Introducing the Episode and Guests

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. Today we're here to answer the question, is Mormon Feminism dead? No, I'm just kidding. We're trying to think about what's a title we can create that's going to make everybody want to listen. And so anyway, I am so excited today to be discussing a new book that's out by one of my favorite publishers, certainly in the Mormon space. And that's signature books. The book is called 50 Years of Exponent 2. And our guests today are Katie Ludlow, Rich. Hey, Katie. Hi. Thanks for joining us.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:00:35] Thanks for having us.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] And we have Heather Sundahl. Hey, Heather.

Heather Sundahl [00:00:39] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:00:40] Yeah. And they are the authors, editors of this book, is that right? I guess you probably have editors separate.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:00:47] Yeah, well, we wrote the original history and then we curated as editors the selected works. It's both. So it's both.

John Dehlin [00:00:53] Perfect. Perfect. Well, for those of you, we know that half of our audience has never been Mormon, and a lot of you are just brand new to learning about Mormonism, even as lifelong Mormons. So for those of you who have no idea, just as a quick intro, there's been feminist streaks in Mormonism since the very beginning, since Emma Smith and the founding of the Relief Society. Oh, and through the suffragette movement and, you know, late 1800s, early 1900s all the way through, there's been important feminist activities and strains and opposition. And then, of course, in the modern era, let's just say in the 60s, as Mormon intellectual life was emerging, there emerged a really important community and movement of Mormon academics and Mormon feminists that culminated in the creation of a really important publication called Exponent 2, or the Women's Exponent 2.

Heather Sundahl [00:01:46] Is that right?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:01:46] Exponent 2.

John Dehlin [00:01:47] Yeah, Exponent II. And we've covered it on Mormon stories before, but this is. We've got great cameras, we've got great audio, and we've got this great book that will help us do it again. But we're basically going to be talking about the history of feminism within Mormonism and this important organization and its entrance into the Internet era and kind of where things are today. But I also hope to dig in to things like The Sunstone Dialogue, September 6 kind of era as it relates to feminism, also the blogging era that emerged with Mormon feminism in the mid-2000s, culminating in ordained Women. And for me, maybe the most important question is, how have things been? How do we rate success? What is success? What is not success? And where is Mormon feminism today? So that's the intro. I hope y' all are excited. As excited as I am to have these. These two women on. So I'll start with you, Katie. Welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:02:50] Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] Yeah. And, Heather, so I guess maybe we always like to start on Mormon Stories by having an intention on why people want to come on in this case. Obviously, you're talking about this book, but what would your intention be for today's interview? And, Heather, we'll start with you. Do you have an intention for today?

Heather Sundahl [00:03:13] I would love for people to know more about the amazing, powerful women who have always existed in Mormonism and the ways that they have fought, both within and without the structure to promote women's voices and to try to make the space something that serves women.

John Dehlin [00:03:36] Love it. Love it. Okay. Katie, how about you?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:03:40] Yeah. In our research, a thing that really emerged is that when Exponent 2 is doing well, and when Mormon feminism is doing well, it prioritizes community over ideological purity. And that's something that's been really important to me in this latest election in the last many years online, where learning to see past, like, the most basic labels and. And find community beyond assumptions.

John Dehlin [00:04:04] Yeah. And. And I have no intention. I will not be getting political today. But in today's climate, just cultural climate, that's a key theme. Beyond feminism, just how do we have community without becoming too extreme and too polarized?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:04:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:24] So, I mean, I think that's relevant. Just it's such a. Such perfect timing. So. All right, well, there's so many places I would want to begin, but if it's okay, can we talk? Can we have each of you share just a micro Mormon story of how you became awakened into, let's just say, Mormon feminism. But let's begin by a definition of feminism, because it's one of those words that's such a simple, elegant, universally acceptable term that almost everybody misunderstands and that has so many unfortunate connotations. Can we just give our audience a very simple definition of feminism to begin with, just so we know what we're talking about here?

Defining Mormon Feminism

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:05:08] Yeah. One of the founders of Exponent 2, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, defined Mormon feminism as recognizing historical discrimination based on gender and a commitment to work towards gender equality and the belief that that is compatible with the tenets of the Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints. And so Mormon feminism doesn't fit cleanly into any of the academic ideological camps of feminism or feminisms, but is a belief that there has been inequality and a commitment to work towards greater equality.

John Dehlin [00:05:39] Yeah. So that's literally it. It's like, men and women should have equality. Right.

Heather Sundahl [00:05:43] It's so simple. And yet here we are, forever struggling with it.

John Dehlin [00:05:49] Yeah. So that's all we're talking about here, is just like, equal opportunity, equal valuing, equal respect. That's it. Right. Okay. Okay. So let's go with each of you. Maybe Heather first.

Heather Sundahl [00:06:01] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:06:02] It's not. Some would say that Mormon, feminist are two words that don't belong together. Tell us just what you want to share about your feminist introduction and awakening and your feminist history in the church.

Heather Sundahl [00:06:15] So let me tell you a little story, and I think that will kind of encapsulate some of were how I come to this and how I perceive it. So I was raised in Southern California. Like many good Mormon girls, I went to byu, and I don't think I considered myself a feminist at all. I think at that point, I still thought feminism was a little bit scary, you know, maybe a little too edgy, a little angry. You know, heaven forbid a woman ever be angry. But I was very much invested in women and women's voices and women's power. And so I noticed that whenever they had firesides and devotionals at BYU, not even nine out of 10, probably 19 out of 20 times, it was a man, that it's a man up there. And so the implication is that only men have authority. Only men get to sort of speak, and that that's where things are at. So one night, there was a devotional, and it was a woman. And I was so excited, and I didn't normally even go to the devotionals at all, but I thought, I'm going to this. They're having a woman speak. I want to go and hear what she has to. So I show up. I don't remember who it was. I don't remember what her topic was, but this one sentence that she said is. And this was in 1986. So we're talking, you know, what is that, like, 38 years?

John Dehlin [00:07:39] I was a junior in high school.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:07:41] Okay.

Heather Sundahl [00:07:41] Yeah. So this is a long time ago. This sentence is burned in my brain. She said, women don't have to become astronomers because they can sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to their children.

John Dehlin [00:07:57] Ooh.

Heather Sundahl [00:07:58] And I just, like, I gasped. And then I went back to my dorm, and my roommate hadn't gone with me. And I'm telling her the story. She starts laughing. I start laughing, and then pretty soon I'm sobbing, and I'm like, what did I just hear? Is that really what they're saying? Is there no. And that you can do this and do that. That for women. And so it really put me on this trajectory where I was wrestling with, like, how am I supposed to genuinely study anything if I am just expected to, you know, tell nursery rhymes and just be with children? And so that really pushed me that there's gotta be something more. There has to be a better approach. This cannot be really what my creator expects of me. And so did you say you were

Guests' Personal Feminist Journeys

John Dehlin [00:08:48] at BYU at the time?

Heather Sundahl [00:08:49] I was at byu.

John Dehlin [00:08:49] Okay. So that was a year before I went to byu. And I just have to. Not to even interrupt your story, but, like, didn't Ezra Taft Benson give his famous talk in 1987, like a year after that?

Heather Sundahl [00:09:01] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] Basically saying, women, the woman's places in the home.

Heather Sundahl [00:09:03] Yes. Where he quotes President Kimball, come home from the typing pool. And I'm like, oh, come on, at least give me a better job to come home from. Come home from the laundry mat. I'm like, what do you think we women are doing? Anyhow? So that started me on this path. And so after that, I really sought out feminist professors at byu, which is

John Dehlin [00:09:27] the time of Gayle Huston and Cecilia Farr.

Heather Sundahl [00:09:30] And yes, Cecilia and I were buddies. Gloria Cronin, you know, they were on my. I ended up getting a master's. They were on my thesis committee. And these were the women that really. I cut my teeth on my feminist teeth. And it wasn't even Mormon feminism. It was just pure feminism that they were teaching me. And I got this. I felt like a fabulous education. I felt like I really learned the important theories and all of that stuff, and that expanded me on into non canonical literature. So I started taking classes in African American lit, Jewish lit, Native American, and really just sort of seeing, here's this canon, who's outside and why are we saying that only these voices are privileged? That these are the only voices who have anything worthwhile when you've got this amazing stuff going on here that turns some of this stuff on its head. So that's where my beginning came. And then I moved to Boston in 96, and that's when I met the women of Exponent 2. And that's where I really started learning about Mormon feminism and what that history was and sort of, you know, the wrestles and what those struggles were.

John Dehlin [00:10:47] Were you around BYU when Joyner Brooks was doing, you know, marching?

Heather Sundahl [00:10:51] Yeah, I was part of Take Back the Night marches and all of that stuff. Voice.

John Dehlin [00:10:58] And you read oh, Voice in the student review you wrote. You followed that?

Heather Sundahl [00:11:02] Of course. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:02] When did you leave BYU?

Heather Sundahl [00:11:03] I ended up graduating in, I think, 94, because I did a master's, and I also went and lived in China for a year.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] Nice. Okay. So we were literally there at the same time. I finished in 93, so. Okay, fun. Okay. And you can only share what you want to, but, like, in terms of, like, the traditional Mormon milestones of, like, getting married in the temple and all that stuff, what do you want to share or being active or leaving the

Heather Sundahl [00:11:30] church, whatever, I'm happy to. I'm really open about my path. I was married in the temple. Four kids. I'm currently divorced. None of my children are active. I am still active. I consider myself, obviously, very nuanced. If you want my reasons for staying, I can give them to you.

John Dehlin [00:11:51] Let's say that for the end. I mean, you could say whenever you want, but that'd be a fun way to kind of. Okay. I think our conversation will naturally get to that. Okay. But. Okay. So you still tend to.

Heather Sundahl [00:12:03] I do. I see it as sort of my job to kind of smash stereotypes wherever I go.

John Dehlin [00:12:10] That's awesome.

Heather Sundahl [00:12:11] So good.

John Dehlin [00:12:12] Okay. Fun. Okay. And really quickly, your involvement in any aspects of Mormon feminism along the way. Did you blog for, you know, the blog. Did you.

Heather Sundahl [00:12:26] I published in Sunstone in the early. I think it was probably 94. It was right around the time that I graduated. I published something in there, and that was a really big deal. It felt I was so green. I sent it to Dialogue and Sunstone. I didn't know you weren't supposed to send it to two places.

John Dehlin [00:12:47] Was Dan Witherspoon the editor at the time?

Heather Sundahl [00:12:49] I don't even remember.

John Dehlin [00:12:51] Okay, that's fine.

Heather Sundahl [00:12:51] But anyhow, they both accepted it. And then I had to write the very awkward letter back to. This is before email. You know, I had to write the

John Dehlin [00:12:59] very pick you must have picked.

Heather Sundahl [00:13:00] Well, Sunstone was first.

John Dehlin [00:13:01] Okay.

Heather Sundahl [00:13:02] You know, the girl's gonna go with, you know, who's there, and, you know, whoever seems more excited.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] So.

Heather Sundahl [00:13:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] Okay.

Heather Sundahl [00:13:11] And then I started when I moved back to Boston. I became staff on the paper in probably 97. I became an associate editor in 2000. The Exponent 2. Sorry, Exponent 2. And then when the blog started in 2006, I think I had some guest posts that first year. So I've been involved with all aspects of Mormon feminism for almost, you know, more than 30 years.

John Dehlin [00:13:44] Nice. Okay. And then career wise. Do you say anything about that?

Heather Sundahl [00:13:49] I. Writer and editor for years and years. I taught at Boston University and at Harvard when I was back there. I taught writing to the ESL students, trying to get, you know, teach academic writing to the ones who are at those universities. And a few years ago, I went back to school to uvu, and now I'm a marriage and family therapist.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] That's so cool.

Heather Sundahl [00:14:13] So, yes, I'm a story person. I'm all about the story. And I realized, you know, helping people edit and working with it, that as you change your story, you change your life, and as you claim your story, that's when you find healing. And I thought, I just need to go directly and work with people who are really, really seeking out these transformations. And so that's what I do. I do a lot of narrative therapy.

John Dehlin [00:14:39] Well, I always need someone to refer people I work with or people I interact with, too. So now I know another emergency vampire therapist I can refer people to. I want your contact information. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for that, Heather. Katie, how about your feminist Mormon story?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:14:58] Yeah, well, Heather and I have so many parallels, but I was born in 1987. That year you were born?

John Dehlin [00:15:04] A year I graduated from high school.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:15:05] Yeah. Great.

John Dehlin [00:15:06] Thank you.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:15:07] Sorry. So I grew up in the era of what I call The Kimball Benson 1, 2 punch, where Kimball comes in and says, you know, mothers stay home. And Benson says, and do it without any help. And that's kind of the generation that I see, you know, with my mom and with a lot of the women who were raising kids as I was growing up. I grew up in Modesto, California, and I was the only girl of five with five brothers of my biological siblings. And so growing up, you know, I saw some of the differences in the church of how boys were treated compared to girls, you know, with ordination, with resources, with scouting and things like that. Definitely noticed some inequality there. But I stayed very active. I went to BYU. I graduated with my Bachelor's in 3 years and got married in the temple the week after. And it was going through the temple that really just shocked me in the initiatory. Heard language about being like a queen and priestess unto your husband and just started sobbing. And then through the rest of the experience was just hearing this language.

John Dehlin [00:16:19] Was the hearkening language still there?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:16:21] Yes, Yesening was there, and the veiling

John Dehlin [00:16:23] of the face was still there.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:16:25] And that I was not at all prepared for that. I had been told to expect that this was gonna be a very empowering experience. And the expectation of Eve making this empowering choice was not reflected in what I saw there in the video at the time.

John Dehlin [00:16:43] Around what year was that?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:16:44] That was 2008.

John Dehlin [00:16:45] Wow. Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:16:46] And so that was shocking to me. But I spent the next several years in a process of. Well, the temple can't be wrong. I must be wrong.

John Dehlin [00:16:55] Okay. And this was after you had gotten your bachelor's.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:16:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:57] And your bachelor's was in history at where?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:17:00] At byu.

John Dehlin [00:17:01] At byu. Okay. So had you. It's weird because I think BYU got more conservative and more anti feminist after Heather and I left.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:17:10] Yes.

Heather Sundahl [00:17:10] Holland was much more progress, and Rex Lee cranked things down. Rex Lee was the one who was like, all right, Cecilia.

John Dehlin [00:17:20] So I would expect that even after a couple decades later, you probably would have had less of an exposure to feminism at BYU than Heather and I would have had.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:17:29] No, I think my history professors were pretty great generally. And that is where I kind of got exposure to feminism and feminist texts and things like that to a small degree. But I was also taking a lot of religion classes, you know, trying to stay on a particular path. And I had a. Because I had a sense of some inequalities, but I don't know that I would have really claimed feminist yet. Then I go through the temple, and I'm kind of shocked. I worked at a law firm in Provo for a year and then ended up going to get my master's in English at BYU as well. Like Heather, Gloria Cronin was also on my thesis committee couple decades later. But. But in that year when I was working at the law firm, it was like a huge year for the blogosphere. And it was like every couple had a little blog about them and their spouse and just usually little scrapbook blogs. Nothing big, but everyone would have a list of the blogs that they followed on the side of their blogger account. And that's where I started seeing things like Feminist Mormon Housewives and Exponent 2. And because of my exposure experience in the temple, I would kind of dip into these blocks. And it was really scary for me to see people who saw the same things that I saw, because what I wanted right then was to be told, no, actually, everything's okay. You are wrong that this is fine. And you can keep believing the way that you did before without any change or discomfort. And that's not what those blocks provided for me. And so I would read between my fingers and retreat back to safer online spaces.

John Dehlin [00:19:09] And Heather's Reaching out to trust.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:19:12] Yeah, baby.

John Dehlin [00:19:12] Katie.

Heather Sundahl [00:19:13] I just. It breaks my heart.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:19:15] And then I get my master's and I get more exposure to feminism and feminist texts from byu. Yeah. Yeah. And just a broader education, rather. You know, liberal arts education and training on how to think critically more than any individual text. And, you know, I grow immature. I start having kids right after I finish my master's. Three weeks later, I have my first baby. I have four kids now. And right before I started my master's, I worked as a research assistant with a history professor on the Mormon trail with Bill Hartley, but right before he retired. And I spent that summer researching trail diaries and coming across content that was different and outside of my previous exposure. You know, assumptions that pioneers were perfect was broken for me in a way that I think was really healthy to see real humans, real people, real problems, real complexity. And, you know, I was able to ask questions and kind of start thinking more along those lines. But those questions kind of stayed with me as I became a stay at home mom. And I stayed interested in Mormon history and would read the books as they came out and kind of engage in some of these ideas, but was mostly just raising my kids. And then about six years ago or so, I started thinking that I wanted to take Mormon history more seriously and more professionally and started kind of doing more intentional research. And that led to.

John Dehlin [00:20:36] Is that just private individual?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:20:38] Yeah, like, so, I mean, I guess it was like a five year plan to enter a PhD program in history, which would have been like this fall. But in those five years, a lot of things changed. And just throughout, like, I am not currently entering, but I am writing and publishing professionally.

John Dehlin [00:20:55] So.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:20:56] Yeah. So my first main research project related to what became an article that was published in the Journal of Mormon History earlier this year, the Shadow Succession Crisis, challenging the claim that Brigham Young disbanded the relief Society in 1845. And I went with the earliest version of that paper to the Mormon History association conference in 2021 and that year. And that conference was really huge for me. It was my first foray back into scholarship and into an academic conference since leaving grad school like a decade earlier. I had started as an exponent blogger earlier that year. I did a couple guest posts in 2020, and that was. I had been reading on and off since 2008, but I hadn't submitted anything until 2020. And then early 2021, I became like a reg. And then at this conference and this year it was still kind of COVID Cautious. It was up at the Park City, like Utah Olympic Park, I think it's called. And there's like skiers jumping into the swimming pool. Yeah. And I got to meet other bloggers there in person for the first time, like Heather and Caroline Klein and Nancy Ross. And from across the courtyard, I saw Claudia and Richard Bushman. And Claudia's the founding editor of Exponent 2. And I'm this new blogger and entering this Mormon space for the first time. And I have nothing to say to them. Like, I'm so intimidated by these, like, rock stars in Mormon history. I don't go introduce myself, but I have this moment where I'm like, Claudia's still here this year. She just turned 90. So at the time she's like 87. And I was just kind of amazed and thought the 50 year anniversary of Exponent's coming up and all of the editors were still alive. And I was like, we should do something to celebrate this anniversary and maybe I can do something. And so I start thinking about that. I'm talking to my friend Rachel Hunt Steenblack, who was a co editor of Mormon Feminism, and asking her about her book project and what that looked like, and start thinking about that over the next few months and start deciding, I do think I want to take this on. And so I reach out to Heather because I'm the new kid on the block. I'm like the one showing up for the first time at a Mormon conference. I'm a new blogger. I just have this passion and this interest, but I don't have the experience or the connections. And that's where I needed the right partner for this kind of project, the old veteran. So I approached Heather about it, and for me, the timing was right. When I'm looking ahead at the ages of my kids, and my youngest just entered first grade this fall, and I knew that I wasn't gonna be starting a grad program or entering full time work in those years. I was like, I can do this book. Heather says yes immediately. But the timing was not exactly right for her.

Heather Sundahl [00:23:36] No. I was three weeks into my master's. And you know when the last time you were in school was? In 1994. And John, we're the same age, basically. We weren't even really using computers. We had word processors, which was like a fancy typewriter. And so to go back to school and them to throw me on canvas and all of this stuff, I was like, I didn't even know if I could do it. I was like, does my brain still work after having four kids? After being out of this for so long, I just was really, like, terrified. And then Katie approaches me. I'm like thinking, this is the worst possible timing. And yet the answer is not just yes, but hell yes and a high five. I will be part of this story. I will be part of shaping this story.

John Dehlin [00:24:28] Nice. Beautiful. If not y', all, who?

Heather Sundahl [00:24:30] Right?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:24:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

Heather Sundahl [00:24:33] Which is scary. Well, because there's people out there. I'm like, no, I don't trust your version or your intentions.

