Christian theology in general, and LDS theology specifically, is focused on men. Men worked out the theology. Men received the revelation. Men wrote the scriptures. Men give the sermons. Men impose the discipline. It’s all men, all the way down and all the way up.
Women are supposed to read themselves into the scriptures and adapt the doctrines as needed. When the scriptures say “men,” they actually mean “men and women.” “Mankind” really means “humankind.” “Brothers” includes “sisters.” This works fine until it doesn’t.
Probably the most glaring example of the practical problems caused by male religious mandates being imposed on women are garments – how they’re designed and how they’re required to be worn. If women were truly equal in the Church, women would design underwear for other women, and the design would take into account menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and other female-centric issues.
If women were truly equal in the Church, many deep and serious doctrines would have to be developed. The Brethren’s current approach is to tell women to trust the Lord to deal with their unanswered questions. The Brethren can’t answer women’s questions. But imagine, just imagine, if women were able to step into their roles as prophetesses and seers and gain revelation about the doctrines that affect women.
Birth. The way to reveal the scarcity of doctrine and scripture about birth is to contrast it with the abundance of doctrine and scripture about death and the resurrection.
Death is when the spirit and body separate. The spirit goes to the spirit world to await resurrection; the body goes to the grave. We are resurrected into the body that reflects the glory we will live with throughout the eternities. This life is an open book test; prophets and teachers throughout the scriptures teach mortals over and over again what they must do to inherit the highest kingdom of glory, to pass the test, to return to live with God. Read all about it in Alma 11:42-46, Alma 42:1-31, D&C 88:14-41, D&C 138:1-37, and the dozens (hundreds?) of entries under Death and Resurrection in the Index to the Triple Combination, the Topical Guide, and the Bible Dictionary.
The doctrine tells us exactly what happens to the spirit and body at every moment. We know where the spirit is after death, what spirits do between death and resurrection (preach to the spirits in spirit prison), what type of bodies we’ll be resurrected with, that all physical infirmities will be healed in the resurrection, what laws and obedience will determine which kingdom of glory we inhabit for eternity. Furthermore, we know that resurrection is a priesthood ordinance, and only resurrected beings can receive the keys necessary to perform this ordinance.
And what do we know about the doctrine of birth? This most important step in the Plan of Salvation? Um, well, not much. If you look up “Birth” in the Index to the Triple Combination, it doesn’t even have any scriptures. The reader is directed to Bear, Bore, Borne, Born, Jesus Christ First Coming of. You follow that path and find the verses about Mary holding Jesus mixed in with soldiers bearing arms and cautions against bearing false witness.
“Birth” doesn’t even exist as an entry in the Bible Dictionary, but there is an explanation of “birthright,” which is the patriarchal order of inheritance. The entry for “Birth” in the Topical Guide consists of six references to people being born and nothing about the woman doing the birthing.
Did you know that there is not one single verse of scripture about the veil drawn over our premortal memories? You’d think that would be important enough to merit a scripture, but no. That doctrine is a creature of deductive reasoning. “Hmmm,” said men, “we teach that we existed before this mortal life, but we don’t have any memories of it. I wonder why? I guess we’ll have to come up with a reason. I know! We forgot! That explains it!” Okay, sure. Is there a reason we have multiple scriptures about what we did in the premortal existence, but not a single scripture about forgetting it all?
If resurrection is a priesthood ordinance, then birth is a priesthood ordinance as well. The doctrine and ordinance of mortal birth should be the pre-eminent example of women’s priesthood and power. Women should be the keepers of premortal memory, the ones who placed the veil, the beings who have power to combine spirit and flesh into a mortal body.
Procreative Sex and Consent. The Church’s law of chastity is designed with men in mind. It looks a lot like the social rules regarding sex that were focused on men’s desire for an heir. In a patriarchal society, the most important question about a baby is the identity of the father. If a woman’s sexual activity is limited to her husband, there is no question about a baby’s paternity.
Stupidly, the Brethren have taken to calling sex “the sacred procreative process.” That misnomer only applies to men. Men are always fertile. A man’s ejaculation always contains sperm in search of an egg. In contrast, women are fertile for only a few days per month, and never fertile once they’ve gone through menopause. A husband and wife with a healthy and enjoyable sex life will only have procreative sex a few times. The rest of the sex is recreational.
All the many ways that the Church’s law of chastity ignores women’s experiences with conception, sex, and consent are worth their own blog posts. Fortunately, I already wrote them. For a full discussion about a law of chastity that actually encompasses women’s full experience with sex, please see Rethinking the Law of Chastity, and A Consent-Based Law of Chastity.
If women were equal to men, the sin of rape would be the sin next to murder, not chasing after a prostitute, who is presumably going to consent if the man offers to pay her (Alma 39:1-5). The Church would have multiple talks and lessons regarding the importance of consent. In fact, every single word ever spoken about women’s modesty and purity would be erased and replaced with teachings about the commandment that men respect a woman’s power over her own body and the utter damnation that awaits any man who assaults, rapes, demeans, harasses or otherwise uses a woman as an object of sexual gratification.
