On 5 October, a group of women (and some male supporters) will, either through tickets granted by LDS leaders (they have petitioned leaders for them) or via the stand-by line, attempt to gain entrance to the priesthood session of general conference. Spearheaded by the group Ordain Women, the announcement of these plans has set LDS blogs afire, reinvigorating a several-decades-long and very important but complex discussion of pathways to full equality of men and women within Mormonism, including the possibility of women being ordained to the priesthood.
In this episode of Mormon Matters, two members of Ordain Women—April Young Bennett and Danielle Mooney—join Dialogue editor Kristine Haglund and Mormon Matters host Dan Wotherspoon for a discussion of Ordain Women, its origins, activities, philosophies, and its plans for the priesthood meeting admission attempt. The conversation then opens into the wider questions about the objections that are being raised to this plan—its strategic gamble, whether the LDS membership is yet ready for a seismic shift such as would follow an announcement opening the door to women’s ordination, and if this is an effective way for the best ideas about why ordination is essential for equality to be heard and prayerfully considered by the Church’s governing leadership. Wherever one stands on the issue of women’s ordination, this is an extremely interesting and vital topic. The future character of Mormonism is very much at stake.
We hope you will listen to this terrific discussion and then weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section below!
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Links:
WAVE (Women Advocating Voice & Equality) website
Feminist Mormon Housewives blog
Ten Common Arguments Against Women’s Ordination in the LDS Church (video slideshow produced by FMH)
The Challenge of Honesty: Essays for Latter-day Saints by Frances Lee Menlove, editor, Dan Wotherspoon (mentioned in the podcast)
Comments 23
Fabulous podcast! So inspired by Danielle and by April (of course as we all work on OW together), but also really loved something that Kristine said: Equality is not a feeling! I am going to be ruminating on that one.
Thanks to all!
I enjoyed the podcast and fully support the OW movement. I am looking forward to hearing how it goes for you on October 5th.
Good Luck!
I really enjoyed this discussion. I will admit that I do not personally feel a desire to take this on, but I have great respect for those who do, and I learned lots while listening to this! Thanks to all on the panel, and of course my favorite Dan Wotherspoon for all the good stuff that comes out of Mo Matters! <3
Brilliant! Such a great group of ladies on the podcast. Kristine is the greatest.
Great discussion! I feel a lot like Dan after having listened to this podcast…I think I was more in the “baby steps” camp but have a new understanding of OW. And I see a stronger connection to why asking for ordination is key to moving things forward. I found interesting what Danielle said about pushback–that she gets the same level of criticism whether she’s asking for a small change in women’s roles vs. women’s ordination.
Danielle used the phrase “thoughtfully cautious while supporting the idea.” I totally support the efforts of OW and am so grateful to them for what they are doing. I’m not sure I’m ready to post my profile at this point, so how can I support OW, being in this category? Any suggestions, April or Danielle?
I was enlightened and inspired by this conversation. Thank you.
Thanks for your support Corrina. If you do not feel called to post a profile or come to Priesthood session with us, you can support us through fasting and prayer, by helping is start conversations about women and priesthood in person and through social media, and if possible, by joining us for prayer at City Creek park at 4, before we head out to the session.
Right about at the hour mark, a women is speaking and she says that the LDS has a lot more invested into not allowing women to hold the priesthood than they did with black Africans? On what grounds does she make this conclusion?
Hi Abdul–that was me. I think the LDS Church has made family form and gender roles a major boundary issue in maintaining distinctiveness from the surrounding (American) society. The sexist division of roles and power in the church is therefore more organizationally important than racist divisions ever were–by the time the 1978 revelation on priesthood came, maintaining racialized divisionswas a huge liability for the church. We are nowhere near that point with gender; the idea of “traditional” family responsibilities and homemaking/childrearing roles for women is still perceived by many to be a major selling point for the church’s missionary efforts and general attractiveness to outsiders.
Also, the Correlation movement expanded and extended the notion of patriarchal order and has made it a truly central organizing principle of the modern church as well as the idealized Mormon family–ordaining women would require much more doctrinal adjustment than ordaining black men did.
That’s a fair explanation. I heard some of you speak at sunstone and I was very impressed. Hope things will work in your favor next week
The podcast was very compelling. There were many concepts I hadn’t heard or considered. Here are my four takeaways:
1. I was hoping to hear rebuttals to common pushback
2. The common phrase was “we just want equality”. Of course we know that men and women will never be completely interchangeable. In church administration, all positions and duties could never be truly gender neutral. I think what these women really desire is to feel that men and women have equal worth or value, yet they derided the concept that equality is a feeling.
3. There was some discussion on the consequences of ordaining women. How would ideal church administration work? The answer seemed to be “We don’t know, we just know we want to be ordained.”
4. I get the feeling that the desire of the women in this podcast is not to hold the priesthood, it is to hold leadership positions currently not assigned to women. I would ask them to consider the following: Assume you achieved your goals. Women now have the priesthood and
can hold any office or calling. However, you personally are never called to be a stake president or bishop or serve in a quorum presidency? Suppose you spend the remainder of your church service in the primary. How would that affect your feeling of equality?
slindblo, do you assume that 12-year-old boys and male converts to the church become ordained only if they personally want to be a bishop or stake president or quorum leader? Why do you think that women want the priesthood for different reasons than men or boys?
Whether I am ever called to these positions is not important. However, I do think it important that at least some women are called to these positions, because I believe the church would be better served by a diverse leadership.
As for your other questions:
1. For rebuttals, I encourage you to watch the video Dan linked to, or this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDdFZjNQIRQ
2. I disagree that positions cannot be gender neutral. In modern, Western society, almost all authority positions in government and business, as well as those in many other churches, are gender neutral. People of either gender are equally qualified to hold these positions and the duties associated with the position are the same, regardless of the gender of the person currently serving. Also, I am less concerned with “feeling” equal as with being equal.
