Kate Kelly,
Mormon feminist and founder of the Ordain Women movement, was recently denied
her excommunication appeal by the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her actions toward gender equality were deemed as
apostasy and cause for excommunication. I am hurt by this decision and I feel a
personal loss as a fellow Mormon.
Gender
equality within religion is not a just a Mormon issue. There are women
everywhere searching for their place in their respective religions. We love our
faiths and we are an essential part of them. Women of the Wall are standing for
equality in Judaism by requesting rights to activities reserved for men.
Despite opposition, there are Catholic parents wanting their daughters to have
the opportunity to be altar servers. After decades of discussions, a woman has
been consecrated as a bishop in the Church of England. Women and men all over
the world are standing up for something greater than what their religion is
offering.
Even within
Mormonism there is progress to be made. Women do not have adequate
representation in our correlated manuals, scriptures, apostleship, or Godhead.
The ordination of women to the priesthood would be a good start. It would offer
women more leadership opportunities that have been lost since the origins of
the Church, but ordination alone will not offer equality. It goes much deeper
than that.
We are
looking for the re-emerging Goddess, our Mother. “No matter how many times she
is rejected and even killed, the Goddess always re-emerges in one form or
another.” (Strangers in a Paradox, 49)
Mormonism is
progressive in recognizing the existence of a Heavenly Mother. However, despite
Her existence we do not pray to Her, or formally recognize Her as part of the
Godhead. In Mormon theology it is not out of the realm of possibility to
conclude that without Heavenly Mother, the Spirit Mother of even Jesus, our
Godhead would not even exist. George Q. Cannon (LDS Apostle, 1860-1901) stated,
“We are the offspring of Him and His wife.”
Orson F.
Whitney (Bishop, 1878-1906) explained that “there was once a time when that
Being whom we now worship—that our eternal Father and Mother were once man and
woman in mortality.” But despite the beauty of the passage, Mormon women are
left without an adequate role model for their aspirations. We rarely speak of
our Mother. If deification is the ultimate goal of Mormonism then an immortal
example of the feminine would be of paramount importance. The association of
the feminine with God is disregarded, and we are suffering the percolated
effects of Her absence. Women not being ordained to the Priesthood is just a
symptom, similar to Her absence in religious texts.
Imagine
scriptures or sermons written in a female superlative, not male. For example,
here’s what a modified excerpt of the inspired King Follett discourse would
say:
"GODDESS HERself was once
as we are now, and is an exalted WOman, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!
... I am going to tell you how GODDESS came to be GODDESSES. We have imagined
and supposed that GODDESS was GODDESS from all eternity. I will refute that
idea ... It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the
Character of GODDESS, and to know that we may converse with HER as one WOman
converses with another, and that SHE was once a WOman like us; yea, that
GODDESS HERself, the MOTHER of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus
Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible." [caps added for
emphasis]
Now imagine
spending your youth reading scriptures and other religious texts in the female
superlative instead of the male. I would venture to say that there would be
more than a just few men who would be confused as to where they fit into the
eternal plan of their Goddess, especially if men were denied ordination to Her
Preistesshood and were only granted its blessing through the authority of women.
This would
most certainly be a problem. But even so, I certainly don’t suggest we move
toward a single matriarchy filled with text and rhetoric in a female
superlative. A balanced approach of both feminine and masculine would be ideal,
but the feminine is rarely mentioned.
Some refute
that our Mother is too holy to speak of and that is the cause of Her absence in
our rhetoric. To that I say Her sacredness is not an excuse for Her neglect. To
worship a male God in no way diminishes His glory and such should be true of
our Goddess. Worship is a product of Her glory which is no less than our
Father’s.
But despite
Her absence, we press forward. We seek Her, even when we don’t know whom we
seek. We thirst for more beyond the biased God depicted through a predominately
masculine lens.
If we are to find balance in the future of our religion we must embrace the re-emerging Goddess. As Erastus Snow (LDS Apostle, 1849-1888) avowed: "If I believe anything God has ever said about himself…I must believe that deity consist of man and woman.” We must recognize that the feminine, as well as the masculine, is a part of each of us. And in so doing we will be able to transcend the expectations and limitations of pre-determined gender roles to build up our religion(s) as equal partners with God(s) worthy of worship.
If we are to find balance in the future of our religion we must embrace the re-emerging Goddess. As Erastus Snow (LDS Apostle, 1849-1888) avowed: "If I believe anything God has ever said about himself…I must believe that deity consist of man and woman.” We must recognize that the feminine, as well as the masculine, is a part of each of us. And in so doing we will be able to transcend the expectations and limitations of pre-determined gender roles to build up our religion(s) as equal partners with God(s) worthy of worship.
