It’s about themework: After 25 years, what Young Women recite still resonates
“We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us and we love him.”
Every Sunday, in chapels across the world and in dozens of languages, female members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ages 12 to 17 stand to recite the familiar words that begin the Young Women theme.
After rehearsing the theme — a mission statement of sorts — every Sunday for years, most girls likely know the theme by heart. And that’s exactly what Young Women leaders say they hoped would happen when they crafted the theme so many years ago.
“It is universal,” said Ardeth G. Kapp, former general president of the Young Women organization from 1984 to 1992. “While there are a lot of things that you can learn on education and arts and wonderful things that you can be involved in, this theme is unique to the preparation of a young woman in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It helps clarify the uniqueness and the mission and the destiny of young women who choose to follow the path. The program really provides a bridge from where they are at age 12 to the future.”
November 2010 marked the 25th anniversary of the Young Women theme and values, developed under the leadership of Kapp, her counselors and Young Women board members. The unveiling of the theme marked a shift from self-improvement and homemaking activities toward a value-based, more spiritually minded program for Young Women.
“It was a historic time in the lives of young women,” Kapp said.
Historical developments
The early 1980s, when Kapp was called to serve as general president of the Young Women, was a tumultuous time for women. Equal rights movements were a constant in the media, making it hard for women to pin down their true identity, Kapp says. Young Women leadership realized young women in the church didn’t have the same visibility and recognition as their male peers, who were recognized often for priesthood advancements and Scouting merits.
“That wasn’t the real motivation for developing a program, but it was something we realized the young women didn’t have,” Kapp said.
Kapp and her counselors wanted the Young Women to have a program that would give this recognition to girls, and, more importantly, help them understand their true identity in order to prepare for the future. They wanted to answers questions like: Who am I? Where should I go? What should I do?
With those thoughts at the forefront of their minds, the leadership sought guidance through prayer, scripture study and contemplation, she says.
“The first thing we realized is that these girls are baptized members of the church and that is their anchor, their pillar,” Kapp said. “Where they ultimately want to be is to have the blessings of the temple.”
With an established idea of where young women are and where they should be, Kapp and her counselors needed to develop a path that would move them in the right direction. That path turned out to be the Young Women theme and accompanying value program.
“We went through a process of really seeking to know the Lord’s will,” Kapp said. “It wasn’t a Young Women program. It was the Lord’s program for young women. We wanted to make sure it was in harmony with the mission of the church at the time, which was to proclaim the gospel, perfect the saints and redeem the dead.”
“In a very real way, the Young Women theme and mission statement is a parallel to the mission of the church,” she said. “To proclaim the gospel is to witness. To perfect the saints is to live the values. To redeem the dead is to participate in temple ordinances.”
Filled with meaning
The theme starts with a declaration of eternal identity: “We are daughters of our Heavenly Father.” Next, it clarifies the role of a Young Women, when it says “We will ‘stand as witness of God at all times, in all things, and in all places.’ ” After that, the theme outlines seven specific values to help accomplish that task: Faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works and integrity. (An eighth value, virtue, was added in 2008.)
“They crafted that theme so that every word mattered,” said Laurel Christensen, author of several books including the 2010 “He Loves Us and We Love Him: You’ve Memorized It, Now Live It” (Deseret Book, $9.99). As research for that book, which focuses on the YW theme, Christensen spent time going through Kapp’s journals from 1984-1986. “They chose ‘we’ versus ‘I’ because they wanted the girls to realize they were part of something bigger than themselves. They wanted them to realize that thousands of other girls were saying the theme as well, and they were part of this army of girls.”
The order of the values isn’t happenstance, either. Each value builds and gives meaning to the next.
“They happen in absolute sequential order,” Kapp said.
For example, the first value, faith, is the first principle of the gospel, as outlined in the First Article of Faith. Faith gives understanding to divine nature, the second value. Once a girl understands her divine nature — that she is literally offspring of a Heavenly Father — she better understands her individual worth, Christensen said.
