Women in Church

Random notes.  Do not mistake them for settled views (or dogmatic ones).

I have been thinking about the role of women in Mormonism in light of recent interest in ordaining them to the priesthood.  I definitely think that there needs to be an evolution in Mormon culture that makes women peers to men.  I don't think they are at present, and I don't think they can be made such without some serious adjustments to the status quo (adjustments that people will notice and react to, not always with appreciation or unmixed happiness).

That said, I am not sure the best solution to the lack of parity between the sexes in LDS Mormonism (specifically) is female ordination to what has historically been a very male priesthood.  I know many people (male and female) are stubbornly against such a move, and it would require a kind of re-orientation in priesthood culture that could be extremely disruptive (not necessarily in a good way, unless your goal is to undo or unmake the LDS church, as mine is not).

I have been thinking it might be possible to make women the peers of men in Mormonism without sending them to priesthood meetings together.  What we need is a conscious, sustained, and sincere effort to make the role of women and female leaders as important to the church as male ("priesthood") counterparts.  For every dollar the bishopric gets, the Relief Society presidency should get one.  For every non-priesthood meeting the bishopric conducts, the Relief Society should conduct another such (trading Sundays?).  For every priesthood ritual that involves women, there should be a female ritual that involves men (as the objects of female blessing, female leadership or presidency, etc.).

Historically, the functioning order of the (male) priesthood is fluid.  It was not obvious from early Mormon history that the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (Q12) would control the church as it does today--unchecked and pretty much uncheckable by any other priesthood quorum.  It would be possible to disrupt the Q12's empire, I think, without thereby demeaning or destroying its priesthood (let alone the church as a whole: I think the church would do better if the Q12 consciously let go of the universal mandate it has held over the church since Brigham Young).  What would it require to make the General Relief Society Board (or Presidency, though I am conceiving that as a peer to the First Presidency right now) functionally the peer of the Q12?  We would need to give the women independent access to church resources (their own equal say in the church's business, for-profit and non-profit as well as liturgical).  The "women's conference" would need to take place as the equivalent of "priesthood meeting" (in General Conference), and we would need to see more women speaking in General Conference.  This could all be accomplished with relatively little pain, it seems to me, even when it comes to traditionalists who dislike anything that seems like change.

The hardest thing to deal with would be the maleness of prophets, seers, and revelators in Mormon institutional history.  We cannot easily make women prophets.  Many of us don't want to.  So what to do?  From my perspective, we are currently confronting a kind of crisis in traditional Mormon leadership, a crisis in which prophets, seers, and revelators are questioning their role in the church and society at large, and increasingly shying away from the kind of prophecy, seership, and revelation that defined the careers of men like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.  While insisting that the prophet must speak with authority to the world, the Q12 are careful to keep him from making the kind of bold, personal assertions that historically define his role.  The old Mormon prophets said whatever they wanted, as the Spirit inspired them, accepting and admitting that the results were occasionally disastrous (a trial from the Lord, a chance to learn humility, etc.).  They were not above offering personal apologies from the pulpit (where they also pursued personal vendettas against one another, on occasion).  They were colorful and accessible as the modern CEO prophets, with a PR department managing their press releases, cannot be.  I wonder whether it might be useful here to create some kind of female executive (a "prophetess" to balance the prophet, though that need not be her title, and her role need not be constructed overtly as priesthood).  Could there emerge some kind of Mormon Delphic Oracle, with a Mormon Pythia receiving revelation applicable in some fashion to the entire LDS church?  I think so.

