Exponent II's Blog, page 42

First Vision

Picture of Redwood Trees in Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley, CA

Author’s Note: I wrote this poem ~10 years ago as a thought experiment – inspired by the A Mother Here Art and Poetry Contest and the then recently published multiple accounts of the First Vision. I submitted it to A Mother Here but it was not chosen. I never submitted it elsewhere although friends encouraged me to when I verbally shared it. The concept of seeing God the Mother seemed radical when I wrote the poem, but I don’t consider it so now. I have been reminded of the poem in the context of the Come Follow Me curriculum and discussions online of the First Vision. I am thus publishing it now on the Exponent blog to add to the dialogue and envision more to the story.

First Vision

Brightness and glory defy all description.

Seeking, pleading for redemption, to overcome the darkness,
to know the truth, a child was bestowed mercy, enwrapped

in a pillar of light, of fire, a personage, then another.

The Father and the Mother? Was She there with Him?

Side by side, hands joined in unison, proclaiming
“This is Our Beloved Son, Hear Him”

How could Joseph not see Her?

Standing, dancing, above him in the air, smiling,
fingers intertwined with Heavenly Father’s, robes flowing together.

Overwhelmed, perhaps, seeing God as one –
as they were in purpose, might, and glory.

Overwhelmed, with the answer to his prayer,
receiving forgiveness of his sins, meeting his Savior.

But how could he forget Her smile?

Her white hair above the brightness of the sun.

Was the Mother lost in retelling the story?

The details change after all.

Variation in retelling is not fabrication,
to the contrary, it expands our vision.

She must have been there –

In a quiet grove of trees, a light descended
like a pillar of fire, two personages appeared
whose brightness and glory defy all description.

Is Trump trying to ruin science?

I am writing this on January 24th. I just got out of a meeting at my place of employment. I work at a small research institute that is funded by government science grants from places like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

There is a lot of shaky fear going on right now in the scientific community. All because of Trump’s recent executive orders.

Trump’s few days in office have resulted in executive orders that involve things like canceling federal grant review panels and training workshops (SOURCE).

Why does this matter?

On a personal note: a grant application from my agency should have been reviewed this week, but has been postponed indefinitely.

On a more global note that everyone should care about: this means that important research projects that could help save human lives are not getting the funding needed.

Today I tried to go to a page on the NIH’s website that I’ve visited many times before (including just a couple days ago) that talks about the need to ensure diverse samples of research participants (so that we’re not just researching white men like research used to be before we started caring about this), and all I got was this:

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Hoping it was just a fluke, I clicked a link I had in my notes for another similar page (that I’d also visited a couple days ago) and this time I got this:

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A bit frantic now, I googled “NIH diversity” and found plenty of links, but each one ended in an error message similar to the ones above.

For the record: having diverse samples in research isn’t just a nice thing to do. It is critical to the lives of human beings. If we only research white men, we do not learn whether interventions/medicines/operations/etc work on anyone else. Without that information, human beings die. That is the reality that Trump is pushing on the scientific community.

NOTE: Trump issued a “communication ban” for NIH employees – meaning that program officers are not allowed to talk to potential grantees until February 1st. So, as researchers, we wait and see what this time in history does for the future of science.

During this waiting, we hope we’re being hyperbolic to worry that Trump’s decisions will have long term implications. But we also know that laws have lasting impacts on the lives of you and me and the people we love. 

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at this day in history: January 25th, 1900.

The story starts in the month leading up to January 25th. Christmas Eve 1899. Lots of people were traveling to see loved ones (just like Christmas Eve a month ago!). This time, a Black passenger in Virginia sat next to a white woman on a train. When asked to move, the Black passenger didn’t move. There was public outrage. The newspaper wrote “God Almighty drew the color line and it cannot be obliterated.” The white governor of Virginia expressed how much he hated riding on trains with Black individuals. And on this day in history (January 25th, 1900), the Viriginia Senate made their new year priorities clear when they unanimously passed a bill requiring separate cars for White individuals and Black individuals. That white governor had no problem signing it into law and it became one of the first state segregation laws (before the segregation of schools, boats, prisons, public halls). Other states were passing similar segregation laws which had all become legal in the federal ruling Plessy v. Ferguson just a few years earlier. That segregation continued for decades and there are still institutions that are systematically segregated and/or unequal. 

As a feminist, you need to care.

These issues impact everyone who experiences inequity. That includes Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities, women and girls, LGBTQIA+ children and adults, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. This matters! Being able to do science for all people (not just white men) matters. 

This January 25th, rather than sitting idly as Trump passes executive orders that can have lasting impacts on the future of human lives, let’s make change. Let’s listen to the voices of those who are being impacted every day. Then take a moment to think about what you can do in your sphere to make things better.

