Introduction and Opening Reflections

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:00:00] Teach me to walk in the light of his love Teach me to pray to my Father above Teach me to know all the things that are right Teach me Teach me to walk in the light Come, little child.

Guest [00:00:37] Why don't we. Why don't we turn to Claudia Bushman's interview? Taryn, do you mind giving some first thoughts and reactions to it?

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:00:44] Yeah, sure. So that was all from one interview, then?

Guest [00:00:49] Yeah. Let's start with Melissa's interview of Claudia.

Reactions to the Mormon Women Review Interviews

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:00:53] Oh, yeah, of course. Sorry about that, Melissa. That I thought was really interesting. I have heard a lot about Claudia Bushman over the past few years. I have a lot of friends who live in the Boston area who are really. Who've been really strongly influenced by her, frankly, who consider her almost like mother in Zion type. She's given them social resources and perspective to deal with, to deal with inequalities they perceive in the church or to deal with personal issues or to just to grow up, you know, a lot of college students go out there, and because of what I've heard about her and the way my friends have always talked about her, I have to say I was a little bit shocked when I first heard that interview because it wasn't what I expected at all. I think that Bonnie Bushman came off as a very engaging woman, a very engaging person, and she was interesting. But I expected someone. This was essentially the person who founded Exponent 2, who has influenced generations of woman women, who's influenced their academic choices, their intellectual development, their feminist leanings. And she was so unassuming. I was just stunned. She was this lionized figure, and it turns out she's a real person with a straightforward personality. Blew me away. I have to say. I was a little bit put off by a few of the things she said, though, in that first episode, there was a discussion at one point of the different ways that women of different ages are not given enough resources or enough programming, that kind of thing in the church. And while I do agree that there's plenty of room for us to do more things in the church, there's plenty of room for women to take more callings, to take over more of the work that doesn't need to be explicitly ordained priesthood work, you know, ward clerk work, that kind of thing. I was a little bit surprised at the suggestion she made that we could consider separating the Relief Society by AIDS so that you have younger women, the women who still have children, older women, retirees, women who kind of moved on to that next phase of life. I was surprised partly because my husband complains all the time about how much he wishes that the elders quorum and the high priest group were combined because he thinks that they lose a lot, they lose a lot in separating out the younger men. They haven't got the resources that they need in order to learn about the gospel, learn about what they should be doing as priesthood holders and really to have interesting conversations on Sunday.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:03:40] And

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:03:43] I have to say I felt a little bit hurt because I am, I'm a 30 year old woman and I go to church and I sit in Relief Society and I have to say I'm part of the group she described as sitting there trying not to say anything offensive to the group that she perceived as younger and therefore more orthodox and so on and so forth. If we were to split by ages and she would write about the breakdown of ideological positioning and general perspective on the gospel, that kind of thing, I'd really be miserable. And really the idea, if she's right, I would be a lone voice of whatever. I'm a voice of weirdo leftist, you know, young Mormon womanhood. And I was a little hurt to think that she would want me to be in the other room and not with her. I was a little surprised at her willingness to talk about these ideas of separation in this church that's based on unity and communion with each other. On the other hand, I just loved her second few episodes. The social history that she talked about, the, the excerpts that she read from primary source documents were wonderful. And I was really, really moved by the way she was so unassuming and so really quiet about her own life, but so entranced with the voices of Mormon women in the past. She gave that advice about people, you know, people going out and collecting their own history, writing down their own history, collecting their mother's history and their grandmother's history because these voices shouldn't be lost. And I thought it was really interesting how she, she played down her own voice. You know, it was really modest, I guess.

Guest [00:05:43] Right. Although she is doing her own history, she is taking her own advice in terms of writing.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:05:48] Of course she is. You know, that was the part that I think I kind of loved about. I mean she, it's Claudia Bush. There's some hero worship here maybe, but you know, it's quality of Bushman. That was what was kind of interesting about it was she was so unassuming, but at the same time, I mean, she's doing this stuff, you know, she is taking her own advice. She's an example. She's, she's someone we can model ourselves On. And it was. It was just interesting, you know.