Ensoulment and Abortion. The Bible doesn’t actually forbid abortion. Men wrote the Bible. Pregnancy and childbirth were women’s issues and the Bible is silent on those topics. One thing I’ll say for the Bible’s authors is at least they knew when to stay out of an issue. Today, Christian men lead the charge against reproductive rights and majority male law-making bodies pass the laws limiting access to abortion.
If women were equal, the LDS Church would have clear doctrine about when the spirit enters a developing fetus. The LDS Church’s doctrine of the pre-existence teaches a more compassionate view of the fate of aborted, miscarried, or stillborn children than other Christian denominations, who sentence a spirit to limbo or damnation in those circumstances.
The Church would also have a vibrant support for the exceptions to the doctrinal ban on abortion (if any ban existed after women received the revelations about ensoulment, stillbirth and miscarriage), and would encourage legal action to enshrine those exceptions into law with robust protections. The strong protections in the re-written law of chastity’s protections for women’s consent would provide for abortion rights if a woman says she didn’t want to have procreative sex. There would be no victim-blaming and no skeptical scrutiny of a woman’s statement about her consent or lack thereof. Abortion would be seen as a mercy for the soul of the developing fetus. Can you imagine the horror of sentencing a child to be born as an act of hatred and sin? [fn 1] The suffering of a child conceived by rape, upon finding out their origin story, would be an injustice so great that society would never impose that burden on a baby, especially when abortion could safely send that soul to a wanted child.
Women in the LDS Church would be organized into action to lobby for state laws that protect women’s lives, rather than the current weak exceptions to abortion bans that doctors don’t dare rely on to perform an abortion. The life and health of an adult woman would always outweigh the potential life of a developing fetus. I can’t imagine women who fully accept their equality to men insisting that another woman endure an unwanted and/or harmful pregnancy. The trauma and burden is too great to impose.
Polygamy and Women as Breeding Stock. Women are more than a uterus. Polygamy has been discussed eloquently and fervently elsewhere. Here, I will only say that if women had equal doctrinal authority in the Church, polygamy would never have happened. If women are made equal now or in the future, the ghost of eternal polygamy would be banished out of the Church’s doctrine forthwith.
Women in the Celestial Kingdom. What do women do in the Celestial Kingdom? Women have been vocal about the fact that an eternity of child-bearing and child-rearing isn’t exactly any woman’s idea of heaven. What exactly does it mean to rule and reign with your husband in the new and everlasting covenant? If women were equal to men, women could reveal and develop the exciting answer to this doctrinal question.
Eve, the Temple Ceremony, and Angels. I read “Eve and the Choice Made in Eden” by Beverly Campbell. What struck me the hardest was the fact that Campbell did not quote any women. It’s been a few years, but my recollection is that the book was mostly a collection of quotes by men saying that Eve made the right choice when she partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and we should honor her for that choice. That’s a profound doctrine, utterly different from mainstream Christian assumptions that Eve ruined everything when she ate the fruit. And yet, based on Campbell’s book, it appears that only LDS men talk about Eve. Where are the sermons given by women about Mother Eve?
If women were fully equal in the Church, I imagine the temple ceremony would have to be changed again, to allow Eve to speak after the Fall. Perhaps involving female angels to minister to Eve and Adam. Why aren’t female angels allowed to minister to this earth? The written scriptures only record male angels [fn 2]. Did Eve commune with angels? If women wrote the scriptures, would we have more stories of angelic visitations and some of those angels would be women?
Michael, the angel who participated with Christ in the creation of the world, became Adam. Before Eve became Eve, which angel was she? What was her contribution to the creation of the world? Let women answer these questions.
Righteousness, Motherhood, Infertility. When faced with questions about why men hold the priesthood and women don’t, men frequently decide to equate priesthood with motherhood. However, there is no equivalence between priesthood and motherhood.
The scriptures plainly teach that men hold the priesthood in this life because they were “called and prepared from the foundation of the world … on account of their exceeding faith and good works” to hold the priesthood (Alma 13:1-13). The great priesthood leaders of each dispensation were the “noble and great ones” identified before the world was made (Abraham 3:22). Men have to be interviewed and found worthy to be ordained to the priesthood.
Motherhood is sometimes(?) a reward for righteousness. The matriarchs of the Old Testament, Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, all struggled with infertility before conceiving important sons. But more often, motherhood has nothing to do with a woman’s righteousness, or even fitness to become a mother. Teenage girls can get pregnant before they are physically or emotionally prepared to be a mother. Wicked women conceive and give birth and hurt their children. Sick women who can’t cope with a pregnancy and child have them anyway, and the children suffer. Women who would love and cherish a child struggle with conceiving. Every mammal with a uterus can have a baby. There is no link between motherhood and righteousness. There is no doctrinal explanation for infertility. Male Church leaders default to the “we just don’t know – how about you trust the Lord” explanation for infertility. The explanations for male sterility are equally scarce.
