Patterns Teach

What do patterns in Church practice and patterns in the stories we hear in Church teach us? I was thinking about this question recently after reading the #VisibleWomen series at the Exponent. The question of how patterns teach was brought to my mind because the whole series seems to be built on this idea. The purpose of the series is to make suggestions to Church leaders about ways that women could be made more visible in areas like Church art, in giving talks, and in conducting their own session of Conference. The subtitle explains the reason: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” The suggestion of this line is that patterns of practice in the Church like how infrequently women are portrayed, how rarely Heavenly Mother is mentioned, and how women aren’t even allowed to conduct their own Conference session, are conveying messages to women that are limiting their view of themselves.

I used to be a statistics teacher, and in that role, I often thought about how patterns can teach. One way the issue came up was when I used example data to teach my students about a statistical test. They would sometimes draw conclusions from irrelevant patterns in my examples. For example, if I illustrated use of a test using two examples, one where the data were temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit, and the other where the data were temperatures in degrees Celsius, students might conclude that the test could only be used when the data were temperatures, but not if they were shot put distances or cell phone provider preference ratings or rat body sizes or any other type of data. Or if the data I showed were all rounded to the nearest ten, students might conclude that the test could only be used with data that had been similarly rounded.

I’m not at all surprised that my students did this. People are great at finding and generalizing patterns. The upside of this is that it made teaching easier: students picked up on many real patterns in how different tests could be used without my ever having to state them explicitly. This generalizes far beyond the classroom. Much of what we learn (probably most of it) comes from observing patterns in what other people do, rather than from having people explicitly explain things to us.

What I tried to do with my students to avoid accidentally teaching things I didn’t intend to with irrelevant patterns was to vary the characteristics of my examples as much as possible to break up the incorrect patterns. For example, if I wanted to avoid conveying that a test could only be used for temperature data, I might show one example that used temperature data and another that used something completely different, like elephant tusk length data. If I wanted to avoid conveying that a test required values rounded to the nearest ten, I would show data where values were rounded at different points.

In case my statistics-related examples are too dense, here’s one that might be more straightforward. If I were teaching someone about parts of speech, and I introduced adjectives with the examples “orange,” “blue,” and “green,” it wouldn’t be surprising if the person I was teaching concluded that only colors qualified as adjectives. I would be better off using a set of examples that broke up the pattern I didn’t want to convey, so something like “orange,” “hairy,” and “difficult.”

Getting back to my opening question, there are many obvious patterns in what we do in the Church, and these patterns convey clear messages, even without anything being stated explicitly. I thought it might be interesting to list some of these patterns and briefly outline what they’re teaching. Many of them come not even from our practice but from the types of stories that are taught (in Conference, Church magazines, and in lesson manuals).

Ordinances are performed by men. Ordinances allow us to make or renew covenants with God. Sometimes, as in blessing the sacrament, those performing them are actually standing in for Jesus. This pattern teaches that men are closer to God, and that they can stand for God in a way that women can’t.

Ordinances are witnessed by men. Not only are priesthood ordinances performed by men, the official witnesses have to be men. This pattern teaches that men’s points of view matter; they count; they can be trusted. Women’s don’t; they can’t.

In meetings where both men and women are present, men nearly always preside. Men preside over sacrament meetings and stake conferences and certainly General Conference (although here’s a suggestion from the Exponent’s series for changing the women’s session). This pattern teaches that leadership is a male role, and that women shouldn’t preside over men.

Men speak in congregational meetings more than women. At the local ward or branch level, this is likely to be true even if only because high councilors are always men, and there are no women who periodically visit and speak (although here’s a suggestion from the Exponent’s series or changing this). As meetings draw bigger groups of people, the speaker list becomes more dominated by men. Stake conferences typically tilt more heavily male than sacrament meetings. And General Conferences are the most male-dominated of all. The whole pattern cycles back on itself when General Conference talks are used as the basis for sacrament meeting talks (not to mention Teachings for Our Time lessons), so even when women are speaking in sacrament meeting, they’re likely to be quoting mostly men. In addition, when both women and men speak in a meeting, men usually speak last, which follows the pattern in General Conference (and in the world in general) where the highest-status or highest-authority speaker speaks last. This pattern teaches that it’s more important to listen to men than to women; as a meeting becomes more important, it becomes more important that we hear from women less in it.

Money is handled by men. Bishopric and branch presidency members take tithing. They and always-male clerks count tithing and deposit it. Bishops and branch presidents decide on budgets. This pattern, I think particularly the requirement that clerks be male when there’s no priesthood function they’re serving, teaches that money should be controlled by men and not by women.

General Authorities are all men. This pattern teaches that God prefers men, and that it’s more important to listen to men.

General Authorities are almost all white. The higher you go (from Seventies to the FP and Q of 12), the whiter they get. This pattern teaches that God prefers white mouthpieces, and that it’s more important to listen to white people than people of color.

General Authorities all speak English. It may not be their first language, but they all do. Most (until very last year, all) General Conference talks are given in English. This pattern teaches that English is preferred by God, and is a better language than other languages.

Primary presidencies are always women. (I’m sure someone will cite me an example of a situation where no women were available and a man was called, but certainly this would be an extremely unusual exception.) This pattern teaches that teaching and caring for children is something women should do rather than men.

Stories: Tithing always leads to temporal blessings. Have you ever read a story in the Ensign about a family that had to choose between paying their tithing and their rent, and they paid their tithing and got kicked out of their apartment and ended up on the street? Me neither. Correlated stories where people struggle to pay their tithing but then choose to pay it always end with temporal blessings.

