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mom3, I agree that the little thing called the Sermon on the Mount (and the Golden Rule) really aren’t as simple as they sometimes seem. Thanks for your thoughts in this thread. They are an incredibly important addition.
I agree with Ray that she was talking about things like Wear Pants to Church. But here’s what someone needs to say. Not “if you know your place you won’t make the church look bad,” but how about talking about the judgments that came up over women wearing pants? The guy from BYU who actually said all activists should be shot point blank in the face?People I actually knew who (despite the church’s clarification that pants were not prohibited) said that women wearing pants to church was disrespectful to God? How about someone acknowledging that the members can make life hell for those who don’t march in line or have perfect cookie cutter lives? Why not applaud them for standing up for others, for standing with the 1 instead of the 99, for their empathy and good intentions? I don’t think she took much time or effort to understand the valid reasons some women felt compelled to stand together with their sisters in the face of the unwarranted firestorm that came from the membership. Hawkgrrl – one of those wonderful “The devil wears pants to church” voicers made a direct hit on our college graduated daughters facebook. My daughter is one of the most dedicated, practicing members of the church. She honors and loves so much of it. She is independent but not a rabble rouser. One day during the “pants” debate my daughter posted on her personal facebook wall a comment thanking her friends for their civility in their discourse on the issue. She hadn’t expected her compliment to even impact a family friend of ours. This friend is a middle aged mom, our two families have been lifetime friends. My kids thought their kids were cousins when they were little because of the time we spent with them. This adult friend, jumped in on my daughters wall and commented passionately about “the devil wears pants to church…..” It
was a strong, thoughtless diatribe. After my daughter cooled down, she choose to quietly delete our friends post. My daughter wanted to continue the spirit of courteousness alive on her face book. Our friend was not so eager. Since her comment had been deleted from my daughter’s page, she headed for her page and wrote an even more intense post, publicly announcing that my daughter was blinded by this, etc. etc. I can not explain the emotions those written words caused. My friend should know better, and if she had a concern is old enough and wise enough to have chosen a different method to address her concern. So I know full well the depth and impact that the direct horribleness of the pants event was. Not only did I see the other awful insults and death threat, but it arrived in our home through a long loved friend. I couldn’t speak for days. I was ill.
It was these events that really caused me to search my own responses. For the first time my life I was ill beyond the pale. If everyone doesn’t see it my way I do understand. I just knew that continued bombing wasn’t going to help me. Maybe learning and forgiving would. Thanks for your thoughts.
Ray why do you think that women praying in GC was going to ever be addressed? Truly I ask because it is 2013 and it hasn’t happened yet. I agree that choosing to see Dalton’s talk with a charitable heart and mind is important as mom3 so well reminded us.
I wonder though in a church system that is set up and run through male priesthood holders only how are women’s voices ever heard? Pretty much the only input the men/leaders have comes from the women directly in their lives, mom/wife.
With statements such as Dalton’s,however innocently she intended it, the message is still loud and clear that if you are a woman, you are not righteous if you question or have concerns about your role in the church as determined and enforced by men. Hence the women surrounding the men in power seem to keep their mouths shut and follow what they have been told their whole life is their duty….to follow the counsel of their priesthood leaders regardless of how they may actually feel.
And you are correct, this topic does cause extreme emotion, as Hawkgirl stated, death threats were made regarding the whole pants issue. Hilarious because as you stated it wasn’t a doctrinal issue, but a cultural perception that has been constantly reinforced. It is unfortunate that there is not a way to respectfully discuss these matters while considering all sides.
Quote:Pretty much the only input the men/leaders have comes from the women directly in their lives, mom/wife.
Dax, it sounds like you’ve never been a Bishop or Stake President.
😆 Believe me, sometimes they wish your statement above was correct.😯 Quote:Take the current brewhaha about women praying in General Conference. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a woman prays in a General Conference within the next year or two – but I actually think the “lobbying” happening online might delay it for 6-12 months past when it might have happened without an organized “lobbying” effort. The Church is aware of discussions like this, and, I believe, has made changes and statements as a direct result of that awareness – maybe not as many and as quickly as most people online would like, but in multiple instances, nonetheless.
