DEAR SISTER LARSON, I want to respond to your recent, public post that pertains to the aftermath of last week’s Relief Society Worldwide Devotional, as well as those who agree with its content. I consider myself an LDS feminist, something I haven’t come to easily or without decades of study and reflection, both of Church doctrine and history. I’m disheartened because I think your words alienate LDS women from one another. There’s been too much of that lately, from both views. Because of the many hats you wear (therapist, chaplain, RS leader), your words bear a unique sway that, I think, deserves to be answered. It’s unfortunate that this answer is coming from a place of my own perceived self-defense, but you were neither generous nor kind to those of us who think differently than you do. As you can see, I will be at least as direct in my tone as you were. What I’ll do is repeat each paragraph you wrote and then respond.

(Note to readers: you can click here to read it straight through.) 

Sister Larson, you write:

“So I don’t normally weigh in on stuff like this because honestly I feel like it shifts our focus away from assisting in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man(kind). But I feel like I have an interesting perspective because of all of the hats I wear.”

I disagree that the topic of LDS women and institutional power and/or the concept of priesthood (both historical and contemporary) shifts our focus away from matters of salvation and exaltation. The present teaching, as represented in Sister Dennis’ address at the Worldwide Relief Society Devotional, places the origin of women’s access to priesthood power in temple rites. By virtue of this alone, the topic is very much related to “bringing to pass… the eternal life of man(kind).”

What you may or may not know is that the Church’s present teachings about women and priesthood, particularly this idea that it’s bestowed on women in the temple, hasn’t been consistent throughout our history. In fact, people have been excommunicated for saying publicly what Sis. Dennis taught on Sunday evening. In September 1992, the year after I gave birth to my only daughter, scholar D. Michael Quinn and theologian and editor Maxine Hanks were excommunicated for (respectively) writing and publishing these same ideas. (See, specifically Quinn’s essay titled “Women Have Had Priesthood since 1843” which appeared in Hank’s collection of feminist essays, Women and Authority.) In a 1994 piece published in the LA times, Hanks writes that, in her disciplinary council, she was told her views were “contrary to the laws and order of the church.” And yet Sunday, these particular views that were hers 30 years ago were taught as eternal truth by an LDS woman on a worldwide stage. Surely you see the disparity in that.  

Let me tell you a bit about Quinn’s offending essay. In it, he examines original historical documents and the changes made by church leaders to the published versions of those documents. The changes demonstrate a clear effort to eliminate the idea that priesthood (it’s power or authority) has ever been something women had, or had access to, through the temple or in any other way. I’m old enough to tell you that, until April 2014, all I ever heard or read in church or through church curriculum was that women do not have or use priesthood but are to support male priesthood bearers as they exercise it. In other words, high church leaders removed teachings that spoke of women as having priesthood as a means of disempowering us. 

This still happens. In his April 2014 talk,  delivered at the first-ever televised General Conference Priesthood Session (thank you, Ordain Women), then-Elder Oaks (vs. now-President Oaks) did the same thing. He used the words of his predecessor Joseph Fielding Smith to reason his way into the claim that women access priesthood power through the men who preside over us. However, if you check Oaks’ use of ellipses against the original, you’ll discover that he removed words used by Pres. Smith that clearly teach that women do not have access to priesthood authority but, instead, have access to a separate, God-given “divine authority” that bears no relationship to priesthood. 

What I’m telling you is that, from about the start of the Priesthood Correlation Program in 1908, church leaders have changed wording to divide women from priesthood access and then, once the Ordain Women movement brought this information forward, contemporary church leaders began looking for ways to add access to priesthood back in for women (by changing words again) without actually reverting to the wording in the original documents. And it’s not some sin on my part to know or acknowledge this. What it is is confusing. (See footnote 7 in the Oaks’ transcript linked. It’ll direct you to JFS’s article “Relief Society–and Aid to the Priesthood,” which appeared in a 1959 edition of Relief Society Magazine, which was an official church publication headed by women. You won’t find that article on the church website, but can find it by clicking here, on a blog called Relief Society Women, which is not affiliated with the Church but has dutifully preserved JFS’s article.)

