Disobedient women and #churchtoo stand up to sexual abuse in evangelicalism

A new book shines a light on sexual abuse in evangelical churches, from Bill Gothard and Josh Duggar to the purity culture underneath it all.

“Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning” and author Sarah Stankorb. Photo by Helen McCormick Photography

August 17, 2023

By 

Jana Riess

(RNS) — When girls and women are taught that submitting to men without question is what God designed them to do, men have few checks on their power. Too often, evangelical pastors and other powerful men took advantage of that, abusing women sexually and emotionally — and then either blaming the survivors or castigating their credibility when survivors sounded the alarm.

Sarah Stankorb’s powerful new book, “Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning,” tells the stories of those survivors and the advocates who spoke up for them. Years before #churchtoo became a hashtag, Stankorb was researching and writing about sexual abuse for publications like Washington Post Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you start on this quest?

Beginning the research and discovering Christian patriarchy started with one story. Many years ago, someone pointed me to a really interesting crowdfunding effort. That was Vyckie Garrison, who had been in a Quiverfull environment, and she had many children. She was leaving both her husband and her church, she didn’t have the funds she needed to support such a large family, and she was just about to be named 2014 Atheist of the Year. I didn’t know what the word Quiverfull even meant, but I looked it up and read her blog. That opened the door.

In case readers don’t know what Quiverfull is, could you explain its teachings and its popularity?

It’s a philosophy of reproduction that treats the womb and what the womb can produce as God’s blessing. So if you use birth control or your husband has a vasectomy, you’re blocking God’s blessing. So the more children you have, the more blessings you have. It comes with a lot of assurances that you’ll be able to support all of these children.

Underlying a lot of it is this idea that Christians need to reproduce as much as possible to keep the Christian population large and overtake other populations of believers. Also baked in, which was very important in Vyckie’s case, was this idea of martyrdom — that as a woman, your way of creating Christians in the world is through procreation. And even if you die in the process, then that’s a way of becoming a martyr.

You also talk about the idea of the stay-at-home daughter, which was a movement I had not heard of before.

Sarah Stankorb, author of “Disobedient Women.” Photo by Helen McCormick Photography

It’s encouraging girls to stay home within their family, under the authority of their father, training to be a mother. It also resulted in girls helping their very overwhelmed mothers with homemaking and raising younger siblings. In these families you really shouldn’t go off to college; college and universities are where you learn feminism and Marxism.

So having a stay-at-home daughter is a way of keeping these young adult women in an authoritative situation until they enter a courtship that’s parent-approved, where they can marry a young man and move under that man’s authority. It was a stopgap to discourage young women from learning any other worldview than what they were raised with. But it also really just reinforced that idea of male authority.

Many Americans were introduced to this idea of courtship through the Duggar family. You spend some time on them in the book. In what way did the Duggar children’s upbringing facilitate the abuse that Josh perpetrated on his sisters, and then how that abuse was handled?

One of the ways is that once the family knew about the abuse, instead of doing what many families would do, which is to seek someone licensed in therapy to walk those young women through a difficult process, Josh was sent to a training center run by Bill Gothard and the IBLP (Institute for Basic Life Principles). That’s where Gothard’s ministry took in many young people for misbehavior and bucking authority. But here we’re talking about sexual assault; we’re talking about a crime. And it was not treated that way.

But the Duggars served as the poster children for Bill Gothard’s ministry, for this whole way of life. And like you saw in the documentary “Shiny Happy People,” shiny people have a few flaws, and it was not all as pleasant as it was shown on reality TV. Many of these families, including not just the Duggars but others who were not as well known, had to maintain a certain credibility within their religious subculture, which meant trying their best not to show the ugly side of life. If you show anything negative, you’ll lose status within the ministry. I think that was also likely a part of why the Duggars didn’t come forward about the abuse, because they didn’t go public until forced to.

