The amount of literature that attacks the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by accusing it of being oppressive to women. This example is but one among many. To many today the very concept of gendered differences is given as absolute proof of the oppressive, anti-woman nature of “Mormonism,” which is then attacked for its supposedly male-oriented and woman dominating nature.
Its all nonsense though and has more to do with the church not aligning with the pet social and political desires of the speakers, usually coming from the political Left, than from any honest evaluation of the role, place, and treatment of women in Latter-day Saint theology and practice. Which is, of course, not to say that things are perfect and beyond reproach, but to point out that just because improvements could be made is not the same thing as saying that the church and its teachings are in and of themselves de facto oppressive, anti-woman, etc. Most of these statements tend to make the erroneous assumption that just because the Saints do it then it must because of their religious beliefs and not because of the common national society they also live in and are influenced by.
The truth is exactly the opposite – that the doctrines of the Restoration are actually deeply ennobling and empowering to women, moreso than any of the policies and dogmas of the world. And it has always been that way. One of the best things about history is that it allows us to look into times where events were more troubled and situations more dire than our own to see how the people of that time responded to many of the same problems that we do today. When we do this with Latter-day Saint history and look at how LDS women responded to their role in the church and the doctrines of the Restored Gospel we find that they, living in a time actually oppressive to women, saw very clearly just how strongly pro-woman that the Restored Gospel and the church was and is.
The Feminist Gospel
The first example comes from Eliza R. Snow, a heroic woman if ever there was one.
The Testimony of Eliza R. Snow
This quote comes from The Great Indignation Meeting of 1870, a meeting of Latter-day Saint women held to publicly protest the threat of anti-polygamy laws aimed. This quote is profound not only because it counters the common propaganda around polygamy, but also speaks to the larger issue of the role of women in Latter-day Saint society:
There is a point at which silence is no longer a virtue. In my humble opinion we have arrived at this point. Shall we – ought we to be silent when every right of citizenship – every vestige of civil and religious liberty is at stake? When our husbands and sons – our fathers and brothers are threatened, being either restrained in their obedience to the commands of God, or incarcerated year after year in the dreary confines of a prison, will it be thought presumptuous for us to speak? Are not our interests one with our brethren? Ladies, this subject as deeply interests us as them. In the Kingdom of God, woman has no interests separate from those of man – all are mutual.
Our enemies pretend that in Utah, woman is held in a state of vassalage—that she does not act from choice, but by coercion – that we would even prefer life elsewhere, were it possible for us to make our escape. What nonsense! We all know that if we wished, we could leave at any time – either to go singly or we could rise en masse, and there is no power here that could or would ever wish to prevent us.
I will now ask this intelligent assembly of ladies: Do you know of any place on the face of the earth, where woman has more liberty, and where she enjoys such high and glorious privileges as she does here, as a Latter-day Saint? “No!” The very idea of women here in a state of slavery is a burlesque on good common sense. The history of this people, with a very little reflection, would instruct outsiders on this point, it would show at once that the part which woman has acted in it, could never have been performed against her will. Amid the many distressing scenes through which we have passed, the privations and hardships consequent on our expulsion from State to State, and our location in an isolated, barren wilderness, the women in this Church have performed and suffered what could never have been borne and accomplished by slaves.
…Were we the stupid, degraded, heartbroken beings that we have been represented, silence might better become us; but, as women of God, – women filling high and responsible positions – performing sacred duties – women who stand not as dictators, but as counselors to their husbands, and who, in the purest, noblest sense of refined womanhood, being truly their helpmates; we not only speak because we have the right, but justice and humanity demand that we should.
Instead of being lorded over by tyrannical husbands, we, the ladies of Utah, are already in possession of a privilege which many intelligent and high aiming ladies in the States are earnestly seeking i. e., the right to vote. Although as yet we have not been admitted to the common ballot box, to us the right of suffrage is extended in matters of far greater importance. This we say truthfully not boastingly; and we may say farther, that if those sensitive persons who profess to pity the condition of the women of Utah, will secure unto us those rights and privileges which a just and equitable administration of the laws of the Constitution of the United States guarantees to every loyal citizen, they may reserve their sympathy for objects more appreciative.