Why would this movement delay it? Do you think the church would wait to do something they were planning on doing to try to prove that they weren’t influenced by members? Or is there some other reason that I’m not thinking of.
Quote:
Dax, it sounds like you’ve never been a Bishop or Stake President.😆 If I didn’t know you better Ray, this would so have set me off.
I really am not to worried about these comments. So many worse things than this have been said at BYU Devotionals, and they are basically forgotten by the bulk of the membership. However I’m sure that if someone wanted to go looking for a quote to make someone look bad, I’m sure BYU devotionals is where they start.
Just one more thought about the idea that some in leadership have about not wanting people to make the church look bad. How about we make a concerted effort to prevent the people who are doing the embarrassing things from doing them? I can think of several examples from the last year, but I’ll add two to the pantscapade: – the girl at BYU who was essentially sexually harrassed by a male testing center employee for wearing “skinny jeans” that weren’t even skinny jeans. She was just curvy. BYU stands by this so-called honor code that essentially gives a blank check to stalkers to harrass women for being attractive to random losers with no better pick up line than “your leggings are out of dress code and your sexy legs are making it hard to study.”
– the bishop who banned cross-dressing toddlers from the ward trunk or treat.
– the aforementioned pantspocalypse showing everyone just how Christian we aren’t.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Just one more thought about the idea that some in leadership have about not wanting people to make the church look bad. How about we make a concerted effort to prevent the people who are doing the embarrassing things from doing them? I can think of several examples from the last year, but I’ll add two to the pantscapade:
– the girl at BYU who was essentially sexually harrassed by a male testing center employee for wearing “skinny jeans” that weren’t even skinny jeans. She was just curvy. BYU stands by this so-called honor code that essentially gives a blank check to stalkers to harrass women for being attractive to random losers with no better pick up line than “your leggings are out of dress code and your sexy legs are making it hard to study.”
– the bishop who banned cross-dressing toddlers from the ward trunk or treat.
– the aforementioned pantspocalypse showing everyone just how Christian we aren’t.
The cross-dressing toddlers story would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
FWIW, the a guy in our unit who regularly passes sacrament with a striped shirt and no tie. He’s semi-active and I guess our branch president has a sense of perspective. Good on him.
I’m going to try and not write a novel here but I’ve been pondering this for a bit… Something that I noticed on my mission was how little the members in those wards cared, on average, what people wore to chruch. I always tried to teach investigators that while many people dressed up, it was more important to be at church. It’s supposed to be a worship service, not a fashion show.
There were two instances that i fondly remember. Once we had an investigator who worked as a painter take off a couple hours saturday afternoon to attend for the first time. He showed up at church wearing jeans with pain on them and a t-shirt with holes in it. Not a single person that I overhead said anything bad about him and many members came over afterwards and introduced themselves and said how happy they were to have him there. He felt so welcomed that he came back again and again and eventually chose to be baptized.
On another occasion there was a sister getting baptized into the college ward that showed up at her baptism in a (very) miniskirt. No one said anything to her about it. She was baptized, everyone congratulated her and it was a great day. Later on she decided on her own that the miniskirt probably wasn’t appropriate and asked us about it. We tried to help her not feel guilty. Turns out the miniskirt was the nicest thing she owned and she wore it specifically because she wanted to dress nice for her baptism to show respect. So her heart had been in the right place. I’m so grateful nobody ruined that day for her.
Back home in Utah after my mission I had a totally different experience. For those that didn’t read my introduction my dad suffers from mental illness. Church attendance is hard for him. One of the problems is that putting on a shirt and tie triggers emotions from his past job that largely caused his mental breakdown. It’s hard for him to feel the spirit when he’s reliving a past hell. So I encouraged him to just wear something nice because God didn’t really care. Well, God might not have but everyone in the ward sure did. My dad enjoyed sacrament meeting for the first time in a long time only to suffer very backhanded compliments like “you’re looking nice” (with a nice thick sarcasm) and such afterwards. They took a day that was happy and did all they could to ruin it…
I think that the church does well teaching principles like I tried to on my mission such as “dress in a way that you feel you are respecting god” and not teaching applications like “god wants you to wear a white shirt and tie”. I argue that not once in Jesus’ perfect life did he ever wear a button-up white shirt, tie, slacks, and wingtips. He wore a robe and sandals, probably had long hair, mustache and beard, and was probably dirty from walking everywhere.
