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Religion Dispatches - Religion Dispatches Religion Dispatches
  • Racial Justice
    • In Israel, Left and Right Join to Protest New Government Threat to Democracy — What’s Striking is What’s Missing
      In Israel, Left and Right Join to Protest New Government Threat to Democracy — What’s Striking is What’s Missing
    • As a Religious Studies Professor I Disagreed With the Hamline Firing — But Now I’ve Changed My Mind
      As a Religious Studies Professor I Disagreed With the Hamline Firing — But Now I’ve Changed My Mind
    • Enjoy the Kosher Collard Greens, But Understand This: Hebrew Israelites Have Something to Say to the Rest of the Jewish Community
      Enjoy the Kosher Collard Greens, But Understand This: Hebrew Israelites Have Something to Say to the Rest of the Jewish Community
  • Politics/Law
    • Don’t Tread on our Gas Stoves: The Latest Right-Wing Cause May Be Silly But the Strategy is the Point
      Don’t Tread on our Gas Stoves: The Latest Right-Wing Cause May Be Silly But the Strategy is the Point
    • In Hamline Case, the ‘Free Expression vs. Religious Sensibilities’ Frame Obscures a Stark Reality About Higher Education
      In Hamline Case, the ‘Free Expression vs. Religious Sensibilities’ Frame Obscures a Stark Reality About Higher Education
    • GOP Candidate Allegedly Orchestrating Shooting of Democrats’ Homes is no Accident
      GOP Candidate Allegedly Orchestrating Shooting of Democrats’ Homes is no Accident
  • Sex/Gender/Justice
    • Christian Nationalist Legislator Introduces Anti-Trans ‘Millstone Act’ Suggesting Biblical Retribution
      Christian Nationalist Legislator Introduces Anti-Trans ‘Millstone Act’ Suggesting Biblical Retribution
    • In Israel, Left and Right Join to Protest New Government Threat to Democracy — What’s Striking is What’s Missing
      In Israel, Left and Right Join to Protest New Government Threat to Democracy — What’s Striking is What’s Missing
    • Don’t Tread on our Gas Stoves: The Latest Right-Wing Cause May Be Silly But the Strategy is the Point
      Don’t Tread on our Gas Stoves: The Latest Right-Wing Cause May Be Silly But the Strategy is the Point
  • Christian Nationalism
    • Christian Nationalist Legislator Introduces Anti-Trans ‘Millstone Act’ Suggesting Biblical Retribution
      Christian Nationalist Legislator Introduces Anti-Trans ‘Millstone Act’ Suggesting Biblical Retribution
    • Don’t Tread on our Gas Stoves: The Latest Right-Wing Cause May Be Silly But the Strategy is the Point
      Don’t Tread on our Gas Stoves: The Latest Right-Wing Cause May Be Silly But the Strategy is the Point
    • GOP Candidate Allegedly Orchestrating Shooting of Democrats’ Homes is no Accident
      GOP Candidate Allegedly Orchestrating Shooting of Democrats’ Homes is no Accident
  • Russia Invades Ukraine
    • Espionage Allegations Against Russian Church Raise Religious Freedom Issue in Ukraine
      Espionage Allegations Against Russian Church Raise Religious Freedom Issue in Ukraine
    • As Tensions Escalate in the Balkans, the West Could Hand Putin a Valuable Weapon
      As Tensions Escalate in the Balkans, the West Could Hand Putin a Valuable Weapon
    • Putin’s Violent Holy War Rhetoric Made it to the Christian Right Fringe — And There’s Reason to Believe it’ll Go Mainstream
      Putin’s Violent Holy War Rhetoric Made it to the Christian Right Fringe — And There’s Reason to Believe it’ll Go Mainstream
holly.welker@gmail.com'

Holly Welker

Holly Welker is the editor of Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage. Her poetry and prose have appeared in publications ranging from Seventeen to Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought to Bitch to the New York Times.

(A)theologies, Archive, Racial Justice, Sex/Gender/JusticeApril 13, 2022

‘Always Pray to the Father’: Mormon Leader Calls Desire for Knowledge of Heavenly Mother ‘Arrogant and Unproductive’

By Holly Welker

In 1995, in a document called the Family Proclamation, leaders of The Church of Jesus…

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(A)theologies, OMFG, Sex/Gender/JusticeJanuary 15, 2020

Mormon Statement on Feminism is Relevant and Timely… But Only by Coincidence

By Holly Welker

“What is the Church’s stance on feminism?” This is the question addressed in a brief anonymous…

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History/Theology, OMFG, Sex/Gender/JusticeMay 7, 2019

LDS Church Rescinds Hurtful Marriage Policy Without Apology

By Holly Welker

Given the ease with which the discontinuation of this policy was accomplished—two pages, three signatures—it’s worthwhile to ask: why now?

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History/Theology, Sex/Gender/JusticeApril 8, 2019

LDS Leaders Owe Repentance and Apology for Cruelty to LGBTQ People and Their Children

By Holly Welker

While LDS leadership rescinded its prohibition on baptizing children of LGBTQ parents, they bizarrely claim that neither the church’s nor God’s will have changed. You can all but hear them say, “Look, don’t blame us for the fact that God finds your gayness abhorrent! We’re just messengers!” 

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History/Theology, OMFG, Sex/Gender/JusticeJanuary 4, 2019

Changes in Role of Mormon Women Can’t Be Discussed—But Let’s Discuss Them Anyway

By Holly Welker

It’s gaslighting, moral cowardice, and yet another betrayal to deny women’s anger and pain, only to go and make some of the changes women have sought while still explicitly denying that women ever had any sort of legitimate complaint.

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Christian Nationalism, Politics/Law, Sex/Gender/JusticeSeptember 28, 2018

Kavanaugh Hearings Are a Commentary on Mormonism

By Holly Welker

I strongly suspect that what Senator Orrin Hatch found so objectionable about the Kavanaugh hearing was that women were allowed to ask questions of a man.

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Culture, OMFG, Sex/Gender/JusticeSeptember 14, 2018

Mormon ‘Humorist’ Robert Kirby Is Butt of His Own Dirty Joke

By Holly Welker

The problem, he writes, is that he “misjudged how she would take [his] sense of humor.” Really? Does he normally get a good response to asking women he’s just met to pretend they’re prostitutes?

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OMFGAugust 20, 2018

LDS Church Disavows “Mormon”-ism

By Holly Welker

I doubt that Latter-day Saints are any more likely in 2018 to renounce a practice ingrained over lifetimes than they were in 1982.

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Archive, OMFG, Sexuality/GenderJanuary 17, 2018

Meet the New (Straight White American Male) Mormon President

By Holly Welker

On Tuesday, Russell M. Nelson, a 93-year-old retired heart surgeon, was announced as the seventeenth…

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Archive, Books, Culture, Sexuality/Gender, StoriesJuly 28, 2014

When Religion Becomes a Trap Rather Than a Safety Net

By Holly Welker

“My situation isn’t isolated to Mormonism. But to suggest that it doesn’t exist in Mormonism is just bullshit. Abuse of power happens in every religion.”

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Religion Dispatches

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