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Pedestals and Podiums: Utah Women, Religious Authority, and Equal Rights
Almost from the beginning, the women’s movement has been divided into two factions–those wanting full equality with men (Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul) and those seeking legal protections for women’s particular needs (Julia Ward Howe, Eleanor Roosevelt). Early Utah leaders such as Relief Society President Emmeline B. Wells walked hand-in-hand with Anthony and other controversial reformers. However, by the 1970s, Mormons had undergone a significant ideological turn to the mainstream, championing women’s unique roles in home and church, and joined other conservatives in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment. Looking back to the nineteenth century, how committed were Latter-day Saints of their day to women’s rights? LDS President Joseph F. Smith was particularly critical of women who “glory in their enthralled condition and who caress and fondle the very chains and manacles which fetter and enslave them!” The masthead of the church’s female Relief Society periodical, Woman’s Exponent , proudly proclaimed “The Rights of the Women of Zion and the Rights of Women of All Nations!” In leading the LDS sisterhood, Wells said she gleaned inspiration from The Revolution,published by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Fast-forward a century to 1972 and passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by the United States Congress. Within a few years, the LDS Church, allied with Phyllis Schlafly, joined a coalition of the Religious Right and embarked on a campaign against ratification. This was a mostly grassroots campaign waged by thousands of men and women who believed they were engaged in a moral war and that the enemy was feminism itself. Conjuring up images of unisex bathrooms, homosexuality, the dangers of women in the military, and the divine calling of stay-at-home motherhood—none of which were directly related to equal rights—the LDS campaign began in Utah at church headquarters but importantly was fought across the country in states that had not yet ratified the proposed amendment. In contrast to the enthusiastic partnership of Mormon women and suffragists of an earlier era, fourteen thousand women, the majority of them obedient, determined LDS foot soldiers responding to a call from their Relief Society leaders, attended the 1977 Utah International Women’s Year Conference in Salt Lake City. Their intent was to commandeer the proceedings if necessary to defeat the pro-ERA agenda of the National Commission on the International Women’s Year. Ironically, the conference organizers were mostly LDS women, who were nevertheless branded by their sisters as feminists. In practice, the church risked much by standing up political action committees around the country and waging a seemingly all-or-nothing campaign. Its strategists, beginning with the dean of the church’s law school at BYU, feared the worst—some going so far as to suggest that the ERA might seriously compromise the church’s legal status and sovereignty of its all-male priesthood. In the wake of such horrors, a take-no-prisoners war of rhetoric and leafleteering raged across the country. In the end, the church exerted a significant, perhaps decisive, impact on the ERA’’s unexpected defeat.
584 pages, Hardcover
First published October 18, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 21, 2018
A look into the twin historical issues of suffrage and the ERA in Utah, and the impact of religion on both.
The book was fascinating, delving deep into issues and events around the ERA, and their tie to Utah women. Much of the uproar, worry, and efforts on either side of the ERA are lost to the generations of women that followed.
The content and premise, and the book's focus of relating Utah women's diametric approach to the two events warrants 4 or 5 stars. Unfortunately, I'm not sure this huge time was ever meant to be compiled into a single book. Many of the chapters read as separate essays, continually repeating some of the information contained in earlier chapters. This made for frustrating reading going from front to back.
The book's topics are important, sometimes tough, but best read in distinct chapters.
The book was fascinating, delving deep into issues and events around the ERA, and their tie to Utah women. Much of the uproar, worry, and efforts on either side of the ERA are lost to the generations of women that followed.
The content and premise, and the book's focus of relating Utah women's diametric approach to the two events warrants 4 or 5 stars. Unfortunately, I'm not sure this huge time was ever meant to be compiled into a single book. Many of the chapters read as separate essays, continually repeating some of the information contained in earlier chapters. This made for frustrating reading going from front to back.
The book's topics are important, sometimes tough, but best read in distinct chapters.
April 15, 2008
It’s been 30 years since the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declared the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution a moral issue. That’s just enough time for a generation to grow up not knowing how divisive times were for Mormon women and how Church leadership and actions contributed to that division. It’s also apparently been enough time for those involved in the conflict to step back and share their thoughts, feelings and papers with historian Bradley.
