History offers few instances of women helping create scripture. Hinduism’s sacred Rigveda may have been partly composed by women, and scholars believe the biblical Book of Ruth was possibly written by a woman, but the evidence for each is wanting…. Read More ›
When Kate Kelly faced excommunication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in June 2014, much of the world took notice. The D.C.-based human rights lawyer garnered wide-spread attention for founding Ordain Women, a movement to push for… Read More ›
On June 11, 2014 the New York Times made waves in the world of Mormondom with their breaking news that two members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) are facing excommunication on the grounds of apostasy…. Read More ›
It is unnerving to think that excommunication is still a real threat in the 21st century. Within both the Catholic and Mormon Churches members continue to be bullied into submission with such threats. Today, speaking out against gender injustice seems… Read More ›
Amy Wright Glenn’s Birth, Breath, & Death: Meditations on Motherhood, Chaplaincy, and Life as a Doula is a mid-life memoir of the author’s personal encounters and professional insights drawn from her work in the spaces of birth and death. Glenn… Read More ›
At the age of fourteen, I began to question the Mormon faith of my family. I embarked on a life long personal and scholarly quest for truth. While teaching comparative religion and philosophy, I was drawn to the work of… Read More ›
It may come as a surprise to those who identify as both feminists and religious practitioners that I don’t believe women should be pastors of any dominant religious congregation. This includes most religions which, I assert, are rooted in and… Read More ›
Jesus loved sinners and Jesus would rather be dancing with me in West Hollywood on a Friday night than lugging through a swamp luring ducks into a trap with a duck caller made by a clan who think that my sexual actions are similar to that of an individual having sex with an animal.
Earlier this month, nearly 150 women were turned away from listening to the leaders of their church. The first weekend of October in the Mormon (LDS) Church is set apart for church members world-wide to hear messages from their leaders…. Read More ›
In the past year, Mormon feminist activism has exploded. Wear Pants to Church Day, Let Women Pray, and Ordain Women are three recent projects which encouraged Mormon feminists to agitate collectively and put pressure on the institutional LDS Church to… Read More ›
A couple of weeks ago, I attended my first grader’s school Patriotic Program. At home he had been singing snatches of “Fifty Nifty United States,” “Proud To Be an American,” and “America the Beautiful” for the last few weeks, so… Read More ›
My friend and I won two tickets to “The Book of Mormon” showing as part of Broadway in Boston. Having known nothing about the musical, we were curious and excited to be going. Nearly two weeks later, we are still… Read More ›
Caroline Kline’s March 26 post, “Mormons Who Advocate Women’s Ordination,” marks a new direction in the Mormon feminist movement. As she describes, the website Ordain Women was launched on March 17 by a few dozen Mormon women and men who… Read More ›
A couple of months ago, I came across the “Ordain a Lady” video by the Catholic Women’s Ordination Conference. Even though it was lighthearted, clever, and fun, it made me cry. Why? Because as a Mormon feminist, I had never seen… Read More ›
This semester I took a class on women in the book of Genesis. I was particularly interested in learning more about the language used to describe Eve, since she is such an important model of inspired action and proactivity for… Read More ›
A little over a week ago, hundreds if not thousands of Mormon women across the world participated in Wear Pants to Church Day, a movement orchestrated by some feminist Mormon women in an effort to bring attention to issues of… Read More ›
No longer having to deconstruct the larger cultural and sexual narratives, heterosexuals who do not support marriage equality or feel threatened by homosexuals return to their one source of power that reinforces the ideology that they are on the right path: the Bible. “Marriage is between a man a woman,” or “A man shall not lie with another man as he would a woman,” becomes the newly reinforced heterosexual rallying cry and the progressive progress that occurred in the past becomes nothing more than a joke.
I’m not a historian or sociologist, but I’ve noticed something about civilizations. They always seem to think they are more special than other civilizations. It’s not important to my purpose here to name names, but so many groups have had… Read More ›
One did not have to watch the debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney this past Tuesday to know that Romney hit the trifecta in the area of women’s issues. It was all over social media within minutes of statements… Read More ›
Last week’s nationwide airing of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide reminded those of us who read the Kristof/WuDunn book of the same title how profoundly we were affected by its revelations. For those unfamiliar with either, the… Read More ›
Recently at a symposium on interreligious dialogue one of the Muslim feminist scholars present said, “Just once I would like to be able to have a conversation about Islamic Feminism without automatically having to be put on the defensive.” When… Read More ›
If I see a flaw in contemporary Mormon feminism, it’s that we haven’t ventured outside our own religious community to partner with other religious feminist activists. Working separately or in ignorance of the work already done by other religious feminists,… Read More ›
Why has Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith mostly been a non-question in his political life? John Kennedy was asked if he would obey the Pope or make his own decisions, Jimmy Carter was asked how his Baptist faith would affect his… Read More ›
A few days ago, as I attended a conference on women in the LDS Church, I realized something about my Mormon feminist community: many of these Mormon women in the audience have felt called to ministry. Many came to this… Read More ›
In my almost two decades as a Mormon feminist, I’ve seen my fellow Mormon feminists come and go. Mostly go. Remaining a practicing Mormon while also embracing feminist principles is for many of us a harrowing and angst-inducing endeavor. While… Read More ›
(a version of this was originally posted at Patheos) Twelve years ago, a conversation with my then-boyfriend turned to the Mormon ideal of husbands presiding over wives. I couldn’t understand why such language was necessary in a relationship of equals…. Read More ›
Unlike the amorphous God of other Judeo-Christian faith traditions, Mormonism’s Heavenly Father is literally, anatomically male. He is the god Mormons pray to, worship, and reference. However, within the Mormon tradition are teachings about Heavenly Mother, an embodied, perfect goddess,… Read More ›
Readers of FAR have been treated to a number of posts over the past few months from members of the “Gendering Mormonism” class I taught this semester at Claremont Graduate University. I was fairly apprehensive in offering the course. For… Read More ›
“Why do you care what God says?” ““Don’t you want to be liberated?” “How can you be serious about being a Mormon?” Those were a few of the questions I fielded the year I, a devout Mormon, worked as an… Read More ›
It was a sad day for me when I realized that I could never, no matter how hard I tried, be the Virgin Mary. Putting aside her biggest claim to fame, I sincerely doubted that I was born immaculately, had… Read More ›
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