Scholars & Saints
Scholars & Saints is the official podcast of the University of Virginia’s Mormon Studies program, housed in the Department of Religious Studies. Scholars & Saints is a venue of public scholarship that promotes respectful dialogue about Latter Day Saint traditions among laypersons and academics.
Scholars & Saints
Mormon Women Around the Globe (feat. Caroline Kline)
Women have always played a large role in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But how do women today, especially women of color, negotiate their faith through a historically patriarchal religion? And how can western scholars really probe this issue for women around the globe, without enforcing their own pre-conceived paradigms? On this episode of Scholars & Saints, Nicholas speaks with Dr. Caroline Kline, Assistant Director for Global Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University, about her 2022 book, Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness. Dr. Kline engages oral histories from her ethnographic study of Mormon women of color in the U.S., Botswana, and Mexico. In so doing, she presents two major theoretical lenses that look at Mormon women's agency from their own perspective: through connectedness to loving families, strong communities, and a profoundly loving, personal God.
To find out more about Dr. Kline and her upcoming projects, click here.
Introduction
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Nicholas Shrum
You're listening to Scholars and Saints. The University of Virginia Mormon Studies podcast. On this podcast, we dive into the academic study of Mormonism, where we engage recent and classic scholarship, interview prominent and up-and-coming thinkers in the field, and reflect on Mormonism’s relevance to the broader study of religion. Scholars and Saints is brought to you by support from the Richard Lyman Bushman Endowed Professorship of Mormon Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.
00;00;32;12 - 00;00;59;02
Nicholas Shrum
The podcast was founded by UVA Religious Studies PhD candidate Steven Betts. For the past several years, Stephen spoke with dozens of Mormon studies scholars and helped connect thousands of listeners to the world of Mormon studies. Starting this year in 2024, I, Nicholas Shrum, a PhD student in Religious Studies at UVA, will carry on the podcast’s goal of exploring some of the most pressing issues and cutting-edge methods in Mormon studies and put them in conversation with scholarship
00;00;59;02 - 00;01;30;28
Nicholas Shrum
from the discipline of religious studies. On today's episode of Scholars and Saints, I speak with Dr. Caroline Kline about her recent book, Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness, published with the University of Illinois Press in 2022. In this book, Dr. Kline, research assistant professor of religion and assistant director of Global Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University, explores the lived experience of Latter-day Saint women of color in Mexico, Botswana, and the United States.
00;01;31;00 - 00;02;02;01
Nicholas Shrum
Using an ethnographic approach to studying religion, Dr. Kline develops several insightful theoretical lenses and theologies that help to shed light on these women's experiences. In today's conversation, Dr. Kline introduces us to “non-oppressive connectedness” as a concept that helps her analyze Mormon women's experiences that more conventional academic paradigms have difficulty in making sense of. She further discusses her “Mormon womanist theology of abundance,” a theology that she discovered in her interviews with women, and then develops in the latter part of the book.
00;02;02;04 - 00;02;22;15
Nicholas Shrum
Dr. Kline describes this theology as “a worldview in which God's love was vast and abundant, spiritual powers could be highly developed, and the opportunity to connect with God personally was unbounded.” I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Dr. Caroline Kline.
00;02;22;18 - 00;02;30;22
Nicholas Shrum
Introducing Dr. Caroline Kline
00;02;30;24 - 00;03;03;21
Nicholas Shrum
Hey, welcome to the UVA Mormon Studies Podcast, Scholars and Saints. Today on the podcast, I'll be speaking with Doctor Caroline Kline, who is a Research Assistant Professor in the Religion Department at Claremont Graduate University, as well as the Assistant Director of the Center for Global Mormon Studies. Today on the podcast, we'll be talking about her recent book, which is entitled Mormon Women at the Crossroads Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness, which was published with the University of Illinois Press in 2022.
00;03;03;23 - 00;03;07;03
Nicholas Shrum
Caroline, welcome to the podcast today.
00;03;07;05 - 00;03;09;24
Caroline Kline
Thanks for having me.
00;03;09;27 - 00;03;20;20
Nicholas Shrum
Just to begin our conversation today, I would love for you to share your journey towards studying religion and what led you to this project on Mormon women?
00;03;20;22 - 00;03;47;21
Caroline Kline
Yeah. So I was actually originally a classics major in college and then got a master's in classics and taught high school Latin. That's what I did in my 20s. But then I actually quit my job teaching Latin, when I heard that Claudia Bushman was coming to Claremont Graduate University. They were at this point starting the Mormon studies program there.
00;03;47;23 - 00;04;07;02
Caroline Kline
And this whole time that I had been teaching Latin in high school, I had just become more and more fascinated by the topic of Mormon women and gender issues within the church. And I'd gotten really involved in Exponent II, which is a Mormon women's organization. And so I went to CGU to follow Claudia, and I stayed there.
