“The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”-Conquest’s Third Law
A little over a decade ago Kate Kelly was excommunicated. A few thoughts in retrospect.
If I had infiltrated the OW movement with the goal of undermining it in the eyes of the Church leadership and membership, and I somehow rose to the very top, I would have essentially done what Kate Kelly did. The Ordain Women movement was a complete disaster for them if their goal was to actually, you know, ordain women, but from the outside it looks like the primary goal was to create martyrs, with the policy goal secondary.
Pushing against the Church or trying to embarrass it to force change doesn’t work for trying to change the Church. This should be obvious, but I suspect the Walter Mitty-esque fantasy for this kind of activism is one where the Church’s PR situation and embarrassment is so incredibly acute that they absolutely have to respond–and then the activists can dictate terms. Where Newsies-like youth across the Wasatch Front leaving their Sunday School classes to march on Salt Lake City demanding change.
I think this is one reason why that Pew survey that showed that most LDS women weren’t clamoring for the priesthood struck such a cord, it challenged the idea that the Ordain Women folks were representing the authentic woman’s voice in the pews. (This is the same kind of vibe that led the Democratic party to being befuddled when blue-collar Hispanic men swing for Trump. But they represent The People (™)!)
The last time there was some kind of grassroots organization challenging the Church that elicited a public sit-down-and-debate response was the Godbeites (historians who know more than I may need to correct me on this point). And Ordain Women never got close to the numbers needed to brute force that kind of response. Instead, they ended up branding their approach as per se apostate. And the fact that Kelly was kind of spitting at the Church on her way out, like some former employee burning bridges because it makes them feel better, didn’t help the apostate branding either.
Around this same time a much more savvy and diplomatic approach was taken by people like Neylan McBaine, who, while you could tell was also pro-female ordination, saw that there were a lot of reasonable changes that could be made before we reached that more controversial point.
However, at this point we’re running out of runway. I’m sure people can think of a few things to better involve women, but the low-hanging fruit has been picked and the remaining things are flirting with the priesthood line. For example, young women passing the sacrament; of course, if you’re pro-female ordination that’s completely fine, but I don’t know a lot of people who are pro-women passing the sacrament that are against female ordination. Incidentally, Catholicism has an analog here, some people suggest that they could have female deacons without female ordination, but in practice the two are correlated to something like .9 if I recall correctly, so the one typically follows the other even if they are technically and theologically distinct.
Perhaps because of the branding issue, people tend to speak in code now without saying “ordain women.” (There’s an analogous situation with the Church’s heteronormativity. People rarely say “same-sex sealings,” instead they’ll say things like “gay members should have the same expectations as straight members.” Given what those people mean by “expectations” it means the same thing as same-sex sealings, but it feels like they’re doing a milk before meat thing with more conservative members, trying to wade them into the cold water slowly.)
As somebody who’s on the other side of this, I do find the wordplay annoying and disingenuous at times, but from a purely tactical perspective I get it. When certain catchphrases, individuals, and groups have become branded as being on the apostate side you want to avoid them. Instead, you want to come off as fresh-faced seminary teacher type who blushes at “damn,” but who also happens to think that women should be ordained. Again, I find the play acting frustrating but I have to concede that it’s much more effective than the Kate Kelly approach.
Comments
22 responses to “The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect”
Considering the swing in presidential approval ratings between the election and now, it seems like the Democrats understood the situation pretty well, and better than some of the people who are experiencing buyer’s remorse. A better comparison would be to the use of “Latinx,” promoted by academics and activists but (according to surveys) alienating to the people the would-be vanguard claims to represent. My impression at the time was that Mormon Women Stand was a real problem for OW – the difference in numbers was massive, if I recall correctly.
I think you’re right about how the end of the movement harmed the cause it claimed to promote. How sincerely did you want ordination to the priesthood if you reject the counsel of its presiding high priest?
That’s why I’m indifferent to the idea of ordaining women. I can imagine advantages and disadvantages. Valid priesthood authority organized by the prophet and presiding high priest is critically important; details of how that gets implemented shouldn’t distract us from that.
“The last time there was some kind of grassroots organization challenging the Church that elicited a public sit-down-and-debate response was the Godbeites.”
Just for some fun history, I think the split with the Fundamentalist Mormons over the course of around 1910 through 1940 was another moment that caused some intense discussions, as was the Third Convention movement in the 1930s and 1940s in Mexico.
