Exponent II's Blog, page 274

Mormon Feminism in 1977 and Today

This week marks the 40th anniversary the National Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas, a culmination of the International Women’s Year (IWY) celebrations in the 1970s. I recently went to Houston for the 40th anniversary celebration of this historic event and delivered this speech about how Mormons reacted to IWY back then and what Mormon feminism is like today.

Video: Mormon Feminism in 1977 and Today

Full Text:

Mormon Feminism in the 1970s
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International Women’s Year in 1975 and the National Women’s Conference in 1977 took place at a pivotal time for Mormon women. In the 1970s, Mormon women began new feminist organizations and organized International Women’s Year events. Meanwhile, Mormon officials fought the Equal Rights Amendment and attempted to solidify traditional gender roles.

Founding of Exponent II

In 1970, Mormon women in Boston began a consciousness-raising group, similar to others of the women’s movement. One day, one of their members discovered a suffragist newspaper written by nineteenth century Mormon women and brought copies to their meetings. It was called the Woman’s Exponent. 1

Mormon women have a fraught relationship with our foremothers. Many of us still cringe when we think about their plight as wives of polygamists, but within the pages of the Women’s Exponent, we see another side to these women. They were among the first American women to achieve the right to vote and many were pioneers in fields such as medicine, politics, and manufacturing.

The Boston women began their own feminist newspaper in 1974, naming it Exponent II in homage. In its first issue, editor Claudia Bushman declared that Exponent II to be “poised on the dual platforms of Mormonism and Feminism.” They aimed to show that feminism was compatible with Mormonism through both their words and their lives. 1,2 They reached 4,000 subscribers within their first year. 3

Mormon Politics through the 70s

I happen to be both a Mormon and a Utahn, but I can assure you that the two demographics are not synonymous. 45% of Utahns are not Mormon 4 and 87% of Mormons live outside of Utah. 5 However, as the only state with a Mormon majority, Utah’s political history is the closest indicator we have to how Mormon political opinions have shifted over time.

During its first several decades of statehood, both major parties were competitive in Utah. 6 Spikes in Republican support in Utah could often be traced to events transpiring in the Mormon community. For example, the Republican party was popular in Utah in the 1950s when Ezra Taft Benson, who was an apostle in the Mormon Church, simultaneously served on the cabinet of Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Within the Mormon Church, only fifteen men are called as apostles. They are the highest-ranking members of the Church and revered by Mormons as prophets, seers and revelators. All apostles are all men. The Mormon priesthood is male-only, with virtually every Mormon man and boy age 12 and up ordained to its lay clergy, while all women are banned from priesthood office.

When the Eisenhower administration concluded in 1961, Benson’s term on his cabinet came to a close and Utah politics returned to balance again, with another short-lived spike in Republican support in response to Roe vs. Wade in 1973. 6,7

Equal Rights Amendment

1973 was also the year that the Utah Legislature began considering whether to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). It looked promising; polling showed that 65% of Utahns favored the ERA, including 63% of Mormons and 73% of other Utahns. 8

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly came to Utah in 1974 to lobby against the ERA and contacted Barbara Smith, who was president of the Relief Society, the Mormon Church’s organization for women. 8 Schlafly may have overestimated Smith’s authority. Although all Relief Society members are women, Relief Society presidents are not elected by women; they are chosen by male priesthood leaders who supervise them and they must receive permission from these male priesthood leaders for any initiatives.

Smith told Schlafly she didn’t think priesthood leaders would take a stand against the ERA because they only became involved in politics with regards to moral issues. However, after talking to Schlafly, Smith brought the question to the male leaders of the church and found that they did want to oppose the ERA. 8

They justified their involvement by declaring the ERA a moral issue after all, but their stated reasons for opposing it focused mainly on legal concerns such as “vague language” and its effects on “the constitutional division of powers.” 9

The night before Utah’s 1975 legislative session began, Mormon Church News published a statement in opposition to the ERA. Overnight, support for the ERA in the Utah House of Representatives dropped from 34 to 16. It was defeated by a 2 to 1 ratio. In the general public, the ratio of support for the ERA among Utah Mormons dropped to only 31%, while Utahns of other faiths continued to support the ERA by a two to one margin. 8

International Women’s Year

[image error]1975 was declared International Women’s Year by the United Nations and as it came to a close, the United States Congress passed a bill calling for Americans to continue the work by organizing a National Women’s Conference, proceeded by smaller conferences in each state, to “identify the barriers that prevent women from participating fully and equally in all aspects of national life, and develop recommendations for means by which such barriers can be removed.” 11

Jan Tyler chaired Utah’s conference committee. She was a Mormon and a professor at Mormon church-owned Brigham Young University, but she was also a fervent supporter of the ERA. About half of the women on her committee were also Mormon women. 12,13 They wanted the Mormon Relief Society to be represented in the proceedings but were stunned when Ezra Taft Benson, the same Mormon apostle who had served on Eisenhower’s cabinet, instructed Mormon clergy to assign 10 women to attend the convention from every Mormon congregation in Utah. That meant that the Mormon church would be sending about 12,000 women, a number that would certainly out-vote anyone else in attendance. 8,12,14

Thanks to Benson’s directive, Utah’s state conference had the highest attendance numbers of all states, with 14,000 attendees, overwhelming Tyler and her committee, who had expected between 300 and 2,000 people. The much more populated state of California had fewer than half as many attendees as Utah, and California had held one of the biggest women’s conferences in the nation. 8,15

Conservative Mormons, many of whom also had leadership roles within local Mormon clergy, invited the Mormon women who were assigned to attend the conference to political planning meetings and told them to “vote no on everything.” The church didn’t technically endorse these meetings, but many of the Mormons who came didn’t know that. 8,13

When the conference opened, some of these women stationed themselves in front of contribution boxes to prevent other women from donating funds to the event. 12 Mormon women voted as a block against every item on the national platform, even the most uncontroversial and innocuous resolutions—just as they had been instructed to do at those planning meetings. 13,14,15 All of the delegates they elected to represent Utah at the national convention in Houston came from a list distributed by a conservative lobbying group. 8 At one point, an angry mob of Mormon women even dismantled the booth of the National Organization for Women. 15 When the conference closed, they refused to leave the venue until General Relief Society President Barbara Smith intervened. 12

Although Smith had become the church’s spokesperson in opposition to the ERA, she was dismayed by the mob mentality that had characterized Mormon women’s actions at the conference and regretted that she had not done more to reign in conservative lobbyists. 8

Mormons for ERA

Even so, the Mormon church continued to align with conservative and anti-feminist lobbying groups as they embarked on campaigns to prevent or rescind ERA ratification in several states. 10 In Virginia, some Mormons pushed back, starting an organization called Mormons for ERA to support ratification of the amendment. 3

Mormons for ERA lobbied and held marches in several states. 16 Sometimes, they hired airplanes to fly pro-ERA banners over Temple Square in Salt Lake City. 3,16

One of the founders of Mormons for ERA, Sonia Johnson, appeared before the Senate Constitutional Rights Subcommittee in 1978. 3 Johnson was excommunicated from the Mormon church by her bishop about a year after her testimony to Congress. 3 A bishop cannot excommunicate a Mormon man—only someone higher up on the chain of command has that authority. But bishops are allowed to excommunicate women.

While using excommunication to silence reformers hurts everyone, Mormon women are particularly vulnerable. Mormon women are disciplined by panels made up entirely of the opposite sex, are not permitted to read the rules and procedures by which they may be punished, and are not afforded the same protections that men enjoy. 17

Ironically, church leaders claimed that favoring the ERA was not grounds for excommunication. 9 Johnson’s bishop argued that he had not technically excommunicated her for her support of the ERA, but rather, for diminishing “support of church leaders.” However, the way she had supposedly diminished support for church leaders was by disagreeing with them about the ERA and successfully persuading others toward her opinion. 18 When Mormon leaders say that they do not be punish people for their opinions, they only mean that they don’t punish anyone for their private thoughts—and perhaps they would, if they could only read minds. Several Mormon activists, including me, have been warned by our church leaders that sharing our opinions is a punishable offense.

