The passion of the Mormon feminist religion
December 1, 2024 8:40 PM Subscribe
For 50 years, Exponent II has made the LDS Church squirm. It has no plans to stop. (High Country News, archive)
Leaving one’s faith is a perfectly valid option. Others may feel called upon to improve the institutions they believe in. Not every feminist or queer person wants to be an atheist.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:55 PM on December 1, 2024 [13 favorites]
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 10:55 PM on December 1, 2024 [13 favorites]
Mormon. Feminist. I would have thought those were mutually exclusive, but seemingly hard categories just refuse to stay separated! They keep doing that Venn diagram intersection thing! I did not wake up this morning knowing that I would be listening to a Mormon feminist podcast, and yet here we are!
posted by otherchaz at 11:15 PM on December 1, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by otherchaz at 11:15 PM on December 1, 2024 [1 favorite]
These juxtapositions make little sense. Why stick with it? The only way to be a Mormon feminist is to be a feminist ex-Mormon.
I've heard people say the same thing about being a Muslim, and it strikes me as a very reductive way of looking at the world. I don't have a religious bone in my body, but I think I can appreciate what it's like to have a cultural institution not only define, but fundamentally be a part of who you are.
Because every human contains multitudes, it is not unexpected that different parts of ourselves may come into dramatic conflict. Resolving that conflict cannot be reduced to choosing one way or the other, but requires transformation. Arguably, the easy way is to transform yourself. The no less legitimate, and sometimes right way, is to transform that which you are a part of. It is a part of you, but you are a part of it, and you have the right to fight for change.
Thanks for the article. Unsurprising, but still nice to read that Mormons are human beings, just like everyone else.
posted by Alex404 at 12:09 AM on December 2, 2024 [20 favorites]
I've heard people say the same thing about being a Muslim, and it strikes me as a very reductive way of looking at the world. I don't have a religious bone in my body, but I think I can appreciate what it's like to have a cultural institution not only define, but fundamentally be a part of who you are.
Because every human contains multitudes, it is not unexpected that different parts of ourselves may come into dramatic conflict. Resolving that conflict cannot be reduced to choosing one way or the other, but requires transformation. Arguably, the easy way is to transform yourself. The no less legitimate, and sometimes right way, is to transform that which you are a part of. It is a part of you, but you are a part of it, and you have the right to fight for change.
Thanks for the article. Unsurprising, but still nice to read that Mormons are human beings, just like everyone else.
posted by Alex404 at 12:09 AM on December 2, 2024 [20 favorites]
I have had friendships with several Mormon women and my sister-in-law is Mormon. I'm not about to challenge the religion of people who are generous and kind but I did have conversations with them about the women's issue. What they said was they believed it to be a cultural issue and not an article of faith, like avoiding caffeine is, so they believed the church would eventually evolve to a stage where gender roles were less starkly separate. Many Christians (called gentiles among the LDS) are just as segregated but few people marvel at a Christian feminist, they point out. And the Mormon church has evolved even in dogma, so it's not a delusional hope.
There is one tenet of LDS that is profoundly different from other Christian faiths and it's their
rejection of original sin. Humans are not stained at birth, are not born in sin and therefore must spend their entire lives repenting for this. They believe the goal is to become LIKE Jesus. In Christianity that's called blasphemy. Whatever you think, it strikes me as a lot more loving and hopeful than most other Christian sects I know about, so maybe that's what helps Mormon feminists reconcile the contradictions.
posted by mygraycatbongo at 7:27 AM on December 2, 2024 [3 favorites]
There is one tenet of LDS that is profoundly different from other Christian faiths and it's their
rejection of original sin. Humans are not stained at birth, are not born in sin and therefore must spend their entire lives repenting for this. They believe the goal is to become LIKE Jesus. In Christianity that's called blasphemy. Whatever you think, it strikes me as a lot more loving and hopeful than most other Christian sects I know about, so maybe that's what helps Mormon feminists reconcile the contradictions.
posted by mygraycatbongo at 7:27 AM on December 2, 2024 [3 favorites]
I think we should be charitable and let people blend contradicting elements into their identity. If we were all asked to have completely internally cohering positions we would be deprived of the chance to change and explore piecemeal who were are. If we require people to break from everything the moment they break from anything, well, that just helps ossify the status quo. So let's not immediately sabotage Mormon-atheists and mormon feminisits and black nazi's and free-market environmentalists and gay republicans etc. Those of us who aren't bundles of contradictions are dangerously monatomic fanatics.
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 9:35 AM on December 2, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by No Climate - No Food, No Food - No Future. at 9:35 AM on December 2, 2024 [2 favorites]
Not every feminist or queer person wants to be an atheist.
Just because a person has left the Mormon (or Catholic) church doesn't mean that they're an atheist.
You can believe in a God that some organization hasn't defined for you.
