Valerie

LARGE SCOPE

Sandra Allen, a one-time political activist for “moral” issues that threatened in the eyes of powerful Mormons in S.L.C. the religious and cultural practices of the Mormon Church, comes to re-interpret the meaning and merit of this activism.  Once, Allen was “set apart” and recognized by the church for her work in the community to defeat the ERA in Nevada.  Later, she set herself apart from the Mormon community in order to mount a serious critique of its [primarily covert] involvement in political issues related to not only women, but also to African Americans, gays/lesbians, and children (education, curriculum, sex education).  Materials found in Allen’s papers suggest she believed (and found evidence to support the idea that) the Mormon Church held considerable sway in economic and foreign policies as well as in domestic “family” policies.   She articulates a concern that the Mormon Church, because it is so wealthy and so organized, has the ability to exert profoundly disproportionate, undue influence in politics.  Additionally, through the Freeman Institute, Mormons have trained other right wing, often religious groups, in tactics to maximize political leverage using explicit rhetorical tactics.

The project, then, of telling her story – both her personal story of her involvement in the ERA defeat in Nevada as well as the story of her research mission – is important on many levels.  First, this project promises to contribute knowledge to the way women participated meaningfully in myriad, unexpected roles in shaping public debate over ERA (and related issues including family law, birth control/abortion, domestic partnership, and suffrage etc).  Second, this project promises to trace the Mormon Church’s shifting attitudes/positions on the rights and “place” of women over the past two centuries, as it attempts to juggle scriptural, socio-cultural, economic, and other factors influencing policy directives on the legal status of and laws affecting women.  One of Allen’s major arguments concerns the Mormon Church’s opposition to ERA which, she contends, was driven by a fear women would want to become priests (African Americans had recently successfully sued to have access to this profession in the Mormon Church).  Third, this project seeks to recover the voice of a woman who sought to empower herself and others by exposing her private life and seeking an education.  She believed her story and her voice would be of value to the greater, democratic community, and she identified herself as part of an effort to challenge the authority of a powerful, resourceful social, economic, and cultural institution: the Mormon Church.  Allen mentions interviews with other women who were involved in the Nevada ERA project as well as other similar projects.  While I do not have the resources (at this point) to attempt to find or contact women who fulfilled roles similar to Allen’s, it’s important to realize that women often played key roles in influencing, directly and indirectly, legislation/laws that bolstered their faith communities or religious prerogatives, but damaged their economic or social status in the larger U.S. society, thus privileging one community only to betray another. 

Allen had a clear motivation for telling her story:  she believed her experience, when taken in combination with the documented evidence she so carefully found and collected, would provide informed citizens with necessary information about the organization, methods, and rhetorical tactics of minority, right-wing religious groups (and is careful to provide evidence that even within these groups, divisions exist).  Allen had the deep sense that the majority of Americans risked their rights and freedoms by remaining uninformed of the rhetorical strategies she herself at one time deployed.  

ALLEN’S RESEARCH PLAN and HER AUDIENCE(S): 

· How does she imagine her audience and devise strategies to reach them? 

· What strategies does she use to bridge the gap she knows exists between her community of origin and her academic community?

To focus the proposal, I think it would be useful to foreground Allen’s writing, research plan, and journals, discussing the discontinuity that she came to see between the Mormon community (and its values) and the gentile community and its values.  She attempts to address a broad audience, made up of both Mormons (and other conservative/fundamentalist Christians) and academics and/or informed gentiles.  Royster’s discussion of the disparities, discontinuities, and divisions between these world views would be a good place to begin.  Burke, here, too is useful.

ALLEN’S RHETORICAL EXPERIENCE IN THE NEVADA ERA FIGHT

· Why did Allen and her collaborators enter the ERA conversation in Nevada? 

· How did Allen and her collaborators enter the ERA conversation in Nevada?  How was Allen and her group established and trained? 

· What express rhetorical strategies were used to influence public opinion against the passage of the ERA? 

· What express rhetorical strategies were used to anticipate/ combat challenging arguments? 

· Who funded this group?   

Additionally, it would be very useful to discuss the rhetorical techniques Allen was taught/ mentored in/ deployed during the ERA campaign in Nevada.  A great deal of Allen’s research is dedicated to exploring and exposing how/where these techniques were used elsewhere, by who, and to what ends.  She claims that the ERA fight in Nevada (and CA/ other western states) was where some of these rhetorical strategies were first launched and attempted and they became models for other contests across the US (and may still be used today).