John Dehlin [00:24:39] That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:24:41] So we decided to take on this project. But it was shortly after I had stopped attending church that we started all this. I had essentially stopped believing traditionally, back in 2014, I kind of stopped the. It's. It's not you, it's me to actually know I believe something different and. But I was in a mixed faith marriage and that was.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] Your Katie was excommunicated. Is that a coincidence?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:25:08] No. Yeah, it was a coincidence. Yeah, it was. It was months before that that, yeah, I kind of followed along what was going on with Ordian women, but I was not a part. I was just raising kids and reading and. Yeah, yeah. Busy on my own, but not really engaged in. In any public Mormon feminism. But 2020, when everything shut down and

John Dehlin [00:25:30] so you're saying you did six years as sort of a non orthodox believing Mormon?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:25:34] Basically, yeah. And I went the intellectual route and the feminist route as a way to stay connected and engaged and intellectually honest, I suppose, with myself rather than. But I would leave church very dysregulated, and it was a very common experience that people had, like leaving with headaches, leav. Just stomach aches and not feeling okay. But when Covid shut down and my husband is able to see the difference in me when I'm not triggered and dysregulated every Sunday and the experience that we could have just sitting our kids down at the kitchen table and talking to them about what we felt they needed to be learning and focusing on, and that kind of shifted the trajectory for our family. And so we left together and. Yeah, so we. So Heather and I kind of reflect much of what the exponent community is like. About Half the bloggers are currently active and half are not. And that's similar with the magazine staff. You have many who are active, others who are not. And our community is a mix. And that is something that I think is like, really different over the ARC of these 50 years. While the founders were very much active members of the church, we now have this broad community of people who are staying connected to their heritage, but on a wide spectrum of belief.

John Dehlin [00:26:50] Love it. So did y' all approach Barbara, or I guess Barbara's predecessor, about doing this book with signature. Yeah, Barbara's so great.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:26:59] Yeah. So I gotta know her tell how

Heather Sundahl [00:27:02] we approach Barbara because I think this is very fun.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:27:04] So we. I hosted just a really small, like, Exponent and Friends thing at my house just to get to know you. I invited some friends who I had sent the magazine to and I thought might be kind of interested. And I knew Barbara through the Mormon History Association Conference and through Twitter and was, like, starting to kind of become friends with her. And I invited her, and she, like, in this short period of time, like, becomes executive director of Signature Books. And she had been executive director of the Mormon History Association. And so she comes over to my house for this little get together, and Heather's like, tell her about her book idea. And I'm like, I can't. Like, this is like, my friend. I'm not.

Heather Sundahl [00:27:35] Like, this is the perfect time to

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:27:36] try to pitch her.

Heather Sundahl [00:27:37] While you're playing cards against Mormonity. Yes. Where everything is just kind of irreverent and raucous and everyone's having a good time. This is the perfect time.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:27:47] And so I'm, like, embarrassed because, like, I'm like, that's not why I invited Barbara. But, hey, Barbara, we have this book idea. She's like, yes, send me your proposal. I'm very interested in hearing more about this.

John Dehlin [00:27:58] So, okay, so you wrote this book in how many, how long?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:28:03] Three years from deciding we were going to do it till it was out in print.

John Dehlin [00:28:06] That's amazing. Yes, that's very.

Heather Sundahl [00:28:08] It was intense. Yeah, it was intense.

John Dehlin [00:28:11] Fun. Beautiful. Well, beautiful stories. Thank you for sharing that. To me, it makes it more personal. I'm already super engaged. So the book. Let's just talk about the book for a second. Why don't y' all just talk about what it covers, and then we'll kind of start digging in a little bit just so people know what it covers.

Writing the History of Exponent 2

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:28:31] Yeah. So there's two main parts. The first part is an original history of the organization. And so to write that of Exponent 2. Yeah. So we interviewed over three dozen participants, founding mothers and editors and board presidents, and just contributors over the years. The archive for Exponent 2 is at BYU Special Collections, and they have over 30 boxes there. And so we took many trips to BYU Special Collections, which was nice because we both live in Utah and had access to that archive, even though X1 was started in Boston. And we read the over 160 issues of the Quarterly and thousands of blog posts.

Heather Sundahl [00:29:11] Thousands of blog posts.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:29:12] And thousands sent surveys to participants and editors to get their recommendations. And so we wrote a history of the organization starting kind of in the 1960s to when it was founded in 1974 to the present, the 50 years. And then we have six units of selected works that cover different kind of eras of the paper and a unit of the blog.

John Dehlin [00:29:33] Beautiful. Okay. All right. So I wasn't necessarily planning on talking about kind of pre exponent Mormon history, because there's a lot we could talk about with Emma and with the Relief Society and even the whole a gift given, a gift taken away kind of stuff. That's all comes before the suffrage movement. Is there anything you guys want to say about early Mormon history or even mid Mormon history? Mid 20th century Mormon history? Before we start talking about exponent, I

Heather Sundahl [00:30:06] think we should mention the women's exponent. Yeah, that's really essential.

The Women's Exponent and Early Mormon Feminism

John Dehlin [00:30:11] Let's start there.

Heather Sundahl [00:30:12] So let me start in Boston and how these women kind of first encountered the women's Exponent. So you have this group of women in Boston, and they're working on various projects. So we can kind of, you know,

John Dehlin [00:30:27] this is early 70s, right?

Heather Sundahl [00:30:28] This is in the early 60s and 70s, and they're doing an institute class. They're gonna be teaching on early Mormon history, the aspects that involve women. So someone's doing polygamy, someone else is doing something else. And this woman, Susan Kohler, is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and she comes across this big bound stack of papers. And they are a Mormon newspaper, a Mormon women's newspaper called the Women's Exponen. And she's able to take them out and bring them with her, which is a little bit horrifying that they're just, you know, handing over these things. And it is this suffraget. These women are suffragists and polygamists. Talk about bizarre. You know, people say that Mormon feminism is, you know, an oxymoron. Suffragist polygamists kind of blows my mind a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:31:23] And sometimes people aren't up on their history. Suffragist means they were fighting for the. The women's right to vote.

Heather Sundahl [00:31:28] For women's right to vote, yes. In England, it's suffragette, but here they're suffragists.

John Dehlin [00:31:34] So there are Mormon women who are polygamists.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:31:36] Many of them.

Heather Sundahl [00:31:37] Many of them, not all of them,

John Dehlin [00:31:38] but many of them who were fighting also for the women's right to vote.

Heather Sundahl [00:31:41] Yes. And so these women are looking at this and they're seeing all these echoes. They feel like these women are kind of teleporting from back in time, saying, we're here with you. We're still struggling with these themes of religion and authority and patriarchy and compliance, along with pushing for advocacy for rights and for all of this. And they just felt like these were their spiritual foremothers. And so that was their sort of first connection. And that planted the seeds then for when they thought, well, why don't we have a paper? Why don't we now do something? That's why they called it Exponent 2, because they're drawing from that original one. Katie, tell a little bit about the order of how it went from Women's Exponent to the Relief Society, just so that people get a little bit of a sense of how women's voices have been represented or co opted over the years in the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:32:44] And before you respond, can I just ask for clarification? Okay, so there was an original Mormon women's publication called the Exponent.

Heather Sundahl [00:32:53] The Women's Exponent.

John Dehlin [00:32:54] Okay, and what year was that founded?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:32:56] Yeah, so that's what. Yeah, so 1872, the women's exponent was founded. So the Relief Society. Yeah, the Relief Society comes back, like Brigham Young authorizes Eliza R. Snow to go and like set up the Relief Society and all the wards and stakes throughout the territory in 68, 1868. And so just a few years after that, as the Relief Society is organizing and they immediately start working towards suffrage. That's kind of. They use like the Relief Society as part of their organizing tool to work towards Utah suffrage and connect to the national suffrage movement. But the Women's exponent starts in 72, and it's kind of this unofficial publication of the Relief Society. It's never official, but it is like approved and connected. They have like an office in the Relief Society building. And Luther Green Richards, who is a niece of Brigham Young, is. Or a great niece. But Anise Brigham Young is the original editor for just the first few years. And then Emmaline Wells comes on as editor for decades. So she really takes the helm and leads that paper and it continues until 1914. The original exponent, the Women's Exponent.

John Dehlin [00:34:03] Okay. Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:34:04] Yeah. So that publication ends in 1914, while Emmeline Wells is now General Relief Society president.

John Dehlin [00:34:12] Was the word exponent a mathematical term or did it mean something else? And was it soft feminist, or was it not even consciously feminist?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:34:23] Yeah, that's a great question. So feminist is a modern term that they would not have used that term. Right. And so if you are looking at just advocating for greater equality and greater rights, and if you want to apply the term feminist to that, the Woman's Exponent was feminist.

Heather Sundahl [00:34:37] Right. Because exponent means advocate.

John Dehlin [00:34:39] Okay.

Heather Sundahl [00:34:40] You Know, someone's an exponent of something.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:34:43] I was thinking, like a number with SEO. Now it's a problem. Right.

Heather Sundahl [00:34:48] But the meaning then was you were a proponent. It was some ideal that you were, like, pushing and working towards.

John Dehlin [00:34:55] Yeah, yeah.

Heather Sundahl [00:34:56] So I would say closest is advocate.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:34:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:58] Okay, good.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:34:59] Yeah. Woman's advocate. And, you know, and a lot of the paper was also just a lot of the dailiness of women's lives. It was, you know, recipes and house cleaning tips and just people sharing stories of their lives. They would print speeches that church leaders gave at different events alongside articles advocating for rights. They would follow different legislation that was related to women or children and give updates on that.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] I love this.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:35:23] Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [00:35:23] And just this beautiful blend of things that we would think are lofty and important and just the cote dien, the daily. Just the ordinary things.

The Relief Society and Shifting Institutional Power

John Dehlin [00:35:32] And is it okay to just talk about the Relief Society from this one standpoint? Like, we think of the Relief Society now in modern Mormonism as this integrated program that's part of the Sunday experience, and then something happens on the weekday. But like it used to be before correlation, it used to be a totally, totally independent. Its own budget, its own leadership, its own building, its own. Like, it was like its own thing. Am I wrong or is that exaggerated?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:35:58] So it was very independent. But, you know, the General Lisa Church leadership, right? Yeah. They would still be called by the president of the church, you know, General Luis. There was still always a relationship. And many of those Relief Society presidents, like Eliza R. Snow, was very much like, listen to your bishop. And a lot of patriarchal compromise. Right. As strong as she was and as much as she did, there was a lot of patriarchal compromise that went on. There was always a relationship, and there was often close relationships between the general Relief side president and top church leaders, and they would have a lot of influence that way. And that's soft and informal influence. And over time, as a lot of things formalized, that's where women start to lose their influence, because they don't get written into the handbook. They don't get those processes formalized. When it's relationship based and then somebody passes away, a lot of that power would end, too.

Heather Sundahl [00:36:51] Well, another way that the power shifted is that we all know that the longer you are somewhere, the more power you accumulate. And so you had Belle Spafford, who was, what, three decades as Relief Society president? That's a lot of power when you're there forever, you know, who gets stuff done, you know, who to talk to to get someone else to get something done. And now, the way it is, people have, what, three years?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:37:14] Five years?

Heather Sundahl [00:37:14] Five years. I mean, it's hardly any time at all. So it's really hard structurally for women even to acquire the soft power needed to change things.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] Yeah, because the apostles are there for

Heather Sundahl [00:37:25] life, but they're there forever.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] 30s or 40s, there's institutional for 60 years.

Heather Sundahl [00:37:29] You know, even if they shouldn't be.

John Dehlin [00:37:31] Yeah. Oh, wait a minute.

Heather Sundahl [00:37:34] I mean, cognitively. I'm saying even if cognitively, they have reached a point where their brain has retired.

John Dehlin [00:37:41] Yeah, sure.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:37:42] So there's a shift that happens in 1915. So the women's Exponent ends and the Relief Society magazine begins.

John Dehlin [00:37:48] And can I ask, a gift given, a gift taken away. You know about that, right? Wasn't that about the same time?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:37:55] That's in the middle 1940s.

John Dehlin [00:37:57] Oh, after.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:37:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:37:58] Okay. Sorry. Okay, keep going.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:38:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:01] So 1915, you said?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:38:02] Yeah, yeah, we're 1915. So Emily Wells, who had been the editor of the Women's Exponent for decades, is now general Relief Society president. And the exponent. Women's Exponent ends.

Heather Sundahl [00:38:10] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:38:11] And the Relief Society magazine begins.

John Dehlin [00:38:13] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:38:13] And that goes for 55 years.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] Why'd they. Why'd they rename it so, I mean.

Heather Sundahl [00:38:17] Because it became official.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:38:18] Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [00:38:19] Before the Women's Exponent wasn't the official church paper.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:38:24] It was related, it was supported, but it was not as official as now the Relief Society magazine, which is the official publication arm of the Relief Society.

Heather Sundahl [00:38:33] So now the Relief Society magazine is the voice.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] Okay, got it, got it.

Heather Sundahl [00:38:37] Of the church to women.

John Dehlin [00:38:39] Okay. And isn't it amazing how institutional memory works? Because it was an important church magazine for decades and decades, and then probably within 20 years, no one even remembered.

Heather Sundahl [00:38:51] I mean, women didn't know that the Woman's Exponent. Even some people did, but a lot of people had no clue. These total feminist women in the 70s find this other thing, and they're like, what is this? And why don't we know about it?

John Dehlin [00:39:04] And surely their moms and grandmas would have read it.

Heather Sundahl [00:39:06] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:39:07] And yet they didn't hear about it.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:39:09] So the Relief Society magazine continues until 1970, and it gets the acts as part of the priesthood correlation movement. And that's a really big year for a shift in women's institutional authority, because that's also when the Relief Society's financial independence was ended.

John Dehlin [00:39:22] Yeah. Because they used to raise their own money and manage their own budgets. Right.

Heather Sundahl [00:39:25] Yes.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:39:26] Yeah. And we can touch on a Beginner's Boston, which was the big first publishing project that the women who started Exponent 2 did, and they raised a lot of money doing it. But that year, you see the First Presidency direct the Relief Society on both the general and local levels to hand over their funds to what year? 1970.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] Okay. And is that in any way coincidental with the rise of the Equal Rights Amendment movement?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:39:53] So, not yet, because 1872 is when Congress ratifies the ERA or like, approves it.

John Dehlin [00:40:00] 1972.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:40:01] 1972. And that's when the national movement starts. Every state starts ratifying. So 1970.

John Dehlin [00:40:07] But there would have been talk about the era prior.

Heather Sundahl [00:40:09] And initially, women assumed that the church was going to support it because it wasn't radical. It wasn't. I mean, if you look at the Utah State Constitution, the language is very, very similar to what the. I mean, some people will even say that the ERA was based on that same language that the Utah constitute our state constitution of just men and women being equal. Like, it wasn't radical until people decided this could be interpreted to be radical. Now we don't want it. But in those. Those first few years in the 70s, it was not a given that the church was going to take a stand against the era.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:40:47] Okay, yeah. So we are a couple years shy before the ERA becomes a huge national discussion. But there's. The women's movement is going on. Yeah, yeah. So 1963, Betty Friedan writes the Feminine Mystique. And that is often looked to as, you know, one of those huge watershed moments that leaves. Leads to the things in the years that follow that lead to the big women's rights movement.

John Dehlin [00:41:10] I love the moment in the Afterword where Laurel Thatcher Ohwick mentions reading that book, you know.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:41:15] Yeah, she got it from her ward organist. Yeah, yeah. In 63.

Boston Origins and the Founding of Exponent 2

Heather Sundahl [00:41:19] So Boston. Yeah, it's so Boston.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:41:22] And I guess let's go there. Let's go to Boston, where in so context determines so much of what is radical. Right.

John Dehlin [00:41:29] Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:41:31] And what was going on in Salt Lake is not the same thing as what's going on in Boston. And so for this particular group of women, and, you know, it's a rotating group of women, Boston has so many universities, so many institutes of higher education. You know, people would kind of come in and out, but it was one of those hubs of the Mormon diaspora after World War II, as people from the Intermountain west, they start going to different places. They go to the Bay Area where Dialogue is founded. They go to Boston and Washington D.C. and other places. And so in Boston, there's really smart and interesting people who Gather and are together in, like, the Cambridge ward. The bishop is getting kind of tired of people moving in and complaining for a couple years because Boston is so different and hard to navigate and hard to figure out. And then finally they get used to it and realize how awesome it is, and then they leave because the NBA or whatever is over. And so he's like, why don't we produce a guidebook to Boston and also sell it as a ward fundraiser? And so he kind of pitches that to the ward council. And these Elders Quorum guys, these Harvard, they're like, no, that's not gonna make any money.

Heather Sundahl [00:42:31] It's a terrible idea.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:42:32] It's a terrible idea. Let's not do it.

Heather Sundahl [00:42:33] Never make any money. Why would anyone buy that book?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:42:37] And then Bonnie Horne, the release study presence, like, the women will do it. She knew that Laurel was interested in doing it. So Laurel Thatcher Ulrich becomes the editor of the first guidebook to the city of Boston.

Heather Sundahl [00:42:47] And if you don't know who Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is, she is our patron saint of Mormon feminism. She's a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the founders of Exponent 2. So she is her phrase. Yes. Everyone will know her from her phrase. Well behaved women seldom make history.

John Dehlin [00:43:08] Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [00:43:09] So if you've heard that, it was not Eleanor Roosevelt, it was not Madonna, it's Laurel.

John Dehlin [00:43:14] Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [00:43:15] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:43:15] Yeah. So Laurel becomes, like, the main editor of this project. It's a group project. Carolyn Peters does this hand drawn artwork that's just really incredible. And ward members write different pieces and they make all these. It's very practical guidebook to all kinds of different things in and around the city. Things to do with kids, things that are free. How to get babysitters.

John Dehlin [00:43:32] Not just for Mormons, but.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:43:34] No. Yes. Not Mormon at all. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:36] Just fun.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:43:38] And all of the areas around in Massachusetts, and they scrape together enough Money to print 1,000 copies. They send an advance copy to the Boston Globe, and they get this glowing review about the effort of these Mormon housewives to create this guidebook. And they sell out the thousand copies before they even get the books. And then they keep going and, like, through a few different revisions and editions, they sell over 23,000 copies. And they make so much money for the ward, they're able to, like, you know, at the time, Relief Society was assessed to donate to the ward welfare funds, and people contributed to ward building funds. There wasn't that general budget yet. And. And so the Relief Society was able to do things like replace the refrigerator in the Longfellow park building. They got new curtains for The Relief Society room. They paid babysitters for their weekday Relief Society meetings and were able to just donate, really give so much money to the ward welfare funds. And this was a group of women who were used to raising money, doing big projects, managing budgets, and that was encouraged and necessary and required. Relief societies all over would do things like create cookbooks, they would host bazaars, and they would do things to fund their projects and contribute it to the war.

Heather Sundahl [00:44:48] Very industrious, very project oriented. I mean, I think that Mormon women are the most incredible creatures on the planet. I've got a friend, Pandora Brewer, who says Superman on Krypton didn't really have any special powers, you know, whatever. But then he comes to Earth, and all of a sudden they're like. People are like, oh, my gosh, how can you do that? You're so strong. She's like, mormon women are the same way. You know, we take for granted all the skills. And then a Mormon woman joins the PTA and is like, oh, I can put a dinner for 300 on. You know, I can feed 300 people in 48 hours for less than $50. You know, like Mormon women.

John Dehlin [00:45:26] That's like a real miracle.

Heather Sundahl [00:45:28] I mean, seriously, Mormon women are amazing. They show up in these different spheres, and people are always like, how does she do that? She's Superwoman. How does she do that? And so these. These women were embodying that. And they loved the projects. They loved the satisfaction and the pride that came from taking on a task, learning new skills, and kicking ass at it.

John Dehlin [00:45:52] And no shade to our never Mormon women out there.

Heather Sundahl [00:45:54] No, no, you have better boundaries.

John Dehlin [00:45:59] You have better boundaries, probably better mental health.

Heather Sundahl [00:46:01] Yes, yes. Everything is a true trade off.

John Dehlin [00:46:04] Okay, all right.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:46:06] So these women are learning how to publish and write and accomplish these big things in the context of the women's movement that is emerging. And it's. Boston is also one of the hubs of the women's movement. It's a hub of the social rights movement. So you have civil rights going on. Like, Martin Luther King got his PhD in Boston, and he met his wife there. And in 65, I think it is he. He leads a march of 22,000 people to Boston Commons to protest against racial segregation in the schools. You have the anti Vietnam War movement, which is huge In Boston in 71, there's like the march from Lexington to Concord and like, Battlegreen Vietnam, the biggest protest of Vietnam vets led by Vietnam vets, rather.

John Dehlin [00:46:54] Malcolm X spent a lot of his adolescence and early adulthood, I think, in Boston, too.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:46:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heather Sundahl [00:47:01] It foments change.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:47:03] Yeah, it does.

