Exponent II's Blog, page 167

The founding fathers – heroes or villains?

[image error]I recently read “The Founding Fathers – heroes or villains?” by Tad Callister, posted by the Deseret News.  It struck me as deeply problematic and ahistorical.  It is problematic because he accuses people who today are critical of the founding fathers for being “hypocritical” and implies ingratitude for “heaven-sent messengers.”  Most of that criticism comes from Black people, People of Color, and their allies.  His narrative puts on one side grateful people who see God’s hand in the founding, and ungrateful hypocrites who want to destroy the legacy of God’s chosen messengers.  This is an unhelpful framework given the conversation that Church members need to be having about race right now.

The title of the article and the first sentence contextualizes this article properly: it sets up an ahistorical and unnecessarily divisive non-conflict.  Humanity is not divided into “heroes” and “villains” and no self-respecting historian would ever bother with trying to establish whether a person fell into one category or the other.  The question suggests that our only two options are to erect a statue to someone or to spit on their grave.  We must worship or despise.  There is no room for nuance, and anyone who offers a complication to a heroic narrative is by definition denigrating the hero.

He begins by quoting Ted Stewart, a federal judge (not, we note, a historian who would actually be qualified to discuss history in an informed way)

“There is just one problem with judging [the founding fathers] by today’s standards and it is this: but for those imperfect founders and the sacrifices that they made and the instruments of government they created, there would be no current, enlightened standards of equality and justice by which to judge them.”

This comment presupposes that the American Founding Fathers a) originated the ideas they supported relating to human rights and liberty and b) created the only democratic experiment in the world in which they grew. Both of these are incorrect.

The American founders stood on the shoulders of giants, and they knew it.  Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau elaborated social contract theory long before the colonists started getting restive.  They, and not Jefferson, originally put forward the idea that humans are endowed with freedom and equality by nature, and that we use our free will to create a political entity along democratic principles that meets the needs of both the individual and the collective.  It was John Locke who first said that all individuals are equal and born with “inalienable” natural rights.  Locke noted that these rights included “life, liberty, and property.”  Locke’s definition of property didn’t only include the things we own, but also a right to personal well-being – or, as Jefferson put it, “pursuit of happiness.”  It was Locke who argued that the purpose of government was to secure and protect the inalienable rights of the people. Other founding principles of the United States were likewise derived from Enlightenment thought – for example, Voltaire was a vociferous advocate of separation of church and state and a fierce critic of tyranny and censorship. So – the idea that, without our sainted founding fathers, we simply would not have these principles present in human minds is nonsense.   They promulgated them.  They produced one of several experiments on those principles.  They merit recognition for their efforts.  But they certainly didn’t come up with the notion of a social contract or natural liberties on their own.

So what about the second part of the contention? Sure, the founding fathers didn’t think of those ideas.  But without them they would only be theory! Again, this is untrue.  The French Revolution erupted shortly after the American Revolution and despite the flattering imagination of many a patriot, the French Revolution owed very little to the United States for  either inspiration or execution.  Like the American Founding Fathers, the French derived their ideology largely to their own countrymen – the French philosophes.  The Haitian Revolution, which followed almost immediately on the heels of the French, was the birth of a democracy that truly challenged the idea that “all men are created equal” meant “only white men, and we are keeping slavery.”  The Haitians freed themselves from slavery.  The Haitians took the same ideology that inspired our Founding Fathers and, unlike Jefferson, immediately engaged with the questions of race and perpetual servitude.

Continuing with Tad Callister:

“Do the critics believe these liberties came about by chance or that they were spawned by evil men? If so, how do they reconcile such a position with the unerring logic of the Savior: ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits.’” 

 And so we return to the reductionist and absurd assertion that good ideas only come from angelic men, and that evil men produce only universally bad outcomes.  Thus if something good happens, then the author of it must have been a hero.

Undoubtedly we have much to be grateful for and much to acknowledge.  We have civil liberties enshrined on our constitution.  We have separation of powers.  We have a system that allows for improvement and change.  We have examples of men who, in many important ways, were inspiring.  But if we know them by their fruits, then those fruits also include the 3/5 compromise, and the specification that the international slave trade had to continue until 1808.  Did God inspire that part of the Constitution?  The fruits were a government that systematically murdered and evicted Native peoples.  The fruits were a government that denied civil rights to women.  When Abigail Adams pleaded with her husband to “Remember the Ladies” she was specifically asking for relief from coverture – the legal fiction in which a married woman ceased to exist in the eyes of the law but instead became subsumed in her husband’s identity, losing all rights to individual property. “All men would be tyrants if they could” she reminded him.  His response? “I cannot but laugh.” Perhaps if the goal is inculcating hero worship, examining the fruit on the tree is a bad plan.

Tad Callister’s closing paragraph is particularly troubling because of his blithe disregard to the subtext of what he was saying:

“The Founding Fathers could have quietly retreated to the comfort and wealth of their plantations, law offices and businesses, but they put that all at risk for their children, fellow Americans and future generations — even us. To not be grateful for their sacrifices, for their willingness to literally put their lives, fortunes and reputations on the altar of sacrifice, would be ingratitude of the highest order. They were nothing less than heaven-sent messengers who gave us the greatest liberties ever enjoyed by any people or nation on earth. And as such we should honor and respect them, and their incredibly supporting and sacrificing spouses, as the heroes they indeed are.”

