Critical online voices don’t represent the Latter-day Saint women I know

If you try to understand the church through the prism of power, it will never make sense to you. The church has a much bigger vision for women than anything being offered through such a limited worldview.

Last week, Latter-day Saint women gathered to hear from the general leadership of the Relief Society. Sister J. Anette Dennis spoke to concerns that some women feel about not being ordained to the priesthood.

She taught that although other denominations may ordain a few of their female members, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints extends priesthood authority and power to all women who make the appropriate covenants.

She declared “there is no other religious organization in the world that I know of that has so broadly given power and authority to women.”

While almost all the women I know were inspired by these remarks, I noticed online rhetoric was more divided (which tracks with my online experience more generally).

A recent BH Roberts Foundation survey found a majority of current Latter-day Saints support the church’s policy of priesthood ordination. When asked whether they believed the church should ordain women to the priesthood, only 1 in 5 expressed agreement. The survey found that supporting the ordination of women also correlated with dissenting views on other doctrinal questions.

Some interpreted Sister Dennis’ remarks as a dismissal of concerns expressed by women. A recent New York Times article describes this as a “groundswell,” conveying the idea that most women in the church somehow feel disenfranchised.

However, social media and even The New York Times is not always an accurate glimpse into how most women in the church feel.

Part of the problem, it seems, is that these conversations reveal two different visions of women’s equality, empowerment and happiness — differences that deserve more discussion.

Gender equality is a raw nerve in the U.S., one that tends to divide people strongly along generational and political lines. A recent Pew survey found a majority of U.S. adults — particularly women under age 30 — believe that being a man helps you get ahead in life and that being a woman holds you back.

Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to say that being a woman is socially and economically disadvantageous, which suggests narratives around gender and gender disparities have both partisan and personal significance.

Our larger culture has tended to take a liberationist view of gender equality, seeing traditionally female roles and occupations as restrictive or oppressive. Under a liberationist view, the only way to achieve parity with men is to liberate women from female roles to assume the same roles and occupations as men.

From this vantage point, the standard for female achievement is set by men. If men are more interested in engineering than, say, nursing or prefer sexual variety to commitment, the goal should be to reorder (“liberate”) society so that more women become engineers and prefer sexual variety.

However, scholars like Erika Bachiochi, Louise Perry and Mary Harrington, who coined the phrase “reactionary feminism,” have recently argued that traditional feminism has not only failed to achieve parity with men, it has disadvantaged women by committing them to a vision of womanhood that’s defined primarily by male interests.

Harrington defines reactionary feminism as “feminism (that) seeks to honor women by accepting as givens the things that make us human: our bodies and our relationships.” This is a contrast to those who sometimes portray uniquely female physical and emotional characteristics as inconvenient impediments to full equality.

These thinkers have sought to reimagine female equality on women’s terms, a project I believe applies to the Church of Jesus Christ.

Harrington argues that while traditional feminism sees marriage as “a patriarchal institution aimed at controlling women’s sexuality,” the reality is women bear a disproportionate amount of the burdens associated with uncommitted sex. Strong marital norms, she argues, actually favor women’s interests more than men’s.

The essence of reactionary feminism is that real equality for women can only be achieved when we account for the ways in which women are, on the mean, psychologically, emotionally and biologically distinct from men. Assertions to the contrary — that women don’t or shouldn’t differ from men in their interests and capacities — is a de facto establishment of men’s interests and capacities as the standard.

In the church, I see a vision of womanhood that not only acknowledges the ways in which a woman’s interests and natural capacities differ from a man’s, but which also celebrates these differences as eternally purposeful and empowering.

In my view, the differences between men’s and women’s roles in the church are an acknowledgement that womanhood is special and distinct from manhood and that the work of salvation requires not just the contributions of individual women, but of womanhood.

This of course includes women regularly leading, speaking and teaching in every Latter-day Saint congregation, as Carolynn Clark recently highlighted. It would be a false dichotomy to suggest these callings are somehow in opposition to uniquely maternal roles.

Still, the idea that women must participate in the church in precisely the same roles as men assumes the way men participate is superior, while simultaneously downplaying the value of uniquely feminine contributions to the plan of salvation, such as bringing forth and nurturing life.

If we assume the best indicator of a woman’s position in the church is not what she has, but what she lacks, we risk being blinded to the ways in which God has positioned women to wield disproportionate impact in the most critical of arenas.

For example, among educated elites in the United States and many Western countries, caring for children has increasingly become seen as insignificant and, at times, repressive. For those who consider caring for children as as a waste of a woman’s full talents and resources, it’s not surprising they might also take issue with the fact that the children’s ministry in the church is led solely by women. Although many men are called to teach primary classes, they are ultimately supervised by women.

There’s even a derogatory term used by some to belittle women whose speech is tender and warm or otherwise inviting to children: “primary voice.” The idea is that only when men take on more responsibility for leading the children’s ministry will women be free to do more important things. Yet Christ told his disciples that a child is the “greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” He also said that whoever received a child in his name receives Him and that it would be better to be drowned than to hurt one.

Children are the least of these. They are the most innocent, most vulnerable, most impressionable and most trusting. Childhood is the most foundational period of our lives, and so much depends on what happens there. At no other time will we more readily incorporate external messages about who we are, whether we are valuable and what kind of world we live in: knowable and just, or chaotic and hostile.

Adults wield incalculable influence over children. We don’t just teach them things. We populate the moral, spiritual and emotional vocabulary with which they will interpret and construct meaning throughout their lives. I know, from experience, how painful it can be to work from an incorrect or incomplete vocabulary and how difficult it is to correct.

Placing women at the head of the children’s ministry is not somehow demeaning. It is a sacred trust. It’s placing some of the most important work that can be done in this life directly in the hands of women.

Yet some will respond that even the primary president has to report to a man in the church’s organization.

Lurking beneath this idea that men in priesthood offices wield unfair influence over women is an assumption that priesthood offices are a means for exercising power over others. This is an impoverished way of conceptualizing both priesthood and the way power and influence work in God’s kingdom.

This view is, however, understandable given that our wider culture is grappling more and more with questions of power on everything from gender to politics and sexuality. In this atmosphere, it’s easy to see the stand at the front of the chapel as a place of status, or to assume that service without titles is invisible. But if you try to understand the church through a prism of power and power imbalances you are going to miss a big part of the picture.

God uses and understands power very differently from the way society does. As Christ said, “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant.”

When I look at the structure of the church, I do not see men lording power over women. I see men being made directly accountable to God for the well-being of those around them, including the vulnerable — a responsibility for which women would otherwise bear most of the burden.

It’s also the case that the burdens of uncommitted, selfish and irresponsible men are borne most by women and children. My own experience with this is perhaps why I’ve noticed the value in men taking on duties that instill within them a sense of compassion and responsibility for the welfare of others.

In the leadership structure of the church, I see men funneled into roles that aim to make them better for the women they share pews and pulpits with. I do not think we need more women taking on these exact same duties.

When we look at offices in the priesthood as formative — as preparing men to relate to others with compassion and wisdom — rather than merely as sources of power, we come to see a church that takes the well-being of women more seriously than any other institution on Earth.

Correction: An earlier version of this column misspelled Sister J. Anette Dennis’ name as “Annette.”