Heather Sundahl [00:47:03] It really. There's something there.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:47:05] And you have these groups of women. Like, in 1971, there was this big protest on 888 Memorial Drive, this Harvard owned building where women occupied it for 10 days. And they were arguing for child care and education and reproductive justice. And there's all these groups that are founding small papers, all these feminist groups. And so then you have these Mormon women who start gathering. Laurel invites them to her living room in 1970 to talk about the women's movement. All across the country, there are these consciousness raising groups that are meeting together and talking about the issues. And these Mormon women were no different. They're talking about birth control and family planning and women. Do they stay at home with kids? Do they go in the workforce? But then they also are talking in the context of their lives of Mormon women. Like, do I need to accept any calling that's asked of me? Am I allowed to say no to that? What does it mean to live for others? Is that something I'm supposed to do? Or is that like self erasure? And they fight with each other. Like, they come to feminism from these different entry points and perspective.

Heather Sundahl [00:48:09] There's intense disagreement. People feel passionately about their own choices. And when someone tells you they've chosen something different, it can feel very threatening.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:48:19] Claudia Bushman says that people would get headaches and leave in tears and that these meetings were miserable.

John Dehlin [00:48:24] Wow, I love that.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:48:26] Yeah, like, sort of. Yeah. I mean, like. And so Judy Dushku at the time. So she starts joining the group when she is not yet married and doesn't have children, while Claudia has five and then six kids, Laurel has four and then five kids. And Judy's this single new professor at Suffolk University, a professor of comparative politics. And she's engaged in the consciousness raising groups with non Mormon groups. And she's bringing these radical manifestos from these groups and she's bringing these ideas. She's taking her students from Suffolk over a couple blocks down to Boston Commons to see all the different protests and demonstrations going on, just to hear exposure, like, be exposed to different arguments. And so she's like this radical single woman with this group of, like, stay at home moms whose husbands are in bishoprics and stake presidencies. And she's like this radical one and all of these different women.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] She's the mom of Eliza Dushku, right, Who was on, what, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not to minimize her contributions, but for those who are into pop culture, this is the same Dushku Yes. Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:49:28] Eliza is the actress. Yeah. So Judy is the radical. And then you have all these other. And they all just have different perspectives and they're not agreeing. And yet it's really meaningful to them to be able to speak openly about these issues. And so Claudia is wanting to direct their energy towards something productive. And that's where the idea of doing a woman's issue of Dialogue, a journal of Mormon thought, comes about. And that leads to the 1971 pink issue.

John Dehlin [00:49:55] So Dialogue had been started by Eugene England around what, 68 ish.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:49:59] 66, I think. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:00] 66. Okay. Dallin H. Oaks was, I think, one of the founding advisors to it, but it's basically a journal of Mormon studies. And so within four or five years of that, these women in Boston get the idea of doing a pink issue of Dialogue dedicated to feminist issues. Right.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:50:17] Yeah, the women's issue. So Eugene England comes out.

Heather Sundahl [00:50:21] Oh, I love it. They're hard to come by.

John Dehlin [00:50:23] Yeah, I've got one.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:50:24] I got a copy this year at the silent auction at the Exponent retreat. And I can't believe that I have my own actual copy of the pink issue. Like the physical. Yeah, it's a special thing. Yeah, it's a special collector's item. So Claudia pitches to Eugene England that this group of women. Claudia started her PhD at the time, but most of these women are stay at home moms. And she's like, we want to do an issue. And she expected to be really hard sell. But right away he's like, yeah, go ahead. Great. Before it actually goes to print, Eugene steps down as editor and Robert Rees becomes editor of Dyatlog. But he honors the agreement. And so they spend these years. So it's Claudia Bushman and Laura Thatcher Ulrich as the editors. They get. They solicit work from people all over the country. They have like historian Juanita Brooks, they have people in Chicago, they have church historian Leonard Arrington submit. They have poetry, they have lots of different kinds of writing. And they put together this issue and then Bob Reese criticizes them of not being feminist enough.

Heather Sundahl [00:51:25] Yeah, Bob, Seriously, he would be so embarrassed.

John Dehlin [00:51:31] Bob's a character.

Heather Sundahl [00:51:32] He is one of the things that as we were researching this book, that it became so apparent, you know, so Exponent was formed on these dual platforms of Mormonism and feminism. And it was so interesting to see how those definitions kept expanding or were challenged. And so you've got these women who are calling themselves feminists, and then you have a man saying, you're not feminist enough. And they're like, what do you mean? You don't get to tell us what it means to be feminist? I mean, I think he wanted them to talk. He's like, you know, why aren't you talking about priesthood? Or why aren't you talking about Heavenly Mother? And it's like, you don't have to burn a bra to be a feminist. Like, don't. And also, we've talked about how it's the same with Mormonism. You don't get to tell me what it means to be Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] Mormon.

Heather Sundahl [00:52:26] Katie is Mormon. She doesn't go to church. I'm Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:52:29] I'm Mormon.

Heather Sundahl [00:52:30] Yeah. You can't take that from me. We have a dear friend who's part of Exponent, who is an ordained minister in the community of Christ. Community of Christ. She is Mormon. No one gets to take that Mormonism from her. And I love the way that Exponent has worked so hard to continually stretch and expand the definitions of feminism and of Mormonism. And we can get to, at some point, of woman and gender and sexuality.

John Dehlin [00:53:00] And that's so classic Bob Reese. So what did they say? I mean, they do this amazing work, and then the editor says it's not feminist.

Heather Sundahl [00:53:06] They just rolled their eyes and did what they wanted.

John Dehlin [00:53:08] Okay, good.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:53:08] Yeah. I mean, he published it. You know, he supported them. And they had lots of. There's in Exponent, too. They printed some letters between Laurel and Bob Reese back and forth. Like, is dialogue sexist? He's like, I don't know. We keep asking more women to submit. They're not submitting enough work. So you tell me. I think they had a good enough relationship to kind of push back on each other on these ideas. But to Laurel at the time, like, they published one Nita Brooks writing about how she would hide her typewriter under the ironing. Right. And she was writing the Mountain Mills Masquerade. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, some ideas are that it was to have an excuse to shoo visitors away. Sorry, I'm doing my ironing. Or to hide what she was actually doing so she didn't have to answer questions. Right. So there's this tension of the work that she's doing as a woman historian. And that idea, that story, was really meaningful to these women who are trying to explore what it means in their lives to consider, I am a Mormon mother, and I am ambitious. And what does that mean for my future?

Heather Sundahl [00:54:12] Can I have both? Can I sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and study science and study physics and study astronomy?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:54:21] And so they're in Boston, where these Huge movements, these huge protests and all these groups are going on. And for them, some of that seems radical. It seems radical for them to occupy a Harvard owned building for days on end. That's not what they're trying to do. They're just trying to find space to talk to each other about these issues and these questions that they're having. It doesn't feel radical to them to write as a Mormon feminist.

John Dehlin [00:54:48] So I'm curious, when they came out with that issue, the 72 pink dialogue issue, did they consider things like asking for the priesthood, some of the more radical sorts of topics? Was it something they consciously considered and just decided for whatever strategic reason not to include, or was it just not really the type of whatever Bob thought they should be including, which is ridiculous. Were the things that Bob thought they should be including things they intentionally chose not to include, or were they just not really on their minds at the time?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:55:24] I don't think it was on their minds yet. They were in a stage of finding their voices. You know, some people talk about how that issue was transformed, transformative in their lives, because they had never published like that before, many of them. And so shortly after that, though, so they published that in 71. And then in the fall of 72, the director of the LDS Institute in Cambridge invites them to teach an institute course on Utah history, which Heather mentioned already. And that's when they, you know, Claudia now credits Bob Reese as kind of being a spur to get them to consider these issues more deeply. And so it's in that process that they spend more time researching some of those issues, like polygamy. They don't get deeply into women in the priesthood yet. That, that doesn't really start. That's not something that they focus on quite yet, but broader topics of women's history and women's rights.

Heather Sundahl [00:56:14] And so in this timeline, so you have the original woman's exponent and then it, it becomes the Relief Society magazine and then that is disbanded in 1970. And then the enzyme comes out. And so with the ensign coming out, and I don't think that the church was like, let's silence women. Let's, you know, have, I think they're thinking, let's just have one size fits all.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:56:40] Let's streamline. We're globalizing rapidly. We're growing by millions over these decades. We're trying to have building programs across the globe. Let's figure out how to finance this in a way that makes better sense. And so let's condense finances.

Heather Sundahl [00:56:54] It wasn't part of some like vast patriarchal conspiracy to silence women. But they were silenced.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:57:02] Women just weren't considered in the decisions.

Heather Sundahl [00:57:03] They weren't considered. And when you're the dominant, when you're, you know, male, white, able bodied, neurotypical, you know, whatever those things are, that's the norm. And you just assume that the way you look at the world is the way that other people look at the world. And I think that these women were feeling like they had lost some voice. They didn't find themselves in the ensign the same way that they even found them in the Relief Society magazine, which wasn't feminist or radical, but it was women's voices.

John Dehlin [00:57:35] That's an interesting piece of the puzzle that the Relief Society magazine ends in 70.

Heather Sundahl [00:57:39] 70.

John Dehlin [00:57:40] And so the Exponent 2 picks up in 70.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:57:45] 74 is when they start.

Heather Sundahl [00:57:47] But you can see where they're realizing it ends in 70. And you're thinking they're seeing we've lost something. There is not a space where women are in charge and they get to decide what they say. And why is that so radical? I mean, it just blows my mind that this idea of uncorrelated women's voices could somehow be really radical.

John Dehlin [00:58:11] I'm dying to know, and I'm probably gonna ask you a question. You don't know those. You know, there would have been women in the 60s that were behind the Relief Society magazine. At some point. They were all told that magazine was going away, and I'm sure they felt really strongly about it. Is there any information on what that was like for the women who ran their Leaf Society magazine to be told that magazine was going away and was going to be ending?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:58:33] I don't know the behind the scenes of, like, the staff of the Relief Sighting magazine. I do know that a lot of women weren't actually that sad that the Relief Sighting magazine ended because it had been so watered down. It shared so many more male voices than it used to. And it was like they kind of thought of it as, like, their mom or their grandma's magazine at this point, if they were younger. So they weren't devastated to see it end. But there was no replacement.

John Dehlin [00:58:53] Interesting. Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:58:54] There was no other outlet that came. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:57] All right. Okay. So the Pink issue in 72. And then should we talk about the formation of the exponent 2 in 74, then?

Heather Sundahl [00:59:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:06] Did the pink issue cause problems?

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:59:09] I think it was really exciting for this group of women. They didn't start getting pushback from Salt Lake for their efforts until 75 after they found Exponent 2.

John Dehlin [00:59:20] Okay, okay. So let's talk about the founding of Exponent 2.

Katie Ludlow Rich [00:59:24] Yeah, yeah. So they had found the Women's Exponent researching for that, that institute course that they were teaching. Right. And there's all of these other feminist groups that are making these little kitchen table style publications. It's all around them, they have the history of, of Mormon women having a publication like this. So it doesn't feel radical to them when they decide, like, let's try this, let's take this on. Stephanie Goodson was, she had experience in journalism. They wanted her to become the first editor of Exponent 2. But she had just been called as Relief Society president. I think she had a new baby. She goes to the bishop and is like, I wanna become editor of this paper that I'm starting with my friends, and I can't do all of these things at once, so I need to be released from this calling. And he says no. And she like, pleads with him, like, please, like, I feel very strongly, I want to do this.

Heather Sundahl [01:00:07] I've prayed about it. This is what I feel like. I'm, you know, what God wants me to do. This is where I feel like I'm called.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:00:15] And he says no. And she accepts that. And so Claudia Bushman becomes the first editor of Exponent 2 out of that process. And she credits Richard. So there's all these different origin stories. You know, 50 years later, people have different perspectives of how, how it founded. Women are talking about it together in these groups. But for Claudia, her story is that she comes home from a project that she did with her friends and she tells her husband Richard, like, everything we do turns to gold. Like, what should we do next? And he says, well, you guys should start a newspaper. And so for her, she credits Richard as being so supportive in this effort as she takes on becoming editor of this paper. But her friends, they were already working

Heather Sundahl [01:00:54] towards talking about it. And when you talk to other women, that, that's not. They're like, no, Richard didn't start this. That's not Richard.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:00:59] That's not their origin story. Yes.

Heather Sundahl [01:01:02] But I kind of love the tension that you get between narratives that there's not. I mean, with almost everything, there's tensions. You know, memory is very fluid. It's, you know, one of the least reliable things is an eyewitness.

John Dehlin [01:01:20] Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So they, so, wow. So in 74, Claudia starts exponent 2.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:01:29] She becomes the founding editor. Yeah, there's this group of women, what we start to call founding mothers by the 10 year anniversary. But these founding mothers, they do all These different pieces, they open the bank account, they do the legal filings, they have a post office box, they start choosing different columns that they're going to lead. They solicit contributions from people all over the country. So for the first three decades of X1 and 2, it's produced in Boston, but from the very beginning it's getting pieces like writing submitted from people all over the country. And so it's Boston produced. But it's this really national platform of Mormon feminists and it starts connecting these dispersed pockets. And they naively expected people were going to be excited.

Heather Sundahl [01:02:14] They, they were so proud of what they'd done. And Dallin Oaks submitted something for the second issue of Exponent 2 of Exponent 2, a chunk of a speech that he gave on women in education. So we love that, we love that.

John Dehlin [01:02:32] What happened? What happened?

Heather Sundahl [01:02:33] Exactly, exactly. So these women were again, it's so much of its perspective. I mean they're thinking what they're doing is so tame compared to the stuff that's going on around them. You know, they're not having sit ins or starving or you know, demanding X, Y and Z. There's no marching in the streets. They feel that they are in fact supporting and really giving a value add to Mormon women and that the church would be so proud of them if they just knew. And so they especially because they're just

John Dehlin [01:03:09] bringing back something that was, which was a solid part of Mormon history from almost the very beginning and doing that

Heather Sundahl [01:03:16] same pattern where some of it is kind of like recipes and poetry and some of it is, you know, advocacy work. But it's just this really non threatening, lovely blend of women's voices. And they just like, I know what we're gonna do. We're gonna flood the church office building and they're gonna be so excited. I just can't wait for them to see these and share it with their wives. And we are just gonna bless the church through our efforts.

John Dehlin [01:03:48] So they sent a bunch of issues.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:03:50] The first issue or the first issue, they printed 5,000 copies. You know, they created mailing lists from anyone that they knew, like friends and family members. They send them stacks, they give it to all of your friends. They're so ambitious with these like 5,000 copies. They actually printed it for money they got from a grant from the church history department to turn their institute lectures into a book.

Heather Sundahl [01:04:09] Which. Thanks Leonard Arrington.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:04:10] Yeah, thanks Leonard Arrington for putting.

John Dehlin [01:04:12] She would have been the church history head of the church history at the time.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:04:15] Yeah. So they had this grant of like $300. And they were so frugal, they hadn't used much of it. So they use it to print the first issue of Exponent 2. They send a bunch of copies to the church office building, and then they are told in no uncertain terms, never do that again. And then by early 1975, they hear also, for good measure, cancel any subscriptions to any general authorities, even if they were gift subscriptions.

John Dehlin [01:04:36] Oh, wow. Okay, wait, we gotta slow down. So this would have been post Harold B. Lee. Post Joseph Fielding Smith. Right. The secretary, Kimball. Kimball. And do we know anything about how, from the perspective of church headquarters, why it was perceived as a not good thing?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:04:54] We know a little bit from the journals of Leonard Arrington.

John Dehlin [01:04:58] Oh, yeah?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:04:58] Yeah. So early in 1975, he is called into a meeting with a couple of apostles, and he's told that they are concerned about Dialogue and that they are concerned about Claudia's Women's Lib magazine back in Boston. And they don't expound, at least in his journal, on what they mean about their concerns about Exponent. But we know that the apostles are aware of it and are talking about it and their concerns about it in partnership with Dialogue. From that meeting, Leonard has to tell Maureen or some Bach beecher, one of his historians, to pull an article on Eliza R. Snow that she had submitted to Dialogue. And so she has to pull that. Pull that article.

John Dehlin [01:05:33] She was one of his employees in the church history department.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:05:37] Yeah. And the apostles are saying we can't give any indication of support for dialogue or for. Well, I guess they don't say X Men yet because these women keep contributing to X Men for a number of years. Like Maureen and Jill Bon Vaidur and other historians still contribute to X Men, but they're not allowed to contribute to dialogue after this point. And so Robert Reese writes to Claudia and he's like, I hope this isn't like some big blacklisting, but, you know, what do you think about this? And so that's kind of the first rumblings that might be around March of 75 that Claudia gets that letter.

The ERA, General Authorities, and Mormon Women

John Dehlin [01:06:08] So this is probably an obvious question to y', all, but I need to understand it better, and I'm sure my viewers and listeners will want to know. In 75, Mormon general authorities weren't fond of the of women libbers. Why? What were they afraid of? What, what, what. What was problematic about, well, the women's liberation movement.

Heather Sundahl [01:06:28] In 75, you have this whole shift. I mean, if you have Phyllis Schlafly, if you don't know who she is? She was a Catholic woman. In Chicago. No, Midwest. Where was she from? I don't know. Anyhow, so she started stop. So the ERA comes out and so you have all of this talk of women's equality, which for a lot of people is very, very threatening.

John Dehlin [01:06:55] This is 72ish when it started.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:06:57] Yeah, 72 is when it starts. And it goes state by state over a several year process.

Heather Sundahl [01:07:01] And it's building.

John Dehlin [01:07:02] So by 75, ERA is three years into public awareness and consciousness.

Heather Sundahl [01:07:06] And, you know, I was a little girl at the time and I can remember hearing about it and saying to my mom, mom, ERA Equal Rights Amendment, that, that sounds like a good thing. You know, and she says, oh, Heather, what you need to understand is that this will make it so that you will have to fight combat, you'll have to go to war and be, you know, in the trenches. And you would go into a bathroom and there would be boys and men in the bathroom. You wouldn't have any safety in a bathroom. Hello. We're still talking about that. And you know, for my mom, it was like she very much bought into the Phyllis Schlafly, where the STOP ERA was an acronym for Stop Taking our privileges. This privilege of being a stay at home wife and mother. That this is what we were created for. This is. We are again supposed to be singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and these people are trying to silence us, stop us and force women into the workforce and take away the mothers of children. Yeah, so it's this very scary prospect that sort of goes against the whole. I mean, in the 70s, you also have the families are forever. You have family home evening. We have this real focus on the nuclear family and sort of us against the world. You get all this the world talk

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:08:35] happening in the 70s and strengthening the priesthood position of men in the home, to be leaders of the home in order to keep men engaged in the church as well.

John Dehlin [01:08:46] Yeah, I'm just. I'm trying to put myself in the brain of like, Spence W. Kimball and, you know, other apostles in 75. And they're thinking if ERA is successful, X, Y and Z happens in the church, which is bad. Katie, do you have any idea of what the X, Y and Z would be in their minds at the time? I know you're probably guessing, but.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:09:07] Yeah. Well, I mean, they do start like Rexy Lee writes the long legal argument for the church against the era. He does, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:14] This is the father of current senator

Heather Sundahl [01:09:17] Mike Lee, the one who shifted things at BYU when we were there.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:09:21] Well, so I Mean, they didn't come out and start fighting. There were individual church leaders who spoke out against the ERA in kind of the years leading up to this. But it's not until Phyllis Schlafly comes and meets with the General Relief Society president who then takes the Mormon General Relief site. The Mormon General Relief site around what year? 75, I think.

John Dehlin [01:09:39] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:09:40] Barbara. I think it's Barbara Smith still. Okay. Yeah. And she is kind of persuaded that this is gonna be a threat to the family. And she takes these concerns to the apostles. And you have apostles in there who probably are already inclined to be against the era, but just had chosen not to take a stand again and sit as the church. And so in 70, the first presidency comes out against the Equal Rights Amendment publicly for the first time. You know, there's little things before that, but this is when they start taking a stand. And then in 97. 98. Not 97, sorry. 77, 78, you start seeing them organize through the church structure, through the Relief Society structure.

Heather Sundahl [01:10:19] The International Year of Woman.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:10:22] Yeah. So International women's year in 77, there were all these conventions in different states leading up to the national convention.

John Dehlin [01:10:30] Is it Miss America? What's the documentary?

Heather Sundahl [01:10:32] Hulu Miss America on Hulu. Cate Blanchet. Fabulous.