Guest [00:06:17] Well, that's. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. Rosalind, what'd you think?

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:06:23] You know, I really shared Taryn's assessment. I enjoyed it very much. I enjoyed listening to her wonderful voice with the same sorts of inflections that my grandmother has. I loved the warmth of her voice. I loved the depth of her experience. Like Taryn, I would be sad to see Relief Society separated into ages and thought it was an interesting and kind of bold suggestion. However, and I think floating bold ideas is good every once in a while, but I would be sad to see it happen. For many of the reasons that Taryn describes, I was interested sort of in her kind of overall method. We've been talking a lot about ways that we approach history and the uses that we make of history. And I was trying to figure out. She is an eminent historian, has lots of experience in the archives, and has done a lot to disseminate and popularize Mormon women's history. So I was trying to figure out her philosophy of history as I was listening to her speak. And she mentioned several times that what she. Obviously, she's very focused on text. She likes having the text in hand. And as a textual historian myself, I understand the appeal and the mystique of having those wonderful documents from the past there. And she said that she liked to read the words of ordinary women. You know, she kind of resisted a little bit your invitation to do a sort of journalistic, heroic women approach to women's history, right, where we talk about the 10 greatest Mormon women. She said, no, no, let's not do that. Let's instead, let's look at and read in their own words the experiences of sort of everyday Mormon women from history. And I enjoyed very much those glimpses into the past. I'm sort of inclined to like her approach and support her approach to history. What was mystifying me just a little bit was how she was getting from the texts themselves, the stories themselves, to her kind of progressive political positions. And I was listening to try and figure out how is she using these vignettes. And I never did quite figure out, was she using. Was she trying to glean some sort of lesson, some sort of kernel of practical or principled knowledge from these stories? Was she just sort of offering them as kind of motivation and inspiration for us, then relying on modern women to come up with their own kernels of practical and principled wisdom, or how was she using these little bits of history? I never did quite figure out how she was getting from the one to the other. And I would love to hear more from her and see whether she sees her activism and her historical work as connected in some way. I'm sure she does. But how precisely she sees them connected and how it is that she uses history in her particular way of reading it, to inform her. Very interesting. Sometimes provocative, but always compassionate sort of religious and political views.

Guest [00:09:48] Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Well, those are two. Yeah. I'm not exactly sure how to respond to either of your reactions. Was there anything in the.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:09:58] I was.

Guest [00:09:59] Oh, go ahead, please.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:10:01] I was just going to say, in response to what Rosalind was saying, I actually got the impression that she doesn't necessarily base her activism on. One of the questions you asked was you saw how she was treating these stories and you saw what her political views were, that kind of thing. But you didn't really see where she was, where the impetus in historical stuff was. I don't think it was there. I think that what was going on, this was. My impression, was that she has these views, she has these ideas about women and about women in Mormonism, and they aren't caused by the things that she's read as a historian. They aren't necessarily stemming out of that so much as they're the reason that she does the war work. It's because she values women in themselves and she sees them as important that she wants to go and she wants to read these stories and she wants to see what their lives and their experiences were like. I will say I think it did serve one other purpose in the interview, which was, if you remember, there was that bit where she talked about that women's accounts of life in Nauvoo, the social life of Nauvoo. And she started talking afterward about the ways that she would like to see our modern Mormon social world enriched. And I think that what she was doing there was actually using the differences that she saw between today's culture and the time that she was reading to us about as a way to start just getting things flexible, talking about how things had been different and could be different and they wouldn't be different the way they had been in nauvoo in the 1840s. That was a very specific time and place. But we could do things. There are these endless possibilities. And that's what I really got from that conversation.

Guest [00:12:01] What did you guys think of her critique of social life or of the church experience today versus 50 years ago or 150 years ago? Did that. Well, that's Rosalind first, and then Taryn did that resonate with you? Did you feel like she was too harsh? Did you feel like she was spot on about how the block has been a failure and about how it just seems so lifeless socially and about her grandchildren not feeling like they've ever had a positive day in church ever? You know, what do you think, Rosalind, about that? Did that resonate or was that dish harmonious with you?