Not sure where to start? Here’s a list of texts/books/articles/essays that you can read this year that will help you understand how institutional racism operates in the US:

In the carceral system:

Recommended Book: Michelle Alexander’s book called The New Jim Crow . Here’s a sample quote: “It is no longer socially permissible to use race as a justification for discrimination, social contempt, and exclusion. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans — in employment, housing, voting, education, public benefits, and exclusion from jury service. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.”

Recommended personal narrative from someone impacted: “It’s been 22 years since my time in solitary and 8 years since my release from prison, but I still have flashbacks and nightmares. Even when I’m with someone else, I find myself secluded in my own mind. I call it being psychologically incarcerated. I’m learning to identify and deal with it, but I am still not normal.” – Kiana Calloway in his piece about being wrongfully convicted and sent to solitary confinement in Louisiana (you can read about him in his bio at his current employment )

In the education system:

Recommended article: Check out this article that summarizes some research suggesting that schools are often still segregated and those that are segregated tend to have worse outcomes. Here’s a sample quote: “When we allow our schools to remain segregated by race and economic status, we are systematically providing fewer educational opportunities to our most vulnerable students. That does not mean segregation is the sole cause of educational disparities, but it magnifies them.”

In the medical field:

Recommended special issue: Check out this AMA Journal of Ethics Special Issue . Here’s a sample quote in the intro: “Legally sanctioned racial segregation in hospitals ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with fiscally incentivized enforcement through Medicare payment structures implemented in 1966. Yet, practices such as sorting patients by insurance status still perpetuate de facto racial and class segregation, especially in academic health centers.”

Recommended article: Check out this article in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment where 79% of the 143 Black adults surveyed said they had experienced healthcare discrimination and that often led to a mistrust of the medical system. 

In Mormonism:

Recommended podcast: Listen to this short (4 minute) NPR story where James Jones (a Black member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) shares his story about being in the church with such a racist history and how that impacts him today. Consider also taking his anti-racism training that is targeted for members of the church. 

Recommended podcast: Listen to this podcast, “ Achieving Zion: The Impact of Racism on Becoming One ” where Dr. Mica McGill tells her story within the context of the large structural issues in the church and describes the impact of racism on the church. Quote from the podcast blurb: “Mormonism has uniquely benefitted from white-supremacy…White Mormons all along the spectrum of orthodoxy must reconcile with their history and mythologized racial innocence in order to truly become one with self and community.”

Please add more recommendations in the comments below!

What ‘Conclave’ taught me about the holiness of doubt

What can the election of a new pope teach us about Mormonism? About nuanced Christianity? About what happens when men who have always known privilege are forced to confront those who have lived without it? About what happens when a person whose life has been defined by faith loses that faith?

What insights can it offer to the idea that one person—one man—can adequately speak for God?

I pondered these and other questions watching “Conclave,” which this week was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Ralph Fiennes. It is fictional and starts with the death of the old pope, then takes the viewer inside the Sistine Chapel for the conclave, where all of the Catholic Church’s cardinals come from throughout the world to vote on a new pope. This is a days-long process with very quiet, subtle campaigning and more than a few twists and turns, although the movie consists largely of talking and silence. Even the biggest twist is not a highly charged moment but a quiet, unexpected admission.

I didn’t go into ready for this level of asking deep questions. I went into it expecting some Dan Brown-esque intrigue—plotting, relics, puzzles, all protecting ancient religious secrets.

It turned out all the secrets weren’t that ancient, the puzzle was what was happening in the mind of the main character and the plot twist at the end made the whole story complicated—but also so very not.

What it was instead was a look at what people will do for power, how religion can be wielded as a tool for good and evil and how faith and doubt co-exist. How they need each other.

“Conclave” follows Dean Lawrence (Fiennes), who is running a conclave split between those who wish to see the Catholic Church progress with the times, including embracing those who have been historically marginalized (including, gasp! women) and those who see tolerance, movement toward the social norms and acceptance of the validity of other faiths as a sin that is dragging the church down and must be rectified. They discuss similar issues we in the Mormon and adjacent space have about the church, but in a way that was safer for me—I don’t have any emotional hangups with Catholicism.

Three moments stood out to me. First: Dean Lawrence, who is adamant that he does not want to be pope (though that is what they all say, even when later words and actions contradict that—can you believe this man’s professed lack of ambition or does he, too, strive to be the most powerful man in Christianity?), gives the opening sermon of the conclave. It is not what the other cardinals expected:

“St. Paul said be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. To work together, to grow together, we must be tolerant, no one person or faction seeking to dominate another. And speaking to the Ephesians who were of course a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the church is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength. And over the course of many years in the service of our mother the church, let me tell you there is one thing which I have to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end … Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts.”