Conceiving children is clearly a doctrinal gap in the great Plan of Salvation. Why can some women conceive and others can’t? Why isn’t conception connected to a willingness to raise children? Why can’t a woman control her fertility? Why isn’t motherhood a reward for a woman’s righteousness the way priesthood is a reward for a man’s righteousness?
Let women prophetesses and apostles reveal these doctrines. Men can veil their faces and remain silent.
Heavenly Mother. A woman songwriter gave us the most definitive statement of Heavenly Mother’s existence, and even that is a deduction and not a revelation.
In the heavens, are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare. Truth is reason, truth eternal, tells me I’ve a mother there. (“Oh My Father” by Eliza R. Snow)
Male Church leaders actively discourage any search for Heavenly Mother, as most recently repeated by Elder Renlund in 2022. The reasons she is obscured are stupid.
Women yearn for Heavenly Mother. It hurts to be erased in the heavens. Yes, if the LDS Church fully developed its doctrine of a Heavenly Mother, we would officially be polytheistic and therefore out of the Christian club for good, but we’re already polytheistic for teaching that God and Jesus are separate beings. We’re never going to be included in the Christian club, so let’s develop our doctrine!
The men who have tried to withhold Heavenly Mother from our hearts and minds have no place in finally revealing the doctrine about her. Women prophets and women apostles should be empowered to teach about Heavenly Mother’s divine role.
Final Thoughts. The LDS Church may claim to have all the currently revealed truth, but it’s clear that all that revealed truth is only a part of what we need. Men have cut women out of the process of revelation. “We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (Article of Faith 9). How about we acknowledge that Goddess will reveal great truths too?
Although, I can’t help but acknowledge that answering all these questions and empowering women as apostles and prophets would change the LDS Church beyond recognition.
**
[fn 1] I’ve got a whole novel planned (which I will never write) about a man who was adopted as an infant and goes looking for his birth family. The adoption records were sealed. He eventually finds his birth mother, and discovers that she was raped and then forced to endure the pregnancy and give birth due to her family’s religious beliefs. The trauma broke her, and he sees her suffering because of his existence. His self-hatred and hatred for his father overwhelms him. He finds his birth father (who was never held accountable and is a professionally successful man) and they die in a murder-suicide. The suicide note rips the rapist’s family apart.
[fn 2] I hope that, after the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, female angels ministered to Mary throughout her pregnancy with Jesus.
Questions:
- What did I miss? What other doctrinal gaps need to be filled by women?
- Do you believe the LDS Church could survive these revelations in its current form?
- Would any of these answers heal your soul?
Wheat & Tares 
I think renewing the 19th century practice of women blessing the sick would be a very edifying change. I also believe that Eve was the angel who blessed and strengthened Jesus in Gethsemane. Her decision in Eden was an act of faith (in Jehovah as a future Messiah) that is reflected in all women and their children throughout history. She had to be there. I believe that Jesus is the only man who truly understands what women go through because he took their life pains and tribulations (yes, social and biological) into himself through His atoning act. So doe sit not make sense for women to anoint with oil (a symbol of Jesus’ act) and blessing the sick (a work of Jesus and his faithful). The Atonement of Christ is a gift to women as much as it is a gift to men.
Excellent article, and articles referenced! I had already decided that I am unable to believe in the misogynist god that Joseph Smith created especially in d&c 132. This leaves me with a huge question mark on who or what God really is or if he/she exists at all. Sad to arrive at this as a born lds, now age 77!
Would doctrine change if women were equal to men in the Church? That depends on how doctrine is formulated. If doctrine comes from revelation via God to the LDS prophet, then theoretically it would not matter whether that prophet was a man or a woman. And it would not matter whether priesthood leadership consisted of men or a mix of men and women. After all, God is revealing his will to the prophet.
I happen to believe in a different version of LDS doctrine formulation. In this version, the men in charge formulate doctrine via a mixture of tradition, background, and personal preferences with an eye on the welfare of the corporation. Change is very slow and usually comes after the rest of the world has figured it out. And women aren’t part of the decision making because they never have been (i.e., tradition), not because it’s prohibited doctrinally.
Some of you believe in paragraph one. I used to. If you now believe in paragraph two you also realize what we are up against for women in the Church.
This article is a remarkable achievement. What a fascinating analysis of what could be and, really, should be. I would think that if there were a true church of God, this is how it would have started from the beginning — no exclusion of 50% of God’s children.
