Category Archives: Mormonism

The Revelation

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Because I’m Big Mr. Stupidhead, I forgot to note that this past week included the anniversary of the revelation on Priesthood, the revelation granting the priesthood to all worthy male members of the Mormon Church.  The official announcement was dated June 9 1978, and noted that the vote in the Quorum of the Twelve took place on the 8th. Count any of those dates as official; it’s still the greatest thing to have happened in Mormondom in my lifetime.

The policy of Priesthood exclusion never made a lick of sense.  Black people couldn’t have the priesthood? Say what? Are you freakin’ kidding me?  I remember vividly when I was in high school, hearing about it in Seminary, and hearing my seminary teacher’s defense of it–the old ‘they were fence-sitters in the pre-existence’ argleblargle.  Anyway, it really bothered me, and I asked my Dad what he thought of that explanation.  My Dad’s an opera singer, and a convert to the Church–not, back then, terribly well-read in LDS history and theology.  But a good and decent and kind-hearted man.  And he said, ‘I don’t know the answer to your question.  But that pre-existence stuff doesn’t make sense to me.  It just feels wrong to me.’

I really think that on that issue, that kind of response was the right one.  In the Church, lots of really bright people were tying themselves in knots trying to figure out a way to reconcile a policy that prevented black people from having the priesthood with our Church’s doctrine and history.  Meanwhile, a guy like my Dad, without much theological training, went straight to the heart of the matter.  ‘Sorry, but that’s a terrible argument.  I don’t believe that could be true.  It feels wrong.’  His heart led him right.

You can’t really talk about the policy of priesthood exclusion without getting into the reason why it existed, and the various convoluted arguments for it.  And the reason the policy existed seems to me perfectly clear.  One word: racism.  It was an expression of the residual racism of American society as it surfaced from the nineteenth to the mid-to-late twentieth century.

This seems to me an obvious point, but it sounds way more accusatory than I intend it.  Was Brigham Young a racist?  Well, he said lots of racist things.  And he instituted a racist policy.  But was he more of a racist than any other white American in the mid-19th century?  No.  I admire Brigham Young; I also admire Abraham Lincoln.  I googled ‘Lincoln black equality’ and came upon this paper by a high school kid. Bright kid: “Lincoln . . . did not feel that black equality could ever be achieved, and was not fighting for it.”  Quite so, and the kid’s paper cites good evidence for that assertion.

As far as I know, there was one white American in the mid-19th century who truly believed that black people were equal in every way to white people, equal in intelligence, moral instincts and capacity to achieve.  I’m thinking of John Brown, and he was crazy.  By ‘crazy’ I don’t mean ‘outside accepted social norms.’  I mean, ‘murdered people he disagreed with.’  I mean, John Brown was a terrorist.  Fascinating dude, obviously.  But nuts.

And yet he was a hero to many.  And they wrote a song about him: ‘John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in his grave, but his soul’s a marchin’ on.’  Or ‘truth goes marching’ on.  And that great abolitionist hymn got a new text, from Julia Ward Howe, a committed abolitionist, when she saw Union soldiers mustering outside Washington D. C, and heard them sing.  Her updated lyrics came to her in a rush, overnight, and she later published them as The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

And those revised lyrics, the Battle Hymn, became the greatest hit ever for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We all know that version, with the trumpets at the beginning, the basses chanting ‘truth is marching’ while the women sing the melody.  I’ve sung it in choirs, so have you, probably, if you’re a choir person.

That version leaves out a couple of verses.  We leave out this one, for example:

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: As ye deal with my condemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on.

What a great verse.  ‘See these bullets?  ‘Burnished rows of steel? Deal with that kinda grace, sucka.  We’re coming, serpent South, to crush your head.’  Splendidly in-your-face.  No wonder we leave it out.

But the most in-your-face verse in the hymn, is the one the choir slows down for.  “As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free.”  It’s an abolitionist hymn, understood as such in Howe’s day.  We see it as a patriotic song, and it is.  We see it as a martial hymn, and it’s that too (Winston Churchill specifically requested it for his funeral, because for him, it symbolized victory over the Nazis).  I’m sure the Choir still sings it because it’s a religious hymn, a Christian hymn, and it’s that too.  But it’s specifically a hymn opposed to slavery.  It’s specifically a hymn saying that Christianity must stand, always, in opposition to the enslavement of our brothers and sisters.  And it’s a hymn–’burnished rows of steel’–even suggesting the appropriateness of a national violent response to slavery.

It’s much the same sentiment that President Lincoln reflected in his Second Inaugural:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

Slavery, in other words, is a moral evil sufficient to warrant the American Civil War, that level of destruction, that amount of death. And that’s essentially the same argument made by the Battle Hymn. Burnished rows of steel indeed.

And in 1960, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir won the Grammy for its recording of the Battle Hymn.

The cheap rhetorical trick here would be to point up the irony, and say ‘a choir from a racist Church won the Grammy for an abolitionist hymn.’  But the words ‘as He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free’ could mean other things than abolition.

And yes, the policy of priesthood exclusion was racist.  But nineteenth century American society was racist.  So was twentieth century American society, through most of the century. So is American society today, actually, if all the “Keep the White House White” tee shirts at Tea Party rallies is any indication.  Mormon culture reflected that racism–it would be naive to think that it wouldn’t. We participated in it, and we shouldn’t have, and that’s bad.  And we had sun-down towns (towns where blacks were told to leave by sun-down, or face violent consequences) in Utah and Idaho.  And restrictive covenants in mortgages.  And anti-miscegenation laws.  And Klan conclaves.  All part of Utah’s history, all wrong, all worth our condemnation.

But in 1978, an elderly conservative man spent hour after hour on his knees, begging his Heavenly Father for guidance, as he struggled to overcome his own culture, and that culture’s past.

Reading Ed Kimball’s brilliant article, “Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on Priesthood,” published in BYU Studies, describes how hard President Kimball worked to receive that revelation.  Revelation doesn’t just distill, like dew, on the shoulders of prophets.  Revelation requires work, discipline, hard study and hours spent kneeling in prayer.  President Kimball had a lifetime of cultural conditioning to overcome.  He had to study at the feet of the Savior, to learn that ideas breathed in through the very air of the society in which he had grown to manhood, that those ideas were wrong.  That he had been wrong.  That can’t have been easy.  And we honor his memory.

We should also honor those of our black LDS brothers and sisters who continue to battle for equality, who continue to fight exclusion, who continue to set the historical record straight, and who lead the fight against silly folk doctrines like the fence-sitters nonsense, which continue to disfigure our culture.  Margaret Young and Darius Gray and the Genesis group are among the heroes who keep alive the fight for historical truth, and doctrinal accuracy.

What the Priesthood Revelation reveals, though, is the capacity for change, for individual change, for institutional change.  We can eradicate racism from our hearts. We can embrace all our brothers and sisters.  And that’s what this anniversary celebrates.

The Arias case, blood atonement, and continuing revelation

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Until this morning, I hadn’t really been following the Jodi Arias case. I almost never do follow these big, Nancy Grace/CNN-full-coverage murder trials.  Anyway, the Jodi Arias case is the latest, apparently, the latest car wreck we all are compelled to rubberneck at as we drive past.  Jodi Arias murdered her boyfriend, Travis Alexander.  Stabbed him, slit his throat, shot him thirty times.  And the trial was lurid enough, with grisly photos to look at, and recorded phone sex to listen to, and allegations of abusive behavior by him.  (Which, frankly, I kind of believe).  And her testimony, which apparently went on forever and got pretty strange and contradictory and unbelievable.

