Sara Hanks and Dr. Nancy Ross put together a book of the best blogs posts at Feminist Mormon Housewives, over their first 10 years. FMH is one of the biggest Mormon blogs on the internet. I was able to sit down with them this summer and find out more about the book. They discussed some of the feminist successes & setbacks between 2012-2014. What were some of the successes in pushing for change within the LDS Church?
Nancy: But at that time the community was all about activism, or so much of the community conversation turned to activism. Really. In the middle of 2012, and this is covered in the book, there’s a little activist action to try and better understand different temples’ policies with regard to women and young women doing baptisms for the dead while menstruating. And so, there are a bunch of phone calls made and they try to get information about what different temples policies are with the idea that, you might show up at a temple and they might have a different policy and that might make people feel excluded or embarrassed.
Sara: Embarrassed. Yeah.
Nancy: And so that happens in the middle of 2012. By the end of 2012, we’ve got the first “Wear pants to church day,” and then that’s followed by, “Let Women Pray,” and the advent of “Let Women Pray was it’s own activist event to try and ask church leaders to let a woman pray in general conference which happened with Jean Stephens, which is super exciting.
Sara: Yeah.
Nancy: And then we’ve got the arrival of Ordain Women in the Spring of 2013. And so leading up to Kate Kelly’s excommunication, like from the middle of 2012 to the middle of 2014, there was just so much momentum in the community for like, Hey, we can change things. With the temple baptisms issue after all of this information gathering, someone was able to kind of make a connection further up the chain in the church and then the church issued a clarification to say no, we need all the temples to allow women young women to participate in baptisms regardless of whether or not they’re menstruating. And that was, that felt huge.
Concerning Kate Kelly’s excommunication in 2014,
Sara: One part of the feeling was just so much shock, because not only had we felt really hopeful for the possibilities of change, but we also kind of were under the impression as a community at large that with the advent of the Internet and so much attention being paid to the church and so much possibility for exposing problems or injustices that the church wouldn’t take the sort of actions that they had taken when it came to Sonia Johnson in the 70’s or the September Six in the early 90’s or the, the professors at BYU who were censured. We thought, “They wouldn’t because it would be too much of a risk. There would be too much backlash.”
Nancy: And it was also right in the middle of that Mormon moment. And the church had done the “I’m a Mormon” campaign. They had spent so much time, effort, energy and resources trying to make the church look good in the eyes of the public.
After the disappointment with Kate Kelly’s excommunication, how did Nancy and Sara react? Are they still active in the LDS Church? What has their spiritual journey been like? Check out their answers!
Nancy: About 18 months ago I was confirmed in Community of Christ and I was one of the people that helped to create the group, the little congregation and that I belong to in St George and I’ve been doing that ever since and I’m very happy with that. In many ways my Mormon feminist experience has really prepared me to kind of claim a faith for myself that it wasn’t necessarily tightly defined by an institution.
…
Sara: I felt very scared and I felt I was having panic attacks whenever I would go to church. And so, I felt like I had to kind of take a step back and I didn’t go for a few months. I had intended to not go for longer. I was like, I need to take a break of a year. And, I’m such a Mormon girl. I’m such a religiously inclined person that I couldn’t even hold to my own expectations. I went back to church after just a few months and started attending again. And I had a very supportive ward at the time.
And I loved relating to the people there. But my journey since then has been, it’s just gotten more and more nuanced. And I’ve had to find a way to relate to the church and relate to my own Mormonism that was very different than how I expected it to be growing up.
What are your thoughts concerning FMH and Ordain Women? Have you read the book? Was there a big dip in activity among women following Kate Kelly’s excommunication? Do you support or oppose activism by lay church members?
Wheat & Tares 
We thought, “They wouldn’t because it would be too much of a risk. There would be too much backlash.”
-Brinksmanship against the Prophets of the church? #Classy
The book is not merely a “greatest hits” sampling of FMH posts. The editors also provide a very informative year-by-year narrative commentary on Mormon blogging in general (of which FMH was a part) and the contemporary events in the LDS Church that blog posts of the day often reacted to. It’s a very nice retrospective for anyone who was involved in the early Bloggernacle as a contributor or commenter. While the focus is on FMH, the book also serves a something of a history of LDS blogging.
The era of the blog lasted about the ten years covered in the book. In many respects, we have now moved on to the era of social media, which brings in a much larger audience of participants: from hundreds of bloggers/commenters discussing LDS topics and events to tens of thousands of Facebook participants. Where blogs and bloggers were something of a curiosity to LDS leaders (if they even took notice), social media has become a serious concern. So it’s a different online Mormon world now than just a dozen years ago.
So, Nancy converted to the Community of Christ, which is what I converted from; although it was still known as RLDS. She will find that they have many more differences beyond just Ordaining Women. For instance, no Sunday talks given by non-priesthood males and females. Positions of local/district leadership result from nominations/elections. Individual congregations struggle with their budgets; they’re expected to maintain their building/operating facilities through local offerings; and the younger generations are mostly dis-interested in being tithe-payers.