However, it would be infeasible to excommunicate every vocal Mormon. Instead, the church’s strategy has been to make an example of just a few of the most influential Mormons. 19 Ironically, excommunicating Mormon activists actually draws more attention to their ideas. Membership in Mormons for ERA doubled during the weeks following Johnson’s excommunication. 20

Mormon Feminism today
Mormon Politics Shift to the Right

The 1970s were the last decade in which Democrats were competitive in Utah. Prominent Republican Ezra Taft Benson became president of the Mormon church in 1985, ushering in a new spike in Republicanism in Utah. He would serve for nine years and after Benson’s presidency, political balance never returned to Utah nor to Mormonism generally. 6,7 Mormon feminists like myself, who were raised in the eighties and beyond, have only ever known our faith as the bastion of conservatism that it is today.

Blogs and Facebook Communities

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Some wonder how feminism can exist within such a patriarchal environment. Actually, feminism thrives where it is needed most, so Mormonism is fertile ground for a feminist movement. The Mormon feminist organization Exponent II has continued to inspire Mormon women since its inception in 1970. Many of its original members from Boston continue to mentor younger Mormon feminists through the Exponent’s magazine, annual retreat and online communities and today, new generations of Mormon feminists have taken leadership roles in the organization. No longer limited to Boston, the Exponent community has expended to serve a worldwide network of Mormon women.

The Exponent is now joined by several other Mormon feminist communities, most centered around blogs and facebook groups. Thanks to the Internet, Mormon feminists from around the world can meet each other and discuss women’s issues. You don’t have to live in a progressive haven like Boston to be active in today’s Mormon feminist movement; online communities are the consciousness-raising groups of our era.

Retreats

But in-person interaction is important too. Within the United States, at least, Mormon feminists learn from each other and support each other in person at any of several retreats that take place each year in different parts of the country. Most of these retreats are limited to women, but one of my favorites, Feminist Mormon Girls Camp, welcomes whole families, including men and children. At this annual camp, our kids can earn merit badges for learning about feminism while grown-ups take turns leading feminist workshops or less serious crafts and games.

Activism

The scriptures teach that faith without works is dead 21 and I would argue that the same is true for feminism without activism. In recent years, Mormon feminists have demonstrated our need for a more egalitarian church through several activist events. For Mormon women, wearing pants to church is much more conspicuous than wearing an awareness ribbon. Although it’s a pretty tame act, when Mormon feminists decided to demonstrate by all of us wearing pants instead of dresses on the same day, at least one Mormon man was so peeved that he threatened violence. 22 Mormon feminist Nikki Hunter created a beautiful quilt from pants and other clothing worn by feminists that day.

Shortly thereafter, we campaigned to let women pray in General Conferences, our most important biannual religious meetings. Happily, Sister Jean A. Stevens did offer the first prayer by a woman at the next General Conference. 23,24

However, as long as Mormon women are banned from the priesthood, persuading men in power to change small and great inequities in the church one by one is an uphill battle for Mormon women. That is why I would argue that Ordain Women has been our most important activist initiative of this decade. Ordain Women has sponsored several actions, but none has attracted as much attention as our attempts to attend the male-only priesthood sessions of Mormon General Conferences. Hundreds of us marched to Temple Square, where we politely requested entry. We were not admitted, but we got noticed. 25

Unfortunately, church leaders retaliated in a familiar way—making an example of one influential Mormon woman. They excommunicated Kate Kelly, one of Ordain Women’s founders. 19 And history repeated itself in more than one way. Just as Mormons for ERA membership roles spiked following the excommunication of Sonia Johnson, after Kate was excommunicated, Ordain Women received an influx of new website profiles from Mormons who wanted women to be ordained. 26

Like the feminism of our foremothers, modern Mormon feminism looks beyond our own church. A new Mormons for ERA seeks to undo the damage our church did to the ERA in the seventies by getting the amendment passed now. 27

And Mormon feminists have been active participants and organizers in nondenominational feminist events such as the Women’s March. 28

As we work with other feminists, Mormon feminists sometimes encounter scorn from those who can’t understand why we don’t leave our patriarchal religion, as if simply abstaining from patriarchy is a more feminist act than combatting patriarchy. I remind them that religious sexism doesn’t only affect religious people. The success of the Mormon church at squashing the ERA is only one example of how religious patriarchy spills over into all areas of society, affecting the way people vote, work, and even how they think about the women that surround them on a day-to-day basis. Other feminists need the help of religious feminists to address one of the greatest barriers to success: the sexism people learn to tolerate at their places of worship. We’re making our own community and culture better, and that’s the first step to changing the world.

Resources to Learn More

Makers: Voices of Utah Women

Nancy Green, producer

Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights

Martha Sonntag Bradley, author

Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings

Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik and Hannah Wheelwright, editors

The Birth of Ordain Women: The Personal Becomes Political

Lorie Winder Stromberg, author

Available within Voices for Equality: Ordain Women and Resurgent Mormon Feminism, edited by Gordon Shepherd, Lavina Fielding Anderson and Gary Shepherd

References

http://www.the-exponent.com/exponent-birthrebirth-series-mother-and-model-the-womens-exponent-by-claudia-bushman/
https://archive.org/details/exponentii11arli
Mormon Feminism Essential Writings. Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik and Hannah Wheelwright, editors. Oxford University Press: 2016
http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/mormon/
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/ & http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/united-states/state/utah [accessed October 2017]
http://utahdatapoints.com/2014/11/update-the-2015-legislature-will-be-utahs-2nd-most-republican-since-the-depression/
https://www.Mormon.org/manual/presidents-of-the-church-student-manual/ezra-taft-benson-thirteenth-president-of-the-church?lang=eng
Pedestals and Podiums. Martha Sonntag Bradley. Signature Books: 2005
https://www.Mormon.org/ensign/1980/03/the-church-and-the-proposed-equal-rights-amendment-a-moral-issue?lang=eng
http://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/26/archives/many-mormon-women-feel-torn-between-equal-rights-proposal-and.html?mcubz=3
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-89/pdf/STATUTE-89-Pg1003.pdf
https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/008-11-14.pdf
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V11N01_60.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/1977/07/25/archives/mormon-turnout-overwhelms-womens-conference-in-utah.html
http://www.pbs.org/video/utah-history-makers-voices-utah-women/
http://exhibits.usu.edu/exhibits/show/mormonsforera/mormonsforerastanceonera
Most disparate church discipline policies differentiate between men with the Melchizedek priesthood and other church members. Virtually all men who have been active Mormon church members for any portion of their adult lives are ordained to the Melchizedek priesthood. All women are banned from the Melchizedek priesthood. Hence, with a few exceptions, these policies discriminate solely on the basis of sex. The policies are written in Church Handbook of Instructions Volume 1. Access to this volume is restricted to Mormons rotating through certain lay clergy positions, nearly all of which exclude women. The author accessed the policies through a leaked copy of the 2010 edition.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/12/06/mormon-bishop-excommunicates-woman-who-is-supporting-era/2194cbc1-806e-4014-8884-d1a527620a3f/?utm_term=.190c571517af
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/06/lds-church-mormons-apostasy-excommunication
http://people.com/archive/sonia-johnsons-excommunication-by-the-mormons-cut-the-big-string-that-held-her-marriage-together-vol-13-no-6/
James 2:20
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/us/19mormon.html?_r=0
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56116507&itype=CMSID
https://news.hjnews.com/news/woman-leads-closing-prayer-at-mormon-conference/article_f0207c64-9eea-11e2-834b-001a4bcf887a.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/04/the-movement-to-ordain-mormon-women/360533/
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2015/01/24/op-ed-ordain-women-supporters-are-worthy-of-their-congregations-love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67wqc7trung
http://www.the-exponent.com/mormon-women-march/

Guest Post: The Problem in Writing Truth vs Fiction in Mormondom

This is co-written by Spunky and Kaki Olsen. Kaki Olsen is Boston-raised and BYU-educated. Her serious writing ranges from nonfiction to science fiction, but she writes academic papers on geeky things for fun and has been a finalist in the Mormon Lit Blitz. 