No, I wouldn’t bother myself with this case at all, really, except for this:  the Mormon blood atonement angle. Travis Alexander, it seems, was LDS.  And was having a rather kinky affair with Arias.  So, according to Brian Carr, a friend of Arias’, we blood-atoned him.  Says Carr, “If Jodi went on the stand and said that it wasn’t her and that the Mormons did this, then they will go after her and her family – their lives are on the line so she is covering up with her story.”  We murdered him, ’cause he was being naughty.

I totally remember doing that kind of thing, don’t you?  When I was sixteen, freshly ordained as a priest, I remember our duties: we had to prepare the sacrament, collect fast offerings, and murder adulterers.  Ah, the memories! Sneaking around, truncheon and dagger in hand, waiting for those vile sinners to fall asleep, then slipping into their homes and driving a blade through their black black hearts!  Halcyon days!

My initial reaction to this preposterous nonsense was to laugh at it.  But this is potentially damaging to the Church.  Not that anyone’s going to believe that we go around murdering folks who sleep around.  No, my fear is, folks read it, wonder what’s going on, google ‘Mormons blood atonement,’ and find stuff that makes us look, at least historically, kind of loony.

One way we could get in front of this would be to just flat out denounce blood atonement. I remember Orson Scott Card once, tongue firmly in cheek, defining blood atonement as “something Mormons have never preached, especially Jedediah M. Grant.”  In other words, yeah, it was a thing.  Obviously, the Church has repeatedly issued statements saying we no longer practice blood atonement; that certainly helps. It’s no longer part of our doctrine or practice.  But it was once, and was defended, by, among others, Elder McConkie, and as recently as 1978. And we’ve never just flat out said ‘it’s a thing some LDS leaders used to teach, but it’s crazy and they were wrong.’

To orient ourselves, this Wikipedia article is generally pretty accurate. It’ll be one of the first things folks will find.  Church authorities taught it, including Jedediah Grant. We believed that some sins are sufficiently heinous that Christ’s atonement was insufficient–that sinners, to gain full forgiveness, needed to allow their own blood to be shed. We didn’t, you know, kill people, but we did teach that hanging was an inappropriate punishment for murder.  It’s why Utah still allowed the death penalty via firing squad well after other states had all gone to lethal injection.

And see, that last part is the one that bothers me.  I don’t particularly care if Jedediah M. Grant said kooky things 150 years ago.  I don’t particularly care if Brigham Young taught this nutty doctrine.  I do care that their beliefs continued to influence public policy in the state of Utah in my lifetime.

And I care a lot that Elder Bruce R. McConkie, a General Authority that I remember with great fondness from my youth, continued to defend blood atonement as a doctrine as late as 1978.

Now, let me hasten to say that I don’t actually speak with any kind of authority on this.  I think blood atonement is weird and creepy.  I think the ‘infinite atonement’ of Jesus Christ means just that; it’s infinite.  I think this notion that you have to have your blood spilled to personally atone for wrong-doing is doctrinally, uh, bewildering.  But that’s just me, just my opinion.

But there’s a reason that something wacky that a few General Authorities believed and taught in the 1870s was something Elder McConkie felt obliged to defend in the 1970s.  It’s because of what I consider a misunderstanding of the doctrine of continuing revelation.

We believe that there are prophets on the earth today, that the leaders of the LDS faith receive revelations.  And a popular folk doctrine insists that everything spoken by any General Authority from the pulpit in General Conference, is automatically scripture; the word of the Lord, the will of the Lord. If Jedediah M. Grant was an apostle (and he was), and if he spoke of blood atonement from the pulpit at General Conference (and he did), then we are obliged to believe in it today, and defend it, even if our current prophet no longer insists that we practice it.

By the same token, General Authorities, from the pulpit, insisted that plural marriage was not just something we practiced, but absolutely central to our entire belief system.  And General Authorities, from the pulpit, insisted that black members of the Church were in some very real sense inferior to white members of the Church, and that that was a justification for denying them the Priesthood.  And General Authorities, from the pulpit, insisted that homosexuality itself was a mortal sin regardless of practice; not just engaging in gay sex, but wanting to.

The Church no longer teaches any of those things.  But we can’t quite bring ourselves to repudiate them either.  We can’t quite manage to say what nonetheless seems obvious; that some talks, once spoken from the pulpit in General Conference, explored ideas that we no longer regard as true. That the doctrine of ‘continuing revelation’ is, at times, superceded by the doctrine of ‘line upon line, precept on precept.’  That, at times, further light and knowledge received, not only by revelation, but also from reason and science and research, renders the ideas of the past irrelevant, or offensive, or untrue.  That new knowledge trumps old knowledge, even for us, at least some of the time.

I believe in God and I believe in continuing revelation.  But for me, praying, seeking answers to prayers, listening to the Spirit, all of that is incredibly difficult.  It’s about feelings, thoughts, impressions.  And I have reason to believe that it’s just as difficult for General Authorities too.  This wonderful article describes the endlessly difficult process through which President Kimball received the revelation on Priesthood.  The hours of contemplation and prayer, day after day.  That accords with my experience.  And while it’s certainly possible that that process is easier for General Authorities than it is for me–and absolutely certain that they’re worthier and more spiritual than me–I actually think that we may misunderstand an apostolic calling.  It may not be about having the right to receive revelation.  It may be more about an obligation to pursue it.

Just once, I would love to hear a talk in which some doctrine that the Church once taught and that no one teaches anymore is just flat out repudiated.  Blood atonement seems like a pretty good candidate for that.  In the meantime, it’s our responsibility to read, study, pray, use our minds and use our spirits, to never quit struggling toward the light.

 

 

BYU Dress and Grooming

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A friend shared this image, a poster from the BYU Honor Code office, and a parody of that poster from the Student Review.  Yes, that’s James Bond being used as a positive example, a guy who follows the BYU Honor Code.  Clean-shaven and all.  Also a womanizer who kills people for a living, but let’s not quibble over nuances.

A couple of points worth making about the BYU Honor Code.  First of all, every college in America has an Honor Code.  They may not call it that, exactly, but every school has one.  If you’re caught cheating on a test, or plagiarizing, you’ll get in trouble.  If you’re a serial sexual harasser, or have multiple DUIs on your record, you’ll get in trouble; state schools, private schools.  BYU is not unique in having an Honor Code.

Where BYU is unique is what sorts of things the Honor Code includes.  You can’t drink, smoke, drink coffee or chew tobacco. You can’t have sex with anyone, unless you’re married. BYU cares what clothes you wear and, if you’re a guy, the length and location of your facial hair.  Tattoos are not allowed, nor are multiple piercings.  Here are the actual rules, if you’re interested.  BYU is a university where students are not allowed to drink or fool around.  Yeah, BYU’s unique.

I taught at BYU for twenty years.  And my feelings about the Honor Code were, to be honest, conflicted. Obviously, some provisions of the Honor Code were there because it’s a Church sponsored school, with its own institutional take on the doctrine of in loco parentis.  Other rules were just public relations. BYU wanted students to look a certain way, clean-cut and well scrubbed. That part always struck me as silly.  I couldn’t care have cared less how my students wore their hair, or their shorts were knee length.  I used to get the giggles, thinking of the Honor Code committee, and how comically solemn committee meetings usually were anyway, and then add sober-sided administrators issuing Talmudic disquisitions on hair or skirt length to the agenda, and ROFL.