ALLEN’S INVESTIGATION INTO THE MORMON CHURCH HIERARCHRY’S EVOLVING ATTITUDES ABOUT/TOWARD WOMEN (and “others”: African Americans, gays, gentiles, etc.)

· How did the founders of the church view women and the woman’s role/place?

· What exceptions to this ideal womanhood (if any) did the church recognize and/or support?

· What practical or ideological impact did the practice of plural marriage have on women/ conceptions of womanhood/ the woman’s place?

· What was the church’s attitude on women’s suffrage?

· In what ways did the church become involved in the women’s suffrage movement?

· How is the church’s view of women’s suffrage related to / different from its views of other legal rights of women (including abortion/sexual education/birth control, divorce/custody/alimony laws, adult and child education, protection from abuse/molestation)?

· What non-legal i.e. cultural, social, economic rights or privileges do women hold in Mormon communities?

· What stigmas or barriers to cultural, social, economic rights or privileges impede women in Mormon communities?

· How does the Mormon community handle allegations of domestic violence, incest, molestation, child abuse, etc?  Are non-legal safeguards in place to protect victims?  How/has the church’s perspective on these issues evolved or changed? 

· How does Allen situate herself and her activities in this/ coming out of this history and culture?

I ask all of these questions because they are questions that Allen asked, or was asking, as she pursued her research.  Allen seemed to believe – and I agree – that to understand the Mormon Church’s fierce opposition to the passage of the ERA, it’s important to look deeply at the history of women (and possible the idealized or imagined role of women) in the church, and the reasons for apparently contradictory positions vis a vis women’s rights taken at various points in history by the hierarchy in S.L.C.  For example, my preliminary research indicates the Church strongly favored women’s suffrage.  How does this position jibe with a fierce opposition to the ERA?  Allen’s research (corroborated by other views) suggests that Mormons supported women’s suffrage because if granted, Mormons would constitute the majority in the State of Utah.  Thus, the church firmly believed that Mormon women would vote with Mormon men.  But to satisfactorily answer all of these questions, an intimate knowledge of the social, cultural, economic forces as well as scriptural/ doctrinal edicts (and interpretations thereof) of both the Mormon Church (including its leadership) and the Mormon community is necessary. 

ALLEN’S ALLEGATIONS

· Why was Allen concerned with the influence of the Mormon Church in politics?

· Why did Allen seek to make connections between the Freedom Institute and the Moral Majority and other right wing groups?

· Why did Allen investigate links between the Mormon Church, FBI, CIA, and top posts in Washington?

· Why was Allen preoccupied with the John Birch Society and its membership?

· What connection was Allen attempting to establish between The Internal Security Subcommittee and the Mormon Church (as well as other conservative groups)?

· Can the Mormon Church’s involvement in the American political landscape be accurately assessed?

Allen’s research reveals that what initially started as a personal project, grew in every direction.  She saw the political and rhetorical work of the Mormon Church (and other fundamentalist/ right wing groups) everywhere.  She felt compelled to make some very strong allegations and to do the research to back them up.  The argument she attempts to make – the dots she attempts to connect – are sweeping and, if proven true (or even mostly true) very compelling.  I would probably need four research assistants alone to track down the various leads Allen provides (I’m not even touching on her beliefs that Mormons have fomented political unrest in Latin America).  I do believe that engaging with her work means rendering these arguments explicit, for this was her ambition, clearly stated.

ALLEN SHOWS US…?

· What do Allen’s political acts mean to her, to her church, to the community of women, to the community of [women] scholars?

· What possibilities for growth, change, evolution, revolution do her stories (multiple) inspire?

· How does her shifting sense of her own ethos (from explicitly based in an idea of faith in God to a scrupulous researcher and writer in the academy) inform the audience’s understanding of and trust in her?

· How (possibly) to bridge gaps between women of radically different faiths, orientations, beliefs, perspectives?

Primary:

Sandra Allen Papers – primary

Secondary:

Thousands of texts (newspaper, journal articles) as well as lists of books appear in the collection

Burke – A Grammar of Motives, Language as Symbolic Action, A Rhetoric of Motives, A Rhetoric of Religion

JJR/ Will also look at some other Feminist Historiographers

What’s Do-able?

I’m so intrigued by this project, that I don’t want to let any of it go.  I actually think the most accessible portion of the story may be Allen’s direct experience working in Nevada to oppose the ERA.  This story can be juxtaposed with what I find about the fight for suffrage in Utah.