My Relation to the Church

Today I want to think about why I am a member of the church and about my complicated relationship to the church. I realize that the complications have offended some and perhaps created obstacles for others. I am sorry for the negative effects of my struggles with my faith, especially sorry for negative effects on my family.

As a child I was happy and deeply at home as a Mormon (although I remembered being mightily bored at church, I also understood from an early age that people are just sometimes boring and it was my job to bear with it). I had a strong foundation of love in my family, and the church felt like the extension of my family outward to my community, backward into the past, and forward into the future. I am grateful to my parents for giving me that grounding, that foundation that is deep and wide and firm but also joyously alive. As Wordsworth says, "Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will." I believe my firm emotional foundation is based on the love and care given by my parents. I know how fortunate I am to have experienced it, as so many children don’t, and are left bereft and ungrounded.

I was an adolescent during the early to mid-seventies, and the second wave of American feminism was just getting going, as well as the echoes and reverberations from the unpopular war, the corruption in government exposed by Watergate, and the social changes that seemed to have swept away the past. I read omnivorously. I experienced on a visceral level (before I knew what it was) the “click” of what those mid-century feminists called “raised consciousness.” Maybe it was more a recognition of what I had always felt. All those amazing books, ideas, theories, systems, which I had devoured and engaged in with delight--giving explanations and descriptions of the human condition—included an overt or more often an unstated appendix: “except for women.” “For women, of course, the inverse is true.” “The feminine dies not fit this model.” Etc. etc.

So from the very beginning of my intellectual life I had a double consciousness. There were humans, and there were women. I was at home in the world of ideas, and I was outside the window looking in. I was in de Beauvoir’s words, simultaneously subject, master of myself—and object—outside of my own experience, excluded deliberately from full personhood. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the feminists were/are wrong. But that was my experience. It was obvious that the traditional feminine roles were devalued in the world—women (and women’s work) were simply not as important as men.

Rightly or not, justified or not, I also experienced that double consciousness at church. At about that time, in an apparent reaction to feminism, we (in the church) began to emphasize verbally the importance of mothering, homemaking, women’s work (more often than on Mothers Day). I—and incidentally, most feminists—agree. Traditional women’s work is incredibly important, is vital, is essential, and must be valued and supported in a world where economic and social pressures can overwhelm it.

But of course men still presided, men were the public face of the church, it was men who told us to be happy in our womanly roles.

I still carry like a weight in my heart my memory of the whole ERA thing, when the church flexed its muscle—here do I say “in opposing women’s rights”?—maybe rather “in the political battle over women’s issues.” I remember my BYU Women’s Studies professor excited to attend the Nov. 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston as an official delegate, to celebrate the advances of women—and I remember her returning home, unable even to speak to us about it because of her tears. She told about the stake Relief Societies bused in en masse to protest and shout down the proceedings—their votes and movements directed by men in suits with 2-way radios. I was 19 years old, newly married and pregnant with our first child. I wondered if the church didn’t actually want strong, intelligent women as members—it seemed that they were actively pushing them/us out.

I remembered ten years later, Feb. 1987, when John and I decided to take the four kids to a Sunday evening fireside at the stake center. John had been working insane hours at three part-time teaching jobs (as well as full-time student) to finish his PhD at U Houston until I took a full-time job. I was Primary President in our ward and working a demanding schedule at a local psych hospital. The talk we heard from President Benson included this quote from Spencer W. Kimball:

Wives, come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from
the factory, the cafe. No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother--cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one's precious husband and children. Come home, wives, to your husbands. Make home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. Wrap the motherly cloak about you and, unembarrassed, help in a major role to create the bodies for the immortal souls who anxiously await.

I was stunned. We were working so hard, sharing child care, trying to reach our educational goals while creating a loving home for our kids. “Should I just quit my job?” I asked John. We talked through the consequences—back home to Utah with no Ph.D., probably working on the family ranch and commuting to a public school job. Maybe it would have been OK. Maybe we missed our chance to show true faith like the pioneers. Some women did it, I know. But it simply wasn’t right for us then. The whole experience was very upsetting for me, and my relationship to/with the church became even more doubled and conflicted.

I decided that I was tired of the battle. I decided not to care. But suppressed inner conflict still pops up, of course—sometimes even more vehemently than it would if it were out in the open and discussed in the clear light of day.