But personally, I was actually kind of grateful for the grooming stuff.  Here’s why; my preferred mode of dress and grooming is basically that of a hobo. Left to my own devices, I absolutely would have worn my hair to the waist, gotten my ears pierced, festooned my visible bits with tattoos.  I’m essentially a hippie at heart.  I would certainly have sported any number of styles of beard. Faded and patched jeans, Grateful Dead tee shirts, Hawaiian shirts; heck, I wouldn’t have put anything past me.  Lava lavas.  Kilts.  Jodhpurs.

In short, I would have looked like a pathetic middle-aged guy desperately clinging to a long-vanished youth, and I would have made a public spectacle of myself.  Now, as it happens, I’m also married, and would never have gotten away with any of that.  But here’s my larger point: I don’t know how to dress.  I don’t care.  I don’t just value comfort over style, I value comfort over everything.  BYU’s silly rules simplified my life.  I had to get a haircut every few months.  I had to shave most mornings.  And I had to dress decently, wearing clothes my wife bought for me because she didn’t trust me to buy anything for myself, nor should she have done.

So BYU prevented me from following my own misguided sartorial heart, and I’m grateful for it.  As a teacher, I didn’t care what anyone wore–I couldn’t be bothered.  If I saw a kid with a beard or long hair, I figured he was an actor growing it out for a role.  It would never have occurred to me to turn anyone in for anything.

Boy, some people sure care, though.  As I understand it, one big issue now has to do with a current fashion popular among young ladies, in which they wear a short skirt with long leggings.  This either is or isn’t a violation of the Honor Code, and some people have taken it upon themselves to write nasty notes to perceived offenders, or otherwise chastise them.  One joker wrote one to my daughter.  Apparently, some guys find some women’s fashions sexually arousing, or something, and think it’s the responsibility of young women to dress in a non-arousing way. “When you dress that way, you don’t know what it does to my relationship to the Spirit.”  Or some such self-serving blather.  “I’m a spiritual Giant, I am, except for those times when you make me not be one!”  Blarg.  BYU fauna do include herds of self-righteous dolts–let’s hope they grow out of it.

As a professor I never would have noticed if a girl was dressed inappropriately, because noticing would have required that I look at her, not as a student, but, however briefly, as a sexual object.  I said that badly, I think, but I want to make this clear; my students were there to learn from me.  My job was to teach. I felt it was my professional obligation to treat all students, male or female, exactly the same–as people who were there to learn.  It certainly wasn’t any part of my job to think of any student in any other way.  For me to look at a young woman and think ‘I think that skirt is too short’ would have required for me to consider something as irrelevant to the subject matter as the length of her skirt.

But it’s tricky.  First of all, I wanted all my students to think of themselves as special, unique, valued.  This went beyond trying to remember their names.  If a student had distinguished herself in some positive way, I tried to remember that, and refer to it in conversation.  If a student had asked me a question about something, I might ask her about it later–’did you ever find an answer to such and such?’  So I might say something like ‘cute tee shirt,’ if the student was wearing a clever or funny tee shirt.  I might say something like ‘did you change your hairstyle?  It’s cute.’  Because college aged women do change their hairstyle with some frequency, and like it when people notice.  This is going to sound weird, but the persona I tried to cultivate was ‘older gay friend.’  Odd, because I’m not, in fact, gay. Just romantically uninterested/unavailable/unappealing.  Just this: there’s a fine line between ‘I like that sweater’ and ‘wow, you’re really hot,’ and I tried to stay on the appropriate side of that line, and I think I generally succeeded.

One thing that helped, I think, is that I’m not an attractive guy.  I’m big and I’m not good-looking.  When I say this, understand I’m not pathetically begging for sympathy and reassurance.  I’m perfectly fine with how I look.  Remember–I’m a theatre guy.  When I say “I’m fat,” I don’t mean “I’m consumed with self-loathing!”  I mean it like an actor: “there are parts I’m right for.”

I was a professor of Theatre, a playwright and a director.  And that means being acutely aware of clothing, of social signifiers and cultural constructs, and what message does wearing that outfit send.  I did get to work with costume designers, really good ones, and that was sometimes tricky for me, because I really genuinely don’t personally care about clothing.  But I do care a great deal about stage picture and the look of a show.  So in casting a show, I did have to take looks into consideration.  Again, a fine line: I couldn’t allow myself to think ‘that’s a pretty girl,’ but I could allow myself to think ‘she’s an ‘ingenue type;’ probably not right for Lady Capulet.’  I think I engaged in more non-traditional casting than most other directors in the department, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t take looks into account.  I do one time recall telling an actress that, although her audition was tremendous, I didn’t think I could cast her, because I thought she was too pretty to be convincing in the role.  She showed up to the call-back looking like a complete mess–no makeup, hadn’t showered, she said–wowed me with her acting, and easily won the role.

So the modesty debate is an interesting one, on a lot of levels. It certainly does get caught up in all sorts of issues of sexism and misogyny and how our culture constructs gender and gender roles.  So saying ‘I don’t care if that skirt is considered immodest’ doesn’t mean ‘I’m indifferent to issues relating to sexual immorality.’  It means ‘I’m deliberately placing myself outside that particular debate.  I’m absenting myself from considering her physical attractiveness.  She is, to me, a student. I am, to her, a teacher. And that relationship, teacher/student, is, to me, something holy.’

 

 

Sexual violence, virtue, and Sister Dalton’s talk

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It’s General Conference time, which I always like; I enjoy going to Church in my pajamas.  And while the stentorian Voice at the beginning of the broadcast always uses the adjective ‘historic’ before each session, this one really did feel historic.  For the first time in the history of the Church, a woman was going to give one of the prayers at the beginning or conclusion of the session.  And when Sister Jean Stephens, first counselor in the general Primary Presidency gave the closing prayer at the end of this morning’s session, well, it managed to be both quotidian and awesome.  It’s not like we’ve never heard a woman pray in Church, after all.  And she gave a lovely, most appropriate prayer.

A number of friends on Facebook responded more negatively, however, to an earlier talk in the session, also by a woman.  Sister Elaine S. Dalton, general Young Women president, gave a talk entitled ‘We are daughters of our Heavenly Father.’  It was a lovely talk, for the most part.  She talked about her mother, who was widowed as a young woman, who raised her family while working as a school teacher.  It reminded me of my grandmother, who was likewise widowed much too young, and who also had to struggle to raise her family alone.

But then, Sister Dalton began to talk about virtue.  And she quoted Moroni 9: 9, about how the Nephites had deprived the daughters of the Lamanites “of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue.”  The point she was making was that virtue–chastity–is dear and precious.

But as a number of my friends on Facebook pointed out, that’s not what Mormon is talking about in that scripture.  Moroni 9 is a letter Moroni has gotten from his father, probably the saddest chapter in the Book of Mormon, a recitation of war atrocities, including rape and cannibalism.  The phrase, ‘deprived them of . . . their chastity’ is a 19th century way of talking about rape.  What Mormon is saying in those verses is that his own people, the Nephites, a people he has served as a political leader, a prophet and a commanding general, have become so depraved, they have raped and tortured and abused and even cannibalized captured Lamanite women.  He’s horrified by what he’s seen. He is overcome by it.  And this is his lament

O my beloved son, how can a people like this, that are without civilization— (And only a few years have passed away, and they were a civil and a delightsome people) But O my son, how can a people like this, whose delight is in so much abomination—How can we expect that God will stay his hand in judgment against us? Behold, my heart cries: Wo unto this people. Come out in judgment, O God, and hide their sins, and wickedness, and abominations from before thy face!  (Moroni 9:11-15)

Without civilization.  That’s how Mormon has come to see his people, his friends and countrymen, as people without civilization.  It’s a stunning condemnation of blood lust and violence.

