Mother in Heaven: Her Image in Our Countenance

Mother in Heaven: Her Image in Our Countenance

David Golding

REL 313 – Mormon Women in the Twentieth Century

I daresay it has almost become a cliché to begin a discussion about the Mormon belief of a

Heavenly Mother with a reference to Eliza Snow’s now ubiquitous lyric—“In the heav’ns are

parents single? / No, the thought makes reason stare; / Truth is reason—truth eternal / Tells me

I’ve a mother there.”1 Yet, far from cliché, discussions like this one so oen begin with this lyric

because Snow’s poetic avowal of a Heavenly Mother remains the only statement within

Mormonism’s textual canon about a mother in heaven. is lyric not only exhausts just the

doctrinal statements of Heavenly Mother in the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants,

Pearl of Great Price, and the Latter-day Saint hymnal combined, but it also exhausts all mention

of her in these texts. Canonically speaking, she has remained confined to one verse of one song in

the hymnal—tying her into other doctrines of Godhead, exaltation, eternal families, and so on,

requires us to speculate if we are to stick to Mormon scriptures. Ironically, though, Heavenly

Mother remains present in Mormon history and popular memory. For all her absence from

official or quasi-official sources of Mormon revelation and scripture, she is still never repudiated

by Mormons themselves, and in many cases, she plays a key role in Mormon imaginings of the

aerlife and the eternal family.

So why the disparity? How is it that one oblique reference—at least when it was penned—to

Heavenly Mother could gain so much traction in the consciousness of Mormons? To complicate

matters, many Mormon women report a general apathy toward a Heavenly Mother doctrine,

1 Eliza R. Snow, “Invocation, or the Eternal Father and Mother,” Times and Seasons 6 (November 15, 1845): 1039; also Eliza R. Snow, Eliza R. Snow: e Complete Poetry, ed. Jill Mulvay Derr and Karen Lynn Davidson (Provo: Brigham Young University Press; Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2009), 313–14.

feeling instead that faith in Jesus suffices, though no one in significant surveys of Mormon

women’s beliefs has reported a rejection of her existence.2 Heavenly Mother remains present

within Mormon theism despite overt downplaying of further details by Mormon church leaders.

is very well could be due to the tense and complex period when Mormon pioneers practiced

polygamy and Heavenly Mother factored into the cosmology as a necessary element. As Snow’s

lyric expresses, it follows that if a theology professes the continuation of the earthly family unit in

aerlife and that the family is the eternal model for godhood, then there must be an eternal

mother alongside an eternal father. When “celestial marriage” became such a contested

battleground in the late 1800s as outside antagonism toward Mormon polygamy intensified, little

wonder Heavenly Mother garnered more theological attention while at the same time

diminishing in theological definition.3

e earliest forays into a Heavenly Mother theology went two directions: both forward and

nowhere. Mormons were intrigued by the concept but they allowed detail to fizzle out over time,

leaving only one constant—an affirmation but no systematic theology of Heavenly Mother. I

argue that how the doctrine of Heavenly Mother developed in Mormon history uniquely disposed

it to be a blank slate for Mormon women onto which they could project their own perceptions of

womanhood. It is precisely the lack of theological definition that makes this possible. e only

real Heavenly Mother theology (as opposed to unsystematic doctrine) to emerge from the

Mormon clergy is that there is a Heavenly Mother somewhere out there with some sort of divine

2

2 I base this observation primarily on my findings in researching the oral histories of Mormon women collected and archived by the Claremont Mormon Women Oral History Project, though others have also noted this fact. See Amy Hoyt, “Beyond the Victim/Empowerment Paradigm: e Gendered Cosmology of Mormon Women,” Feminist eology 16, no. 1 (2007): 89–100 and Terryl L. Givens, e Latter-day Saint Experience in America (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004), 216–17.

3 Grant Tucker Smith, “I’ve a Mother ere: Identity, Language, and Experience in Mormon Women’s Literature” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1993), 88–121. Smith believes Heavenly Mother theology first developed among sister wives as they struggled to eke out a living in harsh circumstances.

parental relationship to humankind, but beyond this Mormons are le to themselves to fill in the

gaps. Some have called this a battleground of gender dynamics over the suppression of the sacred

feminine.4 For my part, I’m interested here in how this functions like a mirror. Contained in the

Claremont archive of oral histories by Mormon women of the twentieth century are over a

hundred interviews with women in which they were asked, among many other things, to reflect

on the idea of a Heavenly Mother. What emerges is a mirror image reflecting back what Mormon

women think of themselves as women and how they imagine a divine version of womanhood.5

When the existence of a Heavenly Mother is affirmed but then le without further definition

in doctrinal, ritual, and liturgical canons, a unique ambivalence surfaces within Mormonism.6

e most profound beliefs in Mormonism get tied up at the same moment with the idea of a

Heavenly Mother—for instance, the beliefs of pre-existence and the origins of the human family,

the spiritual birth of the human soul, Godhead and godhood, the sealing of families and the spirit

of Elijah, and so on. So Heavenly Mother is decidedly not a negation or a vacuum in Mormon

theology. Mormons want to include Heavenly Mother in their theology, but they remain

ambivalent about how far and how little to take things, oen wishing at the same time to reclaim

knowledge about her lost through perceived apostasy and to hold her in a kind of sacred

veneration that demands not speaking much about her.

