found Native American shamans and brujas of both genders laying on hands (Stein 1988, 116-17). North American Pentacostal congregations practice the ritual widely today.
Nor is the role of physical touching excluded from modern healing. In a recent Deseret News article, physician Lynn Fraley stated, in language borrowed from Alvin Tobler's Future Shock: "The more the world becomes 'high tech,' the more the world needs 'high touch.' I consider touch the most undervalued, most effective tool we [physicians] can use." Fraley regularly uses touch with her patients, not only during examinations but also to relieve pain, to reduce anxiety, "and sometimes to provide something that is hard to measure in terms that modern medicine understands" (Jarvik 1989).
[5] An alternative solution—having ecclesiastical leaders set certain women apart as healers—has serious problems. In this case, the choice of seeking and exercising a spiritual gift would still be removed from the woman's own area of autonomy. A male leader would be making the choice. Thus, healing would still be limited and excluding. A second solution, having both men and women participate in prayer circles for healing outside the temple, has the same problems with selection and exclusivity; also, it is a highly unlikely solution, since prayer circles outside the temple have been discouraged for some time.
[post_title] => Woman as Healer in the Modern Church [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 23.3 (Fall 1990): 65–82Evidence from Mormon women's journals, diaries, and meeting minutes tells us that from the 1840s until as recently as the 1930s, LDS women served their families, each other, and the broader community, expanding their own spiritual gifts in the process. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => woman-as-healer-in-the-modern-church [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-17 22:39:20 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-17 22:39:20 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=12213 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Theological Foundations of Patriarchy
Alison Walker
Dialogue 23.3 (Fall 1990): 79–95
MOST RESEARCH BY MORMON FEMINISTS has been historical in nature. Proponents of greater power and privilege for women cite as precedents the lives of Huldah and Deborah of the Old Testament, the treatment of women by Jesus Christ, or the activities of pioneer women in the early restored Church.
Most research by Mormon feminists has been historical in nature. Proponents of greater power and privilege for women cite as precedents the lives of Huldah and Deborah of the Old Testament, the treatment of women by Jesus Christ, or the activities of pioneer women in the early restored Church, including blessing the sick. The strength that many women have found in history has been helpful, and I do not seek to trivialize it. One of my greatest personal experiences of empowerment—a realization that the first to know of Christ's resurrection were women (Luke 24:1-10)—came from history. However, feminism's opponents also cite history: God's ancient covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, for example; or the maleness of Jesus and his twelve apostles; or the former practice of the principle of polygamous marriage. Indeed, the problems of a historical focus on feminist issues are several.
History, by its very definition, relates to a particular people in a particular social and cultural setting, rather than to universals. The implications of any historical occurrence, and even the "facts" of an incident, are always colored by the perceptions of those who have recorded it and those who interpret their records. Implicit in any analysis of history, however uplifting or empowering, must be a question of its applicability to present circumstances.
A more productive approach to Mormon feminism might be a theological one: How does feminism fit within the theological tenets —the unchanging universals, the eternal truths — of Mormonism? Upon what theological tenets is our system of patriarchy based? Simply stated, why the patriarchal order? Perhaps a theological approach would lend rational support to what many of us have long known spiritually and emotionally: that patriarchy is not good, that patriarchy is not right, that patriarchy, in the words of feminist and former Latter-day Saint Marilyn Warenski, is "discrimination in the name of God" (1978, 277).
I will direct my analysis to explore the primary foundations of patriarchy in traditional Judeo-Christian thought and to discover why these principles are unacceptable justifications for patriarchy in Mormondom.
First we ought to define patriarchy. In Mormon Doctrine, Bruce R. McConkie called the patriarchal order the nature of the Lord's government, a system with the family at its center (1979, 559). Dean L. Larsen, of the presidency of the Seventy, expounded on that idea in an article in the Ensign:
[The patriarchal system] places parents in a position of accountability for their own direct family, and it links these family kingdoms in a patriarchal order that lends cohesiveness to the greater kingdom of God of which they are a part. . . . In the Lord's system of government, every organizational unit must have a presiding officer. [God] has decreed that in the family organization the father assumes this role. (1982, 6-9)
Quoting Stephen L Richards to make his point, Larsen continues:
Where is the personality more perfectly endowed by nature and divine ordinance to receive and exercise authority in his own household than the father of that household? (1982, 11)
Larsen's discussion also links the father's presiding position to his priesthood authority: "He bears the priesthood ordination. He is accountable before the Lord for his leadership" (1982, 9). Carolyn Wallace, in researching the Church's priesthood, summarized: "The patriarchal chain . . . establishes an order on earth as well as in heaven, an order that both expresses and depends on priesthood authority" (1986, 122).
In The Creation of Patriarchy, feminist Gerda Lerner defines patriarchy as "the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general [implying] that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to such power" (1986, 239). In linking male dominance over women in the family to male dominance over women in institutions, Lerner completes our definition. In the Church, the priest hood's administrative functions also tie the hierarchy back to ordination.
Patriarchy, then, is more than just husbands and fathers presiding in homes, more than simply an all-male priesthood, and more than only male hegemony. The patriarchal system consists of and encompasses all three. Now, what theological foundations underpin such a system?
Dualism of Spirit and Body
One foundation of patriarchy in traditional Christianity is the concept of dualism. In The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion, Sterling M. McMurrin explained "that the mind-body problem, the question of the nature of the soul or spirit and the body and the relation between them, has been a major metaphysical issue in occidental religious thought since the earliest Christian centuries" (1965, 7). Dualists answer this question by postulating that "minds are immaterial, unextended, simple conscious substances, and bodies are material, extended, composite, nonconscious substances" (Wolff 1981, 331). In the words of Rene Descartes, the modern Western philosopher most closely identified with the dualist view, "It is certain that I, [that is, my mind, by which I am what I am], is entirely and truly distinct from my body" (in Halverson 1981, 173). As Truman Madsen explains this distinction, "The soul has none of the qualities of the body and vice versa. Mind or soul is really real, the body is unreal or less real. The soul is eternal; the body temporal. The soul is good; the body is evil" (1970, 44).
Feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether explains that in traditional Christian thought, "the relationship of male to female is analogous to the relationship of spirit to matter"; femaleness is correlated with "the lower part of human nature in [this] hierarchical scheme of mind over body" (1985, 64; 1983, 93). Ruether further notes that "femaleness is both symbol and expression of the corruptible bodiliness that one must flee in order to purify the soul for eternal life. Female life processes — pregnancy, birth, suckling, indeed, female flesh as such—become vile and impure and carry with them the taint of decay and death (1983, 245).
Traditional Christianity's dualism originated in part in ancient Greece from the metaphysical theories of Plato and Aristotle. Says Rosemary Radford Ruether,
The influence of . . . Aristotelian biology on Christian theology . . . can hardly be underestimated. Aristotle's biology gave "scientific expression" to the basic patriarchal assumption that the male is the normative and representative expression of the human species and the female is not only secondary and auxiliary to the male but lacks full human status in physical strength, moral self control, and mental capacity. This lesser "nature" thus confirms the female's subjugation to the male as her "natural" place in the universe. (1985, 65)
Centuries of Israelite tradition also influenced Christianity's dualism. Ruether offers this example of female subjugation from the time of Moses:
In the story of the giving of the law at Sinai, the people are told to assemble and prepare themselves for the great revelation that will be the charter of their life as a nation of God. Yet, we are startled to read that the "people" are told to keep strictly away from women for three days in order to be ready for the revelation. Suddenly, we realize that the author simply assumes that the "people" means males. . . . Women are not only invisible, but they are also seen as sources of pollution inimical to the receiving of divine revelation. Male sacrality is defined by negation of the female sexual body.[1] (1986, 44)
In the first century, Philo, "the foremost Jewish philosopher of antiquity[,] . . . attempted a reconciliation of the dominant Hellenistic metaphysics of his time with the Hebrew scriptures" (McMurrin 1965, 19), contributing to the dualist view of the relationship of body to spirit and female to male adopted by the Christians. Judaism, and subsequently Christianity, was affected, too, by Persian dualism. The tendency to call the body evil was manifest most sharply in Manichaeism, named for its founder, Mani, a Persian who lived in the third century. Manichaeans believed that "because human beings [are] made of matter, their bodies [are] a prison of evil and darkness. .. . To achieve salvation, humans must . . . abandon all physical desires" (Kagan 1983, 236).
Mormonism has rejected the principle of dualism with such modern day revelations as D&C 29:34 ("All things unto me are spiritual") and D&C 131:7 ("There is no such thing as immaterial matter; all spirit is matter"). As Truman Madsen clarifies, in Mormon theology, "mind, spirit, and body are all material, in varying degrees of refinement. They have equal status in spatio-temporal existence and are, in their perfected state, of equal worth" (1970, 45).
Furthermore, as Carolyn Wallace has written, "the physical body, which is considered the temple for the spirit, is necessary for the perfectibility that LDS church members strive to attain" (1986, 119). In direct opposition to a fleeing from bodiliness to purify the soul, in Mormonism the soul cannot be purified without the body. "Spirits can not attain spiritual maturity unless they live in the embodied state" (Wallace 1986, 119). Mormonism's "conception of God as a material being existing in space and time" reinforces its view of the body and the spirit, further "distinguishing] Mormon theology from the traditional Christian theology which . . . adopted the established Greek theory of the nature of reality as immaterial in its higher forms" (McMurrin 1965, 41).
At times, having spent my life as a female in Mormonism's patriarchy, as I have searched for answers to my numerous questions about the blatant inequalities in the system, I have tentatively concluded that the Church's devaluation of women and things female must result from the inherent lesser worth of femaleness compared with maleness. I have occasionally thought that my lower status on earth comes from a relegation to femaleness in this life because I was not quite as "noble and great" (Abra. 3:22) in the premortal existence as those who have earned maleness. It has even occurred to me that the entire sphere of existence permitted women under the patriarchal order seems to spring from the fact that we are capable of bearing children.
Fortunately, such thoughts are not consistent with the theological tenets of Mormonism regarding dualism (and happily, my sense of self does not allow me to entertain them for long). Because Mormonism has rejected the traditional dualist view of the qualitative nature of spirit and body, Mormonism's patriarchal system cannot be justified by the corresponding dualist view of the value of maleness and femaleness.
God the Father
A second theological justification for traditional Judeo-Christian patriarchy is the belief of God as male. Today, Rosemary Radford Ruether observes, "few topics are as likely to arouse such passionate feelings .. . as the question of the exclusively male image of God. Liberals who have advanced to the point of accepting inclusive language for humans often exhibit a phobic reaction to the very possibility of speaking of God as 'She' " (1983, 47).
Gerda Lerner has written, "For over 2500 years the God of the Hebrews was addressed, represented, and interpreted as a male Father God. . . . This was, historically, the meaning given to the symbol, and therefore this was the meaning which carried authority and force. This meaning became of the utmost significance in the way both men and women were able to conceptualize women and place them both in the divine order of things and human society" (1986, 178). Feminist theologian Mary Daly summarizes the situation: "As long as God is male," she says, "the male is God. .. . If God in 'his' heaven is a father ruling 'his' people, then it is in the 'nature' of things and according to divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male dominated" (Daly 1973, 19, 13).
Merlin Stone, in her book When God Was a Woman, writes of ancient Near and Middle Eastern societies that worshipped female gods. In those societies, Stone theorizes that the status of women paralleled the reverence of the female deity. Similarly, in The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler looks to the prehistoric worship of the Goddess to assert the existence of an earlier egalitarian age that she calls gylany.
Proof for such societies is little more than subjective and tentative reasoning. Rosemary Radford Ruether regards the surviving texts of the "ancient religions that revere Mother Goddesses" as "not fully 'feminist' but . . . more or less androcentric. The power of the Mother is viewed from the perspective of males who wish to defeat or harness this power to seat themselves on it as their throne." As for a gylanic society "lost in the mists of time," Ruether writes, "Perhaps it once existed. Perhaps it did not. In any case, it is 'prehistoric,' which is to say that it does not exist as a part of our historical experience" (1985, x). Writer John A. Phillips bluntly claims that "there is a notable lack of convincing evidence that there ever was a period of general worship of the Mother Goddess, let alone a correlated stage of equality between the sexes" (1984, 176).
These discrepancies reinforce the problems I have noted about a historical focus on feminism. Still, I am convinced that belief in the existence of a female god, a Mother in Heaven, can be a great endowment for women. In the words of radical feminist Sonia Johnson, "I know that Goddess ritual, insofar as it generates reverence for and celebrates that which is female, which is us, is fiercely empowering, and that her image in our minds — images of ourselves as deity —is necessary as a blueprint for a more authoritative mode of being in the world" (1987, 6).
In 1835, mystic Rebecca Jackson, pursuing an itinerant preaching mission, recorded her vision of an Eternal Mother as the empowering revelation that allowed her to resist and triumph over the hostile reception she was receiving by the African Methodist Episcopal Church who wished to silence her: "I saw that night, for the first time, a Mother in the Deity. This indeed was a new scene, a new doctrine to me. But I knowed when I got it, and I was obedient to the heavenly vision —as I see all that I hold forth, that is, with my spirit eye. And was I not glad when I found that I had a Mother!" (in Ruether 1985, 7, 18).
As Latter-day Saints, we too have knowledge of the existence of an Eternal Mother. Even as we sing "O My Father," we are reminded that "truth eternal tells [us we have] a mother there" in heaven, as well (Snow 1985, 292). A 1909 First Presidency statement made the doctrine official: "All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity" (in Wilcox 1987, 69). Believing as we do, in contrast to traditional Christians, that our "Father [and Mother have] bodfies] of flesh and bones as tangible as man's [and woman's]" (D&C 130:22) enriches for us the benefits of seeking a female god: while others believe "that all language for God is metaphorical and not literal and that the authentic God/ess is beyond gender" (Ruether 1985, 8), our Mother is literally a woman. Abraham 4:27 states: "So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image . . . male and female to form they them." In Mormonism, more than in any other religion, "to be in the image of God is to be male and female" (Weber 1987, 58).
Yet, official Mormondom has little to say about Heavenly Mother. Melodie Moench Charles contends that in orthodox Mormonism she "is a nothing at best, and at worst is a housewife. . . . Our theology has allowed her no authority nor power; she gets no acknowledgment for her distinctive contributions, whatever they are. She has no self apart from her husband" (1988, 84-85). Specifically because official Mormondom makes few definite statements about the nature and place of God the Mother, however, I will argue that Mormonism's patriarchal structure is not validated by its theological convictions about God or Goddess; rather, the orthodox presumptions about our Eternal Mother stem from the patriarchal structure.
Mormon feminist Margaret Toscano explores the concept of the Mormon goddess: "If she were allowed to emerge from obscurity and if there developed around her a body of teachings that could be harmonized with our existing beliefs, they would result in a theology that could, perhaps, provide the basis for a reevaluation of the Godhead in terms of the sacred marriage of the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Mother" (1988, 54). Such a reevaluation would necessitate the transcendence of "cultural prejudices" (Charles 1988, 86) — including those
of the patriarchal system. Then, and only then, could the sacred marriage be viewed not as a male-focused, male-led, and male-dominated Mr. and Mrs. God, with Mrs. God nothing but a helper to her husband, the Supreme Being, but as Rosemary Radford Ruether interprets some of the ancient Goddess myths, lacking even "the concept of gender complementarity," where "the Goddess and God are equivalent . . . images of the divine" (1983, 52).
While we lack information about our Mother and her place in the universe, at least as Latter-day Saints we are unable to justify patriarchy based on the exclusively male image of God. In the meantime, perhaps we ought to pray with Lisa Bolin Hawkins:
Another Prayer
Why are you silent, Mother? How can I
Wilcox 1987, 73
Become a goddess when the patterns here
Are those of gods? I struggle, and I try
To mold my womanhood to something near
Their goodness. I need you, who gave me birth
In your own image, to reveal your ways:
A rich example of the daughters' worth;
Pillar of Womanhood to guide our days;
Fire of power and grace to guide my night
When I am lost.
My brothers question me,
And wonder why I seek this added light.
No one can answer all my pain but Thee,
Ordain me to my womanhood, and share
The light that Queens and Priestesses must bear,
The Fall of Eve
Perhaps the most pervasive theological rationale for patriarchy in traditional Christianity comes from what Gerda Lerner has called the most powerful metaphor of gender in the Bible (1986, 182), from a narrative that for over two millennia has "influence[d] the Judeo Christian view of the roles of the sexes and their part in creation" (Collins 1974, 65) —the story of Eve. As James E. Talmage tells it: "Satan presented himself before Eve in the garden [of Eden], and, speaking by the mouth of the serpent, questioned her . . . and sought to beguile [her]. . . . [B]eing eager to possess the advantages pictured by Satan, she disobeyed the command of the Lord, and partook of the fruit forbidden" (1982, 64-65). Eve then urges Adam to eat of the fruit also, and he does. "Adam was not deceived [however], but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1 Tim. 2:14). Punished for her disobedience in the garden, Eve is told, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" (Gen. 3:16). Further, all women (since Eve is the symbol of all women) are made subject to the rule of their husbands as the result of God's decree.[2]
Of Eve's blame, one Christian woman wrote, "When Eve listened to the serpent, representing temptation, she followed, not the will of God, but the path of evil. . . . [E]ve fell far short of the ideal in womanhood" (Deen 1955, 5-6). Art historian Merlin Stone wrote of her personal experience with the Eve account:
Even as a young girl I was taught that, because of Eve, when I grew up I was to bear my children in pain and suffering. As if this was not a sufficient penalty, instead of receiving compassion, sympathy or admiring respect for my courage, I was to experience this pain with guilt, the sin of my wrongdoing laid heavily upon me as punishment for simply being a woman, a daughter of Eve. To make matters worse, I was also supposed to accept the idea that men, as symbolized by Adam, in order to prevent any further foolishness on my part, were presented with the right to control me—to rule over me. According to the omnipotent male deity, whose righteousness and wisdom I was expected to admire and respect with a reverent awe, men were far wiser than women. Thus my penitent, submissive position as a female was firmly established by page three of the nearly one thousand pages of the Judeo-Christian Bible. (1976, 5-6)
This submissive position of women is likewise firmly established in Mormonism. In fact, based on Eve's choice in the garden, Mormon women, married or single, until recently have been required to cove nant to obey the law of their husbands as part of the temple ceremony, whereas men are required to covenant to obey the law of God. Melodie Moench Charles draws the only logical conclusion: "males are linked directly to God, and women to God only through their husbands — even women who have no husbands. . . . husbands, on some level, act as god to their wives" (1988, 79). In Paradise Lost, John Milton similarly describes the relationship of Adam, Eve, and God: "He for God only, she for God in him" (in Phillips 1984, 72). Yet, in addition to violating my idea of what God or Goddess ought to be to people — women and men —such patriarchal elements of the temple blatantly contradict Mormon theology concerning the Fall of Adam and Eve.
First, in Mormon theology, the Fall is not the disastrous event other religions view it. As Eve herself explains, the Fall was necessary for the development of human souls: "Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient" (Moses 5:11). Although it is only speculation, I and others choose to view Eve as "an 'intelligent, sensi tive, and ingenious' woman who weighs carefully the choice before her and then acts out of a desire for wisdom" (Toscano 1988, 41). Presi dent Joseph F. Smith's vision of the spirit world in the Doctrine and Covenants confirms that "among the great and mighty ones who were assembled in the vast congregation of the righteous" was "our glorious Mother Eve, with many of her faithful daughters" (D&C 138:38-39).
Mary Daly explains the positive direction of such a belief: "In [the Fall], women reach for knowledge and, finding it, share it with men, so that together [they] can leave the delusory paradise of false consciousness and alienation. In ripping the image of the Fall from its old context . . . its meaning is divested of its negativity and becomes positive and healing" (1973, 67). John A. Phillips, in studying the myth of Eve, reaches the same conclusion, calling the Genesis narrative "the story of the beginnings of human consciousness, human history, human civilization. . . . The Fall is not a curse, but a blessing. It is the story of humanity becoming human" (1984, 91). Didn't Nephi of old write: "[Eve] fell that [wo]men might be, and [women are, that they might have joy" (2 Ne. 2:25)? Why should Eve, and thereby all women, be punished for making a commendable choice?!
Further, the second Article of Faith states that "men will be pun ished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression." Indeed, historian Jan Shipps makes the following observation:
A fundamental theological tenet that separates Mormonism from traditional Christianity is its rejection of the power of original sin. The LDS doctrine of individual salvation rests on a passage in the Book of Mormon which indicates that, since the atoning sacrifice of Christ redeemed the children of men from the fall, men are free forever, having the right to choose good over evil, liberty over captivity to sin and death, and so on. . . . [But] while LDS men may be free so that in Adam's fall they did not all sin, LDS women continue to suffer the curse of Eve. (1987, xii)
Yet if, as Latter-day Saints, we really believe that men are pun ished for their own sins, we must also believe that women will be pun ished for their own sins and not for Eve's transgression. In rejecting original sin, Mormonism must also reject the subordination of women derived from Eve partaking of the fruit first. Even if Eve was punished for her actions, that punishment should not extend to anyone else.
Analysis of the Fall in the context of Mormon theology presents a wide discrepancy between what we claim to believe concerning Adam and Eve's transgression and the concept of original sin and what we claim to believe concerning women's obedience and submission to men. Using the Fall of Eve to justify the patriarchal order is not consistent with basic tenets of Mormon theology.
So what of the "curse"? Some see the fall of Adam and Eve as a carefully designed myth created by men exercising power over women. When male supremacy was "written into the Bible as one of the first major acts and proclamations of the male creator . . . male domination was explained and justified .. . as the divine and natural state of the human species" (Stone 1976, 217-18). Rosemary Radford Ruether calls the story a "rather odd folktale" and notes that "Hebrew thought itself, in the scriptures and early Rabbinic writings, did not take [it] very seriously" (1983, 166). Even the temple ceremony invests the Eden story "with mythical dimensions" as it "instructs participants to consider themselves to be Adam and Eve as the drama unfolds" (Norman 1988, 93).
Others view Eve's subordination to Adam not as a divine decree of what should be, but as a prophecy of what would be. As Hugh Nibley has asserted, "There [was] no patriarchy or matriarchy in the Garden" (1986, 93). Jolene Edmunds Rockwood explains:
Whether the man's rule is righteous or unrighteous in mortality, the fact that it is mentioned at all presupposes that man did not rule over women before the fall. No elements of the judgments are in existence in the prefallen state. Fallen man must work an unyielding earth by the sweat of his brow; before the fall he was not subject to death. Fallen woman must bear children in pain; before the fall she could not understand pain nor have children. Fallen man rules over fallen woman; before the fall, they were equal companions. (1987, 21)
I concur with Ida Smith, founding director of the Women's Research Institute at Brigham Young University: "Our goal as a people should be to emulate the equal partnership of Adam and Eve before the Fall, not to perpetuate the spiritually blind, unequal relationship that resulted from the Fall" (1987, 103). In the words of Hugh Nibley, "All have fallen, but how far we fall depends on us" (1986, 93).
To conclude, I again quote Rosemary Radford Ruether: "The crit ical principle of feminist theology is the promotion of the full human ity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes, or distorts the full human ity of women is, therefore, appraised as not redemptive [and] what does promote the full humanity of women is of the Holy, it does reflect true relation to the divine, it is the true nature of things, the authentic message of redemption and the mission of redemptive community" (1983, 18-19). Mormonism does much to reject nonredemptive aspects of traditional Judeo-Christianity — the principle of dualism, the exclusively male image of God, ideas about the Fall and original sin —and thereby reflects truth. Why must we persist in reinforcing patriarchy with its denial and distortion of the full humanity of women?
Gerda Lerner contends that "the system of patriarchy is a historic construct; it has a beginning; it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course —it no longer serves the needs of men or women and in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy, and racism it threatens the very existence of life on earth" (1986, 228-29).
But what about patriarchy specifically within the Church? In her book Patriarchs and Politics, Marilyn Warenski wrote about the manifesto of 1890 terminating the practice of polygamy — Official Declaration 1 in the Doctrine and Covenants —and asserted that "change can only be expected to occur when the Mormons once again are so out of tune with society that their divergence constitutes a serious threat to the kingdom" (1987, 274). Was the denial of priesthood to the blacks such a threat? Shortly after the publication of Warenski's book, revelation as Official Declaration 2 extended the priesthood to all worthy male members of the Church.
"We believe that [God] will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God," states our ninth Article of Faith. I am certain that another of these "great and important things" will be the forthcoming condemnation of the "perversion" (Nibley 1986, 93-94) that many of us consider patriarchy to be. "Mormon women [are not] destined to continue the game of ‘Father, May I?,' receiving permission to take only a series of baby steps toward solving a giant problem" (Warenski 1978, 276). Official Declaration 3 or 4 or 5 will finally transform our perception of the Lord's government "from patriarchy into something that never existed before—into [something] radically new" (Daly 1973, 13).
[1] See Exod. 19:14-15. For an additional example, see Levit. 12:2-8 for the law of purification of women after childbirth, noting that "a woman is polluted for twice as long if she bears a female child than if she bears a male child" (Ruether 1986, 44-45). Ironically, even Mary, the mother of Jesus, was deemed unclean after giving birth to the Son of God (Luke 2:22).
[2] Some analysis ties the Eve and Adam story back to the dualism of the body and spirit: Eve "lacks the moral discipline and reasoning skill to keep from being victimized by her senses. She has no intellect to hold her passions in check. She is the less rational, the more sensual of the pair. . . . Man symbolizes mind, and woman symbolizes sense" (Phillips 1984, 61; also Ruether 1985, 63).
[post_title] => Theological Foundations of Patriarchy [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 23.3 (Fall 1990): 79–95MOST RESEARCH BY MORMON FEMINISTS has been historical in nature. Proponents of greater power and privilege for women cite as precedents the lives of Huldah and Deborah of the Old Testament, the treatment of women by Jesus Christ, or the activities of pioneer women in the early restored Church. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => theological-foundations-of-patriarchy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-17 22:49:17 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-17 22:49:17 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=12211 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Need for a New Mormon Heaven
Melodie Moench Charles
Dialogue 21.3 (Fall 1988): 73–85
I used to love this description because my Mormon heaven seemed far superior to this standard Christian heaven that Twain’s Satan describes. Sexual intercourse does have a place in Mormon heaven, though not as an end in itself. Heavenly residents are busy with activities. Those righteous individuals who become gods in Mormon heaven will certainly be using their intellects as they create worlds and keep them running, and they will undoubtedly be learning continuously. Mormonism never suggested there would be continual music, nor continual church or Sabbath days in heaven.
In Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, Satan, who has been banished to earth, writes letters home to Michael and Gabriel. Mortals, he writes, have imagined a heaven that contains “each and every imaginable thing that is repulsive to a man, and not a single thing he likes! . . . He has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race—and of ours—sexual intercourse!” In heaven, “prayer takes its place. . . . His heaven . . . has not a single thing in it that he actually values. It consists—utterly and entirely—of diversions which he cares next to nothing about here in the earth, yet he is quite sure he will like in heaven.” These diversions include “church that lasts forever, and a Sabbath that has no end,” continuous harp playing, and singing. There is no variety in activities and no intellectual stimulation (1938, 15–20).
I used to love this description because my Mormon heaven seemed far superior to this standard Christian heaven that Twain’s Satan describes. Sexual intercourse does have a place in Mormon heaven, though not as an end in itself. Heavenly residents are busy with activities. Those righteous individuals who become gods in Mormon heaven will certainly be using their intellects as they create worlds and keep them running, and they will undoubtedly be learning continuously. Mormonism never suggested there would be continual music, nor continual church or Sabbath days in heaven.
Lately though, Satan’s comments about mortals’ relationship to their heaven have hit close to home. While the appealing aspects of Mormon heaven that I have mentioned have allowed me to feel smug, there are other aspects of Mormon heaven that I, like Twain’s mortals, “care next to nothing about, here in the earth” (1938, 16). Still other aspects of Mormon heaven offend and annoy me in their earthly counterparts, and I can’t imagine that I will like them any better in heaven. Much in this heaven violates my idea of fairness and of how God operates. Much does not seem logical, does not ring true to me, and leaves me feeling apprehensive rather than motivated to earn a promised reward that seems a little like a punishment.
I acknowledge that some of what I present as Mormon heaven is probably not the heaven many living Mormons anticipate, and some Mormons may not even have been exposed to some of these ideas about heaven. Yet many of the most influential nineteenth-century Church leaders, including three prophets, taught these ideas, and they have not been superseded by new teachings. Some Church members continue to promote these or similar ideas; they are still found in our temple ceremony and in our scriptures.
Lowell Bennion has taught that God is reasonable, fair, impartial, and benevolent, and when he acts differently in scriptur,es or in our theology, we can assume that those portrayals are not accurate. Bennion has also taught that for a church to be a good church it must provide people with a sense of their intrinsic worth and equality (Bennion 1956, 7; 1959, 38; 1981, 34, 35, 39). When I apply the Lowell Bennion test to the current concept of heaven, I find it wanting.
Parts of this Mormon heaven seem profoundly wrong because they give women and single men a diminished sense of self-worth here on earth. It is hard not to conclude from the patriarchal nature of this view of heaven that those who can be patriarchs are eternally superior to those who cannot be. Furthermore, this theology of heaven reduces many people to “things”—things that someone else will receive as a reward, things that someone else can use to help him achieve glory, and things that someone else can dominate. I believe that heavenly patriarchy, and the hierarchy and unequal rewards for comparable righteousness that it spawns, are the cultural gospel, authored by Mormon males, not the revealed gospel authored by God. The doctrine is colored by these males’ cultural milieu and their desires for power and glory.
Various writers, such as Goethe, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, have turned Genesis 1:26–27 inside out to claim that man has created God in his own image. Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee said it best in the play, Inherit the Wind: “God created man in His own image—and Man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment” (1963, 70). Taking “man” to mean “males” rather than “humankind/’ religious feminists have refocused this idea and said that males have created a male God and have projected the patriarchal systems of the cultures in which they lived into heaven. According to Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Most images of God in religions are modeled after the ruling class of society” (1975, 74). After the ruling patriarchy creates a God and a heaven like itself, it then “sacrilizes the existing social order as an expression of the will of God’’—that is, it gives itself a stamp of divine approval (1986, 5).
I am going to describe some patriarchal, hierarchical aspects of this Mormon heaven, its marital framework, and then Mother in Heaven, the shadowy deity of Mormon heaven. Within each topic I will focus on the individual features that are unappealing, unreasonable, and destructive to the egos of mortal Mormon women and single men. Be warned that my analysis is very personal and full of my own opinions.
This heaven is a highly structured, organized society. Heber C. Kimball preached that priesthood ranking will be just as it is here, “and you will find all the officers down to the deacon” (JD 4: 82). This heavenly “patriarchal priesthood” denotes a system of eternal organization and government of families. I presume that it is labeled “patriarchal’’ because it is male-centered. Descriptions of the heavenly structure focus on a man’s kingdom and a man’s male progeny. A woman’s kingdom and female progeny are almost non-issues.
People in the celestial kingdom are grouped into both family units and dispensational units, and every conceivable unit in heaven is ruled over by an exalted patriarch. God rules over everyone, Christ rules below him, and Adam below him. Patriarchs who were notable during their earthly lives, such as Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Jacob, though subject to God and Christ, preside as patriarchs over the people in their dispensations. As one of these Joseph Smith will preside as patriarch over the people of the current dispensation (Andrus 1970, 1973; Esplin 1978; Widtsoe 1939; Ehat and Cook 1980, 297–99).
This is not an obsolete nineteenth-century doctrine. I first learned of this heavenly hierarchy in a Relief Society class in 1977. When the teacher said that Joseph Smith would be our king in eternity, I was horrified—certain that she was promoting her own misunderstanding. I was also amazed that no one else seemed alarmed. Apparently this was either old news to others in the class, or else it did not disturb them. After class when I expressed my doubts about her information, the teacher said she got it from religion classes at BYU.
Showing that theology can change, the Church has rejected one layer of heavenly hierarchy accepted in the nineteenth century. For a time faithful Mormon males were sealed to important males in the Church’s hierarchy rather than to their own fathers. For example, in heaven Brigham Young would be a patriarch under God, Christ, and Joseph Smith but over those men and their families who were sealed to him. Some men who were sealed to Brigham Young, John D. Lee for example, also had men sealed to them. The strains this put on relationships between· these mortal men caused the hierarchy to rethink this practice. During Wilford Woodruff’s administration the Church abandoned these adoptive seatings and members were sealed only to their own parents (Brooks 1973, 73–74, 122–24; Irving 1974; Esplin 1978).
In heaven each righteous man would be patriarch over his righteous descendants. A person born in the 1980s would be subject to God, Christ, Joseph Smith, and the thousands of righteous males who are his or her ancestors. Ail of a man’s righteous descendants will make up the kingdom over which that man will rule. Brigham Young explained, “Now if I be made the king and lawgiver to my family, and if I have many sons, I shall become the father of many fathers, for they will have sons, and their sons will have sons, and so on, from generation to generation .... In this way we can become King of kings, and Lord of lords, or Father of fathers, or Prince of princes, and this is the only course, for another man is not going to raise up a kingdom for you” (JD 3: 265–66). When Brigham Young warned that those people who depend upon other people to lead them “never can hold sceptres of glory, majesty, and power in the celestial kingdom” (JD 1: 312), his language makes it clear that administrative efficiency was not the reason for this hierarchical system. This system was organized so that males could rule, gain honor, and have power over others.
Religious groups who feel persecuted have a tendency to expect that after the end of human history they will finally receive the power and status to which they are entitled by right of their superior righteousness, knowledge, and commitment (Hansen 1977). Nineteenth-century Mormon theology shows a preoccupation with attaining power and status in the millennium and in heaven. The developers of our theology took at face value the scriptural references to being rewarded in heaven with crowns, thrones, and kingdoms. Some early Kirtland elders asked rhetorically, “If the Saints are not to reign, for what purpose are they crowned?” (HC 2:5–22) Inheriting thrones and crowns had to mean inheriting kingships. and kingdoms.
I believe that wanting kingdoms, they misread a promise of kingdoms into the scriptures. The New Testament’s answer to the elders’ question “If the Saints are not to reign1 for what purpose are they crowned?” is found in 1 Corinthians 9:24–25. Saints receive a symbolic crown: just as the winners of races are crowned with a garland of laurel leaves for their achievement, the Saints receive a crown of recognition for having endured righteously to the end (Interpreter’s, 1:746). The scriptures that mention crowns talk of crowns of glory, crowns of immortality, crowns of righteousness, crowns of honor, but never crowns of kingship. The thrones mentioned are almost always God’s throne.
I think that Joseph Smith’s desires rather than God’s inspiration prompted the only unambiguous scriptural promises of kingdoms. Doctrine and Covenants 121:29 promises “All thrones and dominions, principalities and powers shall be . . . set forth upon all who have endured valiantly for the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Section 132 promises those who marry “by the new and everlasting covenant” that they shall “inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers, dominions, all heights and depths . . . then shall they be above all because all things are subject unto them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them’’ (v. 19–20). Because the scriptures and those who interpreted them have given me no other reason for the existence of heavenly kingdoms, I believe that this theology has patriarchs ruling in heaven because patriarchs-to-be thought that, deprived of due recognition and power on earth, they deserved a truly grand reward in heaven. No one suggests that anyone in the celestial kingdom is in need of being ruled—instead, it is the earthly patriarchs who feel the need of the glory, honor, and power of ruling.
I find this heavenly structure neither reasonable nor appealing. First, any kind of ruling hierarchy among celestial beings seems inconsistent with a God who loves us equally and who rewards us according to our faith and works, not according to our gender, marital status, rank in the Church’s hierarchy, or our progeny. Second, Brigham Young implied that people who need to be ruled won’t be given the highest eternal reward. This elaborate layering of managers seems entirely unnecessary among people who are worthy of celestial life. In addition, these rulers are chosen more for their gender, the time of their birth, and the size of reward they deserve than for their management or leadership skills.
Third, I can’t imagine that people worthy of the highest degree of the celestial kingdom would aspire to or even be interested in having status and power over other people. I can’t imagine any good reason for heavenly kings beyond God and Christ. If kings exist, I think their role must be to serve their subjects as Jesus did when he washed the feet of his disciples and as King Benjamin did throughout his life by laboring with his own hands.
Fourth, a hierarchy appeals only to those who believe they will be among the rulers rather than among the ruled. Because Mormon hierarchy is patriarchy, all women will automatically be among the ruled, eternally subject to an endless string of grandfathers. From a man’s point of view, there is nothing fair about being subject to one’s father for all eternity, nor about ruling over one’s son only because one man preceded and sired the other. Furthermore, there is nothing fair about being subject to exponentially more grandfathers by virtue of being born in 1980 A.D. rather than in 980 B.C.
By promoting rule in the afterlife by patriarchs, this view implies that even in this life patriarchs are worth more than other people. Giving some righteous people kingdoms and power over other righteous people reduces those other people to things—things making up the kingdom awarded to the patriarch for his righteousness, and things the patriarch can dominate. I don’t believe that God would reward some righteous people by diminishing others.
In order to attain the highest rank and reward in this Mormon heaven a person must be married in the temple. The unmarried and people married in any way other than a sealing ceremony are doomed to the fate outlined in Doctrine and Covenants 132:16–17: “To minister for those who are worthy of a far more, and an exceeding, and an eternal weight of glory. For these angels did not abide my law; therefore, they cannot be enlarged, but remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity; and from henceforth are not gods, but are angels of God forever and ever.” These verses explain that single people have not obeyed the command to get married, and therefore, by definition, are not righteous. Mormon leaders teach an exception to the harsh penalty presented in this scripture: people who had no fair chance to be married correctly get a chance to marry after mortal life.
In mortality Mormonism offers single adults an awkward and isolated social status that evokes either suspicion or pity in other Mormons. It condemns them to a life of sexual frustration and encourages feelings of unrighteousness, guilt, and inadequacy. For single men it offers significantly fewer chances to serve in high management positions in the Church. This heaven offers single people an eternity even worse than the second-class existence they enjoyed in Mormon society on earth. I find it unreasonable to think that God would have structured the rules for salvation to do this to people who are single during mortality. I also think that the difference in eternal rewards for single people and married people is so great that a just God couldn’t have authored them.
Why does Mormon theology do this to single people? Because of the idea that the highest glory in heaven includes becoming a god and reigning over the kingdoms which we create by procreating. Two levels of heavenly kingdoms exist in our theology. The first, as I have said, is a kingdom made up of former mortals, primarily one’s descendants. To rule over one of these one must have descendants in mortality. But the lack of earthly progeny to rule over is not what keeps single people from receiving the highest heavenly reward.
Rather it is the inability to produce heavenly progeny. This second kind of kingdom is made up of the children conceived in heaven who will inhabit earths created by their parent gods. Creating includes not only making a world, but peopling it through procreating, through sexual union with one’s spouse. Parley P. Pratt rhapsodized that “the result of our endless union would be an offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, or the sands of the sea shore.” From Joseph Smith he “learned the true dignity and destiny of a son of God, clothed with an eternal priesthood, as the patriarch and sovereign of his countless offspring. It was from him that I learned that the highest dignity of womanhood was, to stand as queen and priestess to her husband, and to reign for ever and ever as the queen mother of her numerous and still increasing offspring” (1938, 297–98).
I am not arguing against the idea that happy marital unions should continue in heaven. I find the doctrine of eternal marriage one of the most appealing of our theology, and I hope that my marriage will continue there. But rather than viewing eternal marriage as a precondition for the eternal reward of kingdoms in heaven, I see a good marriage being its own reward in heaven just as on earth. Similarly, rather than viewing eternal singleness as a condition deserving eternal punishment, I see it as a condition with limitations (that some might see as punishments) inherent in it. Rather than being punished because, lacking a spouse, one cannot produce progeny in heaven, the inability to procreate here or in heaven is perhaps its own punishment. Surely there is more to being kings, queens, gods, and goddesses than procreating, and those who remain single in heaven need not have external limitations placed on them when singleness necessarily includes limitations.
While I’ve got no interest in ruling over, nor being god to anyone, there is something intriguing and enticing about creating worlds and keeping them running; but for me, the issue is apparently moot. Instead of creating mountains, trees, or marine life, I can earn the right to fill the role of “birth-machine for spirit children” (England 1986, 28) because the other creating is done by the power of the priesthood, a power that women will have in a very limited way, if at all. Brigham Young taught that “the Priesthood ... is the law by which the worlds are, were, and will continue forever and ever. It is that system which brings worlds into existence and peoples them, gives them their revolutions, their days, weeks, months” (Widtsoe 1939, 30).
Orson Pratt elaborated that priesthood was the power for “the regulation of the materials in all their varied operations. It is that power that formed the minerals, the vegetables, and the animals in all their infinite varieties which exist upon our globe. It is that authority that reveals laws for the government of intelligent beings.’, This priesthood is so essential that God, knowing his son would be worthy of having and using the priesthood, “thousands of years beforehand” allowed him to “have the power to create worlds and govern them, the same as if he had already received the consecration” (1853, 145, 147).
Our theology currently gives women no hope that their participation in priesthood will ever be great enough to allow them to create anything but children. Some women might be excited by the possibility of providing the womb through which a never-ending stream of children would be born, but I am not. I don’t look forward to producing progeny while my husband is creating reptiles and planets and inspiring mortals to fashion reasonable governments and legal systems. Gene England rightly called this limited, unequal role for women in eternity “absurd” “humiliating” and “degrading” (1986, 23).
Our temple ceremony has some further limiting, unequal, and degrading implications for women’s heavenly existence. Each woman is promised that she might eventually be a queen and priestess to her husband, while her husband is promised that he might eventually be a king and a priest to God. All women, married or unmarried, are required to covenant to obey the law of their husbands as their husbands obey the law of God, while all men are required to covenant to obey the law of God. Thus males are linked directly to God, and women to God only through their husbands—even women who have no husbands. This link takes on a twist when people being married are symbolically brought into heaven by a male playing the role of God. A man is brought into heaven by an anonymous male temple worker playing that role. But a woman is brought into heaven by her husband playing the role of God to her. So not only does the temple ceremony suggest that women reach God through their husbands, but that husbands, on some level, act as god to their wives.
Though both men and women need spouses to achieve the highest eternal glory, a husband helps his wife attain salvation in a way that a wife does not do for her husband. Daniel Wells taught that if treated well, women would stick to their husbands “because it is for their salvation in the kingdom of our God. It is for this they are here, and they will cleave to you for it; and it is your office, right and privilege to extend that blessing to them. . . . Wives . . . seek their salvation through [their husbands]” (JD 4:255–57). According to Lorenzo Snow, the head of a family must have the spirit of the Lord, “and he should possess that light and that intelligence, which, if carried out in the daily life and conduct of those individuals, will prove the salvation of that family, for he holds their salvation in his hands” (JD 4:243).
As recently as 1978 a priesthood manual for young men taught that “a fine Latter-day Saint girl is counting on you to provide the way to exaltation for her and the spirits in heaven that will come to your home to grow in the gospel” (Inglesby 1985, 29). The Melchizedek Priesthood Personal Study Guide from 1984 included the following: “Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote: ‘[Husbands] must ... love their wives, sacrifice for their well-being and salvation, and guide them in holiness until they are cleansed, sanctified, and perfected, until they are prepared for exaltation in that glorious heaven where the family unit continues. Husbands thus become in effect the saviors of their wives’ (Doctrinal New Testament Commentary 2 :519 )” (pp. 47–48).
An essential part of this theology of marriage in heaven is polygamy. While it is unlikely that the Church will again promote polygamy in mortality, it is still a vital part of Mormon heaven. As Doctrine and Covenants 131 and 132 explain, polygamy in heaven enables celestial beings to procreate kingdoms over which a righteous man would preside as god. I say “man,” because while the woman is a participant, the focus is completely on the male and his kingdom. A man obtains the highest kingdom in heaven only by entering into this kind of marriage. If he does not, “that is the end of his kingdom; he cannot have an increase” (131:2–4). His wives “were given unto him” (132: 37, 39, 52, 61, 62) “for he shall be made ruler over many” (v. 44). They “belong unto him’’ and ‘‘are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth . . . and for their [presumably the women’s] exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men” (v. 63).
Eugene England has argued against heavenly polygamy, suggesting that it be dropped from our theology of heaven. His chief objection was that it made fidelity impossible. With multiple partners no two spouses could experience complete trust and sharing of themselves with each other. I agree with this objection, but I will elevate his secondary objection into my primary one. Heavenly polygamy “is simply a way of saying that one good man is in some sense the equivalent of more women than one, however good. And whether what is implied is that one man can emotionally and sexually satisfy more than one woman or is capable of balancing more than one woman spiritually or intellectually or managerially or whatever . . . the implications seem to me to discredit women, to in some essential way reduce them to less than full equivalence with men” (1986, 27–28).
I can see how nineteenth-century American men, trying to conceive of a heaven, could construct one in which one man was the equivalent of a number of women. Nineteenth-century American culture was sexist and patriarchal, and most people, women as well as men, believed that men were superior to women in many ways. Brigham Young reinforced this notion for Mormons by stressing that he led his wives not by force but “by a superior intelligence.” If the servants of God allow a woman to be their leader, he noted, “they have sunk beneath the standard their organization has fitted them for. . . . Let our wives be the weaker vessels, and the men be men and show the women by their superior ability that God gives husbands wisdom and ability to lead their wives into his presence” (JD 9:307). On another occasion he preached that women are weak. “It is the decree of the Almighty upon [women] to lean upon men as their superior” (JD 12:194).
I can see no reason to let such a theology stand without protest. It can’t be any healthier for Mormon men to believe that they are inherently and eternally superior to all women than it is for Mormon women to believe that they are inherently and eternally inferior to righteous Mormon men. Yet as long as heavenly polygamy remains in our theology, these self-evaluations will naturally arise. As long as Doctrine and Covenants 132 remains in our scriptural canon, heavenly polygamy is a part of Mormon theology.
Heavenly polygamy, more than anything else in our theology, reduces people to things. Emily Dow Partridge, a plural wife to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, complained, “even our own people seemed to think that the Lord had given men plural wives for stepping stones for them and their first wives to mount to glory on” (Hill 1977, 353) . The greater the number of wives and children a man has in heaven, the greater his power, kingdom, and eternal glory. In the worst materialistic sense rather than in the best metaphorical sense, wives and children were a man’s riches. Benjamin F. Johnson remembered that “the Prophet taught us that Dominion & power in the great Future would be Commensurate with the no[.] of ‘Wives, Children & Friends’ that we inherit here” (Van Wagoner 1986, 45) . Joseph Smith counseled his Sunday audience to “use a little Craftiness & seal all [the people to yourself that] you can” so that you can claim them in heaven (Ehat and Cook 1980, 331).
Wives (and children) became objects to be given to righteous men as rewards, or taken from sinful men as punishment. Joseph Smith taught Lucy Walker that “many would awake in the morning of the resurrection sadly disappointed; for they, by transgression would have neither wives or children, for they surely would be taken from them, and given to those who should prove themselves worthy” (Hill 1977, 356). Brigham Young recast this idea in terms of Jesus’ parable of the talents. The man who would not take plural wives may get to the celestial kingdom, “but when he gets there he will not find himself in possession of any wife at all. He has had a talent that he has given up. He will come forward and say, ‘Here is that which thou gavest me, I have not wasted it, and here is the one talent,’ and he will not enjoy it, but it will be taken and given to those who have improved the talents they received, and he will find himself without any wife, and he will remain single forever” (JD 16: 66).
Men too become objects in a system of heavenly polygamy. Mormon marriage sealings revived and revised the Old Testament practice of Levirate marriage. When a man marries a widow who was married for eternity to her first husband, any children who result from this second marriage are credited on the eternal tally sheet to the first husband. Regardless of the role this second husband played in the lives of this wife and children in mortality, in eternity, he is the source of the seed that helped produce children for the first husband (Foster 1981, 164).
Polygamous wives sometimes viewed their husbands as vehicles through which they could attain exaltation. The best example of this was the practice of “marrying up,’’ catalogued in 1986 by Richard Van Wagoner. In a general conference in 1861 Brigham Young, talking on divorce, said that “a woman could leave a man—if the woman preferred—another man higher in authority & he is willing to take her. & her husband gives her up.” Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Young was sealed to Joseph Smith while being married for time only to Henry Jacobs and eventually left Jacobs to be a plural wife of Brigham Young, for “President Young told Zina D. if she would marry him she would be in a higher glory” (p. 43 ) . Brigham Young announced to Henry Jacobs that Zina and her children were his (Brigham’s) property. Here, and in his proposal to Martha Brotherton, in which he promised that “if you will accept me, I will take you straight to the Celestial Kingdom” (p. 18), Brigham was trading on his status, selling himself to a woman by offering that she could ride his coattails to exaltation. Van Wagoner observed, “A Mormon male of hierarchical rank, with feet firmly planted in the priesthood, seemed a sure ticket to heaven” (p. 46).
Rather than seeing any compelling reason to think that we must populate heavenly kingdoms into existence so that these kingdoms can be our eternal reward, I see a compelling reason not to believe that God authored this system. It again reduces people to things. Women are the means by which men populate their kingdoms. They are also symbols of their husbands’ obedience to the commandment to marry, or to marry polygamously; under polygamy, the more wives a man has, the more righteous he is. Women are also taken from men as punishment or given to them as rewards. Men are tickets to celestial glory. Each spirit child is one more being for its parents to be sovereign Lords over.
The theology’s promise of an exalted future of creating worlds and procreating kingdoms supposedly follows a pattern set by God himself. Yet it is hard to match the language used by nineteenth-century Mormon men talking about their own heavenly future, with the Mormon concept of God. The emphasis on becoming a ruler over a family of subjects and wielding scepters of power is inconsistent with our description of God’s character.
While we certainly accept and occasionally use such titles as “King of Kings” to describe God, he is most commonly “Heavenly Father,” an intimate deity. We are supposed to be able to go to him with our deepest thoughts and questions, our most personal concerns. He in turn takes time for each of us and is passionately concerned about our well-being. Mormonism teaches me that I am a child of God. While I may well be a subject in God’s kingdom, I am not instructed to perceive myself as another person to be dominated to add to his personal power. His glory is not greater because he procreated me. I can’t conceive of him basking in his own marvelousness, or taking pride in the vastness of his dominion.
In this view of heaven exalted couples follow the pattern set by God and his eternal female companion. My Star B Primary manual produced in 1985 has a lesson on “Our Heavenly Family” (pp. 12–15). It tells me to teach the six-year-olds that in heaven, “they were a part of a heavenly family. Heavenly Father was their father, and they had a mother in heaven.” She must finally be officially accepted in Church theology.
Granting that it is rare to find Mother in Heaven in lesson manuals at all, the lesson’s portrayal of her is typical of the way official Mormondom deals with her. She appears fewer than ten times, always as “mother in heaven’’ (all small case), in contrast to forty plus appearances of “Heavenly Father” (capitalized), and twenty plus appearances of Jesus. How is she described? As one of the heavenly parents who loved my children. She is like Heavenly Father, who is great and good and wise and knows everything and is perfect. My children loved her in heaven and wanted to be like their heavenly parents. In summary, she exists, has some good characteristics, and she loves.
How is Heavenly Father described? Jesus was his son. Heavenly Father called a meeting; he had a plan. If my children choose to do right they can live with him forever, being “just as happy and great and wise and good as Heavenly Father is.” He planned what my children should do on earth, he knew it would not be easy, he gave them families, prophets, and Jesus. My class wanted to become like Heavenly Father and Jesus, and they wanted to choose the right like Heavenly Father and Jesus wanted. They can return to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus. In summary, Heavenly Father’s companion when he is loving his children is Heavenly Mother. His companion when he is performing any other action is Jesus. Wouldn’t the writers of the manual have been safe in saying that Jesus was the son of a heavenly mother as well as a heavenly father, that she also knew earth life would not be easy, and that she as well as Heavenly Father wanted us all to choose the right?
Although she is great and good and wise and omniscient and perfect, it is not for any of these qualities that she is valued. Her value is in her fertility. She exists to procreate, not to create, to inspire, to guide, to plan, to intervene, to empower, to comfort. As Erastus Snow explained in 1886, logic dictated that she must exist: “Now, it is not said in so many words in the Scriptures, that we have a Mother in heaven as well as a Father. It is left for us to infer this from what we see and know of all living things in the earth including man. The male and female principle is united and both necessary to the accomplishment of the object of their being, and if this be not the case with our Father in heaven after whose image we are created, then it is an anomaly in nature” (JD 26:214). Heavenly Mother is necessary because procreation can’t be achieved by males alone. During the era of polygamy some suggested that she is only one of many mothers in heaven. They reasoned that procreation of spirit children could be accomplished more efficiently if Heavenly Father could impregnate many heavenly mothers, just as exalted mortals, procreation of spirit children could be accomplished more efficiently if exalted mortal males could impregnate many wives.
Yet, peculiarly, even this narrow sphere of creation is denied her in all official Mormon accounts of creation. The primary account, Genesis 1, uses the singular “God” throughout except in verse 26, where without explanation God says, “let us make a man in our image.” Mormon variations of this scripture add other gods to explain this change from singular to plural, but the other gods are never explicitly female and are sometimes explicitly male. In Moses, “I, God” creates, apparently alone, until suddenly, “I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: “Let us make man in our image.” Bizarrely, these two males, God says, “created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them” (Moses 2:26–27).
In Abraham 4, the grammatically plural “Elohim” becomes the numerically plural “the Gods’’ thus eliminating the singular/plural shift. This might, but does not necessarily, include women. The temple ceremony presents Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael sharing creation duties. Elohim and Jehovah transform Michael into Adam. So not only is Mother in Heaven not a participant in creating the light, the darkness, plants and animals, she gets no credit for the one kind of creating allowed her.
