The chance to be counted

Dane Laverty (who blogs at Times & Seasons) has launched a new Web site, Agitating Faithfully. The purpose of the site is simple and singular: Dane is offering members the chance to say, “Yes, I would like to see the priesthood extended to women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” This is in contrast to sites like The Exponent and Feminist Mormon Housewives, which sometimes touch on women and the priesthood but often discuss a much broader range of issues, and organizations like WAVE, which has expressly stated that its purpose is not to advocate for women to receive the priesthood.
Agitating Faithfully builds on a 1997 interview wherein President Gordon B. Hinckley stated that women could potentially receive the priesthood in the future, but seems to indicate that part of the reason they have not is because members are not agitating for it. The site is meant to take President Hinckley at his word by giving members a venue to “agitate” for this cause. Members of the church who would like to see the priesthood extended to women are encouraged to sign their real names and wards.
A section has been created for non-Mormons to voice their support of seeing women receive the priesthood as well.
I think that the site is well-done and fills a much-needed place in the LDS feminist online landscape. I would encourage people who have expressed an openness to seeing women receive the priesthood to consider adding their names.

Comments

The chance to be counted — 23 Comments

  1. Yeah Jack,
    It’s awesome for church leaders to be able to scan the lists to see who to release from their callings. It saves the “correlation” blogs from having to collect that data and send it to the individual Bishops.
    Just kidding, If I was a Bishop and found one of my members on the list, I’d just give them 3-4 more callings, because obviously they don’t feel fulfilled with what they’re currently doing.
  3. Sorry Jack,
    But in the parlance of LDS-ism, trying to rock the boat and forcing the issue ultimately goes the opposite direction of where you want it to go. “Faithfully Agitating” has no hopes of the doctrine/(policy?) changing, but merely in trying to embarres the memory of GBH. You might think “signing” will somehow help, but it won’t. Look how long it has been online, and how fast has it grown? Not really an itch to be scratched by any sort of population.
    And, from my viewpoint, just because your child asks and makes a petition for you to let them hold a deadly-poisonous scorption doesn’t mean you will acquiesence, nor that your an unloving parent if you don’t. Priesthood is about responsibility, far more than worldly honors (something most non-Mormons) don’t seem to get.) Those who want more responsibility should be given more responsibility, imo. And if you really think giving someone more “callings” is giving them a rock, you really don’t understand Mormonism as well as you think you do, regardless of how many manuals you’ve read (or mined, as it were), or how many meetings you sit through with your husband. Somehow something’s not getting caught, it’s like you’re trying to catch flour with a sieve instead of a bowl. “He who will be greatest among you will be the servant.”
  4. Hi PC,
    According to WHOIS, the AF site was first registered on October 25, 2010. IIRC, Dane Laverty just launched the site publicly this month, and stated in one of his interviews that if he had 20 signatures by the end of the month of January, he’d be happy. As of this comment, he has 111 signatures from members and 4 from non-members, and January is far from done. I’d say the project is exceeding expectations exponentially.
    If you want to believe that the purpose of AF is to embarrass the church and the memory of GBH, that’s your call. Dane has said otherwise. Dane has also said that he does not believe the site will change the church’s policy on the matter, but that he intends it as a place where people can testify that they’d like to see change. That is all.
    It was Gordon B. Hinckley who said things like “we don’t hear any agitation for it” and “we don’t hear any complaining” when the issue of women and the priesthood came up. Tell me, PC: what’s the point of pointing that out if agitation and complaining aren’t allowed? Was President Hinckley being disingenuous?
    I agree with you that the priesthood is responsibility. I just don’t understand your point. Are you saying women need to be protected from having responsibility? Why?
    It’s not that I think giving someone callings is automatically giving them a rock. But if a woman is downtrodden because she isn’t permitted to baptize the children she shared her body with for over a year, how does giving her 3-4 callings that have nothing to do with baptism remedy that? You seem to think that all types of service are interchangeable and so long as a woman has access to some form of service, she’s good to go. I disagree.
    I’m sorry that we disagree, PC, but I sincerely don’t think our disagreement stems from any misunderstanding on my part of what the priesthood is and what it means. It stems from your inability to accept what not holding it is and what that means.
  5. Tell me, PC: what’s the point of pointing that out if agitation and complaining aren’t allowed? Was President Hinckley being disingenuous?
