Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: BUT, you may say, no other name matters—what has naming got to do with personal salvation? I will try to explain.1Over many years, I've made a point to list the names I find in scripture denoting the Savior. I suspect many Christians do this to understand the character of Jesus. So far, I have catalogued forty-nine names for the Lord which describe the substance of His work. Considering each name helps me see Christ's character as I try to be like Him, literally taking His name as my own. However, I am female; Christ was not female. (This is despite the abundant feminized scriptural language that Christians must be “born” and “begotten of God.”) I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother; Christ was none of these things. These gendered roles are key features of my female identity, even my “divine nature and destiny.”2 God the Father and Jesus Christ provide universal godly role models, but I also seek divine female examples by which to pattern my life. I want to know more about my past, my present, and my future.Longing for feminine representation in the Godhead, in scripture, and in religious praxis spans time and religious traditions, and is visible across Latter-day Saint church history.3 Knowledge of our Heavenly Mother has been revealed, yet we live below our privileges because of cultural paralysis—we fail to act on this revelation. If Heavenly Mother, the cocreator of worlds and souls, remains inaccessible and relegated to shrouded obscurity in religious praxis, what kind of salvation can her spiritual offspring expect? Her perceived irrelevance and her anonymity are alarming. In liminality Mother in Heaven floats. Knowing God the Mother is a timeless necessity no less essential than knowing God the Father.My work as a rhetorician includes the recovery of lost names and rhetorical legacies from the long American nineteenth century that, if recovered, may benefit us today. Most of these names belong to women. In this essay, I work to recover women in rhetorical history and their timeless legacy, especially Mother in Heaven. While I am female and the mother of five daughters and six granddaughters, my unease isn't confined exclusively to women's concerns. Rather, all the men in my life, including my grandsons, stand to benefit or suffer because of women's marginalized position.To better understand our current moment, I offer the three ancient symbols of the feminine divine: Maiden, Mother, Crone. Recovering the name of women in scripture and US history through the lens of these classic archetypes illustrates why naming practice is important to personal salvation and how we might enjoy the power that comes with the privilege to name. Equitable naming practice is a universal concern, responsibility, and privilege.In recent conversation, I asked a couple friends what motivates them toward their goals. My friend Kerstin offered the German word zuversicht—the reason to get out of bed in the morning. My friend Xiumei shared the Chinese hanzi Σ»ú (wei-ji), which combines the concepts of crisis and possibility. I see these cross-cultural ideas culminating in the Greek word kairos, which signifies the perfect moment, that enchanted time when a rhetorical situation is ripe for action and the world primed for social change. Our time provides a kairotic moment to recover forgotten names—even a restoration of women's divine nature and destiny.The first classic female archetype is the Maiden. Maidenhood is often marked by notions of possibility and faith in a positive future propelling youth on their personal missions in life. Young people are famous for believing in such magical moments, recognizing them, inciting them, and acting on them. Joseph Smith Jr. was such a boy, and Virgin Mary was such a maiden. Mary was a prime model of zuversicht and wei-ji when she responded to the preeminent kairotic moment, her unique mission call, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).Mary is the most common female name in Western human history. In fact, we can get lost in the many Marys spanning time. Virginia Woolf capitalizes on this ubiquity at the beginning of her touchstone feminist treatise A Room of One's Own. She explores the excuses for and ramifications of woman's elision from the historical record by asking her audience to call her by one of the many names of Anon (for anonymous), deliberately disrupting the masculine line of authoritative descent. She tells her readers to “call [her] Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance.”4 Woolf is being ironic, proceeding to prove that naming and remembering names matter a lot.Because Mary is ubiquitous, Mary is universally recognized and relatable. Woolf is Mary. I am Mary. All women are Mary. At the Annunciation, Gabriel said, “Fear not, Mary” (Luke 1:30). What happens when we remove the comma from Gabriel's reassuring words and instead consider them an injunction? We hear “Fear not Mary.” This small grammatical difference might instigate great social action—supporting and developing female power instead of fearing it.For example, “The Song of Mary” or “The Magnificat” (Luke 1:46–55) is one of the oldest hymns sung throughout many Christian denominations. It is one of the most glorious testimonies ever recorded in scripture. During her pregnancy Mary confides her belief in God, in His Son, and in her divine mission as His mother to her much-older relative and friend Elizabeth. Mary's witness is a perspective from one crossing the threshold from maidenhood to motherhood. She rejoices in being seen and elevated by God, declaring that “he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.” Furthermore, she exults in knowing that “all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).However, instead of calling her blessed and celebrating her role in God's plan, Protestants and Latter-day Saints have all but eliminated her in fear