BCC Third Hour

Welcome to Third Hour, a new podcast from By Common Consent!

The idea for this podcast blossomed during a very lively discussion on a Facebook post from former BCC permablogger Natalie Brown. She wrote:

I struggle with how the LDS Church tends to promote to leadership roles or feature in campaigns women who hold / held prominent professional roles rather than followed the endless prescriptive, prophetic advice to stay home. (Remember, for example, the role play in the YW’s manual in which a talented female scientist practiced saying no to her career so that she could raise kids?) To be sure, I disliked that advice myself, but to this day I feel unable to pursue anything without dealing with layers of guilt and mixed-messaging from those closest to me. Indeed, I feel a great deal of paralysis when attempting to plan a life for myself. And so I find this institutional whiplash hard. Like, WHY saddle so many women like me with these lifelong feelings if it turns out that the Church didn’t really mean it? Or, conversely, why not promote and highlight more caregivers if the Church really feels that’s what has most value? Long, complicated topics . . .

Long, complicated topics indeed. The post ended up garnering nearly 100 comments, with many Mormon women sharing their own experiences of what Natalie referred to as “whiplash.”

From that thread emerged the idea to do a roundtable about Mormon women’s whiplash. We set a time to meet and record, and then… well, our conversation just kept spiraling out into more and more complex topics, mostly having to deal with being a woman connected to Mormonism in late capitalism. We decided this would need to be a series to cover all the ground we wanted to cover. And what better place to get conversational nourishment than skipping your third-hour meeting chattering away in the foyer? (Yes, we’re aware of the two-hour block… so spend your now-free third hour with us!)

Tune in to hear what we hope is the first of many episodes diving into “deep culture,” which we know is at least as important as “deep doctrine.” Topics discussed include the Church’s messaging around family, education, and career; the way prescribed life scripts and narratives shape Mormon life; generational differences in how “institutional whiplash” is experienced; and some changes we’d like to see moving forward. Happy listening!