Review: Daughters in My Kingdom, Part 1
Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:17 pm
(with guest graphs by Ziff of Zelophehad's Daughters)
Introduction
The status of women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a subject that has often weighed heavily on my heart. My feelings on the matter have been laid out in many other places so that it would be redundant to repeat them at length here. [1] In short, I am dismayed by the limitations that the LDS church places on the callings women can hold, their participation in ritual, and the ways in which they can express their spiritual gifts. I am concerned about the messages such restrictions send to my young daughter, who is a member of record with the church and attends at least twice a month with her father. I am also troubled by official teachings subordinating wives to husbands within the family unit as studies have shown that patriarchal marriages enjoy much lower success and satisfaction rates and much higher incidences of spousal abuse than egalitarian marriages. [2]
One of my major concerns revolves around female voice in the LDS church, or more appropriately, lack thereof. Out of over thirty sermons delivered in the all-church sessions of General Conferences, women are limited to just two sermons, and though a man always speaks at the female Relief Society and Young Women sessions, women never share their wisdom in the Priesthood session. Female speakers, authors, and leaders are seldom quoted in correlated manuals. The senior editors of the official church magazines are always men while women write fewer articles for these magazines than men do, the result being that women's voices, experiences, and spirituality within Mormonism are often only glimpsed through the accounts and perspectives of men. This is an area where I would like to see change, and I believe change could happen quite easily without radically modifying what the church currently teaches about gender.
For that reason, I was hopeful last year when Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of the Relief Society was announced. At the time, I wrote on my blog:
That manual is now available for public consumption, and I am pleased to report that while DMK does contain some regressive and even harmful material, the book is otherwise a rich account of Mormon female spirituality---often told in the voices of LDS women themselves. Despite my misgivings about certain parts of the book, I feel that it is a net positive for the LDS Sunday School library.
As I worked through DMK, these were some of the questions I asked:
I tried to have appropriate expectations for the manual. I know what the church currently tends to teach on most of these subjects and I know what LDS Sunday School manuals are like. I believe they are often poorly researched, poorly written, and engage in white-washing of LDS history, and I did not expect DMK to single-handedly solve all of these problems. Nevertheless, I did read DMK with the hope of seeing some needed improvement, and I do not believe I was disappointed in this hope.
It is worth noting that DMK is a departure from other LDS church manuals in that it was written by a single woman, Susan W. Tanner, rather than a correlated committee. Ms. Tanner holds a BA in humanities from Brigham Young University and served as the twelfth Young Women general president from 2002 to 2008. The book is heavily dependent on the work of Lucile C. Tate and Elaine R. Harris, who were commissioned in 1996 to compile an unpublished history of the Relief Society that was retained in the church archives.
Voice in Daughters in My Kingdom
In her previous post on the subject over at Faith-Promoting Rumor, Bored in Vernal presented a count of citations from men v. citations from women, finding that “[o]f the 296 quotations, 145 are by women, and 151 are by men.” It was my impression as I read through DMK that there were a few more citations from men than from women. However, I felt like the citations from men tended to be shorter and wanted to see how that theory bore out, so I kept a word count for each sex on a chapter-by-chapter basis as I worked through the manual. Ziff from Zelophehad's Daughters was kind enough to prepare some graphs demonstrating my findings:
As you can see, women tended to be cited more or almost as much as men in almost every chapter of the book. [3] It was only Chapter Eight and Chapter Nine where men were cited significantly more than women, and those were the chapters on priesthood and homemaking. Unsurprisingly, it would seem that men have a lot more to say about not wanting women to hold either the priesthood or jobs outside the home than women do.
Overall, I was very satisfied with the way in which women's voices were emphasized throughout DMK. Chapters Two through Seven, which were a loose chronological history of the Relief Society, were especially rich with accounts of women engaging in service, having prayers answered, giving testimonies of their faith, and demonstrating their wisdom. Each of the fifteen Relief Society general presidents was cited at least once and had a quotation, picture, and signature featured at the bottom of a page at some point. There was one particularly riveting account of a woman working a miraculous healing (130-31). Even in Chapters Eight and Nine, women's voices do not disappear. They become subordinate to the overarching teachings of male leaders, but they still comprise a significant portion of the citations in those chapters.
My hope is that future LDS manuals will follow the example of DMK and include a significant amount of citations from LDS women. Currently, most of them have no citations from women or only a few scattered examples. For example, the 2009 Gospel Principles manual, which has been used for study in both Priesthood and Relief Society meetings for 2010-2011, contains no citations from women. The Eternal Marriage Student Manual contains eight short citations from women and three talks given by women quoted at length out of a 374-page manual made up of almost nothing but citations. A manual with even a quarter of its citations from women would be a welcome change from current patterns, and with DMK, 55% of the citations are from women.
