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uppity mormon women

Uppity Mormon Women: Eliza R Snow
Forgive me as life gets in the way and other projects capture my time and attention. But the Guilt Monkey has won this day and I present, once more, another episode in the series "Uppity Mormon Women".

Enjoy.

Worksafe Clause: This one's got clicky musical links that will take you to music pages won't play until you press "Play", so you won't be embarrassed at work by sudden music.

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Eliza R. Snow

"Zion's Poetess"


Eliza Roxcy Snow was always a writer. Her parents believed in education for all their children, including Eliza. This education served her well, for by the time she was in her twenties, her award-winning work been widely published in magazines and newspapers. As an adult, she supported herself by teaching school.

She found the written medium--especially poetry--the best way to express her thoughts. She wrote many poems about the things that touched her in her life.

She joined the LDS Faith and embraced its doctrine, pondering long about the tenets therein. She wrote many poems, some of which became hymns for the Church: "Be Not Discouraged", which became the beautiful hymn "Though Deepening Trials", and "How Great The Wisdom".

Her most famous poem, originally went by several names: "My Father in Heaven" and later, "Invocation", but the world knows it as the hymn loved and regularly sung by millions, "O My Father."

Eliza loved her faith and studied its tenets thoroughly. A certain piece of doctrine got her thinking: why was God called "Heavenly Father"? Was there a particular reason for this particular form of address? Eliza wasn't stupid and knew that a father could only be called a father because there is a mother.

Could there be a Heavenly Mother? The more Eliza thought on this, the more it made sense. All the other doctrines and practices of her faith pointed to this. Joseph Smith did not tell her she was wrong in her speculation. He himself often spoke of the nature of God, which suggested a dual parental role (for example, see notes on the King Follett Discourse).

Inspired by her musings, she penned this poem, which included the following stanza:

I had learned to call thee Father,
Through thy Spirit from on high;
But until the key of knowledge
Was restored, I knew not why.
In the heavens are parents single?
No; the thought makes reason stare!
Truth is reason, truth eternal
Tells me I've a mother there.

This idea has resounded within the minds and hearts of Mormons ever since. (The hymn "O My Father" was Brigham Young's favourite.) Scriptures and most other doctrine do not directly mention a Heavenly Mother, but She remains in the LDS consciousness, and the idea of Heavenly Parents is often mentioned. (For example, see "The Family: A Proclamation to the World": "Each [person] is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose." (Emphasis mine))

Her poem has touched many (including myself). "The connectedness to deity Eliza expressed so eloquently in "O MyFather" and the glorious doctrines by which she had begun to define herself in Nauvoo would enable her to inspire her sisters in Utah with a sense of woman's eternal worth, equality in the sight of God, and divine destiny."^[1]

With such strong doctrinal concepts as a Heavenly Mother, no wonder so many early Mormon women believed in concepts of gender equality.

Eliza later served as General President of the Relief Society, but she is better known as "Zion's Poetess", and the woman who openly voiced the comforting knowledge of the reality of a Heavenly Mother and the divine destiny of a woman.

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^[1] The Significance of 'O My Father' in the Personal Journey of Eliza R. Snow
by Jill Mulvay Derr

P.S. Okay, I had to throw in something fun: Mental Gas.


Next Post: Elizabeth Claridge McCune - rags to riches.