Episode 258 (Transcript): Cynthia and Susan's Ragecast Potpourri
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener Lindsay Riggs for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:
SH: Like, if we’re gonna move into mainstream Christianity, I feel like a fellow Christian would need to be able to walk into any sacrament meeting and recognize Jesus Christ as the centerpiece of that worship service.
But instead, I feel like they are at least as likely, if not more likely, to get temples or something like tithing or word of wisdom.
Or I mean, like sometimes your pioneer stories, right? Or the importance of sustaining our leaders. Like the talks could be about anything that gets assigned that week, but it’s not, I’m not even sure that it’s most likely to be about Jesus Christ.
CW: Hello, I’m Cynthia Winward.
SH: And I’m Susan Hinkley.
CW: And this is At last she Said It. We are women of faith discussing ragey things.
SH: It’s complicated, Cynthia.
CW: -complicated ragey things. And the title of today’s episode is Cynthia and Susan’s Rage Cast Potpourri.
SH: Yep. That’s the title. All right. Okay.
CW: That’s the title.
SH: To be fair, there were other possible subtitles in the running. Some of those- Including but not limited to-
It’s not gaslighting if God does it.
CW: That’s yours, Susan.
SH: Also, that’s how sacred women are.
CW: Oh gosh. More on that, Uhhuh
SH: more on that. Or also just pass the popcorn because Cynthia, this conversation is just gonna be about a whole bunch of stuff and in preparing for it, well, it came about because we were messaging each other back and forth all week about some ridiculous things and just wanting to grab a mic and talk about them. And in a season of big ideas, like I feel like, ah, we’ve done deep dives on big topics. We’re planning deep dives on future big topics, and it’s been a lot of work and it’s been awesome, but it’s also a lot to chew on. And so every now and then, it’s good to just grab the microphone and blow off steam, so,
If you’re a listener who, you know, loves the deep dives and exploring big ideas, don’t give up on us. Those are coming back. And if you’re a listener who doesn’t mind kicking around the church football every now and then then stick with us today ‘cause that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.
CW: Exactly. Everyone gets your favorite dirty soda and that popcorn. And join us, Susan. I’m wearing my womankind t-shirt even, you know?
SH: Perfect.
CW: We’re not talking about mankind today. We’re talking about womankind. So,
SH: I love it, Cynthia.
CW: Join me. Join me in my feminist rage right now.
SH: Okay. Well, where to start?
CW: Just the tone. Where to start? Exactly.
SH: We’re gonna start with women can now be Sunday school presidents.
CW: Yeah. Yeah
SH: I mean, as a Mormon feminist podcast, I think it’s only fair that we spend a minute talking about this, even though we’re not usually the, you know, respond to church headlines podcast. That’s not really what we are.
But I mean, this one, well, it feels big, or does it?
CW: Or does it?
SH: Is it the biggest crumb we’ve ever had? Or is it the crummiest crumb that we’ve ever had? I’m not,
CW: I keep hearing women talking about crumbs saying we don’t even have enough crumbs for a crouton. Well, well, they’re not wrong.
SH: That’s, yeah, I think that’s true.
A few things occurred to me when this announcement came out, so I guess I’m just gonna start there and we can talk about those.
CW: Okay.
SH: The first is from the first presidency letter about this. They said this, the first presidency and quorum of the 12 apostles have determined that effective immediately the bishop may call a man or a woman to serve as Ward Sunday school president.
If a man is called as Sunday School president, he must hold the Melchizedek priesthood and his counselors and secretary must be male members of the ward. If a woman is called as Sunday school president, her counselors and secretary must be female members of the ward. I’ve got a few questions.
CW: Oh good. Let’s discuss.
SH: Okay. Is this a revelation or is this just an organizational change? Because I feel like this is just an organizational change because of that little phrase up there. We have determined that
CW: Yes.
SH: It’s not like we prayed about it. It’s not like, I mean it’s I don’t know that they woke up one day and determined that actually women could be Sunday school presidents. My question about this is like, what have they been waiting for? Like, what else could they just determine if they [00:05:00] decided to?
CW: If you think about like 1978, what they call a revelation, right? They’re not calling this a revelation. It’s a determination.
So I am, I’m trying to decide, Susan, if determine makes me feel better or worse, like that work because, well, okay, it makes me feel good because then that means more changes can happen as fast as a 90-year-old man wants them to change.
SH: Right?
CW: But it’s bad. Because that means more changes can happen as fast as a 19-year-old man can want to change them.
