The feature image for this post is a photograph from Caroline’s presentation. These women are singing during a Relief Society meeting in Botswana.

Last Wednesday, I had the great pleasure of hearing Caroline Kline give a presentation entitled “Gender, Religion and Agency in a Globalizing World” during a symposium focused on international perspectives of the Church at McGill University.

Caroline completed research in Mexico, Botswana, and in the U.S. among women of color that you can read about in her book Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness (I haven’t read this yet, but I want to!)

She talked about the need to intentionally meet the women she interviewed where they were at without imposing her personal feminist and gender-equality-oriented values. She shared an account in which she asked one woman, “Are women and men equal in the Church?” and then recognized asking these kinds of questions could signal she was on a different wavelength than her interviewees and was imposing a worldview on them that they didn’t necessarily share. To optimize her conversations, she shed some of her personal interpretive paradigms.

She framed her discussion by sharing a reconceptualization of agency by Saba Mahmood, an anthropologist who focused on the crossroads of Muslim women and feminist theory. The traditional definition of agency in feminist theory is autonomy, or self-determining authority, so women who stand up against the status quo are deemed agents. Mahmood decouples agency from autonomy and redefines it as whatever ways women make efforts to change themselves and change the world. Women can therefore act as agents by upholding and/or subverting systems to act on their values and desires.

This definition suited Caroline’s research findings. She found that overall, non-oppressive relationality was the top priority for Latter-day Saint women. From their perspective, the primary obstacles and threats in their lives were abuse, oppression, and alienation. In many cases, Latter-day Saint women across the globe seek out and value the Church precisely because it provides a compelling basis for benevolent masculinity. Women want husbands and family members who are sober, faithful, kind, committed, and motivated. Women choose to engage the Church in part because it can effectively encourage the values, relationships, and behaviors they desire in their lives.

In Mexico, women shared about how the Church helps them access kinder men. Caroline discussed Maria, a woman whose local priesthood leaders helped her find emotional relief. Male leaders’ efforts to listen to her experiences with kindness helped her talk about painful things from her past that she had struggled to address. She found it empowering to go to temple interviews. One leader prompted her to work on forgiving her mother for childhood abuse during her interview, and Maria reported that it brought healing rather than a sense of oppression. It mattered to Maria that the Church helped her have contact with men who were well-intentioned and caring.

One thing women in Mexico were upset about regarding the Church was the closing of the beloved and unique LDS Benemerito High School, which was closed to create a large MTC in Mexico City in 2013. Women resented this and expressed feeling like their perspectives weren’t valued. They considered the high school a wonderful, unique, invaluable place to send their children for them to have supportive and highly desirable experiences. Some were under the impression that the Church valued the complaints of Provo residents, who didn’t want the 2012 proposed expansion of the Provo MTC, over any opinions or needs in Mexico. 

In Botswana, Caroline learned about local customs that caused friction with LDS leaders and their protocols. Caroline explained how the Church uses a homogenization approach across the globe. This means it spreads culture and practices forged in North America to other countries regardless of local customs, without major adaptations or accommodations. In Botswana, it is typical and accepted for parenthood to come before marriage. Children and motherhood are highly valued, and having children out of wedlock is not treated as less ideal, even among some of the local Latter-day Saint women. Caroline told a story about a bishop who tried to assert North-American-based LDS counsel to give babies born out of wedlock for adoption in his ward. The women responded with a firm no, and he quickly dropped the subject. Another point of tension is the custom of lobola, payment made by the groom’s family to the bride’s in exchange for her hand in marriage. This involves formalized meetings between families that are often considered relationally important. General LDS leaders have spoken against lobola, and many of the women Caroline interviewed resisted the authoritative perspective. Others tried to compromise, or came to terms with it.

Caroline also raised the question which is a better approach: Inculturation, that is, letting local culture impact and be integrated into local Church practices, or homogenization, that is, imposing a standardized culture. She suggested that incorporating more inculturation in the Church would be affirming and empowering to global LDS women. This is something ordinary members and local leaders can work toward, encourage, and affirm on a grassroots level in our communities.

Caroline suggested that if global Mormon women’s perspectives were privileged in the Church, we’d see these changes: 

1. A greater emphasis on preventing and protecting against domestic violence 
2. The restructuring of top-down systems such that ordinary members have more voice and decision making power, and leaders decide with rather than for members
3. Greater emphasis on and supports for education
4. An expanded discourse on family relations and connectedness–beyond nuclear family
5. A more abundant spectrum of spiritual capacities and experiences recognized, articulated, and celebrated.

My Response

It meant a lot for me to meet Caroline in person. She was the first person who responded to my first guest post submission at Exponent, and the person who encouraged me to become a perma-blogger. It was really enlightening to learn from someone with so many more years as a Mormon feminist, thinker and writer than me under her belt.

Caroline’s visit and presentation felt timely. That same day in the Exponent community, we were discussing our struggles to sufficiently include and represent global and BIPOC voices on the blog, and all our blindspots as North Americans. BIPOC bloggers’ concerns and Caroline’s research were humbling reminders to me that Mormon women’s perspectives and needs vary greatly across the globe and that relatively privileged white American feminists can’t represent or speak for them all.

I recognized there are many ways that I resonate with global women’s priorities and values. Throughout my life, I have valued that the Church can help men in my circles be kinder, more committed to family, more motivated by a sense of higher and spiritual purpose, and less prone toward problems like substance abuse. And I really value how the Church laid out a solid path for me to partner with someone who is committed to shared spiritual values. In my younger life, I largely did not sense oppression in my relationships with LDS male leaders.

This shifted in my mid-thirties during my transition to raising adolescents and becoming a support to peers going through complicated things in relation to Church and religion. It seemed like suddenly many of the people I loved most were facing painful things with Church. Top-down patriarchal authority started to feel problematic and “off,” and I had unpleasant and startling brushes with its shadow side. I have now personally experienced that patriarchy can lead even well-intentioned men to act controlling, self-righteous, and spiritually abusive in certain contexts. 

Moving forward, I’m going to try to do a better job holding multiple truths about Mormon women’s experiences at once with care, including wisdom gained from my North American-specific feminist awakening, and the recognition that many wise and experienced Latter-day Saint women of color around the world are focusing on priorities and using approaches that have meaningful and understandable distinctions from mine. 

One of the most inspiring things for me in Caroline’s presentation was the encouragement to help the Church move toward greater inculturation on the local level. I recently agreed to help organize a ward choir. Our ward has a large population of refugees and immigrants from Africa. Caroline’s talk arrived just as I was finalizing Christmas music and a performing schedule. She helped me find a greater sense of purpose in pushing the limits and taking risks. This Sunday, we started rehearsing a lively Ghanian song chosen by several African members. And despite the fact we are incorporating bass electric guitar, a couple drums, and electric keyboard, I have scheduled us to perform this number in sacrament meeting this December in addition to a Stake Christmas concert. The choir is also going to recreate a Southern gospel Christmas carol for sacrament meeting. During rehearsal, as the choir members were dancing, the guitar was grooving, and Ricky, an African pop musician was jamming on the keyboard, Church had never been so fun or multi-cultural. 

Caroline’s words helped me see a different vision than I had before of God’s need for my feminist actions and leadership in my ward. I don’t care much anymore if I see some things pretty differently than people in my very international and transient ward. If we can come together and create community experiences that are genuinely enjoyable, interactive, egalitarian and inclusive across cultures, we will achieve something that is loving and remarkable and that meets many of our spiritual and social needs.