Mormon and Christian history together offer all the pieces we would need to create a theological justification for female authority.  In the Old and New Testaments, female leadership is rare but there: other Christians have found it when they needed it, and we can too.  Mormon history, meanwhile, shows us women performing ordinances (blessing, healing, laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, prophecy) since associated--as a matter of policy more than doctrine, it strikes me--with male priesthood (which increasingly ignores much of its mandate in the Articles of Faith: when was the last time you went to a temple meeting like the dedication of the Kirtland Temple?).  Perhaps in expanding the active roles available to women (without simply offering them male priesthood, a gesture I don't see the church making, personally), the church might escape some of the artificial stiltedness that has infected its priesthood (and made modern Mormon rituals so unlike their nineteenth-century counterparts: again, I cannot help thinking of the Kirtland temple, or of Nauvoo, for that matter, where going to the temple to dance all night was not unheard of--what happened to that sacred ordinance? when did we replace it with snacking on jello in carpeted gyms, sitting quietly in front of a movie screen at the temple?).  The old endowment was something extemporaneous--a drama that actors performed to be contemporary.  If we were old-timey Mormons, it would involve Satan in the guise of a bankster (or perhaps a "liberal" university professor in some Utah towns, a Utah businessman-bishop in the Northeast, etc.), and the dialogue would be updated to reflect current trends and issues.  It would incorporate talks from local temple presidencies or presiding authorities (why not include female speakers?) and would evolve from performance to performance (the way a play does).  One temple would not be exactly like another.  People would not go to the temple to fall asleep listening to yet another iteration of an old script that is increasingly read to justify the very kind of unrighteous dominion (see Doctrine and Covenants 121) that early Mormon leaders decried (even if they also succumbed to its allure on occasion and became unjust tyrants: at least they saw this as something wrong, something to resist with passion rather than the will of God that all must embrace).  I cannot help feeling that women might make a really good contribution here, as newcomers and outsiders to the increasingly dull traditions of the male priesthood.

I think the male LDS priesthood has some goods that should be preserved (as unique to manhood).  I don't think that leadership is one of those goods: women need leadership; they need to rule as well as be ruled.  I wonder whether it might be good to imagine ways of letting women lead that don't involve committing them to the kind of leadership that has come to define LDS priesthood, a kind of leadership that I personally find quite disturbing (not necessarily because of its gender).  As a man looking back upon my time as an active Mormon, there are pieces of "priesthood" that I don't want for myself, for my gender, or for anyone really (friend or foe, black or white, male or female).  I wonder what opportunities the future will offer us for restructuring our idea(s) of what it means to lead, to have authority, and to submit (to one having authority).  I do not think that Deity (whatever one understands that to be) demands male leadership to the exclusion or subordination of female.  This thought is not one that I can give over easily, since I have come to it by long pondering and observation (of my own experience and that of others).  

Leadership

Someone remarks casually that "it's hard not being the top dog," and I have a sudden torrent of thoughts to offer.

I think it is actually pretty easy not being the top dog. It can be problematic when people have radically different views of where some collaborative project is (or should be) headed, but even in the latter case I think it is easier to get things done with peer-to-peer conversation rather than command-and-control.

In my marriage, for example, nobody presides. This was true even when we were newlyweds (and were approaching our relationship even more naively than we still do). My wife and I talk about things, express opinions, come up against decisions that must be made quickly, and work things out (without making somebody "be in charge" of everything or have "the final say" in whatever we do individually or together). At some point, I suppose we could become incompatible: even if that happened and we went our separate ways (divorce), I would like to do so amicably rather than angrily. In the same way, if I am ever collaborating with other people in the workplace (or anywhere, really), I always want them to feel free to give honest input, and to walk away if at any point they are too uncomfortable with the way things are going (or some much better opportunity presents itself to them and they feel a real desire to take advantage of it).

The difficulty of leadership is that it really isn't such a good thing, when life is going well. Historically, the great leaders are the people who encounter some disaster and react against it powerfully (with some kind of communal support), unilaterally (without backing down)--and most importantly, successfully (they achieve something that the world recognizes in hindsight as success, e.g. victory in war, economic prosperity, survival in a savage wilderness). But life is not always throwing us into do-or-die situations (wherein we must all look to Napoleon and hope that this is Austerlitz and not Waterloo). We shouldn't deliberately put our backs to the wall and then look for somebody to play Julius Caesar (and "get the bad guys" at all cost by "being a great leader").

Ideally, we never have any need for leadership (the way it is commonly understood). Ideally, we never find our backs to the wall as we gamble everything on the success of some singular encounter with fortune (who giveth and taketh away without regard for persons: even "great leaders" can lose--at terrrible cost to themselves and their communities). Ideally, we don't make every decision an occasion for Caesar to throw the dice and cross the Rubicon. Never cross the Rubicon unless you really have to. If you really have to, then by all means be a leader--just as you might become a murderer to save your own life or the life of someone you love. But don't love leadership (or homicide) for its own sake. I am pretty sure it doesn't love you back; if it does, then history says that its love is really dangerous (as likely to kill you prematurely as to save you from present danger).

