Representation in Art Matters
by Rhiannon
Lately, I've seen a lot of church leaders and church quotes about inviting people in and making our places of worship welcoming to all. Elder Alan T. Phillips in the October 2023 general conference said, "Our wards should be a refuge for ALL of God's children." Additionally, President Emily Belle Freeman had an Instagram post where she shared the need to "Gather In". And recently for me, during my ward conference, a member of my stake presidency led a discussion on inviting people into our chapels and how we can be more welcoming to everyone who comes.
Now there are a lot of things to be said on this very topic. We could have a lengthy discussion about how we do this, from the clothing we wear to the rainbow pins we don to the approachable ways we interact with anyone walking into our buildings. Personally, my mind naturally wonders about the kind of art we have in our curriculum manuals, bulletin boards, and fine art on the walls in our meeting houses and what message this could say about the people in our pews.
I am biracial and my skin is cinnamon. My hair is naturally frizzy and at times looks voluminous. My mother is Polynesian and my physical characteristics are taken from her. I grew up in the US and speak English, to no surprise, without an accent.
It's not that I have never noticed that Polynesians are rarely shown sitting at the feet of Christ—in comparison to white girls and boys—it's just that I ABSOLUTELY notice when they are. I've seen paintings of this only twice.
I have been to meetinghouses in Nicaragua, Guatemala, India, Sri Lanka, Tonga, Tahiti, and Brazil. All of those church buildings have the same art you would see in Salt Lake City.
To further illustrate this point I was reading about Lu Hongnian (1914-1989). He was a Chinese Christian artist. As a boy his family received a postcard of Christ. It was a scene of Christ blessing children and he asked his mother, "Why is Jesus not blessing any Chinese children?" She explained to him that God loves everyone. Honingan says in that moment he resolved to grow up and paint Jesus Christ blessing Chinese children, and that is exactly what he did.
What I want to point out is, that our art in church represents a lot of European-centric looking human beings with Christ. I have been to meetinghouses in Nicaragua, Guatemala, India, Sri Lanka, Tonga, Tahiti, and Brazil. All of those church buildings have the same art that you would see in Salt Lake City. The selections are largely a white Jesus surrounded by white people. This isn’t such a terrible crime but if we are a global church could there be some messaging here that, without meaning to, we are sharing with our global membership? A message about who is included at the feet of Christ vs. who is not?
I think mentally I have always been aware of the phrase, “representation matters." This phrase means that in the shows, movies, portraits, and mentors that we have, they look more like we do. They look like our sexuality, gender, race, body size, etc. If we only see one type of person then we begin to wonder if that person is the gold standard because we fail to see any other forms of diversity. If we do not see ourselves represented then we may wonder if we belong. This may explain hair straighteners, blue contacts, and STEM programs for girls. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to feel the weight of this phrase and what it means.
I was looking through the book A Girl’s Guide to Heavenly Mother by McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding. There is a variety of images of Heavenly Mother in this book. One of the pieces is done by Ester Hi’ilani Candari. The piece is of an older Polynesian woman with gray hair and a fan. I remember when I opened up the book I let out a gasp; I was shocked. This woman looked like my grandmother! I sat in disbelief that on that page, my ethnicity was being represented and included. I remember flipping to the book cover, wondering if I had opened up something geared toward an LDS audience. I knew before I had started reading this book, but then I second-guessed myself, was this actually a book written for LDS folks? I couldn’t believe it.
My worship of divinity felt like it had been magnified. What I was feeling was swelling up and taking up space inside my heart; I felt seen.
I’ve thought a lot about that experience that happened in a matter of seconds. I never considered myself as someone who needed to be represented. Previously I had never questioned or wondered why I hadn’t seen Polynesian women in religious art, or even men for that matter. I had rarely seen Polynesian children sitting at the feet of Christ. At that moment I realized that something in me had been empty only because this picture of this aged Polynesian Woman seemed to be providing me some substance to fill in the emptiness. My worship of divinity felt like it had been magnified. What I was feeling was swelling up and taking up space inside my heart; I felt seen. I felt even more included than I ever had been before and now that I have seen it, I want to see it again and more of it. I have a hunger to see more images of Polynesians in religious art, sitting at the feet of Christ, being blessed by Christ, being loved by Christ, being included with Christ.
I believe that if we would like to be more welcoming and address the beautiful diversity of our global membership then our artwork needs to do a better job of reflecting the kinds of people we would like to see in the pews. This also goes beyond race.