John Dehlin [01:10:38] Everyone should check that out.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:10:39] Oh, it's so. And it's basically the history of these conventions. Yeah. And that fight. Right. Phyllis Schlafly versus these feminists. And so the church just got plugged

John Dehlin [01:10:51] in to all that cultural controversy.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:10:55] They join this right wing coalition and that's where they start to get. Get some real political power by joining with people who maybe have pretty strong religious differences against them, but when they can be a unit together politically.

John Dehlin [01:11:05] Yeah. Because pre 19, pre David O. McKay, were these bearded frontier polygamist weirdos. More like Amish and Mennonites, but polygamists and weird. So the church needs to rebrand.

Heather Sundahl [01:11:18] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:11:19] So they call non polygamous prophets. Shave their beards. How do we mainstream? We adopt the IBM executive look. We get Donny and Marie going and

Heather Sundahl [01:11:28] we do it better than everybody else.

John Dehlin [01:11:30] And then we say we'll be better more minute. We'll be better American Christians than evangelicals, basically. And so this ERA movement is a chance to partner with people who traditionally would have seen us as enemies.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:11:42] Yeah. So they partner with the Eagles Forum with Focus on the Family, with these different groups that together can fight against the Equal Rights Amendment and fight against abortion and reproductive of freedom and paid child care and preschool and greater protections for women against rape and even like when on the platform of these international where International Women's Year conventions was like world peace. And so the church advocates women were

Heather Sundahl [01:12:12] told to vote no on everything. So it's like, let's have food for orphans. And they're like, no. I mean it just was nuts.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:12:23] But they are wanting what they want. These women who go to these conventions and they vote with the encouragement instructions of their church, they're wanting to protect families, you know, and they're told that this is the way that they are going to have strong family units. They're not just wildly ignorant people. They are people who believe strongly in their families and in their children.

Heather Sundahl [01:12:42] You find echoes of this with Prop 8 with we are protecting families, marriage and family is under threat. And one of the things that I always get a little caught up on is that with, you know, Phyllis Schlafly with the stop taking our privileges that p and stop privileges, many, many women have always had to work. Not because they're trying to self actualize or they want a boat. And why is it always a boat? Why do we always, you know, when we're accusing people of wanting to make money for vain things, Things it's about anyhow. But there are so many women who don't have a choice, who have to work. And these things are essential for them. And not staying, not working is really a privilege.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:13:26] Yeah, yeah. And this singular definition of what a family is and what a family looks like is what becomes the problem for these Mormon feminists who are maybe seeing different options or choices from their lives or seeing friends with different experiences. And they are the Mormon feminist who's found like Exponent 2. They are not opposed. They are mothers. They are stay at home wives. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:49] I'm just, I'm just like putting myself in their shoes a little bit. I'm just thinking they're just like, wow, the Mormon women used to have their own magazine, they used to have their own organizations. And it was like, let's bring it back. It'll be good and we'll just find out how to be better wives and mothers and career people and just bring more goodness to the church. And then they like, it's like a train comes, a cultural train and just makes those good intentions all of a sudden present to church leaders as sort of enemies, an existential threat to the church.

Heather Sundahl [01:14:28] Yes. And their spiritual foremothers, the women in the Woman's exponent, they're going back east, getting college degrees, getting medical degrees. They are going back and working with Susan B. Anthony on suffrage issues. I mean, these women are not typically staying home. And part of it's because polygamy would allow them to leave the home and still have someone there to manage things. And so they have seen these different models, and they're not that far away from the memory of women giving blessings being sanctioned. Let's say women being sanctioned to give blessings. Women have always given blessings. Women have continued. Mormon women have continued to give blessings over the years. But they. What was it in the 4? Is it 42 around when that statement comes out saying, I think it's a little bit later?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:15:22] 46 is what I want to say. Okay. Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [01:15:26] So 45, where they say, go to your priesthood leaders for blessings. It's not even banning blessings, but it's saying, this is the ideal.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:15:33] And this. I want to double check the details, But I think 45 is when Heber J. Grant dies, and he's our last polygamous prophet. So by the time he becomes president of the church, he only has one living wife, but he was the last one to have lived polygamy. And that's all the way until 45. And then 46. I think it's Joseph Fielding Smith who writes a letter to. Based on a question from the General Relief Society Board asking about procedures related to blessings, which is a very typical thing. Like, there's so many letters going to church housing headquarters about how to do things when we're spread out all over the globe and we, you know, we're snail mail days. And so men, women, everyone's writing and asking about policies, mission presidents. They're writing about all kinds of things. So it's not an unusual thing for a group to write the First Presidency or the quorum of the 12 to ask about something. But this question leads to him saying it's better to call upon the elders rather than to have women give blessings, which they had been authorized and openly doing for a century.

John Dehlin [01:16:30] Healing blessings with oil.

Heather Sundahl [01:16:31] Healing blessings?

John Dehlin [01:16:32] Yeah. And washings. Like anointings.

Heather Sundahl [01:16:34] Yes, But. So even in 46, they're not banned. They're just saying you really should look to the men to do this. And I can't substantiate this, but somebody who has done some research told me that 1968 was the last time that something about women giving blessings was mentioned in the Relief Society handbook.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:16:54] His letter makes it into the Relief Study Handbook. Right, okay. And then it kind of drops out of there. So. So that becomes the thing. The thing that makes it into the handbook for women giving blessings is the discouragement to do it. And that continues for a couple decades and then that's no longer reprinted in there. And women are also losing the living memory of doing that. Like the practice declined for the decades leading up to his statement. As modern medicine becomes more available, as there's the progressive area, as there's this industrialization, women are leaning more into modern medicine than they are to the more mystical healing. But especially around the time of childbirth, it was still common for a woman to get blessed by other women leading up to giving birth.

John Dehlin [01:17:37] And for those who are interested, and Julia for the show, notes the article that I referred to at the beginning. It's called A Gift Given, A gift Taken. Okay, A gift given, A gift taken. Washing, Anointing and Blessing the Sick among Mormon Women by Linda King Newell. That's one of the most mind blowing articles I've ever read in Mormon studies.

Heather Sundahl [01:18:00] She's amazing. Her book on Emma Smith is just.

John Dehlin [01:18:03] Which is Mormon Enigma.

Heather Sundahl [01:18:04] Yes. It's just amazing.

John Dehlin [01:18:06] Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it's in the between the 40s and the late 60s where the church starts disempowering women from their priesthood power.

Claudia Bushman and the Boston Community

Heather Sundahl [01:18:16] As late as 68, there was mention of women giving blessings, albeit discouraged, still mention that, that it's a thing. And so this would be in these women's memories. This is something that they remember. Whereas most women. Now, if you were to ask a lot of LDS women at this point, they would say, oh, no, no, women never gave blessings. Maybe someone blessed an ox once.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:18:35] Or they will probably have a story that they heard from a grandma or from a ward member and just view it as so particular to a radical, rare situation that they discount it as something that, that they can do.

Heather Sundahl [01:18:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:49] Yeah. Okay. So by the mid-70s, these well intended, faithful, thoughtful Mormon women in Boston just collide with cultural wars around the emergence of feminine, I don't know, power, empowerment. And so they're warned in 75 to what?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:19:17] So 75, there's these steps that go, so Claudia first gets that letter and then there's a meeting of the Exponent II staff where their bishop, Bishop Romish, and Richard Bushman as stake president attend the meeting. And he's coming as an emissary from phone calls he's got from Salt Lake from Apostle L. Tom Perry. So first Bishop Romish is like, look, I'm not here to upset the apple cart, but you know, we're having these concerns. You can't use the church building for Exponent II purposes. And they're like, okay, well, is this a universal policy? Like, what about Utah of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers.

Heather Sundahl [01:19:53] Yes. People have meetings and hold dinners and events for dup. So are they allowed? But Exponent isn't allowed. Like, what are the rules?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:20:01] And what about the men going to play basketball during the week? Like, that's just an informal. Like, are they allowed to. And he's like, well, I mean, I guess it'll have to be a universal policy. Like, he. He is this kind, great bishop. They. They have great relationship with him as. From all accounts, but he's being told, like, you know, they can't be used. They can't be handing out the magazine or the paper at the time at church, and they can't be using the church building. And then Richard Bushman has gotten a couple phone calls from El Tom Perry. One, don't ever again flood the church office building with copies of Exponent. Two, that's not okay. And then the second thing is Claudia Bushman kind of gets in trouble because there was an article in the Boston Globe about the LDS Church in the Boston area. And they interview her because she's wife of the stake president at the time. And she says that Richard is wanting to. He's like, seeking permission to call black members of the church on missions to let black members serve. And of course, this is pre 78, where the revelation on the priesthood changes. And so there's still the priesthood restrictions on race and on temple practice for black members. And so she talks about them like, how many white members of the church want this to be changed. They're told it needs a revelation, but they want this to be changed. And the church leaders are not happy that she spoke to the press about

Heather Sundahl [01:21:17] that because they feel like she has made them look bad, feel like it's, you know, fomenting change and agitating, you know, just getting a little too.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:21:30] They fear that the Bushmans are being restive with these kinds of comments.

John Dehlin [01:21:33] And Richard was the stake president. Yeah, Boston in the 70s.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:21:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:38] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:21:38] Yeah, yeah. So crazy. So that's kind of the first, like, really two things that get them in trouble is sending it to the church office building and Claudia's Comets in the Boston Globe. And she kind of used those as a thing that put them on the negative radar in a way that maybe they would have flown under the radar before that. But it draws this attention. And so Robert D. Hells, who had been in the book Boston State Presidency, is now a general authority out in Salt Lake. He comes out for a state conference and stays at the Bushman's home, as was typical. And he requests to Meet with Claudia, and he's kind of a friend. Not like a close friend, but kind of friendly. But they stay up talking to, like, 2am where he's telling her, like, Exponent 2 should cease. It will come to no good. You know, you got to look out for future callings, for Richard's future calling.

Heather Sundahl [01:22:23] You're sabotaging your husband. Husband's church career. Do you really want to be the thing that holds him back?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:22:29] Yeah. So he tells her that she really needs to resign, and so she kind of sits.

John Dehlin [01:22:35] Wait, who tells who?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:22:36] Robert D. Hills tells Claudia Bushman that she should resign.

John Dehlin [01:22:39] You're saying Richard told.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:22:40] No, no. Yeah. Not Richard. Yeah. As far as I know, he stayed supportive of Claudia. Of Claudia? Yeah. Of Claudia? Yeah. And he's on the board of dialogue at the time.

Heather Sundahl [01:22:49] And nobody cares. Nobody cares. The stake president is on board.

John Dehlin [01:22:52] Church leaders don't care that Richard Bushman's on the board of dialogue.

Heather Sundahl [01:22:57] But because it's women, uncorrelated women are a lot scarier than uncorrelated men. That's the message.

John Dehlin [01:23:06] So Hales tells Claudia to stop, and

Heather Sundahl [01:23:09] Claudia says she sits down and Exponent should stop. Not just you. Stop doing this job. Stop this whole thing.

John Dehlin [01:23:16] This is how I got excommunicated. They told me to stop my podcast. So anyway.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:23:20] And you did it.

John Dehlin [01:23:20] I relate to this.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:23:21] Yeah. So she sits on it for a few weeks, and then the Exponent women have this retreat to Greta Peterson's farmhouse out in kind of the country in Massachusetts, and they have this weekend together where they're gonna be planning a lot of things. And after they open the business meeting, Claudia's like, okay, I haven't told any of you this yet, but this is what Elder Hells told me. And they are just aghast. And there's, like, pages of minutes of them, like, debating and wrestling with. What does this mean? And what should we do? And they're like, what. What do they want us to do? Like, open a modeling agency instead of a newspaper? Is that what they prefer?

Heather Sundahl [01:23:54] Like, what is suitable for us ladies?

John Dehlin [01:23:57] Yeah, you've already answered this. Was it a monthly? Was it a quarterly?

Heather Sundahl [01:24:00] Quarterly.

John Dehlin [01:24:01] Quarterly. So they had come out with maybe 8 or 12 issues by this point.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:24:05] I mean, probably less than that. Yeah. Yeah. So they start July of 74. And so we're. We're about early fall of 75. And so we're maybe four, five issues.

Heather Sundahl [01:24:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:14] Okay. That's pretty early.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:24:17] Yeah, it's pretty early. And so they debate with each other because they're Active members of the church. And they don't view this as an act of rebellion.

John Dehlin [01:24:26] And they're believers.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:24:26] They're believers.

Heather Sundahl [01:24:27] They did this because they thought it was supporting the church, supporting women in the church.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:24:33] Yeah. So they ultimately decide that they are going to fast and pray about it and meet again the next week, which they do. So they break their fast and they come together and they're like, you know, I haven't felt one way or another what God thinks about this. I feel that it's left up to us to decide. And so let's write letters about our testimony of the church and what this project has meant to us and send those to Elder Hales. So they all write these letters. They send them to Elder Hales. He reads them, he passes them on to the quorum of the 12. And then L. Tom Perry, who's a new apostle, brand new apostle. And he had previously been a stake president in Boston and knew most of the.

Heather Sundahl [01:25:10] He knew all these people. All of these people worked together.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:25:14] He selected to fly out to meet with the Exponent II staff and he does that in November of 1975. And there is a special meeting for them to. And there's like five pages of minutes I couldn't believe at by Special Collections coming across these five pages of minutes of El Tom Perry meeting with the exact.

Heather Sundahl [01:25:29] The L. Tom Perry, Special Collections. We love the irony that, you know, he's there telling them, cease and desist. Desist. Stop tweaking your noses at the Brethren. This is coming across bad. Don't agitate.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:25:44] So he is a little bit more cautious. Right. He says, I'm not here to tell you to shut down. That will be your choice.

Heather Sundahl [01:25:50] Yes, it's very much the parent. It's up to you. Do you want to go to bed? It's a up to you, but it's not really up to you. You have to do this.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:25:57] He says, except for Claudia, though. Claudia needs to resign cuz she's wife of the Stake president. And that becomes like the firm. This needs to happen. But he tells him a lot of things, like the prophet speaks for the church. We have one prophet and you need to let him speak for the church. You do not speak for the church.

John Dehlin [01:26:14] Which they weren't trying to do.

Heather Sundahl [01:26:15] No, no, they were speaking for themselves. They were never saying, this is what the church thinks they're saying, this is my experience.

John Dehlin [01:26:22] History repeats itself.

Heather Sundahl [01:26:23] I know, I know. I'm like, does any of this sound familiar?

John Dehlin [01:26:26] Oh my gosh. Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:26:26] He tells them that they should not do Anything that's going to blow up people at the press, like the church and the press don't make sense. Conflict.

John Dehlin [01:26:36] No, that's like, it's authority and then bad press. Those are like the two sacred things in Mormonism.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:26:41] And then gender roles.

Heather Sundahl [01:26:42] Gender roles.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:26:43] So he says that they should not even be marginal about this. That the role of a mother is to be at home influencing her children, that that is her unique role. And that they should not be writing about the Equal Rights Amendment when it's at its height. And so this is 75. This is shortly before the first presidency publicly comes out against the era. But I'm sure he knows what is. Is where that train is heading. Right? And he tells them not to be writing about the Equal Rights Amendment shortly before the church starts their huge church effort to, to help stop the Equal

John Dehlin [01:27:13] Rights Amendment, which they did.

Heather Sundahl [01:27:15] Do either one of you know, this may seem like a weird question. What year the CTR emblem came out? I don't know, because I have read that the CTR emblem, this little shield, it's a green shield with the three letters in the middle, that it was in response to the ERA logo, which is green with the three letters.

John Dehlin [01:27:36] I mean, I would have had a CTR ring by the time I was 8. Which is around 77.

Heather Sundahl [01:27:41] Yes. So around this same time, you can see the propaganda machine in Salt Lake. Like, all right, we've got this bad three letter green thing. Let's transform it and let's find choose the right. Equal Rights Amendment. No, choose the right.

John Dehlin [01:28:00] I'm already feeling sick to my stomach. Okay, so what happens?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:28:03] So, Claudia, well, well, in this meeting, there's this great quote that Laurel says, like, maybe Exponent 2 isn't that important, but the women of the church are. And what if they need us? And the women wrestle over the coming month. So this happens in November. They meet again in December. And they've been talking and debating and questioning and wrestling. Like, what do we do? Claudia officially says, okay, I am like, I'm not repentant, but I am obedient. I am going to resign. This is like my last meeting as editor. And they have to decide what to do. And so Laurel at this point is in New Hampshire. Her husband is a professor there, and she has started her PhD program. She's too far geographically. She's still participating and contributing, but she can't take over as editor. And so they're deciding, like, who else can do this. And Nancy Dredge is there and she, she had just spent a couple years in Korea with her husband on a Fulbright scholarship, but she was part of

Heather Sundahl [01:28:56] the earlier institute class and all of this. She was very much foundational to this feminist movement in Boston.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:29:07] And she's back now. She just had her third baby. She has her little baby on her lap as she's doing her first assignment, helping type the. Type the copy for one of the issues. And she's helping Claudia edit the book that becomes Mormon Sisters, where they took those lectures and turned it into a book. And Claudia's like, well, I think Nancy can do it. And then, and then she gets some support from other women. And Nancy's like, well, you know, I don't quite feel qualified, but I am interested and I'll give it a try. So they kind of create a short term editorial team of support for her with Greta Peterson as an associate editor and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich as an advising editor. But then after a couple issues, Nancy Dredge takes over and becomes the next editor for the next five years.

John Dehlin [01:29:43] But they don't shut it down.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:29:44] No, they don't shut down. No.

Heather Sundahl [01:29:46] They decide that again, it's. It's not even if it's right or wrong or if they personally need it. It's the women of these people are hungry for their voices. They are getting amazing feedback. Letters are coming in saying, far out. A newspaper on Mormon feminism. Like, people are excited. They're saying, I thought I was the only person who wrestled with these ideas. When you have pockets like Boston and the Bay area and it's more vocal, you know that there are other people like you. But people get isolated. And we saw this with the Exponent blog where we had people who were very isolated, thinking they were the only people you wrestling with these things. And then there's this voice, there's this little olive branch. There's this thing that says, you're not alone. Other people feel the same way. It's whatever the opposite of gaslighting is. People suddenly feel validated and the women realize this paper validates a huge range of experience. Because again, it's not saying one thing. It's not saying, this is what you have to do these five things to be Mormon, you have to do these five things to be feminist. It just is like, this is my experience. Well, this is mine. This is mine. And people find themselves in that chorus.

John Dehlin [01:31:09] Was it branded as a Mormon women's feminist magazine or just as a Mormon women's magazine feminist?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:31:15] So from the first issue, Claudia says that this paper is poised on the dual platforms of Mormonism and feminism. And they view those as Compatible. And they say that their aim is to strengthen the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and to strengthen the women of the church. They want to foster friendships, build connection. And it's pretty quickly, like as the ERA fight comes, that these dual platforms start to clearly be dueling identities. And they have to wrestle with how to make room for both parts of their identities.

Heather Sundahl [01:31:45] And that's the interesting part is the dueling. When you've got tension between these different things, that's where the growth happens.

John Dehlin [01:31:52] Like if we slow down, it's like from the Brethren's perspective, the health of the church and men and women being viewed as equal aren't compatible. I mean, that's mathematically the calculus, right? And that's just so crazy, right, that. That somehow those two are not viewed as compatible.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:32:12] Right. And Claudia stepping down does a few things for the paper that kind of leads to its longevity. So first it makes it so that Exponent never has a singular charismatic leader. There's no one who you can then excommunicate and then have the whole. Yeah, yeah. So they think know anyway, so that doesn't end up happening with Exponent. They never again have such direct interference from general authorities in the rest of the organization's history. The second thing is they learn how to pass the work on. So it passes on to Nancy, who then passes it on to Susan Howe and then Sue Paxman, and then, you know, it keeps going on to these different editors. And then they also are able to eventually pass it on to a new generation. So they learn how to pass the work on and not just have it be. And it stays a collaborative process rather than just that one leader. And then also it caused them to really, the women, the staff, to really wrestle with their intentions, their purpose, their meaning. Question, am I doing something wrong? Do I have bad intentions? Are these things being, like, suggested to me accurate or. Or why am I doing this? And they come out of this process with a stronger commitment to this paper than they had before. Most feminists. There were so many feminist papers that were started in the women's movement, these little kitchen table style papers. Most of them last two or three years. And then the creators go on to other things. They move on in their lives. Exponent 2, 50 years later, is still being published.

Why the Church Tolerated Exponent 2

John Dehlin [01:33:37] So, and I love this, but when a. When the Brethren, especially an apostle, says shut this bleep down, you normally do, and in the 70s, you really normally do do, because this is pre September 6th. This is, you know, pre modern era. So like that decision to not shut it down.