 

Kaki and I are in several online LDS writing groups. The groups are great– we beta-read each other’s’ work, brainstorm re-writes and encourage each other. And sometimes we sound off with things that are frustrating. Normally the frustrating points discussed have to do with re-writing nightmares, writer’s block, and rejections from publishers. But every now and again, there is something different.

 

“Why can’t we write what’s real?” lamented a group member. She went on to describe an Elder’s Quorum Presidency meeting that she overheard at a fastfood restaurant in northern Utah. One of the men asked the others what he should do about a woman who texted him following a date.

 

[image error]“Tell her it was a Mormon one-night stand,” advised his mates. “You don’t have to go out with her again no matter how hot it was. Block her.”

 

Between bites, the talk became more sexualised. “My wife can’t get new drapes unless she [pleases me with a specific sexual act],” 

laughed one of the men. “So when you see those drapes at my place….” he said, followed by deep, knowing laughter. 

 

And finally, “Okay— let’s start this meeting.”

 

We could not imagine a Relief Society presidency meeting having nearly that level of sexualised discussion. And yet, here were a group of men in position of ecclesiastical authority, discussing sexual conquests and sharing exploitation strategies between bites of burgers and fries.

 

These men are the ones we are supposed to rely on for spiritual guidance. They are the ones we are supposed to call when we need blessings of temporal health and spiritual strength. They are the ones we and our sisters are “supposed to date” as preferential to men of lesser callings or non-members.

 

Reality Bites. And astounds. And depresses. And makes one yearn for something better in a naturally combined sense of feminist justice and Christian rage.

 

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But the lamentation within this writing group stung in a professional way. Not only were these men behaving atrociously towards the women in their lives, as LDS authors, their existence is forbidden. We can’t recreate or disclose this kind of conversation in our FICTIONAL or even non-fictional writing, because this is not what LDS editors and readers want. We have to pretend that this is not what LDS people are like. Even when it is.

 

As for fictional writing, repentant characters are most certainly welcomed. The sins made by these penitent characters are usually depicted as being in error. Or at worst, someone who let things slip, or were unfairly manipulated before they succumbed to a “Mormon one-night stand” — a night of forbidden passionate kissing in the front seat of a car.

 

These repentant characters aren’t meant to be the *current* Elder’s Quorum president– because that would be too unbelieveable. The Elder’s Quorum presidents are meant to be heroes, or at least loveable oafs whose sins of omission are both innocuous and accidental, meant for comic relief, or intended as dramatic and/or learning devices. There is no room for the reality that men in these positions might sexualise women– even their wives– in front of other males, and passively brag about it by reminding the men in their company that when they see drapes in his window, it is a sign of manipulative marital sexual audacity and bravura.

 

But the darkness is true. And these are not characters, but members of a real LDS Elder’s Quorum. Truth is stranger than fiction, as they say.

 

So what about reality writing? What if we wrote this or– even reported it to a bishop or other ecclesiastical leader?

 

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To put it in a different context, let us consider a court ruling from 2005 that we are aware of personally.  A BYU student met, dated and married a returned missionary she had known from freshman year on.  His family welcomed her in and encouraged the relationship from the start.  Eleven months after their temple sealing, she was granted an annulment.  Why?  Because this BYU RM would punch his new wife in the face or throttle her in their student housing.  He had physically assaulted a sister-in-law and had outbursts against his family.  But mostly– the family knew about this before they were even dating seriously, but still encouraged the marriage. Even his roommate at BYU witnessed his flare-ups and still concealed them, offering to set the young man and woman up on dates.  What they saw as behavior that wasn’t relevant information became domestic violence. Thus, in the end, a judge granted the annulment on the basis of the fraud perpetuated- not just by the man, but by the surrounding friends and family who wanted to deny this part of his personality.

 

 

There has to be a middle ground between “Gosh-golly-shucks, my dreamy home teacher accidentally stole my car from the DI parking lot after the service project” and “I’ll let her redecorate if we get it on” in reality and in fictional writing.  Logically, we understand that this is the case.  As avid readers, published authors (and Kaki is a professional editor), we have seen both ends of the spectrum.  We are constantly asking that authors don’t pigeon-hole male characters, and yet….  When an author delivers the ideal man or woman by making everyone else drunk, abusive, socially inept and selfish, they show off the rugged hunk who hugs puppies and cries manfully when discussing his feelings.  They also detach us from reality and cheat our perception of human nature.

 

There is the suggestion that depicting the “reality” of Mormon culture, this Elder’s Quorum for example, would be slanderous.  We believe that the intent is the key here.  Ideally, we are not writing these characters in order to be anti-Mormon or anti-man.  We are not trying to turn them into the Mormon Shylock and leave them wailing “Hath not an RM personality?” on the pages of every novel. To quote Natalie Portman’s Evie Hammond, “Artists use lies to tell the truth.” Likewise, it is our duty to find ways to tell the truth “In all times, in all things and in all places.”  

 

Lessons on pornography and instructions on violations of the law of chastity are not taught because we should know that they will never happen.  Failing to discuss the best and worst of humanity would be akin to an obstetrician failing to disclose the details of high-risk pregnancy.  In an ideal world, the adversary has no sway over the hearts of people in wards, branches, missions and stakes, but it is up to us to acknowledge it. 

 

In the case of this BYU student, she sought help from her home teacher the night before her court date and he responded that “By leaving your eternal companion, you are dishonoring the priesthood.”  Is it not the greater dishonor to not educate ourselves and those around us in ways that all fall short of the glory of God at the same time that we look with brightness of hope for the healing that the Atonement can bring? And, in truth, wouldn’t it be better to read of a story where a woman overcame such horrors and retained her testimony in spite of the things said and done to her? Perhaps a reason why this is so difficult to write is because stories like this are real, and common, and tightly closeted because repeated pain is inflicted or because painful truth is hard to discuss in Zion.  

 

Or in other words, shall we remain in a state where socially-approved fiction is idealized, but reality is deemed false? Shouldn’t we hope and seek and demand for truth, even when it is deeply, darkly ugly?

All Things Bright and Beautiful: Learning to be a Modern-day Mormon Pioneer

As the days grow colder, I find myself thinking of my ancestors. Recently my father told me the story of one of our pioneer ancestors, a Danish farmer who came to Utah to build Zion with the saints. For a farmer, he was incredibly cultured. He was a gifted violinist and musician. Like many early saints, he sold most of his possessions to come to America, including his treasured violin.

When he got to Utah, it was nothing like Denmark. Where Denmark was lush and temperate, Utah was arid, scrubby, and desolate. According to the story, when he and his family arrived at their assigned plot of land, he sat down on the bare earth and wept.

 

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Modern-day Denmark, photo by Mizrak

After that first day, he picked himself up and got to work. It wasn’t long before he’d built a small cabin for his young family. He didn’t cry again, not after that first day. Instead, he coaxed crops from the land and built a life for himself and his children. And yet, sadly, he never touched a violin ever again. Not even to play a song on a friend’s fiddle. He simply gave it up for the rest of his life.



