- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
jgaskill wrote:
It is my thought that
with all the changes in society such as gay marriage women holding the priesthood in other churches etc etc etc that the LDS church will change sooner rather than later.We already see the start of change with women sitting in on meetings with the GAs , I believe this is a precursor to what is to come. Membership numbers are going down and I think it is only a matter of time until the LDS church follows the Community of Christ (RLDS) and changes .I could be wrong but that is the way I see it I welcome any thoughts on this. I would be surprised if there are any significant changes in the Church in the next 10-20 years because it looks like the leaders in position to make changes from the top down generally think the Church is already more or less the way it should be and the current doctrines and policies should not be changed. For example, it sounds Jeffrey R. Holland was recently acting like members that leave the Church are basically weak and wrong as if there is no validity to any reasons people have to disagree with the Church and we have seen similar attitudes from Oaks, Ballard, Cook, and other leaders as well. Actually I think the mission age change was already one of the most significant changes they could possibly make without really changing the basic product that LDS Mormonism is at this point but it looks like they didn’t really have any plan B lined up if this fails to sufficiently resolve some of the perceived problems they were reacting to.
Then there were the essays which are not about openly facing some of the Church’s embarrassing history in my opinion as much as attempted inoculation and apologetics. Basically it looks like the Church is strongly geared around maintaining the status quo as long as possible with the way leaders are selected and established LDS traditions are treated as if they came straight from God. Even if the lost members and tithing revenue really start to add up I still don’t think they will change; they will probably just blame it on Satan, the evil world, and the members themselves that are supposedly lazy and just want to sin while telling themselves they don’t have any choice but to scale down their operation. Also the Church tends to weed out so many members/investigators that don’t fit the typical obedient TBM profile that most of the ones that are left have already gotten used the the Church the way it is and many of them don’t really expect anything different or better including many leaders that are often some of the most determined of all to uphold tradition no matter what.
jgaskill wrote:It is my thought that with all the changes in society such as gay marriage women holding the priesthood in other churches etc etc etc that the LDS church will change sooner rather than later.
amateurparent wrote:I’m not sure what the changes will be, but I expect to see some big changes. Soon.
Old Timer wrote:I think there will be significant changes in the relatively near future. I see too many small, incremental changes occurring right now that I believe are preparatory to think otherwise.
I hope you are right, but I don’t see any big changes happening soon. I do see more small, incremental changes happening, but I believe it will be a long time before we see any significant changes occur, primarily due to 2 reasons:1. As SD and others have said, we are led by a gerontocracy without much diversity, and because of this, changes are slow in coming. Those who are appointed to vacancies in the Q15 to fill in for those who have passed on fit the same mold, for the most part. I don’t see any big changes coming until we have a LOT more diversity than we currently have in the Q15.
2. Many of our LDS doctrines, beliefs, and policies are tightly entwined with divine gender roles. Changes to beliefs or practices that aren’t in harmony with the gender-specific roles given in The Proclamation on the Family are not going to come easily or quickly, IMHO. I see more small, incremental changes to be more inclusive to marginalized groups such as LGBTQ+, women, unorthodox Mormons, etc., but I don’t see things like women holding the priesthood or fully embracing same sex marriage couples and their families in my lifetime.
LookingHard wrote:I remember hearing a podcast that Patrick Mason (just published “Planted”). He did drop a line in there where he can see one path that the church would go down where they double-downed on some issues and he hoped it didn’t go that way. But he admitted he thinks it was a possibility.
For reason #2, I think we’ve already seen some doubling down on gender issues. The policy on SSM and their children is a good example of this. Before November 2015, I actually thought that the Church was heading in a great direction toward being more inclusive, but then the policy leak and fiasco happened last November.I really hope I am wrong, but I just don’t see big changes happening anytime soon.
With female ordination, I see a real problem. Currently, any man joining the LDS church gets to hold the priesthood. This includes blue-collar men. As women become more visible in the power structure of the LDS church, it would be white, highly-educated professional women who would take a higher place in the power structure of the church. The priesthood would become socio-economic class driven rather than gender driven. This could easily alienate the blue collar families of the church. Those men would be marginalized. This socio-economic divide is already seen in the upper echelons of the church. That same pattern would just move down into the wards.
For a church that talks so much about the high natural spirituality of women, it is so odd to me that women have zero decision-making ability in anything of consequence.
