"Finding Pasture Together": Remembering Kate Holbrook
How the late Latter-day Saint historian's scholarship can make us better disciples
The author (back row, second from the left) and Kate Holbrook (back row, third from the left) with other members of the Mormon Women’s History Initiative team.
Kate Holbrook understood the worth of women’s work and words. In the midst of a battle with cancer and while raising three daughters—Amelia, Lucia, and Persephone—with her husband Sam Brown, she lived and left a legacy of light that continues to shine even after her passing on August 20, 2022. Over the past few months, I have immersed myself in the treasures Kate left behind in books, presentations, podcasts, interviews, and recipes in order to write this tribute. It has been a blessing and has provided some needed hope and perspective. Connecting to the wisdom of friends who have completed exemplary earthly missions can cure many latter-day ailments, and I believe the best way to pay tribute to Kate is to direct readers to the rich archive she left behind.
Kate was managing historian of women’s history for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her work appears in the Gospel Library app, where you can read two important books that she helped edit: The First Fifty Years of Relief Society and At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women. Speaking as one with access to Church archives, Kate adamantly declared to a group of BYU students that “There is nothing to be afraid of in Church history! But learning this much history [holding up a small space between her thumb and finger] on the internet, or from your roommate and then stopping and making a major life-changing decision based on that much history is really dangerous.” Instead, Holbrook counseled her student audience to “make sure you follow the stories through to the end.” On another occasion, Kate said the following about her work writing the history of Latter-day Saints: “They were humans. To study them deeply from reliable sources can be a real source of spiritual empowerment and strength.” She advocated doing the hard work of really understanding historical context and added that if complexities in church history bother you “enough to leave, or to allow it to create a real rift between you and the spirit in your everyday life, then I think it’s incumbent on you to do some digging, and to be really smart about the sources that you’re using to help form your opinions.” The First Fifty Years of Relief Society is an important source for following stories through and understanding Church history in the words of the faithful women who lived it. As Kate concluded, “If you’re only reading things from sources that are meant to tear down, then you’re going to end up in a torn down place.”
At the Pulpit, according to Kate, was conceived as a women’s Journal of Discourses. She emphasized its importance in this way: “For some people, women’s words in the church have not been seen as authoritative. And their talks aren’t easily accessible; you have to do some digging, and most of us don’t have time to do that digging when we’re preparing for a lesson or a church talk. We wanted to provide easier access for members and also for our church leaders.” You can hear Kate talk about the book and discuss one of the included sermons—which she called “the best religious explanation of suffering that I’ve ever read”—on this podcast. Or, you can read and even listen to the sermon here. The next time you give a talk or a lesson, consider looking for your topic in the index of At the Pulpit and incorporating a unique quote from this goldmine of words from Latter-day Saint women.
Kate earned a master of divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in religious studies from Boston University. She was a historian of food and her dissertation examined Latter-day Saint and Nation of Islam foodways. Her scholarship was not only brilliant but fun. She once made a convincing argument about women’s history in a presentation titled, “Women, Jell-O, and Meaning Over Time.”
While taking her audience on a tour through the history of gelatin, she focused on green-Jell-O-shaped trading pins from the 2002 Winter Olympics. She argued that mocking “Jell-O and implicitly the women who prepared it” was a distortion of reality. Kate declared that “ordaining green Jell-O and carrots as the mascot of women’s salads make these women look like they don’t care for others’ culinary pleasure. In fact, the opposite is true. Why bother to put regular food in Jell-O if not to increase eaters’ delight?” Kate revealed how such caricatures discouraged the making of Jell-O salads among women of Generation X. As one of those women, Kate’s research helped me re-embrace Jell-O and its connection to my mom, who was the queen of yummy and festive Jell-O salads.
Kate’s scholarship elevated what could be seen as a mundane and unimportant work of women to the level of importance it deserves. Terryl Givens began an interview with Kate by asking, “If you were to overhear your obituary read, what points would be made? What are the salient features of your life as they would be remembered up to this point?” Without calling attention to herself or to the fact that her cancer may have already prompted her to consider this question, Kate answered in the following way. “I’ve written some books in Latter-day Saint women’s history that I feel have been good contributions. I think I’ll be remembered generally through favorite recipes that have come from me. I’ve decided that’s maybe in some ways a richer and more lasting visceral experience that people will have of my having been on this earth.”