00;04;07;02 - 00;04;21;05
Caroline Kline
I got my PhD there in 2018. And then I went on to work at CGU, in their Center for Global Mormon Studies. And now, as you said, I'm now a Research Assistant Professor there.
00;04;21;08 - 00;04;28;24
Nicholas Shrum
Wonderful. And so is Mormon Women at the Crossroads a book that came out of your dissertation project at CGU?
00;04;28;26 - 00;05;08;12
Caroline Kline
Yes, that's exactly what it was. I went into the program, which was a PhD in Religion program. And I always knew I was going to do something with Mormon women and gender. And I initially thought that I would write my dissertation on Mormon feminism on the blogs, which was territory I was very well familiar with. But as I took more and more classes at CGU, I just realized that there was this whole other world out there of Mormon women and Mormon women's experiences that had not been recorded or written down or examined
00;05;08;14 - 00;05;33;19
Caroline Kline
all that much within the field of Mormon studies. And at the same time, I'd been taking classes that covered things like womanist ethics and womanist theology and theologies from women from around the world and some postcolonial work. So I also had conversation partners to draw on as I would think about these Mormon women from around the world and their experiences and perspectives.
00;05;33;21 - 00;06;06;17
Caroline Kline
Simultaneously, I was working with Claudia Bushman, and I was learning all about the field of oral history, and I just came to love this method as a way to lift up the voices of people that just might not always make it into archives and scholarly books. And so all these sources came together, and that's why I ultimately decided to write my dissertation on Mormon women from three various and different global locations and examine their worldviews, their priorities, and what drove them.
00;06;06;19 - 00;06;31;19
Nicholas Shrum
Excellent. Well, again, I would love to recommend to everybody that this is a fantastic volume to pick up. I think the interventions and arguments that you make are really important for the field of Mormon studies, but then even broadly for the study of religion. I think it teaches us a lot about how to study ethnography or do ethnography, ethically and responsibly.
Mormon Women at the Cross Road’s Contribution to Scholarship
00;06;31;21 - 00;06;52;28
Nicholas Shrum
One question I'd love for you to answer before we kind of dive into your methodology and to the content of the book is how did you see yourself–the scholarly way of putting this– “intervening” into the Mormon Studies scholarship? What contribution did you see yourself making at the outset of your project?
00;06;53;00 - 00;07;15;09
Caroline Kline
Yeah. Interventions in Mormon studies. So I think probably the first one is that it's part of a newer but growing commitment in Mormon studies to decenter white North America and lift up the voices of people, women on the peripheries of the tradition. So I think it's part of that important shift that is taking place.
00;07;15;11 - 00;07;58;13
Caroline Kline
An important intervention is that it takes intersectionality very seriously and how Mormon women navigate their lives at the crossroads of gender, race, class, nationality and so forth. And so I think it was sort of more on the cutting edge by really taking those intersections seriously. In terms of women's agency and other interventions, maybe in the broader field,I think that it really was furthering the work of important people like Catherine Brekus and Amy Hoyt who really expanded and complicated notions of women's agency.
00;07;58;14 - 00;08;25;23
Caroline Kline
So it's really building on their work. But I see my real contribution there when it comes to women's agency is talking about how women of color are navigating all these diverse intersections, but also, even more importantly, to what end they're actually deploying their agency. And this is one of the driving sort of theses of the book is that I name what it is they're driving towards, what their moral priorities are,
00;08;25;23 - 00;08;34;21
Caroline Kline
why they're acting, what their worldview is, what's driving so many of their choices. So I think that is an important intervention.
00;08;34;23 - 00;09;20;01
Nicholas Shrum
Absolutely. I really appreciated many of your thoughts on agency. It reminded me of work by Saba Mahmood and others about, kind of taking a different lens, taking people very seriously with what they say and trying to get into their lives and understanding why they make the decisions that they do. Without the, maybe “judgment” is the proper word here, that we bring as scholars and especially in anthropology and where we're working with living people, we bring a lot of biases and commitments, that you speak quite a bit about in your text that sometimes can, not alter but they definitely impact how we
00;09;20;01 - 00;09;42;28
Nicholas Shrum
receive the information that we're receiving. And I think that you do a great job of balancing those and acknowledging many of the things that you brought, but also seeing and meeting the people that you spoke with. So at this point, I'd love for you, if it would be okay, to just speak briefly about the methodology that you employed here, which is primarily oral history.
Oral History as a Scholarly Methodology
00;09;43;01 - 00;10;01;16
Nicholas Shrum
Since this is a religious studies podcast, I think people would be interested to know about what you you saw as the benefits and drawbacks of conducting oral history. So what does oral history provide that other methodologies do not? And why did you land on that primarily for your your project?
00;10;01;18 - 00;10;26;17
Caroline Kline
As I mentioned before, I just love the method of oral history. It's a method that, like I mentioned before, it can lift up and document and take seriously voices that just don't make it into historical archives all that often. I love that part of the vision of oral history is to preserve those voices so that future generations can learn from them.