I hope this article gets passed around, goes “viral”, whatever it takes to stick. In 50, 100 years, who knows, if the church ever decides to give the respect towards women that they should have from the beginning, this article tells them how to do it. People will be able to say it was a blog post back in 2025 from an unknown prophetess that lit the way.
This post is outstanding, Janey! I love how much thought you’ve put into considering many possible teachings that would be better thought out or developed in a different direction if we had women leaders and real equality for women. You’ve hit on several that I hadn’t even considered. I think what I love most about your post is that it feels like a perfect response to all the people complaining at the time of Ordain Women’s actions that things wouldn’t be any different if women were ordained, because God would tell them the same things he tells the men. Of course, this is false, because nobody’s batphone to God works perfectly, and as you observe, men work out things of interest to them, like paternity certainty.
Another issue that I think could fit on your list would be a discussion of whether or how marriage is essential. With more active women than men in the Church, it’s a perpetual question that so many women (but very few men) face of whether they should date and marry a non-Mormon or hold out and hope they’ll find someone inside the Church. I think it was Spencer W. Kimball who famously scolded women to decided to marry non-Mormon men for choosing temporal happiness and not holding out for celestial glory. It seems like rhetoric has softened since then, but it still boils down to a handwave of “it will all be fixed in the next life.” If there were women in leadership and true equality, I suspect there would at least be more doctrinal development around the question, and perhaps even actual practical innovation in making life easier for people who want to marry non-Mormons or who want to stay single (or, perish the thought, get gay married!). Or maybe there could even be some de-centering of marriage in our rhetoric to begin with, although that might be a bridge too far.
If women’s voices were equal, I believe we would have a more charitable theology for our queer members. I believe that is also true if we had younger men that were more involved in raising their kids in charge rather than men who raised their families from a distance in the 1950’s. Involved parents are truly frustrated with the empty chair theology.
Wonderful read Janey; thank you.
Such a well written article Janey! I’ve only looked at a few of the links. (How did I miss the discussion of Gabby Blair’s book “Ejaculate Responsibly” at W&T?) It’ll be fun to spend some time with your well researched post.
This morning Joe Biden reanimated the ERA by instructing that it be published. That thing just won’t die no matter how many times they try to exterminate it; it’s like the roadrunner and coyote!
And I’m glad, I’ve come to love the ERA as a model of fairness for all people, not just women. I wrote my long-winded thoughts as a comment on the Sonia Johnson post, and I won’t threadjack this one, but with it fresh in mind, I would say this.
The unadorned doctrine in the amendment, if applied to church doctrine, could be an earthquake of effects, too much for some people to process. But I can’t see anyone among the all male leadership who could shepherd the church through the incremental changes necessary to bring women into equality. Further, the political climate in the church makes it impossible. There are so many men who are seemingly unaware of the available entitlements that they enjoy, who depend on unseen and unpaid service by nameless, voiceless women to achieve their accomplishments. But if those perks are threatened, will turn into the most grasping toddler ever, whose comfort appears to be in peril, and they are then fully aware of every jot and tittle of ease to which they lay claim.
Excellent article, bravo! I am going to bookmark this to read and re-read in the coming years. I want to say, “Amen” to what east coast guy said. One small thought: if women were equal in the church, the past isolation between a mother and her child missionary would never have occurred; I do not think any rule restricting missionaries from calling their mom twice a year would have been upheld (I know that has changed, but when I served that was the only telephone contact allowed). I would suspect other aspects of missionary service would improve too as women simply would not stand for some of the dreadful conditions missionaries face.
As for the topic of garments, my wife tells me she would not be too keen on wearing garments ever again, even if they were designed by empowered female church leaders with different fits and fabrics. I do not think she really wants anyone (male or female) to dictate her undergarment choices. I concur. Can we not simply develop some sort of smart phone app that has a guided meditation or reflection routine involving the sacred symbols that can be reviewed on a regular basis? Perhaps we then restrict the actual wearing of the physical garment for temple ceremonies. Another idea I had is simply for the church to manufacture the symbols and allow self-adhesion (like my mom used to do with my cub scout patches) to undergarments of members’ choice. Maybe female leadership would be quicker to get to this type of innovation/revelation.
Modern English is weird. The word “man” came from old English “mann” which really a gender neutral way to refer to humans. Meanwhile, “waepmann” referred to a male human and “wifmann” was for a female human. “Wer” was another word for a man. Language evolves, and those words and their meanings both morphed into words like woman, man, wife, and even werewolf. So “man” in modern English now usually refers to males, but it still sometimes keeps its more neutral literary meaning.
Things get weird when we start looking at the pre-English bible. In languages like Greek and Hebrew there was a mixture of words used, but by the 16th century (when the bible was being translated to English), the word “man” had already evolved from its Old English origins – so words referring generally to humans ended up in English as some form of the word “man”. Meanwhile, gendered words referring to actual male and female figures also were translated to “man” and “woman,” respectively. This alone flattened a lot of the original meaning and nuance.