The food blog Kate started with her daughter Amelia is indeed one way Kate will be remembered. It’s called The Away Cafe because it focuses on recipes that you can take with you or make when you get away for a vacation or a picnic. The wisdom and writing on the blog are as wonderful as the recipes and pictures. For example, the “Food Philosophy” on the blog declares, “Sharing and preparing recipes binds us to other people. For us, making the recipes of people who live far away, or those who have died, or even those who live just down the street, reminds us of their presence in our lives.” Recipes from the blog were used by Melissa Inouye to introduce Kate as the speaker at the 2020 Neal A. Maxwell Lecture
This is an important talk to review for each of us as aspiring disciple-scholars, and I recommend watching both Melissa’s introduction and Kate’s lecture in full.
The recipe Kate called “supernaturally good,” her double chocolate Bundt cake, drew me to the blog. As if describing a food revelation, Kate wrote, “the thought came to me that I should check the amount of cocoa powder in my favorite 9x13 chocolate cake and the amount of flour in my favorite Bundt cake (not chocolate), and if I would do those two things I would know how to make the perfect chocolate Bundt cake.” A colleague at the Maxwell Institute bakes a miniature chocolate Bundt cake for everyone’s birthday using Kate’s inspired recipe, and it truly is a rich and visceral experience of her having been on the earth. Kate was deliberate in crafting a legacy through the love language of food. She described the blog as an “approach to recording family history” and she wrote that “it also builds our family future.”
Kate accomplished a lot in her abbreviated life and seemed to prioritize things of eternal significance. A line from her lecture “Weight of Legacy” is on my office wall and reminds me to constantly reevaluate my motives: “When we are consumed with what our legacy says about us, we invite torment into our lives. When legacy matters to us because of what we can do for others, we invite God, purpose, and meaningful achievement into our lives.” Kate was private about her cancer but in an interview for the LDS Women Project she explained how it had influenced her life: “For me, it makes the things in my life that are beautiful more poignantly beautiful, and it gives perspective. I don’t know how long the good things that I enjoy are going to be around. I’m really grateful for the good things, like going for a picnic with my family, and I’m going to try to make space in my life for the good things instead of putting them off.” Of battling cancer Kate said, “It invites you to be in a place where you really say, ‘Thy will be done.’” I like this way of reframing trials. Perhaps we could ask, “What am I currently facing in my life that could be seen as a merciful invitation to turn my will over to God?”
Kate’s academic training taught her how to think critically, but as she once counseled fellow scholars, she “balanced criticism with hope.” She had a genuine love for the Church, particularly its history and its teachings. She captured the goodness and gifts that came with membership rather than the frustrations or limitations that she might have emphasized. You may recognize Kate from a Face to Face broadcast in front of the Nauvoo Temple with Elder Cook where she spoke to a worldwide audience. Elder Cook even deferred to her on a question about polygamy and gave Kate the opportunity to articulate the Church’s current position. Kate’s mission to Russia and studies of world religions opened her mind and increased her ability to speak and write about and to the global church. For example, she once drew from her mission experience to talk about how “women in Russia ostensibly were more equal in some ways in the workplace, but they were still doing all of the second shift work themselves. It was culturally acceptable to have a mistress.” Therefore, she explained it was a major commitment for men to choose Church membership and live counterculturally. She cautioned members against attitudes of “social superiority” or assuming that “we know what’s right for women in general. Because sometimes in another context, in that particular time and scenario, we might be wrong.” Kate’s affinity for the Church was also local. “I love what happens in a congregation,” she exclaimed, “I love how it takes care of the needs of other people. I love how it makes me grow by trying to be aware of other people’s needs and help meet their needs.” She cherished the community that the Church creates but emphasized, “it’s not just the community, It’s the community with Jesus. I don’t think that this community works without Heavenly Father and Jesus, and modern revelation, and scripture.”
