If we take an expanded view of the Sept Six, we’ll find others excommunicated for not being orthodox enough (or too orthodox.) Sonia Johnson, Brent Metcalfe, Mark Hofmann, and Avraham Gileadi are some of the people we discuss with Dr Sara Patterson. Should all of them be included in conversations about the September Six? Check out our conversation…
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Sonia Johnson & ERA
Interview
GT 00:35 Let’s talk a little bit about some of the other people. I was surprised in your book that you even went back to Sonia Johnson. For those who aren’t familiar with Sonia Johnson, because they’re not as old as say I am, give the young people an idea of who was Sonia Johnson and why was she a problem for the church?
Sara 00:57 Sonia Johnson was a church member who fought for the Equal Rights Amendment. And she talked about the Equal Rights Amendment when she first heard that phrase, Equal Rights Amendment, she said something like “the three most beautiful words in the English language.” So, she really felt like the ERA was an important issue, and that it didn’t contradict her faith. She was an activist for the ERA. She was one of the founders of Mormons for the ERA. And she was eventually excommunicated for that work. Part of the reason that I talk about her is because the Equal Rights Amendment was one of the, I think, defining moments for the church hierarchy in terms of how it would talk about political issues. So, what the church hierarchy said about the Equal Rights Amendment was more generally, excuse me. I should start there, more generally, it said, “we’re not going to get into political issues.” But it framed the Equal Rights Amendment as a moral issue. And therefore said, “we can absolutely say that this is a problem for society.” So, the Church very actively worked against the Equal Rights Amendment, once it had been framed as a moral issue.
Sara 2:44 Part of what happened with Sonia Johnson, is that church leaders started to frame feminism as an external foreign movement that was trying to infiltrate the church and Church leaders narrated it as, “this is going to upset the family.” And because we, as the Church, care about the family, we need to protect the family. And the family needs to be a heterosexual union with the man being the provider and protector and priesthood holder, and the woman being the nurturer, and caretaker of the home and wife. So, what the fear that they were saying was that the Equal Rights Amendment would upset that family structure because it would collapse the differences between men and women. Then they talked about it as having this snowballing effect. So, if the differences between men and women collapsed, then divorce rates were going to go up. Children weren’t going to be raised in a moral household. There would be more teen pregnancy and abortion. Men would feel like they weren’t men anymore, so they might have affairs. Those affairs might with be with other men, so it was this snowball effect, because they were arguing the family was the foundation. Right?
Sara 4:35 And so basically, the moral structure of society would crumble if the Equal Rights Amendment passed. I think it was during that Equal Rights Amendment era that Church leaders got this theology framed that would then suit them well as they continued on into the 80s and 90s, talking about feminism as a danger to the Church. Once they were able to make the claim that feminism was outside the Church trying to get in, then they could also make the claim that they had to be the boundary enforcers to try to protect the family.
GT 05:29 And so by excommunicating Sonia, they made her an outsider, an outside threat?
Sara 05:36 Right.
GT 05:36 Instead of an inside threat.
Sara 05:38 Yeah. And that excommunication really cast a chill over Mormon feminism, which was really interesting. Women were asking really interesting questions about what their roles were, about the theology of the church, and Sonia Johnson served as this lesson.
GT 06:08 Was she the canary in the coal mine?
Sara 06:12 There are certain things you shouldn’t be doing and talking about, yes.
GT 06:15 Because, was she excommunicated in 1982? Does that sound right to you?
Sara 06:20 I want to say it was 1979.
GT 06:21 Was it ‘79? So, it was even earlier.
Sara 06:23 Yeah.
GT 06:24 Because, I remember looking at that and saying, “Well, 79 to 93. That’s 14 years. That’s a big gap”. But could we say that, I mean, even though Sonia, she’s more focused on ERA, and you look at somebody like Maxine Hanks, Margaret Toscano, more of feminist theology. Can we see Sonia as influencing them. And that’s why they had to go after Maxine and Margaret and Janice and people like that?