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:12:39] Well, you know, questions like this are difficult to answer because they really are going to have so much to do with context and with individual temperament. I will say, in my particular ward, it's not the case at all. We have a thriving social life. In fact, almost too much so. You know, truly, it's a rare day when I don't have somebody else's children at my house or my children are at their house or we're doing something. And so in my particular environment, that hasn't been a problem. However, as I said, I can't from that extrapolate out and say that is wrong.

Guest [00:13:20] No, no, no.

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:13:21] I'm just saying your experience, it came through in the podcasts. Sort of her personality, which is just wonderfully vibrant. You can tell she is a woman of limitless, boundless energy who loves projects. I think she called herself a project person at one point. That's sort of a temperamental thing, and that's going to color her assessment of how things have gone right and gone wrong. Somebody like me, sadly not a person of boundless energy, is probably going to have a slightly different take. So it's difficult. It's always difficult. And these are often conversations that can be contentious and sort of unsatisfying because so much of whether or not something has worked out has to do with local. Local context and individual temperaments.

Guest [00:14:12] Yep. Yep. I'm just asking your experience. What about her saying that she finds Sunday School or Relief Society sort of lacking in terms of it being stimulating? Do you. Do you also. Let me. Let Rosalind finish it off, and then I'm gonna have Taryn respond to both those questions in her experience. No, it's good. So, Rosalind, did you share any of her sentiments in that regard?

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:14:37] I certainly have sat through my share of dry and dull Relief Society and Sunday School lessons. Perhaps there could be more done to improve sort of pedagogy. I think there have been some efforts made there. Again, my mother, Christy Franson, lives in Southern California, teaches a really thriving and incredibly popular scripture study class. She's a very charismatic speaker and a charismatic woman. I think she's been a wonderful example to Women inspiring them to get on board with the scriptures. So I think, again, it's going to depend where you go and how things work. Perhaps there are some things that could be done on a structural level, but since we are a layer ministry and anybody can get called to be a teacher, I think there's always going to be some unevenness in the quality of the teaching. That's part of what it means to be a Mormon. I empathize, indeed, with her frustration and would love to see the quality of teaching rise. It's not a crusade for me. However, I think there are lots of gifted teachers out there who, if they're motivated and have the energy, as my mother has, can get something really great going.

Guest [00:15:59] All right, Taryn. On church culture and on the church experience.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:16:05] Well, I thought a lot of her observations about modern church culture and experience, things that we've lost, things that we could gain, were spot on. I do have to note before I talk. I'm sorry, is there.

Guest [00:16:20] Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:16:22] Okay. I do have to note before I go on and talk about what I agreed with, that I think that celebrating Smithness on December 23rd is a really bad idea. I've actually suggested before in print that we should deemphasize secular Christmas celebrations not with religious celebrations, but with celebrations of Joseph Smith's birthday. I think that's just a really, really bad idea. There's enough confusion in our case already about what we value most, what religious reason. On the other hand, I really agreed with a lot of the things she said about the current structure of Sunday School Relief Society. You know, I'm in a world right now where Relief Society is wonderful. It's interesting. Dry topics are well presented and well discussed. We had a genuinely interesting lesson on the importance of visiting teaching today. I have to say I probably sat through 10 lessons on the importance of visiting teaching since I was 18 years old. This was the first one that I enjoyed. I think that it's true that when we have a lay church with lay teachers, there are some limitations on what we can do in our classrooms. But the simple truth is that we're not to the point where we need to start worrying about those limitations. Yet we have poor manuals. We have, I think, in an effort to try to make sure that people in different cultures can really understand the church manuals and really have a shared experience across nations, across continents, across cultures, we've essentially taken everything interesting out of our manuals. And one of the things that means is that no one gets engaged during our Sunday School lessons. Many people don't get engaged during our Relief Society and priesthood conversations either. People just sit. There's nothing stimulating going on. And for that reason, I think that the three hour block has kind of gone off the deep end. I think that she's right that we could do something to vary it. I personally think that it's a great shame that we can't find some way to restructure things so that we don't have all those meetings on Sunday at the same time. It's just because I've been in some wards where Sunday School works brilliantly and Relief Society works brilliantly, and I've been in more wards where they're all a miserable experience. There have been awards in South America where I was just grateful that my Spanish wasn't very good because when I could understand what was going on, it was so deathly boring. But then there have been some really wonderful experiences too. Rosalind's right, though. It's situational. And we need to try to come up with some kind of system to account for that, to make it easier for people with limited teaching experience to. To obtain good materials to start interesting discussions. I think it would be less stressful for the people involved in teaching as well if we did that.

