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If you were to learn about Latter-day Saint garments only from mainstream media coverage, you might assume that women experience them primarily as a burden: physically uncomfortable, medically suspect, sexually inhibiting, or symbolically oppressive. Some women do experience them that way, and their stories should not be dismissed. But the current conversation is incomplete. In recent years, journalists have both given garments increased media attention while giving heavy deference to those who don’t like them. The media has been far less interested in women who experience garments as sacred, comforting, protective, inconvenient but worthwhile, and simply woven into an ordinary life of faith. The result is not exactly a false picture, but an unbalanced one.

To understand the distorted public conversation, it helps to begin with a few basic facts.

The garment, or, more properly, The Garment of the Holy Priesthood, is the two-piece underclothing that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who have been through a covenantal temple ceremony called the endowment wear (hence its colloquial name, the temple garment). Many receive the endowment before a mission or temple marriage, though others do so for personal spiritual reasons. 

The garment represents the coat of skins given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and serves as a reminder of the promises made in the temple. It provides spiritual protection to its wearer. And it also reminds the wearer of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, which symbolically covers our sins and weaknesses and wraps us in mercy. 

The garment design, like other components of the temple, has been updated many times since it was first introduced by Joseph Smith. Originally a long-john one piece, the style and material options have expanded over the years, most recently with a sleeveless top option released for both sexes in 2025.

Endowed Latter-day Saints are expected to wear the garment “day and night throughout [their] life.” At the same time, there is variation in practice around exercise, medical issues, postpartum recovery, and other personal matters, and these questions are not dictated in detailed church policy. The church handbook also states that “it is a matter of personal preference” whether a member wears other undergarments over or under the garment.

Historically, the Church has been cautious about publicly discussing the temple garment, but in recent years, it has released several press releases and an informational video about the garment for a non-member audience. In 2014, one such press release indicated that popular pejorative terms such as “magic underwear” were “inaccurate” and “offensive,” and requested that media give Latter-day Saints “the same degree of respect and sensitivity that would be afforded to any other faith by people of goodwill.” In response, The Atlantic published a respectful piece, but headlined it “Mormon Underwear, Revealed.” Indeed, mainstream media coverage of the garment very rarely avoids a wink at the sexual—on the same day of the aforementioned Atlantic headline, The Washington Post published an article titled, “Mormon Church peels back mystery of sacred undergarments.”

The problem, unfortunately, goes beyond headlines. Hanna Grover, 27, a content creator who posts humorous videos about Latter-day Saint life, was interviewed for a 2025 New York Magazine piece entitled “Mormon Women Are Going Sleeveless.” She told me that her interaction with the writer was very respectful, and that the writer took the time to “understand my background and how garments were a part of my life even before I was endowed.” But Grover said she was surprised upon publication to find that she provided the only positive garment commentary included in the final article (the majority of the interviewees identified as ex-Mormon).

Part of what makes the fixation so frustrating is that religious clothing is not actually unusual. Many faiths use clothing, coverings, or other embodied practices to express devotion, modesty, consecration, or separation from the world. Garments are perhaps unique in that they also serve as underwear, but they are also comparatively less restrictive than many other religious vestments.

Amanda Volk, 42, a lifelong member of the Church in Kansas City, Mo., told me that as a girl in central Kansas, she often noticed Mennonite women in long dresses and bonnets and asked her mother why they dressed that way everywhere they went. Her mother used those moments to explain that many religious communities use dress to express devotion, modesty, and religious dedication to God—and that Latter-day Saint garments belonged to that broader pattern. Seen through that lens, garments did not strike her as something extremely foreign. 

Any casual observer can easily note that public discourse around garments tends to center around women. Perhaps women’s garments receive disproportionate attention because women’s bodies already receive disproportionate public scrutiny. 

Still, if public coverage often foregrounds women’s dissatisfaction, my own interviews suggested that women who experience garments positively are rarely as simplistic as outsiders assume. Their experiences differ widely. Some adjusted quickly and easily. Others experienced real frustration, trial and error, or wardrobe overhaul while still coming to see garments as meaningful.

Kenzie Spafford, 22, lived in Las Vegas when she was endowed. Shortly after, she moved to Tokyo, Japan, notorious for its hot and humid summers. Then she received a mission call to Gilbert, Ariz. “I’ve experienced a lot of heat since being endowed,” she told me. She worried that it would be uncomfortable wearing the extra layer of clothing in the heat, but she found “it doesn’t really bother me at all. I hardly notice how hot it is with a super thin extra layer, it feels like nothing.”