Your book does an excellent job of trying to understand this subculture in a deep way rather than just critiquing it. What might women find attractive about this lifestyle that is fairly closed, with clearly defined gender roles? What’s in it for the women who stay?

That’s a great question. Many families enter this worldview through home schooling. Sometimes they start home schooling for a religious reason, but maybe they just want to teach their kids themselves. They go to a conference and learn that keeping children at home is best if they want to be godly, whatever that means to them. There’s plenty of material that infuses these ideas in their curriculum. It requires a heck of a lot of sacrifice, but they’re willing to do it because they want it to be good in the eyes of God.

I’ll also say I’ve heard from more than a few sources that the gendered power dynamics within their particular families were not as clear-cut as you would think on paper. Sometimes, it’s the women who are pushing the whole Christian patriarchy thing, when the mother is the one bringing the ideas home and almost forcing the father into it. And maybe those men are not naturally people who want that kind of absolute authority. When they feel like, “Well, I have to, this is what this minister I trust tells me I’m supposed to do,” it often becomes extreme. It’s almost as if they’re trying on personality traits that don’t belong to them. You have a woman trying to be submissive, but also trying to force her family members into these roles, and you have a man who feels obligated to be a certain kind of Christian leader. It becomes a mess of people trying to be things they’re not.

Many of these cases of abuse are situated in the rise of “purity culture” from roughly the 1970s to the early 2000s. Did purity culture contribute to abuse in evangelicalism?

“Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning” by Sarah Stankorb. Courtesy image

I think purity culture definitely plays a role. There’s pressure for girls and boys both to avoid any sort of sexual contact, even front-to-front hugs, and to avoid kissing until marriage in the more extreme cases. But the responsibility falls primarily on the women and girls, not only to shield themselves from sin, but also to keep men or boys from even thinking about anything sexual.

Many of these girls haven’t had any information about sex. They don’t know what’s normal; they don’t know what’s healthy; they don’t know what consent is. That’s just not explained. Then when the abuse does happen, they feel so guilty because they feel like it’s their responsibility.

After that amount of guilt, you don’t typically step forward to say, “This is what happened to me.” Often, even if they do step forward within their churches, their pastors blame them. I’m thinking of someone like Jules Woodson, whose youth pastor assaulted her. He was also the person who taught her True Love Waits class. So when he got her alone and asked her to perform sex acts, she assumed that meant he wanted to marry her. That was the only context she had. The following day she reported to her church and was asked, “Did you participate?” Very clearly the blame fell to her. He was eventually sent off to another church. They had a wonderful going-away reception for him. The way Jules was treated was so awful that it almost destroyed her. There are so many stories.

Some of those stories were the multiple victims who came forward with accusations about Bill Gothard himself.

Yes. They thought they were alone until they saw another story on the internet from someone else who had been plucked out of the ministry and brought to work for Bill Gothard. These women describe being brought in alone with Bill Gothard, him putting his hands on them, him rubbing his feet on them, things that should not happen in a workplace or anywhere without permission. But most had no context for any of this. They felt uncomfortable, but he was such an important figure. He was as close to God as anyone they knew, and because of that, they could not fathom that he was being predatory. It wasn’t until they saw another person’s story online and then started to come forward one by one that they began to recognize it was a pattern.

It must have been difficult to spend so many years hearing story after story of abuse.  Toward the end of the book you offer a useful distinction of being trauma-informed, but not trauma-absorptive. Can you explain that?

It’s vital for me to go into an interview reminding myself of what my role is. I’m to be a listener. I have to pay close attention to every moment they’ve described. I need to keep my mind a step outside. That way I can fact-check, I can say, “When exactly did that happen? Do you remember what time of day it was? What were you looking at?” If they mentioned something financial, I need to be thinking about whether they have paperwork to back up what they’ve told me. So, I focus on who else I might need to talk to and how best to verify their story.

