Dear Mormon Man, tell me what you would do.

A few Sundays ago, you drove home from Church, swearing a blue streak. You tore off your tie, yelling and slamming doors, your kids and wife weeping in stunned dismay. You were as shocked as they were, frankly, your rational self scrambling to make sense of your sudden outburst. Your ward leaders had changed your calling, bulldozing you and some other men in the process. Is that what this is about? you asked yourself, disappointed at your pettiness. “Forty years,” you heard yourself roar in reply. “Forty years of this, and I am not doing it anymore.”

Forty years of what? you asked yourself, so you start at the beginning.

—

You are born to a loving mother and father, who teach you that you are a beloved child of your Heavenly Mother.

You have both sisters and brothers, whom you love, and boy and girl friends at school. You are loved by your aunts and uncles and grandparents, and you have a supportive, caring community of adults in your ward.

You are taught about the heroes of the past: Georgia Washington, Beatrice Franklin, Abigail Lincoln. You listen, enraptured, to the masterpieces of Johanna Bach and Lucinda Beethoven. You marvel at the great writers, from Winnie Shakespeare to Larissa Tolstoy. You have posters on your walls of the great scientists like Alberta Einstein and artists like Michaelangela who have shaped and blessed all womankind.

You emulate an additional pantheon of heroes: ancient and modern prophetesses, whose stories and sermons fill your scriptures. The great prophetesses of the Book of Mormona: Nephie, Ammona, Alma and the daughters of Queen Mosiah. The Matriarchs of the Old Testament, Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachael, and the descendants of Josephine of Egypt. And of course Eve, tempted by Adam, who brought about the Fall of Woman.

The most important contribution of the prophetesses is teaching you about the nature of Goddess. This Goddess is not the amorphous non-entity of other faiths, but an actual human being, with a real body “as tangible as woman’s.” This Goddess is your Mother in Heaven, and She knows and loves you. The Goddesshead consists of three distinct beings: This Mother, who is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, Her Daughter, who came to earth to demonstrate a perfect life and embody all perfect attributes (both those considered female qualities and those considered male qualities), and a bodiless Holy Ghost, who possesses the spirit of a woman, but does not have a body so that she can dwell in our hearts. You study this holy trinity and love them with all your might, trying always to be like them.

Paintings of Goddess the Mother and Her Beloved Daughter, as well as the prophetesses and apostelles adorn the walls of your church and your home. You study their kind faces, smooth and beautiful, like your mother’s. Sometimes you notice boys and men among the crowds in the paintings; rarely, you see a painting of a man from the scriptures, like the man at the well, or the man taken in adultery.

At some point you learn one of the glorious truths of the gospel, not found in other religions: You have a Heavenly Father. He is mentioned in a hymn, written by one of the Prophetess’ plural husbands, and a later prophetess validated the doctrine by claiming, “that hymn is a revelation, even though it was given unto us through a man.” You are told never to pray to Heavenly Father, and as far as you know, He doesn’t talk to you. When you ask to know more about Him, you are told no one knows, but it doesn’t really matter because you have a Heavenly Mother and an Elder Sister who love you. You find that you don’t like it when people mention Heavenly Father: having a Father who doesn’t talk to you and doesn’t want you to talk to Him makes you sadder than not having one.

You attend church for three hours every Sunday, where a group of your friends’ mothers and grandmothers preside over your meetings. Both women and men give talks, lead music, and hold some callings, but the ones in front, the ones leading the meetings, giving the keynote addresses, and closing with prayer, are the priestesshood-holders. Every man, no matter his calling, is presided over by the women of the priestesshood.

Every Spring and Fall, you and your family gather to hear the counsel of the prophetess and her apostelles, women called by Heavenly Mother to be Her special witnesses. You gaze at the front of the conference, awed by the righteous power of those women, organized into special groups of twelve and seventy, forming a visual wall of feminine strength. At one point you notice below them and to the side, a small group of men sitting together. They must be nice too, you think. Occasionally men give talks, but you never see a man pray in Conference.