Arantza Condie, 35, a convert and mother of three, was endowed three years ago. She told me that preparing to wear garments was nerve-wracking and that she had to replace most of her wardrobe. Initially, she was disheartened in trying to find clothing that worked. It was a lot of trial and error. But over time, she said, she came to enjoy the new style that was emerging. Unexpectedly, she found herself criticizing her body less and feeling more comfortable in her skin. The most profound change in her, she said, did not occur because the garments “forced” her to dress modestly, but because she was confronted with the reminder of Christ, and His love and sacrifice for her, every morning she put them on.

Other women I talked to described a similar transformation of perspective—when they began to see the garment as enabling them to have a greater closeness to and understanding of the Savior, those feelings of restriction began to melt away.

Alli Stoddard, 21, is a returned missionary and student at BYU. She explained, “While garments do help us to stay modest, that is not why we wear them … When my perception of garments (was) that they were for modesty, I had very little desire to wear them, but when I understood that they represent Jesus Christ covering us, my love for my garments grew exponentially, and the struggle of wearing them disappeared.”

How individual members discuss garments varies greatly from family to family. Because Latter-day Saints promise in the temple to not reveal some aspects of the temple ceremony, some members are cautious in general about discussing any aspect of the temple outside its walls. In my experience discussing garments with women for this and previous articles, many said that an overly cautious home culture around the topic led newly endowed women to feel confused and discouraged. By contrast, women who grew up in homes where garments were discussed openly and frankly—and where parents intentionally prepared their children for garment wearing—felt more comfortable and better prepared for the transition when they were endowed.

Several of the women I interviewed reinforced that point. Volk told me that she grew up in a home where her parents were committed to wearing their garments daily, and that her mother was wise in helping her children dress in clothes even at a young age that would help prepare them to wear garments someday. Ellie Lewis, a 21-year-old California native and BYU student, chose to be endowed just after high school graduation. She said that with her mother’s advice, she was quickly able to find materials and fits she liked, and that because she already dressed conservatively, she did not need to make a significant adjustment in clothing style. After only a few days, she said, the additional layer felt normal; within a week, she “no longer felt fully put together without them on.”

I asked Becky Squire, 42, a popular influencer who shares devotional and lifestyle content along with garment-friendly fashion, about the tension between discussing the garment in a way that acknowledges both its sacredness and its impact on the mundane daily life of the wearer. “Every single time I post about them, I always include the purpose and tie them back to Jesus Christ,” she said. “I see so many online posts about them and it’s all about fashion. Period. And it’s okay to share them like that, but (it’s important to acknowledge) the power that comes from wearing them.” In speaking with her own daughter about garments, she told me “my main goal was to teach and prepare her before she went through the temple. It was never about what you could or couldn’t wear. It was about becoming someone who wants to make and keep covenants and live in God’s presence.”

Outsider commentary often frames women’s garments as evidence of oppression, while showing little curiosity about women’s own moral or spiritual interpretations. All of the women I spoke to emphasized that the narrative of oppression was inconsistent with their own sense of agency.

“The world has become so big on living your truth and encouraging us to find our voice, but only if our voice and our truth agrees with everyone else’s,” Spafford explained. “I’m comfortable in my skin and my body, I don’t need everyone else to be comfortable with it too … It feels ridiculous to always have to defend my freedom when I’m choosing it everyday, nobody is forcing me or going to make me feel bad if one day I stop wearing them. I would be the only one affected.”

Larisa Banks, 40, a Utah mother of five, made a similar point: “No one is forcing me to wear my garments … It’s not about control, but covenant.” To her, outsiders may understandably see oppression, but inside the practice she experiences garments as something chosen as part of her relationship with God. “Receiving my endowment healed my soul. I was struggling with a deeply personal trial and the experience I had in the temple taught me that this life is just a blip of eternity. Just a blip. And wearing the garments is the least I can do to show my devotion and appreciation for Jesus Christ. He saved me when he didn’t need to and my garments remind me of that daily.”

Ultimately, garment conversations are so difficult because the garment often serves as a proxy for a woman’s larger experience in the Church. It is hard to separate one’s feelings about garments from one’s feelings about covenants, authority, womanhood, marriage, community, and belonging. Women who feel spiritually fed by the Church and at peace within its moral world are often more likely to experience the garment as meaningful rather than burdensome. Women who feel estranged from the Church or wounded within it may be more likely to experience the garment as a concrete manifestation of that pain. This does not make either experience unreal. It simply means that the garment is rarely just about the garment.

