If I Don't Believe in Mormonism, What Do I Believe?

There's a hackneyed joke that goes like this:

Q: What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Mormon?

A: Someone who knocks on your door for no particular reason. [1]

Aside from taking a cheap shot at Mormonism, part of the humor of this joke is the idea that Unitarians supposedly don't believe in anything. This is a fairly common assumption that religious people sometimes make about systems of freethought such as Unitarianism, humanism, atheism, etc. I think this stems from their belief that God and religious values are the immutable source of morality, wisdom, and happiness. I can understand why most people have this perspective since many people are first introduced to questions of ethics and morality in a religious context. Moral behavior is also generally the main topic of discussion in nearly all religious settings. And many people are motivated by their love of God to act in moral, pro-social ways. Therefore, religious people often feel that to reject religion must mean that you reject a belief in moral values. It means you don't believe in anything any more.

While I can understand that perspective, I don't think it's accurate. It's true that I no longer believe in religion any more, but that doesn't automatically mean I condone moral relativism or that I don't have moral values any more. So I wanted to articulate here what I do continue to believe in.

The Virtue of Scholarly Dialogue

Generally speaking, I'm fairly wary about believing in "truths" any more. I am hesitant to make bold, dogmatic statements declaring things to be absolutely "true" or "right." The reason I hesitate is because it's always possible that my understanding of the issue could be limited by cognitive bias, a lack of evidence, shortsightedness, etc. (as has been the case in the past, unfortunately).

But even though I hesitate to believe in absolute truths any more, that doesn't mean I reject the notion that truth exists. I still believe that truth exists---and if push comes to shove, I'd be willing to take a stand for the things that I currently believe to be true based on the evidence available to me. However, I am less interested in believing in Truth (with a capital "T") and I am more interested in how to access the truth. In other words, I prefer to believe in processes that have good track records for helping me to get closer at approximating the truth about important matters.

In my opinion, the process of scholarly dialogue is the most superior process so far. When I say "scholarly dialogue" I'm referring to the process of researching a topic thoroughly, articulating an argument based on your research and submitting it for critique by other scholars who have also researched the topic thoroughly.

Under this system it is important for individuals to be as educated as they can about the topics they discuss---but it's also important to keep in mind that oftentimes the process of dialogue is itself a form of education because it exposes us to alternative perspectives that we might not have been aware. Ideas must go through the crucible of scholarly argumentation. If they emerge from that crucible intact, they are worth considering.

Honesty, Courage, and Respect

With that in mind, I've come to feel that the chief requirements for scholarly argumentation are honesty, courage, and respect. I've created a laundry list of what these three virtues mean to me:

Honesty

• Before making your argument, will you research your topic thoroughly to the best of your ability? Are you willing to diligently and objectively search all possible perspectives and information on this topic?
• As you research, will you use only those sources which are of the highest quality and credibility to support your position on the topic? Will you check and re-check your sources to make sure they are highly credible?
• Will you cite your resources fully and accurately so that others can verify that your resources are credible and reliable?
• Will you refuse, on principle, to distort the evidence or another scholar’s point of view? Will you make sure that you do not take quotations out of context or misrepresent them in any way?
• If an occasion for an argument arises and you have not had enough time to conduct sufficient research, will you mention that as a caveat to your argument? Will you acknowledge any personal biases that inform your argument?
• Will you make sure that you define key terms in a way that can be mutually agreed upon so that your readers will understand the fundamental assumptions of your argument if needed?

Courage

• Are you willing to change your mind on this topic? Are you willing to risk your own ego for the sake of truth and in order to do what’s best for society? [2]
• Are you willing to abandon any long-cherished positions when it is clear that there is substantial evidence to the contrary?
• When your perspectives change, are you willing to acknowledge how and why your mind was changed?
• If one of your arguments or some of your supporting evidence is shown to be flawed, will you revise that argument or stop using that evidence altogether?
• Will you recognize the full complexity of the issue and add qualifications to your argument when necessary?

Respect

• Will you acknowledge counterarguments to your own claims in a fair and balanced manner?
• Will you resist the temptation to disparage the character of persons who take a different position from your own? Will you strive to have empathy for others, recognizing that everyone has valid reasons for believing the things they believe?
• If another person concedes that your position is reasonable or correct, will you refrain from belittling them, recognizing that the purpose of scholarly dialogue is not to “win,” but to find the best possible solution or perspectives on the topic?

Without these conditions in place, there can be no productive, rational discussion. It is best not to engage in these kinds of arguments for your own health and well-being. However, when these conditions are in place, it can be a remarkably transformative, powerful experience. Those kinds of discussions are worth seeking out because they will benefit all the participants involved. Society as a whole will be a little bit richer because of it.

Caveats to the Process of Scholarly Dialogue

I'm a big fan of Eliezer Yudkowsky (author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality). On his Less Wrong website for aspiring rationalists, he has an article entitled Twelve Virtues of Rationality that are somewhat similar to the three requirements I've articulated above. One of his virtues is evenness, meaning that you need to apply skepticism and argumentation evenly to positions that you agree with as well as positions that you disagree with.[3] So, in the interest of being even-handed, I need to acknowledge some of the problems with the process of scholarly dialogue that I've discussed above.

Scholarly dialogue takes a long time to achieve. It takes a lot of resources to get to the point where a scholarly dialogue can even take place. It takes time and education to conduct scholarly research. Furthermore, scholarly dialogue benefits from involving as many people as possible during the argumentation process in order to get as many valid, creative perspectives in the forum as possible. When scholarly dialogue is working at its best, it becomes synergistic and collaborative. But when more people are involved it, it also slows down the process immensely. Consensus takes an incredibly long time to achieve and the conditions have to be just right for it to occur. It's a long, arduous and messy process. And that's why it doesn't happen very often.

Good research is not freely accessible to the public. My biggest pet peeve with academia is how many barriers it places around open access to good information. Scholarly research is among the most credible information available, but it requires esoteric permission to access it. You pretty much have to work at a university in order to have access to scholarly materials because it is too cost-prohibitive otherwise. Many academic databases and journals have incredibly high subscription costs. One librarian at my work estimated that database and journal access costs my university close to a million dollars a year. That's a big problem for a host of reasons (and one that I applaud Harvard, Princeton, and MIT for trying to combat). Beyond the tremendous cost for access to journals, most scholarly journals are written in "academese," a highly complex and sometimes unnecessarily technical style of writing that is quite difficult for lay readers to understand. Although some of this jargon is justified, it can also just be an excuse for poor writing. The high cost and the obfuscated language in scholarly journals make it difficult for most people to have access to good information so that they can better educate themselves about key issues.

Scholarly dialogue is not intuitive; it has to be learned. Rationality is not the default way in which human beings approach the world for many complex cultural, psychological and even biological reasons. [4] People usually have valid reasons for behaving and thinking irrationally, but that doesn't make the process of scholarly dialogue any easier. It's sometimes difficult to engage in a productive exchange of ideas when the cultural and biological odds are stacked against you.

