Exponent II's Blog, page 228

#hearLDSwomen: I Was Lectured for Telling My Bishop About My Temple Concerns

[image error]This feels small, but it had a significant impact on me. We were engaged, and I was scheduled for my stake president interview for my first temple recommend. I was excited and bubbling with enthusiasm. For some reason, my fiancé was in this interview with me. The stake president started out by asking what I knew about the endowment. I acknowledged I didn’t know much and excitedly began to ask him questions. He immediately cut me off. He was very stern and reprimanded me. He informed me that he was the one asking the questions, not me. I never spoke again the entire hour except to answer the temple recommend questions, and he directed most of the discussion to my fiancé.

– Anonymous

 

When I brought my concerns about the temple to my bishop, he spent an hour and a half lecturing me about not talking about the temple outside the temple. I was crushed. I went in for healing or at least compassion.

In that meeting, the bishop said his wife originally wanted to keep her name when they married. It was really, really important to her. She didn’t keep her name and now barely remembers that experience (according to him). He said to give it a few years and the temple won’t bother me anymore.

Way to invalidate your wife and me at the same time.

– Tessa

 

Pro Tip: When women come to you with concerns, listen. Believe them. Treat them as equals.

Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.

“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)

Don’t Forget About Us

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By Blaire Ostler

 

Dear Mormon feminists,

I’m glad to see so many women happy about the latest changes to the temple endowment. I’m genuinely moved by how things have improved for cisgender, heterosexual, monogamous women. I mean that sincerely. You deserve to celebrate.

However, please keep in mind these changes do very little for your queer sisters and siblings. While you are celebrating, don’t forget your queer siblings are denied full-fellowship, temple recommends, sealings, baptisms for our children, and are still often excommunicated for our gender identity and/or sexual orientation. Please remember when you say these improvements are “gender improvements,” what has really improved is gender binary practices for cisgender, heterosexual women. “Gender improvements” should include queer, trans, non-binary and intersex folks. These changes do not address our marginalization. Improvements for cisgender, heterosexual women are not the same as “gender improvements.” Please use the word “gender” sensitively because it includes, or should include, more than cisgender, heterosexual women. Gender should include all of us. Feminism should include all of us.

I want to repeat, I’m happy for you if you are celebrating. I really am. I’m hoping these improvements trickle down to queer folks in time, but we need your help.

When you’re in the temple, don’t forget about those of us still waiting outside. When you are at church, don’t forget to speak up about queer inclusion. When you go to a baptism, remember how many of our children are denied the waters of baptism. When you do temple sealings with your spouse, remember we cannot do that with our spouse(s). Let these changes be a catalyst for further gender improvements for all of us. Don’t just speak up on the internet. Speak up at church, during ministering, in our homes, with your friends after a temple session, or with your bishop, so that more of us can worship with you.

Be happy. Celebrate. I honor that. Just don’t forget to honor the sisters that made this happen, and the queer folks who are still left behind.

Sincerely, a queer Mormon sister

 

Blaire Ostler is a philosopher and leading voice at the intersection of queer, Mormon, and transhumanist thought. She is a board member and former CEO of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, the world’s largest advocacy network for the ethical use of technology and religion to expand human abilities. She presents and writes on many forums and speaks at conferences promoting authentic Mormonism. Blaire holds a degree in design from the International Academy of Design and Technology-Seattle. She is currently pursuing a second degree in philosophy with an emphasis in gender studies.

Sisters Speak: Changes in the Temple – Part IV

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The Exponent blog is sharing guest and reader responses to the news of the changes to the LDS temple endowment and other temple ordinances announced 2 January 2019. We welcome your contributions in the comments or as a guest post using this link 

 

“I have an unrealistic and probably irrational dream that the First Presidency will allow every woman who has ever received her endowments to experience these newly improved ordinances, no matter her current level of affiliation with the Church. Being able to participate in the endowment and sealings with more equality (even if not ultimately equal) will not undo the grief and vulnerability I felt as a newlywed who had been received but given nothing, who felt diminished and reduced to an appendage in the eyes of the Church, or the deep shame I experienced for years for feeling these things. While I genuinely rejoice that so many of us have been able, or will soon be able to experience greater equality in the temple, I feel damned by my temple history, knowing I will not be able to partake in the peace or liberation that so many are experiencing through the alterations this week. I feel a little like an unrighteous Moses, barred from entering the promised land after a lifetime of working toward it. I am surprised by the wounds something mostly good could open up in me—an adulthood of hurt now exposed but without a prescription for the specific medicine that might help heal. I’m grateful to those in this group who have reached out, carried names, mourned and celebrated together. It is is at least a topical salve that reduces the sting of lonely grief. I love this {Exponent II} community.” – AEH

*****

“I went to the temple eager to experience the new changes. Coincidentally (or maybe not coincidentally), one of the sisters working in the initiatory area was a friend from years back. We knew each other in University. We are now both getting into old woman years. We are both faithful feminists. Both of us married quite late in life. We often talked about career and life goals together, discussed the gospel and it’s doctrines and knew each other’s heart on many issues. As she performed the ceremony for me, we looked into each other’s eyes and wept. These are some of the things we quietly labored over together. To experience this change in the ordinance together was an undeniable blessing.” -DA