The phrase ‘deprived of their virtue,’ however, poorly describes the values of our civilization about rape.  In the 19th century, women who were raped were described that way, as ‘having been deprived of their virtue.’  They were no longer virgins, they were no longer, therefore, pure.  This was also the Biblical standard.  In the Old Testament, women are encouraged to give their own lives rather than allow themselves to be raped.  Young unmarried women were commanded to marry their rapists.  Check out Deuteronomy 22–all sorts of crazy stuff in there about virginity and stoning people, stuff we don’t worry about anymore.  It’s there, in the scripture, as a reminder of how far culture has advanced.  But we don’t see it that way anymore, nor should we.

Civilization has changed, and very much for the better.  We see ‘virtue’ as something no one can take from you; something that can only be surrendered voluntarily.  A woman who has been raped is, in our eyes, a victim of violence, and completely virtuous in every sense.  Our counsel to a young woman who has been the victim of sexual assault would be that she has been attacked by a violent criminal, and that there is no sense whatever in which she is at fault.

I don’t doubt for one second that Sister Dalton would be horrified if someone were to say to her that her talk suggested that rape victims are in any way morally culpable.  Her use of Moroni 9: 9 was surely intended only to suggest the value of chastity, not to, in any way, minimize the horrors attached to acts of sexual violence.  May I gently suggest, however, that the use of Moroni 9: 9 in the context in which it appeared could only be described as unfortunate.

And yet, it would appear that that scripture is generally intended to be used precisely as Sister Dalton used it.  On LDS.org, the Young Women’s Personal Progress program urges our girls to have ‘value experiences’ in each of the eight Young Women’s values.  One of those values is Virtue, and one of the scriptures recommended to the girls is Moroni 9: 9.

Seriously?  Do we genuinely want our young women, age 12-18, to think that a woman who has been forcibly and violently raped has been ‘deprived of her virtue?’  That a scripture about war crimes will encourage young women to think about how important virtue is?

It gets worse.  82 percent of rapes involve an acquaintance, a friend or family member.  Let’s suppose that a young woman is on a date, and he rapes her, or in a study session with a guy who attacks her.  According to Moroni 9: 9, she’s been deprived of her virtue.  She has been rendered non-virtuous.  Wouldn’t that tend to make her less likely to tell someone, less likely to report it to her parents or a teacher or a Church leader, or the cops?  Wouldn’t that compound whatever feelings of wrong she may be experiencing?

I honestly don’t think any of this is intentional.  I don’t think the Young Women’s program is insensitive to rape.  I think most likely someone did a scripture search for the word ‘virtue,’ and when Moroni 9: 9 popped up, went ‘hey, there’s a strong scripture about how important virtue is, let’s use that,’ without thinking it through.  I think it’s also possible that this usage may reflect the unconscious values of an older generation taught to think of a rape victim as being deprived of her virtue.  And I’m not knocking Moroni.  It’s a terrific scripture, about the kinds of horrors that can take place when a culture loses its moral bearings.  It just doesn’t make sense as a scripture intended to persuade young woman to live chastely.  And may I suggest that it’s time for that usage to go away.

Suffrage: A review

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Jenifer Nii’s beautiful new play, Suffrage, is playing at Plan B Theatre in Salt Lake.  Before I get to the rest of the review, let me say this: you want to see this.  It’s terrific.  Tickets at 801-355-ARTS.

Frances (April Fossen) and Ruth (Sarah Young) are two of the five wives of Benjamin, an otherwise anonymous Mormon patriarch ca. 1880s.  That’s the time and setting of the play.  Frances and Ruth are, in a sense, Mary and Martha, in a play in which the issue of women’s suffrage is the cause to which they both adhere–Mary/Ruth, passionately engaged in that cause, Martha/Frances, more concerned with daily tasks and responsibilities.  Benjamin has been jailed, and as the play begins, is waiting trail, for the crime of plural marriage.  As the play progresses, he is, apparently sentenced to further jail time.  With no male breadwinner, the women (and especially Frances) is worried about paying the mortgage.

It’s a deeply political play, on every level.  The national political debate over the passage of the Edmunds/Tucker Act is alluded to.  It terrifies both women, and energizes Ruth, who is sure that by organizing Utah women and gathering signatures on suffrage petitions, she can influence the national political debate.  She is, in short, hopelessly naive, and Young plays that naivete superbly–Ruth is as appealing a character as a passionate and engaged young person can be.  The play also explores local politics, as Frances, who is superbly qualified to work as a bookkeeper for a local businessman (a job that would save the family home), loses the job, in part due to her prospective employers’ knee-jerk sexism, but also due in large measure to local perceptions of Ruth’s activism.  Frances, it turns out, is perfectly capable of defending Ruth to others, though in person, she constantly urges Ruth to tone things down.

But for me, the most interesting political element in the play is the inter-personal politics of a polygamous family.  This is a play about wives number 2 and 4, in a 5-wife family.  We never meet wives 1, 3 or 5, but they’re alluded to, and we get a very strong sense of them–the senior wife, sick and exhausted and dying, the youngest wife, illiterate and beautiful and (as Ruth puts it), ‘dumb as a houseplant.’  Wife 3, a drudge, waiting to be told what to do.

Obviously, I’ve never lived in a polygamous family, nor have any desire, ever, to do so. But in any family, things have to get decided, tasks need to be finished–stuff has to get done.  Working out who does what and on what schedule and with what priorities is the task of any family leadership council, whether that council has two members or six. We talk of marriage as a ‘partnership of equals,’ and the Church has certainly toned down patriarchalist rhetoric, and that’s all well and good and valuable, but in the meantime, there are meals to prepare and laundry to wash and families have to work it all out.  And who decides?  Well, you talk about it, you make decisions, you negotiate.  Its politics at its most straight-forward and simple.  And the play shows those negotiations, complicated by the fact that Frances, as wife 2, doesn’t enjoy what you might call a presumption of authority from the other women.  She has to lead, and she knows full well she may be resented for it.  But there’s no one else to do it.  That was what I loved best about the play, the interpersonal stuff, involving five women, only two of whom were ever on-stage.  What a lovely dissection of inter-family dynamics.

But of course the play is also about larger concerns, specifically polygamy and its connection to feminism and the issue of women’s suffrage.  And the play ends with a call for all of us in the audience, enlightened 21st century folks that we are, not to forget the struggle for suffrage.  And yes, sure, we should remember and honor that struggle.  Of course we should (Gayle Ruzieka and Ann Coulter notwithstanding).  But honestly suffrage, as it appears in the play, is just ‘the thing Ruth’s into.’  It’s not really central to the concerns of the play, which were, to me, much more about polygamy, and its role in our community.

And it’s great.  If anything, it’s a little embarrassing, as a Mormon playwright, that the finest play describing polygamy from the point of view of plural wives was written by someone not of our culture or faith.  That shouldn’t matter, of course–Jen Nii is a wonderful writer, a deep and responsible researcher, and everything in the play rings true, from the language to the characters to their attitudes and testimonies.  In fact, she may have had an advantage over a Mormon playwright, in that she went into the project knowing what she didn’t know.  An LDS writer might have seen his/her LDSness as a shortcut.  “Their attitudes reflect mine–I don’t need to research their testimonies, for heck’s sake.”