As far as Ordain Women, one thing that is worth noting is that sometimes when people push for a more extreme change, it opens the door to more moderate changes. I.e., they pushed hard for their namesake change and failed at that, but suddenly, those voices pushing for “a lot of reasonable changes that could be made before we reached that more controversial point” looked a lot more reasonable to Church leaders. They weren’t moving fast on those types of things before, but I feel like we’ve seen a lot more of those ideas implemented since OW.
Jonathan: “That’s why I’m indifferent to the idea of ordaining women. I can imagine advantages and disadvantages. Valid priesthood authority organized by the prophet and presiding high priest is critically important; details of how that gets implemented shouldn’t distract us from that.” I agree. In principle there are some policy changes that would be hard for me, but I’m probably 70/30 on the female ordination issue, so it wouldn’t be a problem for me if the Church did change on that.
Chad: “As far as Ordain Women, one thing that is worth noting is that sometimes when people push for a more extreme change, it opens the door to more moderate changes. I.e., they pushed hard for their namesake change and failed at that, but suddenly, those voices pushing for “a lot of reasonable changes that could be made before we reached that more controversial point” looked a lot more reasonable to Church leaders.”
That’s a good point, perhaps women praying in General Conference wouldn’t have made it out of committee without the OW hubbub. It reminds me of the MLK Jr./Malcolm X “frenemy” dynamic, IIRC Malcolm X saw himself as making MLK Jr. look more middle-of-the-road, but the rabble-rousing strategy would make sense if ordaining women was purposefully sacrificed for the incremental gains, and not ever taken seriously as a likely outcome in itself.
Stephen – Thank you for continuing discussion of women’s ordination. FWIW, I support ordination and posted a profile on the OW site in its early days. I also think they pushed in some wrong directions. To Chad’s point, though, the OW push did open the door to more middle-of-the-road voices such as Neylan McBaine. It’s the old “$20 hamburger” trick from marketing.
I’m interested in your thoughts regarding priesthood authority for the ordinances women do perform – specifically the temple initiatory and presenting other women at the veil during the endowment. Where does that authority come from? I get that women temple workers are delegated authority when they are set apart by the temple president (whose keys ultimately come from the President of the Church), but I have never found a scripture, revelation, or even church pronouncement as to where the President of Church obtained that authority to delegate.
So my questions to you are (1) do you have insight into where the authority comes from and (2) assuming not, do you care?
For context, I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that our church body has largely lost interest in the principle of priesthood authority. Each baby-step that opens a role to women which previously required ordination is met with muted “yeah” and we roll along. Consider women saying prayers in conference, serving as baptism witnesses, checking recommended at the temple front desk, serving as SS Presidents, and so forth. As a church body, we care very much that we’re in step with Salt Lake, but not so much whether our actions are actually authorized by God.
Consider that whatever authority now allows women to administer initiatories and endowments, presumably would also permit temple presidents to delegate their keys for women to administer all ordinances in the temple, for mission presidents to delegate their keys for sister missionaries to baptize and confirm, and for bishops to delegate their keys for young women to administer the sacrament. So ordination is not needed for women to administer. Or for men for that matter. We’re effectively becoming a priesthood of all believers.
One last thought on your comment re wordplay. That view cuts both ways. Your argument would render the church as disingenuous when it refers to gays and lesbians as merely “same-sex attracted” instead of acknowledging their identity (something, BTW, we strong insist for ourselves in rebranding away from “Mormons”).
A counter-example: the Randy Bott affair. For decades after the 1978 policy change, there were periodic calls for LDS leadership to renounce not just the prior exclusionary practices but also to renounce the racist folklore that continued to circulate in the Church. There was nothing unreasonable about that request, but LDS leaders ignored it.
Then when BYU religion prof Randy Bott endorsed all of that racist folklore in a conversation with a Washington Post reporter, which then got published in the Washington Post, the uproar was immediate. Within a day or two, LDS leadership posted unmistakably clear renunciations of all of that racist folklore. Sure, it was at the LDS Newsroom, not in a General Conference talk, but it was nevertheless a hugely positive step. It should have happened years earlier.
The lesson? Bad PR is almost the *only* thing that now gets LDS leadership to change bad policy. I think you are reading the Ordain Women movement wrong. The Church did institute some changes in response to the bad publicity around OW. Note the recent decision to allow women to serve as local Sunday School Presidents and counselors. In current LDS leadership practice, sometimes the squeaky wheel gets some grease. Wheels that don’t squeak get nothing.
