Here are my notes and thoughts on "Our Heavenly Mother: Teachings and Applications," presented by Martin Pulido and Eric Dowdle at the SMPT Conference, May 22 2009.
Eric and Martin opened by pointing out that Heavenly Mother (HM) is a mostly taboo subject in Mormonism today. Some believe she is too sacred to talk about. These people argue, for example, that her virtue and reputation must be protected by cloaking her with a curtain of silence. Feminist LDS intellectuals take this to be the standard Mormon view. They rail against the vision of HM as the ideal and invisible heavenly housewife whose sole purpose is reproduction. Eric and Martin's purpose was to show that this is not, in fact, the orthodox Mormon view.
They argued their case by citing a large number of General Authorities from every period of Church history. Orson F. Whitney, for example, spoke of HM and Heavenly Father (HF) as “those we now worship”. He held that both worked together to design the Plan of Salvation. The Gospel Principles manual states that the premortal council was with both our Heavenly Parents, and they both sent us to earth. At the judgment, we are to give an account to both HF and HM. Brigham Young included HM and the heavenly daughters among those who go from power to power and create worlds. He also made HM a partner in creation. Elder Holland teaches that HM continues to nurture, watch over, and care for us in our everyday lives today. The same has been taught by Elder Ballard and Harold B. Lee.
The modern concern over HM seems to focus on her authority and worship status. Only recently have LDS writers been hesitant to use language like “God the Mother.” Widtsoe spoke this way, and so did Talmage. Pratt said that both males and females experience the fullness of divinity. One GA explicitly disagreed at this point: George Q. Cannon. He said HM should not be deified or considered part of the Trinity. Other apostles directly disagreed with Cannon, rejecting the idea that HF is jealous of the honor given to HM. Without HM, HF would not be God. Erastus Snow said deity consists of both man and woman together. Nothing can be God in which the two are not blended. They twain are one God.
I felt the weak point of the paper was the discussion of the ethical and doctrinal implications of the Heavenly Mother doctrine. I say this was the weak point not because these implications are bad, but because it was difficult to see how they follow directly from the version of the Heavenly Mother doctrine Eric and Martin defended. For example, it's true that we should love others and show sympathy and affection, but this seems to be connected with HM only on the assumption that these are strictly feminine virtues. More problematically, the suggestion that we should "protect every mother and sister" seems to have more to do with the view Eric and Martin are arguing against-- that HM's virtue must be protected behind a wall of silence-- than with the one they actually promoted. Similarly, the statement that "whatever prejudice there is on earth, ideal relationships are possible" assumes that HM and HF have an ideal relationship, which (despite strides in the right direction) Eric and Martin did not really fully establish. This is the sort of thing where our assumptions about HM and HF's relationship really follow from the alleged implication, rather than the other way around.
Other, less problematic implications they listed included the idea that we're all one family and should love all siblings unconditionally, the idea that good parenting is a moral obligation, and the idea that women as well as men can see themselves in the image of God. Probably we should add the potentially more controversial implication that husbands and wives should share their possessions, power, and authority equally.
Eric and Martin closed by making the excellent suggestion that LDS should talk about HM more, especially in art and music.
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