Peculiar People

Behold, I say unto you that all old covenants have I caused to be done away in this thing; and this is a new and an everlasting covenant, even that which was from the beginning. (D&C 22:1)

As America continues to navigate the intended and unintended consequences of pluralism, interfaith marriage has become a significant arena of interest. This week, Stanley Fish highlighted Naomi Schaefer Riley’s new and provocative ‘Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America. In the last decade, nearly half of all American marriages involved individuals of different faiths. On the one hand, such a statistic both reaffirms and perpetuates the nation’s increasingly pluralist tradition: besides demonstrating the extent to which individuals have become tolerant of other faiths, interfaith marriages also ensure that the succeeding generation(s) will come to accept religious diversity as commonplace. Richard Putnam and David Campbell’s American Grace persuasively argued that America’s, well, grace is found in the nation’s increasing exposure to and acceptance of religious pluralism, largely through building a network of kinship and friendship with those outside one’s own faith. [Read more...]

Fairly recently, some Mormon feminists have generated a lot of discussion about women and the priesthood with a campaign for female ordination. Ironically, as some Mormon feminists lobby for integrating women into what’s been characterized as a patriarchal institution, other news outlets like the New York Magazine and the Atlanticand the HuffPo are debating what may be a growing trend in women choosing to leave the workplace to embrace the domestic sphere.

The differing views over ordination have highlighted once again the diversity within Mormon feminism (and the difficulty in using this umbrella term to meaningfully encompass them). I think the discussion has been fruitful, and in the hope of making it more so, I want to highlight a couple “knots” that I think we could consider as we all engage with each other’s questions and thoughts about female ordination. [Read more...]

A friend of mine had to renew her driver’s license on her birthday this year, and the new photo made her look overweight. The photo devastated her for days beyond her birthday. While making regular Sunday announcements, a former councilor in my Relief Society presidency often alluded to the constant struggle she waged with sweets. I often hear women, regardless of their faith tradition, say “I was bad,” referring to the fact that they bought themselves a doughnut or a cupcake. In fact, I hear women calling themselves bad all the time not because they’ve cheated, injured children, or exploited the poor, but because of what they’ve eaten. I want to shake them. I want to hug them. I want to yell.

So I suppose this post is my yawp. I know this is not a problem specific to Mormons or women. Change and fluctuation have characterized American food attitudes over the past hundred years. Sometimes we celebrated industrialized food products, sometimes we didn’t, and sometimes, like now, we loved and hated them at the same time. But wherever we have been on this spectrum, we have cared about how food impacts our bodies both in terms of health and in terms of appearance. We particularly have cared about the shape of women’s bodies. Although influences from Photoshop-ed images to photo-ready mobile phones present today’s populace with more images of ideal bodies than ever, women and men have long felt pressured to meet an idealized form. I first thought of myself as overweight when I read how Laura Ingalls Wilder’s dad enjoyed bragging that he had enclosed his wife’s waist within his two hands when they were newly married (Wilder was born in 1867). In 1982, I didn’t think any man had big enough hands to enclose my normal 10-year-old waist. Thoughout my teens I spent an inordinate amount of time worried over this, trying and failing to fix it, and feeling unhappy about the whole endeavor.

Marie Griffith’s extensive study of American attitudes toward the body (Born Again Bodies 2004) includes an examination of contemporary evangelical diet culture, in which a slim body can function as evidence of a saved soul because Jesus can help with weight control. In a recent inspection of Mormon diet cookbooks and programs, I saw a trace of that belief. Joyce Williams wrote in her The HCG Diet for Latter-day Saints, “I determined that my food crutch needed to be voluntarily sacrificed on His altar. I had to completely trust the Savior, and I had to be willing to accept the more glorious and profound alternative to my food crutch which was a deeper relationship with my Heavenly Father” (136). Williams felt she was emotionally over-dependent on excessive quantities of food and she found that Jesus helped her to overcome that dependency.

Most Mormon diet books focus on improved health as the main dieting goal. They quote Alma 38:12 about bridling passions, and they praise the Word of Wisdom for its sage eating advice. These books are all right. They are moderate and they generally focus on health instead of appearance as a reason to lose weight. But still, losing weight seems a daunting enterprise. Too many women’s lives are consumed by it. In cases where people’s body mass index (BMI) qualifies as obese and they want to change that, I am glad they have these helpful and friendly books to help them return to a healthier state. But I wish people not in these categories or who do not want to lose weight could forget the whole business.