I assumed from the beginning that Kate Kelly understood that her best case outcome was to become a martyr and that ordination, if it ever happened, would never benefit her personally. So I was surprised when she seemed genuinely upset about her excommunication. Later, she revealed herself in a guest post on one of the blogs (not this one, but I don’t remember which) in which she grudgingly admitted that celebrating the first woman of color to give a prayer in conference was OK. She started the post with a description of election night 2008 on which she observed millions of people celebrating while she herself wept. And they were not tears of joy because Obama had won–they were tears of bitterness because Ralph Nader had lost and she had seriously believed that he would win. So now it seems to me that Kate Kelly simply was not operating in the real world and it is a shame that so many women looked to her as their leader.
Having made that point, here’s how the rest of her post went, just to connect the dots. After she finished crying over Ralph Nader, Kelly realized that it was important to acknowledge that a barrier had been broken and to allow those who had helped break it have their moment of joy. She then applied the same logic to the prayer in general conference.
“Kate Kelly understood that her best case outcome was to become a martyr and that ordination, if it ever happened, would never benefit her personally.”
I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin. I’m not going to live there. There’s no place for me there….
Much has changed for women in the Church since the Ordain Women movement.
Theologically, a lot of language suggesting women were subordinate to men was removed from the endowment. There’s also President Oaks’ assertion that women regularly exercise priesthood authority, they just don’t hold priesthood offices. (I will not be surprised if he returns to this topic as president of the Church.) These are huge.
Practically, there have been a lot of small changes, with the most recent being women as Sunday School Presidents. I can understand feeling underwhelmed by them, but it shows that leadership are thinking about the topic on an ongoing basis and willing to make changes. Some of the most important changes haven’t been explicitly about women. For example, the emphasis on ward and stake councils rather than bishops and stake presidents just running things has given women much more influence. Shifting some responsibilities from bishops to Elder’s Quorum and Relief Society Presidents has done the same.
Church culture is behind the Handbook on this in a lot of ways. As a concrete example, when my stake’s Relief Society President felt impressed that she and her counsellors should have speaking assignments like the high councilors, the stake president’s response was “I like it, but let’s check the Handbook.” Turns out that’s what it already said. Usually it’s more subtle, like women feeling that if they need spiritual counsel they should go to their bishop rather than their Relief Society President.
I completely disagree that we’re out of runway on this. According to the Handbook, both missionary work and temple and family history work in a ward are led by a man and a woman working as partners, with the bishop just “coordinating.” In my experience we’ve got a ways to go just to make that vision reality, and I can easily imagine more of the work of a ward being put under similar arrangements. I wonder if we’re in the early stages of dividing the role of bishop (temporal affairs + youth) from the role of presiding high priest (spiritual affairs), but precedent so far would make the Relief Society President a partner with the hypothetical presiding high priest rather than subordinate to him. (“Presiding” doesn’t really count.)
Ordain Women’s theory of the case was that the men running the Church thought women were happy with how things were, so they weren’t getting revelation on the topic because they weren’t asking. I never found this at all plausible–the Church’s practices on gender are so out of line with the modern world that leadership has to be constantly aware of that fact. But if you do buy it, then you can spin a story where Ordain Women burst that bubble and caused all the changes I described. I’m dubious.
Personally, I think it’s more about generational shifts. Just think about how different the workforce was that President Hinkley joined in the 1930s, vs. the one President Oaks joined in the late 1950s, vs. the one Elder Gilbert (who is the same age I am) joined in about 2001. Completely different worlds for women. I don’t know how things will change going forward (though I doubt ordaining women to priesthood offices is in the cards) but I am sure they will continue to change.
sam brunson over at bcc had a great article on how allowing the yw to pass the sacrament is not a particularly heavy lift. his main points are that no where in the list of deacon/teacher responsibilities is passing the sacrament listed; in fact, it specifically says priests must administer the sacrament, so by definition, deacons/teacher do not administer it. he also pointed out that women pass sacrament every single sunday as they hand the tray to the person on their left or right.
i think one other point is the leadership saying “well, to do this (ordain women) we would need a revelation” and i think most reasonable church members would say “fine. go get a revelation. if it says yes, like overturning the priesthood ban, then do it. if it says no, then let us know and we’ll (most of us) be fine.” the issue is, as far as we know, because they wont tell us, THEY’VE NEVER ASKED!!!!!