00;10;26;23 - 00;10;44;19
Caroline Kline
And this is a little bit different, maybe, than other sorts of qualitative interviewing where these interviews are done, they might be wonderful interviews, but they might live forever on a researcher's computer. And then the researcher will kind of take whatever quotes he or she wants and use them in a paper or a book, but then they just live there.
00;10;44;19 - 00;11;10;22
Caroline Kline
They they don't go anywhere. The interview itself doesn't go anywhere. But the vision behind oral history is that we are going to keep the interview for future generations. So new generations, new people can examine them and find knowledge and wisdom from them. So I think that's a really awesome part of this method of oral history. For oral history,
00;11;10;22 - 00;11;31;07
Caroline Kline
we understand that it's a complex thing. Well, maybe originally the vision of oral history is that it is this way to uplift voices that aren't usually heard. People now talk about it in ways that I think are really smart, which is that we do acknowledge that it is a co-created product– who I am as an interviewer
00;11;31;09 - 00;11;54;01
Caroline Kline
absolutely affects the kind of interview you're going to get. Certainly in an oral history, probably in any kind of interview, positionality really, really matters. And so I love that oral historians are really careful to say that oral history is a co-created product. It is a product of both the interviewer and the interviewee who are both bringing things to this conversation.
00;11;54;03 - 00;12;18;02
Caroline Kline
I love oral history because it so deeply invites reflection. An oral historian may ask about a certain experience in a person's life, but then they ask what it meant to them, what it taught them, how this impacted their life going forward. And so it's a great method for exploring motivations and meanings and significance.
00;12;18;02 - 00;12;41;05
Caroline Kline
That's something I'm really interested in. I also love that with oral history it's very flexible–at least the way I do it–is very, very flexible. Of course, it's inevitable that a researcher comes in with certain topics they want to talk about. But often these topics are so broad, like childhood, marriage, hoax aspirations, difficult decisions.
00;12;41;07 - 00;13;11;01
Caroline Kline
These are such broad categories of conversation that it gives the narrators–and when I say narrators, I mean the interviewees– it gives the narrators, more space to take the interview where they want to take it. It gives them more space to create the story they want to create, the story they want preserved. I feel like it's a more agentive process for the narrator who has the power to shape and tell their story.
00;13;11;04 - 00;13;37;05
Caroline Kline
They can emphasize the things they want to emphasize. And a good interviewer kind of follows the interviewee, where the interviewee wants to go. So that's such a wonderful, flexible method, where things can emerge, things that you weren't expecting as an interviewer, and a researcher can emerge because you follow where they want to go.
00;13;37;08 - 00;14;00;14
Caroline Kline
I also love it because I think it really can illuminate complexity in a really fantastic way. So, for instance, if you're doing a very targeted qualitative interview about a particular topic like eating disorders, or something, you can ask very specific questions about that. Or a topic like, how do you think of race in the church?
00;14;00;14 - 00;14;30;08
Caroline Kline
And you can ask very specific questions about that. But then with a life oral history method, an oral history method where you're sort of covering the whole arc of their life, you can get all sorts of complicated nuances. They may say one thing and espouse a belief in a certain thing, which no doubt is totally valid, but their life, the actual lived experience that has been uncovered in the process of the interview can add all sorts of complexity to what they actually are saying.
00;14;30;08 - 00;14;53;13
Caroline Kline
So I think it can add so much important nuance. So those are some of the reasons why I love oral history. In terms of drawbacks. Well, if you're after something systematic, this is not the way to go. You're not really going to be able to say, “15% of the women said X about X.”
00;14;53;15 - 00;15;22;00
Caroline Kline
Because each interview is slightly different or maybe wildly different, because so much of the interview is tailored towards a particular person. So you're not going to be able to get really systematic answers like you might from a survey. Oral history has been critiqued as being kind of narrow and idiosyncratic. Again, maybe it plays up individual agency so much and doesn't emphasize systemic issues quite as much.
00;15;22;00 - 00;15;49;26
Caroline Kline
I've certainly seen that critique. And, I hear that. I'm someone who's interested in systemic issues, so that's certainly something to consider. Another drawback is, if you're going to try to get your things into an archive and your interviews into an archive, and if this archive wants transcription, which is a really nice thing to have, transcription is a lot of work.
00;15;50;00 - 00;16;10;23
Caroline Kline
It took me, I think I spent a full year transcribing my interviews, at least. And this was before AI got as good as it is right now. And so it was just listening and typing, and boy was it a lot of work. So, that is that certainly is a drawback of, of oral history.
00;16;10;25 - 00;16;30;19
Nicholas Shrum
Though perhaps spending all that time with the transcripts allowed you to sit with the words of your interviewees a little bit more. So maybe the drawbacks have positives as well. But having transcribed oral histories myself, I feel that. It’s long. It's tedious.