To proceed, I will first provide some context about how the idea of Heavenly Mother has

developed in Mormonism with the recognition that much has already been offered by other

3

4 Margaret Toscano believes Heavenly Mother theology developed as a discourse for male power and the further subordination of women: Toscano, “Is ere a Place for Heavenly Mother in Mormon eology? An Investigation into Discourses of Power,” Sunstone 133 (July 2004): 14–22.

5 Because this project continues to collect oral histories, the number of interviews containing direct references to Heavenly Mother is bound to increase. is study examined all of the oral histories taken before April, 2011.

6 ere is one liturgical tradition in Mormonism I should mention, though, and that is the tradition of singing Eliza Snow’s hymn, “O My Father,” for the Mother’s Day sacrament meeting, which Mormons intend precisely because of the hymn’s reference to a Heavenly Mother.

scholars on this topic—I offer little (if anything) new here. But this context is crucial for

understanding how the women of the oral histories think about and express their ideas of a

Heavenly Mother. I will continue with a discussion about how this idea appears in the oral

histories and conclude with some observations about the mirroring taking place between

Mormon women and their concept of the divine woman.

Appearance and Development of a Heavenly Mother eology in Mormonism

Eliza Snow apparently insisted that the Mormon idea of Heavenly Mother originated not with

her poem but with a revelation to Joseph Smith, though no clear source text from Smith’s

documentary history establishes this connection.7 e strongest possibility comes from a

visionary experience Zebedee Coltrin described. In April 1834, Smith invited Coltrin and Oliver

Cowdery to go for a walk in the woods.8 Like others of Smith’s visionary experiences, aer

kneeling to pray they reportedly saw heavenly messengers. Coltrin said that they saw the blue sky

open up and above them, seated upon a throne, appeared a man and a woman. Smith identified

the man and woman to Coltrin and Cowdery as “father Adam and mother Eve.”9 By 1890, rumors

affected this story and changed it from a vision of the glorified Adam and Eve to a theophany

involving Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother, and Jesus. Abraham Cannon recorded in his journal

what he heard a quorum president say about what Coltrin had once said about a visionary

4

7 A letter written by David O. McKay claims that he asked Snow where the idea of a Heavenly Mother in her poem had originated: McKay, letter to Mrs. James Hood, March 16, 1916 as quoted in Linda P. Wilcox, “e Mormon Concept of a Mother in Heaven,” in Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective, ed. Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Lavina Fielding Anderson (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 66, fn 11.

8 As others retold this story, Sidney Rigdon was mentioned as having participated in this experience as well.

9 Zebedee Coltrin in Utah Stake Minutes, Spanish Fork High Priest’s Quorum, February 5, 1870, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereaer Church History Library).

experience with Smith.10 Adam and Eve were nowhere in this version. Heavenly Mother, it

appears, made her way into Joseph Smith’s visions via speculation and hearsay.

Unfortunately, Coltrin’s narrative is indicative of most of the other sources. Heavenly Mother

appears at the fringes in a folkloric fashion, as if early Mormons want to speculate about her but

have no authoritative basis from which to work. And then their tools become sayings from others

that reduce to, at best, campfire tales.11 A major reason Snow’s poem has served as the main

capsule of Heavenly Mother theology is because of its historical provenance—it is the only and

earliest source that has any legitimate chance of originating with Joseph Smith. Recent

scholarship by David Paulsen and Martin Pulido has shown that the bulk of statements from

within the administrative ranks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints originated in

the twentieth century and all of these seem to stem from the basic idea that Snow gave, not from

any claim to Joseph Smith, revelation, or scripture.12

In short, the most common image to emerge about a Heavenly Mother involves her as the

wife of God the Father and as such, a divine parent that participated in the creation of spirit

children and in the craing of a plan of salvation. Official commentators of Church doctrine and

other Mormon writers have generally articulated a doctrine of Heavenly Mother that locates her

within godhood but not within the Godhead because of her status as the wife of Heavenly Father.

By the 1970s, Mormon emphasis became a counter-countercultural one, responding to popular

debates of the time about the equality of women by holding up Heavenly Mother as an eternal

5

10 Abraham Cannon, Journal, August 25, 1890, Church History Library.

11 One key example here is the Eve-God theory that developed in tandem with Adam-God theory. Eliza Snow, Brigham Young, and Zebedee Coltrin each equated Eve with Heavenly Mother in the same terms that they affirmed Adam as Heavenly Father. Nobody in the Claremont oral histories gave any indication that Eve and Heavenly Mother were the same person, and later theological statements about Heavenly Mother drop any mention of Eve-God theory. See Boyd Kirkland, letter to the editor, Sunstone 6, no. 2 (March-April, 1981): 4–5.

