Mormon Temple Garments (feat. Nancy Ross & Jessica Finnigan)

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have received special undergarments as part of their temple endowment ceremonies since the days of Jospeh Smith. But what are these garments? How do they fit and feel? How have they changed with fashion trends over the years? And how do Latter-day Saints perceive and experience these garments as an embodied practice of their religion?

Researchers Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan sit down with host Nicholas Shrum to discuss these and many other questions from their brand-new book (co-authored with Larissa Kanno Kindred) Mormon Garments: Sacred and Secret (University of Illinois Press). Having surveyed thousands of Latter-day Saints, Ross and Finnigan discuss their findings on the gendered difference in garment wearing, the ways in which garments make Mormonism feel embodied, the social costs of wearing — or not wearing — garments, the complexities of researching such a taboo topic, and the impact of these garments on the individual Latter-day Saints' relationship to the Church and God.

Nancy Ross is an associate professor and the department chair of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Department at Utah Tech University. She was also a 2024 Clyde Research Fellow in Mormonism and Gender in the UVA Mormon Studies Prince Collection.

Jessica Finnigan is the founder of Fractional Project Manager and a seasoned researcher and data analyst. She has been researching and writing about Mormonism — particularly the experience of Mormon women — for over a decade.

Transcript

Introduction

00;00;02;02 - 00;00;32;03

Nicholas Shrum

You're listening to Scholars and Saints. The UVA mormon studies podcast. I'm your host, Nicholas Shrum, a PhD candidate in American religions at the University of Virginia. On this podcast, we dive into the academic study of Mormonism. We engage recent and classic scholarship, interview prominent and up and coming thinkers in the field, and reflect on Mormonism 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;09 - 00;01;00;07

Nicholas Shrum

The podcast goal is to discuss some of the most pressing issues and cutting edge methods in Mormon studies, and put them in conversation with scholarship from the discipline of religious studies. While the podcast content explores Mormonism, the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any organizations they represent or study, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and the University of Virginia.

00;01;00;09 - 00;01;04;22

Lounge and speak for me.

00;01;04;25 - 00;01;30;06

Nicholas Shrum

Today on the podcast, we look into a practice that is central to millions of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, yet shrouded in a profound culture of silence. Temple garments for adult members of the church, garments are a form of sacred ceremonial under clothing, according to official church teachings and within broader Mormon discourse, they function as a daily reminder of covenants made with God, a symbol of modesty and a source of spiritual protection.

00;01;30;07 - 00;02;06;04

Nicholas Shrum

The church in recent years has begun to talk more openly about garments, and they have become the topic of scholarly analysis, including Nancy Ross, Jessica Finnigan, and Larissa Kindred in their recent book Mormon Garments Sacred and Secret. Drawing on a survey of over 4500 church members, their book explores the complex lived experiences of wearing the sacred clothing. Ultimately, Ross, Finnegan and Kindred argued that garments act as a religious technology, a tool of social control, that, while it is oftentimes an empowering tool, often shapes body image, enforces modesty, and in many cases even restrained sexuality.

00;02;06;05 - 00;02;30;17

Nicholas Shrum

It's a deeply insightful conversation about faith and identity, community and individuality, and some of the pressing issues and commitments facing church members. While Larissa Kindred was not able to join in the conversation today, I hope you'll enjoy the episode with her two coauthors, Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan.

00;02;30;19 - 00;02;58;09

Nicholas Shrum

Welcome to another episode of Scholars and Saints, The UVA mormon Studies Podcast. I'm very excited and honored to have Nancy Ross and Jessica Finnigan on the podcast today to talk about their and their coauthor, Larissa Kindreds recent book with University of Illinois Press, Mormon Garments Sacred and Secret. It was published just recently here in 2026. So welcome, Nancy and Jessica.

00;02;58;10 - 00;03;00;20

Nancy Ross

Thank you for having us. Thank you.

00;03;00;22 - 00;03;33;11

Nicholas Shrum

Absolutely. This is a really interesting book. It's another sociological ethnographic study that we featured a couple of on the podcast in the last couple of years, but this was a really, really interesting one because it delves into a topic that people may be outside of, Mormonism may be familiar with. If they are familiar with it, they may have certain ideas of it, that this book definitely dives into the nitty gritty of as the book.

Nancy and Jessica’s Background

00;03;33;12 - 00;04;00;02

Nicholas Shrum

The book's web page talks about an intimate practice in the lives of latter day Saints. So I was wondering, first of all, before we dive into the content of the book, if if you could each introduce yourselves a little bit more and tell us a little bit about your background, your education and research interests or what you currently do, and then we'll dive into how you came to start researching and writing this book, if you wouldn't mind starting Nancy.

00;04;00;03 - 00;04;24;21

Nancy Ross

Sure. Yeah, I'll I'll just jump in. And so sorry, I am still waking up. I am not a morning morning person, so please forgive me. So I was trying to think of where to start here. Yes. So I'm going to mention Cambridge. Not because I want to be that person, but because it also Cambridge is a place that connects Jessica and I.

00;04;24;24 - 00;04;50;25

Nancy Ross

So I was a grad student at at Cambridge in England, and I met my husband there. I did my PhD in art history, and so unlike many in Mormon studies, I did not do in American history, in American Studies. I started my academic career as a medieval art historian and, you know, and have come to some of these things later in my career.

00;04;50;28 - 00;05;17;01

Nancy Ross

I was born into the Cambridge ward. My dad was a grad student at the time. He met my mother in that ward. And so I have a long history with this ward. And I returned to this ward for graduate school. And then after we were just finishing our PhDs and we moved to Saint George, Utah, and to start working at the institution that my husband and I both work at now, Utah Tech University.

00;05;17;02 - 00;05;39;17

Nancy Ross

He's a computer science professor. I am currently the chair of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences department here at Utah Tech. And and while for a long while I tried to. I was I was the art historian in the, in our art department for a while, for about a decade. And I tried to continue my career as a medieval art historian.

00;05;39;17 - 00;06;13;16

Nancy Ross

And at that time, that was almost impossible to do because there were not collections here in Saint George for me to work with. And digitization was only a thing that was just beginning. And so I was not able to continue what I had thought I had hoped I'd be able to do in my career. I was involved with the Mormon feminist movement for a very long time, and I started reading Mormon feminist blogs while I was still in my last year at Cambridge.

00;06;13;16 - 00;06;39;28

Nancy Ross

And I met Jessica through that community because after after we had had left Cambridge, I had seen that Jessica was a new academic person emerging and was like, hey, do you know all these people? Because of course we knew many of the same people. And and eventually Jessica suggested that we started working together. We started working on Mormon feminist projects.

00;06;40;01 - 00;07;07;16

Nancy Ross

And then after a few projects, we started thinking about what we might do next. And sorry, that is that that is my a little bit too early in the morning ramble of of who I am, which is maybe not a great description. Today I work on LDS and RLDS Community of Christ topics generally related to gender and embodiment and and things of that nature.

00;07;07;19 - 00;07;13;20

Nancy Ross

I'm going to tag Jessica now, so hopefully she she has more coherent response. Thank you.

00;07;13;22 - 00;07;38;01

Jessica Finnigan

Yeah. Just to add to what Nancy said, we met when I was at Cambridge. I had done an undergrad at BYU and then did a startup for about ten years and then went back to school in England. So I did a second undergrad at Cambridge and then a master's at King's College in London. And I currently live outside of Toronto, Canada and just do independent scholar work.

Background to Project

00;07;38;06 - 00;08;09;25

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent. Thank you so much. If that's an early morning introduction, I think both of you are much better than I am probably in the morning. So thank you for for introducing yourselves. So I'd like to start with some kind of broad introductory questions about this project. If you could each kind of explain to the audience what led you to to study Mormon garments, and especially this approach, right, of survey work and and that kind of thing.