They could have retreated to their plantations.  Where hundreds of enslaved people made the “comfort and wealth” for them.  They were very careful not to put that comfort and wealth at risk, by making sure that slavery continued. Should the descendants of slaves reflect with unqualified gratitude on that reality?  The founders did not “put their . . . fortunes” on the altar of sacrifice.  They were categorically unwilling to sacrifice their fortunes.  They would not free their slaves, the single greatest concentration of wealth.  The founders guaranteed that they would have complete control of their wives’ property.  Perhaps on an individual level, had they lost and been punished as traitors by Britain, they could have lost those fortunes.  But they did all in their power to maintain white male supremacy, and they succeeded.  If they were sent from heaven as messengers, then what does that say about God’s opinion of Black people? Of women? Of Indigenous peoples?

Of course the final line throws out a classic piece of Mormon pablum – after rattling on and on and on about heroic heaven-sent men we need to remember “their incredibly supporting and sacrificing spouses.”  Would Sally Hemings fit in this category of supportive wife? Or was she more a child that Jefferson owned, a girl who was also his sister-in law? Was the fact that he engaged in a coercive sexual relationship from the time she was fourteen until he died, refusing to free her, evidence of her being “incredibly sacrificing”?

My argument here is not to say that our founding fathers were evil, or to suggest that their contributions are unimportant or unworthy of recognition.  That reductionist position is what Callister suggests is the only alternative to hero-worship.  But that is not the case.  It is possible to reflect with gratitude on some aspects of a legacy, and admire some aspects of a person’s history, without putting them (literally in this case) on a pedestal.  Removing a statue doesn’t automatically mean loathing every aspect of that person.  It means acknowledging the complexity of the legacy, and finding better, more complete ways of telling the story.

Why Young People Leave the Church by an Orthodox Christian

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Greek Orthodox church painting by Kandukuru Nagarjun Used in accordance to (CC BY 2.0)

A few years ago I started listening to Pop Culture Coffee Hour- it’s a Greek Orthodox podcast run by ministers in charge of youth and young adult programming in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. The 4 hosts will talk about a book or movie or show and relate it to the Christian values and beliefs of Orthodoxy. They do an annual Star Wars episode and it can get silly, but they are also very serious about their dedication to Christ and looking for the things to point to Him in the media around us.

In their most recent episode, one of the hosts, Christian Gonzalez, gave a monologue about Millennials and Generation Z who are leaving the Church that felt relevant to our LDS circles, because so many religions are experiencing the departure of their young people and I wanted to share it here. I transcribed this and took out some “um”s and other in-between words/sounds.

I’ve been working in youth ministry now for a decade….The question that you get asked more than any other one is why young people are leaving the Church and what we can do to get them to stay. This is the big question. And we think “more programming” “more pizza parties” “more whatever” – all of this kind of stuff. And ultimately, I feel like after so much thinking and talking to people on “We are Orthodoxy” and after a decade of asking myself this question, I think I am getting somewhat confident in an answer and I think that the reason that they leave is that ultimately the Church doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t actually matter in the world. It has no other goal than the perpetuation of itself, and at the end of the day, young people look at the Church and they see an institution that exists for itself. When push comes to shove, they are forced to hear the words of Jesus- to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, visit the sick and the imprisoned, right? But what they hear about at church is the importance of sexual ethics and personal piety. They are told not to do things like pass out antidoron to anyone besides the people just next to them, unless they distract somebody in church. “But what if I see a stranger in the back of the church who’s never been here before- should I not be welcoming to that person and open to that. To be like, ‘Here you go- here’s some bread.’?”

You know they see us- they see people spending plenty of time planning ethnic celebrations and festivals of the Church while the poor, red-lined neighborhood next to them boasts of a more than 50% high school drop out rate. And ultimately, people are listening to the words of Jesus, who says to care for the disenfranchised and the poor, and they see things where Jesus actually does those things and then they look at our Church and they’re like “Who are you following?”

One of my friends said this recently and it was brilliant, he said, “Ultimately young people leave the Church because they have too much integrity to stay.” And to me, this is becoming a huge issue that we need to address. We’re not actually dealing with people in the communities. We think so much about building buildings and getting more people to these things and have these events and a make money, fundraisers, etc. of course there’s always that pressure on people to give more money so that the priest has a salary so we can keep the doors open, etc.

But again at the end of the day, if this isn’t making any real difference in the lives of real people beyond this simple personal piety- and don’t get me wrong, we need the personal piety- we need that. We need prayer and fasting and alms giving. but again, these things are.. this is me trying to figure this out… these are ascetic practices- of a species of training. And the question is “training for what? What are we training for?” And the reality is that it’s training to love our neighbor. That’s ultimately what it comes down to: to love God, to love neighbor. And when we’re not doing that as a church, all that we do on Sundays is a medieval play. So of course people are tired of going, and of course people don’t think it matters, because they’re not actually seeing anything real instantiating the Kingdom. When people are being gripped tightly, or having money dragged out of their pockets to pay for the debt that is accruing over building a temple when people have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt themselves-we put more burdens on people as a community by wanting to go further into debt to build a new rec center and it baffles me. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that people leave. Who cares? What have we done? What have we done for anybody? How have we made the world better?

You know who makes the world better? The martyrs. And that’s why they get themselves killed. It’s against the institutions and the kingdoms of this world. And man, we’re playing right into it, with our self perpetuation… I don’t now. Rant over.