12 David L. Paulsen and Martin Pulido, “‘A Mother ere’: A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven,” BYU Studies 50, no. 1 (2011): 71–97.

standard of home and family. Heavenly Mother was used to buttress the position that the

traditional home and family needed to remain traditional despite changing mores in society by an

appeal to her eternal nature. is view has remained the dominant one to the present day.13

Put bluntly, no systematic theology of a Heavenly Mother exists within Mormonism, and

Mormons know this. e question really isn’t one of what should be included in a theology of

Heavenly Mother, rather whether such an absence of more direct theological articulation is

justifiable given related theologies of theism, exaltation, and eternal families that enjoy full and

robust definition. In fact, it is these theologies in particular that shape the parameters by which

Mormons ponder about and discuss Heavenly Mother. Mormon women of the oral histories oen

run a theism through their comments about Heavenly Mother that makes implicit reference to

the nature of God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, and whether there is room in the Godhead for a

wife to the Father. ese comments summon cosmological depth found in a broader concept of

godhood and the nature of reality that the interviewees almost unilaterally take as a given.

Consequently, how these women understand God relative to human beings informs their belief in

exaltation and the process of becoming exalted. Without this key piece in the theology, the

common logical move that Mormons make toward affirming an existence of Heavenly Mother

could not happen so easily; the necessity of a Heavenly Mother would not be so apparent unless

the cosmic order was centered on spirit children progressing to an eternal state of godhood.

Mormon theism and understandings of deification differ from eastern Christianities that also

hold to deification by their inclusion of family. Men and women form family units that

themselves become deified, forming in the richest sense of the term a kind of God the Family at

some point in the eternities. A divine feminine, for Mormons, represents a continuation of an

6

13 Wilcox, 69–70; Paulsen and Pulido, 85.

earthly feminine that has become exalted through a cosmic pattern of progression. How they

understand Heavenly Mother will hinge upon how they fit together their theism and their

theologies of exaltation and eternal families.

Mormonism relished a hyper-literalistic reading of scripture that produced a theism distinct

from Trinitarianism. is theism realigned the members of the Godhead away from substantial

oneness to unity in purpose and mission. Jesus and the Holy Spirit could stay physically separated

from God the Father and still function within the Godhead just the same. Staunch Trinitarians

balk at this separation of natures to this day. What is more, Mormons not only placed humankind

within a progressive timeline, moving from birth to death to aerlife, but moved the Godhead

into this schema as well. A revelation of Joseph Smith not only spoke of Jesus moving from grace

to grace as an identical process to how God planned for humans to gain salvation, but became a

radical departure for worship: Mormons were told that this key provided the adequate means for

knowing who and what to worship and thus avoid a kind of misplaced adoration.14 is linkage of

godhood with humanity did not end with Smith refitting the plan of salvation around a doctrine

of deification. e whole scriptural thrust from Genesis to the Apocalypse now came to bear on

this process of whole peoples becoming raised up to godhood and becoming gods.

For Joseph Smith, the Abrahamic covenant did not capitulate in the fulfillment of the Law

through the atonement of Jesus Christ. e covenant came to mean the welding together of the

entire posterity of Abraham into an exalted godly unit, forming a great chain of being connected

back to the original Father of spirits. Becoming gods entailed bloodlines running down through

the ages and meeting back through covenantal relationships. So this business of emulating Jesus

and his Father before him was thoroughly familial in the roughest, earthliest sense, blood and

7

14 Doctrine and Covenants, section 93.

spirit and all.15 But how could there exist a family unit in the heavens, in all its eternal godliness

and perfection without a Mother? e thought makes reason stare, at least for the likes of Eliza

Snow. Running this equation the other direction, if women become gods because of covenantal

relationships and because of a cosmic, progressive order, how could there not be a divine

feminine?

ese observations that flow out of Mormon theism and concepts of exaltation color the

terms of the discussion. Where other religions have female deities and divinities in their theisms,

Mormons imagine a sacred feminine in strikingly human terms: she is one of them, a daughter of

another Heavenly Mother and Heavenly Father somewhere in the great beyond who has simply

attained to her godly status ahead of those in their current mortal state. But this is not to say that

Heavenly Mother is one-to-one human like mortal women are. She has all the qualities that

makes one a God and these through her covenantal bind to an eternal husband and family. While

others find the transcendent so otherworldly because of its manifest otherness, Mormons find

God transcendent because of its resemblance to the self—the dream of becoming the best selves

of which humans are capable coupled with being redeemed and led to that status through similar

beings who have paved the way is itself the mystery that fires much of Mormon devotion. To say

that one should pray to a Heavenly Mother invites questions surrounding her nature, status, and

authority relative to Heavenly Father. e parameters of a discussion like this one for Mormons

will deviate significantly from, say, a Yoruba priestess in Africa who brings offerings to the waters

of the ocean as a prayer to Mother God, the womb of the earth where all life was born. e

8

15 For a full examination of how these theological components relate to each other and how they developed in Joseph Smith’s thought and in early Mormonism, see Armand L. Mauss, All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003). An excellent analysis of the scriptural basis for bloodlines and culture in early Mormon theology is Colin Kidd, e Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Yoruba priestess will be thinking of something entirely different from the Mormon wondering

whether or not to approach Heavenly Mother with devotion.16

e parameters within the greater Mormon theological system delimit and circumscribe any

speculative doctrine regarding Heavenly Mother. She has a parity with God the Father, not with

