Exponent II's Blog, page 33

Mormon Microfeminisms

Recently I came across a video of women sharing their favorite “microfeminism” online. Intrigued, I had to do more digging into this concept. A microfeminism is a small, everyday action that challenges gender bias and inequality. Coined online by TikTokers, these seemingly tiny actions can force others to confront their internal biases and preconceived notions. They can also break down stereotypes and sponsor better actions. As the scriptures say, “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass” (Alma 37:6).

Some popular examples of microfeminism include:

•Holding the door open for men

•Not moving out of the way for men when walking

•Writing a woman’s name first on an invite

•Referring to animals as “she”

I absolutely love this concept! After learning the term, I realized microfeminisms are something I’ve been doing as I’ve deconstructed patriarchy over the years. The place I use them the most are in relation to Mormonism, unsurprisingly.

The LDS Church is the most sexist organization I’ve been a part of and the place where I confront inequality on a regular basis. It’s literally written into the covenants I made and built my life on. I can’t turn a blind eye or pretend that distinctly Mormon inequality doesn’t exist or affect me every day. I’ll never be able to rewire my brain from the trauma of a childhood absorbing the messages of sexism and misogyny in the name of a mediocre white man’s God.

But I can push back and make my future––and the future of my children––a much better and equitable place. Even as my own personal relationship with the church evolves, I truly believe that I will always be Mormon at the core of me, no matter what my faith status. And so as I approach church on my own terms, I dig more into actions that make clear where I stand. Microfeminisms are a subtle but powerful way I can do that in an organization that will not respond outright opposition. They are also a way to agitate and make people a little uncomfortable. Change doesn’t happen when there is no reason to rethink the status quo.

It’s been interesting to watch the reactions to my microfeminisms, especially by patriarchal men. It often throws them off, makes them flounder, or become highly defensive. I’ve thrown off entire Sunday school lessons with my honest comments. In the best scenarios, I’ve forced people to stop and rethink. I’ve received countless thank you’s from people who appreciated me saying the hard things out loud.

I’m under no delusions that microfeminisms alone can change the church. But they are a place to start! Especially for those who might be more timid about bold action or aren’t the heathen feminist blogger in their family (that’s meeeee). Pick a couple of small actions to take and see how they make you feel. Embrace your power and take up the space you deserve to fill! We all are on a different journey and choose to be part of (or not a part of) the Mormon community in different ways for a variety of reasons. But together, we can make an impact, even if that impact is only within ourselves to reclaim our personal authority and spirituality.

Are you willing to try it out? Here’s a list of ideas to get us started:

•Mention Heavenly Mother in prayers and testimonies (“I know She sent Her son to die for us…”)

•Call the Relief Society, Primary, and Young Women’s presidents, “President” instead of “Sister”

•Be upfront in conversation about callings and assignments and willing to say no without guilt

•Call couples “Sister and Brother X”

•Say “Good morning sisters and brothers” or “Good morning my friends/fellow worshippers”

•Refer to God as She or They

•Switch genders when reading scriptures out loud in class (“And it came to pass that she…”)

•Ask men if they need help with tasks that women don’t get asked to do

•Suggest or assign men to make treats, organize meal trains, or decorate

•Wear a tie to church

•Compliment other women you see in the halls

•Call out assumptions about women’s roles as wives and mothers

•Email/text dads instead of moms when you need to send information for primary or youth

•Let the bishopric know every time you hear them thank “the priesthood” for passing the sacrament

•Ask for new members’ and visitors’ pronouns

•Text the bishop every time there’s an all-male line up speaking in sacrament

•Put a copy of Exponent II magazine in the mother’s lounge

•Claim your space in ward council

•Only quote women when giving talks

•Pray out loud for the general Relief Society presidency instead of the prophet/Q12

•Call out sexist, racist, ableist comments in Sunday School

•Challenge the old guy mansplaining polygamy during Gospel Doctrine

•Remind other women that they are allowed to take up space and have their needs met

•Welcome and sit by LGBTQ+ members

What else would you add to this list?

Coming to the table with Wilda Gafney’s ‘Womanist Midrash’

To celebrate Juneteenth a few years ago, I bought a book I’d had my eye on for a while: “Womanist Midrash, Volume 1: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne,” by Dr. Wilda Gafney. It came highly recommended from a couple of scholars whose work I enjoy, and I was at a point in my life when I was looking at the Bible and realizing, “This is not working.”

It came at some point after seeing paintings and videos of scenes from the Bible and, embarrassingly late in life, realizing all of these people from ancient Southwest Asia should not be this white. And that all of the interpretations and teachings I got from the Bible came from white, mostly male, leaders. And that what I was being told was correct was increasingly at odds with what I was reading, what I was taking from the text and what I was finding through the practice of midrash.

The book is a game-changer. Dr. Gafney is a Black woman and a scholar of the Hebrew Bible who tears down and rebuilds the stories I’ve known my whole life from angles I’d never been taught and never considered. She gives life and voices to women—Black life and Black voices. The Bible explodes open through her visionary writing, which is meant, she says on page 2, for all of us—we are all welcome at her table:

“This text is written for those who read the Bible as a religious text, who look to it for teaching and preaching, inspiration and illumination; to offer religious readers an exegetical and hermeneutical resources that delves deeply into the canon(s) and draws on marginal and marginalized women as scriptural exemplars.”

First, some definitions

Womanism: Put simply, this is black feminism. Black American author Alice Walker introduced the term in “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” But womanism is more than black feminism. It embraces liberation theology, the idea that the gospel of Jesus Christ must have as its center the liberation of all people. It rejects the racism and centering of white women that often happens in American feminism and does not hold space for an either/or approach. Gafney calls it a “richer, deeper, liberative paradigm; a social, cultural, and political space and theological matrix with the experiences and multiple identities of black women at the center” (2, footnote).