You grow up with the kids in your ward family. At eight years old you are baptized and confirmed by your mother, as all the kids are by their mothers (except one of your friends, whose older sister is sixteen and has become a priestess — she gets to baptize him). Your grandmothers stand next to the baptismal font as witnesses, and the saving ordinance is presided over and recorded by the sisters of the priestesshood.

The girls join Girl Scouts of America, which is hosted by and integrated with the Church structure. Girl Scouts provides awesome adventures for the girls, and the ward supports it heartily with its budget and callings, which you raise your arm to sustain in sacrament meeting.

You turn twelve, and the girls in your Sunday School class begin receiving the priestesshood and passing the sacrament. You sit in the pews with the fathers and the children, watching those girls handle the ordinances with responsibility and reverence.

You enter the Young Men’s organization, and find that many of your lessons address physical appearance and sexual purity. You learn to measure your worth in terms of girls’ approval: Girls of the “world” will like you if you show off your body; girls and women at church say “modest is hottest,” so you win their approval by covering up. Your bishopess speaks at your Young Men in Excellence program, always quoting the scripture, “Who can find a virtuous man? For his price is far above rubies.” Your Young Men’s leaders teach object lessons on Virtue: a cupcake is passed around and licked; a fresh rose is mauled to death; a board is pounded with nails. “You can repent, but you will never be quite the same,” you are told. You notice that the girl is always the licker, the mauler, the hammer and nail; the boy is the cupcake, the rose, the board.

You have regular worthiness interviews with your bishopess, who sits in a large chair behind a large desk and asks you personal questions about your body and sexuality. Just you and an adult woman, behind a closed door, discussing your private parts.

When you were little, you and your siblings were constantly told that you were cute. You notice now that your sisters and female friends are asked more questions about what they like to do and what they want to be; you are still mostly told what a cute boy you are.

You love school, and your teachers encourage you to pursue your passions, but you have been taught the truth: that your Goddess-given duty to be a husband and father in Zion is your most important (which actually means only) role. At some point it occurs to you that your teenage girl friends will be wives and mothers, and they will get to have careers and the priestesshood. Your church leaders try to comfort you by reading the Prophetess’ Proclamation on the Family, which clearly states that mothers preside over their homes in love and righteousness, but that the two genders work as equal partners, so it all works out. You think a lot about those words preside over.

You attend the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs of your Jewish friends. You notice that both the boys and the girls are called to the Torah and celebrated in beautiful rites of passage. The local synagogue employs a male cantor along with the traditional female rabbess, and the two lead the ceremony together, taking turns. You learn that the practice of bar mitzvahs began in the 1920s (though in some conservative Jewish traditions it is still only girls who are called to the Torah). Seeing a man leading a meeting alongside a woman fills an aching void in your soul, making the world feel whole and balanced. You leave feeling a little jealous.

Every week during Young Men’s, you recite the Young Men’s theme, which begins, “We are sons of our Heavenly Mother, who loves us, and we love Her.” You love saying this phrase — you pray to Mother in Heaven every day and love Her very much. But one day your heart longs so intensely to connect to something masculine in the Divine realm — someone like you — that you imagine a god with a beard and a muscular body, like your father’s and like you know you will have some day. You whisper the words “Dear Heavenly Father,” but then feel guilty and never do it again. You will learn later that scholars who advocate praying to Heavenly Father are excommunicated.

You receive priestesshood blessings from your mother, at the beginning of school and in times of special need. You know you can pray directly to Heavenly Mother if you have a regular problem, but if you are really sick or have a really big problem, you need special access to Heavenly Mother that is only possessed by women.

You read the words of the apostelle Paula in your beloved New Testament, who commands that men should not speak in church, and teaches that the woman is the head of the man. You feel heat rising in your chest, but you don’t know whether it’s anger or fear. You’re pretty sure your sister is not your boss; at what point does this change?

You attend Boys Camp with all the boys in the stake. The men of the stake plan and organize and lead the whole production. On the last night, there is a special dinner and fireside, where the whole camp celebrates the arrival of the bishopesses, who have come to camp to deliver the keynote speeches and preside over the testimony meetings. Your last years at camp include challenging hikes, so women are brought up to camp to accompany the men and offer blessings to any of the boys who feel that they will need extra help.