Granted, the fact that men speak so prominently in a manual by a woman, for women, and about women does serve to highlight the central role men have in overseeing the Relief Society. We are probably nowhere near the day when a Priesthood manual written by a man, for men, and about men will use the words of women for 45% of its citations. However, at this point I will take improvement wherever I can get it, and Daughters in My Kingdom is certainly an improvement.
To Be Continued . . .
-----------
[1] See, for example: Bridget Jack Jeffries, “How Wide the Divide, and Can Biblical Equality Bridge It?,” Mutuality, Autumn 2010, 15-17.
[2] http://godswordtowomen.org/Preato3.htm
[3] It was sometimes not easy to decide what constituted “words of men” v. “words of women.” For example, Joseph Smith is cited heavily throughout Chapter 2 in conjunction with the foundation of the Relief Society; however, his words largely come from the minutes of the Nauvoo Relief Society written by Eliza R. Snow, a woman. In the end, I decided that the way the citation was presented in the main text was key. If it was presented as a straight-up quote from Person A, I counted it under the sex of Person A, even if someone else wrote it down and related it. If it was presented as Person B paraphrasing the words of Person A, I counted it under the sex of Person B. I also did not count scripture citations (Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price) which are heavily male-dominated and would have skewed the tally, as I feel that the androcentrism of scriptures is something that should be treated on its own. I did count short citations from the Family Proclamation as the words of men, but I did not count the pages in Chapter 9 where the entirety of the Family Proclamation was reproduced. There were a few citations from (probably male) 19th century newspaper reporters which I did not bother to look up or count.
Introduction
The status of women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a subject that has often weighed heavily on my heart. My feelings on the matter have been laid out in many other places so that it would be redundant to repeat them at length here. [1] In short, I am dismayed by the limitations that the LDS church places on the callings women can hold, their participation in ritual, and the ways in which they can express their spiritual gifts. I am concerned about the messages such restrictions send to my young daughter, who is a member of record with the church and attends at least twice a month with her father. I am also troubled by official teachings subordinating wives to husbands within the family unit as studies have shown that patriarchal marriages enjoy much lower success and satisfaction rates and much higher incidences of spousal abuse than egalitarian marriages. [2]
One of my major concerns revolves around female voice in the LDS church, or more appropriately, lack thereof. Out of over thirty sermons delivered in the all-church sessions of General Conferences, women are limited to just two sermons, and though a man always speaks at the female Relief Society and Young Women sessions, women never share their wisdom in the Priesthood session. Female speakers, authors, and leaders are seldom quoted in correlated manuals. The senior editors of the official church magazines are always men while women write fewer articles for these magazines than men do, the result being that women's voices, experiences, and spirituality within Mormonism are often only glimpsed through the accounts and perspectives of men. This is an area where I would like to see change, and I believe change could happen quite easily without radically modifying what the church currently teaches about gender.
For that reason, I was hopeful last year when Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of the Relief Society was announced. At the time, I wrote on my blog:
President Beck’s exciting announcement was that the Church is completing a history of the Relief Society that will become available next year. The extent to which that history will be used in Church curricula is not entirely clear, although President Beck did mention that it would be used for visiting teaching lessons. I’d be ecstatic to see it as a manual for Relief Society or Sunday School. I don’t imagine that this will be the sort of “warts-and-all” history that I prefer, but if this gives women in the Church more voice and brings a greater amount of attention to the lives of past Mormon women, I’m all for it.
That manual is now available for public consumption, and I am pleased to report that while DMK does contain some regressive and even harmful material, the book is otherwise a rich account of Mormon female spirituality---often told in the voices of LDS women themselves. Despite my misgivings about certain parts of the book, I feel that it is a net positive for the LDS Sunday School library.
As I worked through DMK, these were some of the questions I asked:
- In its presentation of the history and work of the Relief Society, how many of the citations came from men v. citations from women? How long did those citations last? Were these citations highlighted in any way?
- What does the manual have to say about biblical women?
- What (if anything) does the manual teach about potentially touchy issues such as: polygamy, Emma Smith's “apostasy,” the reasons for disbanding the Relief Society in 1844, support for women's suffrage, nineteenth-century support for women working outside the home, early Mormon women administering blessings with oil, switching the office of Relief Society President from a life-time calling to a short-term calling, and opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment?
- In what ways does the manual promote regressive positions that are harmful to women such as: apologetics for not ordaining women to the priesthood, encouraging all married women to become homemakers instead of pursuing vocations in accordance with their God-given talents, teaching women that they are subordinate to their husbands, and encouraging unhealthy versions of “modesty”?