And this goes far beyond things like Black Lives Matter. It goes far beyond political platforms. Far beyond that. It’s the line that runs through each human heart: Am I going to live for myself or others? And it’s what we need to ask ourselves as an institution.

Pop Culture Coffee Hour, Episode 133: The Chosen

So that rant really caught me and I thought about how we Mormons are dealing with the same things. It has been really good for me to listen to this podcast over the past 3 or 4 years- it sometimes gives me the sermons/talks I wish I heard at church and I often find myself connecting more with the Christian community as a whole.

Do you look outside the LDS/Mormon world for spiritual uplift? Do these words above feel familiar to your experiences?

Surviving Coronavirus While White: Systemic Racism & A Call to Action #CopingWithCOVID19

My Story

It was the last day of March this year. My family and I had been in lockdown for the better half of a month, the beginning of which had been self-imposed. Masks were not yet required or even recommended, except for medical professionals. I had hardly left my two-bedroom apartment in New York City for over two weeks. And when I did, it was to get my two small daughters some outdoor time in a city park where we stayed at least six feet away from other cooped-up city-dwellers trying to get some fresh air. Admittedly, keeping a safe social distance was impossible at times on narrow city sidewalks and park paths.

Then one night as I was putting my 5 and 8-year-old daughters to sleep, I felt a sudden simultaneous onslaught of aches, chills, and fever—symptoms I’d heard so much about in those who had contracted COVID-19. I was immediately petrified lying between my two little girls on their bed that night; I feared the good-night kisses I had given them moments before could have been a kind of kiss of death—especially for my youngest daughter who has a history of chronic bronchitis and pneumonia related to a heart condition.

I swiftly quarantined myself in my bedroom for two weeks, relied on my healthcare and social support systems, and despite it being the longest and scariest two weeks of my life, I survived without developing serious symptoms. (Note: my case of COVID-19, although diagnosed by a doctor, was unconfirmed due to a shortage of tests in NYC at the time.)

One night during those two weeks, I came terrifyingly close to not being able to breathe due to congestion—staying awake all night sipping warm water and hot tea, elevating my head and chest, and following life-saving protocols to keep the fluid constantly streaming into my throat from blocking my airway. I developed a strange rash that my doctor said he’d never seen before. During those two weeks, I’ll admit that I cried alone in my room more than once, and my heart nearly broke in two watching my mask-wearing children cry and stretch out their arms for me at the threshold of my room night after night.

At the same time, I was acutely aware that just a few blocks from my apartment in a major NYC hospital hundreds of critically-ill patients were fighting for their lives. Some waiting to be admitted to the emergency room; some waiting days on end in hospital hallways to get admitted; many never making it out of those hospital hallways and dying alone there, or finally making it to the ICU and getting intubated, only to die there—far from their loved ones who longed to hold their hands and say good-bye. Then came the images of the deceased being loaded into refrigerated trucks outside that same hospital due to the morgues being overloaded by the sheer volume of deaths.

This was all happening within a five-minute walk from my comfortable quarantine-bedroom where I had regular virtual visits with my doctor; health insurance that fully covered those visits; economic privilege allowing me to take almost two weeks off work to rest; nourishing and plentiful food; access to clean, filtered water; and physical proximity to medical supports and facilities like health labs, drug stores, pharmacies, and one of the city’s most reputable hospitals.

It took several weeks for my body to return to full health after my two-week quarantine ended. Meanwhile I began hearing stories from friends and neighbors about those they had lost to COVID-19. I started noticing that not one of my white friends, colleagues, neighbors, or family members had lost a loved one due to coronavirus. Even in the epicenter of the outbreak in New York City, not one white person I know has lost someone close to them. Only one of them has relayed that someone they know has been hospitalized due COVID-19. In contrast, nearly all of the people of color I know in the city—especially the Black and Latinx people I know—have friends and loved ones who have died from coronavirus.

Systemic Racism and COVID-19

The disparity between the percentage of white people versus people of color who are hospitalized per capita in the U.S. due to COVID-19 is staggering. Note this data from the CDC: “Long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put some members of racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting COVID-19 or experiencing severe illness, regardless of age.”

Non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native persons have a rate approximately 5 times that of non-Hispanic white persons,
non-Hispanic black persons have a rate approximately 5 times that of non-Hispanic white persons,
Hispanic or Latino persons have a rate approximately 4 times that of non-Hispanic white persons.

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                                              [Click on image to enlarge]

The CDC concludes that “Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups are at Increased Risk During COVID-19.” They point to “inequities in living, working, health, and social conditions that have persisted across generations” as underlying these risk factors which they outline as the result of systemic racism and the stigma inherent in such an unjust, inequitable system. According to the CDC, these risk factors include but are not limited to

living in over-crowded housing  (e.g., racially segregated housing, tribal reservations, and multi-family households)
lack of complete plumbing (such as in a large number of reservation homes)
living a great distance from grocery stores (known as “food deserts”) and medical centers
lacking safe and reliable transportation, or relying solely on public transportation
being over-represented in jails, prisons, homeless shelters, and detention centers
working in essential industries (health care, grocery stores, meat-packing plants, etc)
no paid sick leave
inequities in employment, income, and education
lack of health insurance
chronic health conditions related to chronic, toxic stress (i.e., asthma, obesity, and high blood pressure)
distrust of the healthcare system, language barriers, or cost of missing work to receive medical care

It has been widely documented that “in states where Black communities make up only a relatively small portion of the population, nearly half—if not majority—of all COVID-19 deaths are members of the Black community.” In New York City where there is a relatively large Black population, both CBS and ABC News reported the story of a 30-year-old Brooklyn educator named Rana “Zoe” Mungin who fought for her life despite being denied testing for COVID-19 multiple times by a Brooklyn hospital.