Depending on how moderate or traditional her branch in St George is, her views on Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon, and Temple Ordinances may not find acceptance. The Community of Christ considers everyone who migrated west in 1846-47 to have been in apostasy. I wish Nancy the best of luck.
Nancy spoke very highly of her conversion, and said she felt much more empowered in Community of Christ. They even let her have keys to the building despite not being a priesthood holder.
FWIW, I had keys to the building when I was working for LDSFS (because at that location, individual sessions were held at the church building closest to the client), and when I served as the ward librarian. So, not a priesthood thing.
After listening to the interview on Mormon Stories I bought the book and I have to say it is truly a remarkable collection of writing. Right now I’m in the section/year on OW anD Kate Kelly’s excommunication and it’s upsetting to see how dishonest the PR department was about their actions. To be received one way and then read in the DNews and SLTrib pre written stories about their being asked to leave and refusing and their disruptive behavior was pretty sad. It’s helped me to appreciate the depth of feeling these women have about the issue and what it’s been like to be marginalized and ignored. We recently visited my wife’s sister in St George and to advantage of the opportunity to visit the CoC meeting and Nancy Ross on a Sunday evening. My wife and I hope that this new path will prove to be a source of light and happiness for them.
I treat the CoC’s revelation on women and the priesthood as authoritative and look forward to the day when the LDS Church follows suit.
The Ordain Women movement setback women’s exercise of priesthood in the Church by decades.
jpv expresses a common opinion, that direct action protesting backfires.
It’s impossible really to refute: no one really knows what would have happened without OW. But I have a different read on events. After so many years of nothing ever changing, there is no reason to think that *anything* ever would have changed without OW. While I think there was backlash against the direct action of OW, I belief there has also been a softer reaction to other movements (Let Women Pray, Wear Pants to Church), perhaps because these movements seem milder than OW.
But I think the most important effect of OW (whether you agree with it or not) is not on the church it its leaders, but in the women who found voice and meaning from the movement itself. The same goes for FMH.
Thank you to FMH, and friends of FMH, for giving a voice to and underserved and underutilized portion of our community.
I totally agree with Rockwell, and I’d like to pose jpv’s comment a different way.
What evidence do you have that the brethren were going to expand women’s exercise of priesthood?
(Don’t forget that activism 2012-2014 such as “Let Women Pray” was a result of Ordain Women, so that can’t be used as evidence for priesthood expansion to women.)
MH, the Let Women Pray campaign predated Ordain Women by several months. OW was created only a couple weeks before Jean Stevens prayed in general conference.
I don’t know whether OW ultimately set back women’s ordination, but the movement did have a few good effects. We got pics of the female auxiliary presidents in the conference center as well as priesthood session televised/broadcast live. I suspect it prompted the brethren to more fully support internal efforts already underway (switching to a general women’s session, focusing on female histories in the Church History Department). Oaks spoke about the concept of women holding priesthood authority, and I’m not sure that would’ve happened without OW seeking priesthood office. However, I suspect OW was the cause for the year-long delay in the release of two gospel topics essays – women and the priesthood and Heavenly Mother.
I told one of my Mormon feminist friends about 5 years ago (before Kate Kelly) that she should not underestimate the disdain our church leaders feel toward feminists, that they would gladly see every feminist out of the church and not even pause for a second to wonder if it was a bad thing. I have still seen nothing to convince me otherwise.
Given the lack of women speakers in this last conference combined with the domination of the women’s meeting by men speaking about women’s gender roles, I see quite clearly how these church leaders view women. Fortunately, these are not attitudes shared at the local ward level for the most part in my experience, but we don’t have 90 year old men running our wards.
Months difference is not noteworthy, IMO.
Well this is interesting. As usual, Mary Ann has her facts straighter than I do. Like MH at 5:29, I thought that ordain women preceded and possibly even inspired the Let Women Pray movement. But unless they had a time machine, (or collusion prior to the official founding of Ordain Women), that is clearly not the case.
For the record, wear pants to church also happened before OW was founded.
All of which makes me consider the whole thing in a different light. I can’t think of a single organized group feminist action that has taken place since the OW actions at conference following Kate Kelly’s excommunication. It seems like the excommunication was successful in either silencing or chasing away those who were speaking out.
Now anyone may correct me and tell me about feminist actions that have taken place… But the fact that I can’t think it them still indicates that they are quiet in comparison.
Rockwell, there’s a reason you haven’t hear about feminist actions. Those women have left.
Both dear friends and myself were involved in those early movements. We had hope and excitement. We all genuinely believed we were doing the right thing and that change would happen.
Then the backlash. The condescending language. The fact that a garbage truck was parked in front of women waiting in line to the priesthood session. The insults of online commenters, bishops on the stand, church leaders, friends, family. Angela is right. The church has no place for feminists. And so many of them left.
I feel FMH is a shell from its early days. Back then there were comments, engagement, activism and more. It’s quieter now. Those voices have taken their hopes and excitement elsewhere. While it’s nice to see the book out, it makes me feel melancholy for what once was, and what will never happen.