Mormon Feminism and Prospects for Change in the LDS Church Holly Theresa Bignall Iowa State University
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Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2010 Hope deferred: Mormon feminism and prospects for change in the LDS church Holly Theresa Bignall Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Part of the Mormon Studies Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Bignall, Holly Theresa, "Hope deferred: Mormon feminism and prospects for change in the LDS church" (2010). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 11699. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/11699 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Hope deferred: Mormon feminism and prospects for change in the LDS church by Holly Theresa Bignall A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Major: Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies (Arts and Humanities) Program of Study Committee: Nikki Bado, Major Professor Heimir Geirsson Chrisy Moutsatsos Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2010 Copyright © Holly Theresa Bignall, 2010. All rights reserved. ii What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? Langston Hughes, Montage of a Dream Deferred iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v ABSTRACT vi CHAPTER 1 – REFLEXIVITY AND THE LATTER-DAY SAINT TRADITION 1 1.a. Overview 1 1.b. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 2 1.c. A Reflexive Methodology 9 CHAPTER 2 – SCRIPTURE, SOLA SCRIPTURA, AND CONTINUOUS REVELATION 22 2.a. Change process and comparisons 22 2.b. Scriptural justification 24 2.c. The prophetic tradition in the LDS church 33 2.d. Doctrine, policy, and folklore 40 2.e. The history of the LDS church’s relationship to people of African descent 44 2.f. Scripture and interpretation 48 2.g. From race to gender 52 CHAPTER 3 – GENDER AND THE LDS CHURCH 54 3.a. LDS feminism 54 3.b. Authority and autonomy of the Relief Society 60 3.c. Women’s access to authoritative speech 68 3.d. Feminine divinity 81 3.e. The LDS church’s prescription of women’s lives 95 3.f. The common thread 115 CHAPTER 4 – PROCESS OF AND PROSPECTS FOR DOCTRINAL CHANGE 132 4.a. A precedent for change 132 4.b. Process of change 138 4.c. Consequences of change 159 iv 4.d. Prospects for change 175 4.e. Concluding thoughts 181 APPENDIX 185 The First Presidency Statement on the Negro Question 185 The First Presidency on the Rights of the Negro 186 Official Declaration 2 189 The Family: A Proclamation to the World 191 WORKS CITED 193 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have many people to thank for making the realization of this thesis possible. First my committee: To Heimir Geirsson and Chrisy Moutsatsos, thank you for your guidance and service. To my major professor, Nikki Bado, who spent countless hours reading the drafts, debating the ideas, challenging my assumptions, and molding the writing into the final product, your mentorship has been invaluable, your scholarship an inspiration, and your support and friendship deeply appreciated. My thanks must also go out to the Ames 1 st Ward and the Ames, Iowa Stake who opened their arms and welcomed me into the community. To the many of you with whom I’ve engaged in extensive conversation, thank you for your friendship, your honesty, your willingness to share, and your openness to my ideas. In particular I must thank my dear friends John Lippolis, Irene Faass, Melanny Cowley, and Jay Staker. To John, thank you for the endless hours spent discussing theology as I wrestled with both the academic and the personal demons raised by this project, as well as for your assistance in identifying sources of information on the church’s positions. To Irene and Melanny for your careful editing, and to Jay for your unwavering support. Most importantly I must thank my family. My parents, Alma and Frederick Bignall, who lovingly raised me in this beautiful and fascinating religious tradition, and nurtured in me a love of learning, an insatiable curiosity, and skeptical and critical mind. You have supported me in this endeavor and unceasingly encouraged me to see it through to completion. To my partner, Edward Jackson, who patiently and lovingly stood beside me through the frustration and the tears and the late nights, who applied his talented and critical eye as well as his red pen to the many drafts, and who picked up the slack while I chained myself to the computer, thank you, I love you. To Alyssa Bignall, my beloved daughter, my friend, my sister—the most supportive and loving child any mother could hope for. There are not words to express the influence you have had in my life and the blessing and privilege it has been to be your mother. vi ABSTRACT This thesis examines how Mormon constructions of gender that limit women’s sphere and narrowly prescribed women’s roles have elicited