Exponent II's Blog, page 37

Words to Live—and Quit—By (plus a GIVEAWAY!)

“It is possible to be happy even when you are miserable,” Claudia Bushman writes in her newly published autobiography, I, Claudia. I happen to agree. Why? Because as Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project teaches, happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy. If your general sense of happiness includes strong, healthy relationships with your children, it doesn’t mean you have to spark with joy during a 3 am feeding and diaper change. If your general sense of happiness includes good oral hygiene, it doesn’t mean you have to look forward to your next dental cleaning.

Happiness is less about the actions or feelings of a given moment, which may include many miserable experiences, but about cultivating a life aligned with your values while engaging in meaningful work and prioritizing relationships and community (and for some, faith).

In I, Claudia: The Life of Claudia Lauper Bushman in Her Own Words (2024, Kofford Books), Claudia offers several aphorisms to live—and quit—by among stories of her long and fascinating life.

“If I didn’t quit, I could never go on.” Some jobs and responsibilities must be put down to pick up others. Claudia could take on many large and significant projects partly because she put down others and learned to prioritize. I believe this aphorism is true over the course of years as well as over the course of a day or week.

One of my favorite Claudia aphorisms is, “If you keep up, you’ll never get ahead.” As a mother of several young children as she did her master’s and doctorate degrees and undertook teaching classes, publishing books, and launching projects such as Exponent II, she gave up on “keeping up” with being fashionable or having the cleanest home. I value the permission to choose to exit the race to be best in every category. Mothers can do many things at once, but we all have limited time and must choose where to put our energy. It is empowering to choose.

And for anyone who has spent any time around Claudia, her most famous and oft-repeated aphorism is, of course, “A record shall/must be kept.” I was familiar with the broad strokes of Claudia’s life from my time interviewing her and studying her role in the founding of Exponent II and her influence on Mormon feminism, but her autobiography offers stories and frank assessments of her life that I am glad to have learned. Why were there years when she would seethe with anger from the church pews while wrestling her young children? What was it like to follow her husband’s career moves as he went on to something, and she would leave her community and projects to go on to nothing? What does it take to catch a vision of something meaningful and make it happen?

Claudia has had a significant impact on Mormon feminism, Mormon women’s history, and beyond. Mark your calendars for the upcoming one-day event on Saturday, March 15, 2025, from 9 am to 9 pm, at the University of Utah Eccles Alumni House in Salt Lake City. Organized by Maxine Hanks, Caroline Kline, and Amy Hoyt, the event will honor the pioneering work of Claudia Lauper Bushman. A link to the Eventbrite free ticket request will follow shortly, as well as live steam Zoom links. More details and a full lineup will be available soon, but speakers include Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Judy Dushku, Jana Riess, Taylor Petrey, and more!

In the meantime, enter this GIVEAWAY to win a copy of I, Claudia: The Life of Claudia Lauper Bushman in Her Own Words. Comment below for one entry, share the giveaway on social media and comment again for a second entry, and follow @exponentii_blog and @katieludlowrich on Instagram and comment again for a third entry. Enter by Friday, January 17. The winner will be randomly selected on Saturday, January 18. The winner must have a US mailing address.

A wrestle with God, and a last day

On the first Sunday of November, I went to church. Since the pandemic, after missing church for a year until the vaccine came out, I’ve gone once or twice a month, no more. My reasoning for each was, “It’s not my week.”

But this day, I had several good reasons to not go. I’d woken up two days earlier with back pain and it had gotten progressively worse in the last 24 hours. It was snowing hard when I left. It was testimony meeting, which never left me with a good feeling. But I went anyway, propelled by a need to go that I couldn’t place. To myself, I wondered if this was my last day.

Three days later, in the pre-dawn hours after the U.S. presidential election, I realized that it had been. I’d like to share with you that choice and the years-long wrestle with God that has preceded it.

Learning to trust myself

I’d woken at 2 a.m. Nov. 6 to news alerts that Trump had won. I curled up my on couch to study, then just cried and prayed—the kind of angry, emotional conversation with God that cuts through formality and politeness and is just raw, unfiltered rage. I don’t remember what preceded the realization that I could not go back to church, but in that moment, that reality was clear to me. When I said the words out loud, “I have to leave the church”—I immediately stopped crying and felt calmer.

The only words I had for that experience come from the church: revelation, inspiration, spiritual experience. After weeks of reflection and sitting with that choice, I now have others: trusting myself. Relying on my authority as an independent adult, a smart and thoughtful person and a child of God. (OK, some of the words still come from church. Since I have not left my belief in God, I’m fine with that.)

Was this the Spirit whispering to me that my choice was correct? Or was it my brain, after years of agonizing over the question, just relieved that it could finally rest? Was I just so exhausted from my Sisyphean journey of trying to reconcile the vast differences between what I saw and what I was told at church?

I don’t know, but I knew it was the right choice, one made not in a moment but through years of study, prayer, conversation, hard questions, tears and trying to imagine a future in the church and a future out of it, both of which seemed murky and frightening. My entire life I’ve been told to trust God. It took this long to realize that trusting God was not an excuse to not trust myself—that the God I know would never want me to ignore what is right and good for me.

Nobody is coming to save me

For years, I wondered why my shelf hadn’t broken. The stories of abuse of women and children, abuse of power, what tithing money was used for, the modern-day colonialism our missionary work represents, the treatment of LGBTQ members (and non-members), the lack of acknowledgement for harm done to women through polygamy and continued systemic inequality, to black people through the priesthood and temple ban, to Native American and Indigenous peoples through placement programs—all have bothered me intensely in recent years, and yet I couldn’t find it in myself to walk away. Even my experiences as a single woman who constantly heard messages, both spoken and unspoken, that I was not enough, that I did not belong, that I had failed in my purpose, didn’t make me leave. They made me angry, and they made every Sunday at church miserable and isolating. But they didn’t make me leave.

I had stopped paying tithing to the church more than two years ago after receiving my own revelation, I stopped wearing garments earlier this year, I hadn’t been to the temple in five years, I didn’t say “amen” after prayers addressed only to Heavenly Father—so, all prayers—and I listened carefully to talks and testimonies before I would say “amen” to them. I realized that I didn’t believe a majority of the words spoken from the pulpit.

Yet none of those things drove me to leave. I’ve realized since that I was trying to offload responsibility in some way—that I wanted an external factor to be the tipping point for my decision. I was waiting for The Big Bad Thing that would justify my decision—to those around me, yes, but even to myself. I knew many would still disagree with me, but I could point to The Big Bad Thing and say, “but look at that. How can I be OK with that? I had to leave.”

Abby Wambach, in a recent episode of “We Can Do Hard Things,” said it better than I can:

“There’s nobody coming to save you. … I have my experience, and I have to believe and understand my experience is holy in order to really want to take full responsibility for it because before I think I was just giving away responsibility, giving away my own life, giving away my own accountability. And there was something that shifted in me. … There is something magic in the surrender and the acceptance that nobody is coming to save us.”

There was no Big Bad Thing that broke my shelf. What came instead was that having a shelf was a choice. I didn’t have to keep those things that wounded me, that led me to question my worth, that made some people more important while telling others to be quiet. I could throw them out and fill my shelf with things that bring me joy. My shelf is filled with loving Heavenly Parents, feminism, truth and inspiration. It is filled with my morals and beliefs about the eternal value of all humans, of the Earth and her waters, trees and animals, of knowledge and learning and courage and compassion. It is filled with pictures of my dog, with mementos of my travels, with books and art and quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and seven different Bible translations in four languages.

My shelf didn’t break, and neither did I. I feel whole for the first time in years. For so long I’d felt torn apart by my conflicting beliefs, by my membership in and love for an organization that did harm to me, by a church that had both beautiful, sacred ideas and ugly, destructive practices and beliefs.

Why I stayed

I have been thinking about why I held on for so long. I have mixed feelings about younger Heidi’s revelations and inspirations; it is not fair to myself to dismiss those spiritual experiences. I have had moments with divinity when I felt inspired, when I felt loved, when I felt guided and protected by a higher power. Those included moments when I decided to go on a mission and experiences on my mission, they include other leaps of faith and inspiration gained through study and prayer.

I also realize, as a member of a high-control religion, I have been taught my entire life the “correct” way to receive revelation, the feelings to look for and what they mean and that I can only trust myself and my feelings if I am doing what I’m supposed to and following the commandments. I’ve essentially been taught not to trust my true, authentic self. So it is hard, now, to know what is mine and what is the result of what I have been taught all these years.

I also held on because much of what the church purports to believe is beautiful. I love the idea of forever families. I love the existence of a God who encompasses all genders and all races, who sees and loves people for who they are, whose love is unconditional. I love the notion of an Atonement in which all sins can be forgiven. Personal revelation, agency, the knowledge of good and evil—there is so much beauty and love in these ideas. So much potential to become something more.