So it, but it’s also bad because, Susan, it was never about ordination and priesthood
SH: Clearly.
CW: And if women weren’t banned from Sunday school presidencies or stake auditor positions, or being witnesses to baptisms or ceilings, all you know, for doctrinal, if we weren’t banned for doctrinal reasons due to priesthood and ordination, then that means we’re banned for, I hate to say we’re not even six minutes in.
I hate to say it’s for sexist reasons, but I don’t know what other conclusion to draw.
SH: You know what it has me thinking about as I’m hearing you talk, I’m thinking about the prohibition against women praying in sacrament meeting, which was 11 years from like 1967 to 1978. And then what they said when they ended it was we’ve looked and there doesn’t seem to be any scriptural prohibition.
CW: That’s right.
SH: I think are the words they used against doing this and which to me sounds like another way of saying we’ve determined that women can be Sunday school presidents.
CW: Good parallel.
SH: And yet I feel like there are so many members, if we sat down to talk about this with this smattering of members, so many would say, well, this was clearly a revelation.
Because the Lord is at the head of this church, right? And so everything, that every decision that gets made by the Brethren is a decision because they have been inspired by the Lord to do that because it’s right for this time that we’re living in now.
CW: Yeah. There are plenty who would say that.
SH: I think there are, but I’m just gonna say like, what? I’m okay. They’re not wrong. I mean, in 2026, clearly it is right that women ought to be able to be the Sunday School president, but I’m not sure it wasn’t that way in 1967 also, right?
CW: Exactly
SH: I just, I have so many questions. Okay.
It gets even more. So this is the quote that came out from the Sunday School General President Paul V. Johnson, and here’s what he said. There are many capable women and men who can help strengthen gospel instruction and foster spiritual growth. Like this is the lightning bolt that they’ve been struggling, so, okay.
Are they really just noticing that women could help strengthen gospel instruction and foster spiritual growth? I mean, I don’t even know what to say with that. It’s like I’ve said a thousand times. If women have been the more spiritual ones all this time, who would you want in charge of teaching and fostering spiritual growth?
CW: Right.
SH: Why? Why would that be the reason that, or the explanation that they offer.
CW: Okay. Okay. You just used that word explanation. I feel like they had to offer an explanation and they weren’t gonna offer the explanation I just said, which was, sorry we were being sexist.
So they have to come up with all of these like bumbling ideas to kind of make everyone go, oh yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense that we have capable men and women who can help strengthen gospel instruction.
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you and I are obviously not thinking that makes sense, but I’m guessing the general population of the church will think, yeah, that makes sense. This feels like the time. I just had- I’ll be gentle with where I heard this conversation, but a young woman recently returned missionary just told me, she was talking about it with her dad about the Sunday school change or something, and he said he used the analogy of seat belts and he said-
Yeah, there were never seat belts in cars. And then all of a sudden we were like, there should be seat belts in cars and now we put seat belts in cars. And he said, it doesn’t mean that the parents who didn’t put their kids in seat belts before there were seat belts loved them any less than the parents who do put their kids in seat belts.
Now, in other words, like Heavenly father doesn’t love you any, doesn’t, didn’t love the women any less or think less of us because we were banned from these callings. It’s just time.
SH: Right, right.
CW: But I mean, I think that’s a crappy, crappy example, but it meant a lot to this recently [00:10:00] returned missionary. She really appreciated her dad’s example.
And so I have to be like, okay, that meant something to her. But I really am sick and tired of this. Like you just said, it would’ve been a great idea in 1968 as well.
SH: Right.
CW: So surely in 2026 it’s a good idea. But, and that’s exactly what I said to this young woman. I said, well, plenty of us have felt for decades and decades women should have been Sunday school presidents. I said, so it doesn’t have anything to do with the time. The time was always here.
SH: Okay. But the problem with an organization like the church is that no time is ever here until they decide that it’s here. If
CW: yes,
SH: if that makes sense.
CW: Yes, it does.
SH: I don’t know.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the meetings. Who knows? Maybe there, you know, half the Q 15 has been pushing for this change forever and only now if they’ve been able to tip the balance to where more are in favor than are opposed. I honestly.
CW: Right.
SH: I have no idea. We have no way of knowing.
How would, how could we know? But it seems to me. That they could, if not come up with an explanation, perhaps offer an apology, maybe? I don’t even know if-
CW: oh, that’s cute, Susan. Sure.
SH: -Apology is the right word.
CW: No, it’s not the right word. The church doesn’t apologize. They’re on the record.
