Showing all posts by Lynnette

Follow-up to this.

1) Theological anthropology

Essential to this feminism is the belief that we are all the literal children of God, women and men alike, with infinite divine potential. This means that anything which gets in the way of the development of that potential, or undercuts the full humanity of any of God’s children, is something to be resisted.

We are also eternal intelligences in our own right, and agency is an eternal principle. It pre-existed the war in heaven, which was fought to preserve it. This gives agency a particular importance, even sacredness.

Additionally, because of our eternal nature, one could make the case that we have an inherent access to moral law (a knowledge of right and wrong); in any case, we clearly have this in mortality, as the light of Christ is given to everyone (see Moroni 7). This means that we can take our own moral judgments seriously.

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As Eve alluded to in her most recent post, a conversation that we’ve been having lately has to do with the relationship between secular and Mormon feminism. I’ve noticed a tendency—and doubtless engaged in it myself—to take feminist theories from a variety of places and simply graft them on to Mormonism. Mormon feminism is then Mormon in the sense that it concerns itself with Mormon issues, but not Mormon in its roots. Read More

We formally started ZD on January 4, 2006, which means that today is our eighth birthday. I’m not sure what it means for a blog to reach the age of accountability, but here we are. Whether or not this will make us better behaved is anyone’s guess. And if eight years is only the average, rather than some absolute age of responsibility, we might actually have a few years to go.

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1.

Location: 2 Nephi 4

Situation: Nephi is led by the Spirit, and finds Laban fallen to the earth and drunken with wine. The Spirit tells him to kill Laban. Nephi doesn’t want to do it. So the Spirit explains that the Lord has delivered Laban into his hands and he has to go through with it.

Money quote: “the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better  that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief.” Read More

The oral exam I took at the end of my master’s program was a nightmare. I couldn’t remember the answers to basic questions. I learned later that the only reason they passed me was because my writing was good, and my advisor persuaded them that it would serve no purpose to fail me. But it was a horrible experience. Read More

First I must confess that I do in fact like the line in Little Women when Jo’s mother says to her: “You have so many extraordinary gifts; how can you expect to lead an ordinary life?” But as much as I want to see Jo live an extraordinary life, I’m finding myself more and more wary of such comments. Because we live in a culture where everyone is expected to have an extraordinary life. To just be an ordinary person—well, that’s settling. As in Lake Wobegon, we are all above average. And we have people saying odd things like,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”¹ Read More

1. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marianne_Williamson [↩]

I’m personally in favor of women’s ordination. But I can see why people have reservations about it. It’s a pretty radical change to make, and would involve all kinds of logistical complications. Most LDS women actually don’t want the priesthood, and are happy with what they can contribute in the current system. There’s also the question of whether women should be seeking priesthood from men in the first place, as opposed to having their own line of priestesshood. I still come down on the side of ordaining women, but I can see it as a complicated question.

I have a much more difficult time when it comes to temple liturgy that subordinates women. Honestly, I just don’t get it. Read More

About a dozen years ago, I participated heavily on a message board for people with mental health issues. I made a lot of good friends there, and I felt comfortable, like I had a place. And then another Mormon appeared. Since we shared a religious background, of course we ended up talking a lot to each other. But something went wrong. To this day, I’m not entirely sure what happened, except that I know that she inadvertently pushed a lot of my buttons with the way she approached things; unsurprisingly, she was much more orthodox than I was, and tended to talk in terms of how sad it was that others on the board didn’t have the crystal clear truth that we did. Read More

One of the most intriguing critiques of certain aspects of feminism—specifically, Christian feminism—that I’ve encountered comes from the feminist theologian Angela West, in her book, Deadly Innocence: Feminist Theology and the Mythology of Sin. She makes several provocative points. One has to do with original sin. She notes that feminists have rightly questioned this doctrine because of the way it has been historically used against women (Eve is the guilty one and bears the greater burden, women are more prone to temptation, etc.)

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One of my more unsettling memories of Primary comes from an afternoon when I was perhaps four, and we were having Singing Time.  The chorister couldn’t talk very loudly; she explained that she had a “frog in her throat.”  I was horrified.  I hadn’t realized that frogs might jump into people’s throats.  I wondered how it would get back out, and I watched her anxiously. Read More

I wrote a post earlier in the week about coming out, but I was feeling too self-conscious about the whole thing to leave it up. This is a kind of re-mix of that post, with a bunch of new stuff thrown in for good measure.