Or you can be an atheist.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:40 AM on December 2, 2024 [1 favorite]
Just because a person has left the Mormon (or Catholic) church doesn't mean that they're an atheist.
You can believe in a God that some organization hasn't defined for you.
Or you can be an atheist.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:40 AM on December 2, 2024 [1 favorite]
These juxtapositions make little sense. Why stick with it? The only way to be a Mormon feminist is to be a feminist ex-Mormon.
Have the feminists in question been excommunicated from the Mormon church? No? It looks like one of them left, and the other remains a Mormon in good standing. So clearly, no, the only way to be a Mormon feminist is NOT to be an ex-Mormon.
If you're saying it's impossible to be a feminist if you live within a sexist structure then what you mean is that no feminists exist anywhere in any form, because we haven't solved structural sexism anywhere. The "original" (for lack of a better term) feminists lived in a deeply sexist and patriarchal world and agitated to question those assumptions and improve it. Why would this not be a valid path within a religion?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:13 AM on December 2, 2024 [3 favorites]
Have the feminists in question been excommunicated from the Mormon church? No? It looks like one of them left, and the other remains a Mormon in good standing. So clearly, no, the only way to be a Mormon feminist is NOT to be an ex-Mormon.
If you're saying it's impossible to be a feminist if you live within a sexist structure then what you mean is that no feminists exist anywhere in any form, because we haven't solved structural sexism anywhere. The "original" (for lack of a better term) feminists lived in a deeply sexist and patriarchal world and agitated to question those assumptions and improve it. Why would this not be a valid path within a religion?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:13 AM on December 2, 2024 [3 favorites]
"...aren't bundles of contradictions are dangerously monatomic fanatics."
Naah. You can also be a monatomic fanactic without being dangerous. Run into them all the time. People are complicated.
posted by aleph at 12:57 PM on December 2, 2024
Naah. You can also be a monatomic fanactic without being dangerous. Run into them all the time. People are complicated.
posted by aleph at 12:57 PM on December 2, 2024
I once met a Mormon Marxist, so... people are vast and contain multitudes.
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:51 PM on December 2, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:51 PM on December 2, 2024 [1 favorite]
And multitudes are vast and contain people.
posted by mono blanco at 8:31 PM on December 2, 2024
posted by mono blanco at 8:31 PM on December 2, 2024
It has often seemed to me that "love it or leave it" is perhaps an overly simplistic approach to take while interrogating peoples' relationships with their families and communities.
posted by stet at 8:47 PM on December 2, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by stet at 8:47 PM on December 2, 2024 [2 favorites]
> Why stick with it? The only way to be a Mormon feminist is to be a feminist ex-Mormon.
FYI to a large extent across large swaths of the intermountain West, "Mormon" is far more cultural or regional or even semi-ethnic kind of identification, far more than membership in a particular religion.
An acquaintance of mine half-jokingly coined the term "Mormo-American" back in the 1990s. Whether that is a good term or not is debatable. But that people with 8 or 10 generations of Mormon roots consider themselves "Mormon" is indisputably true regardless of whether or not they belong to the big church that goes along with that ancestry.
(Which church, BTW, is currently in the throes of an attempt to discard that nasty old moniker "Mormon".)
In my case, for example, literally every one of my ancestors going back to the 1830s-1850s was Mormon and moved to/settled/moved around in/stayed in the Utah area specifically as part of the Mormon migration there.
I probably have a solid 40 or 50 thousand Mormon relatives, all with that very same background, if you would allow me to go out to say 3rd or 4th cousins.
Now of those, probably half or less are official members of the Big Church and some smaller percentage are a member of one of the offshoots. Many belong to some different church or no church at all, but nevertheless consider themselves to some degree to be under "Mormon" umbrella.
With that perspective in mind it is not surprising at all to start looking at the areas of intersection: What is the experience of the queer Mormon, the feminist Mormon, as well as Mormon intellectuals, Mormon liberals, Mormon conservatives, and so on. And of course, the Black, the Latinx, the Native American, and whatever else-Mormon.
And yes, even the atheist Mormon. There are plenty of those in the halls of that church as well as any other (do you really think people join and stay in churches just because of their beliefs?) but many, many, many more well steeped in the Mormon cultural tradition but not sitting in Church per se.
posted by flug at 9:51 PM on December 2, 2024 [6 favorites]
FYI to a large extent across large swaths of the intermountain West, "Mormon" is far more cultural or regional or even semi-ethnic kind of identification, far more than membership in a particular religion.
An acquaintance of mine half-jokingly coined the term "Mormo-American" back in the 1990s. Whether that is a good term or not is debatable. But that people with 8 or 10 generations of Mormon roots consider themselves "Mormon" is indisputably true regardless of whether or not they belong to the big church that goes along with that ancestry.