That kind of dual mindfulness does keep me a layer out, but there are times when I’ll get to the end of the day and it’ll hit me that I’ve just talked to someone who’s been 

 

Native Hawaiian sacred sites have been damaged in the Lahaina wildfires – but, as an Indigenous scholar writes, their stories will live on

The region of Maui has been revered by its Indigenous peoples as a sacred place for generations. It is believed to be the home of Kihawahine, a woman who transformed into a goddess.

A view of the devastation in Lahaina, Hawaii, following the wildfires in August 2023. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

August 14, 2023

By 

Rosalyn R. LaPier

T

(The Conversation) — Native Hawaiians are devastated by the recent wildfires that swept through Lahaina, Maui, killing dozens of residents and destroying hundreds of homes, buildings, Christian churches and Buddhist temples.

It is not just the historic buildings and landmarks that are important to Native Hawaiians. This region of Maui has a longer history.

It has been revered by its Indigenous peoples as a sacred place for generations. In the 19th century, it served as the home and burial place of the Hawaiian royal family and became the first capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Carmen Lindsey, chairwoman of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, said in a statement that “Lahaina holds some of the most historically significant cultural properties and highest-ranking sacred remains of our ancestors.”

As an Indigenous scholar who studies the environment and religion of Indigenous peoples, I am interested in how environmental change such as the catastrophic wildfire at Lahaina impacts sacred sites.

Ancient connections

Lahaina is revered by Native Hawaiians because it has long been the home of Kihawahine, a woman who transformed into a moʻo goddess, or a supernatural shapeshifting lizard in Hawaiian religion. Her primary home was in a fishpond at Mokuʻula, a small island in Lahaina that was considered a “piko,” or center of traditional religious and political activity. Native Hawaiian royalty lived nearby to be near Kihawahine and her supernatural power.

The history of the region is also connected to King Kamehameha. After Kamehameha, the “aliʻi ʻai moku” or lead chief of the Island of Hawaii, succeeded in unifying all the Hawaiian islands in 1810, he made Lahaina on Maui his royal residence.

Portrait of King Kamehameha III of Hawaii, age 11.
Robert Dampier via Wikimedia Commons. Honolulu Museum of Art.

He selected this place to be near Kihawahine, the guardian spirit of his wife Keōpūolani. He then venerated Kihawahine, which assured that his lineage would continue to serve as leaders.

In the ensuing years, Lahaina became the capital of the newly unified Kingdom of Hawaii under Kamehameha and his descendants’ rule. The capital remained in Lahaina until 1845, when King Kamehameha III relocated it to Honolulu, Oahu.

The earthly home of Kihawahine changed dramatically with the coming of American colonization and capitalism to the Island of Maui in the 19th century. Sugarcane companies diverted the waters that fed the fishpond and freshwater springs at Mokuʻula for irrigation, which caused the fishpond to dry up. Subsequently, the U.S. Territory of Hawaii filled what was left of the pond with soil in the early 20th century for a public park.

Efforts have been underway to restore Mokuʻula in Lahaina and revitalize its history as a Native Hawaiian sacred place. These efforts, however, will be dramatically impacted by the devastation of the Lahaina fire.

Restoration efforts at Mokuʻula.

What does the future hold?

According to scientists, destructive wildfires like the one in Lahaina are becoming more common and more intense due to climate change.

Chairwoman Lindsey of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs also sees other influences. “The fires of today are in part due to the climate crisis, a history of colonialism in our islands, and the loss of our right to steward our ‘aina and wai’ [land and water],” she said.

The historic buildings and cultural properties of this place will be forever lost. That sense of loss is summed up in Lindsey’s words: “We have watched our precious cultural assets, our physical connection to our ancestors, our places of remembering — all go up in smoke.”

But the stories of Kihawahine and Hawaiian sacred places will live on.

(Rosalyn R. LaPier, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

 

Threat from climate change to some of India’s sacred pilgrimage sites is reshaping religious beliefs

At the pilgrimage site of Kedarnath in northern India, disastrous flooding has led many to ask whether the gods are getting angry about human behavior.