00;08;09;27 - 00;08;14;10

Nicholas Shrum

Maybe we could start with Jessica this time if you if you wouldn't mind.

00;08;14;13 - 00;08;40;20

Jessica Finnigan

So one of the things that drove us to really doing survey work within Mormonism was we hit a roadblock in the idea that every survey you have to do within Mormonism would cost $10,000. And that was the prevailing wisdom at the time. And we just thought, there's no way this can be true. We have to figure out how to get this data without going bankrupt.

00;08;40;21 - 00;09;24;08

Jessica Finnigan

And so we really it was cutting edge at the time and quite controversial to survey online with a snowball sample. Get these massive, you know, survey sized size surveys and then try to make sense of the data while now that's more common that that's more accepted in academic circles at the time, ten, 15 years ago, it was we hit a lot of people who had a strong opinions about what we were doing and that we weren't doing it in the old fashioned way, but we were able to collect all of this data that really stamped a time in Mormon feminism and the church in general.

00;09;24;08 - 00;09;39;28

Jessica Finnigan

And I'm really proud of that work that we were able to collect. And then Larisa really built on that. And she has even a larger data set on garments that, you know, almost double what we were able to get a decade ago.

00;09;40;05 - 00;09;49;21

Nicholas Shrum

Because if I, if I understand correctly, this Mormon garment sacred and secret, the book relies upon a data set of roughly 4500.

00;09;49;23 - 00;10;37;13

Nancy Ross

That's right. So 4500. You know, we we had done written several papers and were getting to know each other and feeling like this was a very productive partnership and collaborative, collaborative partnership. And so we were thinking about what other kinds of projects that we might do. And so what we had noticed was that within Mormon feminism, the feminist community and some of the kind of closed and secret Facebook groups of the time that conversations about garments tended to run into hundreds of comments, that often these answers both validated our own experiences and really challenged us to understand the practice in different ways.

00;10;37;13 - 00;11;01;06

Nancy Ross

And we had a growing sense that our own experiences with garments were not great, but we didn't really know what other people had experienced. And so we were that kind of led us into, okay, well, like, what are other people experiencing with their garments feeling like that? The answer probably lay in gender, right? As like a dividing line between people's experiences.

00;11;01;06 - 00;11;22;09

Nancy Ross

And of course, we were new to a lot of this work. And so, you know, kind of seeing this in simplistic terms, I feel like we've grown up a lot as scholars with this project. So I feel like it's easy. It's easier now to name that. Like, you know, this to we now we would say that we had like single access thinking and like that's overly simplistic and, and that kind of thing.

00;11;22;09 - 00;11;50;17

Nancy Ross

But I feel like we also have learned a lot of things in this project. And so we were really hoping that we would write an academic journal article and we might get as many as 500 responses. And, and 500 was a lot is, is is a lot of responses. And, you know, like a 500 people can tell us about what they're experiencing with our garments, recognizing that ultimately we were trying to satisfy our own like we had.

00;11;50;19 - 00;12;12;18

Nancy Ross

We were both garment wearing Mormon women at the time, very involved in our local congregations, mothers, two young children. I had two young children at the time. Jessica had four young children at the time, and also trying to kind of get our academic careers off the ground and struggling to figure figure out how to make all of these things work in our lives at this time.

00;12;12;18 - 00;12;56;17

Nancy Ross

And and also figuring that that a snowball sample in social media wouldn't necessarily give us generalizable data, meaning data that where we could draw statistics and then from our sample and then generalize that to the whole population of church members, but that we would get a good range of responses. So, so not going for kind of complexity and aiming for complexity, but not necessarily statistical significance, that we would probably hear some really interesting things and it would be worthwhile data to collect and analyze even without that sense of generalizability.

00;12;56;20 - 00;13;25;03

Nancy Ross

And at the time, neither of us really had the statistical background to do a lot of complicated statistics. Over time, Jessica would acquire some of some of some of those skills, and I would require and we would both acquire some better data handling skills. It helps to marry a computer science professor. But but but we were you know, I think it's fair to say that like, we were naive and we were like, our garments are bothering us.

00;13;25;03 - 00;13;56;14

Nancy Ross

We don't. We understand a little bit about what the challenge is, but we feel like there is more here and we're struggling to name them more. So let's do an academic study. Right. Let's let's answer our personal questions with academic study, which is something scholars often do. And we realized that this was a really taboo topic, of course, because but that's also why we couldn't easily answer our own personal questions.

00;13;56;14 - 00;14;22;03

Nancy Ross

And there wasn't a lot of discussion of this. It was clearly very taboo in our lives. And yet when there were more private and protected spaces online to discuss this, suddenly there was an explosion of conversation. And we're like, this is interesting. And so we wanted to pursue that. And we figured that if we were able to get 500 survey responses, we could write a journal article and move on with our lives.

00;14;22;03 - 00;14;45;24

Nancy Ross

And this would just be like a weird paper we did had done in our past, which and of course, when we when we dropped the survey, that is not at all what happens. So we share the survey in Mormon feminist spaces. We share it in progressive spaces, but we also reach out. There was a Facebook page at the time.

00;14;45;24 - 00;15;10;04

Nancy Ross

Somebody reminded me of this this past week. So I'm mentioning it that called Mormon Women Stand, which was a kind of anti-Mormon feminist page that had like 30,000 followers. And when we shared this with Mormon Women Stand, Mormon women stand posted this on their on their Facebook page, and they were like, the liberals are out to tell people the wrong things about, you know, garment wearing.

00;15;10;04 - 00;15;38;20

Nancy Ross

And so it is your religious duty, conservative Mormon women to take this survey and to set them straight, which was fantastic as far as our data collection went, because we we had not wanted to we wanted to catch like a broad swath. We didn't just want our own experiences represented, we want a broad range of experiences represented. And we were really able to capture that because the survey was taken and shared by a lot of people beyond our social networks.

00;15;38;20 - 00;16;05;01

Nancy Ross

And so that was awesome for data collection. And it created a small storm of excitement in the online spaces of Facebook and those early years, in those earlier years of Facebook groups. And very quickly, within a week, we got 4500 responses, which was far more data than we like, which was like very quickly we were just buried with a quantity of data.

00;16;05;01 - 00;16;13;23

Nancy Ross

We did not know how to manage. And so we tried writing. Sorry, this is a very long answer to your initial question.

00;16;13;24 - 00;16;16;13

Nicholas Shrum

You're totally good. Please continue.

00;16;16;16 - 00;16;51;21

Nancy Ross

But we realized very quickly that and as we tried to write initial journal articles, that this was all that we had accidentally collected some really awesome data that we had at that moment. Not enough knowledge and skills to know how to process, analyze, and come to some clear conclusions with. And so early versions of journal articles that we wrote were all they were all desk rejected or they were rejected in a peer review.

00;16;51;28 - 00;17;15;08

Nancy Ross

Some of the desk rejections were like, you know, for non-Mormon publications were like, my Mormon colleague says that you shouldn't be writing about this. So so that was like, we got plenty of plenty of those. And when we when our article, early article versions went to peer review, what the responses we were getting were like, you're not quite done with this yet.

00;17;15;08 - 00;17;41;12

Nancy Ross

And, and we kind of knew that, but we also didn't. A decade ago, we weren't quite sure where to go and what to do. And what we knew we needed to do was to acquire more data handling skills. We needed. We need to we needed more skills as academics. And again, my training was in medieval art history, which did not prepare me to analyze survey data from an online survey.

00;17;41;14 - 00;17;50;09

Nancy Ross

And, you know, and so we were we were both growing up as scholars. Sorry. I'm going to stop there and tag Jessica. Jessica, what do you want to add?

