FID Conference (Day One)

I see that a couple of people have already posted about the Foundation for Interreligious Diplomacy conference last weekend (see here and here), which reminded me that I’d told a couple of people I’d post some of my thoughts about it. It was really fun to go to the conference; I’ve been kind of obsessed with issues related to pluralism for the past decade or so, but most of my conversation about the subject has been done in a non-LDS context, so I especially enjoyed thinking about them with reference to Mormonism in particular. (Not to mention that I got to hang out with cool people and hide from my dissertation.)

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Languages of Faith

One of my more memorable sacrament meeting talk experiences involved a talk for which I was assigned a somewhat theological topic. I confess that I couldn’t resist bringing in observations from some of my academic work. I did, however, make an effort to make sure it was a church talk, rather than an academic presentation. I don’t know if I completely succeeded, but I had fun thinking about the subject, and I felt more or less okay about how it ended up. Read More

Feminism is Not a Trial

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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Heavenly Mother: Is This Line Secure? (or, the Heavenly Mother Catch-22)

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

Masculinity Under Siege

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

The Pitfalls of Pluralism

When it comes to religion, I have strong pluralist sympathies; one of the aspects of the LDS church I personally find the most challenging is the “only true church” claim. I’ve blogged before about why I think it’s a mistake for Mormons to assume that we have nothing to learn from other traditions, or to conceptualize them as–at best–less developed versions of ourselves. In my own life, I have found that serious engagement with the teachings and ideas of other traditions has tremendously enriched my faith.

Nonetheless, there are ways of talking about pluralism that I find problematic. Read More

A Partner to Adam

In describing the honored place of women in the plan of salvation, LDS leaders commonly cite the narrative found in Genesis 2, in which Eve is created as a helpmeet to Adam. They often emphasize that in order to be a true helpmeet she would have to be the equal of Adam, and reference the symbolism of Eve being created from Adam’s rib as pointing to her role as a full, contributing partner, one neither superior nor inferior. And not infrequently, the fact that Eve is created at the very end of the story is cited as evidence of her elevated status. Read More

Caring What Others Think

There is a conversation which I have seen repeated over and over. It goes something like this. Person A: “I’m upset because I did/said x and I got a negative reaction, people are annoyed with me, etc.” Person B: “Your problem is that you care too much what others think. You need to stop worrying about that.” Seeing variations on this basic exchange on a regular basis has led me to reflect on the question of whether it is necessarily negative to care what others think, a flaw to be overcome, as it is so regularly framed.
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Ten Thousand Comments

In our recent discussion of theory and practice, ZD hit 10,000 comments.  (The 10,000th comment, by the way, was Geoff J’s #6 on that thread.  Congratulations, Geoff; your prize, a T-shirt that says “This is What a Feminist Looks Like,” and a subscription to BUST magazine, will be in the mail.)  I have to say that it’s a bit strange to think that our relatively small blog has this many comments.  (Just think of the number of dissertations that could have been produced by all that writing.  Of course, they might not have been coherent dissertations.)

Comments, I think most bloggers would agree, are both one of the most fun and one of the most challenging aspects of running a blog. Read More

Worrying About Salvation

The possibility of universalism comes up every so often in the bloggernacle (see for example, these discussions at M*, BCC, and NCT.)  In reading these conversations, I’ve realized that my own universalist leanings are not particularly unusual, at least in the context of the Bloggernacle.  (Further evidence of its apostate nature, some might say.)  I think the theological debate is an interesting one.  But in this post I want to bracket the question of whether universal salvation is possible in the context of LDS doctrine, and look at some of the more practical issues involved.  The concern most often raised about the idea is that it  leads to complacency.  In a nutshell, if everyone is eventually going to be saved, what incentive do I have to be good?  Why not eat, drink, and be merry?  Is anxiety about salvation something positive, even necessary—something that will motivate me to live better in the here-and-now? Read More

In Defense of Negative Feminism

One of the things that most struck me at the recent Claremont conference was the extent to which I was doing what I might call “negative feminism.”  I’m using “negative” both in a kind of netural, descriptive sense (in academic theology, there’s a tradition of “negative theology” which emphasizes what we don’t know about God), as opposed to more constructive work which puts forth new ideas–and “negative” in the more usual sense of the term, in that I was in fact  painting a rather negative picture of LDS teachings regarding the eternal status of women.  The reactions I got were varied; some liked it, but others found it excessively gloomy.  This has gotten me thinking about possible dangers with this approach, but also why I think it’s important. Read More

General Conference and the Sensus Fidelium

A fun concept in Catholic teachings is the notion of the sensus fidelium, the “sense of the faithful.”  The idea is that the work of the Spirit guiding the church can be found not only in the teachings of ecclesiastical leaders, but also in the beliefs  and experiences of the members of the church, the community of faith.  Theologian Roger Haight explains that it includes “an active charism of discernment, a power of practical and possessive knowledge belonging to the body of the faithful by virtue of their concrete living of the faith.”  He clarifies, “This does not mean that in every matter of detail a majority of even a consensus of opinion in the Church at any given time is theologically sound.  But it does mean that the experience of the faithful is a source for theology.”1 Read More

  1. Roger Haight, “Sensus Fidelium,” The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, ed. Richard McBrien (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 1182-3. []

Thoughts from the Claremont Conference

I spent last Friday at the Claremont conference, “Mormonism through the Eyes of Women.”  It was an amazing experience.  I’ve been to a lot of different Mormon conferences in the last couple of years, and presented at more than one of them, but none of them felt quite as intense to me as this one did.  Perhaps because Mormon feminist theology is a topic which matters so much to me; perhaps because I hadn’t really presented publicly on the subject before (and I have to admit that I had some anxiety about doing it).  But also, I think, because it was so exciting to be in a room full of people interested in talking about these ideas.  I know that Mormon feminism is thriving; I see it on the blogs every day.  But seeing it online isn’t quite the same as interacting live with a group of people who really care about the subject. Read More

Costs and Benefits of Patriarchy

As a feminist, I frequently blog about what I see as the problematic elements of patriarchy.  However, I realize that many members of the Church (not to mention Church leaders!) see the situation quite differently.  So I thought it might be interesting to simply see what I could come up with as far as potential costs and benefits of a patriarchal system.  I realize that given my own views on this topic, there’s probably no way I can do this in a fair manner, but I’ll give it my best shot, and trust our astute readers to correct any  misperceptions and point out things that I’ve overlooked. Read More

Thoughts on LDS Feminist Theological Work

A question which has been on my mind recently, as I have been contemplating some of the theological questions involved in LDS feminism, is that of methodology. In particular, what are the sources of authority which might be used in feminist approaches to the tradition? Too often, I think, LDS feminists—including myself—have a tendency to simply import norms and values from the varieties of feminism which are prominent in contemporary secular discourse, and then measure the Church against them. This inevitably leads to the criticism that feminists are advocating “worldly” values, and these are irrelevant in the realm of revealed religion. For example, popular terms like “rights” and “equality” may have deep resonance when invoked in the context of Western liberal democracy, but some question the usefulness of these terms in a Christian context. Read More

Political Memories

The first election I remember was in 1980.   The Weekly Reader had pictures of Reagan and Carter, and our kindergarten class held our own election.  I thought Reagan had a nicer smile and looked more friendly in his picture, so I voted for him.  Several students in my Utah class were upset, because they wanted to vote for President Kimball and he wasn’t pictured.  My teacher had to explain that “President” could refer to the President of the United States or the President of the LDS Church, and we weren’t trying to vote President Kimball out of office. Read More