The ERA question alone would be enough to fill one book, but Pedestals & Podiums also addresses the International Women’s Year conferences held in and around 1977. While there is certainly enough information on each issue to warrant two separate volumes, combining the two together provides both context and continuity to help readers understand the milieu in which Utah women (and, in broader context, all LDS members) began reshaping women’s roles in the 1970s and 80s.
Bradley combines her skills as historian, writer and teacher with her own insights gained as a young mother during the relatively turbulent women’s movement in Utah and describes how she came face-to-face with it. Like many members of the LDS Relief Society, she found herself in Salt Lake City one warm summer weekend when the state held its IWY Conference in 1977.
Bradley identified that day as a “stunning, shocking and stupefying day....I felt as if I had stumbled, then found a precarious new balance standing on a narrow bridge with dangerous drops on either side.” (vii) The conference and its fallout started her thinking about women’s issues and examining her own thoughts about the ERA. Bradley recognized that the conference had a “profound impact” on her life, and in addition to providing the dry facts surrounding the women’s movement, this book describes why the conference and subsequent ERA battle affected her, and many other women, the same way.
As Bradley unwinds the tangled web of events that unfolded between 1972 and 1983, she takes time to review some important foundational information detailed in the early chapters of the book. On a single front-to-back read-through, this makes the book a bit repetitive at times, but for researchers interested in a particular topic, time period or single event described in a chapter or two, the recapitulation of important background themes is convenient and memory-jogging.
This book represents Bradley’s successful effort to balance the stories of the pro- and anti-ERA camps and gives the reader a good set of tools from which to follow her final admonition:
“A careful examination of the ways women have worked for or against equality, particularly their activity for and against the Equal Rights Amendment, suggests that those on both sides thought they were doing what was right for the world and were engaged in what would really matter in the long run, that they were on the right side of a good fight. They believed their choices would be the best for succeeding generations. It remains for us to decide if their vision of the future was well advised.” (448)
Bradley’s thoughtful insights and parsing of arguments help the reader understand why some arguments were quite effective while others failed miserably. She also navigates the waters of history and in-fighting which sometimes strengthened, sometimes divided, various groups involved with the ERA fight and clearly identifies and describes how church involvement muddied the political waters just enough so that it was not always clear whether messages about so-called moral issues were coming from the pulpit or from an over-the-back-fence casual conversation.
The chronological organization of the book’s themes is a sometimes awkward framework for the complex interactions between the main subjects – the ERA fight and the IWY conferences. The linear layout creates a kind of doughnut with the ERA surrounding the story of the IWY conferences, but it also highlights the way both fights were handled by the LDS church, showing similarities and differences between the way the Church leaders worked with members in various regions of the country as leaders learned from previous successes and mistakes. Because the movements were so entwined, however, Bradley’s organization is probably the best way to illustrate the complexity of the subjects at hand.
For readers unfamiliar with the long history of the campaign for equal rights in the United States, Bradley’s summary is a good backgrounder. Beginning with the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women suffrage in 1920, Bradley outlines the societal struggles, growth and pressures which meant that voting rights for women was really more of a beginning than an end in an effort to grant women legal rights.
The arguments which defined Mormon women’s support of and opposition to the ERA as proposed in the early 1970s were similar to those which showed up in the beginning of the national debate over women’s rights. Should women receive special protection under the law which could, for instance, limit exploitive sweatshop labor or should they compete on a level playing field which did not recognize separate spheres for men and women?
The complexity of the national women’s movement was echoed in the LDS reaction to it. As the nation grew and grappled with the overwhelming social changes brought about between 1940 and 1970, so the Salt Lake-based church outgrew its own status of isolationistic refuge. The LDS church responded to the social upheaval of the 1960s by intensifying conservative messages to its members. Bradley carefully outlines and documents how the church eventually would speak out against feminism in general and the Equal Rights Amendment in particular over pulpits, in church magazines and in unsigned editorials in the Church News.
Understood in context, Bradley points out that the LDS leaders’ rhetorical arguments had “cultural, political and social significance as well as profound weight in the fight against the ERA” (82).