One of my interests is narrative. Specifically, narratives of the self, and the ways in which we continually construct them. Postmodernists have rejected the notion of a unified and stable self, a self that is a static sort of “thing” that can be studied like an object. How, then, do we talk about the self? One way to approach this problem is to shift from the question “what am I?” to the question “who am I?” Significantly, the latter produces not a self-as-object, but a narrative. It is in telling stories about ourselves, in other words, that we establish identity. Read More

With the anniversary of Pants coming up next month, I’ve been thinking, not so much about the hoopla surrounding it and the death threats and all that excitement, but about people pontificating about the importance of wearing your Sunday best for Jesus.

I should perhaps first note that for all its flaws, I supported the Pants event, that I found it surprisingly touching, even. And yet something about the discourse coming from both sides was painful, for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate at the time. Read More

One of the things I like most about Mormonism is the centrality of personal revelation, the idea that anyone can go to God and get answers. You don’t have to be in some high religious position for this to happen—God is no respecter of persons, and will talk to you directly. The narrative which has become the founding story of our faith is that of Joseph Smith reading in the Bible that he could ask God for wisdom, and taking that seriously enough to give it a try. Read More

For much of my life, I have been both intrigued and a little terrified by the idea of grace. Growing up in the church, I rarely heard the term, but I was drawn to the questions it posed. One day when I was an early adolescent, I stumbled across a standard evangelical pamphlet in a Reader’s Digest. I read it clandestinely, because I doubted it was okay for a good Mormon  to be reading such wild things. But I was fascinated by the idea that you could get yourself saved simply by saying a prayer. For someone who felt overwhelmed by the expectations of the church, that seemed way too good to be true. Read More

This comes from a Facebook conversation primarily between me and Melyngoch, with some contributions from Ziff and Kiskilili thrown in for good measure. Read at your own risk. (Since my FB page isn’t public, I only included the verses composed by members of my family, but please feel free to contribute or re-contribute any additions of your own.)

A Mother’s Day Poem

“I love you, Mother,” said little Mao
And wiped the sweat from off his brow
“I’ve written all day, now have a look
You too can have your own red book!” Read More

Times & Seasons has been having a very lively conversation about women and the priesthood (see here, here, here, and here. I’d like to add my two cents (or ten cents, as the case may be), by proposing some reasons why I think it would be good for women to be ordained. Read More

Thanks to my fabulous RS president, my ward had an RS-centric sacrament meeting last Sunday, to observe the Relief Society birthday. I gave one of the talks, and several people requested that I blog it–so here it is. (This is a longer version of the talk I actually gave, since I was trying not to go over on time.)

I had a lot of fun thinking about this talk, because once I started making a list, I realized just how many women have inspired me and influenced both my faith and the way I see the world. To name just a few: Eliza R. Snow, arguably the first female theologian in the church, whose poem that became our hymn “O My Father” presented the doctrine of Heavenly Mother. As a theologian, I find that an encouraging precedent.¹ Or Pulitzer Prize-winner Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who gives me hope that I can integrate various aspects of who I am when she writes “I am a Mormon. And a feminist. As a daughter of God, I claim the right to all my gifts.”² Or Catholic theologian Elizabeth Johnson, whose book She Who Is has made me seriously think about the importance of the divine feminine.³. Or Deborah of the Old Testament, who served as both a prophetess and a judge. Or poet and essayist Kathleen Norris, whose thoughtful writings about faith have left me with much to ponder.⁴ But for this talk, since you probably would prefer I didn’t go on for hours, I will limit myself to a few particular women.

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1. I am grateful to Deidre Green for this observation. [↩]
2. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Border Crossings,” All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich & Emma Lou Thayne (Salt Lake: Aspen Books, 1995), 198. [↩]
3. Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992 [↩]
4. Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998). [↩]

One of the warnings I heard frequently as a teenager was not to be in an environment which would drive away the Spirit. Inappropriate movies, inappropriate music, friends behaving badly—hang around with any of them, and the Holy Ghost would take off in the other direction. (Also, rumor had it that the Holy Ghost went to bed at midnight, which was why we should be home by then, too.) But when I think about this idea now, I’m a bit confused by it. If the Holy Ghost can’t be in the presence of anything impure or remotely tainted by sin, it’s not going to be much help to us bumbling, imperfect mortals. And if it’s true that it’s most prone to leave in spiritually toxic situations, it seems that it disappears exactly at the time we need it the most. Read More

Once upon a time there was an elderly woman who continually checked her mailbox. Every day, she was disappointed that she failed to get any mail (despite the fact that her mailbox was three times as big as the one next to it.) Finally, one day, she got a letter. But alas, the shock of it killed her. Read More

When I blog about my experiences with depression, I frequently have people ask me how they can help those in their lives who are struggling with this illness. I’m always a little hesitant to answer the question, because people’s needs can vary widely. But I figured I’d list some of what I’ve personally found helpful, and less helpful, in my own experience.

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