00;16;30;21 - 00;16;42;10
Caroline Kline
Yes, yes it is, but good point about having to sit. You do sit with the people for many, many hours and you think about their experience as you're typing. So that is you're right that that can be a benefit.
00;16;42;12 - 00;17;19;29
Nicholas Shrum
Well, thank you for thinking with about me oral histories and how that related to your project and how it helped you to come to the results and the content of the book that I would love to talk to you about next. In the introduction to your book, you reflect on your own positionality, something that you spoke to briefly at the beginning of our conversation, about how you came to this project with certain commitments. You spoke about kind of the venues or the types of Mormonism that you engaged with prior to this project.
The Position of the Scholar in Ethnography
00;17;19;29 - 00;17;38;06
Nicholas Shrum
I'm wondering if you can tell the listeners a little bit about that self-acknowledgment that you bring out in the book about yourself and how that fundamentally changed how you came to see and understand the women that you were speaking with.
00;17;38;08 - 00;18;34;23
Caroline Kline
Yeah, that was a really deliberate decision in the writing up of the project. I was very influenced by feminist research methodology. I was I was convinced by it. And part of feminist research methodology, one tenet of is of it is that you abandon, you the scholar, abandon this view from nowhere, objective, third person academic voice and instead embrace a “view from somewhere” voice, a first person voice that acknowledges who a person is. Like who I am, where I'm coming from, my particular ideological commitments, my biases that no doubt are going to affect the work in some way.
00;18;34;25 - 00;19;01;15
Caroline Kline
I think it just kind of puts on the table and encourages us as scholars to just put it on the table: my particular intersections, my particular positionality and my privilege, which is often, for this particular project, it was often very different than the women I was interviewing. And the idea behind it is that by being frank about who we are, we the scholars are, and being frank about the lens, we're using to view the world,
00;19;01;15 - 00;19;29;18
Caroline Kline
and for me, a predominant lens is gender equality. I am very interested in gender equality. By putting this on the table, we're enabling our readers to better assess the validity of our work. And yeah, so I think that these were all things that were really impacting the way I decided to write myself into the story, into the chapters.
00;19;29;21 - 00;19;53;00
Caroline Kline
I start every single chapter, except for the last– the theological one–, with an anecdote that kind of grounds me as a person in time, interacting with these people from around the world. Because I didn't want my readers to forget, ever, that everything I'm saying is getting filtered through my lens and my perspective.
00;19;53;00 - 00;20;08;21
Caroline Kline
So this is the way I wrote the book and I'm glad I did. I'm glad I put it all on the table, that I am a liberal American, a liberal feminist from America, so of course I'm coming with certain perspectives and questions.
00;20;08;24 - 00;20;36;05
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah. I appreciate it as well. I spoke with Dr. Hazel O'Brien recently, a sociologist of religion, about some work that she had done in Ireland among Irish Mormons. And there are things that I feel like historians–I primarily do history–there's things that historians especially can take from people that that use these other methodologies that I think would be good.
00;20;36;07 - 00;20;54;21
Nicholas Shrum
And it's my opinion that I think historians, it would be great for them to employ as well, because like you said, I think there's a level of trusting the person that's engaging with your work and allowing them to take it all. It's not like you're hiding behind this lens of objectivity.
00;20;54;21 - 00;21;14;21
Nicholas Shrum
It's no, these are real conversations. This is how I experienced it. You can judge the evidence for yourself and you can judge my interpretation of it. But I think the results of your project is really eye opening and very helpful. And I think it does great work in the Mormon studies and religious studies community.
Introduction to the Book and “Non-Oppressive Connectedness”
00;21;14;24 - 00;21;30;27
Nicholas Shrum
I think it'd be great to have a little bit of a bird's eye view of the contents and the arguments you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that you spoke with women, in the United States and, in Botswana, and in Mexico. Correct?
00;21;30;29 - 00;21;32;15
Caroline Kline
Yeah. Women of color in the United States.
00;21;32;15 - 00;21;54;03
Nicholas Shrum
Women of color and in those those locations. You also introduce in the introduction of your book this concept of non-oppressive connectedness, that kind of is this the strong throughline throughout the rest of your work. I'm wondering if you can introduce that for the listeners and what that entails.
00;21;54;05 - 00;22;39;12
Caroline Kline
Sure. Yeah. So non-oppressive connectedness is a term I coined to describe the lens or worldview or moral imperative that drove a lot of the decision making of the women I spoke to around the world. This lens, this worldview, you could see it as standing in contrast to a worldview or a lens of gender equality, which is one I bring to the table. I think maybe it would be helpful if I share the anecdote that I open the book with. It just kind of shows these two worldviews colliding, or at least that
00;22;39;12 - 00;23;01;20
Caroline Kline
there's clearly a disconnect there between these two worldviews. So, this was very early in my project in Mexico. I was interviewing a woman, learning all about her life, her marriage, all this good stuff. And then, at some point in the interview, I asked her if she thinks women and men are equal in the Mormon church and it was at that moment where we kind of lost the flow.
