I’ve never understood the concept of the Angry God. I suppose that’s been a function of my religious privilege. Normally, I dislike the word “privilege” because it strikes me as a term progressives wield like a Bowie knife in a bear fight they bring on for the fur alone. But I’ll borrow it here because the term has successfully taken on a meaning that combines arrogance with naiveté. The term suits me because I have been both arrogant and naive in the practice of my faith. After all, my God has loved me: I found Him; I’ve obeyed Him, honored Him, and served Him. [Arrogance.] And I see His love in the blessings He gives me: I have an amazing family, a beautiful home, vehicles to drive, and friends galore. [Naiveté.] Continue reading “The Angry God, the Excommunication, and the Rest of Us”
Category: Epistles to the Saints
On Kate Kelly’s Summons to a Church Court: An Epistle to the Saints
This morning, I awoke in our cabin, nestled in the piney woods of east Texas, and found, on the floor, the same beautiful black and blue butterfly that had, only yesterday, fluttered by me each time I stepped outside to enjoy the natural world. Somehow, she is trapped inside this morning, motionless, with her wings outspread in the attempt to camouflage against a maple-colored plank floor that will have none of it. I know from the experience of capturing butterflies in my childhood that if I touch her wings, I condemn her. Instead, I find a piece of paper and lay it before her. Although it doesn’t seem natural to her, the butterfly steps onto the paper and I carry her outside, where she flutters back into the trees.
I love symbols. I look for them all the time. As I have struggled to come to terms with the pending disciplinary action against leading LDS feminist Kate Kelly, I couldn’t help but find an imperfect symbol of her predicament in this butterfly. Continue reading “On Kate Kelly’s Summons to a Church Court: An Epistle to the Saints”
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To the Girls of Wasatch County ISD
You are beautiful. You are beautiful in your original school photos, and you are beautiful in the doctored yearbook photos that appeared in the 2013/2014 Wasatch High School yearbook, which isn’t to say I think the “editing,” or photoshopping, the school did in order to cover more of your bodies than your tops and tanks did was appropriate. It shouldn’t have happened. You should’ve been given full opportunity to represent your personality through your attire. Some may say you forfeited that right by not adhering to the dress code. But a dress code that is not enforced on a daily basis hasn’t the respect of the people who created it and who are charged with enforcing it. By default then, it isn’t reasonable to expect those over whom it alleges power to take it seriously. Each original photo I saw of you depicted a young woman who was dressed modestly and appropriately for school. Your parents should be very proud of you for the brave way you are standing up for yourselves by addressing this in front of Fox 13 News cameras. Continue reading “To the Girls of Wasatch County ISD”
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The Kingdom of God and the Civil Disobedience Model
Recently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints experienced what some are classifying civil disobedience when Ordain Women took public action at the past two Priesthood Sessions of General Conference, all with the intent to call attention to perceived gender injustice within the church structure. After going on record suggesting OW refrain from demonstrating at Conference, I was invited by a male supporter of OW to once again review Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (full letter found here and an abridgment, here). After having done so, I am more puzzled than before over why OW has chosen this particular secular model to agitate for change in the LDS Church.
Before I proceed, I feel obligated to point out the obvious, that any conversation about civil disobedience in the Kingdom of God will bifurcate according to the belief system of those involved in the conversation. Continue reading “The Kingdom of God and the Civil Disobedience Model”
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The Mormon Historical Narrative and the 200 Year Pride Cycle
One of the essential lessons of the Book of Mormon is found in the 200 year pride cycle: Christ appeared to the Nephites on the American continent and, in the span of 200 years, they moved from being righteous to prosperous to proud and on to final destruction. The motif is repeated throughout the Book of Mormon. Believers often note that, at times, humility and repentance follow the season of pride and lead the people back to righteous living. Then the cycle repeats again. Admittedly, the pride cycle repeats in the Book of Mormon with relative frequency, but the 200 year pride cycle which began with Christ’s visitation and ended with the Nephite destruction dominates the book. Those of us who believe the Book of Mormon is scripture that is meant for our time see this as a warning to guard against pride.
We often think of the prophetic warning in political or governmental terms, as a warning that governments will fail once pride sets in, either with the politicians, their constituents, or both. We use the pride cycle lesson as a way to encourage civic involvement, a vote-or-be-damned sort of mentality. The pride cycle certainly seems to apply in a political context, but scripture, as we all know, tends to have multiple layers and multiple applications. Because the pride cycle speaks of the faithful ceasing to follow God and falling away because of pride, I suspect one of those many layers must apply specifically to the organized Kingdom of God here on earth, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Continue reading “The Mormon Historical Narrative and the 200 Year Pride Cycle”
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Perspective and the Ordain Women “Problem”
I decided that, once the public action taken by Ordain Women (OW) at the April 2014 Priesthood session of General Conference was accomplished, I’d stay silent about the event. I figured there would be enough people talking about them and probably not enough people listening to them. In the aftermath, I read some very moving posts written by the OW sisters and their male supporters. Surprisingly, during and immediately after General Conference, my Facebook feed was almost absent of OW bashing. I was pleased.