But the church does not always practice those things. In my experience, personal revelation is to confirm what’s been taught from the pulpit, agency has been subsumed by all the rules we must follow without question, forever families has a big “if no one breaks our rules” asterisks and forgiveness has a reprehensible “except for sexual sins which, because of prudish Great Awakening ideals, you cannot fully be forgiven from, the reminder that you’re impure will always be there” asterisk. So much harm has resulted from church teachings: the shunning of LGBTQ people, including money paid to lawyers to advocate against their rights in the highest courts; the excommunication of people who stood for something; the teachings that for years have kept women from recognizing their potential as full humans.

This has been discussed at length, but I keep coming back to Women on the Stand. Having women leaders on the stand cost nothing. It didn’t give women any additional power or authority, it didn’t give them decision-making authority, it didn’t offer additional speaking opportunities. All it did was make them more visible to their wards or stakes. And that was still too much. That is the meagerest of crumbs, and it was still too much. Other things were more important, but that one hurt. Rightly or wrongly, it felt intended to remind women of their place.

A benediction

Thank you for reading this far. Please know that I do not want to cause harm to anyone with my story. Many people who read this want to be in the church. There is nothing wrong with that; we are all on our journeys and have our own paths. So much good is found in community, and many, many people have found community in the LDS Church. What’s more, organizations are changed when people stay in them and make them better. May you find joy, inspiration, Christlike love and Christ in the church. Remember that you can trust yourself and your instincts—that Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father trust you. I hope your voice is heard and valued, that you feel empowered to be loud, to take up space, to claim ownership of a church that is as much yours as it is any leader’s.

And those who are struggling–to stay in, to leave or anywhere in between–know that you are not alone. There is nothing wrong with you. There is community everywhere you look–here at The Exponent, the At Last She Said It podcast, the Pod Squad at We Can Do Hard Things, at the Faith Adjacent podcast. Questioning is part of your divine right. You deserve to feel safe in your relationship with divinity, not threatened or afraid. May you find the home and the peace that you seek. May you never stop seeking.

God’s Language

By Leticia Storrs

Leticia Storrs is a Uruguayan living in Salt Lake City and a first-time contributor to Exponent II.

In the beginning, was it “the Word” or “el Verbo?” (John 1:1 / Juan 1:1) Does translation enrich or diminish meaning? 

While I do not want to sound overly skeptical, I’m not entirely sure God’s language is English. It was simply the language used to describe the First Vision. But do we experience the same feelings when we encounter the First Vision or other spiritual recollections in other languages? 

As someone who deeply believes in the Gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I’ve come to realize that after years of studying, reading, and listening to the Gospel in English, the semiotic, or symbolic, connections don’t always translate effectively across cultures. This isn’t just about pragmatism; it’s about how the Gospel applies to daily life. 

For example, what does a person struggling to survive in a Brazilian “morro” (a small village) hope to gain from a blessing, compared to someone praying for a Tesla in North America? 

When literally translated, a “word” isn’t the same as  a “verbo” or “verb.” A verb signifies an “action” — such as, to do, to share, to love. When we read Juan 1:1 in Spanish, the use of “verbo” helps us understand that it’s not just about passively waiting for life to offer something, but actively shaping our lives and destinies in living the Gospel. 

As a native Uruguayan who immigrated to the United States, I generally start conversations by apologizing: “Please, excuse my accent.” It’s a strong, deep accent from South America that stands out as foreign, even when I speak my native language. The way I speak is distinctly different from the Spanish accents of Central or North America. (I like to note that we’re all Americans with accents, whether we’re born near Argentina’s Perito Moreno Glacier or Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.) 

In my daily life, I don’t have time at the grocery store to explain, “I’ve worked hard to study and improve my English, and despite my accent, my comprehension is excellent.” I often feel that after about two seconds, the listener just assumes: “Oh, another foreigner who doesn’t understand…”

Language is how we internalize life and connect with our Heavenly Father. For me, it is really powerful during English ward meetings to hear prayers in different languages. As an online student in BYU Pathways, I heard opening or closing prayers in at least three languages besides English last semester. On one occasion, I couldn’t understand a single word, yet the Spirit among us was so powerful that it became a memorable moment I’ll recount for years to come. 

How do we feel when someone stands before us in a public space and begins praying in a foreign language? 

Does the Holy Spirit help us navigate such experiences? For me, the answer is sí. 

The use of language involves two parties: the one who speaks and the one who listens. Communication fails if both parties aren’t on the same wavelength. So, how can we achieve that shared connection with our brothers and sisters? It’s not merely about showcasing expertise or the spiritual gift of tongues, it’s about coming together in His name. Two thousand years ago, our Lord did this so effectively that the truth spoken in Aramaic still resonates with us today.

I boldly testify that the only way to stay aligned with God’s language frequency and follow the Gospel’s path is by faithfully walking in His ways. Following Him. 

If there’s one thing I deeply pray for as the new year begins, it’s the bond, unity, and profound connection among brothers and sisters from all walks of life, united in following Him and His teachings, beyond languages.

The comic image is from Quino, an extraordinary Argentinian cartoonist. The Church building is Iglesia en Punta del Este in Uruguay by  Sergio Arteaga on Unsplash.

Helping Youth Navigate LDS Faith and Reap Benefits from it

The feature art for this post is Saint Peter Martyr Healing the Leg of a Young Man by Antonio Vivarini, circa 1450.

In response to my post last week about the difficulties passing down LDS faith to children today, a fellow blogger invited me to think and write about practical ideas for helping kids navigate church activity and Mormon identity in light of difficulties families are facing today. If you found my recent post pessimistic and you are raising kids in the Church, this post might be for you. The last one was a criticism of the institution’s current approach, not an invitation to throw in the towel.

Having a Religious Upbringing Provides Grounding

At the university multi-faith center I work at, sometimes students who have grown up with no religious or spiritual community roots sometimes come into our office in crisis. My colleague offers one-on-one consultations focused on spiritual wellness. These young adults wonder what the deeper purpose of their efforts to learn and advance in life could be. They struggle to make meaning out of why life matters to them on a deeper level and sometimes feel depressed and/or nihilistic. They don’t know how or where to search for something to anchor themselves in, and they lack frameworks to help them work through ethical dilemmas and find peace.

Belonging to a faith tradition during our formative years often helps individuals develop a sense of connection and belonging to humanity and the world. It also helps us develop personal tools for creating meaning, a moral compass, and resilience. This seems to be the case even if we don’t stay very religious or involved as adults. A childhood moral and spiritual framework provides a springboard for developing a deeper sense of self and the values we want to live by.

As a parent, I want my kids to reap the benefits of having a religious foundation to work from while they are growing up. Even though their sense of religious identity is weaker than mine was at their age, it is still there on some level, and exposure to religion helps teens and young adults to flourish more, and to have more adaptive and resilient perspectives (see The State of Religion & Young People 2023: Exploring the Sacred). 

Here are some day-to-day things I’m trying to do to help my kids benefit from having a family faith tradition and to mitigate harm:

Teach Kids God and Spirituality are Bigger Than Our Church

I talk with my kids questions about God’s nature and existence can’t be definitively settled, whether using religious or secular frameworks. I teach them God is bigger and more complicated than the confines of our church. I talk about the value of recognizing that we don’t know all the answers to life’s big spiritual questions, that this can provide a sense of awe in life and open possibilities for us.

Model How to Foster and Benefit from Personal Spirituality

I share with them about how spiritual practices and experiences help me in my life. How they help me find peace, healing, meaning, and love. I sometimes share about spiritual experiences I have after we read the scriptures or during family home evening (my husband and I are trying to revamp these practices). Role modelling can help kids develop capacities to have and to notice spiritual experiences.

I am also teaching my kids about the powerful mental health benefits of journaling and petitionary prayer.

I talk to them about what I value most about being involved with religion. In addition to spiritual experiences, this includes hope, God’s love, community, and close friendships. I teach them that while many people seem to believe that the main benefit of being religious is knowing the truth about the world with certainty, this isn’t what’s important about religion, and this doesn’t work for a lot of people. The real benefit are community and spirituality.

Validate their Pain at Church

I validate all their complaints about church and take their side if they feel wronged. I acknowledge the Church has a lot of weaknesses and has made lots of mistakes, but I also affirm that my LDS spirituality has meant a lot to me throughout my life and continues to help me. I’m trying to convey that there aren’t simple answers about religion and that it’s something worth grappling with.