This may seem like the weeds to those uninterested in LDS history or the church’s evolving (and sometimes devolving) teaching about women and priesthood. But it isn’t the weeds to those of us who’ve experienced the whiplash. It leaves us unable to trust what the brethren teach. One day I was told I don’t have priesthood. The next day I was told I “borrow” it from men who preside. Now I’m told I’ve had it ever since the day I made temple covenants.

As a therapist, you understand the importance of trust within a relationship. Admittedly, Instagram became a virtual mosh pit for the Worldwide RS Devotional, but what you read there are thousands of comments by women whose trust is broken in the institutional church and its leaders. To deny they have a good reason for this is unfair, as I’ve demonstrated above and could demonstrate on topic after topic. 

This brings me back to another reason all of this does, in fact, relate to “bringing to pass… the eternal life of man(kind).” Women, especially younger women, are leaving the church. In my view, the best way to help retention is by reflecting their concerns back to the men with the power to make needful adaptations. Call that criticism if you want, or murmuring, or not supporting our leaders. I don’t care. The reality is, if this Church doesn’t make changes for women, it will die on the vine. They keep saying they need us for a reason. They truly do, but what they need from us is to understand what drives women away.

One last thing on this paragraph before I move on, and I’ll be plain. It is condescending of you to suggest that those of us who are concerned with power inequity in the institutional church aren’t focusing on important things like you are. Check your privilege and then check your premises. They seem more self-gratifying than anything else.

Next, you wrote:

“I currently am a Stake RS president, Chaplain, and Therapist and in all off [sic] these capacities I am serving in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I have not been denied anything because of my sex or race within the church.”

You mention gender and race. Judging by the photo you’ve attached, you clearly want us to understand you are a black LDS woman. So let’s go there. I’ll start with gender.

I graduated from BYU and married in the temple in 1986. In 1987, church president Ezra Taft Benson, delivered the address, “To the Mothers of Zion,” which clearly told me by prophetic call that a woman’s duty is to remain unemployed in order to stay home with her children and best support her husband, particularly in his priesthood duties. Let me assure you, working women experienced guilt and shame for decades because of this talk. Not only that, LDS Temple Recommend holding women who had professions outside the home were rarely called to positions of leadership in the local RS, Primary, and YW organizations. I didn’t see working women in church leadership for decades, and when I finally did, they were women whose children were adults. Today, the women’s church-wide organizations are often led by women who have worked their entire married lives. They are my peers in age. Each of them went against the prophet’s teaching of  their time and are now rewarded for it. Do not think it is lost on those of us of a certain age that your opportunities to serve in the church as a working wife and mother came on the backs of obedient women who taught the Church the dangers that financially dependent women often face. 

My point is, you, a woman employed full-time, are currently serving as a stake RS president. We haven’t moved from the ideas in Benson’s 1987 talk to your situation today without agitation. Brave LDS women used the intervening decades to call attention to how unfair and full of unrighteous judgment it was to limit women to one role, under the  guise of calling it God’s command, rather than support us in our self-determined, Holy Ghost-directed efforts to fulfill the measure of our creation. The work of differentiation from the church in this regard was too often trauma-inducing for LDS women. I don’t exaggerate. I’d need to borrow your hands and fingers to count the number of LDS women in my circle of friends who have been trapped in marriages in which they were physically, sexually, and/or emotionally abused because they feared being ostracized by the only community they knew (the church), or believed God would make things better for them if they were more righteous (enter scrupulosity), or because local church leadership valued women at home more than women in safety. 

I have friends who have had LDS leaders tell them to provide their abusive husbands with more sex at home so they won’t rape them or have affairs. One close friend was denied access to the bishop’s storehouse for food for her family until her unemployed husband stopped choking her out. It was her job, per the bishop, to tell her husband this after she confided in her church leader the abuses she faced at home. And guess what happened in her home as a result. 