00;17;50;13 - 00;18;11;25

Jessica Finnigan

I think that's quite comprehensive, but I think before starting this survey, I didn't realize how taboo it was to discuss garments because I think internally I realized that it was taboo. But as we start getting this data, nobody's talking about it in the temple. Nobody's talking about it with their children or their parents. Nobody's talking about it with their spouse.

00;18;11;26 - 00;19;00;10

Jessica Finnigan

Nobody's talking about it. And, you know, congregational meetings, just the extreme layers of taboo that we had tapped into. And we did not want to violate that taboo, but we also needed to figure out a way, like Nancy said, of how to deal with the data, but also how to tell those stories so that we're respecting that sacredness of like this religious practice, while also sharing the stories that are so important to understanding what's happening culturally, what's happening, you know, within this very, very demanding practice that is just completely silent and shrouded in mystery and that it really is important not only in the LDS culture, but also very important to, I think, the study

00;19;00;10 - 00;19;23;21

Jessica Finnigan

of religion in general and multiple intersections like religion and gender, religion embodies religion and race. So that was stuff that really came out that we really also had to not be on the data. We also had to really understand what's the existing theory. And we had a lot of friends who were also scholars who were like, look at this theory, look at this theory.

00;19;23;21 - 00;19;28;28

Jessica Finnigan

And that was absolutely instrumental in where the book ended up.

00;19;29;00 - 00;19;52;09

Nancy Ross

One of the things that we found, and this is generally not true of survey data, which is that people don't want to write in the box. So we ask lots of questions in our survey that are like multiple choice or check all that apply kinds of questions, very typical of survey work. But we also asked a number of open ended response questions.

00;19;52;09 - 00;20;13;10

Nancy Ross

And we really, you know, we knew that people generally don't write in the box, but we really wanted to understand. And you have to understand that, like our open ended response questions really were open ended. So we the three main questions that became really important to us were, what are your garments mean to you? Why do you wear garments and how does wearing garments make you feel?

00;20;13;10 - 00;20;42;15

Nancy Ross

And so these were pretty open questions, which we didn't really expect people to give us substantive responses. And what we found was that a lot of people, like, poured their hearts out in these in, in, in these open in the box. Right. They wrote in the box and they wrote their secrets in the box, which, which meant that our data collection had been hugely successful, not only in terms of numbers, but in terms of the quality of data that we got.

00;20;42;16 - 00;21;10;05

Nancy Ross

We got really rich stories and data and a far wider range of experiences than we could have ever imagined. Very quickly, we are blown out of the water with our overly simplistic hypothesis that gender is just this easy divider of experience. And we know, and we realize very quickly that this or that this is not simple and and that we have quite accidentally into something very like complex and interesting.

Project Timeline and the “Mormon Moment”

00;21;10;08 - 00;21;45;10

Nicholas Shrum

Thank you both for for that. I mean, as Jessica said, comprehensive. I mean, you covered the what led you to study this topic, the questions that that you asked of the survey respondents and also some of the challenges and the strengths of doing this kind of research, which other people on the podcast have talked about. And, you know, people will, I'm sure that latter day Saints that are familiar with garments will listen to this podcast and have some of those lingering hesitations about talking about a topic like latter day Saint garments.

00;21;45;10 - 00;22;06;25

Nicholas Shrum

But I think that, like you, you both explain so well that it's taboo until it's not right. Because people if it's if it's opened up, people want to talk about it. And so it's, it's and the other thing I just wanted to double check on. So you started doing this research about what year like.

00;22;06;25 - 00;22;45;08

Nancy Ross

So I think we began the conversation at the end of 2013. That coincided with the time that the church released a video. Like, it's like there's a YouTube video the church releases on garments and and there's a that videos, there's a different version. The churches remade this video a few times in the last since that time. But but while we begin the conversation to figure out what we're going to do for this work, the church releases this video and the video does not.

00;22;45;11 - 00;23;02;24

Nancy Ross

The video is for an audience that is outside of the church, that is trying to explain to outsiders what garments mean, but they're not using any of the language or explanations that are familiar to us within the church. Of course, there's there's they're like one or I mean, today there are a couple of talks that deal with garments.

00;23;02;24 - 00;23;26;08

Nancy Ross

But at the time, there was really only one main talk from the late 90s that that really explained what garments mean. And so this did not align with that. And that that I think was further impetus to kind of move forward with a well, what is this really all the all about? So we do the survey in like the spring or early summer of 2014.

00;23;26;08 - 00;23;28;04

Nancy Ross

So it's been a while.

00;23;28;06 - 00;23;53;13

Nicholas Shrum

The reason I ask is because I'm glad that you reminded me, because for some, I didn't remember that the church had released a video that early. Because I know that since the church has released quite a few videos that actually, you know, that show not just ceremonial clothing and the temple, but also the garments themselves, where people can clearly see what they look like, the marking, that kind of thing on, on the temple clothing.

00;23;53;13 - 00;24;20;15

Nicholas Shrum

But as you also mentioned in the book, this was a time when what is kind of known as the Mormon moment, right following Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, the kind of publicity around Ordain Women movement and other things that kind of it's March Madness right now. So Jimmer Mania was a big part of that as well, right? So there were lots of things that were bringing latter day Saints into the public conversation, especially in the United States.

00;24;20;15 - 00;24;44;05

Nicholas Shrum

And so garments and the anecdote that you share right with and Romney, I don't know if you want to talk about that, like how maybe that was part of the things that brought about a more maybe the church being more willing to talk about garments, but also maybe people being excited to talk about it, whether they wanted to reinforce the taboo or they wanted to kind of break the taboo.

00;24;44;07 - 00;25;08;09

Nancy Ross

Right. So our our book begins with the story of an Romney appearing on Jay Leno during the Romney presidential campaign. And this was this is a really important event. And of course, when you're within the church, you know, anytime there's like a celebrity engagement with a big platform, it's kind of a big deal, right? You know, I think we all remember some of some of some of these moments, right?

00;25;08;10 - 00;25;44;14

Nancy Ross

If we have grown up within, within the church. And so Ann Romney goes on to Jay Leno to try and answer the question of why, out of why Americans should vote for a mormon. And, and and that's kind of, you know, Romney's Mormonism is kind of this weird sticking issue, and she is trying to address that. And the next morning, like in all of the blogs, in the Facebook's Facebook groups, people are talking not necessarily about what and Romney said or the conversation with Jay Leno, but rather that they aren't talking.

00;25;44;17 - 00;26;10;27

Nancy Ross

They are wondering whether an Romney was wearing garments because that skirt looked a little too short. You wouldn't be able to ask, you know, they couldn't see and or, you know, were her sleeves too short? They couldn't see and detect garment lines. And so some of that conversation was around, how could we vote for, you know, Romney Ann Romney wasn't representing Mormonism very well if she perhaps wasn't wearing her garments.

00;26;10;27 - 00;26;38;22

Nancy Ross

And I'm in no way in this conversation trying to like Judge and Romney and her, you know, underwear and clothing choices. But that's what the conversation was. And what happened is it very quickly, then, a number of people, a number of journalists who had been following some of these social media spaces quickly begin to report on this conversation, like, whoa, the Mormons are apparently really upset about what kind of underwear and was wearing last night.

00;26;38;24 - 00;27;09;16

Nancy Ross

Isn't that kind of weird? And, and one of the communities that Jessica and I participated in, the feminist Mormon Housewives community, both the we were not bloggers, but we we read the blog and we were part of the Facebook community associated with the blog. Lisa Butterworth, who is now a friend of like, you know, now, a friend of mine is these relationships change over time, you know, kind of came onto the blog and was like, hey, can we not comment on a woman's underwear?

00;27;09;17 - 00;27;32;08

Nancy Ross

Choices like, this is not a good look for us. Like, this is, this is this is just keeping it weird, folks. This is this is a this within the community, we are used to judging people's underwear choices. But this is not a great look on a national stage. And and so that is the story. That is the story that opens, opens, opens our book.