We will never know everything. We will never know most things. Where we came from, where we’re going, if we’re in fact going anywhere after death—I do not know. I cannot know. I can choose to believe, I can choose to have faith in something, but it is not a lack of faith to recognize that I don’t have all the answers, and I doubt the things I am told. Doubt is what drives most of us to ask and seek answers to questions. It is a sacred duty of believers to doubt.

Second: There is an order of nuns who takes care of the conclave. The main nun, Sister Agnes (Isabella Rosselini), is the sole woman in a room with 108 cardinals when a disagreement breaks out—loud, discordant, uncomfortable. As men are yelling, her voice is at first hard to hear. But she will not let herself be ignored. As they quiet, Sister Agnes speaks: “Although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nevertheless given us eyes and ears.”

To give you the rest of the speech would spoil a major plot point, so I won’t. But her words hit me. How many times have we sisters been told to be invisible? To be silent? To be told we are shrill and we need to know when to stop speaking? We are invisible when we are not invited to meetings, when our words are ignored, when our labor is undervalued or simply not valued at all.

Yet God has given us eyes and ears. And a mouth, and a brain. We see, we hear, and we deserve to speak and be heard—as equals. We are not guests at Jesus Christ’s table. We belong there.

The final moment comes when the conclave is interrupted by activity on the outside. One cardinal who wants to be pope, who wants to drag the Catholic Church back into, well, the Middle Ages, demands a holy war against Muslims, against tolerance, against progress. He wants a crusade. He is convinced that this is the way of God—to kill those who do not believe as this man does. (It’s funny how many people are convinced God shares their exact opinions, their likes and dislikes, their prejudices and bigotry. It is not unique to Catholicism. One look at the Christian nationalism sweeping the United States today shows it is a very popular thing, to create God in one’s own image.)

In response, another cardinal, who has been a mystery throughout the movie, stands and calls, “My brother cardinal … my brother cardinal …” Like Sister Agnes, at first his voice goes unheard amid the cacophony. But finally, the men are listening. Cardinal Benitez speaks, slowly, enunciating each word, watching them land with his audience. In an attempt to adequately bring you into the scene, which is as important as the words, I’ve italicized my own description of it:

 “With respect, what do you know about war? He pauses, as it sinks in that this man who calls for war knows nothing of the reality of it. He is European and has spent his life in service of the church in Italy.  I carried out my ministry in the Congo, in Baghdad, in Kabul. I’ve seen the lines of the dead and wounded, Christians and Muslims. When you say we have to fight, what is it you think we’re fighting? You think it’s those deluded men who have carried out these terrible acts today? No, my brother … here he switches to Spanish, his native tongue … that which you’re fighting is here. He puts his hand on his heart. Here, inside each and every one of us, if we give in to hate now. If we speak of sides instead of speaking for every man and woman.”

I wish every religious leader, every religious person, lived that, regardless of their beliefs. I wish we were, all of us, on the same side—the side of peace, of conservation, of love, of knowledge, of nonviolence.  

Photo credit: Focus Features

2024 was a year for movies that forced difficult questions about religion on their viewers. Although “Heretic” didn’t get any Oscar nods, it inspired a lot of critical thinking and discussion here at The Exponent II. Explore some of those pieces:

Mr. Reed from Heretic is right: Polygamy is Mormonism’s biggest problem

Guest post: Why I won’t be seeing Heretic as a former missionary

I was a Mormon sister missionary, and here’s what I thought of Heretic, the new horror movie about missionaries

Rape Isn’t God’s Will

By C Brown

A former Rape Recovery Center educator, C has a master’s degree in curriculum development and has served in many volunteer organizations, including Foster Care Citizen Review Board, LDS Relief Society president, PTA leader, and literacy volunteer.

For several years I volunteered as a community educator for the Rape Recovery Center in Utah. Sometimes I went to the juvenile detention center where many of the group were either rape survivors or rapists. In most cases, the survivors felt guilty for being raped and the perpetrators felt their victims deserved to be raped or that being raped didn’t impact them. Both were false, of course.

Part of our work was to convince the victims that they were not responsible for being raped and that the abuse was the sole responsibility of the rapist. That was difficult since often their families, cultures, and religions shamed and blamed victims while ignoring their horrific suffering. The work with perpetrators was fascinating since most had never learned about consent, the concept that a person must voluntarily, willingly, and genuinely agree to participate in sexual activity. Some rapists assumed that folks wanted to be raped when they clearly did not. Other perpetrators didn’t know that a child was too young to give consent, that someone who was drunk or incapacitated was incapable of giving consent, and that “no” means “no.” It was gratifying to see a person’s eyes light up when they realized what consent truly was and how consent could be violated. It was also thrilling to see perpetrators finally accept responsibility for the harm they had done.