When women struggle with garments, Banks said, the first question should not be whether they simply need more faith. “First, I would ask someone struggling to wear their garments what is making it hard right now? … Are they struggling emotionally or feel like they lost some sense of identity? Are they feeling less feminine or less attractive? Are they dealing with a changing postpartum body or sensory issues? Are they struggling to understand the purpose of the garment? I would tell them garments aren’t meant to erase identity. They’re meant to anchor it. I would tell them, it’s ok that it feels different and that the Lord isn’t surprised by them feeling anything they are feeling.”

Likewise, Spafford said she would advise someone who does not have a good relationship with their garments, “Give it time. Garments are an adjustment, but if you go in with an open mind, an open heart, and a desire to follow God, you’ll figure it out a lot faster than if you fight it.”

That, perhaps, is what much of the current garment conversation lacks: not more exposure or more voyeurism, but more open mindedness. A woman who experiences garments as painful or burdensome should be taken seriously. So should a woman who experiences them as sacred, anchoring, protective, or joyful. And any fair attempt to understand Latter-day Saint women and their garments ought to make room for both.

The post The Trouble with Garment Talk appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Fundamentalism is a label that historically has been primarily applied to right-wing religious thinking. It is hard to define precisely, but academic definitions of fundamentalism generally include 1) a belief that there was an idyllic past that we need to return to; 2) an uncritical reading of sacred texts; and 3) intense policing of ingroup and outgroup. 

I should communicate here at the outset that for a believing and sustaining Latter-day Saint, each of these components of fundamentalism has some validity: the idea of restoration faith implies that there are good things in the past that have been lost and need to be rediscovered and reestablished. Also, sacred texts benefit from reading without the normal human tendency to overanalyze into meaninglessness. And without any gatekeeping and boundaries, organizations dissolve.

Afraid of these tensions, fundamentalism is characterized by isolation and walls. The phrase “Mormon fundamentalists” recalls images of walled compounds owned by polygamous offshoot communities, but strains of right-wing fundamentalist thinking in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have in recent years resulted in psychological walls that are just as impenetrable. Combinations of conspiracy thinking, divisive political loyalties, and a move toward evaluating modern prophetic decisions against narrow interpretations of specific passages in the Doctrine and Covenants have led fundamentalist-leaning church members into regular conflict with church leadership and fueled the growth of charismatic splinter movements.

Cognitive Closure

A strong driver of Fundamentalist thinking is the craving for cognitive closure, where the mind becomes closed off from alternative ways of thinking. Cognitive closure spares us from the discomfort of cognitive dissonance, where new information challenges our understanding of reality. Cognitive dissonance is unsettling, and too much of it can lead to intellectual paralysis and despair. We typically respond to cognitive dissonance with one of several strategies: avoiding the new information, updating our map of reality with the new information, rejecting the new information, transcending the conflict, or embracing some amount of paradox and ambiguity. Some of those responses are designed to maintain cognitive closure; others reflect an openness to the painful work of revising our paradigms.

The modern West is in a crisis of abandonment of the Judeo-Christian faith, and the results are societies drowning in nihilistic despair. The progressive tendency is often to blame right-wing fundamentalism for loss of faith, and it is definitely true that right-wing fundamentalist thinking carries its own sets of problems. But when progressives invoke fundamentalism, they are projecting. In reality, modern progressivism is also fundamentalist: it has merely transferred fundamentalist religious intuitions to a set of secular assumptions about the world. For the Latter-day Saint flavor of progressive fundamentalism, think 1) “Back in its idyllic past, the Church was egalitarian, governed by common consent”; 2) total uncritical deference to writings of “the marginalized” or critical theorists; and 3) people are considered “safe” or “unsafe” based on their adherence to progressive dogma.

In their shift to fundamentalism, Latter-day Saint progressives are following the lead of other formerly-believing activists. Ben Appel described this phenomenon in his article titled “As a Gay Child in a Christian Cult, I Was Taught to Hate Myself. Then I Joined the Church of Social Justice—and Nothing Changed.” Appel’s whole memoir is encapsulated in that lengthy title—it describes his transition from a Christian religion oriented around cognitive closure to a secular progressive religion oriented around cognitive closure. The Witch Trials of J. K. Rowling likewise offers, in podcast format, a glimpse of Christian denunciations of J. K. Rowling juxtaposed with similar denunciations from progressive activists. The specific accusations differ between the two groups, but the basic fundamentalist emotional impulses and cognitive mechanisms at work are exactly the same.

Having adopted a new primary religious framework, Latter-day Saint progressives are now exemplifying the cognitive closure described by Ben Appel and other commentators. Notice how among progressive Latter-day Saints, in particular, that they operate in perfect lockstep on issues like gender and sexuality, with none of the diversity of thought that we see in the secular left on those issues. Among Latter-day Saint progressives, there is no equivalent of lesbian journalist Katie Herzog, gay scientist James Cantor, or transgender doctor Erica Andersen, each of whom has dared to publicly question some of the narratives of the new secular religion.

