I attended a Women's & Gender Studies Brown Bag Lunch Series titled "Mormon Women in America: Past, Present, and Future" by Karen Smyth on Wednesday, October 9th. We had the same speaker in our class in September talk about Twilight and the link with Mormonism.
Summary:
- There are fifteen million members in the church
- Second fastest growing religion after Islam
- It was founded in 1830
- They believe they are the true church of Jesus Christ
- They also believe that the are gendered while pre-mortal, mortal and eternal
- Humans have free will and agency but we should follow in the path of Jesus Christ
- Family and children are crucial to Mormons
- They believe that there are spirit beings before birth
- Therefore you should want to give bodies to as many spirit beings as possible
- They believe in a heavenly mother and heavenly father
- Jesus didn't pray to heavenly mother, so they don't
- The idea is that the mother shouldn't be slandered like the father often is
- 1st commandment for procreations is very important
- All males are priesthood holders
- 12 year olds and older
- 18 year olds and older can be leaders
- Polygamy was practiced in the religion from 1852 until 1890
- Latter Day Saints don't practice it
- Fundamental ones do
- African American men couldn't hold priesthood until 1978
Role of Women:
- Women are equal to men
- Women are appreciated and acknowledged but still separate
- Separate but equal
- Fathers are there for providing essential things for family
- Mothers are there for nurturing
- There are three groups of Mormon women
- Molly Mormons
- Moderate Mormons
- Feminist Mormons
- There is a sisterhood organization
- Auxiliary for the male organizations
- Identity as daughters of God
- The majority of Mormon women are happy within the church
- Some women have things that they see wrong with the church
Talked a lot about the latest Priesthood meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah:
- Women are not allowed into the priesthood meetings that are held
- Reason being that Jesus didn't call on women to be prophets and apostles and that was not accidental
- Have to follow in Jesus' path
- Women in the movement give the example of African American men and them being allowed just in the year 1978
- The response is that happened on God's time, not your time
- There is an Ordained Women's Movement
- ordainwomen.org
- "Mormon women seeking equality and ordination to the priesthood"
- Ordained women's movement peacefully gathered together to ask permission for entrench into the priesthood meeting that happened in October
- They were denied entrance
- Visibly upset
Overall, I enjoyed the event very much and learned a lot of things about Mormon women that I did not know.
I'm pretty sure that's the same woman who came and gave the talk about Twilight and Mormonism, which I thought was awesome. I'm so glad you liked the event! I really didn't have any interactions with mormonism until the talk she gave us a couple weeks ago. It's very interesting!
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that a lot of members of the Catholic Church see themselves as very separate from the Mormon church, just based on my experiences having been raised in a Catholic setting. I think this is interesting because I see a lot of similarities between the two faiths, namely that they believe they are each respectively the "true" church following of Jesus Christ, and the second being the exclusion of women from the priesthood. A note on the latter similarity is that even their reasoning given is the same - Jesus preached to only men, so men are the only ones with the capacity to lead/be a priest/etc. Which has obviously led to the exclusion of women in any major discussion or event of the leaders of the church.
ReplyDeleteOne of my best female friends from high school is converting to Mormonism and her baptism into the faith is set for the end of November. I have had a troubling time speaking with her about this as she has only been a part of the church for less than three months. From what she has spoken about and said of the Church of Latter Day Saints, it sounds disturbing to me. I am curious though if most women are happy within the church because most grow up in Mormon households and don't really understand that it doesn't have to be that way or if that's just my superiority thinking coming into play.
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