- Kent Larsen on What Was Revealed to You In Church (Or What Did Church Lead You to Think About Yesterday), 4/19)?: “Here are a few of the things I thought about because of attending Church meetings yesterday (4/12): One speaker in Sacrament meeting (an actor) looked at preparing for a performance as a metaphor for practicing faith. I think something is there. We often look at faith as some kind of discrete mental process, and not as a learned, practiced thing similar to training a muscle or learning how to pronounce something. There’s something to be gained from looking at it as practicing faith instead of deciding to somehow be faithful. Later, in Sunday School, someone commented that faith is not Sysiphussian — its not a slog that we have to do over and over again just to stay in the same place. I thought that was a great point. In Sunday School, we read a chapter of the scriptures for the lesson by going person by person, each one reading a verse. Maybe you’ve seen the same thing happen in your classes. I suppose that could be a way to eat up time, or cover for a lack of preparedness — but I think its also a way of involving the whole class in the lesson — you can’t read something and not connect with what it says at least a little. Depending on how its done, I think it can be very effective. Another comment in Sunday School talked about repetition in ordinances. The commentator was a Temple Worker, and said he had done some ordinances hundreds of times. He observed that finding the Lord in the repetition can be surprising and valuable. I agree — repetition can either dull our senses and allow us to tune out, or it can focus us and make us carefully consider the details, if we will focus on it. A reminder: Please focus on what you learned or how you reacted to church, not on your criticism of what was wrong or what someone did that was wrong. This thread isn’t about criticizing, its about realizing the vast amount we can learn by thinking about what happened in Church and listening for what will be revealed to us there.” Apr 20, 12:47
- on The Ordain Women Movement in Retrospect: “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”.” Apr 20, 11:01
- on A Theology of Absence: Rosalynde Welch on the Poetry of the Old Testament: “Congratulations again this week to a couple more T&S alumni, probably the two most skillful writers to have regularly posted here.” Apr 18, 17:58
- 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
