Notes from WATERtalks: Feminist Conversations in Religion Series
“The Latter Days: Surviving Mormon Patriarchy in the Age of Feminism”
An hourlong teleconference with
Judith Freeman
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
1 PM to 2 PM ET
WATER spoke with award-winning novelist, critic, and essayist Judith Freeman about her memoir, The Latter Days. Freeman reflected on her Mormon upbringing and the challenges of being a girl in a strictly patriarchal world, as well as the difficulties of addressing such experiences as an adult.
Mary E. Hunt: We welcome all of you to this session and all of WATER’s efforts, which are focused on changing the cultural and intellectual assumptions that ground discrimination, exclusion, and destruction.
We welcome writer Judith Freeman to our circle. We were advised about your work, Judith, by Joanna Brooks, author of Mormon Feminism, who did a WATERtalk in February of 2016 titled “The 40 years we celebrate, the 40 years ahead”. We’re delighted to have you discuss your memoir and especially to focus on “Surviving Mormon Patriarchy in the Age of Feminism”.
Judith Freeman is a novelist, critic, and essayist whose newest book, The Latter Days, was published by Pantheon in June 2016. Kirkus called the book “a poignant, searching memoir of self-discovery.” The paperback of The Latter Days is due out Spring 2017.
Judith will speak about her Mormon upbringing and the challenges of being a girl in a strictly patriarchal world, as well as the difficulties of addressing such experiences as an adult. This will resonate with many women’s religious experiences in various traditions. Those from what I think of as closed system traditions—many Catholics and Jews, some evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants, for example—will hear a lot of their own experiences in Judith’s story.
Judith Freeman’s other novels include, The Chinchilla Farm (1989), A Desert of Pure Feeling (1996), and Red Water (2003), named one of the 100 best books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times. She is also the author of the non-fiction work The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved (2008). She received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997, and also won the Western Heritage Award for her novel, Set For Life in 1992. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and other periodicals. She lives in Los Angeles and rural Idaho with her husband, artist photographer Anthony Hernandez.
Judith Freeman: Thank you, Mary. I feel like I’m joining the most interesting group today. I was last in DC for the Women’s March. I feel like I’m virtually back there again. I’m so grateful to WATER and happy to know a group like yours exists. As Mary said, I’m going to talk about growing up in the Mormon Church in a strong patriarchal culture. I’ll be speaking about my own experience. There are so many stories to be told about being a girl in a patriarchal culture. There are also many stories about Mormonism.
I think of the poet François Villon, who said, “I know all things except myself alone.” This project engages me to know myself. This talk and my book are part of an attempt to understand what formed me. How religion and culture has had such an extraordinary effect on my life.
A more honest title for this talk comes from an introduction Ursula K. Le Guin delivered when I appeared at Powell’s Books last June, on the occasion of reading from my memoir, The Latter Days. Ursula said, Judith’s memoir “gives us the real-life background of that wonderful story of how a girl can blunder into freedom.” When I heard this, it seemed like such an apt description of my past.
Ursula, whom I’ve known for many years, introduced me at Powell’s in 1989 when my first novel came out. She has been valuable in helping me to forge my own identity as a writer and woman. In her introduction, she said:
“The Latter Days tells us about what life is like when your religion is also your government — a government whose decisions are unarguable because authorized directly by God.” She pointed out that, “The men who wrote the U.S. Constitution were so afraid of the terrific power of a religious state, and so aware of the difficulty of combining a hierarchical religion with a democratic government, that – after honest and civil acknowledgments to God – they wrote religion right out of the government of the United States. Ever since then, organized believers have struggled to sneak it back in. The “Religious Right” that is such a powerful force in our politics is not just fundamentalist Christian but also, less noisily, Mormon. The Mormon establishment offers radical conservatives a successful model of non-militarized control of civil life by a religious hierarchy – politically reactionary, patriotic, pro-capitalist, intensely secretive, and entirely male. Judith Freeman tells us about being a girl growing up inside a power structure that is in many ways like an Islamic state. We see and feel the trust, the security, the real happiness, that prevail in Mormon society – and the subjection of thought to belief, of freedom to authority, and of women to men.”
