Southwestern States Mission: Hymnbooks

Christus resurrexit!

Below are images of four pages from what the missionaries called ?the LDS hymnbook.? [1]

A Discussion with a National Women’s History Month Founder Molly Murphy MacGregor

While reading Ruth Rosen?s The World Split Open: How the Modern Women?s Movement Changed America as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York in 2003, I was shocked to discover that my own college played an integral in the development of National Women?s History Week, which became a full month in 1987,. What was even more startling to me was that I (and a majority of my fellow students) did not know about this significant piece of women?s history. As a graduate student in the women?s history program at Sarah Lawrence, I decided to write my master?s thesis on the college?s role in the development of National Women?s History Week.  During the process of writing my thesis, I fortunately, became acquainted with Molly Murphy MacGregor, a driving force behind the development of National Women?s History Week and the executive director of the National Women?s History Project. Over the years I have known MacGregor, I have been struck with how her early religious experiences as a Catholic child and young woman affected her activism and passion for women?s history. Her story is very similar to many women who have grapple with the conflicting aspects of a religious tradition that at times both venerates women but limits their leadership and agency as a church member.
1972 was a banner year for women?s history: Shirley Chisholm ran for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination and Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX of the Higher Education Act. That year MacGregor was serving as a California high school teacher when a student asked about the woman?s movement. Having no answer, MacGregor strove to educate herself about women?s history and was shocked to find no suitable sources. In the following years, MacGregor began to work for the the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women when she and four other women came up with an idea for National Women?s History Week. In 1978, the commission in Sonoma County started a week in March dedicated to women?s history. The week containing March 8^th was chosen for that event as the date was and still is International Women?s Day. During the summer of the following year, MacGregor participated, along with other women leaders of organizations for women and girls, in a women’s history institute led by the historian Gerda Lerner at Sarah Lawrence College. As part of her application to the institute, MacGregor sent along information about the women?s history week in Sonoma county. The women involved in the institute decided to begin similar celebrations in their own communities and initiate an effort to have the week nationally recognized. The first signs of success arrived in 1980 when President Carter issued a the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the week of March 8, 1980 as National Women’s History Week  (full link to the first President Proclamation here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page). That same year Representative Barbara Mikulski and Senator Orrin Hatch co-sponsored a Congressional Resolution for National Women’s History Week to be recognized in 1981. In 1987, galvanized by the fact that fourteen states had already declared March as National Women?s History Month, MacGregor and other women led a lobbying effort to have the full month dedicated to women?s history. Finally in that year Congress declared that March would be national recognized as National Women?s History Month.

After getting to know Molly Murphy MacGregor as a graduate student and member of the National Women?s History Project board of directors, I was struck by how she was shaped by her Catholic childhood. Over the years as I have developed my own research interests in women?s and gender history, religion, feminism, and American history, I have often wanted to revisit this topic with her. I decided to give her a call and ask her a few questions. Growing up in 1950s and 1960s Los Angeles, MacGregor attended Catholic school all the way to the eighth grade and then she attended a public high school. Though she has since stopped practicing Catholicism, MacGregor credits the Catholic Church as well as her parents with inspiring her later activism and passion for women?s history.  Of her Catholic education, MacGregor states ?In terms of my catholic education, it had everything to do with believing to know, love, and serve God and each other. ..I grew up believing we were all connected though the mystical body of Christ.? Catholics believe that their church is united through the Mystical body of Christ and are guided by Christ, the head. MacGregor also explains that she would not have the ?social consciousness? she has now if it were not partly for being taught about the tradition and significance of standing up for what one believes in throughout her childhood and education.

While MacGregor was not particularly bothered by the lack of leadership position for roles for women within Catholicism (she recalled that the role of alter boy never appealed to her as a young girl), what was troublesome was a continual emphasis on death and the dichotomous view of heaven and hell. Because her father never became a Catholic and her parents married outside the church, MacGregor feared that when they died they would both burn in hell. After her father?s untimely death, when accompanying her mother to confession MacGregor was excited anticipating that her mother would finally be able to take communion (she did not partake in this part of the church servive as she had married outside of the church). Yet, when MacGregor was taken aback when her mother claimed that taking communion would not make any difference. To MacGregor?s mother, the church was not necessarily about the leadership in Rome but she would often say ?the church is the people?the people who show up there.? Her religious experience was deeply informed by her parents? counsel and example. She recounts how her brothers told her how a trip to the grocery store with her father often turned into an expedition that included dropping off food on porch of a family, who needed the help.

MacGregor?s leadership with the development of National Women?s History Month and the National Women?s History Project has led her to work with women from a variety of socioeconomic, cultural, and religious background. She attributes her work with these different individuals, including Mormon women, over the last forty years with continuously breaking her own stereotypes about those who are both dedicated to women?s rights and women?s history.  Though MacGregor eventually left the Catholic Church in the 1970s partly due to her participation with different political and activist movements, she is an example of why it is nearly impossible to ignore the salient connections between religious influence, activism, and history.

Mormon Studies Goes to Cambridge: Harvard Divinity School Hires David F. Holland

Okay, now that Harvard Divinity School made official the news that has been circulating for weeks, we at JI (and JI?s satellite branch in Cambridge) can pop the Martinelli’s. David Holland, currently an associate professor at UNLV, will be joining the HDS faculty starting this July as an associate professor of American religious history. (You can read the official HDS announcement here).