*****

“No, I didn’t go to the temple today and won’t be able to go for many months because I live thousands of miles from the nearest temple. After the Rome Temple opens, it will still be over 1000 miles and dollars to fly there and there is no other way to get there. The admonition to not speak about the changes means that people who can’t go to the temple often will not benefit from the cultural shifts these changes might signal, nor will they have the chance to learn about the changes for themselves. It seems that many people think that even a conversation about the broader implications isn’t allowed. But those of us without access to a temple, and that’s a significant part of the church, need ways to talk about this. We all need to hear about and discuss this, not just people who are privileged to live near a temple.” – Anonymous

*****

“When I told my MIL about the changes and how the wording had hurt me in the past, she said it had never bothered her that she had to obey her husband and that she was grateful he was placed above her in the chain to God. The extent to which she had internalized the previous sexism of the endowment was amazing. Not only did she believe that she needed her husband to connect to God, she believed that she herself could not communicate with God in the ways that a man could. When I talked to my brother about the change, he told me the wording, actions, and clothing shouldn’t have impacted me. And, that even if I was upset, I should have realized I was making a covenant with God despite the wording, actions, and clothing that said otherwise. He didn’t seem to realize how far-reaching the harm of it all was, because he was protected from it as a man. I am grateful for the changes, but I am heartbroken over the damage the previous version of the endowment has caused myself and those around me. It’s a very bittersweet moment and I wish I had waited until now to be endowed and sealed. Right now I am juggling hurt, frustration, encouragement, and sorrow. It has been a tough day.” – Alyson

*****

“For the first time in years, I have actually wanted to go to an endowment session. This is big for me, yet, at the same time, I still feel the pain of the past. And wish that could be acknowledged. I am happy for the next generation who don’t have to feel like second class citizens, yet I am pained that they will never know how truly lucky they are.” – CN

*****

“When my husband came home and asked how i felt about it i said “complicated”.  Which wasn’t ok to him. “This is almost everything you’ve been asking for. I don’t understand why you’re not happy” I am though.  I’m happy that i won’t have to distract myself during the next family wedding in order to not seethe at the inequality. But also: I am relieved. I am relieved that i don’t have to grieve when my daughter goes through the temple, or figure out how to tell her all of the awful things she will hear. I am angry. I’m angry that i had to ever feel like God created us to be second class humans. I am sad. I am sad for the girl i was who had to question her value and try to do the mental gymnastics to make those words ok. I am proud. I’m proud of the woman i am who decided she wasn’t going to veil her face anymore and didn’t. The woman who quietly said “no” to herself instead of yes. My feelings are complicated. And that’s ok.” – Sherry M.

*****

“I admit that I find this painful to process. I’m so glad the changes happened because we’ve been working for it for so long. But. I had this distinct feeling of dread while watching “Suffragette” a few years ago. Here were all these women who sacrificed so much—their families, their livelihoods, their reputations—and a dang lot of them never got the vote. They died before they saw their work come to fruition. I feel like the endowment killed my relationship with God. Not all of that was the sexism but a good lot of it was. The changes came. That’s great. But not until after it killed something that I held so dear. I went in as a Daughter of God and came out the bride of My Husband. I’ve advocated along with many other women for these very changes but they won’t resurrect what it took ESPECIALLY since the church will never acknowledge the pain it caused. I was always taught that repentance comes not only by making amends but also by acknowledging the wrongdoing. The latter won’t happen and that hurts.” AIC

*****

“It’s interesting, because I find myself very angry today about all the unnecessary suffering this caused. I’m angry that the Church doesn’t want members to talk about the change—wants to sweep it under the rug. I’m angry about the years of being gaslighted and told that husbands and wives were equal partners while at the same time the Church made women’s exaltation dependent upon their willingness to accept a temple marriage that forced them into vows putting them in a subordinate position. I’m angry about the way the Church sprung this on women—not obtaining informed consent from them beforehand, but keeping the details secret until the women’s first time in the endowment ceremony where social pressures make her unlikely to resist. My life is 100x better now that I’m no longer Mormon, but this news brings back all that anguish I carried for so long. But at the same time, I’m happy that my nieces will hopefully not suffer like their foremothers have before them.” – Anon

*****

“I am grateful for the changes that have been made so far in the temple. I am grateful to whoever has advocated for the women and men who have felt pain and confusion because of how things were previously worded. I know many are frustrated because it should have been this way all along. Change rarely happens as fast as we’d like it to. I was desperately hoping for something about Heavenly Mother, but that didn’t happen this time. I went through the temple for the first time 20 years ago. I’ve prayed for these changes. I am grateful that if my children choose to go through the temple or get married in the temple, the ceremonies will treat men and women as equals who make the same covenants to the same God, or equally with a marriage partner. I will continue to pray for further light, knowledge, and change. I hope there will be more knowledge about Heavenly Mother. I hope gay marriage and positive space for the LGBTQ+ community will be included. I will also continue to make my voice heard to try to advocate and make things better for future generations, as countless women and men have done before me.” JG

Guest Post: A Mind Turned To The Mothers

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Circle of Life, by Keith Mallett

By Tresa Brown Edmunds

Like so many women in our community, my reaction to the temple changes are all over the emotional map. I’m furious that they’ve asked us for silence. Shaking with rage over it. I am so furious about that request (that is obviously really a demand, because temple stuff) for how it robs me of any joy I might have experienced over the changes. First, how can I rejoice when we aren’t even supposed to acknowledge any changes? And second, this request demonstrates how blind they are, still, to the pain we have felt. Where is the ministry? There can be no ministry without discussion. It is illogical every which way round.