I felt uncomfortable having Mormonism compared to an Islamic state. It reveals a terrible bias against Islam that so many in America feel, whether we acknowledge it or not. That Islam is a bad religion, while Mormonism or Catholicism are “good religions.” This simply isn’t true. I also had to consider her idea of religion as government. I had to admit that this was the world I grew up in. Closed and insular, the religion was the government.
I was born in Utah to family of 8 children. I was the 6th child. My father loved singing and had a strong artistic impulse, but he worked ordinary jobs all his life. He passed his independent spirit and inquiring mind on to me. Both of my parents were very devout Mormons—my ancestors go back to first Mormon immigrants in Utah in 1847. Everyone I knew growing up was Mormon. All businesses were owned by Mormons, all politicians were Mormon. Mormons were a Republican voting block, with exception of my father who happened to be a Democrat. He held liberal values, believed in equality of races.
Our local congregation (ward) would put on a musical every year. I felt enfolded by a caring community. From young age, I realized women did not have the same power as men. Men could be bearers of Holy Priesthood, all power was invested in this Priesthood.
I’ll give an example of when I was first struck by the discrepancy in allocation of this power. When we were sick, we received the blessing of the laying on of hands. I remember being sick as a girl, my father would call elders who held Priesthood. Large men would surround me and anoint my forehead with consecrated oil. They would lay fingertips on my head and offer a healing prayer. It was a powerful ceremony. I couldn’t understand why women didn’t have the same power. It seemed that women had a deeper sense of spirituality. Men’s spirituality held entitlement and power. I thought women should be able to lay their hands on their children and heal them. We were told as children that because the male head of household held the priesthood, he was the conduit to our deepest connection with God.
I became a rebellious child as I entered puberty. I lived my life outdoors. I had a hard time conforming and accepting constant authority and pressure to conform. Therefore I didn’t conform. We weren’t an intellectual family. We didn’t read, didn’t have a library card. I understood I would never be sent to college. I didn’t understand how important education was. I got married at 17 to my sister’s older ex-boyfriend with dreams to go into the Peace Corps. Instead I got pregnant. I had a child at 18 that was born with a serious congenital heart defect. My job was to keep him alive for the first few years of his life. We took him to Minnesota to have surgery, where I realized I could take classes for free with my husband’s job at Macalester College. I took a literature class with Roger Blakely who introduced me to books. I read Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, etc. I discovered ideas and inspiration for how one might live their life. I wrote a story once and decided to become a writer.
I divorced my husband by age 21 and returned to live with my parents in Utah. I worked ordinary jobs. I never lost the idea that I was going to be a storyteller. I could teach myself to write by reading. I didn’t realize it would take 19 years. I published my first novel when I was 39 years old. I moved to LA in the late 1970s and became active in efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. This was the beginning of my true consciousness as a feminist. LA gave me what I needed to go forward and create stories of my own.
I want to end today by thinking about Agnes Martin, an artist I deeply admire who once said, “When we realize that we can see life, we gradually give up the things that stand in the way of our complete awareness.” She gave up painting for seven years, gave away her possessions and embraced silence. I now understand this impulse at the age of 70.
How do we determine what stands in our way of complete awareness? Patriarchy stands in my way, as it does for all women and girls. How to survive patriarchy? I can only say by resisting and by changing it. I do believe it’s within our power to do that. Whether it’s in realm of religion, government, or civil society. This, I think, is our work.
MEH: Thank you very much, Judith. I urge you all to get Judith’s book, although it’s painful. But it resonates with so many women’s experiences.
Q & A
Comment: So delighted to have met you via this series. My own conviction is that women in religions are chipping away within their faith traditions. They’ve chosen this as their site of struggle. I think it’s the power in the world with the greatest potential. I work at this and teach community based courses. Now I can add your name to my resources.