Heavenly Mother is not an equal partner with Heavenly Father in any sense. She is second to her husband in everything, to her son in many things, and even to the Holy Ghost. Since she has no sphere of operations, she has no power. Everything that deity does is credited to God, to Christ, or to the Holy Ghost. Our First Article of Faith specifies that “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.” There is no official, creedal statement which claims that we believe at all in Mother in Heaven.
Authority, both temporal and eternal, is linked to priesthood, a power that our Mother in Heaven apparently is without or possesses only in a limited way, because she is female. Her husband possesses all of it there is to possess. On this score, she is second to her son, for even before Christ was either a mortal or resurrected and exalted, he had all the priesthood power he might need to create everything. As a mortal he had authority to speak for God, while she appears not to have enough authority to speak for even herself. She is certainly second in veneration to her husband, for until recently, she existed only in the hymn, “O My Father,” and was otherwise ignored. Prayers and worship are all directed to the Father alone except in rare gatherings of the unorthodox and of feminists. We must conclude that she is second in worth to her husband.
I will guess that this is another case of projecting current social reality into heaven. I can see why nineteenth-century Mormon men would envision a Mother in Heaven as a bearer and nurturer of children, for these were the primary roles American society allowed women. There was little precedent for a powerful, creative woman with independent spheres of action—and any women who were this way were generally derided as being “unwomanly” rather than praised for their talents. I can see why today’s General Authorities who define womanhood as stay-at-home mothering would also envision her this way. But I can’t see any reason now to let such a degrading concept of the female deity continue to exist without protest.
Mother in Heaven is a nothing at best, and at worst is a housewife. Given the status that women have had throughout the history of Mormonism and given the patriarchy that still rules in our Mormon and larger society, Mother in heaven can be nothing other than the faceless, nameless, unavailable-fortheological-purposes blank that she currently is. Our theology has allowed her no authority nor power; she gets no acknowledgment for her distinctive contributions, whatever they are. She has no self apart from her husband.
Unless we can begin to see mortal Mormon women as significant in their own right, we will never see our Mother in Heaven as significant in her own right. She will only have significance because of the male she married or sired. As long as she is only the eternal housewife, producer of babies, and nurturer of children, mortal Mormon women will be expected to find those limiting roles satisfying.
I am not asking that we project a 1980s-vintage female executive into heaven and call this Mother in Heaven. But I wish there were more caution from those who project onto Mother in Heaven the traditional earthly model of housewife and nurturer of children. I would prefer that we project no model of womanhood into heaven to define her. Instead, since revelation often comes when questions are asked, I am encouraging Church authorities to ask for revelation about her. Then we might learn what she really is.
I can’t change the reality of what heaven .is. My wishing, hoping> and needing won’t make it what I want it to be. But neither does Brigham Young’s or Joseph Smith’s. I believe that they and other Mormon males projected their own needs and desires into heaven, and that their heaven probably does not resemble actual heaven any more than my ideal heaven does. I reject much of their vision of heaven because it is destructive. It is based upon the notion that males are the truly significant beings: their kingdoms, their posterity, their creative priesthood power, their rank, and male deities are its focus, while females, including female deities, are an afterthought—ignored, restricted, and demeaned. This erodes the self-worth of women whose selfesteem is already low and encourages pride in men who already have a disproportionate sense of their own importance.
Rewards are given in this heaven because of gender, marital status, and hierarchical position as well as righteousness. Without minimizing Brigham Young’s sacrifices and faithfulness, for example, should we really believe that he deserves a grander eternal reward than do the families who bravely attempted to settle the uninhabitable areas in Southern Utah that he sent them to? Should his reward surpass the rewards of the women who supported their children and their husbands as well, while those husbands were away on missions? Would a just God give him a better reward than he gives the hiddenaway second and third wives of men who rarely visited or contributed to their families’ economic well-being? Should his reward be greater because of all his wives and children than Spencer W. Kimball’s is because he only had one wife and a handful of children?
These men’s vision of heaven reduces many good people to insignificance. In 1967 Torn Stoppard rewrote Hamlet focusing on two minor characters, Rozencranz and Guildenstern. However, even as the major characters in their own play, they merely pass the time as they wait for their encounters with Hamlet. Although the focus is on them, they exist only to help action progress in Hamlet’s story; they are foils to enhance his distinctiveness; they define themselves according to their place in his life. In focusing on males, and particularly on males with hierarchical status, the Mormon vision of heaven reduces all others to minor characters in these males’ heavenly lives. Its creators fashioned fine rewards for themselves but did not consider that their rewards wiped out the identities and personal significance of other people. Almost everyone becomes a minor character in someone else’s story, and many people, especially women, children, and unmarried men, never do get to be the major character in their own story.
All Mormons become minor characters in Joseph Smith’s story in heaven, as we become the subjects in the kingdom over which he rules. All children become minor characters in their parents’, particularly their fathers’ stories, as their numbers are added up to expand the vastness of their parents’ kingdoms. All polygamous wives, who “belong” to their husbands, who “are given’’ to them like presents and can be taken from them and given to other husbands, also contribute by their numbers to the vastness of their husbands’ kingdoms. Husbands become major characters in their own stories as they amass kingdoms, but wives are only the facilitators who help bring the subjects of those kingdoms into existence. Each of us deserves to be the major character in our own story in heaven, but does our current theology of heaven allow each of us that right?
To make Mormon heaven into something that rings true, that could reasonably have been structured by a God who loves us equally and fairly and who wants the best for each of us, I would simply make it less specific. Rewards would be based on faith and works, and each righteous person’s reward would provide her or him with happiness. All people could continue to enjoy the company of those who were important to them on earth and could form emotional bonds with whomever else they chose. There would be meaningful, stimulating, creative activity there. Each person would be valued for her or himself, not for family ties, function, or earthly hierarchical position.
I have said all this not to complain, but rather to encourage Church members and leaders to rethink our theology of heaven. The nineteenth-century Mormon men who fleshed out the theological skeleton provided by scriptures and revelation fleshed it out according to their own cultural prejudices. They structured it to compensate themselves for the deprivations they felt they suffered on earth. But their prejudices and their needs should no longer be misread as representing heavenly reality: they are time-bound) not eternal. It is time to reject those aspects of Mormon heaven that are uninspired, unreasonable, unfair, damaging, and serve no virtuous end.
For bibliography and notes, please see PDF.
[post_title] => The Need for a New Mormon Heaven [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 21.3 (Fall 1988): 73–85I used to love this description because my Mormon heaven seemed far superior to this standard Christian heaven that Twain’s Satan describes. Sexual intercourse does have a place in Mormon heaven, though not as an end in itself. Heavenly residents are busy with activities. Those righteous individuals who become gods in Mormon heaven will certainly be using their intellects as they create worlds and keep them running, and they will undoubtedly be learning continuously. Mormonism never suggested there would be continual music, nor continual church or Sabbath days in heaven. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-need-for-a-new-mormon-heaven [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-03-30 23:44:31 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-03-30 23:44:31 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=12438 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Beyond Matriarchy, Beyond Patriarchy
Margaret Toscano
Dialogue 21.1 (Spring 1988): 34–59
BECAUSE MORMONS don't yet have a strong tradition of speculative theology, I want to explain some of my objectives and methods in writing this essay. My chief purpose is to make symbolic connections, to evoke families of images, and to explore theological possibilities.
Because Mormons don't yet have a strong tradition of speculative theology, I want to explain some of my objectives and methods in writing this essay. My chief purpose is to make symbolic connections, to evoke families of images, and to explore theological possibilities. In doing this, I have purposely mixed voices, approaches, and tones to form a circular and mythic mosaic of past, present, and future which still, I hope, moves in a linear direction. And though I make use of biblical scholarship and criticism, I do not intend to prove my conclusions historically; and I do not wish to be read or interpreted dogmatically. In fact, one reason I am so fascinated with the mythic approach is that it is so flexible and nondogmatic. William Irwin Thompson, a cultural historian, observes: "Mythology is not a propositional system of knowledge. Truth is not an ideology. Truth is that which overlights the conflict of opposed ideologies, and the conflict of opposed ideologies is what you get in myth. . . . The truth overlights both ideologies, and no single human institution or single individual can embody the fullness of truth" (1978, 119).
Modern usage imputes to myth the connotations of a false story, the product of a primitive, superstitious mind, without the benefit of science to explain how the world works. History is often characterized as the opposite of myth because history deals in the scientific discovery of verifiable facts and events, while myth is seen merely as the product of imagination. The modern, objectivist world prefers history and often denigrates myth. But each contributes interdependently to our culture and our understanding of the world. Where history attempts to reconstruct the past fact by fact, myth attempts to see the meaning of the facts as they relate to one another, and to the whole fabric of human knowledge and human experience — past, present, and future. History deals largely with cause and effect; myth deals primarily with modes of understanding. To quote Thompson again: "Mythology .. . is interested in paradoxes, opposites, and transformations — the deep structure of consciousness and not the surface of facts and sensory perceptions" (1978, 120).
Objective fact is not unimportant. On the contrary, it is extremely important that hypotheses and theories be tied to reality — to actual experience — lest we construct worldviews of delusion that lead people to deny their real feelings and experience. Myth, then, is not white-washed or fanciful history but an acknowledgment that facts, like salamanders, are slippery things, that objectivity is also a point of view, and that data is usually determined by what individuals perceive. One characteristic of myth is the numerous versions of each story. Each version is important because it reveals something about the perceptions of the individual or culture that produced it, and each must be taken into account in reconstructing our own picture of the "truth." What follows is, then, my version of the myth.
In Jesus Through the Centuries, Jaroslav Pelikan reminds us that the vitality of Jesus, as the central figure in Western religious experience, depends on the flexibility and fulness of his character. "For each age, the life and teachings of Jesus represented an answer (or, more often, the answer) to the most fundamental questions of human existence and of human destiny" (1985, 2). Similarly, according to Paul Tillich, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ was final and sufficient in the sense that Christ's nature is expansive enough to include every element necessary for the full revelation of the divine (2:119- 20). This is classical Christian theology in both the Catholic and Protestant traditions. Since God revealed himself "once and for all" in his son Jesus, then Jesus becomes the center of human history and society; he becomes the model or norm for human behavior and the focal point for all meaning in existence. Karl Barth puts this proposition thus:
In Him (Jesus Christ) God reveals Himself to man. In Him man sees and knows God. .. . In Him God's plan for man is disclosed, God's judgment on man fulfilled, God's redemption of man accomplished, God's gift to man present in fulness, God's claim and promise to man declared. . . . He is the Word of God in whose truth every thing is disclosed and whose truth cannot be overreached or conditioned by any other word. . . . Except, then, for God Himself, nothing can derive from any other source or look back to any other starting-point (1961, 111).
However, in the past few decades this Christocentric (Christ-centered) view has been seriously challenged. If Jesus Christ is the complete revelation of the divine, some ask, is the white Western male inherently superior and closer to the image of God than any other race or sex? And if Jesus Christ is the model for human behavior, then how can women, minority races, or Third World peoples fully partake of salvation and participate in the Christian life? (Driver 1981)
These are all good questions, but I will focus on one: Christ's maleness as a revelation of the divine nature. Why did God reveal himself in a male body? Does this affect the status of women? Why didn't a female goddess work the atonement? Or put in another way, "Can a male Savior save women?" (Ruether 1983, 116)
The revelation of God as male has, historically, been an extremely important buttress of male domination of women. Since Christ was male, only men have been deemed worthy of ecclesiastical and spiritual authority. As recently as 1977, Pope Paul VI justified banning women from priesthood ordination on the grounds that, since Christ was a male, priests — as his representatives — must also be male (Goldenberg 1979, 5; Ruether 1983, 126).
This attitude has led many contemporary feminist theologians to reject Christ as Savior, although not all reject Christianity. At one end of the spectrum, feminist revisionists see much within the Christian church and tradition worth salvaging. In a sense, they have turned the question around and asked, "Can women save a male Savior?" Though many of these women do not accept Christ as the incarnation of God, they do accept him as an important prophetic figure and as a savior of sorts, who treated women with great equality for his time and preached a gospel of love, healing, wholeness, and freedom. Feminist revisionists feel that when all the texts are reexamined and separated from their patriarchal overlays, the essence of the gospel that emerges is liberation from classism, racism, sexism, and every other -ism (Ruether 1983; Moltmann-Wendell 1986; Fiorenza 1979, 139-148; West 1983). This invitation to full humanity is summed up by the apostle Paul: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).
The revisionists also search both canonical and noncanonical texts for feminine images of the divine and historical evidence of women in priestly roles. Among other important finds, Elaine Pagels has discovered evidence of a God the Mother in the gnostic tradition (1979, 107-19), and Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has found textual evidence of early Christian women serving as apostles and bishops (1979, 84-92).
At the other end of the spectrum are feminists who feel that Christianity is so thoroughly saturated with sexism and patriarchy that no reform is possible. They ask for nothing less than the death of both a Father God and his Son (Daly 1979, Goldenberg 1979). For such radical feminists, rejecting Christ as God incarnate is not enough. They also reject him as prophet:
Jesus Christ cannot symbolize the liberation of women. A culture that maintains a masculine image for its highest divinity cannot allow its women to experience themselves as the equals of its men. In order to develop a theology of women's liberation, feminists have to leave Christ and Bible behind them. Women have to stop denying the sexism that lies at the root of the Jewish and Christian religions (Goldenberg 1979, 22).
In Mormonism, feminist issues rarely center on Christ. (The question most often posed is: How can Christ, as male, be a role model for women?) Instead, the battle between patriarchy and matriarchy centers on the relative status of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. Is she his subordinate or his equal? Also, most feminist research in the Mormon tradition has not been theological but historical, focused on nineteenth-century Mormon women in a much needed attempt both to reclaim a past and to discover possible sources of power for women.
One reason that Church members rarely ask "Why a male Savior?" is that mainstream Mormons seldom think of Jesus Christ as God. He is seen as an elder brother, a mentor, an example of divine love, and a loving Savior, but rarely as God incarnate, that is, possessing the full characteristics of a God before he ever came to earth. Because we Mormons usually do not think of Christ as God, the question of his maleness as a reflection of the divine image does not seem as crucial to us as it does to other Christians. Thus most Mormons would not see the question "Why a male Savior?" as central to questions dealing with God's nature and personality but rather in terms of role models. And for many Mormon intellectuals, the whole question seems to be irrelevant because they view the idea that Christ is God to be a holdover from Joseph Smith's early trinitarian views, later contradicted by his discussion in the King Follett discourse of a progressing God.
Personally, I find no comfort in either the feminist rejection of Christ as God or in my own Church's ambivalence about his status as God and his importance as an object of worship (McConkie 1982, 97-103).
Feminist theology has served to reemphasize present human experience as a basis for understanding scripture and tradition. As Rosemary Radford Ruether points out, the experiential basis for theological interpretation has always been recognized; the real contribution of feminism is to explode the objective/subjective dichotomy:
What have been called the objective sources of theology, scripture and tradition, are themselves codified collections of human experience.
Human experience is the starting point and the ending point of the hermeneutical circle. Codified tradition both reaches back to roots in experience and is constantly renewed or discarded through the test of experience. Received symbols, formulas, and laws are either authenticated or not through their ability to illuminate and interpret experience. Systems of authority try to reverse this relation and make received symbols dictate what can be experienced as well as the interpretation of that which is experienced. In reality, the relation is the opposite. If a symbol does not speak authentically to experience, it becomes dead or must be altered to provide a new meaning (Ruether 1983, 12-13).
The point is that we must rely upon our own experience to understand the meaning of scriptural tradition in our own lives. In a sense, we are each like Joseph in the grove, who realized he must approach God for himself, since the teachers of religion "understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible" (JS-H2:12).
At a time of crisis in my own life, I experienced the love and power of Jesus Christ in such a way that I cannot reject him as Savior, nor can I be ambiguous about his divinity or his identity as God. On the other hand, I cannot believe that he meant his appearance on earth to reinforce male dominance. In contrast, my own experiences with him have been liberating. And yet, I have not been able to disregard Christ's maleness or dismiss it as either meaningless or irrelevant. So what does his divine maleness mean? How does it illuminate and relate to the feminine?
Some time ago I began searching for the answers to these questions in the paradoxes of my religion. I see paradox at the heart of existence and the crux of Christianity. We live in a world of polar opposites, where all things are a "compound in one" (2 Ne. 2:11). Both the tension and the union of opposites engenders life on many different levels. In these unions, opposites are not destroyed nor do they lose their individual identities. True union does not remove differences, but balances apparently opposing principles harmoniously: each opposite is valued and proves a corrective to the excesses of the other.
The feminine and masculine are two such opposites. Each principle must be valued independently, and yet each must simultaneously be seen in its relationship with the other. In our mortal state, this is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do. In Jesus's words, "No man can serve two masters" (Matt. 6:24), perhaps suggesting that human finitude, at least in its Western manifestation, may be predisposed toward monotheism. Even in cultures where a pantheon of gods exists, there is often a head god and a rivalry among the lesser gods for supremacy. Many feminist theologians, who reject the worship of the Father God, ignore the option of worshipping a Divine Couple and advocate the worship of the Mother Goddess of prehistory.
Though I see much value in goddess worship and feel men and women need access to a feminine deity, most modern goddess worship is flawed by merely attempting to replace patriarchy with matriarchy, which is, in my opinion, equally destructive and sexist. Modern goddess literature sometimes belittles men, who are said to be incapable of equality with the goddess or women, but can only serve as sons and lovers (Goldenberg 1979, 103).
And just as women, in the past, have been seen as the source of all evil, symbolized by Eve in Judeo-Christian literature, men become scapegoats in much extreme feminist literature (Daly 1978). The white Anglo-Saxon upper middle-class man is often seen as the source of all evil, even by moderates such as Ruether (1983, 179-80). The evil female seducers bow off the theological stage and the evil male rapists step forward. Though the devouring vagina and the phallic sword are ancient symbols of male/female conflict, they are by no means obsolete.
Introducing her essay on the problem of women accepting a male savior, Rita Nakashima Brock recounts her experiences with rape victims and ob serves: "Essential to that ancient dominant-submissive rape ritual are the rules that give no power and authority to women except through our relationships of submission to men. In Christianity, are women therefore redeemed and legitimated by our reconciliation to the saving efficacy of a male savior?" (Brock 1985, 56) And in Hartman Rector's statement to Sonia Johnson, he uses the image of a black widow spider, evoking the time-honored spectre of the devouring female (Gottlieb and Wiley 1984, 212). So the battle between patriarchy and matriarchy goes on.
How can we get beyond the point where each side thinks of the other as an enemy? For me, the answer rests in resolving the tension between my traditional views of the Fall and Redemption and my radical views about the nature of God and the cosmos. Though I believe that Christ was God incarnate and a revelation of the divine, I do not believe that his appearance on the earth was a complete, "once and for all" revelation of God and of the divine nature. And though I see Christ's sacrificial act on the cross at the center of human existence and high point of history, I also see him encompassed about by the feminine as the defining points of existence. The feminine marks the boundaries at the far corners of my theological universe. In sum, for me, it is inevitable that there should be a revelation of the goddess, the consort of Christ, who guards the portals of life, the gates at the beginning and the end of time.
To explain what I mean by these abstractions, let me use a model adapted from Jungian psychology. Jung and his followers, Erich Neumann in particular, describe four stages of human development connected with chronological development, though not every person progresses through the successive stages in the same way and at the same rate. In fact, many people may never emerge from the second stage, while others remain fixed in the third. And even those who reach the fourth stage are not fully developed individuals, for psychic growth is an ongoing, lifetime process.
The first stage is associated with the prenatal or infancy period of human development. Here, according to Ann Ulanov, a Jungian analyst and theologian, "The ego exists in an undifferentiated wholeness; there is no distinction between inner and outer worlds, nor between image, object, and affect, nor between subject and object. The ego feels it is magically at one with its environment and with all of reality as a totality" (1971, 67). The symbol of this stage is the uroboros, the mythical tail-eating serpent, which "represents circular containment and wholeness" (Ulanov 1971, 67).
In the second stage, called matriarchal by Erich Neumann who connects this phase with early childhood, the ego sees the mother as the source of all life; therefore the Great Mother prevails as archetype of the unconscious individual (Neumann 1954, 39). Creation myths, which typically separate the world into opposites, are often interpreted in terms of the birth of the ego associated with this phase. Though the ego begins to differentiate between itself and the "other" at this stage, it always does so in relation to its mother. Hence, males and females learn to relate in fundamentally different ways. The male's primary mode of relationship depends on differentiation and discrimination, since he sees himself as distinct from his mother, as like to unlike. In contrast, the female's primary mode of relationship is identification and relatedness, since she sees herself as like to like in her relationship with her mother. Thus, Ulanov extrapolates, the female's "ego development takes place not in opposition to but in relation to her unconscious" (1971, 244).
Neumann labels the third stage patriarchal, connected with the period of puberty (1954, 408). In ancient or primitive societies, this stage is memorialized by initiation rites in which the boy is separated from the world of women and brought into the ranks of the men. The girl also undergoes initiation rites to bring her into full status as an adult woman. Myth represents this stage by the loss of Eden through the Fall. Eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil represents adult consciousness, which distinguishes fully between opposites: inner and outer, subject and object, and right and wrong. According to Ulanov: "When the transition to this stage is successfully completed, the archetype of the Great Father becomes the sovereign deity and determines the values and goals of life. Consciousness, rationality, will power, self-discipline, adaption to the demands of external reality, and a sense of individual responsibility become important" (1971, 69). Moreover, in this stage, anything feminine is likely to be rejected as inferior: "The values of the masculine are endorsed at the expense of feminine values; the principle of spirit is seen as opposed to earth; order and definition are seen as superior to creative fertility, commandments and obedience are valued over the virtues of acceptance and forgiveness, and becoming is seen as better than 'just being'" (1971, 69).
The final "integrative" stage requires a reconciliation of opposites, both internally within the self and externally in the self's relations with the outer world and other people. In particular, all elements of the feminine which were rejected and repressed in the patriarchal phase must be reclaimed, both inwardly and outwardly. The integrative stage emphasizes unity and wholeness, then, but not the undifferentiated wholeness of the first and second stages. Rather, all parts of the whole are distinguished and recognized but are not perceived as rivals, as in the patriarchal stage. Instead, the parts are valued for their own unique contribution to the harmonious balance of the whole. It is a circling back to a wholeness lost, but a wholeness with new meaning. In T. S. Eliot's words:
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time (1971, 145).
The self, having gained strength by the ego differentiation and self definition of the preceding stage, must now see the limitations of individual ego and return to the unconscious which it has rejected. As Ulanov puts it: "Whereas in the patriarchal phase the power of being was experienced in terms of the ego's personal goals and meanings, in the integrative phase the power of being is experienced symbolically in the mystery beyond the ego and the ego's powers" (1971,72).
The integrative phase is the most demanding because it cannot be achieved in isolation but must be worked out in relationship to the outer self, the inner self, the outer reality, the inner reality, other people, and God. But paradoxically, only in this enmeshed stage does the individual become a separate, individual entity. Here a woman and a man fully represent more than their sexual or social roles; they are distinct individuals, "as differentiated from having only collective identity as members of a certain family, or group, or nation" (Ulanov 1971, 71). Jung called this process of integration "individuation," the process by which we become fully our best selves. In religious terms, this process could be compared with sanctification.
These four stages of human development can serve as a spiritual model not only to explain the development of the individual in mortality, but also the purification of the individual as she or he makes the cosmic journey of existence from an intelligence to a resurrected and glorified being.
Adapting this model to an eternal timeline, I connect the first or prenatal stage with our existence as intelligences, the formative period of our development about which we have the least knowledge. Though most Mormon theologians have emphasized the independent nature of intelligence, the actual statements we have on the subject focus on the uncreated nature of intelligence rather than on its complete separateness from God. Joseph Smith's curious statement that our minds or intelligences were "coequal with God himself" (Ehat 1980, 359) suggests that, as intelligences, we may have been connected in some way with our divine parents. This is similar to the undifferentiated wholeness of the Jungian model. Doctrine and Covenants 93:23 states that we "were also in the beginning with the Father; that which is Spirit, even the Spirit of truth," and in the 29 August 1857 edition of The Mormon, editor John Taylor suggested that we were once somehow part of the mind of God, "struck from the fire of his eternal blaze, and brought forth in the midst of eternal burnings" (in Andrus 1968, 179).
The matriarchal or second stage, I connect with the period prior to mortality. Again, popular notions of this stage derive from Mormon folklore and speculation; we actually know little about it. However, for our model, the significance of this stage is its domination by the Great Mother figure. In the LDS tradition, we most often associate a Heavenly Mother with the pre existence. In the hymn, "O My Father," Eliza R. Snow implies that her knowledge about her Heavenly Mother is intuited from the forgotten experience of a prenatal world. Hugh Nibley points out in his discussion of the early Christian poem "The Pearl" that it is the Queen or Mother who is the first and last to embrace the departing hero as he leaves his heavenly home and begins his sojourn in the fallen world (1975, 272).
But is there any corroborative evidence that this stage was connected with a Great Goddess? If so, who was she? What was her function and relation to us? And why was she superseded by the Father God?
Scholars in the fields of religion, mythology, and archaeology currently debate whether there actually ever was a period of history or prehistory in which the Great Goddess was generally worshipped to the exclusion of a male deity. Some archaeological evidence, in the form of cave drawings, goddess figures, and structures built in the shape of the goddess or her life-giving womb, seems to support the notion that in prehistoric times a goddess was looked to as the source of all life and the obvious object of worship (Neumann 1963; Stone 1976; Dames 1976; Gimbutas 1974; Thompson 1981). However, lack of written documents renders all such conclusions speculative.
To the archaeological evidence may be added the evidence found in ancient mythologies. Though the mythologies from the Near Eastern world depict pantheons of gods in which a male deity is almost always supreme, the goddesses are still independent and powerful, often vying with the gods for power. In fact, most creation stories from these cultures depict a strong theme of matriarchal-patriarchal struggles. "It is as though the writers [of the creation myths] believed that civilization could not begin or be sustained until the feminine, as a dominant religious power, had been mastered and domesticated" (Phillips 1984, 4). For example, in the Mesopotamian creation story, Enuma elish, the warrior-god Marduk first must kill "Tiamat the dragon-mother of all creation," and then "he creates the world by splitting her carcass into earth and sky; she herself becomes the primordial matter [i.e., matter or mother] of the universe" (Phillips 1984, 5). The Greek poet Hesiod records a similar struggle in his version of the creation story, the Theogony, which reads almost like an anti-feminist tract. This misogynist view, which continued throughout the Hellenic civilization, profoundly affected the early Christian church and, therefore, views of women throughout the Christian epoch (Phipps 1973, 77-94).
Many scholars feel that the struggle between the male and female deities in the Near Eastern mythologies represents the historical struggle between older civilizations dominated by the worship of the Great Mother and the rising new powers which favored male gods. The domination of the male deities over their female counterparts would then symbolize the actual historical conquest of one culture over another (Thompson 1981; Morford and Lenardon 1985, 41). But if there was a period, premortal or otherwise, where a goddess was worshipped, who was she?
Although names and places differ, there is a continuity among the goddess' varying images. For example, in Greek mythology, though Hera, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Artemis all have distinct personalities and functions, each god dess is also seen at times, both in art and literature, as a Mother Goddess figure. Recently, several scholars have also associated Eve, the only female in the Judeo-Christian creation story, with the Mother Goddess of other ancient religions, since the pattern of her story parallels the accounts of other goddesses of the Near East. Furthermore, the name Eve means, according to Genesis 3:20, "the mother of all living." This is the title most commonly associated with the Great Mother Goddess, and Nibley points out that in the Egyptian rituals all the goddesses went by this title at one time or another (1975, 166). Moreover, in Sumerian mythology there is a connection between the title "mother of all living" and the title "lady of the rib" because of a similarity of word sounds. Both of these titles were used to refer to a goddess who healed the rib of the God of wisdom. According to Sumerian scholar Samuel Noah Kramer, "In Sumerian literature, therefore, 'the lady of the rib' came to be identified with 'the lady who makes live' through what may be termed a play of words. It was this, one of the most ancient of literary puns, which was carried over and perpetuated in the Biblical paradise story" (1961, 103).
Though Judeo-Christian tradition depicts Eve as merely mortal, Isaac Kikawada believes that "behind the character of Eve was probably hidden the figure of the creatress or mother Goddess" (1972, 34). John A. Phillips concurs with this supposition and adds: "The story of Eve is also the story of the displacing of the Goddess whose name is taken from a form of the Hebrew verb 'to be' by the masculine God, Yahweh, whose name has the same derivation. We cannot understand the history of Eve without seeing her as a deposed Creator-Goddess, and indeed, in some sense as creation itself" (1984, 3; see also Millet 1970, 52; Asche 1976, 16-17; Heller 1958, 655; and MacDonald's Eve figure in his 1895 Lilith).
Despite its elevated associations, many feminists have objected to Eve's name since it was given her by Adam. Their argument is that the act of naming gives the namer authority to define and limit the object named (Daly 1973, 8). And, of course, in the ancient Hebrew culture, as well as in other Near Eastern cultures, people believed that even knowing the name of something gave the knower power over the object named. Jacob wrestling with the angel and Odysseus' conflict with the Cyclops illustrate the prevalence of this concept. Traditionally, scholars have linked Adam's dominion over the animals with his power to give them names. The same interpretation can be signed to his naming of Eve and may lie at the root of much of men's domination of women. By keeping the power of words and history in their control men have been able to define what women are and can be.
Phyllis Trible acknowledges this argument but objects to a misinterpretation of the text. The formula used by Adam to name the animals is different than that used to address Eve: "In calling the animals by name, 'adham establishes supremacy over them and fails to find a fit helper. In calling woman, 'adham does not name her and does find in her a counterpart. Female and male are equal sexes. Neither has authority over the other" (1979, 77). Moreover, other traditions present alternative descriptions of this event. For example, in the Gnostic text "On the Origin of the World," Adam gives Eve her name not as an act of domination but in recognition of her superiority:
After the day of rest, Sophia sent Zoe, her daughter, who is called "Eve (of life)" as an instructor to raise up Adam, in whom there was no soul, so that those whom he would beget might become vessels of the light. [When] Eve saw her co-likeness cast down, she pitied him, and she said, "Adam, live! Rise up on the earth!" Immediately her word became a deed. For when Adam rose up, immediately he opened his eyes. When he saw her, he said, "You will be called 'the mother of the living' because you are the one who gave me life" (Bethge and Wintermute 1977, 173).
The naming of Eve is not the only part of the Hebrew creation story that troubles feminists. To them, the whole story is merely an aetiological myth, a story used to justify men's domination of women. For this reason many feminists feel that the story should be rejected along with the concepts of the Father God and Christ (Millett 1970, 51-54). Recognizing the power of symbol and the need for myth in communicating ideas, some women have turned, instead, to the figure of Lilith (Plaskow 1979). According to Jewish legend, Lilith, Adam's first wife, came before Eve. Adam and Lilith had not been together very long before they began arguing — each refusing to take what they regarded as the inferior position in the sex act. Finally, when Adam tried to force Lilith beneath him, she uttered the ineffable name of God and disappeared. To fill her place, God then created Eve (Patai 1980, 407-8).
For my own part, though I find the character of Lilith fascinating, my sympathies rest with Eve. For me she is the central figure in the Garden of Eden story (Toscano 1985, 21-23). Phyllis Trible, who also takes this view, maintains that Eve is not the deceptive temptress of the traditional interpretation, but rather an "intelligent, sensitive, and ingenious" woman who weighs carefully the choice before her and then acts out of a desire for wisdom (1979, 79). Trible's interpretation lacks only a good reason why Eve's choice is commendable rather than simply a disastrous sin.
Mormon theology supplies this answer: the Fall was necessary for the development of the souls of women and men. Obtaining physical bodies is part of God's plan, a step toward obtaining the power and likeness of God. However, Mormonism is not alone in asserting the positive aspects of the Fall. Many Enlightenment thinkers interpreted the Eden story in this way. For them, the Fall was also a necessarium peccatum (a necessary sin) and a felix culpa (a happy fault). The Fall was a step forward in human progress, since it took humankind "from blissful ignorance to risky but mature human knowledge, from animal instinct to human reason" (Phillips 1984, 78).
While Mormonism has treated Eve much more positively than has Christianity in general, she is still seen as deserving a position subordinate to Adam. For example, in the Articles of Faith, Apostle James E. Talmage, while insisting that we owe gratitude to our first parents for the chance to experience mortality, still agrees with Paul that "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression" (1890, 65). For BYU religion professor Rodney Turner, the story of the Fall shows why men have a rightful stewardship over women. He reasons that, whereas before the Fall men and women both had direct access to God, after the Fall men stood between God and women as their head, to lead them back to God (1972, 52-53). Strangely, Turner does not expect the celestial kingdom to rectify this fallen order: "And Woman, although a reigning majesty, will nevertheless continue to acknowledge the Priesthood of her divine companion even as he continues to obey the Gods who made his own exaltation possible" (1972, 311). In like manner, I have heard other Mormons argue that since the Fall itself is not evil, then Eve's servitude is not simply a punishment or result of sin, but a reaffirmation of her eternally subordinate status which she overstepped when she took the initiative in eating the fruit.
Other puzzling questions emerge in the common Mormon argument over whether Adam and Eve's action should be called a "sin" or a "transgression"— a distinction Joseph Fielding Smith endorsed to emphasize the necessary nature of the Fall (1:112). If mortality is good, then why do Adam and Eve commit a sin in bringing it about? Why did God forbid them to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil if that was the only way to introduce them into mortality, a necessary step in eternal progression? It seems at first there is no way out of this dilemma. Either Adam and Eve (and especially Eve) were bad, or God was bad.
Orthodox Christianity has, of course, chosen to put the blame on Eve and women in general. Other so-called "heretical" early Christian sects, such as the Gnostics and Manichaeans, chose to see Adam and Eve as Prometheus figures who dared to defy the jealous Old Testament God who wished to keep humanity enslaved in ignorance. Mormonism tends to avoid the question by calling the Fall a "transgression" rather than a "sin." We do this perhaps because we are uncomfortable with the idea that we live in a world where choices between good and evil are not clearly defined.
In my own view, the answer to this dilemma lies in the paradoxical aspects of the creation story itself. In the garden are two trees: not the Tree of Good and the Tree of Evil, but the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. These trees signal to us that for Adam and Eve, as well as for us, the choice between the trees is a complex one. Part of that complexity may revolve around the function of Eve as the Mother Goddess. As "the Mother of All Living" Eve must be regarded as in some ways Adam's parent as well as his mate.
Mother Eve's virtue and greatness, in my view, rest in her ability to perceive paradox and to see that growth comes about through distinguishing between opposites. The Garden of Eden was not a place of opposites. It was a place of maternal wholeness, a state of protection in which Eve's children and also Adam could have all their needs met. But the child grows into a healthy adult only by becoming independent. If the mother fails to let the child go at the appropriate time, then she becomes a devouring mother instead of a nurturing one. It is really up to the mother to end the matriarchal stage and lead the child into its next phase of development — the patriarchal stage.
If distinguishing opposites is one of the main characteristics of the patriarchal stage, then Eve's choice can be interpreted as noble rather than impulsive. For she, as "the mother of all living," saw that the life of all her children could come about only through her death. Consequently, she put her life on the altar. She put to death her eternal life in the Garden of Eden to bring about their mortal life on earth. She clearly saw that "there was no other way."
Nevertheless, Eve's action, though noble, was still a sin because she had disobeyed God's commandment; she ate when she had been forbidden to do so. But what about God's part in this crime? Is he also culpable or at least at fault in some way? Why had he made it a sin to do that which was necessary for the progression of his children? Again, the answer is not a simple one. It rests on a statement made by Joseph Smith: "That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be and often is, right under another. God said thou shalt not kill, at another time he said thou shalt utterly destroy" (Jessee 1984, 508).
God may indeed have intended for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit to bring about mortality, but at another time or under another circumstance. Perhaps he wanted them to approach him with their dilemma and ask how they could fulfill all of his commandments without eating the fruit. And perhaps he planned to grant them the fruit as a result of that request. Might the sin in the garden be not the fruit, but the failure to seek it from the hand of God?
If so, this interpretation sheds light on the nature of Satan's crime as well. His sin was to usurp God's prerogative to initiate Adam and Eve into the lone and dreary world. He was playing God. And in fact on closer examination most of what Satan tells Eve is true; for when Adam and Eve eat the fruit, the Lord himself repeats Satan's statement that the man and the woman have now become as gods, "to know good and evil" (Gen. 3:22).
So Eve was deceived, but not by false ideas. Rather, she was deceived because she mistook Satan for a messenger of God. The point is that the truth of revelation consists not just in its content, but in its source as well.
Eve's choice to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then, must be seen as a conscious and deliberate act of self-sacrifice. For she knew that her choice constituted acceptance of the law of opposites: that pleasure could only be known through pain, health through sickness, and life through death, as she indicates in the temple version of the story. Symbolically, her choice was a yielding of matriarchal wholeness to patriarchal differentiation.
Seen in this light, Eve's subordination to Adam was not so much a prescription of what should be but a description of what would be. In other words, God's statement is not that the husband ought to rule over his wife, but that he would rule over her in the patriarchal stage. Phyllis Trible comments:
The divine speeches to the serpent, the woman, and the man are not commands for structuring life. To the contrary, they show how intolerable existence has become as it stands between creation and redemption. . . . Yet, according to God, she [Eve] still yearns for the original unity of male and female . . . however, union is no more, one flesh is split. The man will not reciprocate the woman's desire, instead he will rule over her. His supremacy is neither a divine right nor a male prerogative. Her subordination is neither a divine decree nor the female destiny. Both their positions result from shared disobedience. God describes this consequence but does not prescribe it as punishment (1978, 123, 128).
When Eve decides to bring about mortality, she does so at the greatest expense to herself, not to Adam. It is true that, in the temple version, Adam also sacrifices by willingly following her (Turner 1972, 309; Talmage 1899, 69-70). But Eve takes the blame for their action, as well as the subordinate status. Her action can be illumined by comparing it to the ancient ritual called the humiliation of the king, which was part of the rites of the ancient Mesopotamian New Year Festival. In this rite, the king was stripped of his kingly vestments and power, beaten, and made to confess his responsibility for the sins of his people and then to wander the streets as a beggar. Finally, he, or a substitute for him, was put to death to fertilize the earth and renew the life of his kingdom and people (Engnell 1967, 33-35, 66-67). Though this ritual most often involved the death of a king or a male god, reversals were also possible. Mary Renault, in her novel The Bull From the Sea (1962), interprets the story of Theseus in this way, when his wife Hippolyta dies in the place of her husband, as a substitute "king."
Moreover, several Near Eastern goddesses enact the pattern of the humiliation of the king or descent of the god. Inanna, an ancient Sumerian goddess, who was queen of heaven and also of the city of Uruk, yielded her royal and sovereign power to her husband, Dumuzi, laying aside all her priestly offices and stripping herself of all her vestments of power so that she could penetrate the underworld and learn its mysteries. Once there, she was pronounced guilty and struck dead by Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld, who hung her corpse "from a hook [or nail] from the wall" (Wolkstein and Kramer 1983, 60). After hanging there for three days and three nights, she was raised to life again by the intercession of the god of wisdom and other deities. She ascended to heaven, her power over life and death acknowledged by the Sumerians, who looked to her as a fertility goddess, in control of all life cycles and seasons.
In the well-known Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, Persephone, another fertility goddess, descended to the underworld; and in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Athanassakis 1976) she functions as a savior goddess. Though her descent to Hades introduced death and the seasons into what had been a state of paradise, her return to life and to her mother Demeter brought renewal. This myth is believed to be the subject of the ancient Eleusinian mysteries, which presumably gave initiates hope for an idyllic afterlife.
Isis, an Egyptian goddess, also functioned as a savior goddess, both in myth through her descent to save Osiris, and in cult practice through her promise of comfort and immortality to initiates (Bleeker 1963).
Eve's story parallels these goddesses' in intriguing ways. Like Isis, Eve acted as savior to bring life to others. Like Persephone, Eve's descent into mortality brought about the changing cycle of life and death and brought an end to the timeless state of paradisiacal bliss. And like Inanna, Eve made her pilgrimage into the world of darkness to acquire knowledge both of good and of evil. In their quests, both Eve and Inanna turn their authority over to their husbands, who then rule over them.
In his Lectures on Genesis Martin Luther talks about the fate of Eve and all womankind who are "under the power of the husband." He compares their subjugated state to "a nail driven into the wall," fixed, immovable, and hemmed in by the demands of men, so that their sphere of influence is confined to the home (1:202). Though Luther does not seem to be aware of the power of the symbol he has chosen, I see a connection with the goddess Inanna, whose corpse hung from the nail on the wall. Isaiah 22:23 and Ezra 9:8 represent God's grace, eventually manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, as a "nail in a sure place" on whom hangs "all the glory of his father's house." According to the Interpreter's Bible, the "nail" was "a wooden peg which was driven into the wall and used for hanging domestic utensils" or keys (5:293). The same Hebrew word can also refer to a tent peg and appears in Isaiah 54:2: "Lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes," from which we derive our term "stake."
Eve can be seen as the counterpart and parallel to Christ. For Eve, too, is a "nail in a sure place," the glory of her mother's house. Just as Eve sacrificed herself and was humiliated to bring her children into mortal life, so Christ sacrificed his life and was humiliated to bring his children into eternal life. As Eve's death was necessary to bring an end to the matriarchal stage, so Christ's death was necessary to bring an end to the patriarchal stage. Angela West comes to a similar conclusion:
Christ became Son and not Daughter because the symbol of female power, the god dess, had long since been done to death and needed no further humiliation; and because the daughters of Eve are always and everywhere being brought low through childbearing (or barrenness) and subordinated in the name of the patriarchal God. But in the person of Jesus Christ, God denies the godhead as patriarchal power, and reveals Godself in humanity, in the helpless infant, in the helpless crucified human being (1983, 89).
I have already implied that mortality can be compared to the third or patriarchal stage of the Jungian model. Seen in this larger perspective, patriarchy becomes a little easier to understand and accept as just one act in a larger drama, a necessary step in the development of the individual personality and of the human race.
However, I do not mean to justify all the abuses of the feminine that have occurred in the previous millennia. Nor am I advocating we do nothing to correct them. Quite the contrary. Any power system not held in check by a loyal opposition tends quickly to become oppressive. However, though abuses are rampant, we should not refuse to see the necessity and good of the patriarchal stage. This necessity is illuminated for us by the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, who is the revelation of the Father figure for us.
Though Christ's mission was parallel to Eve's, it was not identical to it. Where Eve's mission occurred at the end of the matriarchal stage, Christ's mission occurred in the middle of the patriarchal — in the "meridian of time." And though his mission was meant, ultimately, to doom patriarchal authority, Christ did not put an abrupt end to these power systems as many had expected the promised Messiah to do. The reason for this is important. Christ's first coming was to define the true purpose of the patriarchal stage as a probationary state in which we must make distinctions, differentiate between opposites, and use our knowledge of good and evil to choose the way of liberty and life rather than the way of oppression and death (2 Ne. 2:27).
The symbol of Christ's coming into the world is the cross, represented at times by the two-edged sword which can divide asunder both "joint and marrow" (D&C 6:2). Christ, as the word made flesh, is also the sword of God's justice, which "hangs over us" (3 Ne. 20:20). But the purpose of the sword is paradoxical. For though God's justice was meant for us, Christ was wounded for our sakes. The sword pierced his side. Thus, the sword which guards the Tree of Life becomes the iron rod that leads believers to the fruit of that tree. The sword is two-edged because it can both destroy life to administer death and destroy death to administer life. Those who allow themselves to be pierced by the word of God, which is his sword (Rev. 2:16), will receive new life, but those who harden their hearts against God's word will cut themselves off.
Christ's mission, like the double-edged sword, is paradoxical. For while he came to show that the true importance of the patriarchal function was to make distinctions and choose, the choice he advocated was the denial of goodness strictly in patriarchal terms and the affirmation of goodness as it exists in something other than ourselves. Angela West comments on the irony of this paradox:
[The story of Christ is] the only scandal that patriarchy couldn't dare to contemplate; the story of God who de-divinised Godself and became a human historical male who turned out to be a complete political failure. It presents God as the ultimate contradiction to the worship of male power, and mocks all gods and goddesses, who are nothing more than this.
In order to show men, and men in particular, that God was not made in the image of man, God became a man, and [when] that manhood was crucified, patriarchal pretensions were put to death. . . . Christ died on the cross cursed by the patriarchal law, and the law of patriarchy is thus revealed as curse and cursed (1983, 88-89).
The very act of God's coming to earth as a human being is a statement about the need we all have to see the good in our opposites. Though Christ was the Father of Heaven and Earth, he made of himself a Son to bring about the Father's will. Though Christ was a male, he assumed the role of a female to give birth to a new creation through the blood he shed in Gethsemane and on the cross. Though Christ was creator, he became part of the creation to show the inseparability of the two. Though Christ was God, he became human to reveal that true love is in relationship. And though Christ was above all things, he descended below all things "that he might be in and through all things, the light of truth" (D&C 88:6).
The patriarchal stage is important. It allows the ego to develop by making it aware of contrasts and choices. But the important choice of the patriarchal stage is to deny the self-sufficiency of the ego and to move out of that stage into the integrative phase of wholeness, where all that was lost is reclaimed, particularly the feminine. The ego sees its own limitations by first recognizing itself as separate from God, the primary "other," and next by recognizing its own insufficiency — recognizing that it is unable to rescue itself from its own egocentricity and its own narrow categories of perception. To be saved and transcend its limitations, the ego must deny its self-sufficiency and accept what is held in trust for it by God. Once this happens, the self is prepared to begin the process of individuation in earnest.
However, this is not easy to do because it means that the individual has to move beyond "the safety of patriarchal standards" (Ulanov 1971, 70) and risk uncertainty and personal pain. For men, the main obstacle is overcoming the fear that this step is really a regression into the power of the matriarchal and the undifferentiated unconscious. Moreover, it is difficult for men to give up their status in a patriarchal system that provides personal comfort and power. Women also can be fixed in the patriarchal structure, often because they are prisoners of a world view which denies them power to see themselves as anything but subordinates. There is safety in the status quo. Moreover, even patriarchal systems have matriarchal substrata, which afford women status and the comfort of feeling that they are the "real power behind the throne." Another danger for women is fear of freedom, which may precipitate them into a safe matriarchal structure which values the feminine at the expense of the masculine (Ulanov 1971, 244-46).
It takes a heroic leap to get beyond matriarchy and beyond patriarchy to a stage of integration and individuation. And, in fact, many of our fairy tales and hero myths describe the rescue mission involved in this process. Best known are the stories of the prince who rescues the princess from the dragon or the tower, but equally important are the stories of the maiden who rescues the prince from the spell of the witch or sorcerer who keeps him in bondage. For us, the point of these stories is that we must each rely on the other for the power to develop into full personhood. When women acknowledge the good in men, men can be freed from the fear of the devouring feminine; when men acknowledge the power in women, women can be freed from subordination to the patriarchy.
The controlling deity for the integrative stage is neither the Great Mother nor the Great Father, but the Divine Couple, united in a marital embrace. I take this image from ancient myth and art, where the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) was an important part of Near Eastern culture for at least 2,000 years (Kramer 1969, 49). Behind this ritual lay the concept that the sexual union of a god and goddess, sometimes a sky god and an earth goddess, would insure the fertility of land, beasts, and humans and the flourishing of civilization. The love stories of such gods as Isis and Osiris, Inanna and Dumuzi, Ishtar and Tammuz, and Hera and Zeus are no doubt related to this belief. As a variation on the ritual, a god could marry a mortal woman, usually a queen or priestess, who, as a representative of the goddess, could assure the fecundity of the entire kingdom. Or a love or fertility goddess would marry a king or priest to bring well-being to his land and people. In a third variation, a king and queen or priest and priestess could ritually reenact the marriage rite as representatives of the divine couple.
Many lead plaques, engraved with couples in sexual poses, have been found in Near Eastern temple sites. According to Elizabeth Williams Forte, "Such scenes are considered representations of the cult of the sacred marriage, which took place annually in each Mesopotamian city" (Wolkstein and Kramer 1983, 187). Though the scenes are obviously erotic, the positioning of the arms and legs and the intertwining of the god and goddess is such that the scenes are not simply sexual, but ritual as well. The impression is that of a ritual embrace, which sacralizes the sex act (Nibley 1975, 241).
Religious tradition holds that the Israelites totally rejected such fertility rites. In the Old Testament, the Yahwist prophets denounced such practices as pagan and an abomination in the sight of God, repeatedly warning the children of Israel to abandon the worship of Asherah/Astarte and to forsake her high places.
However, in this century, some scholars of the myth-ritual school suggest that there may have been legitimate Hebrew rituals to celebrate the marriage of Yahweh and his consort during certain periods of Israel's history (Hooke 1958, 176-91). Though this school of interpretation is not currently in vogue, the rise of feminist theology in the last few years has resulted in renewed interest in the sacred marriage rites among the Hebrews. For example, Savina J. Teubal explores this ritual in some depth in Sarah the Priestess (1984). An ambitious and thorough analysis of the influence of the Hebrew goddess and her marriage to Yahweh on Judaism is Raphael Patai's The Hebrew Goddess. He there demonstrates how a feminine divinity has always been a part, though admittedly a hidden part, of the religion of Israel, thus answering, in Judaism, the need for the loving and mothering aspects of deity (1967, 258).
Patai also shows how a feminine image of deity has been viewed as the wife of God, whether it be in the form of a union between God and Wisdom, God and his Shekhina (spirit), God and the Queen Matronit of Kabbalism, or God and his Bride, the Sabbath. Perhaps the most striking image of the union of Israel's God with the feminine is seen in the Holy of Holies, itself. Patai asserts that the Ark of the Covenant, the holiest object in the temple and the center for legitimate worship, contained images of the sacred marriage:
In the beginning . . . two images, or slabs of stone, were contained in the Ark, representing Yahweh and his consort. . . . The idea slowly gained ground that the one and only God comprised two aspects, a male and a female one, and that the Cherubim in the Holy of Holies of the Second Temple were the symbolic representation of these two divine virtues or powers. This was followed by a new development, in Talmudic times, when the male Cherub was considered as a symbol of God, while the female Cherub, held in embrace by him, stood for the personified Community of Israel (1967, 97-98).
So we come again to the image of the divine couple in a marital embrace. The image of the sacred marriage is not only important historically but can be projected into the future as well, since the image is used in Judeo-Christian eschatological literature to represent the promised revival of the marriage relationship of Yahweh and the community of Israel and the marriage of Christ to the church. In both instances, the marriage symbolizes the time, after tribulation and judgment, when repentant Israel or the church returns to God, her husband.
Bible scholar Joachim Jeremias points out that in the rabbinic literature the "marriage time" is often associated with the Messianic period of peace and feasting (in Taylor 1953, 88). The rabbis took this idea, no doubt, from the prophets who often use marriage language to describe the relationship between Yahweh and Israel (i.e., Isa. 54:5; Jer. 3:14, 31:32; and Hosea 2:19-20). Though Israel is often rebuked as an errant wife, in the Messianic period she will be pure and magnificent, a bride adorned with jewels (Isa. 61:10). And the Lord will no longer look upon her with disfavor, but "as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee" (Isa. 62:5).
All four Gospel writers, as well as the writer of the book of Revelation, use the bridegroom symbol in connection with Christ. Vincent Taylor, a biblical scholar, asserts that the use of such imagery shows Christ's "Messianic consciousness, and especially His close relationships with His community" (1953, 88). This argument appears warranted by the bridal imagery in the book of Revelation:
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God (21:2-3).
Raphael Patai, although a Jewish scholar, even includes this passage in his book The Messiah Texts, because the author of Revelation who is Christian nevertheless "described the heavenly Jerusalem in Jewish apocalyptic-Aggadic terms" (1979, 200).
In the New Testament, as in the Old, the bridal imagery is connected with an eschatological end period. This is especially evident in the two marriage parables found in Matthew 22 and 25. The kingdom of heaven is compared to ten virgins, who are awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom. Only virgins with oil in their lamps may enter the marriage feast when the bridegroom finally arrives. The listener is then admonished: "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh" (Matt. 25:13). Earlier in Matthew 22, guests at the marriage feast of the king's son must have a wedding garment. Revelation 19 almost seems to be a commentary on the parable, for we are told that the "fine linen is the righteousness of the saints" and "Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Rev. 19:8-9). Looking forward to the marriage of the Lamb is, therefore, synonymous with looking forward to the second coming of Christ.
This is also true of LDS scripture, in particular the Doctrine and Covenants, where the bridal imagery is used a number of times in connection with the purification of Zion and the second coming of Christ. Doctrine and Covenants 88:92 predicts the coming of the bridegroom during a period of tribulation and judgment, in language similar to that found in Revelation: "And angels shall fly through the midst of heaven, crying with a loud voice, sounding the trump of God, saying: Prepare ye, prepare ye, O inhabitants of the earth; for the judgment of our God is come. Behold, and lo, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him" (D&C 88:92; cf. D&C 133:10, 19). As in the New Testament, the Doctrine and Covenants bridegroom image is linked to the marriage supper: "Yea, a voice crying — Prepare ye the way of the Lord, pre pare ye the supper of the Lamb, make ready for the Bridegroom" (D&C 65:3; cf. D&C 58:8-11). The Doctrine and Covenants also repeats the symbolism of the ten virgins, who, as representatives of the community of Israel, are warned to prepare for the coming of the bridegroom: "Wherefore, be faithful, praying always, having your lamps trimmed and burning, and oil with you, that you may be ready at the coming of the Bridegroom" (D&C 33:17).