You learn about how the prophetess Josephine Smith instituted the Church’s society for men. The female general authorities frequently address the men of the Church, telling you how glorious your men’s organization is, and how grateful you should be that the priestesshood was restored so that Josephine Smith could establish it for you. You learn that this men’s society was originally quite autonomous, but that gradually its administration was taken over by the sisters of the priestesshood.

You finish high school and attend Bridgette Young University. You have many excellent professors, one of whom is a man. You are thrilled to see there is a class entitled “Men of the Old Testament.” You are taught that while men’s words make up only 1.1% of the Bible (and the percentage drops to nearly nothing if factoring in LDS scriptures), men are an important part of Heavenly Mother’s plan.

After your first year of college, you feel a longing for more specific direction in your life, so you decide the time is right to receive your Matriarchal blessing. A wise, grandmotherly high priestess in the stake has been called for this purpose, and she lays her hands on your head to reveal which one of the twelve daughters of Israelle you descended from, and about your purpose as a beloved son of your Heavenly Mother. (The husband of the Matriarch acts as a scribe for his wife and later mails you a copy of the blessing.)

You really love the scriptures, so you decide you want to be a Seminary teacher. You sign up for the Church Educational System and attend your first class, where you are the only man in the room. The sister teaching the class notices your wedding ring and asks you to stay afterward to talk, telling you that any men in the class should be aware that they will not be able to teach once they become fathers. You know you want children, so you withdraw from the class.

Your bishopess occasionally comes into your all-men’s church meetings during college and teaches about “The Glorious Role of Men.” In General Conference, the apostelles frequently praise men for their special masculine traits and give them counsel on how to be men of Goddess. You notice their long hair and dresses, and wonder how they know what it feels like to be a man. You feel guilty for this cynicism so you focus on something else.

You prepare to attend the temple. You are told you will be endowed with power, and a tiny corner of your heart allows itself to hope that you will be taught more about your Heavenly Father. You participate in the first ordinance, where you see men officiating as priests. You had heard whispers of this, but did not know how profoundly it would impact you to feel divine power warm your head through the hands of a brother, a fatherly voice pronouncing the blessing. You proceed through the ordinances and are commanded to to hearken to the counsel of your wife, and you learn later that the wives are not given reciprocal counsel to hearken to their husbands. You progress to the endowment, where a film depicts a heavenly committee of women creating the Earth. Heavenly Mother creates Eve’s body, and she awakens in the Garden of Eden. But it is not good for Woman to be alone, so a rib is taken from Eve’s side to make Adam, her helpmeet. Adam soon succumbs to temptation and brings about the Fall of Woman. Heavenly Mother visits the pair, chastising Eve, to which she replies that the man she was given ruined everything. Eve is cursed with added difficulty in work; Adam is cursed with sorrow, a demotion, and the subjugation of his gender. Eve and other females become mediaries between Adam and Heavenly Mother, and Adam does not speak for the duration of the film. You are then asked to make a covenant to adopt this hierarchical model in your own life, inserting your future wife between you and your beloved Heavenly Mother. You learn that just a few years earlier, men were required to covenant to obey their wives. You are promised that if you are both faithful, someday your wife will become a queen and priestess to the most high Goddess, and you will become a king and a priest to your wife. Lest the message is lost on those not paying attention to the words, the brothers are asked to physically cover their faces when approaching Heavenly Mother. The sisters may look at Her directly.

You are given garments of the holy priestesshood to remind you of the covenants you made in the temple. You are to wear them night and day, and they are comically, infuriatingly ill-fitting. The squeezing, bunching and pinching of garments is a frequent topic of conversation among your brothers and friends. Garments seem to fit women’s bodies and work with women’s clothing just fine.