But it’s a play I have to approach from a decidedly mixed point of view.  I think polygamy is loathsome.  I think it’s frickin’ weird, even wanting it.  I can’t think about it in our history without embarrassment.  I wish it wasn’t in our history.  I don’t get it, not at any level.

But Frances and Ruth, I do get. They’re my people; that’s my heritage.  I have polygamous ancestors, and I honor that history.  I think back to my polygamous ancestor, Mary Curtis Markham.  Grim lookin’ lady, but heck, she had a tough life.  And an amazing one.  I’m tremendously honored to have her in my family history.

And then you look at the history, and that same mixed-and-confused feeling reasserts itself.  So the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which ended polygamy in Utah, infuriates me.  It was blatantly unconstitutional, clearly violating the First Amendment. (And both Edmunds and Tucker were renowned constitutional scholars too. Infuriating).  It wreaked havoc in Mormon families, leaving woman like Frances and Ruth utterly rootless and bereft.  Passing it was a contemptible act of moralistic self-satisfied hypocrisy.  And part of me also agrees with it, and in retrospect, it did lead to President Woodruff’s Manifesto, which was important and needed and about time. I don’t think Utah’s current polygamists should be persecuted, but I also think it’s great Warren Jeffs is in jail.

I’m conflicted, is what I’m saying.  And this play does something wonderful; it rubs my face in my own conflictedness.  I belong to a faith that has, in its history, polygamous doctrine and practice, vestiges of which remain in our holy books.  How do I deal with that?  How do I reconcile those contraries?

It does what a terrific play should do, and it does so while moving us deeply.  April Fossen, as Frances, gives an extraordinary performance, so focused and in-the-moment.  Sarah Young’s character is less complex, which doesn’t make her performance any less remarkable.  Cheryl Cluff directed, with her usual directness and economy, even making great auditory and visual use of costume changes.  As always, when she directs, I loved the sound design in the show, including this amazing pro-suffrage version of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.

Anyway, a wonderful play, given a great production. And if I left the theater wallowing in my own conflictedness, well, that’s a good thing for theatre to accomplish.

‘Mormon’ literature

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This past Saturday was the Annual Meeting for the Association for Mormon Letters.  I’ve been a member of AML for twenty years, and try never to miss the Annual Meeting.  It’s basically an academic conference–lots of great papers, exploring this arcane world of Mormon literature.  And some poetry reading, some readings of other works.  Plus–and I always love this part–awards. Outstanding achievement in poetry, drama, fiction in a variety of categories, personal essay.

Anyway, Saturday, my wife and I had some things we had to do in Salt Lake City, and so I missed the Meeting.  I always feel bad about missing it–I do love AML. And it turns out, I probably shoulda gone.  I won an award, a big one.  I won the Smith-Pettit award.  A life-time achievement award.

I’m incredibly honored and grateful. I mean, everyone likes to be recognized for what they do, and I’ve been writing plays and getting them produced for thirty-five years now. I honestly never thought I’d be a candidate for the Smith-Pettit.  But it rocks. Just wish I could have been there to receive it.

But even talking about AML gets me thinking about Mormon literature generally.  It’s a tiny niche category of literature, and it’s even a bit ill-defined.  What do we mean by Mormon fiction, or Mormon drama, or Mormon poetry.  Definitions aren’t terribly important, I guess–what matters is writing well.  And when I served as President of AML, I sort of resisted having, like, a mission statement.  I worried about limiting our field of study.

To me, Mormon literature comes in basically three categories, all of which I think should count as legitimate.  First, it means literature written by Mormons, for Mormons.  That is, novels or plays or poems in which Mormons write about our own culture.  A great example, for me, is Levi Peterson’s novel The Backslider.  It’s a tremendous novel, about a young LDS cowboy growing up in Southern Utah, and it’s brilliant, a novel about guilt and expiation and family and love and self-hatred.  I mean, we can call it a Mormon novel, and that does describe it, but it’s also just a great novel–as good a novel as anything written by an American.  I think it’s every bit as important and profound as Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, or Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist is perhaps the most brilliant recent work in this category.

Second category: literature written by Mormons about anything else.  Obviously, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game comes to mind, as does Anne Perry’s The Face of a Stranger.  Card writes about Mormon culture from time to time too, but he’s basically known as a sci-fi/fantasy author.  And a a lot of Mormon authors have been very successful as fantasy authors, from Dave Wolverton to Brandon Sanderson to Brandon Mull to, you know, Stephenie Meyer.  I would also include Tim Slover’s plays; what a smart, compassionate, literate voice.

Final category, Mormon literature also includes works written by people who aren’t Mormon at all, but find Mormonism a fascinating subject for literature.  The best two works in this category have been plays, I think–Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and The Book of Mormon, the musical.  Neither piece is without controversy in Mormon circles–both also have their defenders, and I count myself as one.

But the main thing I believe about Mormon literature is this: it’s a very big tent.  Authors of literary fiction consider ‘genre fiction’ a less important or valuable category.  Popular Mormon culture faces off against ‘High’ Mormon culture, just as pop v. high arguments disfigure the larger world of cultural criticism nationally.

Me, I like to read good writing.  I don’t care about genre and I don’t care about style, and I certainly don’t care about the membership status or current level of actual or perceived Church commitment.  I want to read good prose, an engaging story, interesting, complex, believable characters.  I like Lance Larson’s poetry, which is dense and powerful and moving, but I also like John Harris’ cowboy poetry, which has its own insight and impact.  I like Dave Wolverton’s fantasy fiction, but I also like Dean Hughes’ Children of Promise series of historical novels.  I’m a big fan of Julie Jensen’s marvelous plays, though I don’t think she has any formal connection to the Church anymore, but also Scott Bronson’s plays, who is a very active practicing Mormon.

The two best novels by Mormons I’ve read recently, in fact, you probably don’t know.  Sarah Dunster’s The Lightning Tree is a terrific historical novel–find it, buy it, read it.  And I read Ryan Rapier’s novel, The Reluctant Blogger, a terrific first novel which isn’t even published yet.

The one idea that ties all of this together is our 13th Article of Faith “if there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”  A good reader needs to seek, and I try to.  And I think that seeking needs to transcend parochial concerns, about genre and popularity and whatever facile judgments we might make about the lives of our brothers and sisters.  Find good stuff to read, read it, write about it.  That’s the mission statement for the Association for Mormon Letters, if we never needed one.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep writing.  More plays, more blog posts, perhaps a novel or two, something I’m not good at but want to keep trying.  Just keep on keepin’ on.  We’ll see what comes of it.

 

Tombs

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Tonight, I was asked to introduce a staged reading of my dear friend Scott Bronson’s play,Tombs.  I ended up thinking about the plays of Corpus Christi, and transubstantiation and stuff.  Anyway, this is what I ended up saying.

“I stand before you, on this Good Friday, to talk about a play.  A play, as it happens, written by one of my dearest friends.  I’ve seen the play in production; I regret that I will not be able to stay to see it tonight.  But I want to begin in a place a long time ago, and a long way off.  The towns of York and Wakefield and Chester in the North of England, sometime in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  It’s June, and spring harvests are in. Nights still a bit chilly, days crisp and clear and warmed by the sun.  A parade has begun, and the priest carries before him a holy wafer and a vial of wine.  Perhaps we hear a song in Latin “Oh, salutaris hostia,” sung in perfect, four-part harmony. Tonight, there will be a feast; today, a parade, and performances.

