The last two weeks have been wild and crazy. We have been in the process of graduating, selling and moving from our house, searching for a place to live, going on vacation, teaching my sister-in-law the temple preparation classes, and helping to get my brother-in-law ready for his mission to Taiwan. Not to mention publishing a book and a thesis in that time and chasing around three little children.Yikes.
I haven’t had much time at the computer and so when I finally got a chance to sit down yesterday afternoon I was so excited to see that this article “A Mother There: A Survey of Historical Teachings about Mother in Heaven” by David L. Paulsen and Martin
Pulido has finally been published in the BYU Studies Journal! About a year ago one of my professors from BYU shared a preliminary draft with me and told me that this paper was in the works. I was very moved the first time I read it and have been thinking a lot about this paper in the year since. I am so glad that it is finally available for others to read.
I think that in her review of the paper Valerie Hudson Cassler does a much better job explaining what this paper is all about. She says,
The article’s primary contribution is an inventory of every saying by
Church leaders from the founding to the present concerning our Heavenly
Mother. That the Latter-day Saint Church alone among all the
Christianities asserts that just as we have a Father in Heaven, so we
also have a Mother in Heaven, is well known. Latter-day Saints do not
believe that God is an old bachelor—we believe that all divinity is both
male and female, such that our Heavenly Father could not be a god
unless there was an equally yoked Heavenly Mother by his side who was
also a god. However, it is also true that you will not find Latter-day
Saints saying much about their Heavenly Mother besides acknowledging her
existence. Indeed, in LDS culture, you will sense that Latter-day
Saints feel they are expected not to speak of her.
…Paulsen and Pulido persuasively argue that the conventional LDS cultural
notion that we are not to speak of Heavenly Mother is, in fact, wrong.
They are quick to add that speaking of Heavenly Mother should not be
taken to include acts such as praying to Heavenly Mother. Nevertheless,
Paulsen and Pulido have “restored the paths to walk in”—that is, by the
very act of publishing this article in BYU Studies, they have opened a
door for the membership of the Church to speak openly of their belief in
a Heavenly Mother, and to assert that silence about Heavenly Mother is
not “sacred,” but a cultural artifact which is not supported by the
General Authorities of the Church.
… Before delving into the arguments made by Paulsen and Pulido, we must
mention at the outset of this review that an important reason this
article is path-breaking is because of the venue in which it was
published. BYU Studies, for those who are not acquainted with that
journal, is an official publication of Brigham Young University, and its
board includes general authorities of the Church. In other words, it
is in a league of its own, certainly no Sunstone or Dialogue, being
scrupulously orthodox and formally affiliated with a Church institution,
but also a different creature than the Ensign, being a peer-reviewed
scholarly journal.
Personally I have never felt or been taught that it was wrong to talk about our Mother in Heaven, but maybe that was because of how I was raised. I remember being really astonished the first time that someone “called me out” for speaking too freely about her. I was even more surprised to discover that some of my faithful LDS friends had feeling of sadness or anger because they felt that she was “off limits” or “absent” from church teachings or from individual worship. I am so grateful for this article, sanctioned by General Authorities, that dispels that myth. It breaks my heart to think that there are women who have been feeling pain over a culturally constructed “silence” about their Mother in Heaven.
Our Mother in Heaven is not off limits, she is an important part of Later-day Saint doctrine and worship and it is proper and fitting that we should talk about her. I think that if there is any “danger” in talking about our Mother in Heaven it is temptation to speculate about her things that have not been revealed. We have been counseled not to pray to Her because we must follow the guidelines that God has laid out, and which Christ modeled, for proper worship. Nowhere in the scriptures does Christ, or anyone else, pray to our Mother in Heaven and so neither do we. In fact, the scriptures are abundantly abundant of examples of individuals and societies that have fallen into wickedness and destruction through the practice of idolatry– which almost always included advanced forms of goddess worship.So while we are not separated or forbidden from knowing our Mother in Heaven we do need to make sure we are worshiping in the proper way that God has specified. Personally I wish that we knew more about her (and I am sure one day we will) but in the mean time we should not speculate on things that have not been revealed.