Hindu devotees worship at the Kedarnath Temple in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. (Shammi Mehra/AFP via Getty Images)

August 15, 2023

By 

David L. Haberman

(The Conversation) — The famous pilgrimage site of Kedarnath, located in the central Himalayas of India, is believed to be a sacred land. It has been referred to as “deva bhumi,” or the “land of the gods,” for centuries.

Millions of people visit this region each year in search of divine blessings and other religious benefits as part of what is known as the Char Dham Yatra, or the pilgrimage to four sacred mountainous abodes devoted to different gods and goddesses. Situated at the base of 20,000-foot snowy peaks, Kedarnath is one of these four major destinations.

The mighty Hindu god Shiva is believed to have manifested in the middle of a meadow in Kedarnath as a conical rock formation that has long been worshiped as a lingam, an embodied form of the deity. A stone temple has stood over the lingam for at least a thousand years, at an altitude of about 12,000 feet.

I visited this area in 2000, 2014 and 2019 as part of research I’ve been conducting for decades on religion, nature and ecology; I have spent numerous summers in the Himalayas. Many in the vast crowds of people on the Char Dham Yatra told me that they believe it is important to undertake this pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime, often identifying it as the most significant journey they will ever perform.

But climate change now threatens the sacred sites of this region. As global temperatures rise, glaciers on the 20,000-foot peaks above Kedarnath that are key sources of the Mandakini River, a major tributary of the Ganges, are melting and retreating at alarming rates. In turn, as I argue in my book, “Understanding Climate Change through Religious Lifeworlds,” climate change disasters are acting as powerful drivers of religious transformations, reshaping religious ideas and practices.

Threats to the Himalayan region

Glacial deterioration is happening worldwide, but subtropical glaciers in high mountainous areas such as the Indian Himalayas are more vulnerable because of their low latitudes. Many climate scientists believe that climate change is affecting the Himalayas more than almost any other region of the world.

Melting glaciers leave massive amounts of water in lakes held in place by unstable natural dams formed of rubble heaped up when the glaciers were healthy and pushing down a slope. The expanding lakes left behind by shrinking glaciers are increasingly prone to glacial lake outburst floods. Another serious danger threatening high mountainous areas as a result of global warming is the shift from snow to extreme rain at increasingly higher altitudes.

Snow clings to hillsides and melts gradually, while rain rushes down slopes immediately, causing destructive erosion, landslides and deluges. The combination of extreme rain and glacial lake outburst floods can lead to deadly flooding, as demonstrated by a catastrophe in Kedarnath in 2013.

Kedarnath disaster

Himalayan researchers determined that in June 2013, more than a foot of rain fell within 24 hours near Kedarnath at elevations never previously recorded. The entire watershed above Kedarnath was filled with raging water. Additionally, the Mandakini River burst out of its banks, causing landslides and devastating flooding.

The Kedarnath Temple pictured amid flood destruction on June 18, 2013.
Strdel/AFP via Getty Images

To make matters worse, the rubble dam that had held back the glacial lake formed by the melting Chorabari Glacier above Kedarnath suddenly breached, releasing a high wall of crashing water. In a matter of 15 minutes, the entire content of the lake was emptied, cresting over three-story buildings with a pounding flow that University of Calcutta scientists estimated was half the volume of Niagara Falls.

Fortunately – or, according to pilgrims, miraculously – a 30-foot oblong boulder rolled down the mountain and stopped just before the ancient temple, parting the powerful waters and protecting the temple so that it remained standing without major damage. Every other building in the town of Kedarnath was demolished.

Government figures claim over 6,000 people died, but those involved in the rescue operations set the figure much higher. Most of the dead were pilgrims.

‘The Gods are angry’

The destructive flooding is changing people’s beliefs. The gods of this region are closely associated with the land itself; and these gods, nature and humans are intimately connected. People living in this region understand the dramatic changes taking place here in terms of this triad.