Although the bridegroom image is familiar, we seldom focus on its implication for the place of the feminine. Viewing the second coming as a marriage means seeing the ushering in of the millennial kingdom as a union of opposites and a reaffirmation of the values of the feminine, for the marriage of the Lamb to the Bride implies the elevation of a female to the status of a divinity. Some scholars argue the opposite — that the symbol of the marriage of Christ is, in fact, a reaffirmation of patriarchal marriage where the male rules, since Christ's bride is his creation, the church, who must always be subordinate to him (Ruether 1983, 141; Eph. 5:22-25).
But there are other scriptures and traditions that do not speak of the messianic marriage time in these terms. The writer of Revelation describes "the bride, the Lamb's wife" as a beautiful city not of the earth, but come down from heaven, "the holy Jerusalem," having "the glory of God [i.e., having glory equal to God's]: and her light was like unto a stone most precious" (Rev. 21:10-11).
A similar idea in the Jewish mystical writings of the thirteenth-century Zohar is that the Matronit (Lady or Matron) was part of the godhead in the beginning (the divine tetrad: Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter). She was the daughter and the queen married to her brother, and the son and king (Patai 1967, 126-52). But she went wandering in the earth in search of her lost children. In the Messianic period, she will be restored to her rightful place, in full union with the king, after she has shaken off the dust and ashes of mourning and put on her beautiful garments, representing the authority and power she possessed in the beginning (Isa. 52:1-2; D&C 113).
But the Holy One, blessed be He, will bring back the Matronit to her place as in the beginning. And then what will the rejoicing be? Say, the joy of the King and the joy of the Matronit. The joy of the King over having returned to her and having parted from the Slave-woman [Lilith], as we have said, and the joy of the Matronit over having returned to couple with the King (Patai 1979, 186-87).
In the Midrash, the gathering of Israel during the Messianic period will be led by the Shekhina, the personification of God's spirit, a female deity of sorts, and the consort of Yahweh:
The day on which the exiles will be ingathered is as great as the day on which the Tora was given to Israel on Mount Sinai. . . . The Shekhina will walk at their head . . . and the nations of the world after them, and the prophets at their sides, and the Ark and the Tora will be with them. And all Israel will be clothed in splendor and wrapped in great honor, and their radiance will shine from one end of the world to the other (Patai 1979, 185).
By separating God's consort from her errant offspring, these writers redeem the wife of Yahweh from a fallen and, therefore, subordinate role. Thus, her exile is not for her own sins, but a voluntary sojourn as she laments the loss of her children in the manner of Rachel mourning for her children, or the goddess Demeter, mourning the loss of Persephone. In the following passage from the Zohar, the writer quotes Isaiah to the effect that the Matronit's children are responsible for her exile. And without her, the king is left less than complete and unworthy of glory:
It is written, "Behold, for your iniquities were ye sold, and for your transgressions was your mother put away" (Isa. 50:1). The Holy One, blessed be He, said, "You have brought it about that I and you shall wander in the world. Lo, the Matronit will leave her Hall with you. Lo, the whole Hall, Mine and yours, has been destroyed, for the Hall is not worthy of the King except when He enters it with the Matronit. And the joy of the King is found only in the hour in which He enters the Hall of the Matronit, and her son is found there with her. [Then] all of them rejoice together (Patai 1979, 187).
Isaiah also uses the Jerusalem symbol to depict a mother at one time and at other times her children, which has the effect of elevating the mother figure. In the end time, the mother, Jerusalem, is no longer desolate, but fertile and life-sustaining: "Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: That ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolation; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory" (Isa. 66:10-11). This is not a description of an ordinary mother nourishing her children, for Jerusalem's milk will flow like a river to her children while she dandles them on her knees (Isa. 66:12; Rev. 22:1). This portrayal evokes the image of a fertility goddess who is commonly represented nursing the child or young god at her breast or also represented as a large-breasted or many-breasted figure. (See the illustrations in Neumann's The Great Mother. Note in particular the Egyptian sky goddess, Nut, who has a stream of milk flowing from her breast to the earth, pp. 32-46 in plate section.) We see a similar depiction of Jerusalem as mother in Isaiah 66:8, where she is described as a woman who "travailed" and "brought forth her children."
Revelation 12 also records an image of a woman in labor who delivers a "man child." In his commentary on Revelation, J. Massyngberde Ford notes that the words "woman" or "women" occur so many times, "that the woman symbol is almost as important as the Lamb" (38:188). Moreover, the woman or women portrayed are powerful and pure. For example, the woman in Revelation 12 is described as "a great wonder in heaven," a mighty woman who is "clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars" (Rev. 12:1). She fights with the great dragon, reminding us of Eve in the garden pitted against the serpent. Being clothed with the sun implies equality with a male sky god, while the moon under her feet connects her with the old Earth Goddess who often bore that symbol. The crown is a symbol of power and kingship (Isa. 62:3—4), while the twelve stars may be connected with the zodiac, which was often for the Jews a symbol of the twelve tribes (Ford 38:197).
Moreover, this imagery connects the bride with still another important set of scriptures. Ford indicates that the text nearest to the portrayal of the woman in Revelation 12 is "the description of the bride in Song of Songs, 6:10" (38:196).
The Song of Songs compares the bride's beauty to the sun and the moon: "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear [or bright] as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" (6:10). The image is of a powerful woman whose majesty surpasses that of a mere mortal. This is one reason some scholars feel that the poem can be traced back "to the ancient myth of the love of a god and a goddess on which the fertility of nature was thought to depend" (May and Metzger 1977, 815). Others feel that the poem simply represents human erotic love (Pope 7c: 192-205). Its sensuous love language has caused a debate since ancient times about the suitability of including the Song of Solomon in the canon. By interpreting it allegorically as the love between God and Israel or Christ and the church, the rabbis and later the Church fathers decided to include it in the canon (Pope 7c: 89-132).
Though this official relation is merely spiritual, we have already seen how the scriptural images of this marriage relationship fit into the pattern of the Mesopotamian sacred marriage, which was both spiritual and erotic. In a detailed analysis and comparison with Sumerian sacred marriage songs, Samuel Noah Kramer shows how the Song of Songs follows the same pattern in terms of its setting, images, language, complex dramatic structure, stock characters, themes, and motifs (1969, 92-102). One example is "the portrayal of the lover as both shepherd and king and of the beloved as both bride and sister" (1969, 92). But for us the most important comparison is the description of the bride. In the Sumerian marriage songs, the bride is Inanna or her human substitute. In the Song of Songs, the bride appears first as a mortal, and yet the description already quoted from Chapter 6 suggests more. Marvin Pope observes:
The combination of beauty and terror which distinguishes the Lady of the Canticle also characterizes the goddess of Love and War throughout the ancient world, from Mesopotamia to Rome, particularly the goddess Inanna or Ishtar of Mesopotamia, Anat of the Western Semites, Athena and Victoria of the Greeks and Romans, Britannia, and most striking of all, Kali of India (7c: 562).
Another remarkable aspect of the Canticle is that the song describes not the love of a dominant male and subordinate female, but their mutuality in love. The structure of the song itself contains long dialogues between the two lovers. Phyllis Trible says that in the Song of Songs there is "no stereotyping of either sex . . . the portrayal of the woman defies the connotations of 'second sex.' She works, keeping vineyards and pasturing flocks. . . . She is independent, fully the equal of the man" (1978, 161). Trible sees a connection between the Garden of Eden and the garden in the Song of Songs. Eden is the place of lost glory, but the garden of the Canticle represents a place of redeeming grace, where the errors of Eden are blotted out and man and woman are reconciled to God and each other. Where in Eden, the woman's "desire became his dominion, .. . in the Song, male power vanishes. His desire becomes her delight. . . . Appropriately, the woman sings the lyrics of this grace: 'I am my lover's and for me is his desire'" (1978, 160).
While working on his translation of the Old Testament, Joseph Smith deleted the Song of Songs on the grounds that it was "not inspired writing" (Matthews 1975, 87). I find it ironic that in spite of his rejection, the descrip tion of the bride from this text, which is found nowhere else in the Bible, appears in three of Joseph Smith's revelations: Doctrine and Covenants 5:14, 105:31, and 109:73. In each instance, the image describes the purified community of Zion or the Church. In Section 109, Joseph prays: "That thy church may come forth out of the wilderness of darkness, and shine forth fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners; And be adorned as a bride for that day when thou shalt unveil the heavens" (D&C 109:73-74).
So who is the bride? Is she a heavenly goddess? Or the earthly community of Israel? Could the bride be a symbol of both? Could there be a real god dess — Eve, Inanna, Ishtar, or Jerusalem — as well as a spiritual community of the faithful — Israel, the Church, or the covenant people of the Lord? And are the faithful on earth to await, like the ten virgins, not only the coming of the bridegroom, but the unveiling of the heavenly bride from above? Is there to be a sacred marriage between her and Jesus Christ? And when is this wedding to occur?
Apostle Orson Pratt wrote in The Seer: "There will be a marriage of the Son of God at the time of His second coming" (1854, 170). Of course, the purpose of Pratt's discourse was to show the reasonability and importance of plural marriage, for he stated that Christ would have many wives: the queen described by John the Revelator as the "Bride of the Lamb," and others, including the five wise virgins who would marry him at the "marriage feast of the Lamb."
Is the final sacramental feast of Doctrine and Covenants 27 a wedding supper? How does this relate to the statement of Joseph Smith that at Adam-ondi-ahman Adam would turn the keys over to Christ? (Ehat 1980, 9) Who are the virgins who will enter the bridal chamber? What do these symbols mean in terms of Christian and Mormon eschatology?
These are questions that will probably not be answered either through historical analysis or even by the efforts of speculative theologians.
However, as we contemplate and analyze the symbols and rituals of our own tradition and compare them with those of others, we may conclude at least that there is embedded in Mormonism, as in Christianity and Judaism, some hidden traces of a goddess. If she were allowed to emerge from obscurity and if there developed around her a body of teachings that could be harmonized with our existing beliefs, they would result in a theology that could, perhaps, provide the basis for a reevaluation of the Godhead in terms of the sacred marriage of the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Mother and of the Son and the Daughter. Such a view, based upon a christological hieros gamos — sacred marriage -— could serve as the foundation for a fuller and more completely integrated spiritual experience for many people in the Church. Such a view might be less rigid, less narrow, more likely to encourage personal individuation, more likely to allow men and women to mature, with greater facility, beyond the limits and tensions of mere matriarchy or mere patriarchy.
And though the emergence of such a theology does not appear imminent, the rumor of it cannot be denied.
[post_title] => Beyond Matriarchy, Beyond Patriarchy [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 21.1 (Spring 1988): 34–59BECAUSE MORMONS don't yet have a strong tradition of speculative theology, I want to explain some of my objectives and methods in writing this essay. My chief purpose is to make symbolic connections, to evoke families of images, and to explore theological possibilities. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => beyond-matriarchy-beyond-patriarchy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 14:42:55 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 14:42:55 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=15736 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
LDS Women and Priesthood: The Historical Relationship of Mormon Women and Priesthood
Linda King Newell
Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 21–32
While an examination of that history leaves unanswered the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood, the historical overview of LDS women’s relationship to priesthood suggests a more expansive view than many members now hold.
When the topic of women holding the priesthood in the LDS Church comes up, it is often met with bad jokes ("I hold the priesthood every night when he comes home from work," or "Maybe women will hold the priesthood when men become mothers"), and a not-so-subtle display of fear among both men ("What are women trying to do, usurp the male role in the home and church?") and women ("I wouldn't want all that responsibility— would you?"). Usually these church members are convinced that their views are shared by all faithful members, including "the Brethren," and are consistent with our Church's history. While an examination of that history leaves unanswered the question of women's ordination to the priesthood, the historical overview of LDS women's relationship to priesthood suggests a more expansive view than many members now hold.
Although I have found no case where women have claimed ordination to the priesthood, there are accounts of women being "ordained" to specific callings and of women who exercised powers and spiritual gifts now assigned only to male priesthood holders. These practices and the endorsement of them by such Church leaders as Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Heber J. Grant, and others, have left many unanswered questions.
When Joseph Smith organized the Relief Society on 17 March 1842 (see Minutes), he gave the women an autonomy currently unknown in that organization. He instructed the sisters to elect their own president who would then select her counselors. Then he "would ordain them to preside over the society . . . just as the Presidency preside over the church."
Elizabeth Ann Whitney moved that Emma Smith be made president. Sophia Packard seconded it. Emma chose Elizabeth Ann Whitney and Sarah M. Cleveland as counselors. Joseph then "read the Revelation to Emma Smith, from the . . . Doctrine and Covenants; and stated that she was ordain'd at the time the revelation was given [in July 1830], to expound the scriptures to all; and to teach the female part of the community." He continued by saying that she was designated an "Elect Lady" because she was "elected to preside."
John Taylor then "laid his hands on the head of Mrs. Cleveland and ordain'd her to be a Counsellor to .. . Emma Smith." He followed the same procedure in "ordaining" Elizabeth Whitney. Susa Young Gates later emphasized that these women were "not only set apart, but ordained." At the third meeting, 30 March 1842, Joseph addressed the women and told them "that the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood .. . he was going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests as in Enoch's day — as in Paul's day." On 17 May Newel K. Whitney accompanied Joseph Smith and told the women: "In the beginning, God created man, male and female, and bestow'd upon man certain blessings peculiar to a man of God, of which woman partook, so that without the female all things cannot be restor'd to the earth — it takes all to restore the Priesthood." Although Whitney had recently been initiated into the endowment and his remarks most certainly reflect his awareness of women's forthcoming role in that ordinance, his words also reflect an anticipation that many held in that era: women's role within the Church was to include priesthood powers — at least in some form. On 28 April 1842 Joseph Smith told the women: "I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time." It is important to remember that "keys" were commonly associated with "priesthood" and that Joseph turned the key to women rather than in their behalf as the standard History of the Church would report (HG 4:607).
The change can be traced to George A. Smith who, in 1854, was assigned to complete Joseph Smith's history. In working on the manuscript from 1 April 1840 to 1 March 1842 — including the Relief Society minutes in question — he revised and corrected the already compiled history, using "reports of sermons of Joseph Smith and others from minutes or sketches taken at the time in long hand." He mentioned using Eliza R. Snow's writings as well and said he had taken "the greatest care .. . to convey the ideas in the prophet's style as near as possible; and in no case has the sentiment been varied that I know of" (Jessee, 1973, 458). He did not, however, comment on this particular passage from the minutes or explain his reasons for changing "I turn the key to you" to "I now turn the key in your behalf." George A. Smith's interpretation has stood in Church publications from that time to the present.
By the time the Relief Society was organized, women had already exercised such spiritual gifts as speaking in tongues and blessing the sick.[1] These practices made a natural entrance into the Relief Society. After the close of the fourth meeting, 19 April 1842, Emma Smith, Sarah Cleveland, and Elizabeth Whitney administered to a Sister Durfee. The following week, she testified that she had "been healed and thought the sisters had more faith than the brethren." After that meeting, Sarah and Elizabeth blessed another Relief Society member, Abigail Leonard, "for the restoration of health."
In the next meeting, Joseph Smith specifically addressed the propriety of women giving blessings: "If God gave his sanction by healing . . . there could be no more sin in any female laying hands on the sick than in wetting the face with water." There were women ordained to heal the sick and it was their privilege to do so. "If the sisters should have faith to heal the sick," he said, "let all hold their tongues" (28 April 1842).
After the death of Joseph Smith in June 1844, the Relief Society did not meet. The following spring, however, several women must have approached Brigham Young about resuming regular meetings, for in a meeting of the Seventies he declared that women ''never can hold the Priesthood apart from their husbands. When I want Sisters or the Wives of the members of the church to get up Relief Society I will summon them to my aid but until that time let them stay at home & if you see females huddling together . . . and if they say Joseph started it tell them its a damned lie for I know he never encouraged it" (Seventies Record, 9 March 1845).
These minutes leave some questions. Certainly Brigham was not saying that Joseph did not organize the Relief Society. That was an established fact. What, then, did he mean when he said that Joseph did not start "it"? Perhaps the clue lies in the first line, Women "never can hold the Priesthood apart from their husbands." Confusion over the relationship of the Relief Society to priesthood authority would deepen, but vital links had already been established between the Relief Society and the exercise of spiritual gifts, priesthood, and the temple.
"Blessing meetings" that had been a feature of both Kirtland and Nauvoo spiritual life continued. In them, the Saints often combined the laying on of hands for health blessings, tongues, and prophecy. Eliza R. Snow's diary contains numerous references to these occasions. For example, on 1 January 1847, she wrote of receiving a blessing "thro' our belov'd mother Chase and sis[ter] Clarissa [Decker] by the gift of tongues," adding: "To describe the scene . . . would be beyond my power." (Snow, 1 Jan. 1847). This group of women would teach the next several generations of Mormon women about spiritual gifts.
Another practice grew out of the ordinances the Saints had received in the Nauvoo Temple. Washing and anointing the sick became a common practice among Church members, particularly women. It was customary for the person administering a blessing to anoint with oil the part of the body in need of healing — for example, a sore shoulder or perhaps a crushed leg. For instance, in 1849 Eliza Jane Merrick, an English convert, reported healing her sister: "I anointed her chest with the oil you consecrated, and also gave her some inwardly ... . She continued very ill all the evening: her breath very short, and the fever very high. I again anointed her chest in the name of the Lord, and asked his blessing; he was graciously pleased to hear me, and in the course of twenty-four hours, she was as well as if nothing had been the matter." (Merrick 1849, 205) One can easily see the inappropriateness of men anointing women in such cases.
There were, however, those who questioned the propriety of such practices by women and the two strands of confidence and doubt began to intertwine. Mary Ellen Able Kimball's journal records a visit on 2 March 1857 to wash and anoint a sick woman who immediately felt better. But after returning home,
I thought of the instructions I had received from time to time that the priesthood was not bestowed upon women. I accordingly asked Mr. Kimball [her husband, Heber C] if woman had a right to wash and anoint the sick for the recovery of their health or is it mockery in them to do so. He replied inasmuch as they are obedient to their husbands they have a right to administer in that way in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ but not by authority of the priesthood invested in them for that authority is not given to woman.
Mary Ellen concluded with the kind of argument that would calm women's apprehensions for the next four decades: "He also said they might administer by the authority given to their husbands in as much as they were one with their husband" (March 1857).
On other occasions, the concept of women holding the priesthood in connection with their husbands was reinforced when husbands and wives joined together in blessing their children. Wilford Woodruff's namesake son, just ordained a priest, was about to begin his duties. The future Church president summoned his family on 3 February 1854. "His father and mother [Phoebe Carter Woodruff] laid hands upon him and blessed him and dedicated him unto the Lord" (Woodruff 4:244). On 8 September 1875, George Goddard recorded a similar incident about his sixteen-year-old son, Brigham H. On his birthday, "his Mother and Myself, put our hands upon his head and pronounced a parents blessing upon him."
While these applications of faith were loving and natural, the question of women's having priesthood authority remained unsettled. Zina Huntington, a plural wife first of Joseph Smith and later Brigham Young, received a patriarchal blessing from John Smith, Joseph's uncle, in 1850, which stated: "the Priesthood in fullness is & Shall be Conferd upon you" (Smith 11:6).[2] Sarah Granger Kimball, whose idea it was to organize the women of Nauvoo, had used the priesthood structure as a pattern for the Relief Society in her ward, complete with deaconesses and teachers (S. Kimball 1868). However, John Taylor, who had originally ordained those first officers in March 1842, explained that "some of the sisters have thought that these sisters mentioned were, in this ordination, ordained to the priesthood . . . [but] it is not the calling of these sisters to hold the Priesthood, only in connection with their husbands, they being one with their husbands (JD 21:367-68). This 1880 statement stood as the official interpretation.
On 23 December 1881, the anniversary of Joseph Smith's birthday, Zina Huntington Young records in her diary that she washed and anointed one woman "for her health, and administered to another for her hearing," then reminisced about the days in Nauvoo. "I have practiced much with My Sister Presendia Kimball while in Nauvoo & ever since before Joseph Smith's death. He blest Sister's to bless the sick." Then on 3 September 1890, she noted that Bishop Newel K. Whitney had "blest the Sisters in having faith to administer to there own families in humble faith not saying by the Authority of the Holy Priesthood but in the name of Jesus Christ." She thus made a direct distinction between the women's blessings and priesthood blessings. Six months earlier she had visited her sick son and administered to him (Young, Journal, 5 March 1890).
But statements about healing by women and priesthood functions had been creating confusion among some Church members for several years. In 1878, Angus Cannon, president of the Salt Lake Stake, had announced, "The sisters have a right to anoint the sick, and pray the Father to heal them, and to exercise that faith that will prevail with God; but women must be careful how they use the authority of the priesthood in administering to the sick." Two years later on 8 August 1880 an address by John Taylor on "The Order and Duties of the Priesthood" reaffirmed that women "hold the Priesthood, only in connection with their husbands, they being one with their husbands" (JD 21:368).
A circular letter from the First Presidency that October spelled out that women "should not be ordained to any office in the Priesthood; but they may be appointed as Helps, and Assistants, and Presidents, among their own sex" and that anointing and blessing the sick were not official functions of the Relief Society since any faithful Church member might perform the actions. Women could administer to the sick "in their respective families." This acknowledgment raised another question: What about administering to those outside the family circle? They gave no answer, although the practice of calling for the elders or for the sisters had certainly been established. Another question was whether women needed to be set apart to bless the sick. In 1884, Eliza R. Snow asserted: "Any and all sisters who honor their holy endowments, not only have the right, but should feel it a duty, whenever called upon to administer to our sisters in these ordinances, which God has graciously committed to His daughters as well as to His sons" (Snow, 1884).
Two differing points of view were now in print. Eliza Snow and the First Presidency agreed that the Relief Society had no monopoly on the ordinance of administration by and for women. The First Presidency, however, implied that the ordinance should now be limited to the woman's family without specifying any requirement but faithfulness. Eliza Snow, on the other hand, had said nothing of limiting administrations to the family — indeed, the implication is clear that anyone in need of a blessing should receive it — but said that only women who had been endowed might officiate.
When precisely the same act was performed and very nearly the same words were used among women in the temple, among women outside the temple, and among men administering to women, the distinction — in the average mind — became shadowy indeed.
Despite the growing ambiguity as the nineteenth century closed, the leading sisters had successfully maintained their right to exercise the gift of blessing and had been supported by the Church hierarchy. The twentieth century would see a definite shift.
Louisa "Lula" Greene Richards, former editor of the Woman's Exponent, wrote a somewhat terse letter to President Lorenzo Snow on 9 April 1901 concerning an article she had read in the Deseret News. It had stated: "Priest, Teacher or Deacon may administer to the sick, and so may a member, male or female, but neither of them can seal the anointing and blessing, because the authority to do that is vested in the Priesthood after the order of Melchizedek." Lula wrote:
If the information given in the answer is absolutely correct, then myself and thousands of other members of the Church have been misinstructed and are laboring under a very serious mistake, which certainly should be authoritatively corrected. Sister Eliza R. Snow Smith [her correspondent's sister], from the Prophet Joseph Smith, her husband, taught the sisters in her day, that a very important part of the sacred ordinance of administrations to the sick was the sealing of the anointing and blessings, and should never be omitted. And we follow the pattern she gave us continually. We do not seal in the authority of the Priesthood, but in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
There is no record of Lorenzo Snow's reply.
Over the next few years, an emerging definition of priesthood authority and an increased emphasis on its importance would remove spiritual responsibilities from women and link those rights with priesthood alone. The statements authorizing the continuance of women's blessings only signaled their dependence on that permission. Sometime during the first decade of the new century, the Relief Society circulated a letter called simply "Answers to Questions." Undated, it ended with the notation: "Approved by the First Presidency of the Church." It may have been a response to an unsigned 1903 Young Woman's Journal lesson that claimed "Only the higher or Melchisedek Priesthood has the right to lay on hands for the healing of the sick, or to direct the administration, . . . though to pray for the sick is the right that necessarily belongs to every member of the Church" ("Gifts" 1903, 384). This may be the earliest published claim that only the Melchizedek Priesthood had authority to heal. The Relief Society's approved letter, however, clearly indicated that any endowed woman had authority to perform such services and that these blessings were not confined to her family. The letter also cautioned the women to avoid resemblances in language to the temple forms, and although the blessings should be sealed, the sisters did not need a priesthood holder to do it.
But the early generation that had taught that women held the priesthood in connection with their husbands was passing. In 1907 the Improvement Era published the query: "Does a wife hold the priesthood with her husband? and may she lay hands on the sick with him, with authority?" Speaking for a new generation, President Joseph F. Smith answered:
A wife does not hold the priesthood in connection with her husband, but she enjoys the benefits thereof with him; and if she is requested to lay hands on the sick with him, or with any other officer holding the Melchizedek priesthood, she may do so with perfect propriety. It is no uncommon thing for a man and wife unitedly to administer to their children, and the husband being mouth, he may properly say out of courtesy, "By authority of the holy priesthood in us vested" (Smith 1907, 308).
During the opening years of the twentieth century, a clearer definition of priesthood emerged, bringing with it a redefinition of the role of women. In 1901 B. H. Roberts, a member of the third presiding quorum, the Seventies, lamented how "common" the priesthood seemed to be held and insisted that "respect for the Priesthood" went far beyond respecting the General Authorities to include "all those who hold the Priesthood . . . presidents of stakes; . . . Bishops . . . the Priests, who teach the Gospel at the firesides of the people . . . and the humblest that holds that power" (CR Oct. 1901, 58). Thus, the priesthood was defined not only as a power from God but also as the man upon whom it was conferred. Statements like this dovetailed with the practice of referring to all ordained male members as "the priesthood."
By 1913, it is evident that the priesthood — meaning, by this time, the authoritative structure of the Church — had authority also over those gifts that had once been the right of every member of the household of faith.
The Relief Society General Board minutes for 7 October 1913 record a growing concern of President Emmeline B. Wells: "In the early days in Nauvoo women administered to the sick and many were healed through their administration, and while some of the brethren do not approve of this, it is to be hoped the blessing will not be taken from us" (4:124). This seems to be the earliest acknowledgment that the Church hierarchy disapproved of the practice.
In response to President Joseph F. Smith's statement that the auxiliaries "are not independent of the priesthood of the Son of God," the Relief Society explained in its February 1914 Bulletin, that all systems have their law. The Church has "the law of God" and defines priesthood as
the power to administer in the ordinances of the Gospel . . . Those who preside over the auxiliary organizations receive their authority from the presiding Priesthood. Women do not hold the Priesthood. This fact must be faced calmly by mothers and explained clearly to young women, for the spirit that is now abroad in the world makes for women's demand for every place and office enjoyed by men, and a few more that men can't enter. Women in this Church must not forget that they have rights which men do not possess.
The writer does not specify these rights but assures women that even the superior woman will marry "the right one," identifiable because "he will be just one or more degrees superior in intelligence and power to the superior woman." In any case if he holds the priesthood, "women everywhere . . . should render that reverence and obedience that belongs of right of the Priesthood which he holds." (pp. 1-3)
An October 1914 letter to bishops and stake presidents from President Joseph F. Smith and his counselors established an official policy on "washing and anointing our sisters preparatory to their confinement." After affirming that sisters may wash, anoint, seal anointings, and bless a woman prior to giv ing birth, the letter states: "It should, however, always be remembered that the command of the Lord is to call in the elders to administer to the sick, and when they can be called in, they should be asked to anoint the sick or seal the anointing."
By 1921 the statements concerning women and their relationship to the priesthood had become increasingly narrow. In April Conference, Rudger Clawson of the Quorum of the Twelve told the church members: "The Priest hood is not received, or held, or exercised in any degree, by the women of the Church; but nevertheless, the women of the Church enjoy the blessings of the Priesthood through their husbands" (CR April 1921, 24-25). Later in the same conference, Charles W. Penrose of the First Presidency referred to Elder Clawson's remarks and added his own commentary:
There seems to be a revival of the idea among some of our sisters that they hold the priesthood. . . . When a woman is sealed to a man holding the Priesthood, she becomes one with him . . . She receives blessings in association with him. . . . Sisters have said to me sometimes, "But, I hold the Priesthood with my husband." "Well," I asked, '"what office do you hold in the Priesthood?" Then they could not say much more. The sisters are not ordained to any office in the Priesthood and there is authority in the Church which they cannot exercise: it does not belong to them; they cannot do that properly any more than they can change themselves into a man. Now, sisters, do not take the idea that I wish to convey that you have no blessings or authority or power belonging to the Priesthood. When you are sealed to a man of God who holds it and who, by overcoming, inherits the fulness of the glory of God, you will share that with him if you are fit for it, and I guess you will be (CR April 1921, 108).
This more detailed explanation did not clarify a great deal. Even if a woman were "one" with her priesthood-holding husband, she still could not do anything as a result of that union. Furthermore, President Penrose conveyed the impression that priesthood does not exist apart from priesthood offices. He then reported women asking him "if they did not have the right to administer to the sick" and he, quoting Jesus' promise to his apostles of the signs that will follow the believers, conceded that there might be
occasions when perhaps it would be wise for a woman to lay her hands upon a child, or upon one another sometimes, and there have been appintments made for our sisters, some good women, to anoint and bless others of their sex who expect to go through times of great personal trial, travail and 'labor;' so that is all right, so far as it goes. But when women go around and declare that they have been set apart to administer to the sick and take the place that is given to the elders of the Church by revelation as declared through James of old, and through the Prophet Joseph in modern times, that is an assumption of authority and contrary to scripture, which is that when people are sick they shall call for the elders of the Church and they shall pray over them and officially lay hands on them (CR April 1921, 198).
Even though President Penrose here cited the authority of Joseph Smith and even though Joseph Smith had certainly taught the propriety and authority of elders to heal the sick, the Prophet had cited that same scripture in the 12 April 1842 Relief Society meeting but, ironically, had made a far different commentary: "These signs . . . should follow all that believe whether male or female."
Another clarification of women's position came in 1922 when the First Presidency, then consisting of Heber J. Grant, Charles W. Penrose, and Anthony W. Ivins issued a circular letter defining the purposes of each auxiliary. The Relief Society was first: "Women, not being heirs to the priesthood except as they enjoy and participate in the blessings through their husbands, are not identified with the priesthood quorums" (Clark 4:314-15). The pattern of removing women from the realm of anything associated with the role of male priesthood had now been established, clarified, and validated.
The strength of that pattern can be seen through a letter from Martha A. Hickman of Logan who in 1935 wrote to the Relief Society general president, Louise Yates Robison, asking if it were "orthodox and sanctioned" for the women to perform washings and anointings of women about to give birth. "We have officiated in this capacity some ten years, have enjoyed our calling, and been appreciated. However, since . . . questions [about "orthodoxy"] have arisen we do not feel quite at ease. We would like to be in harmony, as well as being able to inform correctly those seeking information." (Hickman 1935)
Sister Robison answered the query through Martha Hickman's stake Relief Society president in Logan.
In reference to the question raised [by Martha Hickman], may we say that this beautiful ordinance has always been with the Relief Society, and it is our earnest hope that we may continue to have that privilege, and up to the present time the Presidents of the Church have always allowed it to us. There are some places, however, where a definite stand against it has been taken by the Priesthood Authorities, and where such is the case we cannot do anything but accept their will in the matter. However, where the sisters are permitted to do this for expectant mothers we wish it done very quietly. .. . It is something that should be treated very carefully, and as we have suggested, with no show or discussion of it. (Robison and Lund 1935)
Clearly, blessings not performed by male priesthood holders were now suspect. The next year Joseph Fielding Smith, soon to become president of the Quorum of the Twelve, wrote to Belle S. Spafford, new Relief Society general president, and her counselors, Marianne G. Sharp and Gertrude R. Garff: "While the authorities of the Church have ruled that it is permissible, under certain conditions and with the approval of the priesthood, for sisters to wash and anoint other sisters, yet they feel that it is far better for us to follow the plan the Lord has given us and send for the Elders of the Church to come and administer to the sick and afflicted" (Clark 4:314). It would certainly be difficult for a sister to say that she did not wish to follow "the plan the Lord has given us" by asking for administration from her sisters rather than from the elders.
The letter from Joseph Fielding Smith officially ended women's blessings where they had not already stopped. Although some modern cases of women blessing have recently come to light,[3] there is no further evidence of blessings being given in conjunction with the Relief Society. During the next three decades other pronouncements by Church leaders further stressed the male role of the priesthood. J. Reuben Clark, Jr., a member of the First Presidency, defined the priesthood in 1940 as "the authority of God bestowed upon men to represent Him in certain relationships between and among men and between men and God." But in the remainder of his talk President Clark referred to himself and other male members as "the Priesthood" rather than men with priesthood authority, power, or callings (CR April 1940, 152-54).
In 1956 when Apostle Marion G. Romney spoke of spiritual gifts in general conference, he made no mention of women: "Righteous men, bearing the holy priesthood of the living God and endowed with the gift of the Holy Ghost, who are magnifying their callings . . . are the only men upon the earth with the right to receive and exercise the gifts of the spirit" (CR April 1956, 72).
Apostle John A. Widtsoe's influential revision of his Priesthood and Church Government discusses the powers of priesthood. The chapter on spiritual gifts examines each in turn after an introduction announcing that "spiritual gifts are properly enjoyed by the Saints of God under the direction of 'such as God shall appoint and ordain over the Church' — that is, the Priesthood and its officers" (Widtsoe 1954, 38-39). The discussion of revelation, discernment, healing, translation, and power over evil makes no acknowledgment that these gifts may exist outside the priesthood-ordained group.
About women, Elder Widtsoe wrote the oft-quoted passage: "The man who arrogantly feels that he is better than his wife because he holds the Priesthood has failed utterly to comprehend the meaning and purpose of Priest hood." Why? Because "the Lord loves His daughters quite as well as His sons" and "men can never rise superior to the women who bear and nurture them," and "woman has her gift of equal magnitude — motherhood" (Widtsoe 1954, 89-90).
From the 1950s to the early 1980s, equal citizenship for women in the kingdom seems to have been replaced with the glorification of motherhood, thus ignoring both the single or childless woman and also ignoring fatherhood as the equivalent of motherhood. Limiting the definition of priesthood to chiefly ecclesiastical and administrative functions tends to limit the roles of both sexes. Anything traditionally considered "male" in the Church has come to be attached exclusively to the priesthood, and this emphasis stresses — even magnifies — the differences between the sexes rather than concentrating on expanding the roles of both.
While it can be argued that the mother's functions of pregnancy, birth, and nursing are balanced by the father's giving a name and blessing, baptizing, confirming, and ordaining his children, these acts do not remove from the father the responsibility of day-to-day nurturing. And even though the father is often permitted in the delivery room to witness the birth of his children and be a part of the birth process and bonding, the mother is still not invited into the blessing circles. If women do, indeed, hold the priesthood with their husbands, their presence should be welcomed, particularly since non-priesthood holding fathers are sometimes allowed in the blessing circle. All this aside, the responsibilities of fathering are being increasingly stressed by Church leaders, moving us toward a more inclusive priesthood model: brotherhood sisterhood, motherhood-fatherhood, all functioning in the larger realm of shared priesthood.
The motherhood-priesthood "equivalence" also ignores the fact that women from the beginnings of Church history did not sacrifice their important role as mothers while participating fully in the spiritual gifts of the gospel. Nor is there evidence to suggest that women's spiritual activities or their independence within the Relief Society organization in any way diminished men's priesthood powers or their exercise of them.
Although many works designed to explain the "exalted place" of Mormon women have recently appeared, they have generally been historically shallow.[4] However, as recently as January 1981, James E. Faust of the Quorum of the Twelve told a group of Mormon psychotherapists: "The priesthood is not just male- or husband-centered, but reaches its potential only in the eternal relationship of the husband and the wife sharing and administering these great blessings to the family (Faust 1981, 5). And the 1980-81 Melchizedek Priesthood study guide quotes President Joseph Fielding Smith: "There is nothing in the teachings of the gospel which declares that men are superior to women . . . . Women do not hold the priesthood, but if they are faithful and true, they will become priestesses and queens in the kingdom of God, and that implies that they will be given authority" (McConkie 3:178).
Although the pendulum has swung far from Joseph Smith's prophetic vision of women as queens and priestesses, holders of keys of blessings and spiritual gifts, the statements of Elder Faust and President Smith may signal a theologic reevaluation of the woman's role. A rediscovery of the history of Mormon women's spiritual gifts has also awakened interest in the idea of mothers and fathers jointly anointing and blessing their own children; of husbands receiving, like Wilford Woodruff, blessings from their wives (CR Oct. 1910, 20; Oct. 1919, 31); of mothers standing in the circle when their babies are blessed; of women blessing each other or their children (a mother's blessing) in times of special need; of women as well as men jointly exercising spiritual gifts on behalf of each other. A broader, more inclusive understanding of priesthood could strengthen marital and family ties and once again allow unmarried women to share more fully in the gifts of the spirit which were once common in the household of faith. This could mean a reexamination of the LDS policy of ordaining women to priesthood offices or it could simply mean making changes in the General Handbook of Instruction which would reverse the tide that has stripped women of these opportunities through over a hundred years of policy development.
[1] For examples of women participating in healing in Kirtland, see Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, "Sweet Councel and Seas of Tribulation: The Religious Life of the Women in Kirtland," BYU Studies 20 (Winter 1980): 151-62. See also Linda King Newell, "Gifts of the Spirit: Women's Share," forthcoming in a volume edited by Lavina Fielding Anderson and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher. Part of that essay was published in "A Gift Given, A Gift Taken: Washing, Anointing, and Blessing the Sick Among Mormon Women." Sunstone 6 (Sept./Oct. 1981): 16-26, from which some material has been adapted for this essay.
[2] Statements such as this are sometimes dismissed as references to the church's highest ordinance, the "second anointing" or "fulness of the priesthood," but that ordinance does in fact confer priesthood power on women. See Buerger 1983.
[3] Since the publication of part of this essay in 1981 (n. 1), about ten women have told me of their experiences in exercising spiritual gifts. Two women, in separate instances, each blessed and healed a child in her care. Neither of these women had ever discussed the bless- ing with anyone before for fear it would be considered "inappropriate." Another woman gathered her sister's frail, cancer-ridden body in her arms and blessed her with one pain-free day. Several women together blessed a close friend just prior to her hysterectomy. One daughter told of a blessing administered to her by her mother for the relief of intense menstrual cramps. Others asked that their experience not be mentioned — again fearing that what had been personal and sacred to them would be misunderstood and viewed as inappropriate by others. Of course, the same kinds of blessings, when performed by priesthood holders, are commonly told in public Church meetings as faith-promoting experiences and are accepted by members of the Church in that spirit.
[4] The most ambitious, Oscar W. McConkie, She Shall Be Called Woman (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1979), asserts that the eternal nature of women is different in essence from that of men, that women's primary role in life (and chief contribution to the Church) is motherhood, that women have "greatfer] sensitivity to spiritual truths" and that righteous husbands are "the saviour of the wives." Withal, he acknowledges the equal responsibility of fathers in rearing children and states "many of the brethren, who are otherwise disciplined Christians, exercise unrighteous dominion over women" (pp. 117, 4, 124).
[post_title] => LDS Women and Priesthood: The Historical Relationship of Mormon Women and Priesthood [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 21–32While an examination of that history leaves unanswered the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood, the historical overview of LDS women’s relationship to priesthood suggests a more expansive view than many members now hold. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => lds-women-and-priesthood-the-historical-relationship-of-mormon-women-and-priesthood [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 14:29:39 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 14:29:39 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16028 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
LDS Women and Priesthood: Scriptural Precedents for Priesthood
Melodie Moench Charles
Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 15–20
I have heard many LDS women approach the issue of women and the priesthood by protesting that they do not want to hold the priesthood because they have no interest in passing the sacrament or performing some other ecclesiastical duty. I will venture a guess that many men who have the priesthood do not particularly want to hold it either, and that some of them also have no interest in passing the sacrament. But the reluctance of some men would hardly be a good reason to prevent all men from holding the priesthood.
I
I have heard many LDS women approach the issue of women and the priesthood by protesting that they do not want to hold the priesthood because they have no interest in passing the sacrament or performing some other ecclesiastical duty. I will venture a guess that many men who have the priesthood do not particularly want to hold it either, and that some of them also have no interest in passing the sacrament. But the reluctance of some men would hardly be a good reason to prevent all men from holding the priesthood. Rather than asking, "Do I want to hold the priesthood?" women and men should approach the issue by asking, "Does denying the priesthood to women reflect God's eternal will?" Let me approach this question by looking at priesthood in LDS scriptures including those it accepts with the larger Judeo Christian community, the Old and New Testaments.
The scriptures never explicitly state that women may be permitted to hold priesthood or are prohibited from doing so. Instead, they recount who holds or should hold priesthood at a particular time, and what those priesthood holders do or should do. Therefore, a student of LDS scriptures finds inferences, precedents, and ambiguous information that needs to be interpreted about women holding the priesthood but no direct answer to the question (Hansen 1981; Hutchinson 1981).
Let me first give some information on how each scriptural community defined priesthood, then summarize who held the priesthood in those communities. Next I will look at that information asking the questions: Does that scriptural practice or teaching reflect God's will for his people at all times, and consequently, does or should the LDS Church consider it normative and binding today? Do we, should we, follow what the scriptures say about who can hold the priesthood?
II
Some general observations about priesthood are in order. Please realize that what I say about priesthood in each book of scripture is a simplification and a generalization, telescoping together information from different time periods. While priesthood may be eternal, it is not unchanging (Heb. 7:12). In every book of scripture, the priesthood develops and evolves. Neither the personnel nor their functions remain the same throughout any single LDS scripture.
For example, the notion of who can perform ritual sacrifice evolves within each scripture. Early in the Old Testament, the privilege is broad: all kinds of males do it with no connection made to priesthood. The privilege gradually narrows until finally only priests who can claim Aaronic descent are allowed. In Moses and Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, the biblical patriarchs sacrifice, while Joseph Smith quotes Moroni that at some time the sons of Levi will again offer an offering in righteousness (Moses 5:5, 20; 6:3; Abr. 2:17— 18; JS-H 1:69). In the Book of Mormon, the people obey the law of Moses, including sacrificing animals (Mosiah 2:3), until Christ announces in person that he has fulfilled the law of Moses. Therefore, rather than offering animal sacrifice to God, the people should offer him a broken heart and a contrite spirit (3 Ne. 9:17—22). In the New Testament, sacrifice evolves from being the prerogative of the priests at the Jerusalem temple, to being the prerogative of Christ, who sacrifices himself, and does it only once. Furthermore, Jewish sacrifices cease after the temple is destroyed. The Doctrine and Covenants is written in a time when animal sacrifice is not practiced, but it promises that in the future, such sacrifice will again be offered by the sons of Levi (13:1; 128:24).
The activities explicitly connected to priesthood in scripture include performing rituals, preaching, teaching, and governing the Church. I found no examples of priesthood being invoked when someone manifests spiritual gifts or performs miracles such as healing the sick or raising the dead. Instead these individuals often invoke the power of God or Christ, or claim that the power of God, Christ, or faith makes their action possible.
III
What is priesthood in the Old Testament? In Exodus 19:6 God covenants with the Israelites that if they will obey him they will be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, i.e., a people set apart from all other people. Priesthood then, is a quality or a condition of holiness, sacredness, and purity, of being more removed from the profane than others are. This concept is reflected in the New Testament and modern Christian idea of a priesthood of all believers (see 1 Pet. 2:5, 9, and Rev. 1:6).
The demands of ritual purity are so strict that no nation can be pure always, so the priests, obeying the strict law, represent the people. This purity qualifies the priests to perform specialized functions wherein contact with God occurs (Cody 1969, 119). Cody also argues that priesthood can be seen as a function or craft rather than a condition. For example, whether a Levite is a priest depends upon whether he is functioning as one (Cody 1969, 59). Because the priests are purer than other people, they have superior power to communicate with the supernatural, and therefore, they mediate between the divine and humans (ID 3:877).
Who holds this priesthood? Male descendants of Levi hold it, according to Exodus 32:25-29, because they are more zealous than other Israelites in obeying God. Later, Zadokites, whose Israelite origin is questionable, hold priesthood positions more important than those held by Levites. Later still, people who claim to be Levites descended from Aaron perform the most important functions (Cody 1969, 89, 134, 146). Because the priest had to be as whole and as perfect as possible, those who perform the primary function of offering sacrifice cannot be lame, hunchbacked, or dwarfed, nor can they have defective sight, mutilated faces, a limb too long, an injured foot or hand, an itching disease, or crushed testicles (RSV Lev. 21:16-21).
What is priesthood in the Book of Mormon? It is an eternally existent cosmic entity. As Alma explains, "This high priesthood [is] after the order of his Son, which order was from the foundation of the world; or in other words, without beginning of days or end of years, being prepared from eternity to all eternity" (Alma 13:7). Joseph Smith's description of priesthood as "an everlasting principle" (HC 3:386) fits priesthood in all three exclusively Mormon scriptures. As in the Old Testament, those who hold this priesthood are expected to be exceptionally holy and pure. However, purity in the Book of Mormon is more ethically focused than in the Old Testament, where it is ritually, physically focused. The primary purpose of priesthood is to help people accept Christ as their savior and live in accordance with his teachings.
Who holds this priesthood? The Book of Mormon shows no concern for lineage as a criterion for holding the priesthood. Numbers help determine priesthood bearers when Alma ordains one priest for every fifty people he has baptized (Mosiah 18:18). The men who hold the priesthood are "just," fore ordained by God because they exercised exceedingly great faith, did good works, chose good, repented, and were righteous before him (Mosiah 23:17; Alma 13:3). Immediately after Jesus appears, the twelve Nephite disciples chosen by Jesus seem to be the only priesthood holders.
What is priesthood in the Pearl of Great Price? As in the Book of Mormon, it is an eternally existent cosmic entity. It is also a vehicle for God's power. Some people are "rightful heirs" to it and some people "are cursed as pertaining to it" (Moses 6:7; Abr. 1:2-4, 18, 20-24, 26-27). Who holds this priest hood? Noah (Moses 8:19), Abraham, and "the fathers," that is, the biblical patriarchs (Abr. 1:2-4, 18, 31). Who is denied it? The descendants of Cain, and the children of Canaan, who are described as being black (Moses 7:8, 22) and the descendants of Ham (Abr. 1:20, 22-24, 26-27), presumably all the same people.
What is the priesthood in the New Testament? Most references to priesthood are references to the Jewish priesthood. The great exception is Hebrews, which explains that the priesthood which Christ himself possesses is infinitely superior to, and therefore fulfills and does away with, Jewish priesthood. For most of the New Testament period, there is apparently no Christian priesthood which mortals hold. Although the Gospels show Jesus appointing Peter to be the foundation of his church, commissioning apostles, and assigning seventy people to spread his teachings, they do not connect any of these functions to priesthood. Nor are any of these positions portrayed as being part of a functioning hierarchy during Jesus's lifetime.
As far as we can tell from the texts, New Testament titles, such as apostle, bishop, pastor, evangelist, teacher, elder, and deacon initially describe only functions—roles of service—not priesthood offices (see Mesle 1984, Hutchinson 1981, ID 3:889-90). Paul thinks of his apostleship not as power, authority, or rank, but as a responsibility assigned to him directly from Christ and God to serve humanity by converting them to Christ (Rom. 1:4-5; 1 Cor. 9:15-18; 1 Cor. 2:17, 4:1 ; Gal. 1:15-17). Toward the end of the New Testament period, some of these functions have evolved into offices which are part of an official church hierarchy (1 and 2 Tim. and Titus). Later, though not in the New Testament, these functions are identified as priesthood offices.
Who holds the priesthood? The Jews, but after Christ's resurrection their priesthood is no longer valid and has been fulfilled. Christ himself possesses priesthood. But the roles of Christian service which evolve into priesthood offices seem to be open to anyone. Lineage is apparently no barrier. Sex is apparently no barrier. Paul twice "applies the Greek word meaning 'deacon' to women. To be sure, there is no absolute certainty that in his use of this word he would imply that deaconesses would be ordained and perform functions in the Church reserved to the order of deacons in later times. But there is no reason to believe that the male deacons mentioned in Acts and elsewhere would either" (Meyer 1974, 60). Meyer also notes that the Church Fathers' writings attest to deaconesses in the very early history of the Church who take care of sick women, serve as intermediaries between the bishop and the female members of his flock, and assist in women's baptisms. "As is well known, in the early Church those to be baptized entered the pools or stream naked." When infant baptism becomes the norm, the need for women to baptize women disappears (1974, 63-64, 74). The text of Romans 16:7 is ambiguous, but the evidence favors Junia's being both a woman and an apostle (Hutchinson 1981, 65-66; Jerome 330; Brooten 1977, 141-42). The English translations of these texts often obscure their application to women.
What is priesthood in the Doctrine and Covenants? An eternally existent cosmic entity which is a vehicle for God's power (84:17, 20; 112:30-31; 121:36; 128:11,21; 132:7, 19,44,45,59,64).
Who holds it? Male members of the Church. Some hold it or have special assignments in it "by right," e.g., the sons of Levi, sons of Aaron, Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and Zion (which is referred to as she) (D&C 13; 68:15-21; 86:8-11; 113:8; 124:91). Official Declaration 2 explicitly allows "all worthy male members of the Church . . . without regard for race or color" to hold it.
IV
Has the Church followed the patterns set forth in these scriptures? Does the LDS Church follow the Old Testament pattern and ordain only Levites? Zadokites? Sons of Aaron? Men without physical blemishes?
Does it follow the Book of Mormon pattern and confer priesthood only on men foreordained by God? Men of exceptional righteousness? Those directly appointed by Christ?
Does it follow the Pearl of Great Price pattern and prohibit descendants of Ham, Canaan, or Cain (black people) from holding the priesthood? Does it follow the New Testament pattern and restrict the priesthood to Christ? Does it let anyone serve who has the desire or who feels called? Does it follow the Doctrine and Covenants pattern and allow all worthy males to hold the priesthood?
Pursuing this further, does it follow the Doctrine and Covenants pattern and expect priests, who in today's practice are sixteen years old, to "preach, teach, expound, exhort," and exhort each member "to pray vocally and in secret and attend to all family duties"? Does it follow the pattern of expecting teachers, who in today's practice are fourteen years old, "to watch over the church always, and be with and strengthen them; And see that there is no iniquity in the church, neither hardness with each other, neither lying, back biting, nor evil speaking; And see that the church meets together often, and also see that all members do their duty" (20:46-47, 53-59)? Does it follow the advice in 1 Timothy and expect deacons, who in today's practice are twelve years old, to be "husbands of one wife" who rule "their children and their own houses well" (3:12)? What scriptural pattern does it follow in allowing nineteen-year-olds to have the title "elder"?
V
In summary, then, what do the scriptures say about women holding the priesthood? Nothing directly. While each scripture except for the New Testament seems to assume that priesthood holders are male, none explicitly claims that priesthood holders have to be only and forever male, nor does any scripture describe any necessary connection between priesthood-holding and maleness.
If the Church—any church—held itself rigidly to scriptural patterns and precedents, nothing could ever be done for the first time (McCabe 1977, 11). Continuous revelation to meet changing needs would be meaningless. Black Mormon males would not now exercise the priesthood, since the Pearl of Great Price strongly suggests that they have no right to hold it. The canonized revelation President Kimball received in 1978 is a good example of the Church's rejecting a scriptural precedent as not reflecting God's eternal will. By accepting this revelation, the Church created new scripture which super ceded old.
In 1978 the question arose in the Church of whether women ought to be able to pray in sacrament meeting. According to President Kimball's statement in the Regional Representatives meeting on 29 September, to find an answer to that question, the brethren consulted the scriptures. Since they found no scriptural reason to prohibit women's praying in sacrament meetings, the existing policy was changed. Women have, since then, been allowed to pray in any meeting they attend (Deseret News, 29 Sept. 1978; Salt Lake Tribune, 30 Sept. 1978).
Thus, the LDS Church has rejected scripturally-based precedents about the priesthood and has allowed a practice because scriptures do not forbid it. Perhaps the time has come for the Church to evaluate the scriptural precedents on the issue of allowing women to hold the priesthood and determine which might reflect God's eternal will and which might not.
[post_title] => LDS Women and Priesthood: Scriptural Precedents for Priesthood [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 18.3 (Fall 1985): 15–20I have heard many LDS women approach the issue of women and the priesthood by protesting that they do not want to hold the priesthood because they have no interest in passing the sacrament or performing some other ecclesiastical duty. I will venture a guess that many men who have the priesthood do not particularly want to hold it either, and that some of them also have no interest in passing the sacrament. But the reluctance of some men would hardly be a good reason to prevent all men from holding the priesthood. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => lds-women-and-priesthood-scriptural-precedents-for-priesthood [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 14:19:39 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 14:19:39 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16026 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Crying Change in a Permanent World: Contemporary Mormon Women on Motherhood
Linda P. Wilcox
Dialogue 18.2 (Summer 1985): 116–127
Women in the Mormon Church are encouraged toward traditional roles and attitudes that discourage personal, familial, and societal change. The ideal female role is that of a non-wage-earning wife and mother in a nuclear family where the husband is the provider and the woman’s energies are directed toward her family, the Church, and perhaps community service.
