On a crisp October day, dozens of women gathered in a conference room at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah, for the first-ever Divine Woman Festival.
Latter-day Saints worship a Heavenly Father, and the theology recognizes a Heavenly Mother. Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints don’t talk about her much, but in recent years, there’s been a surge of interest in connecting with the divine feminine.
The festival was a passion project for the organizers, and it wasn’t affiliated with a particular church. Many of the women present were Latter-day Saints, but some had left the church or were on the fence.
Luisa Duran was in the crowd because she’s having a faith crisis — the role of women in the LDS Church has been bothering her.
“Maybe I just feel like sometimes the church makes me feel like men are more than women,” she said. “So part of me is like craving this connection with a divine feminine. And I really wanted to connect with other women.”
In the opening discussion, some said they found an instant sisterhood, while others spoke about how they haven’t felt like they could speak openly about Heavenly Mother. Another attendee, Crystal Schultz, said there aren’t a lot of tools to find her.
“The more freedom we have to know her, the more freedom we have to know ourselves,” she said. “Honestly, it's changed my entire life.”
There’s more interest than ever in talking about the divine feminine, said Margaret Toscano, and not just among Latter-day Saint women. Toscano, a University of Utah professor of classics and comparative studies, is working on a book about Heavenly Mother. She believes the spike in interest is connected to distress over the state of the world.
“I think people are longing for some method — even if it's just a sort of artistic, symbolic way — that they can find a larger way of dealing with all of these problems,” she said.
Toscano has seen depictions from LDS artists of Heavenly Mother as a tree with roots in the earth and branches reaching up to heaven.
“The earth is in trouble,” she said. “And she is this connector between heaven and earth that can help us heal on every level, on a spiritual level, a psychological level, an ecological level.”
Other Christian religions have some elements of a divine feminine. The Virgin Mary in Catholicism, for example, and some have speculated that the Holy Spirit could be female. Latter-day Saint theology is unique, Toscano said, because Heavenly Mother is an embodied being and a literal parent of all of humanity alongside Heavenly Father.
The idea of a Heavenly Mother dates back to the founder of the church, Joseph Smith, but there’s limited knowledge about her. There has been some added recognition of her in recent years — in 2019, the church changed the motto for young women to say they are daughters of “heavenly parents.”
Despite that, Toscano said there’s been a kind of silencing in the church about Heavenly Mother. In 2022, a top leader, apostle Dale G. Renlund, said members shouldn’t pray to or speculate about her.
“Speculation will not lead to greater spiritual knowledge, but it can lead us to deception or divert our focus from what has been revealed,” he counseled.
And that, Toscano said, has made some members feel nervous to talk about her.
“I would say the main reason the church has not wanted to highlight her is that it then opens the church to being critiqued for being pagan, non-Christian,” Toscano said.
Conference organizer Hannah McCort said she’s struggled with the way the LDS Church has talked about Heavenly Mother, adding that the divine feminine has helped her see that she fits in God’s plan.
“Our Heavenly Father is talked about a lot. We want to become like him, but ultimately he's male and I'm female,” McCort said.
“And so as I've talked with Heavenly Mother in a less structured way of prayer — like in my heart — she's helped me to see that there's a place for me, a trajectory, and that I don't need to try to be a man.”
The women gathered for a drum circle. Some danced to the rhythms while others were moved to tears. They also joined in a meditation focused on envisioning the divine feminine. Another event organizer, Emily Carolynn Baker, said she feels Heavenly Mother in moments of joy.
“Whether that's the joy of, like, sinking into a really good juicy peach and just, like, enjoying the juice and flavor of that, or cuddling with my kids late at night,” she described.
Duran, the woman who’s questioning her place in the church, said the event has helped her on a journey.
“This is just like helping me with my next steps to find a community of women who can connect, to find my purpose, to find connection.”
To close their gathering (organizers hope for an even larger one next summer), the women joined to sing a round about the bond of sisterhood called “Wax and Wane” by Penny Stone.
“You know the women who came before you will always be beside you,” they sang. And the women who dance beside you will pass the flame along.”
