R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Find out what it means to President Nelson!

In April Conference, President Nelson said the following to the men and boys in priesthood session:

Another way we can also do better and be better is how we honor the women in our lives, beginning with our wives and daughters, our mothers and sisters.

Here he echoed a number of previous statements he’s made about how important it is for men to honor and respect women. For example, in a 1999 talk, he said:

We who bear the holy priesthood have a sacred duty to honor our sisters. . . . We respect sisters—not only in our immediate families but all the wonderful sisters in our lives. As daughters of God, their potential is divine.

And in a 2006 talk, he said this:

[B]rethren, your foremost priesthood duty is to nurture your marriage—to care for, respect, honor, and love your wife. Be a blessing to her and your children.

And in a 1997 talk, he said this:

[S]ome temple marriages fail because a husband forgets that his highest and most important priesthood duty is to honor and sustain his wife. The best thing that a father can do for his children is to “love their mother.”

I’m encouraged that he’s made it a point to repeatedly remind men to be good to the women around us. But of course this isn’t the only thing that he’s said about women in Conference. Actually, when I first read the line from April Conference that I quoted above, it struck me as a little strange, because I was sure I remembered President Nelson saying some less positive things about women in Conference.

I looked back through all of his Conference talks since he was called to the Quorum of the Twelve in 1984 to look for things he said to or about women to get an overall sense of what he thinks of women. I thought this might be especially instructive given that, as has been much discussed on the blogs, President Nelson signaled his distaste for nicknames and shortenings of the Church’s name in a Conference talk back in 1990. Given this, it seems that we might pick up ideas about what he thinks about women more generally by also looking back at his Conference talks. Unfortunately, I found that not all of the things he’s said to and about women have been as nice as the quotes above.

The first pattern I see in his talks that I find troubling is that he’s praised women for being quiet about any complaints they may have. In his first Conference talk after being called, he praised his wife thusly:

Her sacrifices to bring our ten wonderful children into this world, teaching and training them, while always supporting me without a murmur through my responsibilities in the Church and in my profession, are monumental.

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Sheri Dew and the Unimagined Unknown

A few weeks ago, the Church News ran a story about Russell M. Nelson being interviewed by an Argentine journalist. The real headline is captured better by this LDS Living story with a great clickbaity title: President Nelson’s Incredible Response When a Journalist Asked If the Church Excludes Women.

“Many churches are ruled by men, at the exclusion of women,” said Mr. Rubin. “Is this the case for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?”

“Well,” said President Nelson, “you should talk to a woman about that.”

President Nelson then turned and looked at Sheri Dew, executive vice president of Deseret Management Corporation, the CEO of Deseret Book Company and former Relief Society general presidency member.

“Can you help with this answer about the role of women in the Church?” he asked her. He motioned her into camera range.

Sister Dew told Mr. Rubin that he would have a hard time finding a church where more women have more authority than in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“There are hundreds of thousands of women, right now, who have legitimate leadership opportunities and expectations. As women in the Church we teach and preach, we expound doctrine, we serve missions as full-time proselyting missionaries, and we have leadership responsibilities,” she said.

She thinks he would have a hard time? Seriously?

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Women Are Like Hydrogen

I read some discussion on Facebook recently of a diagram showing the organization of the Church. I think the diagram was something like what’s shown in this post, but I’m not completely sure. Whatever the exact details of the diagram, what’s important about it is that the structure it showed included only men: First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve, Seventies, stake presidents, bishops, etc. The striking thing was its exclusion of women.

I don’t fault the person who made the diagram or whoever shared it. It looked to me like it accurately captured how the Church is structured. If women are included anywhere, it’s at the margins, and perhaps informally, if any of the men in positions of authority ever discuss issues they’re facing with their wives.

I do think it’s interesting, though, that to be included in the hierarchy, men must be married. Bishops I think have to be married by rule. I’m not sure if it’s a rule for the other positions, but if it isn’t, it’s at least an extremely strong norm. The fact that each of these men is married but that their wives aren’t shown reminded me of diagrams of the structures of molecules that one of my kids was showing me recently. In at least some forms of these diagrams, most hydrogen atoms are not included explicitly. They are just assumed to be bonded at each atom where they would be required for the atom to have the right number of valence electrons.

Here’s an example, courtesy of the NIH’s PubChem website:

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The Cost of Making Women Ecclesiastically Superfluous

It first dawned on me that women weren’t necessary in church when I went to BYU Education Week as  a teenager and heard what were meant to be faith-promoting stories about believing LDS women behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, who were unable to have an ecclesiastical organization because there wasn’t anyone with the priesthood to run it and who therefore didn’t get to take the sacrament for decades, but who nonetheless personally kept the faith. Rather than being inspired, I was somewhat taken aback when it occurred to me that for all the importance Latter-day Saints place on having an organized church, it is secondary to the importance of maintaining strict gender divisions. I realize that in the particular situation of the Cold War, there were added complications affecting what was possible. But a principle nonetheless became clear to me: if the choice was to ordain women, or to not have a church at all, Mormons would opt for the latter. (This led me to wonder: what if the only way to restore the church had been to work through a woman? Would the Mormon God simply decided to not have a Restoration rather than to allow a woman to act in his name and with his authority?) Read More

Toward a More Straightforward Expression of Female Desire

When I was a freshling at BYU, I lived in a Heritage Halls apartment with five other girls.  Then, as now, I had little interest in attending social events with hordes of people. The dorm held a variety of such events, and I did my best to steer clear of them. One event which I particularly remember was a dance in which your roommates selected a date for you. I told my roommates I had no interest in attending, and planned to spend the weekend back at my parents’ house doing other activities. I was standing in the hall one afternoon when I overheard them talking about me in the kitchen, trying to figure out if I really didn’t want to go, or if it was merely an act, and they should override my expressed wishes and find me a date. Read More