So Ordain Women is a hot topic these days and a big enough deal to be directly addressed, even if dismissed, by our GA's. So I would like to lay out the merits of each case so that an informed opinion may be drawn.Here is what Joseph Smith had to say about women healing the sick by the laying on of hands:
"Respecting the female laying on hands, he further remark’d, there could be no devils in it if God gave his sanction by healing— that there could be no more sin in any female laying hands on the sick than in wetting the face with water— that it is no sin for any body to do it that has faith, or if the sick has faith to be heal’d by the administration." Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book page 36
Mary Magdelene was known as "The Apostle to the Apostles" in the early Christian community. Women were at that time allowed to perform blessings and healings and to minister to whoever they felt moved to minister to.
What the Ordain Women group is asking for is that our prophets, seers, and revelators pray and ask for permission to ordain women as the 1978 revelation allowed black men the priesthood for the first time in our Church after about 130 years of being denied temple rites and ordinances.
And from the book Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkie there is this excerpt:
Priestesses. See CALLING AND ELECTION SURE, CELESTIAL MARRIAGE, ENDOWMENTS, EXALTATION, KINGS, MELCHIZEDEK PRIESTHOOD, PRIESTHOOD, PRIESTS, QUEENS. Women do not have the priesthood conferred upon them and are not ordained to offices therein, but they are entitled to all priesthood blessings. Those women who go on to their exaltation, ruling and reigning with husbands who are kings and priests, will themselves be queens and priestesses. They will hold positions of power, authority, and preferment in eternity.
So women will hold the priesthood and be queens and priestesses in eternity just not in the here and now. But why not build up the kingdom of God on Earth as it is in Heaven? Why deny women the priesthood, that they will receive in the hereafter, in the here and now?
Deny that there is sexism in our culture and even in our church I think is dangerously delusional. But then so is over playing it. If we are to come to any agreement we must first have open and even painfully honest talks about how sexism influences the decisions of our leadership and how women are not afforded equal authority in our church precisely because of their being denied the priesthood while on Earth.
There is an article detailing why some women will not be a party to the Ordain Women movement. Please read that link to hear out the opposition to the Ordain Women movement. The basis is simply that men and women have different roles and that those roles are eternal. But I don't buy that gender roles are Biblically mandated or rather I reject the gender roles as defined in scripture because I don't feel that women are property or that I want my brother to marry my wife after I die. I feel that those roles are arcane and at times just wrong. Like demanding a rape victim marry her rapist.
Isn't this where we are supposed to carefully consider all information and pray about it to attain further clarity and receive through personal revelation an answer to our queries? Now not all personal revelations will agree or find the same answers but this I feel is a follow your own truth where ever it leads you. Even if others are mislead if you follow the spirit where ever it leads you then you have nothing to fear and others who disagree are responsible for their own reactions and words.
I have yet to receive anything in the way of any answer on this but I do see the merits of the arguments for and also against but I have a soft spot for the Ordain Women movement. I don't see the harm in asking for them to pray on it, I do see a problem with our leaders refusing to do so. The reason is that aren't prophets, seers and revelators supposed to prophesy, see and reveal? How is this any different from the push to get our leadership throughout the 60's and 70's to do the same for black men?
Here's what Apostle N. Eldon Tanner said in 1967: "The church has no intention of changing it's doctrine on the Negro. Throughout the history of the original Christian church, the Negro never held the priesthood. There's really nothing we can do to change this. It's a law of God."
And here we have Dalin H. Oaks this last weekend "They(women) are not free to alter the divinely decreed pattern that only men will hold offices in the priesthood."
Sounds like the same argument right? That's because it is. Except that Spencer W. Kimball was allowed to correct one error that it turns out was not a divine decree but rather a matter of policy decreed by Brigham Young. You can find my post about that here and the LDS.org article saying much the same here.
So we have the church currently teaching something very different about the priesthood now than in 1967. I have to wonder if there will be a time when something very different is preached about women and the priesthood.
Maybe women should have it and maybe they shouldn't but what's the harm in asking, in starting a dialogue? I have to wonder why the hostility toward the Ordain Women group, but the biggest problem I see is what people say and how they treat anyone who disagrees with whichever position one takes on this issue. It solves nothing and only creates more animosity and hurt.
Ordain Women is asking for more than just the priesthood; they're asking to be on the same footing as men in regard to where we go from here as a church, a role they do not have so long as not having the priesthood bars them entry into such lofty positions within our church.
The push for gender equality I can and do support.
