Posted by Lynnette
Like every other human being on the planet, there are things in my life that I would consider trials. Mental health wackiness. Being single in a married church. Financial insecurity, and wondering whether I’ll ever get a job.
However, the fact that my perspective on the church is informed by feminism is not one of them. And I find myself bristling when concern with feminist issues is placed in that category, as if it were an affliction to be borne. As if some people have to struggle with illness or unemployment, and others come down with a bad case of feminism.
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Posted by ZD
Exponent II, we’re happy to see, is resuming publication this year. And they’re looking for submissions. So if you’ve been wanting to write something that has to do with the experience of Mormon women, here’s your chance:
http://the-exponent.com/2010/01/22/announcement-exponent-ii-submissions-request/
Posted by Seraphine
So, our blog is again on the quiet side (and I know that I’m not going to be putting up any more posts until I’m done with first semester grades and comments). Thus, I’m going to direct you all to the Niblets nominations thread over at Mormon Matters. You can look back through all the posts made in 2009 at your favorite blogs in the bloggernacle and nominate posts/bloggers/etc. that you loved. Here’s the link to the nomination thread:
Niblets nominations
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Posted by Seraphine
Since a lot of the discussion on my previous post focused on reasons singles feel alienated at church (as well as things that the church and members can do to make singles feel a bit less alienated), I thought I’d put up my first post directly on that topic–how to make singles feel more welcome in family wards.
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Posted by Seraphine
I was going to do my law of chastity post next, but my reflections on that topic haven’t quite coalesced, so I’m going to go off in a slightly different direction and come back to that topic at a later date.
I have never been married, so this post is not about being married. Instead, it’s about the fun and excitement you experience when most everyone around you (including younger siblings) gets married and you don’t. I want to start with a couple of personal stories which are difficult for me to tell, but I’m hoping they’ll prompt others to share their own stories. And I’m hoping they’ll help illustrate how difficult it can be to be single in the Mormon church. Read more…
Posted by Lynnette
The LDS church is often portrayed (and not without reason) as a highly authoritarian institution. When the prophet speaks, you’re expected to listen. But every Latter-day Saint knows that this comes with a significant caveat. If you’re skeptical about something you hear, you can skip all intermediaries and go directly to God for your own answer. Church directives come with a built-in loophole, and even with some official acknowledgment that general principles might not apply to everyone–for example, the oft-quoted comment from a talk by Boyd K. Packer that “we’d like not to take care of the exception first. We will take care of the rule first, and then we will see to the exceptions,” (which acknowledges the existence of exceptions), or the comment in the Proclamation on the Family that “other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation.” If you’re struggling with some practice or doctrine, you don’t have to simply swallow it; you’re expected to individually work it out with God. Read more…
Posted by Seraphine
Introductory note #1: I’ve changed the title of my series and taken out the word “woman.” While I’ll still be speaking from my personal experience as a woman in the church, I’m really hoping that single men will comment and share their experiences as well.
Introductory note #2: This is not my post on the law of chastity itself. Instead, this is a post on trying to figure out how to deal with your sexuality when you’ve made a commitment to live the law of chastity. So, I don’t want the comments on this post to end up in a debate on the merits of the law of chastity (I’ll give you a chance to have this discussion at a later date). Instead, I want to discuss a more complicated (and to me, pertinent) problem: how do you deal with your sexuality when you’re committed to living this law, especially when there’s no clear end in sight?
I have a healthy attitude about my sexuality, but I don’t have a healthy relationship with it. Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
On the heavenly side, it’s the “eternal power and authority of God” whereby Creation itself was undertaken; on the earthly side, it’s the “authority to . . . act in [God’s] name.”
All sorts of grandiose claims have flown quite naturally from the claim that priesthood is the power of God; after all, if priesthood holders’ blessings aren’t any more effective than the prayer of the faithful non-priest, what then does priesthood mean? But the closeness of the priesthood bearer’s connection to heaven in relation to his non-priestly counterpart can’t easily be assessed using earthly yardsticks, as God and his mercurial habits don’t submit well to the scholar’s probe, so I’ll bracket metaphysical questions and confine my remarks here to the sociological manifestations of priesthood. (I might note, however, that the views of those who are convinced worthy women have just as much access to the divine as priesthood-holding men fit the thesis I expound below beautifully. What they don’t fit is the above definition.) Read more…
Posted by Lynnette
Elaine Dalton’s recent comments about the meaning of pink in a recent edition of the Church News (currently being discussed on BCC), express a concern that girls will want to be like boys. “We want them to understand that they are soft, they are unique, they are feminine and that they don’t have to be like the boys,” says President Dalton. This is hardly a sentiment unique to her; one can find a number of General Conference talks which warn against the temptation for women to set aside their femininity and be like men. Femininity, it seems, is under siege. Read more…
Posted by Seraphine
I’ve been meaning to make a series of posts on being a 30-something single woman in the church, especially as regards the topics of dating, relationships, and sexuality. This past week I read Elna Baker’s The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, and it (along with the conversation prompted by Kevin Barney’s response to the book) has finally jumpstarted me into making my first post (in what will be a series) on these subjects. This post isn’t going to be a review of the book–if you want, e-mail me, and I can send you my review–but instead, reflections about my own experience prompted by the book.