Respect that Religion is a Personal Choice

I require my kids to go to either our ward or to some other weekly community gathering of their choice. In doing this, I’m trying to teach them the value of communities of practice that can help them develop personal values and principles to live by. I tell my kids directly that they get to choose their religious path and that I will support them in it. When I used to have rigid expectations, it made things less likely they’d give faith a chance. It’s better to put relationships first. I teach them all faith traditions, including ours, have enlightened, helpful things, and more base and oppressive ideas too.

Teach Them Oppressive Policies Haven’t Lasted in the Past

I teach them that in church history, oppressive, fear-based policies do not survive or endure. Just after reading David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, my husband, Dennis Wendt, recently wrote, “fear and exclusion are always revealed in hindsight to be out of character with the divine mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” In the past, leaders have had all kinds of foolhardy policies. They antagonized working moms, communists and socialists, banned oral sex, preached against evolution, banned black members from the priesthood and the temple, excommunicated a young adult for being an anti-Nazi activist, created coercive and unequal marital systems and structures, fought politically against women’s rights movement and against gay marriage in the United States, and more. I’m hopeful that in time, current oppressive policies will go the same way as these boundary-violating episodes. The past suggests that in time, the Church will make space for queer experiences to be treated as personal mysteries for member to decide for themselves rather than something it has the right to manage. And that, in the long arc of history, it will come to treat women as equals.

I teach my kids that whenever the Church develops social practices or policies based on the premortal life, things get treacherous. The priesthood ban and polygamy were both at least partly founded on ill-conceived claims to know peoples’ statuses before they were born. Trans policies are rooted in the same pretentious soil of “we know who you were in the premortal life and what limits God wants to impose on you now.” 

Foster a Sense of Familial Mormon Identity

As a family, we engage Mormon identity in ways that help us bond. We affectionately joke about it. The Idaho potato jokes alone are endless, and while this may not directly connect my kids to God, it connects them to the LDS family and community my husband grew up in. My kids are enthusiastic about my identity as an independent-minded Mormon and things like their Dad’s creative approaches to testimony meeting. All of this helps create a sense of familial Mormon identity, which is a little different than what I had growing up, but is also actually richer in certain ways.

Normalize the Church’s Problems; Help Them See a Bigger Picture

I talk to my kids about how all world religions are facing challenges now with community engagement and learning how to navigate offering LGBTQ rights and women’s rights better. I try to normalize that such hot messes are pretty common today, and it is probably not going to be this strange or transitional forever. 

I talk to them about how Christianity itself seems to be going through some kind of big shift in how we think about God, serve, and build communities, and how there are wonderful manifestations of this in Mormon circles. In LDS letters and other circles outside the official Church, we’re talking about Jesus as the empathetic healer of our traumas and wounds rather than a blood ransom for our unworthiness. And we are focusing more on healthy spiritual development than ever before.

Correct and Reframe Teachings about Life and Suffering

I correct things that are said at Church as I decide is needed. I teach them that life is an opportunity to grow and learn to love instead of a test. That the adversity people face is due to societal problems and living in a complicated world and having fragile bodies rather than personal failings or God sending painful trials to refine us. I’m open with them about what I think and believe about tough issues like plural marriage and patriarchy.

Honesty is Fertile Ground for Resilient Faith and Spirituality

You could argue I’m doing the wrong thing in sharing some of what I honestly think about church with my kids. Having to deal with so much complexity is probably not ideal for them before adulthood. But I also realize that one reason I’m still religious is because adults in my life modelled dissenting thoughts and the capacity to criticize leaders while deeply valuing their faith throughout my childhood. I found similar ideas in George Handley’s book of essays If Truth Were a Child. His parents were open with him about how certain church policies troubled them deeply, and this seemed to open up a kind of neutral, low-pressure space that proved to be the ideal conditions for his own authentic connection with the divine to sprout and flourish. Honesty builds trust, and role modelling of mature spiritual differentiation can be powerful.

Enjoy What Authentic Hope You May Have

I hope that things could get better and have more space for a family like us in the years to come. I hope this Umbridge-like period that is especially evident in aspects of church like the CES will end just like it did in Harry Potter. I still hope that my grandkids could be raised in the church in a healthier, happier way. I even hope Church could be better and somewhat out of the wilderness/its current retrenchment by the time my kids are in graduate school. And whatever the Church does, I hope the spirituality and values I pass down will help my kids find grounding and meaning in their lives, whatever paths they decide are best for them.

Accept We Can’t Determine the Church’s Future and Set Your Honest Boundaries

I accept that my and my family’s future choices pertaining to religious practice will partly depend on the kind of direction the church takes, and that I can’t do much to control this. An LDS friend told me this week that whether he stays involved depends on how the church continues to change; right now church is really hard for him as it is for so many of us. I resonated. I admired his willingness to face current hardships with honesty and willingness to adapt, and recognized that I need to do the same thing. It’s not actually healthy or even integrous for me to have some kind of commitment to stay “no matter what.” The bonds in my family and the values I believe in are more important to me than the Church, if I need to leave, I don’t need to frame this as the end of the world or the end of my spiritual life. Mormon identity shouldn’t be what I place at the very core of who I am.

It is valuable to examine our families’ needs, limits and boundaries realistically and honestly as we face the tough issues and oppressive forces at work at Church. It’s healthy to set conditional limits and boundaries with the Church and our involvement. The Church certainly could continue to evolve in ways that will make it such that the deficits of being involved will clearly outweigh any benefits for my family or all motivation will die.  

For now, personally, I hope my kids are reaping more benefits from getting up on Sunday morning, walking to church, and watching how my ward community tries to function than they would having a chill and isolated morning at home. And I hope they are getting something out of hearing diverse church members’ voices about how they connect with God and find meaning in their lives, even if much of this doesn’t resonate with them. Even disagreement may help them build a framework for the convictions, values and spirituality they want to have themselves.

All this is not to judge those whose boundaries have already been crossed such that they are raising kids outside the church. I get that and respect it. This post is just to support parents for whom it might be helpful or inspiring. And these are just a few a my ideas, not anything definitive. I’d love to hear ideas from other parents about how they are navigating raising youth in the Church today.

Of Ritas and Rhodas: Deciphering the Origins of the Women’s Temple Names

By J. Martinez

{I understand that revealing a temple name is a sensitive choice, if you continue reading, you will know what my name was. Though I try to treat the subject with sensitivity, there’s no secret or sacred here} 

What will you call her?

November 16, 2013, I went through the temple for the first time. 

Like most members, I went in blind—it turned out the multiple temple prep courses did little to prepare me for what I was about to experience. I did have some vague inklings, I had heard whispers about a temple name, I thought it might have been the name I had had before I had come to the earth. I had hoped for something pretty or at least meaningful… maybe Esther or Lydia. 

What I didn’t and couldn’t know was that if I had scheduled my appointment for three days later, I would have been a Lydia. Four days later and I would have been an Esther. 

Instead, I got R***a. 

I’m sure I tried to freeze my face to keep it from betraying my dismay. It felt like I had already failed some test, that God had only deemed me worthy of an old lady name. Did this say something about what he thought of me? Were there any takebacks? Could I appeal? 

As soon as I got home, I raced to my scriptures, hoping to divine the meaning behind my name. What I found was a story about a girl who got so excited that a prophet had arrived at her house that she forgot to let him in and left him waiting on the doorstep. 

Surprisingly, I was satisfied. It was funny, it had personality. It’s not like I had high expectations when it came to representation of women in my faith. I’d take what I could get. Besides, it’s not like I could do anything to change it. 

I am looking for further light and knowledge 

When I got back from my mission, I worked at the temple for several months. I learned that there is one name given to all women who enter the temple on a particular day. I also had a temple worker mention that she thought it was so sweet that the name Camilla had been included in honor of the wife of Spencer W Kimball. I still didn’t know about the calendar. 

In 2020, I began my transition away from the church. Like many, my journey included Lindsey Hansen Park’s podcast, a Year of Polygamy. As I listened to the biographies of the wives of Joseph Smith I was startled when I hit episode 29: Rhoda Richards. I felt horrified. Had I been wrong? Was my name not a tribute to an excited girl but to a lonely, old woman? It felt like a gross joke. Was this the case for all the names?

Unveil your faces 

I turned to Temple Name Oracle. For the uninitiated, Temple Name Oracle is a website cross referencing temple names against the date the name was received. It was there I learned about the calendar. 

It turns out that until 1880 there was just one name given to women in the temple: Sarah. Then, for almost 100 years, it was left to the discretion of the temple worker to give whatever name they chose for initiates. 

I was not surprised that the church eventually chose standardization over what I can only imagine was recordkeeping chaos. 

In 1965, the church produced a standardized list of 31 female names. If you went on the first of the month, you were an Adah, if you went on the 31st, you were a Zina. And yes, the list was alphabetized. 

