Ordain Women’s non-protest protest
Photo credit: Deseret News
The Ordain Women organization is nothing new. For the past however long, this group has been asking church leaders for the ordination of women to the priesthood.
For their next move, OW is asking for admittance into the Priesthood session of the LDS Church’s General Conference, held at Temple Square on April 5th. They did the same thing last October with a turn out of only 200 women. This year, 500 are expected to show up.
The Church responded in an open letter addressed to the leaders of the Ordain Women movement. This letter asked these sisters to refrain from going through with their protest because it detracts from the spirituality of the meeting and “from the helpful discussions that Church leaders have held as they seek to listen to the thoughts, concerns, and hopes of women inside and outside of Church leadership.”
While I do believe that the Church has a long way to go when it comes to the visibility of women and that the culture has some sexist issues, I find it hard to side with an organization made up of Church members basically protesting their own church and its leadership.
As Mormons, we get enough flack and opposition from the rest of the world. We are viewed as bizarre and odd. Which is true, we are different from the rest of the world, which is a good thing in my opinion.
The last thing Mormonism needs is protests from inside. This only serves to make us look worse.
While Ordain Women is getting a lot of publicity and attention, I would dare say most of the women in the Church do not prescribe to their ideas.
In a poll published by Deseret News, 87% of American Mormons said they did not believe that women should be ordained to the priesthood, 90% of women surveyed said they did not believe women should be ordained, and 95% of those women have a high religious commitment.
My personal experience backs this poll up. I, myself, am a very proud Mormon woman and consider myself a passionate feminist. Most of my female friends also fall into that category. Neither myself, nor any of my female friends support Ordain Women.
While I do believe that we ladies need to speak up for ourselves and ask for more equality inside and outside of the Church, this just isn’t the way to achieve that.
Instead of creating more tension from the inside and demanding things of the Church and its leadership, how about we approach things with more tact and compassion and less aggression and negativity.
Brittany is the Opinion Editor at UVU Review. She is a passionate little soul of a person. She is a senior at Utah Valley University and will graduate in spring 2014. With a background in addiction recovery and journalism, she is planning a career in non-profits. She can be found on Saturday nights hanging out with her cat Ringo Starr and watching Netflix. She probably tweets too much.