00;23;01;20 - 00;23;24;18
Caroline Kline
Her brow furrowed. She kind of squinted at me and she kind of frowned a little bit, and she was like, “I think so?” And then she kind of went onto something else. But it was clear that that question was uncomfortable. It was a question that didn't really work for her. She was not very interested in it.
00;23;24;20 - 00;23;46;18
Caroline Kline
And it was upon reflection and upon having kind of experiencing this multiple times in future interviews as well, that I just realized that this was a really important moment because what was going on there was that she understood that we were on different wavelengths. She understood that my priorities were different from her priorities.
00;23;46;25 - 00;24;13;26
Caroline Kline
She understood in this moment that I was viewing her and her story through a lens of gender equality that she just wasn't really all that interested in. And so for me, it was also, upon reflection, like, “oh, I am I am bringing this into the interview.” I had all these great intentions of letting women's priorities rise to the surface and following where they want to go when respecting their priorities.
00;24;13;28 - 00;24;32;19
Caroline Kline
But certainly in a handful of my questions like that, I was I was bringing that to the table. And I eventually realized that, after many more interviews, that it wasn't fair for me to bring that lens to the table. It wasn't fair for me to be analyzing their stories through this lens of gender equality.
00;24;32;21 - 00;24;53;16
Caroline Kline
Because that was not their priority. They had other priorities. And so then I began to reflect, well, what were their priorities? What does makes sense? What is the driving force behind so many of their stories and their decisions? And I came to understand that a much fairer lens and worldview was this thing I'm calling non oppressive connectedness.
00;24;53;18 - 00;25;21;03
Caroline Kline
I think it really helps to make sense of why they made the decisions they did. So what is this? What is this thing? Let me describe it a little bit. So this orientation or this worldview is one which really privileges relationality. It privileges connection. That's a massive priority. To family, connection to kids, spouse, church, community, God, all these connections, these are super important.
00;25;21;05 - 00;25;46;21
Caroline Kline
However, it has to be a certain type of connectedness. It has to be vitalizing. It has to be ennobling. It has to be positive, loving, fruitful. And this connection, if these connections are positive like that, this is liberating for them. A close, personal God who loves them? This is liberating for them. A sober, faithful husband? This is liberating for them.
00;25;46;23 - 00;26;15;15
Caroline Kline
And so this lens really, really helped to explain so much of what I saw. And I'll note really quickly that the reason I call it non-oppressive connectedness is because there are limitations. While so many of these women really valued relationality and connections, it was not unbounded. If they were in relationships that were abusive or oppressive in some way, these women were fighting to change those dynamics or leaving the relationships.
00;26;15;17 - 00;26;34;11
Caroline Kline
And so ultimately after studying their interviews and thinking about them for so long, that is when I really came to understand that, “oh this is what's going on.” This is a dominant ethical imperative for them, non oppressive connectedness. And it just explained so much of what I was hearing in these interviews.
00;26;34;14 - 00;26;56;27
Nicholas Shrum
Excellent. Thank you for explaining it. It's a really interesting concept that I think is really nice to sit with as you're reading the book and like all good scholarship it includes it at the beginning so that when you go through the rest of the interviews and our analysis, you're able to keep that at the front of your mind and remind yourself. Because there are times where it is a little bit jarring.
00;26;56;29 - 00;27;17;26
Nicholas Shrum
I'm from the United States and in the academy. And so when certain things come across your mind as you're reading, it's good to have this concept that is able to shape “Oh, yeah. I don't need to be blindsided by this experience that doesn't fit my commitments. Okay. What is the function here?
00;27;17;26 - 00;27;53;01
Nicholas Shrum
How is this operating in these women's lives?” And as I think you demonstrate very nicely, it does serve a positive function. There's a reason that these women do the things that they do. There's a reason that they engage with the church at the level or in the ways that they do. I think it's also great because it takes into account various global, and local specific, cultural customs and experiences and environments that, I think it just does a great job of that.
Commitments and Priorities of the Women Dr. Kline Interviewed
00;27;53;03 - 00;28;17;08
Nicholas Shrum
Maybe you can talk a little bit about what those priorities are that you've noticed, or some of these experiences of these women. You mentioned before how your commitments that you had brought to it, and in some of your questioning, you had to kind of change that. Once you were able to wrestle with that, what kind of priorities did you see floating to the top of your analysis in these interviews?
00;28;17;08 - 00;28;21;13
Nicholas Shrum
What did these women prioritize and value?
00;28;21;15 - 00;28;51;18
Caroline Kline
Yeah. Different things came out in different locations, but I think certainly education was something that was a huge priority for many of these women. I think one of the driving reasons why so many women in Mexico were willing to talk to me is because they wanted to talk to me about the closing of the Benemérito, which was an LDS high school in Mexico City, that was beloved, utterly beloved.