The feast of Corpus Christi begins on the Thursday six weeks following Easter; six weeks, that is, after Maundy Thursday.  Corpus Christi is Latin for the “Body of Christ.” The Feast day celebrates the eucharist, the real presence of Christ in the elements of the host—the body and blood of Christ.  Holy wafers and wine, in the Catholic tradition.  Tap water and Wonder Bread, in the Mormon faith.  Served by twelve year olds, their shirts too big for their necks, clip-on ties askew.  Every Sunday, at mass, back then, we’d take the sacrament; as Catholics still do.  But in addition, an annual holiday celebrated the host itself.  Corpus Christi is primarily a Catholic feast day, though some denominations in the Anglican tradition also celebrate it. We Mormons don’t bother with it.  About the only Holiday we worry about in June is also about Fathers: when we get our Dads a tie or some cologne.   But for Catholics, 13th through 16th centuries, Corpus Christi was a major holiday, and a fun one.

The idea for Corpus Christi came from a woman, Juliana of Liege, an orphaned child-turned nun, who had a vision of the moon, darkened by a spot, signifying, in her mind, a deficiency in the liturgical calendar.  She suggested that in addition to the weekly Eucharistic service, that a special feast day be established just to celebrate that Sacrament, and the miracle of transubstantiation.  Pope Urban IV eventually established Corpus Christi as a feast day in 1264.

One of the main ways in which the Feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated was through the performance of plays.  That may seem a little strange at first, until we interrogate the practice.  Although we Mormons don’t share with Catholics their belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, which is at the heart of Corpus Christi, we also practice it, do we not?  In this miraculous art form we call theatre? In transubstantiation, the substance of sacramental bread literally becomes flesh, and wine becomes blood.  Well, what do actors do, but take upon themselves, with the aid of some greasepaint and a costume piece, literally flesh out, provide flesh to, an idea, an abstraction, a series of constructions of language.  Dramatic characters, living human souls, enacting a story, for our edification and enjoyment.

Initially, Corpus Christi started with a parade honoring the elements of the host, but in time, plays were written and performed by the guilds of the community—the solid backbone of Christian society, the tailors and bakers and nailmakers and cobblers and wheelwrights.  The plays they wrote have survived, especially in England.  We call them Mystery Plays, perhaps to celebrate the twin mysteries of Incarnation and Atonement, in which God became Man, and later died for our sins.

Joseph of Galilee was a favorite character in the plays of Corpus Christi. The unidentified and anonymous authors of the these plays understood something fundamental about drama; that comedy and tragedy are not competing, but complementing masks and styles.  Noah is a doddering old buffoon, his dottiness juxtaposed against the shrieks of drowning neighbors.  Herod’s soldiers are drunks.  And even the soldiers crucifying our Lord are comedically bad at their jobs.  We’re allowed to laugh, just before we’re invited to weep. Astonishingly, shockingly, the plays still work in production.  And are still frequently produced.

Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, is a comic figure as well.  He’s old, a senile and feeble cuckold.  The ‘foolish old man, married to a younger woman’ would become a staple of Moliere, of Cervantes, of commedia dell arte and TV sitcoms.  And in the York version of Corpus Christi, the play of the Annunciation, performed by the pewterers and metal-workers guild, Joseph contemplates suicide.

The purpose of the Corpus Christi plays was to humanize the characters of the Bible, to make them accessible.  Since the liturgy was in Latin, most congregants likely went through Sunday services in a bit of a daze.  Stained glass windows served as a nice aid to communication.  So did acting; and some priests became as adept at chewing the scenery as in administering the wafer and wine.  But so did these annual exercises in community theatre, which were not in Latin, but in the vernacular, in the robust and blunt Middle English of Northern Britain.  The point was to point up the shared values of the entire town, to celebrate together the hard-won spirituality of the late Middle Ages.  When we read about medieval Christianity, what strikes us are its heresies; the mortification of the flesh, the violent sexism and anti-Semitism. The violence: period. Products, perhaps, of a culture too close to death, too used to instant, sudden, inexplicable annihilation.

But we can relate to the plays.  The plays and the music and the cathedrals—the products of genuine devotion—we can look there, and feel the same kinship and wonder we feel in holy places today; the caves of Lescaux, and the temples of India, and Tenochtitlan and Machu Picchu, or in concert halls, listening to Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony or Barber’s Adagio for Strings.  That sense of shared humanity and reverential adoration.

And here, tonight, at UVU.  In Tombs, Scott Bronson shows us a very different Joseph, the kind and caring father to whom our Heavenly Father entrusted his Only Begotten.  Joseph has just died, in fact–though we flash back to catch a glimpse of his parenting style–and Mary and Jesus mourn together outside his tomb.

But in many respects, Tombs reflects the same impulse that drove the plays of Corpus Christi.  It tells us the story of our faith.  It reorients us towards our theology, towards the beliefs that center us and define us.  It reminds us of what we hold most dear.

It’s a deceptively simple play, really.  A mother and son mourn together, and she presses him to tell her his plans.  They share memories.  He has an upcoming task that he dreads—she presses him to let her share his burden.

As I re-read the play once again this morning, that word came back to me—burden. In a very real sense, Scott has written a play about unburdening.  Through confession and conversation, through memories and recollections.  Through atonement.  These characters, so familiar, and yet also doctrinally distanced from us, unburden themselves to each other. As we literally unburden, pass on our burdens, of sin and pain and regret and error, to our Savior, who then chooses to bear them himself, for us, out of love.  And the play ends with two words, the two words above all others, all Christians wish we could speak. Thank you.

Juliana of Liege saw a flawed and incomplete moon, and sought to fill it with a celebration.  And communities and towns across the medieval Catholic world enhanced that celebration by writing and rehearsing and designing and directing and building and performing deceptively simple plays, reflecting the profoundest stories and beliefs at the heart of their culture.  Scott Bronson has done the same here.  He reminds us what must never be forgotten; he speaks for and to our culture of our most central and enduring shared faith.  He makes The Word flesh, he theatrically transubstantiates.  He places us outside a tomb, and reminds us of a tomb found empty, and how that emptiness fills our hearts.  He nourishes us with the bread of mimesis.  From the Guild of Scribblers and Thespians, we bring you our fondest story.  We share with you: Tombs.

Sports, for people who hate sports

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I like sports.  I grew up playing basketball, baseball, football, tennis.  I played all these sports very badly, but in our backyard, or the backyards of neighbor kids, or in our driveway.  It was how we bonded, and it was also how we excluded.  One neighbor kid didn’t play sports–he was somehow even less coordinated than I was–and didn’t want to.  We didn’t mean to treat him badly, but we did.  I still feel terrible about that.  But we loved sports, and when we weren’t playing sports, we were watching them, either live or on TV.  Or talked about them. My brother was just in town, and while he was mostly here on family stuff–his daughter’s baby’s blessing–we did fit in two basketball games on TV.

I know lots of people who can’t stand sports, who especially can’t stand televised team sports.  I am, in fact, married to one of those people.  I get that. We sports fans can be quite sadly fanatical in our devotion to the teams that have earned our allegiance–that’s where the word ‘fan’ comes from, after all.  I hear from people from time to time who tell me they like this blog, and usually they add “except for the baseball ones.”  I get that too, which also doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing baseball ones.