Scholarly dialogue doesn't always get it right---nor does it pretend to. Sometimes experts are wrong. Sometimes the scholarly consensus is wrong. It's important to remember that scholarly dialogue is not about giving you THE TRUTH. It's about approximating truth, getting closer and closer to the truth with every new day---even though you know you're never going to fully arrive there. Scholarship isn't about giving you certainty about the way the world works per se; it's about telling you the probability that this is the way the world works given the current evidence that is available to us. You have to stay on your toes and be willing to diligently keep searching for new evidence and updating your probabilities as you go along. And that's the true beauty of scholarly dialogue: it's a self-correcting process. Even though it gets it wrong sometimes or even a lot of the time, eventually it will correct itself.

Conclusion

As costly and seemingly impossible to attain as it is, I still maintain my commitment to scholarly dialogue, to independent thought, and to the openly democratic exchange of ideas. Compared to nearly every other system, I maintain my confidence that scholarly dialogue has the best track record for improving the human condition so far. And so, yes, that's what I believe in today.

Footnotes

[1] Lenny Bruce is also quoted as saying: "I know my humor is outrageous when it makes the Unitarians so mad that they burn a question mark on my front lawn."

[2] Christopher Lasch’s once wrote: “It is the art of articulating and defending our views that lifts them out of the category of ‘opinions,’ gives them shape and definition, and makes it possible for others to recognize them as a description of their own experience as well. In short, we come to know our own minds only by explaining ourselves to others. The attempt to bring others around to our point of view carries the risk, of course, that we may adopt their point of view instead. We have to enter imaginatively into our opponents’ arguments, if only for the purpose of refuting them, and we may end up being persuaded by those we sought to persuade. Argument is risky and unpredictable---and therefore educational” (qtd. in "The Lost Art of Political Argument." Harper's Magazine Sept. 1990. Web.)

[3] When you fail to apply skepticism evenly to your own arguments, this is also known as "motivated skepticism." See Taber, Charles S. and Milton Lodge. "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs." American Journal of Political Science 50.3 (2006): 755-769. JSTOR. Web.

[4] There are a lot of people who have written about this better than I have. An interesting book to get started with this concept is Chabris and Simon's The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us.

Gospel Principles #3 - Jesus Christ, Our Chosen Leader and Savior (NOM version)

I actually didn't teach this lesson in Relief Society because of the way the schedule was arranged that particular year. I taught lesson #2 instead, but it didn't seem like a terribly interesting one discussion-wise. Therefore, I decided to do this one instead. For reference, see Jesus Christ, Our Chosen Leader and Savior in the Gospel Principles manual.

Growing up I always had a fairly strong personal belief and relationship with God ever since I was 14 years old (as I wrote about earlier), but it took me considerably longer to develop my relationship with Christ, most likely because I felt closer to God through prayer. (For those of you from other faith traditions who are reading this blog, Mormonism posits that God and Christ are two separate individuals.) My freshman year at BYU I experienced a period of intense disillusionment with church culture and felt very estranged from Mormonism although I continued to attend church. My sophomore year of BYU, I started to warm back up to Mormonism again as a result of some loving roommates. One day, after listening to a BYU Devotional with Neal A. Maxwell, I felt the strong desire to recommit myself to God and Mormonism. The day of my re-conversion I spent several hours in prayer and repentance. It was then that I developed a close, intensely personal relationship with Christ, which I maintained as a strong source of comfort and direction for nearly a decade.

But these days I am highly skeptical of the divinity of Christ. My current worldview was very painful for me to accept, but it was the result of my study of the research conducted by scholars of New Testament textual criticism over the last 300 years. I'll discuss why I find their evidence persuasive and I'll end this blog entry on a positive note by talking about how I still feel the concepts of grace and the Atonement are still psychologically useful.

Problems With the New Testament
When I try to accept the divinity of Christ, I find myself in an epistemological quandary. That's a fancy way of saying that it's difficult for me to trust the authority of most sources that claim to provide me with direct, credible knowledge about Christ's divinity. Aside from personal or prophetic revelation (which have their own epistemological flaws that I won't get into here), our main source of access to knowledge about Christ's life and teaching is the New Testament (as well as some extra-canonical Christian literature such as the Gospels of Thomas and Mary). Although I sincerely believe that Christ existed historically and that we can re-construct fragments of his life and original teachings, it is extremely difficult to do so---especially if we use the New Testament in its current form as our exclusive source of knowledge about Christ.

The first problem that I've had in trying to access the truth about Jesus has come as I've studied the history of how the New Testament came into existence. The books of the New Testament were not written chronologically in the order they appear in the New Testament. Here's a nice little graphic I got from Jared Anderson that shows the timeline of when the books of the New Testament were written, according to scholarly textual research:

I don't have the time to rehearse the scholarly methodology used to construct this timeline. You'll just have to trust me when I say that this timeline represents the prevailing scholarly consensus of the dates these books were written. I've listed some helpful sources in my footnotes of this blog entry for further study, if you're so inclined. [1]

As you can see from the chart above, the first books of the New Testament were written by Paul, composed nearly 20 years after the death of Jesus. The Four Gospels were written in the decades after Paul's death in the latter half of the first century. Most contemporary scholars accept something called the "Q hypothesis," which posits that "the material common to Matthew and Luke, but lacking in Mark, probably came from a source no longer extant and commonly designated as 'Q' (from the German Quelle, meaning source)." [2] It was a text that was hypothetically based on an oral tradition dating back to Jesus's time.

Most modern scholars also assume that "despite the identification of these gospels with individual men, we have no reliable historical information about the actual authors of the gospels." [3]  Most scholars assume that John was written by a particular religious community---typically referred to by scholars as the Johannine community. They also infer that the Book of Acts was written by the same author(s) who wrote Luke.

Furthermore, most Biblical scholars agree that the books of the New Testament were written for specific theological and rhetorical purposes. Kraemer and D'Angelo describe the prevailing scholarly consensus:

All presume that early Christian gospels, whether included in the canon of the New Testament or not, reflect the intentional activity of ancient authors and ancient transmitters of traditions about Jesus and about those who made up the early communities of his followers. All recognize that the fundamental character of these traditions is theological, which means, among other things, that their primary concern is to interpret Jesus called Christ to diverse communities of followers, and they are only incidentally at best interested in what we might understand as "history." All acknowledge that a significant portion of these traditions is unlikely to be historically reliable. [4]

Simply put, the writers of the New Testament were less concerned with creating an accurate historical representation of Jesus and were more interested in putting a particular spin on Jesus and his teachings for specific audiences---and for shrewdly calculated rhetorical purposes. (For example, the gospel of Matthew may have been written for the purpose of creating a Jewish-Christian hybrid religion. The gospel of John is decidedly more gnostic in its tone and reflects the fundamental values of the Johannine community that produced it. And so forth.) What this means is that the representation of Jesus in these books is constantly being mediated by the particular rhetorical agendas of its authors. In other words, in these books of the New Testament, we're getting a varied interpretations of Jesus that are being filtered through and colored by specific worldviews, theological values, and rhetorical agendas. As Mormons we're used to reading the Gospels in parallel with each other in Sunday School, cherry-picking our favorite parts to reinforce our contemporary Mormon views. There is some value in this approach, but it can also potentially blind you to other more useful or accurate interpretations of the texts.

