You think you get ignored. Well, how do you think Heavenly Mother feels? Really, nobody ever mentions her, not even at Thanksgiving. Here at Smart Bomb, we take our cues about Mrs. God from
Salt Lake Tribune soothsayer Peggy Fletcher Stack. In a recent epistle, Ms. Stack said Mother in Heaven is gaining popularity within Mormondom. But not all Latter-day Saints are pleased: In some quarters, she has become domesticated as God the Father s wife, with no identity beyond birthing spirit children, or as a heavenly housewife, they complain. Oh, Heavenly Housewife! What a bummer. Is there house cleaning in heaven? Poor Mrs. God, she sounds a little like Rodney Dangerfield. She never gets a break, said Margaret Toscano, who was banished by LDS leaders, Stack says, after writing about God the Mother. It s unclear why Matthew, Mark, Luke and John didn t mention Mrs. God in the New Testament. But what the hell, that was before women s lib. And why not? American Indians call this plan
Nelson’s headstone gets assist from temple renovation
(Michael Stack | Special to The Tribune) This notation appears on the monument that will mark church President Russell M. Nelson s grave in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. May 10, 2021.
It has become a common practice for a husband or wife to erect a headstone for the couple after only one has died waiting to list the death date for the surviving spouse to be engraved later.
Still, mourners strolling through the northwest quadrant of the historic Salt Lake City Cemetery might be startled to see a tall granite shaft emblazoned with the name Russell M. Nelson and the words “Seventeenth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
| Updated: May 9, 2021, 11:06 p.m.
Mormonism’s Heavenly Mother has gone mainstream.
She is the topic of a number of books on sale at Deseret Book, which is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She has spawned essays (including an official one from the faith), poetry, a one-woman play, hymns, art shows, even academic debates.
She has been embraced as part of the church’s Young Women theme, which was updated in 2019 to say: “I am a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny.”
There is a tidal wave of interest in this divine feminine among Latter-day Saints, observers say. It has become almost a movement.
The Most American Religion McKay Coppins
Photographs by Michael Friberg
Image above: The Oquirrh Mountain Temple sits about 20 miles south of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where the Church is based.
This article was published online on December 16, 2020.
To meet with the prophet during a plague, certain protocols must be followed. It’s a gray spring morning in Salt Lake City, and downtown Temple Square is deserted, giving the place an eerie, postapocalyptic quality. The doors of the silver-domed tabernacle are locked; the towering neo-Gothic temple is dark. To enter the Church Administration Building, I meet a handler who escorts me through an underground parking garage; past a security checkpoint, where my temperature is taken; up a restricted elevator; and then, finally, into a large, mahogany-walled conference room. After a few minutes, a side door opens and a trim 95-year-old man in a suit greets me with a hygienic elbow bump.
Photographs by Michael Friberg
Image above: The Oquirrh Mountain Temple sits about 20 miles south of Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where the Church is based.
This article was published online on December 16, 2020.
To meet with the prophet during a plague, certain protocols must be followed. It’s a gray spring morning in Salt Lake City, and downtown Temple Square is deserted, giving the place an eerie, postapocalyptic quality. The doors of the silver-domed tabernacle are locked; the towering neo-Gothic temple is dark. To enter the Church Administration Building, I meet a handler who escorts me through an underground parking garage; past a security checkpoint, where my temperature is taken; up a restricted elevator; and then, finally, into a large, mahogany-walled conference room. After a few minutes, a side door opens and a trim 95-year-old man in a suit greets me with a hygienic elbow bump.