What would it look like if we had paintings representing our queer brothers and sisters? People with tattoos? Single adults? Mixed-faith families, etc? Maybe our artwork could be a tool we can point to and say, "We built this space with you in mind. You are welcome here."*
*Dr. Terence Lester
Women’s Pull
by Kandis Lake
They give us a hill to climb
And a burden to pull,
And watch while we struggle and cry.
They rush in at the end to save,
And place us on a pedestal like shiny trophies
Next to all of the mysterious shelf items
That we don't need to talk about.
What are we doing trekking around this land anyway?
Is it godforsaken, or God-given?
At least I'm making friends.
Why are we in these clothes
When we've progressed to more practical attire?
Is this kind of suffering just
The traditions of our fathers?
We are strong, yes.
But are we empowered?
Or are we stuck?
Damned —
Like the women before us?
Did our mothers have traditions too?
I think of them often.
Are they still stuck?
Are those shelf items still mysterious?
Is this what they wanted for me?
Am I making them proud?
Do they understand?
Meeting Together Oft
by S. Parker
Being part of a world-wide church, I can feel that effort has gone into organizing the members as one body of Christ. For example, all wards follow the same two-hour block, all members study the same lesson in Come Follow Me each week, and all members participate in general conference on the same two weekends a year. Each stake also holds stake conference two times a year, but stake conference is unique in that the timing is not synchronous around the world. Instead, each stake holds their conference on different assigned weekends. Unlike some of the anticipation and traditions that have been built around more predictably scheduled meetings like general conference, stake conference often comes as a surprise to most members of the stake with announcements starting just a few weeks before it will occur.
When the words to announce an impending stake conference are said over the pulpit or in the newsletter, what feelings, memories, or thoughts does the announcement evoke in you? Do you remember impactful talks or faith building, affirming, and uniting messages? Do you remember the joy of meeting together with hundreds of your neighbors united in the same purpose? Or, do you feel anxiety and dread at the topics, the crowds, the length, the parking, the additional child care burden? Has your perspective shifted through a faith transition or a life transition? Are your feelings the same as your spouse or different due to unique perspectives or unequal family responsibilities?
I’m mentally exhausted, and it’s still a week away.
In this season of life, thinking of stake conference for me recalls feelings of anxiety, of long endurance, of wrestling tired children, of heaving heavy church bags filled with hope—hope that I’ll be able to listen or at least feel something uplifting after all the work invested to attend with my family and neighbors. Nevertheless, I can almost hear the metal chairs being slowly pushed along the highly polished floor, inching closer and closer to the poor individuals who chose to sit behind our circus. I’m mentally exhausted, and it’s still a week away.
The pandemic brought some relief for me in this area by forcing at-home everything, including stake conference. During those at-home conferences, I was able to attend the Saturday night adult session while my kids slept. Sunday was a calmer, more peaceful (dare I say restful?) morning with children dressed in their own idea of Sunday best playing with toys too noisy, heavy, or messy for church while my husband and I actually got to listen to the messages from our neighbors on TV. We weren’t wrestling children or hushing their little bodies poised for play and brimming with suppressed energy; or carrying an inconsolable child out in front of a multitude of people; or taking yet another child to the bathroom. We were being uplifted as we met together with our neighbors, each family in our separate homes.
This week I received an email from a priesthood leader I’ve never met, informing me that virtual links to stake conference will no longer be freely available but will need to be requested from bishops. My heart dropped. I’m grateful to those stake leaders because they have volunteered so many years serving in demanding callings, leaving their wives and children most Sundays to demonstrate they can handle their even bigger, next calling. On the other hand, it is the “leaving their wives and children” that also makes me wonder how many times in those years of service they’ve wrangled children through 1.5 to 2 hours of, what is for the kids, dreadfully boring adult talk to be endured in uncomfortable clothing right during nap time. I would venture there are not many stake presidency members who have done it recently enough to have their whole bodies alive with the memories. It is these leaders who’ve decided it’s most uplifting for everyone to be back in person for stake conference; or at least that someone’s need to watch from home be big enough to compel them to ask their bishop, another man, to validate their struggle as worthy enough to send them the link. Will this be another way that a woman will feel inadequate if she doesn’t enjoy stake conference or doesn’t want to go in person for what may end up being a feat of parenting or faith? Did anyone ask the mothers, the women, the children, about how this change would impact them?
Can we embrace the changes the pandemic forced on us as a divine opportunity to learn, evolve, flex, and grow in a way that allows more opportunities to customize and include?
