Agency in the inside valorization of female religious identity

Chapter 2 Studies on agency and gender in religion

2.4. Agency in the inside valorization of female religious identity

2.4.1. General background

It is usual to point to the time “around 2000” to mark a shift in approach: instead of exploring patterns of resistance and emancipation, scholars started to focus on the positive “insider’s voices” through personal interviews, participant observation, or focus groups. These techniques enabled them to map the ways religious women expressed their agency, mainly as a source of self-realization within the system.

2.4.1.1. Compliant empowerment agency

The “inside valorization” of female religious identity turns the focus mostly to what makes women explicitly content with their choices, though constructive critical reflections are possible. The women studied from that angle keep this valorization overall private within their religious sphere. Here overall satisfaction would rule as the result of a peaceable “compliant empowerment agency.” For women in this realm, the consciousness of a struggle against male dominance is nebulous or simply absent, or would at least be considered misplaced in their devotion. Social harmony is what religion is supposed to guarantee, but harmony may require work.

Mahmood’s ethnography (2005) of a grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo is often cited as the pioneering scholarly approach for this new perspective, but others have preceded her in this methodology. Griffith (1997) researched the devotional world of the evangelical Women's Aglow Fellowship, related to Pentecostalism, where intense religious emotion is valued to come to terms with life’s challenges. Brasher’s (1998) ethnographic participation in two Christian fundamentalist congregations revealed how the women-only spheres created a parallel world in which women directed the course of their lives and empowered their standing in the whole congregation. Franks (2001) studied how women found satisfaction in Christian and Islamic revivalist movements. Longman’s research (2002) focused on the ways Orthodox Jewish women constructed their world as guardians of morality, family values, and religious identity. Of particular interest to similar Mormon situations in South Korea, Chong (2008) studied both the “deliverance and submission” of women in Korean evangelical Protestant communities where their religious participation opened up possibilities for gender resistance, while at the same time supporting patriarchal structures. These forms of ethnographic research among religious women revealed how

they invest their agency to contribute effectively to their own spiritual and ethical well-being, the well-being of the family, and that of the religious community.

2.4.1.2. Pious critical agency and instrumental agency

At the same time, within this very realm, women can act to change or adapt conventions, or even to escape from them, but mostly in non-controversial ways. For some women the difference between resistance, subversion, and liberation, studied in the previous phase, may be fuzzy. Within a congregation, local incidents in relation to gender may still cause frictions that can kindle resistance. Avishai (2016, 376) remarked how in this paradox

“religion turned out to be a double edged sword that both reproduced gendered power dynamics and also subverted these systems while empowering women.” Sehlikoglu (2018) noted that this paradoxical movement became apparent already in the early 1990s as part of the active participation of Islamic women in revivalist politics, in particular in Turkey and Egypt. On the one hand they sustained secular developments such as democratic rights, on the other hand they continued to embrace “seemingly oppressive principles of the religion, such as obedience to husband, uneven share in inheritance, various forms of the veil, and so forth.” This was illustrated in MacLeod’s (1991) study which explored how Muslim women who work outside the home use veiling, a symbol of compliance, to avoid the erosion of their social status, thus combining protest and obedience. Rinaldo (2014) also built on Mahmood’s notion of pious agency, but confirms the paradox: her study of Indonesian Muslim women showed such agency is not incompatible with feminist activism for women’s rights. She defined this agency as “pious critical agency.” The position of Amish women as to their valorization within patriarchal structures, and in particular their measured modernization over the past decades, has been the object of various studies (Graybill 2008; Kraybill 2003; Olshan and Schmidt 1994; Stoltzfus 2007). In a study on how Amish and Haredi women, both groups known for their a-worldly seclusion, react to the Internet, Neriya-Ben Shahar (2017) showed how they negotiated their agency in a dual role: both as gatekeepers (rejecting the internet as evil) and as agents-of-change (recognizing advantages to the internet). In that sense, women can negotiate with religion to also pursue extrareligious goals in social relations, economic opportunities, political involvement, and cultural enrichment. This is the domain of

“instrumental agency” (Avishai 2008; Burke 2012).

