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Question: How many members of any of the general boards can you name off the top of your head?
How many GAs can you name in the same time frame?
What do you think this means for the culture of the LDS church?
International Day of Women was this week. I have seen online jokes about it, but no discussion.
What do you see as an appropriate role for women in the future society of the LDS church and the greater US society?
amateurparent wrote:Question:
How many members of any of the general boards can you name off the top of your head?
How many GAs can you name in the same time frame?
Honestly, not many of either. I’m of the age that remembers stake conference quarterly and two sessions on Sunday with a general authority at each conference. Now, we have conference twice yearly and the most likely person visiting, if at all, will be an area authority seventy. General Board members might come out or be seen for regional conferences or for special conferences like the one we had years ago on child abuse but otherwise it’s just General Conference when we might actually see someone. You remember who you see and to a lesser extent who you read about. We’re just too big in our own small way, I’m afraid. As to your other questions,
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What do you think this means for the culture of the LDS church?International Day of Women was this week. I have seen online jokes about it, but no discussion.
What do you see as an appropriate role for women in the future society of the LDS church and the greater US society?
I can’t help you there. My seer stone is in the shop.*erasing my own comment because it didn’t make sense with the question asked* I can’t figure out how to delete my comment on the Tapatalk app though so I just edited it instead.
Honestly, the only names that come to my mind is Sherry Dew and Chieko Okazaki (neither that are current GA’s). Even going back to the early days of the restoration I can only add Emma Smith, Eliza Snow, and Lucy Smith (who was voted in conference as a mother in Zion – not sure how that stacks up as an official title). I can easily come up with the names of about a dozen current mail GA’s and many more if permitted to go into past leadership.
amateurparent wrote:What do you think this means for the culture of the LDS church?
Honestly, this doesn’t stray too far from the culture of the US. Our history is written by men and largely about men. Even today there are not very many women in U.S. congress compared to other countries.
What do you see as an appropriate role for women in the future society of the LDS church and the greater US society?
I expect that the role of women in leadership will continue to evolve in the US and that the LDS church will lag about 50 years behind.
While in Budapest last fall, I learned a lot about Maria Theresa. She ruled from Hungary and Vienna for 40 years. Her children were placed well throughout the Western world. Marie Antonette was a daughter. A son was sent to be over Mexico. She was the last of the powerful Hapsburgs when that family was hugely influential. The comment was made by another leader, that the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had finally found a real man to run things — and that man was Maria Theresa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa Outside Buckingham Palace is a huge statue of Queen Victoria. She ruled over the British Empire which covered 25% of the globe at that time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria Isabella of Spain, Catherine the Great, and Queen Elizabeth. Historically, there have been some amazingly strong women leaders. In many ways, it seems like our culture is forgetting the past strength of women. The scriptures have been literally stripped of many strong women. Those stories are not told. Many of those stories were simply removed or modified.
http://listverse.com/2008/10/02/top-10-most-powerful-women-in-history/ We do not talk much of Moses and his siblings. Miriam and Aaron were his siblings. We talk of Aaron and the priesthood. Miriam was the second in command. It wasn’t Aaron, it was Miriam. We also don’t talk of Deborah and she was worthy of judging Israel.
The trend I see in the LDS church is to talk of women in the scriptures only when they are involved in motherhood, marriage, or caring for people in a domestic/household way. Or another repetition of the 10 Wise/Foolish Virgins. We talk of Lot’s Wife and the story of her being turned into a pillar of salt as punishment. Salt was precious back then. Pillars were a thing of status. For her to look back and contemplate the suffering of others, and be turned into a pillar of salt could be seen as a symbol of her value, her worth before God, and esteem. The story has been turned into a punishment of her for vanity. I’m not sure that is what was meant originally.
There was a wonderful Mormon Stories interview of the man who opened the Pacific Rim/Asian countries to missionary work back in the late 1960’s. I cannot remember his name. He used to teach biology/zoology at BYU. He talked of all the work his wife did. He stated that the mission would not have been successful without her efforts. He talks about the fact that all accolades and acknowledgement went to him, but she was the reason for their success.
I would like to see all of Christianity claim the FULL history of women in the scriptures and in history. The stories are there, they just don’t get told.
Deleted crappy post #1 Deleted crappy post #2 amateurparent wrote:How many members of any of the general boards can you name off the top of your head?
How many GAs can you name in the same time frame?