Church members who were formerly believing and sustaining transfer their inherited intuitions about sacredness to their new progressive worldview, and to maintain cognitive closure, they refuse to question the new things that are now deemed sacred, like even the most bizarre choices of identities and pronouns. This notion of sacredness leads to a refusal to question academic texts by “the marginalized,” even texts challenging taboos around incest or indoctrinating children through exposure to sexualized drag performance in early childhood settings. By contrast, among the secular left, never-devout commentators like Bill Maher are more comfortable dissenting from the progressive narrative because they lack any inherited notions of the sacred.

Among progressive church members, we see no evidence of a mental “shelf” where they might place difficult issues or ambiguities around gender and sexuality; no attempts to even acknowledge any contradictions or complexity in their new doctrines, as opposed to the careful and honest approach to faith that we see in the Church’s gospel topics essays. To understand the rigidity of cognitive closure among progressives, consider how much mental effort is required to maintain the belief that this headline describes reality:

And yet, similar headlines are accepted and parroted on a regular basis by progressive Latter-day Saints. We can’t help but wonder if progressives secretly carry reservations about the obvious delusions they are constantly asked to affirm in their new religion; their real level of belief is hard to assess because we have yet to see a single progressive Latter-day Saint willing to publicly voice any amount of dissent from their new doctrines on gender and sexuality.

Allergy to Some

To be sure, we did briefly observe a temporary crack in progressive thought-uniformity after the horrific November 2022 shootings in a queer nightclub in Colorado Springs. Progressives in the church were eager to highlight the “Mormon” background of the shooter because this validated their delusional narrative that the Church’s teachings on gender and sexuality somehow lead to violence. But when the shooter asserted a gender identity of non-binary, progressives mostly went silent rather than explore their cognitive dissonance. Only a few progressives voiced skepticism of the variety typically voiced by commentators like Konstantin Kisin:

Have there been any studies on why seeing the inside of a court room seems to trigger gender dysphoria in sex offenders?

— Konstantin Kisin (@KonstantinKisin) January 28, 2023

Rather than recognize the fact that the term “Mormon” indicates nothing at all about what someone believes or values, and rather than question even the most outlandish gender identity claims, Latter-day Saint progressives quickly retreated to the comfort of groupthink and denial.

The wildly irrational progressive reactions to J. K. Rowling speak to another element of fundamentalism: Apart from ingroup/outgroup distinctions, fundamentalism has a deathly allergy to the idea of some. For right-leaning fundamentalists, the idea that some people are constituted differently than other people and thus will respond to gospel concepts in different ways implies a need for a sometimes-unsettling flexibility in our approach to religion. On the fundamentalist right, adaptation, responsiveness, and flexibility on the part of the Church are framed in terms of “mistakes” or even institutional apostasy.  Moreover, these fundamentalists have a hard time making distinctions regarding the importance of gospel concepts: when it comes to beliefs, for example, the idea of a literal worldwide flood is given the exact same creedal necessity as the atonement of Christ. The idea that some gospel concepts might be interpreted in figurative ways and that our mental models of any gospel concepts could be tentative in any way is extremely frustrating to right-leaning fundamentalists.

Likewise, progressive fundamentalism hates distinctions, though it responds with a different toolset. Progressives paper over differences and distinctions in gospel concepts using a combination of relativism and metaphorizing: gospel concepts can all be treated as metaphors, and none of them are more objectively true than others because truth is all relative. Scripture is all equally allegorical. To say that some things are objectively true and others aren’t is to make distinctions, and distinctions feel exclusionary.

When relativism becomes the new sacred orthodoxy, defining terms and making distinctions become the new sins. As Valerie Hudson correctly explained in the Deseret News, this results in a corruption of language. In perverse appeals to empathy and inclusion, progressives refuse definitions for even basic concepts like “woman.” To maintain a now-sacred notion of equity, all concepts must be equally undefinable, and word choices must be policed not for accuracy but for “harm” and “safety,” measured in terms of their emotional impact upon an ever-expanding demographic called “the marginalized.”

The Horseshoe Theory

Political commentators often refer to the horseshoe theory, that at the extremes, political movements behave alike. Both Marxist and fascist movements echo the satanic phrase “not one soul …” which expresses a bottomless craving for sameness over distinctions and disparities. Marxism and fascism just apply that craving to different areas of human experience and give it authoritarian backing. The horseshoe theory also explains the similar features of left- and right-wing religious fundamentalism, and it is no accident that left- and right-wing strains of religious fundamentalism both tend to look to political saviors who validate fundamentalist thinking over living prophets who don’t.