Utah doesn’t allow that concept to be taught in schools and few religions teach it, so many young people are misinformed regarding issues of rape and sexual abuse. For decades, Utah, which was in the past predominately LDS, has had one of the highest rate rapes in the United States. The LDS Church has taught for years that victims are partly responsible for being raped, and references to an apostle’s talk that states that lie are still found in Church manuals.1  In addition, Church attorneys are quick to defend LDS rapists and slow to help rape survivors. With the teachings that leaders are called by God and should be obeyed along with the practice of one-on-one interviews by leaders with children and youth, the Church has created a rape culture that shames the victims and too often protects the perpetrators.

To correct the problem, the Church needs to have parents present in all interviews with leaders or discontinue worthiness interviews entirely. No LDS child should feel it is okay to submit to sexual questioning by a Church leader behind closed doors. Since sexual abuse is a serious issue among LDS members, the fundamentals of consent should be taught in age-appropriate language for children, youth, and adults. The recent example of a Danish woman who was repeatedly raped by her husband and then instructed by her bishop to “lock her bedroom door” reveals how poorly LDS leaders are trained about the fundamentals of sexual abuse. Meanwhile, her husband continued to serve in major church callings, causing the government in Denmark to launch an investigation into the policies and practices of the Church.

Currently, the LDS Church has a hotline to protect leaders and the good name of the Church. It needs to implement a hotline where victims can call and report abuse. The horrific case in Arizona reveals how fervently the Church hides behind priest-penitent privilege while it refuses to require its leaders to report abuse to police and to protect victims from abuse. Floodlit.org keeps records of LDS leaders and members who are convicted of serious sexual crimes, yet since most crimes are unreported and few perpetrators are convicted, LDS members often do not recognize how pervasive and serious the problem of sexual abuse in the LDS Church truly is.

Since the LDS Church claims to be the only true Church, it should set the standard for protecting its members from sexual abuse and holding perpetrators accountable. Church leaders should be repeatedly trained on how to create a safe environment for children and youth, how to safeguard the vulnerable, and how to establish clear guidelines for interactions between adults and children. Leaders should require background checks for all who work with vulnerable groups, and the LDS Church should not hide behind priest-penitent privilege but should create a policy where leaders are required to report perpetrators to proper authorities and hold abusers accountable. In addition, the Church should stop shaming and blaming victims of abuse by punishing them with church discipline, ignoring their pleas for help, or minimizing the suffering that survivors of sexual abuse experience.

The inclusion of text and pictures in a recently published Church book for children that justifies child sexual abuse by older men as inspired by God amplifies a Church culture where men can rationalize abusive behavior by pretending that their actions are God-ordained. When Church leaders justify the plural “marriage” of foster daughters, 14-year-old girls, married women, and mother-daughter pairs to Church leaders, claiming it was ordained of God, they create a system where men can defraud others through sexual, financial, psychological, or ecclesiastical abuse and where the Church too often turns a blind eye to the abuse.

Although the LDS Church claims to be the “gold standard” for dealing with child abuse, it disregards the best practices for protecting its children and members. It is time for the Church to care more about its children as it does about protecting its good name. After all, Jesus said that anyone who “shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”2 He also warned the people to “not do what [the Pharisees or church leaders] do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”3

The Church spends millions of dollars in attorney fees and sexual abuse settlements which could be better spent in protecting members from sexual abuse. Best practices for churches and organizations are clearly outlined

1 LDS Eternal Marriage Student Manual, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/eternal-marriage-student-manual/abuse/healing-the-tragic-scars-of-abuse?lang=eng

2 Matthew 18:6 KJV

3 Matthew 23: 3-8 NIV

Inspiration for Bold Mormon Feminist Voices from Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde

This week, during a presidential inaugural sermon, Anglican Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde admonished Donald Trump and J.D. Vance concerning their responsibility before God to show mercy toward the most vulnerable people living in the United States, including queer children, undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, and the children of parents who face possible deportation. I admire her and this bold powerful act of courage and advocacy. Her message is powerful and important.

It was a striking instance of these men having to sit and respectfully listen to uncomfortable words that confronted and challenged them. I doubt Vance or Trump are in the habit of learning from female faith leaders. I perceived discomfort on their faces, including embarrassment at having some of their intentions publicly advised against and spiritually scrutinized during inaugural festivities.