00;27;32;16 - 00;28;02;09

Jessica Finnigan

And it's a great story because so much of our data reflects that type of surveillance within the community, where people do feel that they're being judged for or for not wearing their garments in a certain way. Men and women are reporting that in large numbers and across, you know, we divided our population into it's very hard to do in religion to divide your population because there's so much baggage when you do this.

00;28;02;09 - 00;28;35;04

Jessica Finnigan

But it is necessary in sociology to have a discussion. Otherwise it's just a blob of data. And so we did we had belief questions in in our survey, which really reflected a lot of Pew's general belief questions. But also we adapted the temple recommend questions within the LDS church. And so with that data, we were able to sort of create four groups along what we called conforming and non-conforming belief.

00;28;35;04 - 00;28;53;10

Jessica Finnigan

And across all four of those groups, we have people reporting this intense surveillance within the community that they are feeling judged. So I think Ann Romney story is a nice segue into that Mormon moment, but also into our data.

Respecting Boundaries and Navigating “Taboos”

00;28;53;13 - 00;29;09;01

Nicholas Shrum

Absolutely. And thank you for introducing these categories. I want to come back to those in just a moment. The other thing I just want to say, kind of as we start to get into the specifics of your project.

00;29;09;03 - 00;29;43;06

Nicholas Shrum

Regarding the, you know that there is a taboo around things with Mormon garments and with the temple. I think one thing that's very admirable about your work, but also speaks to kind of how, you know, garments have taken on this, this taboo and this, this silence that that's difficult to talk about is that you all do a really good job of talking about the things that respect, I think, institutional boundaries and guidelines that they themselves, as the church has put forward for the most part, and that you kind of poke holes in that.

00;29;43;08 - 00;30;06;21

Nicholas Shrum

Why couldn't we actually talk about certain things, that there wasn't actually a prohibition, like a religious or a quote unquote sacred prohibition to talk about certain things? It reminds me of how last season on the podcast, we had Jonathan Staple, who talks a lot about the temple. And, you know, there are certain things that as scholars, scholars can respect, that they can respect certain boundaries.

00;30;06;27 - 00;30;22;01

Nicholas Shrum

And I think that you and also Jonathan safely have done a good job of respecting those boundaries. But also, you know, these are things that help us to understand and that the church has also gotten to the forefront of starting to to talk about. Did you have something you wanted to add, Nancy?

00;30;22;02 - 00;30;50;10

Nancy Ross

Yes. No. I would just say that this has been a really difficult this has been an ongoing project for us in writing this book. How do we talk up? How do we break the taboo and like and and and be respectful at the same time? This is not at all an easy thing. I think that people often see the title and they assume that what we have written as an exposé, and I do not believe that that is what we produced.

00;30;50;10 - 00;31;13;07

Nancy Ross

And I think we very carefully avoid, you know, we were very careful to like, not whatever that work is, that we did not do that work, that we tried to honor people's experiences, and we try to talk about them in a way that explains where those come from and also sit, you know, positive experiences alongside more challenging experiences.

00;31;13;07 - 00;31;48;17

Nancy Ross

To say that this is a really complicated practice, but but we do not. For instance, we do not include any images of garments in the book. And that was a very conscious choice. And of course, as an art historian, I'm always going to be inclined to like include pictures of things. But we made the choice early on that we were not going to be included, that one of the lines we would not cross was showing images of garments that we would describe them, that we would discuss them, that this was a book about people's experiences, but that we weren't, that we were really going to honor what had been shared with us.

00;31;48;17 - 00;31;58;28

Nancy Ross

And to do that, we needed to we needed to find some kind of balance, even as we we do engage with the practice very critically.

00;31;59;00 - 00;32;21;05

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, I think that it's, it's, it's, it's an but I mean, I just love the boundary between or the way that you're able to tap into that. There's absolutely an appetite to talk about these things like it's there's a taboo kind of. But people really do want to talk about them, but that there is a scholarly responsibility that I think that you, you hold up very well.

Conforming and Non-Conforming Belief Categories

00;32;21;08 - 00;32;50;14

Nicholas Shrum

Coming back to what Jessica had introduced with these, these categories, I actually had a question about these categories. So as you had mentioned, there's conforming women, conforming men, non-conforming women and non-conforming men. I'm wondering if you don't necessarily have to get into the nitty gritty of how you actually quantified these, these different categories. I wonder if you could kind of talk about the parameters of how you are able to employ a concept of conformity.

00;32;50;16 - 00;33;12;09

Nicholas Shrum

For instance, how did you arrive at the category categorization for each subject? Or for instance, what are like maybe telltale signs of somebody conforming, somebody not conforming? For when people read the book, they can say, you know, they may want to themselves if they're a if they're a mormon, say, oh, if I'm going to read these experiences, am I a conforming or a non-conforming Mormon?

00;33;12;09 - 00;33;14;14

Nicholas Shrum

How how might we make sense of that?

00;33;14;15 - 00;33;35;15

Jessica Finnigan

Yeah. So within that question, part of the questionnaire that I was describing, we took very basic belief questions from here. Like do you believe in Jesus Christ? A lot of them overlapped with the temple recommend questions, but we did try to take and reworded slightly. The temple recommend questions like, do you believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet?

00;33;35;17 - 00;34;12;11

Jessica Finnigan

And we really divided it in. So there were ten questions. And if you score to eight or above, you were in conforming. And if you scored seven. So it was a very high bar for conforming. We didn't want to create any ambiguity around, because we think that the LDS church really is a high demands religion, which would fit into that's a broader sociological religious term where there is a high bar for belief, and there is a high bar for being a member of the community in a lot of ways.

00;34;12;11 - 00;34;37;12

Jessica Finnigan

And so we tried to make that bar very high. So eight or above, they were in conforming. We didn't differentiate what eight you had to have. Like we didn't weigh current prophets versus Joseph Smith differently, but we did have that high bar. So the individuals who are in the high conforming group really do.

00;34;37;15 - 00;34;57;26

Jessica Finnigan

Report belief. That is very in line with passing a temple recommend question. And I think without any stress, like they wouldn't be doing any cognitive dissonance to answer those questions. They're like, yeah, that's correct. Yeah, that's what I believe. Does I answer your question?

00;34;57;29 - 00;34;58;08

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah.

00;34;58;08 - 00;34;59;06

Speaker 5

It does.

00;34;59;08 - 00;35;23;09

Nicholas Shrum

One of the reasons I was just curious is because I, when I was reading the book, you so part of this big part of this work is that it is auto ethnographic and that it has these stories from yourself, Jessica and Nancy and Larissa as well, that you're able to discuss kind of your own approach to it, but then you also self-identify throughout it as nonconforming.

00;35;23;09 - 00;35;43;17

Nicholas Shrum

So I was actually just kind of curious how how one that is reading the book may say they might read the experience of a conforming Mormon and say, well, I don't know about that. Am I a conforming Mormon because I am in line with this or not? I was just curious kind of how how people might how they might approach that.

00;35;43;17 - 00;36;10;04

Nancy Ross

Yeah. And I think right. There's a technical right. Like and Jessica, just to describe some of the technical piece of that. And I think the, the broader piece of that would be the presence of doubt. Right. So a nonconforming believer would be someone who experiences doubt in some in some kind of significant way. And Janna Reese uses in her work love her work.

00;36;10;06 - 00;36;51;08

Nancy Ross

Great colleague uses the language of believers and doubters. We had played with some of that language as well, and then decided that there's a lot of pathology of doubt in Mormonism, and that there was maybe a little more baggage than we wanted. And so with that, we also wanted to emphasize that people who doubt also believe. And so, like referencing conforming believers and non-conforming believers still kept still like, you know, this was not an all or nothing proposition, but rather that people who had doubt had belief.