Though leadership of a living prophet offers possibilities for both on going and dramatic change, Mormon society values permanence, order, and stability in this life and the next. "We do not need innovation," a member of the First Presidency said at a recent general conference {Salt Lake Tribune, 3 April 1983).
Women in the Mormon Church are encouraged toward traditional roles and attitudes that discourage personal, familial, and societal change. The ideal female role is that of a non-wage-earning wife and mother in a nuclear family where the husband is the provider and the woman's energies are directed toward her family, the Church, and perhaps community service. Exchanging or sharing sex roles — or any other blurring of traditional distinctions between the sexes — is frowned upon. A fear is often expressed that declassification would produce chaos and confusion, upsetting the orderly, pattern and structure of the family and society.
Mormonism divides duties between "priesthood" for men and "motherhood" for women. Although men of all races were granted the priesthood in 1978 and there are voices saying, "First blacks, next women," Church leaders have not allowed that possibility in public statements. Priesthood authority not only governs all administrative and decision-making affairs in the Mormon Church but officiates at all crucial life-cycle experiences such as birth (blessing and naming of babies), baptism, ordination to priesthood offices, callings to other positions, marriage, and death. Some Mormon women are feeling anger at not being able to function actively in such experiences, as expressed in the poem by Lisa Bolin Hawkins:
LET MY SISTERS DO FOR ME
If we must preserve our differences,
In Sillitoe 1980, 57
Then let my sisters do for me.
Let my sister tear my last resistance
From my mother's womb, let her
Cradle me and give me my name,
Let her baptize me and call me forth
To receive the Spirit, let her
Teach me of the world, let her
Ordain me to womanhood, let her
(She does wash, anoint and clothe)
Be my god beyond the veil, let her
Heal my sickness, hold my baby, be my friend.
Let her dig my grave, let her robe me,
Let her bless my empty bones.
If you will not have me for your sister,
Then let my sisters do for me.
And let me greet my Mother on the far shore.
But while radical changes in the position of women in the Mormon Church are not likely, change in general is inevitable — changes in society arising from the women's movement, politics, education, the economy; changes in family structure and dynamics; and changes within individual women. This paper will examine change and confrontation as expressed by women in recent Mormon literature. It will focus on motherhood as a crucial life-cycle experience, considered the equivalent of the priesthood which men hold, and elevated in Mormonism as woman's highest role. It also appears to be the only life-cycle event that, while theoretically optional, is not theologically optional for faithful Mormon women. Birth and death, puberty and aging (if one lives long enough) are the only universals. Marriage, divorce, and widowhood are not experienced by all women. But motherhood in some form is unavoidable.
A painting displayed in the Jordan River Temple in Salt Lake shows "An Eternal Mother" — a serene white-haired woman in a long white dress sitting motionless. From a surrounding mist emerge children, both living and unborn. Mormon theology posits a Heavenly Mother as well as a Father. All human beings are her spirit daughters and sons, having been born and having lived with her and the Father in a pre-existence before earth life. Her children will not only return to the presence of their heavenly parents after death but may also become godlike and produce billions of spirit children with which to people their own created worlds. Family ties on this earth will continue in the here after so that one is always a mother to one's children and a daughter to one's earthly mother. Mothers will have the opportunity in the next life to raise children who die at an early age on earth. Women who never produce children on earth will be able to "adopt" children to raise in heaven and, if worthy, to bear spirit children of their own. Implicit in the theology is the idea that women contract in the pre-existence to provide bodies for the waiting spirits — which partially explains the Mormon Church's opposition to birth control and abortion.
Motherhood is thus not an elective choice but a duty and a mission — the main reason for a woman's existence. Those who are unable to bear children on earth, either for physiological reasons or because they are unable to marry, will have the opportunity (duty) in the hereafter. Motherhood is continuous and never-ending. No one in Mormon literature as yet discusses childlessness as a legitimate permanent choice. It is always viewed as a misfortune, deprivation, or even tragedy.
An experience as central to a Mormon woman's identity as motherhood gets much attention in the fiction, poetry, and personal essays they write. Most of the literature emphasizes the positive aspects of the role, the joy of nurturing and physical closeness, the pleasure of watching growth and learning. One of the more straightforward and refreshing essays, written by Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards about fourteen years ago, expresses a thorough delight in the joys of motherhood: "The glories of a new baby are beyond description. Hardly mortal! I revel in this tactile, subtle, exquisite and complex experience. One unexpected bonus of motherhood is the visual beauty. I am enchanted by the sights of my children, the tones of skin, the clear eyes, the grace, the curve of hand and cheek — to see them racing across the back lawn in a certain slant of light" (1971, 11). Though undoubtedly sincere, most such descriptions of the mothering experience tend toward overgeneralization, sentimentality, and romantic idealization.
But there is another side to the experience of being a mother. One woman wrote with surprise that "nothing had prepared me for the darker side of motherhood, the one that saps the mental, emotional and physical energy of a woman" (Pederson 1982, 193). The "darker side" of motherhood was not much in evidence in Mormon literature fourteen years ago. But many Mormon women are now experiencing some of the feminist "clicks" of the early '70s — a time lag of a decade or more.
One fear is that becoming a mother can mean a loss of control over one's life. Myrna Marler writes that when she married and became pregnant, "glimmerings of apprehension warned me then that my life had swung out of control, that the course I had set for myself was irreversible. I wanted the baby — of course I did — but now the choice was gone" (Marler 1982, 70). When her baby was six months old and her husband suggested they have another one, she agreed — not knowing how difficult her older child would become as a toddler nor what a demanding temperament her second child would have. "Besides," she says, "I wanted to show the Lord that I was willing to give and to give unstintingly. That sacrifice, I reasoned, would be in lieu of other adversities I hoped not to experience, a sacrifice certain to purify me for the Celestial Kingdom. In a way I suppose I was bargaining with God: 'I'll have many children, just as I'm supposed to, if You'll keep death and disaster away' (Marler 1982, 73).
Being a mother also can create doublebinds and feelings of being cheated and trapped. "I realized," Jerrie Hurd writes, "that I had half believed my success (in the professional world) could only be bought by failure in the home, and since I was unwilling to fail at home, I hadn't expected to succeed. And at the same time, I felt cheated, trapped and unfulfilled by my nurturing role because I knew I was capable of more" (Hurd 1982, 141). Sonia Johnson has pointed out that the Mormon Church both promotes and rewards in fantilism in women. Having a baby and being a mother is often an easy excuse not to complete one's education or develop talents and abilities in a sphere beyond the home. The theory many women believed was,
If they never proved to themselves that they were capable, talented people, then they would have less frustration performing in roles that required them to be, in many important ways, both incapable and untalented. If these women never raised their expectations of life, never expected to have the excitement and feel the power of developing and using their minds and skills, then they would never feel thwarted or miserable. Only, it didn't turn out that way for most of them.
1981, 42
Mormon women writers are expressing their fear that motherhood may be infantilizing to a woman and keep her immature. Myrna Marler tells how, as a young girl, she watched on a city bus
. . . while a man talked endlessly to a little girl about her new dress, her new purse, and how her daddy was going to take her to the park. The mother beside her beamed as each lisping syllable dropped from her prodigy's mouth. Is this motherhood then, I asked myself, long days spent in the company of immature minds? At that moment I was aware of fear, fear that a good Mormon girl isn't supposed to have, a fear so alarming that I shoved it to the back of my mind and didn't examine it again until it was too late.
Marler 1982, 70
In a short story by Maria Zollinger Russell, Taira notices one effect of her constant association with her one-year-old daughter April. "Since April had begun to say 'bye-bye,' 'momma,' and 'daddy,' Taira had lost some of her own vocabulary by prompting her daughter, in simple words, over the months to speak. Recently, as Jim and she left for a few groceries during April's nap, she said, 'Bye-bye house, see you,' and waved. Jim looked at her with his eyebrows in a question, and she pretended it was a joke, and felt very strange" (1981, 55).
Linda Sillitoe has noted that the frequent theme of creation in recent Mormon women's poetry more often expresses the idea of the child forming or at least fulfilling the mother, rather than the mother creating the child. Sillitoe believes that this reflects the reality of the authors' lives. "The child makes the woman a mother. Since motherhood is the most valued status women attain in our society, the child who achieves that for the mother is intrinsically powerful and valuable. The woman's worth is drawn from the child and is dependent on the child's future. No wonder there is such adulation of already endearing, eternal children. Again and again I read words to the effect, 'You, child give life to me' " (1980, 52).
What do Mormon women find frustrating and unfulfilling about their experience as mothers? Some of them are beginning to tell us clearly and specifically. One admits that she never dreamed her sweet baby would in time be able to infuriate her to the point of physical violence. Her children, as they grew, became — as she calls them — "brats":
They whined, declared my dinners were yucky, and refused to take baths. Where I had envisioned a gathering around the piano in the evenings, they fought at the dinner table and threw themselves down hypnotized in front of the television set. They teased each other, poked each other, hit each other, twisted each other's ears, tattled on each other, and when in public, acted as if they had never even met. . . . My children are not achievers in school; they fight and hit each other and the neighbors, turn family outings into free-for-alls, don't take care of their possessions. . . . And so I walk around from church meeting to church meeting oppressed first by guilt and inadequacy, finally by resentment.
Marler 1982, 83-85
A mother's strong feelings of responsibility and guilt regarding her children is a frequent theme in contemporary literature by Mormon women. Mothers feel more responsible than do fathers for the children — and they resent their husbands' relative nonparticipation while flogging themselves because of their children's failings or problems. The "Prodigal's Mother" in Elouise Bell's poem of that title takes all the responsibility for her son's waywardness upon herself but never loses hope. She works with a frenzy to keep her mind busy and asks her dearest friend the familiar question: Where did I fail?
Sariah, oldest friend, no mock honey ever oozed from your lips,
1979, 522-24
So tell me: where was I amiss?
If only someone would tell me!
This endless chasing after "maybe's"
Like some dull ox chained to his round —
I fear I will end by wandering the hills,
A madwoman in shreds and shards!
Maybe I didn't teach him well enough
In earliest days, when he tugged about my skirts
(Always crying for dates and figs, he was.)
But goodness knows, I did my best!
. . . .
Tell me Sariah, I implore you!
What did I do? What did I not?
Several thousand years later a Mormon mother worrying about the "family presentation" her family is readying for a church meeting feels the same sense of responsibility and sadness:
As our preparation for the program progressed, [her daughter wrote], my mother's anxieties increased. We still had only sixteen minutes worth of material, and she felt humiliated that the entire family wasn't participating. My brothers' indifference and my sister's vacillation toward the Church were all the more painful by the realization that, for all intents and purposes, it would be broadcast publicly. Two days in a row she dissolved into tears saying, "I'm a failure as a mother. Where did I go wrong?" All I could reply was, "You didn't. They did."
Saderup 1980, 114
In a short story, "Prayer for Tommy: A Chant of Imperfect Love," Myrna Marler shows us the pressures on Sharon, the mother of Tommy — a "different" child, and subject to violent rages. Somehow her efforts to teach him just didn't "take" as they did with her other children. She wonders, "Was she a neglectful mother? Was the one soap opera she allowed herself every day a sin? It came on just before the kids got home from school so every day they found her sitting there watching the tube. Was that the sin that had done it?" (1981, 33) The neighbors dislike Tommy, her friends at Church tell her to "love him more," but Sharon continues to feel inadequate. Once after Tommy has confronted the family in an angry rage, Sharon feels overwhelmed by all of the demands on her. "Tommy was locked tight in his room, and her husband was leaving for a meeting, and her responsibilities continued, the dishes still not done, the laundry to fold and her Mutual books lying open on the desk, and Ronnie, the youngest of her six children, tugged at her pant leg." She feels anger at her husband when he gives what she considers cheap advice from a comfortable distance:
"You worry too much," Gene had told her.
1981, 32, 35
"Well, somebody has to," she had snapped. "It's not you who has to go to teacher conference, apologize to the neighbors, or put up with his mouth."
"Sharon, that's not fair."
"Why isn't it fair?" she had demanded, knowing as she said the words she was attacking the whole structure of their Mormon lives — and maybe in that sense it wasn't fair.
Sharon is experiencing internal changes and wants some changes in her relationship with her husband and son. But she draws back when she realizes that adequate changes in her settled Mormon family pattern cannot be achieved without radically undercutting the entire structure. In the end she hopes that telling Tommy she loves him even when he is misbehaving might change him — if she never gives up. But the responsibility for dealing with the situation remains hers and remains within the set structure of her home and surroundings. No change in family roles, no change in society (church, school, neighbors) is available or viable to her.
Nor was any possibility of change available to the woman who wrote a letter describing the destructive effect which her compliant support of her husband in his church callings — instead of insistence that he help her with family responsibilities — had had on her own health and her relationship with her husband. Pregnant with her fifth child, she broke into tears when the apostle who called her husband to a high church position asked how she felt about it. She was assured that all would be well, for they were doing the Lord's work, but she realized then and later that it meant the loss of her husband, emotionally and spiritually.
Now as I look back, I should have said in that interview, "I think you are making a mistake in asking my husband to take this calling. He has a more important calling—his children and his wife." I should have told my husband, ''Look, I can't support you in this. I need you, the children need you. I can't raise five children all by myself. It is physically impossible." But I didn't say any of these things. I just sat there blubbering. I could see how much it meant to my husband to receive this call. He loved the recognition, the adulation of the people, the feeling that he was loved and needed by God to do His work here. I couldn't fight that. And I thought it was wrong for me to have such thoughts and so I tried to do what was "right" and accept the calling.
Now, years later, it isn't any easier to talk to my husband about my feelings toward church authorities and even the church itself. Our children are all married, my husband now holds an even higher church position. And I, though not a typical Mormon matron — fat and harried looking — am not-quite-thin, and have chronic back trouble. We (the Mormon wives, whose children are raised) are all suffering physical problems. We are battling boredom, fatigue, and depression, and trying to figure out why we are so unhappy.
In Johnson 1981, 383-84
These women, and many others, are confronting their realization that change is needed, but they either do not see a workable way to make the changes — or they see it too late. Rubina Rivers Forester's poem, "Mother Doesn't Feel Well," not only captures the sense of isolation and sole responsibility which Tommy's mother experienced but confronts the depressing truth that "nobody really cares":
Lord, my head aches,
Throbs press to the
pit of my stomach
drum, drumming
a melody of pain
And nobody cares.Children gather
in the kitchen —
they mess, break, dirty,
and touch, touch, touch.Lord, my head swirls,
Dizziness jellifies
my legs, arms, will.
And nobody cares.Phone rings —
husband is safe
at work.Lord, I feel nausea.
Waves suffocate me.
They will not spill out.
And nobody cares.Children play outside.
They cry, fight, whine,
keeping me awake
with complaints.I need sleep, Lord.
1982, 14
I cry like a baby
because I hurt,
I really hurt.
And nobody really cares.
One of the most common themes in the writing of Mormon women in the past few years is depression. The fiction contest sponsored by Sunstone a few years ago brought floods of stories dealing with the topic. This outpouring has possibly been influenced by a powerful TV documentary aired in Salt Lake in 1979 which brought vividly to the public consciousness an awareness that even "good" Mormon women who were keeping all the commandments and doing all they should were vulnerable to depression and were, in fact, experiencing it in what appeared to be near-epidemic proportions. While depression affects both single and married women, both mothers and non-mothers, a significant number of Mormon women wrote about depression related to their role as wife and mother.
The protagonist of Maria Zollinger Russell's "What Wondering Brings" is Taira, a young mother of one-year-old April. Taira is experiencing many symptoms of depression -— fatigue, listlessness, not feeling connected to her surroundings, lack of self-discipline, and a tendency to overeat. She gobbles pie early in the morning and is too tired to pick up her daughter's messes during the day or do the dishes after dinner. She envisions her daughter choking on the leaves of a dying plant—leaves which she has not remembered to pick off. Taira does not understand "how she ever got to be twenty-three years old, married, and now a mother; it seemed to have happened while she was looking the other way." Once, seeing her own features in April's face, she "spontaneously wanted to throw April away, to get into the crib herself and begin over again" (1981,55).
Kathy, in "Separate Prayers," becomes depressed even before becoming a mother, as her husband prods her about the issue of children and even uses it to wound her:
"Why don't you want children, Kathy?"
Edwards-Cannon 1981, 35
"I do want children. I just don't want them right now."
"Why?"
"I don't know why. Leave me alone."
"You and your father — you're so much alike."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that neither of you has a gift for intimacy."
The depressed mothers in Linda Sillitoe's story "Demons" are seen through the eyes of Paul, a young Church leader assigned to visit them and help them. He sees women either deserted or patronized by husbands who do not help care for their numerous small children. Paul ascribes the women's condition to the presence of "evil spirits" — as evidenced by the "dark evil feelings" of one woman who "seemed angry, even at us." Paul believes that "maybe if these girls would get out and run every day it would be good for them." He thinks of his own wife who jogs with him each morning, who still looks trim, and who manages her own three closely-spaced children beautifully. Yet Paul feels a fear that the demons may invade even his home, that the "disease" may be contagious: "He somehow felt that he brought defeat home with him, that even in his own shining house a rustle would follow him. Or sometimes from the corner of his eye, he would catch a furtive motion. He would have to be on guard, armored against the shadows" (1981, 43).
As Mormon women confront their feelings of frustration, guilt, and resentment as well as the possibility of external changes, the solutions in the literature are almost invariably worked out within a Mormon framework. Most of the women handle their situations with some combination of hope, acceptance, rationalization, and a basic reconciliation to the way things are. Tommy's mother Sharon decides not to risk toppling the traditional Mormon structure on which her relationship to her husband is built but to continue trying, by herself, to help her son. The mother with the bratty children says it's all worthwhile when a son hands her a valentine to comfort her when she cries or when another thanks her for a cut-up orange (Marler 1980, 76). A woman who with the help of her family begins juggling a professional life and outside interests with her motherly duties deals with her discomfort about feeling "selfish" by finally saying, "It isn't selfish. Think about it. Anyone who develops his or her talents will not only have a better self but better skills to share" (Hurd, 1982, 146).
These women cope within the stability of the Mormon framework of roles and attitudes, somehow finding ways to make everything fit into the mold. The women who don't — who experience depression or alienation — have until recently usually not written about it (unless they had overcome the problems by faith or perseverance) or they have in some ways ceased to be "Mormon" as their life styles and attitudes diverge from the accepted Mormon pattern. Sonia Johnson was a thoroughly Mormon woman who, when confronted with personal changes, broke the Mormon mold rather than accept its prescriptions. Her autobiography is the most graphic, weighty literary example of change and confrontation in the life of a Mormon woman to appear in the literature. A young TV cameraman said to her in surprise, shortly after her excommunication, "But you're just a mom!" She was indeed. Although intelligent, talented, and well-educated, Sonia focused her life on her role as wife, mother, and homemaker before her feminist awakening. She describes motherhood for her in the same straightforward way she records'all her life-cycle experiences — puberty, marriage, divorce:
As I slogged about in a fog of fatigue and postpartum depression, I found myself wondering why I had to bear this burden so alone. . . .
1981, 44
In those first few months of motherhood, before I succeeded in stifling such "unnatural' thoughts, I wondered guiltily whether it was possible that I'd been deceived about motherhood's being the totally fulfilling activity the church and society assured me it was. It didn't take long to learn that this was indeed a myth for a good many women, if not for most.
That didn't mean I didn't love my baby and find aspects of being a mother delightful. Though I chafed at the fulltimeness of it and at Rick's nonparticipation, I found Eric endlessly entrancing.
Some years later in Palo Alto, with her husband spending most of his time working on computer programs, Sonia found herself "stuck at home with three small children and only the church for an outlet." She awoke one morning with stiff burning hands and painful joints. The diagnosis was acute rheumatoid arthritis, and the prognosis was poor. Sonia writes,
I believe that all the frustrations and inchoate longings and boredom of that time, and the guilt at not being perfectly happy doing what the men of the church taught should make a woman perfectly happy — being a full-time wife and mother — all this negative energy turned inward, combined into a potent weapon, and attacked me. . . .
1981, 48-51
It took me years to figure out that I may very well have given myself arthritis to punish myself for not being happy doing God's will. That I'd turned my body into a battlefield for my emotions.
While her holistic understanding of the connection between mind and body came later, Sonia's only wish and prayer at the time was to be able to have the use of her hands long enough to raise her children.
Sonia's disappointment and resentment at her husband's lack of involvement and even avoidance of parenting responsibilities led her to question, in a way that Tommy's mother Sharon backed away from, the traditional assumptions behind the structure of the Mormon family:
Though I had been left the usual childhood and family residue, too, as we all have, the difference between us was that I knew I was responsible for those kids. The church and society had told me so often enough. I knew I couldn't fail, because if I did, no one would come in and pick up the pieces. He knew he could fail, because I'd be there, finally responsible, to take care of things. The patriarchal notion of the mother's doing the nurturing and the father's making the rules kept him an adolescent parent. . . .
1981, 209
Before we can solve the ills of society, we must reorganize parenting. Let the patriarchs of the New Right, who are so concerned about the "family," start taking their share of the responsibility as parents, in keeping the family emotionally secure and united and educating other men to do the same instead of blaming women, who are seldom in positions to make policies that would lift pressures from families.
Sonia recognized that personal change on the part of mothers alone will not solve the problems inherent in motherhood as Mormon (and Western) culture has institutionalized it. Changes in family patterns of parenting are imperative and certainly helpful. But she went further and pointed out the necessity of societal change on a sweeping scale as well:
Men own and rule the world. They are the heads of government, the presidents of corporations, the presidents of universities. They are the ones who could, if they cared about families, reorganize society so families could flourish. If they really want someone home when children come home from school, for instance, or someone to take decent care of the little ones during the day, they have the power to institute scheduling flexible enough that at least one parent can be on hand, or see to it that there is good child care available.
1981, 209-10
To insist that women — the powerless, the economically dispossessed of the world — bear total responsibility for child care, and therefore are to blame if families are in trouble, is cruel nonsense. How would men like to be faced with the dilemma of full-time work and full-time parenting and full blame when things go wrong? I lay the blame for the disintegration of family life squarely at the feet of men. They are the only ones who can do anything about it on any scale that would be helpful to families, and they are not doing it.
These ideas are not particularly new, but to Mormon society they were radical and potentially revolutionary. Eventually Sonia's questioning of the Mormon church pattern extended to the familiar "motherhood-priesthood" division and even beyond. In noting the fear and avoidance her male leaders exhibited about anything concerning the doctrine of a Mother in Heaven and their slowness and reluctance to let women pray in meetings, she writes,
If I was excommunicated for not respecting the priesthood enough (meaning the men), then why shouldn't bishops be excommunicated for not respecting '"the mother hood" enough (meaning the women)? After all, the Mormons make much of motherhood. Motherhood is supposed to make up for not having anything else. . . .
1981, 248
A question I often wanted to ask the leaders of the Mormon church but never got the chance is, "If motherhood is really so revered and so wonderful and is truly the equivalent of priesthood — why can men who not only do not hold the priesthood but are not even members of the church stand in the circle when their children or grandchildren or other relatives are blessed, whereas the mother, though she may have been a devout and worthy member of the church all her life, cannot?" This speaks eloquently of the divinity of maleness in and of itself, which is the basis of patriarchy. Priest hood is merely a smoke screen to hide this fact.
Sonia Johnson, though now outside of the Mormon Church, went unwillingly at the time and still claims that it made her much of what she is. While Mormon women are beginning to write about motherhood with more realism, directness, and honesty, few of them move beyond a tentative examination of the "darker" side to question their society's structure, attitudes, and practices concerning motherhood. Most seem to feel that any problems women experience in their feelings or roles as mothers arise mainly from their own inadequacies and shortcomings, or they only hint at inadequacies elsewhere in the system. Sonia Johnson's careful detailing of her own radical internal changes shows us that there is still much change that is needed — within marital relationships, Church prescriptions, and societal structure — to support individual women's personal changes. Her book is valuable to Mormon literature for revealing the processes that shaped one devout Mormon woman, the agony of personal change, and the dissonance and upheaval that resulted when she made internal change jarringly visible in a conservative society that values permanence, order, harmony, and obedience.
This essay was awarded DIALOGUE'S third place prize for Religious Issues, 1984.
Women in the Mormon Church are encouraged toward traditional roles and attitudes that discourage personal, familial, and societal change. The ideal female role is that of a non-wage-earning wife and mother in a nuclear family where the husband is the provider and the woman’s energies are directed toward her family, the Church, and perhaps community service. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => crying-change-in-a-permanent-world-contemporary-mormon-women-on-motherhood [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 14:15:53 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 14:15:53 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16059 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Ministering Angels: Single Women in Mormon Society
Lavina Fielding Anderson
Dialogue 16.3 (Autumn 1983): 68–69
I would like to discuss teh social experience of historical Latter-day Saint single women in the context of five questions: (1) Does she have an acceptable reason for being single? (2) Can she provide for her own economic security? (3) What place does she occupy in her family of origin? (4) Can she contribute to her community in a way that she will be rewarded for? (5) What was the emotinoal life of a single women in past generations?
Single women in Mormon society have not fared very differently than those in society at large. When they have been objects of pity in Cincinnati, they have also been objects of pity in Cedar City. When they have been glamorous and "liberated" career women in New York, they have also been, on a somewhat smaller scale, glamorous and liberated career women in Salt Lake City. As the Raynes-Parsons essay indicates, their theological and cultural position in the Church has changed very little between two centuries. What has changed has been the larger economic opportunities that have made singleness a less terrifying option than marriage at any price.
I would like to discuss the social experience of historical Latter-day Saint single women in the context of five questions: (1) Does she have an acceptable reason for being single? (2) Can she provide for her own economic security? (3) What place does she occupy in her family of origin? (4) Can she contribute to her community in a way that she will be rewarded for? (5) What was the emotional life of a single woman in past generations?
The answer to the first question, her reasons for remaining single, is difficult to ferret out, for the automatic presumption is that a woman was never single by choice. Instead she was a victim — primarily the victim of man's selfishness, occasionally of her own "ugliness," or of her lack of sufficient social standing to win a "self-respecting" man for a husband (girls who had "lost their virtue" were presumed to be in this category), or of some other defect such as feeble-mindedness, although that was not an absolutely insuperable bar to marriage either. The notion that a woman might choose to remain single when she had the option of marrying is not one that was seriously discussed in the nineteenth century. It was theologically dangerous, socially irresponsible, and usually economically impossible.
However, the reality is that single women did exist; and Mormonism's distinctive system of plural marriage offered the option of being married in letter but single in fact. It is not completely farfetched to think of Eliza R. Snow, with her two husbands, as being a single woman. The cases of Rhoda Richards and Vienna Jacques are even more instructive. Both were sealed to Joseph Smith during his lifetime, but there is no evidence that either considered herself a connubial wife. On the contrary, Rhoda, the sister of Willard, Phineas, and Levi Richards, explained in a brief autobiographical sketch: "In my young days I buried my first and only love, and true to that affiance, I have passed companionless through life; but am sure of having my proper place and standing in the resurrection, having been sealed to the prophet Joseph .. . by his own request." Her editor, Tullidge, comments admiringly, "A very beautiful incident is this . . . memory of her early love, for whose sake she kept sacred her maiden life."[1]Since she was ninety-three at the time she dictated this reminiscence, one might conclude that she considered herself in no haste to join either her dead lover or the man she had been sealed to for eternity.
Vienna Jacques, a native of Massachusetts, came to Kirtland in 1833 at the age of forty-five where a revelation received by Joseph Smith that same year directed her to consecrate her property—about $1400—to the Church. She had never married and it is not clear how she acquired so substantial a sum except "by patient toil and strict economy." Joseph Smith in September of that same year wrote to her, telling her that "I have often felt a whispering . . . thou shouldst remember her in all thy prayers and also by letter." The Doctrine and Covenants instructed her to go to Missouri to "receive an inheritance from the hand of the bishop; that she may settle down in peace." She was married to Joseph in about 1843 or 1844 when she was in her middle fifties according to an affidavit drawn up for her signature but remaining unsigned in the Smith Affidavit Book. She drove her own team across the plains and died at the age of ninety-six in Salt Lake City's Twelfth Ward.[2]
Bernice Grant Casper relates a modern parallel. Her aunt, Lola Smith of Centerville, was engaged to marry Vernon Cecil Layton in 1920. Both were called on missions at the same time but their wedding plans were far advanced — the basement of the home they planned to move into after their wedding was dug — and she decided to stay and work. He went to the California mission and developed a kidney infection. When it became apparent that his condition was terminal, she went to his bedside, and in response to his pleadings during one of his lucid periods, promised to be sealed to him. He died on 12 February 1921 between that promise and her next visit. Two weeks later, on 23 February, she was sealed to him with her father standing as his proxy. She was a few months short of her twenty-fifth birthday. She kept her cedar chest with cut embroidery and crocheted work intact until she died almost sixty years later.
She continued to live in the family home after her brothers and sisters married. Her father died within a year and she lived with her mother for some years. She was very popular, had friends, dated, traveled, sang with a professional group from Centerville, served three times as president of the YWMIA, entertained often and well, and died at the age of eighty-three of a gall bladder attack which she disregarded while she attended a party. Her niece remembers her as "smiling all the time, so clean it hurt with a lovely personality, tasteful and elegant in her clothes, small, and exquisitely refined." Bernice also remembers meeting her aunt in the company of attentive males but her assumption—that her aunt was at least once engaged—differs from the memory of other members of the family. Lola always wore her engagement ring, kept in touch with her fiance's family, and unfailingly went to his grave in Kaysville on Decoration Day. Bernice also remembers that she seldom spoke of her dead fiance but conveyed the idea that she "cherished the thought that she would be with him" and only occasionally "became a little wistful. She said once," her niece recalls, " 'If only I could have just held a baby, my own baby, in my arms.'"
The family was proud of her, and the nieces growing up saw her as glamorous, romantic, and beautiful. They also acquired some reservations about her anomolous marriage. "How could you tell a dying man no?" Bernice queries. "And only two weeks after his death she would have been grieving and mourning his loss. Was that a time for a decision?"[3]
Whatever position these women may occupy in the next life, however, they were, for all practical purposes, single in this life, making the same kinds of decisions as other single women. After about 1880, the pool of single women seems to have increased simultaneously with gradual elimination of polygamy and the expansion of economic opportunities, apparently the overwhelmingly determining factor in the quality of their lives.
Lola Smith was an executive secretary to two state superintendents of school.
Ida Mabel Wilcox set up a portrait photography studio on Salt Lake's Main Street in 1918 when she was twenty-two and remained in business until her death in 1947.[4]
Two sisters, both of whom served on the first general board of the YWMIA, began gainful careers early. Agnes Campbell became a clerk at ZCMI and Joan, the eldest daughter, began working with her father in the Church Historian's office in her early teens. Her father died when she was sixteen and she continued that profession until she was twenty-six, then became a cashier at ZCMI. While she was still young, she was made engrossing clerk in the Territorial legislature and was, while holding that position, nominated as a notary public, "the first woman in the Territory to be so honored." The governor regretfully had to refuse to confirm the appointment because she was underage. The two sisters built a "modest, pretty home" on Capitol Hill where they settled with their mother. After about twelve years at ZCMI, Agnes began working fulltime for the YWMIA, first as assistant secretary to the board, then as business manager for the Young Woman's Journal.[5]
Margaret Ann Freece, the daughter of "a financially impoverished polygamy family," died a "wealthy woman" in Salina. She became a licensed physician in 1897. Her father had been excommunicated several years before her birth and she does not seem to have been a practicing Mormon but contributed to her community in an enviable number of ways including serving on the school board for nine years, providing scholarships for graduating seniors, and founding a progressive club to promote conservation, cultural, and other civic projects. Locally, she had the reputation of preferring to "boil a rock to get the grease out of it rather than buy a soup bone," but her thriftiness seems to have been coupled with genuine competence. She was involved financially in the coal mining industry, was a director of a bank, an officer and the largest stock holder in a grain and milling company, and was one of the early directors of the first bank of Salina. She married at age fifty-four a man who died two years later.[6]
Dr. Freece is, however, the only woman I have come across in this study who was actually wealthy. Far and away the greatest number of single women who were self-sustaining were schoolteachers. For example, of sixty-five single women called to the General Board of the YWMIA between 1948 and 1972 twenty-eight were teachers. Twenty were secretaries.[7] My mother-in-law, Ruby Johnson Anderson, commented forcefully about two of her teachers: "Ruth Rees and Ottilie Finster made it possible for me to earn my living all my life with what they taught me in their classes and I can't say the same thing about any other classes that I took." Ruth Rees was the home economics teacher and Ottilie Finster was the typing teacher. Both were single, and both taught at South High from 1932 until at least the early 1940s. Ruth wrote and sold a cookbook and, with her roommate, another single or possibly widowed woman, designed a dual-occupancy home that contained an "ideal kitchen." She also caused a sensation by "dropping dead of a heart attack in her classroom one day,"[8] sparing herself the problem of a lingering, lonely death that other single woman had to face or make arrangements to avoid.
Teaching school had, of course, been an acceptable occupation for women ever since the development of graded schools in the 1820s; they had become widely accepted by the 1870s. These small classrooms of age-grouped pupils demanded more teachers, and women, who had been thought incapable of handling the discipline problems of the one-room school and advanced age groups, were seen as appropriate for the younger classes, especially since they would accept salaries one-third or one-half those of men. "By 1860 women teachers outnumbered men in some states, and . . . by 1900 over seventy per cent of teachers were women. By 1925, the rate had climbed to 83 percent."[9] Thus, no woman could be accused of doing something unwomanly by becoming a teacher and many women with access to education did so. Certainly many of Utah's best-known Mormon single women were teachers: Alice Louise Reynolds of BYU, Ida and Mary Cook who pioneered the graded school system in Utah, and Maud May Babcock who introduced and popularized physical culture, as it was known then.
Women who did not have independent means or some kind of trade, however, were sometimes in desperate straits. Virginia Blair, born in 1890, worked at a variety of jobs including baby-sitting, freelance writing, and selling greeting cards. She never had much financial independence and was forced to live with her unmarried brother Millington—an arrangement uncongenial to both of them — until World War II enabled her to find employment in an aircraft plant in Burbank, California. After the war, however, she again became economically dependent. Her financial dependence was not just inconvenient and humiliating: she actually went without food and medical attention because of her poverty. And she certainly had strong feelings about her dependence. She and her mother both lived with Millington for a time and she frequently complains that he delighted in coming home, disrupting their quiet enjoyment of a radio program, and leaving the kitchen a mess. She calls their relationship, "Hell on earth."[10]
Another single woman, Eunice Harris, was in nearly the same situation. Born in 1890, she and her mother both became dependent on her brother Clint in Lehi and, in 1930 when Eunice was visiting in Monroe, she received a remarkably candid letter from her mother asking when she was planning to return. "I know things are not as plesant here as they might be, if it was my house hold it would be different in many ways, it is not so agreeable for me either. I have to watch myself all the time or I would be in trouble, as Clint feels that he is under no obligations to keep me & I guess he is right. Many times I would have gone on the spur of the moment had I had a place to go, but as I am dependant on him I have to take whatever comes & make the best of it, & you will have to do the same thing."[11]
Flora Belnap's fragmentary reminiscence about the winter of 1948-49 when she would have been in her mid-sixties, records a bitter complaint that despite terrible cold, six-foot drifts, and the necessity of thawing out her pipes "several times a day," . . . not once did Olive [her sister] call over the telephone to find if I were even alive." Two years later, another sister invited her to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Flora refused and "really prayed some one else would invite me" and, on Thanksgiving morning, a friend did.[12] Thus, many single women seem to have been marginal members of their families of origin.
However, many of these fragmentary households no doubt lived together in peace and harmony. Stephen Webb Alley, whose brother, interestingly enough, never married, fathered three daughters and two sons. Kate, a teacher, and Ellen, whose occupation is not known, never married; and the third daughter, Edna, was over fifty when she married. Kate and Ellen seem to have lived in their family house on Eighth East throughout their lives, and, for Kate at least, with a schoolteacher's income, it must have been by choice.
Those without families present seem to have been in an even more marginal situation. When Jane Beeching died in 1926 at the age of seventy-one, the only survivor was a sister in England. Jane had joined the Church in England and befriended the missionaries there "for many years" before emigrating in 1901 at the age of forty-six. She was known for temple work and her activity in her Relief Society, according to her obituary. One wonders, however, about her Relief Society involvement since she moved three times — to hotels and boarding houses — in the seven months covered by one little diary that survives.[13]
It is not clear how she lived. When she bought a hairbrush and lost it in the same day, she notes it in her diary, possibly because of the annoyance although possibly also because of the expense. She records receiving "a Cheque from England" and a bishop's giving her two months' rent. Eunice Harris also moved frequently from hotel to rooming house when she was in Salt Lake and not living with her brother in Lehi. Flora was well enough off to afford a modest house of her own in Salt Lake City after she moved from Ogden.
These three women, Flora, Eunice, and Jane, also represent a little recognized class of Mormon single women, now occupied most often by widows — the full-time genealogist and temple worker. The greater availability — and indeed necessity — of education has meant that the so-called "old maid" or "spinster aunt" has been replaced by the "career woman" even if the career has been more accepted than chosen and is more endured than embraced. Being actively involved in genealogy and temple work, however, was a conspicuous signal to the community at large that the single woman in question had a firm connection to the spiritual and social life of the Church, that she had important work to do for which she could justly expect recognition, and that people could understand what she did. It is perhaps ironic that none of them, with their commitment to genealogy, seem to have gotten along well with their siblings or left adequate personal histories despite their interest in researching their ancestors. Jane may have kept a diary consistently but only one volume survives. Flora made several attempts to write a personal history but they are unfinished. Eunice would be only a name on her father's family group sheet if a suitcase full of genealogical papers, half-done bead work, vials of pills, and some pictures of her and her sister's family in El Paso were not shoved into a storage room in the old seminary building on Third West in Provo after her death in 1960.[14]
Although a case could be made that such women occupied a backwater in the mainstream of Mormon group life, still they were accepted and "respect able," although we should note this interesting sequence of entries from Jane Beeching's diary:
"We went to the Temple about [Sister Teney Wilson's] records and Bro Simmon Insulted me.
"Waited in vain to get into Temple. Great Crowd of Marriages. "Went to Temple. Locked Out.
"Went to Temple & did Sealings. Emma Lucy Gates married."[15]
It is also interesting that the quickest place to find single women in a preliminary search was on the Church's general boards, and the same could not be said of single men. Florence Smith Jacobsen, president of the YWMIA from 1961 to 1972 explained that single women were actually viewed as desirable because of their lack of family involvement. After she had initially set up her board, her advisors told her that they "would prefer that we did not present the names of women with young children — meaning children under the age of twelve; but that if we did, they could not go on any overnight trips. That's why we drew heavily on older women and single women." Since the policy was not retroactive, board members who were still adding to their families, were not released; and, when it became apparent that "they managed over night assignments just beautifully," the policy was relaxed on occasion, in practice. Since her own three children had grown up thawing out prefrozen casseroles and recognizing Mutual night by the tuna-fish-gravy suppers, Florence was not inclined to be sympathetic with the policy in the first place: "Because of the way the policy came about, I suspect that some incident had occurred and that there had been a typical overreaction to it: because one child drowns you fill in the swimming pool."
Florence adds, "Another reason we picked single women was because they were so well qualified. They were professional women. We needed women who could meet the public, stand up in front of an audience and project, and who could understand the program and the directions we gave them. Those single women or our board had made a mark on their own and were women of accomplishment before they were ever called."[16]
Out of the 116 women called to the General Board during her term of office, 38 percent were single women. Her immediate predecessor, Bertha S. Reeder, called a board of seventy-seven, of which thirty-eight — or fifty per cent were single. This is in addition to eight women who were either widowed or married and childless.
There may be an unconscious echo in this percentage. In 1891 when Elmina S. Taylor, first general YWMIA president, established "aids" (the first members of the General Board) she did it because the labor of traveling to stake conferences was overburdening her. Of the first four women she called, two, Agnes Campbell and Sarah Eddington, were single.
Obviously, being single did not cut women off from the administrative life of the Church as represented by the women's auxiliaries. Occasional references to stake and ward YWMIA presidents as "Miss" indicate that it was no bar to local service either, and Flora Belnap records being totally overcome by "fear & humility" at being called to be first a counselor in a stake Primary presidency and then the president when all of the other officers were "old enough to be my mother."[17]
It is rather more difficult, however, to sort out the emotional life of these women who saw their friends and sisters marrying and having children, indisputably the grand mission of a Mormon woman's life. Did they have feelings of sexual frustration as normal urges and affections were denied an outlet? Did they feel a social stigma attached to their singleness? As menopause announced the irrevocable denial of maternity, did it simply confirm a fact that they had already come to terms with years before or did it confront them with a postponed crisis to work through? And without the built-in support system of a husband, children, and grandchildren — especially for those women whose relationships with their siblings was problematic — where did they go for emotional sustenance?
Needless to say, I have found no open discussion of these matters in any of the documents that I have examined. The reticence on sexual matters that governed previous generations would strongly discourage such disclosures. It may, in many cases, have even prevented the recognition of such feelings and these women might feel justly affronted at the charge that they were sexually repressed. Bernice's Aunt Lola could openly express a longing to hold her own baby in her arms where she would have been severely censured had she said openly that she wished to hold a man of her own in her arms. It is, therefore, in the expressions regarding maternity that we can look for such hidden feelings although we have no way of knowing if the woman speaking actually expressed her own feelings or repeated a conventional platitude.
For instance, we find unmarried members of the General Board addressing conferences or other Board members on the "necessity of getting the young mothers to come out to the meetings" as a way of curtailing "the spread of immorality" and also lecturing on why temple marriages are more beneficial than others. Sarah Eddington, deputy county recorder for forty-eight years who, interestingly, had a sister who also never married, asserts the reason to be: "Joseph Smith says that when a seal is put upon the father and mother it secures their posterity so that they cannot be lost, but will be saved by virtue of the covenant of their father and mother. How dare we think of bequeathing to our children less than we have received? Brigham Young said any young man who understood what he was doing would travel from here to England and any young girl would die unmarried rather than be united in the wrong way."[18] Not only were single women in authoritative positions extended the right to speak authoritatively about marriage and child-rearing — matters on which they had no personal experience — but single women could be seen as noble martyrs, preferring virgin death to an "incorrect" marriage. Elsie Tal mage Brandley, a married YWMIA board member recalls her own emotional response to a short story about a woman who refused to marry outside the temple. She "wept bitterly when a heroine vowed, 'I'll be an old maid for the Gospel's sake' and promised, 'I know how you feel, Phyllis. I'll be an old maid for the Gospel's sake, too.'”[19]
Even though reticence about sexual matters may have disguised sexual feelings to some extent, it is probably not realistic to argue that single women then experienced no tensions between biological urgings and social restraints. It is undeniable, however, that those social restraints were powerful and punishing in their censure. On 21 May 1887, the Deseret News contains a brief notice
of a trial for adultery of a married man and an unmarried woman, both of whom had been excommunicated "some time ago." The unidentified newspaper reporter freely remarks that testimony "showed the conduct of the defendant and Miss Winegar to have been of the most disgusting character."[20] The same edition of the paper also reports the funeral of Louie Wells Cannon, whose story is surely one of the most sorrowful tragedies of nineteenth-century Mormon life. She had died of long-drawn out and agonizing complications in giving birth to the stillborn son of John Q. Cannon, the husband of her sister Annie, no doubt becoming a graphic example of the consequences of un chastity. John was the son of George Q. Cannon, then first counselor in the First Presidency, and Louie was the daughter of Emmeline B. Wells, future general president of the Relief Society, and of Daniel H. Wells, second counselor in the First Presidency. John Q., age twenty-nine, was second counselor in the presiding bishopric. Louie, age twenty-four, was on the YWMIA General Board. He confessed his fault first to his brother on 4 September 1886. In a dramatic sequence, he appeared in stake conference the following afternoon with his uncle, Angus M. Cannon, the stake president. They interrupted the man who was speaking, John Q., in tears and agony, confessed his fault and "laid down his priesthood," and his uncle put the motion of excommunication to the congregation, who also "in tears" voted unanimously to cut him off from the Church. Annie divorced John four days later and he married Louie the day after that. John was arrested and charged with polygamy within a month, a procedure that mocked the family's grief but probably also provided an opportunity for the Mormon community to rally to the couple under what seems to have been gratuitous persecution since family members were required to provide proof of immorality rather than polygamy. Ironically, there seems to have been reason why they should not have been married instead of having an affair since this was well before the 1890 Manifesto. A year after Louie's death, on 6 May 1888, John was rebaptized, and a week later he and Annie were remarried, first in the endowment house by Annie and Louie's father and then by a justice of the peace. Annie stood proxy as Louie was sealed to John.[21] John and Annie later added eight children to the three they already had.
After such painful realities of adultery, it is somewhat alarming to find Kate Thomas, a later member of the YWMIA General Board, penning a memorial poem to the recently dead Osborne Widtsoe in the persona of his wife, Rose Harmer Widtsoe:
Only one more gone with the constant going
Some may think idly since 'tis not their woe, . . .
Not for me! God of love, I want my lover!
Ever and evermore I want my lover!"[22]
Furthermore, the poems addressed to women and the numerous "love poems" in which she assumes a male persona has led one historian to conclude that "her writing is full of unrequited love for men, and later, an almost sensual passion for women."[23]
Kate was born in Salt Lake in 1871 and, a writer and dramatist from childhood, wrote prolifically for the Young Woman's Journal starting about the turn of the century when she would have been in her early thirties. Editor Ann M. Cannon reports that "more than once she wrote an article overnight to fill a particular need,"[24] and in her fiction she seems to have actually preferred using a male point of view. It is thus somewhat disorienting for a reader to begin a story clearly bylined "Kate Thomas" and which explains in the first paragraph, "I was madly in love with my big-bodied English chum, Ashford," to realize a paragraph later that "I" is a boy named Tom.[25] Although her preference for the male persona may speak sinister volumes about the self-perceived limitations of women in an earlier generation, it is an exceedingly common convention and does not speak sinister volumes about her sexual orientation. It is thus difficult to agree with that historian's conclusion. Kate Thomas's prose and poetry would repay study as a compendium of romantic conventions (what, for instance, do you do with speech in a Church magazine by the heroine: "Oh, if there were a man strong enough to win you whether you would or not! To storm you and take you! I despise a man that cannot make a woman love him!"[26]), but her unpublished poetry may reveal more about her internal state. There are indeed poems expressing love and friendship to women, love-longing to men, and the imagined agonies of a mother whose child has died. The emotion is certainly intense but at least some of the subjects cannot have been autobiographical, thus enjoining caution in so interpreting other poems that might be autobiographical. It should also be noted that she was hardly unique: Sarah Russell, a general board member writing under the penname of "Hope," contributed dozens of similar poems to the Journal's pages between 1880 and 1910 and Virginia Blair confided many productions of the same genre to her diary a generation later.
One poem, however, apparently written between 1897 and 1902 when Kate would have been in her late twenties or early thirties tempts such a reading:
I dreamed you loved me — that you kissed my mouth
With that rare look of splendor in your eyes,
Then hand in hand we faced the purple west
That held less glory than our hearts enclosed.
Her lover, clearly male and not female in this poem, tells her that "our sun shall have no setting. Thou and I/Shall be together through eternity" as gods. Exquisite music and clear voices sing:
Blessed are they that find their heavenborn mate.
These twain were great and are great and shall be
When earth is earth no more. They must be great
Who live to God.
She wakens from the dream and laments:
O Love! The paths we tread may never meet.
We may not learn that we are heaven-joined.
It may be but the phantom of a brain
Grown sick with longing for the ne'er-to-be
But all my soul ascends in gratitude
That I may claim the memory of a dream.[27]
A Freudian could no doubt explain this poem satisfactorily by murmuring about repression, fantasies, and sublimation. I think it may be more realistic to see the poem as hybrid—perhaps based on an erotic dream or even an actual kiss but swiftly translated into the acceptable Latter-day Saint convention of eternal marriage continuing beyond the grave—or even perhaps starting there.
It is also important, I feel, to acknowledge the reality that a woman's friendships in preceding generations may have been much richer and more satisfying than some of those established in our mobile and sex-centered society. Although some scholars have attempted to see evidence of sexual liaisons in such longterm and intense friendships—and probably with cause in some cases—I found no evidence of such relationships in any of the Mormon single women I studied. Certainly their Mormon culture would have censured and punished homosexual unions as surely and swiftly as it censured and punished extralegal heterosexual relationships.
A final question remains to be asked in any analysis of the emotional life of single Mormon women. Since the assumption was that no Mormon woman would remain single by choice, is there any evidence that some did? And to what extent did society's view of single women color their views of themselves?
Again, direct evidence does not exist. However, it is interesting that single women then as now were assumed to be drawn to children to fulfill their "instinctive" mothering needs, a view which found a contemporary echo as recently as the 1981 women's fireside when Shirley W. Thomas, first counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency, talked about "mothering roles" in a context of single women and urged all women, regardless of marital status, to "learn to use the principles that relate to motherhood."[28] Thus Ann M. Cannon of the general board receives this somewhat left-handed compliment: "Travel, literary work and a successful public life (she was a county deputy recorder) have not weaned Sister Cannon from simple home pleasures. She showers her love on children, particularly on the dear little ones who live in the home with her" — presumably her younger brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews.[29]
In 1931, May Anderson, the never-married second general president of the Primary, received a letter from Fred W. Schwendiman of the Deseret News thanking her for her "extraordinary kindness." Obviously seeking to pay her an ultimate compliment, he continued, "Such faith and confidence as you have shown is usually only found in the heart of a mother towards her son and I want to tell you that next to my two wonderful mothers and my dear wife and companion, you have won a place in my heart never to be changed."[30] Twelve years later, Lowell Bennion, then of the University of Utah Institute, wrote her a similar graceful compliment: "I recalled all the people I knew who had 'multiplied and replenished the earth' with little regard . . . to life's purposes and . . . then I thought of you and the intelligent loving devotion you had given to the creative life of the souls of other people's children." He calls it a genuinely divine role."[31]
With the possible exception of this last quotation, it is possible to see these quotations as compensatory and consoling, "making up" for an irretrievable loss. Few would argue that the experiences of marriage and motherhood are not inherently valuable and such is not the intention of this paper. The difficulty lies in the conclusion that a woman lacking such experiences is a lessened and lesser person.
Stena Scorup, an educator in Salina, Utah, who also became its mayor, seems to have accepted such an evaluation of herself even though her experiences contradicted it. She called herself "a homely, humble school teacher" but obviously enjoyed the banquets, dances, toasts, and speeches—in other words, receiving attention from men. She devoted herself to providing high quality education to her students and anxious care to her numerous nieces and nephews, but also enjoyed her mission and travel that took her away from such responsibilities. And she seems never to have resolved the tension between Mormon doctrine on the importance of marriage and her own personal state. In a personal sketch written in the third person, she laments that she "is doomed to continue a servant to others through eternity" but "thinks it won't matter much anyway." Her biographer, Vicky Burgess-Olsen, points out the ambiguity in this phrasing: does it refer "to her life? to eternity? to being doomed?" In another place, Stena said, "I am the one member of our family who will never go to heaven" because of her singleness. At the close of her life, she advised her "nieces and nephews and .. . all the previous and younger generation . . . : Do not follow my example. Get married and make a home of your very own and have as many children as you can educate as they should be. Do not get so lost in your profession and work or allow home responsibilities however urgent and necessary, deprive you of having a family and making a real home of your own for them."[32]
It is difficult to tell if any of the single women we have examined in this paper deliberately chose singleness. On at least one level, Stena certainly did, but it was not a level she could acknowledge openly and perhaps could not even admit existed. The powerful conventions that "consoled" single women for their singleness and permitted them entry to Mormon society also required that they be ultimately defined by what they lacked, not by what they possessed or what they could do. There is no question that conformity to this convention—universal as nearly as I can determine—rewarding them with a recognized and valid place. But one wonders about the cost in self-imposed limitations, in self-evaluations that always had to qualify achievement with the reminder, "But I'm not married," and by a loss of talent and energy to a society that defined in negatives rather than positives.
[1] Edward W. Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom (New York: Tullidge & Crandall, 1877), p. 422.
[2] Ibid., p. 441; Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 336; Danel W. Bach man, "A Study of the Mormon Practice of Plural Marriage before the Death of Joseph Smith" (Master's thesis, Purdue University, 1975), pp. 112, 335; Dean Jessee, "A Priceless Treasure," Church News, 2 Aug. 1980.
[3] Conversation with Bernice Grant Casper, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2 April 1982.
[4] "Salt Lake Photographer Succumbs at 53," Salt Lake Tribune, 13 Dec. 1947, p. 25.
[5] Susa Young Gates, History of the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from November 1869 to June 1910 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News, 1911), pp. 196-97.
[6] Vicky Burgess-Olson, "Margaret Ann Freece," Sister Saints, ed. Vicky Burgess-Olson (Provo, Utah: BYU Press, 1978), pp. 402-11.
[7] Occupational information was not available for all of the single women. YWMIA Scrapbook, 1848-1961; Historical Department Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; hereafter cited as LDS Church Archives; and interview with Helen D. Lingwall, former YWMIA secretary, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2 April 1982.
[8] Conversation with Ruby Johnson Anderson of Pasadena, California, in Salt Lake City, Utah, 5 April 1982.
[9] Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1962), pp. 316-17.
[10] See Register and Papers of Virginia Blair, Philip Blair Family Collection, Marriott Library Special Collections, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
[11] Winka Larson Harris to Eunice Harris, 29 July 1930, LDS Church Archives.
[12] Flora Belnap, "Autobiographical Sketch," LDS Church Archives.
