You would think that at some point we would learn from past experiences with priesthood bans.\u00a0 Concerning the priesthood and temple ban against people with black African ancestry, President Dallin H. Oaks noted that:<\/p>\n
Some people put reasons to the one we\u2019re talking about here, and they turned out to be spectacularly wrong.\u00a0 There is a lesson in that. \u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019m referring to reasons given by general authorities and reasons elaborated upon \u2026 by others.\u00a0 The whole set of reasons seemed to me to be unnecessary risk taking. \u2026 Let\u2019s don\u2019t make the mistake that\u2019s been made in the past, here and in other areas, trying to put reasons to revelation.\u00a0 The reasons turn out to be man-made to a great extent.[1]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
While I think it\u2019s apparent from my previous post<\/a> that I don\u2019t agree with President Oaks’s conclusions about the nature of the ban and its relationship to those rationales, I do agree with his point that it is better to use no rationales than it is to use faulty rationales.<\/p>\n
Now, our other priesthood ban is the one against women holding the priesthood.\u00a0 While it\u2019s not entirely analogous (women haven\u2019t been ordained to priesthood offices in the modern Church and there have been no indications given by Church leaders that this will change in the future), I feel like this idea is still relevant.<\/p>\n
One of the main rationales I\u2019ve heard is that men are innately less righteous than women, so they need priesthood offices and service to push them further in order to be saved (while women do not). This idea is the one recently stated by Brad Wilcox in his now-infamous talk when he said that:<\/p>\n
What else don\u2019t women have? Priesthood ordination. They\u2019re not ordained to the priesthood. \u201cWell, how come they\u2019re not ordained to the priesthood?\u201d Maybe we\u2019re asking the wrong question. Maybe we should be asking, \u201cWhy don\u2019t they need to be\u201d \u2026 So what is it that sisters are bringing with them from a premortal life that men are trying to learn through ordination? Maybe that\u2019s the question that ought to be keeping us up at night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is a way of saying that women are innately superior to men, and therefore don\u2019t require priesthood ordination to be saved, unlike men.\u00a0 In other words, the idea is that women are on a pedestal while men are worse-off and in need of an extra boost, and it is used to smooth over privileges given to men by making it seem like women are in the better position despite not being allowed access to those privileges.<\/p>\n
While I\u2019ve heard this idea repeated many times during my years in the Church, I don\u2019t find it satisfactory for a number of reasons.\u00a0 First among these is the idea that everyone has a fighting chance to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.\u00a0 As Peter the Apostle explained: \u201cGod shows no partiality,\u00a0but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 And as Paul put it, we are expected to \u201cwork out your own salvation with fear and trembling;\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 And, as he added elsewhere, \u201cAs many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 To suggest that men are less likely to be saved and that they need the additional growth opportunities of priesthood service is to suggest that God is partial to daughters over sons, that He doesn\u2019t work as well in enabling men to will and to work for his good pleasure, and that male and female are not one in Christ Jesus.<\/p>\n
In addition to this theory, one thing that has been expressed is that women aren\u2019t missing out on that much by not being ordained to the priesthood.\u00a0 As Wilcox stated at another point in his talk:<\/p>\n
Girls, listen closely, because I don\u2019t know that you\u2019ll ever have somebody explain it quite this point blank again. You have access to\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0priesthood blessing. There is not one priesthood blessing that you are denied. And you serve with priesthood authority. When you are set apart in a class presidency or you\u2019re set apart as a missionary or in any calling in the church, you serve with priesthood authority. You will go to temples where you will be endowed with priesthood power, and you will dress in priesthood robes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s a statement that women have access to basically all the same necessary things as men who can be ordained to the priesthood, something that Church leaders have been discussing over the last decade.\u00a0 The problem is that combining these two ideas creates a nonsensical situation where women are supposedly not missing out on anything by not being ordained while men need to be ordained because they get something that helps to push them towards salvation (and thus women are<\/em> missing out on something that men receive through the priesthood).<\/p>\n
In any case, the concept is, at its root, a more palatable update to a more overtly misogynistic version of the same idea from earlier times. \u00a0As articulated by President Brigham Young on one occasion: \u201cWomen \u2026 will be more easily saved than men. \u00a0They have not sense enough to go far wrong.\u00a0 Men have more knowledge and more power; therefore they can go more quickly and more certainly to hell.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Many early Church leaders were raised in a culture where women were seen as having lesser capacities than men but more likely to be saved.\u00a0 That idea was also tied to the belief that polygamy was necessary because far more women would be saved than men.\u00a0 The current rendition doesn\u2019t say that women are inherently less intelligent, which is an improvement at least, but it is still rooted in these deeply sexist views.<\/p>\n