OTOH, there is only a small handful of men in a congregation who have any real ability to make decisions. Not all men get to be part of the decision making process.
My ability to pray and ask for healings or blessings is not affected by whether I hold priesthood keys or not. I do not believe that God listens better when a man speaks.
Priesthood comes into play only in the power structure of the organization. Just giving Relief Society back to women — remove male supervision of RS, allow RS to write their own manuals, and allow them to keep their own budgets and fund raising would be huge.
Fwiw, I think we are likely to see more of what Elder Oaks said in his April 2014 General Conference talk in the Priesthood session, in which he said endowed women have the Priesthood and all female members who are set apart in callings exercise the power of the Priesthood in those callings. I think there will be a continuation, initially and perhaps for some time, of the current limit on men being ordained to offices in the Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthoods, but I think there will be more focus on a “priesthood of believers” approach that might even involve “offices” within the Relief Society. Some of this, I am sure, is a result of the Joseph Smith Papers project and identifying some of what Joseph taught about women and the Priesthood. Women serving as Bishops and on High Councils (and similar changes) might take significantly longer, but I see the groundwork being laid for major changes in our verbiage and organizational structure.
The link to his talk is:
My blog posts about the talk, outlining the Sunday School lessons I taught about it, are:
Part 1 –
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-sunday-school-lesson-recap-our-new.html Part 2 –
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-sunday-school-lesson-recap-our-new_14.html Part 3 –
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-sunday-school-lesson-recap-our-new_21.html Part 4 –
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-sunday-school-lesson-recap-our-new_28.html Ray, he said that women have a borrowed priesthood from their husbands and an RS president has a borrowed priesthood from the bishop. That’s how I understood what he said. Because women are only priestesses to their husbands, their priesthood is borrowed from him. It’s not direct. It’s subordinate. It’s auxillary. That isn’t what he actually said; it is what the interpretation has been, given some of the wording in the endowment. I am sure many members heard it that way, but it isn’t what he said. What he said is radically different than that. He said men and women are given “the same power, which is Priesthood power”. That is an exact quote. I went through the talk line-by-line, over the course of four weeks, with my Sunday School class, focusing narrowly on what he actually said. It is different than what has been said and taught in the past.
Old Timer wrote:That isn’t what he actually said; it is what the interpretation has been, given some of the wording in the endowment. I am sure many members heard it that way, but it isn’t what he said. What he said is radically different than that. He said men and women are given “the same power, which is Priesthood power”. That is an exact quote.
I went through the talk line-by-line, over the course of four weeks, with my Sunday School class, focusing narrowly on what he actually said. It is different than what has been said and taught in the past.
But if it is the SAME, why are they not allowed to give blessings, mother’s blessings, hold infants when babies are blessed (or even pronounce the blessings). It almost rings of “separate, but equal” dealing with segregation.He said, more directly than I would have imagined, that those with the keys to unlock ordination to existing offices and performance of ordinances haven’t done so yet in the case of women outside the temple – because they don’t see that pattern in our scriptures and have not received that revelation from God. I know that is not a wonderful explanation for a whole lot of people, including me fully, but it opened the door for it to happen in the future – and it focused the difference strictly on offices and assignments/responsibilities. It made it much easier to talk in the future about things women can do and responsibilities they can be given and positions they can hold in order to exercise their own Priesthood power and authority.
That actually is a major move, conceptually. It is a subtle one, in the sense that most members won’t realize what he said, but he said it directly and it is in writing – which, I believe, will help make significant preparatory changes much more quickly than would be possible without it.
Also, interestingly, he cited Elder Ballard saying something the same thing. That means two apostles, and not uber-liberal ones, have said it recently.
amateurparent wrote:With female ordination, I see a real problem.
Currently, any man joining the LDS church gets to hold the priesthood. This includes blue-collar men. As women become more visible in the power structure of the LDS church, it would be white, highly-educated professional women who would take a higher place in the power structure of the church. The priesthood would become socio-economic class driven rather than gender driven. This could easily alienate the blue collar families of the church. Those men would be marginalized. This socio-economic divide is already seen in the upper echelons of the church. That same pattern would just move down into the wards.
I agree that the influx of capable women into the pool of available leaders would reduce service opps for men who are not obvious leaders. I think they could come from a variety of backgrounds, though. Also, there are a few men in the church that are capable, but don’t get opportunities in their work to lead, and therefore, see church as a place to flex those talents. I was one such person for 25 years.