Sara 06:59 I talk about Sonia actually in a chapter about the Church hierarchy. I think part of what I think was happening with Sonia Johnson and the Equal Rights Amendment, is the Church hierarchy was telling and reinforcing these narratives about feminism, and about the family and developing strategies for working on political issues. So, when the issue of same sex marriage came up later, the same thing happened in terms of we’re going to frame this as a moral issue that’s threatening the family. And so therefore, we can speak about what is a political issue but framing it in a moral way. I think all of that was forged in that Equal Rights Amendment era, how the church was going to approach feminism, but also these issues that it wanted to frame as moral.
GT 08:07 Well, it’s interesting you say that. I know there was a, I’m trying to decide if I should say the person’s name. I’ll just say a BYU professor for now.
Sara 08:16 Okay.
GT 08:17 I’ll keep it generic. [This professor] talked a lot about Sonia Johnson, and also the gay rights movement, and that the church was always trying to say, “Well, if we allow feminism to influence the culture, gay rights is the next domino.” And as we look at Elder Packers 19…
Sara 08:39 It was 1993.
GT 08:42 Was it 93? So it was the same year.
Sara 08:44 It was May 1993.
GT 08:45 Because he said that the biggest problems were feminists, intellectuals and gays.
Sara 08:52 Yeah.
GT 08:52 He didn’t say it in those words.
Sara 08:53 He said the gay lesbian movement.
GT 08:55 Yeah. And so, the gay lesbian movement has always been tied to feminism as to create a boogeyman. I mean, I don’t see Margaret, Janice, who was the other one I just mentioned? [Maxine.] To me, they were more feminist theologians. They weren’t looking at the politics, but the church always seemed to collapse them. Is that why they were seen as threats, even though they weren’t pushing necessarily for ERA?
Sara 09:27 Well, yes. I think that because they were feminists, I mean, I think they share similarities. So, I’ll talk about them together, but they had different projects that they were working on. I think Heavenly Mother was an issue that the Church hierarchy clearly didn’t want people exploring. And so, when Janice Allred was exploring heavenly mother or when Margaret Toscano gave a presentation at BYU about the feminine divine, the Church hierarchy had already said this wasn’t something that they wanted people talking about. They were women who were saying, “I can talk about it. And I can think creatively about how this theology might work.” And so, they were claiming a spiritual authority that I think was threatening to the Church hierarchy.
GT 10:31 Especially, since they didn’t hold the priesthood because they were women, for heaven’s sake. Right?
Sara 10:35 Right. Margaret was also talking about women in the priesthood. And so, I think that they were challenging. They were feminists who are challenging what the Church hierarchy had already drawn boundaries around.
GT 10:54 So just feminism is bad, whether it’s in the political arena of ERA or theological arena of Heavenly Mother or women in priesthood.
Sara 11:03 Yeah.
GT 11:04 This is just [bad.] We can’t have it.
Sara 11:05 And part of what I think happened, which I talk about in my chapter about the Toscano’s is, I think that Margaret and Paul had a marriage that was structured differently than the Church expected marriages to be structured. Here was Margaret, who was speaking with authority about spiritual matters. And here was Paul, who, when they met with their stake president, he was unwilling to rein in his wife in fact…
GT 11:42 “Can’t you get her under control?”
Sara 11:43 He went after the local leaders, instead of reining her in.
GT 11:47 Reining in his wife.
Sara 11:48 Which I think was their expectation. Right? We’ll have them both here. And then, they’ll stop.
GT 11:56 Paul would put his thumb on her head.
Sara 11:57 Right. I think that while they were both making much broader arguments that were problematic for the church. They also were just not living up to gender expectations. I think that was really frustrating to the local hierarchy.
Brent Metcalfe & Mark Hofmann
Interview
GT 12:20 Are there any other people? We’ve talked about the six. We’ve added David Wright, Cecilia Farr, Gail Houston, Margaret technically wasn’t part of the six.