Jesus Christ; there is no female savior figure. She is seen as an embodied, resurrected woman. She

carries the title of mother because she gave birth to human spirits the same way God the Father is

the father of human spirits—a very natural explanation for the origins of human spirits in pre-

existence that demands a female as much as a male. e tradition of decontextualized literalism

when interpreting scripture17 forces out possibilities of worship or a systematic theology of

Heavenly Mother. ere remains an ambiguity regarding her role in priesthood. While only men

hold the priesthood as ecclesiastical officers within the Mormon church, women participate as

ordinance workers in the temple and invoke priesthood blessings, and much of the Mormon

doctrine of the “fullness of the priesthood” combines with endowment and sealing covenants.

ere is the anticipation that women will exercise the same powers considered priesthood in

mortality aer themselves becoming goddesses through exaltation. Yet nothing in Mormon

theology explicitly ascribes priesthood authority of the same kind identified with God the Father

to God the Mother. is sets up a reluctance to locate Heavenly Mother with any of the official

duties of the Godhead, which extends into a reluctance to identify with Heavenly Mother in

worship.

e earliest Mormons embraced a radical openness to redefine belief and reinterpret

scripture, going so far as to speak of their engagement with “the mysteries” as the linchpin of true

9

16 I rely on Oyeronke Olajubu, Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003) to make this comparison.

17 I thank fellow seminar participants that helped flesh out this tradition in earliest Mormonism; Mormon Scholars Foundation, Summer Seminar on the development of Mormon theology, Brigham Young University, 2010.

religion. For instance, Parley Pratt, Dan Jones, Benjamin Winchester, and other missionary

writers would debate in the press with critics over what constituted the “true religion” and each at

one point built a case around Mormons’ willingness to entertain what other Christians regarded

as mysterious philosophy le only to God or the aerlife.18 It is strange, therefore, how stunted

the development of Heavenly Mother theology has been. Only a couple of approaches have

surfaced in an apparent move to reconcile the lack of detail despite the full range of possibilities

that would further Mormon understandings of a Mother in Heaven. At the heart of these

approaches lies an implicit recognition that Mormons have held back on this “mystery” doctrine

which would not square with their proclivity for diving right into the mysterious doctrines head

first.

e most predominant approach places the idea of a Heavenly Mother within the realm of

intense, ineffable reverence. For various reasons, Heavenly Mother must be held back from

human view not because of a need to suppress her, but because of her degree of holiness, as

though God and Jesus have been profaned by human speech and behavior in ways that God the

Father would never dare allow to his wife.19 is view, once again, mirrors nineteenth- and

twentieth-century American culture. Stemming from backcountry Yankee culture, Americans at

the turn of the century inculcated what scholars have called a culture of honor.20 Loyalty and

insult occupied high rungs on the values pyramid—and both in equal parts. One was loyal to

family above all, and it was because of this loyalty that insults could not go unchallenged. Duels

occurred over the honor of the head of a household and one of the gravest affronts to this man’s

honor would be to insult his wife. Within this society, the woman’s honor needed defending by a

10

18 David J. Whittaker, “Early Mormon Pamphleteering,” Journal of Mormon History 4 (1977): 35–49.

19 See Paulsen and Pulido, 73–75.

20 Richard Lyman Bushman, “e Character of Joseph Smith,” BYU Studies 42, no. 2 (2003): 27.

man.21 Contemporary sensitivities in the wake of suffrage and feminist movements to

misogynism and sexism find these earlier sensibilities insulting in their own right to the dignity

and agency of women. Yet many Mormons have tried to make sense of the absence of articulation

about Heavenly Mother in honor-culture terms, feeling that the only apparent reason knowledge

of her would be kept from humans is because God the Father is the one defending her honor—as

though taking the name of his Only Begotten Son is somehow less offensive to him than

profaning the name of his wife.22

is approach of reverencing the name of Heavenly Mother into silence has constituted for

some Mormon women a censorship that amounts to erasure.23 ese dynamics are seen in the

oral histories more than any other topic of discussion aside from the fact of Heavenly Mother’s

existence and whether she is worth worrying about. Women are split between feeling awed by the

lengths God the Father would go to protect his wife and feeling offended at the idea that she

needs protecting in such blatant, masculinist ways. e sacred censorship motif emerges from the

ongoing reconciliation of the discourse and is itself recursive—the ambivalence the motif strives

to answer perpetuates ambivalence on purpose so as to curb any insult to Heavenly Mother’s

character and honor.

e blank slate I have insisted the doctrine of Heavenly Mother has le to Mormon women in

some sense is not entirely blank, rather more like an empty canvas with a limited palette of tools

and colors with which to fill the portrait. e historical development of (or a lack of) Heavenly

Mother theology predisposes Mormon women to react within a certain framework when

11

21 Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: e Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 247. See also Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) and Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

22 Wilcox, 67.

23 Toscano, 16.

reflecting on a Mother in Heaven. is framework corresponds to other sociological trends in

American culture regarding the role of women in religious communities and churches and trends

in Mormon culture regarding how women straddle issues of feminism, agency, and adherence to

a priesthood hierarchy.24 Heavenly Mother theology ebbs and flows along the contours of

negotiations Mormon women make in their contemporary discourse of women’s issues. Sadly, she

herself has yet to make an appearance in the vivid ways Mormons affirm Heavenly Father and

Jesus have.