Heather Sundahl [01:33:59] It was a big deal.

John Dehlin [01:34:00] And these are faithful, largely faithful women. I'm just that math's not adding up of why they didn't shut it down as faithful Mormons.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:34:10] Context is everything. They are in Boston, where they see what they view as really big, even if they view them as important. Important, even if it's things they agree with. Big radical action for social change. They see the sit ins shutting down businesses. They see marches of tens of thousands of people in the street. They see things happening in Boston Commons. They're living in a very different context than what's happening in Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [01:34:33] So Fawn Brody had been excommunicated. I think that would have been around 50. Right. And Sonia Johnson had not yet been excommunicated. Right. So did they not feel like excommunication was hanging over their heads?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:34:46] Sonia Johnson is what brings that thought into the conversation. Yes.

Sonia Johnson, Mormons for ERA, and Excommunication

John Dehlin [01:34:51] Should we talk about Sonia for a second? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Heather Sundahl [01:34:54] Yeah. She's such an interesting character and our

John Dehlin [01:34:59] viewers have no idea who we're talking about. So.

Heather Sundahl [01:35:01] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:35:03] She's in Virginia, right?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:35:04] Yeah. In 77, she and her friends start Mormons for era and they. Sonia reads the Equal Rights Amendment and just thinks, of course, like this seems natural. And then she's shocked when she finds herself on the other side of this issue as the Brethren. And it's the first time that she has felt really directly oppositional to the Brethren in her long Mormon life. She's this mother, she has a PhD from Upgrades University, but she views herself as, you know, a stay at home mom mostly, even though she does some teaching.

John Dehlin [01:35:30] And faithful.

Heather Sundahl [01:35:31] And very faithful.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:35:32] And so she and her friends start this organization and pretty soon she comes into the national attention when she on the Senate floor goes head to head with Orrin Hatch on the issue. So they have this, like this strong debate and she comes out looking pretty good and he comes out looking a little bit extreme. And it draws huge national attention to Mormons for era. And so compared to especially these exponent two women who are writing this little tame paper, Mormons for ERA has some pretty big demonstrations. And so they do things like that.

Heather Sundahl [01:36:02] They're chaining themselves to the temple a little bit later.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:36:06] But yes. Yeah, they do that. Yeah. So they fly planes with banners behind it with things like Heavenly Mother Loves the ERA or Mormons for ERA are everywhere. They do that over Temple Square during General Conference. And Sonia has a lot of fiery speeches criticizing the patriarchy of the church, which leads us to December of 79 when she's excommunicated.

John Dehlin [01:36:28] And there was some meeting where the church had like spies or the Salt Lake City Police Department, like write down license plates of people attending some ERA related meeting in Salt Lake. Do you know about that?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:36:41] With the era? No, I'm not personally familiar with that.

Heather Sundahl [01:36:44] It's probably the same yellow highlighter. People who are part of the whole strengthening.

John Dehlin [01:36:49] I want to say Cleon Skousen. Wasn't Cleon Skousen originally head of the Salt Lake Police Department?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:36:54] That sounds right.

John Dehlin [01:36:55] Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, okay, so things are really heating up in the late 70s. So Sonny gets excommunicated in 79.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:37:02] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:37:02] Was she evolved with Exponent 2 at all?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:37:05] So you want to tell the Judy story?

Heather Sundahl [01:37:07] No, you tell the Judy story.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:37:08] Okay, so. So we do end up having one small poll from Sonya in Exponent. But you know, she's in Virginia and she is doing things all over the country, but she is not staff. After she's excommunicated in 1980, she comes up to Boston for some radio interviews and she calls Expo and says, like, hey, I'm coming. Do you want to like, talk with me? And whoever talked to her is like, no, because she is kind of this lightning rod for Mormon feminists when she's excommunicated. A lot of Mormon feminists were supportive of the ERA and were concerned about all of these efforts that were happening. And so she becomes this lightning rod. And then Judy Dushku hears that someone had said no, and she's like, I'll have Sonia. She knows that the staff is kind of divided on how to respond to what happened. So she says she'll host Sonya in her home. She wanted, and she invites everyone. But it's not an Official Exponent 2 event.

Heather Sundahl [01:38:03] So this is what I love about Judy Jusku. And this sort of represents, I think the spirit of Exponent is that she recognized that within the group this was very polarizing and that if she had held it at her house and called it an Exponent 2 event, that would have implied that everybody associated with Exponent was in support of Sonia Johnson. And she recognized, I can only speak for myself. I cannot speak for other people. And so she had it just as a personal event in her home. And what was the neighbors. What did she.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:38:38] Well, she just. She wanted her neighbors to see that she, as a Mormon woman, supported Sonia. That was important to her to kind of reflect this support. But then the staff, so they were going to have. Have a guest edit issue. They started having these regional guest edits and they were Going to have the Denver issue. And they pushed that one back so they can have issue dedicated to, to making space to discuss what happened to Sonia and these different reactions. And they have heated late night debates about what is going to make it into this issue. They are committed to not actively criticizing the Brethren. They are for the most part still very active members of the church, but they're also very concerned, obsessed. And there's this great quote. Diane McKinney was the associate editor at the time, and she says that they were editing out the anger, that they were walking on eggshells because they wanted their intention. They weren't as concerned about getting excommunicated yet. You know, this becomes the first time they start thinking about that. But they knew that their audience of Mormon women had lots of different perspectives and they wanted to still hold their audience. And so they're editing out the anger. They're trying to. They want Mormon women to speak, but they also want them to be heard. And so they're trying to be very cautious. So they're fighting with each other about how to do this, how to walk

John Dehlin [01:39:51] this line, that discussion of strategy and being effective, but also keeping sweet to not get in trouble with the Brethren. That's the conversation. Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [01:40:00] Yes, yes. We still have this conversation. We're still having it.

John Dehlin [01:40:06] Okay, so what happens?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:40:08] So they wrestle with these issues, they come to their compromise about what makes in the issue, and then still two people have their names removed from the masthead, one resigns from the board, but Exponent carries on.

Heather Sundahl [01:40:21] Okay, so which again, Exponent is expanding these ideas of what it means to be Mormon and what it means to be feminist. And at this point, most, most of the women are still active and feel like they then have to comply, that they can't criticize, that they need to have more space for those who are faithful and really still trying to thread that needle of following.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:40:51] And they might criticize policies like kind of gender restrictive policies on missions, or they might criticize certain cultural aspects, but they try and avoid criticizing particular leaders especially. And so if you have a particular bishop who excommunicates someone, they're trying not to bash, that they're trying to hold room for someone as being a real person and not be too critical of individual leaders.

John Dehlin [01:41:19] So do you know this is a. Just like I'm throwing this at you, but like, do you know what the subscription, how many subscribers there were in the late 70s during this time period? How many women were following this newspaper?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:41:34] By the end of the first year, they had about 2,000 subscribers. Claudia writes in the paper. And that number would go up and down a bit. Some say it reaches a height of around 4,000.

John Dehlin [01:41:44] But at its peak. Peak.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:41:46] At its peak, yeah. In those, dick, it's before September 6th and before the 90s. So throughout the 80s, that is the number that I hear as the peak. But it was often around 2,500 to 3,000.

John Dehlin [01:41:59] Okay. And that's what it would have been in the late 70s, probably around there. Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:42:03] Yeah. It goes up and down.

John Dehlin [01:42:05] And as I remember. Right. The Equal Rights Amendment is defeated. Defeated, like 82 or something like that. Is that right?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:42:11] That sounds right.

John Dehlin [01:42:12] And the Mormon Church was literally instrumental in having it be defeated.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:42:17] Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [01:42:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:42:20] And so. Okay. But Exponent 2 survives. As we go into the 80s, you know, that Mark Hoffman happens, and this is the rise of Sunstone and the rise of dialogue, even more so. And the rise of concerns by people like Boyd K. Packer, you know, regarding intellectuals in the church. Because it's in the 80s and the early 90s when the church starts condemning forum, condemning symposia, and just really basically declaring gays, feminists and intellectuals as the great enemies of the church. So what do we want to say about the 80s and 90s and Exponent 2?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:42:59] So let's talk about Suba Forbes and her efforts.

Heather Sundahl [01:43:02] So Subuth Forbes, really interesting woman, really bright. And she becomes the editor after suhow. And she has this background of activism. Katie is my brain. I'm like, menopausal. And I'm afraid I'm gonna get the details wrong. But so sue, she gets really involved in speaking up for women and pointing out and advocating for women who've been abused, women in the church who are in these marriages, these temple marriages, and who are what I call sacrificed on the altar of the eternal church, of the eternal family, where the needs of the family and the need to keep everything intact and have things look good and have the husband stay active become more important than whatever is going on within that family, sort of, however violent, whether. Whether emotional or. Or physical. And she is an advocate for these women. And then starts with groups of women going around and talking at stakes and churches about, here's how we can help women. Here's what's going on. And you know, you have bishops listening to it. You had Dennis Lithgow. Dennis Lithgow, who's like, oh, my gosh, this is going on within my ward, and I am not prepared. And he was so grateful to get this kind of information. And so sue did a lot of work with this.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:44:42] Yeah. So exponent is typically a platform for storytelling, for personal essays, for some fiction and poetry. But they move into more direct advocacy in this era on behalf of victims of abuse.

John Dehlin [01:44:53] In the 80s.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:44:54] In the 80s. So like 80s, 87, 88, 89. So they're talking about domestic violence, they're talking about drug abuse in families and ecclesiastical abuse, spiritual abuse and things like that. But they're doing it from a personal, sharing perspective. So they like hold a little conference at Brandeis University where they bring victims of abuse to talk about their experience. They bring some experts. They like Heather was saying, go talk to wards and stakes. And they're raising a lot of awareness. And like Mitt Romney becomes he's bishop and then he becomes stake president. And this is one area in Boston where he actually listens pretty well to some of these concerns. Like he, he calls a state council to get more understanding and resources. They reach out to Salt Lake and they get better resources to train precept leaders to work on victims of abuse. This is not a perfect situation. But on the local level, they are having people listen to them and, and get better resources. They're hearing there is no recourse for an individual, even still a woman in the church who experiences ecclesiastical abuse or who is, you know, having abuse in her family and takes that to a priesthood leader. There's. They're often still being told to preserve the marriage. Right. Exone is hearing from these people. They are getting thousands of letters because there is no one else to tell. And so X1's hearing from these people all over the country. And so they're. Judy Dushku, for decades ran the Sisters Speak and Sisters Help columns. And these are very informal columns based on a question post in one issue and answers published in the other. Or Sisters Help, like getting letter seeking advice directly and without, like the structure of a formal essay. They're able to just share their personal stories. And so you have columns and columns of people talking about the abuse that they've experienced and raising awareness of what happened happens in these wards and stakes. Over in Salt Lake, though, you have Lavina Fielding Anderson gathering stories.

John Dehlin [01:46:50] I was about to say that's what got Lavina in trouble.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:46:53] Yes, yes. And so when she publishes her articles in dialogue about documenting ecclesiastical abuse, that is what leads to her getting excommunicated in 1993 as part of the September 6th.

Heather Sundahl [01:47:08] But again, if it's one voice, it's much easier to sort of cut a soloist than it is to cut an entire choir. Whereas exponent it Wasn't just one voice. It was all of these different voices.

John Dehlin [01:47:20] A few thousand.

Heather Sundahl [01:47:21] Yes.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:47:22] Yeah. And they're speaking from personal experience, not from an academic or official. This is what the situation is.

Heather Sundahl [01:47:29] At least the church did. X. It's like, this is my experience with this time with this bishop.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:47:36] So there's kind of this difference that you have in this era that on a local level, you can see change if local leaders are willing to listen to people bringing up issues. But on the general level, there was no way to really integrate this change in these movements. And when you have this retrenchment, like you mentioned with Boyd K. Packer, and you decide that these are the threats and these are the enemies, rather than. Than find a way to integrate and work towards healing and change, the result is cut off the one who's being loud. So back in Boston and in other areas, like in the Bay Area. So Helen Claire Sievers, who is one of the Exponent volunteers, she is, I think, the Stake Activities Committee chair. She's on the state councils with Mitt Romney, and she tells him, look, like women are talking about issues of gender equality in the church. And these discussions can either happen in Judy Dushku's living room, which they are happening, or they can happen at the church. If you want to be a part of this.

Heather Sundahl [01:48:34] Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:48:35] And so you should call a meeting. You should have the Relief Society president lead it, the Stake Relief Study president. And he says, okay, so they hold this big meeting. There's like almost 300 people there, a lot of dozens of people from Exponent, but just people from the stake who come. And, you know, the Relief side president leads it, but he stands up and he's like, okay, there's lots of things that we cannot change as a Stake, so let's kind of keep this. This focused on what we can change. But they talk for hours. And he makes dozens and dozens of recommendations, and he writes those up and he sends those to a general authority in Salt Lake and says, we're working on implementing these here, but I think you should know that these are things that people are concerned about.

Heather Sundahl [01:49:11] And that's something you can do when you're farther away, you're outside of the shadow of the church office building places that geography matters. And being back in Boston allowed people a lot more freedom within the church to, you know, because I was there forever. You'd have somebody who was in charge of institute come out and they'd say, wait a minute, you're doing things wrong. This isn't how we do Things. And all of the leaders would say, this is how we do things here. No, we're still in charge.

John Dehlin [01:49:41] Were you there when Romney was stake president?

Heather Sundahl [01:49:43] No, no, I was there after he was gospel doctrine teacher when I showed up.

John Dehlin [01:49:46] Oh, you were in his ward?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:49:47] Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [01:49:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:49:48] You were in Mitt Romney's Gospel's production class? Yes. Wow. Yeah. Interesting bargain.

Heather Sundahl [01:49:54] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:49:55] He did not like Exponent. And in the letter he writes to Salt Lake with those letters, he said, we have these exponent women here, and everyone knows I don't like them, but I don't want my feelings about Exponent to hurt my ability to meet the needs of women in the stake. And so here's the recommendations. He and Judy Dushku famously clashed in the national press during each of his campaigns. There's lots of conflicts that he had with ex women and exonent women over the years. And yet on the local level, when you're willing to actually listen to people, you can make change. And then over the years, you hear ex women speak in the national press like, he's made progress over these decades.

John Dehlin [01:50:32] Yeah. So I guess Claudia, Laurel, Judy, none of them ever felt like their membership status was ever seriously in jeopardy. Is that right or not right?

Heather Sundahl [01:50:44] I don't. I don't think so.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:50:45] So after the September 6th excommunications in 93, Judy did work, and she did ask on a couple different times, Bishops and stake presidents, like, hey, have anyone called about me? And there are times that she was told, yes, but don't worry. We love you. We know who you are. We know your heart, and you don't need to worry about this.

John Dehlin [01:51:03] So Lavina had a bad heart, but Judy had an.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:51:06] Okay, well, no, she had a different priesthood leader. She had a different priesthood leader.

Heather Sundahl [01:51:10] It's like Caroline Pearson.

John Dehlin [01:51:12] Yeah. They knew her.

Heather Sundahl [01:51:13] You know, she's also been able to do lots of things because she is further away from Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [01:51:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heather Sundahl [01:51:21] But no, you're absolutely right. Yes, yes, yes. It's not a matter of good heart or not good heart.

John Dehlin [01:51:26] It's because Lavina lived here. Right?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:51:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:29] In Salt Lake. Yeah. Interesting.

Heather Sundahl [01:51:32] Wow.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:51:32] And she was friends. Lavina wrote many times to the paper. She was the one. They used to do these Exponent Day dinners, and she was the last speaker for that. And she comes out in 82 for the exponent day dinner, and she gives what she calls the. The spiritual autobiography, and it is still part of Exponent today.

Heather Sundahl [01:51:49] Oh, beautiful.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:51:50] What's your.

Heather Sundahl [01:51:51] I'll read you my three favorite lines from this if I can find it.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:51:59] So Lavina comes out and she gives the speech where Heather will find those lines.

John Dehlin [01:52:03] But talk about the retreats.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:52:05] Yeah, what are they called? So the first one was the Nauvoo Pilgrimage. Pilgrimage, and that was in 82. Lavina and other women from Salt Lake, these other historians and writers, they invite Mormon feminists from all over the country to come to Nauvoo for this weekend.

John Dehlin [01:52:19] Did Juanita Brooks come to that? Did I get that?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:52:22] I am not positive on Juanita, but yeah, a bunch of women from around the country come and they have this weekend. And it changes so much for some of them. It's the first place where they're able to really have this outpouring and discussion across these differences.

The Exponent Retreat and Community Today

Heather Sundahl [01:52:41] So here's this really beautiful line from Lavina that talks about women and women's power. So she says, I feel we may have circumscribed our limits too narrowly. Our birthright is joy, not weariness, courage, not caution and faith, not fear. By covenant and consecration, may we claim it. And I love that active verb, may we claim it. We are not waiting for someone to give us something or hand us something. We are going to claim it. And this to me is just such a beautiful feminist manifesto.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:53:19] And that's in 82, the same year as that Nauvoo retreat. It's just weeks later that she comes out and she speaks to exponents. So they have this retreat, they do things like the final meeting is this Quaker meeting where they're on the banks of the Mississippi river and they're in this circle. And it's kind of like a testimony meeting that you might experience in sacrament meeting or in Relief Society as they used to do testimony meetings in there as well. But there's no priesthood leadership or oversight. And it's just anyone can stand when they feel moved to do so and speak and speak from their heart. And it doesn't have to be testifying about the church or any particular principles, but sharing something real and something personal. And Exponent had always been having small staff retreats. They've been having gatherings, and not staff exclusive necessarily, but they've been meeting since even before they started the paper and having these little retreats. But in 83, as they're heading up to their 10 year anniversary, they're kind of influenced by this Nauvoo pilgrimage. And that's when they start the Exponent retreat, which has become an annual retreat in New England every year since 1983. And these other groups like the women at the end of this meeting. They come to Levine and they're like, hey, we loved this. You should organize another one. She's like, no thanks. You guys go organize your own.

Heather Sundahl [01:54:22] Yeah, everyone could go your own in your. In your own geographic region. So you have them in Denver, you have them in the Midwest. They sort of pop up. And you have one in Salt Lake where these women annually get together. Sometimes they call it a pilgrimage, other times reunion, sometimes retreat. The format varies a little bit. But there is something really powerful that happens when these women, and with exponent, I would say, and gender minorities come together in this space of where you gift each other trust. Trust can't be earned in a weekend. It's something Carol Sheldon would talk about Friday night saying, look, we don't have time to earn trust. We don't have time to lay those foundations. We have to give it as a gift and be willing to also receive it and honor it. So that the stuff that happens here, basically what happens at retreat, stays at retreat.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:55:26] The confidence issue.

Heather Sundahl [01:55:27] The confidence issue. But people share amazing things. People come and bring a side of themself that they often never is revealed in the rest of the year because this is the space where they feel that they can pull all those parts out together.

John Dehlin [01:55:46] Heather Sundahl, how many of these retreats have you been to?

Heather Sundahl [01:55:49] My son is 20. It's 27, I think. 27 I've been to.

John Dehlin [01:55:56] Whoa.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:55:56] I mean two, I guess cancel with

Heather Sundahl [01:55:58] COVID Yeah, but then I've been to a bunch in Midwest and other places. So more than 30.

John Dehlin [01:56:03] Whoa.

Heather Sundahl [01:56:04] More than 30 feminist retreats, Katie?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:56:06] I have been to three officially now.

John Dehlin [01:56:08] Nice.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:56:08] So.

John Dehlin [01:56:09] So this sound like really beautiful and you look forward to them every year kind of thing.

Heather Sundahl [01:56:14] And I know that I will laugh harder during that weekend than any other time.

John Dehlin [01:56:20] So if some of the women listening want to attend or non binary people want to attend the Women's Exponent retreat. How do they sign up for that?

Heather Sundahl [01:56:29] Our website has the information and I think we also list the other retreats around the country. And most of them, I believe, are also open to gender minorities.

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:56:39] Okay, so the X1 retreat is held in September of every year and registration opens in June. And there'll be announces. People can sign up for our newsletter, follow the blog, sign up for the blog to be emailed to them or. Or keep checking it and we'll list the registration. For the last many years, it's been held at the Barbara C. Harris center in Greenfield, New Hampshire, along the shores of Lake Otter. It's this really beautiful setting and people can walk around the lake or canoe. They can walk through the woods, and it's just really idyllic. And there's different really smart people come and people volunteer to host different workshops and sessions. We have keynote speakers. This last year. Heather gave this incredible keynote. But the year before that, that was Lacy Bagley. Dr. Lacey Bagley, who owns what Flourish. Celebrate. Celebrate. Celebrate Therapy. Year before that was Alison Hong Merrill, who wrote the incredible memoir 99 Fire Hoops. And so there's just different people, just very interesting people who come and share their personal stories. They hold workshops. And then we do, like, fun, ridiculous things too. We have, like, a variety show. Heather always writes a. I'm the Mormon.