Until he came to Harvard for his job-talk and visit earlier this year, I only knew Prof. Holland through his groundbreaking work, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America (OUP, 2011). JI?s own Christopher provided an in-depth review when the book was first published, which I encourage all to read again. For those American religious historians (this aspiring one included) who are returning to sacred scriptures as a starting place for our analysis of both church history as well as history of the volk (both institutional, intellectual, and ?lived?), Sacred Borders is model scholarship.

During his visit to HDS, Holland proved that he?s not only a writer. His dynamic and innovative presentation on his current on ?editing? sacred texts was simply dazzling.

His students at UNLV have attested that he is also a great mentor, and many students at HDS have already benefited from his generous, critical (in both senses of the word), but always amiable suggestions on their work.

Congrats to HDS on a great hire!

In the Ghetto: I Like It Here, but When Can I Get Out?

My ghetto isn?t a slum; I?m quite comfortable here. My ghetto has lovely wallpaper, good hot (chocolate) drinks, and great stories. Really amazing stories. But it is separate.

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Mormon Midwives and the Business of Being Born

I am about six months pregnant right now, which means that my backaches and I am inundated with a list of things that I am supposed to eat or not eat and do or not do.  According to Mayo Clinic, I should avoid certain types of fish including swordfish, shark, king mackerel, and tilefish but not shrimp, crab, canned tuna, salmon, Pollock, catfish, cod, or tilapia.  The fish in the latter group, however, should only be eaten in moderation.  I shouldn?t take a very hot bath or get into the hot tub.  It?s okay to eat hard cheeses like cheddar, feta, and provolone but not soft cheeses like brie, goat?s cheese, and gorgonzola.  Lunchmeat is out, as is sushi.  Tylenol, Metamucil, and Neosporin are okay if you get sick but Benadryl isn?t okay until after the first trimester and most other drugs are out until the baby is weaned.

Being pregnant has made me even more cognizant of the materials and histories that are produced about pregnancy.  Recently, there have been several documentaries made advocating for certain visions of women and reproductive health.  One of the earliest and perhaps most controversial is Ricki Lake?s The Business of Being Born

Southwestern States Mission: The Courtship of Amelia Carling

Sorry I?m late posting? critically analyzing someone?s marriage is sticky business and this post is three times longer than my average.

Four years ago I wrote (1, 2, 3) about the bigamous marriage of Mission President James G Duffin, age 42, and missionary Amelia B Carling, age 24, in August 1902, while she was a missionary under his supervision. At the time, I had only Duffin?s diary, which said little of the marriage and almost nothing of its origins. I now have a transcript of Carling?s diary for the first six months of her mission; it ends eight months before the wedding. Carling?s diary gives little new information about the wedding itself but below I will attempt to suss out something of the emotional character of the proto-relationship.

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Women at Home in the Beehive House

A few years ago on a very rainy day in June in Salt Lake City, my husband and I took refuge in the Beehive House and enjoyed a tour led by one of sister missionaries.  While waiting to meet up with his family arriving from California, we spent the morning touring Temple Square and visiting the genealogy center inside the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The tour was very informative, but I never assumed the tour would ever directly pertain to my research. Of course, I was wrong. Ever since I discovered the Beehive House was used as a home for young female workers and students from the 1920s to the late 1950s, I have been intrigued with understanding how the Beehive House served as a space for young women throughout its history.

Constructed between 1853 and 1855, the Beehive House functioned as a home for Brigham Young. In 1856, the Lion House was built to provide more room for his growing family.  A close reading of the history of Beehive House illuminates how the space served as a form of sanctuary for some of Young?s wives and children as well as young Mormon women in the twentieth century. Clarissa Young Spencer, Brigham Young?s daughter born in 1860, wrote in her book Brigham Young at Home that even after her marriage the Beehive House still felt like her ?real? home and it was a ?place where love and perfect harmony existed.?[1]

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Religion and American Culture Forum: “Contemporary Mormonism: America’s Most Successful ‘New Religion'”

Good news for scholars and students of contemporary Mormonism! The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI continues its emphasis on the study of modern Mormon culture with the latest issue of its journal. Back in September of last year, the Center convened a forum in Indianapolis with scholars Jan Shipps, Phil Barlow, Jana Reiss and former US Senator Bob Bennett to address ?Mormonism in the 21^st Century.? Now, the latest ?Forum? discussion in the Winter 2013 issue of Religion and American Culture features a heavyweight panel comprised of Terryl Givens, Kathryn Lofton, Laurie Maffly-Kipp, and Patrick Mason, who speak to different aspects of the theme ?Contemporary Mormonism: America?s Most Successful ?New Religion?.? The Forum piece offers sophisticated reflections on many of crucial pressure points of Mormonism today: gender, homosexuality, family, politics, perceptions, popular culture.

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Women Praying in General Conference and Grassroots Efforts

If (when) we see women praying in spring General Conference 2013 (hallelujah!), it may or may not be the result of grassroots efforts. Some will argue that the change was in place long before the efforts of ?Let Women Pray in General Conference,? yet those involved will not likely feel that their efforts were of no consequence. Nor should they, they are part of a significant LDS historical tradition.

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Southwestern States Mission: Amelia Carling’s Missionary Blessing

Last week Ardis (from Keepapitchinin) pointed out that in the early 1900s some church assignments held by females did not require ?setting apart.? [1] Female missionary did, however, and Amelia Carling received her ?missionary blessing? on 1901 Jun 25 from Apostle John W Taylor. Below I comment on some gendered aspects of her blessing in comparison to a selection of contemporary male blessings. [2] The complete text of Carling?s blessing is in the footnote. [3]

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