Mormon Women Reflect on a Mother in Heaven: Oral Histories

Mormon women are le with plenty of room to apply or not the idea of Heavenly Mother in

subjective ways. In the oral histories, we see even more breadth of ideas to the point that no

significant baseline emerges. Mormon women today are all over the map in their views on

Heavenly Mother. e only shared idea that cuts across all of the histories where Heavenly

Mother is mentioned is that she is not rejected outright—no one claimed that they did not believe

in her existence. And few expressed certainty regarding their views of her. e most dominant

theme in the oral histories by a significant margin was apathy. Most Mormon women expressed

that they really did not care about Heavenly Mother. A large number reported that belief and

worship in Jesus was sufficient for their personal devotion and salvation. e most prevalent

reason offered for why little is said of Heavenly Mother was that Heavenly Father kept her hidden

from human beings to protect her from being profaned. e commandment to not take the name

of God in vain was almost always brought up in reference to this kind of censorship. Surprisingly,

only one woman expressed what has been considered a common notion among Mormons (due to

12

24 John Heeren, Donald B. Lindsey, and Marylee Mason, “e Mormon Concept of Mother in Heaven: A Sociological Account of Its Origins and Development,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 23, no. 4 (1984): 396–411.

their identification with polygamous marriage practices) that Heavenly Mother is le out of

scripture and authoritative discourse because Heavenly Father practices polygamy and there are

simply a lot of heavenly mothers out there. All others that made reference to a polygamous

godhood expressed a rejection, sometimes even a repudiation, of the idea.

Beyond the fact of the existence of a Heavenly Mother and the dominant attitude of apathy, a

few currents emerge from the oral histories. General attitudes toward Heavenly Mother align with

expressed interest or an explicit downplaying of her importance. Some women displayed attitudes

toward men when reflecting on Heavenly Mother, attributing to her feminine deference to male

authority because only men need their egos padded.25 e women that delved into a theological

discussion about Heavenly Mother either speculated or attempted a synthesis of Heavenly Mother

doctrine with other theological points. e more systematic approaches appealed to the logical

order of concepts that flow out of doctrines of the family, exaltation, and the Godhead.

Sometimes the sufficiency of Jesus’ atonement factored into their rationale for why a Mother in

Heaven serves mortal human beings in less concrete or important ways. e earthly parity

between husband and wife meant for some women that a divine couple is to be expected; in these

cases, women made this observation rather commonsensically without feeling the need to square

it with scripture or other theological beliefs. e range of speculative ideas covered several

opposite poles. Some women surmised that Mother in Heaven needs no attention because she is

more emotionally capable than Heavenly Father; others cited her emotional capacity as reason for

why she deserves increased attention, in other words, Mormon women need her presence in their

lives to better balance their feminine connection to the divine. Some believed she played a

13

25 Oral histories #063, #072, and #076. e oral histories archived in the Claremont project are kept anonymous and are organized by an index number. My citations will simply name the corresponding index number from which the quotation is derived. Since the project is still undergoing digitization, and documents are expected to change in typographical format, I cannot provide page numbers. All of the oral histories used here were recorded between 2008 and 2011 of women living in the United States.

dominant role in the shaping of the plan of salvation; others liked to think of her as keeping a low

profile and primarily being there in pre-existence to nurture spirit children. Some affirmed that

the Father is not the sole judge in aerlife, that Heavenly Mother deserves the titles of Judge and

Counselor just the same; others preferred the idea of Heavenly Mother deferring judgment to

Heavenly Father. About a third of the oral histories expressed a political view toward how Church

policy has treated the doctrine of Heavenly Mother, ranging between frustration with and defense

of current policies. Very few women expressed any notion of engaging in personal worship of

Heavenly Mother, and even these couched their devotional practices in responses to current

norms.

Attitudes toward Heavenly Mother doctrine reflect responses either apathetically or pro or

contra. e apathetic comments remained generally short. One woman responded to the question

in a way indicative of other apathetic responses: “Does it matter?” she asked, comprising half of

her total response to the question.26 e pro comments remained rather stale, stating that

Heavenly Mother exists and that the doctrine is true, but offered little else. When women took

occasion to state an attitude toward the doctrine, they generally le the rest of their comments

about Heavenly Mother at that, as though this question formed the substance of the doctrine.

ese women maintained a limited space and did not draw creatively from multiple sources,

relative to their reflections on God the Father and Jesus. Heavenly Mother remained in these

statements little more than a contested topic le to other people to sort out. e contra comments

were not against Heavenly Mother per se, but took a position against Mormons that would make

something of the doctrine where the scriptures or Church authorities were silent. “I think we

should let it go and stop trying to figure it out because you won’t know,” one woman expressed.27

14

26 Oral history #011.


Another put it even more bluntly, devoting only two sentences to answering the question about a

Mother in Heaven: “I think there is one, but they don’t ever write anything about her. ere’s

nothing in the scriptures about her.”28 One woman expressed a determination to “not defy the

Brethren on this issue” when “she hasn’t revealed her face to us.”29

One exception emerged from the trend of pro, contra, and apathetic attitudes toward

Heavenly Mother doctrine. is woman attempted to reconcile what she perceived to be a useful

model for women with how Church leaders had decidedly downplayed the doctrine.