I don’t know what to make of this story. It breaks my heart to think of the suffering my ancestors endured in cutting ties with their old lives. They gave up so much to live as Mormons in a strange land. Were they happier? Were they grateful? What am I doing to honor their legacy?

More than anything, stories like this cause me to reflect on my own experience with Mormonism. Mostly, I remember all the good that came from my Mormon upbringing. One of my best memories is my own baptism.



A few days before the ceremony, I stood foot-to-foot with my father in my grandparent’s basement, practicing. He had one arm around my back, the other supporting my hands. He showed me how he would dip me under the water, how I could plug my nose with my free hand, how I would bend my legs to go all the way under.

The day of my baptism my mother took a hundred pictures of me and my father in the church foyer, dressed head to toe in our whites. In the pictures, I smile a toothless grin, my eyes squinting behind giant coke-bottle glasses, my curly hair frizzing its way out of my tidy ponytails.

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I still remember stepping into the baptismal font, easing into the warm water where my dad waited for me. My dress ballooned, pillowing around my elbows like a cloud. I remember people crowding around outside the font, their faces a happy blur. I remember my sisters and cousins pressing their smudgy fingers and noses to the glass, how I could hardly recognize them with my glasses off. They were like a swab of paint, a blot of pure, deep love smeared across my vision.



My dad held me in his treelike arms, gently dipping me under the water, just like we practiced. He caught me as my tiny body tried to parachute upwards in my billowy white dress. When I was back on my feet, wiping the water from my eyes, my dad wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the top of my head, like he always does.

My mother met me in the bathroom with my glasses and a thick fuzzy towel. Even after climbing the steps in my cold, dripping dress I felt warm and held. My mother undid my braids and put bow barrettes in my hair. When we got back to the congregation, my grandma, who gave a talk, gifted me an antique key that she’d kept on her nightstand for as long as I could remember.



“Being baptized is like getting a key straight to heaven,” she said, placing the key on a string and tying it around my neck. I wore that key for nearly three years, almost never taking it off, not even to sleep. I don’t remember much else from that day, except that every part of me felt warm and glowing and golden.

Now that I’m grown, I long to give my children access to spiritual milestones like these. They make up the beautiful, beating heart of our religion, and I want desperately for my children to speak that same spiritual language. And yet, despite such potent memories, I find it difficult to square the Mormonism of my past with the Mormonism of my present.



For one thing, I’ve come to realize that my experience with Mormonism was one of immense privilege. I wasn’t black. I wasn’t gay. My home life was stable, predictable, and nurturing.

 

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Jane Manning James, early saint, activist, pioneer

It wasn’t until much later that I realized that this wasn’t everyone’s experience. I was exposed to stories of people who had been deeply traumatized by Mormon culture and doctrine. Some had even been physically hurt or abused by people in positions of power. Hearing these stories, I began to realize that some aspects of Mormonism have actually caused me deep pain as well. I had (and still have) deep shame about my body. In my youth, I constantly felt that I was not worthy enough, pure enough, or pro-active enough in my gospel dutires. I also internalized the idea that I was supposed to endlessly sacrifice in order to live the gospel—that my own boundaries and desires didn’t matter. Since then, I’ve also had ugly encounters with leaders in church, and have faced both rejection and censure from people who were supposed to be guardians of my spiritual growth.

And so, as I’ve grown older, my relationship to Mormonism has evolved. In many ways, it’s grown to be more expansive, more inclusive, more transparent than it ever was in my youth. In other ways, it’s grown more obtuse, less articulated, and less concrete. This is one reason I feel so heartsick when I think of the pain that Mormonism has brought into my life and into the lives of my loved ones. Because for all its bitter flaws and tangles, Mormonism still feels like home.



And as for my current family, we still haven’t discovered what our spiritual heritage will look like. My hope is that it’s both the same and different than the Mormonism I grew up with. Right now, it’s mostly described by all that I hope for. Not only for me, but for all of us with deep ties to Mormonism.



For one, I hope that we’ll find safe corners, that we’ll build circles of love and protection where we can be vulnerable and loving and true. I hope that we’ll be like our pioneer ancestors, that we’ll turn our backs on the ugliness of our past, not to forget, but to forsake and heal. I hope that we can pass on our religious traditions in a way that’s both meaningful and respectful to those who have suffered inside the church. I hope that we can welcome those who are vulnerable into our circles, to hold space for them and grieve with them when they need us.



But most of all, I hope that the future feels bright and full of promise, like me at eight years old—a golden girl dressed in white, standing barefoot in a pool of blue, encircled by all that’s bright and beautiful.

 

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Me and my great grandmother at my baptism

 

Surviving Excellence

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Today I received an invitation to Young Women in Excellence. There will be tables spread out in the gym with displays that represent something the girls have mastered or accomplished. There will be quilts and flutes, paintings and trophies. When you are Type B folk living in a Type A town, events like this are stressful. Not everyone’s talents are easy to display. Thankfully we remembered that my 15 year old took a lifeguard course this spring and can count that as her skill. She is indeed an excellent swimmer. I’m not exactly sure what to put on her corner of the table. A pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses? A whistle? A picture of David Hasslehoff? We’ll figure it out.

As I scramble to make sure she feels validated, I am relieved that there isn’t an equivalent in Relief Society. How awful if we had to put our lives on display! Can you imagine feeling like you had to make perfect meals, perfectly presented? Or have one’s house immaculate and on display, every throw pillow just so? But the worst would be for those with kids. Imagine how awful it would be to have to watch other, more together moms present their children as if they were always spot free and adorably dressed? And you in turn would need to orchestrate perfect pumpkin patch pix! You know where I’m going here because we do this. Every. Single. Day. With Instagram and Facebook, we live in a virtual World of Excellence. Instead of displays on tables in gyms, we watch it on our computers and phones. It is always with us.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I love celebrating the talents of the girls in my ward. Some of them have mad skills and I’m glad for an excuse to celebrate them. And I spend way too much time online obsessing over my adorable nieces and nephews and liking the gorgeous pork tenderloin with a balsamic glaze that my chef friend makes. While I get that it’s important to set goals, to work hard, to do one’s best, it can sometimes feel competitive and oppressive. Often we make the mistake of looking at the “displays” presented by others and believing that is the reality. I worry that some young women will look at the symbols of accomplishment and feel they fall short. I worry that young moms will mistake the inability to turn one’s toddler into a perfect accessory as a character flaw.

On my crazier days I want to send out invitations to a celebration of Full Grown Women of Mediocrity. Sister Gourmet might display the cheesecake where she accidentally used corn flakes instead of graham cracker crumbs for the crust. Mmmmm greasy…. Sister Hannah Andersen would show up with kids in tow, outfits mismatched and ill fitting. Sister Calm and Collected would confess to locking herself in the bathroom to eat chocolate while the Lords of the Flies rampage through the house. And Sister Scholar might admit that she Shmooped the last novel for book group because it was too boring to read.

The truth is, we all fall short. We have all been fools. No one gets through this life with total excellence. As someone whose flaws have tended to end up on display fairly frequently, I have tried to not just make peace with my screw ups, but to embrace them as the things that make me me. For example, there was a period when my family and the family of my BFF Denise kept getting lice. Like 3 times in one winter. It was a nightmare. The shame. The nitpicking. The itching. But instead of shaving our kids’ heads and pretending it was a fashion statement, we owned the hell out of it. We did research. We sent warning emails to other families. We taught a class on lice prevention and elimination. We freaking wrote a song about it. And now when someone in the ward thinks they or their kid may have the creepy crawlies, they know they can call me and I will come and comb through their hair, section at a time. Judgment free.