Midrash: This is a spiritual practice that started millennia ago in Judaism; it aims to understand and interpret the Tanakh more fully by essentially filling in the blanks, of which there are many. In recent decades, feminist scholars in Christianity and Judaism have embraced midrash as a way to give stories and voices back to the women of the Hebrew Bible and Christian (New) Testament. I love this practice; I both read and write my own midrash, and through it I have experienced elation, grief, anger, love and understanding. I’ve read the same stories from different angles and considered what could have actually happened, what, if I strip away the words, interpretations, expectations and patriarchy, what our foremothers might be saying.

Why womanism matters

Broadly, the more voices and perspectives and interpretations we have from the Bible, the better. This is a collection of individual books or letters, written over several centuries, the earliest works passed down orally for generations before being written down. For most of history, they have been written, translated, interpreted, edited, revised by men with a specific purpose: to tell the story of the One True God who has always was and always will be, unchanging, all-powerful, male.

The reality of the Bible is way more complicated than that. In fact, the reality of the Bible is a bit of an oxymoron. There is no “correct” translation or “right” interpretation. We don’t know what was originally written down. We don’t know how far from the events in question the first stories were committed to paper. We don’t know how many times they were rewritten, revised, changed, both intentionally and not. But we know it was a lot, and we’ve all played the game of Telephone and seen what can happen to a simple message the further it gets from its source. We can’t rely on the One True Narrative because that does not and has never existed.

Narrowly, the Bible says what we each bring to it. And when for much of the last two millennia, the people allowed to read and interpret and preach from the Bible were bringing a lot of the same—they were white or of European descent, they were men, they were interested in keeping and maintaining power. They often wielded the words of the Bible to their own advantage. Did you know the words of Paul were used by preachers in the American South to justify slavery? And we all know how the words of Paul have been wielded against women. (Are those really the words of Paul? And is he actually saying that? Again, it’s complicated. But the church—both the Mormon church and the broad Christian church—has accepted them as the words of Paul and the leaders use them to their advantage. So.)

We need people with different experiences reading and interpreting the Bible—people who see and uplift the marginalized, who notice those whose stories go by without getting a name, who take different lessons from the stories we’ve all been taught since childhood has only one lesson. We need scholars who see characters in the Bible with different default skin colors. I am trying to do this, but after so long seeing white as the default, it is a struggle. It is important that I do it anyway.

And finally, it matters because there is not representation of women in color in Mormonism. There is not enough representation on The Exponent II. Nicole Sbitani wrote an excellent piece, “Making Mormon feminist spaces more inclusive,” that lays out ways that spaces like this are, both intentionally and unintentionally, unfriendly to women of color. We need to make sure—I need to make sure—that we, like the white male preachers of the last 2,000 years, are not upholding our experiences and interpretations and power as correct and God-given at the expense of others.

Gafney writes: “Womanists and feminists ask different questions of a text than do other readers and different questions from each other. And we also ask some of the same questions, and we arrive at similar and dissonant conclusions. Privileging the crossroads between our Afro-diasporic identity (embodiment and experience) and our gender (performance and identity), we ask questions about power, authority, voice, agency, hierarchy, inclusion, and exclusion. The readings enrich all readers from any perspective. The questions we ask enrich our own understanding and the understandings of those with whom we are in conversation” (7).

Hagar, an African mother who named God

Dr. Gafney gives the women of Genesis and the women of David’s kingdom a voice; you should read them all. Close your eyes when you finish her words and imagine these women in different settings, looking different than you may have imagined them or seen them in paintings before, but knowing they still belong in these stories—that they have grown and become more majestic as they encompass all of God’s children.

But there is one who bears special mention: Hagar. She is African. She is a slave. Her bodily autonomy is taken from her. She is abused. She is abandoned in the desert and retreats from her dying son, unwilling to watch his last breaths. She cries out in injustice. She also is the only person in the Bible given the honor of naming God (Gen. 16:13).

“The Hebrew text beginning with Genesis 16 makes it clear that Hagar has no say over her body being given to Abram or her child being given to Sarai. Hagar is on the underside of all of the power curves in operation at that time, as noted by Renita Weems, Delores Williams, and many, many others: she is female, foreign, enslaved. She has one source of power: she is fertile; but she lacks autonomy over her own fertility. Sarai is infertile, and the text suggests that, as a result, Hagar held Sarai ‘in low esteem.’ Hagar’s disposition towards Sarai is framed with the word q-l-l, ‘to curse’ or to ‘hold worthless,’ that is, ‘light,’ little,’ or ‘nothing.’ It may not be that Hagar views Sarai was nothing because Sarai is infertile and Hagar is fertile. Rather, it may be that Hagar regards Sarai as nothing and/or curses her because Sarai uses Hagar’s body for her own reproductive purposes. Why should a sex-slave, forced in gestating someone else’s child, think highly of her or bless her enslaver? Perhaps the text singles out Hagar’s feelings toward Sarai because Sarai is primarily responsible for Hagar’s sexual subjugation. Abram’s complicity is secondary. Sarai is free; she has some societal privilege as Abram’s woman and Hagar’s mistress. But she is still an infertile woman in a male-dominated world, both of which imperil her status; she seeks to attain/restore her status on and in Hagar’s body” (41).

Dr. Gafney notes that the verb describing the violence Sarai inflicts on Hagar in Gen. 16:6 is the same verb used in Exodus 1:1 to describe the violence Egypt inflicts on Israel. We’ve all seen “The Ten Commandments.” We have images in our minds about the severity, the cruelty, the inhumanity of that violence. Yet when it is inflicted on one marginalized African woman and her child, it is whitewashed.

This is not the story I grew up knowing, put as it was through the white Christian/Mormon telling of Sarai the faithful, patient, put-upon wife who was doing the best she could. And it’s possible that is largely true—she was faithful, she was struggling, she’d been promised something that did not appear to be coming. But that does not take away the other side of the story—Hagar’s story, who experienced this woman vastly differently. And who deserves to have a voice as much as Sarai did. Who deserves to be remembered as a mother of a great nation, a victim of abuse who survived and found her way home, a woman who stood face to face with God and spoke as an equal.