A resident of Gangotri explained, “The gods are angry with us because of how we are now acting.” When I said to him that I thought this area is where people have been coming for a long time to receive the blessing from the gods, he responded, “Yes, but now they are angry with us. That is why this (Kedarnath disaster) has happened. And more will come if we do not change our ways.”

I found this to be a common view – weather-related disasters were being understood as a result of the immoral actions of human beings, particularly the disregard for the environment.

One significant theological change that appeared to be underway within Himalayan Hinduism as a result of climate change was the transformation of the primary conception of the gods from those who bless to those who punish. “There is so much sin in the world today,” a resident of Uttarkashi told me. “People are making a lot of pollution. Because of this, the climate is changing and the gods are beginning to punish us.”

In some ways there is nothing new in the assertion that human morality and the environment are intimately linked, but the degree of change that is now happening has introduced a new level of concern.

Wandering holy men in this region are witnessing firsthand the dramatic changes in the Himalayas during their years of travel. One holy man living in this area explained, “The gods are nature. When we disrespect nature, we disrespect the gods. They are now angry because of what we are doing to nature. This is why the destructive storms are increasing.”

Conditional hope

All is not lost, however, and there remains some hope for a better outcome. There is a sense that things can still be turned around and the worst avoided if humans are willing to change their ways. Specifically, many articulated this as a return to a more respectful relationship with the gods of the land.

When asked how to please the gods and turn things around, a man in Kedarnath put it simply: “To once again respect the land and nature.” There is no great difference between treating the gods with respect and nature well. A woman I spoke to in Uttarkashi elaborated on this: “The gods and the land are the same. And we are mistreating both. The floods are like a warning slap to a child. They are a wake-up call telling us to change our ways. … If not, we will be finished.”

Human behavior remains a major factor in the holistic worldview that connects humans, gods and environment, and a return to respectful relationships is the key to a sustinable future.

Many Himalayan residents say that humans have the choice to return to a more mutually beneficial relationship with the natural world, but if the gods’ stormy warnings are not heeded, then massive destruction and a gruesome end is near.

Uncertain future

Destructive floods continue to happen in the central Himalayas with increasing force and frequency. Since the 2013 disaster at Kedarnath, more than 800 people have been killed in flash floods in the Char Dham region.

The Kedarnath pilgrimage was suspended in 2022 because of deadly landslides and flooding, but the Indian government has also heavily promoted religious tourism in this area. The year 2022 saw a record number of pilgrims visiting Kedarnath and the three other Char Dham sites in the central Himalayas, which only puts more stress on the land, with additional buildings, crowded roads and polluting vehicles.

With vehicles, factories and other human activities continuing to pump excessive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warming the planet, experts fear disasters like Kedarnath saw in 2013 will become only more common.

(David L. Haberman, Professor Emeritus, Religious Studies, Indiana University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

AN ABUSER

Joseph F. Smith: A traumatized and beloved Mormon leader

Loving, devoted Mormon prophet or rage-prone abuser? Yes to both, says a new biography of Joseph F. Smith.

A new biography from historian Stephen C. Taysom offers a nuanced portrait of the turn-of-the-century Mormon leader. Courtesy of Amazon

August 14, 2023

By 

Jana Riess

(RNS) — In 2000 and 2001, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints focused its worldwide curriculum on the teachings of Joseph F. Smith (1838 – 1918), a nephew of the founding prophet, Joseph Smith Jr. JFS was the church’s sixth president.

An entire lesson in the manual was devoted to “The Wrongful Path of Abuse,” quoting JFS at length about how violence was “unthinkable” and praising him as a “tender and gentle man who expressed sorrow at any kind of abuse. He understood that violence would beget violence, and his own life was an honest expression of compassion and patience, warmth and understanding.”

The lesson’s claim is not wholly untrue, as historian Stephen Taysom points out in the Afterword of his monumental biography of JFS, “Like a Fiery Meteor.” But it’s certainly selective, since JFS admitted in divorce affidavits to beating his first wife, Levira, in the 1860s; the only part he disputed was whether he’d attacked her with a rope or a small stick. He also verbally abused and threatened her, at one point saying he ought to drill a hole in her head and fill it with manure.

