By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
The recent excommunication of Sonia Johnson has caused national attention to be focused on the place of women in the Mormon Church. Mormon leaders have apparently been concerned for some time that this issue would finally come to a head. Just after President Spencer W. Kimball issued the revelation granting blacks the priesthood, he did his best to make sure that women did not get the idea that he could be pressured into another revelation:
HONOLULU (AP) — The President of the Mormon Church said Monday the church will not extend the priesthood to women, now that it has ordained its first black priest. (Salt Lake Tribune, June 13, 1978)
Time magazine for August 7, 1978, reported that “Kimball states that unlike blacks, it is ‘impossible’ that women would ever attain priesthood.”
While we feel that the Mormon Church has many good teachings concerning women and the family, there is definitely a belief in the inferiority of women which stems back to the teachings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Joseph Smith for instance, established a doctrine of polygamy which held Mormon women in bondage for many years. (A chapter of 86 pages dealing with this subject is found in our new book The Changing World of Mormonism.) Smith’s revelation concerning the subject is still printed as Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. After Joseph Smith’s death, Brigham Young led the Church. Notwithstanding the fact that he had many wives, Brigham Young admitted that “There are probably but few men in the world who care about the private society of women less than I do” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, page 99).
Although Young promoted the sealing of women and men in temple marriage for eternity, he seemed to feel that the sealing of men to men (one man would be adopted to another as his son) was even a more solemn ordinance. In a speech given September 4, 1873, Brigham Young maintained: “But we can seal women to men, but not men to men, without a Temple” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 16, page 186). Kimball Young observed:
To understand the role and status and the accompanying self-images of men and women in polygamy, we must recall that Mormondom was a male-dominated society. The priesthood which only men could hold—was in complete control and celestial marriage, either monogamous or polygamous, exemplified the higher status of men. Women were viewed as of lesser worth, to be saved only through men holding the priesthood. . . .
That this masculine principle went deep, and far more fantastically that the Saints could comprehend, is shown in a sermon by Brigham Young, reported by John Read. In a letter to one of his wives Read said that Brigham referred to some future time “when men would be sealed to men in the priesthood in a more solemn ordinance than that by which women were sealed to man, and in a room over that in which women were sealed to man in the temple of the Lord.” (Isn’t One Wife Enough? pages 279-280)
For more information on the sealing of men to men, see our book, Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? pages 480-483.
While Brigham Young did not care much for the “private society of women,” he taught that a man’s place in heaven depended to a great extent on the size of his family. His wife, therefore, should bear as many children as possible:
Sisters, do you wish to make yourselves happy? Then what is your duty? It is for you to bear children, in the name of the Lord, . . . bring forth in the name of Israel’s God, that you may have the honour of being the mothers of great and good men . . . are you tormenting yourselves by thinking that your husbands do not love you? I would not care whether they loved a particle or not; but I would cry out, like one of old, in the joy of my heart, “I have got a man from the Lord!” . . . “I have borne an image of God!” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 9, page 37)
On another occasion Brigham Young admonished:
. . . I am going to set every woman at liberty and say to them, Now go your way, my women with the rest, go your way And my wives have got to do one of two things; either round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this world, and live their religion, or they may leave, for I will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone, rather than have scratching and fighting around me. I will set all at liberty. “What, first wife too?” Yes, I will liberate you all. . . .
I wish my women, and brother Kimball’s and brother Grant’s to leave, and every woman in this Territory, or else say in their hearts that they will embrace the Gospel—the whole of it. . . . say to your wives, “Take all that I have and be set at liberty; but if you stay with me you shall comply with the law of God, and that too without any murmuring and whining. You must fulfil the law of God in every respect, and round up your shoulders to walk up to the mark without any grunting.”
Now recollect that two weeks from to morrow I am going to set you at liberty. But the first wife will say, “It is hard, for I have lived with my husband twenty years, or thirty, and have raised a family of children for him, and it is a great trial to me for him to have more women;” then I say it is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children. If my wife had borne me all the children that she ever would bare, the celestial law would teach me to take young women that would have children. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, pages 55-57)
Fanny Stenhouse, who left the Church in Brigham Young’s day, made these interesting observations:
In my unhappy condition, I thought that perhaps I might
derive some consolation from the sermons in the Tabernacle . . . But instead of obtaining consolation, I heard that which aroused every feeling of my soul to rebellion. . . . I heard that woman was an inferior being, designed by the Lord for the special glory and exaltation of man, that she was a creature that should feel herself honoured if he would only make her the mother of his children—a creature who if very obedient and faithful through all the trials and tribulations in life, might some day be rewarded by becoming one of her husband’s queens, but should even then shine only by virtue of the reflected light derived from the glory of her spouse and lord. He was to be her “saviour,” for he was all in all to her; and it was through him alone and at his will that she could obtain salvation. We were informed that man was the crowning glory of creation, for whom all things—woman included—were brought into being; and that the chief object of woman’s existence was to help man to his great destiny.Not a sentence—indeed, not a word—did we ever hear as to the possibility of womanly perfection and exaltation in her
own right; . . . The great object of marriage, we were told, was the increase of children. . . . if some woman was found objecting to polygamy on account of its crushing and degrading effects upon women generally, then, . . . she was told in the coarse language of Brigham Young himself, that “Such women had no business to complain; it was quite enough honour for them to be permitted to bear children to God’s holy Priesthood.”. . . It was painfully clear to my understanding, then as now, that in Mormonism woman was to lose her personal identity. All that Christianity had done to elevate her was to be ruthlessly set aside and trampled under foot, and she was instantly to return to the position which she occupied in the darkest ages of the world’s existence.