Sara 12:36 Right.
GT 12:36 Her sister, Janice Allred. So that’s, we’re up to like, 10 now. Right?
Sara 12:42 Right. You’re trying to get me to say a number. {chuckling}
GT 12:45 See, I’m a numbers guy. I’m a math guy.
Sara 12:47 Did we add Brent Metcalfe in there?
GT 12:48 Oh, Brent Metcalfe. That was another one. I was going to mention him.
Sara 12:51 Yeah.
GT 12:52 Let’s talk a little bit about Brent.
Sara 12:54 Well, he…
GT 12:55 By the way Brent, you need to come on my podcast! {both chuckling}
Sara 12:59 He had a collection of essays that came out, I think, in 94, called New Approaches to the Book of Mormon. It contained an essay by David Wright. It was a group of people studying scripture, many of whom were arguing that the Book of Mormon was not an ancient text. So, it was the same set of issues that I talked about with David.
GT 13:24 But it still provides value. It’s not like they were trying to knock it down as worthless.
Sara 13:29 Right.
GT 13:30 Or just fiction.
Sara 13:31 Right. And that was something that in biblical studies, those arguments had been made for a long time that…
GT 13:42 Regarding the Bible.
Sara 13:44 Regarding biblical texts, absolutely, that you can read the text. You can read that text as history, but scholars were arguing that it doesn’t hold up to historical criticism. But there were a lot of scholars who are saying, there can be lots of metaphors and meaning that can still be taken from the text. And this text can still be seen as inspired, while also accounting for human hands in the text. So, in terms of scriptural studies, they weren’t making cases that were new, but they were trying to help create a faithful approach to the Book of Mormon.
GT 14:32 Well, and Brent is especially interesting because he was in the crosshairs because he was, he knew Mark Hofmann quite well.
Sara 14:41 Right.
GT 14:42 And so there was that whole issue where he was viewed as a suspect potentially in some of those murders. Clearly, he had nothing to do with them now. But at the time, and then in the 1980s that was a question. Then you said it was ‘94 when he published this new book. Was that the straw that broke the camel’s back? Do you talk much about the Hofmann stuff with Brent Metcalfe?
Sara 15:09 No, I talk about Brent Metcalfe more with David Wright, than in my section about Mark Hofmann. {both chuckling} But part of why I talk about Hofmann in the book is because I think that the events around him made Church leaders aware of and anxious about history telling. Not that they hadn’t already been, but I think what happened with Hofmann raised those questions in a new way.
GT 15:44 So can we conclude Mark Hofmann as part of the September Six as well?
Sara 15:48 No. (emphatically) No, we cannot. {both laughing}
GT 15:53 He’s a whole other story. When you get murder, that kicks you out of the group? {Rick laughing}
Ultra-Conservatives Exed?
Interview
GT 16:00 Who were some of the other people that you would put in the broader September Six category?
Sara 16:09 Those are the names that initially spring to mind. Another issue that I talk about is the excommunications around the same time of ultra-conservative church members.
GT 16:20 Okay.
Sara 16:23 Part of what I’m thinking about in that discussion is Avraham Gileadi. Because he’s the member of the September Six, that doesn’t fit what I would see as more general patterns. I think that his inclusion in the September Six was about the fact that his excommunication happened that month. People wanted to communicate that this was a big deal. This was a really intense set of actions on the Church leaders. Part that Gileadi, from the Church leaders perspective was more connected to these ultra conservative members, and his work was being used by them to support the arguments that they were making.
GT 17:18 Are there others like Bo Gritz that we could include in there?
Sara 17:22 Yes. Not in the September Six.
GT 17:25 Well, I mean, in the broader movement.
Sara 17:27 Yes. Yes. Bo Gritz, Jim and Elaine Harmston, Sterling Allen.
GT 17:34 Okay.
Sara 17:35 Yeah.
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Gospel Tangents
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Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission
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