00;28;51;18 - 00;29;16;22
Caroline Kline
All these Mormon families would send their high school aged children to this thing. And it was just this source of massive strength for the community. But it had recently been shut down by the church and turned into an MTC. And the women were just heartbroken. In the interview there would be tears as they talked about it.
00;29;16;24 - 00;29;38;22
Caroline Kline
They wanted it recorded somewhere. And this is, I think, where they, you know, again, why I think many of them kind of wanted to talk to me. They wanted it recorded somewhere that they did not agree with this decision. Education was so important to them. They wanted the space of education for their children. So, I think that emerged certainly. And this is one of the attractive things about Mormonism.
00;29;38;25 - 00;29;59;18
Caroline Kline
Especially in Mexico, it has kind of an aura of social mobility about it. And, so as much as the church can facilitate that, this is a very attractive thing. And so to have the school shutdown was just a massive blow.
00;29;59;18 - 00;30;28;28
Caroline Kline
So education is a priority. Other priorities. Spirituality is a priority. I saw these women really manifest wonderful senses of connection to the divine and spirituality, really profound and vast spirituality. And so I was thrilled to see that Mormonism was able to facilitate that. Often which is just great.
00;30;28;28 - 00;30;48;22
Caroline Kline
And in ways that, I, as someone who was born and bred Mormon, I didn't always see how some of this stuff could be powerful. But in talking to people from around the world, it became more apparent. For instance, a woman joins the church in Mexico and becomes a Sunday school teacher.
00;30;48;22 - 00;31;09;19
Caroline Kline
And for the first time in her life, she's actually studying the scriptures and reading the scriptures. Some things she never did when she was a Catholic. So this kind of way that it was able to manifest this connection to God, through these various practices. It was just really spiritually enlivening to them.
00;31;09;19 - 00;31;46;13
Caroline Kline
I loved learning about their spirituality. Another priority that came out everywhere, in every location, was concerns about domestic violence. It was a dominant theme in every location. Women talked about spousal abuse, or domestic violence in some form. So I came to realize, oh my “gosh, this is a huge issue.”
00;31;46;13 - 00;32;10;05
Caroline Kline
It's a huge issue in the church. As much as Mormonism could tamp down on it and promote benevolent masculinity, this was all to the good and women were so happy when this could happen. But of course, there was still abuse within Mormon marriages. And this was something that was an enormous concern for women.
00;32;10;05 - 00;32;40;20
Caroline Kline
So this rose to the surface for sure. Other priorities. Well, like I mentioned before, certainly connectedness, relationality, community was really powerful. And I think finding community, in the midst of alienation, feeling disconnected, finding a community that cares, that listens, that that makes a place for them. This was also a strength of Mormonism when it worked well.
00;32;40;20 - 00;32;45;25
Caroline Kline
This was a good strength of Mormonism and something that was very attractive to them.
00;32;45;27 - 00;33;28;21
Nicholas Shrum
Yeah, I was surprised as I was reading through the text how often similar themes would arise across these different locales. That there were concerns, especially, as you mentioned, with spousal abuse and domestic violence across these different locations. I think you do great work thinking about how family relations and how the Mormon theological and cosmological construct can can be appealing in these different, cultural places, different from Western Americanlived realities.
Black Women Navigating Racism within Mormonism
00;33;28;21 - 00;34;03;22
Nicholas Shrum
And so that was very enlightening. I definitely want to ask you about what you call a womanist Mormon theology of abundance. But, perhaps we before we get there, if we could do a little bit on the experiences of Black Latter-day Saint women in the United States. And the reason I ask this is we recently had on the podcast, historian Matt Harris, who wrote a history about Black Latter-day Saints in the postwar period from roughly 1945 up until the recent present.
00;34;03;25 - 00;34;34;00
Nicholas Shrum
And I think that your book has some really fascinating and important things that can add to this discourse within Mormon studies about the place and the experiences of Black Latter-day Saints in your case, especially women. How does your book tell us about the role of racism in the church today and how some of the interviewees that you spoke with dealt with and challenged and navigated and found a place within Mormonism in the United States?
00;34;34;03 - 00;35;01;07
Caroline Kline
Yeah, I think the person that really jumps out at me as you ask that question is the story of a woman I call Nadine. She was a Black woman from the South and a fantastic woman. And she talks about her decision to join the church and how there were there were things that really bothered her about the church.
00;35;01;07 - 00;35;24;23
Caroline Kline
Sshe wanted to join. She was compelled by it. She she was sold in so many ways. But there were two problems. One was polygamy and one was the priesthood ban. And I love this anecdote where she just talked about how she prayed about those things and she realized that those things were not of God.
00;35;24;27 - 00;35;43;08
Caroline Kline
And that actually enabled her to join the church. Once she got this personal confirmation that God does not think this way, that was your personal revelation experience. Once she understood that then she was like, “all right, then I'm just going to, I am not beholden to that. And I will not be beholden to that.