of Mary veneration and deification. There are seven songs revering Joseph Smith Jr. in the LDS hymnal, but none that remember Mary as the first convert to Christianity and Jesus’ most devoted disciple. To enjoy the miracle of God's condescension (1 Nephi 11:16–17), the union between deity and humanity that made Jesus capable of performing the Atonement, we need to sing “The Song of Mary”!Among the many biblical Marys is Mary Magdalene, who does not measure up to society's expectations for women because she is single and childless. Mary Magdalene is suspect in many minds, often associated with moral sin or demonic possession. But she is also an icon of repentance and devoted discipleship. She was an eyewitness to the Savior's ministry and crucifixion. As the first person to whom the resurrected Savior appeared, she recognized Him when He pronounced her name. Mary Magdalene is mentioned twelve times in the Gospels—more than any other woman and more than most of Christ's apostles. God, Angel Gabriel, and Christ supersede cultural conventions by seeing Marys and speaking their name, thereby demonstrating the divine pattern of God valuing all people.5The second classic female archetype is the Mother. While mitochondrial DNA from our mothers charts our biological lineage, cultural tradition dictates that we inherit our surname from our fathers.6 My last name—my maiden name—hails from the little northern Utah town of Heber. I am proud to be part of the Rasband clan. Today, 567 people have this surname.7 I am not one of them, anymore.Many a maiden considers the time of her marriage, when her identity and loyalty may conflict. Will her name change? While more and more women are retaining surnames at marriage, in the past, a name change was expected and caused a woman's identity to be subsumed by her husband's—legally known as coverture.8 This practice—whereby a woman is covered, or shrouded, by her husband, giving up her personhood and fading to the background or becoming invisible—lingers still today as women replace their father's name with their husband's.Many years ago, standing in the courthouse and looking between the clerk and my fiancé, I saw my family name fade like an old sepia print as I practiced my new signature: J. Nanette Hilton.9 I could have chosen differently, but convention carried sway. It's this matter of choice I emphasize: We each have agency to name and be named. Given the choice again, I would have added my husband's family name to my own three. If Jesus can have forty-nine monikers, I can have a few. As my identity expands, I've continued to add names like Momma, Nana, and Professor. But just recently, sifting through my mail I encountered a ghost from the past threatening my personhood. It was an envelope addressed to Dr. and Mrs. Paul Hilton. Some cultures believe that when a person dies, they experience three deaths: first, when their spirit leaves their body; second, when the body is interred or cremated; and, finally, when their name is last spoken. Experiencing the omission of my name on the envelope took my breath away—like a micro-death.Baptism is a symbolic micro-death as covenant-makers (women and men) are buried in the water and reborn, taking upon themselves the name of Christ. For many, it is a rite of passage undertaken without full understanding of its implication—like the young bride surrendering her maidenhood and name. Christian culture draws from the biblical notion that the husband typifies Christ and the wife typifies His kingdom, thus she gives up her own name and is subsumed in His.10 Idealistically, the wife is protected and provided for by her husband who metaphorically represents Christ; she is cherished so much that he gives her his most valuable possession: his name. Few people today recognize this religious signification or that the woman is likewise an embodied type of Christ, even sacrificing her blood and body for others. But, once fully comprehended, we have opportunities to renew our commitments more meaningfully through ordinances and sacraments wherein names and naming are keys to evolving personal power and salvation.Not only does scripture offer the Maiden Mary but also Mother Mary—same woman, different phase. While maidenhood is bright with connotations of innocence and possibility, motherhood is credited with the power to shape individuals and societies—a child's success points to the mother's success. However, motherhood is also a fraught positionality as women are often blamed for society's failures. Motherhood is a good example of how women teeter on the scales of social expectation and judgment.God sidesteps culturally gendered conventions, again and again, to get the job done. For example, Maiden Mary of “low estate” conceived without a husband—consider the social stigma Mary suffered. Elizabeth—a self-declared Crone—stepped forward to name her son John, contrary to custom, when her husband was mute from disbelief (Luke 1:60). Furthermore, in Jesus’ ancestry are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, who resist perfect-mother stereotypes. These women may be considered social outcasts and are among the few females named in scripture. Our list of feminists begins with Eve, who enacted the divine plan by breaking the rules. Women are often remembered only because they exceed the bounds of social propriety.11 If not scandalized, women are mostly silent and invisible from the historical record—religious and secular—prompting Woolf's incandescent prose. In maidenhood, women are sexual commodities and sometimes hypervisible if they thwart convention. In motherhood, women are laborers valued for their procreative and domestic work until they recede into aged obscurity.The silenced mother and missing-mother motifs are pervasive. Consider the many absent mothers informing fairytales, including Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast. The hidden mother has often been perpetuated by