SH: Oh, I, I don’t know. I don’t know what I would want from this, but a milk toasty idea, like there are many capable women and men who can help strengthen gospel instruction and foster spiritual growth really really falls flat for me.
It’s so dumb. I can hardly even know where to start with it.
CW: Okay. How In Susan’s perfect world, what would you have wanted them to say?
SH: It’s a great question, and I should have thought about that before I turned on this mic. I’m not sure what I would want them to say. I might want them to say, we’ve been chewing on this question for decades and we’ve finally decided that there’s no reason that this can’t happen.
I don’t know. Get honest, maybe.
CW: Oh, that’s my whole point. Like, because they don’t want to be honest and say, oh, we realized there was never a reason to ban women we’re making this change. Like, I would actually appreciate that even without an apology.
Let’s not go crazy and be like, they should give an apology. I just feel like there were, they could have been honest, even without an apology, and it would’ve landed a lot better than there are many capable women.
SH: Right. You know what? A hundred percent agree with you. Apology isn’t even necessarily the right word.
I, I, it’s really about getting honest. For me.
CW: Yeah.
SH: And I can put that right now at the beginning of this conversation, that with everything that we’re talking about, the real problem for me is that I want the spin to stop and I wanna hear something honest from the people who are running this thing.
Because I feel like what I hear is a very carefully crafted PR campaign.
CW: For sure.
SH: How are we going to sell this? I mean, I’d love to know how hard he thought about that line before he delivered it, ‘cause I’m guessing pretty hard and that he may have run it by some other people to get it approved before he said it.
I mean, I don’t know.
CW: I guess my question is, depending on the reason that they gave, which neither you nor I like, or if they had been honest, would one of those prevent what you and I always say the ensuing question could be, which is, did it ever matter?
SH: Well, right. I mean, that is the question.
I think,
CW: Well, because that’s kind of when things start unraveling right. For so many women, like, I mean, and this is big. The, this example I’m thinking of is really big. When they changed it in the last 10 years that couples could get married, first civilly and then go to the temple. Like there were a lot of people that sacrificed a lot
SH: right.
CW: To do things, quote unquote, the right way and just get married in the temple that day, there were people who had entire families, mothers, fathers, grandma, everyone, nobody in their family. I’m thinking of a particular woman in my ward who, she’s the only member of her family. She didn’t have one single family member in the temple with her.
And this was extremely difficult for her. And that’s where I think it’s very, it’s really obvious when it’s something that big and that tender. For the question -did it ever matter- arise, maybe less so with Sunday school presidency. I don’t know. I don’t know if women will start pulling on the thread of that sweater as a result of this change.
SH: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know either. It, again, it feels like such a crumb that is indistinguishable from so many other possible crumbs that would be like it. I mean, I’m thinking about like women as stake auditors. That happened a while ago. Now we’re doing Sunday school presidents. Sunday school presidents are a little weightier because it potentially women could be in charge of giving instruction to men in [00:15:00] this position, right? Because there could be male teachers who hear things from the Sunday school president. So it’s possible that women have some authority over men. So, I mean, it’s a little bit bigger, but still, it leads me to the question if it’s determined that there’s no reason that women haven’t been able to be Sunday school presidents, why can’t we open every calling that it’s pretty easy to determine that there’s no reason women can’t have it by next Sunday? Right. Why can’t we make that change instead of just this one change?
CW: Yeah. Because it does say in the first presidency statement, effective immediately.
SH: Yes. It does say effective immediately.
And you and I heard in our substack chat, we had a lot of women reporting last Sunday. And women were talking about how they had female Sunday school presidencies in their wards installed last Sunday. It happened. It happened in one week.
CW: Wow.
SH: Change can move really fast in this church when it moves. Right?
CW: Right. So, yeah. All open up, all the changes, all the callings. For women immediately, like they said in their letter, effective immediately.
SH: I’d love to know if there were members who struggled with this change. Have you seen or heard anything about-
CW: I haven’to.
SH: -that? Because I’d be interested to know.
CW: The only thing that I do see, like on social media when some of these changes come out is all the people who are like, oh, we just gotta make the feminist happy. All the women are- So that’s why we’re, you know,
SH: Right? that’s why I’m doing it.
CW: So,
SH: Actually I may have seen that comment. I may have seen way to cave to the feminists, something like that.
CW: Oh, I see that all the time. Anytime there’s a little crummy crouton.
SH: Yeah. Yeah.
CW: Change made like this.