The scripture in Moroni was quoted in the letter as proof that we are to “...meet together oft, to fast and to pray” (Moroni 6:5), but choosing to cite just those words is to take them out of their larger context. Moroni was describing what was right in their day, hundreds of years ago. In that short verse, there is very little detail of what the meetings were and how many members were there. There is no description of customs or requirements for our day or theirs. In the very next verse, the same word “oft” is used to describe the frequency of administering the sacrament (Moroni 6:6). If the church leadership is content to forgo an ordinance (the sacrament) during stake conference, can we also forgo the compulsion to meet in the same building? Can we embrace the changes that the pandemic forced on us as a divine opportunity to learn, evolve, flex, and grow in a way that allows more opportunities to customize and include?
After all, what does “oft” mean in the context of meeting together? Does it mean weekly for sacrament? More than weekly as we include youth Mutual, Activity Days, quorum or sisterhood activities? Or, can “oft” be a true reflection of ministering where a “meeting” can be constituted by more than one person taking a moment to reconnect “...and speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls” (Moroni 6:5)? Do we or our local leaders need to limit the meaning of the scripture to only leadership appointed and directed meetings? I have more questions than answers.
I did request the link from my bishop, explaining why I felt like it would be better for our family to meet virtually. He listened and said he would look into it. Another question without an answer. I hope that the link will come, but I mostly hope that my experience will be provided as feedback. I hope that it doesn’t get dismissed as whiny, weak, or irrelevant. Without leaders reaching out to understand other perspectives and without women having opportunities to provide input into these kinds of changes, all I have is hope. And, sometimes that hope looks like an overstuffed bag of activities.
Wholeness and Holiness
by Joleene Watabe
Why does it seem that each Sunday as I enter through the doors of the church building, I am being examined to see if I am worthy of being there and worth anybody’s time?
Why, when I am in that space, do I feel like I am wrong? That something is wrong with me because my family does not look like the one the prophet has said is the acceptable version before God?
Why do I feel the condemnation, the scrutiny and the distrust? Or why do I feel like people are nice to me so that they can prove to themselves, God and their peers that they are good people?
Am I imagining this? Is it just in my head? Church is said to be a holy place—so why is it hard for me to bring my whole self? Why is it hard for me to feel the Holy Spirit?
Of course, there are moments when people say the things of God. When they speak truth about love, compassion and peace. When they talk of change and trusting God. In the classrooms and over the pulpit.
Why in the halls when I walk with the pictures of Christ watching over me do I feel invisible, unimportant, insignificant, inconsequential and irrelevant?
Why when I go home do I sigh with relief as I lean into the feeling of safety and acceptance and I am reassured by the Spirit that I matter? That I am good. That I have infinite worth because I am divine. I feel the connection to God. I feel that what I bring to this space is good.
Why do I still long for the approval and connection that seem just out of reach in the church building? Is that the natural man? Or is it my divine soul?
The pain of disconnection is real but the pain of a false and superficial connection is worse. Being in the same space at the same time with a smile on my face only brings loneliness and heartache. The divine spirit in me is pained by the hypocrisy of the moment.
I sense the heartbeat of the sacred world drawing me towards the one thing that truly heals and connects—love. Love that sets me free. Free to be all of me and not battling for a space in my body, in the church or in the world. Free to be united as a whole and holy being.
The Gods of the Universe are big enough to receive and welcome every single part of their creation.
I am seen when I am alone at home by a Universe that wants to be bathed in light and truth and love. A love that values flexibility and humility over rigidity and self-importance. A God who is not afraid of the truth of who I am but values every bit of me and my transcendent experiences. A God who creates space for my pain, my darkness and the shadow in me. A God who is able to transform those parts of me into a part of the whole as soon as they are acknowledged.
The Gods of the Universe are big enough to receive and welcome every single part of their creation. This I sense in the depths of me. This. This feels good. This is grace. This is empowering. This brings peace. And almost—I can almost grasp onto the joy of a complete reunion. A reunion to that place of wholeness where no part of me has to be buried, killed or cut out, but will be holy because I am part of the Whole.
Harmony and Dissonance
by Emily Davis
My Mormon roots go deep, both in my family and in my personal life. I have lines that go back to the early Salt Lake days and at least one line to pioneer ancestry. In my personal life, I did all the things: seminary, BYU, a mission, counselor in Relief Society, secretary in Young Women, Primary pianist, and nursery leader. And then my one calling that has been continually present as others have come and gone: ward organist.
I don’t even remember when I fell in love with music. According to my mom, I sang along to Tabernacle Choir music even as a baby. Whether nature or nurture, music runs deeper than all the rest in my gospel experience. There is another reason I gravitate to music callings, one that has at times been a source of shame. In a church that deeply values declarations that start with “I know” or at the very least “I believe,” I have never felt fully at home. I hoped that if I read the Book of Mormon enough times and prayed hard enough I would have an “I know” experience, but it was never that simple. My experience has ranged from “I believe” to “I deeply believe” to “I’m not sure about any of this but I need a framework for my life and this seems on balance mostly good.” That last one was not going to go down well, especially if I found myself teaching youth or primary children.
