My parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, most of my family are Mormons. I  was born in to the church, a child of pioneers who risked their lives for their faith. My ancestors risked life and health to travel west across an ocean, the Great Lakes, prairie and mountains in 1848, a six month journey.

Enthralled by stories of my ancestors, I remember the exhilaration I felt climbing the mountain trail and arriving at the statue that marks the spot where Brigham Young announced, "This is the place." The story told is reminiscent of Moses pointing the way to the Promised Land; a place of milk and honey, of blessing and a new life.

Nonetheless it took those early settlers years of grueling work to build up provisions and establish a vital community. As a child I would look across the valley and feel the potency of that hard work displayed in city lights and the glistening temple. My heart swelled with pride, I was part of this. Through my ancestral family, I helped build this beautiful city.

Regardless of what you may think of the teachings of the Mormon Church I was taught that I was a Christian. I was baptized through full immersion in "the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Mormons have their own version of apocalyptic Old Testament- twelve tribes of Israel- teachings in the Book of Mormon, but they embrace the Bible and Jesus too.

My father worked long hours as a manufacturing engineer. My mother was weighed down with parenting and depression, not always fully functioning. I walked by myself down Elizabeth Street to the local "ward" of the Mormon Church. "Primary," the Tuesday school for children, taught me stories of Mormon hardship, survival, salvation and faith. These stories mirrored my life and gave me hope. Hard work and strong faith and I too would persevere and all would be okay. Those teachings sustained me through my parents' divorce when I was five and my mother's prolonged struggle with mental illness and addiction to valium. They sustained me through several years when my mother spent every day in bed and I took over as the mother of my three younger brothers. They sustained me through my mother's second marriage to an alcoholic who was absent more than present. Sustained me through the year when my parents decided that beating my brothers was appropriate discipline. Sustained me through the psychological abuse these beatings afflicted on me, forcing me to hide in my closet in a desperate effort to shut out the cries of my brothers. My mother got well and my parents took a different approach to discipline but the damage was done. I remember feeling helpless and incapable of rising up against my father to protect my brothers. The teachings of the church gave me hope even as they reinforced my submissive behavior. I was to be, always, the good obedient daughter.

The climate of American society today - political and religious - is stirring me up. I feel an almost constant undercurrent of anxiety within me. It hums just beneath the surface.

The agitation is fueled because this is an election year, and much is at stake.

The agitation is fueled because I am feeling called to be more authentic, to use my voice, to speak about the issues that concern me. Sometimes this part of my voice filters into my sermons. An article from the Alban Institute on "Preaching Ethically, Preaching Your Perspective" by Ronald D. Sisk addresses this growing edge in my preaching voice:

"Transparency in preaching requires an ongoing personal effort both to know yourself well and to remain objective about how who you are informs your preaching. ... You must know yourself well enough to be able to testify how you have responded to those formative influences. An ethical preacher first honestly and unashamedly preaches her own perspective." [i]

I am working to find that ethical voice that preaches appropriately from my perspective. My voice is influenced by the faith of my ancestors, the trauma and love of my family, the upheaval of the 1960's and 1970's, the assassinations of JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Reagan years, Bush, Clinton, and Obama, the tea party, the war on women, and the empowerment of LGBTQ people.

As a priest in the Episcopal Church I have been clear about my experience of the Mormon Church, how the teachings formed me early on and how the Episcopal Church has opened up my response to those teachings, giving them life and breadth and giving me enough hope to remain a Christian.

As a priest I walk a fine line when I reflect on politics, and yet I feel that religious leaders must speak, honestly and with integrity, about our understanding of life, faith, religion and politics. This level of authenticity, in a climate of anxiety, pushes the paradigm of my life experience to be the "good, obedient daughter." I speak through the lens of a faith informed by my life. I strive to be honest and respect the dignity for all. I try to not slip into name-calling or inverting the bad behavior imposed by one group and turning it onto another. It is my ethical duty as a priest to do this; any other voice would not be authentic, honest, or grounded in the Gospel.

This comes with a price. Transformation always comes with a price. The good girl paradigm is being transformed. What does it mean to be a good, obedient daughter? This is a conversation I am having internally as I think, pray, reflect, and write about the agitating hum within me. It is a conversation that finds its way into my preaching as I test this voice and learn its growing edges, limitations, and strengths. This conversation I am having with myself is a kind of "homiletical ethics" approach to discerning and preaching. Duke Divinity School ethicist Stanley Hauerwas talks about ethics as character, one's dominant approach to the challenges of life.[ii]

I live at risk of giving into the threat the hum poses and silencing this voice. I know that silencing my voice is not the answer. The only way for me to find peace is to follow the Spirit's lead. This must be my dominant approach to life. It is a question of ethics; of learning to be authentic to the person God is calling me to be. Surely that too is being a good, obedient daughter - just not a submissive, passive, silent one hiding her true voice in a closet of despair.

 Resources from the Episcopal Church

These resources include:

A Pastoral Letter from the Presiding Bishop

The World Council of Churches Statement on the doctrine of discovery

 and its enduring impact on Indigenous Peoples

Paper for the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Advent study guide using the Maginificat

Lent Study Guide

Laments (service) over the Doctrine of Discovery

Looking at Columbus Day Through our Baptismal Vows 

EDUCATIONAL DOCUMENTARIES 

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