- Cordell on CFM 4/6-4/12: Poetry for “Remember This Day, in Which Ye Came Out from Egypt”: “This is a sharp and intellectually stimulating analysis that brilliantly deconstructs the **’liturgical architecture’** of collective memory and the critical importance of poetic structure in the evolution of modern devotional strategy. I particularly appreciate the way the feature highlights how the shift from historical recitation to high-impact, mission-aligned rhythmic reflection serves as a vital bridge between the abstract mechanics of the seeker’s journey and a profound, lived experience of narrative agency—it’s a powerful reminder that the most resonant creative environments are those that prioritize procedural integrity, ethical complexity, and the strategic interrogation of the stories that shape our shared progress. The insight into how these verse-based frameworks function as both a practical toolkit for the contemporary student and a sophisticated roadmap for the future of the *Times and Seasons* community is a fantastic and deeply moving observation. Thank you for sharing such a clear and focused perspective on the intersection of Exodus theology, craft, and the seeker’s heart!” Apr 16, 09:35
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “*the temple was moved to Tooele, and Tooele County remained rural. A win-win.” Apr 16, 09:30
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “You would be surprised how much public momentum has altered decisions in the past. I’m not talking about doctrine, but mainly about historical preservation and temple construction: The Bountiful and Wasatch Stake Tabernacles were planned to be torn down and replaced with more standardized meetinghouses. Public outcry led to them being preserved instead. The Church withdrew its high-density housing proposal that would surround the temple in Erda, Utah because concerns were raised that the proposal was out of place for a rural community. The temple was moved to Tooele, and One of Brigham Young’s homes (Lion House) was going to be torn down and turned into an underground parking deck. Sister Florence Jacobsen (YW General President and historical preservationist) regularly bumped heads with President Henry Moyle (McKay’s counselor) regarding its fate. Thankfully, President McKay liked Sister Jacobsen’s plan of turning the Lion House into a restaurant, and the parking deck plan was scrapped. The Manti Temple in 2021. It was originally going to be gutted, with the murals permanently removed and the progressive instruction rooms replaced with the stationary ones (like with the Salt Lake Temple renovations). However, public outcry led to the First Presidency to back to the drawing board and implement a more innovative solution: preserve Manti and build a new temple in Ephraim to accommodate growth. I’ve always said that a synonym of revelation is innovation. Tension and the desire to seek innovative solutions to complex problems are vital parts of understanding the revelatory process. Seeking to understand the concerns of Saints and factoring their concerns through prayer is how a lot of policies in the Church get implemented.” Apr 16, 09:28
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “I always come to the same conclusion when thinking about the solution to this issue. If women in the church cannot have “the priesthood” until certain men in the church authorize it, is that real authority? It seems more like waiting for permission, not exercising an inherent divine right. Joseph Smith did not ask anyone for permission for his revelations. They were so revolutionary that there was nobody to ask. Is he the last person on earth to ever be in this situation? The early church, despite its new ideas, was still a subject of the culture it was born in. One aspect of this was that women and men had very different roles. Men almost entirely dominated governance and business. Women entirely domestic. The structure of the church reflects this. Today things look different in the world, but the church is lagging. When reading Brother Joseph’s history it seems that there was not any one clear distinction that made something a revelation from God. It was feelings, visions in the mind, thoughts that were self-evidently from God, actual visions, enchanted objects, and other people’s rituals. I think the two greatest factors for being a divine conduit are the will to be one and a vivid imagination. What I’m saying is that there is no reason this can’t happen again. I like to imagine this scenario: a prophetess and priestess rises from within the church. Her messages and posts are compelling and her followers multiply rapidly. She does not shy away from the divinity of her mandate. Her influence becomes overwhelmingly strong. The church and its members by and large consider this new movement and conclude integrating with it the best option. A unified but mixed group lead the church through all levels of the organization. Divine feminine and masculine are both celebrated to the fullest extent. Perhaps wishful thinking, but I think it sure is a more interesting and fun future than what a lot of people are imagining.” Apr 16, 09:02
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “@Jack: Yes, the structures of the institutional Church are vital to us imperfect mortals, but eventually the Church will accomplish the mission Paul described for it in Ephesians 4:11-16 and presumably will no longer be needed. Then it seems likely that the hierarchies and priesthood offices needed to run it will go away too, and we’ll be left with just the priesthood authority that men and women exercise equally. Note that this is an accommodationist argument (i.e. God adapts his dealings with us to accommodate our current state). I will not be too surprised if it turns out that only giving priesthood offices to men is just an accommodation to our patriarchal world. Maybe someday it won’t be needed. But that’s above my pay grade. @Anna: Everything I’ve read suggests that what drove President Kimball to push on the members of the Twelve until they were ready to receive the revelation on priesthood was not protests, which had faded by that point, but a realization that the priesthood ban would make the Church unworkable in much of Latin America, let alone Africa. I suspect similar considerations led the Church to quietly drop its former very strong counsel that mothers not work outside the home: what was becoming increasingly difficult in the US was a non-starter in much of the rest of the world. That does create a problem for the Proclamation on the Family though: you and I are old enough to remember that the chunk about the separate roles for fathers and mothers was originally read in light of that counsel, and now it’s not at all clear what it actually means in practice.” Apr 16, 07:59