I am furious, and I am wounded, deeply, over how much of myself I sacrificed, how my relationship with God was harmed, over something that could be so easily disappeared.

There is a part of me that longs to rejoice, still. Because I know the women this will affect, and I want to weep with gratitude for how this will change them. And how this will change the church. Just think of the generations to come! Think of the girls who will grow up and go to the temple for their own mission service, not as an extension of their marriage. Then those girls with that experience will come in to ward councils and speak as if they have a right to. They will go to ward and stake temple nights and not participate in ceremonies that inflict spiritual violence on them. They will not be required to submit to inequitable covenants that teach far too many men that women are divinely ordered as submissive to them. Those girls will turn in to women who might have a chance at making their faith work.

But once my thoughts turn to generations, like the good Mormon girl I am, they go backwards too. I think about women from the generation that raised me. Women who were told that birth control was a sin and a woman’s divine role was to provide tabernacles for God’s children. Those women who, dedicated to righteousness, sacrificed their health, their future, their opportunities, their bodies, to have as many children as God saw fit to send them. And then watched as women from my generation got birth control from their pediatrician before their wedding day.

There are women from the generation above me who listened to the talk “To the Mothers in Zion,” heard the prophet say to “come home from the laundry,” and committed themselves to abandon careers and stay at home with their children, not because they felt called to it or enjoyed it, but because they wanted to be righteous. Even when it meant sacrificing deeply wished for dreams of education or career success or personal development or artistic creation. Even when it meant sacrificing their very sense of selves, personal security, and ability to rise out of poverty. Even when the consequences made a segment of mothers so miserable and toxic that a corresponding segment of my generation is paying the therapy bill. And then they watched as those daughters they sacrificed everything for got to experiment with pursuing aspirations.

There are a LOT of my peers struggling through fraught relationships with their mothers. A LOT. It comes up in every feminist space, at every feminist gathering, it always winds up with an “Oh, moms,” and a shrug and a sigh. We don’t doubt their love, but we wish they understood us better, we wish they were more supportive, less critical, more aware of their actions, less hurtful. So we talk together about the lessons we’re unlearning and new parenting strategies we’re undertaking to try and create a less complicated relationship with our next generation. Sometimes, when friends know about my own complicated maternal history, I will get asked for mother/daughter relationship advice. I have to apologize and explain I have no idea how to work THROUGH a complicated relationship, I only know how to END one. (I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re the situation where I would REALLY recommend it.) From that vantage point, I feel a little like an anthropologist in these discussions. I pay attention as other women offer solidarity and strategy, empathy and encouragement.

Sometimes, someone will ask, “Why didn’t our mothers protect us?” As we’re working through and unlearning things we were taught to believe about women’s place in the cosmos, or the trauma we’ve experienced in bishop’s offices. We will say, “Why were they the ones who enforced the dress codes? Or made me go out with any boy who asked me even if I thought they were creepy? Why didn’t they stop it when they had to know for themselves how it hurt?”

I think the answer to that question is because they didn’t know how it hurt. Entirely. If you have a great big emotional wound, you can go through all the pain and horror of treatment, which requires changes you might not be willing or able to make, or you can callous over. You won’t have to look at it, but it won’t go away. You’ll just turn off your feelings. You won’t have the bad feelings, but you won’t have good feelings either. There’s only one feelings faucet, and the question is how hard do they have to close it off in order to maintain something they can be comfortable with? Mormon women wounded by misogyny in the church were left with no option to solve the problem. They each negotiated it as best they could with what tools they had at the time. For the Mormon mothers from the generation above me, I think many of them have had to make a whole lot of emotional sacrifices in order to live as they believed they *had to* in order to qualify as righteous. And I think that those of us who had one of these mothers understand what that cost meant in human lives.

So as I contemplate this historic moment, I’m thinking of those women from the generation above me. The ones who reacted with rage at their daughter’s birth control. The ones who were chronically undermining their daughter’s professional pursuits, tut tutting at her work or educational aspirations. I understand them in a whole new way today.

The church just changed one day for them too. All the sacrifices they made and the hurt they shoved down, the pain they shared only with the Heavenly Father they knew understood them, He the only one knowing what they bore.

If you commit yourself to something at tremendous personal cost, you can’t give it up or that cost becomes meaningless. For that cost to matter, the something has to matter. Which is why these moms I’m talking about have to undermine or rage or whatever. They bet so large on the sacrifice being worth it, that they can’t afford to walk away. Their sacrifices need to matter, but they don’t. No one is revering these women for what they’ve done. Things just went how they always go, the church forgets in order to believe that doctrine is unchanging. They forget the change and they forget the women who paid for it.