Guest [00:19:32] Okay, good. Well, thanks to both of you for your reactions about that. Real quick, what did you guys think about Claudia's discussion of how she started Exponent 2 and then was told, you know, in no uncertain terms, by leadership, that she needed to stop, that she was willing to stop, and that she was glad she stopped because it allowed her to still continue to have an influence in the church. Taryn, you first. And then Rosalind.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:20:07] Okay. This is a really difficult issue for me. I was listening to this, and I have to say there's something deeply upsetting at kind of a visceral level about the idea that the person who really founded Exponent 2 in large part started the ongoing modern feminist movement in the Mormon Church, the movement that's really survived left it because a man asked her to. And that's a simple, strange thing to me, not least because I've actually heard this story before, and I've always heard it told that it wasn't a formal request. It wasn't actually someone saying, the church is asking you to stop this. It would probably be a good idea if you left us alone. I've always found that personally upsetting. Just because that's a really good way to silence yourself. You want to talk about women in the church, about women in our culture, what they want, what they need, who they are. If someone tells you, oh, you shouldn't do that, you just stop. On the other hand, I do understand a point, not wanting to lose influence. But my question is, how much influence has she really had? I mean, there's the casual influence that she's had on women inside the church, women that she's dealt with, the women who've gone through her seminar, that kind of thing. But I think that I've never really seen any evidence that she's had any of the institutional influence that she may have been helping to maintain. So that's a really. That's a really good question that we can ask ourselves when we think about this, not least because it's my understanding that no one has ever been disciplined for being involved in explanation two. And in fact, it's treated not really with interest by the church, but certainly without concern. So I'm not really sure that there was any reason for her to leave it.

Guest [00:22:01] Interesting.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:22:02] I have to say that, Rosalind,

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:22:06] I thought it was a very interesting story, wrenching, as Taryn said, it really gets to the heart of, and is emblematic of the difficulty that Mormon feminists face, which is how to deal with the idea of authority. What does it mean to live in an authoritarian church in some ways? And what are the borders of institutional jurisdiction and personal judgment? Is there a role for conscience? All these questions are essential there, I certainly feel, offer my sympathy to Claudia. I don't know whether or not she made the right choice. I wouldn't begin to know how to judge that. But I can also tell that it's become an important touchstone for herself. Looking back at our own lives, we tell ourselves stories. We use our own personal histories to make sense of what we're going through in the present and in the future. And it seems to me that this has become one of those personal touchstones for her. And for her, it has come to define something about herself and about where her loyalties lie and about what it means to be a part of an institution and an organization. And I think that in that way, it's a wonderful example of the kind of personal history that she was encouraging all of us women to do, to make of our own histories, types and meanings to guide us forward. Now, in order for that to happen, we need to have the facts down first. As I was saying at the beginning, I think it's helpful to get the facts down, down first and from there, go on to make meaning of it. But from that perspective, I thought it was a wonderful Example, enactment of what she's suggesting, and also emblematic of the whole very difficult, very naughty thicket of issues that surround feminists working in the church.

Guest [00:24:24] Yeah. Well, did either of you have a favorite story that Claudia told in her second and third interview? I'm just curious. So, Rosalind, you first and then Taryn.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:24:39] Sure.

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:24:40] I'm looking at my notes here. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry about that. There's this pop up ad and if I accidentally click on it, then it does that.

Guest [00:24:51] No problem.