But why?  Why do we attach ourselves do devotedly to something as artificial as a professional sports team?  Or college team.  In fact, isn’t inter-collegiate athletics somehow worse?  Doesn’t big-time college sports detract from the educational mission of high ed?  Doesn’t it divert resources that might be better used to hire a new math professor, build a new lab, construct a theatre rehearsal room or dance studio, pay TA’s properly?  Are we seriously seriously, pretending . . .  no.  Wait. Stop! I like sports.  I’m arguing for them.

How?  Why?

It’s good to care about something.

The great New Yorker writer, Roger Angell, used to make this argument; that caring deeply is a basic human good, even if it’s for something silly.  In fact, lots of things we care a lot about are silly.  Once we silly human creatures have got the Food, Sex, Shelter thing down, turns out we have plenty of time and brain-space for silly stuff.  And full-blown life-long infatuation with a sports team is, turns out, mentally healthy.

It’s a shortcut to bonding with other people.

So this past weekend, our family spent some time interacting with my niece’s husband’s family.  I found myself spending some time conversing with my niece’s father-in-law.  Seemed like a nice guy, and we chatted a bit.  Then he mentioned being a baseball fan.  And we went from ‘awkward family party conversation with a stranger’ to ‘my gosh what a cool guy how much fun were we having?’  We got along immediately.  I know the guy now, know how he thinks about something important to both of us.  And it was something safe, not something really volatile–politics, religion.

There’s a theological angle to it, a celebration of human potential, of human beauty.

The human beauty we’re talking about here. . . has nothing to do with sex, or cultural norms.  What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.  There’s a great deal that’s bad about having a body.  We can just quickly mention pains, sores, nausea, odors, aging, gravity, sepsis, clumsiness, illness, limits–every last schism between our bodies and our actual capacities.  Can anyone doubt we need help to be reconciled? Crave it?  It’s your bodies that die, after all.

Great athletes seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch, to move through space, to interact with matter.  Granted, what great athletes can do with their bodies are things the rest of us can only dream of.  But those dreams are important.

David Foster Wallace “Federer both Flesh and Not.”

And as a Mormon, I believe that the human body is magnificent, not sin-filled and vile.  I believe that bodies enhance and enable spiritual capacities, not stunt them.  There is not Mormon equivalent to the heresy of ‘the mortification of the flesh.’

BYU is in a basketball tournament right now, the NIT (National Invitation Tournament), and one of the announcers last night was Bill Walton.  Walton was one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived, sort of a hero of mine.  He’s also a dreadful announcer.  Too talky, too interested in long stories about his own career, and not, like, the ballgame right there in front of him.  He was a former teammate of Danny Ainge and we got to hear many stories about what a great guy Ainge was.  And so on.  But then he talked about Kresimir Cosic.  Cosic was a genuinely brilliant player, for BYU and later, for the Yugoslavian and Croatian national teams.  And Walton stopped himself, got a little choked up, trying to describe the beauty of Cosic’s game.

This happens sometimes.  You remember a Willie Mays, a Joe Montana, a Wayne Gretzsky, a Magic Johnson, and your eyes get a little teary.  What they did was so beautiful, it still takes your breath away.

It’s good to care about things, and to care about beauty.  And of course, I get that same feeling when I hear a great tenor sing, or a great dancer dance, or a great actor in a great role.  If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, praiseworthy . . . So watch this kid,twenty years old, from Africa, already a college graduate.  Watch him soar: Victor Oladipo, from Indiana.  Meanwhile, the NCAA tournament is on-going, and baseball season soon to start.  Go Hoosiers, and go Giants.

 

“Not a feminist”

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At a family party over the weekend, my brother and I found ourselves chatting about our grandmother.  I’ve written about my grandmother before; a remarkable woman.  Her husband, my grandfather, was murdered in 1940, leaving her with five children under the age of nine.  She moved in with her mother, and went to work. While working as a teacher, she earned an MA and a PhD, and ended up on the faculty of BYU, in Library Science.  She was a strong-willed and forceful woman, and her four daughters grew up to be equally remarkable.  My mother and her sisters (my deeply admired and redoubtable aunts) are woman of extraordinary accomplishments and talents.  Two of them earned doctorates; the other two, master’s degrees.  Two of them are published authors.  One is an extraordinary playwright, another a remarkable poet.  I love them all deeply, and continue to be astonished by their humor, wit, energy and intelligence.

Anyway, my brother and I got to talking about my grandmother. We were in a big family gathering, surrounded by our kids and their kids and in-laws, and we were sort of evangelizing about this amazing woman who was such an important part of our early lives.  And then my brother said something that completely amazed me.  He said “of course, she wasn’t a feminist.”

Well, of course she was a feminist.  She was a feminist pioneer.  One of the first women to be hired as tenured faculty at BYU.  A former Utah Mother of the Year.  An actress and a writer.  She fought for equal pay.  She raised her daughters to value higher education, and she taught them the importance of working outside the home. And her daughters all did–they were, all of them, well respected professional women. Obviously she was a feminist.  They are, all of them, feminists.

But for my brother, it was equally obvious.  Of course she wasn’t a feminist.  How could I even suggest such a thing. Yes, she was an accomplished woman, a fiercely independent woman, a professional woman of extraordinary abilities.  But that didn’t make her a, you know, a . . . a feminist.

It blew my mind, honestly.  And it was a big chaotic family gathering–not a setting where we could really pursue it, or where I could ask the question burning in my mind: “what the heck do you think ‘feminist’ means?”  The moment passed, the conversation swirled off in another direction.

And I love my brother, and I respect him.  But come on.  If my grandmother, of all people, wasn’t a feminist. . . .

But I do think she might have rejected that label.  She opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, for example, back in the day.  She was a loyal Republican, and she thought the ERA might bring with it serious unintended consequences; she thought it wasn’t worth the risk.  I talked to her about it; she said she preferred to work one issue at a time–on equal pay, for example, job by job, rather than a big federal approach, or something as potentially scary as a constitutional amendment.

So what is it about that label?  Why is feminist a new F-word?  Why do some women, bright, independent, strong women, still resist calling themselves feminists?

My Mom’s one.  When I was a kid, my Mom always ‘worked outside the home,’ as all those sacrament meeting talks back then insisted married women had no business doing.  She was a school teacher.  My Dad was an opera singer and a music professor; I don’t know much about their finances, but she told me once that she didn’t work because they needed the money.  She worked because she needed to, because staying at home with kids drove her insane.  She chose to work.  So when I got home from school, it was my job to watch my younger brothers.  Which was completely no problem–all we did was play basketball.  Home from school, drop the book bag, grab the ball.  Babysitting made easy.

Mom wouldn’t go to Relief Society for years.  Every time she went, there’d be a lesson about not working outside the home, and so she’d stay away for another year or so.  Finally, after years gone, she finally started going, because they made her RS President.  But my Mom also didn’t consider herself a feminist.

Feminist means . . . well, to me, it just means someone who believes in and supports equality.  To me, feminist means equal.  Period.

But for some people–people every bit as committed to equality as I am–feminist means, well, all sorts of nasty things, I imagine.

What I think, though, is that the central feminist critique of patriarchy, of how patriarchy functioned in the past and how it still controls the power centers of our culture, that the feminist rejection of patriarchy (such a potent and central concept in academic feminist discourse), that that may be the key to why so many LDS people are uncomfortable calling themselves feminists. ‘Patriarchy’, a pejorative word for feminists, is a positive one for Mormons. We give patriarchal blessings.  We talk of honoring our patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.  Priesthood is exclusively patriarchal.