Ideally, instead of leadership we have peer-to-peer negotiation. Instead of noticing something bad in the world (e.g. people are dying in Syria!) and responding with leadership (e.g. bomb the crap out of Syria, stat! show the world that we mean business, that Caesar is burning his boats and preparing to take Britain at all costs!), we should respond with negotiation (e.g. how can we help refugees? is there anything we can do to encourage better behavior among enemies? maybe not all crises need to be solved with bombs and other tools of leadership). Leadership will always be with us (like death and other such things), but it need not be the only thing available when problems arise. We should actively cultivate alternatives to it (or alternative forms of it, if you like, but I mistrust the word too much at present to be interested in redeeming it).

Leadership and Happiness

Some thoughts that I decided to write down this morning as part of an ongoing conversation about what it means to be a good leader.

Leaders will always be dangerous. This is true whether they deliberately set out to lead or not. It is true no matter what their intentions are: often well-intentioned leaders do more harm than those whose only purpose is to screw their followers over. (The shepherd who milks his flock for profit wants them to survive and be happy enough to make milk. The shepherd who wants his flock to be "happy" in some nebulous fashion that he struggles to make objective and singular invariably ends up torturing them. He is out to manage their lives much more intimately, intrusively, and dangerously than the guy with a bucket whose clear purpose is to collect milk.)

I can defend myself against the man with the bucket. But what to do with somebody who baits me with happiness? The best response I can come up with is to recognize and see (over and over again in all my experience, personal and vicarious) that there is no such thing as universal happiness. Happiness is a generic regularity that we all experience in fundamentally irregular ways, such that yours is not mine and never will be. You cannot offer me happiness, no matter what your name is, no matter what degrees or experience you have. I am freest to be happy when I recognize that my happiness is not your gift, never was, and never will be. I like you best (no matter who you are) when I see clearly what you cannot do for me and avoid expecting you to be something you can never be, do something you can never do.
 
Looking back at the course of my life thus far, I see myself as a lucky survivor in humanity's ongoing battle to destroy dangerous heretics--a warlock who somehow managed to avoid getting burned at the stake, so far.  I think the best way to deal with any leader, whether or not he (or she) is ill-intentioned, is not to expect from him (or her) something that no human (or god speaking through a human) can provide.  It is harder to be betrayed when you don't expect impossible things from other people.

As for lies, they are at least as ubiquitous as the leaders who tell them. Sometimes they are deliberate. Sometimes not. Sometimes they are well-intentioned. Sometimes not. I don't believe pure truth is possible, personally. I have never met it--in myself or anyone else, at all. So I live my life as a giant lie. I know that everything I say is going to be false somehow, no matter what I intend. I cannot manage my "persona" the way the modern LDS church tries to. I cannot run damage-control to manipulate your perception of what I write or say. I have to throw down and let you respond as you will (or won't). I have to respect your right to lie the same way I do. So I strive to do that. I strive to lie as honestly, transparently, and non-judgmentally as possible. I live for the epoche of the ancient skeptics (my favorite prophet from antiquity is Pyrrho of Elis, who like me spent his time reading Democritus and Homer in an effort to avoid passing judgment on stuff). Nobody has to believe a word I say. I don't believe them all myself. They are momentary ripples in a wild, untamed stream that can never be dammed and controlled with the precision many people expect. The human mind's capacity for comprehending the universe is severely and irreparably limited. There is no magic formula for making our thoughts inhumanly wise. Enlightenment is something you already have, hidden somewhere impossible to find in the dark recesses of your miserable little soul. Happiness is noticing how it peeks out every now and then:

"Gotcha!"

"Hey, come back here!"

"Come and get me if you can!"

There is no substitute for living your own life. We all make our own religion. Attempts to create and define giant communities like the Catholic church (or even the much smaller LDS one) are a total waste of time--a giant exercise in mental masturbation that becomes worse as people work harder at it (and seriously expect more real results). Catholicism that matters isn't about what a bunch of old fogies in red robes do somewhere in the dark halls of the Vatican (with or without altar boys). It is about the little family of Hispanics who walk past me on their way to St. Gertrude's, where the priest blesses them, the nuns help them with cheap school and daycare, and nobody would dream of molesting their kids. Mormonism isn't about what a bunch of old fogies do in a secret temple chamber in SLC (with or without plural wives). It's about my friend who goes to church here in Chicago with his wife and little boys and participates avidly, even though he is openly agnostic (does God even exist? who cares?). Theological debates are a sideshow: masturbation can be fun, but it isn't the same thing as sex, folks. Never was. Never will be.