Maxwell Institute Podcast #135: The Stuff of Discipleship, with Jennifer Reeder

Joseph Stuart: Hi everyone! This is Joseph Stuart from the Maxwell Institute. We are busy planning several great interview podcast episodes for you. But while we are working on getting those produced, we wanted to make sure that you heard Dr. Jennifer Reeder’s 2021 annual Neal A. Maxwell lecture entitled “A Hair Wreath, a Bald Head, and a Usable Past: The Stuff of Discipleship.” Hope y'all enjoy.

Jennifer Reeder: On October 20 1887, President Wilford Woodruff announced that the Manti Temple was near completion ready for upholstering, furniture, carpets, etc, which are necessary to put it in a state of complete preparation for the sacred labors to be performed there in. He invited all to contribute liberally, that the names of every man, woman, and child would be recorded in the archives of the temple. Local Relief Societies and Primaries made carpet for the interior, as did women and children from as far away as Fillmore and Emory Utah. Mary Jensen, a counselor in the Manti South Relief Society exhorted her sisters, “The Lord will turn the key, we should prepare ourselves to do some work in the temple.” Mary Winch created a decorative wall hanging for the temple. Intricate flowers filled a baptismal font, and formed a wreath made of the sisters hair. These items, carpets and hair art, demonstrate material discipleship. A Victorian hair reef may appear distasteful to our 21st century sense of fine decor. But if we refocus our lenses with historical eyes, we can discover significant cultural ideologies in these artifacts. Material culture includes fine folk art, relics, and the stuff of lived religion. This “stuff” is defined in Webster's 1828 dictionary as a collection of substances, a heap of dust chips, drawers, or scraps of fabric or wood. And stuff, like a hair wreath, can reveal much in ways text is not about lived religion, usable past, and discipleship. Or in the words of Elder Neal A Maxwell, a more determined discipleship. My personal interest in hair wreaths evolved when as a doctoral student, writing my dissertation on 19th century Latter Day Saint women and material culture. I was diagnosed with leukemia and lost my own hair. Elder Maxwell and I share this experience. In fact, we were both patients of the same oncologist at LDS hospital at different times: Dr. Clive Ford. I did not expect the vulnerability that came with becoming bald. I also did not expect the expansion of discipleship when friends came to my aid. We had three head shaving parties, during which I both laughed and sobbed. Elder Maxwell spoke at the April 1997 General Conference in all of his bald Glory, he said as you can see, the lights combined with my cranium to bring some different illumination to the pulpit. I, on the other hand, couldn't bear to go out bareheaded and friends sent beautiful hats, scarves and wigs. One friend went to the temple with me when I was scared to put on a veil with no hair. My Relief Society presidency joined me on my bed all wearing hats when we needed a picture for the ward history. That, my friends, was an unexpected discipleship. A sharing of burdens in a vulnerable situation.

As a historian, I turned to the hair of olden days. I empathize with Eliza Partridge Lyman who lost her hair at Winter Quarters, probably due to malnutrition. She wrote, “What little is left I've had to cut off my head is so bare that I am compelled to wear a cap.” Bless her heart. I know what it is like to have a cold head. Eliza and I rejoice at the scriptural promise that not so much as a hair of their heads shall be lost, but everything will be restored in its proper time frame.