[13] Jane Beeching, Diary, 1915-1917, LDS Church Archives; Obituary, Deseret News, 1 Sept. 1926, 2 Sept. 1926.
[14] Conversation with Donald Barney of Provo, Utah, 22 April 1982.
[15] Jane Beeching, Diary, 21 Jan. 1916, 7 June 1916, 29 June 1916, 30 June 1916.
[16] Conversation with Florence Smith Jacobsen, Salt Lake City, Utah, 22 Jan. 1982.
[17] Autobiographical Sketch in Fourth Ward Amusement Company Account Book, p. 121, Church Archives.
[18] Sarah Eddington, Young Women's Journal, 5 (May 1895): 395; 6 (Dec. 1894): 386.
[19] Elsie Talmage Brandley, Young Woman's Journal, 40 (Oct. 1929): 685.
[20] Deseret News, 21 May 1887, p. 5.
[21] Deseret News, 6 Sept. 1886, p. 2, 16 May 1887, p. 5, 21 May 1887, pp. 3, 5; Journal History, 7 Oct. 1886, pp. 2-3; 9 Oct. 1886, p. 3; 11 Dec. 1886, pp. 2-4, LDS Church Archives; Abraham H. Cannon Diary, 4 Sept. 1886, 5 Sept. 1886, 6 May 1888, 13 May 1888; microfilm of holograph, LDS Church Archives; original at Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah; Emmeline B. Wells Diary, 1 Jan. 1887, 16 May 1887, Harold B. Lee Library.
[22] "The Wife Speaks," Young Woman's Journal, 31 (May 1920): 243.
[23] Sterne McMullen, Register of the Kate Thomas Collection, Utah State Historical Society, n.p.
[24] Young Woman's Journal 40 (Oct. 1929): 681.
[25] "A Romance of Bedruthen Steps," Young Woman's Journal 27 (July 1916): 471.
[26] "The Reconciliation of Dick and Dorothy, " Young Woman's Journal 14 (Dec. 1903): 548-53.
[27] "Untitled Poem" in Record Book of Manuscript Poems, Kate Thomas Papers, Utah Historical Society.
[28] Shirley W. Thomas, "An Opportunity for Continual Learning," Ensign 12 (Nov. 1982): 102.
[29] Young Woman's Journal, 16 (June 1905): 264.
[30] Fred W. Schwendiman to May Anderson, 9 Jan. 1931, LDS Church Archives.
[31] Lowell Bennion to May Anderson, 12 May 1943, LDS Church Archives.
[32] Burgess-Olson, "Stena Scorup," in Sister Saints, pp. 297-99.
[post_title] => Ministering Angels: Single Women in Mormon Society [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 16.3 (Autumn 1983): 68–69I would like to discuss teh social experience of historical Latter-day Saint single women in the context of five questions: (1) Does she have an acceptable reason for being single? (2) Can she provide for her own economic security? (3) What place does she occupy in her family of origin? (4) Can she contribute to her community in a way that she will be rewarded for? (5) What was the emotinoal life of a single women in past generations? [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => ministering-angels-single-women-in-mormon-society [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 14:03:41 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 14:03:41 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16248 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Women and Ordination: Introduction to the Biblical Context
Anthony A. Hutchinson
Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 60–69
THE QUESTION of whether worthy women could be or ought to be ordained to the LDS priesthood has not, until recently, been considered seriously in the LDS community.
The question of whether worthy women could be or ought to be ordained to the LDS priesthood has not, until recently, been considered seriously in the LDS community. As recently as 1979, Leonard Arlington and Davis Bitton wrote, "There are no great pressures from Latter-day Saints for priesthood for women, despite similar demands in other contemporary faiths."[1] Normal LDS treatments of the question really did not address the issue head on, but rather argued for general subordination of women on various grounds, not the least of which was the Church's policy of excluding women from priesthood ordination itself.[2]
A major reason for this is that recent questions about priesthood ordination for women were first publicly formulated in non-LDS Christian communities, particularly the Anglican/Episcopal tradition, and more recently, in Roman Catholicism.[3] To some Mormons this tainted the question with some how being "of the world." In addition, the unique sociological and theological dynamics of priesthood in Mormonism require that the question be phrased in somewhat different terms than it has been in Anglicanism or Roman Catholicism.[4] Whereas these traditions distinguish between a common priesthood possessed by all Christians by virtue of their baptism and an ordained or hierarchial priesthood,[5] normally called the priestly ministry, the LDS priesthood is considerably "laicized," and ordination is not restricted to a trained and specialized elite class of ministers.[6] Consequently, the discussion, started in the context of a non-LDS theology of priesthood and church, has not been picked up quickly by Latter-day Saints. And yet, significantly, some Latter-day Saints are raising the question of the ordination of women. Excommunication resulting from the unauthorized ordination of a woman has occurred. The topic is discussed more and more openly.[7]
After noting some of my working assumptions, I shall briefly give some background from the Old Testament on this subject, then concentrate on insights the New Testament offers.
I deliberately avoid attempting a study of the history of Mormon policy per se because I am by training a biblical theologian and exegete, not an LDS historian. As much remains to be learned about the theological antecedents as about the historical precedents. Careless use of the Bible, particularly certain passages from the Pauline corpus, has bedeviled the discussion of this question by LDS systematic theologians and produced confusion. Proof texts are often adduced by adherents of both sides in the debate. A recitation here of some of the widely accepted consensus of modern New Testament scholarship about these texts and their place on the general cultural and theological horizon of the New Testament might help alleviate the confusion about what God's revelation to the primitive Christian church has to say on this matter. (Excellent studies have been published on this topic. These should be read by anyone interested in the issue because I can attempt no more than a brief summary and application of this material.)[8]
Descriptive Biblical Approach: Some Assumptions
Here are some of the major working assumptions behind my methodology that naturally grow out of a rationally considered LDS faith that do much to support and enhance the real heart and life of our religion.[9]
First, I believe firmly that the Bible has a normative value in Mormonism, just as I believe that LDS scripture and the teachings of the living prophets do. I do not, however, consider this normative value in fundamentalist terms that would make biblical or any particular modern LDS formulations inerrant or an absolute rule of faith. To deny the normative value of the Bible, either through the bad transmission or translation argument, or the claim that current revelation somehow annuls and invalidates all previous revelation, may well cut the Church off from God's revelation to ancient Israel and the primitive Christian church, as well as from its own past. It will also seriously cripple our ability to understand the real contribution which LDS revelation offers to the religious traditions historically descended from the biblical faith. Such a denial, though current in certain elements of the Mormon community, is rooted deeply in fundamentalist concern and, I believe, betrays the very real experience the LDS people have had with divine revelation in 150 years of Church life.[10]
Second, I believe that the historical-critical method of scriptural study provides the tools best suited to the task of identifying God's word to the ancients and the meanings infused into these texts by inspired human authors of scripture. This method ideally combines the exacting canons and tools of responsible philology with the empathy of a faith in the inspired nature of these texts. In so doing, it attempts to discriminate between the original inspired sense of scripture and the rich surplus of meaning laid upon scripture by more recent people inspired by God, often themselves authors of additional scripture. Just as the "new Mormon history" is essential to a careful understanding of our own growth as a people, so is critical biblical scholarship necessary for an accurate understanding of the Bible in its original meaning and inspiration.
Third, one should always remember that the Bible is not a manual of doctrine, a blueprint for the Church, or a code of eternal laws and absolute principles. Rather, it is a record of human experience with the living God, a God who acts as well as speaks. It phrases and expresses this experience and the human values and beliefs concomitant to that experience in history in terms conditioned and colored by the historical, linguistic and cultural milieu in which the inspired human authors wrote. Revelation comes to human beings "in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understand" (D&C 1:24). As a result, when we look to the Bible in our discussion about the ordination of women, we should never think we are finding in its pages absolute standards for all time when in fact we are seeing examples of how the people of God have formulated their faith and values in the past, within the context of their own cultures and the specific questions with which they were struggling.
Fourth, I make a specific caution regarding the limitations circumscribing any attempt in adducing New Testament evidence for use in a modern theological discussion. The New Testament does not give us a complete picture of earliest Christian faith and church practices. Not only is the New Testament evidence incomplete, but it is colored enormously by the occasion and circumstances surrounding the authorship of its books. It is colored by the theological intentions of the second and third generation Christians who committed the early Christian tradition to paper in the gospels; it is colored by the specific polemical situations in which the apostle Paul found himself in writing his epistles. Extreme care must be exercised in using this fragmentary and difficult evidence. Particular care must be taken to allow the New Testament to speak for itself and scrupulously to avoid any interpretation of the texts which relies on associations of ideas not found in the texts themselves. Special care should be taken to avoid imposing categories of thought upon the New Testament which reflect later theological development whether mainstream Christian or LDS. It is only thus that the limited evidence of the New Testament can have any value in the modern discussion.
Women, Priesthood and Prophecy in the Old Testament
Clearly, Old Testament culture was androcentric and generally patriarchal. Women were typically disqualified from active roles in political leadership, and although there is no single Old Testament text explicitly forbidding women priests, it is clear that women were excluded from major roles in the Yahwistic Temple cult. Yet this fact does not force us to conclude that the Old Testament authenticates a modern policy of excluding women from ordination, or even teaches ipso facto women's subordination to men. On the contrary, the condition of women was more advanced in ancient Israel than in contemporary Canaanite culture.[11] The fertility myths and cultic prostitution of Canaanite religion placed value upon women only as means for sexual gratification and the production of children. In contrast to this, the creation narratives of Genesis 1-3 teach clearly the dignity of all human beings and the divine image found in both men and women.
It is important to note that the priestly disqualification was not a simple expression of a misogynistic belief in the inferiority of women. Rather, it was related to two central elements of Old Testament religion, one ideological and one historical. Ideologically, the Israelites held an entire world view and symbolic structuring of reality in which non-urinary issues from the genitalia were considered to be ritual defilements (see esp. Leviticus 15). Therefore, menstrual flow and postpartum hemorrhaging, as well as semen, were defilements. Thus, because of a simple difference between the sexual biology of men and women, a serious handicap in women's participation in the cult resulted. The entire world view of which this complex of ideas is an organic part is no longer wholly available to the consciousness of the modern world,[12] and transcends the single issue of women and their societal role. Historically, Israelite polemic against the Canaanite fertility cult, with its use of sacred prostitutes, drew into suspicion and question any participation of women in the ritual. It is important to note that both of these elements in ancient Judaism do not obtain at all in modern Mormonism.
Several Old Testament references to women and the prophetic gift warrant our attention. The basic concept of "prophet" in the Old Testament involves someone filled with Yahweh's spirit who speaks Yahweh's word.[13] The Old Testament does not normally associate the idea of "priesthood" with the idea of "prophet," except, perhaps, in the charter narratives that trace the Levitical and Aaronic classes back to God's revelation to the prophet par excellence, Moses, as well as the Book of Ezekiel, and some passing references in I Samuel to an early oracular, but not explicitly prophetic, function of priests (I Sam. 14:36-42; 23:9-11; 30:7-8). Indeed, the Old Testament never even hints that priesthood is a requirement or prerequisite for prophecy.
Of interest to our discussion is the fact that three women in the Old Testament are mentioned by name and endorsed explicitly with the term "prophetess"(nebVa).[14] These are Miriam (Exod. 15:20), Deborah (Judges 4:4-5), and Huldah (II Kings 22:14). In Old Testament categories, there is no theoretical distinction between the authority and religious office of a woman like Deborah or Huldah and a man like Elisha. This is not to say that the Old Testament has examples of women who, possessing the prophetic gift, held the "priesthood." This would be a serious misuse of the texts. However, in any LDS doctrinal formulation which takes these texts into account, one must remember that the Old Testament concept of "prophet" is adapted and accommodated in the LDS scriptures. Thus, in D & C 107:40-54, many Old Testament figures, conceived here as prophetic, are associated with the LDS Melchizedek Priesthood. A consistent accommodation of these texts in LDS usage would point to some understanding of priesthood authority for these women, though clearly such an understanding is not implied by the biblical text. A similar accommodation could be applied to Deborah, who is also portrayed as a "judge" in Israel (Judges 4:5). Again, the point is not that the Old Testament teaches that Deborah held the priesthood, for in the Old Testament's eyes the function of "judge" has little to do with "priesthood." but here again, an image normally considered an ordained office in the LDS church is applied to a woman in the Old Testament.
Priesthood and Ministries in the New Testament
"Priesthood" is not a term the New Testament uses to describe specific ministries and roles of service to be exercised by the individual Christian. More correctly one speaks of "ministries" in the New Testament, rather than "priesthood," if one remains faithful to New Testament categories regarding the function and role of various parts of the community in the service of God and one's fellows. A survey of the New Testament use of the Greek terms hiereus (priest), archihiereus (chief, or high priest), as well as the abstract nouns hierateia, hierateuma and hierosyne (priesthood) reveals this clearly. These terms in the New Testament generally apply to the priestly class of Jerusalem—the Jewish priesthood. Many of the passages where these terms occur do not endorse this "priesthood" as an active authority from God, but rather accept the Jewish institution as a sociological and historical fact, and commonly set this institution against Jesus and the early Christian community just as many references pit the Scribes and Pharisees against them. Generally, the terms "priest" or "priesthood" are not applied to Christians or seen as an element in their role as members of the Christian community.
Occasional passages refer to the Jewish priesthood in terms of its role in the faith and life of the earliest Christians because of the historical origins of Christianity as a sect of Judaism. The synoptics portray Jesus saying to a healed leper, "show yourself to the priest" (Matt. 8:4; Mark 1:44; Luke 17:14; cf. Lev. 13:49). Similarly, the Lucan infancy narrative, in an attempt to show the continuity between what Luke considers to be authentic Judaism and Christianity, presents Zacharias as a priest in the temple cult and portrays Anna and Simeon as figures in the Old Testament cultic tradition who have Christian faith. Note, however, that these nonpolemical passages still use the term "priesthood" in a sense properly referring to the Jewish priesthood and not a Christian one.
There are three important exceptions to this absence from the New Testament of the term "priesthood" in describing things Christian. The most significant exception occurs in the Letter to the Hebrews. The author of this anonymous treatise has worked out a lengthy and complex series of proofs of the superiority of Christianity over Judaism: the superiority of Jesus Christ to the prophets, angels and Moses (1:1-3:6), the superiority of Christ's priesthood to the Levitical priesthood of Judaism (4:14-7:28) and the superiority of Christ's sacrifice in the heavenly sanctuary to the sacrificial ritual of the Levitical priesthood (8:1-10:39).[15] In the process of the argument, the term "priesthood" is applied not only to the Levites and the Jewish Temple cult, but also to Christ. It should be noted here, however, that the priesthood in question is Christ's, and is never applied to Christians in general by the author. In fact, it is clear by the line of reasoning that the main referent generating the description of Christ as the great high priest is not a ministry in the Christian community but the Levitical cult itself.
The other two exceptions are descriptions of the Christian community as a holy nation, a royal priesthood (1 Pet. 2:5, 9), and as a kingdom, priests (Apoc. 1:6; 5:10).[16] Although here there seems to be a genuine transferral of Old Testament priesthood terminology to the Christian community, the whole Christian community is understood, rather than a specifically ordained and set apart section of the community. This militates against our seeing even here a reference to a "Christian priesthood" as normally conceived by churches which associate priesthood with a special rite of ordination.[17]
I should note that although Paul does not use the words for "priest" or "priesthood" to describe Christians and their ministries, he does occasionally describe Christ in images borrowed from the Jewish Temple cult (Rom. 3:24-25; 5:2; 8:3, 34; Eph. 2:18). Additionally, in a single reference Paul describes his own ministry in terms derived from the priestly cult (Rom. 15:16). Yet he avoids the specific terms for priesthood and priest, though the words which he does use are loaded with priestly overtones. It is probably from such a reference as this that the institution and theology of a Christian priesthood was able to develop, grow, and take root during the second century A.D.
The fact that "priesthood" is not used in the New Testament to describe the various ministries and roles of service and leadership in the Christian community is important. It has far reaching implications in any attempt to build an LDS ecclesiology, or theology about the Church, and to deal adequately with the New Testament evidence. A key in understanding New Testament values as they relate to the question of the ordination of women to the LDS priesthood is whether ministries in the New Testament which normally have been associated in Mormonism with ordination to the priesthood are exercised only by men, or by men and women alike.
Despite the lack of a formulated concept of an "ordained priesthood in the church" throughout the New Testament, there are in the later books, especially the Pastoral epistles (the Pauline authorship of which is questioned, rightly, by most New Testament scholarship today), tendencies toward seeing the Christian ministries in terms of institutionally ordered offices and hierarchy. Despite these later tendencies, ministries throughout most of the New Testament are conceived in somewhat flexible and changing terms. A good example of this is found in the Pauline lists of charisms (gifts) and ministries (1 Cor. 12:4-11; 1 Cor. 12:28-31; Rom. 12:4-8; and, if we reject the Bultmannian denial of the Pauline authorship of the captivity letters, in Eph. 4:11-14). A comparison of these texts reveals many parallels and many points of divergence. Some of this results from the various settings and functions of the lists. A certain flexibility in describing the ministries is understandable in terms of Pauline thought. For Paul, "there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit; varieties of service, but the same Lord" (1 Cor. 12:4-5). In other words, the ministries of the church are varied, and performed by various people in the community, yet all the ministries come from God. For him, these "gifts . . . differ according to the grace given to us" (Rom. 12:6), since the Spirit "apportions to each one individually as it wills" (1 Cor. 12:11). This diversity has one ultimate goal, that the Christian community, functioning as a healthy body with various members of diverse functions, "equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God" (Eph. 4:12-13). Though certainly for Paul some of these diverse ministries are more important in the process of "upbuilding" than others, just as some of the charisms are "higher gifts" and of "a more excellent way" (1 Cor. 12:31), for him all are necessary. In his understanding, there was no one faction or group which exercised all ministries in the church, or even controlled them all.
Women in the New Testament
A dominant theme throughout the New Testament is that through Jesus the kingdom of God has broken into human history, and that the "age to come" of apocalyptic expectation has in some respects been realized by Jesus and in the Christian community. This dual Christological/eschatological faith informs the New Testament portrayal of women and their roles in the early church. In the "new creation" inaugurated by Christ (Gal. 6:15), "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female" (Gal. 3:28). This understanding undergirds much of the New Testament view of women and their place in the early Christian church despite the heavy limitations imposed upon early Christianity by the patriarchal cultures of the Greco-Roman and ancient Jewish world.[18] From the beginning of Jesus' ministry, women followed him and they themselves ministered of their substance and labors (Luke 8:2-3); many were faithful to Jesus to the end of his life (Mark 15:40-41; 16:1). The first disciples to discover the empty tomb were women (Mark 16:2-8; Luke 24:1-11), and in the Matthean and one of the Johannine resurrection narratives, women were the first to see the resurrected Lord (Matt 28:1-10; John 20:11-18).
None of the various lists of the names of the Twelve includes any women (Mark 3:16-19; Matt. 10:2-4; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13). But this does not mean that women were thereby considered secondary in the community and its ministries, or that women were somehow excluded from apostleship per se. For though the Twelve are called apostles in some passages,[19] the circle of apostles was not limited to the Twelve. In Pauline understanding, the requisites to make a person an apostle were (1) to have seen the risen Lord and (2) to have received a commission by Jesus to preach (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:7-9; Gal. 1:16). For Luke, one also had to have been a companion of Jesus during his earthly ministry (Acts 1:21-22).[20] Significantly, women in the early Christian community met all these criteria for the apostleship. Women were among the group designated by the resurrected Jesus in Luke as his witnesses to the world (Luke 24:48; cf. vv. 22 and 33). Just as the omission of gentiles, slaves, Samaritans and (with the exception of Judas) of Judaeans from the lists of the Twelve says nothing about their exclusion from participation in the early Christian ministries normally associated with ordained priesthood in LDS usage, so also the omission of women from these lists does not imply a less than full participation of women in these ministries.
There is abundant evidence of the participation of women in the various New Testament ministries. Women are seen exercising leadership (Rom. 16:1-2, 6, 12; Phil. 4:2-3), actively participating in church services (1 Cor. 11:5), teaching converts (Acts 18:26), founding churches (Acts 18:2, 18-19; 1 Cor. 16:3-5) and even acting as Christian prophets (1 Cor. 11:5; Acts 21:9). Many of these ministries seem analogous to opportunities available in the LDS church to religiously active women without ordination to the priesthood. However, some of these roles, particularly the founding of local churches and the exercise of leadership, have some connotations of priesthood in Mormonism. More important are two references in Romans 16 to women who seem to be exercising ministries which, though not necessarily associated with priesthood or administrative office in the New Testament, are specifically connected to priesthood office in the restoration.
Phoebe (Rom. 16:1-2) is called a diakonos, a word translated as "deacon" by the KJV when it occurs in Phil. 1:1 and 1 Tim. 3:8, 12. It would be ill conceived to understand the word in Romans 16 as "deaconess," since to do so would anachronistically read back into the New Testament an office in the early Christian church attested at the earliest in the third century, normally identified not by the word diakonos, but by diakonissa.[21] In addition, the word diakonos in the authentic Pauline corpus normally means "minister" or "ser vant" (1 Cor. 3:5; 2 Cor. 3:4-6:13), understood as a gift rather than a specific office, and it is thus that the word usually is translated in this verse. Indeed, the word diakonos, as Paul normally uses it, could perhaps rightly be applied to LDS women today in their various ministries of compassionate service, teaching and administration of auxiliary organizations. Nevertheless, the word diakonos, as it is used in the Pastorals, does denote a specific office in the church, the office of "deacon," and this office in early Christianity is normally understood in Mormonism as a priesthood office. Significantly, the use of the genitive "of the church" in Rom. 16:1-2 reveals that Paul is seeing Phoebe's ministry in terms of not merely a charismatic service but also in terms of an office. As Oepke points out, "The description of Phebe [sic] as the diakonos of the church at Chenchrea indicates the point where the original charism is becoming an office.[22] Thus, Phoebe, as a "deacon," stands as one example of women serving in ministries conceived as priestly in Mormonism.
In the same letter of recommendation in which Paul refers to Phoebe as a diakonos, he also probably refers to a woman apostolos (apostle) when he writes, "Greet Andronikos and Junia, my kinspeople and my fellow prisoners, who are outstanding among the apostles" (Rom. 16:7). I translate the verse thus for several reasons. The manuscript reading Iounian, which is the accusative singular either of the feminine proper name Iounia or of the masculine proper name Iounias, depending upon its accent (which would not have been written in the epigraphy of Paul's day), is the best attested and methodologically soundest reading of the text. Since apparently the near unanimous voice of the first thirteen centuries of Christian interpretation of the verse under stood the name as feminine, and since the masculine name Iounias is not attested in Greek until long after the period of the New Testament,[23] I too am inclined to read the namelounia, and understand it as a reference to a woman. Finally, although the phrase episemoi en tois apostolois could also be understood as "well known among (i.e., to) the apostles," I believe that Junia and Andronikos are here understood as outstanding apostles, because in Paul the preposition en in this kind of locution normally means "among." Had he meant "to" he probably would have used the dative apostolois without the preposition. What we have is reference to a woman Paul considered not only an apostle, but an outstanding one.
Some of the New Testament ministries which Latter-day Saints normally associate exclusively with ordination and priesthood seemingly were exercised by women in the primitive church. Any arguments based upon New Testament scriptures to support the exclusion of women from the LDS priesthood should be carefully weighed in this light.
Rules for Worship; Rules for the Home
There are several passages in the epistles which are often used as prooftexts to support the subordination of women to men in the modern LDS Church. These deal with specific rules governing conduct in church services (1 Cor. 11:3-6; 1 Cor. 14:33-35; 1 Tim. 2:11-15).
In the first of these texts (1 Cor. 11), Paul instructs women that they must wear a head-covering in public worship, so that they might not appear unseemly (by the social customs of his day). He justifies this practice on the basis of four things: (1) the order of creation and the ontology it implies (w. 3, 7-9), (2) the natural decency required by societal standards (w. 4-6), (3) the practice of the "churches of God," i.e., the Palestinian Jewish Christian churches (v. 16), and (4) "because of the angels" (v. 10).[24] Despite the fact that Paul firmly believes his rule is grounded in unassailable tradition (v. 2), current LDS church practice does not require women to cover their heads in regular public worship and thus demonstrates the cultural contingency of the rule.
In the second text (1 Cor. 14:33-35), a proscription is laid upon women's speaking in church. To understand these verses as if Paul were forbidding women to teach in church or publicly address the assembly, is unwarranted. The text does not refer to "teaching" (didaskein) but rather to "speaking" (lalein), and the context suggests that Paul's main concern was to prevent disturbances caused by speaking out of turn (w. 28, 30) or raising questions during church services better left to domestic discussion (v. 35). It is inconceivable that Paul would have considered his rule in terms of speech in general because elsewhere he endorses women who pray and prophesy in public worship (1 Cor. 11:5).
The third text (1 Tim. 2:11-15) is attributed by nearly all modern New Testament scholars not to Paul, but to a later author writing in the Pauline tradition and under his name. Here indeed women are forbidden to teach (didaskein) in church and are exhorted to remain silent. This rule was not known and practiced by all the New Testament churches, for, as I noted above, women played an active role in Paul's churches, and one is indeed pictured teaching in Acts 18:26. The rule therefore should not be seen as a universal having strict normative effect upon us. The fact that women do teach in the modern LDS Church casts doubt on any attempt to use this text to establish an exclusionary ordination policy.
All of these passages, then, include directives of ancient church leaders to specific congregations in a specific cultural milieu about what is acceptable and decent in public worship. They do not give us absolute standards regard ing who should participate in which ministries in the Church.
Since in Mormonism "priesthood" is often associated with concepts of family and family roles, prooftexts dealing with family relations are also adduced by some Latter-day Saints to support the exclusion of women from ordination. These texts occur in the "Haustafeln" (German for "rules of the house") lists found in the late Pauline and deutero-Pauline corpus (Col. 3:18-4:1; Eph. 5:21-6:9; Titus 2:1-10) as well as in 1 Pet. 2:18-3:7. The Haustafeln are exhortations addressed to various members of the familia, or the extended family of the ancient Mediterranean world, including slaves, children, husbands and wives. They tell people the standards of behavior they should follow in their position in the familia. These passages are often cited today to teach that the subordination of women is not only good, but planned and desired by God. Such a use of the Haustafeln, if consistently applied, would require us to argue that the institution of slavery is also desired by God. Rather, these domestic rules attempt to explicate how Chris tian values should form our behavior and attitudes within our circumstances and the societal constraints around us. They should not be seen as endorsements of any of these conditions in themselves. They merely assume them, and sometimes even incorporate ideologies rooted in them (see 1 Pet. 3:7).
The values informing these lists of domestic rules are significant and must be understood clearly if the inspired sense of these texts is to become apparent. These texts stress the love, consideration and respect to be shown by the various members of the familia in their relations to one another not the moral value of the cultural context of these relations. Although they are clearly subordinationist, it seems that they are moving away from the misogyny and slave-holding mentality of the general culture in which Christianity was born toward a more enlightened view of the intrinsic value of all people and the moral responsibility of loving one's neighbors, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Eph. 5:22-25); "Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged. Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters . . . Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven" (Col. 3:18-4:1). These texts, though phrased and conceived in an androcentric world-view, do not teach the normal subordinationism laid upon them by modern prooftexters. Rather, the subordination taught here is one in which the individual submits to and serves humbly his or her fellows, all in submission to the Lord.
The denial of priesthood and various church offices cannot then be inferred reasonably from these New Testament rules for public worship and domestic life.
The Created Order; Eve's Transgression
Some Latter-day Saints may object to the foregoing treatment of these texts on liturgical and domestic regulations on the grounds that while they may argue for some rules, particularly the requirement for head-covering, which are simply "local customs and traditions," they incorporate into their argument a proclamation of "certain basic and eternal principles pertaining to men and women and their relationship to each other."[25] This objection rests on the assumption that the subordinationist logic used in these texts, particularly the references to the order of creation (1 Cor. 11:3, 7-8,12; 1 Tim. 2:13) and to Eve's transgression (2 Cor. 11:3; 1 Tim. 2:14), reflects and sustains the teaching of the modern LDS Church.[26] A careful examination of these texts reveals that their theological reasoning is just as culturally contingent as are the rules they serve to support. Even if one is to take popular LDS formulations of faith as the only reliable guides to "eternal and unchanging principles," the reasoning used in these texts must be viewed as limited by history and culture, for LDS doctrine thus conceived simply does not correspond to the theology in these texts. To show this, I shall discuss (1) how the use of Genesis 1-3 in these texts is more dependent upon cultural factors in the New Testament than upon the intent of Genesis, and (2) how the theological anthropology in these texts cannot be harmonized with standard LDS ideas about the eternity and non-contingency of the individual human being.
1. The meaning later attributed to Genesis 1 -3 in these texts cannot be reconciled with the original meaning of Genesis. One of the four arguments Paul uses in favor of head-covering in I Corinthians 11 concerns the sequence of creation in Genesis and Paul's view of the ontological consequences of this sequence: the "head" (kephale— source, origin)[27] of the woman is her husband (v. 3); while man is the image and glory of God, woman is the glory of man (v. 7), because woman was created from and for man (w. 8-9, cf. 1 Tim. 2:13-15). It is Paul's own culture that allows him to accommodate Genesis in this way.
The two separate stories of creation, the first in Gen. l:l-2:4a and the second in Gen. 2:4b-3:24, are discrete literary and theological units in the eyes of all leading modern interpreters of the Bible, whether they accept any of the classic formulations of the documentary hypothesis about the literary origins of the Pentateuch or not. Paul's claim that only the man was created in the image of God, or that the woman was created secondarily, cannot be gathered from the first story. There, the two genders of humanity are created by means of the speech of God at the same moment, and both are equally in God's image, "In the image of God created he him (=humanity' adam), Male and Female created he them (Gen. 1:27, cf. 5:1-2)."
Similarly, the second creation story does not lend itself to Paul's exegesis. The sequencing of the creation of man (is) and woman (issa) in Genesis does not speak to the subordination of women. At issue in this story are the unity and solidarity of the couple. They are made from one human being ( adam), and are bone of bones, flesh of flesh, woman fissa) from man (7s) (Gen. 2:33).
The usual appeal of modern subordinationists to the words "helpmeet" or "helpmate," supposedly in the KJV of his passage, is painfully mistaken. "Helpmeet" or "helpmate" do not occur in the KJV, but are neologisms resulting from an elementary misunderstanding of the archaic language of the KJV. "An help meet for him" (KJV Gen. 2:18, 20) simply means "a helper suitable or fitting for him," just as "it is not meet" means "it is not fitting."[28] The Hebrew expression here/ ezer kenegdd, means "a help fitting for, suitable for, or even, on par with, him," and does not carry the connotation of "servant" which the English word "helper" carries.
An element in the second creation story, though distinct from the issue of creation order, has generated the other New Testament theme used by subordinationism prooftexters, the transgression of Eve (1 Tim. 2:14; 2 Cor. 11:3). The story describes the defection of woman and man (in that order) from Yahweh, and the subsequent subordination of woman to man (Gen. 3:16-17). Significantly, however, this is an etiology for the social status of women in the author's culture, set parallel to the etiologies of snakes' locomotion and the antipathy of human beings to them, as well as to the difficulty of agriculture. As such, the etiology for the subordination of women here must be considered as descriptive rather than prescriptive. To think otherwise is to suggest that in a modern application, this text somehow not only prescribes the subordination of women, but also forbids anesthesia during childbirth (3:16) and the earning of a living in any manner except manual agriculture in weed-infested fields (3:17-19). In the second story, the subordination of woman is looked upon as a distortion of the created order resulting from humankind's alienation from Yahweh. Perhaps Paul is closer to the meaning of Genesis when he stresses that despite the subordination of women in the present system of things, "in Christ" there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:28).
2. The theological anthropology in these texts cannot be harmonized with standard LDS doctrine. When Paul argues for the head-covering rule, he does so on the basis that the man is the head, or source of being, of the woman, and that while man is the image and glory of God, woman is only the man's glory. This argument not only fails to adopt the relatively egalitarian perspective of the Genesis texts but also assumes many things most Latter-day Saints simply could not accept if they recognized them for what they are. Paul assumes that the very being of women is contingent upon that of men, while men's being is contingent upon the being of God. Although the idea of contingent being of humankind fits comfortably into much biblical theology and the theology of ex nihilo creation in mainstream Christianity, it is contrary (though perhaps not contradictory) to much of Mormonism's symbolic expression and teaching.[29] The idea that all human beings are "co-equal" in their eternity with God, or that "as man is, God once was; as God is now, man may become," simply cannot be harmonized with the ontology of human beings Paul uses as a central part of his reasoning here. These ideas might be allowed to stand under an uneasy truce within their own horizons of discourse. But the basic point is that Paul's idea cannot be reduced simplistically to a reflection of standard LDS understandings of "eternal principles."
Likewise, it seems to me that Mormons who profess to "believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression" would not want to speak of the transgression of Eve as justification for the denial of priesthood to women today, particularly when denial of priesthood to males today is ideally a function of personal worthiness. This is all the more the case in a religious tradition which tends to reinterpret the story in Genesis 3 from a symbolic narrative dealing with humankind's alienation from God and concomitant human suffering, to a celebration of the descent of premortally existent spirits into a physical state of moral trial and growth.
Although the subject of priesthood ordination for Mormon women is difficult and its discussion frequently emotional, many avenues of study can facilitate understanding of the basic issues. I have discussed one of these from a New Testament context that is often overlooked. Within the LDS tradition are other overlooked elements that should be studied more fully for the insights they provide. Women already perform priesthood ordinances upon one another during the initiatory ordinances in the temple. We have a concept of a Mother in Heaven who is as divine and exalted as is the Father. In our canonical LDS scriptures there is no actual prohibition of the ordination of women. In a more sociological context, it is now quite clear that the Church can be remarkably flexible once the general membership has been prepared by the Spirit to accept new revelation through the general leaders. Black males, after all, were given the priesthood in 1978 in the face of Book of Abraham texts ostensibly far more prohibitive than any texts in our scriptures that might conceivably be used to argue against the ordination of women. In early LDS history many of the ministries later associated exclusively with the ordained priesthood were commonly the duty and privilege of worthy female members. These include such ministries as anointing with oil for the healing of the sick, the giving of blessings by means of the laying on of hands,[30] and the independent administration of funds in organizations such as the Relief Society and the Primary. A clear understanding on our part of the early confusion in LDS doctrinal discourse between "ordination" and "setting apart" might serve as a corrective to elements of our male-centered doctrinal expressions today.
Much theological work needs to be done: more thought about an accurate definition of priesthood, and a careful description of women and priesthood in LDS history. In terms of the general joining together in LDS theology of concepts dealing with family and priesthood, careful attention to the sociology of family and priesthood in the Church is needed today. The dynamics of LDS biblical accommodation might be a fruitful area of investigation as well as the possible forms a revelation on this topic might take. Finally, and probably most important, a sensitive treatment of the question of gender stereotyping versus "androgyny" in terms of authentic LDS values and the formation of self-image among Latter-day Saints would help the discussion enormously. After all, conceptions of "priesthood" in D&C 121 seem to be the ideal of human service and leadership for females as well as males. (These concepts seem somewhat at variance with the hierarchial and institutional discourse generally used in attempts to defend the exclusion of women from the priesthood.)
In terms of the New Testament evidence, there is no reason to deny ordination to women; there are, instead, compelling reasons to recommend it. Yet the New Testament evidence is clearly not the only criterion which will be used to decide the issue. Since "we believe in the organization which existed in the primitive church," however, the evidence adduced here ought to encourage a thorough and self-searching investigation of the entire issue.
[1] Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 259.
[2] See, J. A. Widtsoe, Priesthood and Church Government in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1939; reprint, 1966), pp. 83-85, 87-89. Most of these paragraphs are Widtsoe's own or those of his wife Leah Widtsoe published originally in her book Priesthood and Womanhood); J. Reuben Clark, Jr., "Our Wives and our Mothers in the Eternal Plan," Relief Society Magazine 33/12 (Dec, 1946), pp. 795-804; Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, second ed. 1966) pp. 843-44, and Doctrinal New Testament Commentary (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1970) vol. 2: Acts-Philippians pp. 359-62; Rodney Turner, Woman and the Priesthood (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1972) pp. 279-307. Common among these authors is the idea that what "priesthood" is for males, "motherhood" is for females. The difficulty with the idea is obvious: "priesthood" is the antonym not of "motherhood," but rather of "non-priesthood." "Motherhood" is the antonym of "fatherhood." For a discussion of this, see: Michael T. Harward, "Priesthood and the Male Experience," Sunstone 6/5 (Sept./Oct., 1981) 45-49.
[3] For background in Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, see: Emily C. Hewitt and Suzanne R. Hiatt, Women Priests: Yes or No? (New York: Seabury, 1973); Marianne H. Micks and Charles P. Price, editors, Toward a New Theology of Ordination: Essays on the Ordination of Women (Sommerville, Mass.: Greeno, Hadden & Company, Ltd., 1976); Catholic Theological Society of America, A Report on the Status of Women in Church and Society: Considered in the Light of the Question of Women's Ordination (Mahwah, N.J.: Darlington Seminary, 1978); National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Theological Reflections on the Ordination of Women (Washington, D.C.: USCC, 1972); Carroll Stuhlmuehller, C.P., editor, Women and Priesthood: Future Directions (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1978); Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood," Origins 6 (February 3, 1977) 517-24; L. and A. Swidler, editors, Women Priests: A Catholic Commentary on the Vatican Declaration (New York: Paulist, 1977).
[4] The "do-it-yourself" nature of much LDS theological expression, coupled with ad hoc decision-making processes in the hierarchy complicate this because the issue of normative sources of doctrine is not as defined in LDS discussion as it is in the Anglican or Roman communions.
[5] See in particular Lumen Gentium sections 10-13, in The Documents of Vatican II with Notes and Comments by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Authorities, edit. Walter M. Abbot, S.J.; trans, ed. Joseph Gallagher (Chicago: Follet Publishing/Association Press, 1966) pp. 27-33.
[6] I borrow the term "laicized" from John Dillenberger, "Faith and Works in Martin Luther and Joseph Smith," in Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, edit. Truman G. Madsen (BYU Religious Studies Center Monograph Series 4; Provo, Utah: BYU Press, 1978), p. 178. The tensions in discourse caused when one applies normal biblical or even mainstream Christian terminologies to this "laicized" priesthood are not the only tensions present in LDS theologies when viewed in a larger Christian context. Many of the theological innovations of the Nauvoo period produce similar dislocations and tensions in LDS discourse about God when it attempts to appropriate from the biblical tradition formulations about the one-ness and otherness of God. This occurs precisely because Joseph Smith "democratized" many elements of biblical descriptions of divinity and applied them to human beings in general. Thus, John's gospel describes the premortal existence of Jesus as the divine word, whereas Smith describes all human beings as premortally existent. True godhood in the afterlife was similarly democratized. See Sterling McMurrin, The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion (Salt Lake City, Utah: Univ. of Utah Press, 1965), passim.
[7] Examples of this are found in two papers on the issue presented at the Sunstone Theological Symposium in August, 1981, by Cynthia Skousen Ellswood and Mark Gustavson. Also reflecting the tendency is the poem "Priesthood" by Lisa Bolin Hawkins, published in Linda Sillitoe's "New Voices, New Songs: Contemporary Poems by Mormon Women," Dialogue 13/4 (Winter, 1980) 47-61, as well as, perhaps, the article by M. T. Harward mentioned in note 2 above.
[8] See Roger Gryson, The Ministry of Women in the Early Church (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1976); John P. Meier, "On the Veiling of Hermeneutics (1 Cor. 11:2-16)," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 40/2 (April, 1978) 212-26; Pontifical Biblical Commission, "Can Women be Priests?" Origins 6 (July 1, 1976) 92-96; Catholic Biblical Association Taskforce on the Role of Women in Early Christianity, "Women and Priestly Ministry: The New Testament Evidence," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41/4 (October, 1979) 608-13; Elisabeth M. Tetlow, Women and Ministry in the New Testament (New York: Paulist, 1980). For a popularized treatment from an evangelical protestant feminist, see Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Women, Men & the Bible (Nashville: Abing don, 1977). I note my indebtedness to the C.B.A. taskforce report for parts of my own treatment here.
[9] I argued this position at length in my paper, "LDS Approaches to the Holy Bible," at the 1981 Sunstone Theological Symposium and forthcoming in Dialogue.
[10] See the section on LDS revelation and the propositional model of revelation in "LDS Approaches."
[11] For an excellent and popular discussion, see J. McKenzie, The Two Edged Sword: An Interpretation of the Old Testament (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1956) pp. 93-96.
[12] For an overview, see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Praeger, 1966) and Robert Alter, "A New Theory of Kashrut," Commentary 68/2 (August, 1979) 46-52.
[13] See Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology vol. I (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 93-102.
[14] A fourth is named and called a prophetess, but she is clearly not endorsed and would in LDS terminology be called a "false" one. See Nehemiah 6:14.
[15] The complex argument in Hebrews uses a midrash on Gen. 14:17-20 in a crucial section about the superiority of Christ's priesthood. The author combines Psalm 2:7 and Psalm 110:4 to argue that Christ, as God's son, though ineligible for the Levitical priesthood by lineage, possesses a priesthood "after the order of Melchizedek" (Heb. 5:6, cf. Ps 110:4), or "in the likeness of Melchizedek" (Heb. 7:15). Melchizedek, the Jebusite king mentioned in Gen. 14:17-20, is a prime candidate for such a comparison. The midrashic technique applied here assumes that if something is not in the text, it is not in the world. The technique therefore can note many parallels useful to the author's intent though appearing somewhat fanciful to modern readers. The lack of mention of Melchizedek's birth or death in the Old Testament parallels Jesus' uncertain priestly genealogy and the everlasting nature of his priesthood (Heb. 7:3). The mention of Melchizedek in Ps. 110 supports this parallel, for he here appears as an Old Testament figure with priesthood who was not a Levite. Ps. 2 and Ps. 110 were originally royal psalms referring to the historical kings of the Davidic dynasty in Judah. Because they expressed a profound religious hope and trust in the anointed Davidic king, they became easily adapted and associated with an ideal future scion of David's line when the dynasty became as corrupt as it is portrayed in the major prophets or the deuter- onomistic history. In that this scion as a Davidid would be anointed (rriasiah), he can rightly be called "messianic." With the abrupt collapse of the dynasty in 587, contrary as it was to the oracle of Nathan as expressed in 2 Sam. 7:8-16, the royal messianism of such psalms naturally became more and more associated with this future David, this Messiah. As priesthood in the exile appropriated the prerogatives of the now defunct institution of kingship, including apparently the anointing, there was speculation about future priestly figures with salvific power. Thus at Qumran, there is talk of two Messiahs, one kingly and one priestly. The New Testament writers could rightly and easily adopt and accommodate the royal psalms and apply them to Jesus, in whom they saw the fulfillment of hope for the Davidic and the priestly Messiah. The terminology "priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" in Psalm 110 probably was one of the royal titles used by the Davidic house, referring to priestly functions the king ultimately inherited from the native Jebusite priesthood of *el elyon when David established the Ark at Zion and made the city his capital. The author of Hebrews, however, understands the terminology as a reference to a priesthood to which Abraham paid tithes (N.B., in the Hebrew of Genesis 14, Melchizedek might be the one paying Abraham, not vice versa) outside of the Levitical lineage. The part of the titulature, or battery of titles, specifying the king as Yahweh's son (cf. 2 Sam. 7:14 and Isa. 9:5) is likewise accommodated by Hebrews and applied to Jesus as God's son.
This text clearly triggered the LDS revelation on the terminology for Mormonism's two-tiered priesthood: see D&C 68:15,19; 76:57; 107:3-4. Here again, democratization has occurred. The everlasting priesthood which is Christ's and his alone in Hebrews (remember that in the letter Melchizedek serves as a parallel and a typos for Christ, not as his competitor) has become the possession of every worthy male in the restored Church. For a complete discussion of the function of Melchizedek and his priesthood in Hebrews, see J. A. Fitzmyer, "'Now this Melchizedek . . . ' (Heb 7:1)," in Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament (SBLMS 5; Missoula, Montana: Scholars' Press, 1974) pp. 221-44.
[16] These texts are normally adduced by Roman Catholics and Anglicans when speaking of the "common" priesthood of all believers as opposed to the ordained ministerial priesthood. Note that the best manuscript readings of Apocalypse 1:6 refer not to "kings and priests to God," but to "a kingdom, priests to God." See notes 5 and 6 above.
[17] Some Latter-day Saints would object on two grounds. First, the old LDS missionary Bible "Ready References" provided many apparently excellent proofs of the claim that "ordination in the priesthood [was] recognized as essential by the [ancient] apostles," right from the New Testament! I reply simply that none of these prooftexts explicitly associate the Christian ministries with priesthood. Some (Acts 6:6; 13:3; I Tim. 4:14) refer to the inauguration of a ministry or the bestowal of a "gift" by the laying on of hands. Others (Acts 1:21-26; I Tim. 2:7) speak of the choosing, setting apart, or appointment ("ordination," without priestly overtones) of people into various ministries. But none refer to "priesthood" explicitly, and that is precisely the difficulty with these prooftexts. Even in the LDS tradition, it has become necessary to distinguish between ordination to the priesthood and setting apart for offices, though both these rituals are accomplished by the laying on of hands. Second, many Latter-day Saints would point to the restoration by John the Baptist, Peter, James, John and indeed, Jesus himself, of the priesthood to Joseph Smith, and argue that this restoration guarantees that Smith's understanding of priesthood reflects precisely how ancient Christians under the leadership of these men understood it. I reply that if Christians of the New Testament period understood priesthood in the same terms as modern Mormons do today, they did not express it so. It seems clear that Joseph Smith's own understanding of priesthood and ministry developed a great deal even after the innaugural visions restoring "priesthood." Despite constant conflation of Old Testament and New Testament conceptions of priesthood and ministries in the Book of Mormon, I think it is safe to say the early sections of the D&C do not contain all of the advanced priesthood theology of D&C 84 or D&C 107. The visions that Joseph Smith later in life apparently viewed as the "restoration of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods" were probably not conceived as precisely and defined as this at the time of the visions themselves. A careful study of the historical development of the prophet's own priesthood theology might well reveal that the seminal understandings provoked by the "restoration" appearances are in fact far closer to New Testament conceptions than are current LDS formulations about priesthood and ministries. See A. Bruce Lindgren, "The Development of the Latter Day Saint Doctrine of the Priesthood, 1829-1835," Courage 2:3 (Spring, 1972) 439-443.
[18] For discussion of the status of women in these cultures, see A. Oepke, "gyne," in G. Kittel, editor, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1964) vol. I, pp. 776-89, and Tetlow, pp. 5-29.
[19] The term apostolos, as a technical term in Christianity, carried a specific reference to a special witness to the resurrected Lord and as such probably is a post-resurrectional title. Both Matthew and Mark anachronistically read the term back into the life of the earthly Jesus only once each: Mark 6:30 and Matt. 10:2. Luke consistently conflates the idea of "apostle" with the "Twelve" (Luke 6:13; 9:10; 11:49; 17:5; 22:14; 24:10) and thus avoids throughout the Book of Acts calling Paul an apostle, except in Acts 14:4, 14 (where the use probably results not from Luke's theology, but from his slavish use of a source document—note that Luke's normal order "Paul and Barnabas" is in this chapter alone inverted to "Barnabas and Paul"). See Raymond E. Brown, "The Twelve and the Apostolate," paragraphs 160-82 in "Aspects of New Testament Thought," section 78 in R. E. Brown, et ah, editors, The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968).
[20] Luke's use of the word aner (man, as opposed to woman) rather than anthropos (man, as opposed to beast, i.e., a human being of either gender) is to my mind not significant. Here, as elsewhere, Luke's androcentric culture has colored his expression, and he does not seem to be formulating a specific response to the question of gender and apostleship.
[21] See Gryson, pp. 3-5.
[22] Oepke, p. 787.
[23] See B. Brooten, '"Jiinia . . . Outstanding Among the Apostles' (Romans 16:7)," in L. and A. Swidler, editors, Women Priests (New York: Paulist, 1977) p. 142; M. J. Lagrange, Epitre aux Romains (Paris: Gabalda, 1950) p. 366.
[24] See Joseph Fitzmyer, "Qumran Angelology and I Cor 11:10," in Essays on the Semitic Background, pp. 187-204, for a full discussion of the passage and an excellent bibliography.
[25] Thus Bruce R. McConkie, Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, Vol. II, pp. 360-61.
[26] This objection's fundamentalist concern for the inerrant, unchanging and propositional truth of current church dogma entails serious theological difficulties in terms of LDS faith and our own experience as a people of continuing revelation. See "LDS Approaches" for a fuller discussion of these problems.
[27] The term kephale, as used here by Paul, is far richer than the normal meaning attributed to the English word "head." It is not merely "boss" or "administrative head." It carries ontological connotations and could well be translated as "source" or "origin" were it not for the play on words Paul intends by using the term in a discussion about veils. It is thus that most modern commentators construe the word. See, e.g., H. Schleier, "kephale," in Kittel, Theological Dictionary, Vol. 3, p. 679; also H. Conzelmann, / Corinthians (Hermeneia: Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975) p. 181.
[28] See "helpmeet" and "helpmate" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
[29] See McMurrin, Theological Foundations, passim.
[30] See Linda King Newell, "A Gift Given: A Gift Taken—Washing, Anointing, and Blessing the Sick Among Mormon Women," Sunstone 6/5 (Sept./Oct., 1981) 16-25.
[post_title] => Women and Ordination: Introduction to the Biblical Context [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 60–69THE QUESTION of whether worthy women could be or ought to be ordained to the LDS priesthood has not, until recently, been considered seriously in the LDS community. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => women-and-ordination-introduction-to-the-biblical-context [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 01:57:16 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 01:57:16 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16395 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Women and Priesthood
Nadine Hansen
Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 48–59
I smiled wryly at the cartoon on the stationery. The picture showed a woman standing before an all-male ecclesiastical board and asking, “Are you trying to tell me that God is not an equal opportunity employer?” I thought to myself, “Yes, that is precisely what women have been told for centuries.”
I smiled wryly at the cartoon on the stationery. The picture showed a woman standing before an all-male ecclesiastical board and asking, "Are you trying to tell me that God is not an equal opportunity employer?" I thought to myself, "Yes, that is precisely what women have been told for centuries." In fact, we have been assured of it for so long that until recently it was almost unthinkable to question the situation. I thought too of the times I had been asked by LDS women, in whispered tones, "How do you feel about women holding the priesthood?" It is a question which has hardly been raised except in whispers among Mormons, let alone treated with enough respect to warrant serious consideration. When a non-LDS reporter asked President Kimball about the possibility of ordaining women, the reply was "impossible."[1] Members of the Church generally regard this response as adequate and definitive. I perceive, however, dissatisfaction among Mormon women over the rigidly defined "role" church authorities consistently articulate for women. This dissatisfaction has been noticeably manifested in such developments as the heightened interest in the less-traditional women role models in Mormon history, in the establishment of Exponent II on "the dual platforms of Mormonism and feminism"[2] and in the renewed interest in developing an understanding of the nature of our Heavenly Mother.[3] As we rethink our traditional place in the Church and society, we will almost inevitably kindle discussion of the ordination of women.
Although the question of ordaining women is a new one for Mormons, it is not so new to Christendom. It has been widely, and sometimes hotly, debated for more than a decade. Christian feminists are taking a new look at scripture, and have found support for women's ordination—support which has always been there, but which until recently was unnoticed. Books and articles on the subject have proliferated.
The early Christian church had its beginnings in a culture that was deeply biased against women. Rabbinic teachings, developed during the post-exilic centuries when Judaism was fighting to maintain its cultural and religious identity, often emphasized the strictest interpretations of the Torah. Women were subordinate to their husbands, were not allowed to be witnesses in court, were denied education and were restricted in religious practices. One rabbi, Eliezer, (reportedly expressing a minority view) went so far as to teach, "Whosover teaches his daughter the Torah teaches her lasciviousness."[4] Eve, of course, was blamed for the fact that man was no longer in a state of immortality and happiness, and devout male Jews prayed daily, "Blessed be God, King of the universe, for not making me a woman."[5] All in all, women at the time of Jesus were more restricted than were women in the Old Testament. Yet early Christianity saw a brief flowering of new opportunities for women as new religious patterns cut across the deepest class divisions of the society—race, condition of servitude and sex. Wrote Paul, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3:28)
Many scholars now believe that women in this new religious community were permitted a broader participation than we generally acknowledge today. In fact, some New Testament passages refer to women in terms which indicate that the women were ecclesiastical leaders, although this meaning has been obscured by the way the passages are translated into English. Phoebe of Romans 16:1-2 was a woman of considerable responsibility within her religious community. Junia of Romans 16:7 is believed by many scholars to refer to a woman apostle. Indeed a Roman Catholic task force of prominent biblical scholars recently concluded,
An examination of the biblical evidence shows the following: that there is positive evidence in the NT that ministries were shared by various groups and that women did in fact exercise roles and functions later associated with priestly ministry; that the arguments against the admission of women to priestly ministry based on the praxis of Jesus and the apostles, disciplinary regulations, and the created order cannot be sustained. The conclusion we draw, then, is that the NT evidence, while not decisive by itself, points toward the admission of women to priestly ministry.[6]
It is not in the New Testament alone that we can find precedents for a broader religious participation for women. The Old Testament also tells us of women who rose to prominence, despite the obstacles they faced as women in a culture which restricted them in many serious ways.[7] Deborah and Huldah were prophetesses (Judges 4, 2 Kings 22), but these women have rarely been held up as examples for LDS women to emulate. In fact, their existence as prophetesses is problematic to official Mormon commentators. The Bible Dictionary in the new Church-published Bible lists Deborah simply as "a famous woman who judged Israel. . ." with not a single word about her being a prophetess. Last year's Sunday School manual is even more judgmental. It expressly states, "Deborah is described as a 'prophetess' evidently because of her great righteousness and faith. However, she was not in any way a religious leader, for such is contrary to God's order and organization." The student is referred to Luke 2:36-38 and Acts 21:8-9, both of which tell of prophetesses who fit more neatly into Mormon notions about how women can be prophetesses.[8] Huldah, whose influential prophecies both proved correct and were twice accompanied by "Thus saith the Lord," was omitted completely in the new LDS Bible Dictionary![9]
By the standards of today's Mormon writers, the concept that a woman could be a prophetess—not in the limited sense of receiving personal revelation for herself and children or church calling, but rather for all God's people—is apparently unimaginable. Even though the Bible tells us very plainly of these women's activities, they have still been overlooked and their prophetic ministries have been discounted. If this can occur at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore women's contributions to the Kingdom of God, it should come as no surprise to us that only the most remarkable of women would find their way into ancient scriptures. One might wonder how many other accomplished women were omitted.