That same culture that early Church leaders were raised within led some men to argue against giving women the right to vote.\u00a0 Despite Utah Territory being one of the first areas in the United States to give women the vote, there was some opposition to including that right in the Utah State Constitution, particularly on the part of Elder B. H. Roberts.\u00a0 He stated that one of his reasons for opposing women\u2019s suffrage was that engaging in politics would ruin the blessed state of women: \u201cIt was part of wisdom for women to keep separate and apart from such places and such embroilments, that they might not become the subjects of jest and gibes of low-down characters whose mouths you cannot stop.\u201d\u00a0 He added that: \u201cShe is in danger of sacrificing that which is dearer than the ballot to every sensitive woman\u2014that she is in danger of sacrificing that sensitiveness of soul, in danger of sacrificing the high regard of men, which ever goes with true womanhood.\u201d It\u2019s notable that he held women to a higher standard than men, noting that while quarreling and arguing among men was \u201cdegrading and disgraceful to them,\u201d he felt that, \u201cten times more would we feel the disgrace had women been engaged in it.\u201d He even compared political participation to chewing tobacco, which he believed was \u201ca vice, a hundred times more disgusting in her than in man.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Roberts believed that women were too good to be involved in politics and used that as an argument in favor of excluding them, which has some parallels to arguments made about women being more likely to be saved from men and therefore too good to be involved in priesthood.<\/p>\n
One final, more personal, reasons is that stating that women are superior to men as an excuse to withhold the priesthood from women is a sexist idea that cuts both ways.\u00a0 It impacts the role that women have in the Church, but it also tells men that they are worth less in the eyes of God (in a backwards sort of way).\u00a0 I was raised in a feminist household, so hearing about how men are less intelligent than women at home combined with hearing rhetoric like this at Church led me to deeply internalize the idea that I was inferior because of my sex.\u00a0 While I recognize that I am still in a place of privilege because I\u2019m a man in the Church, my main point here is that teaching that women are more righteous by nature is something that is ultimately harmful to both women and men.<\/p>\n
Thus, there are several good reasons to not use the idea that men need priesthood ordination and service to push them through to exaltation while women do not.\u00a0 First, to state this is to suggest that God does not treat everyone equally.\u00a0 Second, combining this idea with other defenses of not ordaining women creates a jumble of contradictory ideas. \u00a0Third, the idea has roots in extremely sexist ways of viewing things.\u00a0 Fourth, similar ideas were used to advocate against women\u2019s suffrage, but as was noted by Abby Hansen recently:<\/p>\n
Choosing who to vote for was described as a burden that men took on reluctantly, but heroically. Many women believed that was the case for a very long time, until they realized that it wasn\u2019t true at all. Having power and being involved in decision making (not by just influencing the men in their lives, but by actually having a vote themselves) wasn\u2019t a burden \u2013 it was a blessing![7]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And fifth, it\u2019s a sexist idea that causes harm to both women and men. \u00a0Together, these reasons make me doubt that claiming that women are inherently superior and thus don\u2019t need priesthood ordination while men do need it is a good idea.<\/p>\n
Which brings me back to my original point.\u00a0 We need to stop perpetuating bad ideas in defense of practices in the Church.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why women aren\u2019t ordained to the priesthood.\u00a0 What I do know, though, is that it is better to say that we don\u2019t know why something is the way it is than it is to make up ideas that have no basis in the scriptures or revelations and which end up causing more harm than good.\u00a0 It is better to use no rationales than it is to use faulty rationales.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Footnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> Dallin H. Oaks, cited in \u201cApostles Talk about Reasons for Lifting Ban,\u201d\u00a0Daily Herald,<\/em>\u00a0Provo, Utah [5 June 1988]: 21 [Associated Press]; reproduced with commentary in Dallin H. Oaks,\u00a0Life\u2019s Lessons Learned: Personal Reflections<\/em>\u00a0[Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 2011], 68-69<\/p>\n
[2]<\/a> Acts 10:34-35, NRSV.<\/p>\n
[3]<\/a> Philippians 2:12-13, NRSV.<\/p>\n
[4]<\/a> Galatians 3:27-28, NRSV.<\/p>\n
[5]<\/a> Cited in William Hepworth Dixon, New America <\/em>(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1867), 241.<\/p>\n
[6]<\/a> Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention Assembled at Salt Lake City on the Fourth Day of March, 1895, to Adopt a Constitution for the State of Utah, Volume I. (Star Printing Company, Salt Lake City, 1898), 587, https:\/\/images.archives.utah.gov\/digital\/collection\/3212\/id\/10083<\/a><\/p>\n
[7]<\/a> Abby Hansen, \u201cWhat Do You Do When Brad Wilcox and John Bytheway No Longer Have All the Answers?\u201d, 8 February 2022, Exponent II<\/em>, https:\/\/www.the-exponent.com\/what-do-you-do-when-brad-wilcox-and-john-bytheway-no-longer-have-all-the-answers\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You would think that at some point we would learn from past experiences with priesthood bans.\u00a0 Concerning the priesthood and temple ban against people with black African ancestry, President Dallin H. Oaks noted that: Some people put reasons to the one we\u2019re talking about here, and they turned out to be spectacularly wrong.\u00a0 There is a lesson in that. \u2026 I\u2019m referring to reasons given by general authorities and reasons elaborated upon \u2026 by others.\u00a0 The whole set of reasons seemed to me to be unnecessary risk taking. \u2026 Let\u2019s don\u2019t make the mistake that\u2019s been made in the past, here and in other areas, trying to put reasons to revelation.\u00a0 The reasons turn out to be man-made to a great extent.[1] While I think it\u2019s apparent from my previous post that I don\u2019t agree with President Oaks’s conclusions about the nature of the ban and its relationship to those rationales, I do agree with his point that it is better to use no rationales than it is to use faulty rationales. Now, our other priesthood ban is the one against women holding the priesthood.\u00a0 While it\u2019s not entirely analogous (women haven\u2019t been ordained to priesthood offices in the modern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought","category-women-in-the-church"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42559"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42561,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42559\/revisions\/42561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}