My name is Grace, and I am reaching out to you as a distressed member of the church. Heads up! Everybody deserves fair warning, right? ;) I am writing this letter with no address or permission to send it to you, so here it goes. I'm writing this to you after the conclusion of General Conference, as I feel troubled.
I watched Women’s Session yesterday evening from the solitude of my bedroom, where I was quarantining pending a COVID test result. (Negative. We’re good!) I struggled with Women’s Session. I loved every talk up until the Brethren started talking. Their words felt out-of-touch, and not just because they’re men. They felt out of touch because the way that they were speaking carried heavy tones of sexism. President Eyring outright stated that there would be more women in heaven than men!
Equality in our church led me through a faith crisis when I got married, and had to face the bitter reality that my husband did NOT fit the image of an elusive knight in shining armour who was going to save me, like I had been led to believe, but was, in fact, just my equal. The wording in the temple, at the time, drove home the fact that our church held, in doctrine and practice, the standard of inequality. My husband WAS supposed to be seen as that savior to me, coming between me and my god. Getting married was the biggest demotion I’d ever received. Things are better, now, but my husband is still assigned the role to “preside” in the temple, something that by very definition is not equality.
President Eyring’s passing comment hurt me immensely, and brought back a flood of anger and upset. See, when I was in college, at BYU-Idaho, some well-intentioned teacher had taught in a class the old doctrine that there would be no female “Sons of Perdition.” I remember stewing on it for months, and upon returning home, one night devolved into a weeping mess with my mother in her bed. “It’s not fair!” I cried. “It’s like women just aren’t worth as much! It’s like we’re less accountable! I can’t even go to Hell if I want to!” My mother righteously corrected me, for which I will always be grateful. “Oh trust me.” she calmed. “You can go to Hell.”
President’s Eyring’s statement that there would be more women in Heaven than men was reminiscent of this old doctrine that caused me so much pain. Only two logical conclusions can be drawn, if we are to believe this statement.
First - Women are less accountable than men. (Those sweet, sweet spirits…)
Second - Men are naturally just more terrible.
I reject both of these notions. Men and women are different, yes. But as the adage goes, “Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.” Women may not murder as many people, but we definitely aren’t “just better.” I have sons. I have a husband. I reject that as pure, though perhaps well-intentioned, sexism. My concern is that this tradition is carried forward and being taught because it has, historically, been used as a justification for polygamy - if there are more women in heaven than men, polygamy is justified. It is being taught, however, without appreciating the more significant implications about worth and equality.
In this church there is no equality between the genders. I can appreciate there are differences between genders, but this is a church that serves men more than women. The Relief Society Presidency doesn’t speak in Priesthood Session of conference. Why do the Brethren feel the need to step all over this rare opportunity we have, as women, to have a session just for us? To actually hear women speak in a way that we relate to, and feel heard! Do the men not trust us women, or see us as capable, to handle one of ten sessions each year on our own?
I am reminded of President Chieko Okazaki who, tactfully, expressed her disappointment that the Relief Society Presidency was not consulted with, in the writing of the Family Proclamation. In a church where women’s needs, concerns, and insights are seen as an afterthought or a token voice, there will be no equality. (Don’t even get me started on our blatant anti-ERA past, subservient to the Brethren Relief Society callings, etc.)
I mentioned that inequality in the church led me through a faith crisis. I have given my entire life to God. I have been an active, temple recommend holder my entire life. I receive regular personal revelation. I feel confident in saying that I know God, and that God approves of me. I love and trust God more than anything, and have taken countless risks in my life because God told me too, and I learned to trust. It was declining a job offer. Going on a mission. Marrying my husband. (I had some real commitment issues, and God had to hit me multiple times over the head, including with direct words, that I needed to marry that man.)
I have followed God through all of these challenges, trials, and risks, and I include the risk that I have felt directed to in my faith crisis. God has told me to disagree. God has told me to say unpopular things, and study our unpopular history. I have come to conclusions about many of these things, conclusions that are unpopular. I let my temple recommend lapse, and have felt nothing but God’s blessing and support for the decision I made to act with integrity in that decision to do so. It hurts. It hurts to feel like my church, my “tribe,” views me as “less than” for doing what God has told me to do, and believing what God has told me is true. But I trust God well enough to know that I should press on.
