It's come out in the news lately that the leader of the Ordain Women movement, Kate Kelly, has been summoned for a church hearing to discuss whether or not she should be excommunicated. For those who aren't members of the LDS church or who aren't familiar with what this movement is, the Ordain Women movement is a group of people who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and who feel that women should be allowed to hold the priesthood.
Our church has always taught that men and women have different roles and responsibilities. Women are primarily in charge of their families. This includes meeting the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of their children. We are expected to do our best to raise our children to be righteous, responsible, healthy adults. Anyone who thinks this is an easy job is kidding themselves. This is a lifelong process, with no vacation days. And it's not just about the children. Women are also expected to stand side-by-side with their husbands when it comes to making decisions and leading their family. We're equal partners. And women who don't get the opportunity to be married or have children in this life are still given opportunities to fulfill these responsibilities via their callings in the church. Women, married and single, are given roles as leaders or teachers, usually over the other women, the young (teenage) women, or the primary children. There they can put their natural abilities to work, nurturing and uplifting others. They can give talks in church, offer prayers, teach, plan activities, and work with the other leaders of the church - men and women - to help the members of their congregation.
Men provide for their families physical need through work (ideally, although sometimes women share that responsibility), and provide for their spiritual needs through the priesthood power they've been given. That includes acting as patriarch by taking the lead in spiritual family gatherings, prayer, and scripture study. It also means that they can lay their hands on their family members' heads when needed and provide blessings directly from God. These blessings can give healing, comfort, or guidance. They also have a responsibility to use their priesthood power outside of their family, to bless and help those in need, and serve in various leadership and teaching callings at church. It's a lot of responsibility, and it's entirely focused outward. Men shouldn't use their priesthood authority to dominate or lord over anyone. In fact, the church teaches that any man who tries to do so is unworthy to carry the priesthood. The priesthood is about service. It's about helping, uplifting, and blessing others. It's a sacred responsibility.
Does having the priesthood make men better or more important than women? Absolutely not. The church does not place men above women in any way, shape, or form. It merely teaches that men and women are different, and have different responsibilities. If you look at it, side by side, it seems to me that men and women are sharing the load pretty equally.In this day and age, it seems that the world is trying to "equalize" men and women by making them more and more alike in nature, and erase their differences entirely. But the fact is, at our very cores, men and women are different. And we are therefore better suited for different things.
That doesn't mean that we can't step into each other's roles when necessary. There are plenty of single parents who have to perform both sides of things. I've done it myself in many ways when Ben has been deployed. He's done his part to cover for me in the rare times that I'm out or sick and he's watching Evie, because we're equal partners. But I'll never be able to fill his shoes perfectly, and he'll never be able to do all the things that I do. Because we're different. But that's good! We compliment each other.
In my opinion, women wanting the priesthood so fervently is ridiculous. We already have as much responsibility on our shoulders as the men do, if not more. We've been given a share of the work. We have sacred responsibilities of our own, ones that are meant for us and will bring us the greatest happiness. God knows what He's doing. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He wants us to have joy in this life, and He has divided the roles of men and women in such a way that will bring us the greatest joy possible.
Women feeling like they're treated as second-class citizens in the church because they don't have the priesthood is entirely in their own imagination. None of the men in the church would agree with that sentiment, and any that did would be unworthy of their own role as a priesthood holder.
Here are some of the things the church teaches about women:
“The true spirit of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gives to woman the highest place of honor in human life." - Improvement Era, May 1935
"One of your unique, precious, and sublime gifts is your femininity, with its natural grace, goodness, and divinity. Femininity is not just lipstick, stylish hairdos, and trendy clothes. It is the divine adornment of humanity. It finds expression in your qualities of your capacity to love, your spirituality, delicacy, radiance, sensitivity, creativity, charm, graciousness, gentleness, dignity, and quiet strength. It is manifest differently in each girl or woman, but each of you possesses it.