Find “Womanist Midrash” by Dr. Wilda Gafney on Bookshop.org. (I also discovered looking this up that Volume 2 has been published!) Both books are published by Westminster John Knox Press.

8 Ways to Make Church Less Boring

My main image is a photo of my son building hymnbook towers when he was younger. I let him do this and afterwards he told me it was the first time he’d ever had fun at church.

This was my middle daughter and two nieces, who made a facedown massage line to pass the time. I was so sad nobody invited me to join!

The other day I sat down and came up with eight easy ways to make church 100 times better, based on my own personal experience as a person who once loved church…but still needed so, so much more than I received.

My parents are both converts who came from families with mixed religious backgrounds. Because of this, I attended services other than LDS meetings as a child, including my two favorites: Methodist Bible Camp in North Carolina the week of my eighth birthday (coming home to Utah to be baptized in a boring mass stake baptism right after was such a letdown of an experience after my fun week there!), and “The Rock” church, a rock-‘n’-roll Christian meeting in the south that felt more like a fun concert than a stiff and formal church meeting.

As an adult, I proactively toured other local congregations in the mid 2010s during one of my husband’s military deployments. I attended Unitarian Universalist meetings, Community of Christ, the Episcopal Church, and Alpine Bible Church. All of them had different things to offer that my LDS services were lacking. Here are the things they did well that I think we could emulate to make our meetings much more enjoyable and spiritually fulfilling:

1. Hire a full-time religious leader for each ward.

This should be someone who attended divinity school to learn how to be an effective pastor. Rely on that person for the bulk of Sunday worship speaking, not the ward members. While I understand the benefits of letting youth and regular ward members practice preparing talks and speaking in front of everyone, couldn’t it just be a small part at the beginning instead of the whole meeting? For the main sermon we could turn the time over to someone who prepares for religious discourse as their full-time job.

I loved the pastor at the Unitarian Universalist Church. She gave such beautiful lessons and I hung on to her every word. After leaving, I’d think about her sermons and stories for weeks. She was incredible at public speaking because it was her job and she was professionally trained to do it. Why are we so afraid to hire a professional clergy member to give our Sunday sermons? Think of your absolutely very favorite teacher or speaker – what if that person was the pastor and taught you every single week from the pulpit? 

2 Make the music more lively!

Why does holy have to also be so boring and so slow? I understand a reverent hymn right before the Sacrament, but why must we remain boring after that? My first experience with a rock n’ roll church was so much fun. I left feeling invigorated and excited and full of joy and energy. Absolutely nothing about it being lively and loud took away from the messages they were teaching. In fact, I was riveted to every word and couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards! I was a teenager when I attended this meeting and it’s still locked into my memory as one of the most fun church experiences I’ve ever had.

I even remember the parking lot, because was enormous and packed with cars. If you didn’t get there early for the first meeting, you’d have to turn around and come back to get a seat at the afternoon one instead. People were going way out of their way to attend there – never out of duty or habit. It was fun!

3. Pay for professional childcare for the babies and toddlers, and hire professional youth ministry pastors to run the youth programs for kids and teenagers.

I cannot express what a difference that made for me as a young mom attending meetings solo when my husband was deployed. I normally sat in Sacrament Meetings stressed out and alone, trying to keep three bored kids quiet in one section of a pew for an hour without killing each other.

At other churches, I would drop off my baby with the professional nursery staff before the meeting began, then my older kids would leave with the youth group to meetings geared towards their interests. I would stay in the main assembly hall all by myself to listen to the sermon with no distraction, and I will tell you… It was heavenly. It felt like a break from my 24/7 childcare duties and I absorbed every second of it as opposed to dreading it and just trying to survive.

4. Solicit questions and topics from the members of the congregation so the (professional) pastor can address the topics most pressing to members of the ward.

Too often in LDS meetings we just hear one inexperienced speaker after another regurgitate a talk from the latest general conference. The talk may have absolutely nothing to do with them at that point in their life (like a teenage boy assigned a talk about eternal marriage). The talk may be irrelevant to the members of that particular ward (like a talk about keeping the Sabbath day more holy to a group of farmers who have to work on Sundays to care for their animals and crops).

If the pastor of the congregation knew what common questions and concerns the members were having, that person could study, pray and adjust their Sunday sermons to meet the local needs.

5. Let people clap!

Why on earth do we not applaud when people give a great musical performance? How is showing appreciation for their hard work not appropriate in a religious setting? And when the music is catchy (assuming we get more fun songs) why not clap along to the beat? It’s so much more engaging and energizing to be physically included in the music. 

6. Make our buildings less cookie cutter, cost effective and styled like the 1990s.

We spend so, so, so much money on temples. They are incredibly extravagant with furniture imported from around the world and high ceilings with stained glass and original artwork. Unfortunately, very few people see the inside of a temple on any given week, and certainly not any children or investigators or inactive members.

Why do we spare no expense for a very tiny portion of worshippers? They could do all of the temple ordinances just fine in a bland building, as long as it was dedicated for the work, but imagine if we had beautiful cathedrals for worship that everyone was invited into.

I once attended Catholic mass in Europe. I remember being mostly unimpressed with the service itself because it felt monotonous, but oh my… the building we worshipped in was extraordinary! Every window was a work of art. Statues and stained glass and paintings and a huge, cavernous ceiling that made you feel like you weren’t on earth anymore. It felt like heaven. And best of all, it was open to anyone, all the time. Even if the services alone didn’t appeal to me, just the beauty of the building alone made it a spiritual experience for me. 

Image from K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash.com

7. Have time set aside after services to meet, mingle and serve.

Instead of gathering my kids and immediately leaving at the end, at both the Episcopal and Unitarian Universalist churches we’d gather in a large room for drinks, food and friendship. I enjoyed talking to people and learning about them, and I loved that on certain weeks a group would leave and go to the local food bank to help sort and stock shelves.

I considered the service my ward was doing that week, which was a ward temple trip. We were carpooling to a very expensive and exclusive building to do what was often repeated work for people who were dead. I longed for a service that took us outside of our own religious community and into the general community, but we mostly served each other or dead people.