Bishop Budde’s boldness surprised many. Her actions remind me of “wilderness” prophets who pop out of nowhere to share inspired words despite personal risks. She is like Abinadi before King Noah, Samuel on the wall of Zarahemla, or Jeremiah or Isaiah warning corrupt kings and kingdoms of their times.

She also reminds me of inspired Mormon feminist writers, advocates and activists who have persisted in calling for greater love, openness, and wisdom to be enacted in the Church one decade after another. 

Wilderness prophets are usually not welcomed with humility or grace. Trump is complaining and asking for an apology from Budde. King Noah put Abinadi in prison because he couldn’t tolerate someone preaching against him in the streets; his priests started up a conversation only because they wanted to prove him wrong and poke fun at him. Samuel’s audience tried to kill him with stones and arrows, and he went home without having been listened to. Jesus taught that prophets tend to not be accepted among their own people.

So it is for bold Latter-day Saint women who speak up. Recently, Latter-day Saint matriarch and arguably the best living Latter-day Saint writer, Carol Lynn Pearson, mentioned her low expectations for leaders to respond to her efforts to exchange with them:

“Soon after the publication of The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy (pub. 2016), I sent a copy of the book to each member of the church’s governing First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and other top leaders. I signed the books to each by name, “with appreciation and with the hope that you will lead us into a truly post-polygamy future.” I knew I would not hear back from any of them” (emphasis mine). Nine years later, they still haven’t reached out. She points out LDS leaders’ recent actions make it clear they still haven’t taken the time to consider her work or to internalize the many striking accounts from members shared throughout her book.

How much is the Church’s administration like King Noah and his priests when it comes to receiving wilderness prophets with grace, open-mindedness, and reciprocity? At what cost is it intolerant of criticism, closed-minded to feedback, and overly confident of being right about things? To what extent is the Church bleeding, burning and gasping for air due its failures to listen to prophetic women and other marginalized prophetic members?

Stories like the one Linda recently shared about Elder Bednar make me wonder if some of them are prone to foolishly and arrogantly attempt to replicate Jesus’s moments of righteous indignation. Church leaders, please get over yourselves. You’re not Jesus, not even close, and you’re not more special or righteous or chosen by God than lay members, women, queer individuals, or children. You shouldn’t try to take up Jesus’s kind of strength or confidence. Human church administrators who would do better to wash the feet of homeless people in the street. This would inspire us all more and do more good in the world.

I have friends who were part of Ordain Women years ago who felt irreversibly pushed out of the Church at the moment they realized top leaders were completely closed to the idea of making room for their voices to be heard. Thinking of their moments of rejection and crushing disappointment breaks my heart.

Our general leaders directly discourage members from giving them any feedback at all, as found in the following item in the Church handbook:

(Item) 38.8.25: Church members are discouraged from calling, emailing, or writing letters to General Authorities about doctrinal questions, personal challenges, or requests. 

I’ve known about this policy for a long time. But a few years ago, so much pain and frustration had built up in me about expectations and policies at church that I felt compelled to write an anonymous letter. I talked about my desire for queer children to be fully embraced as they are at church. About how I can foresee that healthy young people in rising generations will not be able to view Mormon plural marriage as having ever been divinely sanctioned. And other things like my refusal to spend my one open morning in the week cleaning the church building.

The letter was so long I had to put it in a big envelope and take it to the post office. I put no return address. The postal worker noticed this and frowned at me. I told them it was activism against an organization that I could not trust with my name or address because they might punish me unfairly. To think this group I was speaking against was the church family that had raised me and that I put so much trust and energy into throughout my life seemed completely absurd and profoundly disappointing. Sending this letter was sort of like writing to a powerful and dangerous grandfather who I have to deal with but who avoids his own relational issues and emotional intimacy at all costs. The Church’s unhealthy top-down, nonreciprocal impulses stem to stem from unaddressed traumas including the coerciveness and moral dissonance of polygamy, Joseph’s Smith’s violent early death, our sudden, unwanted move to the desert, and repressed insecurity about our frameworks of belief, religious legitimacy, and place in society.

It seemed to me my letter might as well have been dropped into a bottomless pit. I doubt it was even opened at the church office building. How many other women have written such letters out of a desperate need to share their voices? Sending it was not gratifying because I had no reason to hope anyone would read it or care.

The handbook urges members to bring personal concerns to local leaders such as bishops and stake presidents. But local leaders are not empowered to do anything, and are often no better at listening. I once tried to talk with a bishop about how patriarchy and homophobic approaches make it hard for Gen Z and Gen Alpha to resonate with the faith tradition. He interrupted me mid-sentence, saying this kind of thing is above his “pay grade” and nothing he can do anything about. I made a request to another leader that he stop referring to missions as a commandment for boys because it was hurting my child. He didn’t even acknowledge I had said anything and wasn’t interested in conversation. 