Heather Sundahl [01:57:50] If Weird Al Yankovic were a Mormon housewife, that would be me. So I take songs and rewrite it, depending on the kind of thing that's going on.

John Dehlin [01:58:04] And I want to get to kind of the Internet age of Mormon feminism. So don't go away just because we're geeking out on events for just a second. But what's the breakdown of faithful versus not faithful? As someone who's held dozens of retreats and workshops, it's always super tricky if believers are there, but then ex Mormons are there and ex Mormons want to rage against the machine, and believers are still tenderly trying to make the church work, and then trying to keep a tone where everybody, quote, feels safe, but it's also productive and vulnerable. What's the tone of these?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:58:40] I came to my first exponent retreat in 2022, and I hadn't been attending for two years. And so I was nerfed about how it's gonna be. It's always kind of uncomfortable for me when I go into Mormon spaces where I don't know what the expectations are gonna be like at different conferences or conventions or whatever. So at the retreat, I was a little bit nervous, expecting that I was gonna have to perform a certain level of Mormonism or. And also a little intellectually intimidated. Cause, you know, you can have Pulitzer Prize winning Laurel Hatcher Ulrich there. You're gonna have, like, so many really accomplished, interesting people.

John Dehlin [01:59:09] You were worried that the believers wouldn't accept you as authentically no longer believing, Is that what you're saying?

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:59:14] Yeah, I mean, I just didn't know, not having been there before. Right. And I found very quickly that I think it was probably a mix about half and half and that it was very opening and welcoming to wherever you were on the spectrum of belief.

Heather Sundahl [01:59:28] But even in that half and half, that I feel like is an artificial Construction. Because we all know people who are active non believers.

John Dehlin [01:59:36] Sure.

Heather Sundahl [01:59:37] Who don't believe anything but they attend every week. And then you have people who are no longer affiliated officially with the church who are the most spiritual in tune,

Katie Ludlow Rich [01:59:48] sort of hold deep affection for the church but hurt by patriarchy.

Heather Sundahl [01:59:52] Yeah. And so you have so many different. That it's not like there's this camp or that camp. Every person is their own individual camp.

John Dehlin [02:00:02] And it all comes. People have to have thick skin to be able to tolerate diversity of belief or anger or perspective in a group like that. That's all I'm saying.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:00:11] Yeah. So the feedback that we sometimes get on the blog. And I know you want to get to that kind of. Of Internet age is there. I think there's still a pretty decent mix among our regular bloggers of active members and ex Mormons. And there is a frustration sometimes among some of the active members that it is too angry at the church or too frustrated. There's not enough space for belief. And yet the people who are driven to talk about this stuff are people responding to their pain points. They're not typically drawn to write on a Mormon feminist this blog about the things they love the most. Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [02:00:44] About what's working. And so it's about what's not working.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:00:47] That tends to be a little bit more of the vibe on the blog. The magazine I think is much more balanced I think or like curated with the magazine.

Heather Sundahl [02:00:56] You can get a whole set of essays and you can think we're gonna pick this and this and these things

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:01:01] sort of work and show a range of perspectives and have more processed feelings than what might. Might show up as more raw feelings on the blog. Which is both its strength and its challenge to make room for difference still while still allowing that rawness that re the reaction to things that are happening right now. You don't need to wait for someone to fully process and be able to articulate having thought. You can have like the in the moment rawness. But that can be a little tender for people who want to hold more.

Heather Sundahl [02:01:31] Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:01:31] And.

Heather Sundahl [02:01:32] And more feelings for the church. The exponent. There are certain principles that it was founded on that we've carried forward like this community over ideological purity. So if somebody is raging on the blog about what happened to them, they're not going to say anybody who stays in the church is a stupid idiot. That's not going to happen. And nor is somebody who writes something from a point of activity going to say and anybody who walks away is, you know, lazy or whatever. You know. Whatever, or angry or bitter or people

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:02:06] do say the things. But when Exponent is at its best, it's holding that room for difference. And when Exponent really runs into trouble within conflict within Exponent, it's when we're not doing that well. Right. And so when X1 is strong, it is holding that room for difference.

Heather Sundahl [02:02:21] Yes.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:02:21] We don't always live up to that.

Heather Sundahl [02:02:22] It's not saying thus saith Exponent. There have been a few times where Exponent has come out when you had the September or November exclusion policy. Nope, nope, we are not. We don't support this as an organization. We absolutely take a stand. But it is rare for Exponent to come out and take a stand because we want. We recognize that people are in a process. And if you say this is the line and anyone here can come and there can't, all these, these people, they need to be able to continue to process, to get to there or whatever it is.

The Rise of the Exponent Blog

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:02:59] Do you want to talk about how the blog becomes a different beast than the paper?

John Dehlin [02:03:04] Yeah, yeah. So it's a paper. It starts out as a paper, and it continues annually to publish quarterly through what year?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:03:15] So in the 90s, there are times where after the September 6th excommunications, we actually lose a ton of. Ton of subscribers. Dialogue does. Sunstone does by design.

Heather Sundahl [02:03:24] Yes.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:03:25] We lose a ton of subscribers. And then we also have people who are super dedicated volunteers, like, you know, our editor and the design editor, but they're also moms and they're also working and they're going through issues in their own lives. And so between the massive loss of subscribers and, like, ability to fund this project and things going on, their own lives, they're not super consistent. And that also then hurts. It becomes, you know, kind of a cycle where we're losing a lot of subscribers, subscribers in those years, and the numbers don't recover very well. Exponent continues, the annual retreat continues. There's like a vibrant community still in Boston. But the subscriptions start to really get hurt. And so as we enter the early 2000s, we're kind of lining up what's happening nationally with printed publications struggling to stay alive. You know, as all eyes go to the Internet, publications across the board are losing subscribers. And it becomes really challenging. And so Exponent is just in line with that. Right, right. So they continue to publish in print. So it becomes more of a magazine format in, like the early 2000s. Not quite the glossy print that we have now, but magazine format compared to newspaper format. And then around 2007, the subscriber base has dropped so low. And then in 2006, the blog had

John Dehlin [02:04:36] started that we should say the Mormon blogosphere sort of emerges.

Heather Sundahl [02:04:40] Bloggernackle.

John Dehlin [02:04:41] The bloggernackle.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:04:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:42] So like, like it's times and seasons by common consent, and then feminist Mormon Housewives. That's 2004. 2005.

Heather Sundahl [02:04:50] Yes.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:04:51] And we'll talk about the founding blog in just a second. But in 2007, 8 and 9, the quarterly publication becomes essentially an annual online only PDF because the subscriber base is so low. But the blog.

John Dehlin [02:05:04] So you go to digital.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:05:05] The blog's growing. Thriving, thriving.

John Dehlin [02:05:08] So you go to a digital webzine or whatever.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:05:10] Yeah, 2007.

John Dehlin [02:05:12] 7ish.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:05:12] And we can talk about how it comes back into print as a quarterly magazine in 2010.

John Dehlin [02:05:18] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:05:18] But let's step back to the blog.

John Dehlin [02:05:20] Okay. Okay. So I guess I want to. I guess I want to hear what was it like to see feminist Mormon housewives as a blog emerge for the exponent 2 crowd?

Heather Sundahl [02:05:30] It was exciting. I mean, anyone. I mean, that's the thing about Exponent is that. That we're not like, well, we're the only. We own Mormon feminism and nobody else can do it except for us. We're just like, yay, Go. This is awesome. And we've had a lot of crossover with a lot of the founders, the people, you know, we're cousins, I would say, or sisters or siblings, something like that. But it was really exciting. And there were women who were reading that and then looking at Exponent, and they're like, we got to get with that. We need to be more progressive. And they felt like they could do that online. If you're doing something through the paper, you're submitting it, it goes through a review process. I mean, you can't pivot and respond. The church comes out with something about garments changing, you know, 24 hours later, we have all sorts of stuff on the blog where people can respond in real time and have these dialogues back and forth. And so they're seeing this go happening with Mormon feminist housewives and thinking we need to do this. And so you had Jana Remy and Caroline Klein, who had guest edited an issue of Exponent from Southern California. From Southern California and thought, all right, we need to do this. And so they, along with.

John Dehlin [02:06:47] I remember Jana.

Heather Sundahl [02:06:49] Yes. With Emily, Clyde Curtis and Deborah Farmer. Chris. Deborah Farmer, Chris. And Sandra Lee, Megan Rains. I think, yes. This group of women decided, you know, they. They communicated with the board. We want to start a blog.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:07:05] And it's a little unclear how much permission they got verse.

Heather Sundahl [02:07:10] They didn't really get permission, not full permission.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:07:12] Like they, there were conversations happening and they're like, okay, we're doing this. And they, you know, Jana Remy. And Jana Remy had gotten copies of Exponent 2 from her mom. She was familiar with this stuff. She becomes the visiting teacher of Caroline Klein, who has never met another Mormon feminist in person. But she has all these questions and these debates and these issues and she kind of opens up to Jana, her visiting teacher, about these questions that she has. And Jana's like, hold on, let me

Heather Sundahl [02:07:35] go get you a magazine for you.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:07:37] Yeah. Hands her a stack of Exponent twos and is like, read this. And then Caroline's reading this and she has this backlog of decades of these women across the country from this paper in Boston writing about the. These same topics that she's concerned about. And what we kind of experience in this post era era where the church is still like women at home. Mormon women kind of wake up to the women's movement again and again and again in each decade, in each generation. Each person tends to wake up to Mormon feminism and feel for a time that this is all brand new.

Heather Sundahl [02:08:12] Yes. That they're the first person to wonder about Heavenly Mother and sort of question these ideas of patriarchy and authority and ordination and priesthood and what does that mean? And within the church, you see the language on priesthood shift. You know, when I was a kid, there was no room for. No one ever said, oh, women, you actually, you know, do have the priesthood, but you just don't have the keys, blah, blah, blah. None of that was there. There was no priesthood is extreme, exclusively male. And we see as people have had these conversations that the church has been forced to kind of re examine and shift and change the way it discusses it, to be more expansive in some ways.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:08:54] So these women in Southern California have these old copies of Exponent 2 and they're really excited about what's happening at Mormon Feminist Housewives. And they're like, the blogger knackle is happening. We need to be part of this. And we want this institution to have this like institutional memory, to be able to put some of these old articles up on the Internet, make them searchable and findable. They connect to this institution, they start this blog. They, Emily Clay Curtis had been a board president, now lives in Arizona. And they're able to have this dispersed model. Instead of having paste up parties where they're meeting together in each other's living rooms, they're dispersed all around the country. But the Internet is now facilitating that kind of collaborative work that way. So they start the blog, new bloggers join in, they're having guest writers all the time and they are having just tons of views. Blogger Nackle is just thriving. The paper, its subscription model is struggling, but Exponent comes back stronger than ever in terms of its reach and influence through Exponential Blog. Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [02:09:51] What's the domain name of the exponent?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:09:53] It's now exponentii.org.

John Dehlin [02:09:56] okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:09:56] There was, they used to be separate sites where it was the-exponent.com until a couple years ago when we finally integrated the sites onto the. Because it started as like Blogger and these other platforms now WordPress, but now it's the same site.

The September Six and Their Aftermath

John Dehlin [02:10:11] Okay, so I'm going back for just a second, but when Maxine and Lavina and Lynn and Margaret, you know, all these feminists were excommunicated in the early to mid-90s. Were they all involved in Exponent 2 or were they all kind of separate? In other words, did, did their excommunication, was it disruptive to actual Exponent management slash community, or was it more.

Heather Sundahl [02:10:42] I don't know if it was disruptive, but we mourned. I mean, we saw these women as our own, but they.

John Dehlin [02:10:48] Yeah, but it sounds like they were arm's length and so they weren't really a part of what you were doing.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:10:52] So Lavina had notes. Sue Booth, Forbes was editor of exponent during September 6th excommunications. And she had, I don't know if she was roommates or just knew Lavina in college. They known each other for years, for decades. At this point, Lavina was a regular contributor to the paper. Maxine found copies of Exponent 2 when she was a student at Ricks College

Heather Sundahl [02:11:12] in the Rix Library, much like Susan Kohler goes to the Harvard Widener Library, finds the original one. Maxine. I mean, I just love picturing little like 19 year old Maxine like finding these exponent twos and just, you know,

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:11:27] so she wasn't a writer until later. She has this beautiful piece that we included in 50 Years of Exponent 2 about how it was this beacon of Mormon feminism in the east to this girl in Idaho who had no one to connect to about this until later. Right. And in Women in Authority, you know, the book that led to her excommunication, she has these sections from like 19th century text. She has quotes from like the original Woman's Exponent and other sources. And then she also has sections from Exponent 2 that she includes like a lot of different quotes, quotes from from the paper. And then also things like the newsletter for Mormons for era. She has these little. She has like a bunch of sources that she's drawing from for some of the sections in addition to all of these essays that were included in there. And so she's drawing from the source material. It's not until later that she goes out to Harvard Divinity School and gets to connect in person with the Exponent.

Heather Sundahl [02:12:18] So we were friends. I mean, I connected with Maxine online through the elwc, the electronic Latter Day Women's Caucus that Lynn Matthews Anderson started in the early mid-90s that, you know, was this little sort of online really early thing where we'd discuss all of it. So I. That's where I met Maxine. That's where I met Laurie Winder Stromberg, who Laurie had written for Exponent early on. I mean, like 78 people have been woven in and out of the path. I mean, some of them were briefly in Boston. Some of them just. It was done remotely. But they feel connected to Exponent and Exponent felt connected and some of them feel betrayed by Exponent component.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:13:02] Yes. So I guess I'll say first that Judy in 93, I think goes. I don't know if it was the Provo Canyon Retreat or Utah pilgrimage, goes with Lynn Canaveral Whitesides to this retreat. And then like, when in September when these women are excommunicated, Exponent staff meeting focuses on, like, grieving together. Like, we have minutes of them talking about, like, what does excommunication mean? What does apostasy mean? And they want to talk about these things.

John Dehlin [02:13:26] Things.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:13:27] But then one of the consequences of this retrenchment era is that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who's now Pulitzer Prize winning historian, her name is proposed by women to be the keynote speaker of the BYU Women's Conference and the BYU Board of Trustees at a meeting where the women on the board were not present. And so it's like members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the twelve and some other people, they say no without any comment.

John Dehlin [02:13:52] Laurel can't speak of you.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:13:53] That Laurel can't. And she had received a phone call from a friend in Salt Lake prior to this saying that you're on the list. She's like, what list? Like, this shadowy banned list that you can't speak in byu. And she's like, what are you talking about? I did earlier this year with the BYU Honors Program, and it went fantastic. And then I followed it with lunch with the General Relief Society presidency. Like, what do you mean? I can't speak at byu. She's like, well you're now on the list. And it had to do with. She had a long running column called East West. So she was east. And then Emma Luthan was this great writer and poet and novelist in Utah.

Heather Sundahl [02:14:27] She wrote the hymn Where Can I Turn for Peace? Which I think is probably one of the most real and profound HYMNs in the LDS canon.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:14:37] So they each wrote part of this column for a decade or so.

John Dehlin [02:14:42] In Exponent 2.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:14:42] In Exponent 2. And Laurel had written this piece about womanless history. And so she read this article in the Children's Friend about early church history that was just about, you know, Joseph and about the male experience. And she's like, what would it be like? So look back and incorporate real history here with like Lucy Mack Smith who had had like revelatory experiences and, and women giving blessings and like along with these pictures of these boys getting ordained, have women giving blessings by laying on of hands. And this wouldn't be be fake history, this would be real history, but a more complete history that includes women. And she has this article and we hear she's. She's told about this man at church headquarters, the man with the yellow highlighter who has her articles and is highlighting them and writing them up and handing them to apostles and saying like, this person's a problem.

John Dehlin [02:15:34] Yeah, this is the strength in the church membership committee.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:15:37] Yes. Yeah. So she hearing news from friends in Salt Lake and what she says in reflection. So she, she's in this process. She sends me entries, Laurel does, from her diary from the time for the process of creating this book of what she's hearing in these different phone calls and letters and these different trips that she's taking. And she's like, she tried multiple times. She calls Bruce, what's his name?

Heather Sundahl [02:16:05] Bruce Hafen.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:16:05] Bruce Hafen who was the provost for Rex Lee.

Heather Sundahl [02:16:09] And he was the one who was kind of. You know how you have the principal at a high school and the vice principal is in charge of discipline? He's the vice principal.

John Dehlin [02:16:16] He's the hammer.

Heather Sundahl [02:16:17] He's the hammer.

John Dehlin [02:16:18] Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:16:18] So she hears that he's, you know, that he's related to this band. And she calls and she's like, what's going on here? I hear you called my bishop to inquire about my worthiness. And he's like, sister Ulrich, I am so sorry. I wish I could tell you, but I can't. And we value you so much, but I can't tell you anymore.

Heather Sundahl [02:16:42] Sweet sister.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:16:42] Sweet sister.

Heather Sundahl [02:16:43] Sweet sister.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:16:44] And ultimately over the course of a couple years, she calls him a few different times and is like, look, I'm hearing more. This is coming up again. This is now in the press. Peggy Fletcher Sack catches wind of this story. She publishes it. She gives Laurel a heads up that this is coming. So, you know, Laurel calls again. It's like. Like, look. And he's like, I'm so sorry, but I can't tell you. And he never does explain what's going on.

Heather Sundahl [02:17:03] And Laurel, to her credit, says, if I have done something wrong, how can I repent? How can I make something right if I am never made aware of what the problem is?

John Dehlin [02:17:14] And the Brethren are just afraid he'll get out in the press. So they just don't want to give any information.

Heather Sundahl [02:17:18] Yes, again, the bad press. Yeah, we're back to the bad press.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:17:21] They don't give her anything, but she says, you know, but the women talked. The women had this network. You know, they're meeting at these retreats. They are writing to exponent 2, or now we have Mormon Women's Forum happening out in Utah. These women are aware of each other and some are friends. And it's levels of members of the General Relief Study presidency, staff members of Exponent 2. All of these different groups of women interact in these different ways, and they share information with each other when the men will give them no information. And so Laurel is hearing things about what's going on. But then Peggy Cat catches wind and she writes an article about it in the Salt Lake Tribune right before Gloria. What's her name from Ms. Magazine?

John Dehlin [02:17:59] Steinem.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:17:59] Gloria Steinem. Thank you, Gloria. I keep thinking Gloria Cronin because of our earlier conversation, but this is the Gloria Steinem. She's speaking at a bookstore in Salt Lake, and there's like a crowd of a thousand people.

John Dehlin [02:18:09] What year is this?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:18:10] This 92.

Heather Sundahl [02:18:12] 2.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:18:14] It's. Yeah, it's before the excommunications, because I was gone.

Heather Sundahl [02:18:16] I was in China. So it's 92.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:18:18] Yeah. And Gloria comes to talk and Lynn Canavel, Whitesides and these other people are there, and they are upset about Laurel being denied the ability to speak at Women's conference. And they're upset about this, like shadowy Ban and Levine is there, and they start talking about, what if we create a counterpoint to BYU Women's Conference? And that's what the Counterpoint conference emerges. And then that ends up getting tied because the Mormon Women's Forum, which was seen as more Radical than Exponent 2, and it would handle the more difficult topics of priesthood, of Heavenly Mother, and these things that were things that. The topics that people ended up getting in trouble for, they were also this open forum for discussion in a way that Exponent was more edited and more curated in comparison, like editing out the anger. Still, to some extent, they have this nonprofit status and this mailing ability. And so they take on this Counterpoint Conference just as an unofficial, like, independent committee, just so they can mail things. And when all these people see that this conference is tied to the Mormon Women's Forum, there's like 18 people, professors and students from BYU who withdraw from Counterpoint Conference. There's Subu Forbes and Judy Dushku who were really supportive of these women in these efforts, but they were trying to not have. Blow this issue for Laurel up. Laurel is trying to, like, she's.

Heather Sundahl [02:19:43] Laurel is trying to downplay it. She does not want this to be made a huge deal. She feels like that's not gonna ultimately work in her favor. So she's.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:19:56] She's not wanting to make it a bigger issue than it already is in the press, her being denied speaking at byu. And so the. For that year, these Exponent women withdraw, and then these Mormon Women's Forum feel kind of abandoned by Exponent 2. And it's in the coming months that these excommunications happen. And no one from Exponent is on the chopping block.