Eliza Roxcy Snow, 1870
Eliza not only throws the sexist rhetoric used to demonize polygamy back into the teeth of her political oppressors, but she disproves them entirely. The women of Utah had more social and religious equality than anywhere else in the nation. Women in the Kingdom of God already had the right to vote. That women had a right to vote in the appointment of men and women to offices in the church and that they could obstruct or even prevent a man from holding a position of authority by refusing to consent to his appointment was something then very unique to LDS religious practices.
That Eliza saw women’s right to vote to sustain church leaders and appointments as more important than political power demonstrates she had a better understanding of the church as the Kingdom of God than many members today. While other American women were striving for some equality in the worldly and temporal American state, Latter-day Saint women already had the power to vote in the most important and eternal government to ever exist – the Kingdom of God, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This would have an important influence on the secular society as well. Within a month of Eliza’s comments here Utah women would have the right to vote in political elections as well, being the first women in American history to vote in political elections. These are no weak or powerless women, they are empowered and powerful and they would use that to defend plural marriage against the wicked and corrupt government that seeks to destroy it and them. And they were, and are, made that way by the Restored Gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Testimony of Susa Young Gates
One of the daughters of Brigham Young, Susa was no wilting flower. As one of her biographers described her, she was a human dynamo whose service to the church and larger society was astronomical. In addition to forming the music and home science departments at BYU (and working as its longest serving Board of Trustees members), she maintained a massive literary output of articles, literature, and stories (including a biography of her father) and served at one time or another on the boards of the Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association and the Relief Society. Her efforts in genealogy set the standrad which still guides teh church’s work in that field to this day.
Smart, driven, and ambitious, Susa was also deeply involved in the National Council of Women and International Council of Women, passionately dedicated to the cause of women’s suffrage and women’s rights. She worked closely with every major figure of the women’s movement in her era, including Susan B. Anthony and travelled across the United States and to Europe in the struggle for women’s equality. At one point she was so influential in the suffragette movement that she was told that “if she would renounce Mormonism, she would get elected president of the National Council of Women. She replied that this was too heavy a price for her to pay.”
Susa was a woman that was dedicated to the cause of human equality and women’s rights in a way most people today could neither dream of nor truly understand. He influence in this work, though largely unheralded today, still blesses the lives of women across the world. And what was one of the main things driving her work?
The pro-woman nature of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Printed in 1920, just months before the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gave women the civil right to vote nationally, Susa wrote a short article explaining how the equality she found in the doctrines of her faith as a Latter-day Saint gave her the insight and drive to work for women’s equality outside of the church. I reproduce that short article fully below:
The world of man looked out with unseeing eyes into past and future glories when the Vision was vouchsafed to the youthful prophet in the early spring day of 1820. But if it meant much to men, with all their hold upon the earth and its fulness, what was the effect upon the women of the world? That wonderful appearance in the Grove, at Palmyra, held in its heart, like the half-opened calyx of a rose, all the promises of future development for woman, foreshadowed by that revelation given to Moses concerning the creation when he saw “man” created in the express image of his Maker, “male and female created he them.” There was to be no bond and free in Christ Jesus, but all were to be free. Therefore, the vision held the bright promise of equality and freedom for women. The divine Mother, side by side with the divine Father, the equal sharing of equal rights, privileges and responsibilities, in heaven and on earth, all this was foreshadowed in that startling announcement of the Son: “They were all wrong! They draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me!” In an age-long darkness and apostasy, woman had been shackled because of her very virtue, tender sympathy, and patient desire for peace.
Men had trafficked and struggled with one another during the long centuries, outside the sanctuary, since the walls had fallen upon their religious ruins. But man had held woman by the wrist, had controlled her religiously, financially, and civilly. What rights and what privileges she enjoyed through those dark ages of superstition and oppression after the Master’s vision had closed upon mankind with the crucifixion, were hers through sufferance of her male guardians and possessors.