You love Heavenly Mother and the Gospel more than anything else in life, and want to share the truth with your sisters and brothers throughout the world. You decide to serve a mission, and because you don’t have a current prospect to be taken to the temple by a young woman, your stake presidentess allows you to go. You work hard. You learn a foreign language. You love the people as if they were your own family. You love your fellow missionaries, both the brothers and the elders. To keep things organized, you report to and are directed by a very organized hierarchy of leadership, composed of female district leaders, female zone leaders, and female assistants to the presidentess, all of whom are younger than you. These elders are great young women, and it makes you happy to see them learning so much from their leadership opportunities. One time, you and the brothers of the mission are invited to the mission presidentess’ house. Presidentess Annasdaughter is a powerful woman of Goddess, giving rousing sermons at all the mission conferences while her husband, Brother Annasdaughter, smiles from his seat and is occasionally invited to share a brief testimony. At Presidentess and Brother Annasdaughters’ home, Brother Annasdaughter leads the mission brothers in a game about self-esteem, offers a good-natured lecture about what clothing is appropriate on the mission, and talks about marriage after your mission is over.

You come home from your mission and get married to your best friend. During the sealing ceremony you share your sacred secret: the new name you received as a temple initiate. This will enable your wife to call you forth in the resurrection. She is not required or allowed to reveal her name to you. During the temple sealing you promise to give yourself to your wife, and she promises to receive you.

You feel lucky that your wife is so kind and treats you as her equal; many of your friends’ wives are controlling and some are even abusive. Some friends’ wives use their access to priestesshood as a trump card in decision-making; they claim they don’t want to use it that way, but if there is an impasse, someone has to break the tie. What do you think you promised in the temple, these wives ask their husbands.

Throughout the years you are counseled to attend the temple often, but the more you attend, the worse you feel. Determined to reconcile your expectations of joy with your experience of pain, you make an appointment with your local temple presidentess. As you quote the troubling parts of the script, she becomes agitated, claiming, “I have really smart sons, and they have never had any of these concerns. You’re seeing things that aren’t there.” You visit with your bishopess and stake presidentess for help, both of whom confide, “I’ve never noticed that it says that.” You write a letter to one of the apostelles, who you think might be sympathetic or perhaps offer some explanation. You receive a form letter from her secretary; it appears she didn’t pass your letter on to the apostelle.

You witness an argument between a married couple you know and love. There is a strong disagreement, and it becomes heated. The wife commands, “as your senior companion, I am not asking you, I am informing you.” Her husband does as he is told. You learn that this wife makes all financial decisions unilaterally, often flagrantly disregarding the concerns of her husband. You discover over time that this is not uncommon, and that it is frequently accompanied by other emotionally abusive behaviors. You share this with a priestesshood leader, who shrugs and says, “well, those wives are practicing unrighteous dominion.” You feel troubled and unsatisfied, and a day or two later it finally comes to you: How is any dominion ever righteous dominion?

One day you are out for your morning run, wrestling with temple sealing practices prohibiting a widower you know from being sealed to his new wife, while widows can have multiple husbands sealed to them. Suddenly, things seem to make perfect sense, and you imagine an eternal, matriarchal hierarchy: a Heavenly Mother and Daughter presiding over countless righteous women, who achieve their potential as queens and priestesses unto the most high Goddess… and eventually become goddesses themselves. They preside over their husbands, who are valued only as reproductive partners, invisible and mute, supporting and sustaining the women and adding to their glory by providing them with posterity. You picture your Heavenly Father as one of many heavenly fathers, enslaved in an unjust Heaven. Suddenly you can’t breathe; you have to sit down and put your head between your knees.

You read the Church’s essays on lds.org addressing their past racist doctrines and inaccurate scripture translation stories. You decide that it’s finally time to know the whole truth about the early church, so you confront your life-long fear: polyandry. You read the stories of Josephine Smith’s husbands, some of them underage boys and some of them already married to other women. You read that Smith’s first plural relationship was with a teenage servant boy working in her home; Josephine’s husband Emmett caught them in flagrante delicto in their barn. Olivia Cowdery called it a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair,” and was excommunicated. Josephine claimed an angelle had commanded her to take other boys as husbands, a practice which she shared with her close inner circle but which she denied to the Church and the public until her dying day. To Emmett, she transmitted this message from Heavenly Mother:

52 And let mine handservant, Emmett Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Josephine, and who are virtuous and pure before me; and those who are not pure, and have said they were pure, shall be destroyed…

53 For I am the Lady thy Goddess, and ye shall obey my voice; and I give unto my servant Josephine that she shall be made ruler over many things; for she hath been faithful over a few things, and from henceforth I will strengthen her.

