IF YOU’RE A PART of the Mormon feminist community, there’s a high probability you’ve seen the recent footage of President Dallin Oaks admitting in an unscripted moment at a podium in Belgium that “[W]e know we have a heavenly mother or mothers.” (Watch it here.) His statement has piqued irritation among women who’ve long complained that the highest authorities of the church have been endorsing lesson materials that March young LDS women toward temple marriage without disclosing that, according to D&C 132, the temple’s “new and everlasting covenant” includes a commitment to live eternal polygamy. Mormon feminists viewed this clip of Pres. Oaks and, in something akin to unison, cried out, “He said the hidden part out loud! We told you the Church still says that heaven is polygamous!” However, as validating as the mother/mothers line is, I think it’s more important for Mormon feminists to concentrate on his next [audible] sentence because it, too, is hiding a truth that should be said out loud.

He next says, “But for reasons the Lord has not revealed, we do not know much about our heavenly mother.” We’ve heard this sentiment before. In the April 2022 special women’s session of General Conference, Elder Renlund stated, “Very little has been revealed about Mother in Heaven, but what we do know is summarized in a gospel topic [essay]…” He added, “Ever since God appointed prophets, they have been authorized to speak on His behalf. But they do not pronounce doctrines fabricated ‘of [their] own mind’ or teach what has not been revealed [to them].” Until this week, I’ve ingested these types of statements as weak excuses for their inability to receive revelation on an issue that matters so much to at least half the church’s population. But as I listened to Pres. Oaks’ earlier this week, I didn’t hear an excuse. I heard an admission.

When Pres. Oaks says “the Lord” hasn’t revealed much about Heavenly Mother (a figure I often call the Exalted Woman) to any Church president, he is making an admission. 

To understand the admission, consider Elder Renlund’s pronoun use. He is clearly using the word “God” to mean only Heavenly Father, the Exalted Man. Those in the highest ranks of church leadership, he says, “have been authorized” to speak on His behalf, not on Their behalf, and certainly not on Her behalf. When Pres. Oaks says the Lord has not revealed much about the Exalted Woman, he, too, means Heavenly Father hasn’t talked to the Brethren about Her. So what’s the admission? That those who hold the keys of the Melchizedek priesthood – men who have been telling us that God doesn’t communicate with them about Heavenly Mother – are not authorized to receive revelation about the Divine Feminine. They are only authorized by God the Father to represent Him.

The admission has been there all along but it seems we’ve been so influenced by patriarchal thinking that we haven’t understood that, if Heavenly Father requires a male priesthood to represent Him, a Heavenly Mother would likewise require a female priesthood to represent Her. The men don’t possess that. They cannot possess that. But we, the women, can, should, must, will, and possibly already do possess it. Put simply, the men who lead (and who have led) the Church do not have the authority to receive revelation about the form or function of the Exalted Woman. It is beyond the scope of their calling. 

Do I think they realize this? No. All signs indicate they are swayed by the false tradition of patriarchy. But could their words inadvertently reveal a truth they aren’t cognizant of? Yes.

In his aforementioned talk, Elder Renlund condescendingly equated female reasoning about Heavenly Mother to speculation, warning that speculation would lead us away from Big T-truth. Far be it from me to point out that Brigham Young and Orson Pratt reasoned, or speculated, that, because women give birth in mortality, the Exalted Woman must do the same in the next life. In this way, they not only fabricated a reason for eternal polygamy, they manufactured an image of the Exalted Woman as an eternally receptive, reproductive vessel who is dependent upon God the Father, an image that is repulsive to many LDS women. There is no revelation they can point to that supports the idea that the Exalted Woman is eternally reproducing. Instead, they’ll point us away from the teachings of these early LDS patriarchs because the sexism woven into their views is deeply disturbing.

How ironic that they cannot see that the problem isn’t that women might speculate about the Exalted Woman but that men have speculated about Her! How inane is their assumption that male priesthood contains an authorization for them to receive communication about the Exalted Mother! How astonishing that it seems it has never occurred to them that, like the Eternal Father, the Eternal Mother, may have a priesthood for those of her own gender, one that bestows a parallel authority to communicate with and represent Her! They don’t realize that the existence of an All Boys Club doesn’t mean an All Girls Club is an impossibility.