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:24:52] Hopefully you can edit that out. In episode four, she read a wonderful letter that Emma Smith had written at the end of her life. And it was notable for several reasons, one of which was especially interesting to me. Emma mentions the Curse of Eve, which is an idea that has basically evaporated from our public discourse about who Eve is. We use her for entirely the opposite sort of rhetorical and ideological purpose now. And I thought it was so interesting to catch that glimpse of a time when Eve meant something very different. Eve didn't represent women's kind of moral authority and moral superiority, which itself plays into one sort of justification for a male priesthood. Instead, she was precisely the opposite. She was cursed. And for that reason, she was denied leadership status. So I've had sort of ongoing conversations with various people about whether or not this ever was part of our theology. I have argued that the Curse of Eve was understood to be the sort of default reading of the Adam and Eve story. So I felt that I had a moment of justification there, which I enjoyed. I also was in episode five, just really kind of struck by the letter and I'm going to embarrass myself here. I believe it was written by Elizabeth Cain, who is not a member, but was a friend and an observer of the Mormons, describing polygamy and kind of the repulsion that she felt in observing, you know, older men, you know, marrying younger women. This is a scenario that is in my own family history. And I have to say I experienced the very same repulsion that Elizabeth Kane experienced. And it's a very, very difficult. Continues to be an extremely vexed and difficult question in our history. And that was one moment that vividly commanded my ascent right there, as you might say.

Guest [00:27:05] Sure, yeah. That was an emotional part for me as well. Taryn, what did you think? Any favorite or two for you? Oh, go ahead.

Favorite Moments and Feminist History in the Church

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:27:17] The story that I was really taken by, actually what I was really interested in was like, Rosalind, the Emma segment, the bit about the blessing that Josiah writes for herself. First of all, because that was just really interesting. As I think Claudia pointed out. It was fascinating that Joseph had Emma write her own blessing. And it was tragic that when he told her that he would come home and sign it, he never came home. It was very affecting. But the thing that I thought was really interesting about it actually was the spin that Claudia put on the blessing. She talked about how, despite the fact that, as was exemplified by the entire story, oh, I don't have time to come home and give you a blessing. Give it yourself, and I'll write my name on it. Emma was not well treated by Joseph. She wasn't well treated by the church's early history. She really suffered a lot at the hands of her husband at some basic level. Despite that, the blessing was all about how she wanted God to make her worthy to stay at Joseph right hand throughout eternity and always to be with him. And she said that it was really interesting. Impressive, I think, is really how she termed it, that Emma loved him that much. And then she went. Which I thought was really exactly what I was thinking. But then she went on and said that she thought that that was an issue that any of Joseph Smith's detractors would have to deal with. She seemed to think of it as an apologetic. An apologetic thing. Something that was really handy for people who were trying to defend the veracity, Joseph Smith's revelations and prophethood, which I thought was interesting because, you know, there have been plenty of people in the history of the world who were deeply loved, but who were just foul people. And I don't think Joe, this mythical foul. I think he was a prophet. I think he was a great guy. I think he was a lot of fun. I think he had some personal problems, but that's not really any of my business. Right. But I don't think that we can say that Emma's deep love for her husband proves that he was a prophet or that he was on the right track. I think we need to be very careful when we talk about stories from our history not to use these kinds of things to justify our current beliefs. Because the thing that we need to justify our current beliefs with is our faith. Anything else is liable to be obviously off track to other people and therefore ineffective, if that makes sense.

Guest [00:29:51] Building your foundation on sand.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:29:54] Yeah. You know, you can't build a foundation on the fact that he was well liked. We need to do it on what we get from what he gave us.

