The Never Ending Story of Mormon Feminism

The Heavenly Mother movement is not a new one. Nor is the church's movement to shut it down. The problem is.... no woman knows her history.

This article was originally published April 28, 2022 and is making the rounds in social media again this week. I thought it could use a little more time in the sun as I’m rather proud of this little piece of investigative journalism, so I’m publishing it again this week. Hope you enjoy!

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“Change is coming… I see it in private conversation. I hear it in sacrament talks when people refer to Heavenly Parents and not just Heavenly Father… They’re small changes for now, but it’s a start.”

This is a quote from a 2015 article on Religious News Service entitled “Teaching the Mormon Heavenly Mother” interviewing a member who has great hope a wave of change is just around the corner for the Mormon church. Change led by increased interest in Heavenly Mother.¹

The past decade of Mormondom has seen an explosion of social media accounts, podcasts, books, blogs and art devoted to Heavenly Mother.

LDS women can’t seem to get enough. Instagram account @seekingheavenlymother has gained 10,000 new followers in the past few months alone. @themormonhippie, who frequently teaches about Heavenly Mother has over 35,000 followers.

Currently the second² most popular book in Mormonism according to Amazon is “Mother’s Milk” by Rachel Hunt Steenblik- a book of poems about Heavenly Mother.

I have even heard of someone devoting their dissertation to this new, grass roots Heavenly Mother movement in the Mormon church.

Of those two adjectives-- “new” and “grass-roots”-- one is true and one is not. Grass-roots? Absolutely. Discussion on Heavenly Mother has always been a bottom-up rather than top-down movement in the church.

But new?

Hardly.

“Two women in my ward, each unaware of the other’s spiritual odyssey into the meaning of femaleness, arose and bore their testimonies on the same fast Sunday, one mentioning Mother in Heaven and the other dropping our ‘Heavenly Parents’…Up by the organ I rejoiced silently: ‘It’s happening, Mother. It’s happening!”

What year do you think this quote is from? 2022? 2010?

1979.

It’s a quote from Sonia Johnson’s book From Housewife to Heretic.

The same woman, who, that same year hired a plane to circle the conference center in Salt Lake for an hour during General Conference caring the banner “Mother in Heaven loves the ERA.” (ERA= Equal Rights Amendment)

Moment of silence to fully appreciate this act of bad-assery….

Not a new movement, not a new crackdown

Recently, not only does there seem to be an increase in Heavenly Mother interest, there seems to be an increase in the brethren’s attempts to stifle it.

Last year after giving a fireside on her in-depth research on the Biblical history of the Holy Spirit being female, Fiona Givens resigned from her employment with BYU’s Maxwell Institute. After decades of public speaking at Time Out for Women, firesides and conferences, Fiona hasn’t spoken publicly since her resignation.

This year, general authorities have counseled bishops and stake presidents to crack down on speaking about Heavenly Mother in their congregations.

In the most recent general conference, Dale Renlund told the church’s populace to stop speculating about Heavenly Mother, that praying to her isn’t appropriate and that “demanding revelation” on Her is “arrogant and unproductive.”

Another quote quiz!

What year do you think this general conference quote is from:

“…in light of the instruction we have received from the Lord Himself, I regard it as inappropriate for anyone in the Church to pray to our Mother in Heaven.”

From Dale Renlund’s latest 2022 talk?

No, its from Gordon Hinckley’s 1991 conference talk.

Just as the interest and discussion around Heavenly Mother is not new, neither is the brethren’s attempts to silence it.

Concerted effort (including home visits) from apostles themselves to keep women and Heavenly Mother quiet, is not at all uncommon in the church’s history.

In 1974, BYU Professor Jan Tyler gave a pro-ERA speech to a gathering of wives of Utah legislators and was subsequently called in by Dallin Oaks (president of BYU at the time) and later Gordon Hinckley (apostle at the time).³

Jan Tyler

Around that time, apostle L. Tom Perry flew to Boston to pay Claudia Bushman a personal visit to tell her to stop publishing the Exponent II magazine, a magazine written for women in the church, by women in the church, about women’s issues (including Heavenly Mother). Even though he said he found nothing objectionable in the magazine, he was worried about its “negative potential.”⁴

Creators of the Exponent II magazine

In 1997, Janice Allred published a book about Heavenly Mother called “God the Mother and Other Theological Essays” causing the prophet himself, Gordon Hinckley to speak out about it and her being ex-communicated.⁵

In 1993, editor of the book “Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective” Lavinia Fielding Anderson was ex-communicated. Despite having attended faithfully for the three decades after her ex-communication, despite her local and stake leaders recommending her re-baptism to the First Presidency, in 2019 the First Presidency rejected her re-baptism without a reason and without offering conditions for reinstatement.⁶

Lavinia Fielding Anderson

Ghosts of Mormon Feminism

Never heard of Jan Tyler or Janice Allred?

You’re not alone.