8. Finally, stop blaming the members of the church if they’re struggling to enjoy Sunday meetings.

When I was a young mom with a frequently absent military spouse, it was hard to survive Sunday meetings with small children. There are plenty of non-military wives who have the same experience because their husbands are in meetings all day and on the stand. I’d go desperately wanting to be spiritually fed but leave exhausted and sad. The only advice and help I received was to come better prepared and look for what I could do to serve others more. This didn’t help me. It shouldn’t be solely on the worn-out individual members to make church a better experience.

Members of the LDS church are highly dedicated to their religion and will continue to attend no matter how boring or bland the worship services are. But just because everyone puts up with it, doesn’t mean leaders don’t have a responsibility to improve the Sunday experience for everyone who attends.

We Must Not Pre-Comply with Authority

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020, I started binge reading books on American history, politics, and sociology. In many courses I teach, students want to know what to do about sexism and racism in society once they understand its history and the many ways it shows up in every day life.

Ibram Kendi recommends supporting and voting for policies and candidates that are anti-racist and anti-sexist.

Heather McGhee reminds us that social forces often put pressure on us to see others who share our identities as our allies. Instead, we must learn to find solidarity and build bridges with people and groups who do not share our identities but with whom our interests are aligned.

Mikki Kendall offers a vision of an inclusive feminism that seeks the thriving of all in society by tackling poverty, food insecurity, housing, gun violence, and other issues not traditionally understood as feminist ones.

After the election in November 2024, I re-read Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, which serves as an informed listicle of ways that we can resist the onslaught of racist, sexist, anti-immigration, anti-trans, ablest, and anti-democratic tide of executive orders and legislative bills at the state and national levels.

Snyder’s point that resonates with me the most is that we must resist pre-complying with unjust laws and policies. If we pre-promise that we are going to comply with rules that hurt other people, we will not be able to resist when our moment of truth comes.

This is especially important for us in the Mormon, fringe Mormon, and ExMo communities. Over and over again, I heard as a child, teen, and adult, that “Obedience is the first law of heaven,” a statement not supported by scripture. We were taught to pre-comply with authority and to acquiesce to the demands of leadership, regardless of the consequences to ourselves and others, in the name of faith and obedience.

A new state law in Utah, passed in 2024 (HB 261), requires professors at state universities and colleges to submit all course readings and lecture outlines for required courses to a publicly available database.

At my university, I see professors racing remove potentially controversial content from their courses in an effort to pre-comply with a legislature that is anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some feel that by doing so they will protect themselves from this new state surveillance system, but at the expense of student learning.

Pre-complying in this way makes it easier for the state to remove academic freedom and to police content taught at universities that is about inequality in our society, because such content is viewed as controversial from an extreme political point of view. We live in a world full of complex systems and we must continue to teach our students about these realities.

I am actively talking to colleagues about continuing to teach content that is socially relevant to our courses, our research, and the lives of our students. In this time of fear, we must not pre-comply.

Have Mormon Women Uncovered The Eye Opening Truth of Our Own Women’s History?

This is the Equal Rights Amendment:

Original Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in Congress in 1923,

written by Alice Paul:

Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place

subject to its jurisdiction.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

That’s it.

***

Women’s history in regards to the ERA:

Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied

or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate

legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the

date of ratification.

The Equal Rights Amendment was written in 1921 by suffragist Alice Paul. It has been introduced in Congress every session since 1923.

It passed Congress in the above form in 1972, but was not ratified by the necessary thirty-eight states by the July 1982 deadline. It was ratified by thirty-five states (green states are those that ratified the ERA).

This is what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints worked to shut down. This is what The Church of Jesus Christ excommunicated Sonia Johnson over (okay, okay…there are a few more details to this woman’s history…read this link for more info)

But, really…The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints said that, “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex,” were words that would rip women out of their homes, where they are safe and belong, and make them go to war. 

This amendment alone could not make that happen.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints believes that equality is a threat to the men, most importantly the men with power.  But they say it is a threat to women.

This law would possibly force the church’s hand to treat women equally, which by the mere fact that it worked so hard to shut this amendment down, shows that it did not and does not treat its women equally.

Women’s history in regards to Sonia Johnson:

Christine Talbot, as a part of a series, Introductions to Mormon Thought, has thoroughly researched the life and works of Sonia Johnson. Giving us a gift of knowledge on an important Mormon woman, that other Mormon/ Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint women would benefit from examining. 

“The legacy of her [Sonia’s] experience reminds all of us that the challenges, problems, and anguish she articulated have not been resolved”1

I had a vague idea of who Sonia was a couple years ago, but knew her as a controversial figure just from hearing her name thrown around in podcasts. In fact, my mother who is a generation closer to Sonia, still has a hazy, if not wrong idea of who Sonia is and what she actually did.

Talbot notes that in Sonia’s “estimation, she watched male LDS leaders conspire against her and against women’s rights, she saw men lying to women repeatedly, and she saw women internalizing patriarchy and following men’s leadership without question.”2

“The church had taught [Sonia] that men could not be reasoned with and would never simply “give” women their rights. Rights must be seized.”3

When you watch/listen to recordings of Sonia (found through the University of Utah), you may find her to come across as I do; like most typical orthodox Mormon women from the 80’s. Permed hair, cut short, and a soft spoken voice that uses delicate language. She epitomizes the female “general conference voice”. I grew up surrounded by women just like her.

This is part of what makes her story hit so close for me. I was a baby as this was all happening. Sonia was trying to support changes that would benefit me – and the church I was brought up in shut her down, shut all the efforts that would change my world for better, down. 

Sonia continued to write and Talbot took all her works, including personal interviews with Sonia herself to create a short, but thorough outlook of what Sonia has put out into the world and how she tried, but failed to stand up against the Patriarchal system that is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Sonia grew up with the idea that God loves all the same, no matter what gender. She thought it only logical and inline with church theology that the ERA should be passed. When she was asked by her Bishop who was trying to excommunicate her, he pressured her to answer whether she believed in Patriarchy. When she said no, that was the nail in the coffin. He believed that was grounds enough to kick her out of the church.