Political historian Robert Conquest is reported to have said that “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing,” and this just reflects the reality that entropy is the way things go in the absence of clear principles. But we might adapt that maxim to religion and say that any religious organization that is not explicitly orthodox sooner or later becomes fundamentalist, in either left- or right-wing manifestations of that mindset.

As Latter-day Saints, the controversy around Rowling will resonate because they’ve seen so much opposition to beloved prophets coming from the fundamentalist extremes. I explored this phenomenon in my recent article, “Prophets Can’t Win.” Really, the experience of J. K. Rowling indicates that truth-tellers, in general, can’t win, especially when their views are perceived to be invalidating of fundamentalist delusions.

The post J. K. Rowling’s Witch Trials: The Pull of Fundamentalism appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Why the Future of The World’s Largest Religion is Female And African

Gina Zurlo – Religion Unplugged

Religion Unplugged looks at the demographic reasons why the near-term future of religion resides in the women of sub-Saharan Africa, and the significant impacts they’ve made to the world of faith.

No need to be wordy with God, simple prayers are great, too

RJ Jacobs, SJ – The Jesuit Post

Jesuit student, RJ Jacobs, reflects on the simple and meaningful prayers he heard while helping out for Ash Wednesday in the hospital where he volunteers.

Updates in the bible of journalism style

Terry Mattingly – Get Religion

How we understand faith is downstream from how it is described, especially by the journalists we read. The leading light of religion journalism criticism, Terry Mattingly, looks at how the newest changes to the AP style guide may affect our discourse.

Orthodox Geopolitics and American National Security

Dan Harre – Providence

The religious elements undergirding the Russia-Ukraine conflict are deep and complicated. Dan Harre does an excellent job of explaining them with clarity.

The Nixon White House plotted to assassinate a Latter-day Saint journalist 50 years ago

Mark Feldstein – Washington Post

One of the most sobering incidents in recent political history, the Washington Post recounts how President Nixon saught to kill Jack Anderson, one of the leading investigative journalists at the time, and faithful Latter-day Saint.

The post African Women are the Future + Today’s Digest appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

The clause “to teach the female part of [the] community” suggests that even the Prophet may have missed the encompassing, churchwide nature of the call, and may even have set an unfortunate precedence for future readings of Doctrine and Covenants 25:7. There is evidence, as we will see, that this may also have been because he was not totally above the fray when it came to women’s involvement in religions, even though he acted as the Lord’s spokesperson in a revelation that empowered a woman. 

Of course, the Relief Society was organized some twelve years after section 25 was revealed. It made sense in that context that the Prophet should specify that it was Emma’s role, by virtue of her calling as elect lady, or president, to teach the sisters placed under her leadership. In spite of how the Prophet’s specification would later be understood, it did not affect the call—from Christ —for Emma to “expound the scriptures” and to “exhort” all in the Church. Through this call, Christ empowered Emma to help Church members—male and female—access the hidden meanings of holy writ. And that was no small thing. 

Emma’s Christic commission was one of ministerial function in the 1830 context of the revelation. At that time it was the role of preachers and exhorters, sometimes duly licensed, to explicate scripture and exhort individuals to be better Christians. Such a call then was disruptive of the norms, as for the compilation of hymns, even though the presence of female preachers in the religious landscape was not totally unusual. 

Women like Joanna Bethune and Isabella Graham, her mother, had played “an especially active and determinative role” in the rise of the American Sunday Schools between 1803 and 1824. We also know that during the period of “the hymnodic revolution that had swept through America” between 1780 and 1830 that “more than one hundred women crisscrossed the country as itinerant preachers.” Like their male counterparts, some female preachers were constantly on the road because they did not have a pulpit. However, Emma’s call to expound scripture and to exhort the Church logically came with a pulpit because the call was obviously meant to strengthen the Church qualitatively from within and not quantitatively through missionary work.