I tried to have appropriate expectations for the manual. I know what the church currently tends to teach on most of these subjects and I know what LDS Sunday School manuals are like. I believe they are often poorly researched, poorly written, and engage in white-washing of LDS history, and I did not expect DMK to single-handedly solve all of these problems. Nevertheless, I did read DMK with the hope of seeing some needed improvement, and I do not believe I was disappointed in this hope.
It is worth noting that DMK is a departure from other LDS church manuals in that it was written by a single woman, Susan W. Tanner, rather than a correlated committee. Ms. Tanner holds a BA in humanities from Brigham Young University and served as the twelfth Young Women general president from 2002 to 2008. The book is heavily dependent on the work of Lucile C. Tate and Elaine R. Harris, who were commissioned in 1996 to compile an unpublished history of the Relief Society that was retained in the church archives.
Voice in Daughters in My Kingdom
In her previous post on the subject over at Faith-Promoting Rumor, Bored in Vernal presented a count of citations from men v. citations from women, finding that “[o]f the 296 quotations, 145 are by women, and 151 are by men.” It was my impression as I read through DMK that there were a few more citations from men than from women. However, I felt like the citations from men tended to be shorter and wanted to see how that theory bore out, so I kept a word count for each sex on a chapter-by-chapter basis as I worked through the manual. Ziff from Zelophehad's Daughters was kind enough to prepare some graphs demonstrating my findings:
As you can see, women tended to be cited more or almost as much as men in almost every chapter of the book. [3] It was only Chapter Eight and Chapter Nine where men were cited significantly more than women, and those were the chapters on priesthood and homemaking. Unsurprisingly, it would seem that men have a lot more to say about not wanting women to hold either the priesthood or jobs outside the home than women do.
Overall, I was very satisfied with the way in which women's voices were emphasized throughout DMK. Chapters Two through Seven, which were a loose chronological history of the Relief Society, were especially rich with accounts of women engaging in service, having prayers answered, giving testimonies of their faith, and demonstrating their wisdom. Each of the fifteen Relief Society general presidents was cited at least once and had a quotation, picture, and signature featured at the bottom of a page at some point. There was one particularly riveting account of a woman working a miraculous healing (130-31). Even in Chapters Eight and Nine, women's voices do not disappear. They become subordinate to the overarching teachings of male leaders, but they still comprise a significant portion of the citations in those chapters.
My hope is that future LDS manuals will follow the example of DMK and include a significant amount of citations from LDS women. Currently, most of them have no citations from women or only a few scattered examples. For example, the 2009 Gospel Principles manual, which has been used for study in both Priesthood and Relief Society meetings for 2010-2011, contains no citations from women. The Eternal Marriage Student Manual contains eight short citations from women and three talks given by women quoted at length out of a 374-page manual made up of almost nothing but citations. A manual with even a quarter of its citations from women would be a welcome change from current patterns, and with DMK, 55% of the citations are from women.
Granted, the fact that men speak so prominently in a manual by a woman, for women, and about women does serve to highlight the central role men have in overseeing the Relief Society. We are probably nowhere near the day when a Priesthood manual written by a man, for men, and about men will use the words of women for 45% of its citations. However, at this point I will take improvement wherever I can get it, and Daughters in My Kingdom is certainly an improvement.
To Be Continued . . .
-----------
[1] See, for example: Bridget Jack Jeffries, “How Wide the Divide, and Can Biblical Equality Bridge It?,” Mutuality, Autumn 2010, 15-17.
[2] http://godswordtowomen.org/Preato3.htm
[3] It was sometimes not easy to decide what constituted “words of men” v. “words of women.” For example, Joseph Smith is cited heavily throughout Chapter 2 in conjunction with the foundation of the Relief Society; however, his words largely come from the minutes of the Nauvoo Relief Society written by Eliza R. Snow, a woman. In the end, I decided that the way the citation was presented in the main text was key. If it was presented as a straight-up quote from Person A, I counted it under the sex of Person A, even if someone else wrote it down and related it. If it was presented as Person B paraphrasing the words of Person A, I counted it under the sex of Person B. I also did not count scripture citations (Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price) which are heavily male-dominated and would have skewed the tally, as I feel that the androcentrism of scriptures is something that should be treated on its own. I did count short citations from the Family Proclamation as the words of men, but I did not count the pages in Chapter 9 where the entirety of the Family Proclamation was reproduced. There were a few citations from (probably male) 19th century newspaper reporters which I did not bother to look up or count.