Do you know of the TV series based on Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale? I think this will raise the consciousness of religious patriarchy in a dystopian society. Do you have any comment on this or will you be watching it?
JF: I would love to watch it. I have to admit I have never read The Handmaid’s Tale. I once saw Margaret Atwood speak, and was asked a question about the world she created. She said, “I didn’t create it, I just reported it.” This isn’t some terrible futuristic dystopian tale, although she has pushed it there. This is about gathering facts about what is happening to women. I think 19th Century Mormonism, polygamy, etc. has much to connect to The Handmaid’s Tale.
MEH: It’s important to remember that The Handmaid’s Tale was written in 1985. I’m resisting re-reading it because it hits even closer to home now. This would be a good topic for another teleconference. It’s an important read.
Comment: Thank you so much for your incredible courage and perceptiveness and love for speaking truth. I’m so deeply moved. I think the image of you questioning, at a tender age, why women couldn’t lay their hands on a child, is an image that will stay in my heart forever. I, too, had an authoritarian, patriarchal family and tried to find a way to burst through that. I resonated with your blossoming at Macalester. I’m interested in how you thought about the Holy and how your understanding of the Holy transformed when you went away to Macalester?
JF: Thanks for those comments. I’ve received so many responses like that to my book. These issues cross cultures, religions, geography, etc. I had a woman in India tell me how personally she could connect to my story. How do we get out from under the heavy hand of patriarchy? Thinking of spirituality, when one is raised in a closed system and heavily indoctrinated about what the idea of the Holy is, I’m not sure you ever entirely purge this idea or concept. This has definitely receded for me, because it is so attached to the patriarchal idea.
My own spirituality is a private matter, but an important part of my life. I have found great solace in meditation and yoga. Meditation is a form of connecting with that feeling that I am part of all, and all is part of me. I do feel the need for a spiritual practice, but I also really enjoy being a Pagan. I love celebrating the Pagan holidays. Because the Earth, which is so endangered, is holy. I knew very early on that I had to escape from that closed society. It’s been an adventure to opening up my consciousness.
MEH: Judith, I found your book refreshing in many ways and also somewhat troubling. I have a general question which I get asked a lot. I come from the Catholic tradition with conditions not unlike what you have described. My sense is that many people choose to remain Catholic or Mormon. What kind of a Mormon do you consider yourself to be? What does that mean about self-identity and how one sees oneself religiously?
JF: You know, I think that Mormonism is as much a culture as it is a religion. I can relate it to the Jewish tradition in that sense. It is what we are born into. I think it’s very difficult to shed everything and say, “I reject it.” So much is connected to family, ancestors, and landscape. We’re nurtured by trust, security, and happiness. We’re connected to the good parts, as well as the oppressive parts. It’s been many years since I’ve identified as a religious Mormon. I don’t know of people who call themselves secular Mormons. Sometimes I think I’m still a member of this tribe. That doesn’t bother me. I am a Mormon who was shaped and conditioned by my heritage. I really revere my ancestors and my parents. I do believe that somehow it’s possible to not throw the baby out with the bathwater and appreciate that special history.
MEH: Yes, that certainly rings true. For me, as a Catholic, I take the offensive position of “this is what Catholic looks like.” Not the same as saying a secular Catholic. These religious traditions as you’ve described them do such incredible damage to so many people, especially women and girls, who are so vulnerable. I feel a duty to present some alternatives for people to live differently and keep those things that are good about our traditions. I’m wondering what you think about that.
JF: I appreciate what a caller said about working within the religious tradition. I think that we’re going to need a many-pronged approach to create a more peaceful and just world for all people and move towards the light instead of regressing. I’m not sure I could say to a young Mormon woman, “hang in there, you’ll be fine.” I wasn’t fine. There was a lot of damage. I know when I look at my sister’s family that you cannot make any decision or judgment on anyone else’s life. You can only ask yourself how you can best move forward.
Mary, do you still engage in Catholic rituals? Or are you resolving those issues and questions outside a direct participation?