For the past year I have been in a spiritual direction training program. We often have break out sessions involving deep conversations about religious trauma and God-wounds. Mormonism….. tends to come up when its my turn to speak. Every time I am in conversation with my friend Irene she says, “Sorry, the only things I know about Mormonism is what I learned from reading Sonia Johnson’s book and hearing her speak in the 80s.”

After having her mention this to me multiple times the past year, I finally came clean. “I’m sorry Irene, but… I’ve actually never heard of Sonia Johnson.” She cocked her head and looked at me like she must have misunderstood. “But didn’t you just recently leave the Mormon faith? And you’re a feminist? And you’ve NEVER heard of Sonia Johnson?”

“Um…… no.”

I bought her book the next day to educate myself.

I have a friend who generously lets me mooch on her Audible account. I was perusing titles for a long drive a few weeks ago and came across one called “When Women Were Birds” by Terry Tempest Williams. I love birds. I love women. So I downloaded it and was shocked to discover this was yet another badass ex-Mormon feminist I had never heard of.

I Googled her and discovered an open letter to the First Presidency she wrote on behalf of women I had never heard of. As I was reading through Johnson’s book and William’s book- I recognized every single Mormon man’s name they mentioned – every apostle’s name from the 1950’s onward.

But I didn’t recognize ANY, not one of the women’s names in their books. Leaders of Mormons for ERA, Relief Society general presidents, women speaking up for Heavenly Mother and women’s equality.

I was a Mormon feminist for years. I have been an ex-Mormon feminist environmentalist for years. And yet, not until two months ago had I heard of either Sonia Johnson or Terry Tempest Williams - both of whom have had best selling books, made national news multiple times, have spoken before the US Senate, been extremely influential in creating laws and policies in this country and have met the president.

I spent 36 years learning from Mormon men. I know their stories. I know their names. I’ve been taught about LDS pioneers since I was a toddler. I know their stories. I know their names. Only very recently have I even heard the names of Mormon feminist pioneers. I’m only starting to learn their stories.

Even after years of devoting myself to deconstructing what I was raised to believe, I was dumb-founded at how many aspects of my own conditioning I had never even considered that Sonia Johnson brought to my awareness as I read her book.

She is prophetic in her warning,

“Any woman who is afraid of the truth and refuses to look at her history participates in and bears responsibility for its repetition.”

Reinventing the Wheel

Another surprising discovery I made while reading Johnson’s book was that not only had I heard of all the Mormon men leaders in her book from the 1980s, but often they are THE SAME MEN still in charge now! Russell Nelson, Dallin Oaks, M. Russell Ballard – all of these men have been apostles since the 80s.

And apostles weren’t the only male names I recognized. Sonia describes being berated when she spoke before the United States Senate in 1979 by Utah senator Orrin Hatch who disagreed vehemently with her about how many Mormon women supported the ERA, and did everything in his power to delay the ratification of the ERA in the 70s and 80s. Orrin Hatch was a senator until just 3 years ago.

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.

This puts women in the distinct disadvantage to reinvent the wheel with each new cohort of women awakening to patriarchal rule without learning the lessons and wisdom from the cohort before.

In the early 70s in Boston, when Claudia Bushman and her friends discovered copies of the original Exponent women’s magazine in the Harvard Library, they were dumbfounded at their own Mormon feminist history they had never heard of: LDS women political activists leading the suffragist movement, women healing other women, articles on Heavenly Mother- all from 70 years before. They had never heard of these women.⁷

Meanwhile men in charge have the distinct advantage of decades of trial and error experience on how to combat women’s movements, silence women’s voices and snuff out requests for increased representation and equality.

It wasn’t new for the first presidency when in 2014, Kate Kelly asked them to pray about ordaining women. Sonia Johnson had made that exact same request of the first presidency 35 years before. Both women were ex-communicated and took a good chunk of their particular Mormon feminist cohort with them.

The brethren had first-hand experience shutting down women’s movements by the time Kate Kelly and Ordain Women arrived on the scene.

But….. why?

But why would they care so very much? Why would they spend so much of their attention here?

The church is dealing with Utah being one of the leading states in teen suicides, new curriculum, new temples, preparing and giving talks to millions of people, policies, correlations, opening missions, closing missions, managing leadership, hundreds of lawsuits, building 7000 new temples, re-branding and marketing efforts, figuring out what to do with and how to manage its $130 billion dollar fortune. So many things to discuss in so many meetings! So many letters and agendas demanding their attention!

Why on earth would they care so very much about women saying “Dear Heavenly Mother” instead of “Dear Heavenly Father” at the start of a prayer?

Shouldn’t that be the very least of their concerns??

But clearly, they do care. They care a lot. Ex-communications, conference talks, regional training, home visits from apostles. The lengths they have gone to keep women from praying to Her through the decades, is frankly, astonishing.

And for what? Why when they risk losing more and more members, when they risk PR disasters, when they risk upsetting a full half of their membership would they keep dropping the hammer on such a small thing like praying to Heavenly Mother? Surely this does them more harm than good?

Sonia Johnson has a guess.