This is in NOT an attempt to refute the OP or minimize the challenges of women by arguing that they really are included in scripture (the Bible is very obviously dominated by stories about men). Rather, the muffled and mutated language has made it even easier to weaponize religion against women. And it’s largely been done by opinionated men with power and an agenda.
Even the Hebrew word אָדָם can be confusing – it’s the given name “Adam”, it can also mean “man” (in the modern usage), and it can also refer to humankind in general. So when God was supposedly passing down priesthood authority to אָדָם in the old testament, was God referring to Adam the individual, Adam as males, or Adam as humanity? It’s one long game of telephone dating back thousands of years that humans use to justify suppression and violence against each other.
Yes, of course. Plenty of churches have survived and thrived by empowering them women in their congregations. I might even argue that the LDS Church won’t survive in the long term if it doesn’t make changes.
The typo “them women” makes me sound ridiculous. Correction: “…the women…”
What a novel that would be, Janey! I hope you write it and find a brave publisher to publish it. I love all the possibilities in this post. My only thought is, I’m a bit skeptical that any of these changes would occur given the seemingly overwhelming conservative majority in the Church. Let’s say women do receive the priesthood (which do be clear, I hope happens), and the current RS and Primary general presidencies suddenly become apostles. I haven’t seen any evidence from the limited talks we get to see, that they wouldn’t simply continue to tow the current orthodox line the Church is going in. Leadership has historically brushed aside any and all even remotely progressive (social or theological) male voices in their ranks (such as Hugh B. Brown or our favorite German retired pilot), so I see no reason why they wouldn’t do the same to progressive female voices.
Well, first of all, doctrine would have to change before women could ever be equal, and who knows where that would leave us. The inequality as doctrine can’t be found in the scripture, but it can be found in all the talk about priesthood and it can be found in the temple. The temple ceremony still establishes a hierarchy of God/man/woman. Although they have tried to muddy the water and made that hierarchy less obvious, it is still underlying things like the man “presides” in the marriage. A woman is made a priestess unto her husband, which seems to mean she holds his priesthood while he is a priest unto God which we know means he holds God’s priesthood. The husband taking his wife through the veil put him in the “lord” position over his wife, and we don’t know how the second anointing further puts the man as god over his wife.
So, once those things change, we will have to see what we have as a church before we can speculate the changes after women become equal. Just having women in the first presidency would change the church so much to even GET to that point. Then it would be interesting to see what’s left to change.
But with as much as our larger culture is retrenching on women’s equality, and the church being firmly conservative, I can’t see them making any real changes toward greater equality. They seem to prefer to confuse and muddy things up rather than actually change things. A lot of token changes make it look like we are getting closer to equality, but when you look at the actual workings of the church, women have less autonomy than they did in 1950. So, all they have done is hide the inequality better.
I honestly think they would rather see the church disappear than to truly make women equal.
But I really like the post and the fantasy of “what if?” So many good ideas that we’ll never see happen.
Love this post! Thanks!
Also, I’m sadly with every comment who doubts it will happen. Which is perhaps the largest reason I no longer call the LDS church home. I hate patriarchies. And the LDS Church loves patriarchies. Not for me. The partriachy values things I dont and threatens things I care about. A theology without one would be awesome. But we all know what happens when people get power. Especially when they’ve been so eager to get top power, to get unleashed, to make the Church after their image. Not what I signed up for. Down with the patriachy! And yep, it’s all over the temple.
Thanks for the great discussion everyone. These ideas have been bouncing around my head for several years and it felt good to get them all organized and into actual words.
Like several of you, I don’t hold out much hope for the Church making women equal to men any time soon (or ever). What I hope this post does is clarify for people just how much doctrine we are missing. Being a woman has meaning, and it’s a lot more than being a man’s helpmeet (whatever that means) and fitting politely into a man’s life.
A better doctrine of marriage is necessary, good point Ziff. Why is it necessary? And why for eternity? If it’s about child-rearing, that’s not a permanent occupation. Society needs people who aren’t engaged in raising children full time in order to do all the other tasks of society. That’s not minimizing the importance of raising children at all — it’s an acknowledgment that children are best raised in a society with a whole lot more going on.
Chadwick – I thought about mentioning that queerness would be more accepted, so thanks for bringing that up. If women’s issues with the law of chastity were fully developed, that would lead right into queer issues too. Procreative sex is not the only sex.
Pirate Priest – thanks for the linguistics info! I didn’t know that.
Jacob L – interesting about changing how families would communicate with their missionaries. You’re right.
josh h – your first paragraph made me cringe and then you saved it with the second. Yeah, the idea that God tells just a few people what everyone needs to know is wrong. It’s unworkable. It doesn’t make sense. Given how many times the brethren have said “we don’t know; trust the Lord” you would think they would notice that they don’t get all the revelation.