Zoe’s sister, who is a registered nurse, documented her struggle to get adequate medical care on social media while her sister was suffering from debilitating symptoms including difficulty breathing. She wrote how Zoe was misdiagnosed by an EMT as “having a panic attack [when] she kept saying, ‘I can’t breathe.'” Despite finally being admitted to the hospital, a month later Zoe Mungin’s sister wrote that “she fought a long fight but her body was too weak,” and she succumbed to the virus. Her sister commented how Zoe’s story illustrates how “racism and health disparities . . . still continue . . . . The zip code in which we live still predetermines the type of care we receive.” ABC News further noted that

[Zoe’s] case echoes startling data released by the CDC showing that African Americans are being severely impacted by COVID-19 nationwide, accounting for 30% of coronavirus cases in the U.S. despite only comprising approximately 13% of the population.

[Zoe] was a first-generation college student who received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Wellesley College and later earned a Master of Fine Arts from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in Creative Writing. . . . “She died not only because of COVID-19, but because we live in a world that is racist and anti-black,” her friend for more than a decade, Nohemi Maciel, told ABC News. “We know that black people are dying at disproportionate rates. This cannot be left out of the conversation.” . . .

Lauren Calihman, who met Mungin during her freshman year at Wellesley College, said that people who live in areas where city hospitals are underfunded are implicitly being told that “their lives don’t matter, that they don’t matter.”

“Imagine if Zoe had received treatment consistent with the severity of her symptoms, rather than receiving treatment consistent with her origins,” said Calihman.

Wellesley College President Dr. Paula Johnson . . . called the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on black and Latinx families a “moral and systemic failure.”

“For Zoe,” . . . Calihman said, “I can only hope her story ignites sweeping change.”

A Call to Action for White People

As a white person in the U.S., I have recently been confronted by my own complicity in the systemic racism in my country. I’m ashamed to say that until the recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations and uprisings related to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, I wasn’t aware of how complicit I have been through my silence and inaction regarding systemic racism. I have signed an occasional online petition, donated money after a racially-motivated tragedy makes national news, occasionally read about and watched movies seeking to raise awareness about systemic racism and the white supremacy it upholds. I’ve clicked on emotionally-gripping social media posts and showed up to major elections and felt like I was doing enough.

However, I have too often stayed silent in the predominantly white spaces I am a part of. I have rested on my white privilege and centered my feelings and the feelings of my white peers to stay comfortable. My shocked reaction to the recent murders by police of Black Americans—which are just the latest murders and not uncommon—shows how little I understood the reality of racism in our country. As Time magazine points out in a June 4th article,

 The killing of George Floyd was shocking. But to be surprised by it is a privilege African Americans do not have. . . A black person is killed by a police officer in America at the rate of more than one every other day. . . . For 2½ months, America has been paralyzed by a plague, its streets eerily empty. Now pent-up energy and anxiety and rage have spilled out. COVID-19 laid bare the nation’s broader racial inequities.

White privilege contributes to white apathy and white silence, which uphold the systemic factors that result in the deaths of Black and brown people in the U.S. every day. To re-quote Time magazine’s confronting statistic: “A black person is killed by a police officer in America at a rate of more than one every other day.”  And to repeat the CDC statistics above, people of color in this country are dying from COVID-19 at 4 to 5 times the rate of white people.

White people need to have difficult conversations with each other about systemic racism and how it supports the white supremacist system we benefit from. We need to hold each other accountable for our direct and indirect racist behavior, which often includes centering white feelings and comfort when it comes to issues of race and racism. If we don’t, the statistics and deaths detailed above will persist.

But if each of us who benefits from this inhumane system are willing to call in our friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors to the work of anti-racism, despite the discomfort inherent in these conversations, we will be engaging in one of the most important aspects of dismantling the racist system we uphold that causes incalculable suffering.

Fresh Courage Take: Summer 2020’s Letter from the Editor

[image error]Cover art by Crystal Powell

The following is by Emily Fisher Gray, Managing Editor of Exponent II. Subscribing to Exponent II is the best way to support our organization. To receive this issue, subscribe here by July 15, 2020.

We started planning this issue of Exponent II in the early months of 2020, intending to highlight and celebrate the long history of public engagement, service and activism among Mormon women going back to pioneer Utah. Then, just as we began to work through the features and articles, the COVID-19 virus hit, followed by the horrific and senseless deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd at the hands of police or white vigilantes. 

Thrown out of my comfortable routines, faced with a global pandemic and the further unmasking of structural racism, I found myself frustrated and unexpectedly helpless. I wanted to act, to offer relief, to make things better, but the toolkit my Mormon spiritual ancestors left me did not seem to contain an adequate response to the challenges before me. I began to have doubts about the magazine’s planned theme: would it seem quaint and irrelevant to celebrate suffrage rallies and Relief Society service projects in a world that feels suddenly, utterly changed? 

But this issue of Exponent II makes very clear that we are not being called to our foremothers’ activism. BYU student Gretel Tam responds to a call to march in solidarity with her LGBTQ friends despite her mother’s concerns and the contrary messages of her upbringing in the church. Historian Andrea Radke-Moss reveals that Utah’s suffrage movement succeeded because, paradoxically, it upheld the patriarchal structures modern-day Mormon feminists are actively questioning. Tam and Radke-Moss, along with artist Kalani Tonga and poet Dayna Patterson, take inspiration from their ancestors and spiritual foremothers while consciously going in a new direction. 