I don’t have the same internal conflict playing a rousing version of Christ the Lord Is Risen Today that I might have if I were asked to teach and testify in unequivocal terms about resurrection that I more hope for than know will come.
That is the beauty of having a music calling—and sometimes having that as my only calling. First of all, the hymns are often less dogmatic than other aspects of our services. We don’t have hymns about food storage, or how many times a year we should read the standard works, or how often we need to make it to the temple. The hymns, in general, are more focussed on basic doctrines and Jesus. They are not without their issues, but they are usually a little gentler than the checklist church I experience in other areas.
The other great aspect of the hymns is that as the ward organist I can stand behind someone else’s “I know.” I don’t have the same internal conflict playing a rousing version of Christ the Lord Is Risen Today that I might have if I were asked to teach and testify in unequivocal terms about resurrection that I more hope for than know will come.
As for many people, our forced church sabbatical in early 2020 kick-started some reflection, which for me included reflection on our collective experience with music. I dabbled in a couple attempts at home church. The only activity that truly stuck was tuning into the Music and the Spoken Word broadcast each Sunday morning. I believe that due to the health crisis, these were re-runs rather than live broadcasts. In theory, I could have just played something from the archive. However, I fell in love with the sense of community in the YouTube chat each week. As the broadcast started, the chat would come to life: “Hello, from this country”; “Greetings from that one.” Comments and status updates came pouring in a variety of languages. In addition to reading the ones in English, I could usually catch the gist of comments in Romance languages (thank you, high-school Spanish). While I had become physically isolated overnight, this weekly ritual suddenly afforded me a much more expansive community than before.
True, I had been part of other global church meetings, including general conference; however, I merely knew in the abstract that the meeting was viewable worldwide. Participating in a weekly world-wide chat courtesy of the Tabernacle Choir Youtube channel made the extent of that reach and connection real. The more-concrete global experience caused me to reflect on other aspects of our approach to music. For starters, many tuning in did not speak English as their first language, or perhaps at all. They were surely having a different experience than I was. True, many of the tunes would be familiar and they might know the meaning behind that tune, especially if there was a version in their hymnal. However, while the English version of the 1985 hymnbook has 341 hymns; the Spanish version of that same edition has only 209. In searching through different languages on the church music app, I have yet to find another language version with significantly more hymns than the Spanish translation; I doubt there is one. Clearly then, not all the hymns will be familiar to others participating the same way they are for me.
…surely our global worship experience would be better spent focusing on Jesus or loving our neighbors.
Although the language issue stayed in the back of my head, it did not occupy prime real estate. That was reserved by my growing dismay at the number of broadcasts in a six-month stretch with an overtly American theme. I felt uncomfortable as I watched my virtual friends sign on for our online community church to a program focused on American Independence Day, Memorial Day, or Veteran's Day. I am not saying that those occasions do not merit attention, but surely our global worship experience would be better spent focusing on Jesus or loving our neighbors. I don’t know how to meet everyone’s needs with every meeting, but I began to reflect that we need a much wider lens for many of our community gatherings.
As I returned to church months later, I found myself both in a new ward and with a new opportunity to be a ward organist and de facto ward music chair. I was both playing and picking the songs. My recent experience with the Tabernacle Choir’s dedication to holiday-driven song selection regardless of audience caused me to reflect about song selection more than in the past. The effect was not immediate and it took some time to get brave, but I have started to challenge some of our common hymn selections. War songs feel less comfortable now. War against whom? Certainly not another country as we are a global faith. And certainly not against those who believe differently as there is much to be admired outside of our faith tradition and much to be repented of within our own fold. Similarly a Mother’s Day marked by singing Love at Home followed by a Father’s Day singing I Know My Father Lives began to feel like more of an echo of our current struggles with patriarchy—a Heavenly Mother rarely spoken of and a mother here on earth afforded little visibility outside the home, while Heavenly Father and correspondingly the men get prime visibility.
So while I still rely on the hymns, particularly the ones I select about Jesus, to carry a stronger “I know” than I feel I can offer on my own, I have begun to speak up more—even if quietly and mostly through song selection. I do worry sometimes that my pruning is starting to go too deep, that before long the list of songs I will still want us to sing will be too short. I hope that the new hymnbook—with its promised global approach and musical variety—will help, and I hope it will come soon enough. Until then, I’m doing what I can to pick the songs that align with what I believe and want to believe.