After discussing the general church position and outlining how it came to define passage of the ERA as a moral rather than a political battle, Bradley sets forth nine major anti-ERA documents presented by the LDS church and dissects each one, exposing the visceral arguments meant to appeal to generalized fear and emotions.
The rhetoric used by ERA supporters is also examined, though perhaps not as fully. Bradley points out that ERA proponents tended to privilege reason over emotion and therefore were somewhat blindsided by the effectiveness of their opponents’ statements.
Church leaders encouraged women to educate themselves on the topics and participate in the state conferences. There was some lack of clarity as to whether people were being “called” by ecclesiastical authority to attend state conferences or whether they were encouraged to attend on their own. Wards organized busloads of women armed with little information other than directions to vote against all provisions on the conference ballot, further muddying the waters. At the same time, Church leaders encouraged women and men participating to represent themselves as grass-roots “interested parties,” coming together to speak on a topic of importance on their own.
No book discussing the LDS Church and the ERA would be complete without a discussion of Sonia Johnson, her Congressional testimony in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, and the events surrounding her excommunication from the church. Although church leaders insisted that her excommunication had little to do with her opposition to the ERA, actions and other evidence indicated otherwise to many LDS members. Johnson’s excommunication served as a shot across the bow of anyone considering supporting the ERA in opposition to the official church stance on the issue.
Despite the excommunication, Mormons for ERA organized several chapters around the country and worked actively, though unsuccessfully, to get the amendment ratified.
A case study of the Alice Louise Reynolds forum ends the book, reviewing how each of the events discussed earlier affected the women of the forum as well as the existence of the forum itself, once the ERA debate became dangerously controversial. The forum was organized in 1977, in the aftermath of the IWY Conferences. It provided a place for women of all ages, some newly ignited by the fires of political participation, to “make sense of this new world.” (411) One topic of concern for the forum was the church’s involvement in the ERA. Members struggled with dynamics of doubt, faith, agency, and obedience related to the ongoing women’s rights movement. Eventually, as members became more involved in finding ways to support the ERA, the forum was eventually banned from meeting in its founding site – the Alice Louise Reynolds Room on the BYU campus.
“Any history of Mormon feminism during this time period could probably reproduce endless stories of women who struggled with the same issues as the Reynolds Forum. Others during the same period turned more resolutely for companionship and sisterhood to their Relief Societies....Groups like the Reynolds Forum served a dual function. For women who felt alienated and disenchanted with the institutional church, such groups served as a transitional zone, allowing women to voice their concerns and explore them in a supportive atmosphere even as they continued their trajectory of church activity. For others, such groups were a way of maintaining their commitment to the institutional church and of anchoring their loyalty to the gospel principles of justice and equality. The existence of such groups helped mediate political and spiritual realities in a shared context with other Mormon women.” (434-435)
The ERA question alone would be enough to fill one book, but Pedestals & Podiums also addresses the International Women’s Year conferences held in and around 1977. While there is certainly enough information on each issue to warrant two separate volumes, combining the two together provides both context and continuity to help readers understand the milieu in which Utah women (and, in broader context, all LDS members) began reshaping women’s roles in the 1970s and 80s.
Bradley combines her skills as historian, writer and teacher with her own insights gained as a young mother during the relatively turbulent women’s movement in Utah and describes how she came face-to-face with it. Like many members of the LDS Relief Society, she found herself in Salt Lake City one warm summer weekend when the state held its IWY Conference in 1977.
Bradley identified that day as a “stunning, shocking and stupefying day....I felt as if I had stumbled, then found a precarious new balance standing on a narrow bridge with dangerous drops on either side.” (vii) The conference and its fallout started her thinking about women’s issues and examining her own thoughts about the ERA. Bradley recognized that the conference had a “profound impact” on her life, and in addition to providing the dry facts surrounding the women’s movement, this book describes why the conference and subsequent ERA battle affected her, and many other women, the same way.
As Bradley unwinds the tangled web of events that unfolded between 1972 and 1983, she takes time to review some important foundational information detailed in the early chapters of the book. On a single front-to-back read-through, this makes the book a bit repetitive at times, but for researchers interested in a particular topic, time period or single event described in a chapter or two, the recapitulation of important background themes is convenient and memory-jogging.