Before Sonia’s excommunication, her bishop consulted a well-known journalist to ask what impact excommunicating her would have on the press. Even though the journalist (also a Mormon) thought she deserved to be excommunicated, he strongly advised against it. He accurately predicted, “The press would be ruinous to the church.”

Sonia then says,

“But it seems that Mother in Heaven finally became such a threat to them that church leaders disregarded his warning and put into action their desperate plan to regain control of heaven and earth. As long as Mother remained a shadowy appendage of the male God, as long as she knew her place and kept it, she was tolerated. But when she began to get uppity, drastic steps had to be taken to return her to anonymity and powerlessness. The church’s battle was, from this point on, as much against Her as against me.”

Prophetic words written in 1980. It appears we are in the midst of more “drastic steps” in 2022. My own prophecy? More ex-communications of Mormon feminists are in our future. The risk of public outcry and losing Mormon feminist members seems a risk the brethren are willing to take.

Why?

Well, for starters: it works. Excommunication silences women.

But maybe the bigger “why” is because Heavenly Mother is just as threatening to the church today as She was in 1980, as She was in 1940, as She has been to every generation of male leadership.

Because when we pray to Heavenly Mother, the very foundation of Mormonism – priesthood supremacy – is threatened.

“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.

Mormon feminists who promote Heavenly Mother aren’t just expendable to the brethren, they are a liability.

Something has to change….. or does it?

As for the opening quote of this article “Change is coming… small changes for now, but it’s a start.”

I’m not so enthusiastic.

Particularly after hearing that exact same sentiment echoed throughout history.

Terry Tempest Williams tells the story of overhearing her grandmother tell her mother in the early 60s that the church was at a fork in the road when it came to women. They simply had to change. The way they treated women was just not sustainable if they wanted to maintain its membership.

Sitting at the organ in 1979 Sonia Johnson thought, “It’s happening! Change is finally happening! Women are waking up!”

I can’t count the number of similar conversations I’ve been a part of the past five years to the tune of, “The church can’t keep doing this. Mormons everywhere are finally waking up!”

But unless the newly awoken Mormon woman is extremely devout in her research, she is likely to never have heard the names and stories of her Mormon feminist pioneers preceding her. Leaving her to assume that the church must be finally changing because of this surge of newly awoken women she sees waking up alongside her.

It seems we’re living in a never-ending story time loop. But one we aren’t aware of.

In 1900, the Relief Society wanted their own building on temple square. The prophet at the time, Lorenzo Snow promised them they could if they raised their own money to build it. He promised them that just as soon as they had the money “we could be as sure of it as you will be of happiness when you get to heaven."

…………. Ominous.

The Relief Society asked women in the church to donate just $1, and soon they raised over $14,000, which the women handed over. But then brethren built a building for the Presiding Bishop on that land instead. The Relief Society did not get a building until more than 50 years later.

In an article entitled On Being a Mormon Woman published in Dialogue in 2003, Vickie Eastman describes her experience waking up to the time loop of Mormon feminism. After hearing Margaret Tuscano present on the power of women in 1984, Vickie had a fire lit in her and dedicated herself to the fight for women’s equality in the church. She said, “All we had to do was to make sure everyone understood, and a change would certainly be almost automatic! I threw myself into the effort.”

But after 22 years of exhausted effort to make a change for the better, Eastman wrote,

“…the fight for women's equality in the Mormon church is over. Our efforts to change the institution have been almost fruitless. We haven't changed a thing; in fact, women's official status in the church is worse now than in the 60s and early 70s when we started. We have no hope left.”⁸

I don’t pray for the church to change anymore. Because history shows it will not. It has a 200 year history of dragging its feet as long as possible, then upon public outcry throwing women a few crumbs (women can witness baptisms, pray in conference, wear pants on a mission, not be required to share their husband with another woman (on earth), etc) all while never budging on their attitude and subjugation of women.

Knowing this history can be difficult to face, but is absolutely vital to those devoting themselves to fight for change in the church.

Placing one’s chips on the hope that the patriarchy will one day grant equality for women is hope misplaced.

I pray women will place their hope in places and people where it belongs: on women liberating themselves.

I don’t have hope for the institution of the church anymore, but I do have hope for the women in the church.

The prayer renowned suffragist Susan B. Anthony prayed in 1870 in her attempts to wake the women of her generation up echoes my own prayer for Mormon women:

“So while I do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages, still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a self-respect which will compel them to see the abject degradation of their present position; which will force them to break their yoke of bondage, and give them faith in themselves, which will make them proclaim their allegiance to women first; which will enable them to see that man can no more feel, speak or act for women than could the old slaveholder for his slave. The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. O, to compel them to see and feel, and to give them the courage and conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it.”

1. Source: Religion News

2. The first is Under The Banner of Heaven, which is *about Mormonism but usually not being read BY Mormons

3. Source: “From Housewife to Heretic”

4. Source: My Short Happy Life with Exponent II by Claudia Bushman

5. Source

6. Source: Salt Lake Tribune

7. Source: Dialogue 2003

8. Source: On Being a Mormon Woman