Seeking the Feminine Divine: Mormon Women's Religious Authority and Power in Rachel Hunt Steenblik's poetry

TLDR: Hunt Steenblik as discussed by the authors uses traditionally feminine themes alongside phrases and stories familiar to Mormon audiences to establish her authority as a Mormon woman, making a space for theological ideas outside mainstream ecclesiastical authority, which is denied to women in the Mormon church.

Abstract: Literary theorists like Helene Cixous and other French feminists have written about _l’ecriture feminine_, a deconstructive force which allows female writers more freedom from male-dominated areas. Because Christianity has been historically male-dominated, Christian women have long used this idea to great effect, using their writing as a space in which they are free to assert power and authority. Mormonism, which arose in the 1830s during the Second Great Awakening, has grown to reinforce a patriarchal model for both family and church leadership, making Cixous’ separate space of writing necessary for Mormon women of the twenty-first century. The Mormon poet Rachel Hunt Steenblik’s volume _Mother’s Milk_ explores the idea of a feminine God, using poetry to teach theology with authority she is not afforded in traditional church spaces. Hunt Steenblik uses traditionally feminine themes alongside phrases and stories familiar to Mormon audiences to establish her authority as a Mormon woman. In doing this, she makes a space for theological ideas outside mainstream ecclesiastical authority, which is denied to women in the Mormon church. Hunt Steenblik’s poems explore the connection between femininity and God through the embodied experience of birth and a mother-daughter relationship to validate female religious authority as well as align the author with male prophetic leaders and mimic language from Mormon scripture to broaden the Mormon definition of divinity and leadership. Hunt Steenblik’s work asserts the need for redemption of humanity as a whole as well as of the feminine divine and female religious power.