00;35;43;11 - 00;36;06;20
Caroline Kline
And now I will embrace everything that I love about this church, and I will become a part of it.” And so I thought this is just a wonderful model of complexity, of a taking the best of a tradition, embracing the best of a tradition and forthrightly chucking out what clearly is dehumanizing and does not work.
00;36;06;26 - 00;36;32;06
Caroline Kline
And so I loved her as a model. So that's one example of a woman navigating an issue, issues of race within the church. I think that also came out in talking to various women. Now, this is not a Black woman, but, certainly the issue of interracial marriage and the way that it had been condemned in previous generations.
00;36;32;08 - 00;36;57;29
Caroline Kline
One woman I spoke to talked about how these teachings, even though the church leaders no longer talk about interracial marriage like that, these teachings have these tentacles that reach down through the generations and still affect her and still affect people. And so she talked about how as a biracial woman, these teachings about interracial marriage were really personally damaging to her and really hurt her sense of self-worth
00;36;57;29 - 00;37;18;13
Caroline Kline
And having a place in the church because, while these things weren't being emphasized anymore, like these negative comments about interracial marriage, they're kind of ideas that still percolate in the community. And she felt unmarriagable, she felt like no one wanted her because she was bringing biracialality to the marriage no matter what.
00;37;18;16 - 00;37;40;14
Caroline Kline
And so, for me, this was an example of how sometimes just not talking about it anymore, which is sometimes a method that church leaders have chosen on difficult things–they just kind of say the “past is the past, we do things differently now”-- but sometimes what is needed are really frank disavowals.
00;37;40;17 - 00;38;12;07
Caroline Kline
And I think the church has done some work towards that with the gospel topics essay on race that is pretty frank disavowing some of these old teachings. But even better would be widespread, over the pulpit, clear condemnations of this kind of thinking and I think that it's that kind of widespread disavowal would really mean a lot to women, like the women I talked to who were still being hurt because some of these ideas were still being embraced in the community.
00;38;12;10 - 00;38;20;08
Caroline Kline
So that's another example. Are there any others you're thinking of in particular that you'd like me to talk a little bit more about?
00;38;20;11 - 00;38;43;08
Nicholas Shrum
No, I mean, those are fantastic examples. And, again, I would just love to reiterate to listeners that this is why oral history and ethnography can be so valuable. Because I think within Mormon studies, traditionally it's been institutional history. It's been top down. It's “this is what the church's done. This is what the church believed.
00;38;43;08 - 00;39;14;22
Nicholas Shrum
That's how that changed.” But really getting into the lives of how belief and lived reality for people, practitioners of Mormonism, it can be quite different. And especially those anecdotes that you shared. Sure, the church does not teach against interracial marriage anymore. However, there have been justifications for the priesthood ban and the temple ban that have continued despite disavowal by the church.
00;39;14;25 - 00;39;36;21
Nicholas Shrum
These things still impact people. And I think that it's both from a scholarship perspective, but then also for the health of the Mormon community, this is really important work in helping people to understand that these are things people really still deal with. And hopefully it's a little bit eye opening for people.
Dr. Kline’s “Womanist Mormon Theology of Abundance”
00;39;36;24 - 00;39;50;28
Nicholas Shrum
So thank you for those. So for the last bit of our conversationtoday, I'd love for you to tell listeners about what you call a “womanist Mormon theology of abundance,” which is the the subject of your final chapter in your book.
00;39;51;01 - 00;40;23;06
Caroline Kline
Yeah. So it was in this last chapter that I examine a theological perspective that I saw emerging in the women in these various locations and in slightly different ways. And so the way I would define this womanist theology of abundance, is it's a perspective where God's love is vast and abundant, where spiritual power can be highly developed,
00;40;23;08 - 00;40;51;04
Caroline Kline
where your ability to connect with God is expansive. It's a theological perspective that emphasizes female strength and ability. Personal potential. It emphasizes the vastness of God's generosity and it stands in contrast to theological perspectives that emphasize scarcity, fear and exclusivity. So that’s a nutshell of
00;40;51;04 - 00;41;14;15
Caroline Kline
how I would define this Mormon womanist theology of abundance. And just a quick note about the term “womanist.” I titled the chapter “Towards a Womanist Mormon Theology of Abundance.” So I'm calling it womanist because, now I myself am not a womanist because I am not a person of color.
00;41;14;17 - 00;41;39;01
Caroline Kline
Womanists are women of color. You might think of them as is kind of like Black feminists, sometimes they're described in that way. But I absolutely love womanist theology and ethics. And one of the things I love about it is that a main source of authority for womanists is the lives and perspectives of women
00;41;39;03 - 00;42;07;17
Caroline Kline
who have gone before them, of women in their community. So your grandma, your aunt, your neighbor down the street, these women's voices and experiences are authoritative. The wisdom they bring from their lived experience is authoritative. And so when I was constructing this theology based on all these interviews I did and how they talked about God, of course what I was doing is I was upholding these women of color as authoritative.