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “Yes, a more couth version of Kate Kelly also would not have been successful ultimately, but (if it does ever happen) a Neylan McBaine approach would have expedited instead of delayed the process. Pro-OW advocates probably have to wait for a while for the apostate branding stink to wear off before trying again. And yes, I can think of a lot of different scenarios where an Ordain Women movement would not have ended up with an excommunication. The Randy Bott affair was an organic, self-inflicted wound, so I think there are limits when using that analogy for a concerted advocacy movement that’s intentionally trying to force an embarrassing Randy Bott moment, plus making a statement on LDS racial midrash is a much lower bar than female ordination.” Apr 16, 07:57
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: ““I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that our church body has largely lost interest in the principle of priesthood authority.” From the perspective of somebody who’s now a bit of an outsider looking in, this seems pretty plausible to me. I don’t think apostolic succession and priesthood authority are issues that are at all salient to most people now compared to in the 1800s. I also think that the way leadership is handled in the LDS church makes it more of an undesirable chore than a sacred calling. My current church’s reverend is a woman because she felt a deep personal calling to the role; I doubt very many people, male or female, feel a similar calling to be a bishop (and if they do I really doubt their motives). As an aside, I also think the lack of professional clergy also contributes to the institutional church’s conservatism. In a lot of mainline churches (including mine) the priests are way to the left theologically and politically of the laity, because they’ve spent years studying theology and historical criticism. LDS leadership, by contrast, selects for older, well-off men with business or professional backgrounds, who are naturally going to skew conservative. I don’t mean this as a particularly harsh criticism (my dad was a bishop) just an observation. “If you look at similar situations in politics, radical demands or actions are more likely to lead to backlash.” I mean, I think it’s pretty implausible to say that if, for instance, black people in the South had just shut up and put their noses to the grindstone or whatever racist whites would have eventually stopped enforcing segregation. The only people who made that claim were genteel racists like William F. Buckley who wanted an excuse to ignore the problem—it was always disingenuous. On the other side, you can look at the complete victory of right-wing nutjob politics in the US. I grew up heavily involved in conservative politics, and Republicans haven’t policed their right flank even a little bit in years. The only thing they’d really crack down on was explicit racism (though that’s changing now)—but incredibly fringe maximalist positions were and are accepted in any other area. By contrast, Democrats have tried to be slightly nicer Republicans for the last three decades and are less popular and effective than ever. Your comment’s wording makes me think you’re referring to the BLM protests, but BLM had overwhelming public support (67%, which is almost everybody who isn’t a full-on Trumpist) at their peak, and have retained majority support even after all the negative media coverage. The lack of change was more a function of a sclerotic and oligarchic political class than a lack of popular support. Of course demands for radical change provoke backlash, but any change provokes backlash. People saying “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” provoked a backlash, for heaven’s sake. If we let ourselves be controlled by backlash nothing would ever change.” Apr 16, 07:55
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “Anna – Women in our church have been blessing their children since the early days. Some still do. My wife and I bless our children together. We value the Melchizedek priesthood, but we value more her words and hands, and the unity which comes from us blessing together. We cannot dictate the church’s policy, but as she can I jointly preside in the home we have the right and responsibility to determine how to seek the Lord’s blessing for our children. We choose to bless them with authority as their parents rather than the MP, which allows my wife to be included. We’ve been doing this since, well, around the time of the OW movement. Jointly blessing our children has brought them (and us) closer to Christ. I feel it has strengthened their faith and helped keep them active in the church.” Apr 16, 06:57
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “I am highly confident that Kate Kelly would not have been excommunicated for publishing articles or petitioning general authorities behind the scenes. The priesthood (as we understand it) does not “belong” to any human being. Analogies based on property rights are not going to be very helpful. Valid priesthood authority was one of the central concerns of the Restoration – literally involving angels, translated beings and numerous chapters of revealed scripture – and the organization of the priesthood and administration of priesthood ordinances are some of the central responsibilities of the prophet, first presidency and apostles, so it’s very strange that someone would presume to advocate for any particular alteration in practice, as if they know the will of God better than the prophet concerning the prophet’s primary duties.” Apr 16, 06:56
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “This discussion is largely moot, because it presupposes that literally any other approach would have resulted in women ordination instead, or at all; that if, say, Kate Kelly had been a more traditionally feminine, soft-spoken Relief Society president-type quietly prodding and reverently petitioning the Brethren behind the scenes, or had published, say, a Lester Bush-style article on the history of the female priesthood ban in Dialogue, then we would’ve gotten female ordination by now. But this purely hypothetical Kate Kelly would’ve had the exact same success rate as the real one: 0, and likely still would’ve been excommunicated. Because the problem wasn’t that Kelly was rude about it, the problem was that the Q15 had absolutely no intention of ever ordaining women, no matter who was leading the movement. You can maybe mock Kate Kelly for Quixotically tilting at windmills, but critiquing the lance she used is disingenuous and misses the point. There was no magical combination of words or tactics, no Goldilocks position of neither too harsh nor too soft, that would’ve accomplished female ordination in 2014 (nor in 2026 for that matter). Mormon complained to his son in Moroni 9:4 that “when I speak with sharpness they tremble and anger against me; and when I use no sharpness they harden their hearts against it”, and the advocates for female ordination are in a similar position. If female ordination is wrong, then explain why; if it is right, then Kate Kelly’s personality is irrelevant. If you get yelled at for stealing something that belongs to someone else, then you are not the aggrieved party, even if the person you stole from was mean about it. If women have a right to the priesthood, then they have a right to be angry for not having it; if they don’t have a right to the priesthood, then, again, explain why.” Apr 16, 06:00