Guest [00:30:01] Sure. Well, Rosalind and Taran, I really appreciated your candid feedback on the series so far. I think I'VE learned a lot. I'm listening to this a couple times to make sure that I remember a couple things as I, as I perspective. But what I'd love to hear from both of you and I'll start with Rosalind and then end with Taryn. You know, I am going to now move to some of the tougher issues in the history of the LDS Church with feminism. And specifically we're going to touch on the the whole era experience in the church in the 1970s as recounted by Martha Bradley. And then we're going to hit hard the 1980s, something that I call the train wreck of LDS feminism, where the culminated in the September 6th excommunications and that whole deal. And then we're going to move on to sort of modern Mormon women and how they're feeling today about the church and their experience within the church. But Rosalind, I'll start with you and then Taryn, if you were to sort of help give me some feedback or guidance on what you'd like to hear as this series progresses, you know, what type of alternative viewpoints or what types of people you would like to hear interviewed or issues covered. Do you either have any opinions on what you would want to make sure gets included?

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:31:34] John, I can give you a little bit of my personal, personal feelings on how I hope your approach goes. I think these are difficult and painful issues. I have no desire to sweep them under the carpet or hide them. And I think some good can be done by talking about and disseminating this information. I think it's really tempting when we look back at at history. And once again, this seems to be an obsession with me tonight, the uses and the ways that we make history. It's very tempting to sort of fall back on a kind of totalizing narrative of silence, invisibility and oppression. Right. And I noticed just to bring it back to the beginning, bring it full circle in your introduction, you gave us that delightful little quiz. It was a lot of fun. But it seemed to me that you were pulling together and rightly pointing out a lot of really central issues to women's experience in the church, but issues that each had a very distinct kind of origin and etiology and context. And so I would encourage you, as you go forward and explore these issues, to do your best to get down to the local and get down to the specific context, rather than falling back on a kind of larger narrative of some sort of monolithic or sort of totalized oppression of women. I think some of the issues that you mentioned probably are secondary Issues stemming from the fact that we have a gendered priesthood. Some of them probably have more to do with the specifics of remote historical cultures. When we're talking about, about the Book of Mormon, for example, some of them have to do with the way that we do historiography in our sort of heroic historiography, which tends to exclude women because of the way that they live their lives. So I think many of these problems have distinct and different ways of understanding them best. And I would encourage you to get down to those individual best ways of understanding the episodes that you discuss. I think in some ways this relates to what Claudia was urging us to do, which is to go back to the specific, go back to the local and to the individual, and work from there. I'm excited to see what you have in store for us. I also have a continuing interest in what we do with these stories. Your podcast is entitled Mormon Stories. And this of kind, kind of confessional approach to building a community has a lot going for it and I think it can do a lot of good. I think it has some limitations as well, though. In some ways I think that personal stories can be atomizing, they can be polarizing and sometimes it's difficult to kind of share, to reach the same conclusions and to. And to all end up on the same page. So I would be interested in you doing a little bit of kind of self critical examination of what stories can do and what they do well and what they can't do, what their limitations are. I for one would find that these are questions that I don't have answers to. I'm looking for myself. And I would be very interested in sort of some larger critical issues like that, as you see, can forward.

Guest [00:35:06] That's good. That's part of why I had you guys on to help educate me to the extent that you're able. But I'll take that suggestion. I'll take that feedback and I'll do my best to internalize it and respond to it. So thank you, Rosalind.

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:35:20] You are welcome, John.

Guest [00:35:21] All right, Taryn, give me some thoughts

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:35:25] on the future directions of the series.

Guest [00:35:28] Yeah. What do you want to make sure it gets covered or how it's treated? You know, the tone, the tenor, the potential interview, interviewees, Anything you want to say as for aspirations for how this series continues and concludes?