Furthermore, it is important to note that several of the books of the New Testament that are attributed to Paul are believed by many scholars to be pseudepigrapha, meaning that they were letters falsely written in the 2nd century in Paul's name after the fact. These writings were written by well-intentioned individuals who likely saw no real ethical harm in what they were doing. They merely wanted to authoritatively settle the theological disputes that were plaguing early Christian communities (for example, issues of high or low Christology, gnosticism, monotheism, and---most importantly to me as a contemporary Mormon feminist---defining the role of women in the early church).

So, that's how the New Testament was constructed timeline-wise, but that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as problems with the New Testament are concerned. As Bart Ehrmann, a well-respected New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill, explains:

It is one thing to say that the original [manuscripts of the books of the New Testament] were inspired, but the reality is that we don’t have the originals—so saying they were inspired doesn’t help me much, unless I can reconstruct the originals.

Moreover, the vast majority of Christians for the entire history of the church have not had access to the originals, making their inspiration something of a moot point. Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. …

[T]hese copies differ from one another in so many places that we don’t even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant. ... Even so, what's one to make of all these differences? If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don't have the very words of scripture? In some places, as we will see [later in this book], we simply cannot be sure that we have reconstructed the original text accurately. It’s a bit hard to know what the words of the Bible mean if we don’t even know what the words are! [5]

As Ehrman is alluding to here, the New Testament has changed dramatically as it has been passed down through the centuries. We have no access to the original manuscripts of the New Testament, nor do I think we have any hope of being able to have access to the originals one day. The existing manuscripts that we have today are copies of copies of copies and they contain a multitude of discrepancies---some changes made on accident by the unprofessional scribes of the early centuries and some changes made deliberately for politically and theologically motivated purposes. I also feel that the process of canonization was also a very political process that was particularly oppressive to views that gave an equal role to women in Christian communities.

In short, I feel that the New Testament is a very unstable, unreliable text. We cannot un-complicatedly state that it gives us pure, direct access to Christ and his teachings. We simply do not have access to any kind of authoritative, genuine record of what those teachings really were in any kind of pure form. We only have access to a murky shadow of what it might have been.

Mormons have an "out" for this, of course. According to the 9th Article of Faith, Mormons are only obliged to believe the Bible is the word of God "as far as it is translated correctly." I'm not going to claim to know what Joseph Smith really meant when he penned those words. However, by this logic it almost stands to reason that since the "translations" of these Biblical texts have been proven to be so utterly riddled with centuries of errors that the Bible should practically be rejected in its entirety---which I'm fairly certain was not Joseph Smith's intent. Furthermore, I am extremely hesitant to trust Joseph Smith's supposed translation of the Bible as being authoritative in any way---especially given the multitude of problems with the Book of Abraham. (And we haven't even mentioned that if, according to Mormon theology, the Great Apostasy began shortly after Paul's death, which is traditionally believed to be around 67 A.D., then that throws suspicion on nearly 2/3 of the New Testament as being corrupted by apostasy---including the four Gospels.)

We simply have to accept that the New Testament and its representation of Christ and early Christianity is problematic at best. I just can't trust the authoritativeness of the New Testament any more, as much as I may want to on an emotional level. If it truly is the word of God, then it is clearly a very flawed vehicle for it---and it has the suspicious imprint of human hands all throughout it. [6]

My Current View of Christology
I want to point to Mark 16 as an example of a particular disputed chapter in textual criticism that illustrates my current perspectives on Christ. There is an intense debate about whether verses 9-20 of Mark 16 were in the original Markan manuscript or not. Mark is, of course, believed by scholars to be the first gospel that was written and is known to be one of the sources of material used by the authors of Matthew and Luke when composing their gospels. The disputed verses of the final chapter of Mark provide an account of Jesus's resurrection.

The controversy between scholars about these verses comes from the fact that these verses are missing from two of our earliest and most complete Markan manuscripts: Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, dated mid-300's A.D. To be fair, I should also mention that the scribes who wrote these two codices left some blank space after verse 8, indicating that they were possibly aware of a longer ending to the Gospel of Mark, but they did not have it available from the manuscripts they were copying.

Most other manuscripts of Mark 16 and early versions (such as translations into other languages) include verses 9-20. There is also evidence that the early Christian church leaders immediately following the apostles' deaths may have been aware of these verses. [7]

Nevertheless, I personally think it makes sense that they were not original to Mark. The Gospel of Mark seems to have a very low Christology, meaning that he does not seem to be terribly concerned with proving that Jesus was divine (at least not the way Luke or other gospels seem to be). And it's important to note that many early Christians would have had differing views on Christology in general. Christian communities which had low Christologies were certainly in existence at the time Mark was written.

This is just one key example of several important verses that are either in dispute by New Testament scholars or which are considered by scholars to be later additions by scribes. While many of these changes are inconsqeuential, some have a very direct impact on our understanding of Christology and Christ's original theology.

My own personal belief based on my study of the New Testament is that when Christ was alive, his followers sincerely believed that he was the predicted Messiah who would deliver the Jews from political bondage under the Romans. Christ and his followers likely believed that the end of the world was coming soon and the Kingdom of God would soon be established on the earth. When the Romans assassinated Christ, it threw the early Christian community into theological chaos. How could he be their liberator if he was dead? Paul helped to make sense of this theological problem by preaching that Christ would return in glory soon and would bring about the kingdom of God. As is clear from the original letters of Paul, he and his followers were millenarians, which means they sincerely believed that they would one day live to see the Second Coming. As time passed and the original Christians converts began to die, the younger Christian communities had to deal with the theological cognitive dissonance caused by the fact that Christ hadn't come yet. I think that the theology of grace (the Atonement, as Mormons call it) and resurrection were later theological adaptations created by Christians as a way to make sense of Christ's absence. We've seen this kind of pattern for resolving millenarian cognitive dissonance emerge time and time again with many Christian sects in more contemporary times (and I include the Mormonism in that category, given that many early Saints fully believed the second coming would occur in 1890). In short, I think the version of Christianity that has survived today is a complex, man-made theological construction that is very different from what the earliest Christians believed---including possibly Christ himself.

I recognize this view is a bit naive, underdeveloped and awkwardly expressed. I'm not a Biblical scholar; just a Biblical enthusiast who likes to read scholarly Biblical criticism. As such, my views are liable to change as more information and evidence comes in. But, nevertheless, that's where I currently stand on the matter: the Atonement and other high-Christological concepts were theological innovations that emerged later in the development of Christianity (or were at least in strong competition with other views of Christ in ancient Christianity). I therefore am skeptical of the evidence that Christ is a divine being.

