Sunday morning I woke to half a dozen links on my Facebook page to Louis CK’s opening monologue for Saturday Night Live, all with captions like, “Louis CK namechecks Heavenly Mother.” Sure enough, discussing his theological uncertainty, CK says,
I think if there is a god, I don’t know if it’s the one in the Bible, ‘cause that’s a weird story. He’s our father, and we’re his children. That’s it. “Our father who art in heaven.” Where’s our mother? What happened to our mom? What did he do to our mom? Something happened…. How could we not have a mother?
Heavenly Mother is an absolutely foundational bit of Mormon doctrine that is very rarely discussed—in fact, worshiping her can get you excommunicated. Some Mormons think we aren’t even supposed to talk about her, but her existence in Mormon theology is at least acknowledged in the recent essay about whether we’ll get to have our own planets in the next life.
One source Mormons rely on to establish God the Mother’s doctrinal relevance is a hymn by Eliza R. Snow (who married to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young) currently entitled “O My Father.” Snow’s logic is similar to CK’s: if we have a father in heaven, we must have a mother:
