Incoming Study: Women & Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism

I’ve made no secret of the fact that, in my earliest days of studying the church as a teenager, I was something of an anti-Mormon. I read the content on all kinds of Web sites that were critical of the church. Books that I read in those early years included Is the Mormon My Brother? (1997) and The Forgotten Trinity (1998) by James White, Kingdom of the Cults (not sure which edition) by Walter Martin, Blood on the Doorposts (1994) and Lucifer Dethroned (1993) by the Schnoebelens, Questions to Ask Your Mormon Friend (1994) by Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson,Answering Mormons’ Questions (1991) by Bill McKeever, andWhat You Need to Know About Mormons (1992) by Ed Decker. Many of these were books passed onto me or given to me by friends who knew that I was interested in Mormonism.
As my journey went on and I broke out of my narrow-minded anti-Mormon mindset, I began to explore LDS thought and history more freely. It was around that time, somewhere between my junior and my senior year of high school, that I ordered Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism edited by Maxine Hanks (1992). I knew enough of the church’s stance on women to know that I was not very fond of it, and W&A seemed to be the book that offered the most exhaustive exploration of the issue. W&A was also one of the first books I ever read that explored feminist issues in religion. (Other early contenders in that department were When Women Were Priests by Karen Jo Torjesen [1995] and Essays on Women in Earliest Christianity Vol. I edited by Carroll D. Osburn [1993].)
I found Women & Authority to be deeply thought-provoking and profoundly moving. While I remember not agreeing with everything that its authors were advocating, the book raised a number of very good questions for me on the status of women and Mormonism. At the time I was somewhat intimidated by Mormon apologists and felt that they were very capable individuals when it came to answering difficult questions concerning their faith, but I was stunned by the obviously terrible quality of the apologetics on this issue. They never went much deeper than “other Christians suck at this, too,” “women can have the priesthood when men can have babies,” and “Mormon women don’t want the priesthood, so it doesn’t really matter.” In any case, I think that W&A had more staying power for my outlook on Mormonism than all of the counter-cult books I listed put together.
Yesterday, Lula announced over at fMh that they will be doing a series discussing Women & Authority at the pace of one chapter a week. I think I will join in by posting my own weekly comments and reflections here in addition to contributing to the discussion over there. It will be fun to re-visit the book eleven years later with the insight of all of the other things I have learned about women and Mormonism in the time that has transpired since.
If you want to follow along, you’ll be happy to know that Signature Books has placed the text online in its entirety, so it won’t cost you a dime or even a trip to the library.
Though I think it’s a book well worth adding to your paper collection.

Comments

Incoming Study: Women & Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism— 8 Comments