Mother in Heaven has provided a very useful model, one that can be created in a desired

image by every woman, to think about and to pray to.… Leaders tell us that it is not

suitable for a woman to pray to her mother in heaven because Jesus is only recorded as

having prayed to his father. As usual, I regret that authority has to come down hard on

people who are feeling a need for some feminine leadership and comfort.30

Here, the pattern of prayer set by Jesus in the New Testament serves as the reasons for Church

leaders to discourage praying to Heavenly Mother, despite the fact that Mormon prayer tradition

has adopted various other modes not present in the Lord’s Prayer or the Intercessory Prayer. is

woman recognizes the utility of having a female divine model but feels the need to position her

comments relative to the scriptural precedent for praying to Heavenly Father.

Some oral histories attributed the lack of Heavenly Mother theology to the will of God. If God

the Father willed it, then the Church would have more doctrine. Comments along these lines

expressed an apathy toward fretting about the revelations of God—they appear to come down at

irregular moments anyway, so why expect a mystery revelation to come in the near future? Some

15




women delay their concerns until the aerlife or millennium. “I figure if Heavenly Father wanted

me to think about her a lot, He would have given us a lot more information,” said one woman.31

Another put it this way: “Yes, She is there. Do I need to know more than that? Heavenly Father

and Jesus don’t seem to think so. Neither do I.”32

Attitudes toward women in general had less coverage in the oral histories, though some

women gravitated to their own sense of womanhood when reflecting on a divine mother figure.

One woman put it succinctly: “My concept of a mother in heaven is a glorified woman that is

doing a lot up there, I don’t know what.”33 A self-described “daddy’s girl” had little to say about a

Heavenly Mother because of her “own feelings of self worth.” Her sense of inadequacy made it

difficult for her to relate to “another woman who might take on that role of even someone as

grand as a Heavenly Mother,” so connecting with a divine father came more easily and logically.34

For another woman, the beauty inherent in the feminine made the idea of a Heavenly Mother

palatable. “I think that the women in the Church are obviously the nurturers and the decorators

and the ones who make things beautiful and gentle. at is our role in life.… Well, I have this

window that I look out of when I sit in my office … and it’s so beautiful and serene.… I just think

there’s a woman involved in that. It’s just so beautiful. I totally believe in a concept of a Mother in

Heaven.”35 Women enjoy a more clear-cut sense of duties and responsibilities in the church and in

the world, according to another woman who felt that these apparent roles did not need further

expression in a feminine role model. She implies that men have a obtuse set of responsibilities

16






that necessitates a masculine role model in God the Father. “e reason that we don’t know more

about her is because basically for the most part we know what our duties and responsibilities are

as women in the church and in the world [as] mothers, wives, sisters, and women period.”36

Only a couple of women expressed any form of personal devotion or worship toward a

Heavenly Mother. One mentioned, “Sometimes as women we want to know if there’s a model to

follow and we think of a mother in heaven. I feel a connection, and I think she’s aware of me.”37

is kind of a connection resonated with another woman in the moments of giving birth. “I’ve

that that in times of birth that there was a strong connection with a Mother who understood the

power I was going through. I felt assured by that, and that I got a little glimpse of something

eternal.”38 Only one woman suggested that she prays to Heavenly Mother. Because praying to her

has been expressly banned from general Church practice, this woman has found ways of fitting in

a worship of Heavenly Mother into regular life:

Any human that is opening themselves up to the divine in some way—how could this ever

be a bad thing? So I think about [Heavenly Mother] and I want to include her in my

language. I don’t really use the term Heavenly Father. I use the term God in church

because in my mind I’m defining God as both of them—God the Mother and God the

Father. So whenever possible I pray to God. I don’t pray to Heavenly Father because I just

don’t feel right not including my Mother. If I’m in a church context and it’s appropriate I

try to talk about Heavenly Parents as much as possible. I want her presence

acknowledged.39

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e bulk of responses in the oral histories set up either a more systematic view of the

doctrine, offered speculative statements about Heavenly Mother, or took a political position

toward the Church or how the concept has developed within Mormonism. On the systematic end,

women grappled with various theological points to reconcile Heavenly Mother with what

sometimes appeared to them to be competing doctrines. e most common belief that women

responded to involved the salvific role of Jesus and whether he serves and appropriate intercessor

and role model. More women affirmed the sufficiency of Jesus than those that speculated about

how Mother in Heaven is soteriologically involved in the plan of salvation. One comment is

typical of others than run along these conceptual lines: “Whether you’re male or female, you can

be like Christ. As such, he displays characteristics and traits and actions that are appropriate for

anyone regardless of their sex.” To hold up Jesus as the universal exemplar required a willingness

“to acknowledge that men can be like women and women can be like men.”40 Another woman

found more of a middle ground to both affirm the sufficiency of Jesus but also the need for a

Heavenly Mother role model. “We can’t imagine that all of the Savior’s attributes came solely from

his Heavenly Father. Some of them had to have come from his Heavenly Mother, as well.” Where

other Christians have looked to Mary as the source for feminine perfections Jesus inherited, this

woman finds in Heavenly Mother. In the same way that Jesus appeared as the express image of his

Father, this woman identifies Jesus as manifesting the express image of his Heavenly Mother, not

Mary. “I have to believe that some of the Savior’s attributes were from his Heavenly Mother, so

when I emulate him, I’m emulating her.” She introduces a radical departure from the traditional

Christian doctrine—that Jesus’ mission involved manifesting the divinity of the Father to

humankind—by seeing the transmission of feminine divinity in the person of Jesus.41

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40 Oral history, #026.