Definitions of agency can thus be expanded in various directions. Numerous publications have since extended this kind of research in new ways, in particular in Muslim women’s lives, including in non-religious areas. Sehlikoglu (2018) provided a detailed literature overview of these studies. They reveal “multiple femininities” and invite to “embrace fluidities, temporalities, shifts, and instabilities as they exist in the lives of individuals” (p. 84).

61 2.4.2. In Mormon studies

In line with the third phase in approaches, around 2000 a shift also occurred in Mormon studies, namely towards research that valorized aspects of Mormonism in women’s lives in contrast with the previous phase where the focus was on agency as defiance. Mormon analyst Brekus (2011) remarked how historians of women in minority groups tended to search for a “usable past” that underscored their “individual or collective resistance to white male hegemony” (p. 71). But in so doing, agency became synonymous with resistance to the social structure and its constraints. Agency, it is assumed, must lead to emancipation. The consequence is that religious history focused on the few female leaders that defy the vested order. Brekus concluded:

Because historians have implicitly defined agency against structure, they have found it hard to imagine women who accepted religious structures as agents. This is why there are so few Mormon women in American religious history textbooks—

or for that matter, Catholic women, Orthodox Jewish women, or Fundamentalist women. The field of women’s history still has a feminist bent, and scholars in search of a “usable past” have rarely been interested in studying women who seem to have accepted female subordination. (p. 72)

Since 2000 a number of theses and dissertations which study the perception of gender roles among Mormon women in the US and Canada came to rather positive conclusions as to the value of Mormonism for women. Of course, often their analysis included a discussion of crises preceding solutions: such crises would then rather belong to the preceding phase (2.3.2). From the studies mentioned below I gathered the themes wherein Mormon women estimated that female valorization in their religion outperformed drawbacks. Some of the cited authors contribute to more than one theme.

2.4.2.1. Theology and temple

Brinkman (2000) explored how Mormon and Catholic women create religious meaning and construct a relational spirituality as part of their gender performance. For the Mormon respondents, the incorporation of the feminine principle related to “Heavenly Mother” is empowering. They readily accept a masculinized image of God by emphasizing motherhood as complementary for the priesthood and for godhood as eternal couple.

Also George (2013) gathered from interviews the conclusion that aspects such as female deity and positive representations of Eve are empowering to women.

Kane (2011; 2017) entered the realm of Mormon temple rituals—often overlooked because of their sacred/secret nature—that are vital to understand the broader perspectives Mormon women may develop because of their temple participation. Kane illustrated that women “draw from an amalgam of competing dominant, alternative, and

oppositional discourses to define their religious experiences and identities” (p. 1) Women draw from the temple rituals expansive identities ― “priestesses unto the most high God”—thus shifting normative definitions of Mormon women as subservient wives and mothers. Kane belonged to the congregation where the fieldwork was done and as a practicing Mormon had experiential knowledge of temple rituals. In its public descriptions of the ordinance of the endowment in the temple, the church mentions that the concept of priests and priestesses is part of the ceremony.¹

2.4.2.2. Employment and career

Since the 1990s explicit directives by church leaders to avoid women’s employment in favor of family life have waned, though the emphasis on motherhood remained.

Beaman (2001) explored boundary negotiations of Mormon women employed in the paid labor force. She found that they interpreted church teachings in ways that allowed maximization of agency while remaining within the exigencies of church doctrine. Yet there often remained a tension in the role expectations for women as to their responsibility toward husband and family. Beaman underscored the individual evolution in viewpoints with age, as well as the difference between “lifers” and converts who were able to perceive gender roles from the perspective of their pre-Mormon life.

2.4.2.3. Marriage and family life

Marriage and family are central in Mormonism (5.2.2 and 5.4.2.4). Numerous studies analyze the impact of this focus on marital conditions. I limit my selection to a few.

