Janice Allred wrote about God the Mother back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While she wasn’t excommunicated in 1993, Janice Allred had a bird’s eye view of the Sept Six. In Sept 1993, 6 intellectuals were excommunicated or disfellowshipped from the LDS Church for writing and speaking about things the LDS Church apostles disagreed with. Both she and her sister Margaret Toscano received warnings from their bishops as Margaret’s husband Paul was a member of teh September Six and excommunicated. Janice will share her memories of that important month in Mormon history. Check out our conversation….
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Gospel Tangents
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Review of Sept 6
Interview
GT 00:56 Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m excited to have a legend. Can you tell us who you are? And you actually have a famous sister and brother-in-law.
Janice 01:06 I do. I’m Janice Allred. My famous sister is Margaret Toscano and her husband, Paul.
GT 01:14 So, Margaret and Paul are both two-time guests. This is your first time.
Janice 01:17 It is, yes.
GT 01:20 It was good to see you at Sunstone a few weeks ago. I was able to wrestle you down, twist your arm really hard. {chuckles}
Janice 01:28 You were.
GT 01:29 It was interesting to me because they had a panel. This is going to be aired in September.
Janice 01:36 Right.
GT 01:37 There was a scholar there. I’m trying to remember what her name was.[1] And she had said [that] it really should be adding you and Margaret, The September Eight, instead of the September Six.
Janice 01:50 Yes, I wish I could remember her name as well. But I did not meet her. So, I don’t remember her name. {Rick chuckling} I believe that she is writing a book or has written a book, which is coming out in September on The September Six.
GT 02:07 Is that through Signature [Books]?
Janice 02:08 Yes. And I guess the September Eight, I understand that I am in the book, but I was not interviewed.
GT 02:14 Oh, really?
Janice 02:15 No. However, I have written extensively about my excommunication. And hopefully she did find that publication, which was from the Mormon Alliance, the Case Reports.
GT 02:27 That’s right. Now, you told me last year, it’s taken me a whole year to get you on, that I should read that. And so I did. And then it took me a whole year to get you back on. So… {chuckling}
Janice 02:40 Yes, I do remember meeting you a year ago. And I remember that was a very busy time for me. And so, we didn’t make the connection. But I’m glad you were able to read my long account, from the case reports.
GT 02:53 Yeah, it took a little bit. I think I had to find it on Abe Books. It’s one of those things, that’s not on Amazon.
Janice 03:00 It’s very hard to find. It’s out of print. I tried to find copies for my grandchildren, and it was very hard.
GT 03:10 So, September 2023 marks 30 years since 1993. And so just as a quick refresher for those people who may not be familiar with The September Six, or the September Eight, and how you tie into that, can you tell us who The September Six are? Just give us a brief thumbnail of their story and then we’ll dive into your story.
Janice 03:38 Ah, so September of 1993 was an interesting time for me. My family was actually in Mexico. My husband is a professor at BYU, and he was doing a sabbatical. My daughter had just gotten married in August of 1993. We went to Mexico. I have nine children. Six of the nine went with us. My youngest was a year old. And so, we went and we heard about what happened in September, through a friend of mine, who sent me the news articles. So, these were all people I knew. It started with Lynne Whitesides, who was the president of the Mormon Women’s Forum at the time. I was in the forum. She was a good friend. She was disfellowshipped. Then there was Lavina Fielding Anderson, also a friend of mine. We were in the Mormon Alliance together. I think we were. I think we had started. All the dates get confused, but Lavina was excommunicated for a piece that she had done that was published in Dialogue, that gave the history of the interactions (let’s put it this way) of the difficult interactions between the Church authorities and the Mormon intellectual community. She was excommunicated for that. So that’s Lavina. Also Michael Quinn, a scholar. I knew Michael, not well, not as well as I knew Lynne and Lavina. Then Paul Toscano my brother-in-law whom I know of course, very well. Let’s see, then there was also Maxine Hanks. [She was] also a friend, and Avraham Gileadi, who I did not know personally, but I knew him as a scholar. His work was mostly on the Book of Isaiah. I later became acquainted with his wife. So, I have personal connections with [each one.] Did I give six?
GT 03:58 I think so.
Janice 05:41 I think I did.
GT 05:43 I love that you got them in order. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten them in order before.