Can you conceive, then, what the Vision meant to woman?
It meant in civil, religious, social and finally, financial matters, the right of choice; it meant woman’s free agency, the liberation of her long-chained will and purpose.
She has erred in her judgment at times since that day of prefigured release in the Grove at Palmyra. So has her husband, her son, and her brother. But, O! the wonder and joy of that Vision! Today, and since that day, in this Church and Kingdom, as was divinely ordained, together men and women stumble along, now climbing, and now slipping on the steep hillside. Joined by the clinging hands of their little children, both are facing the rising sun of the coming day of peace and power. When the key was turned in the opening portal of sky and earth to admit men once again in life’s sacred courts, men were endowed with the power and majesty of the Holy Priesthood; and all its blessings, gifts, and powers are shared and shared alike by man and his true mate. He of right enters into his Priesthood heritage, while the Gate Beautiful opens wide to admit all of us women into the glories of the Court of the Women! Nor are we there confined! Side by side, men and women climb the golden stairs, pass Solomon’s Porch, the Altar of Sacrifice, the symbolic tables and glowing candle-branches, into the Holy Place; and as we go together into the Holy of Holies we voice the hymnal of our sex –
“When I leave this frail existence,
When I lay this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet yon
In your royal courts on high?
Then, at length, when I’ve completed,
All you sent me forth to do,
With your mutual approbation,
Let me come and dwell with you.”[The quoted poetry is the fourth verse of hymn O, My Father]
The Vision Beautiful, by Susa Young Gates, April 1920
Stand True
Can you conceive of a pro-woman Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? I can. Following the testimony of these women, and the many more like them, I can see the many powerful ways in which the Restored Gospel ennobles and empowers women, making them the equals of men in Time and Eternity. I see it all the time. I see women preach, teach, and lead men, women, and children all throughout the Kingdom of God. From the very start the doctrines of the Restored Gospel elevated the role and position of women, breaking the shackles of apostate Christianity and teaching the truth of the divine Mother in Heaven and the equal roles of men and women in the Kingdom of God. As an outgrowth of this equality, Latter-day Saint women were empowered to more powerfully press for political equality and Latter-day Saint men were willing to listen to them and acknowledge their demands. When women like Eliza and Susa worked for the political equality of women in American society they were only exporting Mormonism into the world around them.
There are, of course, critics who would reject this entire argument. But that isn’t because the Restored Gospel or the church are oppressive and anti-woman. It is because most of these critics are so indoctrinated into their political views that they belong to political cults. For them it is an article of faith that the traditional family is a “bastion of women’s oppression.” When you believe that being married is in and of itself an “exploitation” of women and demand that society must “abolishing the family” in order for women to have equality then a church that teaches that men and women should be married together as one of its most important beliefs will automatically be rejected. Facts aren’t the issue here. Faith is the basis of these claims. They’re driven by ideology, not reason. No matter of how many facts and counterarguments you argue, no matter how rational you are, you cannot reason people out of their religious beliefs. These people hate female biology, they hate the female body and want to use science to either deny it or destroy it. They see mothers as the enemy and believe service to the state or “society” is more important than service to the family.
Their very language – the effort erase the words “woman” and mother, replacing them with a physiological terms such as “menstruating/birthing person” – only serves to obliterate the womanhood altogether. It objectifies women by reducing them to nothing more than their bodily functions. They don’t even believe that nature and reality exist. Objectivity doesn’t exist, only what you think you understand about reality exists. Therefore women don’t exist, only the idea of women and that idea can be altered at will. These people are so divorced from reality that they can’t even agree about what a woman is or if women exist at all. How are you supposed to have a discussion about the role and place of women with them in the first place? How can they be pro-woman when their ideology, their religion, obliterates womanhood and women altogether?