  1. Will this be a revisiting of Margaret Toscano territory? Does Mormon feminism really need to equate to demonstrative sedition, or are the good sisters now finding a more spiritually organic way to evolve their flexibilities? I agree with you that the “other Christians suck at this, too” argument is obscenely paltry. But as a convert, one of my attractions to the church was that Mormonism isn’t one of those “pick-and-choose-your-beliefs-à-la-carte” religions. Its doctrines can’t be reversed with protests, petitions and votes. I know, Jack, I’m showing my ignorance here as to what the modern LDS feminist movement is all about, but when I think of it, I think of Ms. Toscano, Sonia Johnson, and their orchestra. I’ll tell you what, though: I’ll follow the fMh series, and part of me hopes my assumptions are corrected. I’m opinionated, but I’m pliable to truth-conducive reasoning.
  2. But as a convert, one of my attractions to the church was that Mormonism isn’t one of those “pick-and-choose-your-beliefs-à-la-carte” religions.
    Every religion is a “pick-and-choose-your-beliefs-à-la-carte” religion. Either you pick your beliefs yourself, or you delegate the job to someone else.
  4. How is that grenade-tossing? It’s the truth. Everyone decides what they do or do not believe. It’s not even a normative statement: it’s the way it is. Even if I decide “I believe whatever Rob Perkins tells me,” I’m still the one who decided to delegate, and as an autonomous human being I still can at any moment decide whether or not to make exceptions or to stop delegating. I’m the only one in control of what I believe or not.
    If Bridget says “if you are in my religion, you do not get to pick and choose; you have to believe all of the precepts I teach and nothing more,” that’s a self-serving statement from a self-interested power structure. I only believe Bridget’s statement (that I have to delegate my belief-decision-making to her) if I have already decided to delegate all of my belief-decision-making to her. Otherwise, I’m perfectly free to believe every single thing she says except the stuff about how I have to believe everything she says. Why not? That’s not even inconsistent: it’s just being an autonomous moral agent and exercising my agency.
    And it’s not grenade-tossing because it is critically important when discussing authoritarian religious power structures like the Mormon Church. The Church’s leaders may very well say that you have to follow them all-or-nothing, but unless you are operating on an a priori determination that everything they say is right–and you have no reason to other than their assertion that you should–then you have no reason to assume that that one particular statement, and thus all of their particular statement, is binding.
  5. OK, we’re focusing too much on a perhaps ill-worded phrase.
    My point is, as I see it, the way the LDS Church emphatically presents itself, either all the doctrines are from God or they are not. Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, modern revelation, the priesthood authority, the temple covenants, etc., are interwoven. Debunk any one of these, and the whole structure is suspect. So then, if you are a faithful member, and all these things ARE from God, what do you hope to gain from protesting “women and the priesthood”(besides the demonstrative malcontentment? Are we granted amendment privileges to say, “Well, yes, he is a living prophet and I agree with most of the things he says, but not this?” I guess some believe that.
    I know I keep bringing her up, but when Ms. Toscano appeared on that PBS documentary and said, on the one hand, “The Church leaders were wrong, so I did what I wanted to,” and on the other, “They tore me from my church,” I had a problem with the logic. I guess that’s where my “à-la-carte” analogy came to mind.
    That said, please don’t discount my admission that I don’t know all the arguments of the Mormon feminist movement, and that I will follow fMh’s series of the book with all its accompanied commentary.
  6. My point is, as I see it, the way the LDS Church emphatically presents itself,
    “The Church” is a legal fiction. It can’t “present itself.” People present the Church in a particular way. But that’s me nitpicking, ebcause I realize that people use “the Church” as a shorthand for “the Church’s leadership and the people who are internally authorized by the Church’s rules to say things about the Church,” even though I think that it’s a dangerous shorthand, because calling something x inevitably leads to thinking of that thing as x.
    either all the doctrines are from God or they are not. Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, modern revelation, the priesthood authority, the temple covenants, etc., are interwoven. Debunk any one of these, and the whole structure is suspect.
    Sure, “the Church” presents itself this way, but it is the kind of presentation that is obviously self-serving: “Accept on the basis my authority that you should accept my authority. And you have to accept all of it or none of it” Setting aside that this is the kind of dangerous black-and-white statement that is used as a tool to control the way you think, it’s also flatly untrue: the different parts are not inseparably interwoven just because “the Church” says they are. “The Church” has a perverse incentive to tell you it’s all-or-nothing.
    So then, if you are a faithful member, and all these things ARE from God, what do you hope to gain from protesting “women and the priesthood”(besides the demonstrative malcontentment? Are we granted amendment privileges to say, “Well, yes, he is a living prophet and I agree with most of the things he says, but not this?” I guess some believe that.
    You can be a faithful member who doesn’t drink the kool-aid. You can believe in the doctrinal truth of Mormonism and even the restoration while still believing that the Church’s leadership is made up of fallible human leaders who for the most part are doing the best they can to manage the restored Church as it has been handed to them. But that they might be wrong about a lot of things, and that doesn’t make the whole house of cards fall down.
    I mean, that’s the way a lot of non-Mormon church-based Chritianity sees itself: JEsus left the Church in the hands of humans, and humans make all kinds of mistakes, but nevertheless it’s still God’s Church: it’s still the Church Jesus left to the apostles, to prayerfully lead to the best of their ability. And it looks for all the world like God (and/or Jesus) knew what he was doing when he did that. Warts and all.
    So yeah, I’m not surprised that people embeded in positions of authority in the Church’s power structure might try to claim that it’s all or nothing. They have every incentive to do so. But that doesn’t mean they are right when they say that. And I’m also not surprised if they say things like “So then, if you are a faithful member, and all these things ARE from God, what do you hope to gain from protesting ‘women and the priesthood?’” Because it is in the interest of the status quo to say things like that. Because if people believe it, then the status quo does not change.
    But that doesn’t mean that a faithful member has to believe them. Does faithful member mean “follows the Church leadership unquestioningly?” Well, maybe the Church leadership says that, but again, they sort of have a perverse incentive. so what if they are wrong? “But they said they are never wrong!” Exactly my point.
  7. David T. ~ I would say that LDS feminists broadly fall into three camps: (1) Those who think the church’s policies on women are wrong and that women should have the option of being ordained to the priesthood with all that entails; (2) Those who think that the basic idea of male-only priesthood is from God, but the status of women in the church could be improved substantially without giving them the priesthood; (3) Those who think most of the official policies effecting women are from God, but still seek to combat cultural misogyny and implement empowering teachings within the church’s current framework. There are also people who believe that women are meant to hold priestesshood, but the practical applications for that take on all sorts of meanings so that people who think that can belong to any of those three camps.
    I would say that most of the essays in W&A come from women and men who fall into camps 1 or 2. How you feel about that is sort of up to you. If you believe that prophets are functionally infallible at leading the church and that their mode of receiving revelation is essentially a batphone to God, then I guess you would have a hard time seeing how they could be wrong about this.
    But the “batphone to God” model is very hard to reconcile with all of the things LDS leaders have historically gotten wrong.
  8. I’m actually reading this right now. Thanks for letting me know about FMH’s reading and discussion. I’d like to join in too.
Categories:

Related Post:



0 коментарі:

Post a Comment

ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity