Thanks for your response, Kiskilili. I’m grateful you didn’t take offense, even though I worded my questions ungracefully. Your answer makes a lot of sense; I feel like I understand your position better.

No offense taken at all, Jane; your questions certainly weren’t worded ungracefully. (I was a little slow to respond to the original question only because I got busy with offline activities.)

I want to know what’s real, and I desperately want to believe that what turns out to be real is also what’s good, at least in the eternal scheme of things. I grant you, our LDS theology isn’t always really comforting on that score; I’m just hoping against hope that the problematic bits are wrong.

I think some part of me believes God actually is loving, but rather than dousing my anger this is what inflames it. I find the OT God who can be bargained with and persuaded a lot more appealing than the omniscient perfect image of God we’ve inherited from hellenism-influenced Christianity. (It’s interesting that we’ve rejected the ontology of the classical Christian God in favor of an anthropomorphic being whose roots are in the OT, and yet at the same time, in some important ways, we’ve adopted the character of the former God rather than the latter.) I guess I’m hoping in the end to be able to bargain with God and make my case to him.

I agree that core vs. peripheral isn’t a universal or even a generally decidable criterion. From a Mormon perspective, I think the only really defensible long-term criterion for deciding what to keep and what to change is relying our sense of right and wrong as shaped by the Spirit. That may be a hit-or-miss proposition in the finite term, but it’s nonetheless the fundamentally Mormon answer, I think. I don’t think you can locate foundational claims for Mormonism in anything other than the voice of God, generally as carried by the Spirit. That’s why Mormonism can continue to exist across quite striking changes in theology and practice — that core belief in connections between God and humanity persists. And so ultimately, I think, the way for a Mormon to argue against patriarchy is to argue that it is in conflict with her or his moral sense.

There’s a lot to like about this approach, although I don’t know it would ensure that someone would remain within the tradition. Maybe I think God must in some way be accountable to my sense of what’s rational so I find it useful to point out contradictions and inconsistencies in our ideas about gender on the assumption that not all of them can be true. But I don’t assume God is necessarily accountable in the same way to my sense of what’s ethical. In a parallel vein, I question the temple’s legitimacy on the basis of things like the Documentary Hypothesis, but on some fundamental level don’t feel that the injustice of Eve’s subordination is sufficient reason to doubt its validity.

Ironically, the unfortunate history of classical theology is the generation of compelling logical arguments for why certain toxic byproducts are part and parcel of the one true faith.

Mormonism certainly tends to be rather less subject to this style of ratiocination, however. On the contrary, unremittingly hostile thereto. That leaves far more room to maneuver, if closing the door to systematic theology done right.

Actually, we seem dead set on developing byzantine justifications for practices that were once taken for granted. I’m not sure how we develop criteria for disentangling “toxic byproducts” from the “one true faith”; nor am I convinced that Mormonism’s struggle to understand itself diachronically is qualitatively different from that of the classical Christian tradition, and it’s not clear to me why we’ve closed the the door on systematic theology, or why that would give us more (not less) room to maneuver.

Now, how do we ask for the change needed in the church? Martin Luther King imagined a world without racism. Can we imagine a world without sexism? Would that start with asking for individual rights of all members? Let me know your thoughts on how to encourage change.

I only wish I knew, Jo. The Church definitely changes, but it’s loath to appear to capitulate, which is why I think a MLK fighting for change on the basis of justice would likely just provoke the Church into digging in its heels.

At the same time, I have to believe there’s some value in raising the issues and keeping the topic alive. When it comes to feminist issues, I think the first approach should be to identify the contradictions (men preside but men and women are equal partners; Eve was punished with subordination, which is a form of equality, because she’s superior and is honored for her forethought; patriarchy is eternal but it’s also a result of the fall, etc.), and secondly to identify conclusions that don’t follow naturally from our premises (women are more spiritual than men so they’re denied access to spiritual authority, Heavenly Mother is honored by being ignored, etc.).

In situations in which people are genuinely stifled by the patriarchal structure, unfortunately I don’t know what the solution is. There doesn’t really seem to be a court of appeal, which is part of the problem with patriarchy to begin with.

1. Blogging is what I do for recreation. I receive no remuneration of any sort for it. Quite the contrary: I pay a yearly fee as a part of the cost of maintaining this website. I am under no obligation, ever, to respond to any commenter, any more than I’m under an obligation to watch TV or hang out with friends (it’s recreation, see). I have an offline life, and, for the record, it’s more important to me than the bloggernacle. Anytime I respond, it’s out of courtesy (and this is especially so for commenters not one of whose comments actually dealt with the content of the original post).

If this is of concern to my readers, there’s a simple solution: offer me a yearly salary with benefits and I’ll be happy to move blogging higher on my priority list. Until then, I’m not your blogging flunky. I’m not obligated to develop a Mormon hermeneutic for you or to hammer out a cognitive framework for a Zion society or any other random project you happen to lob in my direction. And if I do choose to engage your comments, I may not have time to respond immediately. I’m busy. Deal with it.

2. No one on the thread has found offense in the latest quotes, and no one has mocked Hudson. I think what’s being mocked is the desultory lurch in conversational topics and the promiscuous name dropping.

3.

I am not the least bit interested in discussing Hudson herself but this is obviously not going to move beyond that.

Au contraire. You’re the one who brought up Hudson herself and you’re the one who has insisted tenaciously on keeping the issue alive. You’re the only one preventing us from moving beyond it.

Juliann, I appreciate your respect for my position and your interest in the issue of women’s status in the Church, and hope our interactions in the future will be more fruitful.

I have made three separate enquiries asking specific questions about specific quotes and have been told that the respondant does not have time for a substantive response while the mockery builds. I am stunned that anyone would find offense in the latest quotes I have used (and they are not all from Hudson)…I see great potential in womanist theology but even that has not garnered even one response. .

At this point it might be worth recalling that the topic of Kiskilili’s post was culture, patriarchy, and equality. It was not Valerie Hudson, Linda Thomas, their CVs, their insider-outsider status, their relationship to BYU or to other institutions, or womanist theology. Juliann, if you’re interested in an extended discussion of any of the above, you’ll undoubtedly get more responses by composing your own post on the topic for a blog that accepts guest submissions. I suspect FMH would be happy to host a discussion of womanist theology, for example.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Or what about Nim Chimpsky? Do you agree or disagree with this?

Banana me eat banana.

Q: Is anyone here interested in hiring Valerie Hudson?
A: No.
Q: Is her CV relevant to this conversation?
A: No.

Do you agree or disagree with this?

A Zion community lives the fullness of this commandment. Zion, as we know, is a place where the saints are equal in both heavenly and temporal things, which makes sense given what we know about the Church of the Firstborn, as noted above (D&C 70:14; 78:5-7). They must come together presuming the equality of each person and then acting on it to remove any discordance between the ideal and the lived situation. They cannot form Zion by coming together unsure of each other’s equality, or doubting it, or not even thinking about how it should order their relations.

Do you agree or disagree with this?

Zion is only really Zion if black women find peace there.

Do you agree or disagree with this?

We must “work with church women to help empower them and to hlep them speak their voice so that church leadership will respond or change.”

Do you agree or disagree with this?

A spiritual change of heart within an individual brings aobut a striving for unity and equality, and all who love the Lord will strive to build such a social order.