If these temple changes are my generation’s birth control, we need to take another lesson from that generation. We need to know that this isn’t enough. We need to stand up for our daughters and protect them the way we wished our mothers had protected us. We can own all our feelings, all the good and the bad, the rage and rejoicing, turn the feelings faucet all the way up, open up to healing with all its terrifying life altering implications, and we can say, this is not enough. We will protect our daughters the way we wish we had been protected.

Sisters Speak: Changes in the Temple – Part III

[image error]The Exponent blog is sharing guest and reader responses to the news of the changes to the LDS temple endowment and other temple ordinances announced 2 January 2019. We welcome your contributions in the comments or as a guest post using this link

“I was so thrilled to hear about the changes. When I was endowed nearly 25 years ago, the sexist language hurt me, but I still tried oh so hard to understand that it was from God. I remember asking my MTC teacher a few weeks later, “Am I, as a woman, created just for the glory of men?” Even after my mission, I served as a temple ordinance worker for many years trying to understand where I fit into God’s plan as a woman. It has been many years now that I have had a firm testimony that the sexist aspects of the temple were not from God but rather from men. I am so happy that my nieces and my daughter will not have the years of pain and struggle from the temple that I did.” – Brita

*****

“Years ago, when I stopped attending the temple and consciously decided not to renew my recommend, I thought that if the temple ever changed, I would be back. Now, I have spent the day devouring everything I can find about the changes, and I’m not sure I’ll ever return. I am grateful for changes that feel like a significant step forward. I am grateful for the message that women are not eternally subservient to men. But my heart can’t stop screaming the question: Was the endowment wrong then, or is it wrong now? Was it truly revelation from God or was it in response to women leaving in droves? Shouldn’t God be revealing truth to his prophets, including these truths? Why did it take until 2019 to reveal equality? If President Nelson is a “true prophet” and is receiving all of this revelation, what does that mean about Presidents Monson, Hinckley, and others? Much like the term “Mormon” being accepted and encouraged 10 years ago and condemned now as a tool of Satan, I’m supremely confused about how such a drastic change in the temple ceremonies doesn’t mean that somewhere, sometime, we got it completely wrong for years and years at a time. I am grateful for the change. But despite the fact that problems with the temple were the instigation of my faith transition, I don’t know that changes in the temple can stop the unraveling of my faith in the church as an institution.” – Lynn

*****

“These changes would have been more useful for me ten years ago at my very sad sealing, where I learned that the door was very deliberately propped open for eternal polygyny in my marriage. But I’m thrilled that the temple will be better for women today. Probably still not perfect, but better. The vindication feels pretty good, though. I want to hand deliver this news to all the sanctimonious turds who were so scandalized by my dislike of the temple, and who defended all the sexism at the expense of my wellbeing, and the wellbeing of so many others. My feelings were not wrong, and now I have proof.  Still…I suspect people will say the same things about the temple that they say about polygamy and the priesthood/temple ban. “We don’t know why it was that way, but we know that’s how God wanted it.” But as for me and my house, we know the things in the Church that make people feel bad are usually big, human mistakes.” – GPW

*****

“I’m wrestling with this. I haven’t been to the temple other than for family weddings in four years. I have never missed it. I maintain a recommend simply to fit the mold. I’m so thankful that the brave outcry of my sisters pushed a change that will prevent further generations from the pain I feel and many others have spent their whole lives feeling. I am thankful because my daughters won’t hurt the way I have. I’m so grateful for that. I’m sad because this doesn’t change anything in my own heart. I’m still a lost sheep, calling out in the darkness for my Shepherd. I’m not sure I’ll ever be found. I thought briefly this morning that I’d go, see for myself. Now though, after reading about it all day, I think I won’t. I don’t think I can.” –  MBH

*****

“Too little too late. This doesn’t feel like revelation, it feels like damage control. I am happy for the women who have yet to be endowed, this was for them. I’m grateful they won’t have to go through the trauma I experienced. But, for me and all the other women who have left? We’re still invisible and unacknowledged. Still expendable. All the FP would have had to say was “We have seen and heard the women who have struggled with and been hurt by the temple ceremonies. We are sorry for the pain you’ve experienced. Your sincere voices have caused us to bring this before the Lord. His answer to us and to all of you is that yes, you are as valued, capable, and loved as his sons. You are daughters of God with individual worth and the temple should absolutely reflect that. We invite all who have stopped attending the temple to come back. We need you, we are stronger with you here.” But that will never happen. I am haunted by President Oaks remarks that “the church doesn’t give apologies.” Also, forbidding anyone to talk about it seems like an attempt to mask their insecurity and maintain control, certainly not a tactic to help us grow in understanding together. I can’t go back to somewhere where I’m only valued if I’m obedient.” – DW

*****

“is heavenly mother represented? can women represent god/goddess? can women be witnesses of ordinances? can women work the veil? can living women be sealed to more than one husband? can women voice the prayer circle? can women speak equally and carry the same authority in all places where decisions are made? there is a long way to go before women are equal in the church, or even in the temple. this is a first step, that gives a better appearance of equality, and that message is important to get through everyone’s heads. But a child can see that there is not equality in our church. when they sit in sacrament meeting, a little girl will see a stand full of men and boys passing the sacrament and wonder, where are girls in our church?” – KP