MEH: Yes, within the Catholic progressive women’s movement we have the Women-Church Movement where we have been worshipping in feminist based communities. The particular group that I belong to began in the late 1970s. It was inspired by Pope John Paul II’s first visit to Washington where women protested the ban against women’s ordination. We’ve adjudicated these things for ourselves and for our children. You find a lot of creativity.
That said, I think we’ve made an enormous amount of difference for a very small amount of people. But I think we need a broader scale approach.
Can you bring us up to date on how Mormon feminism is advancing? Women’s ordination?
JF: I do think that Joanna Brooks and some other strong feminist Mormons who have not abandoned the tradition are working very hard to give young women a different idea about their own strength and place within the church. I can’t speak to the up-to-the-minute activities of Mormon feminists. It’s not something I know a great deal about. I know there has been a tradition in the Mormon Church of excommunicating feminists, gay people, etc. It’s ruthless. I know there was a strong attempt by a young Mormon feminist, Kate Kelly, to lobby the church to allow women to be ordained in the Priesthood. Her efforts resulted in excommunication. You’re throwing yourself up against a pretty hard rock.
That strength and patriarchy is just so powerful and so entrenched. I think where we can make a difference is in our individual activities within our structure of the family or relationships. The way we give ourselves power and permission. Utah has the highest rates of depression among women. I do feel that women are put on a pedestal. But when you’re revered you don’t have much power. The decisions are sometimes so cruel or arbitrary.
People always ask me if Mormonism is a cult or a religion. And I always defend them, but it’s hard to with something like the edict that a child from a gay couple can’t be baptized. You’re not going to change the structure of the Priesthood or the power of the people at the top—from the Prophet to the priests at the bottom. I think that feminism and our own self worth will be lived out on a much more private level.
MEH: Thank you, Judith. You can listen to our November 2014 WATERtalk with Kate Kelly here.
Comment: I live in Atlanta, GA. I grew up Mormon. I didn’t leave until my late 40s. I was in a very difficult situation. I was in college at the time and exposed to new ideas. I made the decision to take Gandhi’s advice. After years of trying to bring more egalitarian ideas, I decided that I would be the change I wanted to see in the Mormon Church. I left the church and I started seeing a therapist. She said I had a lot of fear, shame, and guilt. It’s easy to take the girl out of the church, but not the church out of the girl.
When I visit my Mormon sisters I go to their ward. There’s a lot I can appreciate about it. But there was damage done. I don’t expect to be a catalyst for change from within. But to be an inspiration to those inside who are considering what their options are. There’s a spiritual freedom of yours when you operate outside the confines and constructs of the church structure. There’s no way in the world I would ever give up.
JF: I love your comment, and I love the idea that you’ve expressed to “be the change.” That gives you the authority and power. You’re not entrenched in the system.
Diann L. Neu: Thank you both for this conversation you just had. I come out of the Catholic tradition, liturgy and ritual is my passion and calling. I want to follow this conversation because, when I create rituals, I’m aware that I come out of what I call the best hidden tradition of Catholicism (the social justice and spiritual side of Catholicism). I pay attention to women’s spiritual journeys that are not often celebrated. Lifecycle liturgies, for example. I’m creating with a whole new cloth, but on the other hand tapping into the spiritual and social justice tradition that I was raised with. I’m not coming from nowhere. I’m coming from a spiritual source. Do you find that in yourselves? What do you find is your spiritual strength or justice foundation?
JF: Diann, I liked your comment. I do think ritual is so important. I think they’re quite essential and quite beautiful. They can deeply alter the state of our lives and our consciousness. It connects you not only to the sense of the Holy, but also to your wish to create justice in the world. For me, there’s no question that these rituals are buried deep within me. For example, I think my meditation is a form of prayer. Why destroy something that is in us that exists spiritually? I do believe that I can lay my hands on my husband and help make him feel better. That which is within us serves us again in another form.
WATER thanks Judith Freeman for her work. We look forward to further collaboration.
The next WATERtalk is scheduled for Wednesday, June 14, 2017 at 1 PM ET with Ani Zonneveld.