JFS is on record for beating a neighbor almost to death in 1873. There were other stories too, with less clear evidence, including a possible beating of his little sister’s teacher when he was still in his early teens. JFS was a turbulent man who admitted that his temper was the worst part of him and that the only man on earth he ever feared was himself.

But the tender side was there as well, especially toward children. Orphaned at a young age —his father, Hyrum, was murdered in the Carthage Jail in 1844, and his mother died when he was a teen — JFS never lost his sympathy for other orphans. He went out of his way to help, and even adopt, children in need. There’s also no record that JFS was ever violent toward his five subsequent plural wives after Levira.

Both responses — the violence and the compassion — stem from the same early trauma, Taysom said in a Zoom interview. “There was always this constant sense that he was going to lose everything that he cherished,” said Taysom, an associate professor at Cleveland State University who has researched JFS for over a decade.

Taysom points out that JFS’ trauma didn’t end with his father’s murder but was followed by many other deaths. His mother, Mary Fielding Smith (she of the famous story of blessing the oxen on the plains), died when he was 13. As an adult he buried 13 of his 45 children, losses that JFS grieved desperately.

Author and professor Stephen C. Taysom

“That always drove him,” Taysom said. “I’m sure that’s the source of the anger that comes out in him. He doesn’t have great control over the ferocious emotions that he has, whether it’s rage or the grief that he feels for losing a child. He either can’t control it or doesn’t control it, which is different from a lot of people in his world. Even in that context of the 19th-century American West, very few people in the church hierarchy would’ve been as prone to violence as he was. I’m not a psychologist, but the inability to regulate strong emotion can be a hallmark of a traumatized person. He definitely had that.”

Another response was JFS’ unwavering, even fundamentalist, religiosity. In the face of ongoing trauma and poverty, he came to see the church as a holy refuge to be protected at all costs. “He’s unapologetically dualistic in the way he views the world,” said Taysom. “He sees everything as either building up the kingdom or destroying it. He sees the world as this dangerous place that kills righteous things.”

This meant he could be hard on other people, just as he was hard on himself. Despite his deep love for his family, for example, he sometimes subjected them to biting criticism and near-impossible standards. “I never encountered him asking forgiveness for someone or apologizing for something. It just wasn’t part of who he was,” Taysom said.

But that inflexible devotion also meant JFS threw himself wholeheartedly into church service. He went on his first mission at age 15, an orphan sent to sink or swim in the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). He swam: There’s a critical scene in the book where JFS preached in sacrament meeting, served the sacrament and then proceeded to excommunicate nine wayward members of the congregation. He was just 17 years old.

Taysom was impressed by JFS’ fierce commitment to education. Because of his parents’ deaths and his ensuing extreme poverty, he received little formal schooling. When he arrived in Hawaii, his letters home showed he was “barely literate.” But he worked at it constantly, reading everything he could and mastering the English language as well as Hawaiian. (Taysom, who has collected some of the books from JFS’ personal library, has his copy of Dante’s “Inferno.”)

“He is certainly one of the most intelligent church leaders we’ve ever had, just in terms of the capacity to learn things, and coupling that with his real desire to put that to use,” said Taysom.

As the years went by and JFS rose in the ranks of church leadership, he directed that self-taught mind to systematizing doctrine and theology. Taysom says JFS is remembered today for his 1918 Vision of the Redemption of the Dead, which codified much of what Latter-day Saints came to believe about eternal families and temple work. But JFS was keenly interested in theology more broadly and regularly fielded doctrinal questions from church members, giving them detailed and logical explanations from the scriptures.

