This Saturday, April 6th, 2013 (the 183rd anniversary of the LDS Church's founding) while faithful Mormon men the world over attended the man-datory Priesthood Session of General Conference, about 100 people (mostly women) gathered on the University of Utah campus in solidarity and support of female Priesthood ordination.
The event-organizer for these unorthodox-orthodox Saints is faithful Mormon, Kate Kelly, a human rights attorney, who claims the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, always intended for women to function fully and equally within the holy Priesthood he restored. Kelly notes that the female Relief Society was designed to function in perfect parallel with the male organization, with a President and 2 counselors who served, not for a short few-years term as they do now, but for life, just as the Apostles do.
Kelly also highlights the fact that women often performed blessings of healing by the laying-on-of-hands in the first decades of the Restoration.
And as all "endowed" women know, Temple matrons perform Priesthood ordinances daily as part of the Endowment ceremony. During the Washings and Anointings, women lay hands on other women's heads and invoke the Priesthood. The Endowment ceremony is essentially a Priesthood ordination and the "garment" you receive in that ceremony is properly called the Garment of the Holy Priesthood.
A memorable couplet repeated in every Endowment Session is "They are hereafter Kings and Queens, Priests and Priestesses".
Is there any hope a grassroots campaign might eventually move the Brethren to change policy and afford faithful women a more equal place in the Church?
Surprisingly, yes...maybe.
Only 8 hours before the rally for Female Ordination was held, there was a momentous break with tradition when Sister Jean Stevens offered the first female led prayer in an LDS General Conference, only 4 few months after an online campaign was launched to "Let Women Pray":
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mormons-gather-utah-semi-annual-conference-18896328#.UWHeG6JkybA
The Church insists that the Spring Conference itinerary was selected long before the social-media outcry, but only Sister Stevens can confirm that she was asked to give the invocation before "Let Women Pray" was launched.
Does this historic prayer signal a new day in gender egalitarianism within the Church?
Well...
Shortly before Sister Stevens rose to the pulpit, Elder Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said this to a global Mormon audience:
"Men and women have different but equally valued roles... Just as a woman cannot conceive a child without a man, so a man cannot fully exercise the power of the priesthood to establish an eternal family without a woman."
(Scientific Aside)
What if we were to tell Elder Ballard that many women have conceived children without ever having had sex with a man?
(He'd probably argue that they still used a male donor.)
But what if we showed him that scientists have fertilized a female mouse's ovum with another female's DNA, producing completely healthy female offspring?
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Look-Moms-no-dad-Mice-born-in-Japan-from-2789992.php
(He'd probably insist it required a male scientist!)
And the Virgin Mary?!
(He'd probably say that the virgin birth was a miracle by God and God's a dude.)
There's just no arguing with some people.
Tackling this issue head on in behalf of all progressive Mormons is Joanna Brooks on her blog Ask Mormon Girl:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/joannabrooks/7008/
A post soon to follow this will address the ever strained relations between the Church and LGBT rights.
-Joe
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