For people without eating disorders, I believe in a celebratory approach to eating. I call it happy eating. This is the vision I hope those WITH disorders eventually will live. Eat when you are hungry. Don’t eat fast, and stop when you begin to feel full. Avoid processed foods. Eat what tastes good.

I am neither skinny nor obese and there is certainly more to the world than lies in my philosophy. But I have a lot of faith in those guidelines. I frequently want a slice of chocolate cake, but never five slices. Not really. I almost always want well-prepared vegetables. Sometimes I really want a hamburger, or tofu, or chicken, or a smoothie. When I listen to my body (not my emotions) and eat what I want, I feel good. I really don’t think you can enter the “obese” category eating this way. I believe diets and social pressure are responsible for most obesity and disorders. Diets make us obese, and they make us suffer over food. I like Michael Pollan’s Food Rules (2009). I like the verses in Doctrine and Covenants section 59:

Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of [wo]man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul. (18-19)

I want for all of us to have good food in the proper amounts that will please our eyes, gladded our hearts, enliven our senses and our souls. I am not only a practicing Latter-day Saint, but a believing one. I believe in God and I believe in Satan. I don’t spend much time thinking about the latter guy, but it occurred to me recently that if it’s his job to ruin our lives, having someone spend a lot of time feeling bad about weight loss is an effective step in that direction. I think God wants us to be able to enjoy the pleasure of good wholesome food.

After exploring Mormon diet cookbooks and manuals, I wondered what Church leaders had to say about weight. I found that Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland used more strident language than I had, bless his soul,

You are bombarded in movies, television, fashion magazines, and advertisements with the message that looks are everything! . . .In too many cases too much is being done to the human body to meet just such a fictional (to say nothing of superficial) standard. . .In terms of preoccupation with self and a fixation on the physical, this is more than social insanity; it is spiritually destructive, and it accounts for much of the unhappiness women, including young women, face in the modern world. And if adults are preoccupied with appearance–tucking and nipping and implanting and remodeling everything that can be remodeled–those pressures and anxieties will certainly seep through to children.” (October 2005 General Conference)

Melvin J. Ballard identified a reason obsession with weight can be particularly pernicious “Popular culture today often makes women look silly, inconsequential, mindless, and powerless. It objectifies them and disrespects them and then suggests that they are able to leave their mark on mankind only by seduction—easily the most pervasively dangerous message the adversary sends to women about themselves.”(“Mothers and Daughters,” Ensign, May 2010.) I interpret these words as a reminder that a fixation with weight doesn’t just waste time and promote unhappiness, it significantly undermines women’s power. At the April 27, 2012 BYU Women’s Conference, Sister Mary N. Cook said,

The current climate of the world is filled with [media] that bombard women with messages that looks are what matter most. They encourage women to focus on the things they aren’t, rather than all that they are. It may seem an insurmountable task to stop this profusion of propaganda, but we can turn away from it, and we can focus our attention and the eyes of our young women to those who are doing good, rather than those who are looking good.

I wonder whether this might also be a solution to the weight problem. In doing good, can we achieve a level of wellness that dissuades us from eating to a point that endangers our health? Can we learn to let go of these cares about the shape of our body and find strength in what we are?

Lately I’ve been thinking about how historical conceptions of the U.S. West have helped to shape the present-day religious landscapes of this grouping of contiguous, but varied regions. I live in the Northwest and study and teach about the religious history of Oregon and Washington. But much of my research is also focused on Utah-based Mormonism. The contemporary religious landscapes of these two regions couldn’t be more different. As Patricia O’Connell Killen and Mark Silk have shown, the Northwest is the most “unchurched” part of the country and has the highest number of “nones,” those who self-identify with no historic, institutional expression of religion. No one religious tradition dominates or has ever dominated in this region. It is a hotbed of alternative, nature-based spiritualities. In contrast, in Utah, residents are church members at record levels and the region is well known for its homogenous Mormon religious landscape. Two regions on opposite ends of the scale.