00;42;07;17 - 00;42;32;00
Caroline Kline
Their experience, their perspective in formulating this were the sources of authority. And so that's why I call it a womanist theology of abundance. I'm lifting up and I'm holding their voices as authoritative. So I think for me–it was the last chapter I wrote–
00;42;32;02 - 00;42;56;20
Caroline Kline
I just kind of felt like after talking about each of these various global locations, because the book is geographically divided. I talk about Mexico and then I talk about Botswana, and then I talk about women of color in the United States. And I wanted something in the end that kind of brought it all together and showed the way, their perspectives, were melding, but also differentiating.
00;42;56;20 - 00;43;07;03
Caroline Kline
And it just made sense to me that I'd like to lift up this particular thread of abundance that I saw distributed throughout so many of these oral histories.
00;43;07;05 - 00;43;33;14
Nicholas Shrum
Perfect. Thank you. Well, again, I recommend for listeners that they go pick up a copy of the book. It was published in 2022 with the University of Illinois Press and, it leaves you with a lot to think about. I think that it's it's worthwhile, even if you aren't a latter day Saints, even if you practice other religious traditions, to really sit with these experiences.
What Mormon Women at the Crossroads offers to the Mormon community and academia
00;43;33;17 - 00;44;06;05
Nicholas Shrum
It was a great experience. So I really appreciate all of the effort that you put into writing it and conducting the research and then also reflecting and honoring and raising these voices and validating their experiences. Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you would like to add or that you would like listeners to know about this project or what you think it offers to both the Mormon studies or the Mormon community, but also to Mormon studies and religious studies broadly?
00;44;06;07 - 00;44;31;05
Caroline Kline
Oh, that's a great question. Let me think about that. I think one of the things I'm most proud of with this book, and it might serve as a useful potential model, perhaps for some people, is the way I foregrounded these women's stories in all their complexity. I think that is something useful.
00;44;31;07 - 00;44;53;25
Caroline Kline
As I was trying to figure out how to write this thing, certainly the idea of a real thematic treatment where I take a theme and then I find 20 quotes and talk about the variations of these various 20 quotes and people. But ultimately, I didn't want to flatten the women out.
00;44;53;25 - 00;45;13;05
Caroline Kline
I felt like that kind of approach would flatten them out. You wouldn't be able to distinguish the speaker of this quote from the speaker of that quote very easily. And so instead I was like, “no, we're gonna do this differently. We are going to tell women's stories. I will pick 3 or 4 women to focus on in each location, and I will tell their story and their complexity.”
00;45;13;05 - 00;45;47;08
Caroline Kline
I think really foregrounding their story and their life story and going through it, talking about what they say here, but how their experience like this is a little different and adds all this nuance, I think in the end that this was a more respectful choice in terms of highlighting and illuminating who these women are and just how wonderfully complex they are, as we all are as we live our lives.
00;45;47;10 - 00;46;28;25
Nicholas Shrum
Well, you do a wonderful job. And I think that this perspective that you bring and the time that you spent with these interviewees and talking with them about their lives, it adds a lot of depth to how we understand, as scholars, but then also just within the Mormon community, what it means, what Mormonism means, what it means to be a member of the church, and the various iterations of Mormonism and how it's lived and experienced across the world. Which is another wonderful, as you mentioned at the outset, another wonderful addition of this book is to decenter the experience of the
Dr. Kline’s Next Project and Close
00;46;28;25 - 00;46;44;05
Nicholas Shrum
American church in many ways, especially the white American church. So thank you for that as well. Before we close, what projects are you working on now and what can listeners be looking forward to coming from you next?
00;46;44;07 - 00;47;08;05
Caroline Kline
I recently decided on what my next book project will be, and it is going to be a book about Mormon women and the subject of labor, of work, paid and unpaid. And so I am excited to get started on that. It's going to be, no doubt, oral histories will will play an enormous role.
00;47;08;07 - 00;47;23;28
Caroline Kline
And I think that the question of Mormon women in labor and work and paid employment. This has been one that has been haunting many women, many Mormon women who have had to struggle with these questions about the right way to forge a path when it comes to this.
00;47;23;28 - 00;47;34;01
Caroline Kline
So, I'm excited. Yeah, I imagine hopefully in a couple of years there will be a new book that will be coming out.
00;47;34;01 - 00;47;45;12
Nicholas Shrum
Excellent. Well, we'll look forward to that and then hopefully we can have you back on the podcast to talk about it and we can share your work with the listeners here. So thank you so much, Dr. Kline, for being on the podcast.
00;47;45;14 - 00;47;48;28
Caroline Kline
Thank you so much.
00;47;49;00 - 00;48;05;27
Nicholas Shrum
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scholars and Saints. Please be sure to come back to hear more conversations soon. A special thank you to Harrison Stewart for production editing, and to Ben Arrington for providing music for this episode. To hear more, visit mormonguitar.com. Thank you for listening.