Going back even further, we find hair used as a material memorialization according to legend. Charlemagne was buried in the ninth century wearing an amulet containing the hair of the Virgin Mary. That amulet reappeared when French Empress Josephine wore it to her coronation in 1804, emanating her political and religious authority. Locks of the hair of ancient, holy women were often revered as relics, including Hildegard of Bengin, Saint Anne the Mother Mary, the Mother of Christ, St. Cecily an early Roman martyr, and Silas the first disciple of Paul. Catholic worship of saints relics shifted as the Elizabethen age turned and Protestantism took a cultural hold. Commemoration transitions from the relic of a saint to that of a beloved individual memorializing personal relationships. Hair artists considered the importance of using hair from living people rather than from the dead. This live material insinuated a perpetuation of animation, affection, and life. Hair work as decor originated as a fine art in Western Europe in the late 18th century, particularly Scandinavia, France, Germany and England. This spread throughout Europe and the United States. Perhaps the preponderant Danish population in Sanpete County, Utah influenced the inclusion of a hair wreath in the Manti Temple. In general, artifacts made of hair included pictures, rings, necklaces, brooches, pins, earrings, and wreaths. Hair was a very workable material due to its texture, playability and tensile strength, it could be easily molded into intricate designs. Popular motifs included flora, flowers, plants, trees, birds, butterflies and bees. Other formats wove hair in a manner similar to bobbin lights. Artisans formed the hair into jewelry placed in lockets and collected it like signatures in friendship albums. Hair wreaths for wall display ranged in size from one to four feet in diameter, and were often framed in shadow boxes to hold the three dimensional forms. The use of hair in territorial Utah demonstrated a sense of pioneer resourcefulness, a readily available medium. Because of their ornate quality, hair wreaths were often displayed in fashionable parlors. The Saints placed hair wreaths in temples, either in the celestial room, the church's finest Victorian parlor, or the temple’s grand entrance. There we see Mary Winter's hair wreath and the Manti temple and a hair wreath that was in the Salt Lake Temple. Mary Winch collected hair from women of the Magi South Relief Society. She designed a grandiose floral display in a vertical arrangement placed in a wooden chip urn on the backs of oxen on a fashionable parquet floor, surrounded by an open reach. She framed her composition in a large octagon of shadowbox 35 inches in height, 25 inches in width, and six and a half inches, inches thick. This is a big piece. The wood piece in the, in the wreath was created by Yanae Matson Yojal, a Swedish immigrant who edited the local Manti newspaper Yojal with both the first person in doubt in the Manti temple, and the first to be sealed as a couple with his wife, Christiana Wilhelmina Kristofferson. Also a Relief Society member, her hair was likely included in this piece. Mary Wench presented the arts to the Manti temple in 1888, I'm sure with great pride. Let's examine the cultural ideology of this type of artifacts. Hair could depict a family tree with a trunk woven out of hair from progenitors and branches made from descendants. Sometimes care from the paternal side of the family would comprise half of the scene while hair from the maternal side of the family would fill the other half accompanied by a genealogical key delineating each contributor. It becomes even more complicated on paper with plural marriage, but in the medium of hair, the strands blend together, mixing color and texture into one. A hair wreath demonstrates the importance of family. Other pieces honored different relationships, popular fashion accessories, accessories of the time included hair jewelry to commemorate engagements and friendships, such as watch chains, bracelets, rings, and belts.