The list was updated periodically. 

❖ In 1974 they returned to a more haphazard list that assigned a name to each day of the year. This list included 50 female names repeated throughout the year and included unique finds like: Carla, Christina, Joan, Rita and Victoria. 

❖ 1983 reduced the list back down to 31 names 

❖ 1993 had the strictest list of all: still 31 names and this time 100% of the names were scriptural. 

❖ That list lasted 20 years until our current list was introduced Jan, 1, 2014. 

As I read through the names I decided to tackle the project, find out once and for all where all the names had come from. I figured between the Oracle, a detailed spreadsheet and google, I would be done in no time. 

As Touching the Principle 

My fears that the names all came from wives of Joseph Smith were quickly assuaged.

❖ Of the 34 women listed by Todd Compton as the wives of Joseph Smith, only 17 of the women have been used as temple names. Removing duplicates, we are left with 14 unique names. 

❖ Of those 14 names, 7 were Bible names. 

❖ Of the remaining 7, all but two had significant roles in church history (Emma, Eliza, Zina and Helen were all prominent presidents of the Relief Society and Lucy was Joseph Smith’s mother among several other significant references). 

❖ That only leaves the names Agnes and Flora. Given that Flora was only used in the most recent cycle, it is much more likely that it was in honor of the wife of Ezra Taft Benson than a secret reference to the plural wife of Joseph Smith.

❖ Agnes was only used in the chaotic 50 name cycle of 1974 so it’s possible that her origins are more obscure. That said, Agnes was the name of John Taylor’s mother which could explain her origins. Given that there is no other evidence that the names were likely inspired by Joseph’s plural wives, I doubt that this one was either. 

At least my Rhoda appeared safe from that. 

Why will you call her Eve? 

From there, I expected the majority of the names to be scriptural. After all, of the 92 men’s names that have been in rotation since 1965 only TWO cannot be found in Mormon scripture. I know there are fewer women in scriptures than men but surely there were enough for a month or two of temple names. 

❖ Of the 80 unique female names recorded on Temple Name Oracle, only 39 are mentioned in the scriptures. 

❖ 22 of the 31 names in the current cycle are scriptural, 18 of the 31 in the original cycle and 23 of the 50 in the 1974 cycle. 

❖ The 1983 and 1993 cycles were the most scripturally dense, 1983 only included one non scriptural name: Eliza. 

❖ The 1993 cycle is currently the only cycle to include 100% scriptural names, though it did use Miriam, Ruth and Naomi twice each to do it. It’s fascinating to me that they choose to repeat names rather than simply keep the scriptural names Priscilla, Hagar, Johannah and Eve from the previous cycle. How those names lost out but Eunice made it through to the next round we’ll never know! 

❖ The scriptural names that have been used every cycle are: Esther, Lydia, Martha, Miriam, Rachel, Rebekah, Ruth. The only other name that has been used every cycle is Emma. 

❖ Many of the names are one verse wonders like 

➢ Claudia who was “greeted” in 2 Tim 4:21, 

➢ or Judith the wife of Esau in Genesis 26:34 

➢ or Lois and Eunice in 2 Tim 1:5, the grandmother and mother of Timothy.

❖ Even some of the most prominent scriptural names have been excluded in recent cycles. Eve only made one appearance in the 1983-1993 cycle (though her name is still included for any initiates whose given name matches the new name of the day). Mary was only included in the first two cycles. 

❖ Some of the names are technically mentioned in the scriptures but are almost surely not scripturally inspired, like 

➢ Zina the son of Shimei in 1 Chronicles 23:10 

➢ or Isabel the harlot of Alma 39:3-4. 

➢ Judith, the Hittite wife of Esau also seems questionable to me. 

❖ Some of the female names that are technically mentioned in the scriptures weren’t even names of people! Looking at you, Ruby and Grace!

So many of the women were simply “wife of” or “mother of.” It seems Johnny Lingo might have had it wrong and it wasn’t cows that determined your worth but the number of verses your temple name earned in the scriptures. Suddenly my five verses weren’t looking too shabby. 

I was happy to see when the queens, prophetesses and priestesses came in force.

❖ The Prophetesses: Deborah (3 cycles), Huldah (2 cycles) and Miriam (all five cycles).

❖ Phoebe the deacon was only absent for 1974-83. 

❖ Esther the queen has never been absent. 

❖ Junia, the apostle, however, has yet to make an appearance. 

I know most women weren’t thrilled to get Huldah as their temple name, but it makes me sad to see that the names of such powerful women as Deborah and Huldah were pulled from the current cycle. Especially when they were traded for names like Camilla, Grace and Ruby. 

Maybe the next cycle will exchange Miriam, Esther and Emma for Danzel, Pearl and Chastity.

Is there no other way? 

I had grown up in the church, I knew there weren’t a lot of women mentioned in the scriptures. But I had certainly expected that there were enough to cover a few 31-50 name cycles. Were most of the women in the scriptures evil and therefore ineligible? Did the church simply run out of the names of righteous women in scripture and therefore had to fill the gaps with family names? I wanted to compare the numbers. 

Starting with the Bible. 

❖ The Biographical Bible found 1,940 character names in the Old and New Testament.

❖ From a list of women in the Bible I found a total of 100 unique women’s names in the Old Testament and 33 in the New Testament. [These numbers were based off of google searches and removing duplicates in excel, it was not a meticulous process so please don’t cite my numbers, they are only meant to give a rough picture] 

❖ 17 of the 100 names in the Old Testament are represented in the temple names and 14 of the 33 New Testament names. 

Now, it could be that some names were excluded because they would not be familiar to the average temple goer or because they were represented as evil in the text. 

Some recognizable names that have never been included are: Jochebed the mother of Moses, Zipporah the wife of Moses, Anna the prophetess at the temple and Junia the apostle. 

In the Book of Mormon, there are 6 women named. 

❖ Three of those women are references to the Biblical matriarchs: Eve, Sarah and Mary, all have been included as temple names in at least one cycle. 

❖ That leaves Sariah, Abish and Isabel. Though Isabel is represented in the temple names, it’s hard for me to imagine that it is in honor of the harlot from Alma.

❖ Abish was included in the two scripture heavy cycles of ‘83 and ’93

❖ Shockingly, Sariah has never been used as a temple name. 

It is possible that Sariah was excluded because her name is so similar to Sarah (a name used in every cycle except the first). However, Naoma and Norma were both included in the ’65 cycle, Naoma was even repeated in the ‘74 cycle with Naomi. Emma and Emmeline also made an appearance together in the ‘74 cycle. I feel like we could handle Sarah and Sariah. {As a side note, the inclusion of Naoma is so bizarre to me, I still can’t help but wonder if it was misheard or misremembered…despite being recorded for two different cycles.} 

Finally, I turned to Doctrine and Covenants. A google search turned up a grand total of 2 women. Emma Hale Smith and Vienna Jacques. Honestly, I didn’t believe it. After much hemming and hawing, I sat down and skimmed the book, searching for names. 

❖ While there are just under 200 men’s names used—119 unique names—there are only 5 women mentioned. 

❖ Three of them were Biblical. 

❖ Google was right. There are two women unique to Doctrine and Covenants mentioned in the 138 sections. 

❖ Only one of them made the temple name list. 

❖ To add further insult to injury, of the five female names of the D&C, Emma, Sarah and Hagar make their appearances in the infamous Section 132. One woman being castigated for resisting polygamy while the other two are used as models of obedient plural wives. What representation. 

There are enough female names in the scriptures to fill out the temple name logs. The 83 and 93 cycles prove that. There are not only more than enough names but there are significant women who have been underutilized or excluded entirely. Abish, Dinah, Deborah, Elizabeth, Huldah and Leah were all removed when the current cycle was released. It is hard not to wonder if the downsizing of prophetesses was intentional. 

You are beginning to see already 

Once I realized how many names were nonscriptural I assumed that the rest would be prominent women from church history. 

❖ Eliza made the list every cycle except the scriptures only one. 

❖ Lucy had been on the list for the last two cycles. 

❖ Emma had managed to be on the list for every cycle in spite of being such a controversial figure in church history. 

I was no expert on church history, much less women in church history, so I figured that many of the names might be unfamiliar to me but that a simple google search would quickly connect them to church history. 

The last thing I expected was to come up empty. To simply not be able to find a significant or obvious connection to the church. When my google searches came up empty, I wondered if the names were simply more “wives of.” I started with listing out wives of church presidents, curious if each would have a wife represented. They didn’t. I added every member of the quorum of the twelve. The assistants to the president. 