It is a waste of time trying to correct people who hate you for merely existing and thinking differently. You’ll never argue them into a different position. As with everything, the Restored Gospel is the answer to the insanities and evils of the world. Only conversion from their false faith to the true one, to the Restored Gospel, will change their hearts and then their minds. It is only the Restored Gospel that teaches what a woman is, how you be a woman, and why being a woman matters. It is only the Restored Gospel that helps a woman understand her relationship to herself, to her husband, to her children, to her friends, to her family, to her work, to her community, to her society. And only by converting to the Restored Gospel can women learn these essential truths and powers that the doctrines of the world deny to them.
What can you do to aid in this conversion? Well, speak the truth first and foremost. Don’t be browbeaten and buzz-worded into silence. Refuse to equivocate on the Restored Gospel and its teachings. Teach the Gospel, testify to its truths, and refuse to be moved from it. They will spew every vile and filthy insult they can think of to do as much harm to you as possible. They’ll call you a bigot, a homophobe, a transphobe, a Fascist, even a Nazi. Don’t give in. Have courage. When they try and smear the Restored Gospel and the church as being anti-woman, testify to the truth. You won’t convince them, but others with open ears and hearts may themselves see and hear and be converted and saved. For them the exalting truths of Divine Womanhood will be like water to one trapped in the desert or food for one starving. It will be satisfying, filling, delicious Truth.
Try your best to act with grace, forgiveness, and mercy. That doesn’t mean submission. It does mean peace. When the early Christian martyrs met persecution, hate, and even death with courage, faithfulness, and nonviolence by refusing to obey, refusing to backdown, refusing to be silent, and refusing to respond to violence with violence even as it cost them their lives, their sufferings and their examples converted more people than ever to Christianity:
Now it is evident that no one can terrify or subdue us who have believed in Jesus over all the world. For it is plain that, though beheaded, and crucified, and thrown to wild beasts, and chains, and fire, and all other kinds of torture, we do not give up our confession; but the more such things happen, the more do others and in larger numbers become faithful, and worshippers of God through the name of Jesus.
The Dialogue with Trypho, by Justin Martyr, the Roberts-Donaldson English Translation
The most powerful example you can follow is that of Christ. He too was hated and persecuted for speaking the truth. But He never backed down, never shrunk from the struggle though the cost for Him was greater than we can imagine. But for all the evil that was shown to Him, He returned nothing but good. His life was one dedicated to service and love, even and especially for His enemies. We should strive to never do less.
Final Thoughts
As Susa Young Gates notes, the church hasn’t yet achieved its full potential in regards to women, which I would argue is because of its nature as a convert religion more than anything else. Converts to the faith start at a lower baseline and bring many of their previous assumptions into the church. The influence of the Restored Gospel then takes years, decades even, to form and transform that person. At the same time competing with the powerful national and social cultures of the world. We do not live in Latter-day Saint only vacuums. For every hour we spend at church we spend days being influenced by the national culture, national values, and national prejudices of the societies we grow up in through schools and entertainment.
None of this denies the true pro-woman power of the Restored Gospel and the church. It merely means that the world is anti-woman and oppressive to women and it takes time to deprogram those indoctrinated mental frameworks from the minds of people. The best tool for doing that though is the one that touches not only the mind, but the heart and soul of the subject, the Holy Spirit. That Gift, that power, is only found here, in this church. Ultimately, that is what a Christian life, a life of repentance and conversion, is all about. And the doctrines and eternal truths that bring about that repentance and conversion so deeply and powerfully are the teachings, commandments, and truths of Jesus Christ as restored and taught by His modern Prophets and Apostles.
While many others draw near to being pro-woman with their lips, their acts are have the opposite effect of attacking, degrading, and ultimately destroying women and womanhood. The only place where the truths exist that lead to the honoring, uplifting, and exalting of women is in the Restored Gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most stridently pro-woman force ever unleashed upon the Earth. Those who deny it and fight against it only ultimately do harm to women by delaying the ascension of the Restored Gospel and its pro-woman doctrines and truths to universal influence.