(Tell It All, pages 342-344)
Although the Church no longer allows the practice of polygamy, some of the teachings concerning the inferiority of women persist in its theology. Church leaders teach, for instance, that plural marriage will be practiced in heaven. Mormon apologist John J. Stewart proclaims:
The Church has never, and certainly will never, renounce this doctrine. The revelation on plural marriage is still an integral part of LDS scripture, and always will be. If a woman, sealed to her husband for time and eternity, precedes her husband in death, it is his privilege to marry another also for time and eternity, providing that he is worthy of doing so. Consider, for instance, the case of President Joseph Fielding Smith of the Council of the Twelve, one of the greatest men upon earth. . . . After the death of his first wife President Joseph Fielding Smith married another, and each of these good women are sealed to him for time and all eternity. (Brigham Young and His Wives, Salt Lake City, 1961, page 14)
In his book Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 2, page 67, President Smith remarked: “. . . my wives will be mine in eternity. I don’t know how some other people feel, but that is a glorious thought to me. That helps to keep me sober.”
Every Mormon woman, therefore, faces the possibility of living in a polygamous relationship in heaven if she dies first and her husband decides to be sealed to another woman. A woman, of course, cannot be sealed for eternity to more than one husband. Because a woman is not granted the same privilege as a man a problem has arisen for those doing work for the dead. In a newsletter published by Sandy First Ward we find the following:
. . . Brother Christiansen talked about new rulings concerning sealings for the dead. It is now possible for a woman that was married more than once to be sealed to ALL her husbands, providing that in life she had not been sealed to any of her husbands.
The First Presidency of the Church has ruled that rather than try to decide which husband a deceased woman should be sealed to, she can be sealed to all of them. However, only one sealing will be valid and accepted before God. God and the woman will decide which one of the sealings will be accepted on Judgment Day. (Tele-Ward, Sandy First Ward, January 25, 1976, vol. V, no. 2, page 5)
In 1976 the First Presidency announced a new rule which discriminates against a woman who wishes to obtain her endowments in the temple after marriage:
A wife whose husband is not endowed should not be given a recommend to receive her endowments. . . . A worthy man whose wife has not received her endowments may be given a recommend to receive his own endowments. (General Handbook of Instructions, Number 21, 1976, page 54)
Christian theology teaches that males and females will be equal in the resurrection:
But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.
(Luke 20:35-36)
Mormon Church leaders teach that both men and women can attain Godhood. Apostle Bruce R. McConkie says that “Godhood is not for men only; it is for men and women together” (Mormon Doctrine, 1979, page 844).
While at first glance it appears that this would make men and women equal, a more careful examination of the doctrine reveals just the opposite. According to Mormon theology, Church members follow the same plan of eternal progression as God the Father. Mormon leaders claim God is just an exalted man who has a wife known as the “Eternal Mother.” Apostle McConkie explains:
Implicit in the Christian verity that all men are the spirit children of an Eternal Father is the usually unspoken truth that they are also the offspring of an Eternal Mother. . . .
This doctrine that there is a Mother in Heaven was affirmed
in plainness by the First Presidency of the Church . . .Mortal persons who overcome all things and gain an ultimate exaltation will live eternally in the family unit and have spirit children, thus becoming Eternal Fathers and Eternal Mothers. (Mormon Doctrine, 1979, pages 516-517)
Now, if the “Eternal Mother” really had gained equality with her husband, we would expect the Mormons to pray to her. The Apostle Orson Pratt, however, made it plain that the “Eternal Mother’s” Godhood does not really amount to much since she is in “the most perfect obedience” to her “great head”:
But if we have a heavenly Mother as well as a heavenly Father, is it not right that we should worship the Mother of our spirits as well as the Father? No; for the Father of our spirits is at the head of His household, and His wives and children are required to yield the most perfect obedience to their great Head. It is lawful for the children to worship the King of Heaven, but not the “Queen of heaven,”. . . Jesus prayed to His Father, and taught His disciples to do likewise; but we are nowhere taught that Jesus prayed to His heavenly Mother: . . . (The Seer, page 157)
It would appear, then, that in Mormon theology the claim that a woman can obtain “Godhood” amounts to very little. Like the present “Heavenly Mother,” she will be required to yield the most perfect obedience” to her “great Head”—i.e., her husband, while she continues to give birth to “many millions” of spirit children.
Apostle Pratt explained:
In the Heaven where our spirits were born, there are many Gods, each one of whom has his own wife or wives which were given to him previous to his redemption, while yet in his mortal state. Each God, through his wife or Wives, raises up a numerous family of sons and daughters; . . . As soon as each God has begotten many millions of male and female spirits, . . . he, in connection with his sons, organizes a new world, . . . where he sends both the male and female spirits to inhabit tabernacles of flesh and bones. . . . The number of the sons and daughters of God, born in Heaven before this earth was formed, is not known by us. . . . Seventy thousand million, therefore, is a rough approximation to the number . . . Add to seventy thousand million, the third part which fell, namely, thirty-five thousand million, and the sum amounts to one hundred and five thousand million which was the approximate number of the sons and daughters of God in Heaven before the rebellion which broke out among them.
31. If we admit that one personage was the Father of all this great family, and that they were all born of the same Mother, the period of time intervening between the birth of the oldest and the youngest spirit must have been immense. If we suppose, as an average, that only one year intervened between each birth, then it would have required, over one hundred thousand million of years for the same Mother to have given birth to this vast family. . . . if it required one hundred thousand million of years to people a world like this, as above stated, it is evident that, with a hundred wives, this period would be reduced to only one thousand million of years. (Ibid., pages 37-39)
Since the Mormon Church changed the anti-black doctrine, many Mormon women have come to see that they are the ones who will be “second class” citizens in heaven. Mormon leaders used to explain that blacks could not hold the priesthood because they were not valiant in the pre-existence, but no reason has been given for the inferiority of women in Mormon theology.
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