strong resistance from many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A rich tradition of feminist theology and activism exists within the LDS church, but little work has been done to analyze the overarching effectiveness of these feminist efforts in bringing about change in the tradition. In order to address this issue I begin by teasing out how the LDS church’s process for making changes to doctrine, policy, and practice differs from the change process of mainstream Protestant denominations, and how LDS church’s particular change process informed its response to the civil rights movement—explaining why the eventual resolution took the form it did. I follow this with a consideration of how Mormon feminists have presented their positions and arguments for change, how the church as an organization has responded, and the current state of official church positions and rhetoric with respect to feminist issues. Finally, I pose the following questions: What lessons does the history of race related change within the LDS church hold for us regarding the potential change process for addressing feminist concerns? What avenues are available to the church for making changes in the roles it prescribes for LDS women? And is there evidence of imminent change or that change is in process right now? After analyzing the evidence available in the literature, I suggest that the LDS church is currently experiencing neither the internal nor the external conditions necessary to motivate it to seek and enact deep, genuine change in its construction of gender roles. In addition, I argue that while some of the church’s behavior suggests movement toward a more conciliatory stance toward women, on balance, the majority of evidence suggests that the church is not taking steps to prepare for a major doctrinal change as it did in the lead-up to changing its doctrine on race. 1 CHAPTER 1 – REFLEXIVITY AND THE LATTER-DAY SAINT TRADITION In absolute darkness, we are blind. In absolute light, we are also blind… It is only through the dynamic inter play of light and dark—the shifting of lights and shadows—that sight exists. Nikki Bado 1 1.a. Overview Feminist scholars studying religion have drawn our attention to the ways in which religious organizations and theological works construct gender and prescribe women’s roles within religious communities, church institutions, and society more generally.2 In this thesis I examine how Mormon constructions of gender that limit women’s sphere and narrowly prescribed women’s roles have elicited strong resistance from many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A rich tradition of feminist theology and activism exists within the LDS church, 3 but little work has been done to analyze the overarching effectiveness of these feminist efforts in 1 Bado-Fralick, Coming to the Edge of the Circle , 6. 2 Influential works on Western Christian traditions include: Ruether, Women and Redemption , 29-64; Stanton and the Revising Committee, The Woman’s Bible , 29-64; Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk , 29-64; Fiorenza, In Memory of Her , 29-64; Arthur, “The Wisdom Goddess and the Masculinization of Western Religion,” 29-64; Gardini, “The Feminine Aspect of God in Christianity,” 29-64; Fiorenza, “Women in the Early Christian Movement,” 29-64; McLaughlin, “The Christian Past: Does it Hold a Future for Women,” 29-64; Pagels, “What Became of God the Mother?,” 29-64; Fiorenza, “Feminist Spirituality, Christian Identity, and Catholic Vision,” 29-64; Collins, “Theology in the Politics of Appalachian Women,” 29-64; Daly, Beyond God the Father , 29-64; Daly, Gyn/ecology , 29-64; Some influential works on Judaism include: Trible, “Eve and Adam,” 29-64; Adler, Engendering Judaism , 29-64; Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai , 29-64; Resnick Dufour, “Sifting Through Tradition,” 29-64; For Feminist works on Islam consider: Hassan, “Feminist theology,” 29-64; Lazreg, “Feminism and Difference,” 29-64; Tohidi, “Islamic ‘Feminism’,” 29-64; King, “Islam, Women and Violence,” 29-64; Badran, Feminists, Islam, and nation , 29-64; Cooke, Women Claim Islam , 29-64; Some interesting feminist works on Hinduism include: Gross, “Hindu Female Deities as a Resource for the Contemporary Rediscovery of the Goddess,” 29-64; Dobia, “Approaching the Hindu Goddess of Desire,” 29-64; Important feminist works on Buddhism include: Gross, Buddhism after patriarchy , 29-64; Klein, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen , 29-64; Kwok, Introducing Asian feminist theology , 29-64; Kwok, Postcolonial imagination and feminist theology , 29-64; For works on Third World feminist theologies more generally see: Russell, Inheriting our mothers’ gardens , 29-64; Pui-lan, Hope Abundant , 29-64; King, Feminist Theology from the Third World , 29- 64; For a good overview see chapter two of Gross, Feminism and Religion , 29-64.