The church created a class of dependent women and shamed us for doing what you can now do and be celebrated for. For those of us familiar with the frequency of these types of problems (and we don’t have to be therapists to have familiarity, I promise), being told we have equal power, or equitable power, in the church is laughable. Until an abused wife can meet with a woman who has the power to unilaterally (without male oversight) meet her needs with the sanction of the church, women like me will scoff when told women have all the power we need. Women need to be making decisions without oversight at all levels. Period.   

You brought up race. I’m sure I don’t need to inform you that, as a point of doctrine, it wasn’t that long ago that you’d have been barred from the temple for your race and wouldn’t have been allowed the access to priesthood power you celebrate for all LDS women. As one who witnessed the ending of the priesthood ban, I need to make sure you understand that, without outside pressure, including from Latter-day Saints of all skin colors who were willing to speak up and differentiate from the church on its doctrinal racism, the ban may not have been lifted in 1978.  Yes, the church was running into issues figuring out which men did and did not have “a drop of negro blood” in certain countries, which made it difficult for them to decide which men were white enough for priesthood, but agitation at home has, over and over and over, brought better, kinder, more inclusive practices into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today is no different. Advocacy is a form of faith.

You write:

“I have had access to any and every priesthood power I have needed to accomplish the work I was asked by the Lord to do. The funny thing is that when we are leading by the Spirit the only person that should be ‘in charge’ is the Lord himself. It’s His work. We are just volunteers. Those in positions of authority within the church bare a burden you couldn’t even imagine. My fear is that if we continue to envy their titles and covet what we perceive as their power we lose sight of how equitably the church is currently established.”

I absolutely love that you point out that we lead (or, I’d add, serve) by the Spirit. I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I’ve argued that the gift of the Holy Ghost is the great equalizer in the Church. My personal opinion is that LDS women shouldn’t need ordination to fill any calling because the Spirit directs, not priesthood. No LDS man prays for his priesthood to be with him when making decisions. Rather, he calls on the Spirit, which both inspires and directs. Women have the same access to the gift of the Holy Ghost as men.

With that said, I want you to notice how you, once again, shamed women who view this differently than you. You suggest to people who are not allowed to lead without oversight that we can’t imagine the burden placed on those who withhold that opportunity from us. I invite them to share the burden with women. Furthermore, you not only misjudge us, you accuse us of a lack of empathy when it is precisely empathy for the marginalized that leads us to raise our voices. You suggest we are power-hungry people who “covet titles.” That’s like saying starving people are hungry because they covet food. We want our gender represented as decision makers, and not simply as an ignorable voice in the room. We want this for the safety of women, not to satisfy some vanity you imagine we have. We are tired of every weighty decision made in the church being made through the male lens. And I will not suffer being deemed unrighteous for that desire by another woman without calling her out.  

You write:

“We talk about mental load in the home. But do we talk about it within the church. As a Stake RS president I am often going to meetings with my 10 month old at 6am. As a chaplain I’ve gotten calls in the middle of the night that I need to go minister to someone. As a therapist I hear gut wrenching stories about some of the most gruesome and heartbreaking traumas you couldn’t even imagine. I do all three of these while mothering 3 kids. The burden of it all is HEAVY sometimes, but by the grace of God it’s doable, and this is all under the current policies of the church.”

I appreciate this. We definitely need to talk more about the mental load caused by church callings. Only you can decide if the church is asking too much of you. I hope you’re thriving and I support you in your decisions about work, home, and church, regardless of what they are.  A woman of my generation in your situation would have been counseled to quit her job in order to give her full attention to her calling and her family and shamed and blamed if she opted not to do that. I’m very happy you won’t face that.  