00;36;51;08 - 00;37;13;26

Nancy Ross

We did not. We had basically no one in the survey who was like, I don't believe any of these things, like, all of this is trash. We didn't have that. We didn't see that. At the other end, we had this large cluster of very conforming beliefs, but we had just this huge range of people who experienced doubt, and they also still held belief.

00;37;13;26 - 00;37;37;23

Nancy Ross

And we wanted to honor that as well. Right. Like right. These are these are not like numerically these are tidy categories, but like ideas wise these are these are kind of messy categories. And we didn't want to like be as researchers, be judging our participants with religious language that, you know, judge them for having the wrong kind of beliefs somehow.

00;37;37;23 - 00;37;42;14

Nancy Ross

So that's where we we landed on the awkward language of conforming and non-conforming.

00;37;42;16 - 00;37;52;11

Jessica Finnigan

And a lot of the traditional language within creating these groups within sociology of religion is high and low, and we wanted to also avoid that baggage.

00;37;52;14 - 00;37;52;21

Speaker 5

No.

00;37;52;22 - 00;38;11;04

Nicholas Shrum

And you do both. I just want to be very clear. I think that it works very, very well. I just want for people that there are quite a few nonacademic people that listen to the podcast that I want them to understand, because it's a high, a high tension religion. Right, that people will if you're not judging, they will self judge.

00;38;11;06 - 00;38;32;06

Nicholas Shrum

Right? When they when they read it and they'll say, oh man. Maybe I am a nonconforming Mormon and then have that open up the floodgates to a, to a certain kind of thought process. But as you mentioned, with people like Janna Reese, right. We learn from the sociology of religion, especially in high tension religions, that, that, that, that middle.

Findings: Belief Types

00;38;32;07 - 00;38;56;16

Nicholas Shrum

So in Jana's study, the liminal Mormons and then in your language, the nonconforming Mormon, this is this is pretty big. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It can it doesn't need to mean certain things. Yeah. Excellent. Well I appreciate the discussion about that. I'd love to get into some of the findings that that this book brings up.

00;38;56;16 - 00;39;25;27

Nicholas Shrum

So it's broken into five chapters on different topics. So the history of the garment a chapter on belief, gender, belief and gender, a chapter on secrecy and sacredness, another on shame and worthiness and another nobody in control. So I was wondering if we could start off first with some of the major takeaways that that you had as you investigated the role that you call them, belief types play and how these respondents discuss their garment experience.

00;39;26;02 - 00;39;28;25

Nicholas Shrum

And if we if we could talk about that for a minute.

00;39;28;27 - 00;39;54;00

Nancy Ross

Yeah. So what we saw and what we really wanted to. Right. So when we got our big mess of data and we finally figure out, okay, we check our data against a lot of different demographic categories, it's not education level that helps explain people's, you know, the huge range of experiences with garments that we come up with, this belief index, we combine it with gender and we come up with these four groups.

00;39;54;02 - 00;40;23;13

Nancy Ross

One of the things that we see that we saw very quickly is that we can start with conforming men, conforming men, because garment design changes over the years have broadly followed trends in men's underwear, broadly speaking, conforming when men do not have a lot of problems with their garments, they don't necessarily problem attires their garments very much.

00;40;23;13 - 00;40;53;24

Nancy Ross

They may indicate that they may be are hot in the summer, or that they they generate extra heat on the body, and that that garment wearing is fairly easily easy. And that when they talked about what their garments meant to them, they. There's a particular talk by Carlos essay from the I think it's 97, 1997, and they describe their what their garments mean to them and broadly the same ways that church officials in church talks are describing garments.

00;40;53;24 - 00;41;27;12

Nancy Ross

And again, in these fairly abstract ways, not in like embodied experience ways, in fairly abstract ways, then we have non-conforming men. And this was this was one of the huge disruptive finds of our survey, which is that that men did not all fit into the same group. Sorry and apologies, Nicholas, for, for, for maybe over, over generalizing there, but that nonconforming men had actually very real challenges with their garments.

00;41;27;12 - 00;42;14;27

Nancy Ross

And that silence also held made them hold their challenges as secrets. So one of the things that we saw that was very clear with nonconforming men is that they felt that they that the church was controlling them through their underwear, that they maybe had expected as men in a gender traditional religion, of having more agency. But the fact that they could not have agency over a choice like their underwear really made them feel they're created like a lot of psychological discomfort with this sense of underwear control, and they often felt like their wives would be really upset with them and would see it as like setting aside the marriage or like taking off a wedding

00;42;14;27 - 00;42;36;17

Nancy Ross

ring. There was a lot of language that kind of compared the kind of demonstrated that people often saw garments as like a kind of wedding ring, not representing just their temple, their temple covenants to like, obey God in an abstract way, but their commitment to their spouse and their ceiling. And so this was really not what we expected.

00;42;36;18 - 00;43;07;11

Nancy Ross

We would not expect men to describe their garments in this way. And and for there to be such like psychological friction there. Then we had conforming women and conforming women often, of course, these are all ranges of experience. They often describe their that they liked the what their garments meant, much like conforming men. But they would also describe that garments as underwear didn't work for them.

00;43;07;11 - 00;43;49;13

Nancy Ross

So in the same paragraph be like, I love what my garments mean, and garments as underwear is a very difficult experience. I wish that this were different somehow. Non-conforming women, like nonconforming men, often noted that sense of feeling, control, feeling controlled, that non-conforming men had experienced. But they were also quick to point out the many embodied challenges of wearing garments with menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, disability, that there were just a lot of challenges that they that they communicated and often wondered if that's really what God needed from them.

00;43;49;19 - 00;43;51;06

Speaker 5

No, thank you for that.

Embodiment as a Central Theme

00;43;51;06 - 00;44;23;14

Nicholas Shrum

That broad breakdown of kind of how these belief types set the stage for the approach that these people bring to their garment wearing, or how they think about garments in the religion. One of the. So you brought up a couple of really key issues. So you had obedience, you had embodiment and actually want to ask about embodiment, because I think that's one of the really noble and admirable parts of this book is, is the attention to embodiment, especially something that is big in the study of religion right now?

00;44;23;16 - 00;44;40;14

Nicholas Shrum

Wonder if you could kind of introduce listeners to how bodies are such, you call it, you know, a central issue in the book. Why can't you separate? I mean, it's kind of an obvious question, but why can't you separate embodiment and bodies from garments?

00;44;40;21 - 00;44;42;11

Nancy Ross

Do you want to tackle that? Jessica.

00;44;42;14 - 00;45;06;10

Jessica Finnigan

Yeah, I mean, at a basic level, the body is wearing the garment 24 over seven, right? If you're following a very in if you're following a very strict interpretation of it, you're often wearing them to work out. You're wearing them in every aspect of your life. So I think that's really something that's underappreciated in the church wide discussion with garments.

00;45;06;10 - 00;45;31;04

Jessica Finnigan

Even now, with the changes that have come up with the influencers, that it still is the body that has to meet this practice head on every day. And so we have, you know, it's not an outer layer. While they're still embodiments, they were the hijab or wearing a priestly collar of estimates. This is your base layer. And so it's becoming very real.

00;45;31;04 - 00;45;56;23

Jessica Finnigan

You know, with body heat, with different body excretions, with all of these like, nitty gritty things that are kind of also taboo to talk about in the world. So we're having this religious taboo and this body taboo on top of each other. I don't think it's necessarily polite company, you know, to discuss your underwear even outside of religion.

00;45;56;23 - 00;46;30;25

Jessica Finnigan

And so you get all of these layers. We get in the surveys. There's just especially with women, as Nancy mentioned, that there's just these practical realities of this religious practice. And even when you're sleeping, you're still wearing garments. You're not necessarily wearing a nun's habit to bed, but you are wearing garments to bed. And so there's no really church approved break for, you know, bodies getting some type of, you know, reprieve from this practice.

