Arriving at the mid-point of her sprawling 1996 opus Boys for Pele, “Hey Jupiter“^[1]There’s also a remix version that actually got its own music video, but I prefer the album original personally. is a sudden shift in tone. Up till this point, Tori Amos^[2]whom I’ve been listening to a lot more lately for, well, obvious reasons has been actively critiquing, challenging, and dismantling all forms of Christo-religious patriarchy: e.g. “Blood Roses” sneers “sometimes your nothing but meat” in our sexist society, where women are still often presupposed chattel til proven otherwise^[3]“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing … Continue reading; “Father Lucifer” in turn asks the devil himself “How’s your Jesus Christ been hanging”–implicitly positioning the two less as opponents than as complimentary figures–and also positing that the way we fetishize “girls that eat pizza but never gain weight” as inherently devilish; while “Muhammad My Friend” even more provocatively confides to the founder of Islam, “We both know it was a girl/Back in Bethlehem”. Hence it feels like a logical progression that, as she repeatedly subverts religious patriarchy–making the devil her father, Muhammad her friend, and Christ a woman–she inevitably comes to confront the most blatantly patriarchal western deity of all: Jupiter, head of imperial Roman pantheon.

And granted, there still appears a hint of patriarchal subversion as she repeatedly asks that Uber-masculine deity, “So are you gay?” However, she does not appear to be using the term as an insult or a slur (no small feat even today, let alone in 1996), but as a sincere question, of how her friend is doing; “Thought we both could use a friend to run to” she also sings repeatedly, against a plaintive and lonely piano melody. Here there be none of the biting sarcasm or winking blasphemy of “Father Lucifer” or “Muhammad My Friend,” but a plaintive earnestness, a genuine desire for a friend–not a god, not a lover, but just a friend.

Two relevant moments from her personal history feel relevant here: 1) she was sexually assaulted at the age of 21 by a man who forced her to sing hymns just to survive (as documented in her debut single “Me and a Gun“); and 2) according to a 2005 biography, Amos was heavily influenced growing up by her maternal grandfather who, in contrast to her stern Methodist minister father, offered a more pantheistic and tolerant spirituality. That would appear to explain both her critiques of Christianity (hymns doing nothing to prevent–and even actively participating in–a rape), and her far more intimate friendliness with a pantheistic deity. A pantheon for her—wherein the gods of necessity must collaborate together—appears to be a more humane alternative to the inherent oppressiveness of a top-down patriarchy.

Our Church is a patriarchy. This is not up for debate. Call it a benign patriarchy and quote D&C 121:36-42 or what have you, I’ve heard it all before, we all have–this Church is still a patriarchy. This has been very well documented elsewhere. Only men are ordained to the priesthood, only men hold any leadership callings of consequence, and the womens’ organizations are run by men; these same men also don’t like to talk about Heavenly Mother, whom they seem vaguely embarrassed about, and sometimes act as though they wish Joseph Smith had never broached the idea in the first place.

But he did, and She’s with us, and I sometimes wonder what Tori Amos could do with her–but then, I sometimes wonder what we could do with her, too. And part of me totally gets it why we downplay her: it’s for the same reason we have tended lately to downplay the potential godhood of humanity in our theology—it all makes our faith seem far too pantheistic to be compatible with mainstream Christianity.

But as Tori Amos helpfully reminds us, just what’s so great about fitting in with mainstream Christianity in the first place? There’s a reason we believe the Restoration had to happen. Richard Bushman argued in Rough Stone Rolling that just because Joseph Smith and the Book of Abraham and the Temple endowment all preach that there are a multiplicity of gods spread out endlessly throughout eternity, that by no means signifies that the faith is pantheistic,^[4]pp. 535-536 because we still have only one God who directly pertains to us—but I don’t know, maybe we should just lean into it. Maybe monotheism is overrated. Perhaps a pantheon of perfected beings, male and female–as opposed to a single dictatorial deity–all collaborating together in the creation, is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Perhaps such an approach will help us approach the Almighty as not a fearsome overlord, but as a friend–which we’re supposed to be doing anyways: “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you” (John 15:15). And as Tori Amos knows well, we all “could use a friend to run to…”