"Femininity is part of the God-given divinity within each of you. It is your incomparable power and influence to do good. You can, through your supernal gifts, bless the lives of children, women, and men. Be proud of your womanhood. Enhance it. Use it to serve others." - James E. Faust, April 2000 General Conference
"The errand of angels is given to women... They fulfill their divine potential and magnify their God-given gifts. They are capable, strong women who bless families, serve others, and understand that “the glory of God is intelligence” (D&C 93:36) - Margaret D. Nadauld, October 2000 General Conference
“Woman is God's supreme creation. Only after the earth had been formed, after the day had been separated from the night, after the waters had been divided from the land, after vegetation and animal life had been created, and after man had been placed on the earth, was woman created; and only then was the work pronounced complete and good.
“God will hold us accountable if we neglect His daughters.” - President Gordon B. Hinckley “Our Responsibility to Our Young Women,” Ensign, Sept. 1988
"I want you to be proud you are a woman. I want you to feel the reality of what that means, to know who you truly are. You are literally a spirit daughter of heavenly parents with a divine nature and an eternal destiny. That surpassing truth should be fixed deep in your soul and be fundamental to every decision you make as you grow into mature womanhood. There could never be a greater authentication of your dignity, your worth, your privileges, and your promise. Your Father in Heaven knows your name and knows your circumstance. He hears your prayers. He knows your hopes and dreams, including your fears and frustrations. And He knows what you can become through faith in Him. Because of this divine heritage you, along with all of your spiritual sisters and brothers, have full equality in His sight and are empowered through obedience to become a rightful heir in His eternal kingdom, an “[heir] of God, and joint-[heir] with Christ.” Seek to comprehend the significance of these doctrines. Everything Christ taught He taught to women as well as men. Indeed, in the restored light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, a woman occupies a majesty all her own in the divine design of the Creator. You are, as Elder James E. Talmage once phrased it, 'a sanctified investiture which none shall dare profane.'
"Be a woman of Christ. Cherish your esteemed place in the sight of God. He needs you. This Church needs you. The world needs you. A woman’s abiding trust in God and unfailing devotion to things of the Spirit have always been an anchor when the wind and the waves of life were fiercest. I say to you what the Prophet Joseph said more than 150 years ago: “If you live up to your privileges, the angels cannot be restrained from being your associates.” - Jeffrey R. Holland, October 2005 General Conference
I could go on, but I think I've made my point.
The church in no way thinks of women as being lesser to men in any form. If anything, they put womanhood on a pedestal. So, logically, this whole "the church is sexist and women are second-class citizens" idea is malarkey.
But that's not even the biggest issue here. The reason this woman, Kate Kelly, the founder of the Ordain Women movement, is facing excommunication is that she has been working through her movement to pull people away from the teachings of the church. She has been encouraging people to turn their backs on the doctrine we receive from our prophet and try to publicly shame the church into changing their doctrine to suit her opinions. And she does it while claiming to be a faithful member of the church.
But here's the thing. All faithful members of our church believe that God gives us revelation and doctrine through his living prophet, our leader, Thomas S. Monson. And we believe that our church has been led by living prophets since its restoration in the 19th century. We believe that Joseph Smith Jr. was the first prophet of the restored gospel, and that he communicated directly with Jesus Christ, and that he got all of the doctrine he taught from the Savior. And since Joseph Smith's time, we have had fifteen more prophets, all of whom have led the church under the direct authority and direction of Jesus Christ. We believe that Christ, Himself, is the head of our church. All the doctrine we get comes from Him.
Do you see the problem here?
You can't claim to be a faithful member of the church, and believe that God is at the head of it, leading us, and then turn around and try to change the doctrine by protesting and forming organizations and getting the media to make the church look bigoted. Either Christ is the head of our church, and the doctrine we have is valid and has a divine purpose, or the church is just an earthly organization that can be swayed by popular opinion. In which case, why even bother with it? If it's not God's church, why claim to believe in it at all?
