Mothers in Zion - why they're leaving

[Moksha]

SLTribune this morning. The church is losing its best women because, ultimately, its leaders don’t see them and don’t want to have to listen to them.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/11 ... f-society/

I get a 404 error on the link.

It is one of those subscription-only type articles, to encourage Tribune viewers interested in LDS Church news to pay up or leave.

[malkie]

I get a 404 error on the link.

It is one of those subscription-only type articles, to encourage Tribune viewers interested in LDS Church news to pay up or leave.

Some browsers, including Brave, have a button to the right of the URL that sets the browser to "reading" or "Speed Reading" mode.

If you click the button as the page loads, just before the paywall code kicks in, you may be able to read the full text, although images appear to be omitted. If you click the button at the wrong time, you can refresh the page and try again.

I ws able to read the article using this browser mode.

[Dr Moore]

The instagram post now has 7,200 comments. Wow!! The men in charge may not want to listen, but the women will be heard.

[Marcus]

I don't think the latter part of this was part of the original post, but was added after the responses..

There is no other religious organization in the world, that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women. There are religions that ordain some women to positions such as priests and pastors, but very few relative to the number of women in their congregations receive that authority that their church gives them.

“By contrast, all women, 18 years and older, in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who choose a covenant relationship with God in the house of the Lord are endowed with priesthood power directly from God. And as we serve in whatever calling or assignment, including ministering assignments, we are given priesthood authority to carry out those responsibilities. My dear sisters, you belong to a Church which offers all its women priesthood power and authority from God!.” —Sister @j_anettedennis

here's the really weird part:
"By contrast, all women, 18 years and older, in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who choose a covenant relationship with God in the house of the Lord are endowed with priesthood power directly from God."

What???

My dear sisters, you belong to a Church which offers all its women priesthood power and authority from God!.”

I am politely calling BS on that.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

A slap in the face’: LDS Relief Society leaders ordered off the stand


By Peggy Fletcher Stack
| Nov. 24, 2023, 6:00 a.m.
| Updated: Nov. 26, 2023, 3:42 p.m.


It seemed like such a simple act of inclusion.

Having female Relief Society leaders sitting on the stand facing the pews during Latter-day Saint Sunday services has been a noncontroversial tradition among some congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area for a decade or more.

But to many women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the public presence of women, sitting side by side with male ecclesiastical authorities, sent a powerful signal they were an important and essential part of the community’s leadership.

Apparently, though, even that small symbol was too much for some of the faith’s male leaders.

The practice was abruptly discontinued last month, according to church spokesperson Doug Andersen, at the order of the North America West Area president, whose jurisdiction includes California.

The Utah-based faith “has a long-established practice when it comes to worship services,” Andersen says. “The general pattern includes presiding authorities sitting on the stand along with other women, men, youth and children based on their invitation to participate in the service.”

Local leaders, Andersen says, “were recently reminded of this practice.”

The heartbreaking edict, Latter-day Saint observers in the region say, was handed down to male leaders without any input from the women affected or explanation for the change.

There is nothing in the church’s General Handbook barring female officials from the stand and many wonder why women are allowed to sit with men in cushy seats on the platform at General Conference but not at the local level.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Then-Young Women General President Bonnie Oscarson speaks at a women's session in 2014.

In response, members in at least three stakes (regional clusters of congregations] surrounding San Francisco have expressed their concerns to lay bishops and stake presidents, while also conducting surveys and launching a letter-writing campaign to church headquarters in Salt Lake City.

“It was a slap in the face,” says Laurel McNeil, a Relief Society president in Sunnyvale. “We are good enough for all this service, but not good enough to sit up there with men and present a united front.”

Being on the stand was “recognition and acknowledgment of the work that sisters do in the church,” she says. “It was a visible symbol for young men and adult men, too.”

The women who are upset about the move are all “faithful, orthodox women, not rebels or activists,” says McNeil, who gave a stack of letters from women to an area authority. “It feels like we are being punished for something we didn’t do wrong. The feelings run the gamut from anger to sadness — and they are profound and deep.”

Not only was the Relief Society representation on the stand “impactful for women, but there was also a very practical benefit of seeing the congregation from a bird’s-eye view,” writes Melanie Williams of the Los Altos Stake. “It helped the bishopric immensely as she could identify members’ needs the men might miss.”

Bay Area bishops and stake presidents “have responded with empathy and taken the time to meet individually with women,” Williams says, while there has been no communication with them from headquarters in Utah.

She says she has “never felt more ‘less than’ in all my church life. It was …such a small crumb.”

Why did the church take away that “crumb”? Whom did that threaten?

Jesus was “born to a woman, announced his ministry to a woman and first appeared to a woman after he was resurrected,” Williams says. “He would not have objected to their presence on the stand.”