Probably the most commonly cited justifications for assigning a subordinate role to women (and therefore excluding them from priesthood) are found in the writings of Paul. His ideas about women do not bear directly on women's ordination, since it would be possible for women to be priesthood bearers and to perform priesthood ordinances (such as administering the Sacrament, baptizing, blessing the sick, etc.) while still occupying a subordinate position in the home and church. Nevertheless, it is important to discuss briefly a few of Paul's statements since they have had such a profound impact on Christian thinking and continue to be invoked to define what is and what is not "proper" behavior for women.
It should be noted that some of the more restrictive passages about women appear in 1 Timothy and Ephesians, epistles whose Pauline authorship is in question among biblical scholars.[10] Mormons have generally not made distinctions between Pauline and pseudo-Pauline writings. Indeed the new Bible Dictionary does not hint at the controversy over authorship, and in fact goes so far as to assign Hebrews to Paul, although Hebrews itself makes no such claim.
Mormons have been highly selective in accepting and rejecting the teachings of Paul. On the one hand we have rejected his counsel on such matters as celibacy (I Cor. 7:8-9), on women speaking and teaching in church (I Cor. 14:34-35,1 Tim. 2:11-12), and on women wearing headcoverings while praying or prophesying (I Cor. 11:5). On the other hand, we have uncompromisingly accepted the idea of women's subordinate place in marriage (Eph. 5:22-24,1 Cor. 11:3), and have extended this subordination to the Church as well. This inconsistency stems, I believe, from a far too literal application of the epistolary understanding of the stories of the creation and fall. That is, a few passages in the epistles attempt to justify women's subordination by explaining that Eve was created after Adam and for his benefit (I Tim. 2:13, I Cor. 11:7, 9), and that she was the first to "fall," (I Tim. 2:14) thereby causing all women to be required to be subordinate to their husbands. We have taken this reasoning literally but have applied it selectively, rejecting part of the resulting counsel as culturally motivated while accepting part of it as eternal truth. We therefore permit (in fact, encourage) women to speak and teach in church (culture now permits that). But in doing so, women must remain subordinate to men (eternal proper order).
When Paul relies on creation order for his ordering of the male-female hierarchy, he alludes to the creation story in Genesis 2. In this story Adam is created first, then Eve. In contrast, the Genesis 1 story[11] relates that there was simultaneous creation of male and female in the image of God. Many Mormons view the Genesis 1 creation story as spiritual creation and the Genesis 2 account as temporal creation,[12] thus seeing the two stories as separate events, rather than as contradictory stories about the same event. Even so, the "temporal" account of creation, as understood by Mormons need not provide a pattern of dominance and submission, since it is understood to be allegorical, not literal. Just how much literalism should be applied to the scriptural account is a question which has not, as far as I know, been conclusively stated. President Kimball has said that the story of the rib is "of course, figurative"[13] and has also suggested that husbands should "preside" rather than "rule."[14] In addition, he has stated that "distress" for women at the time of childbirth would be more correct than "sorrow."[15] Although these changes in wording are few, they significantly alter the meaning of the text. If the significance is not immediately apparent, it is probably because our frame of reference is such that this new preferred wording reflects the changes which have already occurred in our thinking and in our marriages. If we could look at these changes from a broader historical vantage point (from the vantage point of the first century, A.D., perhaps), we would see them as a major step toward more egalitarian relationships. That this sort of re-evaluation of the meaning of the stories can occur is evidence that the stories are not prescriptions for what must always be. As the facts about the way we live and think change and progress, so will our understanding of these scriptures.
Another Pauline argument for the subordination of women to men— "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression"—is more problematic to Mormon theology, since Mormons view the fall as an event which was both necessary and desirable for the progress of Adam and Eve and the entire human family, while simultaneously viewing it as a transgression which merited punishment. The story contains a double message which is difficult to explain in any way consistent with other aspects of Mormon theology. If, as Paul claims, Eve was truly deceived and Adam was not, then why should Eve's punishment be greater than Adam's? Should not the punishment be greater for one who knowingly disobeys than for one who is "deceived"? If, on the other hand, Eve was not deceived, but rather fell intentionally as some Mormon leaders have claimed,[16] in order to bring about the necessary condition of mortality and knowledge of good and evil, then why is she punished more severely than Adam, who enters mortality only after she urges him to do so? Mormon writings and sermons are replete with accolades to our first parents for their willingness to "fall",[17] yet Eve is placed in a subordinate position to Adam for being the first to do that which she was sent to earth to do. Moreover, Mormon belief holds that "men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam's transgression,”[18] yet all women are expected to give due submission to their husbands on account of Eve's transgression, an act over which no other woman has any control.
It would probably be more honest to admit that in Mormon theology creation order and the fall have little to do with women's position in marriage and in the Church. Paul's statements on the subject serve as effective arguments for maintaining the status quo, but they are not at the root of the role designations of subordination for women and superordination for men. The real root of this hierarchical ordering, it seems to me, is the Mormon concept of man's, and woman's, ultimate destiny. Under this concept, woman is not subordinate to man because of creation order and the fall, but because God is male and because only men can become like God. Although it has become fashionable to give verbal affirmation to the equality of the sexes, and even to the eternal equality of the sexes,[19] the fact is that our present-day concepts of heaven and eternal progression grew out of a theology which did not encompass any such egalitarian belief. For example, Orson Pratt said, "The Father of our spirit is the head of His household, and His wives and children are required to yield the most perfect obedience to their great Head."[20] Today's church leaders have said little about our Heavenly Mother's relationship to Heavenly Father and have not, to my knowledge, indicated whether or not they would agree with Orson Pratt. But until we begin to see our ultimate destiny as a genuine equal partnership, we will likely find it impossible to believe that women and men are inherently equal, and we will persist in using Pauline discourses about women to buttress our view that men are divinely designated to be eternal leaders, while women are divinely designated to be eternal followers. In a circular pattern of thinking, our concept of the heavens could continue to prevent us from allowing women to be leaders on earth, while the lack of women leaders on earth continues to cause us to project our earth-view into the heavens.
During the past several thousand years the established pattern of who was authorized to act for God has varied significantly. It is possible to look at the circumstances of priesthood bearers from the time of Moses and see a pattern of expanding authorization. The time of Moses was a period of restrictiveness, in which priesthood was limited to only one tribe of the House of Israel, the Levites. Christ widened the circle to include the Jews. Following Christ's death and resurrection, the circle expanded to include Gentiles (including, seemingly, some women). Some ground was lost between then and the Restoration, but since the beginning of the Church all men, except those of Negro ancestry, have been priesthood bearers. Then, in 1978, the circle expanded again to include all worthy males. Only women remain excluded. Perhaps the time is near when the circle can be widened again to include us all.
There are undoubtedly many women who prefer to remain excluded. They feel they enjoy all the blessings of the priesthood, while being free from its responsibilities. But the rising expectations of women today are causing many of us to re-examine our feelings about the strict role assignments that have circumscribed us, compartmentalized us, and divided us, male and female. I have often thought that those who feel women are not deprived by their exclusion from priesthood have not given much thought to how much women are denied by the exclusion. Filling important church offices is a great responsibility to be sure. But it is also a great opportunity for growth. Because women are denied priesthood, they are also denied this opportunity. In addition, they are denied the opportunity to be part of the ongoing decision making process in our wards, our stakes, our Church. In everything from deciding who will fill church callings to deciding where and when to purchase property, women are regularly asked to sustain decisions which have been made by men, but they are given little opportunity to influence those decisions before they are made. Often these decisions have a very great impact on women, as is the case when undertakings involving large time or financial commitments are openly discussed in priesthood meeting, yet women are generally not consulted about them.
Many women felt dismayed by the loss of autonomy they experienced when the Relief Society was "correlated," losing its magazine and the opportunity to raise and manage its own funds. Yet even though women were the ones most affected by these changes, they were not permitted to make the decision about how the Relief Society would be structured. The decision was made for them. By men.[21] Hierarchical decision-making might well continue to cause dismay and dissent if women filled all church leadership positions on an equal basis with men. But the chances of decisions being made which adversely affected women—such as the one a few years ago to deny women the opportunity to offer prayers in sacrament meeting—would be lessened, because women would be more likely than men, even well-meaning men, to be aware of how any given decision would affect other women. It is a simple matter of common experience.
Having an all-male priesthood affects our attitudes toward women and men much more deeply than we realize. Many people sincerely believe that granting priesthood to men while denying it to women in no way influences their egalitarian ideals. But would we still feel the same if instead of an all male priesthood, we had an all-female priesthood?
How would we feel if every leadership position (except those relating directly to men and children) were filled by a woman? If every significant problem had to be resolved by women? If every woman and every man who needed counselling from a spiritual leader had to be counselled by a woman? How would we feel if every member of the stake high council were a woman? If each month we received a message in sacrament meeting from a high councilwoman? If the presiding officer in all church meetings were a woman? If church courts were all held by women? How would we feel if we could ordain our twelve-year-old daughters, but not our sons? If each week our daughters blessed and passed the Sacrament? If our young women were encouraged to go on missions, and our young men permitted to go only if they were older than our young women? If in the mission field all zone and district leaders were young women, to whom slightly older young men had to report? If our brother missionaries could teach investigators but were denied the privilege of baptizing and confirming them? How would we feel if only mothers could bless, baptize and confirm their children? If men did most of the teaching of children, and women filled nearly all ward executive positions? If women addressed the annual men's general meeting of the Church, to instruct them in how to best fill their role as men? Would men in this situation still be so sure that in the Church, men and women are equal, even though the men have a different role?
Before June 1978, we all readily understood that the denial of priesthood to black men was a serious deprivation. Singling out one race of men for priesthood exclusion was easily recognized as injustice, and most of us were deeply gratified to see that injustice removed by revelation. But somehow it is much more difficult for many people to see denial of priesthood to women as a similar injustice. The revelation on behalf of black men apparently came in response to the heartfelt concern of church leaders for their brothers, a concern which moved them to "plead long and earnestly in behalf of these, our faithful brethren, spending many hours in the Upper Room of the Temple supplicating the Lord for divine guidance."[22] It was only after these "many hours" of prayer that the revelation came. I long for the day when similar empathy can be evoked on behalf of our faithful sisters.
There can be little question about women's abilities to fill priesthood assignments and perform priesthood ordinances. Women are functioning as ecclesiastical leaders in many faiths and are finding themselves to be equal to the challenges. Even in our own culture and faith, women have demonstrated their abilities to heal the sick and pronounce prophetic blessings, functions which have come to be strictly associated with priesthood.[23] And although there is no precedent within the Church for general ordination of women, there is a limited authority conferred upon women temple workers, who perform temple ordinances for women. Donna Hill has noted:
Traditionally, the Mormon priesthood has been reserved for males, but there may be reason to speculate whether some form of it was intended for females. Heber C. Kimball, in his journal entry for February 1,1844, said that he and Vilate were anointed priest and priestess 'unto our god under the hands of B. Young and by the ways of the Holy Order.' The significance of the ordination is not made known. Benjamin Winchester in his Personal Narrative wrote that Joseph promised his sister Lucy Smith that he would make her a priestess and the highest woman in trie church if she would accept polygamy, but she refused.[24]
The Kimball journal entry could be a reference to temple ordinances, but the Winchester statement sounds like Joseph Smith may have had something different in mind. Certain aspects of our belief system support the idea of ordination of women, such as the fact that we believe women "will become priestesses and queens in the kingdom of God, and that implies that they will be given authority."[25]
It is my hope that we will not become entrenched in an absolutist position which precludes the possibility of dialogue and change on this issue. I am reminded of the absoluteness of terms with which the policy of denial of priesthood to black men was defended,[26] and I wonder, if we had not been so adamantly certain that the Negro doctrine could never change, might it have changed sooner than it did? What part do we, the membership, play in change? Does our readiness to accept change influence its timing?
The subject of women having priesthood will almost certainly become a topic of discussion in the future. Already missionaries in the United States are being faced with questions about why women are not ordained. I have had several female, nonmember acquaintances express—unsolicited—what one woman put very succinctly: "Some of your missionaries knocked on my door the other day. I told them to come back when Mormon women could be priests." For many of us, if not most of us, equality of the sexes has entered into our consciousness as a correct principle. We may not yet fully believe that women and men are equal, but at least we believe that we should believe it. As we come to accept this principle more fully, the inevitable question arises: why should maleness be the ultimate determiner of who shall be authorized to act in the name of God?
Men and women alike rightly consider the priesthood to be a great gift from God, and the right to bear the priesthood to be a special honor, an honor which is denied to women. If the day comes—and I believe it will—when women and men alike will be bearers of both the blessings and burdens of the priesthood, the artificial barriers of dominance and submission, power and manipulation, which sometimes strain our male-female relationships will lessen, and we will all be freer to choose our own paths and roles. In Christian unity we will go forward together, with power to bless our own lives and the lives of others, and with opportunity for a fuller, richer spiritual life and participation for all the children of God.
[1] “Mormonism Enters a New Era," Time, Vol. 112 (August 7, 1978), p. 56.
[2] Claudia L. Bushman, "Exponent II Is Born," Exponent II, Vol. 1 (July, 1974), p. 2.
[3] This interest in evidenced by the recent surge in writing about Mother in Heaven. Papers dealing with the subject have been presented at the last two Sunstone Theological Symposiums. Linda Wilcox, in her paper, "The Mormon Concept of a Mother in Heaven," (published in the September-October, 1980 issue of Sunstone) observed that there "is an increasing awareness of and attention to the idea [of Mother in Heaven] at the grass-roots level in the Church." She noted that one of the judges for the Eliza R. Snow Poetry Contest said that that year (1980) was the first year in which there were several poems submitted about Mother in Heaven. Linda Sillitoe has made a similar observation. In an article about Mormon women's poetry Sillitoe wrote, "I suspect that more poems to or about our Mother in Heaven have been written in the last year or so by Mormon women than in all the years since Eliza R. Snow penned 'Our Eternal Mother and Father,' later retitled 'Oh My Father.'" (See Linda Sillitoe, "New Voices, New Songs: Contemporary Poems by Mormon Women," Dialogue, Vol. 13 (Winter, 1980), p. 58.) In addition I have noticed what seems to be an increase in references to Mother in Heaven by individuals speaking from the pulpit in church services.
[4] Encyclopaedia Judaica, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971, Vol. 16, p. 626. See also Elisabeth M. Tetlow, Women and Ministry in the New Testament, New York: Paulist Press, 1980, pp. 20-24.
[5] Judith Hauptman, "Images of Women in the Talmud, "Religion and Sexism, Rosemary Radford Ruether, ed., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974, p. 196. Hauptman argues that this prayer should not arouse the feminist ire it has provoked. She says that it sounds worse out of its context than it actually is, and that it simply "expresses a man's gratitude for being created male, and therefore for having more opportunities to fulfill divine commandments than do women, who are exempted from a good many." For women seeking a broader range of participation within their religious communities, this argument would seem to confirm precisely the point they are attempting to make about the exclusiveness of those communities.
[6] The Task Force of the Executive Board of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, "Women and Priestly Ministry: The New Testament Evidence," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vo. 41,1979, pp. 612-13. The Task Force was formed by the Executive Board "to study and report on the Role of Women in Early Christianity.
[7] Included in the restrictions placed upon women in the Old Testament were those which were imposed on them during and after menstruation and following childbirth. Women were "unclean" during menstruation and for a week following their menstrual periods. During this time they defiled everyone they touched and everything they sat or lay on. (Lev. 15:19-30). Following childbirth they were unclean, and the uncleanness lasted twice as long following the birth of a female child as it did following the birth of a male child. (Lev. 12:1-8). If a man suspected his wife of unfaithfulness, he could cause her to go through a trial by ordeal to determine her guilt or innocence (Num. 5: 12-31). Moreover, women are listed among a man's other articles of property as objects which are not to be coveted (Exo. 20:17).
[8] Old Testament Part I—Gospel Doctrine Teachers Supplement, Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1980, p. 163. These prophetesses include Anna, an elderly woman at the time of Jesus' birth, whose prophecy was that of bearing her testimony about Jesus "to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." (Luke 2:36-38). The Bible also identifies Miriam (the sister of Moses) as a prophetess. The Dictionary lists Miriam, but does not indicate that she was a prophetess.
[9] The old Cambridge Bible Dictionary, on which the new one is based, did list Huldah, stating that she was "a prophetess in Jerusalem in the time of Josiah." Thus the omission is not accidental. Likewise in the case of Deborah, the old Dictionary listed her as a prophetess.
[10] Many biblical scholars have dealt with the issue of authorship. One good source for readers who wish to have a better understanding of this issue is The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, Charles M. Laymon, ed., Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971, pp. 834-5 and p. 883.
[11] Most biblical scholars see the two creation stories as stories which were handed down through two separate sources, the priestly source in which Elohim is the Creator, and the Yahwist source in which Yahweh is the Creator. See Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975 (Third Edition), pp. 211-213 and 426-436. Note that in the KJV, Genesis 1 says "God" was the creator, while Genesis 2 refers to "the LORD God" (with Lord in small capital letters). "God" has been used in place of "Elohim" while LORD God is used in place of Yahweh.
[12] B.H. Roberts, however, speculated that there had actually been two creations on earth. This was tied to his theory that there were pre-Adamites, who were destroyed before Adam and Eve were placed on the earth. See Richard Sherlock, "The Roberts/Smith/Talmage Affair," Dialogue, Vol. XIII, No. 3 (Fall, 1980), pp. 65-6.
[13] Woman, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1979, p. 80.
[14] Ibid., p. 83.
[15] Ibid.
[16] John A. Widtsoe, Rational Theology as Taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1965, p. 51. Widtsoe says, "The fall was a deliberate use of a law, by which Adam and Eve became mortal, and could beget mortal children. . . .The Bible account is, undoubtedly, only figurative."
[17] For example, see Bruce R. McConkie, "Eve and the Fall," Woman, pp. 57-68.
[18] Second Article of Faith.
[19] For example, President Kimball has said, "We had full equality as God's spirit children. We have equality as recipients of God's perfected love for each of us." Spencer W. Kimball, "The Role of Righteous Women," The Ensign, Vol. 9 (November 1979), p. 102.
[20] Cited in Linda Wilcox, op. at, p. 14. From Orson Pratt, The Seer 1 (October 1853), p. 159.
[21] Many women may have barely noticed the changes which occurred in the Relief Society in 1969-70, but others resented them. See Marilyn Warenski, Patriarchs and Politics, the Plight of the Mormon Woman, San Francisco: McGraw-Hill, 1980, p. 138-9.
[22] D. & C. Official Declaration 2.
[23] Carol Lynn Pearson, Daughters of Light, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1973, especially chapters 3,5, and 6. See also Mormon Sisters, Claudia L. Bushman, ed., Salt Lake City: Olympus Publishing Co., 1976, especially chapter 1.
[24] Donna Hill, Joseph Smith, The First Mormon, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977, p. 484. The statement continues, "See Winchester in the collection of Charles Woodward, First Half Century of Mormonism, NYPL. I do not know of any corroboration of Winchester's statement."
[25] Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, Vol. 3, (Bruce R. McConkie, compiler), Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1956, p. 178.
[26] Brigham Young taught, "When all the other children of Adam have had the privilege of receiving the Priesthood, and of coming into the kingdom of God, and of being redeemed from the four quarters of the earth, and have received their resurrection from the dead, then it will be time enough to remove the curse from Cain and his posterity. QD 2, p. 143) This, and similar statements have been reiterated in such works as Joseph Fielding Smith, The Way to Perfection, Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1958, p. 106 and in John L. Lund, The Church and the Negro, 1967, pp. 45-49.
[post_title] => Women and Priesthood [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 48–59I smiled wryly at the cartoon on the stationery. The picture showed a woman standing before an all-male ecclesiastical board and asking, “Are you trying to tell me that God is not an equal opportunity employer?” I thought to myself, “Yes, that is precisely what women have been told for centuries.” [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => women-and-priesthood [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 13:51:09 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 13:51:09 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16394 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Mormon Women and the Struggle for Definition
Carol Cornwall Madsen
Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 40–47
I am sensitive to that steadying hand as I attempt to identify and define what for an earlier generation of women identified and defined them as women—their relationship to the Church.
Ever since I began studying and writing about the life of Emmeline B. Wells, which will be a life's work for me, I have felt her steadying hand on my shoulder reminding me of the caution she once gave to those who shared their deepest confidences with one another:
How utterly unable we are, to judge one another, none of us being constituted exactly alike; how can we define each other's sentiments truly, how discriminate fairly and justly in those peculiarly nice points of distinction which are determined by the emotions agitating the human heart in its variety of phases, or under, perhaps, exceptional circumstances?[1]
I am sensitive to that steadying hand as I attempt to identify and define what for an earlier generation of women identified and defined them as women—their relationship to the Church. The individual variables, including the level of commitment and the extent to which any individual allows an institution to affect his or her life, impede the process of generalizing. Moreover, the deeply personal nature of religious conviction almost defies a corporate assessment, yet I will attempt to do just that, hoping I will not misplace Emmeline's trust that private thoughts and feelings and the diversity of sentiment and opinion will not be misjudged or misinterpreted. The generalizations I will make cannot possibly be all inclusive. I hope they will be instructive.
I would like to concentrate on three aspects of the religious life of early Mormon women which I think helped them define and understand themselves and their place within both the theology and the institution of Mormonism. All had their beginnings in the Nauvoo period when women emerged as a visible, collective entity through the organization of the Relief Society. Most members today are familiar with what has become a symbol of that organization's beginning—Joseph giving the key to women. According to Eliza R. Snow's minutes, Joseph turned the key to women, not in behalf of women, as we generally hear, and told them that knowledge and intelligence would flow down from that time forth. "This," he said, "would be the beginning of better days for this society,”[2]
For many, that symbolic gesture signaled the opening of a new dispensation for women, not only Mormon, but all women. Summing up this interpretation of those significant words, Apostle Orson F. Whitney explained:
[The Prophet Joseph] taught that the sisters were to act with the brethren, to stand side by side with them, and to enjoy the benefits and blessings of the priesthood, the delegated authority of God.
The lifting of the women of Zion to that plane, was the beginning of a work for the elevation of womankind throughout the world. "I have turned the key," said the Prophet on that historic occasion, and from what has since taken place we are justified in believing that the words were big with fate. . . .
The turning of the key by the Prophet of God, and the setting up in this Church, of women's organizations, [were] signs of a new era, one of those sunbursts of light that proclaim the dawning of a new dispensation.[3]
While the organization of the Relief Society in Nauvoo marked the beginning of a specified collective role for women in the Church, Mormon women in Kirtland had already informally organized to contribute in material ways to the building of the Kirtland Temple. Working in unity with the brethren of the Church in that venture and receiving the Prophet Joseph's commendation for the liberality of their services, many were understandably disappointed to learn that they would not be permitted to participate in the ordinances performed in that temple. That privilege would come later in Nauvoo.
The organization of the Relief Society came about from the same voluntary effort of women during the construction of the Nauvoo Temple. Sarah Kimball's suggestion that a female benevolent society be organized for this purpose, however, was met by Joseph's statement that he had something better for them. Explaining that the Church was not fully organized until the women were, he told them that "he was glad to have the opportunity of organizing the women, as a part of the priesthood belonged to them."[4]
From the beginning, Relief Society members perceived their organization as distinctive from the ladies aid and benevolent societies that were flourishing elsewhere. Formed "after the pattern of the priesthood," it had been "organized according to the law of heaven," explained John Taylor, present at its inception.[5] In an address to the sisters, Elder Reynolds Cahoon elaborated this idea: "There are many Benevolent Societies abroad designed to do good/' he told them, "but not as this. Ours is according to the order of God, connected with the priesthood, according to the same good principles. Knowledge will grow out of it."[6] Thus empowered, the women of Nauvoo assumed their assigned tasks to relieve the poor, watch over the morals of the community and save souls. Membership burgeoned.
In the years that followed the re-establishment of the Relief Society in the Salt Lake Valley, its potential as a parallel force with the priesthood in building the kingdom blossomed. Eliza R. Snow, by appointment of Brigham Young, directed the affairs of the society throughout the territory, organizing and assisting the various units to meet the needs of the community which Brigham Young had outlined. But while the impetus for organization this time originated with the Prophet, the women planned, developed and implemented many of the specific economic, community, educational and religious programs that came to be their share of kingdom building. There was wide latitude in their stewardship. While the broad purposes were the same for all, no two units functioned exactly alike, each devising a meeting schedule, course of study and economic and charitable programs to fit the needs and resources of its particular community. There was ample room for innovation and leadership on both the local and general level in the initial stages of the Relief Society.
Conflicts between Relief Society programs and ward plans were to be resolved according to the bishop's wishes. "We will do as we are directed by the priesthood," Eliza told one inquiring Relief Society president, this message becoming her major theme.[7] Nevertheless, there were resources which women could employ in their need for cooperation. As Eliza reminded a Relief Society in Cache Valley, "We are accredited with great persuasive powers and we can use them on the Brethren."[8]
With the exception of Emma Smith, Eliza R. Snow was unique among women leaders in the Church. She not only held the position of "Presidentess of all Mormon women's organizations," indeed of all Mormon women, she was also the wife of the living prophet. As Maureen Beecher has described, she was the "chief disseminator of the religion to the women of the Church," and conversely, we might add, their advocate with the Prophet. No minutes exist of the conferences between Eliza and Brigham, but it is certain that Eliza's respect for the priesthood and her obedience to authority did not deter her from vigorously representing the interests of the women of Zion in that unique council of two. Always announcing new assignments or programs as having been advised or suggested by President Young (though we cannot be certain who originated them), she was able, by this means, to instruct women to yield the same obedience to authority she exemplified and also to provide an authoritative base for the programs she directed.
The interconnection of priesthood and Relief Society first enunciated by the Prophet Joseph was continually reinforced by later church presidents. "Let male and female operate together in the one great common cause," John Taylor told a conference audience.[9] Wilford Woodruff confirmed this mutual labor: "The responsibilities of building up this kingdom rest alike upon the man and the woman."[10] Lorenzo Snow exhorted the sisters to take an interest in their societies for they were "of great importance. Without them," he repeated, "the Church could not be fully organized."[11] Presiding Bishop Edward Hunter expanded the words of Joseph to the sisters. "They have saved much suffering," he said, "and have been a great help to the bishops. They have the priesthood—a portion of the priesthood rests upon the sisters."[12] The Relief Society did not consider itself just a ladies' auxiliary.
Through it the women of the Church had been given a vehicle by which their voices could be heard, their capabilities utilized, their contributions valued.
In the process of organizing the women into the structure of the Church, Joseph opened other significant avenues of participation. At the 28 April 1842 meeting, he affirmed their right to use spiritual gifts, which were freely exercised in the early days of the Church. The gift of tongues had rested on many of the sisters of the Church since its beginning, and others had testified to receiving the power to rebuke evil spirits and to prophesy. At issue at this particular meeting in Nauvoo was the right of women to lay on hands for the purpose of healing. Some were ordained for this purpose, Joseph explained to the Relief Society women, but, he assured them, anybody could do it who had the faith or if the sick had the faith to be healed by that administration.[13] These were gifts of the spirit, he told them, designated to follow all believers. They were gifts of faith given to the faithful, irrespective of gender or age. One member of the General Retrenchment Association described her own healing at the hands of her young son whose "perfect and pure faith in the power and mercies of God had claimed for her the blessings which he asked in childish simplicity and trust."[14]
Again, Eliza was to lead as the practice of blessing one another through laying on of hands and washing and anointing developed among the sisters. She not only encouraged the use of these spiritual activities but taught women the proper procedure. In a directive to the Relief Society in 1884 she reminded the sisters that no special setting apart was necessary for these administrations. "Any and all sisters," she said,
who honor their holy covenants, not only have the right, but should feel it a duty, whenever called upon, to administer to our sisters in these ordinances; and we testify that when administered and received in faith and humility they are accompanied with almighty power.[15]
While she connected their use to those who had received the temple endowment, President Joseph F. Smith in 1914 substantiated Joseph's original counsel that such administrations could be exercised by all members of the household of faith.[16]
Minutes of the women's organizations (Relief Society, YWMIA, and Primary), personal diaries and letters attest to the efficacy of these spiritual activities of the women, not only in healing the sick and bringing comfort and solace to women in childbirth but in strengthening the spiritual fibre of all who participated in them. Relief Society testimony meetings were punctuated with demonstrations of the gift of tongues and accounts of healings by the administration of sisters. Washing and anointing a woman about to be confined for childbirth became one of the most significant of these rituals, encouraged by their leaders and sought after by the sisters themselves. At a time when women continually faced the crushing burden of infant death as they gave birth year after year—or even their own death—such administrations by those who knew precisely the pangs of that burden had a deep and personal meaning. The women must have experienced a unique transmittal of energizing spiritual strength and support as they felt the knowing and comforting hands of kindred souls placed upon them. These religious practices became a source of spiritual bonding among the sisters of the Church. Looking back on a lifetime of sharing such experiences with other women, Emmeline Wells recalled the "beautiful little meetings" which the sisters often held in her home. She remembered the glorious testimonies born by Sister Isabella Home and Eliza Snow. . . and the wonderful singing of Mother Elizabeth Ann Whitney [in tongues] with its beautiful interpretation by Aunt Zina." These were women, she told a new generation of Mormon sisters, "whom I loved as much as if bound by kindred ties, closer, perhaps, because our faith and work were so in tune with our everyday life."[17] Access to this kind of spiritual power and union by both women and men gave meaning to the concept of building a community of Saints.
It was in the temple experience that Mormon women of the early Church most fully defined themselves and their place in both the temporal and eternal kingdom. Here they learned their relationship to priesthood in very personal and tangible ways, particularly those who received all of the temple ordinances. Joseph recorded, before meeting with the Relief Society at its sixth meeting, that he was going to give a lecture to the sisters on the priesthood, showing them how they would come in possession of its gifts, privileges and blessings. Subsequent events indicate that he intended to prepare them, just as he had the brethren, to receive the fullness of the gospel, or the priesthood ordinances that were to be administered in the temple. Conscious that his time was limited, he introduced these ordinances to a selected group of men and later women before the completion of the Nauvoo Temple. When it was completed many of those who had received their endowment beforehand became the first temple officiators. "Woman," Emmeline B. Wells remembered, "was called upon to take her part in administering therein, officiating in the character of priestess."[18] This term was consistently applied to women who performed temple service. Eliza R. Snow, Zina D.H. Young and Bathsheba W. Smith, who served, each in her own time, simultaneously as general president of the Relief Society and as temple matron (using a contemporary term) were frequently referred to as Presiding High Priestesses.
Once again women and men were called to unite their efforts in another aspect—the most important one—of their religious life. "Our sisters should be prepared to take their position in Zion," John Taylor announced at a Relief Society conference. "They are really one with us, and when the brethren go into the temples to officiate for the males, the sisters will go for the females; we operate together for the good of the whole... all acting mutually, through the ordinances of the Gospel, as saviours upon Mount Zion."[19]
I believe it is impossible to overestimate the significance of temple work in the lives of early Mormon women. As both initiates and officiators they knew they were participating in the essential priesthood ordinances of the gospel in the same manner as their husbands, their fathers or their brothers. Moreover, they knew it was a universal work for both the living and the dead, and the appellation, "Saviours on Mount Zion/' was not just a poetic phrase. Nor was it mere hyperbole in the words of welcome given by the Kanab Relief Society officers when Eliza R. Snow and Zina D.H. Young visited:
We welcome sisters Eliza and Zina as our Elect Lady and her counselor, and as presidents of all the feminine portion of the human race, although comparatively few recognize their right to this authority. Yet, we know they have been set apart as leading priestesses of this dispensation. As such we honor them.[20]
Besides bringing women and men together to work as partners in performing priesthood ordinances, the temple also underscored their interdependence in the eternal plan. Marriage was an essential saving ordinance and through marriage women had access to priesthood. James E. Talmage, author of House of the Lord, explains:
It is a precept of the Church that women of the Church share the authority of the priesthood with their husbands, actual or prospective; and therefore women, whether taking the endowment for themselves or for the dead, are not ordained to specific rank in the priesthood. Nevertheless, there is no grade, rank, or phase of the temple endowment to which women are not eligible on an equality with man.[21]
Lucy Meserve Smith, wife of apostle George A. Smith, was one who expressed very clearly this perception of shared priesthood. Writing of a particularly frightful experience in which she felt the tangible presence of evil spirits, she recalled that
the holy spirit said to me they can do no harm where the name of Jesus is used with authority. I immediately rebuked them in [that name] and also by virtue of the Holy Priesthood conferred upon me in common with my companion in the Temple of our God.[22]
In a patriarchal blessing given to her at the death of her husband, Zina Y. Williams was also reminded of the particular power given to her in the Temple: "These blessings are yours, the blessings and the power according to the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood, you received in your endowments. . ."[23]
Though the question of women and priesthood evoked a great deal of semantic volleying over whether they held or shared it, the effect of the precept, expressed by Talmage, was the encouragement by church leaders for women and men to use it jointly in blessing or administering to their children—or to others—as occasion arose. And they did. In 1873, for example, George A. Smith, then a member of the first presidency, travelled with a party of Mormons, including Lorenzo Snow, his sister Eliza, Feramorz Little and others, to the Holy Land. At a stopover in Bologna, Italy, he felt ill. "I became fatigued and dizzy," he wrote in his diary. "I got into a carriage and returned to the hotel. On arriving at the hotel I found myself so unwell that I requested Bros. Snow and Little and Sister Eliza to lay hands on me."[24] Children were encouraged to cultivate enough faith to be able, when afflicted, to call upon either their parents or the elders to lay hands upon them that they might recover.[25]
The ambivalence that seemed to follow the question of women and priesthood is noticeably evident in an answer Joseph F. Smith gave in 1907 in the Improvement Era to a question on the subject. No, he said, women do not hold the priesthood. Nevertheless, he continued, "if a woman is requested to lay hands on the sick with her husband or with any other officer holding the Melchizedek Priesthood, she may do so with perfect propriety."
It is no uncommon thing for a man and wife unitedly to administer to their children, and the husband being mouth, he may properly say out of courtesy, "By authority of the holy priesthood in us vested."[26]
While the debate went on around them concerning their precise relationship to priesthood, women went about with a knowledge that they did indeed have a claimable right, not just to its blessings but also to its gifts and privileges, as Joseph had promised. In their homes it was exercised jointly with their husbands, or alone in their husband's absence, in behalf of themselves, their families and often friends or neighbors. In their church activities it bolstered the authority delegated to them to officiate in their various callings. In the temple it was utilized directly by women as they administered the priesthood ordinances to other women.
Thus through the sealing ordinances of the temple, men and women became not only heirs to the blessings and privileges of priesthood but candidates for godhood, ultimately, according to Talmage, "administering in their respective stations, seeing and understanding alike, and cooperating to the full in the government of their family kingdom." Conscious of the inequities that unbalanced the relationships of men and women in this life, he added, "Then shall woman be recompensed in rich measure for all the injustice that womanhood has endured in mortality."[27]
So it was that from their membership in the Relief Society which they understood to be an essential part of church organization, functioning along side priesthood in implementing and supervising temporal concerns, from their participation in spiritual affairs through the exercise of spiritual gifts and their share in the uses of priesthood, and especially from the promise of godhood which awaited the faithful man and woman only together, Mormon women felt themselves to be an integral, viable force within the kingdom. Allowing for the extravagance of the zealot, and Eliza R. Snow was certainly that, there was a basis for her claim that Mormon women "occupied a more important position than was occupied by any other woman on earth, . . . associated as they are with apostles and prophets, sharing with them in the gifts and powers of the holy priesthood, and participating in those sacred ordinances which would prepare them to once more dwell in the presence of the Holy Ones."[28] This is the legacy of Mormon women.
[1] Blanche Beechwood, "About Letter Writing," Woman's Exponent 4 (1 July 1875):24.
[2] Minutes of the Nauvoo Female Relief Society, 28 April 1842, typescript copy, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter cited CA), p. 32.
[3] Young Woman's Journal 17 (July 1906):295-96.
[4] Woman's Exponent 7 (1 July 1878):18.
[5] Relief Society Minutes, 17 March 1842, p. 8.
[6] Relief Society Minutes, 13 August 1843, p. 91.
[7] Eliza R. Snow to Wilmarth East, 23 April 1883, Eliza R. Snow Papers, CA.
[8] Smithfield Ward, Cache Stake, Relief Society Minutes, 1868-78, 12 May 1878, p. 486, ms, CA.
[9] Journal of Discourses 19 (21 October 1877): 246.
[10] Woman's Exponent 9 (15 July 1880):31.
[11] Box Elder Stake Relief Society Minutes, 1875-1884,10 December 1876, ms, CA.
[12] Woman's Exponent 6 (1 December 1877): 102.
[13] Relief Society Minutes, 28 April 1842, p. 29.
[14] Woman's Exponent 1 (15 February 1873):138.
[15] Woman's Exponent 13 (15 September 1884):91, and General Relief Society Handbook, 1902.
[16] First Presidency (Joseph F. Smith, Anthon H. Lund, Charles W. Penrose) to Presidents of Stakes and Bishops of Wards, 3 October 1914, ms. CA.
[17] Relief Society Magazine 3 (February 1916):68.
[18] Emmeline B. Wells, "Pen Sketch of an Illustrious Woman," Woman's Exponent 9 (15 October 1880):74.
[19] Woman's Exponent 8 (1 June 1879): 2.
[20] Woman's Exponent 9 (1 April 1881):165.
[21] James E. Talmage, The House of the Lord (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1912), p. 94.
[22] Historical Record of Lucy M. Smith, ms, CA, p. 52. (Record begins: "Salt Lake City June 12th 1889 Historical Sketches of My Great Grandfather.")
[23] Zina Y. Card Papers, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
[24] George A. Smith, Diary, 9 January 1873, holograph, CA.
[25] Woman's Exponent 1 (15 April 1873):173.
[26] Improvement Era 10 (February 1907):308.
[27] "The Eternity of Sex," Young Woman's Journal 25 (October 1914):602-603.
[28] "Position and Duties," Woman's Exponent 3 (15 July 1874): 28.
[post_title] => Mormon Women and the Struggle for Definition [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 40–47I am sensitive to that steadying hand as I attempt to identify and define what for an earlier generation of women identified and defined them as women—their relationship to the Church. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => mormon-women-and-the-struggle-for-definition [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 01:40:57 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 01:40:57 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16392 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
The Pink Dialogue and Beyond
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 28–39
Some time in June 1970,I invited a few friends to my house to chat about the then emerging women’s movement. If I had known we were about to make history, I would have taken minutes or at least passed a roll around, but of course I didn’t.
Some time in June 1970, I invited a few friends to my house to chat about the then emerging women's movement. If I had known we were about to make history, I would have taken minutes or at least passed a roll around, but of course I didn't. All I have now to document that momentous gathering are memories. I remember Claudia Bushman sitting on a straight oak chair near my fireplace telling us about women's lives in the nineteenth century. Since she had just begun a doctoral program in history, she was our resident scholar. If we had a resident feminist, it was Judy Dushku, who came to that first meeting with a rhymed manifesto she had picked up at the university where she taught. We laughed at the poem's pungent satire, then pondered its attack on "living for others." "Isn't that what we are supposed to do?" someone said. Our potential for disagreement was obvious, yet on that bright morning we were too absorbed in the unfamiliar openness to care.
The talk streamed through the room like sunshine. None of us recognized that we were beginning a discussion that would continue for more than a decade. We only knew that it felt good to talk, and that we did not want to stop when it was time to go home. Before many weeks had passed, we were not only meeting regularly but had volunteered to put together a special issue of Dialogue. For us, publishing was a natural thing to do; most of our group had been involved in producing A Beginner's Boston, a Relief Society-sponsored guidebook that was already in its second edition. Meeting on weekday mornings to discuss forbidden issues was not natural, however. Like most Mormon women, we had more to do than to say. Our basements were full of wheat and our station wagons full of children, and if we screamed, we screamed in private. Yet our success with A Beginner's Boston had given us an astonishing belief in our own powers. Secure in the knowledge that our Relief Society had made a smashing success of a project which our ward elders quorum had turned down, we took on the most explosive issues in Mormon dom.
When I say that we made history, I do not mean to imply that we were more forward looking, more courageous, or more intelligent than any other Latter-day Saint women. (Nor do I mean to suggest that we solved the problems we tackled.) By 1970 there must have been dozens of individuals and maybe even some groups who had begun to grapple with feminism, but by a fortunate combination of circumstances—our prior publishing experience, the particular mix of personalities and talents in Boston that year, and the providential appearance of Dialogue's editor, Eugene England, at the Bush man house in July—we were the first group of Mormon women to find our way to print. Gene certainly took a chance on us; I think we were all surprised at how easily he accepted our offer.
For me, the autumn and winter were both exhilarating and exhausting. I had moved to New Hampshire in September, yet I continued to drive the hour and a half to Boston once or twice a month for the Dialogue meetings, usually bringing a friend, Shirley Gee, with me. Shirley and I continued each discussion on the long ride home, missing stoplights and taking wrong turns as we simultaneously threaded our way through city traffic and through the tangle of emotions these meetings aroused.
Our group talked about Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, Rodney Turner and the latest Relief Society lessons; about birth control, working women, church politics and homosexuality; about things we knew well, like housework, and about things we knew not at all, like the relevance of feminism to working class women. In our most extravagant moments, we did not know whether to be angry at our mothers, at our husbands or at God. To our dismay we often found ourselves angry with each other. Claudia Bushman believes we took on the Dialogue project as a way of containing our conflicts. I am not sure that anyone knew how deep those conflicts were in those first weeks of summer when we made our offer to Gene. Whatever our motive, the decision to publish heightened the tension in our meetings.
By the following June, Claudia would write in a bitter mock preface to the now almost completed issue:
What do we learn from this experience? That our detractors were right when they felt that our meetings were evil? That the spirit of the Relief Society with its careful suppression of dangerous ideas is the only true model? That women cannot cooperate on a project without becoming shrill and combative?
At this point, wearied by wrangling, disagreements and hurt feelings (some of them my own) I'd nave to admit that the group is a failure . . . The amiable and close sisterhood of the early days is still felt from time to time, but members feel defensive, require approval while refusing to give it and feel threatened by others whose lifestyle is dissimilar to their own.
Bit by tortured bit, the pink issue of Dialogue rose from this maelstrom of emerging consciousness.
I do not wish to exaggerate our struggles. A certain amount of turmoil is probably characteristic of any group project, as most Mormons know. Yet in a church context, both our pain and our achievement were different. We had called ourselves to this task. Without a confirming priesthood blessing and without any clear historical precedent, we had taken upon ourselves a project which would neither build buildings nor win converts and which by its very nature would disturb the equilibrium of our lives. That Claudia Bushman could refer to our issue, even with tongue in cheek, as the Ladies Home Dialogue says much about our insecurity and about our self-conscious conservatism at the time. That we persisted in publishing our work despite our conflicts has been for all of us a source of pride.
At the close of her introduction to the Summer 1971 Dialogue, Claudia wrote:
We offer our issue of Ladies Home Dialogue without apology. For a woman eager to do something unique and meaningful, but bogged down with the minutiae of everyday life, the pattern of another woman who has surmounted the same obstacles has real worth. Women have always been valued in the Church but not encouraged to say much. We hope that now and in the future more ladies will speak out and, what is more, be heard.
In assessing the gains of the past ten years, it is tempting to focus on the last phrase in Claudia's statement. Considering IWY, the excommunication of Sonia Johnson and the resurgence of the radical right, it is not at all certain that the "ladies" have been heard or ever will be heard in high places. I would prefer to focus on Claudia's invitation to the women themselves. As I think of the achievements of the past decade—the publication of Mormon Sisters and Sister Saints, the founding of Exponent II, the establishment of the BYU women's conferences, the securing of a feminist presence in Dialogue and Sunstone and in the Mormon History Association, the blossoming of women's fiction and poetry and especially the developing of an informal network of thinking Mormon women—I am warmed and enlivened.
The pink Dialogue was not responsible for this outpouring of women's voices, but it did begin it. In my manic moods, I like to remember that. If I could somehow figure out the exact date of our first meeting, I would propose it for historic recognition. A handsome brass plaque would look nice, set in the front lawn of my old house at 380 Dedham Street in Newton, somewhere between the peach tree and the birch. "Here," the inscription would read, "in this ordinary looking, gambrel-roofed house, the second generation of Mormon feminists was born."
A feminist is a person who believes in equality between the sexes, who recognizes discrimination against women and who is willing to work to overcome it. A Mormon feminist believes that these principles are compatible not only with the gospel of Jesus Christ but with the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I can speak with authority for only one member of the second generation of Mormon feminists—myself—yet I am quite serious when I say that for me that first meeting in my living room in Newton was historic. Although I had encountered "the problem with no name" long before Betty Friedan described it, I was ambivalent about solutions. By 1970, I had begun to make small adjustments in my own life, but I still believed that my deepest conflicts were personal rather than general. If I were a better person, I reasoned, a more Christ-like and less-neurotic person, I would not find it so difficult to "live for others." Taking night classes was my strategy for keeping up my spirits so I could carry on the more important work at home. As my husband and I used to joke, "tuition is cheaper than a psychiatrist."
In the past few weeks, I have been rereading some of the correspondence I saved from the year we were working on the pink Dialogue. As in going back to an old journal, I have been amused, dismayed, embarrassed and encouraged, recognizing my own shortcomings and at the same time discerning direction in what at the time seemed chaos. That meeting in Newton now seems like the beginning of a long journey outward from self-pity and self-condemnation. The year of talking helped. Seeing myself in others' reactions, I was able to objectify my problems. I remember the amusement on Judy Dushku's face during a meeting at Grethe Peterson's house when I confessed my embarrassment at coming home one day and finding my husband sitting at the sewing machine mending his pants. I also remember one intense meeting at Bonnie Home's house when the whole group responded in an unbelieving chorus to my tearful proclamation that I would give up my children rather than my courses. Identifying my own worst fears helped me climb over them.
Equally important to the development of my own feminism was the editing process itself. Since I had done pretty much what I wanted with A Beginner's Boston, I was unprepared for the endless negotiations. Claudia and I made a good team. She took a hard line with the local sisters while I played gentle mediator; when it came time to deal with our editors in Los Angeles, we reversed roles. Much of my attention in the spring of 1971 was directed at Bob Rees, who took over as editor of Dialogue after we had already begun work on the women's issue. We had expected little more than last minute copyediting from Bob and were dismayed at the criticism arriving in Boston weeks after we had sent our first material to California. Many of our problems at this stage can be attributed to tangled communications—having since been in a position to offend several guest editors of Exponent II, I can identify with him—yet certain key conflicts were probably inherent in the very process we were undertaking. Among these was our disagreement over Juanita Brooks' piece, "I Married A Family." Bob simply could not understand what we saw in it; I got tears in my eyes whenever I read it. He wanted us to tackle tough issues, like polygamy and the priesthood and was puzzled by our fascination with Juanita Brooks' nursing baby and her curdled tomato soup.
Bob's criticism hit at about the time our group was threatening to break asunder over a certain paragraph in one of the local essays. As I recall, the offending passage said something about middle-aged Mormon housewives spending their time "polishing the polish." Since the author of this piece was newly married and childless, the matrons among us were incensed. Was she implying that we—or our mothers—had wasted our lives? She was equally distressed, convinced that they were not attacking her paragraph so much as the liberated objectives she had outlined for her life. I still remember the conciliatory phone call I made to her after one explosive meeting. "Thank you," she said cooly, "but I really must go. My husband has cooked dinner, and I'm afraid it's getting cold."
Tough issues indeed! How did Bob Rees expect us to write about polygamy or the priesthood when we couldn't even write about housework without risking a schism? In our situation, Juanita Brooks' self-revelations were of immense value. To us it really mattered that the foremost female scholar in Mormondom once hid her typewriter under the ironing.
Somewhere in all this uproar, a not-to-be named male member of Dia logue's staff urged us not to produce "just another Relief Society Magazine." I was furious. Like most college-educated women of my generation, I had been taught to laugh at ladies' books (any self-respecting English major preferred Hawthorne and Melville to the "damned scribbling females" who were their competitors), but I had not yet learned to question the social structure or the attitudes that kept women out of the world of serious letters. The comment about the Relief Society Magazine hurt; for the first time I recognized a slur on women's writing as a slur on me.
So it was that my first feelings of feminist outrage were directed not at "the Brethren" but at the kindly gentlemen at Dialogue. Who did they think they were, presuming to tell us what Mormon women should want? Without doubt, we were a difficult bunch to deal with. In the long run, Bob let us have our way on almost every point, though we were long convinced that some genie in Salt Lake City had conspired with the printer to present us our finished issue in pink.
I referred earlier to our self-conscious conservatism. I think this was feminist at base though we didn't yet know it. Certainly we experienced the usual queasiness about countering the brethren, a genuine fear of being wrong, of being caught out of bounds—that worry eventually led some of our sisters to withdraw their support for the issue—yet there was affirmation as well as fear in our collective reluctance to abandon the housewife pose. As Ladies Home Dialogue we could speak out for all women, not just those who considered themselves liberated, and at the same time turn up our noses at the male intellectuals who were interested in being our guides.
In September 1972 Bob wrote to inform us that a number of the judges of the fourth annual Dialogue prize competition had cited our issue. "The whole was suffused with the religious culture of Mormonism, portrayed as a culture in tension between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (perhaps not the twenty-first)." So it was! It is no accident that the most fully developed personal statements in the issue were written by Jaroldeen Edwards, a mother of twelve, and Christine Durham, a law student with two children and a testimony. Jerry had earned her lyricism. Aside from admitting that she sometimes served her family canned spaghetti, she had fulfilled the highest expectations of traditional Mormon womanhood. Her life was "filled with being." Chris's voice was not lyrical, but it was equally clear. She had chosen another path and was willing to defend it. The rest of us were, as Grethe Peterson put it, "somewhere in between." The radicals were without children; the mothers were without jobs. As a consequence we skirted the subjective. Dixie Huefner polled the General Boards; Cheryl May wrote about a hypothetical sister named "Carol"; Judy Dushku (in a never-to-be-published article) erected an elaborate analogy to African tribal government, and I, despite a few self-revelations, hid behind humor. We were too conflicted— too untested—to share our lives with the world. A few of the single sisters talked but wouldn't sign their names, and those who did sign refused to commit more than a page or two. Despite endless and anguished discussion, our article on housework became a medley of aphorisms, assembled anonymously, like a quilt.
The pink Dialogue proclaimed the value of women's voices, yet in 1971 few Mormon women were really prepared to speak. Before we could write with any depth about Tough Issues, we had to do a little more experimenting with our own lives. We also had to learn more about our own place in history. I will never forget the exhilaration of walking in late to one of the Dialogue meetings and hearing Claudia reading the story of Ellis Shipp from Leonard Arrington's newly submitted manuscript on women in church history. When she came to the fateful passage in which Ellis defies her husband to go back to medical school, the whole room cheered. "Yesterday you said that I should not go. I am going, going now!" With Ellis's words Leonard let the pioneer generation of Mormon feminists out of the closet, and there was no putting them back.
In a year when Relief Society lessons, conference talks and Church News editorials routinely condemned working women, we proudly published on the back cover of our pink Dialogue this quotation from Brigham Young:
We believe that women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but they should stand behind the counter, study law or physic, or become good bookkeepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and all this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation.
In time we would discover the complexity in Brigham's statement (after all, a vacuum cleaner is useful), but for the moment it was enough to know that activities now condemned were once approved. Some eternal truths were only fifty or sixty years old.
Recognizing change in the Church, many of us were better able to deal with change in our own lives. In the autumn of 1971, I took a part-time teaching job at the University of New Hampshire and quit attending Wednesday morning Relief Society. I suppose I expected the sky to fall down. Instead, I was called to be Gospel Doctrine teacher in my ward. My new schedule (and perhaps a growing professional identity) had rescued me from Primary. I remember wondering why it had not happened ten years before when I was pining for just such a calling.