*****

“I keep thinking that I’m glad these changes were made, but women will never feel equal to their husbands (or men) until eternal polygamy is stopped. Everyone pretends like it isn’t really there, but it is very painful for many of us. There is an implied subservience with polygamy.” – AMPH

*****

“My first reaction was a surge of relief, of validation, of rejoicing even? I fell to my knees and sobbed quite literally. I have been begging and pleading in prayers for years. I stopped going to the temple because it hurt so much. My first endowment experience was one where I felt betrayed, confused, tricked. And in trying to convey my feelings to family members I was made to feel like I just wasn’t seeing things with the proper eyes which only made me feel worse about myself. What I experienced in the endowment didn’t jive with all the Young Women’s talks, conference talks, and pep talks from parents growing up that God is no respecter of persons and that he loves me as His daughter, as much as he loves his sons. So a huge part of me feels validation, and happiness that these changes are being made. Since I had a daughter I’ve worried about her experiencing similar feelings if she decides to go to the temple and it means a lot that she, and others, won’t have to go through the same. The truth is, even if it shouldn’t have, my temple experience made me question a lot about my true value, my role in the Plan of Salvation. It made me question my marriage relationship and my role therein. It’s broken my heart. It’s done immeasurable damage. So there’s still anger. And confusion. And questions. Why now? Is it really from God or is it convenient timing? Is it that the tears and prayers of God’s beloved daughters reached Him or because it couldn’t be avoided any longer? I’m trying to make sense of when God’s laws and doctrine are unchanging and when they aren’t. And I resent that my family, who wouldn’t hear my grievances and sorrows before, because it was rebellious and faith-less, are now praising these changes as part of God’s ongoing revelation to His living prophets.” – ESD

*****

“All the recent changes have brought back the painful feelings I’ve been working through for the past year. I’m angry that the Church made me and others live with such a twisted theology for so long. The previous wording in the temple did real damage to my relationship with God, Christ, and the Church. I don’t know where or how to begin building up the pieces. I feel betrayed that the Church made such a significant change that directly affects me – how I see myself, my relationship with my husband, my relationship with Christ, and my relationship with God – all without a single explanation. In contrast, ministering – which is essentially identical to visiting teaching – received coverage via numerous conference talks, Ensign articles, and a new website, all dedicated to explaining the nuanced changes. But the completely radical changing of the highest ordinance in the gospel gets nothing? Worse than nothing – an instruction to not discuss it. This feels like a betrayal to me, and I will have to process these feelings before I am ready to go to the temple again and witness the changes for myself.  On the other hand, I have found new hope in seeing how the words of my sisters have brought about this change. I don’t believe anyone in Church leadership initially wanted to listen, but courageous women made their voices heard time and time again through blog posts, emails, letters, personal conversations, and prayers. Their words made a real difference. Up to this point, I’ve considered myself an observer in these feminist spaces. I found solidarity in reading the words of others, but I couldn’t bring myself to write. I didn’t believe it would make a difference, and felt it would cause me too much pain. Now, I’m ready to share my story and my truth – in my ward, in my letters, in my family, and in this community. The changes to the temple have shown me that my voice does have power.” – AC

*****

“I have immensely mixed feelings. While I see this as a huge leap forward for the role of women in the doctrine of the church, it’s actively downplayed as not changing the doctrine at all. I vividly remember my first endowment experience as I prepared to be married. I was nervous to be part of a ceremony but I cowered into the obedient shell of a young woman I was because there was too much at stake: my wedding and reception and family expectations and the love of my fiancee were all contingent on me accepting everything in the temple wholesale. I couldn’t pick and choose. I couldn’t raise my hand for clarification. I had to nod and covenant and move merrily along behind the woman in front of me. In the end I left confused and troubled at being a subject to my husband, an accessory to his exaltation and a mere female valued only through my potential role as a mother.  Over time I came to accept and even defend the presentation of Eve in the temple and the role of women in general. Men needed a role, too, and couldn’t bear children but could lead and guide and preside. I would hearken to my husband because he would follow God. I saw it as a model established just as we follow Christ heading the Church and he hearkens to God’s commands. I attended fairly regularly seeking quiet and peaceful worship and learned to ignore any contrary feelings of discomfort and questioning. I even defended the model to various friends that struggled because, Revelation. There had to be a greater purpose in why the wording was what it was and we just needed more faith to understand.

With the wording changed, all the years of frustration and shame feel even worse knowing they were unnecessary. And quite frankly it solidifies my doubts of modern Revelation and the infallibility of the prophet. While I welcome the content of these changes, the fact that the Church so casually changes fundamental doctrines while dismissing them as non doctrinal shakes my faith to its very core. The temple is sold as a crowning experience, the height of our spiritual journey where we learn of our Divine potential and see the beginning to the end of the plan of salvation. Changing the script IS changing the doctrine and is a big deal.” – KC

 

O Remember, Remember

[image error]Dawn, by Simeon Solomon. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It got to be so common that I knew it was happening before we were fifteen seconds into the conversation. A woman from my ward would pull me aside in the church hallway, ask to go for a walk, quietly start up a conversation in a corner at a ward activity. They were Relief Society presidents, a stake president’s wife, a Primary president, my visiting teacher, a senior missionary, a bishop’s wife, a seminary teacher, and a dozen others. They ranged in age from early twenties to eighty. Sometimes the woman was calm, sometimes weeping, sometimes agitated, but the opening words were always similar: “You seem like someone I could talk to about the temple and I just have to talk to somebody . . .”