Notes from WATERtalks: Feminist Conversations in Religion Series
“The Latter Days: Surviving Mormon Patriarchy in the Age of Feminism”
An hourlong teleconference with
Judith Freeman
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
1 PM to 2 PM ET
WATER spoke with award-winning novelist, critic, and essayist Judith Freeman about her memoir, The Latter Days. Freeman reflected on her Mormon upbringing and the challenges of being a girl in a strictly patriarchal world, as well as the difficulties of addressing such experiences as an adult.
Mary E. Hunt: We welcome all of you to this session and all of WATER’s efforts, which are focused on changing the cultural and intellectual assumptions that ground discrimination, exclusion, and destruction.
We welcome writer Judith Freeman to our circle. We were advised about your work, Judith, by Joanna Brooks, author of Mormon Feminism, who did a WATERtalk in February of 2016 titled “The 40 years we celebrate, the 40 years ahead”. We’re delighted to have you discuss your memoir and especially to focus on “Surviving Mormon Patriarchy in the Age of Feminism”.
Judith Freeman is a novelist, critic, and essayist whose newest book, The Latter Days, was published by Pantheon in June 2016. Kirkus called the book “a poignant, searching memoir of self-discovery.” The paperback of The Latter Days is due out Spring 2017.
Judith will speak about her Mormon upbringing and the challenges of being a girl in a strictly patriarchal world, as well as the difficulties of addressing such experiences as an adult. This will resonate with many women’s religious experiences in various traditions. Those from what I think of as closed system traditions—many Catholics and Jews, some evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants, for example—will hear a lot of their own experiences in Judith’s story.
Judith Freeman’s other novels include, The Chinchilla Farm (1989), A Desert of Pure Feeling (1996), and Red Water (2003), named one of the 100 best books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times. She is also the author of the non-fiction work The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved (2008). She received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997, and also won the Western Heritage Award for her novel, Set For Life in 1992. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and other periodicals. She lives in Los Angeles and rural Idaho with her husband, artist photographer Anthony Hernandez.
Judith Freeman: Thank you, Mary. I feel like I’m joining the most interesting group today. I was last in DC for the Women’s March. I feel like I’m virtually back there again. I’m so grateful to WATER and happy to know a group like yours exists. As Mary said, I’m going to talk about growing up in the Mormon Church in a strong patriarchal culture. I’ll be speaking about my own experience. There are so many stories to be told about being a girl in a patriarchal culture. There are also many stories about Mormonism.
I think of the poet François Villon, who said, “I know all things except myself alone.” This project engages me to know myself. This talk and my book are part of an attempt to understand what formed me. How religion and culture has had such an extraordinary effect on my life.
A more honest title for this talk comes from an introduction Ursula K. Le Guin delivered when I appeared at Powell’s Books last June, on the occasion of reading from my memoir, The Latter Days. Ursula said, Judith’s memoir “gives us the real-life background of that wonderful story of how a girl can blunder into freedom.” When I heard this, it seemed like such an apt description of my past.
Ursula, whom I’ve known for many years, introduced me at Powell’s in 1989 when my first novel came out. She has been valuable in helping me to forge my own identity as a writer and woman. In her introduction, she said:
“The Latter Days tells us about what life is like when your religion is also your government — a government whose decisions are unarguable because authorized directly by God.” She pointed out that, “The men who wrote the U.S. Constitution were so afraid of the terrific power of a religious state, and so aware of the difficulty of combining a hierarchical religion with a democratic government, that – after honest and civil acknowledgments to God – they wrote religion right out of the government of the United States. Ever since then, organized believers have struggled to sneak it back in. The “Religious Right” that is such a powerful force in our politics is not just fundamentalist Christian but also, less noisily, Mormon. The Mormon establishment offers radical conservatives a successful model of non-militarized control of civil life by a religious hierarchy – politically reactionary, patriotic, pro-capitalist, intensely secretive, and entirely male. Judith Freeman tells us about being a girl growing up inside a power structure that is in many ways like an Islamic state. We see and feel the trust, the security, the real happiness, that prevail in Mormon society – and the subjection of thought to belief, of freedom to authority, and of women to men.”