    Who knows.
    However, I do think that PC may have a point, this whole thing may be completely counterproductive. The church does not like to appear that it ever gives in to public opinion. Probably because that would make it look less like revelation. The advice from all sides (church leadership, liberal Mormons, and conservative Mormons) for changing the church is always the same, speak softly and carry a little stick. Don’t make too much noise, follow the proper priesthood channels, don’t ask for too much, be profusely grateful for any concession, and then shut your mouth on the issue.
    GBH’s reply was PR genius. Outside the LDS world, lack of agitation is seen as lack of interest, so he scores some amount of understanding with those outside the LDS flock. But agitating is the worst way to go about change inside the LDS church, according to just about everyone. You make yourself a target for apostasy charges, you make yourself a target for “steadying the ark” charges, and you probably make the GA’s dig in on the very issue you are trying to change.
    It’s really quite a masterful catch-22. That it also makes for good PR is just icing on the cake.
  6. I can’t believe this, I agree with David an two points!
    Tell me, PC: what’s the point of pointing that out if agitation and complaining aren’t allowed? Was President Hinckley being disingenuous?
    I agree with David. There’s no logical reason to insist that pointing out a fact (Case B doesn’t exist) means “If Case B exists then things will change). It certainly doesn’t have to be logically be understood as a call for input.
    The church does not like to appear that it ever gives in to public opinion.
    Exactly right. It’s so funny to listen to revisionist anti-Mormons claim that the church just bent in to social pressures on Polygamy and Blacks and the Priesthood to “avoid the hardness of doing what they believe.” If the prophets had decided to just bend, they would have done it when it was easy to. Like when the rest of the Protestant world decided to finally allow black people into their churches in the 60′s. Now while the LDS did withhold their priesthood (and hence temple attendance) til 1978, they were still welcome in the Church, and hence, qualified through the covenant for salvation. It would have been EASY to flip when the protestants did. Not 20 years later. It would have been EASY to flip when the first anti-Mormon, anti-polygamy law was signed and not decades later. Oh, and may I point out Jack, that many Protestants these days are giving in to the gay agenda in accepting as OK that which is abominable, because it is the easy thing to do, and because they reject prophets, prophecy, and the holy spirit (in deed, not necessarily in word).
    Of course, I disagree with David’s contextualizing of it all, so maybe everything’s still right in the world. In any case, I’m just beginning to view all non-Mormon Christians like this genius. Way to go Protestant Christianity!!!
  7. I adamantly disbelieve that any revelation of any kind was involved in OD-2. Nevertheless, I can say with confident and informed conviction that black people definitely did not get the priesthood because of popular agitation within the church.
  8. David ~ I agree that it’s possible that the effort could be counter-productive in terms of actually getting the church to change its policies. Then again, if the only things that the site accomplishes is to tangibly falsify the “we don’t hear anyone complaining” claim and allow Mormons who feel this way to see that they’re not alone and network with one another, then I think those are worthwhile results.
    PC ~ I agree that it does not logically follow that pointing it out is an invitation for it, but it still makes President Hinckley disingenuous for bringing it up if such is not the case. Imagine if he had said what you’re apparently telling me is the truth: “We don’t hear any complaining, we don’t hear any agitating for it. Oh, and just so you’re aware, complaining and agitating when one has a concern with how the church is run is not welcome in the first place.” The point about “no complaining, no agitating” would immediately become moot because people who might want to complain and agitate would not be doing so, being discouraged from it and all. Either complaining and agitating is welcome, or President Hinckley was making a duplicitous point to a non-LDS audience that didn’t know any better.
    There isn’t anything anti-Mormon or revisionist about believing that outside pressure affected the church’s policy changes on polygamy and blacks and the priesthood. In fact, it’s quite quixotic and ahistorical to think otherwise. The pressure for the church to change in each case did not stop suddenly with the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act or the Civil Rights Movement, it only intensified.
    “Your practice of polygamy is now illegal, and we might get around to sending an army across the country to stop you when we’re done fighting this messy Civil War” is certainly bad. But “Your practice of polygamy is illegal, and our army is now in place and we’re literally on the verge of seizing your property and dismantling your organization and tossing you into prison” is worse.
