Why did this happen?

The three men who exed Kate did more damage to the church in one night than John Larsen and john Dehlin and Kate Kelly did in 10 years combined.

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Cadence – If you could order the world or life, what would you want, where could life purpose be found, where could people go to find support for the ideals you are looking for?

Like many others I have grieved over the events of the past couple of weeks and months. I still can’t fully present my own feelings on the matters that have taken place. I had hoped for a more nurturing response – on both sides. As a desirer of the noblest in humanity – I hoped my church would demonstrate something different.

The challenge for me is – walking forward. You see I still want that noblest envisionment. I want a community that performs as Christ performed.

You raise the question “Why did this happen?” Though your post wasn’t really about that, the answer to the question is humanism. This happened because of humanism. There is no place in the world to stop humanism. The only way to escape it is to find an island and live alone. And there aren’t many of those left. Which means there is no place to run to.

You mention an about face – what did you envision as the about face? What would it look like and why does it need to happen? I ask this because if there is no place to run to – is there a place/way to build with. Can you help your envisionment happen? Is it necessary for the LDS religion?

Maybe this painful event has made room for us to ask ourselves some deep questions and see what happens. As an aside, last week felt like death or funeral. A personal loss. It takes a long time to get over that type of pain. I don’t plan to feel better soon. Whether I stay or leave, it’s in the periphery of my soul right now. That’s a fact.

I do not want to believe that other than a few die hard orthodox believers thought this was a good thing.

A lot of people would say that is wasn’t “good,” but it was “right.” I have no idea.

All I know is how is has affected me. I’m discouraged; I wish they’d have just left her alone. And, to add to the problems in my house, it seems to have caught the attention of my husband, who didn’t know her name a month ago. It’s been the focus of tension between us as the internet “conversation” (using the term generously) about KK/OW has continued several weeks now.

I believe that in many ways, we are still paying for the mistakes of Kirtland, Independence, and Nauvoo. And there was plenty of blame to go around. The exodus to Utah, and the ensuing years of conflict over polygamy. hardened the organization into a brittle, isolationist bunker mentality that prompts us to separate from the rest of humanity and purge ourselves with self-defeating witch hunts.

The people are ready for some “meat”, starved after decades of milk and juvenile obedience-driven spirituality. As a people, we are ready for some growing pains. We need to put away the childish things, and face the dark closet of fear. We are ready to realize that there is no boogie man there–only our own childish fear. It’s time to “man up” and face the reality that spiritual things are nuanced, and there is no black-and-white. This includes the leaders of the church. They’ve done us no favors by creating a church full of fearful, guilt-ridden, personality-cult worshipping spiritual sycophants. We can be more. We can do more. We don’t need Moses to stand between us and God anymore. We are ready to be a kingdom of priests and priestesses.

Kate’s excommunication, although very painful, is just a drop in the bucket of the pain to come.

Growing pains are inevitable. We can be independent men and women of God if only we can let our fears allow us to see beyond the dogmas of the present. I believe Zion will be filled with the glorious diversity of God’s children, who are one not because they all think and look alike, but because our charity binds us together in spite of our differences.

The information age is here. We can grow up and accept our heritage, warts and all, or we can wallow in a dark corner of self-induced ignorance.

We all see what we see, me included. Humanism and all that jazz.

I think it happened because Kate Kelley was persistent and unbending with her demand. From the beginning of OW, she has called for the ordination of women and said “nothing less will suffice.” After being notified of the disciplinary council, she wrote:

Convening a council in my absence, after I have moved, is both cowardly and unchristlike…

I am proud of what we have done together. We told the truth.

I am inspired by the courageous Mormon women and men who have sacrificed so much to advocate for gender equality. We took a stand and will continue to do so.

I don’t see any room for compromise there. It appears she wasn’t interested in any dialogue beyond presenting her demand.

Clearly it didn’t have to happen this way. They could have just come out and said they don’t have any intention of changing this and then wait and see what happens after that; it sounded like Ordain Women already weren’t planning on trying to get into the General Conference priesthood meetings anymore anyway. Also, I don’t believe the PR spin that this was simply a matter for local leaders to decide. She wasn’t even living in that stake at the time so it looks like they really wanted to push a judgment through the process for some reason. It sounds like L. Whitney Clayton and M. Russell Ballard visited this stake shortly before this happened and specifically called the Ordain Women movement an example of apostasy.

I think it happened mostly because some Church leaders felt threatened by the idea of an organized sub-group pushing to change something that has already been the way it is for so long and that many assume is the way God wanted it. My guess is that some of them think most women in the Church are already satisfied with the way things are and this is just a minority of vocal agitators but they didn’t like the media attention generated by them or attempts to recruit more supporters. Maybe they also saw it as an a deliberate act of disobedience that undermines the Church’s goals and thought she deserved to be punished for this so they wanted to take a stand to show this group who was boss.