I felt uncomfortable having Mormonism compared to an Islamic state. It reveals a terrible bias against Islam that so many in America feel, whether we acknowledge it or not. That Islam is a bad religion, while Mormonism or Catholicism are “good religions.” This simply isn’t true. I also had to consider her idea of religion as government. I had to admit that this was the world I grew up in. Closed and insular, the religion was the government.
I was born in Utah to family of 8 children. I was the 6th child. My father loved singing and had a strong artistic impulse, but he worked ordinary jobs all his life. He passed his independent spirit and inquiring mind on to me. Both of my parents were very devout Mormons—my ancestors go back to first Mormon immigrants in Utah in 1847. Everyone I knew growing up was Mormon. All businesses were owned by Mormons, all politicians were Mormon. Mormons were a Republican voting block, with exception of my father who happened to be a Democrat. He held liberal values, believed in equality of races.
Our local congregation (ward) would put on a musical every year. I felt enfolded by a caring community. From young age, I realized women did not have the same power as men. Men could be bearers of Holy Priesthood, all power was invested in this Priesthood.
I’ll give an example of when I was first struck by the discrepancy in allocation of this power. When we were sick, we received the blessing of the laying on of hands. I remember being sick as a girl, my father would call elders who held Priesthood. Large men would surround me and anoint my forehead with consecrated oil. They would lay fingertips on my head and offer a healing prayer. It was a powerful ceremony. I couldn’t understand why women didn’t have the same power. It seemed that women had a deeper sense of spirituality. Men’s spirituality held entitlement and power. I thought women should be able to lay their hands on their children and heal them. We were told as children that because the male head of household held the priesthood, he was the conduit to our deepest connection with God.
I became a rebellious child as I entered puberty. I lived my life outdoors. I had a hard time conforming and accepting constant authority and pressure to conform. Therefore I didn’t conform. We weren’t an intellectual family. We didn’t read, didn’t have a library card. I understood I would never be sent to college. I didn’t understand how important education was. I got married at 17 to my sister’s older ex-boyfriend with dreams to go into the Peace Corps. Instead I got pregnant. I had a child at 18 that was born with a serious congenital heart defect. My job was to keep him alive for the first few years of his life. We took him to Minnesota to have surgery, where I realized I could take classes for free with my husband’s job at Macalester College. I took a literature class with Roger Blakely who introduced me to books. I read Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, etc. I discovered ideas and inspiration for how one might live their life. I wrote a story once and decided to become a writer.
I divorced my husband by age 21 and returned to live with my parents in Utah. I worked ordinary jobs. I never lost the idea that I was going to be a storyteller. I could teach myself to write by reading. I didn’t realize it would take 19 years. I published my first novel when I was 39 years old. I moved to LA in the late 1970s and became active in efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. This was the beginning of my true consciousness as a feminist. LA gave me what I needed to go forward and create stories of my own.
I want to end today by thinking about Agnes Martin, an artist I deeply admire who once said, “When we realize that we can see life, we gradually give up the things that stand in the way of our complete awareness.” She gave up painting for seven years, gave away her possessions and embraced silence. I now understand this impulse at the age of 70.
How do we determine what stands in our way of complete awareness? Patriarchy stands in my way, as it does for all women and girls. How to survive patriarchy? I can only say by resisting and by changing it. I do believe it’s within our power to do that. Whether it’s in realm of religion, government, or civil society. This, I think, is our work.
MEH: Thank you very much, Judith. I urge you all to get Judith’s book, although it’s painful. But it resonates with so many women’s experiences.
Q & A
Comment: So delighted to have met you via this series. My own conviction is that women in religions are chipping away within their faith traditions. They’ve chosen this as their site of struggle. I think it’s the power in the world with the greatest potential. I work at this and teach community based courses. Now I can add your name to my resources.