My kids are amazing and hilarious and everyone’s favorite babysitters. But they also have anxiety disorders and faith transitions and all sorts of other not fun things. And I am not ashamed. My hope is that the people who also find their realities are less than picture perfect know they can come to me and be embraced, as I have been by the women who were brave enough to let me see past the displays. I’m not saying we have to wear tee shirts that advertise our pain (“Four Miscarriages and Counting!!” or “Failed the Bar Exam”), but along with celebrating and displaying our triumphs, the Savior has taught me to see value in sharing our brokenness and pain. There is healing to be found in displaying our vulnerabilities.  To me, this is the embodiment of excellence.

Virtual Oasis (For When There’s Nothing To Say)

I generally describe myself as an idealistic realist. This character trait allows me to do what I do for a living–lobby for social justice and civil rights–and not go completely crazy. But I have to admit that the last several months have really taken it out of me and I feel uncharacteristically despondent about the sate of the world. I have lots of thoughts on what is happening but I’m struggling to articulate them so I thought that I would use the existing Exponent Blog tradition of the Virtual Oasis to share some profound (and not-so-profound) links. 

Close the Boyfriend Loophole. Especially relevant for today, Samantha Bee’s prescient segment on the number one predictor of mass shootings, domestic violence. “Abused women are the canary in the coal mine”.
One of the things I am increasingly worried about it the growing tribalism of our society. I believe one of the reasons for this is that our society is still segregated. Nikole Hannah-Jones recently received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship for “chronicling the persistence of racial segregation in American society, particularly in education, and reshaping national conversations around education reform.” Her work is so important. Read it. Or listen to to this.
If you need some self-care after those heavy things, here is a worthwhile interview with Brene Brown that delves into her new book, “Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and The Courage to Stand Alone”.
This seems overdue: Women behind speculum redesign say we need gynecological tools designed by people with vaginas. So fascinating!
On Minimization as a Patriarchal Reflex. I am still thinking about how this blog post relates to my relationships with my husband, sons and colleagues but it feels like part of the answer.
It’s painful to acknowledge that we have to be careful about male feminist allies. I wish this wasn’t true, but once again, we are seeing that men who claim to be allies are often wolves.  And in case you think this isn’t a problem in our Mormon circles–it is.
Here’s a place to escape: Inside the Joyfully Deranged Kitchen of Amy Sedaris.
This twitter thread is a must read. We have to stop idealizing the Civil War. We have to confront history as it actually is.
Have you all noticed the increase in “editorial” modest clothing? This article from the NY Times style magazine, Modest Dressing, as Virtue,  was not at all what I was expecting but was so so interesting. Every choice made by women, even our clothing choices, are fraught with history, politics and cultural meaning. It’s exhausting.
Oh, and a note about the picture I chose. I visited Chicago with some dear friends this weekend and had the opportunity of going to the Art Institute of Chicago which I can’t recommend highly enough. This picture by Georgia O’Keefe, which is on display at the Art Institute, literally took my breath and stopped me in my tracks . It feels like what I’m searching for–a light to make the darkness go away. I needed to see that.

So, what are y’all thinking and reading about these day? Post away in the comments!

Religious Rituals Reinforcing Hierarchy

This semester I am teaching a religious studies class and am delving into the sociology of religion in way I never have before. During our week studying rituals, I was struck by this passage in our textbook.

“Emile Durkheim proposes that religious rituals reinforce the existing structures within a given society. If, for example, a social group holds that men are superior to women, then its ritual life will reinforce hierarchical gender roles. Rituals, and religious rituals in particular, function as a kind of social glue that holds society together by ensuring that members of the society accept their socially constructed roles as natural and God-given.”

I realize that not all of Durkheim’s theories hold up so well over time, but this particular description of the function of ritual in society struck me as insightful. It also made me think about the function of our own Mormon rituals in reinforcing hierarchy.

Of course, I’m thinking most particularly of the women’s hearken covenant in the temple. This covenant has haunted me since I first heard/experienced it almost two decades ago. It was profoundly painful because it was the first time I had explicitly experienced the outright, overt subordination of women to men in Mormonism. Sure, I knew all about men “presiding,” but while troubling, that didn’t have the powerful punch of the wording in this ritual. Here, in this most holy of places, I and other women were being told to ritually vow and assent to our own subordination. I was crushed. Never have I cried so hard.

That was nearly two decades ago, and I have spent countless hours since then grappling with the role of women in Mormonism. I tend to believe that Mormon leaders employ a dual discourse regarding women’s status. On the one hand they are equal partners, walking beside their husbands, equal decision makers in all things. On the other hand, they are subordinate partners to be presided over; they are to hearken unto their husbands in righteousness. Which discourse about women’s status has more weight? Which more fully represents the LDS understanding of gender roles? On my positive days, I lean toward the former. After all, in practice, most functional LDS marriages are egalitarian in their decision making (if not their role bifurcation). On other days, however, the crushing fact that women’s subordination is ritually reenacted, over and over and over again, within Mormonism’s most sacred space, leads me to believe that the latter holds more purchase in Mormon cosmology. Ritual, as Durkheim says, powerfully sacralizes the hierarchical social order and communicates to adherents that that social order is the will of God.

I know many, many Mormons believe that women are not and should not be of secondary status to men. But so many of these Mormons who have come to that conclusion have done so despite being sent a different message in the temple. Perhaps it’s time for our leaders to consider amending this ritual so that it better reflects the egalitarian discourse embraced by so many General Authorities, a discourse which has risen to prominence over the last several decades. Such a change would also reflect the day to day lived practice of many Mormons in happy egalitarian marriages. It would also reflect the conviction and experience of so many of my faithful Mormon sisters that they have direct relationships with God, and that they are directly responsible to God.

As feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether writes, there comes a time when old religious symbols or language no longer resonate, no longer carry the same meaning that they did for generations past. When that time comes, new symbols and new language must arise to replace the old, if the religion is to retain currency and impact in people’s lives. I think that time has come in Mormonism. Let the new symbols and language arise.

The Errand of Angels

[image error]General conference speakers have their own idioms that I’m sure longtime members have, on some level, noticed.  The speakers use the word “even” for emphasis in a way that I’ve never heard in colloquial English – “Our Lord and Savior, even Jesus Christ.”  They provide a brief synopsis of their point at the end of their talks, tagging on “is my prayer” even though ordinarily one might say “I pray that we’ll all find peace” rather than “that we may find peace is my humble prayer…”  General Conference speakers are notorious for shamelessly abusing the passive voice.  “Tears were shed, hearts were touched and lives were changed.”  Most of these peculiarities aren’t particularly bothersome, they just make it easier to do an impression of your favorite General Authority.  However, there is one tic that always makes me utter a loud “tsk!” and roll my eyes.  It is the propensity for men to refer to the women in their lives as “angels” – my angel mother, my angel wife.  Fantastic.  I’m glad she has a halo.  Meanwhile in my living room: Is that barf or poop on my shirt? Oh, it’s both!

Why does this bother me? It’s supposed to be a compliment! I feel irked because it puts women on a pedestal and implies an impossible standard of womanhood.  Angels are heavenly beings.  Angels don’t slam doors or yell or act in passive aggressive ways when they’re frustrated.  Angels “do whatsoever is gentle and human” but the implication is that to be human is to “cheer and to bless” rather than “to swear at the dishwasher and lock oneself in the bathroom with earplugs pretending the children are not home.”  I don’t personally know any women I’d describe as angelic, which is fortunate for them because I’d probably be a sour resentful witch about it if I did.

I have often thought that, in the unlikely event that one of my male relatives ever finds himself in a position of authority in the church, I never ever want him to refer to me as an angel.  It would erase my very real struggles and shortcomings, and how darn hard I have to work at everything.  I think I’m a good mom, but nurturing is a lot of miserable thankless work.  I don’t do it because it’s my angelic nature, I do because it’s needed and right and I care.