This book represents Bradley’s successful effort to balance the stories of the pro- and anti-ERA camps and gives the reader a good set of tools from which to follow her final admonition:
“A careful examination of the ways women have worked for or against equality, particularly their activity for and against the Equal Rights Amendment, suggests that those on both sides thought they were doing what was right for the world and were engaged in what would really matter in the long run, that they were on the right side of a good fight. They believed their choices would be the best for succeeding generations. It remains for us to decide if their vision of the future was well advised.” (448)
Bradley’s thoughtful insights and parsing of arguments help the reader understand why some arguments were quite effective while others failed miserably. She also navigates the waters of history and in-fighting which sometimes strengthened, sometimes divided, various groups involved with the ERA fight and clearly identifies and describes how church involvement muddied the political waters just enough so that it was not always clear whether messages about so-called moral issues were coming from the pulpit or from an over-the-back-fence casual conversation.
The chronological organization of the book’s themes is a sometimes awkward framework for the complex interactions between the main subjects – the ERA fight and the IWY conferences. The linear layout creates a kind of doughnut with the ERA surrounding the story of the IWY conferences, but it also highlights the way both fights were handled by the LDS church, showing similarities and differences between the way the Church leaders worked with members in various regions of the country as leaders learned from previous successes and mistakes. Because the movements were so entwined, however, Bradley’s organization is probably the best way to illustrate the complexity of the subjects at hand.
For readers unfamiliar with the long history of the campaign for equal rights in the United States, Bradley’s summary is a good backgrounder. Beginning with the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women suffrage in 1920, Bradley outlines the societal struggles, growth and pressures which meant that voting rights for women was really more of a beginning than an end in an effort to grant women legal rights.
The arguments which defined Mormon women’s support of and opposition to the ERA as proposed in the early 1970s were similar to those which showed up in the beginning of the national debate over women’s rights. Should women receive special protection under the law which could, for instance, limit exploitive sweatshop labor or should they compete on a level playing field which did not recognize separate spheres for men and women?
The complexity of the national women’s movement was echoed in the LDS reaction to it. As the nation grew and grappled with the overwhelming social changes brought about between 1940 and 1970, so the Salt Lake-based church outgrew its own status of isolationistic refuge. The LDS church responded to the social upheaval of the 1960s by intensifying conservative messages to its members. Bradley carefully outlines and documents how the church eventually would speak out against feminism in general and the Equal Rights Amendment in particular over pulpits, in church magazines and in unsigned editorials in the Church News.
Understood in context, Bradley points out that the LDS leaders’ rhetorical arguments had “cultural, political and social significance as well as profound weight in the fight against the ERA” (82).
After discussing the general church position and outlining how it came to define passage of the ERA as a moral rather than a political battle, Bradley sets forth nine major anti-ERA documents presented by the LDS church and dissects each one, exposing the visceral arguments meant to appeal to generalized fear and emotions.
The rhetoric used by ERA supporters is also examined, though perhaps not as fully. Bradley points out that ERA proponents tended to privilege reason over emotion and therefore were somewhat blindsided by the effectiveness of their opponents’ statements.
Church leaders encouraged women to educate themselves on the topics and participate in the state conferences. There was some lack of clarity as to whether people were being “called” by ecclesiastical authority to attend state conferences or whether they were encouraged to attend on their own. Wards organized busloads of women armed with little information other than directions to vote against all provisions on the conference ballot, further muddying the waters. At the same time, Church leaders encouraged women and men participating to represent themselves as grass-roots “interested parties,” coming together to speak on a topic of importance on their own.
No book discussing the LDS Church and the ERA would be complete without a discussion of Sonia Johnson, her Congressional testimony in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, and the events surrounding her excommunication from the church. Although church leaders insisted that her excommunication had little to do with her opposition to the ERA, actions and other evidence indicated otherwise to many LDS members. Johnson’s excommunication served as a shot across the bow of anyone considering supporting the ERA in opposition to the official church stance on the issue.
Despite the excommunication, Mormons for ERA organized several chapters around the country and worked actively, though unsuccessfully, to get the amendment ratified.