The number of female preachers and teachers involved in the Sunday School movement does not mean that the context of Emma’s call was one in which women were wholly accepted in religious life. The pulpit was still considered a “masculine space,” as Catherine Brekus puts it, a ground of bitter theological battles, even within the few denominations that tolerated female preaching. The mere idea of women praying in public horrified some of the greatest luminaries of the day. Peter Cartwright, a prominent revival preacher between 1803 and 1856, informs us that there were “fashionable objections to females praying in public” in the Methodist Episcopal Church to which he belonged. In 1827 Asael Nettleton stood against such revivalist fathers as Charles Grandison Finney who was accused of having introduced in revivalism “the practice of females praying with males,” among other “new measures,” and of “rais[ing] an angry dispute,” “a civil war in Zion—a domestic broil in the household of faith.” Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s father, concurred with Nettleton. “There is no instance in the patriarchal age, of a woman offering sacrifice as an act of worship, and a symbol of prayer; and none in the tabernacle or temple service,” he argued. 

The suggestion made earlier that Joseph probably did not understand the encompassing nature of Emma’s call to expound scripture and exhort the Church rests on the fact that he did share somewhat in those popular views expressed by Beecher. In fact, female prayer for Beecher could eventually be tolerated only on the condition that even in matrimonial bonds, “it was the wife apart, and the husband apart”—they could not pray together. Otherwise, he insisted, “no well-educated female can put herself up, or be put up, to the point of public prayer, without the loss of some portion at least of that female delicacy …; and whoever has had an opportunity to observe the effect of female exhortation and prayer in public, will be compelled to remark [upon] the exchange of softness and delicacy for masculine courage, so desirable in man, so unlovely in woman.”

The last part of Beecher’s argument refers to the highly demonstrative and physical aspect of exhortation in the context of revivalism. Overall, though, those who opposed the involvement of women in pastoral life, even in areas that did not require ordination or a degree in theology, were never without an excuse. As Beecher and Nettleton saw it, the involvement of women was the ruin of the churches; religious matters were deemed too sacred to be left to women because everything in them, from their tone to their physical appearance, made them a source of such distraction that rather than edifying, their presence at the pulpit was equated to its defilement. Indeed, the view of the most adamant ministers was that women who dared to take the pulpit in the presence of men “were no better than prostitutes.”

Such strong language was certainly informed by two concepts: (1) the belief that with Eve—the archetypal woman—came sin and the demise of the Edenic world, and (2) the Pauline injunction to “let your women keep silence in the churches” and to ask their husbands questions “at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church” (1 Corinthians 14:34–35). In that context, even though the dynamics in the American religious landscape tended toward greater inclusion of women, Emma’s call to exhort and to expound the scriptures to everyone in the restored Church of Jesus Christ placed her in a position that was socially avant-gardist. That position arguably reveals more about Christ and his plan for women in His Church than is usually assumed. Through that revelation, Christ steers the Church back on a trajectory of greater inclusivity by suspending the injunction, which may have been unduly attributed to Paul, to bar women from speaking in churches and from holding institutional positions.

Emma as Hymn Compiler and Organizer of Worship 

Beyond Emma’s role as president of the Relief Society, Rachel Cope has shown how the title of “elect lady” also applied in her assignment “to make a selection of sacred hymns  … to be had in my church.” Emma was “a unique exception” in religious America, Cope writes, because in that context hymn selection was a territory dominated by male preachers since immense practical and theological power came with it. It is amply documented that hymns were so important and sought after by believers that “instead of hunting up a college or Biblical institute,” itinerant preachers of the Methodist tradition—a group with which Latter-day Saints share a great deal—relied on a most important library that consisted of three items: the Bible, a hymnbook, and a copy of the “Discipline,” the Methodist “handbook of instructions.” 

Coming from the Methodist tradition, Emma surely understood the significance of hymn singing in worship. Michael Hicks proposes that “since choosing songs to be sung was often the duty of a congregational singing master, the revelation may have been designating Emma to lead the tunes.” This reading is irreconcilable with the clause “make a selection” that is used in the revelation. Another possible reading is that through the call, Christ made Emma both conductor of church meetings and his officiator in a special ritual. As Christ’s officiator, we can say that she symbolically welcomes and leads the ceremony for every Latter-day Saint who opens a hymnbook. The act of opening the hymnbook can then be compared to leaving behind a profane world and stepping into “a sacred space” in which, through a ritual of prayer that takes the form of a “song of the heart,” Latter-day Saint worshippers then and now present a righteous devotion that delights the very soul of God. 

As in all rituals, the validity of singing as a ritual rests on certain rules: the verse explicitly tells about the conditions worshippers have to be in (righteous) and how to sing (from the heart) so that their worship can delight the soul of the Lord. But these rules also imply that Christ placed a tremendous responsibility on Emma in calling her to compile hymns for the Church. The successful performance of the ritual—and to a certain extent of the whole religious service—depended on her ability to choose songs that participants would embrace without reservations and would intone as though they were personal prayers that had originated in their hearts. 