I was chatting about this with some friends the other day and we began reframing the narrative that women are angelic.  If the errand of angels is given to women, what does that mean?

Angels minister.  They teach and testify of Christ.  They prepare the way.  They cry repentance.

Angels call people out on their nonsense.  Angels rebuked Laman and Lemuel.  Angels thundered at Alma and the sons of Mosiah.

Angels know things about God and the Plan of Salvation that were hitherto unrevealed.  Gabriel came to Mary to explain about Jesus.  Angels explained to Mary Magdalene that Jesus was gone.  An Angel taught Nephi in visions.  Angels know truth through having a personal relationship with God.

Angels are fierce and formidable.  When Adam and Eve were cast out, an angel with a flaming sword was put in place to guard the way back.

An angelic woman is fierce, and wise, and tells it to you straight.  Angelic women can be brassy or sweet or both.  We can be outspoken or softspoken, so long as we’re speaking the truth without flinching.  Angelic women get orders from God and no one else, because angels are special witnesses of Christ.  So if you find yourself grinding your teeth when you’re asked to sing “As Sisters in Zion,” imagine every woman in your Relief Society wielding a flaming sword. This is the gift that as sisters we claim.

 

Read All About It

For three years of my childhood, ages 6-9, I lived in a rural county in Indiana. No one walked to school; everyone was bused. The 911 service was not set up; you had to directly call the police or the fire department if you needed them. My second grade classmates invited me to see the pigs they raised for the county fair and I even signed up for 4H myself, though we didn’t stay long enough for me to really get into the program

After last year’s US Presidential election, there was a lot of talk about the widening gulf between rural and urban America, so as a current an urbanite, I decided to make an effort to go out of my way to at least consume media that I wouldn’t otherwise see. I subscribed to a local county newspaper of my short-lived rural childhood experience.

The newspaper itself is mainly concerned about local happenings. It is rare for national or global events to show up in it except in letters to the editor. Dependable columns include high school sports, marriage licenses, obituaries, a police beat, and a pastor’s weekly column. There are ads on the side for St. Joseph’s Catholic Church Annual Turkey Dinner and Medicare Open Enrollment. [image error]Over the past year, bad news has included a house fire that killed a couple of young girls and a couple of local teen girls’ bodies being found dead and the police investigation into both crimes (the arson and the murders). I followed both of those stories for weeks/months as the community held vigils and fundraised for the families affected. The community’s excitement has extended to the new recycling plant being built nearby and the jobs it’ll create and praise has been to graduating students with scholarships and the local professional people who have been honored with rewards by Indiana professional organizations.

Reading this newspaper in my inbox every week has made me reflect on the news options in my current city. Yes, there is a lot of local news, but I don’t recall a ton about high school athletics or sewing drives for charity. While closely following another community, I’ve realized I’m not closely following my own. What are my local valedictorians up to? Where are the local blood drives? When is city council meeting and voting? It is so much easier to read about another place and imagine what it might be like to live there and ignore living in the place you are now.

This week I received an email asking me to continue my subscription after it expires at the end of this month. I’ll probably renew it and will have to find a good local-to-me newspaper to support as well. Local papers do a great service to our communities: keeping us together where we are.

Does your community have a local paper? Do you follow it?

The Greatest Commandment

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In Matthew 22:36-40 (New International Version) we are given the greatest commandment:

36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I love that Jesus immediately after stating that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul and mind has to clarify with a second commandment: Loving God = Loving neighbor= loving self. He knows our struggle to treat imperfect others and self with the love we strive to direct towards God.

Recently I spent the day at a retreat to address compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and the burnout common to helping and first responder professions. I was asked to reflect on what replenishes and restores balance for myself and others and spent hours discussing it with other helping professionals. Early in the day, a comment from a chaplain got me thinking about the divine imperative to love myself.

Afterwards, I began to apply what I learned and integrate it with my spiritual beliefs by color coding my to-do list and calendar into 1. Things I was doing for others (God and neighbors) and 2. Things I was doing for myself. As I began the exercise I anticipated that there might be some imbalance, but I was surprised to see the vast scale of the imbalance. I spend a lot more time on others versus the time I spend on self.  I began to wonder, what would it look like if I loved my neighbors (family, patients, co-workers, actual neighbors) in an investment of time equal to the measure of time I spend on self-care?

I started to review the good plans on my doing-for-others list and contemplate what I might cross out and replace with self-sustaining investment. This was incredibly difficult! I do not want to let go of any of the things I do for others. And I realized there is some unhealthy pride in my people pleasing ways. Saying no and backing out of commitments takes humility. It requires acknowledgment that I am human and limited. I do not have infinite resources of love, energy, or time. I am not the Savior. I am not perfect. I am not a limitless source of light and love with the capacity to atone, heal, or raise the dead. Obvious, right? But there is a self-righteous perfectionist within who relentlessly promotes the propaganda of imbalance and self-neglect. She thinks it is good and holy to sacrifice self for others with no sense of replenishing ratios or balance.

Finally, I reflected on the quality of care I provide in love for myself versus what it looks like when I am loving my neighbor. Most of the time I coded as self-care is basic care to sustain life; sleeping, eating, hygiene and then a bit of recreational mindless checking out time reading, on my phone, or watching TV. The time I spend on spiritually or emotionally nourishing and replenishing activities for myself is scarce. In reflecting on my love for others, the quality I deliver is much higher. More eye contact. More careful listening. More sitting with feelings in acceptance. I give much more than the basic blocks of life sustenance to others throughout my day. I am not the greatest at living the greatest commandment. My lived version is ” love your neighbor about ten times more than you love yourself.”

Looking around at my mostly Mormon community of friends and family I see that I am not the only one struggling to live up to this key element of the greatest commandment. Love yourself. Even the annoying and irritating bits. Love all of her. Unconditionally. Relentlessly.

What would it look like if I spent as much time and energy caring for myself as I do in caring for others? How would it feel?

I am going to try my best to find out.

My Ninety-Five Theses for Today’s Mormon Church

Today is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg (or maybe he didn’t? either way, that’s the cultural narrative). In doing so, he both posited things about the church that he felt were problematic, and welcomed debate about those issues. Almost inadvertently, he kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

I have neither the goal nor the desire to kick off any type of Mormon Reformation, but hoo-boy, do I have some grievances/ideas/theses about the Mormon church. Sometimes I feel like the policies and practices we have in place are actually stumbling blocks to creating Zion, rather than building blocks.  So, in the very-loosely-defined spirit of Luther (and possibly more in the spirit of Festivus’ Airing of Grievances), I present my Ninety-five Theses for the present-day Mormon Church.