Nevertheless, the Atonement is Still a Useful Concept
That being said, I generally keep my agnostic beliefs about Christ to myself. On one level, I do that because I don't want to start a fight with anyone. But on another level, I don't want to hurt anyone's beliefs in the Atonement. Although I think there are some potentially damaging elements of the idea that God hates sin and requires suffering as recompense for sin, I nevertheless see value in the concept of Christ and the Atonement. [8]

Let me relate a brief story without going into too much detail. A while ago I broke an important promise that I had made to someone. It was a promise that no longer had any intrinsic meaning to me and which would have meant nothing to someone who didn't understand the context. But I felt tremendously guilty about my actions the next day---a feeling that I had not in any way anticipated. I knew that I couldn’t undo the effects of my actions because I couldn’t change the past---I couldn’t un-break my promise. All I could really do to learn from the event so that I could avoid making the same mistake in the future. And although I had stopped believing in the literal Atonement long before that event occurred, I admittedly mourned for my loss of faith in it on that day.

Guilt can sometimes be a productive, pro-social emotion---but when we wallow in it or experience it unnecessarily, it can become unhealthy. And so I think I mourned for my belief in the Atonement because I wanted to displace guilt/pain the way I used to by just handing it over to Christ. It had been so much easier, so much more convenient really, before my beliefs about Christ had gotten so complicated.

As I was reflecting on that, I was thinking about how psychologically useful the concept of repentence is. From a certain point of view, it’s like giving us a way to “change” the past even though we can’t actually change the past. And repentence allows us to psychologically put our guilt about the past behind us and move forward doing good works in the future—with our psychological image of ourselves as “still a good person” relatively intact (which is itself another very useful social fiction). [9]

The problem for me is the dilemma of the placebo effect: the Atonement doesn’t work if you know how it works. I see value in the concept, but I can’t personally psyche myself into it believing it—even though I miss the function that it used to have in my life. Now, let me state that I do believe it is possible to train yourself to let go of the past and be optimistic about the future without the aid of the Atonement---but it is a lot more difficult to do on your own because it does require deliberate training and personal discipline.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I wouldn't ever want to take someone's placebo effect away from them. If their beliefs are working for them, why try to disabuse them of it? But for me, I'm personally more interested in having an accurate view of the world than believing in social fictions---useful though those fictions may be.

Footnotes
 [1] For a good and accessible summary of the history, methodology, and evidence accumulated over the last 300 years of New Testament criticism, I would recommend reading Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why a trade book written for a lay audience by Bart Ehrmann, a well-respected New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill. I would also recommend listening to Jared Anderson's "An Academic Introduction to the New Testament" on the Mormon Stories podcast. Lastly, I'd recommend investing in a study Bible such as the New Revised Standard Version. (I believe my husband and I use the Harper-Collins edition.) I list my sources here so that you know I'm not just pulling this stuff from Joe Schmoe's Anti-Christ website. This is legitimate scholarship being made by individuals who have devoted their life and careers to the study of ancient Greek languages and the New Testament manuscripts. They study the Bible in a league of their own and to disrespect their scholarship shows incredible audacity, naivete and ignorance of this field of study.

[2] Kraemer, Ross Shepherd and Mary Rose D'Angelo, eds. Women and Christian Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ehrmann, ibid.

[6] Just as a humorous side note. An image was floating around the Internet that said: "To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click 'I agree.' "

[7] This is a very complicated debate and one that I'm not fully qualified to retrace, so I'll refer you to Wikipedia's entry on Mark 16 for more information about the debate.

[8] It's useful to acknowledge that there are many different ways of conceiving of the concepts of grace and the Atonement.

[9] My friend who is a New Testament scholar with an LDS background wrote a beautiful Middle Way Mormonism post expressing similar ideas: "Jesus: Savior or Symbol."

On Maltheism from Wondermark

I really enjoyed this series about maltheism from the comic strip Wondermark, so I thought I would re-post them here. (This re-post is done with permission, by the way.) It's an interesting thought experiment, especially after my previous post about God. (Incidentally, I've been emailing back and forth with a friend about that post for the last three months. It's been an interesting discussion.)

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the strip!

Gospel Principles #1 - Our Heavenly Father (NOM version)

See my previous blog entry to read how I taught this lesson in Relief Society.

For most of my adolescent and adult life, I had a strong belief in God. When I was 14, I had a transcendent experience (probably what some Christians would call the sensation of “being born again”) in which I prayed to God and felt strongly that he was real and that he loved me deeply. I remember feeling like I was on a spiritual high for nearly an entire week---just so utterly happy to feel God’s love and see his hand in my life.

For most of my life, I saw God as a loving parent who knew me more perfectly than I knew myself. I believed he was intimately aware of every detail of my life and that he regularly intervened on my behalf. And I furthermore believed he did this for everyone else on earth too---but not all of his children were fully aware of his love and his presence. This belief gave me a sense of purpose, an elevated self-esteem, and a feeling that everything would turn out okay for me in the end.

Those days are over now. It's interesting how far I've come from that too. I recently became a member of a private agnostic/atheist Facebook group for Mormons. (Funny---the person I was 2 years ago could not have even conceived that such a group existed, let alone become a member of one.) This morning a group member posted an interesting question:

Hey everybody, I was just curious about the spectrum of belief/disbelief in this group. Where do you guys fall on this 7-point scale? (Borrowed from Richard Dawkins.) All viewpoints on the issue are welcome. I just think that it might be interesting to clarify what each of us means when we say we are agnostics/atheists/nonbelievers, etc.

1. Strong Theist: I do not question the existence of God, I KNOW he exists.
2. De-facto Theist: I cannot know for certain but I strongly believe in God and I live my life on the assumption that he is there.
3. Weak Theist: I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.
4. Pure Agnostic: God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.
5. Weak Atheist: I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.
6. De-facto Atheist: I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable and I live my life under the assumption that he is not there.
7. Strong Atheist: I am 100% sure that there is no God.

I thought about it for a long time, and eventually I responded: "To be honest, my answer would probably change depending on which day you asked me. But on most days I would put myself at a solid 5. On my darker days, I'm a 7 and on my more optimistic, socially-amenable days I'm a 3."

Simply put, although today I am highly skeptical of God’s existence, I am willing to make room for the possibility that God might still exist. I do, however, feel confident that if God exists, he/she is probably very different from how I used to imagine him/her to be when I was younger. I'll explain why I've come to feel that way in this blog entry.

NOTE: The topic of today's blog entry is of course a very sensitive issue. It was actually very difficult to write this post since I knew so many people would see it differently than I do. So, let me just make it clear that I am in no way advocating that others adopt my views on God. You are welcome to retain your particular beliefs and I will respect them and even validate them. I just want to explain what my views are in order to make sense of it for myself. Also, I will refer to God using the male pronoun "he" for the sake of convenience---but not because I actually believe God is a male.