Unfortunately, the problem in this situation is pride. This isn't unusual, pride tends to be at the root of most of our worst decisions. We think that we know better than other people. We think we're smarter, or better looking, or more talented. We feel entitled. Most people get that way from time to time. But if you don't take a step back and catch yourself, and try to be humble, it can grow and consume us until we think we know better than the Lord.
Because that's what this is. Anyone who leaves the church or fights the church because of some point of doctrine or other that they disagree with is being prideful. And we cannot progress spiritually if we're being proud. Pride is a wall built directly in our path. The only way to move forward is to tear the wall down by being humble and repenting. When it comes to doctrine, that means accepting it, even if you disagree with it, and genuinely trying to live by it. And when you can do that, you can begin to understand the why.
Some have criticized the church for Kate Kelly's potential excommunication, saying that the leadership of the church is trying to punish people for having opinions and asking questions. Some believe that we're all brainwashed, and that asking questions is discouraged so as to keep us all in line.
The fact is, though, that we're encouraged to ask questions. We're encouraged to think, and study, and pray. That's how we gain understanding, and receive revelation. God doesn't just give us answers out of nowhere. He waits for us to ask. But we're encouraged to do so with humility and sincerity. When pride or anger enters into the equation, when we have a spirit of "this can't be right, what are they thinking," we begin to close ourselves off from the Spirit, and it's much harder to get true answers.
I'll give you a personal example. When the church came out and asked members in California to vote for Prop 8 in California, I was shocked. I knew from personal study (which, again, is encouraged) that the church doesn't harbor any kind of ill will toward the LGBT community. If anything, their stance has been one of love. They've actually supported gay rights when it comes to the law. So I was surprised.
I've had several gay friends throughout my life (being in the musical theater world), and my first thought was that it didn't seem fair to them. Why shouldn't they get to be with the person they love? Isn't that a good thing? And the church is all about love, so why did they suddenly seem so hateful?
It took me several days of thinking and praying about it. At first, my prayers were incredulous and a bit of the "that can't be right" prideful sort. But then I tried to be humble. I asked myself, "Is the church true?" And I've had too many experiences in my life that have testified to me of the reality and truthfulness of the gospel to deny that one.
Yes, it's true.
So, then, if it's true, the prophet is in direct communication with God, right?
Right.
And he would never abuse his authority as the prophet to misguide the members? He would never lie and say something was from God when it was merely his own opinion?
Never. Not in a million years. He's a man of integrity and honor.
And he and the other leaders of the church put this out there as an official, church-sanctioned, God-directed stance?
Yes.
Therefore, this must come from God.
From there, I had a choice. I could either turn my back on everything I believed in, or I could be humble and choose to embrace the instruction from the church, even though I didn't understand it. I chose to trust God. He sees much more of the bigger picture than I ever will. Just because I didn't understand it at the time, didn't mean that He was confused about it. The Lord always has a reason.
Because that's the thing in situations like this. We tend to put too much trust in our own understanding. But we're so limited! We understand nothing when compared to God. He sees and knows and understands everything. Each of us is like a blind man, being guided by His voice. He's giving us directions, because we can't actually see where we're going. We need to trust Him if we're going to make it where we want to go.
So I decided to accept the doctrine we've been given and oppose gay marriage. It wasn't an easy decision, but once I made it, I stuck with it.
And then came the understanding.
Because that's how revelation works. All of us are entitled to personal revelation from the Lord. But we can't receive clear answers if we're being prideful and hard-hearted. We need to be humble in order to hear the Spirit's still, small voice.I came to understand that the church was, of course, still about love. We weren't opposed to gay marriage because we hate the LGBT community and want to keep them apart. Rather, we fully support monogamy for all people. But to us, marriage isn't a legal institution. It's a religious one. For us, the definition of marriage is a union between a man, woman, and God. Marriage and family are at the center of everything we believe. We believe that families can continue, in their family units, through eternity. Marriages can last forever. They don't have to end with death. They are an extremely important, central part of our faith, and as such, have clear-cut rules.
