In memory of Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye

[Stargazer]

Someone whom I had never heard of until today has passed away. Seems like heaven is getting crowded with Saints, leaving us here with holes that we who are left behind will have to fill.

This appeared in The Interpreter Foundation News, written by Dan Peterson: https://interpreterfoundation.org/news-melissa-wei-tsing-inouye/

And a YouTube video on the FAIR channel:

 

[ZealouslyStriving]

She was a regular guest scholar on "Come, Follow Up". Check it out on BYUTV.

 

[Doctor Steuss]

Apparently, she did an interview about 5 days before she passed, and asked that it not be published until after she was gone.  Always interesting seeing the insights of those that have to live at the tragic intersection of youth and impermanence.  Link below.

SLTrib Link

 

[Calm]

I love this idea….seems like it would be a policy change, no doctrinal changes needed.

Quote

We could do so much good if [the women’s organization] Relief Society, for example, were in charge of distributing our humanitarian aid and could coordinate those local projects in their areas. Or if, for example, to preserve some sort of complementarian difference but to make sure that women had significant power, if men were in charge of like the sacerdotal priesthood — you know, call the men for the ordinances type things — and women were in charge of the finances, then we would have a true kind of codependent relationship.

If you wanted money for the upcoming Young Men’s camp trip, you would go to the Relief Society president and she would check the books. And if you needed someone baptized, you would go to elders.

It would be a kind of mutual dependency that would engender respect. Right now that kind of balance does not exist in Mormonism because it’s a very patriarchal system — not only in its theology but also in its cultural and corporate practices. If you look at the 25 departments of the church, only the human resources head is female. In a culture like that, it’s just not possible to have normal, respectful relationships between men and women

 

[Calm]

This is also brilliant and great she and others could bring these ideas to life already.

Quote

One of the things the research had was a website where you could put up a profile and announce yourself and the work you were doing and what institution you were at. That was a much more egalitarian, inclusive approach to scholarship. So now if you’re organizing a conference on a certain topic or region, you can go to that database.

This May they’re going to be holding a Global Mormon Studies conference in Mexico. The one before that was in Coventry, England. And the one before that was in Bordeaux, France. And just because they have been in different places, they’ve brought in different people.

Mexico is going to be really cool because it’s going to break the hegemonic barrier of the English language. It’s going to have papers in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

I’m really proud of Michelle Graabek, who is the new head of the organization, and of the Church History Department’s outreach, which has been really enthusiastic in supporting the conference. It will be a really groundbreaking conference especially because it will involve a number of scholars from Mexico who wouldn’t be able to fly to the United States for a conference held all in English.

That’s an academic contribution, but it also crosses over as we’ve seen to the Church History Department. Now people are thinking about Mormon studies in ways that are more inclusive and more global to reflect what is actually happening as opposed to who tends to get seen and heard the most.

I’ve been working in the Church History Department on projects like global history, where we’re trying to elevate the voices of global Latter-day Saints. There’s the global church history competition, which is currently a pilot underway in four different areas. It’s also an attempt to bring attention to the work of local historians.

I went on a kind of a listening tour of the church history specialists in Europe and the Swiss church history specialist looked at me and said, “How would you Americans like it if we Swiss wrote up your history and just gave it to you?”

Ever since then, we’ve tried to find ways not only to have more local sources but also to collaborate with local historians so that they will feel empowered and connected to the larger organizations in writing their own histories.

 

[Stargazer]

On 4/30/2024 at 9:15 PM, Doctor Steuss said:

Apparently, she did an interview about 5 days before she passed, and asked that it not be published until after she was gone.  Always interesting seeing the insights of those that have to live at the tragic intersection of youth and impermanence.  Link below.

SLTrib Link

 

Drat. A paywall.