Contradictory Premises
As I already mentioned, I used to see God as a parent figure who was actively involved in my life. If I were to summarize my previous views on God in the form of a theorem, it would look like this:

1. God is a loving being who is fair and equitable, who wants the best for all of his children.
2. God is an all-powerful being who is capable of influencing the world and human events on both a large and small scale.
3. God is aware of each of his children’s lives and is actively trying to nurture them and influence their lives for the better.

While I feel it is possible for God to have any one of these three qualities, I’ve realized that you can’t have all three---you have to pick two. As soon as you choose one of those qualities, it immediately nullifies one of the other two.

Let me illustrate my meaning. Let’s take Theorem #1 which says that God is a loving being who is fair and equitable and who wants the best for his children. If that is true, it becomes very difficult to make sense of the extremely stark inequities and brutalities that exist in the world.

Take, this image for example:

This is a picture of thousands of shoes that used to belong to the Jewish men, women, and children who were systematically murdered in concentration camps by the Nazi soldiers during the Holocaust. When you watch films such as Night and Fog and read other accounts of the atrocities of the Holocaust, it is quite natural to ask: how could a loving and equitable God allow an estimated six million individuals to be heinously tortured and murdered solely because of their ethnicity?

The Book of Mormon attempts to answer this question in Alma 14. In this chapter, Alma and Amulek witness believing women and children being burned to death by the wicked unbelievers. When Amulek pleads with Alma to let them intervene using the powers God has given them, Alma replies in verse 11:

The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand; for behold the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory; and he doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just; and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day.

In other words, the righteous and the wicked will have their just rewards in the after-life. By that same logic, God doesn’t intervene in egregious human events such as the Holocaust so that Hitler’s wicked deeds will serve as a testament against him in the next life.

I suppose I could logically accept such an explanation (even though it is admittedly very unsatisfactory on an emotional level). However, this explanation makes Theorem #3 impossible because it suggests that God does not intervene in our lives for the most part (even though he has the power to do so). Perhaps he does so out of a respect for human agency or something to that effect.

But this is a bit of a problem for contemporary Mormons. If you visit a ward on any given Fast Sunday, you will hear many Mormons who provide anecdotal evidence asserting that Theorem #3 is most definitely true. Mormons are fond of sharing stories in which they could see that God had intervened in their life in some way. Probably the most typical example of this is when someone gets up and talks about how they lost something like their car keys, and then they miraculously found them shortly after praying to God for help. I used to enjoy both hearing and telling those kinds of stories because I saw it as evidence of God’s love for us and his personal involvement in our lives. But those stories make me cringe now; I just can’t see how Theorem #3 makes any sense at all when taking into account all of the suffering in the world.

If you have the stomach for it, take a look at this Pulitzer-Prize winning photo, taken by Kevin Carter in 1993:

[Click on this link to view the image]

Truthfully, this image is so disturbing to me that I can’t bring myself to feature it directly on my blog. The picture shows a starving, emaciated Sudanese girl being stalked by a vulture. Carter said the girl was on her way to a feeding center when he took the picture. Fortunately, he chased the vulture away after snapping the picture and the girl eventually made it to the center, but the photograph haunted him so profoundly that he committed suicide in 1994. Looking at the picture, I can understand why.

To put this image into relief, let's contrast it with a personal story told by Elder J. Devin Cornish in the most recent General Conference. He talks about how he was riding his bicycle on his way home from medical school when he felt incredibly tired and hungry. He decided that he would feel better if he could get a piece of chicken at a nearby fried chicken shop where they were having a sale on drumsticks for 29 cents. When he looked in his wallet, he saw he only had a nickel. He states:

As I rode along, I told the Lord my situation and asked if, in His mercy, He could let me find a quarter on the side of the road. I told Him that I didn’t need this as a sign but that I would be really grateful if He felt to grant me this kind blessing. I began watching the ground more intently but saw nothing. Trying to maintain a faith-filled but submissive attitude as I rode, I approached the store. Then, almost exactly across the street from the chicken place, I saw a quarter on the ground. With gratitude and relief, I picked it up, bought the chicken, savored every morsel, and rode happily home.

Why would God help an educated, white, American Mormon doctor find a quarter on the ground so that he could buy a piece of chicken while simultaneously allowing this little girl in Africa---and countless other children---to nearly starve to death?

To answer that question, you need to drop one of the three theorems. One possibility is to drop Theorem #2 and say that God is a loving and equitable being who is fully aware of this child, but he is not all-powerful and is therefore incapable of intervening on her behalf. Mormon doctrine is probably flexible enough to allow for this possibility, but it is certainly not a very popular view of God among mainstream Mormons. For example, Elder Cornish interprets his story this way:

In His mercy, the God of heaven, the Creator and Ruler of all things everywhere, had heard a prayer about a very minor thing. One might well ask why He would concern Himself with something so small. I am led to believe that our Heavenly Father loves us so much that the things that are important to us become important to Him, just because He loves us. How much more would He want to help us with the big things that we ask, which are right?

Assuming that Elder Cornish's logic is sound (doubtful---but I'll play along), then perhaps God can only help the girl if she prays to him for help. Perhaps she didn't pray? Or maybe if she did pray, perhaps she didn't use the appropriate format and structure---using "thee" and "thy" and closing in the name of Christ. Ugh... I really don't like that thought at all. I really chafe at the idea of a legalistic God who needs you to perfectly perform some ritual in order for him to have the power to help you. Because that just leads us back to inequity again since this Sudanese girl didn't have the good fortune to know about the proper way to pray---through no fault of her own. She just lost out on culture roulette.

Let's see what happens when we drop Theorem #3 instead. Perhaps God is a loving and equitable being who is all-powerful, but he is no longer aware of this girl’s adversities. This view of God would be at odds with Mormon doctrine. It's more like in line with the Deist view of a God that initially created the world but then left it alone to its own devices. If this is true, God doesn't intervene in our lives because he is not in our corner of the universe any more and he isn't aware of our needs. If we adopt this view of an absent God, then Elder Cornish was using flawed Post Hoc logic to falsely see a causal link between his prayer and finding the quarter (which is a fairly plausible explanation, actually). The problem with dropping Theorem #3 is that you have to completely realign what it means to pray and what kind of a relationship you can have with God. It just opens up a new can of theological worms.

The only other possibility (and by far the most disturbing) is to drop Theorem #1. Perhaps God is not a loving and equitable being after all. Perhaps he really does favor the rich, the white, the beautiful, the heterosexual, and the male over those who are not. Perhaps God favors these lucky individuals because of the remarkably good decisions they made in the pre-mortal existence. This view of God frankly disturbs me and I cannot accept it. If it is true, then God would not a being that is worthy of my worship.

I guess my point is that it really is impossible for all three of these theorems about God be true. You have to pick two of them. For me, it's a Sophie's Choice to have to decide which two are more to my liking. I wish God could be all three at the same time. But I doubt that he can.