The pink Dialogue arrived in Boston just before Christmas 1971. Our group spent the early winter selling copies and modestly accepting the congratulations of friends (studiously ignoring the silence of some long-time associates in the Church). By the next fall we were off and running on a new project, a lecture series to be presented at the LDS Institute in Cambridge in the spring of 1973. Doing research for her talk, Susan Kohler discovered a complete set of The Woman's Exponent in the stacks at Harvard's Widener Library. Here indeed was a voice speaking to us from the dust! These women were saying things in the 1870s that we had only begun to think. In June of 1973 we celebrated the 103rd anniversary of the founding of the original Exponent and our own good fortune with a dinner at Grethe Peterson's house in Cambridge. Maureen Ursenbach Beecher of the church historian's office was Boston's first annual Exponent Day speaker. (Juanita Brooks was the second, and this June, Lavina Fielding Anderson will be the tenth.)
During the summer of 1973, my friends in Boston debated our next step. Should we revise and publish our lectures? Or found a women's newspaper? At a two-day retreat organized by Carrel Sheldon at the stake girls' camp in western Massachusetts, the fateful plans were laid. When the first issue of Exponent II appeared in July 1974, it proclaimed itself "the spiritual descendant of The Woman's Exponent," but it was the literal descendant of the pink Dialogue. In its pages that first Boston discussion circle has been revived and enlarged. Remembering our own early struggles, we refused from the first to promote any other platform than diversity. Our objective was to give Mormon women space to think and grow. Occasionally someone complains about the cheap paper we use. The Exponent crumbles and turns yellow, they say. Although I see the practical problem, I wonder if the symbolic value of newsprint isn't part of the paper's appeal. Most Mormon women have had too much indelible ink in their lives—lessons written seven years in advance, slogans engraved in gold. It is reassuring to know that some thoughts can be thrown out and thrown away.
By the time we published Mormon Sisters in 1976, we had already weathered the familiar conflicts. Two male scholars who read the essays in manuscript found them lame ("This book says nothing new"). Several of our local sisters found them threatening, and one would-be author withdrew her finished chapter because she found the tone of the whole too critical. Unable to find a publisher, we incorporated as Emmeline Press, did our own typing, paste-up and distribution, and at the end of the year paid ourselves a small royalty and a few cents an hour. By this time, the "Boston group" was hardly to be found in Boston. Our workers were spread from Pittsburgh to Provo, and though most of the chapters in Mormon Sisters had originated in our Institute forum, others had been completed by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Jill Mulvay Derr, and Chris Rigby Arrington at the church historian's office in Salt Lake City.
Mormon Sisters, Sister Saints, Sisters and Little Saints, Elders and Sisters. Think of the outpouring of sisters' titles in the past five years! The promise of the pink Dialogue is being fulfilled. Mormon women are writing articles, essays, poems, stories and reviews. They are making films and producing television documentaries. They are exploring history, literature, theology, politics and their own lives. Yet this new growth has not been achieved without pain. At the very moment Mormon women began to discover their lost history, they were swept up by history and thrust into the arena of politics by the Church's pronouncement on the ERA. Suddenly in 1978 Mormonism and feminism seemed incompatible.
Marilyn Warenski, whose Patriarchs and Politics was published by McGraw-Hill in 1978, was not the first to see the irony in our history, though she was the first to exploit the contrast between the pro-suffrage stance of the church in the 1890s and its anti-feminist stance in the 1970s. In both eras, she concluded, Mormon women had simply been manipulated by the brethren. Warenski wrote in response to IWY, but her book hit college bookstores just as Sonia Johnson was making her stand against the Church's position on the ERA. When Mormon history became a topic of conversation in corridors at the University of New Hampshire, when a local Unitarian Society invited me to speak then questioned me about IWY, when a country band refused to play at our ward square dance "because of your Church's attitude toward women," I knew that my adulthood as a Mormon feminist had begun.
About a year ago, Mary Bradford gave a writing workshop in Cambridge for the Exponent II staff and other interested persons. In one session she tried to use an essay I had written in the Summer 1974 Dialogue as an example of what to do or not to do, but she never got to her point because my friends were so busy discussing how my ideas on the subject had changed. I had insisted in that essay that I simply did not feel like a second-class citizen in the Church.
Precisely because it is blatantly and intransigently sexist, the priest- hood gives me no pain. One need not be kind, wise, intelligent, published, or professionally committed to receive it—just over twelve and male. Thus it presumes difference, without superiority. I think of it as a secondary sex characteristic, like whiskers, something I can admire without struggling to attain.
At one level of consciousness, I still think of the priesthood as a secondary sex characteristic. In my psyche the whole concept is bound up with warm feelings and secure, predictable patterns. Growing up, I never resented seeing the males in our family rush out early on Sunday morning, smelling good, while I sat at the kitchen table drinking Postum. Nothing in my church service as an adult has made me feel deprived. Because I have always preferred teaching to administering anything, I have never missed being denied the opportunity for high church calling. In my iconoclastic moods, I suppose I have even enjoyed being outside the structure. I could carp without having to assume any real responsibility for change.
In the past five years, as the saying goes, my consciousness has been raised. IWY helped. It wasn't the issues that upset me so much as the spectacle of grown women rushing out to vote against proposals they had not read. The priesthood is "the principle of order in the kingdom," I had written in 1974. In 1977, I saw that order in a new and frightening light. I had always believed in the importance of unity in the Church, but I thought that true unity was achieved "by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned." Now, I was told, it was simply a matter of following one's "file leader." I don't know where this term came from, but I don't like it. For me, it conjures up images of marching infantry—or geese. Why should children of God waggle along in single file, each a paper cut-out of the other?
In November of 1979, a professor in my department at UNH stopped me on the way to class one day to ask why I wasn't "out in Salt Lake City" defending my sister. I explained that excommunication is a local matter in the Mormon Church, that Sonia Johnson seemed to have run into some problems with her bishop, but that I was quite sure the Church would never let a woman be excommunicated for her political beliefs. At that point, I had scarcely heard of Sonia Johnson. I could no more imagine a bishop excommunicate a woman for supporting the ERA than I could imagine a ward organist flying a banner over stake conference proclaiming the support of Mother in Heaven. The next few weeks taught me a great deal about the Church and about myself. The Sunday after the excommunication a good friend and I found ourselves shouting at each other in the kitchen at Church. Why should we have to defend either Sonia or her bishop? Wasn't the bitterness in Virginia enough, without having it spread through the Church? I resented the excommunication because I resented what it taught me about the priesthood. I was astonished to discover that an endowed woman could be tried at the ward level though her husband could not. Through the next months I identified with Sonia's cause in the way I had once identified with the Relief Society Magazine, not because I liked it, but because I could recognize an attack on it as an attack on me. The vision of that all-male council trying a woman's membership was more revealing than any of the rhetoric on either side.
In the shadow of such events I have gradually become aware of the immense contradictions within the Church as it struggles to stretch and grow with the times. Listening to General Conference never made me feel second class; it has taken the new "Women's Broadcasts" to do that. Hearing women's voices for the first time over direct wire, I have been forced to look beyond the egalitarian partnership of my own home and the comfortable give and take of my ward to the blatant sexism of the general church structure.
I am glad that the General Relief Society President now conducts the women's meetings, but I wonder why a member of First Presidency must preside. I am pleased to hear the voices of our female leaders, but I wonder why the first and last speakers and the most honored guests must be male. I am happy that the Apostles can sit with their wives in the tabernacle, but I wonder why, if these men are welcome at a women's meeting, other men aren't invited too, and I wonder why our women's leaders cannot address all the membership of the Church in a general conference.
If my ward Relief Society president can conduct weekly meetings without the presence of the bishop, if the sisters of our ward can be trusted to instruct each other without the guiding hand of the elders, if women can pray in sacrament meeting and preach to the ward as a whole, why must we be subjected to this humiliating parade of authority at the general church level? To sit in such a setting and hear President Kimball proclaim our equality or Elder Packer extoll our great circle of sisterhood is almost as disconcerting as to hear Elder Benson tell us our place is at home. The structure of the program and the assembly of dark suits on the platform proclaim our second-class status even when the words do not. Why, I wonder, must the women of the Church endure a women's meeting that is not a women's meeting at all?
There is not space here to explore the full range of these contradictions; they are evident for anyone who cares to look. That the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints simultaneously enlarges and diminishes women should hardly be surprising since it was born and has grown to maturity in a larger society which does the same. In my opinion, the solution is neither to keep quiet nor to picket the tabernacle. To do either is to accept the very heresy we want to overcome—the misguided notion that the Church is somehow to be equated with the men at the top. We must relearn an old lesson from Sunday School—the Church rests upon the testimonies of its individual members. I resist teachings and practices which diminish women not only because I am a feminist but because I am a Mormon.
As I have reconsidered the past ten years, I have come to believe that one reason I had difficulty recognizing discrimination in the Church was because I tended to confuse the spirit of the priesthood with its form. When President Kimball (in October 1979 General Priesthood Meeting) encouraged Latter-day Saint men to be "leader-servants" in their homes, he was teaching the spirit of priesthood. When Joseph Smith urged the brethren to cultivate "gentle ness, meekness, and love unfeigned" he was speaking of the spirit of priest hood. When Christ knelt and washed the feet of his servants, he truly taught what it meant to be a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. I have felt the spirit of priesthood. I have seen men stay up at night with crying babies, sacrifice professional goals to pick apples at the welfare farm and give up football games to rake a widow's yard. I have seen restless men learn to sit and listen to people's problems, and I have seen ordinary men develop Christ like qualities of love and compassion. In a very real sense, the priesthood has allowed men to develop the feminine side of their natures. In a world which assumed male dominance, Christ's priesthood turned the whole notion of dominance upside down, but in a world which is beginning to recognize equality between men and women, an anxious clinging to the form of the priesthood can only violate its spirit. It is the old story of Peter and the gentiles. Neither maleness nor Jewishness is essential.
A second reason I had difficulty recognizing discrimination in the Church grew from my own reluctance to assume power. "Men pass the sacrament and collect tithing," I wrote in 1974, "but they have no monopoly on spiritual gifts. Those are free to all who ask." Most of the time, to be perfectly honest, I wasn't asking. Me give a blessing? Me speak for God? If such a notion had suggested itself, I probably would have laughed. I had all the power I could handle already. For a long time, I approached my professional life in the same way. One of the reasons I found editing A Beginner's Boston so satisfying was that someone else had called me to do the very thing I wanted to do—write. When it came to the next step, I had a great deal of trouble making up my mind. I argued with myself for months over the merits of entering a doctoral program. I thought I could probably do the work; I just had trouble believing the work was worth doing. How tedious, I thought. How dull. Me pass an oral exam? Me write a thesis? Surely I had more important things to do. As a former teacher reminded me, "Your talent is to delight." I clung to my guidebook image just as Claudia and I had clung to our housewife image, out of affirmation and fear—affirmation for a whole wonderful world outside the range of male credentials, and fear at assuming power I had never associated with women.
For me, learning to question the present structure of the priesthood has been a positive as well as a negative experience. With feelings of anger and betrayal has come a new sense of responsibility; with recognition of discrimination has come renewed conviction of the essential message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am convinced that an effective challenge to male dominance can only be built upon "principles of righteousness." Trusting the spirit of the priesthood in the Church, Mormon women must recognize the potential for priesthood in themselves.
In the past few days I have been reading 1 Nephi 8-11. Although I love Richard Poll's use of Book of Mormon symbols to characterize contemporary Latter-day Saints, I wonder if the Liahonas among us have been too willing to give up the imagery of Lehi's dream. There are so many folks out there peddling maps to the Celestial Kingdom—"Straight and Narrow Path This Way! Grasp Iron Rod for Safe Trip!"—that it is easy to picture the Iron Rod as an unending railing of manuals, conference addresses, lessons and programs leading from baptism to the hereafter. I don't think that is the message Lehi intended. In his story, the Iron Rod is discovered in an existential crisis, in darkness and mist. Those who grasp it find themselves, not in some final safe place, but with a new vision of the meaning of life, through having tasted the love of God.
Lehi's story has particular relevance for Mormon feminists. As the wrenching struggles of the past five years have forced us to reach for the eternal and enduring amid the transient and temporary, we have felt and grasped the Iron Rod—sometimes to our own amazement. For so many years I have been a questioner, a protester, a letter writer; I had begun to think that words like faith and testimony belonged to other women, the ones who sat quietly in the congregation, meekly acknowledging the authority of the brethren. Gradually as I have found myself in front of a class or down on my knees or back at my typewriter after each new crisis, I have begun to realize that those words belong to me.
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." To care enough about the Church to want to see it better, to cherish the past without denying the future, to love and respect the brethren while recognizing their limitations, to be willing to speak when no one is listening—all of these require faith. Because I am not at all certain that the next decade will be any easier for Mormon women than the last, I offer these personal experiences as a kind of testimony. Ten years ago, in a small gathering in a living room in Newton, a few women began to talk to each other. Struggling to produce an issue of Dialogue, they not only discovered the value of the personal voice, they learned the importance of accepting responsibility for their own perceptions. Risking conflict, they grew in their ability to serve. Opening themselves to others, they were unexpectedly strengthened in knowledge and in faith.
[post_title] => The Pink Dialogue and Beyond [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 14.4 (Winter 1981): 28–39Some time in June 1970,I invited a few friends to my house to chat about the then emerging women’s movement. If I had known we were about to make history, I would have taken minutes or at least passed a roll around, but of course I didn’t. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-pink-dialogue-and-beyond [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 01:27:17 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 01:27:17 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16391 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
Church and Politics at the IWY Conference
Dixie Snow Huefner
Dialogue 11.1 (Spring 1978): 58–76
During the spring of 1977, Utah’s two major newspapers began their coverage of what was to become one of the hottest political controversies of the year: the Utah Women’s Conference authorized by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year and scheduled for June 24-25
During the spring of 1977, Utah's two major newspapers began their coverage of what was to become one of the hottest political controversies of the year: the Utah Women's Conference authorized by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year and scheduled for June 24-25. Publicity appeared both before and after the grassroots mass meetings which were held in May to help determine the conference workshop topics and to guide the task forces on those topics. Although part of me wanted to participate, because of various commitments I was planning only to follow the conference in the press. When my Relief Society President asked me to recruit 10 women from our ward to attend the conference, it was all the impetus I needed.
She assured me that the Church was not instructing Mormon women how to vote but was merely encouraging them to be present and to reflect "church standards" when appropriate. She shared a comment from the stake Relief Society leadership expressing concern that the conference would be too "liberal" without the presence of Mormon women. She also passed on a copy of the conference pre-registration form, on which a stake leader had checked those workshops she thought Mormons ought to attend; they included, among others, workshops on the Equal Rights Amendment ERA, reproductive health (which was to discuss abortion), teenage pregnancy and young women. The Relief Society President and I concurred in the decision that the most appropriate way to involve ward sisters would be to share factual information about the conference and to invite them officially, on behalf of the Relief Society, not only to attend but to share their individual values and viewpoints.
It was interesting and surprising to me that most of the women I contacted were unaware of the conference, even though it was only two weeks away. The press had reported that the Utah conference was one of 50 being held in every state in the nation as a follow up to the International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City the previous year, and that Congress was subsidizing all 50 conferences. The press had also reported that 14 Utah delegates were to be elected to attend a national conference in November in Houston and that the deadline for pre-conference nominations had been in early June. I had read that additional nominations were to be accepted from the floor, and that both state and national resolutions were to be voted on at the conference. Not only did most of the women I contacted plead ignorance, but they expressed only moderate interest. About half were able or willing to attend workshops of their choice at the 2-day event.
The week of the conference two phone calls made me wonder if Church desire to involve its women in the IWY Conference had gone beyond mere community participation. The first call was from a friend in a Salt Lake City east bench ward. She had been asked by her official Relief Society "recruiter" to attend as a ward delegate and to vote against the Equal Rights Amendment and other resolutions seen as contrary to church positions. She was also asked to attend an informational caucus at Highland High School the night before the conference. My friend accepted the invitation to attend the conference, stipulating that she would vote her own conscience, but she declined to attend the caucus. (I later learned that this same ward organizer delivered to my friend a slate of anti-ERA, anti-abortion names which had been prepared by the politically conservative organizers of the caucus and from which my friend was asked to select delegate preferences.)
The second call was from a woman in my ward who had attended sacrament meeting in another ward the Sunday before the conference. The woman thought I would like to know that the bishop in that ward had read from the pulpit a letter alleged to be from Ezra Taft Benson, in which women were urged to attend the conference to defend church positions and to prevent feminists and radical leftists from dominating the conference. She said that the letter suggested that conference participants report to the Right-to-Life booth in order to find out how to vote. (A check in my own ward revealed no such letter. Both before and after the conference, other sources made reference to a "Benson letter." In each case which I investigated, the letter turned out to be the original Relief Society letter to regional representatives (discussed below), which invoked President Benson's office as sanction for its request that at least 10 LDS women per ward be asked to attend the conference.[1] The letter, signed by the Relief Society Presidency, made no mention of domination by radical feminists and gave no instructions on voting.[2]
On Thursday morning, the day before the conference, the Salt Lake Tribune covered the growing charges and denials that the Church was attempting to pack the conference with pre-briefed delegates. Relief Society President Barbara Smith was quoted as saying that the Church was not telling members how to vote,[3] only inviting members to participate. Ironically, that evening an editorial appeared in the church owned Deseret News entitled "Utah Women Should Match Power with Responsibility." The editorial noted that "unhappily" many of the state and federal resolutions affecting women's rights "rely heavily on government." The editorial observed that many of Utah's women had already shown their "common sense" at earlier IWY mass meetings by rejecting abortion, the ERA and federally supported day-care centers and by seeking tougher antipornography and rape laws. "Balance" and "reasonableness" were said to characterize these positions. The editorial cited revision of credit and property laws as instances of progress in women's rights, expressing confidence in the ability of Utah's women to keep the home as the cornerstone of a good society and to exercise their power responsibly at the conference.[4]
It is interesting to contrast the reporting in the two newspapers on the eve of the conference. The Deseret News remained silent on the charges that the Church was trying to orchestrate the proceedings. It noted that a battle was brewing between forces opposing and favoring the ERA and abortion, but, unlike the Tribune, it reported no charges against the Church. Instead it covered counter-charges attributing the anxiety of Utah IWY officials to their realization that the conference was going to be "dominated" by women with conservative leanings.[5]
In its morning coverage the Tribune not only had noted the charges leveled against the LDS Church and the Relief Society denial thereof but also had informed its readers of the contents of the original Relief Society letter inviting participation at the conference.[6] The letter contained four instructions for Relief Society presidents: 1) encourage LDS women to read the Deseret News for information about the conference rules (the Tribune neglected to mention this part of the letter), 2) "select one capable and experienced LDS woman who could speak from the floor at the convention as a concerned citizen/' 3) encourage at least ten women from each ward to register for the conference and to "support good recommendations and to file a minority, dissenting report if necessary," and 4) encourage LDS women to bring "friends, neighbors or women affiliated with other churches who share mutual concern."[7] After the conference, Relief Society 1st Counselor Janeth Cannon acknowledged the attendance goal of 10 women to have been a mistake because it was interpreted by so many as a "call to arms."[8]
That the Church's quota system was effective was shown by the presence at the convention's opening song and prayer of some 9,000 registrants. The conference organizers had originally planned for 3,000 participants; ultimately attendance was to swell to over 13,000. A clue to the mood of the conference came as introductions of dignitaries were made. While polite applause greeted the introduction of Mary Anne Krupsak, New York State's Lieutenant Governor and the IWY federal observer assigned to the Utah conference, rousing cheers greeted the introduction of Relief Society President Barbara Smith. Most of the audience were clearly LDS and eager to demonstrate their loyalty.
The major business of the first morning was to adopt the rules governing the convention, to receive nominations from the floor for the 14 delegate spots and to hear the keynote speaker. Several of the rules governing the convention were challenged. Statements from the Utah IWY Coordinating Committee explaining the rationale for proposed procedures were not honored at face value. The registrants would not accept the presiding officer's assurance that the Coordinating Committee would accept everyone's nomination if it had been filed by 8:45 that morning regardless of whether there was time for each person from the recently swollen ranks of nominees to be placed verbally in nomination before the convention. Floor speakers openly accused the Coordinating Committee of feminist bias and charged that prefiled nominations had been "stacked" by the committee.
From Friday morning's proceedings it was clear that the majority of conference registrants were openly hostile toward the Utah Coordinating Committee and the federal regulations guiding the state women's conference. Additional time was spent that morning haggling over whether Utah was legally bound by the federal regulations. State legislator Georgia Peterson pressed the point. In the immediate weeks preceding the conference, she had been busy organizing a group called "Let's Govern Ourselves," which had prepared and was distributing an anti-ERA slate of nominees for Utah's 14 delegate spots. It seemed to me that the primary reason for these parliamentary maneuvers was to establish early in the conference that the majority bloc of registrants—and not the Coordinating Committee—had political control of the conference.
The source of the enormous ground swell of distrust for the Utah IWY Coordinating Committee was puzzling to me. I knew a number of the Committee members and several members of task forces. From past experience I knew them to be responsible people; from conversations with several of them I also knew the Committee had tried to be both fair and moderate in all conference preparations. The Coordinating Committee of 33 women had been selected in Washington, D.C. by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year from approximately 200 names submitted from a variety of statewide women's organizations and personal and political sources. The vast majority of the Committee was made up of women from all parts of the Wasatch Front (the state's urban core, where the majority of its population resides). Half were LDS. Some were young, some elderly. Some were homemakers; some were professional women. Most had records of community involvement. Ethnic minority women were represented. The Committee chairperson was an active member of the LDS Church and a BYU faculty member.[9] The cochairperson was an elected Salt Lake County official and an active Republican.[10] The positions of the Committee members on specific women's issues were not solicited by the National Commission, which instead was interested in evidence of contributions to the community or women's organizations, as well as in demographic balance. It should not have been surprising, however, that members proved to be interested in at least some aspects of the women's movement, most as supporters or sympathizers, a few as detractors.
From the approximately 100 pre-filed nominations for the 14 delegate spots at the Houston conference, the Committee had endorsed a slate of 42 candidates. Following federal guidelines, the slate was selected to achieve geographic, occupational, religious, age, ethnic and socio-economic balance. Approximately half were LDS. The slate included one man. Again, although specific positions of the nominees on controversial issues were often unknown, most of the people on the slate were active in community or women's organizations, or they were simply interested in women's issues—a not unnatural phenomenon for a women's conference.
To judge by remarks heard from the floor of the convention, the fact that organizers and nominees were generally interested in the women's movement seemed both perverse and conspiratorial to most conference participants—who were not similarly interested and had therefore passed up chances to become involved until the Church had rallied them. It was not until after the conference was over and their control secure that the majority would acknowledge that the Coordinating Committee had run the conference fairly and had not used dirty tricks on unwitting conference goers.
After the Friday morning adoption of rules of procedure, the rest of the conference was structured to provide for three major votes. Secret voting on a set of nationally formulated resolutions took place all day Friday in dozens of voting booths set up in the convention center. On Friday afternoon and again on Saturday morning concurrent workshops were held on 26 state issues on women's rights and needs. Scheduling allowed attendance at three workshops. In most cases resolutions had been prepared in advance by task forces responsible for the formal presentations in each workshop. These resolutions and others introduced by workshop attendees were the subject of parliamentary debate in each workshop. A proposed set of resolutions was to emerge from each workshop. Friday evening and Saturday afternoon were devoted to plenary sessions at which emerging workshop resolutions were voted on openly by the full body to determine a state plan of action on women's issues. The secret balloting on Saturday morning and early afternoon elected, from nearly 200 nominees, a slate of 14 delegates to attend the national IWY conference in Houston.
Different workshops produced differing experiences for conference goers. Some were constructive and even peaceful. Other workshops were quarrelsome and chaotic. In the Friday afternoon ERA workshop, which I attended (and which was repeated Saturday morning), the audience listened to the two proponents of the ERA politely and quietly for the most part, but frequently interrupted the speeches of the two opponents to shout enthusiastic approval. The ensuing parliamentary debate produced some of the conference's most "anti" militant resolutions. The audience did not support the task force's "neutral" resolution urging dissemination of information, pro and con, on the ERA. Instead it voted down not only support for the ERA but also support for any public funding for discussion of the issue. Saturday's participants went further and advocated abolition of all future funding for International Women's Year.
The debate in the teenage pregnancy workshop, which I joined in progress, was in some disarray, primarily because of confusion over parliamentary procedure. A task force resolution was defeated which urged compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (nondiscrimination in schools on the basis of sex) for pregnant students and students who were parents. Also defeated was another task force resolution recommending the development of a state plan to reduce teenage pregnancy through education and to assist young parents at school. The resolution in question had noted that "where school policies prohibit discussion of birth control responsibilities, those institutions have an even more crucial obligation to refer students to other sources of information."[11] One modified task force resolution did emerge from the workshop recommending that local school districts take special note of vocational training needs of pregnant students or parent-students. In the plenary session another recommendation was added to it before both were passed as a package. The new resolution read as follows:
Because the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancy is increasing at an alarming rate particularly among teenagers, and because the mores contained in the media have encouraged premarital sex, we the women in Utah would like to see an encouragement of chastity of both men and women, in schools, in media, and by society. If and when out-of-wedlock pregnancies do occur, we affirm that abortion is not a solution, that good prenatal care, emotional support, good nutrition should be available to teenagers or to any woman who has a problem pregnancy and encouragement be given to give life to the preborn child rather than killing the preborn child to solve someone else's social problem. We deplore the so-called progressive education that is now present in our schools. We desire to have Utah schools free from sex education. We reserve that right to ourselves as parents of those children.[12]
Clearly, the participants wanted to make explicit that they did not favor abortion or sex education in the schools as possible solutions to the problem of teenage pregnancy.
The Friday evening plenary session, which amended the conference rules to extend the time limit on debate, managed to vote on the emerging resolutions from only 4 workshops. The session dragged on until 1:30 a.m. Differing sides later agreed that participants were not leaving or voting to recess because of fear that the Coordinating Committee would reconvene the session on the sly and pass resolutions which the majority would oppose. Finally Barbara Smith's motion to recess (solicited by the Coordinating Committee) was accepted by the body. Even then, the audience refused to disperse until the Coordinating Committee had left the podium.
The following morning I moderated the workshop on Lifespan Planning for Young Women, having been recruited only a few days earlier. The task force presenters were moderate in tone; the atmosphere was charged and somewhat suspicious, but behavior was reasonably courteous. After an hour of presentation and an hour of parliamentary debate, the workshop emerged with two recommendations for the plenary session. One was an original task force resolution urging improved sex education for parents and the helping professions so that sex education could be strengthened in families. The other was a modified resolution urging home and school training of young women in "decision-making skills centering around conscious life choices" to prepare them to be self-supporting and to be adequate wives and mothers if and when either option arose. The workshop defeated a task force resolution urging less sex role stereotyping in career counseling and instructional materials. The two resolutions emerging from the workshop were later defeated in the plenary session.
By Saturday the results of the national resolutions, voted on by secret ballot the day before, had been tallied by the computer. Every one of the national resolutions had been defeated.[13] In addition to rejecting unpopular resolutions supporting the ERA, the right of a woman to control her own body (abortion on demand), enforcement of non-discrimination in education on the basis of sex (Title IX), and day-care programs, the registrants defeated a host of more moderate resolutions, examples of which are quoted below:
Arts and Humanities: Judging agencies and review boards should use blind judging for musicians, singers, articles, and papers being considered for publication or delivery, exhibits, and grant applications, wherever possible.
Child Care: Education for parenthood programs should be improved and expanded by local and state school boards with technical assistance and experimental programs provided by the Federal government.
Credit. The Federal Equal Credit Opportunity Act should be vigorously, efficiently, and expeditiously enforced by all the Federal agencies with enforcement responsibilities.
Employment. The Executive Branch of the Federal government should abide by the same standards as private employers.
Female Offenders: Federal and state governments should cooperate in providing more humane, sensible, and economic treatment of young women who are subject to court jurisdiction because they have run away from home, have family or school problems, or commit sexual offenses ("status offenders").
Legal Status of Homemakers: More effective methods for collection of support should be adopted. Older Women: Public and private women's organizations should work together to give publicity to the positive roles of women over 50 and to provide the services that will enable elderly women to function comfortably in their own homes instead of moving to institutions.
Rape: State and local governments should revise rape laws to provide for graduated degrees of the crime to apply to assault by or upon both sexes; to include all types of sexual assault against adults; and to otherwise redefine the crime so that victims are under no greater legal handicaps than victims of other crimes.
Women in Elective and Appointive Office: The President, Governors, political parties, women's organizations, and foundations should join in an effort to increase the number of women in elective and appointive office, including especially judgeships.
A major factor in the negative vote was obviously the acknowledged philosophical opposition of the majority of the participants to both feminism and to the women's movement. They had no wish to examine individual issues on their merit but rather were present to make a political statement in opposition both to the very legitimacy of the need for the conference, and to the role of the federal government in establishing state coordinating committees and the upcoming convention in Houston.
But an explanation for the defeat of all the resolutions, even supposedly noncontroversial ones, must go beyond this. Great numbers of conference participants had attended pre-conference caucuses and were heavily swayed by the judgments and attitudes of caucus leaders. Attendees stated that caucus leaders had urged the defeat of the national resolutions, had voiced fear of radical feminist control of state and national conferences, had cited "horror stories" from other state conventions about homosexual life-style support and pornographic movies, had expressed open distrust of the IWY Coordinating Committee in Utah and had distributed anti-ERA, anti abortion delegate slates. Every vagueness in the wording of the national resolutions was seen as conspiratorial and devious. Some caucuses were told not to bother to read the resolutions because some of them might "sound good" and therefore might deceive the reader.[14] Caucus leaders had represented the politically conservative forces opposed to abortion, the ERA and the women's movement in general. They had used the Church's organizational mechanisms and their own Church affiliation to encourage attendance at the caucuses.[15] Many persons in attendance accepted such representations unquestioningly, neither challenging the sources of the information nor checking its accuracy.
Another contributing factor was that for many participants the conference was the first introduction to the women's movement and its concerns. The complexity of many of the issues may have made many women feel too ignorant to make sound judgments; under these circumstances, they simply adopted the old adage which has defeated many another political issue: "When in doubt, vote no."
While all the national resolutions had been disposed of, most of the state resolutions were still in limbo. Saturday afternoon was spent voting on those state resolutions not voted on the previous evening, which were most of them.
A word of explanation about the plenary sessions. The Coordinating Committee had hoped publicly that the plenary sessions would reflect a spirit of cooperative searching for solutions to problems. Such an idealistic hope was based on several assumptions: (1) that most conference registrants would not be hostile to the women's movement, (2) that they would come to learn, and (3) that they would be willing to examine issues with open minds. Even so, it was optimistic to think that resolutions emerging from 26 workshops could have been discussed throughtfully and voted on in the 5 scheduled hours of plenary session. Twelve minutes per workshop is not much time to search together for solutions, under the best of circumstances. Given the ultimate makeup and size of the conference and, more importantly, the political purpose of the sessions—it was naive to believe that the plenary sessions could have been anything but the political battleground they became. There was little inclination to explore the rationale behind various resolutions or to strike compromises which would honor minority needs and rights. Rather, pre-determined points of view fought for supremacy in the balloting.
Although 11 hours were ultimately consumed in plenary sessions, time constraints made it impossible to vote on most workshop resolutions item by item, and therefore many workshops found all their resolutions either accepted or rejected as a package, depending on who was at the microphones to explain and justify the resolutions or to maneuver for modification or rejection.
The actions taken on state resolutions tend to confirm and extend the impressions set forth above as to the causes of the defeat of the national resolutions. Most of the original state task force resolutions were modified or stricken in the workshops. Those which did emerge intact were frequently defeated on the floor of the plenary session. This may appear paradoxical, since the plenary sessions were attended by the same people who attended the workshops. One might suppose that task force resolutions which survived the workshop would survive the plenary session. Perhaps one reason they did not was because all registrants had not had the benefit of the two-hour workshop discussion and therefore did not understand the issues as well as workshop participants did. Or perhaps registrants did not distribute themselves evenly at workshops, stacking some and ignoring others at their "peril", as they later perceived it. At any rate, if the purpose of the resolution was not clear on its face at the plenary session, it was usually in trouble. It also became evident that there were several emotionally loaded terms which, if mentioned, boded ill for any workshop resolution; suspect terms were abortion, ERA, sex education, sex-role stereotyping, Title IX, affirmative action, taxes, welfare programs or, for that matter, any federal government program. Irrespective of the extent of the problem or the established roles of various levels of government, as soon as the resolution hinted at one of these subjects, it was slated for defeat.
Killed either in the workshops or on the floor were all the original task force resolutions from 10 of the 26 workshops. In some of these, substitute resolutions were passed which merely negated the original task force resolutions; e.g., in lieu of proposals suggesting sex education courses, improvements in day care, and dissemination of information about the ERA, resolutions were substituted which rejected any movement toward sex education, government day care, ERA, etc. In other cases, no substitute resolutions were prepared and the state platform remained silent, for instance, on equal pay for equal work, credit opportunities and access to elective and appointive office.
The one set of task force resolutions to pass the plenary session intact was that on "Women in Utah History," which urged recognition of the fact that women have contributed to the history of society.[16] Task force recommendations urging expanded mental health services and improved services for battered wives remained essentially intact with added qualifications about the need for community involvement and local control. Passed with modifications and some substitutions, were some of the task force resolutions from 11 other workshops. Among them were specific resolutions supporting counseling for minority students, repeal of mandatory retirement provisions under the Social Security guidelines, tighter control of child abuse, reduction in sexual exploitation by the media, reform of inheritance tax laws to help home makers, improved services for female offenders and more effective prosecution of rape cases. The Lifestyle and International Interdependence task forces did not prepare resolutions, and the Lifestyle workshop purposefully did not entertain any from its participants. The International Interdependence workshop wrote its own anti-international-interdependence resolutions (see appendix), most but not all of which passed the plenary session. A lifestyle resolution forbidding advocacy of homosexuality by the public school system was introduced and passed on the floor.
A detailed summary of action on workshop resolutions forms an appendix to this article.[17] Analysis of these actions reveals some common threads. A fear of federal encroachment has already been mentioned. Also apparent are both the relative satisfaction with the status of women and the open hostility to affirmative action and to equal access by women to labor markets, equal credit, even equal promotions and, in one case, equal pay. There is satisfaction with current role definitions and pronounced disagreement with pleas for less sex-role stereotyping. There is dissatisfaction with both state and federal social service programs and spending, unless they directly benefit participants (such as extending disability provisions to home makers and not taxing transfers of property between husbands and wives). The delivery of expanded social services (food and housing programs, bilingual education, child care services, improved health programs) to the disadvantaged are rejected. Paradoxically, compassion for the female offender is demonstrated—by acceptance of the need for more appropriate and effective governmental programs on their behalf. The legitimacy of the federal government's role in helping to operate a welfare system is strongly challenged. Any new governmental spending, either state or local, to accelerate non-discrimination on the basis of sex or to enforce existing rights of women under the law is rejected. The body of decisions was politically conservative and out of spirit with the national women's movement.
While rejecting government participation in many social concerns, participants demonstrated that they felt it was appropriate for government to enforce the participants' perceptions of morality. Governmental programs were seen as legitimate when they restricted pornography, homosexuality, child abuse, abortion, wife abuse, and rape of women. Governmental programs which were seen as protecting traditional family responsibilities were sanctioned (e.g., a mandatory Family Court system in Utah, juvenile court judges and social workers to help reduce child abuse, and the Utah Parentage Act to help determine paternity and establish the financial obligation of unwed fathers). Parenthetically, maintaining the traditional family unit appears to have been more important than rewarding the role of the woman in that family; for instance, participants were not interested in having Social Security benefits accrue equally to the employed spouse and to the homemaker.
Feminists and nonfeminists alike were able to unite in their disapproval of all forms of sexual exploitation. Pornography, rape, wife abuse, and exploitative advertising and newspaper reporting were all abhorrent to both groups.
Judging from the plenary sessions, most of the national resolutions would have gone down to defeat even if the balloting on them had been held after the plenary sessions instead of before them. There were a few, but not many, inconsistencies in the two sets of votes. A number of state rape resolutions were accepted while similar national recommendations were defeated. Similarly, support for school district parenting classes and more effective methods for collection of child support were accepted in state resolutions but rejected in national resolutions. However, given the conference's suspicion of the federal government and its rejection of the federal role in sponsoring the IWY meetings, it is likely that even those national resolutions would have been rejected either out of protest or out of fear that they would not be left to state and local control.
That conference attendees were there not to work out compromises but to triumphantly acclaim their own value system was driven home when the duly elected slate of 14 delegates and 5 alternates to the Houston convention was announced on Saturday afternoon. In contrast to the balance on the IWY slate, all but one of the nineteen were Mormon, all were Caucasian (one was a Chicana), all were middle class, all but one were over the age of 40, all but one were Republican, and all were from the anti-ERA and anti-abortion slates distributed at and before the conference.[18] The rights of the majority were supreme.
How much of the results of this conference, either good or bad, can be laid at the doorstep of the Church? Did it anticipate its exploitation by the political right? Did it do anything to prevent it? What evidence is available to suggest whether church leaders were happy or displeased with events at the conference?
Certainly the large turnout at the conference can be attributed to the Church's calling of 10 women from each ward. The church's organizational mechanisms are superb, as those who watched it work after Idaho's Teton Dam disaster can testify. Use of both the priesthood authority and the quota system made the invitation to attend acquire the nature of a call, with the intended result: people came.[19]
What transpired after the initial phone calls from President Benson's office is unclear, but it is clear that messages farther down the line (from stake Relief Society Presidents to ward presidents to ward members) stated over and over again that the Relief Society wanted women at the conference to defend Church positions and to prevent domination by radical feminists. Concern about the nature of the conference, rather than the desire to encourage community participation by LDS women, was the dominant theme of countless messages relayed down the chain. Given the IWY Committee's personal request to the Relief Society to support the IWY Conference by inviting its women to attend, some may question whether the actual way in which the Church chose to accept the invitation was either generous or gracious.
Both before and after the conference the Church insisted that it had not told its women how to vote; it had only encouraged them to attend. It seems obvious that members did not need to be told explicitly how to vote. Their attitudes about the conference had already been shaped.
The Church has acknowledged in a variety of ways that it received an avalanche of agitated inquiries from its own members about its role in Utah's IWY conference. In a form letter responding to many of these inquiries, the Relief Society Presidency tried to spell out its involvement to the satisfaction of inquirers.[20] The letter notes that the Committee suggested that the Relief Society prepare an informative fact sheet for its members so they would attend the conference as informed citizens. This, the letter observes, the Relief Society declined to do for fear that some would think they were trying to "manipulate the thinking of our women." Hindsight being better than foresight, one can wonder how an informative fact sheet could possibly have been more manipulative than what actually happened.
The letter of explanation goes on to say that many persons approached the Relief Society before the conference seeking support to try to "unite" LDS women at the conference. To each, the Relief Society suggested they act as individuals, as the Relief Society did not want to take sides. Relief Society Board members state privately that although they did not realize it at the time, their attempts at neutrality allowed a vacuum to be created into which the right wing moved. Some of the right wing organizers have stated publicly[21] and privately that they felt they had the silent blessing of the Relief Society for their actions in organizing pre-conference caucuses.
In an article in the Salt Lake Tribune of August 14, 1977, Relief Society President Barbara Smith is quoted as saying that she holds herself partly to blame for the confusion in the minds of many people between the conservative caucus activities and those of the Relief Society. As she puts it, "I didn't say, 'Don't use the Relief Society."' She acknowledges in the article that the Relief Society was used by the "far right." One wonders, however, whether the Relief Society's tolerance of the use of its informal machinery for right-wing purposes was as innocent as is implied. If, instead of the anti-feminist Phyllis Schafly report, the caucuses had distributed the latest pro-abortion flyer, would the Relief Society have remained as passive?[22]
While the Relief Society may have been dismayed by the storm of controversy in which it has found itself, the Relief Society Presidency did not seem disappointed with decisions reached by the conference. Its letter of explanation is revealing both for what it does and does not say. While acknowledging that it was "unhappy" over the passage of the motion not to hold future IWY meetings, the Relief Society Presidency did not express unhappiness over any other conference action. Instead, the letter claims "huge success" for the conference, "even though there were some happenings that caused personal distress." Privately Relief Society Board members have expressed satisfaction with the "unity" of the actions taken and with the Mormon-dominated slate of delegates. The Deseret News, in an editorial close on the heels of the conference, declared the conference a success,[23] while the Salt Lake Tribune was editorializing that it feared "the community at large has suffered a net loss."[24]
If the Church is not worried about the actual conference decisions, because to a real extent they reflect the socio-political values of many of our present leaders, there are indications that at least individual church officials[25] and a good number of church members are concerned about the Church's role in shaping those decisions. Its failure to control its own bureaucracy does not square with its statements of official neutrality. Also the ambiguity of the Relief Society position was risky. Ambiguity is a powerful tool for giving general direction while leaving implementation to individual interpretation. For this very reason, it is exploitable, sometimes in ways which cannot be anticipated. In political situations it may be cleaner and less manipulative of members to either stay completely out of or to jump openly into issues of special concern. Allowing others to use the Church for purposes which it can technically disavow smacks of either too little or too much political sophistication.
The behavior of conference participants in reaching their decisions is also something with which the Church ought to be concerned. The conference was too often characterized by distrust, self-righteousness and a battlefield mentality which demanded unconditional victory. For women with Judao-Christian roots, too many behaved in unchristian fashion. Politics has been known to elicit such behavior before and is likely to again.
We in the Church often cite with pride Joseph Smith's pronouncement: "I teach the people correct principles and they govern themselves."[26] When we are gullible, unquestioningly believing persons who are acting in secular capacities and trading on their Church ties, one may ask whether we have indeed been taught correct principles. When we do not make time for community service without church pressures such as quotas and priesthood authority, can we say we have learned correct principles? When we are unable to participate in the political arena with love, courtesy, compassion and respect for all persons, including those whose beliefs are different from our own, can we say we have learned correct principles?
How can the Church improve the behavior of its members? Perhaps it needs to write lessons on how to employ more skepticism and scholarship in the search for light and truth—a skepticism which insists on knowing sources of information and instruction, a scholarship which searches out evidence, that forms preliminary judgments and tests them. Perhaps it also needs to explore better ways to generate community activity among more church members. Can wards create or promote ways to effectively recognize the value of community service, not just to the community but to the Lord? Finally, ward members need to practice, in church settings, how to acknowledge conflict and how to disagree on important matters without ceasing to respect and cherish each other. Perhaps we ought to address some hard social issues in Relief Society, and other church meetings, with clear church sanction and clear church acceptance of divergent solutions among its members. If church members do not practice correct principles under conditions of stress, how can we say with assurance that we know how to govern ourselves? If we cannot do it even among ourselves, how can we do it in the larger world?
Appendix
A summary of the action taken at the plenary sessions is included as an appendix for those who wish more detailed evidence of the philosophy dominating the conference. Recommendations surviving the workshops were voted on in plenary session. Task force recommendations killed in the workshops were not resurrected.
Workshops are listed in the order of their discussion at the plenary sessions.
Aging
Three task force recommendations survived the plenary session. Passed were recommendations to reform the Social Security guidelines by raising the earning limitations, repealing the mandatory retirement provisions, and continuing SSI benefits during periods of temporary institutionalization. The session defeated task force recommendations supporting (1) maintenance of individual Social Security accounts without regard to marital status and (2) relaxation of the eligibility requirements of separated couples for individual SSI benefits. Earlier, the workshop had killed task force recommendations to fix responsibility in a single agency for enforcement of laws prohibiting age and sex discrimination and to encourage the mass media to hire women without regard to sex or age.
Child Abuse
Surviving the plenary session were four task force recommendations plus an additional workshop recommendation to expand outreach programs. The four recommendations included appointment of more juvenile court judges, expansion of the State Advisory Committee on Child Abuse, establishment of a central registry within the Utah Division of Family Services, and funding for increased social workers in the Division of Family Services and for training programs on the prevention of child neglect and abuse. Killed in the workshop was a task force resolution promoting cooperative nursery schools, crisis nurseries, the Crisis Center (at the University of Utah), and Great Britain's "new mother" program.
Arts and Humanities
One task force recommendation survived the plenary session, although all had survived the workshop. The session passed the recommendation urging better public education regarding availability of grants and grant application procedures. The session amended a follow-up recommendation, substituting "equal" for "special" consideration for rural, remote communities of the state. Defeated was another follow-up recommendation, this one added in the workshop, to allocate state funds to employ a public information person within the State Division of Fine Arts. The plenary session also defeated task force recommendations urging blind judging for music auditions, for articles submitted for publication, and for grant and entry applications. Three other resolutions which were introduced and passed in the workshop and which urged upgraded art education in the schools were never discussed or voted on in plenary session, due to time limitations imposed on workshop debate. This was the only workshop unable to present all its emergent recommendations to the plenary session.
Child Development
No task force recommendations survived the plenary session. The session defeated a task force recommendation asking for junior high, high school, and post high school parent education classes using teachers competent in areas of child development and family relationships. In place of a series of task force recommendations urging better training and increased financial resources for child care providers and state administrators, the workshop had substituted a recommendation stating that day care should be the responsibility of the family first and that better child care services should be developed by the local community, church, and businesses for those who need them. This substitute resolution passed the plenary session. Killed in the workshop was a resolution to have the Utah Office of Child Development report directly to the Governor's Office. (It presently reports to the Utah State Board of Education.)
Teenage Pregnancy
One modified task force recommendation survived the plenary session; it urged that reviews by local school districts (the original resolution had stated "reviews by the Office for Women") take special note of the vocational training needs of pregnant students and students who are parents. In addition a resolution was introduced on the floor and approved which opposed abortion and sex education in the schools as solutions to the problem of teenage pregnancy. Defeated in the workshop were resolutions urging school compliance with Title IX for pregnant students and students who are parents and urging a state plan to reduce teenage pregnancy through education and through school referral to sources of information about birth control responsibilities.
Power: Elective, Appointive, and Personal
No task force recommendations survived the plenary session. Although all the task force recommendations emerged intact from the workshop, all were defeated as a package on the floor. Summarized, they included: (1) requests of the legislative and executive branches at state and local levels to fill appointed positions with equal numbers of men and women, (2) advocacy of a campaign within political parties to work for equal distribution of public financing to men and women candidates, (3) encouragement of the recruitment and support of women candidates for political office and launching an educational program within the political party system to inform women on how to become more involved.
Reproductive Health
No task force recommendations made it to the plenary session. The workshop rejected them and substituted their own. Defeated in the workshop were recommendations pressing for comprehensive sex education in Utah schools (grades K-12) and establishing a timetable and guidelines for its implementation. The plenary session passed as a package the substitute recommendations espousing (1) sex education classes for parents sponsored by local religious and civic organizations to help parents assume their responsibility for sex education,* (2) parenting classes in schools under the direction and control of parents in each school district and excluding sex education,** (3) the illegality of all state and federally funded abortions, (4) the Right to Life Amendment (and urging that funds now used for abortion be used for medical research and for help with adoption procedures), (5) retention of the distinction between male and female gender in textbooks, (6) outlawing of sex "training" in classrooms and textbooks "with the exception of basic anatomical natural reproduction" training, which is not to begin until the 6th grade, and (7) prohibition of public school instruction in "unnatural sex acts such as homosexuality and self- stimulation."
* A similar recommendation was later defeated under the "Lifespan Planning for Young Women" workshop.
** A similar but less restrictive proposal had been defeated earlier under the "Child Development" recommendations. Essentially that same proposal was later accepted as part of the "Mental Health" package of recommendations, while still another proposal urging mandatory parenting classes was defeated under the "Men" recommendations.
Mental Health
Modified task force recommendations survived the plenary session. The workshop accepted the thrust of the original resolutions but specified community control, local funding, and other restrictions on the training and services recommended. The plenary session passed, as a package, recommendations supporting parenting classes within the secondary system, community education programs, and local funding of services in the areas of job preparation, financial management, cooperative day care and temporary welfare programs.
Enforcement of Laws
No task force recommendation made it into the plenary session. Defeated in the workshop were recommendations urging (1) public information programs to educate married women on the need to establish credit in their own names, (2) education of women about their rights under consumer credit laws, and (3) assistance to Utah high schools in educating students about proper use of credit. Also defeated in the workshop were recommendations urging equal opportunity for women in competitive sports in Utah. No substitute resolutions were offered, either in the workshop or on the floor, so there were none for consideration by the plenary session.
Women as Educators
No task force recommendations survived the plenary session. A lengthy series of recommendations, enlarging upon the original task force recommendations, emerged from the workshop. Summarized, the recommendations included the following: less sex-stereotyped career counseling and instructional mate- rials, compliance with federal and state anti-discrimination laws, dissemination to prospective educators of information on employment rights and protections, state legislation to enforce the spirit of the State Affirmative Action Study, school district incentives to reward higher levels of teacher preparation, skill, and experience; more hiring of qualified women in administrative and other positions. The plenary session defeated all the recommendations as a package.
Media
Five task force recommendations and an additional workshop recommendation survived the plenary session. Task force recommendations had been accepted, refined, and enlarged in the workshop session. Initially all were passed as a package in the plenary session but were later reconsidered one at a time. Passed were recommendations urging (1) placement of news by subject matter not sex, (2) elimination of exploitation of men and women to add irrelevant sexual interest, (3) elimination of personal details (sex, sexual preference, appearance, religion, etc.) in a news story when irrelevant, (4) granting the same respect to women's activities and organizations that is shown to men's, (5) public education by the media on the violence of rape rather than the sexual appeal of rape, and (6) withdrawal of all TV and radio commercials concerning women's personal health products (a workshop addition to the task force recommendations). Ultimately defeated was a recommendation establishing as a goal the employment of women in policy making positions, urging special efforts to employ qualified and knowledgeable women, and supporting equal pay, opportunity, training, and promotion of women in the media. Also defeated were recommendations respecting a person's right to determine for publication her (or his) own title and encouraging the media to broaden the subject matter of news stories to include more activities of women in the population.
Minority Women
No original task force recommendations made it into the plenary session. The workshop struck the original resolutions, which were concerned mostly with assessing minority needs and urging involvement of ethnic minority women in the larger women's movement. The workshop objected to the language of the original recommendations which suggested that minority women felt isolated from white women and had unusual needs. The workshop substituted its own recommendations, which the plenary session voted to take up one at a time. Passed on the floor were recommendations urging that teachers-in-training have at least 5 credit hours of cultural awareness courses prior to certification, that qualified "ethnic people" be hired to teach these courses, and that counseling be provided for minority students. Defeated were recommendations that adequate minority representation at the National Conference in Houston be assured, that adequate funding for child care services for low income women be advocated, that a coalition be formed to take a stand against the Bakke decision,* that teachers be required to take the equivalent of one credit of cultural awareness training every 5 years, and that bilingual education should be provided in educational institutions.
* In the Bakke case, then on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court upheld the white plaintiff's argument that he had been discriminated against in his admission to medical school because of the University of California at Davis' affirmative action policies guaranteeing a certain number of spots to minority students.
Legal Status of Homemakers
Five task force recommendations survived the plenary session. Passed were recommendations sup- porting the Utah Parentage Act and urging the establishment of a mandatory Family Court System to deal with domestic problems, tax reform to allow tax deductions for expenses accrued by disability of fulltime homemakers, tax reform to eliminate taxation on all transfers of property between husband and wife at death and all gifts between same during their lifetimes, and cooperation of women with State and County Recovery Services. Defeated in the plenary session was a task force recommendation urging that the Social Security Act benefits presently accruing to the spouse employed outside the home accrue equally to the homemaker and the spouse. Previously killed in the workshop was an endorsement of the Utah Uniform Probate Code.
Women Offenders
All three emerging task force recommendations, some of them enlarged in the workshop, survived the plenary session. Included were recommendations: (1) urging adequate health services for female offenders and the inclusion of a woman on the medical staff at the Utah State Prison, (2) encouraging job training services, community treatment facilities, generous visitation rights, and counseling for the offender with children, and (3) requesting the appointment of an independent and diverse body of citizens, including women, to inspect local jails, state institutions, and community programs to assist the legislature in setting uniform standards for such facilities. Killed in the workshop was a recommendation asking for support of affirmative action in the recruitment and hiring of women to staff positions within the Division of Corrections and the Department of Social Services.
Basic Needs
No task force recommendations survived the plenary session. Concerned primarily with single-parent (usually female) families receiving welfare, the emergent task force recommendations focused on job training to help recipients become self-sufficient and capable of holding their families together. In the plenary session these recommendations were struck, and floor substitutes were passed which deplored the trend to a welfare state and which recommended that people meet their own basic needs through their own earned income. Local measures and private good will, not federal programs, were recommended for those who could not provide for themselves. Additional substitute recommendations were passed, urging evaluation, consolidation, and enforcement of present supplementary food programs and organization of voluntary committees in each city of the state to evaluate basic needs for food and housing and to forward their recommendations for action to the Utah Legislature. Earlier, the workshop had defeated task force recommendations urging improved and expanded governmental food and housing programs.
Equal Rights Amendment
The original task force recommendation did not make it into the plenary session. Recognizing the controversial nature of the ERA in Utah, the task force had recommended that a special committee of equal numbers of proponents and opponents be appointed by the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women to locate neutral facilities and to disperse information reflecting both sides of the issue. This public education approach to the ERA was defeated by the workshop and a resolution substituted opposing the ERA and opposing the use of any public funds to promote or oppose the ERA. The workshop went further and passed a resolution directing the U.S. Congress to appropriate no new funds for IWY. These recommendations passed in the plenary session along with another, introduced on the floor, which added that the national convention in Houston should be told that "rights for women can better be accomplished by more efficiently enforcing existing laws and applying pressures to society in other ways. We the women of Utah recognize that any government which is powerful enough to give its people everything they want is powerful enough to take away everything that we have."