They told me about how they cried through the endowment because of how women were treated there. They told me that they felt like what was intended as the pinnacle of their spiritual lives was a burden they could barely bear. They told me that every time the temple came up at church, they were internally cringing. They told me they felt ashamed for their feelings. Often, they told me that their husbands simply didn’t understand, and so they’d stopped talking about it.

I just listened. And I told them that how they felt was okay. They weren’t unrighteous. They weren’t imagining things. They weren’t wrong. I told them that I was always willing to talk about these things and they could bring it up again with me anytime and that I wouldn’t betray their confidentiality or judge them in any way. If they never brought it up again, I would respect that silence.

I did, however, carry their stories with me. I have held their grief and pain with my own, making a burden that felt too heavy sometimes. Out of love for them, I have many times been the dissenting voice in a lesson on the temple, earning me dagger-eyes from some other members of the class. Almost all of the women who came to me never showed up on at a feminist blog or retreat. They never publicly shared their struggle and couldn’t rely on the kind of community that I had. I felt, at times, like I had an unofficial calling to be the one-person temple support group for the women in my various wards.

I am genuinely overjoyed to think that these women have had their burden removed. I have gotten weepy with happiness every time I think about them in the last couple days. I’m so grateful to know that my own daughter and these women’s daughters will not suffer like their mothers did. The easing of that struggle is something to feel wholeheartedly and unequivocally thankful for.

But as long as I live, I will continue to carry those women’s stories with me. I will not pretend for a moment like these changes are simply an adjustment of details. These women will never receive public recognition for the quiet work that they did within themselves or their families and they would never ask for it. Yet I believe that these faithful women’s cries to God for relief or comfort were a major part of the birth these changes. I will forever be a witness of that crushing work. My soul wept for them as we had those conversations in hallways and corners. I will not forget or deny that grief.

There will be a “before” and an “after” January 2, 2019 for LDS women’s experiences in the temple. I couldn’t be more happy to be on the “after” side. But the burden of what went before doesn’t disappear. It is etched in my heart. It is etched in their hearts. We will remember together.

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Sisters Speak: Changes in the Temple – Part II

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The Exponent blog is sharing guest and reader responses to the news of the changes to the LDS temple endowment and other temple ordinances announced 2 January 2019. We welcome your contributions in the comments or as a guest post using this link

By Moss

“I’m in tears over this. So much pain and angst over this for the last 15 years. The darkness I felt in the temple, the visceral sickness in my gut during those parts- I had always heard that influences like that couldn’t be present in the temple. What did it mean that I felt them? This is where we are taught about Eternal Truths- is this how God really feels about his daughters? 

Years of crying in the shower and in prayers raging against an unresponsive heaven. Thinking something was wrong with me because this hurt. Everyone acts like it’s fine what is wrong with me? I don’t have to tools to make sense of this. And I can’t talk about this with anyone. It’s too sacred. It would damage other people’s testimonies. I’d get released from my callings. Ostracized from my peers. If people knew how I really felt.

Me silently searching for answers for years, looking for the key of knowledge that would make it ok. Me finally telling my husband, in tears, afraid he’ll reject me for feeling this way. Many tearful conversations later, still trying to make sense of it and what it means for me and our relationship. 

Me talking to my visiting teacher, my bishop, and them telling me ‘there is no sexism in the temple!’ Me wondering what it means if heaven is like the temple but I don’t want to go there. Is there a place for me in heaven? Afraid to die because I’m afraid of heaven. Instead of heaven I found myself hoping for oblivion. 

Me stepping away from the temple and feeling alienated from friends, family, fellow Mormons, and even God for my own mental and spiritual health. Marking the boundaries, holding it at arm’s length because letting it closer will hurt. Removing my garments because more than anything they remind me of being complicit in my own dehumanization. I no longer trust the people who told me to go there. I can no longer sing I love to see the temple to my children because I feel like a hypocrite.

And now it’s changed. And they’re not going to tell us why our suffering was necessary.

I fought this Balrog all the way down and at the end of the day it all meant nothing. I wrestled with the angel. Everything broke into a billion pieces as I struggled. And it meant nothing. Jacob was left with a promise and a limp. I’m left with a spiritual wound and I don’t know what to do with the promise I’m left with. I don’t know if it’s worth anything or if I even want it.”