The Historical Development of Monotheism
Although it really does pain me to say this, I find it more logically plausible that God doesn't exist at all. One reason why I find the existence of God to be implausible is because the historical and archaeological evidence seems to suggest that God is a man-made construct. My study of Biblical scholarship has lead me to this conclusion.

For a really fabulous introduction to the current views of Biblical historians and archaeologists about the development of the Old Testament, I'd highly recommend watching an episode of NOVA entitled The Bible's Buried Secrets on the PBS website. I'd also recommend reading Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible for a more in-depth examination of the scholarship mentioned in that documentary.

Rather than rehearse the whole argument here, I'm just going to cite a comment I made on someone's blog entry since it mentions a lot of the scholarly concepts that inform my current views about Biblical history. The blog entry I was responding to was partially about how the Mormon concept of Mother in Heaven has fallen by the wayside. A commenter on the blog argued that Catholics were responsible for removing the theology of Mother in Heaven from Mormonism. I know it's both lazy and pompous to quote myself, but here was my reply:

"I apologize in advance for leaving such a long comment, but I want to respond to what an earlier commenter said about the Catholic church (aka the Apostasy) being responsible for getting rid of the theology of Heavenly Mother. It's not my desire to be contentious, but I want to point out that this idea is not supported by the historical or archaeological record. The removal of female goddesses from Judeo-Christian theology could instead be traced to Old Testament times---specifically to the period in which Jews were in Babylonian captivity beginning around 600 BC. Most Biblical scholars agree that it was during this time period when the theological concept of monotheism (one God and no other Gods) was first developed.

"What is important to know about the Iron Age is that they had a very different concept of God than we have today. Most cultures during this time (including the Jews) believed that each kingdom (each nation/group of people) had their own god. That god was believed to fight with them in battles with other nations (other gods). When your god won, it meant your god was superior to their god. It was also customary for defeated nations to stop worshiping their nation's god and begin worshiping the god of the victorious nation.

"The god of the Jewish nation-state was Yahweh. But it is important to note that the Jews would not have believed Yahweh was the only god. Not only did they believe other nations had their own gods, but the Jews also believed in other minor gods whom they worshiped. (Such as female goddesses.)

"All of this changed in 586 BC when the Jews were defeated and captured by the Babylonians. The Jewish priests and scribes did not stop worshiping Yahweh like they were supposed to. They retained their own religious traditions and theology in captivity. It was during this time that they developed the idea that Yahweh was the one and only god. And the Jews reasoned Yahweh had allowed them to fall into captivity because he had been angered by their worship of false gods. And so Jews began to strongly discourage their worship of other gods (such as female goddesses). That's why the Old Testament has so such so many proscriptions against worshiping false idols throughout it.

"I know it's uncomfortable for Mormons to think of Judeo-Christian theology as being something that evolved over time (continuing revelation?). And it's equally unsettling to imagine that the Bible wasn't really written in Moses' time but rather in David's/Isaiah's time, but that's what the general consensus is among Biblical scholars and archaeologists.

"It is the memory of my recently deceased Catholic grandparents that motivates my desire to make this comment. They lived in Utah from the 1950s until this year. Unfortunately, they were often badly mistreated or maligned by their Mormon neighbors---in large part because of strong anti-Papist sentiments that existed in Mormon culture (fueled by frankly wrong-headed statements from LDS leaders from the 1930s to the 1980s).

"I should also mention that I recently attended my Catholic grandmother's funeral and I listened intently as a priest recited the prayers of the rosary on my grandmother's behalf. Most of the prayers in the rosary are offered to the Virgin Mary. Although she is regarded as a Saint (not a God), Catholics pray to her for intercession and see her as a model of holy femininity. I can’t help but feel that Mormons lack something their Catholic sisters have. Mormons have a female goddess in our theology---but we are not allowed to pray to her or to even speak about her in public. There is something to be envied in Catholicism.

"When we speak of the Apostasy, I hope we will be sensitive to our fellow Christian brothers and sisters---even if they do not always extend the same courtesy to us. I think we would be better served by building theological bridges rather than theological walls."

Concluding on a Hopeful Note
This blog entry has probably been a total downer to read. But I wanted to end with a note of optimism since I don't completely reject the idea of God. I'll close by (sigh) quoting myself again from a recent email conversation I had with a friend from another faith:

"I think that if God exists, I feel confident that he has created multiple paths through which we can find him. And maybe God is flexible enough that he can be for us what we need him to be. For example, my sister prefers the Mormon version of God who is intimately involved in every aspect of her life and who guides her every decision. That thought gives her a sense of self-esteem and direction in life. But I personally don't find that kind of a God very appealing because I don't want God to micromanage every aspect of my life; I would prefer a God who trusts me to make my own decisions based on my own sound reasoning on the matter. And perhaps God is both of those things at once. Perhaps God is the loving 'parent figure' my sister needs him to be and the observant, but distant 'supervisor figure' that I need him to be for me. Can God be big enough to be all the things that we as individuals need him to be? My hope is that he can."

Perhaps God is an important part of the human psyche---evolved through cultural and biological processes in response to very real human needs and concerns. As I've said elsewhere on this blog, God might be a blank screen onto which we project an image of our ideal selves. As we look at that ideal image, we are possibly inspired to become better than we already are. And maybe we can achieve more as humans than we ever could have without that distant ideal to guide us.

And so, on that note, I'll close this blog entry with the immortal words of Cake: "Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps."

Gospel Principles #1 - Our Heavenly Father (TBM version)

Since I no longer serve as a Relief Society teacher in my ward, I'm going to start retroactively examining lessons that I taught in the past. I'll start at the beginning with my first lesson from the Gospel Principles manual.

This blog entry will examine how I taught this lesson originally in church. I'll post the "NOM Version" of this lesson in a few days. At the time I originally taught this lesson, I was a fully believing church member. My crisis of faith began about two months after teaching this lesson.

For reference, see Our Heavenly Father in the Gospel Principles manual.

Who is God?
I started the lesson by talking about how when my husband served his mission in Japan, he struggled to teach with the old-school missionary discussions because the first discussion operates on the assumption that you are already familiar with the Christian concept of God. For most Japanese people, their concept of God is so different from our own that it was difficult to even fathom what the missionaries were talking about. I then asked the sisters how they would explain the concept of God to someone who had never heard of him before---someone who has absolutely no concept of God. I listed the sister's responses on the boards. (I don't remember what they were any more.)

We then read the following paragraph from page 5 of the manual:

The prophets have taught us that God is the Almighty Ruler of the universe. God dwells in heaven (see D&C 20:17). Through His Son, Jesus Christ, He created the heavens and the earth and all things that are in them (see 3 Nephi 9:15; Moses 2:1). He made the moon, the stars, and the sun. He organized this world and gave it form, motion, and life. He filled the air and the water with living things. He covered the hills and plains with all kinds of animal life. He gave us day and night, summer and winter, seedtime and harvest. He made man in His own image to be a ruler over His other creations (see Genesis 1:26–27).

I emphasized that God is the creator and that Jesus Christ created the world under God's direction.