Sonia went to church for a year after being excommunicated. She still believed in its theology and the ERA as being cohesive.

Talbot notes that Sonia did an interview with Dialogue: A journal of Mormon Thought where she said,

“Women are the experts on being women, but we are told who we are and what we are and what we must feel by men who haven’t a clue…How can they tell me when I am feeling fulfilled?”4

Let’s learn more about the women before us from other women. I highly recommend Christine Talbot’s addition to the Introductions to Mormon Thought Series on Sonia Johnson, A Mormon Feminist.

Other related articles: here, and here

Talbot, Sonia Johnson A Mormon Feminist, 83. ︎Talbot, Sonia Johnson A Mormon Feminist, 16. ︎Talbot, Sonia Johnson A Mormon Feminist,17. ︎Talbot, Sonia Johnson A Mormon Feminist, 88. ︎

Scripture Translations and Who Defines the Divine

Scripture translations have intrigued me since High School when I met Judy Brummer, a South African translator of the Book of Mormon who shared her experience of feeling Moroni’s energy sitting with her while she translated his words into the Xhosa language. Her creative, transformative experience of translating scripture greatly influenced my reading of scriptural texts. Suddenly, these sacred words no longer seemed magical or mystical, but more human– more prone to error and bias. 

From then on, the words on the scritta paper weren’t necessarily the words of God but the words that translators thought were God’s–which seemed much more interesting to me. I realized that scriptural texts are filtered through invisible human translators who influence the messages and ideologies of a text. And yet, we rarely know their names–these writers of scripture. 

Years later, when writing a paper in college, I came across a story about an Iraqw Bible translation project that again transformed the way I viewed God. The Iraqw language, a Cushitic language spoken in Northern Tanzania, posed a translation challenge because the Iraqw word for God is feminine.

According to Aloo Osotsi Mojola, a translation scholar at the University of Nairobi, translators are often confronted with issues of inadequate direct translation–words that require the translator’s creativity and judgment. When faced with a word, “God” in this case, that has no direct equivalent, the translators must make a choice: Do we take the path of domestication, using one of the names of God from the local language? Or do we opt for foreignization, borrowing one of the names of God from the neighboring dominant languages? 

The Iraqw name for God is Mother Looa. This ancient goddess appears in their folktales and myths, in their daily conversations, and in their prayers. For centuries, Iraqw-speaking people understood that the creator of the universe was Mother Looa. She is the protector and loving mother of all humanity, “she represents all that is good, beautiful, and true.” By contrast, the masculine god, Neetlanqw, is understood to bring evil and calamity, suffering and chaos to the world. Naturally, the Bible translation team–consisting mostly of women–decided to translate the English word “God” to the Iraqw “Mother Looa.” 

As I read this scholarly article, I loved imagining these people calling to Mother Looa when they were in trouble, reading Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning Mother Looa created the heavens and the earth.” I knew it was just normal to them, and I hated the idea of Christianity commandeering their Goddess of goodness, forcing her to enact the horrors attributed to the God of Israel in the Bible. But–wow. The Christian Bible held a Goddess in its pages, and she transformed all the hes into hers. 

What a difference a word makes, I thought.

But the story ended predictably: Christian leaders discovered this feminine translation and took immediate action. 

Obviously, there was no room for feminine language in the Bible. The Christian leaders argued that “everyone knows, God is a father and therefore masculine.” I would argue that the Iraqw-speaking people did not “know” that, but Mother Looa was cut from the Bible–erased from Christian tradition, theology, and thought. Instead of listening and straddling two worlds like translators do, the leaders held rigidly to the foundation of Christianity: Father, man, he, him.

And though I love the idea of a Goddess in the Bible, stripping away all those masculine pronouns, I am also–sadly–glad that Looa was released from the barbaric acts of our Old Testament God.

I’ve thought often about this story of translation, the power of a single word, and the decisions of translators–the invisible world-makers. This erasure of Mother Looa was still fresh in my mind when I learned of another instance where translation shaped (or reshaped) religious texts in 17th-century England. Mary Sidney, who knew five languages, including Hebrew, translated many texts into English, but when I read the Psalms that she translated, I was transformed. 

For me, the Bible is literarily clunky and strange and hard to read. This ugliness was always excused to me because people said it was translated from an ancient language, but then I read Mary Sidney’s Psalms and realized that that just isn’t true. Her wordplay, metrical complexity, and linguistic prowess made scripture beautiful to me. Delightful. For example, here is a portion of her translation of Psalm 150: 

Let ringing timbrels so his honor sound,
Let sounding cymbals so his glory ring,
That in their tunes such melody be found
As fits the pomp of most triumphant king.

Her Psalms, which she presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1599, demonstrate rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration. Her words are so much more beautiful, so much more linguistically complex and clever than the King James version of Psalm 150: 

Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.
Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.
Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.

Yikes. Both translations originate from the same Hebrew poems, and yet, they vary vastly based on the person translating. I find Sidney’s translation more to my liking, but isn’t that fascinating? Two translators take the same Hebrew words and create two completely different products. Translators matter.

Ultimately, Bible translation is not just about words—it’s about power, belief, and who gets to define the divine. 

*This post was inspired by guest blogger Leticia Storr’s beautiful post, God’s Language .

*Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Exponent II is Looking for a Fundraising Chair and Auditor

Fundraising Chair

We are looking to fill this essential position within the Exponent II organization. As chair, you would lead efforts to secure financial resources to sustain and grow the organization’s mission of providing feminist forums for women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum. This role involves developing and implementing fundraising strategies and cultivating donor relationships. Job description here. To apply, email your resume and a short statement of interest to board@exponentii.org by February 25, 2025. 

Auditor

Exponent II is looking for a volunteer to audit our monthly income/expenses. The anticipated time commitment is approximately one hour each month. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Jeanine Bean, Treasurer at treasurer@exponentii.org by February 25, 2025. 