His craving for tidy systems forever changed the previously more haphazard administration of the church. He brought the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve together in purpose — the power struggles between those two bodies are an interesting thread in the book — and foreclosed for all time the possibility of a succession crisis of the sort that had pertained after the death of Joseph Smith Jr. and to a lesser extent after the deaths of Brigham Young and John Taylor.

The death masks of Joseph, left, and Hyrum Smith, created in the Mansion House in Nauvoo, Illinois, by George Q. Cannon after their martyrdom. The masks were donated to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by the Wilford C. Wood Foundation. Photo by Kenneth R. Mays via Wikimedia Commons

“He imposed an order on things,” said Taysom. “Today, when we ordain somebody to be a deacon, we confer the Aaronic Priesthood on them, and then we ordain them a deacon. But sometimes that was done the other way around until JFS said, ‘No, it has to be done this way because this is how God wants it done.’ So with him, you see this fusion of the performance of things in a certain way and the will of God for them to be that way.”

Smith’s drive to enforce order included an unbending emphasis on sexual purity. He viewed masturbation as a terrible evil (though he couldn’t bring himself to say the word) and believed some Victorian physicians who argued that circumcision could prevent it. So in 1896 JFS arranged for seven of his sons to be circumcised, even though they were far past infancy, then ranging in age from seven to 23. In his mind, whatever pain they experienced from the procedure would be worth it if they could only avoid sin.

Similarly, JFS took a thoroughly uncompromising view of the Albert Carrington case, in which an apostle of the church who had been excommunicated in 1885 for adultery applied in 1887 for rebaptism. Other church leaders leaned toward granting Carrington’s request. “They were saying, ‘Well, Brigham Young would have let him back in,’” said Taysom. But JFS refused, drawing a theological connection between Carrington’s adultery and the “unpardonable sin” mentioned in scripture.

“JFS is saying this is just like denying the Holy Ghost, that it’s a sin next to murder. And so it’s through his writings and teachings that you get this almost strange Mormon way of talking about morality — that when we say ‘immorality’ we mean something sexual, and that you’d rather be dead than have that on your soul.”

In the end, JFS emerges from the biography as a fully drawn human being, full of contradictions. “Some people are going to think I’m trashing him and other people that I’m excusing him,” said Taysom. That makes for a balanced portrait of a complex man who left his defining stamp on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint Saints.

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Related content in Mormon history:

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How some Muslim and non-Muslim rappers alike embrace Islam’s greeting of peace

In many parts of the world, hip-hop has become a way for Muslim artists to assert their belonging and identity.

Phife and Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest perform in 1994. (Tim Mosenfelder/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

August 25, 2023

By 

Jeta Luboteni, Margarita Guillory

(The Conversation) — Ever since the United States’ “war on terror” began, American media has been rife with stereotypes of Muslims as violent, foreign threats. Advocates trying to push back against this characterization sometimes emphasize that “Islam means peace,” since the two words are derived from the same Arabic root.

Indeed, the traditional Muslim greeting “al-salamu alaykum” means “peace be upon you.” Some Americans were already familiar with the phrase, thanks to an unexpected source: hip-hop culture, which often incorporated the Arabic phrase.

This is but one example of Islam’s deep intertwining with the threads of hip-hop culture. In her groundbreaking book “Muslim Cool,” scholar, artist and activist Suad Abdul Khabeer shows how Islam, specifically Black Islam, was a crucial part of hip-hop’s roots – asserting the faith’s place in American life. From prayerlike lyrics to tongue-in-cheek references, Islam and other religions are woven into hip-hop’s beats.

That’s the focus of a class we teach at Boston University. One of us is a professor of religion, history and pop culture, while the other is a graduate student in Islamic Studies.

More than ‘hello’

In Muslim cultures, “al-salamu alaykum” is more than a way of saying hello. It points to the spiritual peace of submitting to God – and not only in this life. Saying “peace be upon you” is a prayer that God will grant heaven to the person with whom you are speaking. Many Muslims believe that “salam” is also the greeting heard upon entering heaven.

