The Best Social Practice: Mormon Women and the Professionalization of Reform

As the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) began to seek assimilation into American culture after the end of polygamy in the 1890s, the American progressive movement was in full swing. Progressivism was a curious combination of moralism and professionalization; progressives embraced the Protestant values of the white American middle class, but they were also the first generation of Americans to prize what have become the routine expectations of certification, expertise, and training; it was at the turn of the twentieth century that medical schools, law schools, professional exams, and licensing became routine.

Many Mormon leaders embraced progressive values because they saw in the progressive movement both an expression of Mormonism's optimistic theology, which emphasized human potential and moral discipline, and an opportunity to build connections and bridges with other Americans. Amy Brown Lyman, a major leader in the church's women's organization (called the Relief Society) for most of the first half of the twentieth century, was chief among these. Lyman studied social work at the University of Chicago with the major progressive leader Jane Addams, and under her leadership, the Relief Society began to embrace professional training in social work and began to cooperate with national progressive associations to provide relief to the nation's poor. This paper considers Lyman's conflict with Susa Young Gates, a daughter of the earlier church president Brigham Young, and one who looked at Lyman's drive toward professionalization with some suspicion. For Gates, progressive values were a betrayal of the amateur and spiritual ethos of Mormon community, and her conflict with Lyman was both a battle over organization but also a conflict about the nature of Mormonism itself.