Those that went before us may not have provided us with a specific roadmap for public engagement, but they had courage and confidence to try to create a more perfect world. If this is the legacy of social action they bequeathed us, it lives on in the brave Black women calling for change in our churches and communities so justice, safety, and spiritual fellowship may be enjoyed equally by all of God’s children. 

I take heart from the words of Kalani Tonga, who points out that “activism is really just a willingness to invest your time, resources, and privilege into bettering your community.” This magazine issue offers several different paths we might follow in keeping up our Mormon tradition of active service and hard work for a good cause. Fara Anderson Sneddon shows how the church’s Just Serve program creates a space for female leadership and service in keeping with the original Relief Society mission. Brita Brown Engh shares her experience serving as a mentor and “Big Sister” to a young, Muslim new American in Salt Lake City. Sarah Gusky Kemer’s lovely sermon on consecration shows us how even simple acts of service can become sacred. Throughout this issue, art by Black, Indigenous, and other Women of Color show us the beauty of the world around us and present a vision of a more just and equal world to come. In the face of a massive public health crisis and powerful, heartbreaking pleas for social justice, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. I hope you will find inspiration in this issue of the magazine, as well as beauty and balm for your soul. Like the Magi in T.S. Eliot’s poem and our Mormon pioneer foremothers, we must continue to move forward with courage, hope, and humility, seeking to find God and build Zion in the best ways we know how. 

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2019 Annual Report

2019 was a very good year for Exponent II. We celebrated our 45th anniversary, strengthened and professionalized the organization, and dramatically improved our financial sustainability.  Along the way, we updated our mission statement, held a remarkable retreat, continued to publish our award-winning magazine, and received retroactive reinstatement of our tax-exempt status, which restores our ability to accept tax-deductible donations.

Linked you’ll find a copy of our 2019 Annual Report [image error] detailing the work we’ve done and the successes we’re celebrating. We believe it’s of utmost importance to be transparent with and accountable to you, our Exponent community.

It’s an increasingly large and diverse community. Our blog had over 1 million pageviews in 2019. Our Facebook discussion group is nearing 5,000 members (as of June 2020) who discuss topics related to Mormonism and equality. Our magazine shares personal narratives, feminist theology, poetry, fiction, and art by women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum. We’re also in the process of launching a new website that will bring all of our activities under one umbrella and allow us to function as a single unit.

Will you join us in the work? As we expand our reach and strengthen our commitment to intersectionality, we find that our biggest barrier to outreach is a financial one. We want to make the Exponent II magazine accessible to more people who can benefit from a thoughtful, diverse, non-male-centric approach to Mormonism. We would love to create a more robust scholarship fund for our annual retreat. We want to pay our hard-working editors and group moderators to show that their work is important and valid.

We have big plans for the future, including printing a new edition of our Illuminating Women coloring book, holding retreats outside of New England, producing more Exponent II merchandise, and creating more forums for our community members to share their stories.

Click here to help support this work with either a one-time or recurring donation. If you’re able to commit to a recurring donation, these enable us to better project our financial situation and plan accordingly. We need your help to pursue our important mission!

Yours in sisterhood,

The Exponent II Board

(Barbara Christiansen, Kirsten Campbell, Pandora Brewer, Susan Christiansen, Emily Gray, Margaret Olsen Hemming, Libby Potter Boss, Carrie Salisbury, Heather Sundahl and Katrina Vinck Baker)

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Guest Post: “Do You Hear and Answer *Every* Child’s Prayer?”

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By Kaylee

I have the privilege of living with a priesthood holder who is authorized to administer the sacrament at home during quarantine. My three-year-old has been the most enthusiastic of my Primary-aged daughters about taking the sacrament at home. She loves to pass the bread and water to each family member. She often wants to “be the bishop” and conduct from her ottoman podium. (She recently got her own spot on the FHE board, and conducting is her favorite.) This week, she was helping my husband get the sacrament dishes ready, scampering back and forth between the kitchen and our living-room-turned-chapel, excited feet pattering on the floor. My husband handed her a piece of bread to put on the plate. She saw an opportunity and took it. I saw her big solemn eyes concentrating as she broke the bread, feet up on tippy-toes so she could see better over the top of the credenza that has served as our sacrament table. I heard her sweet happy voice: “I am a good helper!”

I remember being ten, almost eleven. The boys in my friend group were starting to be ordained as deacons. I remember sitting on a metal folding chair, first row in the gym, and taking the sacrament from one of those boys. I remember saying to myself, “I’m not going to let it bother me that girls don’t get to be deacons too.” That worked, for a couple of decades. My feelings have been changing the last few years, but having sacrament in my home has put a focus on how much our tradition of excluding girls from serving in rituals is not a requirement from God. I’ve studied the scriptures: passing the sacrament is not mentioned as part of the deacon’s duties; besides, women and children pass the trays down the rows. Preparing and cleaning up are not mentioned in the scriptures as teacher’s duties; women used to do this too. Breaking the bread is symbolic, but not a required part of the ordinance: My gluten-free friends partake of a piece of Rice Chex, not Rice Chex crumbles. Women can certainly read the scriptures out loud, even the ones containing the sacrament prayers. A woman can do every single piece of the ordinance, but not the whole thing put together. Our regional seventy has specifically mentioned that members who are not living with an authorized priesthood holder are *not* to partake of bread and water after meditating on the sacrament prayers.