I searched each man on google and then the Church Biographical Database, sometimes in desperation I even turned to tracing family lines in Family Search. Tediously, I added the names of their wives, then, when that wasn’t enough, their mothers. Occasionally a name would pop and I would wonder, was this her? When I reached the first presidency and quorum of the 12 serving in 1965 cells started lighting up. 

Coincidentally or not, every member of the big 15 in 1965 has had the name of a wife or a mother used as a temple name. Now, I have to be clear, they were not all used in the 1965 cycle but they have all been used in one cycle or another. 

Could this be a coincidence? Absolutely! But there has not been any other set of 15 so heavily represented. I have to add the disclaimer, I know that some of their family names were Bible names so more likely explained by that connection but the list also included Ethel, May and Camilla—names with little to no other obvious connection to the church. I felt like I might have found something. I wondered what was so special about that board of church leadership that they had wives or mothers represented in the temple names. 

I switched to looking for any representation from the female leadership. I listed out the General Relief Society Presidencies, General Young Women and Primary presidencies.

❖ The names of each member of the 1965 YW’s presidency was used in the 1965 cycle. Their names were: Florence, Margaret and Dorothy and therefore not chosen from being Bible names. 

❖ Now, Florence could also be in reference to the daughter of Heber J Grant

❖ Margaret could be the wife of Lyman White or mother of Melvin J Ballard or Bruce R McConkie (he does seem like the type to get a name represented somewhere)

❖ Dorothy could be the sister of Howard W Hunter. 

We’ll never know. It could have been a random coincidence. 

Let us go down {the rabbit hole}

Now, if you’ve made it this far, buckle up because we’re about to really go off the rails. I was in deep. Searching everywhere. Astonished that I hadn’t found references to the names out of luck or sheer commonness of the name. I was left staring at names like Rita, Carla, Ramona. How could these be such hard names to connect? In desperation I started just looking for any result that came up in the Church Biographical Database for the names I had left. For Carla there was only one entry: Elna Carla Pederson (1898-1984). Nothing about her appeared significant. Sorry Carla. I was stymied. 

I turned to Ramona, there were only three entries 

Ramona Foulger

Blanche Ramona Bywater 

Ramona Stevenson Wilcox. 

Ramona Stevenson Wilcox served with her husband, Joseph J Cannon, as Mission Presidents of the British Isles Mission from 1934-1937. 

There was an elder who also served in the same mission during the same time frame: Elder Gordon Hinckley. 

I couldn’t believe it. I triple checked the dates. Was it possible that somehow, someone had suggested the name of the wife of his mission president? Is this where my other missing names came from? Before you get excited or hopeful (like I certainly was), if that is the secret, it is a secret that will remain hidden. Though I began adding missions and time frames to my spreadsheet, isolating mission presidents for the time frames went well beyond my amateur google sleuthing. If there is a real church historian willing to lend a hand, I will gladly take it. It was a momentary high that led exactly nowhere. 

I was left with 12 names and no strong connection or persuasive explanation for their inclusion on the temple lists. 

We will…rest from our labors for a season 

The truth I was finally forced to accept was that I would never know. 

Even for the names that did have a connection to a general authority, was a mother’s middle name REALLY the most likely explanation? For all I knew, it could have been for a beloved grandmother from some Seventy on some committee. 

We don’t know how the names are selected. Given how the church runs, I mind summons an image of a committee tasked with selecting the names for a new cycle. I imagine them being told to study, ponder and pray about the selection. Perhaps each contributes a name or several, perhaps they pray as they vote for which names to include. Perhaps they are thinking of women who they love or admire. 

I wonder…if such a committee exists, are there women on it? 

It doesn’t seem likely to me. Maybe the next time they create the list, there will be.

Return and Report 

As I have shared my findings–from scripture references to wild theories–with people on their journeys with the church, something has been clear. We felt something about these names. We were disappointed, touched, excited. Sometimes the names felt inspired, sometimes they fell flat or were even triggering. Most of us wanted them to mean something. To be more than a name drawn from a hat. We wanted to know why they were chosen, who they were chosen for. We’re curious and, like so many things in the temple, we have so few answers. 

I wish I knew who Rita was. I wonder if she had any idea that her name would be remembered by countless women whispering a name to their husbands to be. I wish we knew the stories and women behind the names. 

Honestly, I just wish we just remembered the women. Not just as “mother of” or “wife of.” But as people. As prophets, as priestesses, as poets, as queens. 

As so much more than a name whispered through the veil. 

Author bio: After a true, blue Utah Mormon young adulthood—BYU, mission, temple work and temple sealing—J Martinez was a part of the great COVID Exmo Migration of 2020. She now spends her time voraciously consuming audiobooks and exploring new trails with her kiddo.

Am I a Fascinating Woman and a Mormon Feminist?

For me, the word “feminism” is a community-building word, a clarifying and liberating word, a word that explains so much of my grief and confusion in the LDS church and brings me into communion with others who are also aching and questioning and creating. It’s the word I use to explain the time I wept in my bathroom after reading an Ensign article about “Women in the Scriptures,” the hope I had as a little girl in a Book of Women to compliment the Book of Mormon, and the search I undertook to find Heavenly Mother. For me, Feminism is an ache for the silenced women in history, it’s like they are all inside me, pumping my blood and screaming their silence, screaming for me to speak and listen. 

However, in the LDS church, as Colleen McDannell explains in her book Sister Saints, “Feminism is still a dirty word for many Mormon women” (199). And I wonder why? I understand that everyone has different experiences and journeys and not everyone cares about the screaming silence inside my veins, but why systemically fight it? Why halt representation and stories and theology creation? In my mind, feminism is just asking for equal space in a system of men.

In the 1970s, my grandmother, an Equal Rights Amendment activist, was asked by her bishop to choose between her good standing in the church and her political affiliation with the ERA movement. She chose her good standing in the church and my aunt says that a spark went out inside my grandma. But the bishop’s message was clear: Feminism or Mormonism. She had to give up one to keep the other. This was not the case with all Mormon bishops, some feminists celebrated their Mormonism and Feminism; however, during this time, church leaders distributed anti-feminist pamphlets and organized anti-ERA meetings and conferences. Feminism became a dirty word within the LDS church, an anti-family and anti-marriage word. 

In Fifty Years of Exponent II, Katie Rich and Heather Sundahl mention writings from Mormon women during this time. In one such document, a Mormon woman expresses surprise “at the intensity and hostility [other] Mormon women” showed concerning equal rights. “These meetings and anti-ERA literature circulated in Relief Societies pit homemakers against feminists” (28). This hostility and division surrounding feminism in the wards and stakes of Mormonism centered around “protecting” the family and marriage as defined by the LDS church leaders. 

In the 1990s, my mom was in a book group of powerful Mormon women and one of them, a BYU professor, was excommunicated for her feminist writings. This woman served as a beacon to all of her former students and friends on what happens to feminists in Mormonism: you can’t have both. Well, unless, maybe, you’re an undercover feminist? Hiding in a marriage with a family and aren’t too loud? Maybe I can have both?

Recently, in preparation for a comedic skit, my friends and I read Fascinating Womanhood. The author, Helen Andelin, is a Mormon woman who first published her book in 1963 and sold over 2 million copies. This book is “designed to teach women how to be happy in marriage” and seemed like the perfect content for a skit at a Mormon Feminist retreat. Granted, my friends and I laughed till we cried reading passages out loud in our one-room cabin. However, I’d found this book on my grandmother’s shelf and I found her in the ideas of the text. The juxtaposition of my Feminism with the femininity described in the book was hilarious . . . and tragic. I found not only my grandparents and my parents in the pages, I also found my husband and myself. 

Fascinating Womanhood prescribes “femininity” as the balm for a husband’s unhappiness. Andelin describes this femininity as a “fundamental law” and outlines a woman’s role in marriage. This role is to be “child-like” with “dear little whims, and caprices.” It explains that a wife must have “girlish trust in” her husband and make obvious “her absolute dependency upon others to provide for her.” The whole book is a guidebook for women on how to make a husband feel like the “superior male.” It’s the antithesis of feminism.

And this, I think, is what the church is protecting from feminism—the superior male. This type of marriage. 

And as I laughed irreverently while preparing for a Mormon Feminist skit designed from a Mormon femininity guidebook, I had to face the reality of the paradox within myself: I’m a Mormon Feminist and a Fascinating Woman. Like the women before me. 

Even though I had never previously read this book, it described my anti-feminist marriage. I’d never once acknowledged, chosen, or examined the fascinating woman inside me. I didn’t even know she existed. But there she was, trained by this book’s ideas that demonize working women, suggesting that “gone is the luster, the charm, the poetry that says ‘she is a phantom of delight’” when a woman works outside the home. A book that infantilizes both men and women, and condones a relationship built on pretending, blame, and avoidance of emotion, communication, and vulnerability. This book is an anthem for upholding a strict gender binary, a society where men and women are enabled by each other. 

