lulu wrote:Your vocabulary of contribute, influence and indirectly are problematic in terms of gender. Have you sent up a paradygm where men "do" but women merely "contribute," "influence," or "indirect"? No woman would ever be a founder with those labels imposed on her.
Your accusation of gender bias is way off base. I am perfectly happy to say women "did" things that they actually did do. They were certainly indispensable to American life in many ways. They had charge of transmitting education, religion, and tradition to the next generation, which is not only a necessary social function but also a major vector of intellectual influence.
None of the events in history, frankly, would have been possible without them. And, of course, many women threw off the shackles of institutional sexism in various ways and played important public roles as doers, thinkers, speakers, deciders, and, yes, founders.
But when we speak about cause and effect in history, we have to use language in an intelligible and meaningful way. Lucy did not found Mormonism any more than Alvin or Joseph Smith Sr. did. These family members may have contributed, influenced, made possible, participated, or even conspired with Joseph Jr. in various ways, but they did not found Mormonism.
It is simply a fact of nineteenth century gender norms that women had less opportunity to "do" public activities like founding a religion. We can't and shouldn't wish this fact away through a misleading use of language. Your "affirmative action" approach to history may have the virtue of making historical women look more important, but it effaces the oppressive power structures that narrowed women's options. We have to see, name, and understand power imbalances before we can hope to change them.
Many religions believe(d) in the restoration of Israel,
Not as a core concept. Joseph Smith took this far, far, beyond what anyone else had done with the idea.
Exaltation is an interesting choice but it wasn't around in 1830.
It was around. It was just in a more seminal form. Perhaps this suggestion will be more intelligible if I specify that I mean the
desire for exaltation as opposed to the formal, fully developed Nauvoo doctrine.
Is there another major US religion that claims new scripture from the Book of Mormon to the D&C to the Gen. Conf. reports?
Depends how you define "major" and "US religion." There are tons of new scriptures among American NRMs, but none of them have grown to Mormon size. Uniqueness, in any case, probably shouldn't be the criterion for Mormonism's core concept. The criterion should be explanatory power. In other words, what's the concept from which all other concepts logically flow? New scripture is an interesting proposal, and you could probably make the argument that it has this sort of explanatory power, but I'm not so sure. Joseph was doing things like city building and running for president that seem a bit far afield.
Anyway, what's your reference for Lucy being the source of this idea? Now
that would be interesting.
