Fawn Brodie’s Mother

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Anon70
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Joined: Mon Oct 17, 2016 11:56 pm

Fawn Brodie’s Mother

Post by Anon70 » Sat Dec 08, 2018 3:11 pm

Read this on Wikipedia so I suppose take it with a grain of salt? I found it fascinating that her mom was a “thoroughgoing” heretic. I also appreciated that she hated the temple (because I always have). I’d love to have a lady like this in my ward to be open with. Right now I am a “thoroughgoing” apostate so this really resonated with me.


Although Fawn grew to maturity in a rigorously religious environment that included strict Sabbatarianism and evening prayers on her knees,[9] her mother was a closet skeptic who thought the LDS Church a "wonderful social order" but who doubted its dogma.[10] According to Brodie, in the late 1930s, while her father headed Mormon mission activities in German-speaking Europe, her mother became a "thoroughgoing heretic" while accompanying him there.[11]

[10] Flora McKay recalled that her mother "hated the temple ceremonies so bad that it was just ghastly." Among other things, her mother rejected the Mormon view of eternity and instead insisted that "eternity is one generation to another." Bringhurst 1999, pp. 20–21.

[11] Brodie said that two years of "playing hostess to itinerant apostles, plus some sophisticated literature and the overwhelmingly impressive spectacle of twenty centuries of European art really shocked her out of that provincialism in which twenty-five years in Huntsville had tried to enshroud her." Brodie was pleasantly surprised that at her mother's age, "there could come such delightful blossoming of courageous heresy." Bringhurst 1999, p. 75.

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MerrieMiss
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Re: Fawn Brodie’s Mother

Post by MerrieMiss » Sat Dec 08, 2018 4:06 pm

I wonder if there is any kind of connection to the fact that Fawn's father and David O. McKay were brothers - both seemed to have married women who were not ordinary mormon women material. According to wikipedia, DOM's wife (Brodie's aunt)
attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music to study piano performance. After returning to Utah, she was one of six students to be awarded degrees from the University of Utah in 1898 where she had attended the Department of Music. Both her parents, Emma Louise Robbins and Obadiah H. Riggs, taught at the University.
My recollection is that education was extremely important in the McKay home, they were recent converts from Scotland with no ties to polygamy and early Mormonism. Just seems like the family was set up to have liberal/progressive ideas - DOM bringing the church into the 20th century and Brodie exposing JS for what he was.

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