Good Fruit, Bad Fruit
by Cynthia Winward
As a youth Sunday School teacher for the New Testament, I have loved teaching this year. Focusing solely on the life of Jesus has been as easy as it gets when it comes to teaching. But now that we are in the latter half of the year, it’s getting tricky for me.
You’ve heard of the dog days of summer? At least in Utah, those days (technically July 3-August 11) are the hottest and driest of the summer. Right now, October through December, are what I would call the dog days of studying the New Testament in the Come Follow Me (CFM) curriculum. We’re done reading about the life of Jesus and now it’s on to the business in the early Christian church, which mainly consists of letters by Paul (or letters attributed to Paul) that bear hardly any relevance to my 13-year old students 2,000 years later.
It’s healthy to wrestle with problematic sacred texts.
A recent lesson for the last week of October was one such hot and dry lesson. It focused on the letters to Timothy and Titus who were coworkers of Paul. I knew right away that this lesson contained the infamous teachings that “a woman should learn in quietness and full submission.” (1 Tim 2:11). I wasn’t surprised to learn that the CFM curriculum doesn’t even mention those verses as a discussion prompt. I immediately texted Susan, explaining that I can’t decide if it is good or bad that there is zero mention of these horrific verses. She texted back, “Well, in a different church it would be healthy to tackle it.” She's right. It’s healthy to wrestle with problematic sacred texts. And as a feminist, you better believe I was going to tackle these verses with teens. But how?
I decided to go straight to the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:17-20, where he specifically says, here's how ya know if the prophets are speaking garbage. “Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit…. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.”
I asked the class to describe what it tastes like when they eat a bad grape or an apple past its prime—sour, bad texture, just ‘off.’ I said that Jesus gave us a pretty easy way to discern whether a prophet is sharing good fruit or bad fruit. (Never mind that many biblical scholars don’t even believe Timothy was written by Paul. The Greek the author uses is different from Paul’s other writings, etc.*) I said that these verses were definitely bad fruit.
Call out the bad fruit, as uncomfortable as it may be.
Luckily, as Latter-day Saints we also have Article of Faith 8: “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly….” I asked if anyone could recite it—most could—so we talked about how wonderful it is that Joseph Smith believed the Bible had lots of errors. This was one of those errors. A huge gigantic error that has been used for centuries to demean and demoralize a woman’s place in the greater Christian church.
Call out the bad fruit, as uncomfortable as it may be. We owe this next generation better tools for their spiritual tool belt.
*See The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version, commentary on Timothy
Contributors:
Rhiannon
I like to laugh hard and read thought-provoking books.
I am married and I have 3 boys.
I like to garden flowers! I love large dahlias, mammoth-sized sunflowers, and very big zinnias.
I am a closeted introvert.
Kandis Lake
Kandis is a mom to littles, a bookworm, a writer, and a registered nurse. She feels closest to God when in nature and when reading beautiful words. She loves family history and learning new things. She lives with her family in Utah and enjoys adventuring with them as often as possible.
S. Parker
S. has a literature degree from Westminster College but has worked in the sciences since high school. She’s currently a project manager for a medical device company in Utah. Though a lifetime feminist, it was being a mother of four daughters that caused her to connect her feminism with the faith tradition she grew up loving.
Joleene Watabe
Joleene was born and raised in San Diego, CA where she developed a love of the ocean, an appreciation of the importance of family and a lifelong craving for good weather. She met and married Tim while they were in college at BYU. They went on a twenty-six-year adventure together that led to four amazing children, graduate degrees for both of them, and making their home in various places such as Japan, California, Utah and Ohio, before Tim died in an accident in October of 2017. Joleene recently moved back to California even though the rumor is that everyone is leaving the state. She has worked as a Clinical Mental Health Counselor for over 10 years. She enjoys reading, writing, and sharing her passion for developing good mental health habits. She is continuing to rebuild her life and find a new path forward by spending more time with her family, helping others through their grief and mental health issues, exploring the outdoors, and going to the beach whenever possible.
Emily Davis
Emily lives in Albuquerque, NM. Professionally, she is an Excel spreadsheet wizard and business analyst. Her leisure activities include hiking just far enough to find a good view and indoor rock climbing.
Cynthia Winward
Cynthia is excited to be heading into her fourth year in 2024 teaching youth Sunday School. Of course, no woman gets to control her callings, but she would love the opportunity to tackle the Book of Mormon again, in person, not on Zoom due to the Covid lockdown.
Thank you all for your beautiful essays. Representation in art, music selection, calling out harmful scripture, feeling welcome at church...these things all matter. It gives me hope that there are women eager and willing to explore these topics.