Is Mormon faith crisis a men’s only affair? Do Mormon women have anything to say about the historical controversies and waves of disaffection impacting the contemporary church?

One could read Sunday’s front-page New York Times article, “Some Mormons Search the Web and Find Doubt” (July 21, 2013) (be sure to see Kimberly’s great FMH blog piece on this) and never know how deeply disaffection runs among Mormon women, and how our story may differ in substantial ways from that of our male contemporaries—ways that reveal how deeply male privilege is embedded in Mormon culture.

The article’s author, Laurie Goodstein, is an outstanding journalist who has made women’s issues in religion a consistent priority in her reporting. That’s why I was especially disheartened to find absolutely no Mormon women—zero—cited or quoted in her otherwise outstanding piece.

(Sources say that some women were interviewed for the story, but none made the final cut. Three women are named in the article. All wives. It would have been great to hear from Mormon women who have been hard at work on faith crisis issues, like Fiona Givens, or Chelsea Fife, or Cindy Reid, who is making a movie about Mormon women in faith crisis.)

Consequently, the version of the story Goodstein tells through the article’s subject, former European LDS area authority Hans Mattson, is of a young man who sacrifices and works hard for the faith, rises through the ranks of leadership—or hopes to, but finds himself suddenly confronted with historical controversies about Joseph Smith and the origins of the Book of Mormon that cast the literal veracity of the faith into doubt. It’s like the son who expects to inherit the family business but finds that dad has been cooking the books.

And the response to widening circles of disaffection over historical issues from Church leaders has also played into this masculine plotline. Goodstein’s article cites Elder Jeffrey Holland, who has spoken to faith crisis issues in two recent General Conference addresses, and whose New York Times quoted lines—“Don’t hyperventilate if from time to time issues arise that need to be examined”—come across as a high-minded LDS version of the adage “man up.” As if the father is saying to the son, “Of course, the family business has its issues, but you owe it to your family to protect our honor, so get a grip. That’s what manhood means. That’s what we all have to do, son.” Male faith crisis seems to be about credibility and betrayal.

But what about faith crisis for women?

Data from John Dehlin’s important survey of disaffected Mormons reveals that Mormon women also use the internet, and that many of us have there discovered historical controversies that cast the “official version” of the Mormon story into doubt. But what drives women’s disaffection may be different. Not just the hurt cause by a sense of betrayal and embarrassment over historical secrets kept secret, but the hurt caused by practices of discrimination, exclusion, and subordination based on race, sexuality, and gender.

And what women do with our faith crisis is different too. For we never expected to “rise through the ranks.” Our sorrow is not that what we expected to inherit from our fathers is tarnished. Our sorrow is in pondering that all along our fathers really believed that the inequality and subordination of women was exactly what God intended. Or at least that contesting the policies and liturgies in which gender subordination has been institutionally inscribed was not worth serious attention.

I’ve written elsewhere about the incoherence of theology around gender in modern Mormonism. Other signs of inattention to the concerns of women include the fact that sealing policies that allow living men (but not women) to be sealed to more than one spouse, thus presaging polygamy in the eternities, remain in effect—despite the fact that they cause many women (and men) who feel strongly opposed to polygamy anxiety, shame, and heartbreak. If the Church wanted to acknowledge faith crisis-provoking issues important to women, this policy could be revised to match the current policy for sealings of the dead, which allow multiple sealings for men and women. Theological clarification on the historical and contemporary meaning of polygamy—is it eternal, or not, really?—would be even more meaningful. Temple endowment rituals could also be revised to remove language that instantiates the subordination of women–that is, the analogizing of women’s position to men with that of men’s to God—simply by making the language of the rite the same for women and for men, which it is not.

Is our God really polygamous? Is subordination of women really the order of the eternities? These questions have driven many men and women from the faith, and have since the days of Emma Smith. It didn’t take the invention of the internet to hasten faith crisis for women in Mormonism.

Every great world faith has matured through historical controversies about its origins into a place where there is room for non-literal interpretations of sacred history. That’s the work we’re seeing happen right now, in an incredibly compressed time frame, for Mormonism. And I hope it succeeds. I hope that the Church’s efforts to be more forthcoming about its history and books and talks by Richard and Claudia Bushman and Terryl and Fiona Givens help destigmatize doubt and make the faith more welcoming to those in faith crisis. I want a big, beautiful, proud Mormonism that holds onto its people.

At the same time, it seems that to retain those who care about issues not just of credibility but of justness will require changes to the institution itself—changes that at least erase the subordination of women from ritual liturgy and eternal polygamy from policy. And I sincerely hope that the Church finds the will to address all of these issues as well.

Because I have stayed because the God I know as a Mormon is a God of mercy, justice, and justness. Most days, I am willing to be patient to wait for that God to radiate through every aspect of our policy and practice. But I recognize the justness in my sisters and daughters asking, “Does God really intend me to be subordinate?” And I cannot hold it against them if the answer they find in Mormon history, policy and practice makes them feel they need to walk away.

This is the story I’m witnessing in the women—of all ages—around me. And this is the half of the story the New York Times failed to tell.