Heather Sundahl [02:20:16] Yeah. So they. They felt betrayed.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:20:19] Some of them.

Heather Sundahl [02:20:19] Yeah, some of them felt betrayed by Exponent.

John Dehlin [02:20:21] And you. And you went right to where my brain was going. It was like, how has Exponent 2 avoided some of the punishments that other organizations like, like Sunstone, Dialogue, Mormon Stories.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:20:33] But then in later years, you know, Judy is keynote speaker at Mormon Women's Forum. Suba Forbes is coming out speaking like they. They do continue relationships, but there is this point where. Where Exponent does become more conservative in order to keep being able to hold space for Mormon women's stories.

Heather Sundahl [02:20:51] He's more cautious.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:20:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:20:52] Well, you also want to preserve your capital and sometimes your membership. Yeah, Right.

Heather Sundahl [02:20:58] Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:20:58] Yeah. And in those years, most were still. Most were still active.

John Dehlin [02:21:02] Yeah. Wow. Okay. So that's kind of. As the bloggernackle rises in the mid to late 2000s, you know, that sort of leads to the emergence of the ordained women movement and let's just say 2012. 2013. Right. And so I'm dying to hear kind of perspectives on that story. And I know that that wasn't an Exponent 2 initiative, but it was certainly initiative that was prominently associated with Mormon feminism.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:21:43] So Laurie Winder Stromberg is part of. Any time two or three Mormon feminists are gathered, Laurie is there. Right. So she's part of. She comes out to Boston after she graduates from BYU in the. In the 1970s as part of Exponent 2. Katie Kelly knows that Lori's been part of org feminist organizing for these decades and comes to Lori about, like, how to organize this. And so they are part of founding ordained women. They create a board, they gather people. Exponent is not ever officially affiliated, but of the first profile, about half of them are Exponent bloggers.

Heather Sundahl [02:22:17] Exponent was Exponent especially. The bloggers were very much involved in the ground floor of what was going on with ordained women.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:22:26] So. But not everyone in Exponent was. So the magazine has come back in print. It's now a quarterly, and Caroline Klein has revived Sister Speak. And after. I think they. Before the excommunications that they do. The priesthood issue. Right. I believe so, anyway. So they do. They end up having an issue in priesthood. And that is something they had stayed away from, from. And that's something that Laurie Winder Strongberg talks about as the line between a good Mormon feminist and a bad Mormon feminist, particularly in those years, is your willingness to talk publicly about the issue of women's ordination. An exponent after the excommunications in 93 had become even more cautious than they were before about that. But that blows open with ordained women. You can no longer ignore the conversation. And you have to talk about it even if you don't all come to the same conclusion. So there's this issue on priesthood. Emily Clyde Curtis and Amy Evans Hickman are editors in those years. And the print issue reflects this. These wide perspectives. And we hold. We have two pieces from that issue in 50 years of Exponent 2 where we have.

Heather Sundahl [02:23:27] And there's such a beautiful juxtaposition. You have Abby Hansen, who. Whose husband is in the military, and she writes this really gorgeous piece about somebody needing a blessing or she needs the blessing.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:23:41] Yeah, there's two stories in there. Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [02:23:42] One, when she needs a blessing, her husband's gone. So she turns to her dear friends and the friends go and get their husbands.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:23:49] And she's like, I. I just had a miscarriage.

Heather Sundahl [02:23:51] I don't really know these men. This is a very female grief that I'm experiencing and just talks about the additional sorrow of sort of not being able to have either the family or the. The feminine comfort that she really would have loved. It really sort of strikes her.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:24:08] So that's when he's deployed. But Even when he's there, when her friend needs a blessing, she needs to still call on her husband.

Heather Sundahl [02:24:14] Yes. And so she's realizing there's a problem here. There's a problem. And so then the essay that we. That we juxtapose it with is by Diane Pritchett, who tells about a woman that she visit. No. She was Relief Society president, and a woman in the congregation had terrible postpartum depression and was needing, most likely, to be institutionalized for a brief time. And the bishop is over, the home teachers are over, the husband is there, and they all talk about it, and they all agree that a woman needs to give the blessing. And so Diane then steps forward, lays her hands on the head of this woman, and in. In front of the bishop and all these other people, she gives a blessing. And Diane's perspective is, I don't feel the need to agitate for priesthood because I have power and I will use it when I need to use it. And so it's so interesting because these are both really strong women, both very capable and agentive, with really different perspectives on the same topic.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:25:26] And they're not oppositional to each other.

Heather Sundahl [02:25:28] No. But they're not critical of the other,

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:25:30] and they're just expressing a range of experiences. The Sister Speak column in those years, it pulls comments from the blog about a huge, wide range of perspectives that the exponent community is experiencing around these issues. So there is difference, and they're making room for difference to talk about it, while at the same time, many exponent bloggers are some the most active advocates within ordain women.

John Dehlin [02:25:53] So because you mentioned Katie Kelly and Lori Winder Stromberg, I had to go back in my memory, and I'm pretty sure my memory is right. Katie Kelly actually reached out to me first and said, john, I would like to get in touch with women who could help me. I have this idea of doing ordained women. And I've got an email here, January 9, 2017, 2013. And I write to Katie Kelly, two contacts for finding supporters, Laurie Winder Stromberg. And I give her Lori Winter Stromberg's Facebook address. And then I say, willing to file the press release. Chelsea Fife, waiting to hear back from Joanna, meeting Joanna Brooks.

Heather Sundahl [02:26:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:33] So anyway, I was a little bit of a intermediary there.

Heather Sundahl [02:26:37] Yeah. And she came out.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:26:38] You were in that mix in those years, for sure.

John Dehlin [02:26:41] For sure.

Heather Sundahl [02:26:41] And she came out to the exponent retreat before 2013.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:26:44] Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [02:26:45] You know, all of this had really happened, and there was, you know, not a debate. That sounds very Formal and contentious. But there was a panel with these varying perspectives. But she had come, I think before and never really like that was her feminist awakening. So it's so interesting that someone can be a feminist their whole entire life, but if they're not, if ordination isn't their thing, then some people will say, well, you're not a real feminist and someone cannot be a feminist. And then this. And they're like, oh, now you're a feminist. And again, I'm like, I really resist when people start telling me what I have to believe to be Mormon or a feminist, or people tell me what it means for me to be a woman.

John Dehlin [02:27:29] Identity is sacred.

Heather Sundahl [02:27:30] Yes. Yes.

Ordained Women, Katie Kelly, and Advocacy for Priesthood

John Dehlin [02:27:31] So prior to ordained women, had Exponent 2 ever publicly advocated for priesthood for women?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:27:39] No. So there may have been all those decades. There may have been. They certainly weren't advocating for it. There may have been some mentions here and there. Right. Or certainly an awareness that it wasn't there, that women didn't have it. Right. So there were discussions like that. But 2005 was the Southern California issue by Caroline Klein at Janet Remy as these guest editors. And Laurie Winter Stromberg was part of the roundtable discussion that they had at UC Irvine to kind of gather discussion and content for this issue. And she delivered this presentation called Power Hungry and it's about advocating for priesthood as the main point of it. And she submits it for this issue of Exponent. But back in Boston, they edit out the parts about priesthood and they publish it. And so Laurie's like, okay. And she publishes is the full thing in Sunstone that year. But Exponent was still being cautious on that topic. Nancy Dredge was again editor. She was second editor for the second time. Heather's a associate editor at this time and they are making room to share women's stories with the awareness of what had happened the previous decade and the ability to talk openly about these things on the X1 platform changes with the Internet because. Because everybody's talking about these things. When Mitt Romney runs for president and he's being asked on national news media about his underwear, suddenly garments become so much easier to talk about for everyone else. With ordained women, you can't not talk about priesthood anymore.

Heather Sundahl [02:29:07] Yeah. When it's everywhere, it's not taboo. It's no longer this hush hush thing like the temple or anything.

John Dehlin [02:29:16] Okay. So I'm gonna ask your forgiveness for asking you to step out necessarily of any official exponent 2 capacity. Although, I don't know. Are y' all part of leadership in Exponent 2? Or are you just. Just historians?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:29:31] Heather's historian on the board of Exponent. I am not a board member, but I am a blogger, and. Okay, okay, you're entrenched.

Heather Sundahl [02:29:39] You're entrenched.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:29:41] I started this book project as the newcomer, semi outsider. I am no longer an outsider.

John Dehlin [02:29:46] Okay. So, you know, I haven't really talked much about this publicly, but Katie Kelly and I had a falling out. And it started, according to my memory, when Greg Prince came on Mormon Stories podcast and said that Katie Kelly and ordained women set Mormon feminism back 20 years. And he said that on Mormon Stories. And I don't have a history of. My approach on Mormon Stories is to kind of let people tell their stories. And unless they're saying something like conspiratorial or like defamatory or like disprovable by science, I kind of just let people have their perspective, and I don't really argue with them much, or at least that's how I think of myself. So I didn't argue with him at the time. I was just like, okay, that's your perspective. But Katie got super mad at me because I didn't argue with him, I guess, and challenge him. And that was the beginning of the end of our relationship, unfortunately. I'm curious to know what y' all think about ordained women and whether it was good for the church, whether it was good for Mormon feminism, whether it was bad for the church, bad for Mormon feminism. Obviously, those are binary, unuseful binaries, but do y' all have thoughts on that?

Heather Sundahl [02:30:57] You go first.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:30:58] So I don't know Katie personally. I just know her through social media, like, from a distance. And so I certainly don't want to speak for her perspective on any of that. I'm not speaking for her perspective, certainly not. But me personally, I was not publicly engaged in Mormon feminism during the years of ordained women. Right. And so I'm kind of this observer who's feeling hurt by a lot of things in the church, but also afraid to speak publicly. I was following along with these things. I remember hearing the news of Katie's excommunication and feeling personally devastated and feeling that the church had done something that really hurt me and hurt women and hurt feminism. And it felt like I was aware that September 6th excommunications had happened, but as a still active member, wanted to believe that we were past that, that we weren't punitive like that. And then, of course, that year, you got excommunicated as well. And it just starts to shift my perspective on who's Allowed to talk and share opinions. And that adds another layer of pressure of me of feeling that I can't speak out publicly about my own opinions. So what does that do for me? I have this pressure of being a member missionary. By that point, four of my five brothers had left the church. And I have family members surrounding, like, be the good one. Stay in the church. Be an example. Be the reason your brothers come back to the church. And I feel this intense pressure. But I also see things changing radically. So I'm not at the retreat in these years. I'm not participating in Exponent and seeing how it's impacting all those. Those currently active Mormon feminists. But I am seeing what happens to people who speak out. And so when it comes to 2020 and I submit my first guest post to Exponent.

John Dehlin [02:32:43] Wait, did you just say that you were watching changes happen as a result of ordained women? Did I hear you say that? Right.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:32:50] So I was watching changes by that comment. I think I met within the Mormon feminist community.

John Dehlin [02:32:56] Got it. I do think fear and what?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:33:00] Anger. Anger, sadness, frustration.

John Dehlin [02:33:03] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:33:04] A bigger wave of people leaving the church, probably.

John Dehlin [02:33:06] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:33:07] Within, like, the small Mormon feminist communities of the blogs that I'm following.

John Dehlin [02:33:10] Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that was a watershed moment.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:33:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:14] A lot of people that were hanging on, trying to make it work, trying to walk that middle way. Nope, it's just like, up. Yeah, this is over.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:33:21] Yeah. So that was a huge thing. The policy of exclusion in 2015 was another wave of a huge thing. And I'm being impacted by these things, influenced by these things, and seeing. Feeling a level of hurt. But it's not until 2020 that I even submitted my first guest post. And I stayed up night at night before it's gonna go live, terrified, like, panic attack, essentially feeling like I might die by this going forward. You know, it feels like that level of pressure. And so finally having that post. And my first guest post was about an open letter I'd written on my Facebook account about women speaking in General Conference. And I had sent it to the first presidency, got a letter back from a secretary of the first presidency with these reasons why more women didn't speak in General Conference.

John Dehlin [02:34:03] And they were all prior to what year.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:34:05] So it was 2019 that I wrote that letter and then got the response sometime in early 2020.

John Dehlin [02:34:10] No, but when we're up until what year were we women not allowed to speak in general?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:34:13] No, they weren't big, but not that they weren't speaking in higher numbers.

John Dehlin [02:34:16] Okay. Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:34:17] That's what they still Are. Yeah, yeah, they are still like 11 ish percent.

John Dehlin [02:34:20] When were they allowed to pray for the first day?

Heather Sundahl [02:34:22] That was that. When was the prayer? 2016.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:34:26] I don't, I don't remember off the top of my head of the year, but it was not long ago.

John Dehlin [02:34:30] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:34:30] Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. About. Not about women. More women speaking in larger numbers and a greater representation at general conference. Yeah. To be clear.

Heather Sundahl [02:34:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:34:40] Okay.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:34:40] Yeah. So I, I wrote. And they weren't speaking in every session either. So I wrote an open letter about that. You know, I'm still active in the church and still trying to faithfully advocate. If only they knew and understood these things better, you know, they'd make these changes, you know, the typical Mormon feminist path.

John Dehlin [02:34:55] And I see Heather just kind of rolling your eyes.

Heather Sundahl [02:34:57] Same thing. They'll be so excited if we flood the church office building.

John Dehlin [02:35:01] 5,000 copies.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:35:02] They're just waiting to hear from us.

The Cost of Speaking Out in the Church

Heather Sundahl [02:35:04] They just.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:35:08] Yeah. And just, you know, this, this hope of being able to be heard and listened to. Right. And then I get this book, this so dismissive. And it's all these reasons that they had created related to policies why more. More women weren't speaking or they weren't speaking. Higher numbers. And I wrote a guest post about it to Exponent and they published it. And I was terrified of what was going to happen. My, like in my body, I guess, like trauma from watching these things and all this pressure and this fear of. To be an example. And then what happens? Not much. I get comments of support. I get people saying, yeah, I've thought the same thing. Or. That's so interesting. Thanks for writing that. Thanks for sharing that. All of a sudden I find that there is community there for me. Right. And so all of this community has been shaped and influenced by what has happened in the ordained women years since then. My personal intersection with it is a little bit different. And it probably led to layers of fear for me being able to even speak out about something really basic about women speaking in higher numbers at general conference. It probably set me back longer from talking and engaging personally. But by the time I finally did, the community was still there and they were still ready to be like, yeah, thanks for writing that. And like later I wrote a post about the gifts of not going viral. How glad I am that it did not make a big splash. My particular little tiny guest post, it just let me realize I'm not going to die if I speak out. I'm not going to be excommunicated just because I wrote something about this. Right. Because that's the fear that gets instilled. That's the intention. It's the message that they're sending, that if you speak out and you protest and you come out, you may be excommunicated, which, of course, has those eternal implications for your family. And I'm here not trying to break up my marriage and wanting, you know, I am committed to my husband, to my kids. I'm not trying to break off my eternal family, even though I have lots of frustrations or difficulties with the church. And that's the fear that that message sends to little baby Mormon feminists like me is the. That if you speak out about this, you lose your family.

John Dehlin [02:37:20] So if I. And I'm not trying to speak for Greg Prince or have you speak for Greg Prince now, I want to kind of abstract up a layer to just the idea of strategy and approach, which ties back to Exponent two. And I want to come to you in just a second, Heather. But I guess the idea is if you push too hard, if you're too vocal, if you anger the Brethren, if you agitate too much, then you'll prompt an excommunication which then, like 1993, like 2014, 2015, sends fear, shockwaves of fear and nudges people into silence for another possible generation or two until people feel emboldened or forget such that they start speaking openly again. And so, and that seems to be maybe what some would say the critique of me or of Katie were. And it seems to be what Exponent 2 has tried for now, five decades to avoid. And it seems like they've been successful. That by. That seems to be one of the, I don't know, those hallmarks of Exponent 2 is that they've managed to stay alive without inviting terminating sanctions by the

Heather Sundahl [02:38:45] Brethren for five decades while maintaining their integrity. I would say, you know, that I don't feel like Exponent has sort of sold its soul in order to stick around. So. So I would disagree with Greg in that comment that it, what, put it back, what was it, 20 years?

John Dehlin [02:39:09] It set Mormon women's feminism back 20 years or whatever.

Heather Sundahl [02:39:12] I disagree. I do think that you did get a lot of people who were scared and people react to fear and that kind of thing. But I disagree. I think that you can draw a parallel with what I was saying earlier, that the church has really shifted the way they talk about priesthood. They have really shifted and tried to have it be more expansive, like the force, that it's something that, you know, that men and women, you know, if you are Set apart then you are. I don't know what the language is that. That you've been. That's.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:39:51] That's.

Heather Sundahl [02:39:52] You have the priesthood through that setting. You know that women are more part of it. Again, the language is very different. And I do think that because of Katie and because of her absolute line in the sand and being excommunicated, I think the church. The language has shifted.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:40:11] We haven't shifted. Institutional equality. Women are not ordained. There's still a lot that they're excluded from. Things have been excluded from since 1970, but the rhetoric has started to shift and a number of smaller policies have started to shift as well.

John Dehlin [02:40:27] Yeah, because, like, if I think about the difference, women can pray in general Conference now. Maybe more women have a more visible.

Heather Sundahl [02:40:34] Women can be witnesses at baptisms. Women can be witnesses in a temple ceiling.

John Dehlin [02:40:40] The veil in the temple has been taken away. Women no longer hearken to their husbands.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:40:44] Language has changed.

Heather Sundahl [02:40:45] And I'm not. I'm not giving Katie credit for all of that.

John Dehlin [02:40:48] No, no, no.

Heather Sundahl [02:40:48] But I do think what she did

John Dehlin [02:40:51] and the committee around her too. The Ordained Women Board. Right, sure. Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [02:40:55] I do think what that movement did, the visibility, even though I wasn't part of it, I am probably more like Diane Pritchett in that if I think someone needs a blessing, I'm just gonna go put my hands on them and give them a blessing. I do not see priesthood as. I don't feel like I need priesthood for permission to me to use my power. I completely recognize that within the institutional church, I am not given authority. I am not given institutional power. Let me be very clear. I'm not saying that that does not matter, but I'm saying in terms of me, Heather, using my power, I still use it. The same year that Katie Kelly, that you had the. When she was. When ordained women came out, I wrote a blog post about giving my car a blessing about my, you know, my car dying, being in this really point of crisis and laying my hands on the car and, you know, much like, who was it who blessed the oxen?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:41:57] I think it was Smith.

John Dehlin [02:41:59] Joseph Fielding Smith.

Heather Sundahl [02:42:00] Eliza Fielding Smith.

John Dehlin [02:42:01] Yeah, something.

Heather Sundahl [02:42:02] I think it's Eliza Fielding.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:42:03] No, no, no, no. Not Eliza.

Heather Sundahl [02:42:04] Bill.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:42:04] I don't think that's not the right name. But give me a second, you'll get it. Mary Fielding Smith.

John Dehlin [02:42:08] That's right.

Heather Sundahl [02:42:08] Mary Fielding Smith, which was Joseph F.

John Dehlin [02:42:10] Smith's mom, I'm thinking.

Heather Sundahl [02:42:12] So I'm like, look, if an oxen was a mode of transportation, and if she can bless an oxen, I Can bless a car. You know, it was a little bit my way of saying, like, I have power and I have solidarity with these women, but I'm not necessarily. I don't take that. Their complete approach.

John Dehlin [02:42:34] Yeah. What were the Boston women saying about ordained women while they were watching that train wreck happen?

Heather Sundahl [02:42:38] Well, some of them were part of it. Some of them were. You know, I mean, again, it was a mix. It's not a monolith. Some of them.

John Dehlin [02:42:43] Were there some going, she's going about the wrong way. They're going to be there are people

Heather Sundahl [02:42:47] thinking she's going about it the wrong

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:42:48] way or they know what the consequences can be. Whether they think it's right or wrong, they know she will be able to

Heather Sundahl [02:42:54] take the church's actions and then that will cut her off from certain kinds of power. The Mormon feminist influence.

John Dehlin [02:43:00] Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Sundahl [02:43:01] And so you just have people with different. I mean, you've got Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. You know, you kind of need both. And so I'm always grateful for the people who are willing to kind of Joan of Arc it. Who are willing to be a martyr for the cause, because I feel in my role and what I'm doing, it allows me latitude and room to do other things and to advance the cause as well. Wow.

