Sabbath Devotional: A Brief History of Patriotism and Women in My Church

As we discuss patriotism and the constitution in congregations across America today, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on what patriotism looked like for some of our foremothers in this church.

Of course, the early church's relationship with the United States was fraught. Members had faced extermination, been driven from their homes and chased across the Rockies to a desert state where they largely bootstrapped their way into new cities, new gardens, new lives. Yet, when the possibility of statehood arose, the leadership of the church pursued it. Utah became a state on the eve of the Spanish-American War and the imperialist conflict in the Philippines.

This caused some tension. Church leaders were trying to demonstrate loyalty to the United States after decades of conflict while also preserving a commitment to peacemaking and a healthy skepticism toward war. This is a difficult needle to thread, and I don't mean to cast judgement on what the proper path forward was. But while church and state leaders grappled with pressing questions about patriotism, statehood, and loyalty, women asked another question: How do disciples of Christ build peace? Real peace. A peace that can withstand international tumults and tense negotiations between political priorities?

At the beginning of the twentieth century, long before women could vote nationally, LDS women across Utah organized one of the largest peace movements in the state's history. They held peace meetings in towns throughout Utah. They gathered in churches and public halls, in tabernacles and synagogues. They invited religious leaders from different faiths to speak. They passed resolutions supporting international peace and arbitration rather than war. In 1903 alone, more than fifteen thousand Utahns participated in these meetings. That's roughly 5% of the state's population at the time. It was grassroots organizing and coalition building before there were names for either.

In her summaries of these meetings, Emmeline B. Wells pointed out that the sego lily (Utah's state flower) was always prominently displayed. It was a reminder that patriotism needn't look like bravado or belligerence. It can also be a bold declaration of peace.

By the World Wars, the peace meetings were becoming less popular as national support for engaging in the international conflict rose. So, the women began to emphasize their unique position and insight into the cost of war. They were the ones "who must send their sons to kill and be killed." They drafted resolutions vocalizing support for an organization of collaborative nations who might end the war peacefully without the cost of more lives. They brought maternal moral language into politics and conflict strategy.

And when the US did enter the war, the women did not double down or boycott all war efforts as you might expect from peace movements in the sixties. They supported war relief efforts as they continued to actively, passionately advocate for peace. Utah women would organize Red Cross efforts, supply troops, feed soldiers traveling through Salt Lake, and care for wounded veterans.

But also, women like Ruth May Fox (s/o to Fox Hall dorms from my early BYU days) helped organize a statewide Peace Day supporting efforts to prevent future wars. She spoke at the Tabernacle to commemorate the day. In her speech, she calls for greater brotherly love and the laying down of enmity. What strikes me is she doesn't talk about treaties or resolutions (though as a seasoned activist for peace and suffrage, she'd been involved in drafting many). She isn't speaking to foreign governments or legislators. She's speaking directly to her neighbors. Because for Ruth, peace began long before the diplomats gathered. It happened in homes, wards, and communities. It grew from the soil of friends and families who fostered charity over contempt.

Reading through this draft, I recognize that it might not feel like much of a devotional. But I see in this history a kind of tidal wave. I am sitting in my office typing. The office is in a home that my grandmother rents to me. It's the home that my mother grew up in, sitting on the farm that her family tended. My Grandpa Claude purchased the farm early in his marriage to my grandmother, just a few years after he returned home from the Korean War. My grandfather was a gentle soul, and war was deeply traumatic for him. I imagine him in Asia, a dairy farmer from Logan who had never traveled further east than Bear Lake, wrestling with the many sorrows he witnessed all around him, holding the largest paycheck he'd ever received in his life. He used it to buy pearls for his mother, Claudia. Claudia, who raised seven boys and taught them to be gentle and respectful and kind. Claudia, who served her community in love and charity and peace. Claudia, who never spoke at a tabernacle or drafted legislation, but who lived in and through the tensions of war and patriotism that punctuated her life. Claudia, who sent her boy to Korea, then received him home again. Who listened as he told her what he'd seen. And who helped him keep living, and living well.

So much of my life is the result of a million small acts of peace that have all cascaded into this room in this moment as I sit, writing about the possibility of a better, kinder, less violent world. A world my grandfather imagined when he fixed his representatives' phone numbers on his refrigerator so he could contact them about legislation that mattered to him. A world he affirmed when he wept with possibility over my sister's mission call to Seoul. A world he learned from his mother. A world, I'm sure, she learned from hers. And from the many, many women working hard throughout the decades of her life to proclaim what they called "a patriotism of peace."

I don't know. Maybe I'm feeling sentimental coming off of Memorial Day. But having recently visited and cleaned the graves of Claude and Claudia, I do think this is the legacy they've offered. It's not the sort of thing that makes history books. But it makes families — my family, breaking in blessings upon my head. And I want to affirm it by carrying the work forward. So, I'll end with my anthem for peace work, a quote from George Eliot (a pen name for Marrianne Evans): “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

To the women, their hidden lives, and their faithful work. May it continue to cascade in our country.

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Image is of a peace parade on Armistice Day in Vernal, Utah

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Sarah Perkins is the peaceful root director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.