00;46;31;00 - 00;46;53;26

Jessica Finnigan

There are some minor changes in the current handbook for medical reasons, but that's very new and how that's being actually implemented. We don't have any data on. But I think it's really important that there's a practical aspects of this religious practice that we're asking people to undertake. You know, two thirds of their life every day.

00;46;53;28 - 00;47;05;13

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah. Thank you for that. And one, why I think this is so important as well, is that so many of the respondents I think speak to.

00;47;05;15 - 00;47;34;02

Nicholas Shrum

Ideas that maybe some, most, I would say conforming Mormons in your study don't really think about, but that scholars of embodied religion are thinking about all the time. And so one of those things is that to to to study embodiment and religion is to acknowledge for the most part, right, that things that are commonplace in when people think about religion, like belief, right, are not necessarily these abstract things that happen outside of the body.

00;47;34;04 - 00;47;54;03

Nicholas Shrum

Right. So scholars of the rigid and embodiment belief happens at some point. But first you have to be alive, right? Like in your body is impacting belief, all of these kinds of things. And there's so many really interesting responses that you include in the book of people saying, you know, when I don't wear my garment, that impacts my belief.

00;47;54;03 - 00;48;32;28

Nicholas Shrum

And, you know, maybe the Protestant people in the audience that are listening say, what does it have anything to do with belief? Right. That has nothing to do with, you know, confessing that Jesus is, is, is Lord or anything like that. This is. But for Mormons, it is. It's a it's one of those places where maybe it's not acknowledged enough in latter day Saint discourse about truly how embodied this religion is, aside from the fact that garments stem from a very embodied practice of being in a temple that is very, very physical, that that you can't experience without a body.

00;48;32;29 - 00;48;35;17

Nicholas Shrum

Right. Sorry. You had something you wanted to add, Nancy?

00;48;35;18 - 00;49;06;08

Nancy Ross

No. And just one of the challenges then, is that all of the people who make and formally surveil on behalf of the institution are conforming. Men broadly have a kind of assumption that garments are comfortable underwear, that all people broadly experience the same embodied physical sensations with garments, and as though this is just easy and natural and, well, everybody wears underwear.

00;49;06;08 - 00;49;34;03

Nancy Ross

So this is the underwear, and the underwear is designed to meet the needs of my body. And that is just not true. With all of the bodies, people experience physical sensation very different ways. We construct bodies in very different ways in Mormonism. And then that ends up the construction of those bodies, the experiences of the body. Then interact with another third thing, the garment, and produce all kinds of different experiences.

00;49;34;04 - 00;49;51;20

Nancy Ross

Not and absolutely not just positive ones. And if you feel a God require that God requires you to wear garments, and garments are a very difficult physical sensation that is going to absolutely impact your experience as an understanding of God and your relationship to God.

00;49;51;21 - 00;50;24;02

Jessica Finnigan

And we actually presented to the Church Research Correlation Department, and that was one of the things that we brought up is that in our data, there are women especially who are reporting these physical problems with their garments. And then that spirals into, you know, disbelief and like a faith crisis because of what their body experienced, it goes against a lot of the broader narrative in the church is like, why people leave like it's but like their body is experiencing pain.

00;50;24;02 - 00;50;42;28

Jessica Finnigan

They're not getting help. They're getting no relief from their bishop, from beehive clothing, from anything. And then it like leads them into questioning, does God really love me? Do I belong in this practice? Right? Like what is happening? And that was also very surprising to us as well.

00;50;43;01 - 00;51;22;10

Nancy Ross

And this building on that, we are also taught to in within the church to interpret bodily sensations as like a sign of the truthfulness of the gospel. Right. And so when you are taught that, you know good warm feelings when you pray or when you read the Book of Mormon are a sign of the truthfulness of things, and that bad feelings might be a sign of a lack of truth, then it's going to be very difficult than you might use exactly those same processes to interpret your experiences with garments, and come to the conclusion that something isn't right here like that.

00;51;22;10 - 00;51;25;27

Nancy Ross

These things don't add up in the way that it feels like they should.

00;51;26;01 - 00;51;49;06

Nicholas Shrum

Yeah, that's a really I mean, both of those comments were were really insightful. And this idea of expectation is a huge part of the respondents. Right. So there's latter day Saints typically don't first put on garments until at least the age of 18. Right. And so but that's 18 years is a lot of formative time that people have probably heard about garments.

00;51;49;06 - 00;52;13;19

Nicholas Shrum

And so they build up expectations about what that's supposed to mean, what they expect that that will be like when it happens. And oftentimes the lived experience of that, right, is that it doesn't line up and that causes discomfort. I mean, this is also similar with with many things, including, right, the temple ceremonies that people report. Oh, that is not what I was expecting or and I was expecting to feel a certain way and that didn't happen.

00;52;13;19 - 00;52;47;09

Nicholas Shrum

But man, it's not necessarily just that you went to the temple for the first time and it wasn't the presentation that you were expecting. Now it's man, I'm it. I wasn't expecting to feel quote unquote frumpy is is one that like women had explained quite a bit in the book. Right. This I that really interesting intersection between, you know, embodiment and kind of these questions of religious expectation and trying to fall in line into orthodoxy and trying to tick off boxes.

00;52;47;17 - 00;53;11;26

Nicholas Shrum

So I think the way that you discuss embodiment is, is really, really important. The next question I want to ask is, and we've already alluded to it on page 101 of the book you describe, you introduce this concept of the social cost of wearing garments. And you we've discussed briefly kind of the, the, the role that surveillance plays.

Social Costs of Wearing Garments

00;53;11;27 - 00;53;32;24

Nicholas Shrum

Right. So when people are discussing an Romney's underwear choices, that's obviously a social cost that that people get. If we're going to talk about an Romney, people could probably talk about me. But what are some of these social costs that you observed or that that came out during these responses, or for anybody that would like to?

00;53;32;26 - 00;54;12;01

Nancy Ross

Yeah, sure. Just that there was so that when people of course, when we're within the community, we we understand that you can see people's garment lines. So even though underwear we under we'd broadly understand underwear in society is something that is hidden and that of people's underwear choices as private ones that within the church community that we those that the lines that are created are distinctive and then that your underwear choices become public, but then only recognizable to insiders within the community.

00;54;12;01 - 00;54;52;08

Nancy Ross

So there is this community surveillance that happens where you can often tell, right. And I live I live in Saint George. I live in a very Mormon community. There are a lot of people walking around wearing garment and and that is visible that like that is visible. It's and it's just not it's not just that like Nancy Ross is a pervert, but rather that like, this is and what we understood, what we understood through, through the survey is that garment that checking to see if other people are wearing their garments is something that many people in the community learn to do, and that many people also have the experience of noticing that other people are

00;54;52;08 - 00;55;16;22

Nancy Ross

looking for or checking for garment lines. And so, so this is not just not just a select minority of church members who are overly concerned with other people's underwear. This becomes a kind of shorthand for whether or not someone is a worthy Mormon or a good Mormon. Are they wearing their garments? And that then becomes this dividing line.

00;55;16;22 - 00;55;40;22

Nancy Ross

Going back to our initial story within an Romney like, can she even be a good Mormon representing Mormonism on a national stage? If it's not super clear that she is wearing garments in this moment, you know, and and so there's a lot of judgment that is associated with whether or not you are you have the correct underwear lines or not.

00;55;40;23 - 00;56;23;25

Nancy Ross

And so it's not just that there are costs to taking garments to, to like, you know, throughout this whole conversation, there are costs to church members to take their garments off and then to be judged as unworthy by church members and, and potentially spouses or extended family. But to wear them may also come with a cost. Right to wear them may also have a significant embodied cost that might be very difficult, that might create psychological and physical distress and then difficulty in thinking about, well, how do I navigate this essential religious practice in my life?