Things shouldn’t be this way. Noah should have heeded Abinadi’s warnings. Instead, due to his choices to control others and treat others harshly, all Abinadi’s prophecies came true: Noah lost his power and his own priests burned him at the stake. Trump and Vance should be responsive to Bishop Budde’s call for mercy, but only time will tell what actions they will take. Latter-day Saint women should be heard, heeded, and empowered in their own church rather than ignored, disciplined, or pushed into a powerless role. Will the Church change course and start listening to women’s wisdom and warnings, or will it continue in its oppressive, self-confident, avoidant habits?

Bishop Budde probably knew Trump would resist and resent her words, but she shared them anyway with grace and power. Her actions strengthened many people this week. She role modeled moral and spiritual maturity, compassionate advocacy for those in need, respectful bridge building, faith and hope. We Latter-day Saint feminists, allies, and advocates can take inspiration from Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde and raise voices of wisdom and warning boldly as we feel inspired. We may not influence the views or policies of any leader, but we WILL help members and future generations to learn, grow, heal and transform in unprecedented ways. Our voices will spread love and relief to those who are most marginalized at church. And we will change the Church through the ways we teach, impact and show love and understanding to its members. How do we do this? We can start with writing, posting, and speaking online, supporting people with open-mindedness, nuance and compassion in our in-person circles, and whatever ways we feel inspired to speak out and be different and more loving than policies and rhetoric at Church.

Imagine that you had an opportunity like Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. A few minutes when top Latter-day Saint leaders were obliged to listen to your solemn, authoritative words about what needs to happen in their upcoming years of leadership. What would you say? What would you admonish them to do or warn them about?

Note: the feature photo for this post is from Bishop Budde’s leadership profile on Washington National Cathedral’s website.

Guest Post: My Pastel Cardigan

by Kimber Young Poon

I first saw the pastel cardigan on a missionary training video. Perched on the edge of the seat, the sister missionary wearing the cardigan glowed with a submissive charm.

“How many people should we invite to be baptized this week?” The other sister — the non-pastel-cardigan-one — asked.

“Hmmmm,” the pastel cardigan sister tilted her head to the ceiling in a thoughtful pause. Her hair was modestly fluffy — long, parted in the center. “What about 10?”

She gently leafed through their planner, her fingers floating through the pages.

“We have to have the faith that God will help us,” she said softly, quiet confidence exuding behind a relaxed pixelated smile.

I went to the store that Monday and bought myself a pastel cardigan. The arms didn’t fit quite right, and I had to stretch the sleeve hem to reach my wrist, but the fabric was soft and the buttons were shiny. It hung simply around my torso. I regarded myself in the mirror, wondering how I could add more fluff to my hair.

Months later, I sat across from Diana, a new woman we were teaching. Her hair was curly, wild, and dyed bright orange. She wore all black — a black cardigan over a black blouse, black tweed pants, and pointed black flats.

She was the stage lighting director for big concerts in Manhattan. She spoke in a brisk, hurried voice, as if constantly giving commands to technicians to hit the lights immediately.

And for some reason, beyond our understanding, she wanted to meet with the Mormon missionaries.

The first day she saw me, she eyed my shin-length skirt and said curtly, “You’re going to get raped at night if you walk out on the street too late.”

“Don’t worry, we have to be in our apartment by 9:30,” I replied.

I tugged at my pastel cardigan. So, why did she want to meet with us?

“I want to know what it means to be a Woman of God,” she said.

Well, it means pastel cardigans, I said. But I didn’t say that. I said words like “obedience” and “special” and “faith” and “loved.”

“You’re in luck!” My companion chimed in, “We have the General Women’s Conference happening next week. You can come and see what we are all about!”

—

I squirmed in my seat next to Diana as we waited for the conference to start. We were seated in a tight room on folding chairs in semi-circles surrounding a small, old television. She eyed me again.

“Pastel isn’t your color,” she said matter-of-factly. I pulled at my sleeves. Why couldn’t they just stay?

As the broadcast started, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a diverse international choir.

All of the women teaching in the broadcast taught exclusively about pastel cardigans. But they didn’t actually teach that. They said words like “obedience” and “duty” and “gift” and “Motherhood” and “covenant” and “highest and holiest calling.”

It seemed normal enough to me.

During the closing prayer, I snuck a glance at Diana. She stared at the screen head-on, unabashedly.

“I thought you guys told me that God thought women were good for more than being birthing machines,” she said to us before we never saw her again.

—

That night, I took off my pastel cardigan.