    “We dislike churches that institutionally discriminate against black people” is bad. But “We vehemently dislike churches that still institutionally discriminate against black people after all this time, and other college sports teams are boycotting participation with BYU, and we see that you’re building a temple in Brazil that hardly anyone will be able to use” is worse.
    Finally PC, you might think that the church’s resistance on this point is evidence that it accepts “prophets, prophecy, and the holy spirit,” that it’s really the LDS church that is radical and counter-cultural, but you’re forgetting that when the church instituted this policy in the 1800s, nothing could have been more commonplace and “safe” than discrimination against women. Ordaining women and granting them equal authority with men is the move that would have been radical and counter-cultural. Instead, on the ecclesiastical level, the church fell in line with the policies of a bunch of “apostate” Christian churches on the matter. Where’s the prophecy and the Holy Spirit in that?
    In any case, I’m just beginning to view all non-Mormon Christians like this genius. Way to go Protestant Christianity!!!
    PC, I’d like to take your words as charitably as possible, so let me please be sure I’m understanding you here. Is it really your intention to compare me to Robert Bentley simply because we disagree on the matter of women and the priesthood?
  9. Don’t get me wrong: I am definitely not saying that unhappiness (outside and in the Church) about the priesthood restriction was irrelevant to the history of OD-2. I think OD-2 certainly was inevitable, simply because of evolving cultural attitudes about race. But OD-2 happened when it happened because Kimball decided it was time. Lots of things [may have] contributed to his conclusion (if you’re a beliver, then I guess you believe revelation was part or all of it). Its hard to know, because he never ghave a lot of details. But at the end of the day, the restriction bothered him a lot, and he felt good about lifting it. So he did.
  10. PC, sometimes I whine about your rather bleak exit from Tim’s blog, because a certain level of entertainment disappeared. But then comments like your last one remind me how rude you actually were to people and I remember why I stopped reading your crap anyway. Way to go, Predictably Maladjusted Wet Blanket!!!
  11. Oh, really Whitney. Ouch. Good thing I don’t give a rip about your comments, seeing as they’re completely uninsightful. Well, I haven’t thought about you or your comments at all since I’ve stopped visiting Tim’s blog.
    Jack, No it was not my intention to compare you to Robert Bentley. And FWIW, it doesn’t bother me at all that you think that women should get the priesthood. But me complaining about Robert Bentley’s misunderstanding of Christianity is about as helpful as many of your complaints against Mormonism. You hold Mormons to an impossible standard, to which you would hold no other group, many of which I feel are unfair.
  12. Oh, really Whitney. Ouch. Good thing I don’t give a rip about your comments, seeing as they’re completely uninsightful. Well, I haven’t thought about you or your comments at all since I’ve stopped visiting Tim’s blog.
    ZING! Just kidding.
  13. It’s true. I don’t even try to contribute substance anymore. Mostly because once I figured out where I fell on the faith spectrum, I didn’t see much point in being completely condescending and disagreeable with others who were equally confident in views I simply reject and have no interest in debating anymore.
    But hey, good luck to you PC. It gets better.
  15. Well, PC, I guess we’re in agreement then that your reference to Robert Bentley was completely tangential and unhelpful.
    I don’t believe that I hold Mormonism to any standards that I don’t expect from my own religion. In this case, I want both groups to teach my daughter that she’s equal with men, and “equal” includes “equal in authority.”
    And I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
  16. There was a lot of outside pressure during the time of the most famous Mormon revelations ending polygamy (which needed to be done for Utah to become a state) and allowing blacks to have the priesthood (at a time when the civil rights movement had become more widely supported, which was not true in the 60s contrary to what psychochemiker said). Perhaps the Church could say that the agitation of Mormons for women to be allowed in the priesthood is a sign that God is sending a revelation that this is the right time for it to happen.
    It is important to remember that the Mormon Church has to remain attractive to its followers if it wants to be successful. If people feel that what the Church is teaching doesn’t match up with their morals, they might start to question whether it is the church for them. In America, you are free to choose your own faith, even if that means moving to another state where the faith you want is more common. Judging from the Pew Poll in the link below, Mormons switch to other denominations about as much as people of other churches (15% of Mormons, compared with 18% of Catholics and 7% of Protestants). And Mormons who leave religion all together is almost exactly the same as the other churches (14% of Mormons, 14% of Catholics, and 13% of Protestants). If the church doesn’t listen to those who feel like Jack about the Priesthood, then they are just going to create…well, more Jack Mormons!