Janey, this is a good list. I’d argue that the most fundamental doctrine of Christian theology might change – the need for an atonement and sacrifice of a god.
A woman would probably conceive a better plan than requiring her children to murder her husband’s favorite son because they were forced into the impossible situation of transgressing commandments of her husband.
Aaaaand, Trevor Holliday knocks it out of the park. Wow, yes, profound observation.
Any thoughts on that from anyone? How would an equal male-female Gods pairing handle sin and repentance? No other religion on earth requires an atonement for sin like Christianity. No one has to die for repentance to work in other faiths.
I reconcile it this way. We all sin, we all hurt others. some much more than others. We are the ones demanding payment for the wrongs done to us. Jesus is the mediator who knows all our hearts. He is asking us if we would accept payment from him, and allow him to judge the culpability, repentance or otherwise of a perpetrator, rather than demand they pay themselves. Similarly, he will do the same for us, in the harms we have called. Anyone not accepting this is put in the position of making recompense themselves for the wrongs they have done. Similarly the unrepentant also make payment themselves. And then I stretch it further than this and say, that reasonable people, accepting this form of mediation, and accepting Jesus assessment of remorse, repentance etc., will say, actually, we are not going to demand that Jesus suffer in order that they get payment for the wrong the repentant person did us, and that we have it in our hearts to forgive. I’m not sure I am explaining this properly…
This is a great post, Janey. And a great discussion.
My faith crisis began when I realized I had moral objections to the whole system. (Deciding the Book of Mormon was fictional didn’t really faze me, but ymmv.) I don’t want a life that’s predicated on the infinite suffering of anybody, God or not.
Then I got pregnant. Then I gave birth. Then I survived the first year of my child’s life. Suffering, a lot of suffering, is baked into the premise of living. My being here=my mom suffered. More than I ever understood until I did it for somebody else. And then I did it again. I still don’t want my life at the cost of infinite suffering to anyone, but I’ve realized, like Buddha says, that life is suffering. But it’s not all suffering.
I don’t know that I think Jesus’s atoning sacrifice is what we/they think it is. We suffer. All of us. We make each other suffer. Sin doesn’t even have to come into it. Jesus says, “But it’s okay.” The love is bigger than the suffering, or maybe it isn’t bigger, but it’s right there too. Love and joy and pain suffering, all existing together, all at one with each other, and we’ve got to feel it all. And when it becomes too much, we can lean on Jesus, or maybe better still, lean on each other because we’re trying to be like Him.
Janey, an enlightening post, and thanks. You wrote that birth was likely a priesthood ordinance just as resurrection is a priesthood ordinance. You cited Pres. Kimball and Young for the notion that resurrection is a priesthood ordinance, but I am not convinced. If by ordinance we mean that individual resurrected men will go to a grave and say some words and then a designated corpse will come forth, I don’t believe that. Paul said: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: forthe trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.” The trumpet may well be metaphor, but many came forth from their graves at Jesus’ resurrection, and we know nothing about people going around doing ordinances at their graves. I think the Lord does this, although I don’t know how.
I haven’t thought it all the way through, but maybe knowing all about birth doesn’t really matter. Not because it is not important, but because it is in the past, and the past effectively doesn’t matter—ever. Our focus should be on the present with a hope for the future. We read in Isaiah: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” Maybe these lines tell us that we don’t need to worry too much about birth and other passed things like sin. It is in the past and we cannot change it. Jesus did not focus His teachings on people’s pasts in the four gospels. He called on people to change now and to believe, but he never told people to make long lists of their previous sins and to perform painful acts of contrition for each of them.
We focus on the present with a hope for the future, but we know little about it. Paul told us that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” We don’t know what the eternities hold, but I don’t think that women will be getting pregnant and will be birthing spirit children in some sort of painful labor. I don’t know that there is a divine copulative act followed by spiritual pregnancy and then by years of raising spirit babies, changing spirit diapers with spirit poo, and spending hours alone with children cleaning the house in the clouds while the husband is out doing whatever husbands do, expecting supper to be on the table when he gets home. People who talk about family life in the eternities speak from ignorance. I see my wife and I as partners in the eternities, but I don’t know what we’ll be doing. Whatever it is, we’ll do it together, and that is good.
When one accepted Jesus in the gospels, he or she became a new creature in Christ, and he or she exercised the power to become a son of God. Why didn’t John say the power to become sons and daughters? Did he exclude women? No! Daughters didn’t have claim to inheritance. It isn’t that John hated or excluded women, but sons (and not daughters) have a right to inherit, and all men and women, bond and free, black and white, have the power to become sons, meaning they have legal claim to inherit. I don’t see sexism in the language there. Having the power to become a daughter would get you precious little in the society and time when John wrote: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” Sons could inherit the land and take the name (metaphors for salvation), and women who follow Christ will have the same claim as men who follow Christ.
