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The following is part 2 in a series of articles on difficult and controversial topics in LDS Church History and Doctrine taken from A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History. To see the previous installment, click here.
At the 2014 FairMormon conference, Sharon Eubank, director of LDS Charities and a former member of the Relief Society general board, delivered an address titled “This is a Woman’s Church.” At its conclusion, she received a standing ovation. During the Q&A, she again received a standing ovation with her confident reply to a question that could easily have caused others to stumble:
Question: What makes you, for lack of a better word, okay with not being able to hold the priesthood?
Answer: I believe that anyone who is endowed holds certain aspects of the priesthood, and the Church is just on the verge of understanding what that means.
At the same conference, Neylan McBaine was presented with the FairMormon Award of Excellence. Neylan is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Mormon Women Project, a non-profit website, which features weekly interviews with LDS women from around the world. It also focuses on women’s stories, women’s concerns, and features discourses by women authorities.
This conference was held seven months after Kate Kelly, the founder of Ordain Women, a group committed to see their organizational name fulfilled within the Church, had been excommunicated. Previous to her Church discipline, Kelly had shared her thoughts on multiple occasions with national audiences that, of course, included some Church members. Surveys indicate the silent female majority watched and tried to understand her motivations for changes they did not desire.
These three LDS women—Sharon Eubank, Neylan McBaine, and Kate Kelly—all acknowledged an ongoing opportunity for expanding women’s participation and contributions as the Church grows throughout the world. Yet, important differences are obvious between suggestions that conflict with accepted doctrines and those that function within them.
Keeping Up with Changing Times
In regard to current women’s issues in the Church, there seems to be few occupying the middle ground. On one extreme, there are those who advocate the ordination of women and the elimination of gendered segregation of any kind in the Church. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who are completely satisfied with the status quo. Neylan seeks to bring LDS members, both men and women, closer together.
In full disclosure, I admit that I lean more toward maintaining the status quo than to advocating sweeping changes. And that is why Neylan’s message is as important for me as for anyone.
Having published hundreds of interviews for the Mormon Women’s Project, she is familiar with the experiences of women and men who have dealt with the complicated dance of gender relations within the privacy of their own lives. She sees the pain of those who truly feel less in the Church and seeks to create a measure of balance, so that all will feel the Church is a safe and fulfilling haven of worship. In the process, she asks those with more conservative inclinations to stretch and do uncomfortable things in order for others to feel more included.
Beyond Words
Neylan McBaine is a doer. It is one thing to identify a problem and seek changes, but Neylan is an agent of transformation through facilitation and invitation. If she identifies a problem, she often offers a practical suggestion, adding perspective and ideas for how to improve. She asks women to similarly be assertive in their individual stewardship.
One young-adult reader had this to say about the chapter:
It gave me better insight into how some women feel in the Church. As I have been living in California and have been in a position of leadership in the Relief Society, I have encountered many who feel like their role in the Church is less than what a man’s role is. I have never felt that way, and it has been difficult to understand how to address these concerns that some of my sisters have had. I feel that Neylan McBaine has done a wonderful job at addressing these concerns and being able to still bring us together and build our faith.
Neylan translates the concerns of women in the Church who would like to see a more visible role for those who don’t see a pressing disparity. She skillfully explains why having sisters more visible and meaningfully involved is important for spiritual reasons as much as for worldly ones.
A Selection from “Latter-day Saint Women in the Twenty-First Century” by Neylan MacBaine from A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History:
For much of the twentieth century, the Church’s division of labor was in harmony with mainstream American culture: men and women typically occupied separate spheres, with the man in the workplace and the woman at home. That cultural dynamic was comfortably mirrored in Church structure, where men were responsible for public administration and women for private nurturing. That public/private division, however, is no longer the norm in our broader culture, and our youth are growing up without that formerly idealized division of gender roles. What our youth see and celebrate is that women around the world are benefitting from the explosion of rights and protections now given them by governments, institutions, and family culture. The strong cultural force driving toward the potential of women to gain education, fulfill their personal ambitions, earn money for their families, and have a public voice in all settings has undeniably resulted in a better quality of life for women worldwide.
It is not coincidental that this explosion of women’s voices and opportunities has corresponded with the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the last days. The founding of the Relief Society corresponded with a trend toward the improvement of women’s lives globally. Apostle Orson F. Whitney noted that the “lifting of the women of Zion . . . was the beginning of a work for the elevation of womankind throughout the world. . . . The spirit of women’s work [is] . . . one of those sunbursts of light that proclaim the dawning of a new dispensation.”1 What we are experiencing now in the liberation of women from historical strictures is “one of those sunbursts of light” delivered by the Restoration.
But the Church doesn’t appear to be facilitating the institutional opportunities that in our secular culture have resulted in so many open doors for our grandmothers, our mothers, and now us. Instead, the vast majority of leadership opportunities, of administration responsibilities, and of ecclesiastical oversight are the sole domain of men in the Church. On the one hand, the Restoration allowed the world to consider equal opportunities for women as for men, but on the other, in our own Church men and women’s opportunities to contribute are by divine mandate largely separated by gender. How are we to balance these two realities? . . .
To read more of Neylan McBaine’s chapter, “Latter-day Women in the Twenty-First Century,” check out A Reason for Faith, available at Deseret Book and online retailers like Amazon.com.
Be sure to subscribe to the free A Reason for Faith Newsletter for access to additional resources.
LAURA HARRIS HALES earned a master’s degree in professional writing from New England College. She works as a freelance copy editor. Along with her husband, Brian Hales, she maintains the website JosephSmithsPolygamy.org. Her five children—all avid truth seekers—never cease to amaze and inspire her.
Harold RustJune 6, 2016
I've known a great number of inspiring women in the Church and I don't think lack of holding Priesthood leadership positions has diminished their role in the least.
Harold RustJune 6, 2016
The interesting twist, in my personal view, is that if the tables were turned and women held all the administrative leadership roles in the Church, then these same women would be even more vocal in demanding change. The reality is that men in the Church don't actively seek to be called a Bishop or High Priest Group Leader. It is very possible that if the Priesthood were open to anyone, then many men might just gladly turn it all over to women. Again, in my opinion, men are not naturally as religiously inclined as women and by having these distinct responsibilities it keeps them about as involved in Church worship as the women overall. I think there is indeed a divine reason right now for men to be the ones given the Priesthood. In the end, we won't be any further ahead than women who haven't been so ordained.