mothers. A photographic trend in the Victorian era was such an instance when women omitted themselves from the picture. Rather than holding their baby in the portrait or propping up the infant, mothers held the baby while concealing themselves “under a shroud, obscured as another object, their limbs disembodied by the framing of the image, cut out of the frame entirely, or scratched or burned out of the image.”12 This type of self-effacement conveys a false modesty resulting in woman's erasure across centuries, not only in photographs, but in legal recognition, public education, the arts, sciences, and in nearly every sphere of influence—even today. This erasure can be seen through the culturally constructed “‘sacred’ censorship” or “holy hush” around Heavenly Mother, impoverishing generations.13The third classic female archetype is the Crone. After maternity, a woman is often discounted and banished from society, becoming the spectral mother and wife, lurking in the shadows and mad in the attic, and the haunting hag with magic powers hovering at the margins.14 The Crone is the most mystifying archetype, because of modern negative linguistic connotation and prevalent ageism. Modern usage defines crone as a “feeble and withered old woman” and as a “strong term of abuse.”15 In the archetypal sense, the Crone may elicit fear because she has supernatural powers and upends expectation. Fear is the barrier to revelation and change. American psychoanalyst and writer Clarissa Pinkola Estés recovers the Crone, reminding us that the word has etymological roots in crown, corona, coronation, and queen.16 Having experienced maidenhood and motherhood, the Crone is at the apex of development—beyond any commodification, above stereotypes, and rejecting cultural constructs. She is wisdom personified—Leila, Lady Wisdom, Wise Woman, Mary, Baba Yaga, Shekhinah, Befana, Radha, Kuan Yin, Shakti, Badb, Banshee, Fall and Winter after Spring and Summer, Cailleach. She is the mature Athena, Mazu, Artemis, Anu, Persephone, and Eostre. She is perfected Gaia, Pachamama, Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Macha, Demeter, Dea Matres, and Isis. As I now am, She once was. She is every woman through Her experience. She is perfect. She is God-dess. I see Her and She sees me. As She now is, I may be.17Years ago, in a graduate seminar charting the history of American feminism, I became aware of first wave American feminists who recognized the fundamental need to know God the Mother. This knowledge liberated me from feeling alone or wrong in my desire for connection to the feminine divine. In fighting for women's rights, these nineteenth-century women also fought to elucidate Mother in Heaven. Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are prime examples of women who publicly worked to recover the female divine and were consequently stigmatized and generally forgotten.Many considered Fuller the greatest intellectual of her day. One scholar suggests that Fuller was perhaps the “greatest humanist of her century, one of the greatest America has ever produced.”18 A key element of Fuller's legacy is her dedicated excavation of female power. In an 1841 essay, Fuller names this feminine force “Leila.” She describes Leila as “all the powers of with their powers of and Fuller this female that my spirit a kind of for a between me and the Fuller subsumed in on her name and a Leila a with God and a call to Fuller that Leila us to God yet and than when to his as I ever but the is for still us In her essay, Fuller not only the female but also Her power to and woman into God's Fuller her feminist in the Her social of women's to especially as a She this by the of thy name is She it to they name is Fuller these with an from a at a convention she for her which she as for its these Fuller the of female power and social at the Fuller was a at the time of her and gendered expectations made her a social social by to in she the with whom she a As the family for the Today, few people know or remember that Fuller women's in with her in the Her and spirit her to the first In a convention to the of upon However, Fuller and her family on their the audience Fuller in a moment of After her Fuller's were by a of who considered her and Fuller to be and forgotten because she to to of I believe that by Fuller and her we may what as a and plan for and social that personal and Cady Stanton was another first wave American feminist calling for a recovery of feminine who for her As she made for the her her and to her from [her] with Fuller's Stanton and the of seven She is remembered as a historical in the for women's she women the to to the US for all of the modern connotations of Stanton because of her old and In my and in she her most and most at the of her life, of years after the to the into Her in the for women's is only by the in her from seeing the of her legacy is sometimes to be exclusively a and are of her to recover Mother in Heaven and Her In Stanton her to to what it about a of female and a and her an the of the the women's she and which she Stanton first The in and it was an yet and considered by of the a work of was to women from and to her to her full for a of Heavenly Mother to the was am to know about these and women. and legacies my belief that we must the work to recover Mother in Heaven. naming She and to us as and to offer and elicit a Her positionality may us God the recognizing Her not only as Mother, but also as Maiden and Crone, we the portrait of our Heavenly in Her in the I about my own and when I on my through the of not Her to be in one or phase. I less I I that She would if we worked for and that so to even in and is is a who draws from her as a a of and work the role and of in the of family life. Her as hidden in each are to be After a from to her her in and from Utah in is a to the of and
Author: Nanette Rasband Hilton
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4411597734