I’m reminded of the probably apocryphal story of the kid, graduating from primary, brought up to the pulpit by the bishop.  The bishop tells the congregation “little Sally here will be joining the Young Women’s, and I was so impressed with her bishop’s interview.  Let me show you.”  He then turns to the girl in the best beaming bishoply fashion, and says, “so Sally, a little quiz.  There’s something that your Daddy has that your Mommy does not have.  And it starts with a ‘p.’  What is it?”  The girl stares up at him, appalled, and finally replies, “I think I know the answer, but I don’t think I’m supposed to say it in Church!”

My wife likes to say that she doesn’t mind not having the Priesthood right up to the point that some man, talking about women’s roles, says she shouldn’t mind not having the Priesthood.  And my Mom and grandma were much of the same mind.  I used to love watching my grandma in Sacrament meeting.  Whenever a speaker would talk about ‘women’s roles,’ or why women shouldn’t ‘work outside the home,’ my grandmother would start cleaning our her purse.  And she would say ‘oh, dear, oh dear,’ under her breath, just loudly enough that the speaker could barely hear it, but not so loudly as to be distracting.

But ‘feminist’? That’s going to far.  That suggests, maybe, that patriarchy itself is at fault, that an organization run entirely by men, correlated by men, is inherently, automatically unjust and unequal.  That society itself remains unequal, despite the undoubted advances women have made. And for some women, that’s pushing things too far.  They’re perfectly happy being women, comfortable in their skin.  And they don’t feel they’ve been disrespected, either in Church or society at large.  Sure, there are problems, and we need to work to fix them.  But we don’t need to completely re-order society.

Of course, ‘feminism’ means many things to many people.  To some feminists, the essence of feminism is the critique of and opposition to patriarchy.  To other feminists, the essence of feminism is simply equality.  For some, my grandmother’s muttered comments in Church when men talked about women’s roles was an act of feminist subversion (muted to be sure, but certainly unmistakable).  But to others, her rejection of the ERA couldn’t be reconciled with committed feminist activism.

My grandmother was a strong, independent woman.  To me, that makes her a feminist, an important and powerful feminist pioneer.  My Mom is equally strong, equally independent, and very much a feminist too.  That’s because, to me, feminist is a positive word, a terrific thing to be. To others, it’s another ‘f’ word.  Either way, equality is what we’re aiming for.

 

What’s in the way?

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So what’s getting in the way?

What aspects of Mormon culture hold us back?  What sorts of things get said in our culture that aren’t helpful?  What cliches drive us crazy, what ideas are just teeth-grittingly annoying? And how can we look for the humor in comments that might otherwise hurt and sting?

For a long time, I was a staff writer for something called the Sugarbeet. Sort of a Mormon answer to the Onion.  Basically, we made fun of Mormon culture.  We put out a book and everything.  And although I was a very minor part of the whole enterprise, I found it really did wonders for my, well, testimony. It helps to laugh.

I’ve heard it all my life; people ‘go inactive’ because people in the Church say something that offends them, and that drives them away.  But to me, it’s not comments from ward members that hurt, but the attitudes those comments reveal.  And it’s not really that we ‘get offended.’  It’s more like we start to wonder ‘where do I fit in?  If that’s what everyone believes, and I don’t believe it, why am I here?’  So let’s look at some things people say, and how we might possibly respond.

“We’re living in the Last Days.  And our inspired constitution is hanging by a thread.  It’s up to us, the Priesthood of God, to save it.”

Okay, I’m a liberal Democrat, and I live in Provo, Utah.  I’m outnumbered.  I’m, like, Custer-at-the-Little-Bighorn outnumbered.  The folks in my ward are really nice about it, but every once in awhile, people blurt out something about that Moslem Socialist in the White House, and it’s annoying.  Comments like this have diminished since a Certain Somebody lost the last Presidential election, but they haven’t gone away entirely, as recent comments by a Utah stake President have shown.

It helps to know the facts.  The ‘constitution hangs by a thread’ stuff comes from something called the White Horse prophecy, which Joseph Smith probably never mentioned and which the Church has officially repudiated.  (Here’s a link to a scholarly article in BYU Studies on this prophecy.)  But like many folk doctrines, folks still believe in it, and cite it all the time.  Even Glenn Beck, I understand.  It’s best just to remember that the Church’s official policy is non-partisan, and that lots of Church leaders have likewise been Democrats.  And that might even be worth pointing out, from time to time.

“Don’t you believe in the prophet?”

Said with a condescending smile, right?  What happens is that you’ll be talking, and you’ll say something maybe slightly unorthodox, and this is the conversation-stopping response.  I see it a lot in science/religion discussions.  You’ll say something about, say, pre-Adamic death, and someone will quote Mormon Doctrine at you.

Mormonism is built on a foundation of continuing revelation.  But that doesn’t mean that every comment made by a General Authority is equally authoritative.  Sometimes the Brethren have disagreed.  At times, even, they’ve gotten things wrong. My main way of dealing with this kind of comment is to say something like ‘well, we’ll have to agree to disagree,’ and walk away.  But I think that’s a really lame response, and wish I had a better one.  Any suggestions?

“President Benson said that R-rated movies. . .”

I love film, as an art form.  I see lots of movies, I taught classes on film at the college level for twenty years, I study film theory.  I like movies.  And I have really good reasons to reject the MPAA rating system as a guide to, well, basically, anything. I see many many movies, and I don’t much care what they’re rated.

But for some people in the Church, President Benson’s comments about the rating system suggest an absolute standard, binding on all Latter-day Saints.  And the thing is, it simplifies matters.  R-rated=bad, PG-13=okay.  But the fact is, I have seen R-rated movies that were profoundly and powerfully moral, that changed my life for the better.  And PG-13 movies that were bad aesthetically and morally.  A letter-of-the-rating approach completely ignores the complexity and subjectivity of art generally, or of film as an art form, but if you’re not much into movies, that may not matter much.  I’m going to see the movies I’m going to see.  And give a friendly wave to ward members I happen to see at the cineplex.

“Read approved works by the Brethren.  We don’t need to read works by atheists or agnostics or anti-Mormons.  Just read approved materials and you’ll be fine.”

So, what, I’m supposed to research the religious views of every author I read?  Really? I’ve got a five book a week habit goin’ on here.  I don’t have the faintest idea which of my favorite authors are atheists. More to the point, I believe in actively seeking out books that are virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy.  An active search takes effort.  And to me,it’s worth it.

There are book people, people who love to read, who go to the library twice a week, who would rather read than eat.  I’m one, so’s my wife.  And then there are people who don’t enjoy reading.  That’s totally cool.  I don’t feel like I have the right to comment on what other people do for fun.  (Hunting, fishing, really any outdoor sports). I’m going to read a lot, all the time.  Most of what I read is non-fiction, because to me, it’s fun to learn about the world.  I don’t read a lot of ‘approved materials,’ because they’re boring.

“I know. . . .”

The Church is true.  The Book of Mormon is true. That President Monson is a prophet of God.

I understand, rhetorically, that to say ‘I know’ seems stronger than to say ‘I believe.’  But my reading of the scriptures tells me that we’re saved by faith, and not necessarily by knowledge.  In fact, to just believe is considered as much a gift of the spirit as ‘knowing.’

 To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world.

To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful. D&C 46: 13-14.

I don’t know very many things on this earth.  I’m pretty confident in gravity. But religiously?  I try.  I do my best.  I wish testimony meetings could focus a little less on certitude, and bit more on the struggle for faith. Faith is, after all, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  Let me find sustenance in that paradox, and be grateful for what I do not know.