Latter-day Saint women today live in a media age constantly buzzing with false claims and misrepresentations of their daily lives, worship and ambitions.
“The truth about us seems to be in short supply these days,” Sheri Dew — executive vice president and chief content officer of Deseret Management Corporation — recently said of Latter-day Saint women during BYU Women’s Conference.
Hollywood seems fixated on portraying millions of smart, talented, accomplished, devoted and chaste Latter-day Saint women as women who are “secretly petty, promiscuous and preoccupied with flaunting their covenant-breaking,” Dew said. But these representations aren’t accurate.
False claims and misrepresentations of Latter-day Saint women and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in general, aren’t anything new, however.
Misperceptions of the faith, its practices and its regard for women have existed since the early days of the church, researcher and archivist Sharalyn Howcroft said in a March interview with the Deseret News.
Eliza R. Snow, an early Latter-day Saint woman leader often referred to as “Zion’s poetess,” did a lot of work to “dispel rumors” about the church’s principles and the purposes of its Relief Society organization, Howcroft said.
“There’s many times that she said, ‘Women are not ornaments, we’re not decoration. We need to speak. We need to make our thoughts known,’” Howcroft said of Snow.
A book highlighting 52 of nearly 1,300 sermons delivered by Snow to the women of the church was published in March. At the book’s press event, Sister Kristin M. Yee of the church’s Relief Society general presidency told the Deseret News that Latter-day Saint women today would benefit from reading Snow’s words.
Snow knew “deeply who she was, where she was headed and had a great fortitude to be able to accomplish all that she did in (the Lord’s) name,” Sister Yee said. “As we study the work of the sisters, we will be strengthened, we will gain understanding and we will be able to better know our place and to find joy in this work.”
10 quotes from Zion’s poetess
The book “Rise Up and Speak: Selected Discourses of Eliza R. Snow” features 52 of Snow’s sermons in standardized text, with introductions and annotations for context.
Here are 10 quotes from Snow with links to where each is available on the Church Historian’s Press website. The website features all of Snow’s nearly 1,300 known and recorded sermons, unedited.
March 17, 1843; Nauvoo, Illinois:
- “Let not your early life be trifled away on nonsensical objects, but in all your pursuits, have a wise reference to the future. … Let your thoughts be elevated. Let them rise superior to the superficial glare, the pompous nothingness of the fashion of this world which ever passes away, and study to make yourselves useful.”
Jan. 13, 1870; Salt Lake City, Utah Territory:
- “Heretofore, while detraction and ridicule have been poured forth in almost every form that malice could invent, while we have been misrepresented by speech and press and exhibited in every shade but our true light, the ladies of Utah, as a general thing, have remained silent. … But there is a point at which silence is no longer a virtue. In my humble opinion, we have arrived at this point.”
- “Were we the stupid, degraded, heartbroken beings that we have been represented, silence might better become us. But, as women of God — women filling high and responsible positions, performing sacred duties, women who stand not as dictators but as counselors to their husbands, and who, in the purest, noblest sense of refined womanhood, being truly their helpmates — we not only speak because we have the right, but justice and humanity demand that we should.”
- “Every sister in this church should be a preacher of righteousness, and I think we all are; I believe it is our aim to be such. Let us be more energetic to improve our minds and develop that strength of moral character which cannot be surpassed on the face of the earth.”
Aug. 3, 1871; Ogden, Utah Territory:
- “We stand in a different position from the ladies of the world — we have made covenants with God, we understand his order … (and) we are endowed with all the powers and abilities whereby we can come to the full measure of the stature of queens and goddesses in eternity.”
- “I love to look upon my sisters when their faces indicate that they possess the Spirit of the Lord. Why should we care about the fashions of the world? We should realize that God has called us out of the world and that it is a degradation for us to stoop to assimilate with them and to adopt the habits and customs they are seeking to introduce among us to make us like themselves.”
Dec. 4, 1873; Ogden, Utah Territory:
- “Those that are in the world will sink into insignificance. You will rise to renown and become women to be looked up to. The world will become devastated and many will come up to Zion. When they come, they will seek for wise women.”
Nov. 16, 1875; Plain City, Utah Territory:
- “Wake up, my sisters. We have much to do. Satan is trying to overcome the Saints. Inasmuch as we are humble, cultivate a cheerful disposition, endeavor to make our homes happy, we shall overcome.”
Feb. 13, 1881; Kanab, Utah Territory:
- “I would say to my young sisters, never shrink from a duty. God has put the means in your hands to become queens and priestesses in his kingdom if you will only live for it.”
April 28, 1883; Morgan, Utah Territory:
- “We must not give up nor get discouraged. The adversary will not leave a stone unturned to discourage us and lead us away, and if he can succeed in overcoming once, his work is accomplished.”
Who was Eliza R. Snow?
Born in Massachusetts in 1804, the Latter-day Saint wordsmith was not always confident in speaking.
Snow once said her heart went “pitter-pat” the moment Brigham Young first called her to “instruct the sisters,” Latter-day Saint historian Jennifer Reeder told the Deseret News.
Snow grew more confident over time as she traveled by wagon and train to speak, sometimes to multiple audiences in one day, Reeder said.
People “could not stop listening to her,” Reeder added, and Snow taught other women to “rise up and speak.”
Snow spent decades of her life traveling the territories of Utah and Idaho to minister to and instruct early Latter-day Saint women.
She served as a founding member, secretary and later the second general president of the church’s Relief Society. And during her service, Snow helped reorganize local Relief Society presidencies, as well as establish the church’s Young Women and Primary organizations.
Local Relief Society secretaries and others recorded Snow’s words in hundreds of minute books. A selection of these words now appears featured in the book “Rise Up and Speak: Selected Discourses of Eliza R. Snow.”
Learn more about the book, released in March, and how it was curated here.