“Each value has a value statement, and the hope was that the girls would memorize the value statements,” Christensen said. “Unless you know the value statements, it can be hard to internalize what the values really mean. For example, the value statement for divine nature says: ‘I have inherited divine qualities which I will strive to develop.’ So girls will understand, ‘Because I am a child of God, this is the kind of girl I can be.’ “
Increased visibility
After Kapp and her counselors had the foundation for the theme and Young Women program in place, they recruited an artist to design a logo that would give increased visibility to young women. They identified five elements the logo needed to incorporate. It had to be universal; it had to be spiritual; it had to be active; it had to be powerful, and it had to have a feminine element.
The solution, a torch with a profile of a woman, fulfilled the requirements exactly, Kapp said.
“A torch is universal, timeless,” she said. “It conveys light, which is spirituality. A torch is something you can’t lay down, it’s active. And the logo included the profile of a woman, so it is feminine.”
Colors were selected to accompany each value, another way to add visibility, Kapp says. Unlike the values, the colors do not have scriptural references as their underpinning. However, there is logic to the selection and the colors were carefully thought out, she says.
“The colors were also symbolic,” Kapp said. “The whole program was designed to help young women learn the importance of symbols and how we can learn through symbols.”
Staying power
Despite the changes the world has undergone in the past quarter-century, the theme has remained largely unchanged.
In 1999, then-President Margaret D. Nadauld and her counselors added the phrase “strengthen home and family” to the last part of the theme. In 2008, the additional value of “virtue” was added.
“It is amazing that it is still relevant,” Christensen said. “The addition of the value virtue is proof of modern-day revelation. Young women need an emphasis on virtue now in a way we didn’t 25 years ago. The values are going to become more and more important to them as time goes on, and the theme will be more and more relevant.”
That constancy is exactly what Kapp says she and her counselors hoped they would be able to create when they first started pondering the idea in 1984.
“Twenty-five years later, we realize that we were just planting seeds that will continue to grow,” Kapp said. “It was not our work; it was the work of inspiration that comes to those who are seeking counsel from the Lord.”
Deepening appreciation
Although the theme was crafted to carry deep meaning, many teenage girls don’t realize the importance of what they’re reciting every week, Christensen says. For seven years, Christensen has traveled the country speaking to teenage girls about gospel topics. On these visits, she realized that every group of girls recited the theme in the same, often mechanical, manner.
“It was almost like the inflection was written on the poster,” said Christensen, who works as creative director for product development at Deseret Book. “It just dawned on me that they have no idea what they’re saying.”
Shortly after this ah-ha moment, Christensen took a trip to China with a close friend. There, a tour guide asked them what Mormons believe.
“She was the first person I’ve ever met who had never heard of the concept of being a child of God,” Christensen says. “As we drove around China, I saw all these teenage girls, and I just wanted to run up to them and say, ‘Do you know that you’re a daughter of your Heavenly Father and that he loves you?’ They don’t know this very simple Young Women theme that many girls take so for granted.”
Since that time, Christensen has made it her cause to help Latter-day Saint girls understand and live the principles identified in the Young Women theme.
“A girl who believes the truths of that theme lives completely different than a girl who doesn’t,” Christensen said. “I was 13 years old when the theme was introduced. I honestly feel like everything in my life that I know, every good thing that I’ve done, everything that has shaped my life for good, I could easily go back to that theme and say, ‘Yes, it started there.’ “
One of her strategies to help young women realize the importance of the theme is to encourage them to slow down when they recite it. Christensen recently spoke to three stakes of young women in San Clemente, Calif. While there, she asked the girls to go home and recite the theme in front of a mirror.
“Since then, we’ve said the theme really slowly,” said Kelly Moody, Young Women president in the San Clemente 6th Ward, who coordinated Christensen’s visit to her area. “The slower you say it, the more you think about it. Now the girls are finally taking time with the Young Women theme, rather than just hurrying through to the next thing.”
If you read
“He Loves Us and We Love Him: You’ve Memorized It, Now Live It”
Author: Laurel Christensen
Publisher: Deseret Book
Date of publication: November 2010
Length: 112
Cost: $9.99