54 And I command mine handservant, Emmett Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Josephine, and to none else. But if he will not abide this commandment he shall be destroyed, saith…thy Goddess, and will destroy him if he abide not in my law.

Despite growing difficulty, there is still so much goodness in the Church, and you put your heart and soul into your calling in the Young Men’s organization. One day the bishopess’ counselor decides to sit in the back of the room during the lesson. The dynamic changes palpably: the authority to run the meeting shifts to the back of the room and the teacher begins to stammer, the boys fidgeting and glancing back. This safe place, the one last haven for men and boys to operate without being overseen by women is now claimed for the priestesshood too. “We just want to let the Young Men know we love them and care about them,” the counselor says.

You go to Boys’ Camp with the Young Men. The Stake Boys Camp leader is a close friend, you learn that the boys’ opportunities for camp are not even comparable to the variety of opportunities available to the girls. This is easily observable within families: your friends’ daughters hike and adventure all over the state, while their sons are restricted to one site with limited activities, year after year. You learn about the budget discrepancies between the Young Women’s/Girl Scouts program and Young Men’s program in your ward.

The fathers in your area are concerned about an epidemic of depression spreading among their teenage children; multiple kids in your local high schools have taken their lives. Your stake holds early-morning seminary at 6:00 am, and the fathers cite research that sleep deprivation contributes to depression. Fatherhood is the one role you have been allowed in the Church; the nurture and care of children is explicitly stated as the stewardship of fathers. Since men are not invited to the meetings where policy is decided, several of your friends plan to write letters to the stake presidentess voicing this concern, and you spend hours proofreading their letters. The dads wait hopefully for a reply, but the stake presidentess does not respond to a single one. Instead she shows up in your sacrament meeting and gives a stern talk about sustaining the priestesshood.

Several years later when your own children are in high school you decide to try writing a friendly letter to ask if you can have a conversation. It goes unanswered. A woman in the stake presidency emails “I know you’re frustrated that change isn’t happening.” You reply, “Sure, I would love this to change, but my main frustration is that I feel like we fathers are not being heard. Could we talk about it?” She doesn’t reply to this email.

You study the cultures of other countries, learning about male infanticide, groom burnings, honor killings, and the nearly universal misandry that has defined gender relations throughout human history. You see men of other cultures with their bodies and faces covered; in many countries boys are not allowed to go to school or to leave their homes without a female escort. Among your European ancestors (including, you discover, many of your intellectual heroines), it was believed for millennia that women must be in charge because men were base and evil, barely human. Next it was believed that women must be in charge because men were angelic, but weak and foolish. Next it was believed that women must be in charge because men are actually more spiritual and capable, and women need the opportunity to lead. You wonder what women will come up with next to justify the systems that keep them in power.

As you survey humankind, you see that your religion is not new or unique with its veils and its vows, its silencing and its subjugation. You wonder, with a rush of fear and hope, if the painful doctrines did not come from Heavenly Mother after all, but were perhaps inherited from a long history of malignant matriarchy. You see the world making progress, and hope that, as Martha Luther King said, “the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” You observe that your Church is following that arc, but reluctantly, often generations behind, and with frequent, devastating missteps. You want to be patient as your beloved Church fumbles slowly along, but the collateral damage is the decimated self-esteem and unrealized potential of countless men — entire generations of grandfathers, fathers, uncles and brothers and friends. Will it also be your sons?

Without warning, you are released from the Young Men’s organization in a careless calling-swap that ignores the input of several men in the ward. You find yourself cut loose from the calling which had kept you anchored, and reminded that in this church you are voiceless, as mute and powerless as Adam after the Fall. You feel something snap as you drive home from church; after forty years of this, you’re not going to do it any more.

—

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