The Quran instructs Muslims that “when you are greeted with a greeting, respond with a better greeting or return it.” This means that the proper response to “al-salamu alaykum” is, at a minimum, to respond in kind: “wa alaykum al-salam.”

This exchange has been adapted by several rap artists – including Rick Ross, who does not identify as Muslim, and turns the phrase’s meaning on its head. Ross uses the greeting in the hook of his song “By Any Means,” referencing a famous speech by civil rights leader Malcolm X, who was a minister of the Nation of Islam for many years until shortly before his assassination. In 1964, Malcolm X declared African Americans’ right “to be respected as a human being … by any means necessary.”

Half a century later, Ross rapped,

By any means, if you like it or not
Malcolm X, by any means
Mini-14 stuffed in my denim jeans
Al-salaam alaykum, wa alaykum al-salaam
Whatever your religion kiss the ring on the Don

Ross’s use of the phrase, right after he mentions Malcolm X, appears to insinuate that if one wishes him peace, he will wish them the same. However, if one wishes him violence, he will not hesitate to respond in kind.

‘Peace to all my shorties’

Other hip-hop artists have used “al-salamu alaykum” in many different ways, including lyrics that show broader familiarity with the laws of Islam. For example, it is sometimes contrasted with pork, which is prohibited in Islam, and by extension, the police – the “pigs,” in derogatory slang – though it is more common for non-Muslim singers to use it in this way.

“Tell the pigs I say Asalamu alaikum,” Lil Wayne says in “Tapout,” a song that has little else to do with Islam. Joyner Lucas likewise raps, “I say As-salāmu ʿalaykum when I tear apart some bacon,” in the song “Stranger Things.” Combinations of the sacred and the profane are present throughout hip-hop, not limited to references to Islam.

Finally, many rappers, particularly those who are Muslim, use the greeting in a more straightforward manner. In their 1995 song “Glamour and Glitz,” A Tribe Called Quest raps:

Peace to all my shorties who be dying too young
Peace to both coasts and the land in between
Peace to your man if you're doing your thing
Peace to my peoples who is incarcerated
Asalaam alaikum means peace, don't debate it

Here they affirm and assert that the core of the greeting is one of peace and harmony – not only between people, but between all of God’s creations.

Shared identity

French Montana performs during the premiere of ‘For Khadija,’ a documentary about his family, at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.
Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival

But even if Muslims come in peace, society may not see them that way – and that experience of discrimination often comes through in some lyrics. Rapper French Montana, who immigrated to the Bronx – the birthplace of hip-hop – from Morocco, raps in his 2019 song “Salam Alaykum:”

As-salamu alaykum, 
That pressure don’t break, 
It don’t matter what you do, 
they still gon’ hate you

It’s a harsh recognition that whatever one’s actions, whether violent or peaceful, they may still result in racism – a realization he shares with some fellow Muslim rappers in Europe. A comedic take on this is done by Zuna and Nimo in their 2016 song “Hol’ mir dein Cousin,” where at the start of the song, Nimo states he has a shipment of “haze–” marijuana, but at the end of the video, it turns out the shipment is of “Hase–” bunnies. Yet, throughout the song the rappers speak about violence and drug trade, painting a conflicting picture of innocence versus guilt.

Fatima El-Tayeb, a scholar of race and gender, calls hip-hop a “diasporic lingua franca” in her 2011 book “European Others,” highlighting how an art form created by African Americans, and speaking to their experiences, has become one of the main ways minorities around the world speak about their struggles and successes. Some young Muslims in Europe, for example, use hip-hop as a key way to assert their sense of belonging in societies.

In hip-hop, “al-salamu alaykum” is not treated as though it were part of a foreign culture. These rappers’ beats create a space where it’s OK to be Muslim – a space in which Islam is not merely tolerated, but recognized as a valuable part of pop culture.

(Margarita Guillory, Associate Professor of Religion, Boston University. Jeta Luboteni, Ph.D. Student in Religion, Boston University. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)