This is a whole other blog post, but everyone loses in this marital system built by patriarchy. In the book For the Love of Men, Liz Plank, after much research, declares that “Patriarchy kills men, too.” 

And now I think I understand why feminism is a dirty word for many members of the church. Because it is an anti-marriage, an anti-fascinating woman word. It has the potential to disrupt everything. It’s not just about making room for women. It’s about redefining masculinity, too. It’s about relationships. It’s about re-writing the scripts of how humans are in relationship to each other. It’s about throwing out these ancient and modern gender binaries. It’s about freeing everyone from stifling roles. I’ve been so naive, thinking I could protect my marriage from feminism. Thinking I could be a Fascinating Woman and a Mormon Feminist. But just like my grandma and my mom, I can’t. Because I think that one of the silenced women screaming in my veins is me. 

*Read more about Mormonism, Feminism, and gender roles at the Salt Lake Tribune.

Photo by Elias Maurer on Unsplash

“Faithfully Agitated: Stories from Everyday Saints who Struggle, but Stay”

The saying goes something like, “Everyone has one book in them. Almost no one has two.” “They” might be right.

In 2021, in the aftermath of the unexpected death of my ten-year-old son Sawyer, I wrote
a book entitled, Heartbroken, but not Broken. The book addresses cultural narratives around grief,
especially faith-based narratives and offers some experienced based suggestions on what to do and not do as when supporting someone on a loss journey. This post isn’t about my first book. It’s about my second book.

Spoiler alert-there was no Book Two.

In Heartbroken, but not Broken I let readers know from the onset that my perspective is grounded in place as a practicing member of the LDS faith and a feminist. I acknowledge up front that my world view might not be for everyone. I never dreamed I’d use the ‘f’ word (feminist) in a book sold at Deseret Book, but it happened, and I was thrilled. Looking back, I think about how including the literal word “feminist” was so important to me. I wanted people to understand that if they were going to come on a portion of my loss journey, they needed to know a little about me. My feminism shaped me, grounded me in my testimony and the way I engage with my faith. It’s that particular perspective that prompted the idea for my second book. Well, that and good
conversations.

In 2022 my publisher reached out and asked if I had another idea for a book, and I suggested a few. The publisher gave me the green light to go ahead and start working on an official pitch for my second book, which I immediately submitted. The publisher was interested, and I was energized.

My idea was the confluence of two specific events. The first took place at my son’s graduation from BYU. We
held a graduation party for him, and he invited a really diverse group of friends and mentors. A woman he’d met playing pickleball came up to me at the party and said she had read my book and would love to chat. She said after reading my book she read some of my blog posts on Exponent II. I had only authored a couple, but she read lots of posts from all of the great people who share their wisdom and perspective on this blog. She said she was struggling with her faith but had no one to talk to about it. She said, “If I brought any of these issues up during Relief Society, I’d be shunned. I work at the temple with my husband, we are seen as a true blue
Mormon couple, and I know there would be a lot of whispering in the halls if I said what I was
really thinking and asked the questions I really need to ask.”

Fast forward a couple of months and that graduation party conversation still lingered on my heart. My friend Bee and I met for lunch at a downtown café and I was excited to swap life stories. Bee and I both call The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days our faith tradition so often our conversations regularly turn to discussion about our own current worship strategies. She was sharing how she’d drawn strength from a particular article written by a fellow Latter-day Saint author, and I found myself speaking critically of the author Bee was talking about. I (admittedly and embarrassingly now) said something like, “I don’t really read her work anymore because she wrote a piece that I found to be extremely offensive.” Taken aback, Bee said to me, “Hm, well I am not aware of that piece. Regardless, I find spiritual wisdom wherever I can. Just because I don’t agree with everything someone
might espouse doesn’t mean they can’t teach me something valuable at any given moment.” Insert my shame face. I wholeheartedly live by this wisdom. At least, I thought I did. Yet there I was, in a tiny, overcrowded, downtown cafe, eating crow. Why hadn’t I been willing to offer grace to this random author, but was willing to offer it to everyone else? I even felt myself getting a little defensive as the conversation continued, harried by what I was feeling and processing what she said.

Looking back, I think it was pride seeping in as I realized Bee was right and I was wrong. Bee and I are friends. We can cordially disagree and move on to the next thing as friends do. We proceeded to finish our delectable turkey, blue cheese, and cranberry jam sandwiches, hugged, and went our separate ways. My lunch devoured, I had an hour-long drive home to mull over my thoughts and I did just that. But it wasn’t just for the hour-long drive home that the conversation weighed on my mind. It was over the next several days which turned into weeks that the conversation took up space in my mind. I merged my feelings from both the downtown lunch conversation and the graduation conversation, and I knew book two would need to be less of my perspective and more of the stories of others. I wanted to create a space for everyday Latter-day Saints with stories about their faith struggles, and sitting with those struggles while still going to church. There are so many stories we should all be hearing and sharing. book two would be a collection of these stories, not just my words.

Now, I have a confession. I had been struggling with some aspects of my testimony when Bee and I met for lunch. Bee has a solid, albeit somewhat nuanced, testimony of the Gospel espoused by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our common faith fueled most of our conversations over many lunches. During lunch, Bee expressed concern about a couple of things she’d been processing during her worship over the previous months. In a moment, out of nowhere, and with no censorship or decorum, I asked her, “With all of these questions and concerns, why do you stay a member of the {LDS} Church?” As I said the words out loud, I couldn’t believe I was saying them. I felt my heart quicken as I realized I was asking her audibly what my head had been asking my heart silently. I think I had been too afraid to ask myself this question but asking her felt like a safer way to force the issue in my mind. I think it has been a persistent question in my heart, jostling for attention, since Sawyer died in 2016. Until that moment I hadn’t had the energy to give it much
consideration.

After publishing Heartbroken, but not Broken, I started speaking at book groups and doing interviews
on podcasts about the intersection of grief and faith. I talked a lot about how we can mourn with those who mourn. About how grief has this dirty underbelly no one ever creates space for, and about the importance of making space for tough faith conversations. Common themes kept emerging during these public discussions. In the quiet aftermath of several of these events, with just a few lingering guests, people would approach me
and thank me for my willingness to speak about difficult subjects so openly. They expressed their
own concerns about difficult subjects in their lives; sometimes grief and death, sometimes faith, sometimes about whatever was most pressing on their hearts. By sharing stories of Sawyer’s death, I was seen as willing to talk about dicey subjects so people would open up to me about other dicey subject matters.

Sharing portions of my intimate grief journey with others it taught me several things. First, it helped me express what I was feeling inside so the darkness didn’t weigh me down and bury me alive. I once heard a survivor of sexual violence say, “I heal out loud, so others don’t have to suffer in silence.” Second, it helped me understand a measure of the depth of the pain and sorrow others feel. Not always because of death, but often because of grief. Grief over death, sometimes. Grief over the life they thought they would live but haven’t. Grief over the loss of a specific aspect of their life, maybe a job or a home or a vision held close to their heart. Grief about trials and
struggles that have come their way and grief because the anger has settled and there is nowhere left for it to go.

Aside from opening my heart to the pain of others, sharing stories about Sawyer-his death and his life- also allowed me passage into the deep, sacred waters where other people hold their pain. But also, it showed me a window into their resilience. Central to the resilience in the many stories I heard was the role of God, spirituality, and an enduring faith in what people believe but may not know to be true. That faith, that belief, became the arc of many discussions I had with strangers and friends alike as we shared what was on our hearts. In addition to grief, a slew of other subjects arose, including fears harbored over openly discussing questions and concerns they had about God, gospel doctrine or church culture. Their realistic concerns, they feared, would make them seem faithless. Instead of talking about them and seeking camaraderie and support from others, they often let their concerns fester. And more regularly than not, those festering feelings had nowhere to go, so they resulted in people sticking around full of resentment or leaving their Church membership behind. It seems like there should be more middle ground.