The Christian Savior “loved women,” she says, “which showed in his actions, not just his words.”

Ripples from the Ordain Women movement
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Women are turned away from the all-male priesthood session of General Conference in October 2013.

In 2013, a group of women launched a campaign to ordain women to the all-male Latter-day Saint priesthood.

“Since leadership and positional authority in Mormonism [are] inextricably tied to priesthood ordination,” organizers wrote, “it is clear that Mormon women must be ordained in order to be full and equal participants in their church.”

As a public act to show their intent, Ordain Women leaders, including co-founder Kate Kelly, asked for tickets to the General Conference priesthood session for men.

More than a hundred women walked politely in a line to Temple Square in Salt Lake City and asked to be allowed into the Tabernacle but were turned away at the door.

The protest, which was repeated at subsequent General Conferences, drew widespread publicity and criticism locally and nationally.

A little over a year later, Kelly was excommunicated and many of the participants either fell silent or left the church. The impact of their actions, however, was broad and deep.

In response, church changes included:

• The men’s priesthood meeting was broadcast live for the first time, allowing women to watch it online.

• At least one woman was added to the church’s top committees making decisions about missionary work, family history, temples and more.

• The photos of top female church leaders were included in widely circulated charts of high-level authorities.

• Churchwide female leaders were moved from the side to center seats during General Conference.

• Women were added as “advisers” to the church’s European area authorities in leadership councils.

Creative inclusion efforts
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) A young Latter-day Saint boy passes the sacrament. Some wards have allowed young women to take the sacrament to nursing mothers in women's restrooms.

In congregations, especially in the United States, bishops and stake presidents tried to create more opportunities for women.

Members report that wards have tried allowing women to serve as “executive secretaries” to bishoprics, to become ward mission leaders, to attend bishopric meetings, to conduct baptisms of their own children, to be ward or stake “auditors,” to pass the sacrament, or Communion, into the women’s restroom for nursing mothers, and to be Sunday school presidents.

To be clear, these are unconventional choices somewhat frowned upon and some even prohibited by the General Handbook.

In 2016, Bay Area bishops came up with a list of ways they could improve the status of women in their congregations.

Their recommendations included:

• Involving women in decision-making that affected them.

• Budgeting the same amount for Young Women activities as Young Men.

• Giving equal time in services for female and male speakers.

• Citing and quoting female church leaders on doctrinal topics in sermons, speeches and books.

• Referring to women by their titles as often as they do men.

Having female leaders such as Relief Society presidents, Young Women presidents and children’s Primary presidents on the stand was one of the items recommended and endorsed by many of the bishops.

A step back?
(Rick Bowmer | AP) Neylan McBaine wrote “Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact,” a book about the ways in which the faith could offer more leadership opportunities short of ordaining women to the priesthood.

Booting female leaders from the stands seems like a giant step backward to Neylan McBaine, who wrote in her 2014 book, “Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact,” about the ways in which the faith could offer more leadership opportunities without ordaining women to the priesthood. Many of the above experiments in gender inclusion were suggested in that book.

At the beginning of church President Russell M. Nelson’s tenure in 2018, there seemed to be a willingness “to increase women’s participation in church councils,” McBaine says now. “But absolutely nothing has changed in the visibility or inclusion of women in our weekly, essential, Sunday experience.”

At a Latter-day Saint service to install a new three-man bishopric she recently attended, “there were 38 men on the stand, including the entire [stake] high council, both old and new bishoprics, stake presidency and all of the sacrament blessers and passers.”

The message, McBaine notes in an email, was “loud and clear: The church can run without women, and sacrament meeting is not a place for women to exercise any stewardship.”

The church’s “patriarchal structure” makes it so “women don’t know where to turn to exercise spiritual authority or stewardship in our community,” she says. “We have enough of a toehold — we can get baptized, we can speak in [church], we can teach other women — that we are bold enough to believe that there is a place for us in that structure.”

Yet if women try to extend that toehold, “for the benefit of the church as a whole and for our own spiritual growth,” McBaine says, “we find doors slammed in our faces.”

And the line seems arbitrary.

“Why is it OK for a woman to call upon the powers of heaven to bless her congregation in an opening prayer, but not pass the plastic tray of bread or water to that congregation?” she asks. “Why is it OK for a woman to instruct from the pulpit in a sacrament meeting talk, but not sit on the stand to be acknowledged as a steward of those listening?”

The arbitrary nature “of this latest hand-slapping,” McBaine says, “simply underscores that it is a blatant power move, designed to intimidate and reassert male dominance in the core Sunday experience.”

She feels deeply that “this is not the way of [church founder Joseph [Smith], whose trademark was innovation. This is not the way of the early Christian church, where women hosted the meetings and Paul praised them for their leadership. This is not the way of the church even in the not-so-distant past, when Primary, seminary, visiting and home teaching and more bubbled up from member needs.”