The False Parable of Priesthood Keys and Priesthood Locks

Men and women do not have the same experiences reading the scriptures and church materials like the Come Follow Me curriculum. I was reminded of this recently when I went to write the lesson plan for the week that covers the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood. The lesson quotes from The Melchizedek Priesthood written by Elder Dale G. Renlund and his wife, Ruth.

“The term priesthood keys is used in two different ways. The first refers to a specific right or privilege conferred upon all who receive the Aaronic or Melchizedek Priesthood. … For instance, Aaronic Priesthood holders receive the keys of the ministering of angels and the keys of the preparatory gospel of repentance and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins (see Doctrine and Covenants 13:1; 84:26–27). Melchizedek Priesthood holders receive the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, the key of the knowledge of God, and the keys of all the spiritual blessings of the Church (see Doctrine and Covenants 84:19; 107:18). …
“The second way the term priesthood keys is used refers to leadership. Priesthood leaders receive additional priesthood keys, the right to preside over an organizational division of the Church or a quorum. In this regard, priesthood keys are the authority and power to direct, lead, and govern in the Church” (The Melchizedek Priesthood: Understanding the Doctrine, Living the Principles [2018], 26).

When church leaders talk about priesthood, they tend to talk about three things: authority, power, and keys. We’ve started to hear about women using priesthood authority and priesthood power (Using Section 84 to Emphasize the Priesthood Power of Women has a pretty good list of talks), but as far as I can tell, priesthood keys are still taught as a male-only thing.

All this emphasis on keys got me thinking about locks. Locks are a natural counterpart to keys, and keys don’t have much of a purpose without locks. Current discourse teaches that women have the priesthood, but they don’t have priesthood keys. Do women have priesthood locks? A priesthood key could be used with a priesthood lock to let somebody through. The ethical way to use a priesthood key is “only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned”. This doesn’t just mean during the initial sustaining vote. This means with every encounter with every priesthood lock the key interacts with (and the priesthood keys of a man in a leadership position may interact with a lot of priesthood locks as well as other priesthood keys).

Do I want to have a priesthood lock? It means being stuck in one place. The lock’s strength and integrity have to be monitored. A priesthood lock is assumed to passively protect the possessions of the man who holds the key. A lock has a responsibility to constrain the actions of men who try to use their keys to go where they don’t have a right to go.

This metaphor is so close to what girls and women have learned about chastity at church that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. And just in case it’s not clear: although I love my female body, I’m not interested in having a “priesthood lock” for men to pick, tamper with, devise ways to bypass, or break. I’m also not interested in being the first line of defense to protect male controlled spaces. This parable is false because, unlike a lock, women have agency to determine where they go and what they do in life. By denying women priesthood keys, the church circumscribes women’s agency in its sphere of influence. Church is the place where many women feel their agency is most restricted.

Going back to Elder Renlund’s quote (and the priesthood duties enumerated in Doctrine and Covenants 84), women already do or are capable of doing all of that stuff. “The errand of angels is given to women” who minister to others, sister missionaries teach the gospel of repentance, and the only reason women don’t perform baptisms is due to church policy, not physical inability. Women are spiritual. Women have insight about God and the mysteries of Their realm. Women are able to receive and give spiritual blessings. Within the current church leadership structure, women are presidents who don’t preside over their organizational divisions. But they certainly could if the men would let them.

If we have to go with a key and lock metaphor, I’d rather have a multifactor authentication system where every person has a piece of the secret combinations presumably required to enter the kingdom of God. We’d all have to work together to get to where we’re going. Hmmm, working together with one heart and one mind, that sounds like…Zion.

Come Follow Me: Doctrine and Covenants 12–17; Joseph Smith—History 1:66–75 “Upon You My Fellow Servants”

Table of ContentsHistorical OverviewStructure of the Assigned Doctrine and Covenants Sections“Upon You My Fellow Servants” – restoration of Aaronic priesthoodDiscussion: Baptism

This lesson covers the part of church history where the Aaronic priesthood is restored and Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were baptized. If I were teaching this lesson, I’d choose to have an open-ended discussion about baptism at the end of class. I’d prime the class for this discussion by saying something like:
“At the end of class, I’d like to discuss baptism and what it has meant for you. During class, be thinking about any experiences you might like to share about a baptism that you’ve attended, something you’ve learned about baptism, or how this ordinance has brought you closer to God.”

Historical Overview

It would be helpful to display or have people find the New York/Pennsylvania map in the scriptures under Study Helps → Church History Maps → Northeastern United States.

The revelations in this lesson were given to Joseph Knight Sr., Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and the Whitmer brothers: David, John, Peter Jr. Who were these people? Where were they from?

Revelations in Context presents historical information from the Joseph Smith Papers (among other sources) in brief chapters. The chapters that are relevant for this lesson are:

The Contributions of Martin Harris

Oliver Cowdery’s Gift

The Knight and Whitmer Families

The Experience of the Three Witnesses

Here’s a summary of these chapters:
Martin Harris was a prosperous middle aged farmer living in Palmyra, NY. He helped with the translation of the Book of Mormon in the spring of 1828. His wife, Lucy, was suspicious of Joseph Smith because he would not show her the plates. Martin convinced Joseph to let him bring part of the manuscript home so she could read them. This is when the 116 pages were lost. Ultimately, despite his wife’s concerns, Martin parted with “essentially all the property to which he had a legal right” in order to print the Book of Mormon. He was one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon.

Oliver Cowdery was a young school teacher boarding in Palmyra with Joseph Smith’s parents in the fall of 1828. The next spring, Oliver traveled to Harmony, PA where Joseph was living with Emma. The following day, Joseph recommenced translating the Book of Mormon (he had stopped after Martin lost the manuscript.) Oliver was one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon.

The Knight family lived 30 miles north of Harmony, in Coleville, NY. Joseph Smith had worked as a laborer on the farm of Joseph Knight Sr. He was one of the first people Joseph Smith told about the gold plates.