I wholeheartedly disagree that discussing problems or doubts about gospel subjects makes us faithless, yet we have somehow landed in a culture where hearty discourse can often lead to labels and judgements. Sometimes even worse, depending on where we have landed in the leadership roulette. In our current cultural climate, we seem to have lost our dependence on honoring personal revelation or, at the very least, our personal willingness to discuss hard things. An adjective like “faithless,” in the LDS culture can be tantamount to “sin” for a lot of
people. The goal is to avoid “even the appearance of evil”. Okay so “evil” feels a little strong, but often the regrettable byproduct of that notion for many who struggle is to remain quiet. It’s almost as if the shame of being labeled a “doubter” has worse reprisal than actually doubting. That day in the cafe with Bee, it didn’t really matter which it was-being faithless or appearing faithless-that kept me largely quiet discussing my struggles publicly. I wasn’t speaking up. I assume it was a fear of that “tainted” persona that kept me from asking
myself why I stay. For a culture that espouses the love of God over His judgment, there tends to
be a little confusion sometimes about who is the ultimate Judge. Maybe that isn’t an explicit LDS cultural aspect,
but my own personal experience with faith culture and I have conflated the two. After Sawyer died, I was quiet about a lot of things. Until I wasn’t. I had too much to process, too much to say and no way to say it. The grieving process was breaking me and I had made a commitment to my husband and my family that I wouldn’t let Sawyer’s death break us. Break me. So, slowly, I started to speak. And by speak, I mean write. Writing down every little detail I could remember about Sawyer’s brief time in the hospital, his death, our lives in the wake
of his death, all of it. Then one day, as if by magic, those words had a title and a cover, and you
could “suddenly” buy it on Amazon and or in Deseret Book. 

Book Two felt similar as it began to unfold. I had heard too much and needed others to hear it as well. I naively felt like Book two would be so much easier to complete than the first one. I started laying the groundwork, reaching out to people I knew and those I didn’t to schedule interviews for the manuscript, and it was exciting. My pitch to people was essentially this:

“{After introductions} I am compiling a series of essays about people who have a million
reasons to leave the LDS faith, but who instead opt to stay. Would you be interested in sharing
some of the experiences you personally have had that made you question your faith involvement,
but the reasons you ultimately decided to stay engaged?”

Some people did interviews with me. Some people sent me essays. Traction was building. I even had strangers reaching out to me saying they heard about my project and they were interested in participating. I originally pitched 13 stories (chapters for individual stories) centered around 13 different topics. As interest grew, I
thought I might even have enough material for two books. I even had my title. “Faithfully Agitated: Stories from Everyday Saints who Struggle but Stay.” The concept was to gather stories from everyday Latter-day Saints who, despite having a lot of reasons to abandon thr LDS faith, actually stick around. There are a lot of books about why people leave the LDS faith. There are also a lot of books about what people get from their faith and how it helps them. A lot of these stories are by the famous and “pseudo-famous” Saints who are in the LDS-limelight. They are almost protected by their popularity which allows them space to publicly share their concerns with aspects of the LDS Church culture, doctrine, and policies while decision to stay engaged with the faith. Sometimes those stories, while important and valuable, are inaccessible to the everyday Latter-day Saint. I wanted to change that.

I had two goals. The first was to share the stories of those who are “boots on the ground,” so to speak. Not so much from people who are protected by status, wealth, name, or position. Sharing these everyday stories I thought could bolster those who are struggling to help them know they are not alone. Help me know, I am not alone. My second goal was to reach those who don’t understand people who struggle with their testimonies. Maybe, just maybe, it would help create a learning space to “convert” those who have the gift of believing and can’t understand the struggler, or non-believer. Convert them to the idea that struggling, while maybe incomprehensible to them, is a natural outcome for many living in 2025. Maybe the story sharing could work towards creating an ebb and flow of ideas from both sides of the fence and generate compassion and understand for different perspectives. I see others working towards these goals and I wanted in.

Then it started happening. Or rather, stopped happening. The crickets. People who were genuinely engaged, stopped calling back. Follow up interviews were cancelled or no shows. Emails correspondence stopped. Finally, a couple of people started answering my calls/emails. The gist across the board from those who had gone silent was, “When I went to write down all the reasons I stay, in relation to the reasons I need to leave, I realized the disconnect. I’m not sure I have reasons to stay, so I think I am leaving.”

Over and over again, a similar sentiment.

At first, I panicked. My first panic was about my relationship to others disengagement. Did I make them leave? Did me asking the question result in an answer that could impact their salvation? I did a lot of processing and ultimately landed on a less egocentric answer. This was for them and God to work out, I wasn’t a part of it. Then I panicked that I would not be able to write Book Two. Did I commit to something I can’t follow through on? That hurts. I did a lot of processing and ultimately landed on a less egocentric answer. Book Two was not for me to create, it was for me to share. If there was nothing to share, then I was not needed for this project. I let the book go. Finally, I panicked that for those who had put time and effort, energy, heart and soul into an essay for a chapter, I wouldn’t have an outlet to share their story. They deserved to be heard, I told them they would be heard. I did a lot of processing. A lot of stalling. A bit of hiding. But then I landed on a less egocentric answer and realized that these stories could still be shared.

With permission, over the next several months, I will use my space on the blog to share the
stories of those who have experienced things like racism, homophobia, and scrutiny for mental
health issues in their LDS congregation but stay engaged in the LDS faith. I will share the stories I was able to collect in my attempt to create Book Two as a blog series, “Faithfully Agitated.” I hope by sharing these stories there will be some measure of fulfillment of the goals I intended for the book, but bigger than that, I hope these important stories by everyday saints with their everyday struggles will be heard and used to build a more robust Zion.

10 Things To Know About the Suffs

If you ever have the chance to see Suffs, a Tony award winning musical detailing the experiences of women agitating for suffrage during the Wilson administration of 1912-1920, gather your best girls, pin on your suffragist ribbons, and experience the magic together.  

While Suffs unfortunately closed on Broadway starting January 5, the show will fortunately go on a national US tour starting in Fall 2025. If seeing the show live is not in your wherewithal, it will also be featured by Great Performances on PBS and is streaming now as a cast recording via Spotify and Apple Music.  

Created by Shaina Taub, the story follows the arc of Carrie Chapman Catt and Mary Church Terrell as the staid, institutional faces of a 60 year suffrage mission. Alice Paul and Ida B. Wells show up as upstarts, shaking up the status quo, demanding more decisive action. The play explores the internal fissures and fractures of the movement along the lines of age, race, and class with these four characters standing in as archetypes. 

As the women wrestle along, they confront questions like who gets to be involved in the movement? How does a suffragist present herself? What does she stand for? What is she willing to do? What is the movement asking for? Can their efforts ever possibly by enough? Did they do the right thing? 

No one is free from self-doubt or moments of startling realization, all leading toward a final stirring call for us in the now to continue the work (covered beautifully by Alex Newell and Broadway Inspirational Voices):

“I won’t live to see the future that I fight for 
Maybe no one gets to reach that perfect day 
If the work is never over 
Then how do you keep marching anyway? 
Do you carry your banner as far as you can? 
Rewriting the world with your imperfect pen? 
‘Til the next stubborn girl picks it up in a picket line over and over again? 
And you join in the chorus of centuries chanting to her 

The path will be twisted and risky and slow 
But keep marching, keep marching 
Will you fail or prevail? Well, you may never know 
But keep marching, keep marching 
‘Cause your ancestors are all the proof you need 
That progress is possible, not guaranteed 
It will only be made if we keep marching, keep marching on” 

The experience of this show, the moments where I laughed and cried and felt so seen reminded me of the Ordain Woman movement, which bravely asked the biggest ask there could be for Mormon women, right at the doors of the building, upsetting the status quo, risking the eternal damnation of excommunication (is that better or worse than the torture of force feeding?). In President Wilson’s many evasions, I heard the echoes of all the arguments against equity in our own church. In the power of Ida B. Well’s resounding rebuke at the suggestion of a segregated protest march, I saw all the continuing pressure points of race and gender our Mormon feminist movement navigates. One character even hesitates to be married because she knows it will result in the end of her own legal personhood, echoing my own internal unease at the fine print of marriage in general and temple sealing ceremonies in specific.  

With catchy songs, poignant moments, and fully weighted arcs, I hope to see this musical again and again and I would love to know what you thought if you’ve have the experience of seeing the show.  