You’re right that we don’t have a clear doctrine about when the spirit enters a developing fetus. I don’t think that the spirit enters at conception. Gnats and flowers have life, but I don’t know that they have eternal spirits, or that their spirit and body become a soul. They may have been spiritually created before being physically created, but that might be more like planning and execution, blueprints and construction. We don’t know when the child’s spirit enters the womb. I agree with you on abortion.
I am OK with unanswered questions. I would rather have no answers than wrong answers, and there are a lot of wrong answers circulating in mormondom (or in CoJCoLDSdom). I may well be naïve, but I rely much more on the standard works than I do on general conference talks or the Journal of Discourses, and I put more confidence in the written revealed word than in the written speculative words. No, Janey, it isn’t that I see myself as a god out making worlds, and my wife’s fate is hidden, so as a man I’m destined to oppress my wife. I don’t know anything about being a god and making worlds. I’m OK with simply becoming a joint heir with Christ, and my wife has the same promise. I can’t spend too much time today speculating on what I’ll be doing on a daily basis in a future that I cannot comprehend. Maybe we’re not ready for new doctrine to be revealed, because we don’t do that good of a job with what we have received to date. Maybe we can receive more knowledge when we get better with faith, forgiveness, and love.
Georgis, you write so many words. So many of them stemming from a privileged, male position while posturing to understand women’s concerns and twisting actual teachings to make it all look so much better for women than it is. I know at least one of the sources where you learned that: the old boy’s club that we call General Conference! Or better, yet, as you claim to not put much stock in that: the written word itself.
Bravo for so clearly demonstrating exactly what this post is about. It takes some real effort to listen and understand views outside our own; especially when if you’re one of the great benefactors of the status quo!
Georgis – thank you for that remarkably eloquent and patronizing comment. You will notice that, in the first part of the post, I pointed out that the Brethren’s reply to women’s questions is to tell them to trust the Lord. I’m sure if the Brethren read this thread, they would upvote your comment, and your comment only.
Personally, I am ready for new doctrine to be revealed.
Ecellent list. I’d add: women who choose to stay single.
Does LDS doctrine allow women to choose celibacy? I’m talking about more than the “sweet spirit” concept. For example, a single mom who survived DV and just doesn’t have it in her to try marriage again. She has a temple recommend and is a faithful saint but she gets a lot of pressure from all sides to remarry. If she is maintaining her purity, why all the pressure to remarry as if single life was sinful? Nobody does this to the single sweet spirits, so why do divorced and widowed women get treated this way? Can’t a formerly married sister just be allowed to focus on her children and well-being while faithfully serving the lord? She is sealed to her dad; why doesn’t the doctrine of sweet spirits apply to her? It seems as if having children revokes the sweet spirit “just wait until the next life” doctrine.
Also, I recently saw in the news that IVF can create a pregnancy using the DNA of two women, so if this advancement takes off and lesbian couples are able to conceive, isn’t that part of the plan? Shouldn’t their families be just as worthy in the hereafter as those of hetero couples?
I really love Trevor Holliday’s comment. I have always been bothered by how Mormons teach the atonement. The sinner is portrayed more sympathetically than the innocent victim of sin, who is ignored as if they do not exist and the only offense is against God. And the violence of how we teach it bothers me. The stories are typically like the one about a kid who is does whatever, but the punishment is a whipping and because he has no shirt or something the bigger kid in the class volunteers to take the whipping for him. Or the guy in debt and it is like the money is owed to God the father and Jesus intervenes and pays the debt to God, but somehow there is never an earthly victim owed money, and I guess if there is, he just needs to forgive the debt. But God can’t just forgive the debt?!? No, that would be mercy robbing justice. But if a human is stuck forgiving, it is no problem of mercy robbing justice, they just *have* to forgive with no thought of ever receiving justice. God can’t be robbed as far as justice goes, but fellow humans can. And it is always portrayed violently. I hate it. So, yes, I think the first female prophet would start to change how we view the atonement. It would start sounding much different than Boyd K Packer’s way of teaching atonement.
Janey,
A thoughtful list. Like many others here, I have little hope that change will come, but I guess this opens up the larger question of how might change actually come about. We’ve seen that politely asking the Q15 to ask God didn’t get far, although at least some small changes came from it. To me, RMN and DHO shut their hearts long ago. So I would assume that change will have to come from a younger generation of the old guard and when not changing becomes untenable.
But what could make that happen? The only thing I can think of is if enough women in the church stopped being willing to support patriarchy going forward. (Of course men could do this too, but we’ve had 200 years and haven’t done much, so I don’t see a lot of hope there). What if many more young adults women decided to marry outside of the Mormon church because they feel too uncomfortable in a church where women have no meaningful role in policy and doctrine? What if many Mormon mothers balk at their children being baptized or being indoctrinated in primary with songs like “Follow the Prophet, He knows the way”? And so forth?