To me GAs are like referees. I only know their names when they make a lot of bad calls.
amateurparent wrote:What do you think this means for the culture of the LDS church?
First off:
https://www.lds.org/church/leaders?lang=enghttps://www.lds.org/church/leaders?lang=eng” class=”bbcode_url”> There are 99 men listed on that page and 9 women. First the issue of disparity between the sexes would have to be addressed otherwise you’d probably have to look at what
percentageof GAs you can name vs. what percentageof general board members you can name? amateurparent wrote:We talk of Lot’s Wife and the story of her being turned into a pillar of salt as punishment. Salt was precious back then. Pillars were a thing of status. For her to look back and contemplate the suffering of others, and be turned into a pillar of salt could be seen as a symbol of her value, her worth before God, and esteem. The story has been turned into a punishment of her for vanity. I’m not sure that is what was meant originally.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing that.
amateurparent wrote:The trend I see in the LDS church is to talk of women in the scriptures only when they are involved in motherhood, marriage, or caring for people in a domestic/household way.
JSH 1:12 wrote:…for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.
I’d extend this concept to all scripture. People can create whatever narrative they want to create out of what is there. What we extract from scripture tells us more about ourselves than anything else.
amateurparent wrote:I would like to see all of Christianity claim the FULL history of women in the scriptures and in history. The stories are there, they just don’t get told.
Our cannon is probably even more lopsided than the 9 and the 99. You’re right, the stories are there. I think we could do a much better job of incorporating non-LDS specific material into the correlated material (if we take the rule that only correlated material can be shared as a given). From what I hear some of the older manuals were like this, they included stories that belong to the human tradition as opposed to only sharing stories within the LDS tradition. I’m not saying there aren’t any stories of strong women in the LDS tradition, I’m just combining a few complaints.
We lost something when we shut out the outside world, spiritual biodiversity. Chances of extinction increase without biodiversity. If our lessons only use examples from within the confines of LDS history (and often straining credulity to make the story fit a particular narrative) our lessons become a form of spiritual inbreeding.
Ok, on that note I’m done on that point.
:silent: Always Thinking wrote:I can name a few users on here, but a lot more GA’s.
I think when amateurparent said board members she meant members of the Relief Society, Primary, and YW General Presidencies, not members of StayLDS.
Not many of either – but my reaction to the different groups as a whole and individually probably is about the same. (Meaning I like a lot of what some say and don’t like a lot of what others say.) Biological sex doesn’t alter that for me. What does it say?
We live in a sexist culture – and not just in the LDS Church. It has gotten better in my lifetime in every culture of which I am a part, including the LDS Church, but we still have a long way to go.
Nibbler, geez, now I feel like an idiot :facepalm: I think I will delete my comment. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of those groups in the church being called the general boards. Always Thinking wrote:Nibbler, geez, now I feel like an idiot :facepalm: I think I will delete my comment. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of those groups in the church being called the general boards.
Don’t feel bad. I thought I was one of those that are “Generally bored”.nibbler wrote: Quote:There are 99 men listed on that page and 9 women. First the issue of disparity between the sexes would have to be addressed otherwise you’d probably have to look at what
percentageof GAs you can name vs. what percentageof general board members you can name?
By that measure it’s pretty decent that I can name 33% of the women. A potential plus with so few women leaders is that they have more influence when they do speak. AP, I can think of all kinds of things I would love to hear coming from them. I’m just not particularly hopeful right now that I ever will.This question is VERY interesting. I fail flat out–I can only remember those who were in past positions, like Julie Beck. I can name several GA leaders however. As I read several board postings for years, I experienced an eye-opening AHA moment. I can summarize by saying I don’t like what I see as a religious twist to devalue women.
Anyone ever see the show “Shadowlands”? Remember CS Lewis smart alec friend who was saying that “men have intellect”, and “woman have soul”….and Lewis’ wife sais this:
Quote:
uh, I’m from the United States…and different cultures have different modes of discourse.
I need a little guidance. Are you trying to be offensive, or just merely stupid?
Let me say: ‘WELL SAID!”
:clap: They do at least get their pictures hung in the Conference Center. That’s a change within the last few years, I believe. They do have their pictures up. Finally. I’ll bet most of us could name a number of the QOT12 and the First Presidency .. But don’t remember the name of the RS President.
It’s just a commentary on the cultural focus and the power structure.
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