3. To clarify my personal position on how administration would work, I envision that it would function in much the same way as it does today, with the big difference being that some of the people serving as bishops, stake presidents, and area and general authorities would happen to be women.
Slindblo–I think the women involved with OW face a double bind in talking about what change might look like. Laying out a fully-realized concept of administration involving women would elicit even more accusations of being “power hungry” and not deferring to the authorities of the church, while leaving things open or vague elicits the charge of not having thought carefully about it. They can’t win!
I am struck and inspired by the prospect of my personal priesthood interview being conducted by a woman in the quorum presidency. I imagine the questions and priorities and critique and counsel would be markedly different than I receive today, and probably much more useful.
In fact, I am going to ask my wife’s visiting teachers to give me a personal priesthood interview on a quarterly basis. I think I will learn and improve a lot from the exercise.
No, I’m not kidding.
Just ordain them to the priesthood of Eve…or priesthood of Mary? and let them judge women and bless all, as the mother of the ward next, working with the Bishop . who is know as the father of the ward.
There problem solved!
Wonderful podcast, as usual. I especially appreciate the point that was made that women don’t know how to disagree and still get along, because we are supposed to stay “nice”. I believe this problem is far broader. We are told in the scriptures, “Contention is of the devil”. It seems that many people avoid conversations that are uncomfortable, because they may have strong feelings and they assign those feelings as “contentious”. Is this really just because we are women that we avoid difficult conversations?
In that same line, it was so great to hear a conversation where the panelists were disagreeing on important issues, but being open to have the conversation. Loved it!
A doctrinal difficulty I see is that probably millions of vicarious temple initiatory ordinances have been done where men are ordained to the priesthood and women are not. If women were ordained then would this become a requirement to obtain temple ordinances as it is now for men? Would vicarious ordinances for women then include priesthood ordination? And what would you do with the millions of women who have already had vicarious ordinances done, would you have to go back and give them all the priesthood in an initiatory ordinance? Has this been discussed anywhere online yet?
Due to the Mormon church’s continued support of the Boy Scouts of America, despite this organizations decision to no longer hold reverence, duty of God, and moral straightness as standards, clearly this religious body is not lead by God-fearing men, so maybe the time has come for Mormon women to drag their men kicking and screaming to the teachings of Jesus in the Bible where all are to submit to their roles as Christ submitted to the Father.
Sorry you guys were not let into the priesthood session, I was rooting for you. Do you think the church decided to broadcast the session live on TV and Internet for the first time IN REACTION TO YOUR PLANNED ATTEMPT TO ATTEND THE SESSION IN PERSON?
Sometimes, we have an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other religious organizations that have blurred the roles/rules of their religious traditions.
In the case of the LDS Church, one does not have to look far for an excellent case study: the RLDS (now Community of Christ) attempted to be every thing to every one.and ended up being a much smaller church with several shisms now competing for their mantle as the true voice of the Reorganization. Ordination of women was the FINAL straw and now we have the Church of Jesus Christ–Restoration Branch, the Remnant Chuirch of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and other lesser players.
And now the CoC (RLDS) keeps toying with Gay Ordination and more are leaving…
While I believe that the spiritual prowess of women is on par if not above that of men, calling a woman an “Elder” or “Priest”, etc. as done in the RLDS/CoC faith always makes me pause. A better solution should have been followed when President Smith took that step—a step that even his retired (now deceased) father/President Emeritus privately disagreed with.
You ordain women if there are appropriate offices. The Bickerton folk ordain Deconesses, for example, whose duties remind me of the LDS Relief Society plus handling their washing of sister’s feet (men do the feet of other men). (The Church of Jesus Christ, Bickerton Organization is a Rigdon branch of the LDS Movement). There are Temple parallels that could also—and have—been drawn.
So little need exists for this protest, IMHO. You will only cause schism in the church if and when this issue is taken up by enough women in the church. Not sure you will be happy with the results.
JaromX
You people do not know what you do not know. You have no clue, obviously, about some of the most sacred doctrines of the Church pertaining to women that do NOT pertain to men. In fact, if most men truly understood who they were married to (or born to, or had as sisters), they would be blown away in near disbelief, and likely sudden feelings of inferiority.
And women, if you truly understood the burden of the Priesthood, you’d not be so quick to seek it. Unfortunately, many men likewise have little to no clue. Fortunately, that’s why we’re each given about 80 or so years down here – to learn, and grow wiser.
True or false: women can already lay hands on others and pronounce sacred blessings, with fully approval and even encouragement by the highest of Church officials. Don’t answer too quickly, now. If you’ve been endowed and think about it, you know the answer is “True.” And that doesn’t even scratch the surface, but you’re getting warmer.
Few there are that find it. And this surely ain’t the way, I can assure you. You don’t have a clue as to your official worth in the Church, if you’re arguing this line. But unfortunately the Lord himself had to counsel the men in the Church in D&C 121:35-42. There He explains how many of the men in the Church have contributed to the beliefs that lead you to foolishly seek that which you don’t need – and for all the wrong reasons. If you’ve been endowed, you’ve already been told all any person could ever hope to hear in this life, except perhaps that their calling and election has been made sure. You women have something men do not have, and you don’t have a clue (nor do most of them).
I will not further engage in this line of discussion, as it would go beyond a “line” I would consider personally unacceptable to cross. Something about pearls …. Just know the pearls are already there, and you endowed women already have them – and don’t have a clue. You haven’t been listening, and pondering, and praying, or you would not even be here (I just happened to find this by total, unrelated accident).