    (at the end of the ‘Patterns of Conversion’ section)
  17. There was a lot of outside pressure during the time of the most famous Mormon revelations ending polygamy (which needed to be done for Utah to become a state) and allowing blacks to have the priesthood (at a time when the civil rights movement had become more widely supported, which was not true in the 60s contrary to what psychochemiker said). Perhaps the Church could say that the agitation of Mormons for women to be allowed in the priesthood is a sign that God is sending a revelation that this is the right time for it to happen.
    Honestly, unlike with polygamy, the Church had pretty much weathered the worst in terms of outside and inside pressure on the priesthood ban by ’78.
    Things kept popping up every couple of years, but there’s no real connection between the intensity of pressure and the date of OD-2. Certainly allowing blacks to have the priesthood was a convenient choice for the Church at any time in a post-Civil Rights society, but the history of OD-2 is way more interesting and complex of a poser than can be casually handwaved away by an appeal to “social pressure.” Spencer W. Kimball ended the ban–it was an intensely personal decision and we may never really know all the factors that were at work in his life and his thought processes, precisely because it was all framed by the narrative of sort-of-prophetic-revelation.
  18. Thank you Kullervo,
    I guess this was just a point someone who doesn’t obviously hold a stake in the argument must make well.
  19. Well, yes, Kimball’s decision was very personal and we may never know all of the background that went into it. But you can say that about anything, from Truman’s decision to use atomic bombs on cities in Japan, to Kennedy’s decision to risk nuclear war to block the Soviet ships and keep atomic bombs out of Cuba. But we can have a pretty good guess from the historical record and logical reasoning. Similarly, there may not have been direct threats of legal action all of the time because blacks were not allowed the priesthood, but there was a growing background swell of support for civil rights across the nation that wasn’t going up and down but rather steadily rising. Maybe a different Prophet would have opened the priesthood to blacks in the 1960s. Maybe a third would have waited until the 1990s. Maybe a fourth still wouldn’t have done it (though this would greatly decrease the Mormon conversions among African Americans, something the Church probably would not like). But I don’t think you can just write off the outside world as irrelevant just because you don’t know everything about what went on in Kimball’s head. We have some pretty decent clues.
  20. I certainly believe that Kimball’s reasons for issuing OD-2 were complex and multifaceted. But there’s no way I would say that external pressure was not a significant factor. That he didn’t issue it at the height of the Civil Rights Movement does not mean external pressure was not a significant factor, because the Civil Rights Movement signaled the beginning of the end for toleration of overt racism. It wasn’t like the Civil Rights Movement happened and pressure was high for a while, then everyone went back to being racist again and the ban on blacks was in the clear. It took time for public attitudes to shift to what they are now, but from the CRM onward, the public grew less and less accepting of blatantly racist policies and teachings. I think that part of the reason for OD2 was the realization that the ban on blacks was becoming unsustainable, both internally (the mess in Brazil) and externally (public toleration for racism was plummeting).
    Personally, I would like to think that Kimball was sincerely moved by the Spirit of God into issuing OD2. I’m willing to believe that the Spirit of God was working even if it wasn’t directly through Kimball. But none of that means that outside pressure wasn’t a factor. I firmly believe that both internal and external pressure can be a tool in God’s hands towards moving people towards fulfilling his will. It doesn’t have to be an either/or thing.
    I would say similar things about external pressure and certain evangelical events that I view as inspired. Bob Jones University issued an apology for its past racism a few years ago; I think external pressure was a motivating factor for that. Christian Egalitarianism really took off in the late 1960s / early 1970s, and I think second wave feminism was a catalyst for that. Etc.
    I hope to get to the comments on my polygamy posts and be back to blogging with part 3 of my polygamy series tomorrow.
  21. I’m certainly not saying that external/public pressure was irrelevant. I’m just saying that it is not anything like a complete explanation. There were internal factors (different interrelated ones among lay Mormons, Mormon scholars, institutional/administrative difficulties, and even evidence of disagreement among the Q12), there were external factors (not much could be done directly against the Church in a legal sense but a lot of creative indirect pressure was certainly leveled), and then there’s whatever was going on in Kimball’s head.
    I’m saying it was complex, that’s all, in a way that undermines the easy snipe that the Church simply caved to public outcry.
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