By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog
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Participants in various geographies valued their church membership for helping them differentiate themselves from the ‘outside’ culture. Fijian participants valued the church’s progressiveness (see Part 1); US and NZ participants valued the church’s respect for motherhood. Furthermore, responses to the 2019 temple updates reveal a gap in priorities between Fijian, US, and NZ participants.
An ethnographic introduction to issues of gender and religion in the Global South.
[Read more…]
I didn’t suspect that inviting the missionaries for dinner would launch a research project.
While we were eating, the Fijian missionary mentioned that showing good table manners in her home meant that her dad (the LDS bishop) and brothers ate first. After the men and boys had eaten, her mom and sisters ate the leftovers.
Because I was interested, I wrote down her exact quote: “I have four sisters and three brothers. My brothers are good at eating. I wished there to be enough.” With good humor, she made this comment with a laugh and her head held high.
“I have four sisters and three brothers. My brothers are good at eating. I wished there to be enough.”
Talking with this missionary about the gender-based rules and traditions in her culture made me wonder how the gendered practices of the church are interpreted in places like her Latter-Day Saint home and her Latter-Day Saint ward.
[Read more…]Infuriating. Intriguing.
Why did I find this sign intriguing, even endearing, when I saw it on a church in the Cook Islands last week … but would find it frustrating if I saw it on my LDS church building back at home?
Why would I feel a sense of loss if this church in the Cook Islands decided to be more inclusive and modern but cringe when my own church gives any indication of non-inclusivity or traditionalism?
[Read more…][part 7 in an ongoing series about LDS missions and missionary work]
The organizers of the I’m a Mormon campaign produced inspirational videos about women who didn’t fit the mold of the traditional Mormon woman. One of the campaign’s authors stated that the videos were meant to show that “Mormon women write their own script.”
Some LDS women reacted with confusion and a sense of betrayal. Neylan McBaine, one of the creators, captured this confusion by quoting a letter received by their marketing team:
[Read more…]-A Satire-
[Part 5 in an ongoing series about LDS Missions and Missionary Work]
“And what are you training [missionaries] to do? To go home; to be a husband or wife…”
–President Bonnie H. Cordon, General Young Women President, in an interview announcing the new role of sister training leaders (STLs).1
“Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be APs.”
-a country song I heard one time, I think.
[Read more…]
Part 2 in an ongoing series about LDS missions and missionaries.
Dear Missionaries,
It takes skill and courage to insert yourself into other people’s lives in a respectful way, a helpful way. When you come from a different culture and a different generation, it’s easy to misstep.
I live in a secular, Westernized country: New Zealand. Most of my friends know very little about religion. They have rarely stepped inside a church or mosque or opened a book of scripture.
My secular friends perceive religion the way it shows up in the news and TV scripts, as fundamentalist and radical. They are wary of people who take religion too seriously. But they know me, and so they are cautiously willing to meet you.
Although your good-heartedness will carry the day without any help from me, I’m offering you a few tips for making the most of our time together.
When you teach my friends, refer to me in the same way that I introduce myself to you. Call me the same thing that my friends call me.
A doctor named Stella1 came to my house a couple of days ago to meet with you (sisters). You called me “Sister Jones” and referred to my partner as “President Jones.”
Using Stella’s first name – but my last name – felt out of balance. Also, my church title would have appeared formal and unfamiliar to my houseguest and friend.
[Read more…]BCC welcomes Holly Miller, who will be publishing a series of articles about LDS missions. Holly earned an MA in Religious Studies and an MM in Classical Piano. She is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, raised in Utah, living with her family in New Zealand. Email: imagine.inspire.inquire@gmail.com
This is the story of a 20-year prayer experiment.
It started in 1993 in the MTC with Sr. Bean.
As I walked out of class one day, my idol-teacher, Sr Bean, asked if I’d hang back for a second.
I admired Sr Bean the way a kid sister admires a wise and glamorous older sister. I can still picture the brown flush of the leather cross-over shoes she wore. I got a matching pair when I got home from my mission. I remember the way she’d set her jaw when she got serious, the skin on her cheekbones, and her stories.
Earlier that day in class, I had shared a scripture about praying with real intent. I had made a case for the idea that rattling off memorized phrases while praying is useless.
After class that day, in this rare, intimate exchange with Sr Bean – the only time it was just the two of us – Sr Bean told me that her family had a tradition of ending every prayer in the exact same way. They ended every prayer by praying that they would all “go on missions and get married in the temple.” She said that all 8 (?) of the kids in that family repeated that memorized prayer from the time they were little until the time they left home, over every meal and at every family prayer.
She said, “If there ever was a phrase that was rattled off without thinking, that would have been it. But, guess what happened? We grew up, and all 8 of us went on missions and got married in the temple.”
This is the moment my 20-year prayer experiment was conceived.
