1 Contextualizing Mormonism and the New Spirituality. I am especially humbled by DryadвЂ™s assertion that this dissertation constitutes a magical act.ДЎ INTRODUCTION. Finally, I acknowledge the participants in this study for their bravery and certainty, and for sharing their stories with me. In addition, I thank Mary Ellen Robertson, M.A., and Dan Wotherspoon, Ph.D., with the Sunstone Education Foundation, who over the last decade gave me a symposia platform for exploring the ideas that appear here. I also recognize and express gratitude for the local support of a large and extended group of feminist Mormon women of all ages, whose contribution to me as a scholar and as a human being cannot be understated. I could not have completed this project without the national support of Mormon feminists of all ages, especially Maxine Hanks, Janice Allred, Margaret Toscano, and Holly Welker, whose sacrifices and contributions to my life and the debate over Mormon identity iiiДЄnd doctrine demand acknowledgement. I am also deeply indebted to academic and personal friends who have supported me in this and other projects: academic and spiritual companions Brook Michalik, M.F.A., Rebecca Bailey, Lisa Hansen, Asia Dutson, Lizbeth Rizzo, Genevieve Zork, Jean Leavitt, Suzann Werner, Karen Amason, and Kathy Lyon Elizabeth McNeil, Ph.D., and Susan Taffer, Ph.D., excellent editors, committed activists, and devoted friends and Laura Bush, Ph.D., and Anne Seiler, M.A., who ongoingly remind me who I am and affirm what I stand for in the world.

I am also profoundly grateful to have known Ken Morrison, whose ability to mentor with great passion will not be forgotten.

I still consider my theoretical mentor to be Wendy Doniger, whose ability to write academic poetry enthralls and stirs me. Their collective and individual commitment and contribution to religious studies deepen my inquiry and inspires me to excellence. Lengel, who just over ten years ago steered me away from Anthropology to the Department of Religious Studies Alison Coudert and Mark Woodward, who told me fabulous stories and mentored me early in knowing which questions to ask Joel Gereboff, who as department chair has ongoingly supported my academic interests beyond the norm Linell Cady, Tracy Fessenden, and Tisa Wenger, with whom I have enjoyed a long and rich academic partnership and Colleen McDannell for being willing to join us on the journey. I feel deeply privileged to share this life with you all, and I still believe in forever.ДЄCKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge those whose intellectual and emotional support has been so valuable to me during the years I have been at Arizona State University: P. This project is a tribute to your patience, love, and uncritical, enthusiastic support.

It illuminates processes and discourses of religious adaptation and synthesis through which these LDS women creatively and provocatively challenge LDS Church formal power structures.ДEDICATION This project is dedicated to my family: my husband, David, who ongoingly chooses and supports me not just in spite of but in celebration of our differences my children Tatiana, Astrid, Dominic, Natasha, and Mikhail, who are my heroes and my champions my grandchildren, Cozette, Tristan, Donovan, Nathaniel, and Vivienne, who are so creative and open to new possibilities my father Ray, to whom I owe my intellectual curiosity and pursuit of excellence in teaching, but who died before I could complete the project and my mother Callie, who I now have the privilege of caring for. The study focuses on religious hybridity with an emphasis on gender and the negotiation of power deriving from patriarchal religious authority, highlighting the dance between institutional power structures and individual authority. As example of these connections, it introduces ethnographic data from women who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in order to show (a) how living LDS women adapt and integrate elements from the New Spirituality with Mormon ideas about the nature of reality into hybrid spiritualities and (b) how they negotiate their blended religious identities both in relation to the current American New Spirituality milieu and the highly centralized, hierarchical, and patriarchal Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormonism and the New Spirituality: LDS Women's Hybrid Spiritualities by Doe DaughtreyДЄ Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of PhilosophyДЄpproved April 2012 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Linell Cady, Chair Colleen McDannell Tisa Wenger Tracy FessendenДЄBSTRACT This dissertation illuminates overlaps in Mormonism and the New Spirituality in North America, showing their shared history and epistemologies.

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