“I tried,” I told God on my knees in tears, “I’ve tried to be who you want me to be. I’ve tried to be soft and meek and quiet and gentle. But I am bold, I am impatient, I am a leader, I am proud.”

God met me that night — right there, sitting on the ground across from me, knees to knees.

“I have enough people wearing pastel cardigans,” She said. “I need you.”

 

Kimber is a writer, teacher, and artist based out of Cottonwood Heights, Utah. She loves to try new foods, visit museums, and wear colorful dresses (but avoids pastels). She writes about faith transformation and spiritual growth in her newsletter, Something for Sundays.

Does a Temple Recommend Mean You’re a Good Person? (Nope, So Stop Worrying About It.)

Have you ever felt bad (or had someone try to make you feel bad) for not having a current temple recommend? I’m sorry if that’s ever happened to you, especially because I don’t think your temple recommend status has anything to do with what kind of a person you are.

Chad and Lori Daybell both had active temple recommends when they committed their murders. They’d attend the temple together before each killing. Incarcerated Jodi Hildebrandt attended the temple and received a blessing from the St. George temple president while simultaneously abusing children in her basement dungeon with fellow abuser Ruby Franke. Sterling Van Wagenen, the director of the set of temple movies still in rotation in 2019, was arrested for sexual abuse of children, so the church had to pull those films and replace them with a slideshow.

I think a temple recommend has little to do with a person’s character, and everything to do with how well they conform to rules and/or lie to their leaders.

Here’s a list of people who have been denied a recommend:

-A caring mother in Texas who wears a tank top in the summer. -A widower in a nursing home who spent his life in church service but can’t afford to pay tithing on his small social security check.-A pediatric nurse who drinks coffee to stay awake on long overnight shifts caring for sick children.-A firefighter who risks his life to save strangers’ lives, but views adult content on the internet.-A woman with three callings, fully active, a near perfect visiting teaching record, who publicly said on Facebook she supported women getting the priesthood (okay, that one was me).

Here’s a list of people who passed the temple recommend questions with flying colors:

-A racist woman who treats minorities at her work like second class citizens but wears the right underwear.-A misogynistic man who treats his wife like a personal slave but only drinks herbal tea.-An ex-husband who gets out of paying child support by remaining purposefully unemployed but pays tithing.-A mean woman who gossips and lies about the people in her ward, but believes Joseph Smith was a prophet.-Senior church leaders who ran a multi-decade illegal scheme to conceal the massive wealth of the church from members but sustain their Priesthood leaders (which is themselves).

Some of the worst humans I have ever encountered held a temple recommend for decades, while some of the kindest and most caring people couldn’t qualify. Once I was sitting in a temple session and looked around the room. It occurred to me that I wasn’t with the most Christ-like people on earth – rather I was with the people who were willing to jump through the most hoops and follow the most rules (including myself!).

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with choosing to follow the necessary rules to obtain a temple recommend. Don’t drink coffee, wear garments, pay tithing, attend church meetings – no problem! Those are not things that harm anyone else.

Just please don’t assume that your recommend makes you morally superior to someone else who donates ten percent of their income to a food pantry instead of the church and takes their grandkids to see a movie on Sunday. If you happen to think that God favors you over them, I think you’ll be disappointed someday to find out how wrong you are.

*****
For me personally, there was a moment in the spring of 2014 when I realized exactly how little a temple recommend had to do with a person’s worthiness or their relationship with God. My temple recommend had been taken away at the end of 2013 when my bishop disapproved of my profile on the Ordain Women website. A few months later, a new bishop took his place and offered my recommend back, saying he felt I was worthy of it. (Thanks, second bishop!)

My worthiness hadn’t changed at all, only the man assigned to give me the recommend had. Sometimes a temple recommend is just a tool in the arsenal of a priesthood leader to control someone’s behavior. Following my own conscience over my bishop’s demands is something I remain very proud of myself for. (And to those who choose to give in to a leader’s demands in order to keep your recommend – I don’t blame you at all! This is an impossible system.)

This Inauguration Day, We Need a Little Christmas

It feels both overwhelming and anticlimactic, the grey of January after the twinkle lights of December. Other than a few stacks of gifts that haven’t yet been assigned cupboard space and a Christmas throw pillow or ornament overlooked in the frenzy of boxing up, my house is back to normal. The kids are back in school. Life has picked up again, and I’m staring down the barrel of a new year.

Despite the mild winter, January feels particularly dreary this year, made heavy by the weight of a broken world, the inauguration of a divisive president, and the stress of personal resolutions and failings. The magic of Christmas, which made the seasonal cold and dark and even stress bearable, is gone. If December was largely a reprieve, from these cares at least, January is a reckoning.

