In Defense of Casseroles

A few semesters ago, I took a Latter-day Saint women’s history class at BYU. A seminar-style class, it was populated by about seven consistently attending students, including one lone boy, and I can confidently say it changed my life. The vast majority of the time, every student seemed to share in the collective goal of sorting out nuanced participation in a patriarchal tradition, following the examples of the women who had paved the way. But one day, in the midst of a discussion about the Relief Society’s surprisingly radical beginnings, the girl sitting across from me heaved a plaintive sigh and a comment that cut like a dissonant chord. “And now all they do is casseroles.”

My classmate clearly meant no harm by this—I have no doubt that she was only trying to express that familiar frustration that arises when grappling with the ways women’s roles in the Church have evolved (and arguably been stifled) over time, wondering how on earth the early Relief Society sisters had more autonomy and power than we feel in our 21st-century BYU YSA wards. But as much as I resonated with the pain that clearly informed her remark, I couldn’t help but sense a fundamental misunderstanding in her logic. You see, the way I look at it, there is nothing more important than a casserole. 

It may seem to some to be a very bold doctrine that I talk of—that somehow a casserole, that gooey inheritance of a people exiled to the American heartland, could be anything worthy of attention. Concoctions of canned cream-of-whatever soup are certainly lacking in both form and comeliness. But it’s not necessarily about the casserole itself (delicious as funeral potatoes are)—this is a story about the spiritual and social contributions of women and how they are consistently undervalued. The casserole represents a specific type of materialist, grounded care that the Relief Society has been uniquely situated to provide throughout Latter-day Saint history and into the present, and the attitude of my classmate serves as a convenient microcosm of the way the efforts of Latter-day Saint women to provide this care are routinely discredited and even mocked.

Now, I reject any notion that women are somehow more innately wired to provide this type of care, or that the burden of it should rest solely on them. In a more divine society—perhaps what one would call Zion—I hope that we would all be doing a little better in demonstrating “long-suffering, gentleness and meekness, and…love unfeigned,” regardless of gender. But the fact remains that historically, in the United States as well as the Church, it has been overwhelmingly women who donate their time and bodies to provide unseen, life-giving, and even salvific service.

I think that the consistent minimization of Latter-day Saint women’s work can be attributed in part to our cultural image of the Relief Society. The fact is, nobody looks forward to the transition from Young Women’s to Relief Society. The name itself conjures images of quavery-voiced old women, rows of scrapbook-paper handouts arranged on lacy tablecloths, and DownEast chevron-patterned maxi skirts. Even in more progressive spaces, the modern Relief Society is often regarded as rather ridiculous, a bone thrown to the women of a staunchly patriarchal institution to keep them occupied while the real work occurs elsewhere. 

Too often, the volley of vitriol aimed at Latter-day Saint women comes from inside and outside of the chapel. Fellow members will laugh at misogynistic references to “Primary voice,” a lilting cadence characteristic of older women in the Jello belt. People outside the Church, instead of offering support for the Latter-day Saint women they claim to care for, often pluck the low-hanging fruit of misogynistic tropes leftover from an age of anti-polygamy political cartoons. It can seem as if the women of conservative religious traditions have been left out of the culturally dominant—albeit infamous—“girls support girls!”-flavor of third wave feminism that has taken root in our collective consciousness.

Relief societies and similar charitable organizations were common in the 19th century as ways for women to form tight-knit communities and to engage with causes they cared about. The Church’s Female Relief Society of Nauvoo was no different, aiming to provide spiritual and temporal sustenance for the women who participated. The idea for a Latter-day Saint Relief Society was dreamt up by women puzzling out how to contribute to their burgeoning religious community, with the organization they imagined modeled after the benevolent societies in which many of them had previously held membership. In March of 1842, Sarah Granger Kimball and Eliza R. Snow—among others—shared their plans with Joseph Smith, who approved of the idea and integrated the women’s organization into the larger Church structure.  The women of the Society autonomously and democratically voted on Emma Smith to be the organization’s first president and to lead the members in both temporal charitable efforts and the work of salvation.