The wonderful thing about this paper is that the authors compile a beautiful list of everything that we do know about her. Happily, it was much more than I thought! They said,
In this paper we have briefly shown that historically there has been substantial discussion and elaboration
on the roles and divinity of our Heavenly Mother, challenging academics’ claims
that general authorities and other church leaders have limited Heavenly
Mother’s role to reproduction. It also refutes the suspicion that they have
advocated a position of sacred silence about her. We have found no record of a
general authority advising us to be silent about our Heavenly Mother; indeed,
as we have amply demonstrated, many general authorities have openly taught
about her.Additionally, while some have claimed that historically
Heavenly Mother’s role has been marginalized or trivialized, we feel that
honest consideration of the actual historical data provides a much more
elevated view of Heavenly Mother. The Heavenly Mother portrayed in the
teachings we examined is indeed a procreator and parent, as well as a divine
person, a co-creator, a co-director of the Plan of Salvation, and a guide in
both this life and the next. Certainly,
consideration of these points reinforces several important doctrines that we
unquestioningly embrace, including divine embodiment, eternal families, divine
relations, the deification of women, the eternal nature and value of gender,
and the shared lineage of Gods and humans.
Far from degrading either the Heavenly Feminine or the earthly feminine,
we feel that these teachings exalt both.
I also especially loved this quote included in the paper by President Rudger
Clawson (Quorum of the Twelve, 10 Oct. 1989 – 21 Jun. 1943) who said,
“It
doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our
Eternal Mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly
fathers, to include our earthly mothers in our affections.” Rather,
“we honor woman when we acknowledge Godhood in her eternal prototype.”
So today as you honor and celebrate your earthly mothers don’t forget to honor and celebrate your Divine Mother. She loves us, as much as our Father in Heaven does, and all mothers– all women– have been created in her image. That knowledge is incredible and is definitely something worth celebrating on Mother’s Day!
I enjoyed this a lot, Heather. I blogged about Heavenly Mother this week too, and I'm also thrilled to see that the damaging myth of "sacred silence" is being finally dispelled.
The only paragraph where I would disagree with you is the one that begins with your injunction against speculation about Heavenly Mother. I found it very ironic that you go on to posit that one of the reasons we have been counseled not to pray to Heavenly Mother is to avoid "advanced forms of goddess worship."
True? Perhaps. Speculation? Certainly.
Good call Sarah, that was speculation! See i told you it is a temptation 😉
Today our musical number was not the Primary children singing as is usually the case. Instead I accompanied one of the missionaries who sang "O My Father" to the tune of "Come Thou Fount." It was beautiful and touching especially since the only line repeated was the very last, "Tells me I've a mother there." It was nice to hear!
I also really enjoyed reading the paper and Hudson's evaluation. I have been repeatedly called out about talking about her, so I'm a bit more conflicted about the way the lay church addresses her existence, but I think that's a matter of the idiosyncracies of geography. I have found a rich trove of wisdom by seeking and finding personal revelation on the subject. I don't get to talk about that, but I get to be peaceful with that. Nice post. We celebrated our Heavenly Mother around here as well.
My patriarchal blessing mentions her- that I sat with her, that she gave me counsel before I left for earth. While on a mission an investigator had it right when he said "If there's a Mr. God, there has to be a Mrs. God."
Have you read The Shack? I call it gospel doctrine for the Born Again. At first I really liked it, but then I began to really dis-like it. It's about a man who goes into the woods and has a revelation and is taken care of by the Godhead- 3 distinct persons. The Holy Ghost is Asian and female and wispy with no body. The Savior is a white man and the Father, well he's really a she- a woman always in the kitchen and being SO nurturing.
As one friend points out to those who don't believe in the LDS doctrine of The Godhead, of Revelation and of a Heavenly Mother, then why do you LOVE this book? They have no answer.
I have not read everything you wrote yet or the paper yet, as it is too late and I need to be asleep, but I will!
Something to celebrate indeed.
I've also been surprised at how much has actually been said about our Heavenly Mother. Awhile ago, I went through and made a compilation of those mentions from prophets and apostles on lds.org. You can see the breakdown of how often she was mentioned here:
http://nathanrichardson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Nathan-Richardson-Heavenly-Mother-references.pdf