Our views on marriage are clearly different than the world's views. That's why not just anyone can be married in one of our temples. For us, it's a sacred ordinance.
I personally believe that if religious marriage and legal marriage were defined by different words, we wouldn't have a problem with gay marriage. If, for example, "civil union" was the legal term for any and all legal unions, our church would fully support gay civil unions. Legally, members of the LGBT community should have all the same rights as anyone else. Religiously, as members of the LDS church, we're held to higher standards. And it's not purely based on sexual preference. Most heterosexual people aren't able to enter our temples and be married for eternity, either. Nobody is, until they meet the necessary standards.
The only reason the gay marriage debate became an issue in the first place was because we were given the opportunity to vote on it. If we'd been given the chance to vote on something else - like whether pornography should be outlawed - we probably would have voted according to our standards in that instance, too. And we also would have outraged people. But, as I learned, it's truly not about hate. It's just about taking the opportunity to try and stand up for what we believe is best. If we could make it so, we wouldn't want people to have sex outside of marriage, either. We'd outlaw alcohol and tobacco. We would vote to make adultery illegal. We would even vote to make all businesses (except emergency ones, like ERs and fire stations) close on Sundays. If given the chance, of course we would vote to make the world more the way we believe God would want it to be.
But we weren't presented with the opportunity to vote on any of that. So it's never come up. Simple as that.
Anyway, the moral of the story is, when we're humble and embrace the doctrine we're given from the Lord, we're able to learn, and grow, and get answers to our questions.
So, people who accuse members of the church of being "sheep" or "brainwashed" and say that we're discouraged from asking questions clearly don't understand the doctrine we're taught. Relying on the intelligence and strength of man and protesting the Lord's doctrine is not the same thing as "asking questions." That's just pride. That's being hardhearted. The real, tough questions are the ones we ask the Lord, and ourselves. "What am I doing wrong? What do I need to change in my life? How can I be more humble? How can I increase my understanding? How can I feel closer to the Spirit?" Because only through humility and drawing nearer to the Lord can we truly gain answers to the really important questions. And that's a much tougher thing to do that protesting and getting puffed up and belligerent. Anger and pride is easy. Humility is hard.
When we're prideful and fight against what has been taught, we create a wall for ourselves. We're no longer able to feel the Spirit as strongly. And, if it continues, and if we work to pull people away with us, it can lead to apostasy.
And that's what's happening with Kate Kelly. She has fought against the Lord for so long, and has been so vocal, angry, and prideful about it, that she's actively working to pull people away from the doctrine that we've been given. She considers herself a faithful member, but it's not the church she's fighting, it's the Lord. So, facing excommunication for apostasy sounds about right to me.
The church never does these kinds of things lightly. She has been warned by church leaders that this might be the outcome if she doesn't stop. But she chose to ignore those warnings.
And honestly, I truly don't see how she reconciles her actions with being a "faithful member" in her own mind. The contrast is so huge. As I said earlier, either this is the Lord's church and His doctrine is there for a reason, or it's a social, earthly organization that can be swayed by protest and public opinion. It can't be both.
The good news is, there's always repentance. That's a gift that everyone can use, if they're willing. I sincerely hope that Sister Kelly can humble herself and draw closer to the Lord. She's a daughter of God, just like me, just like all women. She's loved. The Lord is waiting for her to turn back to Him. I'm sure He wants that desperately. I hope she can work things out and fix her relationship with Him. I hope she can learn to embrace her role as a woman, and appreciate the divine gifts that come with womanhood.
As for me, I'm proud to be a woman. I'm proud to be one of God's cherished daughters. I have divine potential in me, as do all women. I'm happy to embrace my role as a wife, a mother, a leader, a woman.
The way I see it, if that's what God wants for me, there's a good reason for it. I trust in His love for me. I trust that He wants me to be happy. I trust that He won't lead me astray.
People are flawed. God is perfect. I choose to be on His side.