After sacrament our family has been singing church songs, whatever the children request. This week the three-year-old wanted “A Child’s Prayer.” These words hit my heart:

Heavenly Father, are you really there?

And do you hear and answer ev’ry child’s prayer?

The sacrament prayer is just that: a prayer. No priesthood power or authority is invoked in the words of the prayer. The sacrament prayer is a prayer that God is capable of hearing from my female voice. Women could be granted authority to bless the sacrament, particularly when it would not be safe or appropriate for a man to visit her. We already do this in the temple: women are granted authority to perform ordinances in places where it would not be appropriate for a man to be.

My heart breaks for those who want to partake of the sacrament but do not, not because they are not physically capable of performing the ordinance for themselves, but because they have not been granted the authority to perform the ordinance. It hurts to feel excluded. It’s impossible to be “at one” when people are feeling left out. Last Sunday, I witnessed my young daughter do everything she possibly could to make the sacrament a joyous and reverent occasion. It was a pure and holy offering. I also want to help make the sacrament a joyous and reverent occasion. For now though, it hurts to think about going back to church, where neither my girls nor I will ever check the sacrament prayer for accuracy, where we will never work together to pour water into little cups, where we will never help create this holy experience, except by sitting still and staying quiet.

 

Kaylee only wears sensible shoes (if she has to wear shoes at all) and is passionate about pants with functional pockets (even her Sunday slacks).

6/25 This week in Mormon Land

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/06/25/this-week-mormon-land/

Sacred Music Sunday: When the Roll Is Called up Yonder

The Second Coming of Christ stained glass window – Cadetgray / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)

When I joined the church in the mid-1990s, there seemed to be an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) consensus that the Second Coming was right around the corner. We were living in the last days, and surely the world would come to an end soon. I wondered if I would grow old. Y2K came and went. 9/11 happened, and we were still here. And then after a few years, everyone seemed to come to a collective agreement to relax about it a little bit.

When I was on my mission in 2003, a general authority came to speak at a zone conference. I don’t remember the rest of his talk, but I do remember one part where he started talking about the last days and the Second Coming. He said, “Elders and Sisters, give me a show of hands. How many of you think that the Second Coming could happen tomorrow?” I looked around the room. My hand was the only one that didn’t go up – I knew that not all of the scriptural prophecies had been fulfilled yet. He continued and said, “How long does a 3 1/2 year war take?” There was a mumbling in the room as the hands went down.

I personally think that the Second Coming won’t be for another 4 billion years or so – I think the end of the world will be the literal end of the world, and that’s about how much more time our solar system has. But the scriptures also say that no one knows when, so I remain open to being wrong on that point.

I’ve seen an uptick in apocalyptic rhetoric lately. It’s understandable – a global pandemic, an unprecedented recession, civil unrest, dust clouds, locusts, etc. It sure looks like we’re reading straight out of the book of Revelation sometimes. It’s gotten me thinking. Every day is someone’s Second Coming. Rather than focusing on meeting Jesus with Him coming in clouds of glory to fix the world, we should be focusing on meeting Jesus at the end of our mortal journey. If we live well, it won’t matter whether He returns during our lifetimes, because we’ll meet Him either way.

One song that I really like that gets at this point is When the Roll Is Called up Yonder. It’s catchy and celebratory, focusing on the day of resurrection. “Then when all of life is over and our work on Earth is done, and the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.”

A Faith Journey in Idioms

Feeling a little silly today, I decided to try to give a summary of my faith journey with all the idioms I could muster. It might be a little over the top.

Growing up in the church, I put all my eggs in one basket. I believed wholeheartedly, striving to check all the boxes. I was all in. Beginning at my mothers’ knee, from Primary, through YW and seminary, accepting all callings I was given, I was convinced the church was true and I was struggling to measure up. I felt like for the most part I could see eye to eye with church leaders. I followed my parents’ plan to attend BYU and was hitched with a bun in the oven by graduation. My husband was called to a bishopric when I had my third babe in arms. I was in it to win it, through thick and thin, prepared to weather the storm in the gospel boat. Come rain or shine, I planned to endure to the end. For the most part, ignorance was bliss. 

I remember one RS birthday celebration where a friend spilled the beans to us that RS sisters used to give blessings. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. It went on my shelf with some of the troubling things I learned about as a teenager, like polygamy and the priesthood and temple ban. For years I was willing to hang on, ignoring the things that bothered me.

Once in a blue moon you may completely change your worldview during your adult life, as happened to me in regard to the church. I’d heard through the grapevine about some things that were very distressing to me, church history was a hot potato. I was caught between two stools for some time, wanting to dig deeper and uncover the truth, but fearful for what I would find. I didn’t want to cry over spilled milk, knowing about history, can’t change it. The church said ‘don’t bite off more than you can chew, curiosity killed the cat’. Joseph Smith somehow became a sacred cow. A few years back, I got wind of the new church essays that let the cat out of the bag, but they essentially just said ‘let sleeping dogs lie’. I tried to do this for a time, but I was learning more and more things that had a snowball effect. After the exclusion policy I gave up on submitting to the church. I was deeply hurt and disappointed in church leaders. Actions speak louder than words. I decided to throw caution to the wind and go the whole nine yards. 