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Church is too long. We need a two-hour block, and we need it now.
We need more snacks. I don’t care if this takes the form of a between-the-hours snack break or a monthly break the fast fellowshipping meal, or something else, but there should be an opportunity to break bread with one another and informally chat.
The nursery toys should be cleaned more often.
Relatedly, the nursery toys should be a budget priority. Our children need more than broken plastic cars and dolls that are missing arms.
Primary should be more active. Those kids have been (or will be) sitting through all of Sacrament meeting and possibly some classtime without moving. Let’s get those kids dancing and singing and moving their boogie-bodies.
Primary & nursery teachers are a gift to the ward, and should be treated as such. They need reliable backup lists and team-teachers when at all possible.
To quote a new convert I spoke with recently, “y’all’s hymns sound like we’re at a funeral every damn time.”  Let’s get the tempo up to where it needs to be, and let’s try to add some gusto in our singing.
Also, can we get some hymns that are more active and sound like praise?  I wouldn’t mind some moving and some clapping, too. Let’s pretend that we’re happy to be singing at church.
Don’t just show up at somebody’s house without calling!  Missionaries and well-meaning church leaders, I’m looking at you.  This has been aptly named “well-intentioned social terrorism” by leading experts and makes people less likely to fellowship with us, not more.  If you keep making appointments with people and they don’t show up… maybe that’s a hint that they don’t want to hang out with you, and that’s ok.  Also, don’t show up at somebody’s place of employment, or wait for another tenant of a building to go through the door so that you can get to a person’s front door without ringing a bell.  Again, if they don’t want to talk to you, then they probably have a good reason.  Don’t try all sorts of creative ways to trap them into a conversation.
Relatedly, when somebody sets a boundary, respect it.  If they say, “I don’t want visiting teachers right now,” don’t assign them visiting teachers who are just extra sneaky about visiting teaching.
Youth leaders should be trained in how to respond to and/or report issues of child abuse. Honestly, we all should, but especially youth leaders.
We have a proud cultural history of beards, and so any prohibition of beards on church-affiliated campuses or for temple workers needs to be abolished immediately.
Neckties are the pantyhose of men and should be culturally optional.
The Word of Wisdom is some good advice, and let’s get back to that.  A cup of coffee shouldn’t keep you out of the temple.
For the love of Pete, please dump the Boy Scouts.  And Cub Scouts.
Less meetings.  PEC and Ward Council should be merged and all leadership should attend the one meeting.
Make the priests properly wash their hands before preparing the Sacrament.  And enforce it.  I’m talking surgery-level scrubbing.
“Follow the Prophet” sounds like it’s a theme song for a cult.  Get rid of it.  Being in a minor key makes it even more terrible.
Stop interviewing teenagers behind closed doors without another person present.
Stop talking to minors about masturbating.  Also, adults.  Don’t talk to anybody about masturbating.  Why are we talking about masturbating at church?!
Let’s make the temple clothes for baptisms for the dead a little less see-through.
Have the girls help pass the Sacrament.  There is nothing in the scriptures that prohibits this, and passing the Sacrament tray around isn’t required to be a priesthood function.
Bring the Sacrament to the mother’s lounge.  If the Sacrament is the most important part of our Sunday service, it should be made available to all, including those feeding their babies.
Relatedly, those wards that only provide the Sacrament to those who are seated in the chapel because the people in the lobby didn’t get to church on time??  Stop that right now.  Limiting access to the Sacrament based on arrival time is high-level Pharisee nonsense.
Women’s garments should be sleeveless, or at least without that little bunch under the armpit, which is unnecessary and uncomfortable.
This one may be controversial, but get rid of the one-piece garments.  Just… no.
Stop the worship/emphasis on The Family™.  If you’re going to talk about defending the family, you’d better be talking about all families, not just the ones with cis-gendered, heterosexual parents who are married and who have 3+ children born in the covenant.  Families, as a social unit of primary support and love, are worth defending.  “The Family™” is code for being homophobic and it’s antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.
Relatedly, we have turned church leaders into idols that we worship.  Stop making a false equivalence between fallible humans who are called to positions of leadership/authority and Jesus.  They are not Jesus.  We worship Jesus, not them.  We are supposed to obey God and Jesus, not church leaders.  We have moved the center of our worship onto human beings who make mistakes and who see through a glass, darkly, and it belongs on God and Christ.  Full stop.
Women are not necks who turn heads.  We are people with our own necks and heads.  So are men.  We should work together in a collaborative and equal fashion.
Ordain women.
Change the temple language so that women are covenanting with God, not through their husbands.
Stop carpeting the walls.  Why do so many buildings have carpet running up the walls?  That carpet is itchy and scratchy and makes it very difficult for toddlers to walk against the walls, because it’s not pleasant to touch or hold on to.
I am all in favor of having ward members help clean the building, but if we could get professionals in to make sure that the bathrooms and kitchens are properly cleaned and sanitized every so often, that’d be great.
Please make the women’s session for women, and have it be either 12+ or 18+.  I feel like having the 8-12 year-olds really infantilizes the whole thing.  They’re children, and that’s ok. They don’t need to be there.
Let’s hear from more women in General Conference.  This would hopefully naturally happen should we ordain women (see Thesis 30) but black men have been ordained for almost 40 years and we still rarely hear from them. So, relatedly…
… make a concerted effort to have more diversity in leadership, and in talks during General Conference.  We should value the experiences of all people in this church from all demographic groups.
Either pad the pews, or make church shorter.  Some of us have tailbones that haven’t fully healed from multiplying and replenishing the earth, if you catch my drift, and have a hard time sitting on hard surfaces for that long.
Engage more with community groups and civic outreach.
Do more interfaith service work.  I want to see more Mormons starting soup kitchens and doing anti-poverty work.
I may be biased, but every ward should call a Ward Social Worker to help both the Bishop and Relief Society connect people with resources in the broader community.
More security for missionaries, especially those serving in high-crime communities, and especially women.  I know way too many women who have been sexually assaulted on their missions because they were asked to be places that were unsafe and known for being hostile to women.
Increase the budgets for congregations outside the US.  Wards in Mexico shouldn’t be receiving less money-per-person than wards in the US.
Fund fewer shopping malls.
Make the mother’s lounge more than an afterthought when planning buildings.  Nursing mothers deserve more space than the broom closet, separate spaces to change diapers (without stinking up the whole mother’s lounge), and comfortable chairs.
Put changing tables in all of the men’s restrooms.  Women aren’t the only people who change diapers.
More global hymns.  Less songs about Zion in the mountains and more songs celebrating the cultural diversity of the church membership.
Take the Star-Spangled Banner out of the hymnbook.  Also My Country ‘Tis of Thee and America the Beautiful.  And God Save the King (even though it’s been a Queen since forever).  It’s fine to be patriotic, but having those songs in the hymnbook smacks of nationalism and colonialism in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable.
Have a Gospel Essentials 2.0 Sunday School class.  Basically it would be a Sunday School class discussing the basic tenets of the gospel, but in a much deeper philosophical/theological way than in the normal class geared towards investigators.
The “Mission President’s Wife” needs an official title that makes her co-equal with her spouse.
Female missionaries should be called as District/Zone leaders, with authority and stewardship over both male and female missionaries.
Please remove the bit in the handbook about asking members to consult with their bishops before getting their tubes tied or a vasectomy.  Why on earth should a couple have to consult their ecclesiastical leader before making a choice about their reproductive health and family size?!  And what bishop really wants to sit down with a couple, only to have them say, “So, bishop, Jeff here is thinking about getting snipped and wants to hear your thoughts”?
Screen-print the garments instead of sewing in the symbols.  Children always pick the most inopportune time to ask, “Mom, what’s that on your nipple?” and it’s awkward for literally everyone.
Now, I can’t find a documented source for this one, but it’s my understanding that if a child is born through surrogacy, the child is sealed to the man whose sperm is used *and the surrogate mother* until the child is later sealed to the biological mother and the biological father in the temple.  WHAT NONSENSE IS THAT.  The uterus/vagina through which a child is grown/birthed should not matter more than the DNA used to create that child.  If this is true, that should change.  If not, please let me know because I’ve had a bee in my bonnet about this for a while.
BYU and other church-affiliated campuses should have coffee available as a courtesy to visiting and/or nonmember faculty and students.  And, honestly, if students want to drink it, I don’t think it’s a sin.  See Thesis #14.