Janice 05:46 I don’t know that I gave them in order. Maybe I got them in the right order, but I don’t know. It was pure serendipity if I did. So that was, of course, very troubling to me. At the same time, this was 1993. In 1992, I had given a talk at Sunstone Symposium about God the Mother, and shortly after that my stake president had called me in to discuss it. Now, do you want me to go into this, as well?
GT 06:18 Sure, I do. But before you do, I do want to ask you, it does seem like Avraham Gileadi is kind of the odd duck out of the six?
Janice 06:29 That’s true.
GT 06:31 Why is that? Why is he different than the others?
Janice 06:35 I’ll just give you my own understanding and interpretation. Others may differ. I think it’s because Avraham was not part of the same Mormon intellectual community that the rest of them were. All the rest of them were people who went to Sunstone and presented papers there. Avraham was different. He was a very popular speaker. He had a lot of people going to his lectures and following, but he was not part of the Mormon intellectual community. Also, and here’s maybe another important point., Avraham was never critical of the Church institution or authorities, whereas I think most of the rest of The September Six, had, in some way, done something that questioned the authorities, something like that. Michael and his historical work, had done things which were not pleasing to such authorities as Boyd Packer. And Paul Toscano had been very outspoken in his criticism of Church authorities. Lynn Whitesides and Maxine Hanks were both feminists and did work in feminism, which was not regarded as following what the Church wanted you to do. And Lavina, of course, did her history. It was a history. There was nothing in it except the history of the tensions between the Church authorities and the Mormon intellectual community. So that’s the difference that I perceive. And Avraham never wanted to associate himself with the other September Six. He was always distancing himself. He didn’t give interviews, whereas I think all the rest of them did.
GT 08:18 Yeah. I talked to Matt Bowman, and he hates talking about the liberal/conservative divide. So I’m going to make Matt mad when I say this.
Janice 08:29 That’s okay.
GT 08:29 But it does seem like Avraham was more of a conservative scholar and the rest of you were more liberal. Is that fair?
Janice 08:37 Yeah, that’s fair.
GT 08:38 Okay. And so, all six of those, let’s make sure we got them. Avraham, Lynne Whitesides, Paul Toscano, Michael Quinn, Lavina, and Maxine Hanks. So the six were excommunicated all in 1993.
Janice 09:00 In one month, September, which is why they call it September Six, and why it seemed like a movement. It seemed so important to people.
GT 09:09 Yeah.
Janice 09:09 Because it happened so quickly.
GT 09:11 I know, it seems like it probably should have been The September Seven, because Margaret [Toscano] was in some pretty hot water as well. But I think they were like, well we went after Paul, we’re not going to go after both of them. So they waited until 2000 to get her.
Janice 09:27 That’s very interesting. And Margaret talked about this a bit in her presentation at the Sunstone Symposium session that we recently did. Yes, she had been called in by her bishop and stake president both and commanded not to write or speak on certain topics, especially God the Mother and women in the priesthood. And yes, basically both Margaret and Paul would tell you that this is what happened. Paul got his red flag and waved it around and got their attention.
GT 10:04 Got the bull to come after him.
Janice 10:05 Yes. And also Margaret was protected by two bishops. So again, this is a procedural thing. Women are tried in our local ward courts and men are tried, if they have the priesthood, are tried in the stake court. So Margaret was protected by her bishops. They did not want to go after her. And so it took a while for the…
GT 10:33 Well and even in the end, the bishop didn’t go after her. It was the stake, which was very unusual for a woman to go before the stake.
Janice 10:39 Yes, it was very unusual. But that’s what happened. Yeah.
Theology of God the Mother
Interview
GT 10:43 Yeah, And so we have kind of skipped over you because, were you in 1996? Am I remembering that right?
Janice 10:52 Well, I had two courts.
GT 10:54 Oh.
Janice 10:55 The first one was in 1994.
GT 10:57 Okay.
Janice 10:57 And the second one was in 1995. In the first one I was, I think I was put on formal probation with all the same restrictions that would have been with disfellowshipment.
GT 11:10 So you didn’t get any blowback in 1993 per se?
Janice 11:14 No.
GT 11:15 Okay.
Janice 11:15 No.
GT 11:16 But 1994 is only a year later.
Janice 11:20 You see, the wheels had already started with me in 1992. It was just delayed because of things that happened. So in 1992, I gave the speech at Sunstone, called “Toward a Mormon Theology of God the Mother.” Two months later, my stake president called me and my husband in for talk. And he pointed out that this speech I had given had been called to his attention.