People often exchanged hair locks in the 19th century as they would later exchange wallet size photographs, hair artifacts embodied a physical manifestation of a person, material, memories of embodied tactility. Hair was often created to preserve relationships altered by physical separation and acted as a synecdoche key or a tangible memorial symbol, a representation of a loved one. While hair on a living person changes color and texture over time, cut locks preserved a specific moment of time. For example, Jane Blood’s 1880 diary described the gift of a hair wreath to demonstrate love for a dear friend in Kaysville, Utah. Margaret T. Smoot requested a lock of hair from her missionary husband to place in a locket with his picture. The Manti temple Harry's also reflects a sisterhood originating in the Navajo Relief Society, which was organized after the pet the order of heaven. President Emma Smith taught that every member should be held in full fellowship. Cindia Huntington Buell did not live in Nauvoo at the time of the Relief Society organization. Having heard about the group from her sister Zeina, she traveled to town where women gathered for a meeting. The minutes record that she rejoiced in the opportunity, that she considered it a great privilege. She felt the Spirit of the Lord was with the society and rejoiced to become a member. Eliza R. Snow connected for Cindia to the sisterhood that as the spirit of a person pervades every member of the body, so shall the Spirit of the Lord which pervades this society be with her, she shall feel it and rejoice. She shall be blessed, wherever she is, and the Lord shall open the way and she shall be instrumental in doing much good. Cindia became entwined with her Relief Society sisters. Later as a Relief Society leader in Utah, she traveled with Eliza R. Snow to train local branches. The women of Manti represented a second generation of Relief Society. Most of them emigrated from Denmark, with others from Switzerland, Sweden, England, Wales and Scotland. They did not experience the 1840s Nauvoo Relief Society, but engaged in a tradition of female community that had been set for them by their predecessors. At the meeting dividing the Manti South Ward from the North Ward Stake Relief Society President, there on the left, remarked, “It was one of the greatest privileges we could have to be associated with the Relief Societies and it took the good and the just. Hoped that the sisters would be wide awake to their duties.” On June 2 1887, one year before the Manti temple dedication the South Ward Relief Society President Elizabeth Casto, hoped that the women would soon do a good work at the temple. She then encouraged the German sisters to speak, after which Anna Keller bore her testimony in German. A month later, President Casto herself from England, noted that many have come from or left their native land to be blessed and serve the Lord. Their hair art reflected their international membership and included a tight collection of flowers woven from the locks of different individuals. While a handwritten attribution of the creator appears at the bottom of the piece, no indication reveals what hair belonged to whom. The fact that different colors of their, of their hair locks are woven together without identity demonstrates a new sisterhood, one without rank or hierarchy. Examination of their hair leads us to a tradition of female religious authority found in the spiritual gift of healing. At the Navajo Relief Society meeting on April 28 1942, Joseph Smith authorized women to heal the sick by the laying on of hands, explaining that wherein they are ordained, it is the privilege of those set apart to administer in that authority which is conferred upon them. Elizabeth Ann Whitney remembered that she was ordained and set apart under the hand of Smith to administer to the sick and comfort the sorrowful. How interesting. From Joseph's hand to Elizabeth Ann's head, and then from her hand to the heads of many others, connecting them in tactile ways to their divine gift. Bathsheba W. Smith recalled how Joseph had given the sisters instructions that they could administer to the sick. “From Nauvoo to winter quarters and across the plains to Utah, women administer to each other. They gently place hands on the hair of the, of their heads to call upon the name of God.” Manti South Ward Relief Society member Mariah Jensen connected healing with our new temple. “If we go there, we will see the sick, healed and feel the Spirit of God.” Touch between the hand and the head demonstrated a physical connection in the present moment and strengthened the female sisterhood.