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I would leave no stone unturned. I read extensively about church history. And since I wanted it straight from the horse’s mouth, I read a lot from the Joseph Smith papers. The history I learned was a far cry from what I had been taught, it had more holes than Swiss cheese. It was out of the frying pan into the fire. I’m not saying he didn’t have a spark of decency, just that we have to take church history with a grain of salt because Joseph Smith was not the best thing since sliced bread. I was deeply disturbed by what I learned about the way polygamy was practiced, especially the abuse of power I saw inherent in church leaders coercing young girls as secret polygamous wives (In Sacred Loneliness).  I was heartbroken over the stories of many of the early mormon women (Mormon Enigma). I was sick reading about how race issues really played out in the church (as in Religion of a Different Color). When it rains it pours. I was disturbed by Brigham Young’s power plays, racism, and misogyny. I was so disappointed by so many of the early church prophets. The devil is in the details. It made me feel a bit under the weather, but I tried to give the church the benefit of the doubt about the version of history I was taught. After all, I didn’t know whether they intentionally tried to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. Your guess is as good as mine. I was trying not to beat a dead horse and did my utmost to cut Joseph and Brigham some slack. 

For quite a while I was sitting on the fence. I continued to burn the midnight oil pleading in prayer for confirmation that the church was true, I told God “the ball is in your court”. Night after night I hit the sack exhausted and searching. But I was barking up the wrong tree. I was striving to keep my fears at bay by ploughing forward with church service, weekly temple attendance, family home evening, fasting and  prayer, and daily scripture study. I was on the ball with what I saw as my spiritual duties. I wanted all my ducks in a row. I know it may seem a strange thing to do when your faith is slipping away, but there was a method to my madness. Drastic times call for drastic measures. I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. I was demonstrating my faithfulness to God and the church while also striving to be worthy of a very important personal revelation. But I felt an immense weight as I continued to wrestle. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

But my testimony really bit the dust. What was the last straw? Eventually I realized my prayer had to change. I could see which way the wind was blowing. I could not let the church off the hook for all the things I was learning, not only the coercion and bad leadership I saw in its past, but also current sins like covering up abuse and hoarding wealth. I remembered all the times I was taught that I wasn’t measuring up and realized the church was the pot calling the kettle black. Those that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Leaders have whitewashed history to promote the narrative they wanted. I realize they started to let the cat out of the bag with the Essays to change their tune, but for me it was too little too late. I felt like the values of the church no longer aligned with my own. My prayer changed to “Is it okay to leave?” and peace came. To make a long story short, I ended up realizing that, to preserve my mental health, I could no longer go to the church I had dedicated my life to.

Leaving the church while living in Utah county is no piece of cake. Its hard to give it up cold turkey. It takes some time to pull yourself together. To make matters worse, the church is everywhere you turn. Birds of a feather flock together, leaving out the black sheep. Most people will beat around the bush and keep their interactions with me to small talk rather than ask about my spiritual journey, others just give me the cold shoulder. Some people have accused me of not playing with a full deck or being off my rocker. Some think I have missed the boat as concerning salvation or are worried about my leaving the boat. Some see me as jumping on the bandwagon of sin. Some are just plain glad to see the back of any doubters in their midst. It is a hard thing. But every cloud has a silver lining. 

This seeming crisis of faith turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Sometimes I feel like it cost me an arm and a leg, but I have grown so much. I’ve really accepted that you can’t judge a book by its cover, and begun work to purge myself of my mormon arrogance. I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I realize there are a lot of great things about the church. Maybe we don’t see eye to eye on the reasons, but many of our values are still the same. I appreciate the good things I learned while letting go of those things that no longer serve me.



If you are a fervent believer, you may see people like me as a devil’s advocate. Please trust me when I tell you the church was toxic and harmful for me and any attempts you make to bring me back will send you back to the drawing board. I may not offer a penny for your thoughts, because I feel like I am already familiar with your position. Don’t add insult to injury by telling me I am lost and deceived. I promise I am not just trying to get the best of both worlds by finding a way to sin. It seems to be a common belief that ex-mormons are like a kid in a candy store, trying all things forbidden. Yes, I used to think I wouldn’t be caught dead breaking the mormon taboos I grew up with, but I went on to break some at the drop of a hat. Yes, some of my positions and choices changed, but the deepest values did not. If your view of God turns out to be right, I am prepared to cross that bridge when I come to it. 

My newer view of god is one of a forgiving and expansive god that will understand my decision and my pain. I grew up handing over my personal sovereignty to the church and its leaders, but my experience taught me that it takes two to tango. If I simply stop doing some things, I reclaim my power. I choose my own underwear. I choose what beverages to try. I choose how to spend my Sunday for my spiritual replenishment. Eventually I found that the church was stealing my thunder, I did not owe all my moral choices to the church. I was as capable as my nonmormon friends of hitting the nail on the head with my daily choices between right and wrong. I learned to see and respect a lot more shades of gray. In the heat of the moment, I sometimes lose my cool, but I feel like overall I am much more at peace with myself and let go of much of the toxic perfectionism that I had internalized. I’ve had a taste of my own medicine- where I used to not even notice myself judging others, I have come to notice what I used to judge about others and now see myself being judged as a person in the out group. I feel like my journey is helping me become a better person and bringing me more peace.