In the meantime, courtesy of my current hyper focus, here’s 10 Things to Know About the (historical) Suffs:

It’s suffragist, not suffragette. While the media coined the term suffragette, the suffragists found it demeaning.  Inez Millholland, labor lawyer, led the procession of 8000 suffrage marchers in the first ever protest march down Pennsylvania Avenue. She was chosen to highlight the femininity, youth, and respectability of the marchers. The famed and influential Howard University sorority Delta Sigma Theta participated in the protest march. So did Helen Keller, though she left early when the crowds began to threaten the marchers.While the march was largely integrated, tensions rose in the Illinois delegation and among southern participants the day of. The Illinois delegation leader attempted to oust Ida B. Wells, but was unsuccessful. Mary Church Terrell’s National Association of Colored Women delegation was also threatened by a southern boycott and a participating group of men offered to act as a buffer. The Silent Sentinels stood in protest outside the White House for a peaceful six months before police threatened to arrest them, largely in response to Sentinel banners targeting a Russian delegation visiting the White House. The Russian revolution had resulted in women’s suffrage and the Sentinels wanted the Russian delegation to pressure the US to do the same as part of their wartime partnership.  At least two dozen Sentinels were sent to Occoquan Workhouse following arrest during picketing. They survived deplorable conditions, physical violence, and learned how the workhouse system trapped Black women in forced labor. In all, about 218 women from 26 states were arrested during the protests.  Alice Paul would suffer all her life from the effects of the force feeding she endured in both British and American jails in the pursuit of suffrage.  Woodrow Wilson referred to his first and second wife as “little girl.” His ick is legion. From 1912 to 1918, Wilson largely ignored the suffrage movement until it became clear that women’s suffrage would help improve the democratic reputation of the US on the global stage while he tried to sell the League of Nations. His personal views never changed (“universal suffrage is at the foundation of every evil in this country”), but he was willing to put his support behind the amendment for the political gain.  The deciding vote in Tennessee that finally ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920 voted aye because his mother asked him to.   

Facts from Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote by Tina Cassidy and Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote by suffragist Doris Stevens. 

Photos are public domain from Wikimedia Commons.

As a Little Child

The scriptures teach us to become as a little child. Many times, I’ve heard people at church use that directive to mean that we should be quiet, submissive, obedient, seen but not heard. However, upon observing children, I think there’s more to the story.

Children are inquisitive. They constantly ask “Why?” And when they get an answer, they think about it for a minute and then ask, about the answer, “Why?” on and on until they’re satisfied.

Children are open-minded and aren’t burdened by expectations. Everything is new to them, so they’re not stuck thinking about things the way they’ve always been thought about. I’ve spent many years at church teaching primary, and the kids have had some amazing insights. When I taught about the parable of the Good Samaritan and the directive to love our neighbor, one of the kids asked if space aliens were our neighbors, too. She wasn’t being sassy; she genuinely wanted to know. And then after addressing the ethics of interstellar relations, another kid asked about how to handle bullying at school, so we discussed that.

Children tell the truth, even when they’re the only ones. In the story The Emperor’s New Clothes, none of the adults were willing to state the plainly obvious, for fear of social ostracism. The only one who told the truth, that the emperor wasn’t wearing anything, was a child, who didn’t care what others thought. Real children act like the child in the story; they’re unfailingly honest.

Children care deeply about justice. A refrain often heard from the lips of a child is “That’s not fair!!” As adults, we can sometimes get complacent after a lifetime of little injustices, but children won’t put up with any unfairness.

As we become like little children, or rediscover the child within us, we should likewise be inquisitive, open-minded, honest, and committed to justice.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Guest Post: In Defense of the Fence Sitter

By Kara Stevenson

Lately, I have found myself sitting on the fence. I can’t say that it’s comfortable. Fences aren’t designed with a place for us to sit, after all. They’re designed to separate; to show whose land and property is whose – to show where you should not step foot.

If the land and property is not your own, you ought to stick to your side. To merely peek over the fence is seen as invasive. You stick to your side, and they will stick to theirs.

I’m not suggesting that this is an inherently bad thing. Sometimes, there is good reason to have a fence. Safety and privacy are the top reasons that come to mind.

However, if there were a person who used their walls, the locks on their doors, and their high tech security systems to never let a single soul on their property, we may agree that their use of such tools has been taken to an extreme. Their goal for safety may be preventing them from learning about – and learning to love – those just outside their front door.

Safety, security, and comfort are important. But so is inclusion, diversity, and compassion.

To stand in one’s convictions is admirable. But so is openness and the willingness to allow other ideas in.

Human history is full of separation. Governments and powerful people have used separation as a tool to keep their own thoughts and ideas in, while keeping others out. Sometimes physical walls are built to separate people along with their ideas.

The Berlin Wall was constructed by the Soviet controlled east side of Berlin to keep their people in. Not only did the wall serve as a physical barrier, but it symbolized the deep political divide of a fractured nation, a nation that was struggling to find its identity after the fall of Hitler and the Nazi regime.

East Berliners who held jobs in the West were cut off from their employment. Even families were separated by the domineering concrete structure lined with armed guards.

Pictures from the time period show faces peering through barbed wire, friends reaching across barriers to hold hands, and fathers lifting children upon their shoulders to peer across the divide. Some pictures show East Berliners escaping, climbing over the barriers or even digging tunnels to escape to the other side. Even infants and the elderly were dragged through such tunnels to find freedom in the West.

Many of us won’t have to experience the division caused by a literal wall. It is not a physical fence that I sit upon, but rather the proverbial fence of Mormonism.

We don’t have a West and an East side. We have Mormons and Ex-Mormons. The divide between the two can feel just as menacing and impenetrable as a concrete wall.

There are some who may peek over at the other side, curious about their beliefs or their reasoning for being on such a side, only to quickly step away, fearful of how these new and differing perspectives might impact them and possibly change their very lives.

There are some who may be separated from their family. Some refuse to meet their loved ones at the wall; their differences in beliefs are too vast that they would rather not have a relationship at all. Others gladly meet their friends where they are, and even reach their hand over the wall with love.

Some, who find themselves desperate to get to the other side, feel like they have to claw, fight, climb and dig if only to experience what the other side is like. They don’t have the freedom to wander to and fro. The consequences of picking the other side can be devastating.

The wall has become normal to us. We hardly even notice it. The divide between Mormons and Ex-Mormons has been around for almost as long as the church has existed. It was constructed out of fear and anger, betrayal and ignorance.

I have found myself on both sides of the wall. I had to fight my way to stand firmly on either side, digging metaphorical tunnels and pushing past proverbial barbed wire. When you finally arrive, it feels good to be on one side. You know where you stand. You have your people who stand by you. Life feels clear because you “know” you’re on the right side of things.

And yet, over time, I have found that to be painfully unsatisfactory.

I lacked spiritual humility. I forgot what it was like to be curious and excited about the unknown. I felt intellectually imprisoned within the walls of our cultures own construction.

If it were in my power, I would destroy the wall. I wish for a culture that is truly free; where members can flow back and forth seamlessly, without the fear of losing relationships or their perceived worth in the eyes of God. I wish doubt and uncertainty were celebrated, not seen as weak in comparison to faith.

But wishing only gets you so far.

The fence is still here. I don’t expect it to go away any time soon. If that’s going to be the case, then I will use it to my advantage.

I’ll sit on the fence, because up here, I can see both sides. I can see the hurting faces of members and non members. I can see the families torn apart. I can see friends meeting in the middle, finding holes in the wood where they can see eye to eye. I can see the painful journeys of those finding a way to cross.

I have no desire to be right. I don’t want to place my feet on solid ground that gives me the illusion of “knowing.” I don’t care to feel spiritual safety on either side.

We should care about being inclusive, making sure that people on both sides don’t feel like outcasts. We should care about diversity of thought, being willing to hear both sides express their passions and struggles. But mostly, we should care about being compassionate, and loving others regardless of where they stand.

For me, I can do those things best when I sit on the fence.

Some people don’t like fence sitters. They’re seen as unable to make a decision, perhaps even lacking the courage to do so.

I would argue that it actually requires courage to sit on the fence. It requires humility to accept what you do not know. And it requires love to be willing to see both sides.

Needless to say, I am far from perfect in this regard. I may slip off the fence from time to time, finding momentary comfort in the solid ground beneath my feet. It’s tempting to stay, and even more tempting to leave the fence far, far behind, creating an even greater divide.

But the easy path is never worthwhile.

So I climb back on the fence.

Perhaps you find yourself standing at the border of a different fence that juts its way through the church. Feminists vs traditionalists, or progressives vs conservatives, just to name a few.

I’m sure there’s plenty of room on those fences, too.

It may be obvious to note that there are certain topics that necessitate a choice; where fence sitting is not an option. Racism, sexism, and all forms of bigotry are examples of such topics where I cannot sit on the fence. And neither should you.

There are few topics that are so black and white, where neutrality can’t be possible. If we boil down racism, sexism, and bigotry, we quickly see that the opposition found in such topics is between love and hate.

In such cases, may we always choose the side of love.

But in cases that aren’t so black and white, where the nuance blends toward a tone of grey, fence sitting may very well be the greatest act of love that we can muster.

If you haven’t yet, I would encourage you to give fence sitting a try. I can’t guarantee your comfort, and I certainly can’t guarantee you safety in your current beliefs.

But I can promise you that you won’t find a better view anywhere else.

Kara Stevenson is a BYU-I graduate with a bachelors in communications. She primarily uses her degree to negotiate with her two independent and fierce daughters. She is a Disney addict, a video game lover, and she enjoys dabbling with writing on the side.

Photo: Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock