While, at the behest of non-member friends, I have been working on a related piece myself, I cannot claim authorship of the following entry. Thank you to Patrick Mason for a well-written
article (published in June of this year) that I completely concur with.
~~~
""By proving contraries,” Joseph Smith once declared, “truth is made
manifest.” For many, the very phrase “Mormon feminism” is itself a
“contrary.” If so, then perhaps Mormon feminism is precisely the kind
of place we should look for truth.
"First,
some necessary qualifiers. Women hold positions of significant
leadership in every LDS congregation, but they do not hold (nor have
they ever held) priesthood office in the Church. By definition, women
are excluded from the Church’s key decision-making bodies, from ward
bishoprics to the First Presidency. Women do participate in governing
councils on every level, but always under the leadership of men. How
much their voices are acknowledged, furthermore, is largely determined
by how much space and influence they are granted by their male
priesthood leaders. All-male priesthood quorums are the locations of
power and authority; women’s and children’s organizations are
“auxiliaries.”
"Reflecting on these very real structural
challenges, one of my non-LDS feminist students has repeatedly asked,
“Why don’t Mormon women go on strike?” There are probably as many
different answers to that question as there are women who choose to
remain active in the LDS Church. Mormon women stay for social reasons,
spiritual reasons, cultural reasons—all the reasons why anyone gets or
stays involved with any religion.
"For many (not all) women, part
of what attracts them to and keeps them within Mormonism is the
distinctive brand of feminism deep within the core of the tradition.
Although this feminism is fleshed out in relationships, conversations,
and movements, it originates in a philosophy that seeks out those
elements of the tradition that promote the empowerment of women and the
equality of the sexes.
"Here I will only consider some of the
theological foundations of Mormon feminism rather than the lived
experience of Mormon women and feminists. Without wanting to reduce
Mormon feminism to ideas—and certainly not presuming to speak for all
Mormon women or all Mormon feminists (which includes men)—I want to
sketch out four ways in which I see Mormonism giving life to feminism,
and feminism giving life to Mormonism. Indeed, at some points it can be
difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
"
First,
Mormonism redeems Eve. It does so by proclaiming that there isn’t all
that much that she needs to be redeemed from. Hers was a “fortunate
fall,” a conscious decision that put the wheels of God’s plan of
salvation in motion. In the Mormon Eden narrative, Eve is not tricked
by Satan so much as she rationally weighs the decision before her, and
she chooses the path of knowledge of good and evil with its attendant
sin and sorrow, joy and salvation. Mormon scripture and prophets have
unequivocally declared that Eve made the correct choice—the one that God
wanted her to make—and then got Adam to do the same.
"But what to
do with God’s curse on Eve: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire
shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee” (Genesis 3:16). A
feminist reading of this passage reveals God’s decree to be
descriptive, not normative—the world as it would be, not necessarily how
it should be. In a fallen world, the daughters of Eve would be cursed
with the slings and arrows of childbirth and motherhood; they would
largely be reliant upon men for their security and wellbeing (and thus
would have desire toward him); and those fallen men would rule over
them, often in a patriarchal and abusive manner. The suffering of women
would largely come at the hands of men–as it turns out, Eve’s curse was
actually Adam’s curse all along.
"
Second, Mormonism deifies women
as women. I’m not talking about the Victorian pedestal that Mormon men
have often placed Mormon women on—a pedestal that in the end resembles
more of a prison. Mormons believe in a Heavenly Mother who reigns in
heaven side-by-side with Heavenly Father (God). Furthermore, Mormonism
proclaims that faithful women will,
in the words of early Mormon feminist and Relief Society
Presidentess Eliza R. Snow, be “crowned in the presence of God and the lamb” to become “Queens” and “Priestesses.”
"To
be sure, the doctrine of a Heavenly Mother, though repeatedly affirmed
throughout the history of the Church, is largely undeveloped, and LDS
prophets have
publicly taught that Mormons should not pray to her. Nevertheless, as demonstrated in a recent
BYU Studies article,
“leaders and influential Latter-day Saints have explored her roles as a
fully divine being, a creator of worlds with the Father, a coframer of
the plan of salvation, and a concerned and involved parent of her
children on earth.” The doctrine of the deification of women is also a
central core of LDS teaching and temple ritual. If being a woman is a
core part of identity, as most strands of feminism insist, then
Mormonism is distinctive if not singular in asserting that women do not
have to give up that part of themselves when they go to heaven.
"
Third,
modern Mormonism is responsive to feminism. Though it takes only a few
strokes of the keyboard to uncover countless affirmations of Mormon
patriarchy, any careful observer would notice that the discourse has
changed significantly in recent decades, and continues to evolve. Take
for example the language about gender roles in the home. The LDS
Church’s semi-canonical
The Family: A Proclamation to the World states,
By
divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and
righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and
protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for
the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities,
fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.
"This
is the very definition of paradox: fathers preside, but fathers and
mothers are equal partners. Similar language is found in the most
recent issue of the
Ensign, the Church’s official monthly magazine for adults:
The
husband’s patriarchal duty as one who presides in the home is not to
rule over others but to ensure that the marriage and the family prosper.
. . . The husband is accountable for growth and happiness in the
marriage, but this accountability does not give him authority over his
wife. Both are in charge of the marriage.
"Where
there may be some degree of message confusion here, on a deeper level I
see “proving contraries” in operation. What seems to have emerged in
contemporary Mormonism is a paradoxical ethic of egalitarian
complementarity. The Church stands firm on the notion of difference
rather than radical sameness when it comes to the sexes, and often
relies on traditional patriarchal language to express distinctive gender
roles. At the same time, it insists on an ultimate and functional
equality, particularly within a marriage. Then again, complementarity
and difference trumps egalitarianism in the ecclesiastical structures of
the church. Thus, the paradox.
"
Finally, insofar as Mormonism
offers a substantive critique of certain forms of secular feminism, it
does so by questioning the foundational assumption of the radical
autonomy of the individual. This is not so much a beef with feminism as
it is with certain fruits of the secular Enlightenment. Mormonism is
hardly antagonistic to the individual, but it also insists that the self
is not the arbiter of all that is true and good. Community matters,
children matter, God matters.
"In sum, Mormon feminism manifests
the redemption of Eve and Adam (and all their sons and daughters),
proclaims the literal deification of women, wrestles with the paradox of
equality in difference, and insists on rooting the self in the bonds of
human community and communion with God. And that, at least in part, is
why Mormon feminism—the seeming “contrary”—is true."
