‘We can do a lot to blur the lines of patriarchy’ in the LDS Church, says feminist author

In Neylan McBaine’s groundbreaking 2014 book, “Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact,” she argued that there was much more the global faith could do to see, hear and include women.

First, though, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must acknowledge that the faith is a patriarchy.

“Many of us do not see the extent to which our organizational structure, the language we use, our understanding of God, our quoting of spiritual authorities, our visual representations in our meetings, and the stories of our scriptures,” McBaine told an audience of 4,000 at last week’s Restore conference, “center the experiences and viewpoints of men.”

Ten years later, McBaine notes some steps toward greater gender equity in the Utah-based church — but not as many as in the surrounding society.

Here are excerpts from The Salt Lake Tribune’s latest “Mormon Land” podcast in which McBaine explains her views of patriarchy and its consequences.

When did you first start thinking about patriarchy in the church?

In 2012, I had been invited — actually recommended by the church’s public affairs department — to speak at [that year’s] FAIR Mormon conference. I decided that was the time that I needed to start addressing some of what I had been learning over the past couple of years about how we could amplify women’s participation in the administrative church. … I was standing on the stage, finishing my remarks, and some ushers had been going through the aisles collecting note cards on which people had been writing their questions for me.… The first note card on the top of the pile said, “You are an apostate.”

Two years later you included your ideas in ‘Women at Church’?

Many members had never really confronted or thought about the fact that we function in a patriarchal structure. So I spent the first third of the book explaining why our system of church governance can feel so at odds for some people. I had concrete examples of how our experiences in the world are different when it comes to the glass ceilings that women encounter.…I tried to express how that can create dissonance and how that can create pain in the lives of Latter-day Saint women. I didn’t use that word “pain” lightly. Every person in the church probably is close to or has at least heard about somebody who has found the dissonance of gender participation too great to continue their participation in the church.…The second half of the book provided very practical ideas about what we should look at that’s not included in the [church] handbook. We should read between the lines and use our imagination to extract new practices and new ideas and new ways of including women that aren’t expressly forbidden.

What strides toward gender equity have you seen in the intervening years?

I want to be very clear that we still live in a patriarchal governance, and we can define what that means and see how factual, how true, how objectively right that statement is. Nothing about the external exoskeleton of the church has changed. Women don’t have the priesthood. There are no female prophets or general authorities. But we can do a lot to blur the lines of patriarchy at the local level. We see local leaders having much more imagination when it comes to including women in the local experiences. …We see women holding babies as they’re getting blessed. We see female contributors to bishops’ councils who are suggesting women to speak in the meetings and helping plan the sacrament meetings. We have seen a much greater level of parity in the ward [congregational] councils over the past 10 years. We have also seen some changes for women in the temple around the language of the temple ceremony…women being witnesses at baptisms. I still see those within the lived experience of the members rather than something structural.

In your Restore speech, you didn’t use the word priesthood. Was that on purpose?

Yeah, entirely on purpose. We’ve kind of gotten into a rut of a certain vocabulary that we use to describe gender relations in the church — and the rut usually involves the word priesthood. That includes concepts of power and authority and keys and who’s working in God’s name and who has the right to do certain things in an ecclesiastical sense. I’m trying to introduce a different vocabulary because I think we can very accurately and helpfully separate our ability to work in God’s name, our ability to do righteous works, our ability to serve, our ability to oversee ordinances from church administration, which again is the governance structure that we work under that keeps things in order. That is, by definition, patriarchal. That means that ultimately decision-making power bubbles up to men. By not talking about priesthood and instead talking about the decision-making power and administrative power that lies in the hands of men, I gave permission…for women to say, “I want to be involved in decision-making. I want to be able to have the women whom I request to be in my Relief Society presidency, my Young Women presidency, my Primary presidency — I want that request to be honored. I want those women to be called because I received stewardship over them. I don’t want a man to be able to have veto power over that.”

Why is it important to address it that way?

I’m trying to create two different discussions. The first one is to say, “We are a patriarchy.” That is the name of it. The second question is: Are you OK with that? There are three options. One is: “Yes, it is a patriarchy and I’m fine with that. I get everything I need. It doesn’t bother me. I feel like I like the decisions that are being made. I feel like I can step in where I need to. I’m good.” The second is: “Yes, this is a patriarchy, and I’m wrestling with it. I’m trying to figure out if there are still enough other elements in my church experience to outweigh the negative of patriarchy.” This group is always doing a little bit of a dance. “Do I have the tools I need to stay tethered? Do I have the tools I need to still be my whole self, to differentiate myself, to develop myself?” The third group is “the church is a patriarchy and that trumps and outweighs any of the other goodness or benefits that I get out of the church or it’s so harmful to me.” Every one of those groups should agree the church is a patriarchy. The question then is, so what? How does that dictate your relationship to the church?

What are the downsides of relying on local leaders for change?

The governance of women can be drastically different from ward to ward, from stake to stake. And that is probably the biggest downside and the most exhausting emotionally. The other downside is of course that the high level leadership of the institutional church can always intervene and can always step in. That’s exactly what we saw happen with women sitting on the stand in those three Bay Area stakes. They’d been doing it for years under one area authority and then a new area authority came in, got wind of it and shut it down to the serious grief of many of the people who were involved.

You say the chasm between what women experience inside and outside the church with regard to gender relations is wider now than it has ever been. How so?

This kind of dawned on me when I was opening the 50th anniversary of the Exponent II magazine, celebrating the experiences of Latter-day Saint women in the 20th and 21st centuries. While I was considering 1974 and the cultural context that led to the start of [the magazine], it dawned on me that the women who started that magazine were responding to a social upheaval that was going on in the world around them, as well as in their own personal lives as members of the church. There were so many glass ceilings that still hadn’t been broken and there was still such a wrestle in the general American public with the role of women. Exponent II was sort of the Mormon version of that… This conversation isn’t really happening anymore in the world. There are almost no organizations in which we function in modern American society in 2024 that still adhere to patriarchal structure and are OK with it, that are not making significant efforts to diversify the decision-making power in their governing bodies.

Are you more optimistic or pessimistic about gender issues in the church in the future and why?

I’m optimistic that our people will continue to take personal responsibility and stewardship and use their imagination to read between the lines of the handbook. I think people feel empowered to do that now. Creative and imaginative things are happening. And I think that won’t ever change. Bishops and Relief Society presidents and the local members are doing all they can. Unless something comes from the top … we’re going to be stunted in how much progress we can actually make on this issue. Still, I am very hopeful that things will continue to change. For instance, I’m very hopeful that girls will start passing the sacrament soon. I think that’s coming. Putting Young Women in a position of visibility [as greeters] within the sacrament meeting is a step to that. I’ve heard of people reading Doctrine and Covenants 59 more closely and understanding that there’s perfect cover for having girls pass the sacrament right there in our scriptures.

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