(Which church, BTW, is currently in the throes of an attempt to discard that nasty old moniker "Mormon".)
In my case, for example, literally every one of my ancestors going back to the 1830s-1850s was Mormon and moved to/settled/moved around in/stayed in the Utah area specifically as part of the Mormon migration there.
I probably have a solid 40 or 50 thousand Mormon relatives, all with that very same background, if you would allow me to go out to say 3rd or 4th cousins.
Now of those, probably half or less are official members of the Big Church and some smaller percentage are a member of one of the offshoots. Many belong to some different church or no church at all, but nevertheless consider themselves to some degree to be under "Mormon" umbrella.
With that perspective in mind it is not surprising at all to start looking at the areas of intersection: What is the experience of the queer Mormon, the feminist Mormon, as well as Mormon intellectuals, Mormon liberals, Mormon conservatives, and so on. And of course, the Black, the Latinx, the Native American, and whatever else-Mormon.
And yes, even the atheist Mormon. There are plenty of those in the halls of that church as well as any other (do you really think people join and stay in churches just because of their beliefs?) but many, many, many more well steeped in the Mormon cultural tradition but not sitting in Church per se.
posted by flug at 9:51 PM on December 2, 2024 [6 favorites]
Just to point up a specific example: There was a small coterie of African-American Mormons who stuck with the church through its entire history of discrimination and denigration - which was very significant throughout the late 19th Century through the entire 20th Century, and only finally let up to a degree some decades later in Mormonism that most other similar institutions.
WHY in the world would anyone put up with that, you might ask?
Just leave.
Most did.
Some didn't.
Why?
Historian Matthew Harris has recently published a tour-de-force in-depth evaluation of this whole period, what stood in the way of change, how decisions were made and not made in extraordinary detail, what happened and why, how decisions and policies affected individuals and communities, how people on all sides felt and reacted at each step along the way, why some left and some decided to stay.
This guy somehow got developed sources to get an unrivaled, and rarely seen, inside look at how institutional decisions of this type are made and roll out over the decades - and combined it with deep research into the lives of people - mostly very little known - who were most directly affected.
If you really are interested - beyond a bit of quick comment-bomb snark - in questions like "How can a person be an atheist and a Mormon, queer and a Mormon, feminist and a Mormon, Black and a Mormon - at the time when the Church was actively discriminating against and denigrating Blackness as a race and as a concept in the most thoroughgoing way imaginable - the book is well worth a look:
* Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Matthew L. Harris.
posted by flug at 10:05 PM on December 2, 2024 [7 favorites]
WHY in the world would anyone put up with that, you might ask?
Just leave.
Most did.
Some didn't.
Why?
Historian Matthew Harris has recently published a tour-de-force in-depth evaluation of this whole period, what stood in the way of change, how decisions were made and not made in extraordinary detail, what happened and why, how decisions and policies affected individuals and communities, how people on all sides felt and reacted at each step along the way, why some left and some decided to stay.
This guy somehow got developed sources to get an unrivaled, and rarely seen, inside look at how institutional decisions of this type are made and roll out over the decades - and combined it with deep research into the lives of people - mostly very little known - who were most directly affected.
If you really are interested - beyond a bit of quick comment-bomb snark - in questions like "How can a person be an atheist and a Mormon, queer and a Mormon, feminist and a Mormon, Black and a Mormon - at the time when the Church was actively discriminating against and denigrating Blackness as a race and as a concept in the most thoroughgoing way imaginable - the book is well worth a look:
* Second-Class Saints: Black Mormons and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Matthew L. Harris.
posted by flug at 10:05 PM on December 2, 2024 [7 favorites]
i'm no religious scholar, but i've been on a žižek kick lately and he writes: "In his Notes Towards a Definition of Culture, T.S. Eliot remarked that there are moments when the only choice is the one between heresy and non-belief, when the only way to keep a religion alive is to perform a sectarian split from its main corpse."
although this was in an entirely different context (saving liberal democracy) it strikes me that for relatively 'young' religions[1,2] -- cult + time -- to mature (or evolve ;) they typically hive off into heterodox branches. mormonism, as far as i'm aware, has yet to achieve such critical, uh, mass... assuming LDS is 'orthodox' of course!
posted by kliuless at 10:19 PM on December 5, 2024
although this was in an entirely different context (saving liberal democracy) it strikes me that for relatively 'young' religions[1,2] -- cult + time -- to mature (or evolve ;) they typically hive off into heterodox branches. mormonism, as far as i'm aware, has yet to achieve such critical, uh, mass... assuming LDS is 'orthodox' of course!
posted by kliuless at 10:19 PM on December 5, 2024
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These juxtapositions make little sense. Why stick with it? The only way to be a Mormon feminist is to be a feminist ex-Mormon.
posted by rh at 9:47 PM on December 1, 2024 [9 favorites]