If the church continues “to conform rather than disrupt, retrench rather than innovate, our community will wither,” McBaine warns. “And if women continue to have to diminish themselves so much more than men to be in good standing with the institution, they will leave.”

A sobering thought, she says, for a church trying to hold onto its young.

Future for young Latter-day Saint women
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) A combined Primary, Young Women and Relief Society choir sings at General Conference in 2015.

Some years ago, Amy Jensen was the Young Women president in the Lafayette, Calif., congregation and spoke to “the intelligent, talented and faithful girls of my ward,” she says, and heard a constant refrain: Why aren’t the women more visible?

“These young women wanted to understand why the only leadership that was recognized consistently in the church were men,” Jensen writes in a letter to the area president. “When they sat with their families in the pews, they looked up and saw a church full of men, and their own experiences told them what they saw on the stand didn’t reflect the real story of their ward.”

These girls knew of the work and leadership it took from women and men to keep the congregation running, she writes, “so why, when they looked up from their seats onto the stand, didn’t they see themselves reflected back?”

Jensen took their concerns to the ward council, which includes men and women, “and it was decided that there would always be a woman in leadership sitting on the stand next to our other ward leaders.”

The girls “felt heard,” she writes, “and the ward council understood this to be a simple way to begin to address a complex problem.”

They do not want “the work of their mothers and [female] leaders” to be invisible, Jensen writes, “but recognized so they might more easily see themselves in the church they love.”

Along with many others, Jensen prays that this policy will be reversed.

Brittany Dawson in Las Altos has seen women who struggle to come to church.

“The last thing I would want is for a small change to negatively impact their experience at church,” she writes, “making it even harder to come or keeping them from coming to church altogether.”

And here’s a letter from a 13-year-old in her area that Jensen shared with her leaders:

“If you want all of the [wards] to be the same, which I believe is the reason you’re choosing to make this change,” she wonders, “then why not make the change so that all Relief Society presidents in the church [sit on] stands during sacrament meetings?”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

author
pstack@sltrib.com
Twitter-logoFollow @religiongal
Donate to the newsroom now. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax deductible

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Good news everyone!!

Did you know that there is no other religious organization in the world that has given women more power and authority? At least that's what the Church is now saying.

And in related news, the Church will soon be teaching that Blacks were never denied the priesthood.

LDS Church gives more power to women than any other religious organization, leader declares
It is unknown how many women skipped Sunday services as part of a boycott.

By Tamarra Kemsley
| March 17, 2024, 4:17 p.m.
| Updated: March 18, 2024, 5:32 p.m.

Comment

Latter-day Saint women who have made covenants with God in the faith’s temples are “endowed with priesthood power,” a leader in the global Relief Society declared during a prerecorded worldwide broadcast Sunday celebrating the 182nd anniversary of the founding of the women’s organization.

“There is no other religious organization in the world,” J. Anette Dennis, first counselor Relief Society General Presidency, said, “that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women.”

Her reasoning: Yes, other faiths ordain women to roles like priest or pastor, but those individuals represent a small minority when compared to the total number of women within their congregations.

“By contrast, all women, 18 years and older,” she explained, “in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who choose a covenant relationship with God in the House of the Lord are endowed with priesthood power directly from God.”

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) In a talk during Sunday's devotional, J. Anette Dennis, first counselor Relief Society General Presidency, said she was not aware of any other religious organization "that has so broadly given power and authority to women.”

And that’s not all.

All Latter-day Saint women are given priesthood authority to fulfill their callings, or volunteer positions within their congregations, and other assignments, she said, regardless of whether they have performed the rituals found within the faith’s temples.

“My dear sisters,” she concluded, “you belong to a church which offers all its women priesthood power and authority from God.”

Priesthood authority vs. priesthood office
The idea that Latter-day Saint women act with priesthood authority isn’t entirely new.

More than a decade ago, a grassroots campaign for female ordination ended with church leaders excommunicating a chief organizer, Kate Kelly. In a sermon broadcast months before that action, apostle Dallin H. Oaks, next in line to head up the Utah-based faith, explained that women utilize the priesthood when performing the work the church calls them to do, asking “what other authority can it be?”

Dennis cited this talk, as well as one from church President Russell M. Nelson, in which the current leader explained, “As a righteous, endowed Latter-day Saint woman, you speak and teach with power and authority from God.”

If some women have not always appreciated this fact, it is because, Dennis said, “the adversary wants to focus our attention on what we haven’t been given and blind us to all that we have been given.”

‘It doesn’t speak to the pain’
Not everyone was convinced.

Elizabeth Ostler, editor-in-chief of the LDS Women Project, pushed back on Dennis’ remarks.