I don’t get the sense that there is yet enough ground swell of this kind of opposition to really get the next generation of LDS male leaders to accept change, but it’s seems hard to know just before tipping points are reached.
I need to research how change came about in churches like the United Methodist Church which once were also patriarchal but have long ago accepted women clergy. Of course the UMC never claimed to have a direct bat phone to God and was never as rigidly hierarchal so I am sure that made change much easier.
If women were truly created equal, then men would have to develop an entirely different identity/definition of “male/masculine” instead of the “not women” and/or “superior to women” mostly subconscious narrative.
“Not women” get to bypass the consequences of dumb, defensive decisions trying to prove their worth their to kids (as justification for the kid to obey the father’s rules/expectations). Eventually, one realizes that “it was never about the parents” in teaching kids to handle power/respect/authority/autonomy – because it was “always about the kids” and finding the accommodations the kid needs to not blow up their lives as teenagers.
Most “Not women” emotional management techniques are external – including swearing, yelling, and eventually physical combat. Most of the time, these techniques are destructive in nature. Which is fine, but machinery does a better job of destruction (so most of our fire wood production has shifted to harvesting forests rather then working off rage at the tree that needs to come down). Most of our “not women” have not learned the creative art of “rage cleaning” or “rage kneading”.
Most “Not women” are fed emotional diets of shame, anger and competition, with “failure to provide” and “failure to provide the proper decision-making example (aka presiding properly)” always looming in the background. They are also more likely to be enmeshed in a system of patriarchy – which makes it harder for them to do the internal work of defining “failure” and “provide” and “preside/make decisions” for their self. If the system works enough to give off most of the moral framework, why bother reinventing the wheel and making one’s own moral framework and definitions.
“Not women” rely on everything remaining the same as long as possible (and are ambushed by change). Their only cyclical calendar is the changing of the seasons (which is mitigated by office work). Women learn that cycles are eternal and internal from their bodies.
I agree that the true “sin next to murder” is sexual abuse, and I implied as much when I taught Alma 39 as an early morning seminary teacher years ago. Typically the reasoning for why sexual sin is supposedly very high on the list of “bad sins” is framed around the logic that murder is interfering with God’s plan for when we leave this life, and illegitimate sex is interfering with God’s plan for creating life. I think the logic is fairly weak, for reasons you outline in this post. I chose instead to frame this around agency: the worst way to violate the agency of another is to deprive them of life, and thus it follows that other serious violations of agency would be major sins. This would include any form of sexual abuse, not to mention such things as enslavement.
Conservative religions have a long history of categorizing the legitimacy of sexual relations around procreation. Their response to the sexual revolution of the 1960s was to push back strongly against all forms of non-procreative sex, even within marriage. In our church this came in the form of a couple of decades of sermons denouncing contraception over the pulpit, as well as that infamous and short-lived directive in the 1980s to bishops to withhold temple recommends from married couples who enjoyed, uh, certain non-procreative activities. Obviously they have backed off from those, and they have now even scrubbed the handbook of references to masturbation, but I think these types of sentiments still persist in the minds of the elderly leaders, reinforced by their belief in the inherent sinfulness of same-sex relations. I note that this connection has already been brought up by other commenters, and I agree that if women were the ones developing the moral code around sexuality, I think it would likely lead to different conclusions on same-sex relationships.
Most of our “not women” have not learned the creative art of “rage cleaning” or “rage kneading”.
I am a “not woman” who definitely has learned the art of “rage cleaning”, but more frequently I engage in “stress cleaning.” 🙂
What do women do in the Celestial Kingdom?
Rodney Turner, Professor at BYU, was big on saying how exalted women would be immortal, and, able to have children, but will have no other powers. And, no one rebuked him for that, at least not in public. Yet, I know a number of BYU Professors getting rebuked for teaching perceived false doctrines.
Their response to the sexual revolution of the 1960s was to push back strongly against all forms of non-procreative sex, even within marriage.
While I believe in no sex before marriage, this devalues women that are naturally sterile, or, are past menopause.
And, I’m still trying to figure out why only 3 women are named in the Book of Mormon. Yet, a number of women are named in the Old Testament.
I am reading this, and I see the problem. However, in every instance, so far as I can tell, it is Heavenly Father (and presumably Heavenly Mother) who determines what doctrines are revealed.
Either the LDS Church has the established Gospel and Doctrine of Christ to enact the Plan of Salvation, as devised by Heavenly Parents, or it doesn’t.
If it does, we have what God wants us to have, if it isn’t then we need to look elsewhere. I have looked, I don’t see revelations anywhere else that lead to something more. I accept I am a man (with a wife, 6 daughters, 3 granddaughters, a mother a sister, nieces) with all my privilege. But the question I would ask is why is God silent if women are supposed to be delivering these new doctrines?
I don’t know the answer.