Raising Kane

Colonel Thomas L. Kane (1822-1883) was always a hero of the underdog. As a Pennsylvania attorney, he frequently took up the causes of the outcast and the oppressed. He was a staunch abolitionist, even preferring to go to jail rather than to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act (and the even more stringent provisions of the Compromise of 1850) requiring him to be more active in returning escaped slaves to their Southern masters. The Supreme Court, fortunately, decided that his incarceration was unconstitutional, and he was set free.

His taking up for the underdog eventually led to his great and continual intercession on behalf of the Latter-day Saints, and time and time again he negotiated with government leaders on their behalf. The gratitude of the Saints has expressed itself in the establishment of Kane County, UT, the naming of the Kanesville Tabernacle in Council Bluffs, IA (where on Dec. 27, 1847, Brigham Young was sustained as the second president of the Church), and numerous articles and other publications recounting his many great acts of friendship towards the Saints. As Brigham Young once wrote Kane in a letter dated April 16, 1871, "Those who know you cherish for you the fondest recollection, while with all, your name is held in honorable remembrance" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_L._Kane).

Kane also spoke French, publishing several articles in that language while in Paris, and fought in the Battle of Gettysburg (where he was promoted to major general for his bravery in battle). He was, in short, a hero.

But it is his wife, Elizabeth, that I have been reading about recently and I find her to be an equally intriguing figure. On a visit with her husband and two children to Utah, she commented on the idea (which she disdained) that theological discussions belong properly to the male domain, and that women should not trouble themselves too much with doctrinal matters. The existence of this notion she traces to a (faulty, in my opinion) reading of the Apostle Paul. On the question of whether a woman should "refer all theological puzzles to her own husband at home" she writes, "Ah, St. Paul, little didst thou foresee how busy our husbands would be all day in Wall Street, how tired and cross every evening at home! Fancy our asking THEM to extract roots of doctrine for us!" (TWELVE MORMON HOMES VISITED, 1874).

Wonderful comment from Elizabeth Kane.

President Kimball taught: "We want our homes blessed with sister scriptorians." Elder Maxwell said that for too long in the church, men have been the theologians while the women have been the Christians (see http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=c86f44584a204110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1#footnote7). It seems to me that women could more confidently study and expound doctrine while we men could sometimes stop expounding so much and actually start living more fully the Christianity of the doctrines that we are so happy to discuss.