The idea that the Exalted Woman is an eternal sexual submissive whose great, everlasting role is to reproduce bodiless spirit babies is, by the way, in direct opposition to Joseph Smith’s teachings. Soon after that April 2022 special Women’s session, I wrote Ending the Objectification of Exalted Women: Joseph Smith’s Antidote to Literal Offspring Theology. In it, I lay out how Smith’s King Follett Discourse asserts that the spirits of men have never been, nor ever could be, created (or born) because each of us is co-eternal with God, having neither beginning nor ending. The Prophet who opened this dispensation did not see women as eternal breeders. I can agree with Elder Renlund on this one point, that speculation about the role of the Exalted Woman has led the entire Church away from truth.

The most direct route to gaining more light and knowledge about the Exalted Woman would be the ordination of women to Her Priesthesshood, something male leaders currently deny us. But we mustn’t forget that the kingdom of God resides within us. We’re all familiar with the famous line from Jurassic Park: “Life finds a way.” So does the Divine Feminine. Ladies, when you hear them say they don’t know much about Heavenly Mother, remind yourself that She is yours and you are Hers.

Once upon a time, a Melchizedek priesthood holder offered to ordain me. I declined. Not because I think women have no right to priesthood. I think we do. Not because the formal church would have given me hell for it. I no longer bow to external authority that conflicts with my conscience. I declined because I innately sensed that his priesthood was not my priesthood. I believe that Joseph Smith, as flawed a character as he was, understood the divine authority of women and was in the process of establishing a co-priesthood (a priestesshood) for women that honors us with equal authority and access to God. My sense of this is not speculation; it is spiritual awakening. 

I’m confident historical research is on its way to support what I’m suggesting. Someday a woman will emerge to lead us to this better light and knowledge. The Restoration, after all, continues. But we need men to get out of the way, to stop feeling threatened by us, to stop thinking they must protect us from ourselves, and to recognize they will be benefitted by true partnership with women. That partnership will require female ordination to a priesthood they can neither usurp nor claim as their own. But if they don’t get out of the way, if they don’t recognize they, too, need us to have the female priesthood, it won’t stop women from tapping into what is rightfully our gift from the Divine Feminine. That’s already happening.

What I’m saying may not immediately ring true to all Mormon feminists. I understand some have doubts about the notion that gender is binary and eternal. Some sense that whatever God is must be both male and female simultaneously. I sometimes wonder if our talk of male and female Gods is a simplification for our mortal minds. If what Joseph Smith says in the Follett address is correct, there’s no need for biological gender and no need for specifically heterosexual eternal marriage. I’m open to whatever configuration of the Divine proves to be our reality in the next life. I’ve learned that truth is often tucked quietly between layers of ambiguity. But because women exist and women have eternal life, women deserve a better understanding of what comes next, and that is what I’m addressing today. 

I also hope we stop centering the words of Melchizedek priesthood holders regarding the Exalted Woman and, instead, truly prioritize the words of female seekers who are bearing down on their own spirituality in order to birth a relationship with the eternal being we’ve been taught to think of as our Mother. Centering male leaders reinforces the vain expectation that male priesthood is the only one God’s children need. Revealing Her is a work for the women of the Church. They need us to show them the way. Let’s focus on that. 

My husband recently shared a joke with me that goes like this: a dog and a cat die and meet St. Peter at the Judgment Bar. St. Peter asks the dog what it did during its life to warrant an eternal reward. The dog replies, “I was loyal to my family. I always protected them, and I loved them even when they probably didn’t deserve love.” Then St. Peter turns to the cat and asks, “What did you do with your life that warrants an eternal reward?” The cat pauses longer than is comfortable and then, still looking St. Peter in the eye, replies, “Excuse me, but you’re in my seat.”

I feel much like the cat. The male priesthood has been occupying two seats when it was intended to fill only one. Those who hold it have assumed that the patriarchal order serves women. In reality, it has separated us from the Feminine Divine. Thankfully, increasing numbers of LDS women are awakening to the harm of accepting a male-centric existence for ourselves. Throughout history, women had little choice but to submit to male dominance. That time is past. It’s time we acknowledge that the Melchizedek priesthood has many rights, but lacks the right, lacks the authority, to represent their Queen. It’s time women say, “Excuse me, Elder, but you’re occupying my seat.”
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Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. (Proverbs 8: 1-3)

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