However, about a week after the Priesthood session, a guest post from The Millennial Star, titled “Ordain Women: thanks for nothing” (sic), began appearing in my feed. I looked away the first few times it appeared, but its recurrence demanded I pay it some attention. Everything about that post stood in stark contrast to the things I’d read by OW supporters. It was angry when OW posts were reflective, jubilant, and sad. It was rude when OW posts seemed to go out of their way to forgive. And it was illogical, making claims about OW that were not recognizable to me and assumptions that should have been put on the Naughty Bench rather than online. But I haven’t an interest in discussing, much less debunking, the guest post. Read it here if you haven’t. Instead, I’d like to don my fiction writer/editor’s cap and discuss the difference between point of view (POV) and perspective, why and how that knowledge can help us, and what perspective has to do with the Ordain Women “problem.” Continue reading “Perspective and the Ordain Women “Problem””
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Doubt, Mormon Women Stand, and Traction
I was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in early December of 1978, six months after the church lifted the ban prohibiting black men from ordination and one week before my 17th birthday. Oddly, two years earlier the ban was, in large measure, what led me to scrutinize the Church. As an eighth grader, I was so upset to learn that a church would blatantly discriminate that I spent several lunch periods boring my friend and fellow Catholic, the bespeckled and knock-kneed Maria Campagne, with my tirades. The ban put the “Mormon Church” on my radar screen and, shock of shocks, in no time I was trembling under the weight of a newly-found, but solid, testimony. Continue reading “Doubt, Mormon Women Stand, and Traction”
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The Parable of Convict Lake
Lucky me, I spent my honeymoon trout fishing.
It was August of 1986, a miserably hot summer, even in the Sierras. My new husband and I had opted out of a Hawaiian honeymoon in favor of a cash gift, so we spent the post-nuptial week at my parents’ condo in Mammoth Lakes, California. Today, Mammoth Lakes hops with summer activity, but not so much then. Mostly we fished. My father, an avid angler, had advised us to hit the beautiful St. Mary’s Lake, but I confused its location with another and inadvertently directed my fledgling husband to one of the ugliest lakes known to man. Or so I thought at the time. Convict Lake. Continue reading “The Parable of Convict Lake”
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HEADLINE: Ordain Women Shoots Self in Foot
Last week I composed a few words (read here) asking the Mormon faithful to look at LDS feminism and, specifically, the Ordain Women movement through a more measured and Christ-like lens. The response was, not surprisingly, a mixed bag. Happily, many took to heart the “make love, not war” message. Regardless, I spent much more of last week immersed in the discussion of female ordination than I could have predicted. When a friend pointed me to the recent Feminist Mormon Housewife podcast with Kate Kelly, founder of Ordain Women, I listened to about 30 minutes of the two hour discussion before my Internet glitched and that was that. So, admittedly, I haven’t ingested the entire interview, but I listened long enough to hear Kelly explain that OW’s public action at the Priesthood Session of April’s General Conference is intended to “communicate to the leaders of the church and to the Lord” that his daughters are, essentially, ready and waiting to be given the blessing of the priesthood. And I thought, “Sister Kelly, that ain’t gonna work.” Continue reading “HEADLINE: Ordain Women Shoots Self in Foot”
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Today’s LDS Feminism and Ordain Women: An Epistle to the Saints
It seems to be an unfortunate reality that, if I am to speak of gender issues to traditional Latter-day Saints, I must, at the outset, announce that I am not a member of Ordain Women. So here it is: I am not a member of Ordain Women. But I am a practicing and faithful Latter-day Saint who is disturbed by the depiction of the group as a small cluster of angry women who intend to usurp the positions of authority in the church. I’ve come across too much of that kind of rhetoric over the past few weeks to remain silent. And so I decided, in preparation for the 184th Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which will be held the first week in April, I’d share with you my observations about what today’s LDS feminism looks like from where I sit, which, admittedly, is the cheap seats of the organizational hierarchy. My focus will remain on female ordination even though Ordain Women, as well as LDS feminists outside that group, have an interest in other women’s issues.
Continue reading “Today’s LDS Feminism and Ordain Women: An Epistle to the Saints”
Life Outside The Book of Mormon Belt 