Do you know of the TV series based on Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale? I think this will raise the consciousness of religious patriarchy in a dystopian society. Do you have any comment on this or will you be watching it?
JF: I would love to watch it. I have to admit I have never read The Handmaid’s Tale. I once saw Margaret Atwood speak, and was asked a question about the world she created. She said, “I didn’t create it, I just reported it.” This isn’t some terrible futuristic dystopian tale, although she has pushed it there. This is about gathering facts about what is happening to women. I think 19th Century Mormonism, polygamy, etc. has much to connect to The Handmaid’s Tale.
MEH: It’s important to remember that The Handmaid’s Tale was written in 1985. I’m resisting re-reading it because it hits even closer to home now. This would be a good topic for another teleconference. It’s an important read.
Comment: Thank you so much for your incredible courage and perceptiveness and love for speaking truth. I’m so deeply moved. I think the image of you questioning, at a tender age, why women couldn’t lay their hands on a child, is an image that will stay in my heart forever. I, too, had an authoritarian, patriarchal family and tried to find a way to burst through that. I resonated with your blossoming at Macalester. I’m interested in how you thought about the Holy and how your understanding of the Holy transformed when you went away to Macalester?
JF: Thanks for those comments. I’ve received so many responses like that to my book. These issues cross cultures, religions, geography, etc. I had a woman in India tell me how personally she could connect to my story. How do we get out from under the heavy hand of patriarchy? Thinking of spirituality, when one is raised in a closed system and heavily indoctrinated about what the idea of the Holy is, I’m not sure you ever entirely purge this idea or concept. This has definitely receded for me, because it is so attached to the patriarchal idea.
My own spirituality is a private matter, but an important part of my life. I have found great solace in meditation and yoga. Meditation is a form of connecting with that feeling that I am part of all, and all is part of me. I do feel the need for a spiritual practice, but I also really enjoy being a Pagan. I love celebrating the Pagan holidays. Because the Earth, which is so endangered, is holy. I knew very early on that I had to escape from that closed society. It’s been an adventure to opening up my consciousness.
MEH: Judith, I found your book refreshing in many ways and also somewhat troubling. I have a general question which I get asked a lot. I come from the Catholic tradition with conditions not unlike what you have described. My sense is that many people choose to remain Catholic or Mormon. What kind of a Mormon do you consider yourself to be? What does that mean about self-identity and how one sees oneself religiously?
JF: You know, I think that Mormonism is as much a culture as it is a religion. I can relate it to the Jewish tradition in that sense. It is what we are born into. I think it’s very difficult to shed everything and say, “I reject it.” So much is connected to family, ancestors, and landscape. We’re nurtured by trust, security, and happiness. We’re connected to the good parts, as well as the oppressive parts. It’s been many years since I’ve identified as a religious Mormon. I don’t know of people who call themselves secular Mormons. Sometimes I think I’m still a member of this tribe. That doesn’t bother me. I am a Mormon who was shaped and conditioned by my heritage. I really revere my ancestors and my parents. I do believe that somehow it’s possible to not throw the baby out with the bathwater and appreciate that special history.
MEH: Yes, that certainly rings true. For me, as a Catholic, I take the offensive position of “this is what Catholic looks like.” Not the same as saying a secular Catholic. These religious traditions as you’ve described them do such incredible damage to so many people, especially women and girls, who are so vulnerable. I feel a duty to present some alternatives for people to live differently and keep those things that are good about our traditions. I’m wondering what you think about that.
JF: I appreciate what a caller said about working within the religious tradition. I think that we’re going to need a many-pronged approach to create a more peaceful and just world for all people and move towards the light instead of regressing. I’m not sure I could say to a young Mormon woman, “hang in there, you’ll be fine.” I wasn’t fine. There was a lot of damage. I know when I look at my sister’s family that you cannot make any decision or judgment on anyone else’s life. You can only ask yourself how you can best move forward.
Mary, do you still engage in Catholic rituals? Or are you resolving those issues and questions outside a direct participation?