[Read more…]About ten years ago, we were renovating our master bathroom, making the shower larger with a stone surround, and adding a big sunken garden tub (that literally has been used TWICE since we put it in, grrrr). As we discussed the options with the builder, he quoted a set amount to add a “bench” to the shower.
My husband, looking to save money perhaps, quickly said, “We don’t really need that. When do I ever sit in the shower?”
I interrupted to explain. “That’s not for sitting. I need a place to rest my foot when I shave my legs. It’s a foot shelf!” [Read more…]
Michael is from a multigenerational Latter-day Saint family but has spent the majority of his life outside of the Mormon corridor. He’s not employed by academia but looks for opportunities to scratch his academic itch.
This is a follow-up post to his description of cultural challenges facing the LGB community within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As explained in the first post, the “T” is omitted intentionally out of respect for differences in transgender experience.
How can local Latter-day Saints and their leaders help to make our wards and stakes places of refuge, love, and sanctification for LGB Saints?
Based on my observations, I offer a few suggestions. I acknowledge, with deepest gratitude, my indebtedness to Eve Tushnet’s Gay and Catholic for her unique perspective and thoughts on LGB people in Catholicism. In addition, please note that I think many of the issues Latter-day Saints have with LGB Saints can be addressed by rethinking the place of single people in the Church, regardless of their sexual orientation. [Read more…]
Michael is from a multigenerational Latter-day Saint family but has spent the majority of his life outside of the Mormon corridor. He’s not employed by academia but looks for opportunities to scratch his academic itch.
PREFACE
When the Church retracted the November 2015 set of LGB-related Church policies I felt relief, like taking a breath of air after too much time underwater. As the news sunk in, one common reaction I saw was would-be allies asking what everyday Latter-day Saints could do to make their LGBT brothers and sisters feel more welcome.
Most of the proffered answers to that question focused on changing doctrine, policy, and teachings. That is not my answer — or at least, not my starting point. I intend to adapt the question Neylan McBaine poses in Women at Church: “accepting the doctrines and policies we have in place in the Church today, how can we help improve [LGB]-cooperative practices on the local level so as to relieve unnecessary tensions caused by cultural or historically normative practices?” [Read more…]
From the Women’s Bible Commentary:
Deuteronomy prohibits the husband, who sought to secure for himself a cheap divorce from his spurned bride, from ever divorcing her. To our ears, this provision sounds appalling, binding a young girl for the rest of her life to a man who “hates” her. In patriarchal ancient Judah, where women’s social status and economic survival depended on membership in a male-headed household, the provision was probably intended to guarantee her security.
The Deuteronomic law relies on some assumptions that don’t match our modern interpretation of marriage:
In the iron age society of Deuteronomy, marriage entitles women but obligates men. Restricting men from abandoning their obligation is the objective of restrictions on divorce, not an intention to protect women from harm within the marriage relationship (which isn’t addressed), but to require men to protect women from a patriarchal society in which they have no standing or power and are financially and physically vulnerable. [Read more…]
Rachel Allred lives in California and loves her husband, her toddler, and ice cream (not necessarily in that order). She generally tries to make the world a more empathetic place.
I literally started crying in the cab Thursday. It was a Lyft. The driver asked if I was okay; I told him I was.
I knew The Policy was wrong. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I felt like death when it was announced. My heart sank. My lungs filled with lead. My mind started screaming. My soul recoiled. I don’t know how else to say it. I was just completely numb. I walked around in a vaguely ragey, disbelieving fog for days.
That weekend in November 2015, my beloved husband and I (this was back when he went to church; I’ve wondered since if the policy was the beginning of the end) went to a thrift store to buy clothes with rainbow patterns. We specifically chose a thrift store whose proceeds are donated to LGBTQ support organizations. We wore our rainbows to church that Sunday. We went with subtle patterns. Too subtle, maybe, because we had to tell people that’s what we were doing, but I was playing the organ so at least some people noticed. [Read more…]
Humans are really bad at accurately identifying heretics and prophets. Christ preached as much (“no prophet is accepted in his own country”) — and was executed for it (“by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God”). Christ himself is both the world’s most renowned heretic and its greatest prophet.
It’s easy to confuse the two concepts because the definitions of heresy and prophesy mirror each other. They both hinge on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Bible teaches that those who testify of Christ have the gift of prophesy. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embraces this testifying definition of prophets.
St. Thomas Aquinas defines heresy as professing faith in Christ, while corrupting His Gospel. William Tyndale similarly explains that heresy springs “out of the blind hearts of hypocrites” who “cannot comprehend the light of scripture.” [Read more…]
I have a fondness for cheesy Christian romance novels. Their plots feature all of the emotional turmoil and external drama of harlequin romance novels – but they add faith crises and subtract sex.
