Thread by @BenjaminEPark

Last night LDS apostle Dale Renlund cautioned Latter-day Saints not to become fixated on "speculation" concerning Heavenly Mother.

How did we get to the point where this concept became so divisive? A quick #MormonAmerica thread. /1 sltrib.com/religion/2022/…

Mormonism has a surprisingly long and dynamic tradition of theologizing Heavenly Mother, dating all the way back to Nauvoo. A recent @BYUStudies article--aided by the legendary @rachelsteenblik!--uncovered this potent history. /2 byustudies.byu.edu/article/a-moth…

So, what led to the demise of this potent Mormon doctrine? Post-WWII US saw a rise in "traditional" gender discourse, a masculine trajectory captured in @kkdumez's Jesus & John Wayne. Mormons embraced this rhetoric & crystalized it through correlation./3 wwnorton.com/books/97816314…

The 1970s then saw a cascade of challenges to this new patriarchal structure. 1st, Boston Mormon feminists, like L Ulrich, C Bushman, & J Dushku, led a renaissance of LDS feminist thinking. Here's Ulrich's reflections in @dialoguejournal on this moment. /4 dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/upl…

Second, the debates over ERA, especially the church's response to pro-ERA activists, animated a more direct challenge to patriarchal theology. Mormon feminists became more adamant and direct in their arguments. /5

Third, the end of Mormonism's racial restriction in 1978 led many to consider whether the gender restriction was next. Mormon leaders were quick to say "no," but a growing chorus of women, including Nadine Hansen in @dialoguejournal, proclaimed "yes." /6 dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/upl…

It was in this space that a new wave of feminist scholarship directly challenged Mormonism's patriarchal authority, including a renewed focus on Heavenly Mother. For example, Margaret Toscano wrote in @SunstoneMag about this forgotten "Goddess" theology./7 sunstonemagazine.com/wp-content/upl…

The Mother in Heaven concept, then, was now wedded to feminist scholarship in LDS leaders' minds, as they saw it as an extension of the women's ordination debate. Gordon Hinckley spoke out against praying to Heavenly Mother in 1991./8 churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-…

Nevertheless, Mormon women persisted in their bold and brave work, culminating in Maxine Hanks's 1992 edited collection WOMEN AND AUTHORITY (@signaturebooks), which showed the movement was not going away. /9 signaturebookslibrary.org/840/

LDS authorities, seeing this as a direct threat, struck back with a series of disciplinary actions. A number of those in Hanks's volume, including Lynne Whitesides who wrote on Heavenly Mother, were excommunicated as part of the September 6 in 1993. /10

The next year, Janice Allred, who published the @dialoguejournal article "Toward a Mormon Theology of God the Mother," was also excommunicated, and several BYU feminists were disciplined and/or fired. Toscano herself was ex'd a few years later. /11 dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/upl…

The 1995 Proclamation on the Family has rightly been seen as a response to the early debates over gay marriage, but it should also be understood as an attempt to end the feminist theologizing and reaffirm "God as their Eternal Father." /12

The disciplines calmed things for a while, but flash forward to now: some of the same leaders who were part of the 1990s retrenchment--Oaks & Nelson--are in charge, and the same issue has again resurfaced. @religiongal covered the resurgence last year./13 sltrib.com/religion/2021/…

And then there was more talk of another crackdown at this year's conference, which turned out to be true. As @rachelsteenblik has wisely demonstrated, leaders were following an already-structured blueprint./14 sltrib.com/religion/2022/…

For many Mormon women, carving out space for Heavenly Mother means carving out space for Mormon women. This is not mere theologizing, but a cultural work with lived consequences. Read @KatieLudlowRich's brave words. /15 the-exponent.com/elder-renlund-…

As seen in the wonderful work of poets Carol Lynn Pearson and @rachelsteenblik, beauty and love is found in seeking Heavenly Mother, one of the most important avenues of Mormon theologizing today. The debate is not going anywhere. /fin

And in case you are on the TikToks, here's the video version of my history of Heavenly Mother discourse. tiktok.com/@benjaminepark…