Makes me wonder if Jesus showed up one Sunday if He’d be allowed into the chapel of his own church.
:silent: Anyways, I’ve kind of hijacked a thread about women’s issues but I think the idea behind it is the same. Comments like Sis. Dalton’s, however she intended them, reinforce the cultural idea that individuality is a sin.
I think that efforts like wear pants to church day or trying to get a woman to pray in GC are necessary. How many people quietly leave the church over these issues never to return? By not leaving over these issues, and by pointing them out while reaffirming belief in the gospel, I think we can help rid the church of false traditions that aren’t part of the restored gospel.
We need to stop hiding the light of the gospel beneath a bush of outdated, non-scriptural, judgmental, unchristian cultural mores.
Old-Timer wrote:Quote:Pretty much the only input the men/leaders have comes from the women directly in their lives, mom/wife.
Dax, it sounds like you’ve never been a Bishop or Stake President.
😆 Believe me, sometimes they wish your statement above was correct.😯 Wow Ray……Thank you for doing the proverbial male priesthood holder pat on the head to the silly little women that make annoying requests of priesthood leaders.
Sarcasm aside…yes you are correct I have never nor will I due to my gender be in the Bishopric/SP. Thanks for pointing that out! Okay I’m done with sarcasm.
I was sincerely asking without malice about how women would be able to make known the desire to pray in GC without making somewhat of a scene. It is 2013 and it has apparently not occurred to the men in charge that maybe women would like to do that. Or perhaps give a talk in GC that was not directed to just women and youth.
I do not feel that the men are out to get the women. I simply think that until recently the leaders of the church were unaware of how frustrating church can be for many women. They are from a different generation and are surrounded by women who have never thought twice about how good lds women should behave. Dalton’s talk is an example of reinforcing the motto that to be a righteous woman you need to not question your role in the church and defer to the priesthood leaders.
That being said, I am grateful for the changes that have been implemented. The age of missionaries, the new curriculum for ALL of the youth, it is wonderful.
Also Ray I agree women can certainly nag and be annoying on a local level, very annoying, but do they have any real power or influence on the men in a ward as a group? Has a women ever stood up and said to the men in a ward or stake conference that they feel impressed to implement a program or changes that the men need to follow directly? Never!!
It is sad that before my faith crisis I did not even realize that a woman had never prayed in conference. That is how intrinsic a woman’s place in church had become to me. I never even questioned why that was and simply followed the “if that was how my male priesthood leaders thought it should be then who was I as a female to question it mentality”.
Thanks to Dalton and others it appears that we are somewhat reinforcing that belief due to silly annoying women who do not know their place and open their mouths.
Quote:But when a general president of a major church organization, speaking to a large audience of young, impressionable, still-forming, BYU students, says to marry young, raise a family, preferably a large one, like hers, that young women, if they will just learn their place and accept it, without the need to worry about perceived inequalities… then, for me, I, me… I cannot simply apply my normal “benefit-of-the-doubt” stance, and my mind immediately shifts to my adult daughters, and I begin to wonder what I can/should say to them to counter this line of thinking… and I find myself thinking of a future without the church.
She started the section about marrying young with the statement that she wished to give the young audience some counsel like Paul had done to Timothy of old. She finished that section by saying that if the people in the audience convince themselves that they are too young and opt to wait, the devil wins. It just bothers me when someone decides that they know so much about me, my circumstances, the world, and the way that the cosmos works that they can make such a blanket statement. There is no room there for “individual adaptation,” – THE – DEVIL – WINS!!!
😈 Sorry, Dax and others. It was just meant as a joke about how lots of people talk to Bishops and Stake Presidents – often more people than the leaders would wish talked to them. Obviously, I butchered the joke – and, honestly, I wasn’t even thinking of whether Dax was a man or a woman when I typed it.
See how easy it is to mis-speak and misunderstand?
Again, I apologize. It meant NOTHING like how it came across.
Hi Ray! Thanks so much for clarifying! Apology appreciated and thanks for being the moderator! It is not an easy job!
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