One trope in these novels is to set up a wicked foil to the wholesome protagonist. In-need-of-repentance characters lurk in the subplots, steeped in dark allusions and transgressed boundaries. Think of Mr. Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen evinces plenty of scandal, yet there are zero explicit mentions of sex.
In order to stay “clean,” Christian novelists have learned to invoke religiously-tinged shame by writing proxies for sex. All “sin” happens off-screen. A common scene is the chance encounter after dark. A woman stands in the shadows, heart pounding, face lit by candlelight. A man with a half-unbuttoned shirt leans against a doorframe. After two pages of banter, he steps across the threshold. The door shuts. The chapter ends. At that moment, the reader is cued to assume the characters had sex. [Read more…]
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just published a glossy series of 90-second explanations of our core temple practices.
I’m amazed at how much demystifying content these videos succeed in outlining in less than seven minutes of total video time.
Here are the highlights.
We’ve all seen Catholic confession in movies and TV shows. It’s a situation that we might liken to our own worthiness interviews, and yet there are some significant differences in purpose, theological implications, and in how the act is understood by believers. [Read more…]
The first time I heard the word “masturbation,” I was 12 years old and sitting in my bishop’s office.
I believe we were discussing a limited use recommend for an upcoming temple trip. I remember the bishop walking through the 1990 version of For the Strength of Youth, which used a lot of large, sexual words I did not know — like “petting” and “perversion” and “pornography.”
My bishop defined them for me. When he realized I had no idea what he was talking about, he apologized. He explained how due to the evils of the world, children were getting exposed to sex and having their innocence corrupted by Satan younger and younger. As much as he hated the topic, he felt like it was his pastoral duty to make sure the youth knew what constituted sin.
JD is a gay man in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and he still attends!
He could still really use a friend there. His colorful church socks get lonely too. This piece is a follow up to a previous one Part 1.
Last month, I wrote about my struggles as a gay man in the Church. There, like everywhere, my LGBTQ friends and I have received numerous pieces of repetitive advice. As we approach the end of Pride, I want to provide my reactions to some common themes.
Until we consider the real implications of our statements, actions, and policies, we are not prepared to minister to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. [Read more…]
The #MeToo movement is a stone cut from the mountain of silent victims’ pain, rolling forth to break in pieces the corrupt and powerful institutions of this world.
Abuse is no respecter of victims. Religious and secular, clergy and celebrities, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, women and men. #MeToo stories infect every community — our friends and families, our churches and coworkers. Hypocrisy is rampant.
Victims who speak out are prophets, calling the world to repentance.
The world is listening. You are listening. As #MeToo has erupted, I hear the same questions again and again from concerned observers with desires to help.
I believe victims, I know abuse happens, but I don’t know who they are.
Someone close to me is in a terrible relationship. I’m listening, but I don’t know what to do.
How can I help? [Read more…]
Two years ago, when I was writing a book about my own life as a Mormon, of which I am an authority, I was filled with anxieties about not being good enough, not smart enough, and on and on. My wise editor, Blair Hodges, was patient and listened for many weeks and then one day he said a line that has changed everything for me. He said, “Listen, no one else is going to take you seriously until you take yourself seriously.” The doors swung wide open. 
I have looked back on that experience so often and wondered why it was that I felt so much insecurity about asserting my voice. Not my voice as part of a chorus of other voices, or one that had offered ideas to someone else, not my voice as an influence, but my voice, as a stand alone entity. In the two years since, I’ve realized that my panic was much in part because my voice had never been taken seriously up to that point in my life. In church spaces I had never been in charge. I had never had a platform that was solely and authoritatively mine in which to speak. Particularly one in which both genders recognized that a female was in charge. Even though in theory I had been given freedom and power to use my voice within the church, in practice, I had not. [Read more…]
If you’re like me, last Sunday was your first experience with the new third hour curriculum. Rather than a lesson, or even a General Conference talk, the first week of the month is “presidency’s choice” of topic. The second and third weeks are discussions on General Conference talks assigned by the presidency, and the fourth Sunday is on a topic assigned by the church (“Sabbath” for six consecutive months–kill me now). To me, switching from the Teachings manual to selected talks from the last General Conference is an upgrade for a few reasons. First, we spent more time on Howard Hunter than he actually spent in the role of church president. Some of these manuals were a little thin (his was pretty good, though). Second, we have a little more control on what talks we choose. Lastly, while I don’t love every General Conference talk, I figure those talks are more relevant to someone else, and there’s always something there for everyone.
Basically this gives us license to talk about what we want to talk about, which is steering into the skid since that’s what’s going to happen anyway. It feels more open. [Read more…]
Mormon-landia is abuzz today with the news (broken by This Week in Mormons) that youth can now more fully participate in baptisms for the dead on youth temple trips. Specifically, Priests (age 16+) can now perform and witness temple baptisms, just like they already perform and witness live baptisms. And young women (age 12-18) can perform any baptistry assignment (i.e. logistics, temple clothing, towels) currently done by adult women. Previously, all of these functions could only be performed by endowed members.