In its first few decades, the Relief Society became a veritable suffrage organization. With surprising political savvy and outspokenness unexpected from a then-polygamous population, the Relief Society sisters feverishly wrote (often in the Women’s Exponent, a publication that has been called the first long-lived feminist periodical in the western United States), advocated, sang, and campaigned in favor of the right to vote. Beyond their political activism, women’s participation in the Relief Society provided them with essential social connection, female solidarity, and collective purpose at a time when the effects of the Industrial Revolution were carving male and female existences into wholly different spheres. In pursuit of their goal for “the relief of the poor, the destitute, the widow and the orphan,” the women assessed the material needs of fellow ward members and organized to meet those needs. “How great the responsibilities of the sisters of the Church. What a work they are accomplishing!” wrote Belinda Marden Pratt, a plural wife of apostle Parley P. Pratt. “Teaching their children. Engaged in the Relief Society! Giving of their means to the poor. Visiting the sick. Administering comfort and consolation when needed….Our labors are as great as those of the Brethren and more numerous, for the responsibility of training the young rests almost entirely with the sisters.”

It couldn’t be clearer that the Relief Society’s founding members were confident that they were engaging in the most important work possible, and that their efforts were central to both the temporal survival and spiritual salvation of their neighbors. So why is it so difficult for us to give their work the recognition it deserves? Why do we reduce them to crafting and centerpieces, or scoff at a weepy teacher closing out a lesson? Why do we underestimate the saving power of a casserole?

Despite changes to the way the organization operates within the larger structure of the institutional Church, the modern Relief Society has maintained a commitment to involvement with social causes, one example being Jean B. Bingham’s 2017 address to the European Parliament in which she spoke strongly in support of women’s rights and education. Recent leaders such as Sharon Eubank have been especially effective in urging Latter-day Saint women to seize the full measure of their position in the Church and in demonstrating that the Relief Society’s roots as a place of radical involvement and progression are still present, if transformed. However, it is worth noting that there are certainly real reasons that the modern Relief Society sometimes feels pale and deflated compared to the fiery impact of its newborn iteration. A growing Church necessitated a centralized locus of power, and over time the Relief Society became less autonomous and more reliant on male direction. As a people, we have forgotten that the Relief Society is meant to be equally yoked with the Priesthood organization of the Church, not subject to it. 

Luckily, the Church is not its inescapably flawed leaders, nor is it high-rise buildings in downtown Salt Lake City. It is the broken hearts and outstretched hands that coordinate dinners for new mothers and populate the pews every Sunday. Even when the Relief Society’s autonomy as an organization within a patriarchal Church has waxed and waned, the work among the people has been ceaseless. 

If there’s one thing Latter-day Saints are good at, it’s boots-on-the-ground service. It is the natural inheritance of a uniquely tactile theology in which the soul is made up of the spirit and the body and the voice of the Lord was heard in the wilderness of Fayette, Seneca county. The resultant Church is therefore often grubby, homespun, with sore joints and a crooked nose—a rough stone rolling down from a high mountain, the prodigal son at last returned, the woman nourished in the thorny wilderness. In a faith that believes literally in a God of flesh and blood, the material conditions of its members are of utmost importance. Latter-day Saints believe that it is their responsibility to establish a Zion community for the collective benefit of all, to restore the scattered human family back to a whole, and to knit hearts together across time. As a leader in this sacred work, the Relief Society takes seriously its call to mourn with those that mourn, to “succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.”

This is where casseroles come in. What can we do in the face of human suffering too gangly and fierce to fit your arms around? We can double a recipe, buy twice the amount of groceries at the store, and bake two casseroles to leave one warm on a neighbor’s porch. Or mow a lawn, watch a toddler, move a couch. At a ward level, Latter-day Saints—and, I would argue, especially the members of the Relief Society—are consistently, deeply invested in the work of improving the material conditions of their neighbors.

It may seem paradoxical to say that there is nothing more important than a casserole. It is certainly paradoxical that such grounded, material offerings are the best antidotes to the choking disembodiment of grief, loneliness, and all the other diverse shades of pain that inevitably cling to the human experience. And yet Mormonism is full of paradoxes. What do we make of an omnipotent, eternal God with a pumping heart and creased hands, or plural wives who felt spiritually empowered by their participation in an inherently patriarchal institution? Opposition in all things indeed. Rosalynde Welch described Mormon theology as one in which “the whole world is holy,” and anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of a steaming hot Relief Society-supplied meal knows that God can consecrate frozen vegetables and canned soup.