The novelty and uniqueness of a woman tasked with selecting hymns probably explain why John Whitmer—who is believed to have authored the introduction to the revelation in the 1833 Book of Commandments—specifically mentions “A Revelation to Emma [Smith] …  giving her a command to select Hymns” and silences the remaining aspects of the revelation behind an “&c.” Indeed, this method of abbreviation is generally used in long book titles. Unfortunately, this summary, which emphasizes hymn compilation—though already a major move—has become the main aspect of this elect lady revelation that succeeding generations of Latter-day Saints retain. Because of that, the header may be said to have both oriented how the revelation is read and limited its scope. 

Compiling hymns is, however, merely one of the many ways in which Christ empowers those who, on account of their gender and social standing, were precluded from greater involvement in religious life. 

Doctrine and Covenants 25 as Revelation for the Emmas of Christ’s Church 

As hinted at, I concur with Carol Cornwall Madsen’s view that while “[the] specifics [of Doctrine and Covenants 25] are addressed to Emma, its principles are applicable to all” because of its canonization as scripture. Joseph Smith, who acted as mediator between Christ and Emma, insisted on that universal dimension when he declared that “not [Emma] alone, but others, may attain to the same blessings” or privilege to expound scripture and exhort the Church. Christ may have been pointing to that universal dimension in concluding the revelation with the phrase “this is my voice unto all” (emphasis added). Surely, there is ground to read “others” and “all” in the broad universal sense of “male and female.” After all, the first verse of the revelation begins by indicating that “all those who receive my gospel are sons and daughters in my kingdom.” When it comes to empowerment, however, “others” and “all” may generally be read more narrowly to refer to the women of Christ’s Church.

With that understanding in mind, readers of the revelation logically come to see Emma as Christ may have viewed her: a type, and a model for all, especially for the female body of the Church. The revelation then stands as a reference point, the basis for a pattern of female participation and empowerment in Christ’s Church. As mentioned previously, in that 1830 revelation, when Christ was laying the foundation of His Church once again on the earth, He freed Latter-day Saint women from the Pauline injunction not to speak in church. The revelation has a double significance in that it tacitly allows Latter-day Saint women to pray and speak on religious matters, and it explicitly mandates that they occupy the pulpit to explicate scripture and exhort the Church. This explicit mission recalls of course the responsibility entrusted to priesthood holders in a revelation given in the same organizational years “to teach, expound, exhort” the Church (Doctrine and Covenants 20:42, 46, 59). This similarity may have been part of what led Joseph to state that the Relief Society, meaning the sisters collectively, was “patterned after the priesthood.”

Another level of reading of the revelation may consist of seeing Emma as a type, a proxy for Christ. Expounding and explaining to others the hidden and true meaning of scripture is one of the activities we see Christ doing throughout his earthly ministry. In Luke 24:27, for instance, we learn that “beginning at Moses and all the prophets,” the resurrected Christ “expounded  … in all the scriptures the things concerning himself ” to the disciples He had joined on the road to Emmaus. Before His Crucifixion, we learn that after reading, for instance, from Isaiah 61, “the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him” (Luke 4:20), obviously eager to access the true meaning of the prophecy. With authority, Christ explained, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:21). Interestingly, the scripture that was fulfilled indicates that Christ, anointed by the Spirit, had come “to preach the gospel to the poor; … to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18–19). Assuming that after Christ’s own eventful ministry “the acceptable year of the Lord” encompasses “the dispensation of the fulness of times” Christ speaks about in Doctrine and Covenants 112:30, we may argue that Relief Society presidents (who continue in Emma’s stead)—and their sisters who are also elect ladies in the kingdom— act as proxy for Christ in that they are able to stand in the Church where he would have stood to “preach deliverance” to those who are spiritually “captives.” Just like the sisters’ organization is “patterned after the priesthood,” one may see in that a “pattern,” a certain coherence with what Christ may have intended in calling Emma to exhort and expound: in these specific areas, at least, the Emmas of the Church are just like priesthood holders who represent Christ at the sacrament table and other rituals. 

Like Christ in the Lukan passage, Emma may be said further to have received an anointing, when set apart by the proper authority, which entitles her to the Spirit of Christ (see Doctrine and Covenants 25:7), the Holy Ghost (Doctrine and Covenants 25:8), to “preach [that is, exhort and expound] the gospel” to Latter-day Saints who are “poor [in spirit],” who are “brokenhearted” or “bruised,” to open the eyes of those who may be “blind” as to the true meaning of scripture, and to deliver those who are in a form of captivity. Doctrine and Covenants 25 is addressed to Emma, but there is in the revelation an implicit reminder for Joseph and for the larger body of the Church, the males in particular, to acknowledge the Christic mandate and authority of their sisters in the area of teaching and exhortation. 