The universality of post-Christmas letdown was probably part of the inspiration behind the poem The Work of Christmas by Howard Thurman:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was one of America’s greatest mystics and activists. He was an African-American theologian, a gifted educator and author, and a prominent civil rights leader, mentoring many of the civil rights leaders of his era, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was Thurman who introduced nonviolence to the civil rights movement as a response to racism and brutality. 

Howard Thurman

When I feel despair at the civil rights ground we’ve lost recently, ground that was gained through the work and sometimes blood of people like Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, I remind myself that even though things feel bleak, they are nowhere near as bleak as they were in Thurman’s time. He knew, in a way I will never know, what it was to look hate in the face and choose love. He knew the work of justice was hard and sometimes backfired, and he did it anyway. He knew progress moved slowly, when it moved at all. He had every reason to preach retribution or sit in despair, but he didn’t. He chose hope. 

The words of Thurman’s poem lodged deep in my heart this Christmas season as I contemplated my impending annual January malaise, compounded this year by the distress of another Trump presidency. Phrases from the poem floated through my mind unbidden like gentle directives. As inauguration day crept closer: Rebuild the nations. As quiet panic over New Year’s resolutions set in: Heal the broken. As I felt rising insecurities and aimlessness: Feed the hungry. As I was overcome by helplessness at the scale of injustice and suffering in the world: Bring peace among the people. As I grappled with despair that so many people idolize Trump and what he stands for: Make music in the heart.

These next four years, I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to fall prey to the outrage bait of “can you believe this shocking/false/offensive thing Trump said” because of course I can believe it, and I can finally see that it doesn’t matter because it’s all a distraction meant to keep us so keyed up in righteous indignation that we become unable to act. I am going to focus on outcomes instead of bombastic red herrings and do what I can in my own sphere to mitigate harm to vulnerable populations.

There is big irony and pain in Trump, the dismantler of DEI initiatives, the fomenter of racism and xenophobia, being inaugurated on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It feels like acid in an already raw wound. But it also feels like a reminder: the marginalized groups living 60+ years ago alongside Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King had it much worse then than they do today, and they had it much worse 60+ years before MLK’s time than they did in the tumultuous 1960’s. Despite the ground we’ve lost, despite the additional ground we may lose in the next four years, Black people and other people of color, LGBTQ people, women, and others have had it worse, much worse, in the shockingly recent past. The US has faced injustice and hate and devastating setbacks before. Today feels dark, but it is not even close to the darkest days this country has seen. Trump and his ilk are a step back, but perspective shows us, and I believe Howard Thurman would tell us, we have a robust precedent for hope.

The Christmas star is gone. The song of the angels is stilled. The shepherds are back with their flocks. The world feels lone and dreary without the lingering light that suffused the Christmas season. But the work of Christmas has just begun.

To learn more about Howard Thurman, you can watch the 2021 PBS documentary Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.

US Capitol Photo by Heidi Kaden on Unsplash

Photo of Howard Thurman from Smithsonian Digital Archives via Wikipedia

Doctrine Would Change if Women Were Equal

Photo by HONG SON on Pexels.com

If women at church were equal to men, what doctrines would we have about birth? (I didn’t realize how little there was in the scriptures.) What might be taught at church about abortion? Or Heavenly Mother? What would it be like to have scriptures written by, for, and about women? The way we teach the law of chastity would definitely change. What else? Janey over at Wheat and Tares wrote a powerhouse of a blogpost exploring these ideas and more in her recent post Doctrine Would Change if Women Were Equal.

Our Bloggers Recommend: What is Intuitive Eating?

Do I trust my body? Do I listen to my body? I’m asking myself these questions as I’m listening to “We Can Do Hard Things” this week, when hosts Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach speak with intuitive eating expert Evelyn Tribole. As Glennon, who has been diagnosed with and in treatment for first with bulimia and then anorexia since she was a child, and Abby, who spent most of her adult life as a world-class athlete (well, she is still world-class but no longer playing), share their thoughts and experiences, they keep repeating the need for trust in oneself–and how dangerous it is to not trust yourself and your body to make good choices. Glennon, who grew up evangelical, discusses how she was taught not to trust her body, how being given rules set her up to have a poor relationship with her body and not trust it to send her the signals that she was full.

The Exponent II did a series on being fat and female last fall, and as I listened to this podcast I kept thinking about my own relationship with food and my body (neither is good or intuitive) and how being told I needed to follow certain rules to be “good,” even though most of those rules weren’t related to food, could have affected me without knowing about it. By internalizing the need to trust and obey with question external forces, even if it conflicted with what I individually felt, did I learn not to trust myself?