Let me also preface my comments by saying my experiences are not representative of the essence of Mormon female singledom Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
In the past we’ve discussed the problem of women’s exaltation and role in the next life generally. Let’s look now at the complementary problem: women’s absence from the pre-mortal existence.
Cosmogonies around the world often make a connection between creation and procreation: female and male elements unite to engender aspects of the known universe. In striking contrast, Mormonism teaches not just that a single male God called the cosmos into existence, but that a committee of men, operating independently of any women, created the universe in concert. Women, rather than being participants in that creation, are simply counted amont the products of men’s creation. Read more…
Posted by Seraphine
This year Christmas hasn’t really felt like Christmas. Even with my choir concerts, full of jubilant carols and beautifully done Messiah movements, I’ve had a difficult time getting into the spirit of things. Part of it is that I let my life get too busy the past few months. Teaching, grading, packing boxes, and running to rehearsal after rehearsal has left me little time to think and reflect and just feel. Even while the joyous Christmas music echoed through the concert hall, I was worrying about my diction, or about what I needed to accomplish before I left town for the holidays. Read more…
Posted by Ziff
In a recent post at T&S, Kaimi suggested
it seems to me that church members (and leaders) tend to de-emphasize the use of the single-name description Jesus. We regularly use the name Jesus when it is associated with the title Christ. However, when we use a single-word name, LDS speakers — unlike speakers I’ve heard from other denominations — tend to use the name Christ, not Jesus.
I think he’s probably right, but I thought it might be interesting to gather a little data to check. Read more…
Posted by Vada
This is a repost of a post I did for FMH’s A Day in the Life series. I’m resurrecting it now because my little sister recently had her second baby and is feeling overwhelmed. Hopefully this will help her realize that she’s at least doing better than I managed at the same time. Also, I hope to follow this up by finishing a post I started when the second was about a year old and things were much more under control, so look for that soon.
I’m a SAHM with a BA in anthropology and a minor in computer science. I have a 21-mo-old and a 3-mo-old (both boys). I write, and hope someday to publish a book, but not for a while at the rate I’m going.
Here’s my post… Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
Here’s how I see the situation (and I’ll admit at the outset that I haven’t entirely been able to make sense of it or read all the relevant history).
In a sense, Mormonism is anti-everything. In the ideal Mormon realm no other religions would exist, since their understanding of truth is partial and corrupt; other people would ultimately be better off as Mormons. A robust emphasis on proselytism indicates as much. Mormon theology makes universal truth claims that by their very nature are bound to impinge on others’ religious truth claims, as well as universal claims to authority that are bound to impinge on others’ claims to authority. Note: I’m not necessarily persuaded this a bad thing. I’m simply observing that Mormon theology sets itself in opposition to all other faith traditions. We’re right; they’re wrong. There is no salvation outside the Church. Read more…
Posted by Eve
Recently, in the course of making Christmas plans for our upcoming visit to Utah, my husband informed me that a member of his extended family considers it morally wrong to set foot in Starbucks, so if we go get the holiday raspberry brownies a couple of other family members enjoy, this first family member will not accompany us. Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
Among Mormons motherhood is held up as the “highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind [sic].” One might discern, then, a vaguely Mary-shaped silhouette in our discourse in the negative space between our focus on Jesus as the consummate man and our insistence on the near-divinity of motherhood. In the heavenly realm we lack anything other than a wisp of an ultimate example of maternalism, where in the earthly sphere our most promising candidate for filling the role of superlative mother lacks prominence. Read more…
Posted by Kiskilili
Recently I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Ann Braude, a scholar of the religious history of American women, on the topic of the role Christianity played in the fight for women’s rights in the United States. I’ve heard Professor Braude speak in the past (once to Mormon women at an Exponent II series in my area) and have very much enjoyed listening to her ideas. Caveat: I’m relying here on hastily scribbled notes and can’t vouch that they accurately encapsulate Braude’s views. Read more…
Posted by Eve
In one of many recent conversations we’ve had about raising children, my mother recalled attending mother education classes once a month as part of the old weekday Relief Society curriculum (which existed before the block schedule was implemented in 1980). She said there were always two choices: a mother education class and an alternative, for those who weren’t currently raising children–and, I suppose, for anyone who simply didn’t want to be educated in motherhood that week, for whatever reason. Of course a mother education curriculum can be beyond awkward in many contexts. One of my first church callings was as the mother education instructor in my singles’ ward. Broad adaptation was required. Read more…
Posted by Ziff
As a follow-up to my last post discussing who in the Quorum of the Fifteen would likely be Church President at some point, I made some figures that show Quorum members’ changing probabilities over time for the last 60 years. (A description of where these probabilities come from is in the previous post.)
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