The Whitmer family was from Fayette, NY. David Whitmer heard about the gold plates when became friends with Oliver Cowdery in 1828. Oliver stopped to see the Whitmers when he was traveling to Harmony, PA be a scribe for the translation work, and he wrote letters to the family when he was with Joseph in Pennsylvania. In May 1829, David Whitmer arrived in Harmony to move Joseph and Oliver to the Whitmer’s home (back in New York), where they could translate and have their board free of charge. Emma later came to live at the Whitmer’s as well, and she also acted as a scribe. The translation was finished about a month later, in the summer of 1829.

Peter and Mary Whitmer had eight children together: Christian, Jacob, John, David, Catherine, Peter Jr., Nancy, and Elizabeth Ann. This week’s reading contains sections of the Doctrine and Covenants revealed for John, David, and Peter Jr. One of those sons, David, was one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon. Mary Whitmer was also a witness of the Book of Mormon:

“A grandson of Mary Musselman Whitmer (wife of Peter Whitmer Sr.) reported that Mary had “so many extra persons to care for” that she “was often overloaded with work.” One evening, after a long day’s work, she went to the barn to milk the cows and met a stranger who “showed her a bundle of plates” and “turned the leaves of the book of plates over, leaf after leaf,” promising Mary that “she should be blessed” if she were “patient and faithful in bearing her burden a little longer.”9 She thus became another witness of the Book of Mormon.”

Structure of the Assigned Doctrine and Covenants Sections

If you feel like you were re-reading the same thing over and over, you were!

Sections 15 (to John Whitmer) and 16 (to Peter Whitmer Jr.) are identical except for the names in verse 1.

Sections 12 (to Joseph Knight Sr.) and 14 (to David Whitmer) are very similar. For these sections:
Verses 1-5 are identical.
Verses 6 say similar things.
The main difference is in verses 7-8.
Verses 9 are similar. Section 14 has a few more verses at the end.

Section 13 is the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood. It was conferred by John the Baptist to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. This section is only a single verse long and is the same as JS—history 1:69.

Section 17 promises Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris a view of the plates.

Joseph Smith—History 1:66-75 is Joseph’s account of the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood and his and Oliver’s baptism in April of 1829. The asterisk in verse 71 leads to Oliver Cowdery’s memories of the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood, which was published in 1834, about five years afterwards.

“Upon You My Fellow Servants” – restoration of Aaronic priesthood

After reviewing the historical context and the structure of the assigned reading, go through and talk about whichever verses are meaningful to you and your class. Ask your class what insights they had as they studied this week.

A verse I would choose to cover is D&C 13:1/JS-H 1:69 (it’s the same words in both places):

“Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah, I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.”

Two phrases stand out to me here. The first is “Upon you my fellow servants” and the second phrase is “keys of the ministering of angels”.

The first phrase “Upon you my fellow servants”, is also the title for this lesson. What do you think it means to be a fellow servant with John the Baptist?

I’ve become very sensitive to gendered language in the scriptures. The word ‘fellow’ is interesting because it has both gendered and gender neutral meanings:
1. a man or boy
2. a person in the same position, involved in the same activity, or otherwise associated with another
3. a member of a learned society

The first definition does not apply here. When used in the first way, the word refers to a male, but the other two definitions are gender neutral. While the third definition could apply, we say we don’t generally refer to members of the Aaronic priesthood as “the priesthood fellows”. We say “the priesthood brethren”. It’s pretty clear that in this verse “my fellow servants” refers to Joseph and Oliver being involved in building up the kingdom of God, just like John the Baptist. Women can be fellows in this work too, although they are currently not in the same position, because they have not been ordained to the Aaronic priesthood.

The second phrase, “keys of the ministering of angels”, reminds me of the favorite Relief Society song As Sisters in Zion. Verse two begins: “The errand of angels is given to women; and this is a gift that, as sisters, we claim”. Because of this familiar song, the phrase “ministering of angels” helps me, as a woman, see myself in these scriptures. The errand of angels in the song is the act of ministering: “To do whatsoever is gentle and human, To cheer and to bless in humanity’s name”. Women are already doing work of the Aaronic Priesthood.
It is not a trivial desire for women to want to know how their purpose fits with the church. The men around Joseph Smith were concerned about this too. Sections 12, 14, 15, and 16 were revealed because men wanted to understand their individual duties to the church.

In the October 2016 conference talk “Rise Up in Strength, Sisters in Zion,” Bonnie L. Oscarson, Young Women General President said:

“All women need to see themselves as essential participants in the work of the priesthood. Women in this Church are presidents, counselors, teachers, members of councils, sisters, and mothers, and the kingdom of God cannot function unless we rise up and fulfill our duties with faith. Sometimes we just need to have a greater vision of what is possible.”

Discussion: Baptism

Recount how Joseph baptized Oliver, and then Oliver baptized Joseph after they received the Aaronic priesthood from John the Baptist (JS-H 1:70-72). Read JS-H 1:73 together:

“Immediately on our coming up out of the water after we had been baptized, we experienced great and glorious blessings from our Heavenly Father. No sooner had I baptized Oliver Cowdery, than the Holy Ghost fell upon him, and he stood up and prophesied many things which should shortly come to pass. And again, so soon as I had been baptized by him, I also had the spirit of prophecy, when, standing up, I prophesied concerning the rise of this Church, and many other things connected with the Church, and this generation of the children of men. We were filled with the Holy Ghost, and rejoiced in the God of our salvation.”

Give the class time to share about their own experiences with baptism. Conclude by sharing one of these quotes by female leaders*.

“We are all at different points on our journey back to our Father in Heaven. Did the Jews and Greeks whom Paul addressed in his epistle to the Galatians stop being Jews and Greeks when they were baptized? Did the men stop being men and the women stop being women? No. But they had all ‘been baptized into Christ’ and had ‘put on Christ’ (Gal. 3:27).”
Chieko N. Okazaki, First Counselor, Relief Society General Presidency
“Baskets and Bottles,” April 1996 General Conference

“Baptism is the beginning of a new life for each one of us, a life of purpose. The Lord is very clear as to what it means to keep his commandments, come into his fold, and be called his people. His people are ‘willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.’ ”
Dwan J. Young, Primary General President
“ Keeping the Covenants We Make at Baptism ,” October 1984 General Conference

* The Relief Society President in my ward recently gave a talk. In it she quoted some spiritual wisdom from another woman in our ward and attributed the quote just like you would for a general authority. I loved how it acknowledged the worth of insight from those around us. I’m definitely going to challenge myself to do this next time I give a talk or teach a lesson.