I was applying every management theory I taught in my classes and I looked at church leadership as a place to apply theory since my work provided no suitable opportunities for leadership or management that I wanted.
On the other hand, lack of opportunity (due to competition from women) would make me keener for other service opportunities outside the church, or even more ambitious in my work, so I don’t see it as a huge problem. In fact, I learned in job interviews that church leadership counts for diddly-squat when you apply for a secular management position. So, in a way, not being attracted to church leadership, due to the leadership shortage going away, would have been a boon to me personally. I would have looked for greener pastures outside the church and worked even hard at garnering more desireable positions outside my company work. That would have been good for my career.
Also, a lot of men don’t want leadership. It isn’t their strength and all the hokus about growing after taking on callings you don’t want strikes me as cognitive dissonance half the time. So, having women there would be a welcome break. I know that for people who have done the full range of leadership in the church, having others step up is a welcome break. So, in most wards I have been in (outside Utah) there is a leadership shortage, and I think women would help reduce that shortage.
Add to this the number of times I have been a president with two lame counselors. People who accept the calling and do nothing. Or have to function alone with no help at all. I think the influx of women would make for a stronger church. Especially when you add in capable people like my wife who have served in just about every female leadership calling you can imagine. There is nowhere for them to go given the priesthood restriction.
Most of the best leaders I have worked with have been women by the way, so I wouldn’t mind having a women HPGL, EQP, or even Bishop. Not sure how comfortable I would be confessing sexual sin to a woman, but women have to confess it to men so I guess it’s only fair…
Great thoughts, i’m new to this group so i’m just astounded that there are other people who actually dare to talk/think this way. i’m hoping for change as well, but guardedly pessimistic. I’m afraid that as long as we have the gerontocracy that we do, and a leadership that is still largely Utah bred, we will always be behind the curve on doing what’s right. We aren’t a bunch that likes to stick our necks out, rather preferring to let others lead the charge for social change and then adopting it as our own once its reached general acceptance. I’m afraid we may need a shakeup in the general leadership of the church to see any real change in any near future. I would love to be wrong and to be more optimistic, but I don’t think substantial changes are coming in the near to mid-term future. My reasons:
1) Top-down power structure
2) Binary, non-nuanced mindset and narratives
3) Cumulative, case-law kind of truth model; what each prophet and GA said was true. Only easy change to make is to become more strict.
4) Many of the dissenting are leaving, which leaves the general membership to tilt right.
Curt, I would really like to hear more about how you interpreted what E. Oaks said. When you say:
Quote:He said, more directly than I would have imagined, that those with the keys to unlock ordination to existing offices and performance of ordinances haven’t done so yet in the case of women outside the temple – because they don’t see that pattern in our scriptures and have not received that revelation from God.
It sounds like you are saying that E. Oaks is describing a “priesthood of all believers” for women, but a “priesthood of ordination” for men.
Quote:Protestants believe that through Christ they have been given direct access to God, just like a priest; thus the doctrine is called the priesthood of all believers. God is equally accessible to all the faithful, and every Christian has equal potential to minister for God.
Basically, women are Protestants and men are Catholics (or follow that model)? It’s possible he meant that. I’m just trying to clarify how you interpret it. Of course I had several relatives use this talk as a cudgel claiming it was clear as day as if they had already fully understood and agreed with what E. Oaks was saying from birth. I found his talk both revolutionary (he seems to be making doctrine here, setting precedent), and also confusing. I couldn’t be certain what he meant or what the end game was after reading it. I assumed that was intentional and clever on his part – keeping options open.
I absolutely think it was a brilliant, and sincere, way to keep options open – which is one main reason I loved it so much. We hadn’t had a General Conference talk do that with regard to this topic. I think the immediate, current summary from his talk, in practical terms, is what you described with the Protestant / Catholic distinction – and that would be a good first step, if the recognition of existing Priesthood power and authority within endowed women continues to be taught and used as the foundation for organizational and rhetoric changes. In our culture, it could be next to impossible to make a sudden move to office ordination and ordinance performance without serious repercussions – but it would be much easier after some time had passed with changes built around the idea of equal “pure” Prieathood power and authority, with only offices and ordinance performance being different.
I have no prediction on a timeline, but the foundation now is there, unlike at any other time in my life.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.