Missionaries shouldn’t ask members to commit to finding “x” number of people for them to teach by a certain date.  Changing one’s spiritual beliefs and/or home is a big deal.  I’m not going to force that on my friends or family because you have a quota to fill.
Stop measuring the success of missionaries by how many people they teach and/or baptize.
Have missionaries do more service.  Maybe make lasting partnerships with organizations in your area, and commit to having a certain number of missionaries available to them for a certain number of hours per week (so that organizations can depend on that continuity).  “By their fruits ye shall know them!”  Let’s make sure we’re bearing good fruit.
Let missionaries call their parents more than twice per year.  I know that we want them to focus, but especially with lowering the mission age, many of these kids are away from home for the first time.  Let them call their moms or dads.  It might actually make them more effective as missionaries, not less.
Let sister missionaries wear pants whenever they want, especially if they’re serving in places where they’re riding bikes, or where there is a high incidence of mosquito-borne illnesses.
Let families plan their own baptismal services.  Let them invite the people they want and have people close to the individual being baptized speak.  I know that there are a lot of baptisms in the Wasatch Front, but turning them into assembly-line functions makes it less special for the people being baptized.  Let families celebrate this ordinance and rite of passage in a way that’s meaningful to them.
Get rid of the one-year temple penalty on civil marriages within the US (and some other countries, I think).  Let people plan their marriage and/or sealing in a way that best works for them and their families.
Open up sealing ceremonies to everyone, regardless of “worthiness.”  I don’t think we need to perform sealing ceremonies for everybody, but let family members and friends witness the ceremony and celebrate with their loved ones.
Allow cooking in the kitchens.  We could be teaching all sorts of skills in there if they weren’t for “warming only.”
Allow children of same-sex couples to be baptized.  What is this nonsense.  I can’t believe I even have to say that.
Relatedly, stop excommunicating married people in same-sex relationships.  Let them come to church, partake of the sacrament, and hold callings.  Hold them to the same standards that we hold heterosexual couples to, and encourage commitment, fidelity, and love.
Truthfully, I think there’s space to allow same-sex relationships to be sanctified and sealed in the temple.  Taylor Petrey’s “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology” has some insight on this.
Amplify the fourth mission of the church: Care for the Poor and Needy.  Tackle it not just on a case-by-case level, but on a systemic level.
This has been improving in recent years, but broaden the catalog of “acceptable artwork” for church buildings.  Let’s see artwork that reflects the diversity of the membership.
Put pictures of female general leadership in the building, and not just in places where only women and children gather.
Call women into the Sunday School presidency and men into the Primary presidency.
Stop treating young single adults (or old single adults, for that matter) as not-fully-formed members of the Body of Christ.  Have them serve in positions of authority.  Don’t require their activities to be supervised by married members.  Trust them to make decisions as adults.
Use the buildings during the week.  Sure, there are probably insurance/liability issues, but other churches have found ways to work through them.  Hold literacy classes.  Help with childcare.  Provide pop-up food banks or shelters.  Let them be used for elections.  These buildings sit empty through 90% of the week, and could be used to do so much good in the community.
Model disagreement within church leadership.  I would love for members of the Quorum of the Twelve to give conference talks that disagree with one another, and to acknowledge that they disagree.  So much of our issue is thinking that there is one answer to every question, and that everybody needs to fall in line.  Instead, we need a multiplicity of viewpoints, of ways to think about different issues, and a dialogue on so many topics.  I know that the Quorum of the Twelve disagree with one another behind closed doors, but I would love to see them model a civil conversation of how to respectfully disagree and still be fully in line with church teachings. My hope is that this model would trickle down to provide much more substantive/interesting discussions in local church meetings.
Revamp the Sunday School curriculum so that the teacher’s manual is less of a call-and-response.  Acknowledge thorny issues in the manuals and provide a variety of ways to talk about/understand those issues.
Some wards still only allow men to be the final speakers in Sacrament meeting.  Stop it!  Women can speak last, too.
Create coming-of-age rituals for the girls in the church.  This could be corrected with ordaining women (see Thesis 30), but girls need to mark their maturation into adulthood and feel welcomed and needed by their congregation, too.  Give them responsibilities and ways to serve their ward community.
Call the female presidents of auxiliaries “President.”  Similarly, call the wives of mission presidents “President,” unless they get a better/co-equal title (see Thesis 49).  We should be talking about President Bingham and President Oscarson the same way we talk about President Nelson and President Callister.
Have women pray in General Conference.  Remember how we tried that and it was awesome?  What happened??
Have General Women’s Session alternate with General Priesthood Session every year in April/October.  DONE!
Teach about prominent women in the scriptures and church history.  Make sure the men and the women know about our spiritual forebearers.
Stop doing Trunk-or-Treats.  Unless you live somewhere that Halloween doesn’t otherwise exist, and you want to celebrate it for some reason, actually go out and trick or treat with your community instead of doing a quick grab in the church parking lot.
Have mothers hold their babies during baby blessings.
Encourage activities that are inclusive.  Fathers/Sons campout is great, unless you don’t have a father or you don’t have a son, or you have three brothers who all get to go camping but you’re stuck home.  I’m not saying that we can’t do activities that are just for certain groups, but examine the gendered makeup of these activities.  Are the boys always camping and the girls always doing crafts?  Maybe flip that script once or twice and have the girls go camping and the boys do crafts.  I promise it won’t cause the earth to stop spinning on its axis, and you might meet the needs of some people who are excluded from the traditional activities.
Please, please, please turn up the heat in the Chapel.  I swear the thermostats are exclusively set by people who are wearing suits.  Some of us women are wearing skirts and dresses and we are freezing.
Embrace our glorious theology of a Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine.  God isn’t just a He.  Change the YW theme to say “We are daughters of our Heavenly Parents, who love us, and we love them.”
Focus on people over numbers.  I know that it’s hard to measure outcomes and program success without quantitative data, but try to find innovative ways to determine whether your ward is healthy and functional beyond “percentage of adults with active temple recommends” and “percentage of households being home taught once per quarter.”
Allow wards to do special musical numbers that are outside the hymnal.  I’m not saying you just allow anything, but we hear “Consider the Lillies” all the time in Conference and that isn’t in there.  Some wards are pickier about this than others, but realize that not all uplifting music is in the hymnal.
Have less stuff run up through the RS President and Bishop.  I know that oversight is important because things really do go off the rails sometimes, but our poor Bishops and RS Presidents) are overworked.  Maybe the Bishop doesn’t have to sign off on the visiting teaching assignments, for example, and maybe the RS President doesn’t need to approve every activity.  Less micromanaging, more delegating.
Change youth standards to be more inward reflections than outward.  When talking about modesty, don’t just talk about what body parts need to covered, but talk about what it means to be modest in all of your thoughts and deeds.  When talking about the Word of Wisdom, talk less about what substances to eat/drink and more about what it means to treat your body with respect and have moderation in all things.  If we set less outward markers on what it means to be a righteous Latter-day Saint, we’re more likely to build an inner spiritual foundation that is based on principles instead of actions, and we’re also less likely to judge others who aren’t outwardly conforming.
Allow women to be sealed to more than one man in the temple, similar to how men can currently be sealed to more than one woman.  We do this after women are deceased anyways (after women die, you can seal them to any husbands she had during mortality) with the idea that God will sort it all out in the end.  I think we can be confident that God will sort it all out in the end if we do it in mortality, too, and it reduces unnecessary anguish to divorcees, widows, widowers, and their families.
No Sacrament meeting start times after 2pm.
I really love our lay ministry, but provide more training for Bishops and RS presidents.  I would love to see some sort of weekend training where new bishops/stake presidents/RS Presidents/maybe even auxiliary presidents get two days of serious, intensive leadership training.  I would love to see them talk about ministering, and about knowing when you are out of your depth and to refer out to professionals.
Temple films that reflect age and racial diversity in the people being portrayed.
Home teaching standards that are more similar to the new visiting teaching standards.  More ministry, less formality.  Serve people in the way they need/want to be served!
Put stained glass in the chapels.  We suffer from a tragic shortage of stained glass in our meetinghouses.

And that’s that!  What do you think?  What theses would you add?  Which would you remove?  What could make practiced Mormonism more like Zion to you?