Burn it all down: A review of ‘I’ve Got Questions’

The title of this piece is not the thesis of Erin Hicks Moon’s book, “I’ve Got Questions,” a story of deconstruction or, as she puts it “having it out with God.” But it’s what I took away from the book. Burn it all down. Then look at what’s left, even if it’s just ashes. Consider what you want to replant or rebuild, what you want to do differently and what you want to walk away from forever Remember that fire heals, purifies, sanctifies—but don’t feel bad if in the process you douse it with gasoline and throw a match over your shoulder as you walk away in a perfect slo-mo action movie moment, rage fueling every step.

I’ve been a fan of the author for years; Erin is the host of Faith Adjacent, a podcast I’ve listened since it was called The Bible Binge and the co-hosts retold stories from the Bible, casting celebrities as characters and being as irreverently loving with the scriptures as I was becoming in my own study. (Some of my favorites: Winona Ryder as Miriam, Viola Davis as Mary the mother of Jesus, Danai Gurira as Queen Vashti, Jon Hamm as Xerxes—really all of Season 8, the season of Esther, is gold; Chris Evans as Adam, Selena Gomez as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Listen to this podcast.)

Because of this podcast, I knew a little about Erin’s faith journey (drink*). I knew she’d been evangelical, I knew she’d been Episcopalian. When I picked up this book, I didn’t know what she considered herself. I finished the book. I still couldn’t tell you what she considers herself. And that spoke to me because I don’t know what I consider myself.

As promised: questions

Erin starts with a list of questions that look a lot like mine. Here are a few:

Why does an institution that claims freedom so frequently yoke its members with unnecessary burdens?

Why is there cognitive dissonance between what we read in the Gospels and the way our faith is lived out?

Why does Christianity have a reputation for hatred, bigotry, and hidden abuse?

What do you do when the church you love pretends not to notice when the vulnerable are abused?

What do you do when the church is complicit in the abuse?

How do you untangle the knots of grief, anger, and pain in a place that is supposed to bear the fruit of joy, peace, and kindness? (p. 17-18)

I don’t need to explain why those questions stood out to me. Although Erin doesn’t answer these questions, she offers herself as an example that buoys the journey (drink) of so many people looking at the church that they loved and sacrificed for, the faith that carried them through hard times, the doubts they’ve always been able, until now, to place to the side. So many people, especially women, are looking at the religious beliefs they have been taught and saying, “This is not working.” And they are asking why. They are exploring what will work. And often, this puts them at odds with their churches and the men who run them.

In this book, Erin talks about grief and the importance of lament. She writes that grief can be a profound gift: “It’s the way we signal to ourselves and other people: This means something to me, and I am bereft without it” (p. 71). Grieve for it—the lost faith, the lost certainty. The last time I went to Relief Society, I remember realizing how much I missed that certain knowledge that it was all true. I would never go back to that certainty; it was illusory. But it was so much more comfortable. Grieve what you had.

Question. Doubt. Struggle. Wrestle.

The Bible is not filled with stories of people whose faith came easily. It is not filled with stories of people who were unafraid to challenge God. Erin talks about being the bearer of doubts (which is worth noting—you don’t have doubts. No, you are a majestic bearer of doubts, one strong enough to think and question everything you have been taught since before you can remember.) and how people around you, hopefully well-meaning people, suggest that you strengthen your faith. You do that by reading your scriptures and praying and going to church and fasting and ignoring-ignoring-ignoring those doubts and that cognitive dissonance and the voice that whispers, “but Jesus never said anything about gay people and he said we should be feeding the hungry, so why are we ignoring the hungry and going after the gay people?”

“Lobotomizing the part of yourself that is angry, hurt, or frustrated with God is not the answer,” Erin writes. “Beloved, you have a strong faith because you wrestle, not in spite of your wrestling. It is a gift. Don’t believe anything to the contrary” (p. 115).

‘Just because they say it, doesn’t make it so’

This is not an advice or a self-help book; it’s not a map for you to go on your deconstruction. What it felt like is a companion, a reminder that I’m not walking this path alone—that even though I’m the only one on my journey (drink), so many other people across all religions are spiritually walking with me. It’s a reminder that it’s OK to be angry—no, it’s a moral necessity to be angry when I realize I’ve been told not to trust myself or to ignore what I see or to question my worth because I don’t fit the mold.

The book offers a flashing red light that church is not God. That a belief system isn’t Jesus. That other people don’t get to tell me who God is. That no one has the right to tell me that God is not female or to deny access to God-She. That my relationship should always be with God, not with an organization.

It’s a good reminder that I could be wrong. In fact, I probably am, regularly, about a lot. And so are you, and so is everyone around us. That sounds scary, but it’s actually freeing. Knowing I can be wrong is an opportunity to experiment. Decades ago, when I was in Young Women, the theme one year was “Experiment upon the word.” Let’s do that!

The book circles back to what actually matters: Loving God. Loving your neighbor as yourself. Loving yourself. Why is that one so hard? Be good to yourself. Go easy on yourself when you mess up. Be better; don’t worry about being perfect. Trust yourself. Trust the God that you have come to know on your own, in the quiet places in your mind and heart where there are no outside voices drowning out what you say to God and what God says to you.

“They play keep-away with the keys to the kingdom, but the gates have always been unlocked” (p. 137).

“I’ve Got Questions: The Spiritual Practice of Having it Out with God,” published Feb. 4, is available on Bookshop.org and Baker Bookhouse (and lots of other booksellers too). Support local bookstores when you can!

*This is Erin’s joke.

Photo from www.erinhmoon.com

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