GT 11:52 So, he wasn’t just reading it.
Janice 11:54 No. He would have never seen it. No one would have ever seen it if—it’s a committee called The Strengthening Church Members Committee, which had been discovered/outed by Eugene England, I think, a couple of years before. Basically, this committee was assigned to follow certain people or to listen to all the talks at Sunstone and pick out the ones, flag ones that were what they deemed to be on forbidden subjects or too unorthodox, you know, dangerous.
GT 12:29 Heretical.
Janice 12:30 Heretical. Yes. And so that’s how I got called to the attention of the authorities. And it was really interesting, because my stake president was, at this point, extremely apologetic. “I hope I’m not offending you by calling you in.” But he did say one thing, which I was willing to listen to, but not willing to make him a promise. He said, basically, “You can never publish this speech.”
GT 12:59 Just like Margaret.
Janice 13:01 Yeah. “You’re not allowed to publish this”. And I said, Well, here’s the thing about publication. It’s not easy. It’s not like everything I’ve written or presented has been published. So, I had no plans to publish it. I don’t know that anyone would want to publish it. But, I will say this. I will tell you, if I plan to publish it. I did not say, “I will not publish it,” because, frankly, I would want to publish it. As a writer, you do like to publish things.
GT 13:39 This was your stake president.
Janice 13:41 This was my stake president.
GT 13:42 So that’s interesting that he jumped over the bishop.
Janice 13:45 Oh, yeah. It came to the stake president from the Strengthen the Church Members Committee. So this was in August, before we went to Mexico. So it’s in August of 1992 or 1993.
GT 14:05 Oh.
Janice 14:06 Wait a minute. No, no, this is 1992. We didn’t go to Mexico until 1993. But it was right after. Maybe it wasn’t August. It was sometime. I gave the speech in ’92. Sometime after that the stake president told me I was not publish it. Then comes my daughter’s marriage. We go to Mexico. Before I left to Mexico…
GT 14:38 Was she getting married in the Mexico City Temple or something?
Janice 14:41 No. My husband was doing sabbatical in Mexico. She got married in the Manti Utah Temple.
GT 14:41 Okay.
Janice 14:51 She wanted to get married down there. It’s a small temple. Anyway, so we went down there. And I knew, this was a time for me, which was difficult, because I knew that I could be in trouble with the Church.
GT 15:07 You knew that before giving the speech?
Janice 15:09 Yeah, when I gave the speech, I knew that it was a subject which was not exactly forbidden territory. But it was an area where I knew that many women had been called in by bishops, had been disciplined in various ways, silenced in various ways. So Maxine Hanks had done her book called, Women and Authority. I have a small piece in there, and Margaret has a piece in there.
GT 15:40 She just republished that didn’t she?
Janice 15:43 It may have been republished.
GT 15:44 Yeah. Just within the last few years.
Janice 15:47 It’s possible. It was an excellent compilation. And there were many individual voices in there talking about– she had a whole section on women and the priesthood and God the Mother. Women told about their experiences in dealing with these topics and how Church authorities had responded, in many ways, negatively to these things. So, I knew that writing a speech about God the Mother could be a problem. Plus, the other thing…
GT 16:18 And you were still willing to do it?
Janice 16:20 It was very important to me.
GT 16:23 You don’t strike me as the rebellious [type.] {chuckling}
Janice 16:28 I’m not rebellious as in, I will just go out and rebel for rebellion sake. But if something is important to me, I’ll stand my ground.
GT 16:37 Okay.
Janice 16:38 And my work on God the Mother is somewhat different. Well, it’s quite different than what many people have done. Because I take an approach—I had been working on theological topics, this was 1992, for 20 years, more than 20 years.
GT 16:58 Wow.
Janice 16:59 And I had written a lot and studied a lot. And deep philosophical questions have been important to me my entire life. And so I got into theology through that lens. I started out by being very interested in the deep philosophical questions. And then, because of my belief in God, it went that direction. So, my study of the Book of Mormon—This was probably in the 70s, when I came to the belief that Jesus Christ and God the Father are the same person, that there are not two persons.
GT 17:50 That sounds like Paul Toscano.
Janice 17:52 It’s very interesting, because Paul Toscano believes the same thing. Paul, and I, and actually, Margaret as well.
GT 17:58 Yeah, I know.