Yet, exploring how inhabitants have talked about these regions, I’ve found some striking similarities. In both regions, in the nineteenth century, Euro-American writers sacralized the land they lived on, seeing nature as the expression of God’s favor and exceptional interest in their respective regions. Northwest poet Frances Fuller Victor (1826-1902) wrote a memorial to Presbyterian missionary Narcissa Whitman who was killed by Cayuse Indians in 1847, along with her husband and twelve others. The incident became known as the Whitman Massacre and it rallied the country around the philosophy of Manifest Destiny, pulling pioneers across the country on a godly errand to impose “civilization” on the Pacific coast and sparking a series of shockingly violent wars with Native Americans throughout the Northwest. In her poem, Victor sees the poppies that grow in the valley of the Whitman’s former mission as natural monuments to Narcissa. She claims that this beautiful, naturally endowed part of the country was kept hidden by God for enterprising Euro-American pioneers.

The glorious morns, the sultry noons,
The blazoned sunsets of the plains,
The starry nights, the white-fire noons,
The golden fields of ripening grains,
That prove this land, in God’s great plan,
The last, best heritage of man! (1)

Such themes have been sounded since Europeans first nudged their way across the Atlantic and they were re-shaped and energized as they fused with Protestant exceptionalist ideas of chosen-ness.

Mormons employed such themes as they searched for and finally found their earthly Zion in Utah. Prominent churchwoman Ruth May Fox (1853-1958) reflected on the chosen-ness of Utah, in her mind, a land reserved by God for the Latter-day Saints:

She lives in a land reserved throughout all ages,
For a people that God could rely on;
To establish His Kingdom and battle for truth;
And He named it the land of Zion. (2)

Energized by this vision, starting in 1847, Mormon pioneers flooded into the Salt Lake Valley from the East Coast, from Scandinavia, from England, from Ireland.

Early writers of both regions, not surprisingly, also religiously engaged with the nature of their promised lands. They saw nature as a place where they could truly experience the divine away from the corruptions and distractions of worldly life. In one of her most famous poems, Northwest writer Ella Higginson (1861-1940) rejects the formal worship of God in churches and, instead, claims that she found in nature a true communion with God on a beautiful Easter morning.

My knees have know no cushions rich,
But the soft, emeralded sod;
My aisles have been the forest paths
Lined with the crimson rod;
My choir, the birds and winds and waves—
My only pastor God. (3)

Mormon writers of the same era sound quite similar. Well known writer and editor Emmeline B. Wells (1828-1921) loved to go to nature to connect to God.

My soul hath gone forth in its wandering,
To the hills that are purple with light;
Those temples that tower everlasting,
In their majesty, grandeur and might.
And I list to the voices eternal,
That have sung thro’ the ages of time,
And I bask in the visions supernal,
That uplift me to regions sublime. (4)

For writers of both regions, nature was the vehicle of a revelatory engagement with the divine.

So how do we end up with such different contemporary religious landscapes? Northwest writers used the common experience of nature to try to speak to a diverse, fractious, splintered population. It was the language of the cultural and economical elite of the region, an elite that was striving to find for the region a common goal, a common experience, a common identity. Nature religion has become, in the public discourse, as way for residents of the Northwest to create a sense of community and regional identity, even as this discourse marginalizes those outside of the urban population centers of the region or those dedicated to particular religious traditions. It re-shapes and imperializes Native American ideas, an eerie parallel with earlier military conquests. Mormon writers used nature to express an already agreed upon theology and cultural system that was being rapidly systematized and centralized. It allowed writers to safely express personal revelatory experience in the face of a hierarchy that was increasingly quick to safeguard its authority and privilege. Perhaps nature religion never took off in the Mormon Intermountain region the way it did in the Northwest because Mormons and non-Mormons of this area were already living within a dominant discourse, a discourse that today does the same thing that present-day nature-focused discourse in the Northwest does. It unites and marginalizes simultaneously, alienating those who don’t believe, who don’t want to live within this Mormon worldview and cultural system. Two regions so different, yet similar in so many ways.

(1) Frances Fuller Victory, “The Poppies of Wa-Il-Lat-Pu,” Poems (Author’s Edition, 1900), 51.

(2) R.M.F., “The Daughters of Zion,” Woman’s Exponent 17, no. 23 (May 1, 1889): 177.

(3) Ella Higginson, “God’s Creed,” When the Birds Go North Again (New York: MacMillan Co., 1902), 4.

(4) E.B.W., “Meditation,” Woman’s Exponent 23, nos 3-4 (August 1 & 15, 1894): 169.