God is Our Spiritual Father
We then read the following passage from page 5 of the manual:

God is the Supreme and Absolute Being in whom we believe and whom we worship. He is “the Great Parent of the universe,” and He “looks upon the whole of the human family with a fatherly care and paternal regard” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith [2007], 39).

I reiterated that God is our Father. Because he created our spirits, he is our spiritual father in heaven.

I then had a few people in the class read Moses 1:27-33, 37. You can read it on your own if you want to, but it's basically God speaking to Moses saying that he created worlds without number, but "The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine." I talked about how there are so many people that they are numberless like the sands of the sea, but God knows each one individually and cares about them. That says a lot about our relationship to him.

God Has a Body of Flesh and Bones
We then read from page 6 of the manual:

Because we are made in His image (see Moses 2:26; 6:9), we know that our bodies are like His body. His eternal spirit is housed in a tangible body of flesh and bones (see D&C 130:22). God’s body, however, is perfected and glorified, with a glory beyond all description.

To add a little bit of humor to the lesson, I talked about how the first time I learned this principle was when I watched the Cecil B. DeMille movie The Ten Commandments and my parents took me aside to tell me that God actually has a physical body that resembles a human's---not like the pillar of fire depicted in the movie.

I then said to the class: "So, this is something that puzzles me. The doctrine that God has a human body is unique to our church. Joseph Smith learned this from the First Vision and we emphasize it heavily in our church. Why does it matter that God has a tangible body? Assuming he could still love, guide, and protect you without a body, what difference would it make if he were only spirit?"

I used the sister's responses to have a discussion about it. I don't remember what was said, but I have in my notes that one point I wanted to bring out was that it tells us about God's past and about what we each have the potential to become.

God is the Source of Everything Good
We then read from page 6 of the manual:

God is perfect. He is a God of righteousness, with attributes such as love, mercy, charity, truth, power, faith, knowledge, and judgment. He has all power. He knows all things. He is full of goodness.

All good things come from God. Everything that He does is to help His children become like Him. He has said, “Behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39)

I had the sister's pick out the key words from that passage that told us about God's attributes and we listed them on the board: perfect, righteous, all-knowing, the source of everything good, etc. Once those were listed on the board, I talked about how these attributes were the reason why we worship God and also why we desperately need God's guidance in our lives.

Coming to Know and Love God
The final section of the lesson talks about the importance of coming to know God. We read from page 6 of the manual:

Knowing God is so important that the Savior said, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

The first and greatest commandment is “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart” (Matthew 22:37).

The more we know God, the more we love Him and keep His commandments (see 1 John 2:3–5). By keeping His commandments we can become like Him.

I then said: "So, we need to know God better in order to become more like him and to learn how to love him. It's probably safe to assume that all of us in this room do believe in God. I want you to reflect for a minute on why you believe in God. What experiences have shaped your testimony of our Heavenly Father? What methods have you used that are helpful for drawing you closer to Heavenly Father?"

I just let the sister's share their experiences for the remainder of the lesson, building on what they said to bring out the four suggestions given by the lesson about how to come to know God:

1. Believe that he exists and that he loves us
2. Study the scriptures
3. Pray to him
4. Obey all his commandments

For #3, I had a note to myself to read this from the Bible Dictionary: “The object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them.”

I had also written my own ideas for how to come closer to God:  writing a journal, being a parent, giving service, putting our wills on His altar, removing anything from our lives that can distract us from God.

I then bore my testimony and concluded. Pretty standard stuff. I seem to recall that it went well.

A Feminist Review of Daughters in My Kingdom: Part One

A few weeks ago my Relief Society president handed out free copies of the church's new publication Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society. I finally finished reading the book last week and since the book was plugged multiple times during last weekend's Relief Society General Broadcast (prompting my TBM mother to state that the broadcast was "one big infomercial"), I'd figure I'd post a review.

I should mention that when I first tried sitting down and writing my review, it ended up being nearly 20 pages long, so I decided it wouldn't work for a blog post. However, if you want to read my full, in-depth analysis with notes on each chapter, I've posted it on a Google Doc.

Instead, I'm going to condense and break up my document into smaller parts, each part discussing some of the major themes of Daughters in My Kingdom.

Introduction
Daughters in My Kingdom is a 208 page, full-color, glossy booklet discussing the history of the Relief Society and the role of women within the church. Since the booklet was handed out for free in my ward and since you can buy it for only $3 at the Church Distribution Center, I'm guessing the church is printing this book at a net loss. Whenever the church does something like that, it means that they really, really want people to read it. I can't help but wonder if the church is feeling the pressure of increasing criticism from feminist groups inside and outside of the church. (I discuss my evidence why I feel Daughters in My Kingdom is a response to feminist groups such as LDS Wave in more detail in my Google Doc, if you're interested.)

With that in mind, I was feeling fairly optimistic when I began reading Daughters in My Kingdom that it would be a step in the right direction towards gender equality within the church. And while it there are indeed aspects of this publication that are progressive, I nevertheless feel that Daughters in My Kingdom is not a very satisfactory response to the very valid concerns being raised by Mormon feminists.

The Relief Society as an "Ancient" Organization
The idea that the Relief Society is a divine organization was a central theme throughout this book. In Chapter 1, the book spends a great deal of time discussing the women in the New Testament and how Christ valued and involved women in his ministry. It also suggests that Christ organized the Relief Society as part of "the same organization that existed in the primitive church" (see the 6th Article of Faith). This chapter quotes Eliza R. Snow twice (once in the chapter heading and once in the actual chapter) as saying: "Although the name may be of modern date, the institution is of ancient origin. We were told by our martyred prophet that the same organization existed in the church anciently" (1, 7). Side note: if you want to read my discussion of why I think this idea is patently false, you can read my detailed notes for this chapter. But I won't dwell on it here because I want to focus more on how this idea is important to the book's overall argument.

Chapter 1 equivocates on Snow's statement a little bit by stating: "While little is known about a formal organization of women in the New Testament, evidence suggests that women were vital participants in the Savior's ministry" (3). Although this qualifying statement is an indication that the church is unwilling to fully commit to Eliza R. Snow's assertion that the Relief Society existed in Christ's time, the chapter ultimately allows Snow to have the last word on the matter by including her quote in the chapter's final section. In this way, the book subtly gives an official church endorsement of the idea that the Relief Society existed in the primitive church.

The book's suggestion that the Relief Society was established by Christ as part of the primitive church is very important to one of the book's main arguments: that the church's current ecclesiastical structure is divinely justified---and therefore cannot be changed. Women cannot have the priesthood or hold priesthood-only leadership positions because Christ intended for them to have a separate, complementary women's organization. The "separate, but equal" pattern of organization for the contemporary church is divinely authorized and therefore unnegotiable.