A case study of the Alice Louise Reynolds forum ends the book, reviewing how each of the events discussed earlier affected the women of the forum as well as the existence of the forum itself, once the ERA debate became dangerously controversial. The forum was organized in 1977, in the aftermath of the IWY Conferences. It provided a place for women of all ages, some newly ignited by the fires of political participation, to “make sense of this new world.” (411) One topic of concern for the forum was the church’s involvement in the ERA. Members struggled with dynamics of doubt, faith, agency, and obedience related to the ongoing women’s rights movement. Eventually, as members became more involved in finding ways to support the ERA, the forum was eventually banned from meeting in its founding site – the Alice Louise Reynolds Room on the BYU campus.
“Any history of Mormon feminism during this time period could probably reproduce endless stories of women who struggled with the same issues as the Reynolds Forum. Others during the same period turned more resolutely for companionship and sisterhood to their Relief Societies....Groups like the Reynolds Forum served a dual function. For women who felt alienated and disenchanted with the institutional church, such groups served as a transitional zone, allowing women to voice their concerns and explore them in a supportive atmosphere even as they continued their trajectory of church activity. For others, such groups were a way of maintaining their commitment to the institutional church and of anchoring their loyalty to the gospel principles of justice and equality. The existence of such groups helped mediate political and spiritual realities in a shared context with other Mormon women.” (434-435)
November 11, 2022
The thing that really struck me about the chapters about the 19th century Mormon activists was at how differently pro/anti ERA forces viewed their contributions and used their examples.
It seems, that the 19th century Mormon activists were primarily protectionist-type feminists. They fought for protective legislation for women and children rather than equality. And they justified their (unfeminine) activism by calling on their duty as the protectors-of-home-and-thus-morality and then by focusing on female spheres of influence. This protectionist-female focus is the aspect of their activism that anti-ERA forces chose to empathize with and to emphasize as an historical example of Mormon’s pro-woman stance. pg 106.
However, it is also clear the 19th century Mormon activists were not your average modest Christian ladies. They were in fact a bunch of radical hell-raising Mormon freaks (in the loveliest sense of the word). They were anything but mainstream, certainly not submissive, weak, controlled by men, or reticent to express their opinions. This radical aspect of our foremothers was what the pro-ERA forces chose to empathize with.
It was also very interesting to me that the emphasis on family, and protecting the family has not always a prominent teaching in the church. Pg 92. I would’ve never thunk.
I also thought the information about how it’s an established pattern in churches (not just ours) that as the church goes from being a new sect to a mainstream religion, women lose power. Pg. 93 Interesting.
It was also very interesting to me that it seemed, in some ways, that by opposing the ERA, the church really had to amp up its pro-woman rhetoric. In response to media questions about what roles beyond wife and mother were appropriate for women, the church for the first time started to emphasize the role of “free agency”. Pg 105 (I don’t know that the rhetoric had a lot of real world effect. But I like to hope that it will as we kids who grew up on the stuff start to get into positions where we can institutionalized it) (One can hope).
The history of the priesthood correlation was interesting. I’d known that it happened but was very fuzzy on the details. I really identified with this quote “(women were) . . . not targeted but wounded in the effort to streamline . . .” Pg 112 Speaks volumes about my life, I’d say.
I enjoyed the irony that the church’s anti-ERA efforts politicized and mobilized all kinds of women who would have otherwise been uninvolved.
The chapter on Utah’s International Women’s Year Conference, was to my mind by far the most disturbing. If you don’t make it through the whole book, I would recommend this skimming chapter 6 and reading chapter 7 pretty thoroughly at least. In fact I could spend an hour just writing about this chapter, it honestly scared the bejeebers out of me.The whole walky-talky thing was just sinister.
I had no idea, NONE that the ERA was so close to being ratified, and I had even less idea how instrumental the church was in its defeat. I had no idea that Mormons mobilized they way they did, that it was done through official church channels. Now I really do understand the resentment the last generation of Mormon feminists feel. It was not a good period in our history.
I also thought the all or nothing response to feminists and the ERA was fascinating. I wonder about the history of this sort of attitude in the church. Interesting that “mainstream” Mormons would tell feminist Mormons “you are not a Mormon, you don’t represent us.” Pg 337. It seems to me this is a pretty common attitude still, the whole “how can you be Mormon and a Democrat?” thing . Has the church always been this way, or did it somehow evolve with the whole ERA debacle?