“While I do think it is helpful to recognize that endowed women have the priesthood and are utilizing that priesthood more than we may be aware, this claim doesn’t actually address the grievance within our community,” she said. “It doesn’t speak to the pain or desire that many members have about how we talk about, understand and use the priesthood in our services and homes.”

To this point, Kristine Haglund, a writer and former editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, noted that the church’s patriarchal structure bars women from its central decision-making structure in their local congregations and church headquarters.

“Latter-day Saint women’s ecclesiastical authority is dramatically less,” she said, “than in churches which extend priesthood to women.”

While “distinguishing between priesthood power and priesthood office in this way may feel empowering for many LDS women,” Haglund said, “the fact that women’s priesthood power is exercised exclusively with the permission and at the direction of men who hold priesthood office feels constraining and disempowering to many.”

So disempowering, in fact, that one woman, discouraged at the recent removal of women from the stand in a few Bay Area congregations, called on other Latter-day Saint women to boycott Sunday’s services, the same day of the broadcast.

“To my fellow sisters, here’s what I’m thinking. If the church would like us to be less visible, let’s help them out,” Seattle Latter-day Saint Kierstyn Kremer Howes wrote in a widely read op-ed published by The Salt Lake Tribune. “Let’s just not show up.”

In a follow-up op-ed last week, she described hearing from “a lot of women” who responded to her previous piece with stories of “being belittled, maligned, insulted and ignored.”

Those messages only reinforced her position, Kremer Howes wrote, explaining that, come Sunday, she would “try to get five hours of sleep instead of the usual four.”

Afterward, Kremer Howes said in an interview, she received emails from “a few” women who said they “love the idea and are planning on sleeping in on that day as well,” although it was unclear by Sunday afternoon how many ultimately participated.

Don’t wait until marriage, mission to receive ‘endowment’
President Camille N. Johnson, head of the nearly 8 million-strong global Relief Society, followed her counselor by encouraging listeners who had not yet received their “endowment” — a sacred temple ritual in which individuals make promises to God — to do so, explaining they need not wait for marriage or a mission as has customarily been the case.

To be eligible, she said, women must:

• Be “worthy.”

• Be at least 18 years old.

• Have completed or are no longer attending high school or secondary school.

• Have been a member of the church for at least a year.

• “Feel a desire to receive and honor temple covenants throughout their lives.”

Kristin M. Yee, second counselor in the Relief Society presidency, spoke poignantly about how her own “covenant relationship” with God has served her as a single woman.

“Sometimes, at the end of the day,” the former Disney artist explained, “I want to talk to someone about a tender mercy from the Lord that I’ve witnessed or a difficult situation I’m struggling with.”

(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Kristin Yee of the global Relief Society presidency visits with Relief Society sisters after a special meeting involving multiple congregations at a church meetinghouse in San Diego on Friday, Sept. 15, 2023. In her talk Sunday, Yee spoke about the comfort entering into a "covenant relationship" with God has granted her as a single woman.

At times, God intervenes, she said, sending a friend or family member her way in the exact right moment.

“But many times, I have had the privilege and blessing of speaking to my Father in Heaven about my day and the feelings of my heart,” she said. “Because of this, I’ve become better acquainted with God and better at counseling with him.”

Nelson, who, at 99, occasionally slurred words and spoke in a sometimes-halting manner, closed the recorded devotional by extolling the gifts he said were intrinsic to women, including a special “receptivity to the Spirit and an enhanced moral compass.”

“In saying this, I do not absolve men from distinguishing right from wrong or from doing the spiritual work to receive revelation,” Nelson explained. “However, if the world should ever lose the moral rectitude of its women, the world would never recover.”

author
tkemsley@sltrib.com
Twitter-logoFollow @tamarranicole
Donate to the newsroom now. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax deductible

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/03 ... wer-women/

[Moksha]

I wonder if the Church will discontinue its policy of excluding women from being seated on the stand at the April 2024 General Conference.

[Equality]

I don't know why women would leave the church if this is true. And it must be true. Church leaders wouldn't lie about something like this, would they?

[Equality]

To be eligible, she said, women must:

• Be “worthy.”

• Be at least 18 years old.

• Have completed or are no longer attending high school or secondary school.

• Have been a member of the church for at least a year.

• “Feel a desire to receive and honor temple covenants throughout their lives.”

Funny, they left out the part that if a woman is married to a non-member husband, she can meet all the above qualifications and not be allowed to get her endowment if her NON-MEMBER husband refuses to give his express consent for it. Why would they leave that out, do you think?

[Dr Moore]

Well, the men in charge must really hate hearing from all their women. The powers that be have begun purging that Instagram post of hundreds of dissenting comments. Go see the link upthread as it plays out in real time. They can hardly keep up with the angry questions but Lord knows they’re trying. Silencing the women, that’s how Mormons give them power and authority… silencing them.