W&A: Notes on Chapter 6
[Hanks, Maxine, ed. Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism. Salt Lake City, Ut.: Signature Books, 1992.]
Let’s get caught up today with Chapter 6, “Mormon Women as ‘Natural’ Seers: An Enduring Legacy” by Ian G. Barber.
“And the king said that a seer is greater than a prophet. And Ammon said that a seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and a gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God, which no man can; yet a man may have great power given him from God.” ~ Mosiah 8:15-16
Barber’s essay covers the following points:
- Women commonly functioned as seers in the nineteenth century and in the early LDS church, often through use of a peep stone. These seers were charismatic and their gifts came through non-hierarchical channels.
- The gift of seeing was often found in those who were denied formal access to power by the culture of the nineteenth century. See Alan Taylor, “A black skin, female gender, and adolescent age were all marks of powerlessness in the early Republic and one or some combination of the three often characterized seers.” (175)
- LDS leaders came to see these unofficial seers as challengers to their authority and began to discourage their flocks from giving heed to such figures. I had to chuckle at the irony of this situation, given that Protestants more or less reject Joseph Smith for the exact same reason: he challenged our authority with non-hierarchical revelation that he received (in part) through a peep stone and did not bring his message to the Christian world through the proper channels.
- In spite of this, the idea of women as natural seers dovetails quite nicely with the common LDS wisdom that women are more spiritual than men and men need priesthood to compensate for their lack of spirituality. If Mormons really wish to maintain that gender paradigm, they should encourage the tradition of women as natural seers.
Throughout this chapter, I kept on thinking: sure, lots of nineteenth century women claimed to see visions in rocks. But how many were actually doing so, and how many were the nineteenth century equivalent of teenagers screwing around with Ouija boards and “Bloody Mary” slumber party rituals? I certainly believe that women can be seers, and I believe that they should seek to develop these gifts to help compensate for the limited role that the LDS church offers them. Problem is, so long as women’s organizations are subordinated to the male LDS hierarchy, the potential scope and authority of their visions is going to be on a leash.
Next week will be a treat with Chapter 7: “Non-Hierarchical Revelation” by one of my favorite Mormon historians, Todd Compton. This also represents the last week of 2006-2007 fMh summaries as the chapter discussions didn’t pick up again after that.
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W&A: Notes on Chapter 6 — 2 Comments
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Can you hope to reference “Bloody Mary” and not get this link?
“bring his message to the Christian world through the proper channels.”
As I understand it, there is no proper channel for the rest of the Christian world to get a new authoritative message from God. With the Catholic Council of Trent, which Protestants almost tenaciously hold to, the Catholic and Protestant diety is now impotent to give any thing new, to authoritatively clarify anything, or to restore anything. Now that may not matter if one assumes that nothing has been lost, and that cultural understandings of things taught in earlier scripture hasn’t changed. The first assumption depends more on faith. Anyone who believes the second assumption is true ought not be allowed on a computer…