Janice 17:59 She may not have explained it to you. We all came to the same belief through our study of the Book of Mormon, independently.
GT 18:07 Yeah, I’m just going to point out, Paul has some very unusual beliefs, you need to check out that episode. It’s pretty interesting.
Janice 18:16 And Paul’s beliefs and mine are not exactly the same.
GT 18:20 That’s what Margaret said. There’s a slight difference, but they’re very similar.
Janice 18:23 There are slight differences. They’re very similar. But Paul, and Margaret and I all start with the fundamental premise, that God the Father, and Jesus Christ are the same person.
GT 18:37 Yeah.
Janice 18:38 There are not two persons, God the Father, and Jesus. Jesus Christ is God the Father. And this is taught very clearly in the Book of Mormon, I won’t go into it. This is not my purpose here today.
GT 18:50 {chuckling} We get into tangents. We might get into it. But yeah.
Janice 18:52 We can get into it later. But that is the premise with which I began my study of God the Mother. So I didn’t have God the Father, one personage, God the Son, another personage, and then the Holy Spirit, another personage. I started out with believing that the man we call Jesus Christ is also the Heavenly Father, the Father of our spirits, and also the Spirit of Truth or the Holy Spirit. Though this was not as clear in my first essay. In that essay, I say there are two personages in the Godhead. God the Father, and God the Mother. God the Father becomes our Savior, Jesus Christ. God the Mother becomes the Holy Spirit. That’s what I taught in that one, and my beliefs have—I’ve been developing. This was in 1992. And that was quite a while ago. Eight plus 23, that’s 31 years ago. And I can tell you these dates because I remember which children were being born. So, my son Joel was born in 1975.
GT 20:06 Okay.
Janice 20:07 His name is Jo-el, which means Jehovah is God. I named him that because I had come to the belief that Jehovah is God, is the Father.
GT 20:20 You sound like a Jehovah’s Witness now.
Janice 20:22 I do. Well, actually, this is a Mormon belief. Joseph Smith taught it very clearly, that Jehovah is Jesus Christ. Mormons believe that. They just don’t see Jehovah as the Creator God, the God of the Old [Testament,] they see this other one.
GT 20:44 This already is going to get you in hot trouble.
Janice 20:47 Oh yeah, I knew that. Later this comes out with my bishop. He said, “You know, your greatest heresy is not what you say about God the Mother. It’s what you say about Jesus Christ being the Father.” Which is interesting, because it all goes back to the patriarchal thing. They don’t care so much about what you say about God the Mother, but they care a lot about your view of God the Father.
GT 21:13 Because I’ve always been under the impression that it was more God the Mother that got you in trouble, but that’s not really true.
Janice 21:19 That’s what called me to their attention. {Rick laughing} But it was other things.
GT 21:24 So if you would have just not said that, you would have been okay?
Janice 21:28 Who knows? I don’t know. But, when I came to the belief, through the understanding that my view of the Godhead is quite different than that which is taught by the Church at this time, I knew that that could be a point of trouble for me. And the question was…
GT 21:48 So this isn’t even Trinitarian?
Janice 21:50 No, it’s not. It’s very different.
GT 21:52 It’s not Godhead, it’s not Trinitarian. It’s just the Toscano-Allred theology? Is that what we call it?
Janice 21:59 I don’t know what we call it. No, it’s very different. It’s not Trinitarian. And to my way of thinking, it is beautifully, fundamentally outlined in the Scriptures revealed through Joseph Smith, both the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, which accords, in my view, perfectly with the teachings about God, in the Old and New Testaments. I have devoted my life to understanding this, and the material that is still available, the things that are still needed, that still need to be explained and thought through are profound. And so, no, it’s a view that has been so fruitful for me, and so important. So, at that time, and again, you say [that] I don’t look like I’m rebellious, but I do stand up for what I believe. And President Hinckley had just given his speech on the anti-Praying to God the Mother speech, and that’s when I said, “Okay, I’m going to write about God the Mother.” I knew that writing about God the Mother meant I needed to present a redefinition, a rethinking of the Godhead, which is what I did in my paper, Toward a Mormon Theology of God the Mother.
{End of Part 1}
[1] Sara Patterson wrote a book called “The September Six and the Struggle for the Soul of Mormonism.” Her book can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3t1Aodc . You can see our interview at https://gospeltangents.com/people/sara-patterson/.
Copyright © 2023
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission
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