Disparity in the Church’s sealing policies for men and women is something many members never think about until their life experience reveals it in some way. The truth is, a variety of complex real-life scenarios may change the idea of sealing from a joyful eternal prospect to a painful eternal sentence for some Latter-day Saint women. If you are widowed, divorced, remarried, or single, your sealing options as a woman are limited, and you have little to no power in the process of determining what’s right for you. In Episode 108, ALSSI listeners share their personal experiences with the Church’s sealing policies, and the complex emotions that arise as a result of living within these limitations.
Episode 109 is a short bonus featuring a few more listeners’ sealing experiences. Spoiler: It’s still complicated.
Notes & Quotes:
Church Policies and Guidelines
A law professor explains “temple divorces,” and how they changed through the years, Mormon Land Podcast, Episode 246, 10/10/2022
Michelle
Wonderful episode! For me it was extremely hopeful to hear so many other women feeling sticky about sealings. Something I’ve been rolling around in my head lately, is how we teach ordinances for the dead. They are given the option to CHOOSE to accept the sealing. What if our agency is just as highly regarded, and actively choosing it to apply is all part of the process, a main ingredient even? I like thinking that my eternal agency goes hand in hand with my eternal covenants and everyday I can choose what applies. I also like think about a church that trusts women to make decisions for themselves.
Rebecca Nolan
Please be aware of the language you use. My situation albeit different from yours is not ‘messy’. I know you probably don’t mean it in the way it came across but please be aware when talking about a topic as emotive as this that it may land differently that it’s intended in the delivery.
Some comments/thoughts on what I’ve heard: How are we (lds), any different from fundamentalist lds who practice polygamy yet its seemingly acceptable to be polygamous in the eternaties !!??
I struggle with the advice of reading the handbook… a handbook written by men…..
Interesting that the things that you/we talk about appear to be fairly apparent to women but not to the men of the church and change is slow if not changing at all because if it affected men it would be changed.
It concerns me that the church doesn’t recognise other types of family when we talk about families are together for ever. I am a single parent , I married my sons father but that didn’t work out we were never sealed in the temple. My son is a grown man and was sealed to his sweetheart after returning from his mission. Whilst in the sealing room it was apparently painful for me to witness my son become sealed to his wife and her family and know that i was not sealed to them and their future children. The temple is a painful place for me.. The idea of completing temple work for other when I myself cannot participate in the blessings of those ordinances is painful beyond Measure. I have spent all my sons life ticking all the boxes of membership in order to feel worthy of being sealed to my son… I’m of the belief now that any loving parent (HF)) would do all they could to ensure their children are all together so I choose to believe that the sealing is an ordinance of power created by men and that I WILL be with my sonand his wife and my grandchildren, who i love dearly and leave it to God who I believe will more than want me to be with my family for eternity without a sealing .. my heaven is with them.
I am unable to achieve celestial glory because I am unmarried despite I have endeavoured to be a faithful and good and obedient member of the church. YET if I were to marry that would change things.. Why am I more worthy for celestial glory because I have married? Am I not worthy unmarried?
Thankyou for talking about these things . I hope that men are listening and participating in the conversation because change will be swifter when men are a part of the conversation like most things if it doesn’t affect you mostly people don’t take issue with it.
Divorced and Frustrated
I loved that the episode addresses how policy and doctrine have shifted over time. One thing that wasn’t explicitly mentioned is the teaching that temple sealing to spouse is required for the highest degree of exhalation. So if a man who has never been sealed marries a window who doesn’t cancel her previous sealing, technically he forfeits exhalation. And while he waits for that eternal damning of progression, he is disqualified from being a temple worker and any other callings that require a temple sealing (I’m thinking Bishop, Stake President, Mission President, General Authority). Or he can treat every widowed or divorced woman as “used goods” and move along to “unspoiled property.” As if dating after divorce after temple marriage wasn’t difficult enough for a woman. She can usually expect to have to kiss any never-married men goodbye!
Single Parents are Parents too
Our current sealing practice excludes single moms wishing to be sealed to their children. I have several friends who are women that never married and willingly adopted children. They raised these children in the church that does not offer a sealing for child to parent in these circumstances. I do not know of men in the situation but it could be equally excluding.
Shannon Starks
Thank you for your courage in confronting these issues that have troubled so many women in the church for so many years. I love that you are letting women share their stories, because I spent many troubled decades with only a notebook to hear mine. Indeed, if all this is going to be sorted out in heaven anyway, why do we need hurtful limitations on the agency of women (and men) here? Though my processing of the past 10 years has led me in a path that won’t work for everyone, I’ve come to understand that temple sealings are for strengthening us here and now and that our eternity depends on the true desires of our hearts, not on the rituals we physically perform. It has been such a relief and blessing to be able to own this and feel the affirmation, love, and peace of God. Can’t even express how amazingly good it feels.
CH
This Sunday I will be requesting that my sealing to my ex husband be voided. No Idea where that will take me, but I have made peace with that being the direction I wish to go.
I would also recommend an address given by Terryl Givens, in which he explores the nature and power of sealings- and I find it to be much more congruent with the Divine parents I believe in- and all the stress around sealings isn’t maybe so warranted. Man seems to have complicated it.