I am hurting in this church. I hurt because of this church every day. But I stay, because like Eugene England stated, “The church is as true as the gospel.” You just don’t become a better person in any other setting, and yes, that is often through trials.
I reach out to you because I don’t want inequality to be one of those trials for me anymore, or for anybody else. I know I stand with God on the issue - that I can go to Hell like any man, and I will gain exaltation through the same judgement which will be meted my brothers! I am not a fragile thing to be pedestaled and admired from a distance, but rather a comrade, a “helpmeet” in the purest form.
I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done, realistically. It has been a long time since I have felt the blind belief that the church would only ever help me. But I hold out hope that many of our leaders are genuinely good people trying to do what is right. Surely, if they heard my cries, they would do something to fix it, wouldn’t they?
I am a woman with a lot of faith in God, and not very much in man. (God is okay with this.) I know I am not the only one suffering in this way. Heck, there are support groups with thousands of members trying to stay actively engaged in the church despite their nuanced beliefs and differences.
Will the church make a place for feminists? I’m not asking you to Ordain Women. (Secretly, I feel like we regressed there a bit, but I’m not going to push it.) I just want to know that women are equal, and though we’ve made significant steps in the right direction, in the words of a friend of mine, “I’m just so tired of being expected to be grateful for crumbs.”
Can the general Relief Society Presidency operate a little more independently? Call their own successors like the brethren do? Can we have Women’s Sessions where a man doesn’t demand the final word by virtue of his divine authority? Where, maybe, men don’t even feel entitled to give their opinion or speak at all? In the least, can we have a Women’s Session where we don’t have to be subjected to patronizing, pedestaling tones from the men, and veiled attacks on our equality, or constant reminders of our “place” in the priesthood, beneath the brethren? (Priesthood does NOT equal “the ability to pray to God and get God’s help,” so no, women don’t have it in the sense that the men do, no matter how we try to spin it.)
I’m sorry. I know my tone gets grumpy. I’m really tired of the struggle. I’m tired of losing friends and family to the struggle. I have had so many friends and family members step away from the church because of these mortal problems, and the fact that leadership seems unwilling to recognize or admit to the mortality of these problems. Fallibility is written into our doctrine, and yet it is so hard to admit to, at times. It is admitting Brigham Young said crazy things. It’s admitting we were wrong when we said it was doctrine that blacks couldn’t have the priesthood until every white man had it. I’m obviously very open to the idea that polygamy could have been a mortal invention. But knowing that there have been mortal mistakes made and claimed as doctrine DOES leave the door open for changes in these matters of equality. Do we truly believe in equality between men and women, like the Book of Mormon states, or do we just pay it lip service while still placing exclusively men at the top of the chain of every command?
I was frustrated, during COVID, that our Area Authority vetoed our ability to hold online church services locally. I am someone that very much appreciates fellowshipping with the saints, despite all my opinionated ways making me rough around the edges. I joined with wards in other parts of the world, but eventually, my frustration with what I deemed to be an unrighteous ruling vetoing local online services led me to finding local online services outside of our faith.
I attended online services with Community of Christ, and found beautiful fellowship there. I glimpsed equality in the church, and knowing that it was the church of the son of Joseph helped me see that equality was and is possible. Reading the history of Emma Smith, I know that equality is possible. Equality is certainly compatible with the vision Joseph Smith Jr had, though it is far from what exists presently.
I want to belong in this church. I find value in our rituals, in our teachings, in the empowering relationships with deity that are fostered and grown from our earliest youth. We are a church of service, of goodness and kindness. At times we are mortal and we screw up, but I hope that we can continue to strive for a Zion society of equality, and not let fear of looking “mortal” hold us back from progressing forward when we recognize or learn new truths.
A sincerely trying member,
Grace
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