Freeman, Palmer, and Baker (2006) studied the way Mormon stay-at-home mothers identify the leisure at their disposal and their sense of empowerment to take personal leisure: “In general, these women seemed satisfied with how they spent their personal leisure time. While they could come up with an ideal leisure setting or experience, they did not appear to fantasize about a life that appeared far better to them than their own”

(p. 210)

Hoyt (2007a; 2007b), with reference to Mahmood’s work, argued that the feminist victim/empowerment scheme tends to mischaracterize the position of traditional religious women by applying Western political notions. She studied Mormon women to show how they adhere to agency as an indigenous concept, in order to deliberately choose for a strong family life, including the acceptance of gendered theology. Hoyt argued that a feminist concept of agency and the traditional Mormon understanding of agency are not mutually exclusive. Rather, the model of agency needs to be reconceptualized in the

1 Joseph F. Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, vol. 3 (Salt Lake Bookcraft, 1956, 3:178.) “The Restoration of Major Doctrines through Joseph Smith: Priesthood, the Word of God, and the Temple,” Ensign (February 1989);

“Accepted of the Lord: The Doctrine of Making Your Calling and Election Sure,” Ensign (July 1976).

63 sense that agency “includes simultaneous resistance and maintenance of religious norms,” successfully applied in family life (2007a, 41).

George (2013) found in her interviews that heterosexual women who enjoy domesticity find refuge in Mormonism “which glorifies, honors, and protects heteronormative domesticity” (p. 146).

An important facet of Mormon family life pertains to marriage stability. Studies show that same-faith marriages are significantly more stable than interfaith marriages (Lehrer 2009; Olson et al. 2015). Applied to Mormonism, Mormon couples, married in the temple, have low divorce rates. However, in interfaith marriages, in particular when one of the partners is Mormon, those rates are higher. Kelley, Dollahite, and Marks (2017) reviewed the related empirical studies to conclude: “We are left with the apparent reality that LDS marriage represents both the most stable and (one of the) least stable unions when studied nationally, depending on whether both spouses are LDS or not” (p. 27). Marriage stability rates do not guarantee how gender roles play out within the relation between husband and wife, but the variable of same-faith or interfaith marriage is an important factor to consider when assessing gender roles. The related complexities of how religion (including Mormonism) both sustains and harms families were laid out in Dollahite, Marks, and Dalton (2018). For a retrospective of studies on Mormon families, see also Kelley, Dollahite, and Marks (2017).

2.4.2.4. Sister missionaries

Calling members to serve fulltime proselytizing missions for a certain period has been part of church life since the 1830s. Over the years it became a formal system as part of the priesthood duty of male young adults. They typically serve two years, often in a foreign country. Female young adults have been sent on missions since the 1900s, for periods from 18 to 24 months, but ambivalence about their need and presence is evident from the many changes as to their age and assignments. At the end of 2019, some 67,000 missionaries were serving, assigned over some 400 geographical “missions,” each under the direction of a mission president and his wife.

Lyon and Shumway McFarland (2003) documented the history and impact of “sister missionaries“ in the church—single young women, counterparts of the typical male missionaries. According to these authors, the effect on the valorization of Mormon women in the church is undeniable. While young men may feel considerable pressure to go on a mission, young women do not: “A sense of personal responsibility for women’s decision to serve naturally evolves into a personal responsibility for their mission experience” (p. 98). Church leaders acknowledge that sister missionaries “work harder, they prepare more people for baptism, they are more mature, more compliant with mission rules” (p. 96). Still, Lyon and Shumway McFarland remarked that the public utterances of church leaders tilt towards male bias in missionary service.

More than a decade later, Rabada (2014) analyzed the situation of sister missionaries in the wake of the 2012 decision that lowered their minimum age to 19 to be called (originally it was 23, then lowered to 21 in 1964). The age change caused an upsurge in young women willing to “go on a mission.” It also led to granting more authority to these young women as trainers and leaders. Rabada sees these developments not only as women’s valorization during the mission period, but also beyond: “a new generation of experienced, independent, empowered, twenty-first century women will be coming home after eighteen months of service transformed and eager to continue serving their faith and their church” (p. 39).

2.4.2.5. Community life and female impact

Hoyt (2007a; 2007b) pointed to the positive influence community life can have on women.

She turned to unapologetically traditional Mormon women for an ethnographic study of their use of agency to wholly and willingly accept a gendered society. Specifically, Hoyt utilized the concept of agency to understand how it functions as a continuous engagement to validate various knowledge systems among Mormon women. She criticized certain feminist approaches that tend to discount and understudy traditional gender roles, insisting that research needs to take into account specific renderings of gender analysis in order to paint a more trustworthy picture of the lives and practices of conservative religious women. Though women do not “hold the priesthood” to function in the hierarchical structure of the church, their intense involvement in the congregation creates forms of authority and often leads to contentment.