00;56;23;25 - 00;56;51;24

Nancy Ross

If this if there is like real if emotionally or physically, this is a very difficult experience. And so it's not just that there are costs for wearing them or costs for taking them off. There are costs on these are this is a difficult set of choices for people to navigate in. And the silence and the secrecy that surrounds this process makes it difficult to have open conversation.

00;56;51;27 - 00;57;21;03

Nancy Ross

That would create more flexibility. One of the things some and throughout this process I've been like, yes, I'm wearing I'm writing a book on garments to people in my life. One of the people are like, oh, well, is your conclusion that the church shouldn't do this? And I'm like, no, no, it's it's that I wish we had more open conversation, because lifting that kind of veil of secrecy would allow for more open and reasonable negotiation and accommodation.

00;57;21;05 - 00;57;48;27

Nancy Ross

Throughout this project, Jessica and I have talked a lot about comparing this to like the practice of fasting, where within the community there are these widely acknowledged carve outs for people who would obviously not be able to engage in fasting for two meals. You know, if you are pregnant, if you are sick, if you are taking a medication that required food, you know, young children should not be like obliged to engage in this practice, right?

00;57;48;28 - 00;58;16;26

Nancy Ross

Like they're like a number of very obvious carve outs for community members who would not be able to engage very reasonably in this embodied practice for their health, for the for their health and safety. But we don't have that same conversation with garments, and that the sense of taboo makes it hard to have that conversation now.

00;58;16;27 - 00;58;47;27

Nicholas Shrum

Thank you for that. And you you introduced this this idea of of signaling worthiness. Right. And that's a huge one. And maybe, maybe the last kind of like specific question relating to the content of the book that I'd like to, to get your thoughts on relates to obedience and control. And just so that listeners know there's, there's so much really, really good content and, and thematic discussions in this book relating to, to these things of obedience and control.

Obedience, Control, and Sexuality

00;58;47;27 - 00;59;25;27

Nicholas Shrum

And one of the very central themes is how garment wearing, both theologically and then embodied and just social consequences impact human sexuality and intimacy. It's just it's a massive part of this that is not part of the popular discourse at all. And so that's another very admirable thing that this book does. One has really quick about obedience and control, especially an argument that you make that they serve as a physical and metaphorical boundary around Mormon bodies, acting as a constant reminder of the church's influence over the lives of its members.

00;59;26;03 - 00;59;55;07

Nicholas Shrum

And so I'm I'm asking you to reflect on kind of the physical and the metaphorical boundaries. We've already talked a quite a bit about that, but maybe more specifically, is is it appropriate to kind of conclude that some of these in conclusions or consequences of garment wedding, are they intentional? Right. Are like thinking from a very maybe religious studies ritual kind of perspective.

00;59;55;08 - 01;00;26;24

Nicholas Shrum

I mean, there are intentions here, right? That behind whether it's the institution itself or from Joseph Smith's thought or those that were in charge of developing the changes and stuff that a lot of these consequences are results are intended. I'm just wondering if you could reflect on kind of there's unintended consequences, but then there's intended consequences. What are your thoughts about, you know, how it functions in the community?

01;00;26;26 - 01;01;08;24

Nancy Ross

I'm going to go with a the answer of yes, I'm to I'm going to say that I think that I think one of the legacies of polygamy within the LDS church, within the church today, is the sense that deviating from cultural norms and from white, evangelical, Protestant like cultural norms created problems for the church in terms of preaching and expanding the message and doing missionary work, and that that that the legacy of polygamy has been a whole project of the 20th century to try and overcome.

01;01;08;25 - 01;01;51;10

Nancy Ross

Right. Like, I think that that is real. I think that that is very, very real. And so do church members. And do church leaders make comments? Over the course of the 20th century that identify the restraint of sexual behavior as a priority for the church and is teaching. Yes, yes, yes we do. Yes, that's that's that's real. And and and do I think that church leaders have a clear understanding of how this impacts women and how that functions when you set up women as gatekeepers of men's sexuality?

01;01;51;13 - 01;02;41;18

Nancy Ross

Maybe a little, but probably not a lot. Do I think that they understand that how much difficulty garment wearing, combined with modesty discussions and the formation of young women and and men have created probably strong reflexes of dissociation in, in many church members. Probably not. And so so I think that there are both intended I think that some of this is intended and I think some of it is not intended, but I do I think that and I think that the silence around garments has protected those who make the decisions about such things at the larger general level and at the local level, ignorant of and that this is right, like a kind of

01;02;41;19 - 01;03;26;21

Nancy Ross

sacred ignorance of some of kind of protected these norms and have prevented more open and honest discussion around and around such things. You know, the you know, I remember my nephews coming home from their missions and, and making jokes about, you know, being a really good missionary means you're going to have a hot wife with lots of great sex, or that somehow the implication, without ever understanding that you, that that various messages might have actually that that both men and women might absorb may actually just have created sexual dysfunction.

01;03;26;23 - 01;03;39;27

Nancy Ross

And, and that's a really sad story. Like, that's, that's a very sad story. That is a very difficult one to talk with, to talk about within circles of conforming believers.

01;03;40;04 - 01;04;16;07

Jessica Finnigan

I think the discussion that the church wants to have around garments and the silence or the secrecy around it, is that people can have their own interpretation and that it's between you and God. When you know, the discussion we've had this last hour disrupts that entire thing. But I think in practice, what happens is it becomes culturally more and more extreme that the interpretation becomes the most rigorous interpretation, and then that becomes adopted and then that spirals into the next generations most interpreted, like we've moved away from, like the protection.

01;04;16;07 - 01;04;43;18

Jessica Finnigan

But I think the modesty and the sexuality really has, you know, intentionally or unintentionally become a lot of the meaning of garments. And I think, as Nancy pointed out, that, like, there's a lot of conflicting information, even in the most conforming men, they do not complain about their garments for themselves, but they complained about how those garments impacted their sex lives within their marriage.

01;04;43;21 - 01;05;00;10

Jessica Finnigan

So I think if they're bringing that up is a very real situation that the church I don't think is aware of that there. I mean, we had men say I probably would have had 2 or 3 more kids if my wife wasn't wearing garments like to that extreme situation.

01;05;00;13 - 01;05;01;09

Speaker 6

Wow. Well.

Why Read This Book?

01;05;01;13 - 01;05;30;24

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent answers to a very poorly formulated question. Just goes to show how well you know, your your your your really, really well written book and with a lot of excellent content. Thank you for discussion. I just had a couple of brief concluding questions. I always ask every author or group of authors on the podcast. First of all, why should people that aren't necessarily interested, that aren't necessarily interested in Mormon studies read this book?

01;05;30;26 - 01;05;34;26

Nancy Ross

I think that we.

01;05;34;28 - 01;05;57;26

Nancy Ross

Tackle the like, you know, going back to some of the points you made, I think the discussions around understanding, like belief is an intersection of identity that we might understand within a system of intersectionality is an important one, especially for scholars of religion who are interested in issues around intersectionality. That helps to highlight some, maybe even some of the challenges of embodiment.

01;05;57;29 - 01;06;41;13

Nancy Ross

So I think the conversation around belief, the conversation of embodiment, the conversation around agency is I think that those are important ones. And for I appreciate the conversation, the question you have around sex and sexuality, I feel like people are a little hesitant to ask, you know, such questions because it can feel very awkward. And I have come to appreciate that within the evangelical studies and that many scholars, historians and sociologists are really trying to engage very directly with what is the legacy of evangelical purity culture in their communities.

01;06;41;13 - 01;07;06;14

Nancy Ross

And I feel like we have not really reckoned in Mormon studies with our own. And so as we've been doing a lot of this work, we've been taking a lot of cues from our Mormon feminist friends and scholars who have done who have done some of this work, and also from the ways in which even scholars of evangelical Christianity are engaging with this work today.