Where Mormon Feminism Stands Today

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:43:32] So the blog in, like 2000, starts in 2006, 2007. Jana Remy, one of the blog founders, has this radical Mormon manifesto where she lays out these things like, as Mormon feminists. And she gets feedback from these other bloggers and other people that she knows, and they write these beliefs about, like, we are not compromising about support for our queer siblings in the church. We believe in full equality for gay marriage. And within the church, we believe in gender equality in the church. She lays out all of these things in this very.

John Dehlin [02:44:05] This is the appendix of the book

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:44:08] in Unit six. Yeah. The unit for the block. Yeah. So it's included in 50 years of Exponent 2.

John Dehlin [02:44:11] Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:44:12] And it was quoted just this week in High Country News, this magazine, that Leah Sotilli, the reporter who was the Smith Pettit lecturer at Sunstone this year, she came to our session about 50 years of Exponent 2 and wrote about us in the magazine and quotes Jana's piece here. And Caroline Klein talks about how prophetic that was, how Jana as an individual was ahead of what Mormon feminism was as a whole by a decade or two. But that is where Mormon feminism has gone. And that's one thing that Heather has kind of touched on, is about how, you know, exponent work to Expand what it means to be Mormon, what it means to be feminist, and then also what it means to be a woman. And early on that is allowing for greater difference. Not just a singular model of womanhood, but women can be stay at home moms, or they can work, they can go to graduate school, they can have careers, or they can, you know, just volunteer in their communities, or you can

Heather Sundahl [02:45:02] be married, or you can be single, you can have children, or you could be childless by choice and still be a good Mormon woman. That the script has to expand so we cannot have these really narrow prescriptions.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:45:15] So that broader vision of womanhood and now a broader vision of gender as exponent has intentionally worked to be inclusive of trans women and gender minorities, non binary individuals, and kind of open the boundary there as well.

John Dehlin [02:45:31] Beautiful. Okay, I have another question, this that y' all may or may not have thought about or want to talk about, but I'm going to throw it anyway. So, you know, the other thing that has happened, you know, it's gays, feminists and intellectuals, right? And so, you know, one of the things that's emerged are really pretty significant challenges to the Church's truth claims. And you know, that stuff was happening in the early 20th century and it's always been happening, but it really heated up with dialogue in Sunstone. But with the rise of the Internet CES letter Mormon stories, the church's true claims are on the ropes. And I remember I had lost my faith by the time ordained women happens. And I remember somebody making the joke about ordained women. Mormon men claim to have a unicorn and now Mormon women want to have a unicorn too. And basically what they're saying is the priesthood isn't real, so the men who claim it, they're claiming to have a fake thing, and now the women want a fake thing too. In other words, what does any of this matter if the Book of Mormon is likely a fraud and if Joseph Smith was likely a charlatan in the sense of a treasure digger and a foul of the law and forging things and then later, what many. And I know these are really intense words, they're probably outside the circle of exponent 2 and in any way that they would speak. But I mean, by any reasonable, objective view, Joseph Smith could be classified as a sexual predator in the terms of marrying 14 year olds and mother, daughter pairs and sister pairs and other men's, you know, women married to other men. Like there's so many, there's so much credible evidence just showing that the church is indistinguishable. From the FLDS church or Scientology or Jehovah's Witnesses in so many ways, which is a way of introducing this broader idea of like, where is Mormon feminism today? Because ordained women died. And so many of these people, like Jenna Remy and others, they're no longer even involved in the community, it seems. And you know, in the back of my mind, I'm like, I think there's still an Exponent to Facebook group. I think they probably still have a blog. But like, I never hear. I know Nyla McBain sort of like became the spokeswoman for feminism within the church, and they'll invite her to a conference every once in a while so they can kind of check out the box of having a faithful Mormon feminist, you know, invited. But like, but like, you never hear about I on Reddit, on, you know, in the circles where I am, and I'm plugged into believing Mormonism as well. I attend the RESTORE conference annually. You just don't hear a lot about Mormon feminism anymore. You heard about it way more in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s than you do now, it seems. And so I guess there's two parts of the question. One part is like, have y'. All. Has Exponent 2 ever dealt with true truth claim? Stuff like, does any of this matter if, if none of it's true? Or have you guys just avoided that altogether?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:48:50] So I can speak to that a little bit. Where. Well, first, Exponent 2 as a platform is about personal sharing, so it isn't about. So 97 Jan ships. So the non LDS historian of Mormonism, she came to Boston and one thing that she talked to the staff. So this is a few years after the excommunications. She referred to to Exponent 2 as Mormonism's stealth alternative. Where compared to other publications that are getting at truth claims and getting at the truth of history. Exponent was interested in history, but what it was sharing was personal experience. So does Exponent 2 attempt to establish the truth of any truth claims? No, it shares the truth of individual persons experiences and perspectives. So that's not part of the mission of Exponent to, to establish one way or another the truth claims. But when you're talking about the unicorn aspect of if it's real or not, like, so as a, what I would consider a non believer, it still matters to me about structural equality in the church because I am a mom raising four kids in Utah and Utah has a church, has immense power in Utah, immense influence among the people who are the, the friends and teachers and potential future Bosses of my children and of the community that I live in. And it matters to me as a community member that we work towards a place like Utah ranks among the lowest among higher education for women. Among like the pay gap is among the worst in Utah. And I think if we work towards greater structural equality among even those who are believers in that as a true thing, or even practicing non believers, I think that improves the rest of the state, improves the culture that I'm raising my kids in. Do I personally want the priesthood? No. Do I think it matters if there is full gender equality and partnership in the church? Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:50:45] And so do you think of this kind of for you as a service project? It's like I'm not really in into the church too much anymore, but I want to stick around to help be a part of improving it for other women and men who are affected by patriarchy.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:50:59] So I view Exponent for me as a place of community where I can kind of bring my whole self. For two years, my family lived in Texas, in North Dallas, and there were many great things about that experience, many great people and, you know, great food and lots of things that I really value from that time there. But for me as a Mormon feminist, it was a very lonely time because I didn't have an in person community where I could talk very openly about the whole of my experience. And so for me, like being in person in Utah, engaging in Exponent 2, engaging in Mormon feminism, is a way that I get to bring my whole self to my interactions and my experiences. I don't think what I'm doing is a service project to the church, but I do think helping give women part of their history is really important. Like Gerda Lerner, the feminist theologian, or not theologian, feminist, feminist scholar, talks about how like a key to women's oppression is keeping their history from them. When women are restored to their history, they stop thinking that they are reinventing the wheel. Every time that they experience structural inequality and work towards equality, when they experience the practice of feminism, they are not alone. They're not reinventing this every time that they are part of a history, part of a system, and that they can learn and move forward through collective activism. But when you are cut off from your history, you are alone. So do I think history and women's history is a service? Yes. Do I think I am. I'm not part of a service project though, to heal something. I am engaging in community.

John Dehlin [02:52:42] Beautiful. I love, I love that answer. Heather, how would you answer that question? Lots of questions, but yeah, so. And I hope I wasn't offensive in sharing that perspective.

Heather Sundahl [02:52:53] No, I don't. I don't think so. So I think that all of this matters. I mean, I look at Christianity and I'm like, do we really. Do we believe in a virgin birth? Do we? You know, I look at all religions and I'm like. Like, they're all fantastical. There's all these elements that, you know, for me, it's like, what's happening now? How can this community be used for good? And this is the community that I was raised in. I can walk away from Mormonism, but I will always be a Mormon girl. It will always be part of my identity. And again, my children as well. They're not part of the church, but. But they very much have Mormon identities. My son. I just remember this one thing that made me laugh. I don't know what year it was where they changed it from the language of home teaching to ministering, but it's, you know, within Mormonism, everyone is assigned people who are supposed to look out for them and serve them. And my son heard through the grapevine. He's like, mom, what the hell is going on? I heard that the. The Mormons got rid of home teaching. Who's gonna help people move? What if somebody's sick? Who's gonna bring someone a meal? I'm like, oh, sweetie, it's still there. They've just given it a different name. And he has so much gratitude for lots of the aspects that he was raised with that it taught him, as Katie keeps talking about community and this sense of belonging and this sense of responsibility towards the people around you. And so I. I do very much value that. And I feel like we have alienated women from their histories. I mean, over and over with Exponent, you have this theme of discovery. You have the exponent women discovering the women's exponent. You have Maxine hanks Discovering Exponent 2, you have Katie discovering the blog. I mean, I go back and. And find these Mormon feminists, and people are hungry for belonging, and they're hungry for a belonging that is not okay. Are you this? Are you this. Sorry, you can't belong? I mean, as a therapist, I spend so much time with clients trying to help them to develop their internal sense of authority so that they can claim their own truths. I mean, my clients will know things, but they so much want other people to validate it. And when you can get them to start validating themselves, it's really, really powerful. So I'm less worried about external authority. And I know that that's a privilege that I also have, that I can do that my age and my education and all of these things allow me to either sort of take it or leave it. But I love helping people develop their internal authority. And as someone who is still active in the church, that's something that I regularly do. When I teach a Relief Society lesson, I go there, I talk about

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:56:05] your

Heather Sundahl [02:56:06] inner knowing and help them find language that allows them to overlap some of these kinds of authority. Because we get so with LDS Church, there's so much external authority that people don't even know who they are. And it's really a satisfying work to help people do that. And I love working with the youth and helping them, you know, if they stay or go, I don't really care. I just want them to feel get a taste of their own power and their own value as an individual. And Exponent has done that over and over. It's modeled it through the writing, through the communications. All of these things teach people the patterns for discovering yourself, for asserting yourself and getting comfortable enough with yourself that you can accept other people as they are, that they don't have to be same same.

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:57:04] You'd also asked like where Mormon feminism kind of is today. So that made me think of not Mormon feminism as a whole, but what are some of the changes in the projects Exponent has done in the last decade or so? So Margaret Olson Heming came on as art editor, first design editor, then art editor in like 2010, 2012, and then was editor in chief for about six years. And one thing that she did was transformed Exponent's engagement with art and what that did. So art was always important in Exponent from, from it its early hand drawn art pieces in the beginning, but when it came back into print in 2010 as a magazine, they started including a lot more art. And she was instrumental in creating this incredible network of Mormon artists as like Instagram is starting. And the tools that we have now are not the same tools that we have back then. And to create and find Mormon feminist art took a lot of legwork. And it took building Network and cold calling people and connecting things. And so that now in our beautifully printed magazine, so we still have our essays and we still have our personal sharing, but we have visual expressions of feminism as well in new ways that open it up to whole new expressions that not everyone is a writer, but people have things to say. And when you can be a visual artist or a photographer or a sculptor or a textile artist, there are things that can be expressed and shared there for people who may not also be the ones writing essays, though, of course, depends on the individual. Right. And so as we expand there, we expand who gets to be part of this project and speak and speak in different ways and have visual expressions. I went to the Church History Museum a couple weeks ago to go see an exhibit because there's an installation there by Peyton Turner, who was our art director for many years and is still kind of our ambassador. And it is just this beautifully interesting thing about female ancestors. Right. I was shocked as I went through this exhibit up there to see so many pieces of. About matrilineal history visually depicted in art in a way that felt so different than what I was used to experiencing with Mormon art. There is a shift that has happened over the last many years of what Mormon women and gender minorities are producing in their art and what they are expressing. And for me, as we. I don't attend church anymore, but I went and I had this moment at this art exhibit at the Church History Museum to see expressions of things that I longed for depicted there in that building.

John Dehlin [02:59:47] Mother in Heaven, right?

Katie Ludlow Rich [02:59:48] Yeah. Yes. Things related to Mother in Heaven at times, too. But. But in this, it was more about the particular pieces that I'm thinking of, had to do with women's history and matrilineal history and. And drawing from the strength of your mothers in a way that. That's not something I grew up with in the church seeing visually. Right. There was also, like the 14th Ward Quilt, which is Pioneer Air Quilt, that the 14th Ward in Salt Lake produced when all these different women did these different squares. And Laurel Thatcher Ulrich kind of like, wrote about it in a House Full of Females, that book. And I've heard about this quilt. It's. It's on display together, these two pieces, I think, for the first time. And it's this massive quilt. And to see this visual women's history in front of me is something different than what I had before, and I find that very powerful. And that's something that X1 is able to do now. It's. It's a different kind of feminism that's happening, and it's growing, and it's more accessible. Like, go to the Compass Gallery in Provo. Esther Kandari is the curator there. And I'm able to see women's art that is a wildly different expression than what I grew up with.

Heather Sundahl [03:00:53] And there's so much claiming of power in that art.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:00:56] And X1 is not the soul. It's one part of the growth of that. It's you know, all of these different artists are claiming their own power and doing their own things. Xone is one piece of that where they're able to connect and print and often be the first place that these artists are printed.

Heather Sundahl [03:01:12] We love to help people launch.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:01:15] We are still often. Myself, the first imprint or like, first blog post was with Exponent. My first imprint piece was with Exponent magazine. And that's something that, like, it helps people continue to find their voices. Rachel Ruecker is our current editor, and she is so active in trying to be inclusive of marginalized people, marginalized voices of its different varieties. So X1 is not leading the charge on particular feminist things like ordained women right now, but they are changing who gets to have a voice and a platform.

John Dehlin [03:01:47] Well, I mean, it occurs to me that I'm asking very male, male type questions. And it's just from my perspective, like, I saw the September 6th come and go. I saw feminist Mormon housewives blog come and go. I've seen attempts at kind of female led podcasts kind of come and go. I saw ordained women come and go. And on the one hand, like, y' all are so lovely and I'm so happy to see that the fire of Mormon feminism still burning so brightly because I'm, I'm. This is all outside of my existence and I'm, I'm pretty involved. I'm pretty committed to this space. And I never hear about Exponent 2 or Mormon feminism. I'll go years and really not hear about it. And that makes me profoundly sad. Right? So I'm sure it's my fault in some way that I'm totally disconnected from what y' all are doing, or maybe y' all are keeping your distance, or we're both keeping our distance or just too busy doing our own thing. There's a part of me, and I don't know if this is a male ish type question or just. But like, I, I want to see Mormon feminism be bigger than Mormon stories in the sense of, like, more women learning about it, knowing about it. Because if I'm not hearing about it, then there's a boatload of Mormons and ex Mormons that aren't hearing about it. I'm very sure that most ex Mormons that are avid followers of Mormon stories have never heard of Exponent 2 at all, let alone know that there's a active blog and a Facebook group that exist, let alone that these annual events are happening. So do y' all think about size or marketing or partnerships or growth or again, is that like a Male, patriarchal, capitalistic way of thinking about things.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:03:47] We need funding.

Heather Sundahl [03:03:48] Yeah. And we've realized that we have not been as forward thinking and as active as we should be in reaching out and connecting and growing.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:04:00] Journal of Mormon History, Wayfair Magazine, Dialogue. They all can pay their editors. Exponent has had these teeny tiny stipends. And right now in our 50th year, we are working on fundraising to properly pay our editor for the first time. That is what we are working on right now. And we need donations in order to do that. We need more subscriptions to the magazine. We went through these huge waves and upsets. We've had more growth in the last year with the magazine, more subscriptions. We are higher than we have been since 1993.

John Dehlin [03:04:31] Okay. I love this. So start number one, buy this book, go up on Amazon or wherever you get your books. Go to Benchmark Books.

The Book, How to Support Exponent 2, and Closing Thoughts

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:04:39] Benchmark Books is great.

John Dehlin [03:04:40] Buy 50 years of Exponent 2. Katie Ludlow Rich and Heather Sundahl. I intentionally didn't prepare to dig into this book. I wanted to whet your appetite and hunger for this book. This is an amazing book. But I wanted. I knew that y' all would need some of this background in history to then entice you to want to read more. So I hope that's been the outcome. I hope that this book jumps up as a best seller in Mormonism on Amazon because of this episode. So please go. Buy 50 Years of Exponent 2. Katie Ludlow Rich and Heather Sundahl. Published by Signature Books. As a first step, as a second step, you say that people who want to join and or donate to Exponent 2, how do they do it?

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:05:25] Exponenti.org we have a support page. We have a shop page. You can subscribe to Exponent2 magazine, digital or print subscriptions. We have another of other products and we have a store right now with some merch. But also donate. We need donations and we need, we welcome any size donation. We need small ones, but we really need large donations to help fund the future of Mormon feminism.

John Dehlin [03:05:49] Okay? So people can donate.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:05:52] We're 501c3. It's tax deductible donation.

John Dehlin [03:05:55] Okay. And to be honest, I think part of how y' all have survived is by not getting too big. Because I guarantee you, like, I'm just receiving word that Julie, Julie Hanks is getting pressure from her stake president and bishop. She's asking for letters to basically defend her as someone who has helped people stay in the church, because I think she's getting the same type of heat that I got before I got excommunicated. The same type of heat that Katie got before she was excommunicated. Julie Hanks could be on the block as well.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:06:30] I was sad to hear that.

John Dehlin [03:06:31] But why? It's because she's been so effective and she grew too big. And that's when the brethren want to cut your head off, is when your head rises above a certain level. So in some sense, Exponent 2's size is a feature, not a bug. It is, right?

Heather Sundahl [03:06:45] Yes. It's a double edged sword because it's allowed us to kind of be stealth and stay, Stay below.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:06:54] But that's a problem I would be happy for us to figure out. You know, let us have a full endowment funded, let us pay our editor and have the resources we need to grow, and then we will tackle that problem on the challenges. If and when it comes.

John Dehlin [03:07:09] Says someone hasn't been through it.

Heather Sundahl [03:07:11] I know.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:07:11] Sure, sure. But also, I just wanted to. We don't have this one charismatic leader.

Heather Sundahl [03:07:15] Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:07:16] We are a community of different voices and, you know, we'll see what comes.

John Dehlin [03:07:23] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I am delighted to see Exponent 2 burning brightly. I feel sad that I don't have a relationship with y', all, but this is, you know, I'm. I'm happy for this.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:07:32] We thank you for having us on. We really appreciate your time and your. Your enthusiasm here. It means a lot.

Heather Sundahl [03:07:37] Well, well, when I told my daughter that I was going on, they were so excited. They are 19 and 23.

John Dehlin [03:07:44] Oh, wow.

Heather Sundahl [03:07:45] Just so you know.

John Dehlin [03:07:46] Well, if y' all ever want a consultant to help you gain more eyeballs, I might be able to give you a thought or two.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:07:54] I will take you up on that.

John Dehlin [03:07:56] Okay. So, because I. I love to grow other. I don't like to be a lone voice in the wilderness.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:08:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:08:02] I love to have other voices prominent. I don't need them to be anything less like me. I want them to be their own voices. But I love to amplify voices. So I'm so glad you all came. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and your experience and your wisdom. I have loved these three hours. So thank you and thank you for this very important book. Thank you. Thank Katie and Heather. Thank you so much.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:08:25] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [03:08:25] Yeah. All right, well, anything else before we go? No, no.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:08:31] Yeah. I mean, we accept guest posts, we accept submissions to the magazine as well. So people here who want to have their voice heard will take your donations, but also we'll take your writing and

Heather Sundahl [03:08:39] your art, and we'll help you with your writing. If you're a first time writer and a little nervous, we are so good at holding your hand and walking you through the whole process.

John Dehlin [03:08:48] And if there are women out there feeling lonely and isolated, like there's no one that understands them, they can come to your events.

Heather Sundahl [03:08:54] Yeah.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:08:55] And come to our Instagram X Exponent 2, Exponent 2 blog and Exponent 2 underscore mag. We have these two Instagram accounts and there's great community happening there on Instagram. Great community on the blog still. And Facebook group. Well, Facebook page currently. The group is not currently active. But yeah, we have a Facebook page and we have our annual retreat and Pilgrim.

John Dehlin [03:09:17] What's it called?

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:09:18] It's called the X1 at 2 retreat and it's in September. But then there are these other ones that we also advertise in and help connect people too. If New Hampshire's too far, well, I

John Dehlin [03:09:27] hope y' all grow to the exact right size that keeps you alive.

Katie Ludlow Rich [03:09:31] Thank you.

Heather Sundahl [03:09:31] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:09:34] Thanks for joining us. All right, everyone, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Again, please buy this book, 50 Years of Exponent II by Katie Ludlow Rich and Heather Sundahl, published by Signature Books. Spread the Word. Share this with everyone. I won't ask for donations this time. Just donate to the them. Help them build up an endowment and pay our editor. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure there's just a rich trove of writings and art and community that y' all can mine as women and non binary people and men if you want to learn from wise people. So thanks for joining us today. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. Be kind to each other, be good to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Bye everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.