If you are a doubter in the midst of the wrestle, I see you. Hang in there. Many will avoid the elephant in the room, but find your people who won’t get bent out of shape by your questions. Easy does it. If you choose to leave, it is a delicate balance to maintain relationships and not burn bridges while you differentiate from loved ones. If you choose to stay, break a leg. May you find loving support while you work to have your cake and eat it too. No pain, no gain. I have great respect for your fight and will root you on. I did not walk away hoping to see the church go down in flames. I was worn out with my disappointment and heartbreak. I hope to see you on cloud nine, as the church changes for the better.

I promise I won’t give up my day job to write more idiom stories. For now, I’ll call it a day. 

A Review on Noom or How I Learned Wisdom

 

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Sample screenshot of Noom app, which shows a woman standing in front of a mirror and the text below the image says, “In most situations you’ll find that people aren’t throwing all the shame and judgments your way. And that in fact, you are the only one holding all the shame and judgment. #Projection 101”

I heard from a fellow MoFem and psychologist friend that Noom, a weight-loss application, employed sound psychological concepts and tools so effectively that she would recommend it to her clients as a tool for general mental health. As I recently finished talk therapy (for now), I wondered if Noom could help me address some unhealthy eating patterns as well as maintaining my overall mental health.

In March, I signed up. I recognized some unhealthy eating patterns, i.e. ways I used food to numb and cope with emotions. It felt strange to sign up for a weight loss program when I didn’t want (in fact worried that) weight loss would become my focus. And Noom has done a great job in helping me learn; #NoomNerds use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; mindfulness and meditation; and self-reflection through journaling to achieve weight loss. Still, I was skeptical.

Also, surprise! This isn’t actually a post about Noom. (This article is a great resource for that https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/reviewedcom/2020/01/09/noom-review/4422490002/.)

For much of my life, I was best at embracing spiritual practices that I was sure I could do perfectly: Church callings, daily prayer, Word of Wisdom, tithing. I had decided that quantitative measurements would let me know that I did things “right.” I could make concrete plans to succeed at those goals.

While sometimes the goals were hard to achieve, at least it was always easy to measure how well I was doing them.

In achieving those goals, I shied away from creating bigger goals, e.g. strengthening my testimony, practicing hope, feeling the love of the Atonement. I didn’t know what those goals would look like. How would I know if I succeed at them? And, frankly, my spiritual life was busy enough with the easily measurable goals that I soothed myself with the idea that until I could manage daily scripture study and weekly FHE, I didn’t really have time to do those loftier goals.

My perspective about my spiritual life was similar to my perspective of my body. I know how to lose weight, cutting calories until the weight comes off. My culture has taught me what weight is “best” for me. I can ignore physical discomfort, hyper-focus on the scale numbers, and achieve those numbers. (Some of my worst eating and self-loathing habits have been adopted in pursuit of the scale number.)

Noom reframed my thinking about my body. Instead of “how much weight do I want to loose?,” I was asked to define my big picture, “Your Big Picture (YBP)” in Noomspeak. Noom goes on to further break down YBP, to dig deeper, and ask more questions. I won’t bore you with the details (after all, this still isn’t really a post about Noom).

There was a time when my YBP (to feel confident and happy in my body) felt as unattainable a goal as feeling the love of the Atonement. But, Noom gave me tools to make my YBP more concrete and attainable. It provided me with regular readings on how to think differently about my body and be kinder to myself; it even shows me how to apply these techniques in other areas of my life, like in the workplace and in my personal relationships.

Noom asked me thoughtful questions that I could reflect on in my journal; these questions didn’t have a “right” or “wrong” answer. The app gave me a safe community where I could say what was making me uncomfortable, when I was struggling, and problem solve on how I could try new solutions.

I developed skills to be kind to myself, find ways to joyfully move, and forgive myself. While Noom is marketed as a weight-loss app, it actually gave me time and space to learn wisdom about my body and mind. It reminds me of this quote that former Episcopalian pastor, Barbara Brown Taylor, wrote in her book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, “Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.”

I think about other communities in my life, like my ward, like the Mormon feminist community. How can we as community help individual members to gain their own spiritual wisdom? How much would our spiritual communities be enriched if we then felt safe to share our hard-won wisdom with each other?

And, here’s where it gets tricky: Noom gave me the freedom to find my YBP. The community, the readings, the questions were all to help me achieve the goal I set; Noom trusted that I knew best what my YBP is.

Do we, as a Church, an institution, trust each other to gain our own spiritual wisdom? Do we trust that a member when they say they skipped Church in order to grow closer to God through a hike? Do we trust one of our Mormon feminist sisters that she gains wisdom by serving as a Young Women’s counselor even as we worry that her ward is not giving her what we think she needs?

Those quantitative measurements when it comes to our weight and our religiosity are so convenient. They are so (relatively) easily controlled. It is comfortable to say, “We have 60% ward temple attendance. How do we improve that?”

But, what would it look like if we said, “We know there is addiction in this ward. How do we help these people feel the love of God and the power of the Atonement so that they can find their YBP?”

Do we truly believe that each individual understands their spiritual gifts and divine nature? How do we, as a community, express that trust? How do we help each other to trust our inner wisdom? How do we empower each other to find that inner wisdom?

I don’t have good answers to those questions, but I know that those answers can only come when we feel safe in our communities because we cannot trust each other to do the hard inner spiritual work until we can feel safe.

Do you feel safe in your ward? Do you feel safe with your family? Do you feel safe in the Mormon feminist community? If you do, how do you feel safe? If you don’t, could you be vulnerable and ask for what you need to feel safe?