Whom I Have Called: The Ordain Women Movement and the Narrative of Dissent in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

ABSTRACT

The bulk of existing organizational dissent research has focused on corporate environments, theorizing dissent as a means of seeking and enacting change. This study extends the examination of organizational dissent to a large, highly structured and institutionalized faith organization. This study involves a narrative analysis of 315 microstories written by members of the Ordain Women movement, which seeks ordination of Mormon women into the priesthood. Findings suggest a definition of dissent effectiveness that includes a discursive space of voice, and that dissent may serve as a sensemaking tactic where ongoing dissonance is required for organizational membership. Writers of dissent narratives displayed meek, nonvitriolic dissent tactics that served to reinforce the power structures against which the members dissented.

KEYWORDS:

• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• dissent
• faith organizations
• power structures

Notes

1. Other Christian faiths worship a holy trinity of consubstantial beings: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Mormonism treats the trinity not as part of a whole but as three distinct beings.

2. The Mormon Heavenly Mother figure is not a human woman, as the Biblical Mary. Rather, the Mormon Heavenly Mother is the holy consort of God and was never of Earth.

3. The narrative methods employed here require a detailed knowledge of the workings of the organization under study. The researcher was raised as a sixth-generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but is no longer a practicing Mormon.