George (2013) noted that her participants claimed that forms of gender discrimination were softened by rhetoric of equality and by the scarcity of overt forms of oppression.

Moreover, women enjoyed privileges, such as church positions that buffered them from experiencing domination and allowed dissenting views. On the other hand, “homophobia, horizontal hostility, unexamined privilege, and domination through intimidation were evident in interviews with some participants” (p. 147).

Lamoreaux (2012) interviewed Mormon women in order to delineate how non-Mormon therapists in counseling psychology could optimize their service to non-Mormon clients. Though devout Mormon women can experience a large amount of cognitive dissonance and sometimes suffer from depression, overall they stand behind the advantages which their situation generates: full commitment to the church is demanding, but remains an essential part of their living culture; the eternal perspective makes them accept trials as forms of necessary probation; they rejoice and pride themselves in keeping up high standards. This whole approach also develops an attitude of “us versus them,” whereby Mormon women become exceedingly dependent on their own community to ensure satisfaction, thus perhaps creating a vicious circle of internal reliance to maintain happiness.

65 Torgrimsson (2019) analyzed blog posts written by Mormon feminists who “perceive the relationship between their faith and their feminism as dissonant but simultaneously describe this as an ambivalence of religious virtue which bestows upon them a sense of freedom, authenticity and creative potential.” In blogging they find a community to discuss and sort out their conflicting feelings and negotiate their identities. By embracing

“virtuous ambivalence” as part of their agency, they are able, often but not always, to accept their compliance with the system.

Claudia Bushman’s call for “Mormon women to speak out” (2008) is not an academic study, but deserves to be mentioned here because of Bushman’s reputation in Mormon circles for the valorization of women in the church. Her message to Mormon women is to be more assertive, more confident, more persuasive, and more creative in the interaction with male leaders—within the boundaries of reasonableness. Neylan McBaine’s Women at Church (2014) follows in a similar vein. It is a kind of pastoral analysis and guide by a Mormon expert who maintains a deferential tone toward church leaders. In the first part she identifies the challenges and agony Mormon women can feel in the context of unfulfilled expectations and frustrated perfectionism. In the second part she offers suggestions to broaden women’s roles in the church without overstepping current regulations, such as more female involvement with interviews of young women, expanded female impact in ward councils, and more presence of women’s voices in church talks and lessons. In her review of McBaine’s work, Smith (2014) appreciated the effort to make suggestions, but remarked that such minor changes do not address the deeper structural problem. Moreover, attempts to alter procedures locally can be “very divisive” as conservative women will resist non-institutional changes, while more liberal

“may fume if their local leaders are unwilling to adopt changes that are implemented elsewhere.”

2.4.2.6. Priesthood

One of the major contentious areas is the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood (5.5). Research shows that only a small minority of Mormon women are adamant in their request to extend the priesthood to women; according to these studies, a vast majority of women do not plead for it (citations in Hamm 2016). Hamm studied this paradox from the angle of the complex meaning of “priesthood” in Mormonism—which many Mormons understand differently. Her surveys denoted semantic confusion and diversity, despite the church’s attempt to determine an official position. One of Hamm’s surveys probed further among Mormon women who had previously stated that women should not have the priesthood. Most declared that they simply sustain church authority in the matter; others referred to the gender roles in which they see the priesthood as a helping gift to men: men need it, women don’t. Basically, most Mormon women accept the present situation from an overall satisfaction with the current dynamics in the

community. Hamm’s analysis intended to clarify how much women feel that they already participate in priesthood authority and thus feel valorized.

2.4.2.7. Personal revelation

Clayton (2013) studied the topic of “personal revelation” in Mormon women’s narratives.

She concluded that they act agentively in response to what they perceive to be revelation from God: “There is no need to evaluate the reality of these communications as to whether they are truly from a loving and interested divine Being or from the woman’s own inner psyche. The narrators believe they come from God and so they carry the weight of heavenly communication for them” (p. 36). George (2013) found that “the doctrine of

Dans le document Mormon, Flemish, and female : a qualitative study of the perception of gender roles among mormon women in Flanders (Page 83-91)