I noticed how Kate was careful to show respect for all people regardless of rank and status. She once spoke of an experience of “holy envy” as she visited a church service at Boston Common with a congregation of homeless people. She had shaken hands with a lot of people and said, “coming home on the train, I felt like my hand was burning with a kind of holiness.” She felt like that experience was “a vision of Christ’s gospel as I had never practiced or experienced it before.” Kate also had a close relationship with leaders in the Church. Not many Latter-day Saints will have Dallin H. Oaks preside at their funeral and read a letter from the First Presidency in their honor at it, as Kate did. Kate respected the words of Church leaders by magnifying them. For instance, her keynote address for the BYU Women’s Conference in 2020 entitled “Revelation is a Process: The Continuing Restoration and the Gathering of Israel,” echoed the words of President Nelson, and other general leaders. She also mentioned in that talk some of the very earliest members of Relief Society, who believed that:
When, in the name of God, Joseph Smith turned the key to women, he made possible things like the Seneca Falls Convention, which was the first women’s rights convention in the United States. They believed when he turned that key and promised, “and this society shall rejoice, and knowledge, and intelligence shall flow down from this time, this is the beginning of better days,” that conditions would improve for women throughout the world, not only for themselves.
Kate then said, “When I first learned they believed that, I thought it was quaint and sweet. But as I've grown in understanding, I've come to agree with them.” I also agree with them and with Kate’s belief that, “the better we become as saints, the more we can bless people outside of our church, as well as those within and we can be open to things, the good things people outside of the church have to teach us.” Kate concluded that address with a charge to the women of the church, “We can do substantial good in this world,” and “our Heavenly Father is waiting to help us to make us stronger.” Then she repeated twice the admonition, “He needs us to follow through on answers to the questions he is waiting for us to ask.” What an empowering invitation!
I hope this tribute has connected you to the legacy of Kate Holbrook. I hope it has also reminded you to be deliberate about your own legacy and realize how leaving a record of ourselves allows us to continue to be present in the lives of those we love. If you want to spend more time in Kate’s archive, you can visit her website here. I’m thrilled to be able to also share a preview of Kate’s last book, “an exploration of the tensions that structure a disciple’s life” called Two Things Are True. She submitted the manuscript for publication to the Maxwell Institute before she passed away. One of the editors of the book, Rosalynde Frandsen Welch, wrote the following short blurb about it. I share it with her permission:
Kate always wrote about what she knew personally and loved, and her life is abundantly present in each of the five chapters: “Revelation,” “Forgiveness,” “Legacy,” “The True Church,” and “Housework.” If it seems like that last chapter is out of place, it’s not! Kate had a gift for drawing out the theological aspects of everyday life, especially women’s lives, and she finds spiritual depth in the routines and struggles of housework. Each chapter is built around two statements that are in tension with each other, and in the exploration of that tension she finds beauty and wisdom. Her writing is wonderfully down to earth, and her faith shines through on every page. Truly, she was a disciple first in everything that she did. She loved the Church and the Saints, and those were the defining directions of her life. It’s a wonderful book and I’m so honored to have worked on it!
I’m looking forward to reading Two Things Are True and marvel that Kate’s work continues on both sides of the veil. Her example inspires me to keep writing. Kate once told me about her determination to overcome her inner critic. She said she would repeat to herself over and over during the day, “You can do this, you can write!” I conclude with a passage from Kate’s chapter “Revelation” to show how powerfully she was able to write.
Passages written by the Book of Mormon prophet Nephi have helped me to imagine what the gathering of Israel looks like in terms of a loving God’s responsiveness to human needs for safety and comfort: “he gathereth his children from the four quarters of the earth; and he numbereth his sheep, and they know him; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd; and he shall feed his sheep, and in him they shall find pasture” (1 Nephi 22:24–25). I love the image here of all of us, from every part of the earth, finding pasture together, under one perfect, all-loving shepherd. There is a pasture I love which I visit every summer. Horses and cows graze there. The sky, mountains, meadow, trees, and streams are beautiful. The air is clear. The animals have all that they need and they are safe there. To have all of us in a safe and beautiful place where we are known, seen, and cared for—I want to be in that place and I want to help others to find it.
Thank you, Kate, for your work in helping us envision and find that pasture.
"Finding Pasture Together": Remembering Kate Holbrook
Thank you Taunalyn for writing this - it does a fantastic job of connecting us readers to Kate's works, which is a wonderful tribute to her.