There is much to celebrate here. I fully support increased responsibility and participation in the workings of the church for our incredible youth. Hopefully, these additional spiritual and service opportunities will help all youth feel closer to Christ and strengthen their faith. This change also reduces the burden on finding sufficient adults to officiate youth temple trips, hopefully increasing the total number of opportunities to perform baptisms. In addition, it may help those young women who are uncomfortable being baptized while on their periods (despite temple pronunciations that this is permitted), feel more comfortable having an awkward-question-free opportunity to serve.
And yet. This policy change was a major missed opportunity to increase the spiritual role of young women in the Church. [Read more…]
I can still remember turning 12. At least the church parts of it. After I turned 12, my dad ordained me to the Aaronic priesthood, and then I got to pass the sacrament.
And I continued to pass it for the next two years.[fn1]
Passing the sacrament was an important part of my development as a Mormon. It provided me with a tangible connection to the church. My participation in the church stopped being passive, the receipt of knowledge and culture, and started being, well, participatory. I felt a certain amount of pride, a certain amount of responsibility, and even a certain amount of ownership over my church experience. I remember intricately figuring out who would go where, negotiating the pews to make sure that everybody got the sacrament, watching the priests, waiting for them to stand up so I could return my tray.
And lately I’ve been thinking, what if Beehives passed the sacrament, too? [Read more…]
Tobias Funke is a character on the TV series Arrested Development who constantly says things that have a double meaning, but without recognizing that there’s a double meaning. Often in online groups, people will post statements or pictures, particularly things done by BYU, that suffer the same problem: unintentional double entendre. A few of Tobias Funke’s most famous lines: [Read more…]
I have often said that the gender roles described in the Proclamation are unnecessary because either they are descriptive (meaning people naturally behave this way, so who cares) or prescriptive (meaning, people should behave this way, but if it’s not natural to them, they won’t anyway and you can’t make them). This perspective neutralizes the power of gender roles whichever way you look at it. But what if gender roles can’t be neutral? What if telling a group of people that their kind behave a certain way actually changes behavior from its natural course? Is this influence ameliorative or detrimental? As a social experiment, what are its fruits? [Read more…]
I gave a version of these remarks last night as part of the panel discussion at Writ & Vision in Provo.
In her foreword to Ashley Mae Hoiland’s new book, One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly, Kristin Matthews aptly identifies its participation in “a markedly female tradition of Christian writing,” noting its affinities with the work of writers like Mary Oliver, Louise Glück, and Annie Dillard, as well as medieval mystics like Hildegard von Bingen and Julian of Norwich (xviii-xx). That’s esteemed company! Add to which that this is the first monograph published by a woman in the history of the Maxwell Institute or FARMS, and it becomes clear that One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly is opening up new avenues for Mormon women’s writing. I’d like to talk for a few minutes tonight about what those avenues might be, exactly, by way of arguing that this book is as important for Mormon men to read as it is for Mormon women. [Read more…]
An article in Vox showed the statistical correlation between Trump supporters and hostile sexism. One interesting aspect of this analysis was that this is not an issue of Republicans in general being hostile to women, just a correlation between those who are and those who support Trump. The trend was not the same when Romney ran in 2012. Romney appealed to benevolent sexists rather than hostile sexists. The difference, as they say, is yuge. [Read more…]
Today’s Guest Post is by Chris Kimball.
Although nobody accuses me, every time the (now out-of-print) The Miracle of Forgiveness comes up, I cringe and feel guilty. It’s really not my work and I know that. But the author is my grandfather Spencer Kimball and somehow I feel responsible in a vague but troubling way.
Rape is a difficult and touchy subject, yet I want to contribute to the discussion. I offer this as my personal opinion (I certainly cannot and would never claim to channel Spencer Kimball.) [Read more…]
Christian Harrison generously agreed to respond to Sam’s post. Christian is a longtime friend of the blog, an urban enthusiast, a professional storyteller, and a man of faith—a practicing member of the Church. He’s also gay.
Whether it’s some progressive acquaintance calling me an Uncle Tom or Elder Bednar insisting that I don’t exist, I must admit that I’ve had no shortage of chances to wonder, lately, why I stay.
Why do I lend material support to an organization dead-set on erasing me and countless other queer members? Why do I stay when my very presence defies the wishes of so many of my coreligionists—members of the flock who want so desperately to run off the sheep with different wool? Can’t I see that I’m unwelcome? Can’t I see that God’s love is a tough love—that His love isn’t universal?
Why? Why? Why…
[Read more…]
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