I also thought it was interesting that Mormon men intentionally hid their involvement in anti-ERA efforts (pg 346), letting the Mormon women look to be at the forefront. And that “Mormons” intentionally masked their own Mormon affiliations, mobilizing as “citizens”.
And the whole Sonia Johnson thing probably deserves a post of its own too. How tragic.
And the Reynold Forum women and their faithful questioning response, the complete lack of response from the offical channels they were counseled to take andtheir subsequent expulsion from the BYU Campus. Yup.
It seems, that the 19th century Mormon activists were primarily protectionist-type feminists. They fought for protective legislation for women and children rather than equality. And they justified their (unfeminine) activism by calling on their duty as the protectors-of-home-and-thus-morality and then by focusing on female spheres of influence. This protectionist-female focus is the aspect of their activism that anti-ERA forces chose to empathize with and to emphasize as an historical example of Mormon’s pro-woman stance. pg 106.
However, it is also clear the 19th century Mormon activists were not your average modest Christian ladies. They were in fact a bunch of radical hell-raising Mormon freaks (in the loveliest sense of the word). They were anything but mainstream, certainly not submissive, weak, controlled by men, or reticent to express their opinions. This radical aspect of our foremothers was what the pro-ERA forces chose to empathize with.
It was also very interesting to me that the emphasis on family, and protecting the family has not always a prominent teaching in the church. Pg 92. I would’ve never thunk.
I also thought the information about how it’s an established pattern in churches (not just ours) that as the church goes from being a new sect to a mainstream religion, women lose power. Pg. 93 Interesting.
It was also very interesting to me that it seemed, in some ways, that by opposing the ERA, the church really had to amp up its pro-woman rhetoric. In response to media questions about what roles beyond wife and mother were appropriate for women, the church for the first time started to emphasize the role of “free agency”. Pg 105 (I don’t know that the rhetoric had a lot of real world effect. But I like to hope that it will as we kids who grew up on the stuff start to get into positions where we can institutionalized it) (One can hope).
The history of the priesthood correlation was interesting. I’d known that it happened but was very fuzzy on the details. I really identified with this quote “(women were) . . . not targeted but wounded in the effort to streamline . . .” Pg 112 Speaks volumes about my life, I’d say.
I enjoyed the irony that the church’s anti-ERA efforts politicized and mobilized all kinds of women who would have otherwise been uninvolved.
The chapter on Utah’s International Women’s Year Conference, was to my mind by far the most disturbing. If you don’t make it through the whole book, I would recommend this skimming chapter 6 and reading chapter 7 pretty thoroughly at least. In fact I could spend an hour just writing about this chapter, it honestly scared the bejeebers out of me.The whole walky-talky thing was just sinister.
I had no idea, NONE that the ERA was so close to being ratified, and I had even less idea how instrumental the church was in its defeat. I had no idea that Mormons mobilized they way they did, that it was done through official church channels. Now I really do understand the resentment the last generation of Mormon feminists feel. It was not a good period in our history.
I also thought the all or nothing response to feminists and the ERA was fascinating. I wonder about the history of this sort of attitude in the church. Interesting that “mainstream” Mormons would tell feminist Mormons “you are not a Mormon, you don’t represent us.” Pg 337. It seems to me this is a pretty common attitude still, the whole “how can you be Mormon and a Democrat?” thing . Has the church always been this way, or did it somehow evolve with the whole ERA debacle?
I also thought it was interesting that Mormon men intentionally hid their involvement in anti-ERA efforts (pg 346), letting the Mormon women look to be at the forefront. And that “Mormons” intentionally masked their own Mormon affiliations, mobilizing as “citizens”.
And the whole Sonia Johnson thing probably deserves a post of its own too. How tragic.
And the Reynold Forum women and their faithful questioning response, the complete lack of response from the offical channels they were counseled to take andtheir subsequent expulsion from the BYU Campus. Yup.
Want to Read
November 15, 2011A must read for anyone who wants to understand the psychology behind the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment.
October 1, 2015
Good info--would be good as a reference, but it was so dense that it was hard to plow through.
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