Who we pray to and how we envision God is personal, but the Church organization can and does limit our collective discourse about Heavenly Mother. Many feminists have been disciplined for speaking and writing publicly about Her. What does this silencing say about the importance of the doctrine? And is an unwillingness to allow deeper engagement with the feminine divine in our teaching and worship indicative of the organization’s regard for women generally? Why don’t we seem to believe our own stuff about one of the most unique—and for many compelling—aspects of our theology?
Notes & Quotes:
The Never Ending Story of Mormon Feminism, by Celeste Davis, 4/28/2022
There Is Always a Struggle: An Interview with Chieko N. Okazaki, by Gregory A. Prince, 11/15/2005, Dialogue Journal
Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet, by Meggan Watterson
Celebrating Our Divine Mother — A Conversation with McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding, Faith Matters podcast, 5/7/2022
Your Divine Nature and Eternal Destiny, by Dale G. Renlund, 4/2022
The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom of Our Divine Mother, by Kathryn Knight Sonntag
“It seems LDS women wake up to patriarchal inequality in cohorts. Each cohort believing they are the first to wake up. Each waking up largely without the wisdom and experiences of previous generation’s awakenings, who are usually long gone. Unsurprisingly these women are not discussed at church.” —Celeste Davis
“Her existence is dangerous to patriarchy, for which reason I should think the whole effort was to keep the issue about Her very quiet. The less people think about her, the less they will question her position, the church’s position about Her. The less, in short, they will question male rule. I like to imagine what would happen if Mormons really began believing in Her and Her equality with Father: polygamy, the all-male priesthood, all aspects of patriarchy would be in deepest jeopardy.” —Sonia Johnson
“Because when we have direct access to female divine, we start questioning the need for so many male middle-men. Because when Heavenly Mother leaves Her silent, invisible pedestal and emerges as a deity with a personality and power, women begin to leave their silent, invisible pedestals too, and step into their own power.” —Celeste Davis
“It’s not that an idea of god the father was so upsetting to me, it was that it was so incomplete. God as the father and Jesus as his only son made zero sense. It just felt like one side of a far more inclusive and radical love story.” —Meggan Watterson, MM Revealed, p. 47
“As children of heavenly parents, we embody traits from each parent. Because we have come to understand God as He, the majority of our discussion about divine attributes we seek to emulate originate from a male deity. We have had little experience thinking of God as feminine and masculine, let alone considering Mother God as an autonomous, whole being with unique traits that we, as her spirit children, have also inherited. We are less experienced at seeking out the Mother’s attributes. I believe that a knowledge of her character, power, and purpose creates wholeness in ourselves, in our relationships, and in our theology. Harmonizing Their divinely feminine and divinely masculine principles inside our souls leads to unity with Them.” —Kathryn Knight Sonntag
“Here’s how I can best explain what it’s like for me sitting in the pew when only god the father is preached. Remember how in the 1980s, we still thought it was OK to smoke on planes? The statistics had already been reported about the harmful effects of smoking, and even secondhand smoke, but there we were picking our seats in the smoking or non-smoking section.
And here we are in 21st century rife with all the statistics on the status of women the world…… here we are in an age of information about the psychological impact on a girl who only ever hears God referred to as male and as the father. Here we are in the world that practices or reinforces within its culture what is preached in its places of worship.
This is what it’s like for me to sit in a church that’s filled with only “God of the fathers”. It’s like sitting in the smoking section of an airplane in the 1980s. Everyone around me thinks we are golden. And I’m sitting there choking on the fumes.” —Meggan Watterson, MM Revealed, p. 48
“I believe asking questions and exploring possibilities are indispensable ways to show love and reverence for revealed truth.” —Kathryn Knight Sonntag
Greta Heddy
I was so excited to find you through your interview on Beyond The Block. I want to gush about how wonderful it is to hear active LDS women who are my age (well, you will be in a few years) talk about the complicated parts of life and the church and our spiritual journeys. Listening to you during my commute helps me in so many ways.
I had to tell you about my reaction to Elder Renlund’s talk. I understand that he needed to stick to the party line, but when he said we would know as much about Heavenly Mother as he does, and ended with “I wish I knew more.” I couldn’t believe it. Of all people on the Earth, if an apostle of God really wished to know more, he could. Who better to get revelation for the whole church than one of the 12? I had a hard time listening to the rest of the talk because of the hypocrisy I hear in that line.
Thank you for what you are doing. I thank my Heavenly Parents that I found you. I am a divorced mother of three adult children, two of them being non-binary LGBTQ+, one who isn’t interested in church any more and one who returned home from their mission a few years ago and, though yearning to keep their spirituality and love for the Lord, has stepped away from it because of the toxic environment of people who say they love them, act like friends but then say they can never accept them for who they are because it’s against “the Church”. You are showing me there are ways to be faithful and speak up for myself and all people in the church. And since I currently teach RS, I hope to empower more of my sisters and siblings of all genders to move closer to the relationship with God and help the Church become the society it is meant to be.
Leslie Smith
I was listening to this podcast and wanted to share I have always had a relationship with my Heavenly Mother. I received my patriarchal blessing in 1990 and it specifically refers to my Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother in the beginning and through the rest of the blessing it refers to my Heavenly Parents. Specifically, saying there is nothing I can ever do will make them love me less, they will always love me. I am confused to why it is so taboo when a patriarch of the church recognized Her in my blessing. I believe my Heavenly Mother is there for me and loves me. This needs to be shared with everyone women in the church. I did do a lesson on Elder Rendlund talk in Relief Society and shared this with the women in my ward, it was liberating.
Mark Crego
A great episode!
I wanted to direct a reply to the woman who was threatened by her bishop because she referred to God as “they.” We don’t believe our own stuff here: In LDS scriptures, Joseph Smith interprets the proper pronouns for God, i.e. “Elohim” as they/them:
“So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them.” (Abraham 4:27)
If we take the word “man” here in its Hebrew ‘adam as meaning “human.”, then all of humans, male and female, are created in the image of “them.” “Elohim” (literally, Hebrew for “gods”) must therefore properly be seen as a plural yet a singular unity. And, this plural Elohim must be both male and female, otherwise male and female cannot both be created in the image of “them.”
If we take the current LDS teaching that “exaltation is a family matter”—setting aside the deep problems it implies by excluding those who don’t conform to so-called traditional gender norms—LDS theology demands that both the male and female become god. Such “gender” must not be merely biological sex, but rather, the male/female, the yin and yang and all of its patterns in nature and humans, must be considered an integrated, cooperative divine nature we all share.
This is evident in the creation itself. Abraham 4:1-2 show that in the beginning “the gods”—Elohim—created the heavens and the earth, and the “Spirit of the Gods was brooding upon the face of the waters.” Joseph Smith corrected the King James Version that reads, “the Spirit of God *moved* upon the face of the waters, to the more accurately rendered “the Spirit of the Gods *was brooding* upon the face of the waters”, reflecting the ongoing nurturing of a mother over her offspring. The term “Spirit” in Hebrew, “ruach” is female, adding to the idea that the divine mother was the very Spirit of the Gods who breathes life into creation, and then nurtures, protects, and sustains it.
It is time for us to truly embrace our own theology. We need to believe our own stuff. It doesn’t make sense for us to strictly define God as male or “Father;” even if it is true that male terms have been used in the past to refer to collective plurals including both men and women. To refer to God exclusively as “Father” denies the fullness of the divine nature. “They” are God. “They” are our parents. “They” are both male and female, as the image of the male and female gender of god is present in each and every one of us.