Next, please stop telling women who have a different view from you that we “couldn’t even imagine” things. Here you speak of the trauma. Previously you spoke of the burden of leadership. Can’t you understand that a hunk of the women who experience disaffection with church practice or policy, to whatever degree, do so precisely because they’ve lived these unimaginable traumas you speak of? Or because they and/or their husbands have been similarly overburdened by of their unique mix of church, work, and family demands? I’d recommend spending some time in Mormon feminist spaces. Many of us become feminist precisely because of the things you say we can’t understand. And to be honest, I won’t be surprised to see you with us in 10 years. 

You write: 

“If your desire is to serve the Lord more, then serve. But if you only want to be recognized for what you do then that’s pride. Those that know the weight of what it’s like to lead in the church wouldn’t envy it. I am grateful that I am able to serve in the ways that I do but I am looking forward to the day when I’ll have my dream calling of youth Sunday School teacher.”

That’s my dream calling, too. You’ll get that calling. I won’t. FWIW, I’ve served as an auxiliary president. Of course, that was before I was willing to differentiate out loud, but its also the reason I differentiated.  As a YW president, I was told by my bishop not to bother fellowshipping an “angry” lesbian on my rolls because she was too far gone. The truth is, the Church had no place for her in the mid-1990s. The fault for her exclusion rested solidly on the Church, not on the girl. So you bet, with time, I learned to speak out. And thus began my own marginalization, something I haven’t enjoyed. You’re suggesting I’m chasing power when, in reality, I’ve forfeited power by forfeiting social capital through the simple act of speaking up for those the church has harmed. Please stop forwarding wrong-headed accusations on women like me. We seek protections and opportunities for women, not titles or power.    

I’m not motivated by some evil thirst for power. Love motivates me. I learned this from Jesus. Love motivated him every time he cared for the marginalized or criticized the powerful in his religion. For this paragraph alone, I think you owe the women of whom you speak so disparagingly an apology, but I don’t need it. I’ve been where you are. I get it. I hear pain in your experience. I suspect you feel unappreciated. Maybe you think we’re criticizing you because we criticize the Church. LDS take much of their identity from our religion, but you are not the Church. You are one woman, as am I. Sisters. I want you to hear the pain in our experience and grant us the grace you also want.

You write:

“I have also been enabled to serve in a Stake and Ward where the leadership empowers the sisters to seek revelation and act on it. I have been blessed to have their trust and their encouragement to use my voice. I have felt an overwhelming outpouring of the spirit that has allowed me to facilitate miracles.”

Yes! Me, too! Except… 

Do you see how the language you use here admits the limitation we protest? The leadership you speak of is male-only, and you say these men “empower” you and other women to seek the Spirit and act on it. No. No, they don’t. Women have the power to access the Holy Spirit on their own, and we surely choose to act by our own free will. The semantics here matter. Do not assign power to priesthood leaders when that power belongs to us. 

You write:

“We as women in the church haven’t even tapped into a fraction of what we are capable of doing. My hope is that as we build our faith and utilize the gifts we already have we will begin to realize that we have everything necessary to accomplish any work the Lord asks us to do.” 

I agree that women haven’t tapped into all we are capable of doing. A study of what Joseph Smith intended for women (and the Relief Society) in terms of priesthood will shore up your belief in this, not diminish it. 

But your second statement potentially closes the door on continuing revelation and/or the restoration as an ongoing experience, which Pres. Nelson has called it. I trust you believe in both. To be honest, I’m worn thin by women who are comfortable with the status quo casting the rest of us as less faithful than they are, which is very much the vibe of your essay. We are exercising the same kind of faith that Joseph Smith did when he noticed the church he attended seemed to be missing the mark. The difference is, we can change nothing. Any answer to our prayers must come through men and be enacted by men because men hold all power and all authority. I dare say, there are women in other religious organizations who don’t have to settle for that. But I do. You do, too. 

Why is it that LDS women who hope for better conditions for ourselves are seen as proudly coveting power, but men with complete power who won’t consider sharing that power with women are praised as humble? 

Answer: patriarchy. 

~~~
And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness (Colossians 3:14)

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