Sisters Speak: Changes in the Temple – Part I

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The Exponent blog is sharing guest and reader responses to the news of the changes to the LDS temple endowment and other temple ordinances announced 2 January 2019. We welcome your contributions in the comments or as a guest post using this link

*****

“For me, my time in the temple today felt like a long awaited breath in. I have struggled and cried many angry and hurt tears over years of temple service. As a single woman and a temple worker. As a young married mom. As a middle mom, now. Trying to breathe through the hurt to hold on to the things about the temple that I love. Today felt like a million answered prayers. It also felt like my hurt was heard and validated by my Heavenly Parents. Like our collective cries were enough to finally break through tradition. I am so humbled. So grateful.” – BR

*****

“I’m feeling relieved about the changes (finally!!), but sad because this would have meant so much to me 10 years ago when I decided to stop going to the temple, largely because of these issues. It would have brought me so much peace. Now, 10 years later, I believe so little about Mormonism that I have no desire to go to the temple. The changes have come too late for me and so many others.” -LFL

*****

“Like many others, I’m so excited by the changes and the theological implications. In a selfish sense, I’m also mourning my own experience, and how much better it could have been. I find myself wishing I could be sealed over again, receive the initiatories over again, make covenants in a way that doesn’t make me hold back in my mind… I want to talk about it with my friends. I want to talk about it with my in-laws. I need to sort through these feelings in a way that doesn’t use concealed and coded language. It’s difficult to be told by men not to openly celebrate or react to something that doesn’t impact them as much as it does us. Why minimize something so theologically monumental?” – ECR

*****

“I am so, so incredibly happy that women going through the temple for the first time will be saved so much cognitive dissonance, pain, and trauma going forward. I am so, so incredibly sad, frustrated, and angry that church leaders have made these changes without even hardly acknowledging it, boiling it all down to “details” and “adjustments”. Generations of pain mean nothing to them.” – LRP

*****

“As I’ve mulled over these changes, I’ve felt more and more upset and hurt. The temple is the main thing that contributed to me doubting the existence of and love of God. I’m not sure how to recover from that, or if I ever will. Part of me is so glad I was “right” and the temple was wrong, that God apparently isn’t sexist and I’m not inherently inferior as a female. But the pain I felt for so many years is not so easily erased. I don’t know how to heal from the spiritual trauma. I don’t really know what I believe about God anymore, and I’m unsure how to pick up the pieces of my shattered faith in a loving and just God.” -RBR

*****

“The changes today don’t fix the inherent problems for single women in the church. We may not covenant to a non-existent husband anymore, but the initiatory still refers to the “new and everlasting covenant” – a covenant that I won’t participate in. When we cross the veil, the promises of eternity with God will still include references to a posterity that I don’t want. The church still sees me as deficient, incomplete, and not worthy to be by God’s side as I am.  I still don’t have a place here.” – Julia

*****

Standing in the crowded, noisy, bustling Celestial room last night after the session, I could hear dozens of conversations about “the changes.” And we’ll all keep discussing “the changes” for a while still to come. I’m happy about it all. It was time for this. We have been ready. And my heart just keeps hearing, “…a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.” -Rebecca

*****

“My heart is full of joy for these changes. To borrow from the lovely talk at last conference, I’ve felt a lot of “divine discontent” towards the temple for awhile now. To hear that so much has been fixed is beautiful. I know it isn’t completely fixed yet, not by a long shot, but I’m eager to attend after a pained hiatus and witness the changed ordinances firsthand. I can’t wait for the day that all has been made right and whole and safe for ALL of God’s children to attend the temple.” – ML

*****

“My joy at the changes that have been made is mitigated somewhat by the charge for silence. Pay no attention to the men behind the veil. Is this true change, or another pedestalization? “Women, you’re amazing! But please don’t tell anyone about it.” The press release added to my complex feelings. We have never been charged to refrain from talking about ordinances in the past, yet here we are dealing with another form of silencing – trading Eve’s silence in the lone and dreary world for our own”. – FRE

*****

“I am looking forward to going and seeing how I feel about the changes. I remember the changes 30 years ago, and appreciated those. I am feeling really Thankful for these changes, and I am so sorry for those it came too late for.” – JBW

*****

“For me, 43 years of pain, 43 years of wondering, if a decision had to be made, “Is this something I should follow my husband on just decide on my own?” 43 years of lacking self-confidence in my own thoughts and inspirations because I was supposed to “hearken” (hate that antiquated word) unto my husband. 43 years of nonsense and abuse in my church.” -LL

*****

“I went to the temple yesterday, and found myself smiling at every change I noticed. I was very happy with the corrections that a lot of women had been asking for, such as not veiling during the prayer, and being able to make covenants directly with God. But more often it was the unexpected things that made me the most happy, changes that I am still pondering. I loved having the Law of the Gospel defined as the higher law of Jesus Christ, and I liked having Eve more involved especially when she asks Adam if WE are going to obey all of God’s commands. I am glad that President Nelson was responsive to these concerns as it has often felt that concerns have been dismissed. However, after receiving my endowment in 1984 and having been very upset at the temple language then, I knew that the endowment could change to reflect what we need today, and so I have been hopeful for a long time that it would eventually be updated. I appreciate all those women and men who have contributed to making this change possible.” – SW

*****

“We’ve been surrounded by talk and visuals of the top-down model of the church for so long that by now it’s deeply embedded in our psyches. But these changes bring to mind a new perspective. Perhaps the true model of the restoration comes from the bottom-up. As members are filled with light and inspiration, we as a people generate a beacon that at last reaches the world through the mouthpiece of the prophet.  This encourages me to double down in seeking truth and to share more freely the light I receive.” – SD

 

#hearLDSwomen: I Was Punished for Warning Parents About a Pedophile

[image error]So, in the midst of all the crap that’s going on, I decided to look up a former high school teacher and see if he was on the sex offender registry. Nothing ever happened to me (I got the creeps super early on and avoided him like the plague) but I’d heard that he was later arrested and charged with child molestation and wasn’t surprised AT ALL.