01;07;06;14 - 01;07;48;02

Nancy Ross

I think, and understanding that we understand that these are not the same, but they are. We are cousins of traditions with our even with with the evangelical community, and that we are trying to do some of this same work for our for our own community. So that. Right, like there might be a trend like embodiment or understanding sexual purity culture and understanding it like is a trend in one place and, and one area of religious scholarship and understanding that there's a different but related conversation that we can have in a different place, if that, if that makes sense.

01;07;48;04 - 01;07;49;16

Speaker 6

Absolutely, yeah.

01;07;49;18 - 01;07;56;15

Nicholas Shrum

Is there something you would like to add, Jessica, about, maybe why people outside of Mormon studies should read this book?

01;07;56;17 - 01;08;20;21

Jessica Finnigan

I think because this book was so demanding in order to discuss garments that it is a new frame for seeing existing theory. And like Nancy described, like we're layering on top all of these other movements and how they're discussing embodiment. And I think that garments really is a very unique intersection of a lot of the existing literature.

01;08;20;23 - 01;08;46;25

Nicholas Shrum

Well, it's one that I this book is one that I will recommend at the University of Virginia. I've been and as as a mormon at the University of Virginia, I've been asked by many different people from different countries, international students, people domestic in the United States that have different religious traditions, ask me about garments. And this is really nice to have a an academic scholarly work that I can say, here you go.

Impact on the Scholarly Study of Religion

01;08;46;25 - 01;09;28;08

Nicholas Shrum

Like, this is how that, you know, from a sociological and ethnographic approach, right? This is a really helpful way of understanding a lot of what goes into Mormon garment wearing that they think they will find insightful and useful. My last question is, is the big kind of religious studies question? I'm wondering if you could comment on how this project and doing the research and analyzing the data, and then interpreting and writing about the data in the book, how IT influencer confirmed your approach to the study of religion in general, or kind of how you see religion operating, what did it change for you?

01;09;28;10 - 01;09;32;16

Nicholas Shrum

How you view religion through a scholarly lens?

01;09;32;18 - 01;10;06;22

Jessica Finnigan

I think it reinforced ideas that I learned in grad school that discussing religion really is complicated, and that people try to write religion too quickly. I think because there is this pressure within academia to, you know, publish or perish kind of unfortunately. But I think really good religious studies work takes a lot of time and for, you know, restarted and stopped and I had a breakdown.

01;10;06;25 - 01;10;32;12

Jessica Finnigan

I got to back away from it for a while, but there's no way we could have written this in the first year or even the second year. And I think that it's okay if you sit with data for a long time to try to make sense of it, especially when you're pushing into new areas or a new religious practice or discussing things that don't exist.

01;10;32;12 - 01;10;55;14

Jessica Finnigan

And I think there's a lot of pressure in academia to not take that time. But for me, I think that that really is why the book is the way it is, is because, you know, we were largely forced to take a lot of time to sit with it and to gain skills and to understand what these people were telling us in their stories.

01;10;55;14 - 01;10;58;04

Jessica Finnigan

And that's my big takeaway.

01;10;58;06 - 01;10;58;18

Nancy Ross

I love.

01;10;58;18 - 01;10;59;15

Jessica Finnigan

That.

01;10;59;17 - 01;11;25;06

Nancy Ross

And that was so true. There were so many times when we had to take a break from this project because it felt too heavy. Because it wasn't just academic, right? This was also reflecting on our own experiences and better understanding our own experiences. And I just feel like there were so many devastating epiphanies along along the way.

01;11;25;09 - 01;12;07;01

Nancy Ross

I also want to say that for me, one of the one of the big takeaways and reflecting because I think we all so we all understand the our coauthor group that we that that we became nonconforming believers, but we also all have the experience of being conforming, believing Mormon women and that there are that from that conforming, believing space, that concepts like agency feel and look so very different between in the conforming space and in the non-conforming space, and that there is like the wisdom and perspective of the conforming space.

01;12;07;01 - 01;12;35;27

Nancy Ross

And there's also a really important wisdom and perspective of the non-conforming space. And if we are only understanding Mormonism or a religious tradition from one of those vantage points, we are missing a bigger picture of like belief and community dynamics and that that like, you know, long live the nonconforming believer. And they point put a really there's a really important place for for non-conforming belief.

01;12;35;27 - 01;13;00;06

Nancy Ross

And I imagine any I mean, not all traditions emphasize believing, you know, but but within that situating these things and discussing these things alongside each other is a very productive conversation and one that I, you know, hope, you know, hope to see it bump into more often.

01;13;00;09 - 01;13;36;18

Jessica Finnigan

I had one more thing, just from a practical writing standpoint, that I think it's really valuable to bring somebody else in. So Larissa wasn't in the initial survey, but she had done adjacent research, and Nancy brought her in, and that was absolutely vital to finishing this project. So if you're stuck just from a practical standpoint, bring in some new energy of people who have a background and can bring like she was invaluable to talk just to finishing the project, but to also fleshing out what we have around race.

01;13;36;18 - 01;14;00;21

Jessica Finnigan

And, you know, she also added to like every chapter, like instrumentally, like she's everywhere in this book. So I don't want anyone to like her, especially to think like, oh, because I think we talk about like, why have we set up the survey? But she is, you know, the book. Like, so I think that it's really important to if you are stuck, bring in somebody who can help you get unstuck.

01;14;00;23 - 01;14;22;21

Nicholas Shrum

Those are excellent thoughts. And I mean, there's a number of things that are one that the best scholarship is collaborative. I'm finding that myself, my own work. I'm in the middle of dissertation dissertation writing, and I'm stuck in my own head all the time. And you have to get out. You have to talk to people. You have to get these perspectives to help you write through and think through things.

01;14;22;24 - 01;14;47;04

Nicholas Shrum

The last thing that I'll just mention that I'm so appreciative of, especially in Mormon studies, because one of one of the I mean, this is the case, I think, with many traditions, specific fields, it's it's it's vulnerable in many ways. You know, Nancy, when you mentioned that it was it was at times too heavy. I can empathize with that and some of my own work.

01;14;47;04 - 01;15;21;02

Nicholas Shrum

I have to take a break because it's just too heavy. But it's important. And so first of all, just gratitude and appreciation to to the three of you for writing this, not just in the way that you wrote it with, you know, it's excellent scholarly analysis and all of the work that went into it, but also the vulnerability and courage to include your own experiences is, I think, a really special part that Mormon studies can bring, because sometimes that scholarly remove can put a distance that is sometimes helpful, sometimes unhelpful.

01;15;21;02 - 01;15;38;27

Nicholas Shrum

And I think in this case, it's very helpful for people when they read it to to read your experiences. So thank you for for doing that. And then of course, just totally for writing the book and adding to the scholarship on, on on this, this really important topic in Mormon studies. So thank you both.

01;15;39;02 - 01;15;54;16

Nancy Ross

Thank you for having us and engaging with our work. It is just the biggest compliment to have people like, you know, read the book for starters. And, and, you know, engage with it. That's, you know, all we had hoped for.

01;15;54;19 - 01;16;14;26

Nicholas Shrum

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast again. This is has been Nancy Ross, Jessica Finnigan and then absent from the discussion but nevertheless present in in all of the content is Larissa Kano kindred Mormon Garment Sacred and secret from the University of Illinois Press. Thank you so much.

Outro

01;16;14;28 - 01;16;31;17

Nicholas Shrum

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Scholars and Saints. Please be sure to come back to hear more conversation soon. A special thank you to Harrison Stewart for production, editing, and to Ben Allington for providing music for this episode. To hear more, visit Mormon Guitar. Thank you for listening.

01;16;31;19 - 01;16;37;18

VO

I know my way.

01;16;37;20 - 01;16;38;16

VO

And Steve.