This isn’t what I intended to do with this post—relate my feminist history in a self-justifying manner. I recognize in myself intellectual pride, stubbornness, a tendency to intellectual rebellion. I don’t like authority or obedience—it seems to be characterological—I perceive no virtue in either for their own sake. It all depends on who is the authority and what I am expected to obey. (Again I feel myself slipping into self-justification).

But the church is still extremely important to me. As my two sons-in-law have pointed out, (Brett) I am a lazy feminist who often doesn’t live up to her own principles, and (Jamison) I have very liberal beliefs while living a very conservative lifestyle.

The church means to me a beloved tradition that my ancestors sacrificed for. Some sacrificed everything. It means a community of people working hard to be good and do what’s right, encouraging each other to service and love. I understand that we’re not perfect. I love the community, the trying. I have been an active and committed participant in the church throughout my life from childhood on, but my attitude toward the church varies dramatically. I love the church, I admire the church, I am amazed by the church, I appreciate the church, I am grateful for the church, at times I cling desperately to the church—but at times I am also exasperated by the church, bored by the church, resentful of the church, and angry at the church. My difficulty comes when the church is defined as authoritarian and hierarchical as it is possible to be, with God at the top of the hierarchy. Fortunately for me, there are other ways of looking at it, particularly if one reads the stories and teachings of Jesus. He was not especially impressed with the authoritarian hierarchy of his day, and taught that the kingdom of God resides first in our hearts. If I view the church not as an end in itself, but as an imperfect and temporary means to the end of becoming more like Jesus and returning to live with him, then I don’t get caught up in futile rebellion against the church as some kind of monolithic institution.

I am envious, in some ways, of the strong faith of my father and brothers. I realize that belief is not my gift. I have enough insight to recognize why this is so—I am judgmental, believe implicitly in my own ability to determine what is right and wrong, have an automatic reject button for authoritarian pronouncements of any kind from anyone, mistrust sentiment, mistrust tradition, mistrust groupthink, mistrust logic, and my dignity won’t let me take the risk of being made a fool by believing something which might be false. Often I don’t even want to believe. I find Joseph Smith to be a deeply disturbing figure. I am ambivalent about him. I am mistrustful and wary of him. I read the Book of Mormon, with its moral clarity and unambiguous sense of justice, goodness, right and wrong—and I don’t see that moral clarity in Joseph’s own life—polygamy being only one of the things that muddy the waters. I realize that I can be a Christian without having much of an opinion of Joseph Smith, but can I truly be a Mormon? How can I get past my dislike of Joseph’s faults to fully appreciate his gifts?

I want to be a fully participating Christian/Mormon. What does it mean? What is required of me? Does it mean we’re all alike? Does it mean we all have the same opinions? Does it mean we all must believe the same things? Does it mean if we disagree we should keep quiet about our disagreement, particularly if we’re in the minority? Does it mean that we can differ on things that don’t matter, but on things that matter, we should have the same opinions and behaviors? Who decides what matters? Should it ever be enforced? And how would that work? Can we be different as long as we’re nice to each other? How different is it OK to be?

I am trying to integrate the practice of gratitude into my life, and perhaps it applies here.

Gratitude for the church comes fairly easily to me when I am conscious of it and think about it. I am grateful to the church for providing structure and guidance in my life and that of my children when the world seems chaotic and confusing. I am grateful for a place to learn and think about Jesus on a regular basis. How would I know him if I had not had that frequent opportunity? I am grateful for the call to transcend the materialism and consumerism of my daily life.

Humility, on the other hand, is not so easy for me. Again, I look to the stories and example of Jesus, who was not interested in status, in power over others, in winning arguments, in being right—but in loving, teaching, and serving. I have to remember his statement that the last will be first, the first last, and that the Master is the servant of all.

It is painful to realize that I have hurt others with my opinions and struggles. I am very sorry. I guess I don’t know how to do it except by dialogue, which I appreciate. Other comments and thoughts about religion from past years are on the UK blog here and here and here and here (but I realize they also may be painful to read). My extremely conflicted feelings about the church and gays I have expressed earlier on this blog. I am again working with a young gay Mormon man for whom I keep my cell phone by the bed in case of a middle-of-the-night call.