Guest Post: What’s That Smell? #MormonMeToo

[image error]By Caroline Crockett Brock

Last year mold was found in my daughter’s middle school. It was black mold, and it was growing behind seemingly sound walls.

Now here’s the thing about mold: If conditions are right, it can grow just about anywhere. A school. A home. A church. It doesn’t discriminate. All it needs is food, water and a dark stagnant environment.

There’s mold in the church today. Black Mold. We’ve begun to see the toxic effects of its spores in the story of Joseph Bishop, and more widely, in the Protect LDS Children campaign. Truth is, evil predators reside in every faith community. It’s the tragic reality. What concerns me are the systems that allow a predator to operate freely in this church and the underlying communal false beliefs and dysfunctions that contribute to the rise of their behavior.

When mold was found in my daughter’s school, there was a public outcry. There was no resistance to these efforts. The school district did not turn to lawyers in order to deny culpability. It quickly employed experts to investigate the problem. To eradicate the mold, they had to find the source.

In the same fashion, we as a body of Christ must find the source of our own black mold and to do so, we can’t worry about what our neighbors will think. We’ve got to put on masks, pick up sledgehammers and be brave enough to investigate its origins.

Did it start in the 1830s with a leader who coerced 14 year-old girls into marriage by promising eternal rewards for her and her family?
When he used the power of his position as prophet to marry other married women?
When he hid his exploits from his wife then called her to repentance for not accepting polygamy?

The belief that women are passive vessels designed to house a man’s eternal dynasty rather than equal partners in a process of co-creation has birthed a malignant false belief in man’s eternal entitlement. This emotion of ‘benign’ superiority is the breeding ground for the toxicity we feel today. It’s in the lie of Eve’s ‘sin’ and the historical societal oppression of women justified by that myth. It’s in the blatant untruths embedded in the temple story wherein attendees watch men mimic a hierarchical string of commands about creation, without a whisper of participation from the feminine divine. It’s the lived experience of generations of LDS women who were manipulated into polygamy in hopes of an eternal reward. Let me be perfectly clear: ANY dominion is unrighteous dominion. It’s these practices and untruths that Mormons have never truly repudiated and repented of, that have served as food and water for this mold. Because of this, black toxins have been quietly growing behind walls made of God-sanctioned patriarchy ever since.

There’s mold in the walls of this church, and denial has never been a successful strategy in eliminating it. Without an honest investigation of the source, we have little hope for eradication and a toxic-free environment. When we seek to protect the structure more than the inhabitants within, we all continue to suffer. Before healing can occur, Mormon iniquities and untruths about the male dominance over females must be revealed, properly named, and eradicated.

There is no other way.

 

In the case of my daughter’s school, investigators found the mold to be so pervasive that a new school was erected instead. Rather than having children stay in a school dangerous to their long-term health, the district built a state of the art facility where children could learn and grow in a safe and toxic free environment.

In contrast, rather than eradicating the original mold from the walls, the church has decided to explain away the generational iniquities of the past with the platitudes and apologetics of today. They have labeled the abused souls “blips” rather than victims of a system that promises eternal salvation yet allows for the equivalent of spiritual homicide. The church issues a policy change that only wallpapers over black mildew stains which are ominously spreading across the room. Having two leaders in a primary room is great. It’s not the problem. Reminding me of parental rights I already have is great. It’s not problem. Until men no longer feel they have a right to preside over females due to their gender, the contamination will continue. Until men dismantle its hierarchical system where position and authority is honored above all, mold spores will fly. Until men begin to honor women’s voices and experiences rather than marginalize and minimize their personhood, this toxin will continue to cause illness.

Once this recognition and repentance occurs, perhaps we can begin to understand that patriarchy alone was never meant to be a whole or holy system. Once we feel through the pain this system has created and provide true assistance to the acutely affected victims among us, perhaps we can rebuild the walls of this faith community with the support of both men and women, patriarchy and matriarchy. Together, hand in hand, we can co-create systems in this church that support wholeness and healthy understandings of worth, sexual expression and identity. That honor and value men AND women. Until there is a balance of a patriarchy and matriarchy, there will be no hope of a structure without toxicity. No hope of a Zion-like society.

There’s mold in these walls, and it’s corroding the souls of the remarkable people in this church.

There’s mold in these walls, and to fix it, we’ve got to find another way.

By Caroline Crockett Brock. Wife. Mother. Writer. Goddess in Embryo.