This is evidence in the modal “shalt” that precedes “be ordained,” which further confers to the calling a sense of decree, something that must come to pass in Christ’s Church. Modern prophets, seers, and revelators have made it clear that though not ordained to a specific priesthood office, a woman who is set apart to serve in the restored Church of Jesus Christ officiates under the same priesthood umbrella as do the ordained males of the Church. Like the men, those sisters are “given priesthood authority to perform a priesthood function,” affirmed Elder Dallin H. Oaks in 2014 as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

There is a two-fold corollary to the clarification made by Elder Oaks. The first one is that Latter-day Saints who fail to acknowledge those sisters in their divinely appointed sacerdotal functions tacitly fail to see them and the Relief Society as Joseph Smith did, as an instrument of balance and perfection in the restoration process. The second is that when Church members disregard women serving in their appointed positions, they disregard the priesthood, those who exercise the keys, and ultimately Christ, who provided for the calling of sisters. 

Overall then, Doctrine and Covenants 25 shows a Christ who is consistent but who, in restoring His Church, literally repairs it and bridges loopholes in teachings that may have been brought into holy writ to marginalize women. Prior to Christ’s Resurrection, we see Him in the New Testament protecting women from ostracization, forgiving and healing them physically and spiritually (see John 8:3– 11; Luke 7:36–50). This dynamic of inclusion and empowerment is stepped up after the Resurrection: Christ “appeared first to Mary Magdalene,” we read in Mark 16:9. And, for the first time, Christ gives a woman a major commission: He asks Mary to be his envoy, to announce to “my brethren … I ascend unto my Father, and your Father” (John 20:17). That in and of itself was remarkable, considering the low social recognition women had in Mary’s culture. Like Mary, Emma was the first in modern times to be given a commission that breaks away from established exclusionary practices. Mary’s calling to announce and Emma’s calling to expound and exhort reveal consistency in a dynamic of female inclusion and empowerment and a Christ who does not change. 

Conclusion 

The objective of this paper has been to propose an interpretative reading of Doctrine and Covenants 25 using a reading methodology based on diachronic (historical) and synchronic (textual and intertextual) analyses. 

In a religious community, social factors—such as previous religious affiliation or non-affiliation, the level of education of the adherents, and the broader tradition in general—make it so that understanding and adhering to doctrine can be easier said than done, the fruits (praxis) are not always an exact manifestation of the tree (Christ and what He reveals). And that is not necessarily because the members are recalcitrant toward a particular doctrine. 

The records do not hint that the early Saints had voiced any significant opposition to Emma’s multiple divine callings at a time when female inclusion in religious life was the object of heated debates in the larger American religious landscape. Yet, there is a hiatus, a disconnect, between the revelation and its implementation in the history of the restored Church of Jesus Christ. As noted by Marianne Holman Prescott, for a long time the early Saints followed “most other Christians in their day” and because of that, except in a few cases, they “reserved public preaching and leadership for men.” To that may be added the frustration created by the fact that women were not even invited to pray in the general conferences of the Church until April 2013. 

These restrictions have had ripple effects in and outside of the Church, fueling the sentiment that only the voice of “the brethren” matters in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that it was conceived and exists for modern patriarchs. But Holman Prescott also documents an evolution within the Church that consists in aligning more with the spirit of revelations that mandate the inclusion of women, a subject on which the apostolic voice of M. Russell Ballard, for instance, has been raised more than once and in multiple venues of the Church and its institutions. 

Aside from prayer and teaching and participation in the Church’s temple rituals, women now sit as permanent members on several Church councils, most notably the Board of Trustees of the Church Educational System (the General President of the Primary and the General President of the Relief Society, who is also a member of the more reduced Executive Committee), on the Priesthood and Family Executive Council (General President of the Relief Society), Missionary Executive Council (General Young Women President), and the Temple and Family History Executive Council (General President of the Primary). In September 2018 the youth of the Church worldwide were presented with two well-trained and faithful historians—including a woman—to whom an apostle deferred by letting them address historical issues. About a year later, President Nelson announced a change in Church policy allowing women who carry a temple recommend to stand as witnesses for baptisms and temple sealings. Interestingly, all of these forward-looking decisions actually bring the Church more in line with authorized precedents and the spirit of empowerment that is found in Doctrine and Covenants 25. It is to be assumed that this trend will not only continue but that the leaders will further educate the membership of the Church so that their practice reflects even more what Christ has revealed for the equilibrium and full flourishing of His restored Church. 

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