In addition to healing hair in jewelry and other artifacts, hair also represented a fascination with death stemming from the philosophy of Memento Mori. Popular hair designs featured weeping willows, tombs or trees. In the Middle Ages, some worried they may not recognize their loved ones after death. A sentimental solution was to retain a lock of hair. Plaited hair of the deceased was often encased in mourning jewelry and presented to immediate family and close friends in the 18th and early 19th centuries. For example, Queen Victoria wore a bracelet containing a lock of hair from her husband, Albert after his death. Emma Smith followed this tradition after the death of Joseph she wore a lock of his hair for the rest of her life. Wearing jewelry made of a loved one's hair was a physical token of memory well before the advent of photography. In a typical refined fashion for the time, the Manti Temple hair art featured a Victorial floral mourning wreath open at the top, symbolizing an ascent into heaven. The message inscribed on the hair wreath articulates this belief, “These locks of hair oh Lord, thou has seen us wear so now we commit them to thy holy temples care.” There, Relief Society women demonstrate their belief in God, the restoration and their cabinet constituting their individual salvation. This was an important concept for these women. On March 2, 1882, Maria Jenson urged the sisters to live faithful to their covenants. Shortly after the temple dedication in a combined meeting with visitors to the temple from other locations, a Sister Young spoke of laboring here in the temple, “That the glory of God might be made manifest.” Sister Standring rejoiced in the work of salvation, “That when our earthly career shall have finished, we may go back to the eternal presence of our God.” Two months later, Sister O.C. Nelson testified, “It has strengthened me so much to go into the temple that I cannot tell how much I encourage my sisters to go there. Many days that I've been there, I have felt that I could raise my voice and praise God.” These Latter Day Saint women yearned to link their own physical bodies with a promised resurrection, where not one head of the hair would be lost. They also wanted to share that eternal hope and connection with their deceased families. The Manti Temple hair wreath encircled a baptismal font, where sacred ordinances were performed by proxy for the dead. As the temple neared completion, Sister O.C. Nelson, bore her testimony to this work, “We should live so that we could do the work for our dead in the temples.” Their work connected them to their families across both time and space. Sister Kimbel exclaimed, “We can go in the temple and redeem our dead who have been in prison for 1000s of years.” The hair wreath represented the understanding of the temple work they could do therein. Unfortunately, the popularity of hair art was fleeting. The practice declined when the Industrial Revolution prompted the commercial manufacture of goods. Fear of disease and germs spread through human hair contributed to that demise. Photography became more accessible to the general public and as transportation and communication technology improved, hair art diminished, almost entirely. Victorian style transformed, the dark fussy ornaments appeared awkward and weighty compared to the new light shear 20th century modern fashions. The hairy wreath illustrates a segment of popular memory that became unusable, and virtually forgotten or considered unappealing. When artifacts are no longer used or needed, the collective memory loses capacity. Hair wreaths were relegated as Victorian treacle for the walls of an outdated relic hall. The Manti Temple hair wreath is now in the, in storage at the church history museum in Salt Lake City. This hair wreath, though, is usable to us today, not only in studying lived religion and art history, it provokes the question: What do old fashioned hair wreaths and bald heads have to do with Elder Maxwell and Elder Holland's charge for disciple scholars?

I would like to propose four ways. First, empathy. Although as scholars, we have an academic responsibility to objectively separate ourselves from our subjects, at the same time, we need to collapse the historic, historical distance. We cannot be presentist, we must seek context and I believe part of that context is empathy. My cancer experience introduced me to a deep vulnerability. My bald head helped me to see the women I write more in much more personal ways. When Eliza Lyman lost her hair and winter quarters, I understood. The same location when Jane Schneider Richards lost a toddler and a baby while her husband was on a mission. She was all alone. She wrote about the experience, “I only lived because I could not die.” I get it.

In trying to write fairly and accurately about Emma Smith. I recognize the emotional trauma she experienced on many fronts. We must understand our subjects in a personal way and not judge them according to today's standards. I loved doing biographical research for At the Pulpit, 185 years of discourses by Latter Day Saint women. My responsibility lay over the first half of the book 1830 to 1920. Once we had selected the sermons, I dug into biographical research about my female orders. Some of them were hard to find, leaving very little in the textual record, but as I dug deeply, I discovered Jane Nyman who had been rejected from joining the Navajo Relief Society in 1842, because of gossip. Yet went on to become the first Relief Society President of the Beaver Relief Society. She spoke of the mantle of charity to cover all sins and the need to refrain from unneeded judgment. I love that physical connotation of a mantel covering our sin. I immediately recognized Jane's vulnerabilities, as she had suffered so greatly from poverty and gossip in Nauvoo. Elanore Jones presented a beautiful discourse on prayer, but I couldn't find any information about her anywhere. She hid herself from the public record, but a family history genius discovered that she had been born into a multiracial family in the South before the Civil War. She joined the church and came to Utah where the census recorded her every decade as white, she too was extremely vulnerable. Yet from her vulnerability came a rich relationship and testimony with God. She said, “There is no prison so deep, no prison so dark, no pit so deep, no expanse so broad that the Spirit of God cannot enter. And when all other privileges are denied us, we can pray and God will hear it.” Wow. Personal vulnerabilities toward our subjects, and with our colleagues make us stronger disciple scholars.