Not only is he not on the registry, but he’s living in North Salt Lake, retired from teaching, and has an “I’m a Mormon” profile.

I am completely skeeved out by this. There was never anything that I could report–all he did was call me into his office for a one-on-one meeting and proceed to tell me I had a “sweet spirit” and try to get close to me. I saw all the warning signs, dropped the extracurricular he was in charge of, and told my parents (they 100% believed me and said to stay away from him).

But I honestly thought he’d been caught and sentenced. And he wasn’t, apparently.

– L

 

When I was Cubmaster, I fought my way up the chain (first committee chair, then Primary president, then bishop), to inform parents that one of our den leaders had ended up in jail for having sex with minor girls. My intent was to make sure he had not also harmed any Cub Scouts, so parents could be simply informed and then ask their kids if they were okay. I got shut down. A few days later, a good elder of the Church posted the news link to our ward’s Facebook page, and nobody batted an eye. It got worse for me from there out. I have zero desire to ever serve in a calling again.

Immediately after I got shut down, the Primary president started micromanaging my calling as Primary chorister. She was mad that I had escalated above her to the bishop regarding the den leader, and she was teaching me a lesson. After some agonizing weeks, I was finally let go for “doing too much” in that calling. That was the final blow to my faith in any patriarchy having any sort of revelatory power over me, for, or on my behalf. I absolutely knew those callings were where I was supposed to be. I went from being very involved and feeling like a contributing member of my ward to one that simply goes home after Sacrament.

On a side note- it freed me up to study women in church history, which has been very enlightening!

It sounds horrible, but I feel like I’ve grown from it. I don’t feel as bitter about it as I used to. It didn’t break me, it made me stronger.

– Katharina Nelson

 

Pro Tip: Support women and girls in trusting their instincts. Always, always inform ward members (and others who may have been affected) if a fellow congregant is a sexual predator.

Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.

“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)

Guest Post: I’m not celebrating.

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The Exponent blog is sharing responses to the news of the changes to the LDS temple endowment and other temple ordinances announced today. We welcome your responses – please use this link to submit. 

By N. Christensen

I’m not celebrating the changes to the temple.

I do not celebrate, although I think the changes are a good thing.

Now, fewer women will be brought up believing they are beloved daughters of God, valued as much as any child of God, only to be blindsided by a secret ritual – a ritual that has their entire lives been propped up as the pinnacle of their spiritual experience – that dehumanizes them and makes them feel worthless. If fewer women go through that, this is a good thing.

Now, fewer daughters may express fear and uncertainty to their parents about the unknown covenants they are about to make, only to be looked in the eye and told they will not be surprised by any of the covenants. Fewer daughters will then sit in the temple next to the mother that reassured them as they realize that they are being made swear allegiance, obedience, and worship to a husband and not to God. If fewer women go through that, this is a good thing.

Fewer women will have to reassess their relationships with the loved ones who knew what they were going to be expected to promise and thought it was fine; that no warning was needed; that the covenants made were a good thing. Fewer women will start their marriages in fear that their husbands, who they trusted, knew and expected that their wives would be made to obey them. If fewer women go through that, this is a good thing.

Fewer women will feel darkness in the temple and assume it must be due to some sin or moral failing of their own. Fewer women will be told that any discomfort they feel is due to their own misunderstanding. Fewer women will be told that there is nothing wrong with the temple; that they just need to pray more, to have more faith. Fewer women will force themselves to go back again and again, spiraling into despair and loneliness as their feelings about the temple remain unchanged. Fewer women will research the history of the endowment, hoping to find answers and meaning, but only finding that the original meanings and interperetations are so much worse than they could have imagined. That the ceremony itself was once so much worse. Fewer women will believe that they and all women are hated by God; that they have no real value; that they exist solely for the benefit of men, as was taught by early church leaders. Fewer women will spend hours screaming and crying on their knees begging God for comfort and answers that never come. Fewer women will have to bury all this down and sit silently in church as everyone around them talks about the joy and peace the temple brings. If fewer women go through that, this is a good thing.

But as with all changes to the temple, this is not going to be branded as a correction of wrong, but as a clarification of existing good. There will be no apology. The assurances that any discomfort with the way things were must lie with personal misunderstanding will be forgotten. The church was never wrong. Those who have been in pain until now were silly to doubt the servants of the Lord. The fault is with you; it was never with the church.

So I am genuinely happy for the women who come after me. But I mourn for the women who came before; the women whose pain prompted these changes but whose pain and efforts will now be erased. The women who were silenced and who will now be silenced again.

And I cannot celebrate.