Stories: Sex always leads to unhappiness. Correlated stories that mention sex always talk about bad outcomes: unplanned pregnancy, dropping out of school, STIs, emotional upheaval. When sex has positive outcomes, like closeness between marital partners or having children, sex doesn’t get mentioned. It’s just “they got married and were happy and had kids.”

Stories: Prophets (and Church leaders in general) are infallible. Correlated stories about people who struggle to follow a Church teaching always end up with them either deciding to follow it and having a good outcome or deciding not to follow it and having a bad outcome. Even when following a Church leader appears to have a bad outcome, in the end, it always has a good one. The story of the old man who defends the decision to leave late with the Willie and Martin handcart companies because it looked like a mistake at the time, but he was grateful because it was “the price we paid to become acquainted with God” is the prototypical example.

Stories: Women are always happier as mothers than having careers. Correlated stories about women struggling to decide whether to go to more school or focus on a career on one hand or stay at home with their kids (or start having kids and stay home with them) always end with them staying at home and being happy or sticking with school or work and being disappointed.

Stories: Couples are always happier when they have more kids. Correlated stories about people deciding how many children to have never end with a couple deciding to have one more child and finding that it sends the mother into deep depression or pushes the family over the edge financially. They always end up grateful for the child. Such stories may also describe couples who are sad that they didn’t have all the kids they wanted to. No stories tell of happy childless couples, or couples who decided after some number of kids that they were done, and who end up being happy with the decision.

Stories: People only leave the Church because they’re lazy or evil or choosing to be offended, and they always regret the decision. Nobody ever leaves because of genuine concerns with Church doctrines or practices, either in the present or the past. And they never end up happy. Unless they come back, that is.

Stories: Prayers are always answered. Correlated stories have people praying for lost keys and lost children, and they’re pretty much always found. This pattern teaches that God is ready to jump in and solve anything we need solved, large or small, no matter how difficult, and therefore if we’re finding that our problems aren’t solved quickly after praying, we must be bad somehow.

Stories: Non-Mormons always respect Mormon beliefs. Correlated stories of people standing up for what they believe in and fearing that others will mock them always have happy endings where people say something like, “I think it’s great you don’t drink alcohol.” No such stories ever end with people saying (as I expect might be more common now), “Dude, why do you all care whether gay people get married?”

Stories: Lost sheep always want to be found. Correlated stories of diligent visiting and home teachers, and persistent family members who prod their non-practicing friends and family members to go back to church always conclude with the friends and family members happily back in full activity. Such stories never feature non-practicing people who just want to be left alone, or who are happy to have relationships that aren’t church-related.

Stories: Non-Mormons typically want to be Mormon. Correlated stories about reluctant investigators typically end with the reluctant investigator baptized, or going to the temple, or becoming a bishop. Stories about random encounters with non-Mormons also frequently end with them being baptized. They typically don’t end up with people deciding that they’re happy with the church they’re already in, or with no church at all.

I have a few concluding thoughts, but they don’t relate that well to each other, so I’ll make a list:

• One question that remains open for me about all these patterns is how often they’re used intentionally to teach, and how often they’re just incidental, and accidentally conveying messages that aren’t actually intended. It seems likely to me that at least some patterns are sending an intended message. For example, I think all the patterns that place men in positions of authority and importance ahead of women are probably conveying intended messages. These patterns are old and they are everywhere in the Church, and if pressed on them (as we’ve seen with the discussion surrounding OW), GAs and PR people come up with all kinds of justifications for them. This suggests these patterns are not accidental. With other messages, though, like tithing always bringing material blessings, I wonder if they don’t come about inadvertently. Perhaps there are rules for the Church curriculum folks that say they can’t print anything that’s not faith-promoting, and so to be safe, they avoid printing anything where someone pays tithing and a bad thing happens, even if the person frames it in such a way as to conclude that tithing is still a true principle. It’s easy to see how this kind of thinking might lead to the pattern we see, where stories can never tell of a bad thing happening after tithing is paid, even if nobody writing or choosing the stories actually thinks this is how the world is. That explaining of the process doesn’t mean, though, that the message isn’t still sent by the pattern in the stories.
• It’s clear that the co-existence of patterns that teach one thing while explicit Church rhetoric teaches something else actually serves an important function, both for Church leaders and for some members. Going back to the example of the sexist patterns, this disconnect between the rhetoric and the practice is exactly what Kiskilili pointed out and labeled chicken patriarchy in her post a few years ago. It allows GAs to have it both ways with what they say about men and women. With their rhetoric, they praise women, and try to show themselves to be not too out of step with a culture where it’s no longer accepted to just come out and say that men are better or more important than women, but with their practice, they go right on perpetuating the patterns that convey precisely those messages. Similarly, for many Church members, this disconnect allows them to claim that troubling teachings, like sexist ideas or prophetic infallibility, aren’t actually being taught because they aren’t being stated explicitly.
• Once we’ve spent a lot of time in the Church, perhaps we’ve learned to ignore the patterns, or have explained them away as not saying what they pretty obviously do. I think all that’s needed, though, to make them clear again, is a fresh set of eyes. Kids often do a great job of this, pointing out uncomfortable and obvious things that we’ve learned to carefully tiptoe around, like that we do treat men as being more important than women. Non-Mormon friends can do this for us too. I’ve heard several people say that even thinking about explaining some Church practices to friends not steeped in the convoluted explanations we’re all so familiar with throws the blatant sexism of our practices into bold relief.

In the end, perhaps I’m not so much concerned with which of these patterns are intended and which are accidental or what function they might be serving. I just wanted to bring them up and point out that they’re present, and that they do send clear messages.