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:35:46] Well, I think that some of the things Rosalind was talking about were things I was interested in. In particular, she mentioned that some of the stuff that is discussed in a series, some of the issues that we talk about when we Talk about women and Mormonism are things that are byproducts of a gendered priesthood. And here's the thing about that. One thing I'd be really interested in hearing about on Mormon stories is how we came up with the gendered priesthood, what the history of it is, how it developed, because it has developed. It didn't spring fully formed out of. Out of Joseph's revelations in 1830. It's something that we're constantly revising. And the duties of the priesthood and the duties of women who are not part of the priesthood are always changing in our church. I think that that would be a really interesting thing to talk about. I think also that for all that Rosalind is right, that context is very important. Local things, the local story is very important. And also that personal stories can be divisive, can make the picture less clear rather than more clear. I really don't think that that's a concern with the format that you've been using in Mormon stories for the past 60 episodes. I think that you've really developed a good thing with the. With the way that you try to read through individual stories and use them to build a larger story for us. So I really like what you've done and hope that you pursue it with that stuff. I think that aside from the gendered priesthood, it would be really interesting to look at the history of women's charismatic gifts in the church, because that's something that a lot of people know a little bit about and frankly, a lot of fun because it's both inspiring and really foreign. While we're not currently a charismatic church, which is something I'm comfortable with, I'm not really into that. I think that the stories that you can find about the way prayer meetings and blessing meetings worked in the early religious society are a lot of fun, and they give us a very different understanding of what people. People thought of as official and unofficial, as direct from God, and something that came through the mediation of the church. And I'd like to see that not only for discussion of women's issues in the church, but for discussion of what the future holds for us as a whole community of worshipers. I think also I would like to hear a few men talking about the history of women in the church and perhaps the way that a growing awareness of that history has influenced them. I know that there are a few male historians who have done quite a lot of interesting work on the history of women in the church. Mike Quinn, I don't know whether he'd be someone you could interview. But I have to say he's done some really interesting work. It would be fun to hear about that stuff. I think that's what I'd be interested in.

Closing Thoughts and Gratitude

Guest [00:39:06] Well, Taryn, thank you for that and Rosalind as well. I just want to let you both know I am sincerely grateful that you would take some time out of your Sabbath evening to come on the show. In many ways, I really am flying blind because admittedly I haven't done much reading. I'm new to this whole deal. I really do want and need your thoughts and feedback to make you know the rest of what I do as impactful as possible. So I take your suggestions and your criticisms and your compliments and all that in all the spirits in which they're intended. And I just can't thank you both enough for taking the time to come on and talk about this very important issue. So thank you.

Rosalynde (Mormon Matters) [00:39:47] Rosalind, thank you, John, it was a great pleasure. And Taryn, thank you as well. It was a great pleasure to talk with you.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:39:53] It was a lot of fun. Rosalind, thank you. And John, thank you for having me on. It was fun.

Guest [00:39:58] Oh well, my pleasure. My pleasure to do both you guys. Have a great evening. And to our listeners, thank you so much again for tuning in to Mormon Matters). You can check us out@mormonmatters.org you can also email us@mormonmattersmail.com and please don't hesitate to give us your thoughts and feedback. And if you have any requests or ideas, ideas, we'd love to hear them. So thanks again. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks again to our guests and we look forward to talking with you all again very soon. Take care.

Taryn Nelson-Seawright [00:40:27] It may not be on the mountain height or over the stormy sea it may not be at the battle's front My Lord would have need of me but if by a still small voice he calls to pass that I do not know I'll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in Thine I'll go where you want me to go I'll go where you want me to go Dear Lord over mountain or plain or sea I'll say what you want me to say Dear Lord, I'll be what you want me to be Perhaps today there are loving words which Jesus would have me speak There may be now in the past paths of sin Some wanderer whom I should see oh Savior, if thou will be my guide Though dark and rugged the way my voice shall echo the message sweet I'll say what you want me to say I'll go where you want me to go Dear Lord over mountain or plain or sea I'll say what you want me to say Dear Lord, I'll be what you want me to be there's surely somewhere a lonely place in earth's harvest field so wide Where I may labor through life's short day For Jesus the crucified so trusting my all to thy tender care and knowing thou lovest me I'll do thy will with a heart sincere I'll be with you you want me to be I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord over mountain or plain or sea I'll say what you want me to say, Dear Lord I'll be what you want me to be I'll be what you want me to be I'll be what you want me to be.

Guest [00:43:27] This wonderful music has been provided by clayton and sky pixton. To check out more, go to claytonpixton.com that's C-L-A-Y-T-O-N pixton P-I-X-T-O-N.com or skypixton.com S-K-Y-E-P-I-X-T- o-n.com or check us out on the mormon matters.org website to get the links. Thanks again.

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.