Employment
No task force recommendations survived the plenary session. They had been refined in the workshop and a new one had been added. They concentrated on fair employment practices, hiring of more women at administrative levels, designation of more CETA funds to advance the training of women, studying merit and civil service systems to remove barriers to women's advancement, development of programs to attract women business owners to Utah, and directing the Small Business Association to consider women as an economically disadvantaged group and to develop technical assistance programs for them. Every recommendation was defeated in the plenary session with the exception of the new one, which stated that employers should not be bound by quota laws except where the job applicants were equally qualified in every respect for the job in question.
Men
This workshop did not have recommendations prepared in advance by its all-male task force. Three were formulated in the workshop. The plenary session first passed the one urging stronger control of the distribution of pornographic materials and stringent enforcement of existing antipornography legislation. Another recommendation focused on providing alternative living accommodations for victims ("usually wives and children") of family violence. Alternatives were to be provided through private or public facilities. This recommendation passed after being amended to limit the public role to "temporary public funding for facilities." A third recommendation, that parenting skills be made mandatory training at the secondary school level, was defeated by the plenary session.
Lifespan Planning for Young Women
No task force recommendations survived the plenary session. The workshop had accepted a task force recommendation urging sex education for parents, the medical profession, clergy, and counselors so that sex education in the family and for the helping professions could be strengthened. The workshop also passed a modified recommendation urging better preparation within the home and school system for both motherhood and vocational self-sufficiency. Both these recommendations were defeated in the plenary session. In their place a substitute resolution was passed, encouraging each woman to "seek knowledge through the private and public resources now available" and deploring "government agencies assuming more authority, responsibilities, and control." Defeated earlier, in the workshop, was a task force recommendation urging less sex-stereotyped career counseling and instructional materials in the public schools.
Wife Abuse
All task force recommendations survived the workshop and plenary session, some in modified form. Two new recommendations were added in the workshop, one of which passed the plenary session. Recommendations included establishment for battered wives of a network of emergency shelters sponsored by local organizations and the Division of Family Services (a similar recommendation had passed earlier under the "Men" workshop discussion), encouragement of stronger state laws for punishment of wife abusers, establishment of laws requiring a husband to pay for losses (medical expenses, child care during recovery, etc.) suffered by his battered wife, and a request (one of the workshop additions) that law enforcement bodies maintain separate statistics on wife-abuse incidents. Not adopted was the other new workshop request urging that private groups and the media educate the public about wife abuse.
International Interdependence
There were no preprinted task force recommendations for this workshop. The workshop emerged with its own resolutions against foreign aid, international interdependence, and "any world government body which attempts to dilute our national laws and personal sovereignty." In addition it resolved that the right to trial by jury should be "restored" as a basic right of all citizens, not to be limited by Supreme Court decisions. Lastly it resolved that separation of powers be "reestablished" and that the executive branch be prohibited from establishing administrative regulations which have the status of law. The plenary session adopted all the resolutions except the one against foreign aid.
Health Education
Two task force recommendations survived the plenary session, one asking that the Food and Drug Administration compile and distribute a table of generic drug equivalencies and the other supporting removal of taxes from eye glasses and hearing aids. The plenary session denied support to workshop- prepared recommendations asking better preventive health education by local health professionals using state funds, improvement in existing school health programs, placement of more women in policy-making health positions, and abolishment of sex discrimination by insurance companies. The workshop had earlier defeated task force recommendations encouraging health care deliverers to better educate their patients about their own bodies and encouraging better public health education by public health organizations.
Rape
Four of the task force recommendations survived the plenary session. Four did not. The original recommendations had been accepted and refined by the workshop session. The emerging recommendations urged increased medical sensitivity to the needs of the victim, freedom of choice in terminating or sustaining pregnancy resulting from rape, compensation to victims for property damage, loss of income, and medical and counseling expenses; training for prosecutors and law enforcement officials in collection of evidence and prosecution of rape cases, prohibition of introduction of evidence of past sexual conduct unless clearly relevant to the case, elimination of language in Utah laws which discriminates on the basis of gender of attacker or victim, the bringing of rape and sexual assault laws into harmony with other criminal statutes by including spouses as victims, and the offering of workshops to inform people on how to report a rape and avoid rape and incest situations. Half were passed. Defeated were those recommending freedom of choice in terminating or sustaining a rape-induced pregnancy, inclusion of spouses as victims under criminal statutes, elimination of gender-based discrimination in statutory language, and compensation to victims.
Women as Students
No task force recommendations made it to the plenary session. Killed in the workshop were the original recommendations urging public education on the Title IX regulations and elimination of sex bias and stereotyping in all textbooks, counseling materials, and educational institutions. In their place were recommendations that the Title IX regulations be eliminated, that Congress state the intent of the Title IX statute at the time of passage, and that Congress specify enforcement procedures. Also added were recommendations supporting the Utah State Board of Education's pending suit against Title IX and rejecting any movement to eliminate gender from children's textbooks. All these substitute recommendations passed the plenary session.
Women in Utah History
The original task force recommendations survived both the workshop and the plenary session. They specified "that women be included in the history of Utah as it is written in textbooks and monographs, as it is taught in the public schools and institutions of higher learning, and as it is ritualized in programs, pageants, and monuments" and "that institutions responsible for the care and dissemination of materials and information relating to Utah history hire more women in managerial positions,* actively collect women-related historical materials, and conscientiously promote the inclusion of women in Utah history. . . ."
* This was the only time out of several tries that a recommendation urging the hiring of more women in managerial positions passed the plenary session.
Lifestyles
There were no recommendations planned for the lifestyle workshop because lifestyles were seen by the task force as "so much a personal matter." The workshop discussion was intended rather to define lifestyles and outline conditions which influence them. Therefore no recommendations were entertained in the workshop. On the floor of the plenary session, however, a recommendation was introduced and passed which stated that drastic cultural changes including lesbianism and homosexuality should not be advocated or taught within Utah's public school system.
[1] Letter of June 3, 1977 on Relief Society letterhead, addressed to all regional representatives in Utah and signed "Relief Society General Presidency." The letter began, "This is a follow-up on the phone call you received from President Ezra Taft Benson's office, and here is what should be done."
[2] Later, after the IWY Conference became so controversial, my friend declined to identify the bishop.
[3] Salt Lake Tribune, June 23, 1977, p. B-l.
[4] Deseret News, June 23, 1977, Editorial Page.
[5] Deseret News, June 23, 1977, p. B-l.
[6] Salt Lake Tribune, June 23, 1977, p. B-l.
[7] The letter of June 3, 1977 enclosed enough copies for stake presidents and bishops and concluded with a deadline for their distribution. Some found the letter innocent. Others attributed hidden meanings to it. The ambiguous clauses quoted in the text were seen by some as subtly encouraging a defensive posture from the outset on the part of recruited ward delegates.
[8] Linda Sillitoe, "Women Scorned: Inside Utah's IWY Conference," Utah Holiday VI:12, August, 1977, p. 28.
[9] Jan L. Tyler then Asst. Professor of Child Development and Family Relations, BYU.
[10] Katie Dixon, Salt Lake County Recorder.
[11] Draft Copy, A Proposed State Plan of Action (Working Paper Developed by the Task Forces of the IWY Coordinating Committee), a copy of which is on file with the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, Utah State Capitol Building, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84114.
[12] Transcript of Recommendations Coming Out of Workshops, Utah State IWY Meeting, June 24-25, 1977. Filed with the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, Utah State Capitol, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114.
[13] All the nationally-formulated resolutions were printed in the Deseret News, June 16, 1977, p. C-l-3. They were a summary of major recommendations appearing in To Form a More Perfect Union, the report of the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, copies of which were available to the first 5,000 registrants at the conference.
[14] Numerous attendees, representing women of varying persuasions, confirm that these were the attitudes and statements made by caucus leaders. At the Provo caucus, one of the caucus speakers, representing the Conservative Caucus and the American Party, went so far as to argue that the IWY Commission wanted to legalize rape. Kathleen Flake, a member of the Utah IWY Coordinating Committee, was present at the Provo caucus and took the podium to attempt to clear up such misconceptions.
[15] Groups inspiring and/or conducting the caucuses were the "Conservative Caucus," a coalition of various right-wing interests led by self-described "Bishop" Dennis Ker (an LDS Bishop), and "Let's Govern Ourselves," led by Republican state legislator Georgia Peterson. Caucuses were held in Bountiful, Ogden, Kearns, Provo, Salt Lake City (Highland High School), and Logan. The author has substantiated reports from five separate Salt Lake Valley wards that Church machinery was used to invite women to attend these caucuses. For additional documentation of caucus activities and use of Church organizational mechanisms and ties to publicize the caucuses, see Sillitoe, pp. 63-65.
[16] It is interesting but perhaps just coincidental that on Wednesday, June 22, Thursday, June 23, and Friday, June 24, i.e., the two days preceding and the first day of the conference, the Deseret News ran feature articles providing information developed by the Women's History Task Force on the role of women in Utah's development.
[17] The following three documents were available after the conference from the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, Utah State Capitol, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114. They form the basis for the summaries provided in the appendix.
(a) Draft Copy, Proposed State Plan of Action, A Working Paper Developed by the Task Forces of the IWY Coordinating Committee.
(b) Transcript of Recommendations Coming Out of Workshops, Utah State IWY Meeting, June 24- 25, 1977.
(c) Recommendations Approved by the body in Plenary Session, Utah Women's Meeting, June 24- 25, 1977.
Recently these documents have been combined into a soft-cover monograph, Utah State Plan of Action, The Utah Women's Meeting, June 24-25, 1977, which also includes minority reports filed with the Utah IWY Coordinating Committee. Limited copies of this document are available, but one is filed with the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women, Utah State Capitol Building, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114. This document is the one being forwarded to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. However, there are at least two errors in its reporting of the final recommendations. The correct version is to be found in the separate printing of recommendations cited in (c) above.
[18] Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, June 26, 1977, A-l. Salt Lake Tribune, Thursday, June 30, 1977, B-ll. Sillitoe, p. 68.
[19] Earlier, informal attempts by the Relief Society to encourage LDS women to attend the grassroots mass meetings had met with only partial success.
[20] The copy in my possession is dated July 11, 1977. It is written on Relief Society letterhead and is signed by all three members of the Relief Society Presidency.
[21] "Bishop" Dennis Ker is quoted by independent sources as having stated (at the Highland High Caucus) that although the Relief Society had not authorized these caucuses, they were aware of them and wanted their members to be informed, thus inferring that the Church did not disapprove.
[22] Page 1 of Lifestyle Section. [Editor’s Note: This footnote is not in-text in the PDF, so I placed it here.]
[23] Deseret News, Monday, June 27, 1977, Editorial Page.
[24] Salt Lake Tribune, Wednesday, June 29, 1977, Editorial Page.
[25] Private communication.
[26] Journal of Discourses, V. 10, p. 57.
[post_title] => Church and Politics at the IWY Conference [post_excerpt] => Dialogue 11.1 (Spring 1978): 58–76During the spring of 1977, Utah’s two major newspapers began their coverage of what was to become one of the hottest political controversies of the year: the Utah Women’s Conference authorized by the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year and scheduled for June 24-25 [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => church-and-politics-at-the-iwy-conference [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-04-13 01:16:39 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-04-13 01:16:39 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.dialoguejournal.com/?post_type=dj_articles&p=16893 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => dj_articles [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) 1
And Woe Unto Them That Are With Child In Those Days
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Dialogue 6.2 (Summer 1972): 40–47
It isn't easy these days to be a Momon mother of four. In the university town where I live, fertility is tolerated but not encouraged. Every time I drive to the grocery store, bumper stickers remind me that Overpopulation Begins At Home, and I am admonished to Make Love, Not Babies. At church I have the opposite problem. My youngest is almost two and if I hurry off to Primary without a girdle, somebody's sure to look suspiciously at my flabby stomach and start imagining things. Everybody else is pregnant, why not I?
Podcast Transcript
Dialogue Topics: Women’s History and Feminism
This month is March and that means it is Women’s History Month. With that in mind, I [Taylor Petrey] wanted to take some time to talk about the role that Dialogue has played in Mormon women’s history, including marking the birthplace of modern Mormon feminism in 1971, and continuing to be a hub for groundbreaking work on women’s history, feminist theology, and cultural analysis of gender in the LDS tradition. Did you know that there are at least eight issues dedicated to this topic from 1971 to 2019, in addition to many standalone articles? In fact, there are so many that this podcast episode is really just scratching the surface of the thousands and thousands of pages of published material. Throughout the article, we have hyperlinked the various articles, and we encourage you to go to the source material to see what these people were saying about their religion and their gender.
Now, I should note that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Mormon feminism. I’ve written a bit about it in my own book on twentieth-century gender, and my articles on Mormon feminism and Heavenly Mother, and I’ve co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender. I consider Claudia Bushman, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Judy Dushku friends and mentors. I thought I knew a lot about this topic, but researching for this podcast I still uncovered new gems and started to see the role that Dialogue has played in this history in a new light.
In the podcast episode and this article, I am going to walk through this history in four major phases. First, I want to talk about the role Dialogue played in the foundation of modern Mormon feminism. This introduces us to some of the key figures over the last fifty years. Then, I want to talk about the conflict that feminists faced between their values and their loyalty to the church during the years that the church was opposing the Equal Rights Amendment, as well as some of the fall out. In the 1980s and 1990s, feminists and church leaders came into even more open conflict once again. Finally, I want to review the scholarship on this issue over the past few decades, looking at Mormon feminism in the new millennium as it appears in the pages of Dialogue.
Act I: Mormon Feminism Reborn
When we talk about the founding of modern Mormon feminism, there are two contexts that I want to mention here. In our last podcast episode, we noted how Dialogue was born in the context of the civil rights movement. But 1966 is also right in the middle of the rebirth of feminism. This is the first major context. By the 1960s, we can begin to chart what is generally referred to as second-wave feminism. If the first wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries around white women’s voting rights, the second wave dominated the 1960s and 1970s, when women were calling for equal treatment in the workplace, at home, and in their religious traditions. No doubt Mormon women all over the country were being influenced by these broader cultural shifts. However, the Mormon women in Boston were particularly moved and began to organize. In 1970, they came together to discuss these issues.
The second major context that has to be understood is that church leaders in this period are emphasizing what they called “the patriarchal order.” This isn’t just a hold over of old values, but actually a newly re-assertive patriarchy that was dismantling the Relief Society’s independence and putting into place all sorts of new policies and programs that would ensure male leadership. Women are actually losing power in the church in the post-war period. It was in this context that that Boston women’s group first began to act, creating an independent funding stream for the local Relief Society in their area.
Dialogue co-founder and co-editor Eugene England was based at Stanford in California, but he visited Cambridge, MA, in 1970. Claudia Bushman remembers walking with England and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich on the Harvard campus one evening and pausing near the Widener Library: “I just blurted out that there should be a women’s issue of Dialogue and that we had a group who could put it together.” According to Bushman, England liked the idea: “I expected more of a hard sell,” she recalled, “but he just immediately agreed and said to go ahead with it.”
The result was the now famous “Pink Issue” of Dialogue. It was edited, illustrated, and written by that group of women in Boston. It marks the official beginnings of modern Mormon feminism. Devery Anderson has written: “The pink issue was the first public sign that a feminist movement within modern Mormonism had been born.” The editors of Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, Joanna Brooks, Rachel Steenblick, Hannah Wheelwright, wrote, “The ‘Pink Issue’ of Dialogue, as it would later be known, struck a warm, frank, and bold note to mark the beginning of a new era in Mormon women’s history” (35).
It is fascinating looking back on the now-fifty-years-old issue. It was controversial, but it wasn’t confrontational. This wasn’t the Udall letter on race and the priesthood, but rather an attempt to start a conversation and to emphasize compatibility. Claudia Bushman wrote that they were committed to the compatibility of the gospel and feminism. The issue covers everything from housework to education to respect in church.
“The issue seems pretty innocuous now, but the whole project was still pretty threatening,” insisted Ulrich thirty years later. “Some women didn’t want to be associated with something that might make them seem critical of the church. Others thought we were not being bold enough. I think we were trying hard to be ourselves.” It was a lot of these women just telling their stories.
Ulrich was right about how it was received, despite the fact that this issue is now legendary. Responses assailed the idea of a “middle ground”: some said it wasn’t faithful enough to the role of woman as mother, while others said that it wasn’t radical enough by praising singlehood and childlessness.
One response from a single twenty-five-year-old male in the letters to the editor in the next issue was a classic case of mansplaining: “The penchant for autobiography in this issue led to a lack of systematic analysis on the problem of women in Mormonism in general.” Richard Sherlock, in that letter, critiques Claudia Bushman for being pro-marriage and pro-family in her feminism. More responses came in for the Summer 1972 Issue: “The women’s issue followed the church line. Ho hum!”; “Mr. Sherlock was not the only person who had great hopes for the issue on women and came away disappointed. At least it was a beginning….Raising children is a challenge, mopping the floor is a bore. Talking about it, or writing about it is a deadly bore. Please, just because we are women does not mean that we are interested in hearing more about housework, or cooking, or diapering. It is bad enough to have to do it.”
These disagreements continued for years. By 1974 the women in Boston organized by starting their own publication. Not a scholarly journal like Dialogue, but a magazine that featured the arts, poetry, personal voices, and more, they named it Exponent II, named after The Women’s Exponent, the nineteenth-century Mormon feminist publication that these women had discovered in the stacks at Harvard’s Widener Library and had been astonished to discover their feminist foremothers.
Bob Rees, then-editor of Dialogue, reflected on the Pink Issue and the first issue of Exponent II: “Frankly, I am still somewhat disappointed that the [pink] issue was not bolder and more far reaching in its attempts to speak to the serious problems of sexism within Mormonism. Your approach and tone may have been more practical and realistic, but personally I would have liked a little more boldness. That is, by the way, the same objection I have to the first issue of Exponent II—it seems to be trying so hard not to offend that it comes off as pretty bland.”
Dialogue’s letter to the editor section became a place to talk about the new venture of Exponent II, the second independent Mormon publication after Dialogue. Some examples of the complaints extended to Exponent II after the inaugural issue in 1974: “What a contrast [to Exponent the original]! Exponent II is timid and tentative where its namesake is forthright and assertive. The difference is due to the fact that nineteenth century Mormon women didn’t question either their rights or their independence (both of which were hard earned) and contemporary Mormon women seem uncertain of both. The history that spans these two publications has to be among the most intriguing in the annals of women’s studies.”
I want to point out that the birth of Mormon feminism had a rocky start, but it foreshadowed the very struggles that it would often find itself in. Too radical and too conservative.
But the existence of Exponent II didn’t mean that Mormon feminism disappeared from Dialogue. Dialogue continued to be a place in these early years to discuss the major issues of Mormon feminism. In the 1960s and 1970s, you’ll recall that race and the priesthood was heating up as a hot topic. The question of women and the priesthood wasn’t far behind.
In Summer 1974, Ulrich wrote an essay about why she doesn’t want the priesthood, stating simply, “If the priesthood were a profession, I’d feel differently. . . . Precisely because it is blatantly and intransigently sexist, the priesthood gives me no pain. One need not be kind, wise, intelligent, published, or professionally committed to receive it—just over twelve and male. Thus it presumes difference, without superiority. I think of it as a secondary sex characteristic, like whiskers, something I can admire without struggling to attain.”
A reader, surprised by Ulrich’s stance on the priesthood, wrote to the editor in a letter from Fall 1974: “I was shocked to read Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s short piece in the most recent issue of Dialogue. She states that the priesthood is ‘blatantly and intransigently sexist’ and that therefore the priesthood gives her no pain. She says she feels no urge to struggle to attain it. But the entire tone of her note suggests she is yearning to have the power which the priesthood represents and resents the fact that she cannot get it in spite of being perhaps better qualified in terms of ‘spiritual gifts’ than many males who have it. While I do not question Sister Ulrich’s spiritual gifts, she seems to have missed a point fundamental to the order of the Kingdom. The male has the right by blood to preside over the female in righteous dominion. It is the female’s and uphold the male who presides in righteousness. The sooner Sister Ulrich and other sisters in the Church come to accept this fundamental principle, the happier they will be. “
In these formative years, LDS feminists were finding their voice in a number of ways. First, they were reclaiming their past. Women’s history becomes an important part of this movement. It isn’t an accident that both Ulrich and Bushman go on to be leading historians of America and Mormonism, at Harvard and Columbia respectively, with women’s stories at the heart of much of what they do. Second, they are telling their own stories, and being authentic to who they are as Mormons and as feminists. Third, they understand the power of organizing. They not only produce a founding document in the “pink issue,” but put forward a number of other publications including Exponent II and some groundbreaking historical articles in an edited book. I am proud that Dialogue was the venue that helped launch modern Mormon feminism, and continues to be a home for these critical issues for over fifty years.
Act 2: The Equal Rights Amendment
The feminists in Boston weren’t the only Mormon feminists. There were LDS women all over the country who were being influenced by the broader feminist movement, and no issue became more important than the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). In the early 1970s, most Mormons supported the ERA, but in the beginning of 1975, the Church came out against the ERA and launched a national political effort to defeat its ratification. Mormon feminists found themselves in a tough spot, having to choose between supporing the church or supporting the most important feminist cause since women’s suffrage. This was the chief goal of the second-wave feminist movement. An innocuous statement in and of itself, the ERA would have had huge symbolic and real world consequences. But it proved to be hugely divisive for Mormon feminists.
Dialogue had moved to Washington, D.C., in the second half of the 1970s under Mary Bradford’s editorship. Mary, the first female editor of Dialogue, was already showing the leadership that women were taking in this arena. But it is notable that from 1975 to 1980, there is little written on Mormon feminism or women’s issues—including a profound silence on the ERA.
But that didn’t mean that Mormon women were silent on the issue. The chief group that you need to know about during this period is Mormons for the ERA, and its most important leader, Sonia Johnson. Johnson and Mormons for the ERA were a feminist movement that directly challenged church authority. They held events that garnered huge media attention, including flying a banner over General Conference that said “Heavenly Mother loves the ERA.” Johnson sparred with Senator Orrin Hatch in a senate hearing. She grew increasingly frustrated, moving away from compatibility between feminism and Mormonism and eventually called the church “the last unmitigated Western patriarchy” in a caustic speech. It is important to realize that the church in the 1970s was pretty strict: for example, women couldn’t give prayers in mixed-sex meetings for much of this decade. The end of the racial restrictions on the priesthood actually correlates with tighter patriarchal authority. In any case, Sonia Johnson was excommunicated for that speech in December 1979.
Dialogue’s silence was a source of concern. The first issue of the decade is filled with Letters to the Editor on the ERA. A letter to the editor in Spring 1980: “Please do something on the naughty women’s movement. We need more discussion of issues rather than warmed-over historical Ph.D dissertations.”
This was the issue. The ERA had been going on for eight years, with five years of the church opposing it. Feminism was transforming business, relationships, and the church. And Dialogue had been ducking it. Though Dialogue had sat out of these issues up until then, the floodgates broke in 1981 with three of the four issues dedicated to the topic.
The Spring 1981 Issue had an interview with Beverly Campbell, the anti-ERA spokeswoman for the LDS Church. She was the LDS version of Phyllis Schlafly, a Catholic anti-ERA spokeswoman who led the STOP ERA campaign. Campbell was the anti-Sonia Johnson. They’d both been invited to speak on the Today Show, but Johnson refused to appear with Campbell. Dialogue’s interview is really an excellent interview, a great resource for getting at what is happening for conservative women during this time.
In the Summer 1981 Issue, Mary Bradford writes “The Odyssey of Sonia Johnson,” which is a chronological biography based around major milestones of Johnson’s efforts. In it, Bradford provides lots of details about Johnson’s battle for the ERA, conflicts with Orrin Hatch, and so on. That year, Johnson had also published her book From Housewife to Heretic. There was still huge controversy about her excommunication almost two years later. It was the most notorious excommunication until the September Six.
Bradford’s biography was then followed by an interview with Johnson in the same issue. Mary Bradford did the interview, and it is notable that Beverly Campbell, Sonia Johson, and Mary Bradford were all from Virginia, making the D.C. area a hub of Mormon women’s activity. Johnson’s interview is a little challenging. There is a lot in there about her divorce and excommunication. It has a lot of the emotions, about betrayals from local friends and leaders, and some great stories about her daughter asking to be able to pass the microphone during testimony meeting or to pass out programs and her bishop saying, “No, that is a priesthood function.” During this time, President Spencer W. Kimball had reversed a policy that had been in place for a number of years that women couldn’t pray in sacrament meeting, giving people hope that other activities in the Church might be opened to anyone instead of restricted to the male members. It is important to recognize the context of how patriarchal the church was at this time.
After these two issues about the ERA, the Winter 1981 Issue is the ten-year anniversary of “Pink Issue”. Sometimes called the “Red Issue,” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Claudia Bushman return. In the intervening ten years, both finished PhDs with six children and became professors. Feminism continued to transform society and rip at the church over the last decade.
Ulrich writes a retrospective in this issue. One of the things that surprised me was how much she describes the fights that these early Boston women were having. As stated earlier, the Pink Issue received mixed reviews, often being seen as too timid. But she was also writing in the wake of the rise of the religious right, the defeat of the ERA, and the excommunication of Sonia Johnson. “How did Bob Rees expect us to write about polygamy or the priesthood when we couldn’t even write about housework without risking a schism? . . . So it was that my first feelings of feminist outrage were directed not at ‘the Brethren’ but at the kindly gentlemen at Dialogue. Who did they think they were, presuming to tell us what Mormon women should want?” Ulrich continues, “The pink Dialogue proclaimed the value of women’s voices, yet in 1971 few Mormon women were really prepared to speak. Before we could write with any depth about tough issues, we had to do a little more experimenting with our own lives.”
“That the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints simultaneously enlarges and diminishes women should hardly be surprising since it was born and has grown to maturity in a larger society which does the same.”
In the Red Issue, there is an attempt to reset after the tumultuous decade by declaring what a Mormon feminist is: “A feminist is a person who believes in equality between the sexes, who recognizes discrimination against women and who is willing to work to overcome it. A Mormon feminist believes that these principles are compatible not only with the gospel of Jesus Christ but with the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “
This Winter 1981 Issue was more than just a nice retrospective. It also set out a bold new agenda after ten years of feminist thought. The next generation wanted to talk about even more substantive issues. And right here in Dialogue, forty years ago, Mormon feminists broke another taboo—raising the question of women and the priesthood for the first time in print.
In 1978, the Church had received a revelation ending the restrictions on Black men from being ordained to the priesthood and Black men and women from attending the temple. Naturally, people increasingly started to ask the question about women’s ordination as well. This was a topic in numerous Chrisitan denominations, and many were opening up during the 1970s. In 1981, the RLDS church (now Community of Christ) received a revelation to ordain women.
And thus we get Nadine Hansen’s “Women and the Priesthood.” Her biography in that issue says she was a mother of four and a senior at San Jose State University studying religion and economics. The first real treatise on the subject, this article was the kind of thing the more liberal Mormon feminists had been hoping for over the past decade, but what more conservative Mormon feminists and women were dreading. It is a close and sophisticated reading of scripture and a more rigorous and intellectual engagement with the historical record. It self-consciously builds on the 1978 revelation on the priesthood: “Before June 1978, we all readily understood that the denial of priesthood to black men was a serious deprivation. Singling out one race of men for priesthood exclusion was easily recognized as injustice, and most of us were deeply gratified to see that injustice removed by revelation. But somehow it is much more difficult for many people to see denial of priesthood to women as a similar injustice.” She really tackles the hierarchical arguments about the priesthood, and questions whether the nascent egalitarianism, separate but equal, is possible.
Anthony Hutchinson also writes on this topic in the Winter 1981 Issue. In “Women and Ordination: Introduction to the Biblical Context,” he wrote some of the most important articles on Mormonism and scriptural scholarship during this period. Four years later, in the Fall 1985 Issue, a treatment of women and the priesthood was given with essays from Melodie Moench Charles, Linda King Newell, Meg Wheatley-Pesci. Questions around priesthood ordination were a big issue in the 1980s, but it was mostly in scholarly circles that it was discussed. We didn’t see any activism on this issue.
During this time, there are also other new venues that are popping up. Sunstone Magazine was founded in the late 1970s and began hosting forums. These topics were being discussed at Sunstone and Dialogue, along with the Mormon Women’s Forum and other organizations. Meanwhile, women’s history is moving forward with important, mature historians during this decade who were displaced after 1982 but regrouped and continued their work.
We also see a maturation of feminist theology really begin to take off in the 1980s. For example, in the Spring 1988 Issue, Margaret Merrill Toscano published “Beyond Matriarchy, Beyond Patriarchy,” a work of speculative feminist theology. In Fall 1988, Melodie Moench Charles offered an early critical appraisal of Heavenly Mother as imagined by many Mormon feminists in “The Need for a New Mormon Heaven.”
So, in the two decades following the founding of modern Mormon feminism, there were some rough years as they struck to find a balance between their faith and feminism, but the conflicts really rose to the surface over the ERA. However, Mormon feminists didn’t leave en masse; rather, they regrouped and remained committed, producing new, groundbreaking scholarship, pushing boundaries in history and theology, and raising enduring questions around femininity and gender, authority and membership, and role and future.
Act 3: Open Conflict
A dark period for Mormon feminists’ relationship with the Church began in the 1990s. In this period, a number of open conflicts between the Church and feminist result in chastisement and excommunication. There is a sense of restlessness in the articles they were writing. There is hope for their goals: things are moving forward and there is great new scholarship. But it seems that the church isn’t really changing. By this time, Sonia Johnson’s work is a decade old by now, but it and her excommunication loom in the background.
Yet, there was also a sense, almost twenty years after the Pink Issue, that these issues were somehow passe. Consider the opening to the Fall and Winter 1990 Issues, which were dedicated to women’s history and feminist theology: “A women’s issue in 1990? Doesn’t that smack of tokenism, of division rather than unity, of sexism rather than sexual equality? Perhaps it would if women’s voices hadn’t been integral and almost proportionate in Dialogue for more than twenty years now. Perhaps it would if the landmark ‘pink’ issue of 1971 and the ‘red’ one in 1981 hadn’t mattered so much to both men and women.“
The Fall 1990 Issue contained Alison Walker’s “Theological Foundations of Patriarchy,” which uses scriptural and theological analysis to argue for patriarchal roots, and Betina Lindsey’s “Woman as Healer,” which looks at the history of women and gifts of the spirit. Additionally, in “The Good Woman Syndrome; Or, When Is Enough, Enough?” Helen Candland Stark takes a look at domestic abuse in Mormonism as she expands on her Exponent II essay on the same topic.
These years, the readership of Dialogue is seeing more and more women as writers, and excellent writers at that. In the Winter 1990 Issue, Vella Niel Evans looks at Mormon women in the labor industry in “Mormon Women and the Right to Work.” Lavina Fielding Anderson, in “The Grammar of Inequity,” takes on gender-inclusive language within the Church and the gospel: “The scriptures are profoundly exclusionary. It is an agonizing paradox; but to the degree we love and use the language of the scriptures, we also love and use the language of exclusion. . . . I feel that women must be fully included in the gospel of Jesus Christ, not because the scriptural texts fully include them nor because our theology perfectly includes them but because any other pattern does violence to the fabric of the universe, distorting and misshaping the image of God that I strive, however imperfectly, to see and reach toward. When language becomes a veil, masking and disguising God, then it is imperative, as a matter of spiritual health, that language change. I think that the process, though arduous, will be accompanied by joy. “
It’s interesting to me to see the negative reactions to these issues and these articles. For example, a letter in Summer 1991 states, “Equity between the sexes is unquestionably an issue of importance, but one might reasonably ask if it is the only issue. The Fall 1990 Issue of Dialogue was devoted almost entirely to this issue, as was a major part of the Winter Issue.
“Perhaps instead you could have devoted some space to addressing the completely one-sided treatment of this topic in Dialogue. Surely the word ‘dialogue’ does not mean that those holding one point of view should spend their time and energy reinforcing one another’s prejudices.
“Is Dialogue going to treat a wide range of issues in an intellectually honest manner, or become merely a propaganda machine under the control of persons with only one point of view?”
And a letter in Fall 1991: “I have only recently finished a cover- to-cover reading of the Fall 1990 Women’s Issue, and I must send my thanks and sense of awe-struck appreciation for an issue of such power and magnitude. I have pondered for some weeks now just what I can possibly say to express my sense of indebtedness to each and every contributor, and unfortunately I have come up empty-handed. Still, I must somehow try. “
Despite the detractors and the letter writers, women continued to publish, writing their own history with their own voices. In the Winter 1991 Issue, Lola Van Wagonen published “In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise,” which is relevant to current celebrations since 2020 is the anniversary of the national enfranchisement of women. And in the Summer 1992 Issue, Julie Nichols told the life stories of various Mormons in “The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Women’s Stories, Women’s Lives.”
That takes us to up to 1993. And this is a big one. The whole Spring 1993 Issue is powerful, and one of the most controversial ever published in Dialogue. The essay that I want to focus on here is related to feminism, but not exclusively about feminism. For a little more than a decade before this, since the early 1980s, tension between church leaders and scholars was heating up. Historians were publishing a lot of material that was embarrassing church leaders. You’ve got the Hofmann forgeries, which hurt them twice, first when he publicized the content and then when they turned out to be fakes. And church leaders were playing ping pong with Mormon scholars—some going after them behind the scenes and some protecting them. Tensions were high.
Enter Lavina Fielding Anderson. “The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology” is a sixty-page article on what she calls “ecclesaiastical abuse.” It represents the early work of the Mormon Alliance that Paul Toscano had started that was seeking organized pushback against the Church’s patriarchal control. A sample from the article helps to set the tone of it: “The clash between obedience to ecclesiastical authority and the integrity of individual conscience is certainly not one upon which Mormonism has a monopoly. But the past two decades have seen accelerating tensions in the relationship between the institutional church and the two overlapping subcommunities I claim—intellectuals and feminists. “ The article was really about historians and feminists, and acknowledges that scientists and others might also have their stories. But the issues with the New Mormon History movement and various feminists during the ERA and beyond needed airing. Lavina belonged to both communities—historians and feminists—and argued at the intersection of them.
The article then discusses conflicts from 1972 to 1992. It takes people through the beginning and end of Leonard Arrington’s stint as Church Historian and his exile afterward. It documents many episodes of intimidation of historians, quotes letters from General Authorities attacking in general and specifically certain historians for airing unflattering history of church leaders, and goes over the church’s efforts to disrupt the International Women’s Year conferences. It also discusses Sonia Johnson’s excommunication. Anderson shows that the Committee to Strengthen the Members, a.k.a. Strengthening the Church Members Committee, is behind it a lot of the supervision. In 1992, the committee, headed by James E. Faust and Russell M. Nelson, was publicly exposed. The article reveals that several of those being investigated have “files” on them and that people working at Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT, seemed to be calling local stake presidents and bishops. Some of the main characters in this story are Paul Toscano, D. Michael Quinn, Lavina Fielding Anderson, Linda King Newell, and Maxine Hanks. Brent Metcalfe, David Knowlton, John Sillito, and other big Sunstone names are also getting blowback for Sunstone. In addition to this article, from 1991 to 1993, this anti-intellectual movement within the Church top brass is receiving tons of media coverage. LDS intellectuals are speaking out, comparing the Church and community’s treatment of them to McCarthyism. Eugene England’s essay compares it to the Salem Witch Trials.
Because of this article, Lavina Fielding Anderson is excommunicated as part of the September Six, when six members were excommunicated for articles published. Included in those six targets were other prominent feminists Maxine Hanks and Margaret Toscano. Many others were caught up at BYU and elsewhere as a silencing moratorium spread across the field of Mormon studies.
However, Dialogue continued to wade into these murky waters. Summer 1994 brough another special issue on women’s topics. In it, Janice Allread published her foundational piece on Heavenly Mother, “Toward a Mormon Theology of God the Mother.” History still needed (and still needs) to be expanded in Martha Sonntag Bradley’s “Seizing Sacred Space,” Women’s Engagement in Early Mormonism and David Hall’s “Anxiously Engaged: Amy Brown Lyman and Relief Society Charity Work, 1917-45”, which informed his later full-length biography of Lyman, an indispensable work of what women’s authority in the church was like before correlation.
Additionally, this period saw authors like Lynn Matthews Anderson engaging with broader conversations occurring in the study of religion and the study of scripture. For example, “Toward a Feminist Interpretation of Latter-day Scripture,” brought together feminist biblical studies and feminist literary studies toward Latter-day Saint conceptions of scripture. And, Margaret Toscano, one of the September Six, continued to publish on Mormon history with “If Mormon Women Have had the Priesthood Since 1843, Why Aren’t They Using it?”
Although this was a tough period, I want to end with Cecilia Konchar Farr’s “Dancing Through the Doctrine: Observations on Religion and Feminism.” Farr ran into troubles at BYU as part of the 1993 crackdown, but she published this article anyway. In it, she wants to desecularize feminism and find space for feminist critique of religion from inside positions of faith.
“Religious feminists and certainly Mormon feminists might lay some of the blame for the loss of religious discourse in feminism not only on our reluctance to use it, but also on a wresting away of this language by the conservative groups who have set up feminists—along with witches and lesbians—as the enemies of God.
“Perhaps I am also writing in response to the question that I hear often from many of my (as we say in Mormonism) gentile friends, ‘Why do you stay in such a male-dominated religion?’ I am often tempted to ask them, admittedly begging the question, which institutions they associate with are not dominated by men—their banks, their government, their schools or factories or hospitals? I stay because Mormonism means something to me at the deepest levels of my being. So I find myself, in my own religious odyssey, sitting in a structure I have deconstructed, but that I admire still. I stare at the clouds through the open beams where the ceil- ing once was and admire the beams without wishing for the ceiling. And currently I have no plans for a desert escape. It’s a tough position to take in this particular historical moment as an intellectual and a feminist, I love my church and am proud to be Mormon.”
Act 4: Mormon Feminism in the New Millennium
By the 1990s, Dialogue had moved past commemorating the 1971 Pink Issue and was tackling new projects with new dedicated issues. As stated above, in 1990 and then with two issues in 1994, they devoted space to various topics that intersected with feminism and gender. However, for nine years, Dialogue did not publish an issue focusing solely on these topics. It wasn’t completely silent in the intervening years; there were other articles here and there that you can search for in our Archive. For this history and for brevity’s sake, we skip forward to the Fall 2003 Issue when we get another full issue on women’s issues. It was exactly a decade after the September Six, as well as after more excommunications, like Janice Allred’s later that decade.
This issue hints at the continuation of old questions, as well as starting to take the question in new directions. There are contributions from more than twenty scholars on three topics: Women and the Priesthood; Women and Missions; and Sexuality and the Women’s Movement in Mormonism. Some of my good friends have articles in this issue, which came out just as I was finishing my masters degree. There are also essays from others assessing what had happened to the movement, including a discussion of Lavina Fielding Anderson’s excommunication. Claudia Bushman also offers a key essay on the origins of Exponent II and the early days of Mormon feminism in Boston.
The turn to sexuality I think marks an especially interesting development. Melissa Proctor’s “Bodies, Babies, and Birth Control” is still one of the most important articles on this topic. In it, Proctor studies the messages sent to women, officially and unofficially, by the Church and how those messages were received.
For those interested in the women in the priesthood question, this issue provides important milestones for that conversation. In the panel, Dialogue published Todd Compton’s “‘Kingdom of Priests’: Priesthood, Temple, and Women in the Old Testament and in the Restoration,” William D. Russell’s “Ordaining Women and the Transformation from Sect to Denomination,” and Barbara Higdon’s “Present at the Beginning: One Woman’s Journey.” Looking at the history and contemporary conceptions of priesthood, the panel gave new looks at women and the priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Bushman’s 2003 essay on the history of Exponent II set the stage for really telling the history of modern Mormon feminism. Forty years after that conversation in Harvard Yard, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich published “Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism.” This article is really crucial because it retells LDS feminist history that had often seen LDS women as reacting to feminist thought, or being influenced by it, but Ulrich shows that Mormon women were co-creating feminist approaches to religion. She writes, “Mormon women weren’t passive recipients of the new feminism. We helped to create it. Constructing a timeline of key events reinforced the point. In 1972, the year Rosemary Radford Ruether introduced feminist theology at the Harvard Divinity School, Mormon feminists were teaching women’s history at the LDS Institute of Religion in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” It also offers a fuller and more contextualized history of early Mormon feminist groups, and some reflection on early Mormon feminist interaction with Dialogue. Mormon women were passive actors, but leaders and co-creators of religious feminism.
One other important essay, this one in the Winter 2008 Issue, is Kevin Barney, “How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated).” Barney’s article builds on Dan Peterson, “Nephi and His Asherah,” and teases out places in the scriptures that discuss Heavenly Mother.
During the 2000s and early 2010s, it is important to note that social media and blogging were breathing new life into Mormon feminism, spreading it far beyond scholars and becoming a mass movement that was mobilizing women all over the place, not just in metropolitan areas or college towns. Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan tell this story in “Mormon Feminist Perspectives on the Mormon Digital Awakening: A Study of Identity and Personal Narratives.” But I want to consider how this digital awakening led to a renewed clash with feminists and the church.
Women’s leadership and roles in the church were really heating up in these decades. Neylan McBaine’s “To Do the Business of the Church: A Cooperative Paradigm for Examining Gendered Participation within Church Organizational Structure” appears in Fall 2012. This article was originally given at a FAIR conference and must be read in the context of a renewed feminist movement in the LDS church, with radical and more conserative wings. Ordain Women, Neylan McBaine, and Valerie Hudson were “must read” material, in addition to Feminist Mormon Housewives, Wave, and other organizations.
Notably, in Spring 2013, Kate Kelly and others, including many veteran LDS feminists, launched Ordain Women. They led mass actions at Temple Square and gained global media attention. Just over a year later, Kelly was excommunicated. This was huge news and once again struck many as an irreconcilable conflict between feminism and LDS church practices. Kelly’s actions not only divided feminists from the church, but feminists from feminists, with many sympathetic but who believed she’d gone too far. Others felt she did what was necessary. However one feels, Kelly became a household name in the church and broke a taboo on public discussion—not just on blogs or in the pages of Dialogue—a public discussion on women’s leadership in the church.
While the public discussions begun by Kelly and others occurred, Dialogue continued its own engagement with the topic. For an excellent roundtable discussion, check out “Three Meditations on Women and the Priesthood” (Winter 2014): C.J. Kendrick, Rosalynde Welch, Ashmae Hoiland. And, in Summer 2015, Cory Crawford wrote “The Struggle for Female Authority in Biblical and Mormon Theology,” which engaged the question of precedent for women’s ordination: “The historical origins of the gender ban have not yet been addressed with the same degree of attention in Church discourse. The recent statements made by the Church on the racial priesthood ban strongly emphasize the impact nineteenth-century US racial politics had on the development of the priesthood ban for members of African descent, but no such discussion of culture and gender politics has yet been addressed in Church publications on gender and priesthood.” He looks at both the cultural contexts of ancient Israelite priesthood and modern LDS priesthood to identify a genealogy of the gender ban. In my view, the definitive article on this topic, and I highly recommend it. I would also commend, in tandem with these articles, Roger Terry’s two-part series, “Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church” (Spring/Summer 2018).
A year before her and co-editors put out Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, Joanna Brooks published “Mormon Feminism: The Next Forty Years” (Winter 2014). Brooks talks about the period from 1970s Mormon feminism in Boston to the present and imagines what needs to be part of the future. She identifies five areas for Mormon feminism: theology, institutions, racial inclusion, financial independence, and spiritual independence.
Mormon feminist theology has fortunately made a comeback and Dialogue has been an important home for that since Brooks wrote seven years ago. For example, Spring 2016 brought us Fiona Givens’s “‘The Perfect Union of Man and Woman’: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making” and Spring 2017 gave us a Feminist Roundtable: Maxine Hanks, “Shifiting Boundaries of Feminist Theology: What Have we Learned?” Mette Ivie Harrison, “When Feminists Excommunicate,” and Neylan McBaine, “Mormon Women and the Anatomy of Belonging.” Hanks, who was excommunicated in the September Six episode in 1993, returned to the church in 2012 and reflected on the shifting ground of feminist historical and theolgoical thought in the intervening two decades. Hanks’s comeback also includes an interview in Spring 2019, “LDS Women’s Authority and the Temple: A Feminist FHE Discussion with Maxine Hanks.”
Spring 2019 also has an article by Jodi England Hansen on the temple, “Condemn Me Not.” In it, she reflects on the changes that occurred to the temple ceremony: “I am grateful for what was removed, which consisted of much of the sexist language and action. There are still words that distinguish gender roles, and there are still differences in some of the ordinances between men and women. I see the changes as a step toward more equitable language, but not as achieving true gender equality at the linguistic level. I am concerned about some of the added phrases.“ Also in that issue, Kathryn Knight Sonntag has an ecofeminist article, “The Mother Tree.”
So, I want to end somewhat with where we began. The Spring 2020 issue was guest edited by Exponent II, as the editorship transitioned away from Boyd Peterson to myself. I guess we can say this was Exponent II and Dialogue’s Jubilee Year, forty-nine years after the Pink Issue. And it is remarkable to note how far Mormon feminism has come. Margaret Olson Hemming put together an amazing issue that really put forward the new kinds of feminist scholarship out there: Brittany Romanello, “Multiculturalism as Resistance: Latina Migrants Navigate US Mormon Spaces,” which brought much-needed intersectionality to the scholarship, while Amanda Hendrix-Komoto’s “The Other Crimes: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Utah” is I think the first history of abortion in Mormon studies and benefits from the new histories that show that abortion was increibly common in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, including in Utah. Tons of other great content in this issue too, including some fascinating interviews, one with Emily Clyde Curtis, a former classmate of mine, “Mormon Women in the Ministry” that talks about her work as a chaplain, and Barbara Christiansen, another old friend of mine, in “Women in Workplace Power.”
Conclusions and Continuations
The Mormon feminist content of Dialogue is an embarrassment of riches. I am proud that it has stood as a leader in this work for over 50 years now and I am in awe with all the contributions of such brilliant feminists. From the brave beginnings of the Boston group, to maturation and divisions among feminists, to conflicts with church leaders, to renewed efforts to carve our space and a future, Dialogue has been there. We haven’t been the only place, as our friends at Exponent II and later organizations and publications, including blogs and social media, grew and flourished throughout the years, but we have been a continual resource for fantastic scholarship.
There is still more to say, and Dialogue will continue to curate and distribute conversations around these topics. In fact, in 2022, Dialogue will have its first issue completely dedicated to Heavenly Mother and discussing topics pertaining to Her.
Thank you for taking this journey with us, for trusting some of your time to Dialogue, and for all your support. If you want to subscribe or donate to Dialogue, you can do so at dialoguejournal.com/subscribe.
The podcast episode of this post was written by our editor, Taylor Petrey, with sound editing and music by Daniel Foster Smith; this post was edited for cohesion and brevity by Adam McLain and Emily Jensen. Our content manager is Emily Jensen. Our social media managers are Adam McLain and Calvin Burke. The Dialogue Journal Podcast is produced by The Dialogue Foundation, with support from Merry Thieves.
The podcast episode is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network, a collective of independent, interesting podcasts who promote thoughtful, respectful, and engaging inquiry and discussion of all aspects of the LDS tradition, thought, and arts and culture.
LINER NOTES
Continuing the Dialogue Topics Podcast, Dialogue Editor Taylor Petrey walks us through the history of feminism in the pages of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. From the Pink Issue in Summer 1971 to fight for the Equal Rights Amendment to open conflict between feminists and patriarchs in the Church to Mormon feminism finding its foundation in the new millennium, the pages of Dialogue have been host to numerous and various thoughts on the matter of gender and women.
Act 1: Mormon Feminism Reborn
- The Pink Issue, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 1971
- Summer 1972, Letters to the Editor responses to the Pink Issue
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Counseling the Brethren,” Summer 1974
Act 2: The Equal Rights Amendment
- Letters to the Editor, Spring 1980.
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “The PInk Dialogue and Beyond,” Winter 1981.
- Interview with Beverly Campbell, Spring 1981.
- Mary L. Bradford, “The Odyssey of Sonia Johnson,” Summer 1981.
- An Interview with Sonia Johnson, Summer 1981.
- The Red Issue, Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 1981
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “The Pink Dialogue and Beyond,” Winter 1981.
- Nadine Hansen, “Women and Priesthood,” Winter 1981.
- Anthony Hutchinson, “Women and Ordination: Introduction to the Biblical Context,” Winter 1981.
- Melodie Moench Charles, “LDS Women and Priesthood: Scriptural Precedents for Priesthood,” Fall 1985.
- Linda King Newell, “LDS Women and Priesthood: The Historical Relationship of Mormon Women and Priesthood,” Fall 1985.
- Meg Wheatley-Pesci, “LDS Women and Priesthood: An Expanded Definition of Priesthood: Some Present and Future Consequences,” Fall 1985.
- Margaret Merrill Toscano, “Beyond Matriarchy, Beyond Patriarchy,” Spring 1988.
- Melodie Moench Charles, “The Need for a New Mormon Heaven,” Fall 1988.
Act 3: Open Conflict
- Alison Walker, “Theological Foundations of Patriarchy,” Fall 1990.
- Betina Lindsey, “Woman as Healer in the Modern Church,” Fall 1990.
- Helen Candland Stark, “The Good Woman Syndrome,” Fall 1990.
- Vella Neil Evans, “Mormon Women and the Right to Wage Work,” Winter 1990.
- Lavina Fielding Anderson, “The Grammar of Inequality,” Winter 1990.
- Letters to the Editor, Summer 1991, Spring 1991, and Fall 1991.
- Lola Van Wagonen, “In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise,” Winter 1991.
- Julie J. Nichols, “The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Women’s Stories, Women’s Lives,” Summer 1992.
- Lavina Fielding Anderson, “The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology,” Spring 1993.
- Janice Allred, “Toward a Mormon Theology of God the Mother,” Summer 1994.
- Martha Sonntag Bradley, “‘Seizing Sacred Space’: Women’s Engagement in Early Mormonism,” Summer 1994.
- David Hall, “Anxiously Engaged: Amy Brown Lyman and Relief Society Charity Work, 1917–45,” Summer 1994.
- Lynn Matthews Anderson, “Toward a Feminist Interpretation of Latter-day Scripture,” Summer 1994.
- Margaret Merrill Toscano, “If Mormon Women Had the Priesthood Since 1843, Why Aren’t They Using It?” Summer 1994.
- Cecilia Konchar Farr, “Dancing through the Doctrine: Observations on Religion and Feminism,” Fall 1995.
Act 4: Mormon Feminism in the New Millennium
- Fall 2003 Issue
- Claudia Bushman, “My Short Happy Life with Exponent II,” Fall 2003.
- Melissa Proctor, “Bodies, Babies, and Birth Control,” Fall 2003.
- Kevin L. Barney, “How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated),” Winter 2008.
- Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Mormon Women in the History of Second-Wave Feminism,” Summer 2010.
- Neylan McBaine, “To Do the Business of the Church: A Cooperative Paradigm for Examining Gendered Participation Within Church Organizational Structure,” Fall 2012.
- Joanna Brooks, “Mormon Feminism: The Next Forty Years,” Winter 2014.
- Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan, “Mormon Feminist Perspectives on the Mormon Digital Awakening: A Study of Identity and Personal Narratives,” Winter 2014.
- Courtney J. Kendrick, “A Letter to My Mormon Daughter,” Winter 2014.
- Rosalynde Welch, “Mormon Priesthood Against the Meritocracy,” Winter 2014.
- Ashmae Hoiland, “In Light,” Winter 2014.
- Cory Crawford, “The Struggle for Female Authority in Biblical and Mormon Tradition,” Summer 2015.
- Fiona Givens, “‘The Perfect Union of Man and Woman’: Reclamation and Collaboration in Joseph Smith’s Theology Making,” Spring 2016.
- Maxine Hanks, “Shifting Boundaries of Feminist Theology: What Have We Learned?” Spring 2017.
- Mette Ivie Harrison, “When Feminists Excommunicate,” Spring 2017.
- Neylan McBaine, “Mormon Women and the Anatomy of Belonging,” Spring 2017.
- Maxine Hanks, “LDS Women’s Authority and the Temple: A Feminist FHE Discussion with Maxine Hanks,” Spring 2019.
- Jody England Hansen, “Condemn Me Not,” Spring 2019.
- Kathryn Knight Sonntag, “The Mother Tree: Understanding the Spiritual Root of Our Ecological Crisis,” Spring 2019.
- Spring 2020 Issue, guest edited by Exponent II.
- Brittany Romanello, “Multiculturalism as Resistance: Latina Migrants Navigate U.S. Mormon Spaces,” Spring 2020.
- Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, “The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Utah,” Spring 2020.
- Emily Clyde Curtis, “Mormon Women in the Ministry,” Spring 2020.
- Barbara Christiansen, “Women in Workplace Power,” Spring 2020.
Other books and resources
- Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblick, and Hannah Wheelwright, eds., Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings.
- Dan Peterson, “Nephi and His Asherah,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.
- Ordain Women
- Sunstone Magazine
- Roger Terry, “Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 1: Definitions and Development,” Spring 2018.
- Roger Terry, “Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 2: Ordinances, QUorums, Nonpriesthood Authority, Presiding, Priestesses, and Priesthood Bans,” Summer 2018.
- Maxine Hanks, ed. Women and Authority.
- Taylor G. Petrey and Amy Hoyt, The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender.