Thank You, Jesus! LDS Church Responds to Ordain Women

March 17 2014 --The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been put in the unfortunate situation of having to, twice now, use strong measures to decline requests for tickets to attend the male only Priesthood session of LDS General Conference, by a misguided group of Mormon feminists who persist in their relentless bullying of Church leaders to pray for a revelation to ordain LDS women to the priesthood.

This morning Deseret News posted a letter sent to the Ordain Women organization. Jessica Moody, a female spokesperson for the LDS Church, in which the groups’ dialogue is identified in no uncertain terms as oppositional to the position of the Church - and clearly states the reasons, signed it:

"Women in the church, by a very large majority, do not share your advocacy for priesthood ordination for women and consider that position to be extreme. Declaring such an objective to be non-negotiable, as you have done, actually detracts from the helpful discussions that church leaders have held as they seek to listen to the thoughts, concerns, and hopes of women inside and outside of church leadership. Ordination of women to the priesthood is a matter of doctrine that is contrary to the Lord’s revealed organization for His church.” 

This is one of the boldest moves, at least from what I’ve seen, where the Church has felt to publicly respond to individual members who are demonstrating against the Lord’s doctrine of the priesthood. I recently heard that this small part of the total LDS Church membership represent only 0.5 percent of Mormon women – but oh how loud the media can make them appear, right? And sadly, the rest of us feel that our voices are being stifled in the process--about who we really are, what we truly stand for, and how that looks to so many of us. I hear of your frustrations on a daily basis.

As a Mormon woman who opposes how this organization advocates their cause, which I wrote my personal thoughts in regard to a year ago, and since have been interviewed about, including by Deseret News, I am pleased to see this bold response by the Church. I ‘Stand’ in support of the contents of the letter, and the need to deliver the message - now posted on the Mormon Newsroom and notably signed by an LDS Public Affairs Spokeswoman, to decline OW’s ticket request. (I’m going to keep on emphasizing the authority that a LDS woman has been given to address this huge issue.)

Here is the official report and letter in its entirety and available as a PDF download on the Mormon Newsroom. And here are some of my favorite excerpts extracted from the letter:

"Some wonderful conversations have been held over recent years, and are continuing to be held, relative to women in the church and the invaluable contributions we make. The recent changes you have seen, most notably the lowering of the missionary age for sisters, serve as examples and were facilitated by the input of many extraordinary LDS women around the world."

"Women in the church, by a very large majority, do not share your advocacy for priesthood ordination for women and consider that position to be extreme. Declaring such an objective to be non-negotiable, as you have done, actually detracts from the helpful discussions that church leaders have held as they seek to listen to the thoughts, concerns, and hopes of women inside and outside of church leadership. Ordination of women to the priesthood is a matter of doctrine that is contrary to the Lord’s revealed organization for His church.”

“We invite you, as our sisters, to participate with women everywhere in the parallel meeting for women and girls on March 29, and hope you will join us in a spirit of love and harmony. The women’s meeting is a remarkable gathering of worldwide sisterhood, and was proposed and planned by the presidencies and boards of the Primary, Young Women and Relief Society as a time to focus on ennobling and eternal doctrines relating to women.”

"If you feel you must come and demonstrate, we ask that you do so in free speech zones adjacent to Temple Square, which have long been established for those wishing to voice differing viewpoints.”

Please refrain from leaving comments that purport if the First Presidency didn’t sign the letter, then it is not official, therefore it can be ignored. Note that directly under Jessica Moody’s name that it indicates this letter is on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it is on official Church letterhead. “Whether by mine own voice, or the voice of my servants …” and I would add, delegated to an official spokesperson for the Church to convey. To disregard Church direction because it comes through a Church spokesperson is disingenuous.

A personal friend notes, “The most interesting and subtle part of the Church’s response: they communicated that the OW protestors would be considered like any other protestors at General Conference — a group that should remain in the free-speech zones highlighted on the map. Wow. That’s a smack in the face — they were just lumped in with the ex-Mormons and the anti-Mormons holding signs at Conference. Not explicitly, but implicitly.”

Terrie Lynn Bitner, who writes on her Latter-day Saint Women blog, shared some interesting thoughts about women attending the priesthood session, during a Facebook discussion, which resonated with me: 

"If the audience is both male and female, it becomes exactly like General Conference, and therefore unnecessary. I look forward every year to a meeting designed to fit my special needs as a woman and I resent their effort to rob me of it. Plus, every seat filled by a woman in priesthood is a seat not filled by a member of the target audience. They might want to be men, but I'm proud to be a woman (that was the message of the women's movement originally--not that to be valuable we have to become men) and I resent their efforts to remove womanhood from my church membership. They are a small minority trying to spoil something special for us all. I am 55 years old. I've seen how misguided the women's movement, which started as a good thing, has become. When you remove uniqueness, you remove something extraordinarily special."

Amen, Sister!

LDS Church Spokeswomen, Ruth Todd, who was on Temple Square during last October’s attempt by OW to attend the Priesthood session provided this statement to the media, “Millions of women in this church do not share the views of this small group who organized today's protest, and most church members would see such efforts as divisive. Even so, these are our sisters and we want them among us, and hope they will find the peace and joy we all seek in the gospel of Jesus Christ." 

Ordain Women’s ongoing agenda to disrupt the LDS General Conference, a sacred time for all members, is not considered acceptable behavior for faithful Latter-day Saints - and it's time we say so. In my opinion, it is the opposite of Zion – and I sincerely hope they will reconsider their relentless opposition, as so kindly requested by the Church.

If I felt sorry for anyone, in watching some of the video footage, it was for those poor priesthood leaders who were humbly following the directions given them. It is wrong that the OW organization is planning on recreating this protest again, with a larger presence.

I truly feel that the advocacy of the Ordain Women organization is divisive and strongly reject the ongoing dialogue that because someone is not in agreement with the actions of those of OW, it somehow translates into a lack of compassion for individuals experiencing a challenge of their faith. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mormon women can often be found discussing the dilemma,  this situation has placed them in and if they try to speak up about their discomfort in how OW operates, Mormon feminists call them divisive. However, the actions addressed in the letter are responsible for the division among Mormon women. The Apostle Paul reminds us in his poignant treaties on spiritual separation how this principle works: (Romans 8:35-39):

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 

As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Thus, it is we, who separate ourselves from God’s love and His people, and not the other way around.

Today, Mormon women around the globe are commemorating the organization of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – one of the largest women’s organizations in the world – established on March 17, 1842.

"In the first meeting of the Relief Society, Sister Emma Smith said, “We are going to do something extraordinary.” She was right. The history of Relief Society is filled with examples of ordinary women who have accomplished extraordinary things as they have exercised faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  

Relief Society was established to help prepare daughters of God for the blessings of eternal life. The purposes of Relief Society are to increase faith and personal righteousness, strengthen families and homes, and provide relief by seeking out and helping those in need. Women fulfill these purposes as they seek, receive, and act on personal revelation in their callings and in their personal lives." Daughters in My Kingdom 

My heart aches when I think of these, my sisters’ in Christ, looking to measure ‘equality’ by the standards of a secular society. We are living in a world that now considers it a virtue to reject moral absolutes and mock religious thought and beliefs as dangerous to society. We must resist such ideology, from wherever it is found, even if within our own faith. Rather, let us submit our will to God and His plan of salvation, which through the Atonement of Jesus Christ has made us equal with Him.

Let us be still, and know that this is so.

tDMg

Kathryn Skaggs

Updates to this post:

Ordain Women Founder Kate Kelly Charged With Apostasy

Excommunication All the Rage!

Graphic/Photo Source: Kathryn Skaggs