Number two, expand definitions. Who among you I asked would ever have considered finding discipleship in hair wreaths? I propose that as we, we expand our definitions, not only of viable sources and random topics, but have a larger understanding of discipleship. Let's not limit ourselves to traditional practices and media. Let's expand to include women and Global Voices and material culture. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich masterfully demonstrates how material culture adds to the names, numbers, locations and other quantitative data, and brings in less prominent voices. We should push ourselves beyond what we think are our limits and boundaries, in order for the grace of Jesus Christ to expand and magnify it. To make more of us than we might have believed, as people of the house of Israel and of the Abrahamic covenant, we can be as the sands of the sea and the stars of the sky. But we should consider the diverse ways in which we can accomplish that. The hairs of our heads may do so much more than look good after a proper cut. We can cover each other with mercy and charity, we can fill the measure of our creation in more ways than posterity. Let's look beyond that.

Number three, consecration. When President Woodruff asked the saints in Manti to contribute to the interior of the Manti Temple, women and children found ways to contribute even with red carpets and hair. They created with what they had. In Kirtland, women did not donate their best China, as the story is often told. Instead, children gathered broken glass and dishes for the stucco. This is not a story of second best, but an example of a usable past. Our history is not perfectly whole, but contains gaps, breaches and repairs. When we expand the definition of consecration, we look to and understand those broken parts, especially when they are of a much more serious consequence, like race or polygamy. We recognize them and accept them, just as they as we recognize and accept our own broken and imperfect contributions. When my leukemia recurred the first time in 2013, I received a priesthood blessing from a friend. He told me that I had a work to do, which I interpreted as my career in 19th century women Latter Day Saint women's history. He said that the Lord would preserve, preserve my life until my work was completed. I had a bone marrow transplant, followed by another period of good work, skip ahead to a third recurrence in 2016, and the need for a second transplant. I was done. I did not want to go through the intense physical and mental demands of transplant preparation and recovery. But I remembered that blessing in 2013, and I had an inkling that my work was not yet done. I felt a responsibility to do all I could to preserve my body to do that work. That was my consecration with scar tissue in my lungs, a bald head and an oxygen tank. I draw again on Elder Maxwell's teachings on consecration as both a principle and a process, and it is not tied to a single moment. Instead he said, “It is freely given drop by drop until the cup of consecration brims and finally runs over.”

Number four: recognize the ongoing restoration. Shortly before she died, Emma Smith spoke with her sons Joseph the third and Alexander. She said, “I was an active participant in the scenes that transpired.” She described her experience in the restoration. It is marvelous to me. a marvel and a wonder. Emma positioned herself squarely in the middle of it all exactly where she should be. One of the three purposes of the church history department where I work is to witness and to defend the truth of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. My colleagues and I get to do that every day. And yet, it's not all stars and hearts and unicorns, we have to dig deep and do hard work. We explore what Elder Maxwell calls “wintery doctrine” and “pin cushion periods,” and cushions can take a toll on one's fingertips and on one's soul. This is all part of discipleship. We belong to this great fellowship. Me and Eliza, Mary Wench in Manti, Eleanor Jones, the woman to whom I minister, my colleagues in the church history department. Our consecrations are both miniscule and grand, and they are all a part of a much larger work beyond our abilities. But oh, what a delight to be fellow saints in a living church. We have done much work and there is much work to do. Let's lace up our shoes and eat our vitamin pills. Wilford Woodruff noted that all those who contributed to the Manti Temple would have their names recorded in the archives of the temple. Sometimes that record is material rather than textual, the stuff of discipleship. May we learn from our past and use it in our quest as disciple scholars. Thank you.

Stuart: Thank you for listening to the Maxwell Institute podcast. Could you do us a favor and recommend this show to others? Review and rate the podcast on Apple podcast or other podcast providers or share the episode on social media? Thanks so much and have a blessed week y'all.