All other systematic approaches to Heavenly Mother doctrine centered on how the individual

knows a Mother in Heaven exists. ese comments took two forms. e most dominant form

made a simple statement in logic along if-then statements, for example, if there are mothers here

in mortality, and if exaltation means becoming a god, then there must be a Mother God. Most

statements that took pains to defend the existence of a Heavenly Mother went this route of logical

reasoning. A few exceptions to this dominant form of systematic proofs for the existence of a

Mother in Heaven included establishing a parity between the configuration of people and families

in the aerlife and the present mortal configuration. One comment suggested that since there is a

helpmeet in mortality, there must be a helpmeet in eternity.42 e temple served for one woman

as the basis for belief in a Heavenly Mother—“If the temple promises to both men and women

today are true, then we have the potential to become ‘as God is’ with out husband, and if that idea

is true and if He was once as we are, then the model would include a Mother in Heaven.”43

Most statements that went beyond affirming the existence of a Heavenly Mother or

establishing some measure of a systematic outlook on the doctrine offered speculations. is

category above all the others received the broadest range of creativity and possibilities. I identify

here speculative comments based on their proximity to established concepts. Because so few

articulations qualify as “established,” many comments fall into what I deem the speculative realm.

Only a few comments referenced the possibility of polygamous mothers in heaven, and only one

seemed accepting of the idea: “I think the reason that Heavenly Father doesn’t talk about

Heavenly Mother is because there are too many of them. He obviously has numerous wives.”44

One woman hypothesized that a polygamy of racially diverse mothers in heaven was responsible

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for racial diversity among mortal human beings. “Maybe different races come from different

wives.…” She squared the possibility of polygamous eternal marriage with her own reticence to

the practice by assuming that perfect harmony in human relationships characterizes all celestial

marriages. “I am sure in … the celestial world we will not have jealousy or animosity.”45 Most

speculative responses remained relatively close to other perceived theological norms. Some

women identified mother nature with Heavenly Mother, others considered her the maternal

source of spirit children, and others suggested a kind of motherly sadness she would feel as a

motherly God that perhaps a fatherly God would not fully comprehend. A few assigned three key

roles traditionally associated with male figures to Heavenly Mother. One woman thought of the

Holy Ghost as really Heavenly Mother.46 Two women thought of Heavenly Mother as a righteous

judge alongside the Father at the final judgment.47 And one woman considered many revelations

to have originated with Heavenly Mother because of their nurturing prose. “She probably takes a

lot of the responsibility for the lesson material that appears in the scriptures about teaching the

children and caring for them.”48

e women that conveyed a political stance regarding the doctrine fell into mainly three

camps: whether they agreed with the censorship by the Father to prevent the taking of Heavenly

Mother’s name in vain, the issue of polygamous mothers in heaven, and the role of feminism

surrounding the doctrine. Exceptions to these included one woman who took a position against

praying to Heavenly Mother,49 another who felt disturbed by the doctrine despite feeling that the

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47 Oral histories #053 and #072.



theological basis is justified,50 and another who thought the suppression of Heavenly Mother

theology was a power play by a male-dominated clergy deserving of resistance.51

e issue of sacred censorship was split fairly evenly between women who liked or supported

the idea of God the Father protecting the honor of his wife and those who found the idea

distasteful or offensive. One response is indicative of most comments supporting the idea of a

sacred censorship: “e reason we don’t read about her is that our Father in Heaven loves her so

dearly that he will go to any lengths to protect her. She is so treasured by him.”52 A woman who

particularly resonated with sacred censorship put it this way: “e idea that her name is not

brought up oen because it is so sacred … when you really think about it that is awe-inspiring.”53

On the other end, one woman expressed her dissatisfaction with the idea in colorful terms. “I

don’t believe that we don’t know about her because Heavenly Father is trying to protect her. She’s

a God, surely she can take care of herself and whip some butt if she needs to.”54 More oen,

opponents of sacred silencing of Heavenly Mother express their views like this woman: “I don’t

really buy that line that Heavenly Father is protecting her. at just doesn’t make sense to me.”55

Most oral histories that invoked polygamy express a rejection of it as the heavenly order. One

admitted to ambivalence—“Maybe Heavenly Father was here on this planet and brought one of

the heavenly mothers here who started this half divine, half mortal race.… Heavenly Father is

married. I hope that it’s to only one Heavenly Mother.”56 But most were decidedly upset at the