I don’t think a vocal minority that demands radical change can take credit for positive changes while avoiding responsibility for creating the impression that they don’t care about harm to the institution. The Church was changing long before OW came on the scene, and it seems just as likely that OW slowed change rather than accelerated it. If you look at similar situations in politics, radical demands or actions are more likely to lead to backlash. Boring long-term persuasion that demonstrates genuine support for the institution is the way to achieve change, not defacing artwork or similar stunts.
“They’ve never asked” is simply not plausible on an issue that’s been prominent for over 50 years. Significant innovations require revelation, while maintaining tradition doesn’t.
I don’t think that the organization of auxiliary duties with regard to the sacrament is on that level (and note that the Catholics have both a male-only priesthood and both altar boys and girls), but following the instructions of the presiding high priest with respect to ordinances seems like the right idea.
I’m not convinced that there’ll ever be parity between men and women in the church vis-a-vis priesthood authority. But I do believe that we’ll see the emergence of something that ‘s more complimentary in nature. And perhaps we’re beginning to see it already in certain callings–something that looks more like Adam and Eve working together as priest and priestess.
Of course, I could be wrong–but if I’m not, and that’s the way the future really does look, then folks trying to forcefully import a system based on parity could very well be doing damage (echoing Jonathan though for different reasons) to the church’s efforts to unveil a matriarchal order that is intended to work along side the patriarchal order.
After all, I don’t think we should be too surprised to learn that the Kingdom–during the Millennium–might be governed through large familial systems rather than through wards and stakes–or any other kind of governmental system for that matter.
I wish more of you had lived through the years before blacks got priesthood. There was a minority agitating for that. Some of them were excommunicated. It took years and plenty of embarrassment in the press before the church finally caved…or maybe I should say “prayed about it and got some revelation.” And the same thing with surveys saying that the majority of members were happy with things the way they were. Then suddenly the church changes doctrine and everybody is saying, “finally. I have been praying for this for years? Funny that it was an apostate minority until it happened and then it was what everybody wanted.
I imagine it will happen pretty much the same way when women are given the priesthood. I don’t expect to live to see it, but when it happens, there will be almost no women saying, “oh, I don’t want the priesthood, so don’t ordain me.” Women do want the priesthood, but we have also lived all our lives being told it is evil of us to want it. And who wants to admit that they are so evil as to lust after being worth something in God’s eyes. No, women want to be faithful and if the church tells them that righteous women do not want priesthood, well, we want to be righteous more than we want priesthood. So, we do not dare admit that having priesthood so we can help bless a baby we just spent months of throwing up to get to this world. And we don’t dare say it would be handy in the middle of the night when a child is sick and our husband isn’t home, if we could give the child a blessing, instead of having to wait till a decent hour to call our neighbor over. Yes, women would want priesthood if we didn’t have to become apostate in order to admit to ourselves we want the power to act in God’s name and really do not understand why that is denied to us.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
*the temple was moved to Tooele, and Tooele County remained rural. A win-win.
Steven C.,
Kate Kelly was far more strategic than you’re giving her credit for. She understood that movements often require both disruption and diplomacy. She said every movement needs both “Malcolms and Martins” and she knew she was not the Martin.
She chose, deliberately, to be the disruptor in order to create urgency, and raise visibility. She knew she was NOT keeping her head safely down. She knew she was not in a fight where she could run away and live to fight another day.
That kind of imminent pressure she applied has always been part of how change happens. Accelerants are needed. And, she got results. So did Sam Young. We owe both a debt of gratitude, whether or not the church acknowledges that many of the changes they made were indeed a direct result of their work.
For generations, women in the Church have worked patiently and faithfully for change, happy for small policy changes. Frustrated. Hopeful. Much of the progress they have achieved has been lipstick on the pig. Meanwhile, the church is hemorrhaging its Gen Alpha (current primary/YW) daughters as they grapple with the patriarchy in a world where equality is their expectation (realistic or not).
Kate didn’t replace or minimize the efforts of strategic long-range LDS feminists. She just served in a different capacity – as the accelerator, the combustion. She was the Malcolm to their Martins.
That is not recklessness. It’s intentional, courageous leadership.
All sisters in the church should be saying “thank you, Kate Kelly”.