The Relief Society was Organized "Under the Priesthood"
Chapter 2 continues in this same vein by discussing the history of the organization of the first Female Relief Society of Nauvoo. It discusses how Sarah Kimball, Margaret Cook, and Eliza R. Snow first approached Joseph Smith with their idea to form the Relief Society in the spring of 1842. Although the evidence couldn't be clearer that the Relief Society was Kimball, Cook and Snow's brainchild, the chapter quotes Sarah Kimball's 1883 memoir in which she remembers that Joseph Smith responded to their proposal by saying: "This is not what you want. Tell the sisters their offering is accepted of the Lord, and he has something better for them than a written constitution. I invite them to meet with me and a few of the brethren next Thursday afternoon, and I will organize the women under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood" (12). The chapter then goes on to argue: "Rather than pattern a Latter-day Saint women's organization after the women's societies that were prevalent and popular at that time, the Prophet Joseph Smith organized them after a divinely inspired and authorized manner" (12).

This chapter repeatedly emphasizes that the Relief Society was set up under priesthood authority. The book states: "As the Lord's prophet, Joseph Smith held all the keys of priesthood authority on the earth. Therefore, when he organized the Relief Society to function under his overall direction, he unlocked opportunities for the women of the Church to play vital roles in the work of the Lord's kingdom. They now served under the authority of the priesthood" (15). Later in the chapter, the book states: "The Relief Society was not just another group of women trying to do good in the world. It was different. It was 'something better' because it was organized under priesthood authority" (16). Side note: you can read my detailed notes on this chapter for why I feel that this portrayal of the history of the early Relief Society is flawed. I discuss evidence supporting the theory that Joseph Smith wanted to use the Relief Society to introduce the female temple endowment, but later abandoned it when the society became too popular (and was therefore no longer elite).

What I want to point out is how chapter 2 further supports the book's larger rhetorical purpose of justifying the church's contemporary auxiliary structure. The book doesn't allow the Relief Society to be Kimball, Cook, and Snow's idea---it has to be Joseph Smith's idea (and therefore the Lord's idea). It has to be organized "under the priesthood after a pattern of the priesthood" (12) in order to be authorized and authentic.

What about the Structural Reorganization of the Relief Society in 1971?
Frankly, the assertion that the Relief Society was organized "under the priesthood" is an anachronistic view of the Relief Society's relationship to the priesthood---meaning that it is being filtered through the lens of the contemporary church institution in order to justify its current structure. The fact that the Relief Society's history is being filtered through the the lens of the contemporary church is made obvious by the notable omissions of key historical events from Chapter 6 of the book. This chapter (which covers the history of the Relief Society from 1946 to the present day) makes no mention of the sweeping organizational changes that occurred within the Relief Society under Harold B. Lee's Correlation program in 1971. Under Lee's administration, all of the church's auxiliary programs (which included the Relief Society, the Primary, the Young Women's and Young Men's programs, and the Sunday School) ceased to be fully autonomous organizations.

Prior to 1971, the Relief Society was an independent organization. Its relationship to the church was similar to the relationship an after-school program has with a school: they were definitely connected, but they ultimately existed independently of one another. The Relief Society had its own leadership structure, its own publications, its own curriculum, and---perhaps most importantly---its own finances. In the 1970s, the Relief Society lost its autonomy and came under full priesthood control on a general, stake, and ward level. Their finances were seized and surrendered to the church. Their publications were discontinued. The General Relief Society Presidencies, who had previously served in their callings for life (the way a prophet and his First Presidency serve for life), were eventually released by their new priesthood leaders. Side note: for a detailed history of the controversy over the Correlation changes, see chapter 7 of David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism and Part 2 of Daymon Smith's discussion of Correlation on the Mormon Stories podcast.

In short, the Relief Society only began to exist "under the priesthood" in 1971. It wasn't this way in Christ's time and it wasn't that way in Joseph Smith's time. The book's suggestion that it ever was that way to begin with is terribly anachronistic. And it reveals the book's true purpose: to give divine legitimacy to the current institutional structure of the church, the "separate, but equal" organization for men and women.

I counted nearly 18 other instances in Daughters in My Kingdom in which the authors took great pains to constantly assert that all of the actions of the Relief Society are and were authorized by priesthood leaders. In many cases, these assertions were very awkward and redundant, which suggests that they were deliberate and consciously inserted into the text (probably by the Correlation Committee). Here's a couple of examples:

• "The Saints were blessed by priesthood power through the laying on of hands by brethren who held the priesthood" (32).
• "[T]he Relief Society established the Relief Society Social Service Department in 1919, with the full support of President Heber J. Grant" (67).
• "In 1924, with support and encouragement from general and local priesthood leaders and Sister Williams [the General Relief Society president], the Cottonwood Stake Relief Society established a maternity hospital" (69).

In each of those cases, it appears that the book took great pains to make it very clear that all Relief Society actions fell under priesthood governance. I've listed more of these citations in the General Observations section of my Google Doc. 

Conclusion
Earlier I used the term "separate, but equal" to describe the church's current auxiliary structure. This was intentional, my purpose being to allude to the name of the constitutional doctrine under which racial segregation was legalized. My argument is that the church's "separate, but equal" doctrine functions in a similar way to Jim Crow laws: it creates a system in which there are two classes of citizens (in this case, men and women) with the purpose of denying the second class of citizens any real kind of power or voice within the governing body.

A Mormon woman's relationship with her God is constantly mediated by males. Although she has the right to personal prayer, personal revelation, and spiritual gifts, beyond that she is wholly dependent on males for salvation and exaltation. A male priesthood holder must perform the saving ordinances for her (with the notable exception of the Initiatory rites in preparation for the endowment). A male bishop must interview her for worthiness to enter the temple. A male prophet is responsible for communicating  a male God's will to her. And male leaders on a general, stake, and ward level have the final say in all decisions that affect a woman's day-to-day experiences within the church. Males, in turn, have no such dependency on females, with the exception of their need to be sealed to a woman in order to receive the patriarchal priesthood. And, according to Daughters in My Kingdom, a female auxiliary leader must have authority (a fancy word for "permission") from her male priesthood leaders to enact changes to her organization that she feels are needed. I fail to see the purported equality in this system.

I find it offensive when church members try to suggest that this inherently inequitable system is what God wants and intends for his children. I'm an agnostic (bordering on atheism), which means that I am skeptical of God's existence but could possibly be convinced otherwise. If God exists and does indeed speak to humans through personal or prophetic revelation today, I feel confident that we receive that communication imperfectly, filtering this revelation through our own biases and prejudices. James Madison expressed my current view succinctly in The Federalist Papers: "When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be, is rendered dim and doubtful by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated."

With that in mind, I've come to feel that God is a blank screen onto which we project ourselves---complete with our biases, prejudices, and our assumptions about the world. We project our perceptions of goodness onto God and then turn around and use that projection as justification for a theology we constructed ourselves. The current leaders of the church were born and raised in an era of patriarchy. Therefore, when they "talk" to God, they filter it through that lens. I'm highly skeptical that God is such a blatant misogynist---and if he is, then he is not a creature who is worthy of my worship.