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thought that much is le out because there simply are too many heavenly mothers to speak of: “I

have to admit that sometimes I wonder if it’s a singular Mother in Heaven or if it’s a polygamous

thing. at sometimes upsets me. I’m not real comfortable with polygamy. I wonder sometimes if

she’s more than one, if that’s really a rule of heaven. People have told me that it’s not true and you

don’t have to be polygamous to reach even the highest degree in the Celestial Kingdom. But

sometimes when I think of Mother in Heaven I get conflicted.”57

Feminism factored into some women’s reflections on a Mother in Heaven. A woman who had

initially felt disturbed at the idea of a Heavenly Mother came to appreciate the doctrine as she

studied feminist theology. Because of her “intimate relationship with God,” she felt less worry

over “the feminine versus masculine aspect” of the Godhead. “I am more fascinated by the idea

that that doctrine has been attributed to Eliza R. Snow and what that means to women in the

church being able to introduce theological concepts and doctrine, how those doctrines are

accepted, and whether women can do that with authority.”58 For one woman, waiting on men to

talk about Heavenly Mother would just prevent the theology from developing since men have a

fear of women “rocking the boat.” Emphasizing Heavenly Father at the expense of Heavenly

Mother amounts to a kind of subversion of women. “I think that fear drives the idea that she is

too sacred to talk about or talk to.… Fear on the part of men losing control—of everything.… I

think that all too oen we gloss over the idea of growing to be like our Father in Heaven, when in

fact more of us are growing to be like our Mother in Heaven.”59

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Summary oughts

In September 1993, seven Mormons were summoned to disciplinary councils in what became

popularly known as the “September Six.” (Six of the seven were either disfellowshipped or

excommunicated; the seventh, Margaret Toscano, was excommunicated seven years later, though

her initial disciplinary council convened the same month as the other six.) Four of those

summoned were women—Lavina Fielding Anderson, Maxine Hanks, Margaret Toscano, and

Lynne Kanavel Whitesides. All four had previously spoken about Heavenly Mother and her place

within Mormon theology, some more than the others. ese fairly public institutional reactions

against feminism and, in some cases, advocacy for Heavenly Mother worship began a period of

retrenchment favoring the traditional views of priesthood authority and theism.60 One would

expect to see some recognition on the part of twentieth-century American Mormon women,

some degree of an institutional presence in their statements and beliefs. Interestingly, no direct

mention of the September Six, strong institutional action to consolidate worship practices away

from Heavenly Mother doctrine, or antagonism toward Mormon feminists surfaces in the oral

histories. When randomly asked to reflect on a Mother in Heaven, all of the respondents had

something personal to offer. is suggests that the climate of individual Heavenly Mother belief is

not so contested as prior observers have assumed, if the sample of interviewed women is any

indication of the larger currents in Mormon society.61

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60 Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, Paul Toscano, Maxine Hanks, D. Michael Quinn, and Lavina Fielding Anderson, “Spiritual Paths Aer September 1993,” Sunstone (December 2003): 13–31; Lavina Fielding Anderson, “e Church and Its Scholars: Ten Years Aer,” Sunstone 128 (July 2003): 13–19.

61 Aaltje Baumgart, “Mormon and Feminist? Feminist Reactions to LDS Scripture, Doctrine, and Practices,” AMERICAN@ 1, no. 2 (2003): 7; Robert A. Rees, “Our Mother in Heaven,” Sunstone 15 (April 1991): 49–50; Danny L. Jorgensen, “Gender-Inclusive Images of God: A Sociological Interpretation of Early Shakerism and Mormonism,” Novo Religio 4, no. 1 (2000): 72–75; Carrie A. Miles, “e Genesis of Gender, or Why Mother in Heaven Can’t Save You,” Sunstone 20 (July 1997): 16.

e woman that most oen emerges from these mirror images of Heavenly Mother theology

is one concerned with usefulness—utility is prioritized in a pragmatic way, and what is not useful

is not worth worrying about. is is a resourceful, not really a philosophical, woman focused on

what works and what is grounded in experience. A disparate constellation of expressions about a

Mother in Heaven has emerged out of the negotiation of profound meaning Mormon women find

in beliefs of family and God with the historical fact of a Heavenly Mother theology kept at the

periphery. So, too, is the portrait of womanhood refracted through concepts of connecting with

children, feminine creativity and spirituality, and so on. Whether responding pro or contra,

Mormon women summon for whatever reason images of worry, tension, affirmation,

communion, and motherly love. Not all consider their ascriptions of divine mother scriptural, in

fact many take pains to avoid speaking where the scriptures are silent. But present in these oral

histories is a sense of women wanting themselves to redeem nature and humanity through their

unique feminine voice and feminine influence. e Heavenly Mother of these women reaches a

parity with the salvific mission Mormons have characteristically reserved only for Jesus, captured

in one woman’s use of Isaiah—“I think of her very much in the terms that I think of Father in

Heaven. You look at Isaiah and you read ‘Wonderful! Counselor! e Mighty God-Goddess! e

Everlasting Mother! e Author of Peace!’”62 In an age where the status of women has been

increasingly questioned and advocated, little wonder some Mormon women have found Heavenly

Mother again in the Old Testament. We must wonder to what degree they all will locate her in

themselves.

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Documents

Mother in Heaven: Her Image in Our Countenance