MEH: Yes, within the Catholic progressive women’s movement we have the Women-Church Movement where we have been worshipping in feminist based communities. The particular group that I belong to began in the late 1970s. It was inspired by Pope John Paul II’s first visit to Washington where women protested the ban against women’s ordination. We’ve adjudicated these things for ourselves and for our children. You find a lot of creativity.
That said, I think we’ve made an enormous amount of difference for a very small amount of people. But I think we need a broader scale approach.
Can you bring us up to date on how Mormon feminism is advancing? Women’s ordination?
JF: I do think that Joanna Brooks and some other strong feminist Mormons who have not abandoned the tradition are working very hard to give young women a different idea about their own strength and place within the church. I can’t speak to the up-to-the-minute activities of Mormon feminists. It’s not something I know a great deal about. I know there has been a tradition in the Mormon Church of excommunicating feminists, gay people, etc. It’s ruthless. I know there was a strong attempt by a young Mormon feminist, Kate Kelly, to lobby the church to allow women to be ordained in the Priesthood. Her efforts resulted in excommunication. You’re throwing yourself up against a pretty hard rock.
That strength and patriarchy is just so powerful and so entrenched. I think where we can make a difference is in our individual activities within our structure of the family or relationships. The way we give ourselves power and permission. Utah has the highest rates of depression among women. I do feel that women are put on a pedestal. But when you’re revered you don’t have much power. The decisions are sometimes so cruel or arbitrary.
People always ask me if Mormonism is a cult or a religion. And I always defend them, but it’s hard to with something like the edict that a child from a gay couple can’t be baptized. You’re not going to change the structure of the Priesthood or the power of the people at the top—from the Prophet to the priests at the bottom. I think that feminism and our own self worth will be lived out on a much more private level.
MEH: Thank you, Judith. You can listen to our November 2014 WATERtalk with Kate Kelly here.
Comment: I live in Atlanta, GA. I grew up Mormon. I didn’t leave until my late 40s. I was in a very difficult situation. I was in college at the time and exposed to new ideas. I made the decision to take Gandhi’s advice. After years of trying to bring more egalitarian ideas, I decided that I would be the change I wanted to see in the Mormon Church. I left the church and I started seeing a therapist. She said I had a lot of fear, shame, and guilt. It’s easy to take the girl out of the church, but not the church out of the girl.
When I visit my Mormon sisters I go to their ward. There’s a lot I can appreciate about it. But there was damage done. I don’t expect to be a catalyst for change from within. But to be an inspiration to those inside who are considering what their options are. There’s a spiritual freedom of yours when you operate outside the confines and constructs of the church structure. There’s no way in the world I would ever give up.
JF: I love your comment, and I love the idea that you’ve expressed to “be the change.” That gives you the authority and power. You’re not entrenched in the system.
Diann L. Neu: Thank you both for this conversation you just had. I come out of the Catholic tradition, liturgy and ritual is my passion and calling. I want to follow this conversation because, when I create rituals, I’m aware that I come out of what I call the best hidden tradition of Catholicism (the social justice and spiritual side of Catholicism). I pay attention to women’s spiritual journeys that are not often celebrated. Lifecycle liturgies, for example. I’m creating with a whole new cloth, but on the other hand tapping into the spiritual and social justice tradition that I was raised with. I’m not coming from nowhere. I’m coming from a spiritual source. Do you find that in yourselves? What do you find is your spiritual strength or justice foundation?
JF: Diann, I liked your comment. I do think ritual is so important. I think they’re quite essential and quite beautiful. They can deeply alter the state of our lives and our consciousness. It connects you not only to the sense of the Holy, but also to your wish to create justice in the world. For me, there’s no question that these rituals are buried deep within me. For example, I think my meditation is a form of prayer. Why destroy something that is in us that exists spiritually? I do believe that I can lay my hands on my husband and help make him feel better. That which is within us serves us again in another form.
WATER thanks Judith Freeman for her work. We look forward to further collaboration.
The next WATERtalk is scheduled for Wednesday, June 14, 2017 at 1 PM ET with Ani Zonneveld.