SH: I have more questions.
CW: Oh, good. What’s your next question?
SH: Why do men require ordination to the highest priesthood? Melchizedek Priesthood. Why do men require Melchizedek priesthood ordination for this job while women need only to be members of the ward? I mean, does this mean that ordination really doesn’t mean anything or does it maybe mean that because women already have magic invisible ordination that we’re talking about, we already have priesthood power, whatever it is, we don’t really need the regular kind?
Like what’s the reasoning there and why don’t they think anyone’s gonna ask that question?
CW: Because it’s already that way for every single calling, almost any leadership calling for a man, the handbook will say, it’s so weird how they word it now. It used to say like, temple recommend holder.
Actually, I don’t know if it said that. What it does say now is full tithe paying member. The men have to be full tithe paying members to hold most callings. Most leadership callings and like you said, for women, she just has to be a member of the ward. So if it hasn’t made people wince before, I don’t think it’s gonna make them upset now?
SH: I’m not necessarily asking people to be upset about it. I’m just curious. I don’t get it. Like, I don’t understand why does he need priesthood for this? And I don’t.
CW: Okay. We’re always saying that women who are endowed have priesthood power, right?
SH: Right.
CW: So then you would think it would say a woman needs to be endowed to hold a Sunday school president calling.
SH: Yes, that’s exactly it. If it said that, if it said that, then I would be able to sort of connect the dots in my head of what they’re talking about. But it doesn’t say that, it just-
CW: Really fascinating
SH: -member of the ward. So it’s really interesting to me, and again, this is a case where like there’s more they could say about it-
CW: Oh there always is.
SH: -if they would. Right. Like almost everything would be better to me if they would just say, explain themselves.
CW: But when has that ever ever happened?
SH: Never.
CW: They never show us their cards.
SH: Never ever happens. No. I don’t think they’re going to. And I don’t know why. There’s another question I have. Why don’t you ever show us your cards?
This is not a card game. You know how to protect your cards. Okay, my next question. Why can men and women serve together on committees in the church but they can’t serve together in presidencies?
CW: Oh my gosh.
SH: Like, what is that about?
Aren’t there men and women like both on the Activities committee? Am I like, am I right about that? It’s not one gender or the other.
CW: Well, technically I mean, activities committee doesn’t really exist anymore.
SH: Oh okay see this is how out of touch I am.
CW: But when they did, yeah. Men and women would serve. It had men and women-
SH: It had men and women.
CW: -serve there. I mean, when I was young women’s president, I constantly was meeting alone with the bishop to talk about some of the different concerns. Guess what? We managed to behave ourselves.
Like relief society presidents meet all the [00:20:00] time with the bishop to talk about food orders and things like that. I’m sure they text each other and call each other and email each other, like, so, so I don’t understand this either.
Why they can’t serve together in a presidency. Like, I don’t, well, this is the ragey episode, so I’m just gonna say it and ask for forgiveness later. But I, the infantilization of men and women is just maddening to me. It just drives me absolutely crazy. I mean, is it just that we see all women as Jezebels and we see men as they can’t control themselves, so they can’t really work together in a presidency. I don’t know. I’ll never forget when I went to Israel 10 years ago and I went to the whaling wall, I went to the western wall, and that was the first time I had ever known that it is separated. There’s a fence, a littler wall slash fence that goes down the middle so that men can pray at the wall on one side and women on the other side.
And so sometimes I feel like there’s this fence slash wall separating LDS men and women as well. And I wonder if that’s the real reason. This is where I’m gonna go dark, get dark real fast, is sometimes I wonder if that’s the real reason we don’t have equality because it would erase the wall and men aren’t about to do that.
SH: Well, I mean conversely, or another side of that same coin, the first thing that I think of with this is, are there a lot of men who would not be willing to serve under a female president? Or wouldn’t are just- Are they just avoiding that problem by-
CW: Exactly- good point,
SH: -making it all men or all women?
CW: I mean that, that kind of makes me think there, what you just said is true, that there wouldn’t be men who would serve, quote unquote, under women because women still can’t be stake Sunday School-
SH: Right?
CW: -Presidencies that so,
SH: Or the general Sunday school president.
CW: Absolutely. So yes, men always need to be able to be in charge if there’s a woman in the room, Ooh, I might need to take that out.
SH: Fascinating.
CW: I dunno. I dunno. Here’s the thing. In my life, even as someone who works from home, so I don’t hang out with men all day, I still see men on social media. I comment on their posts, they might send me like a private message about you know, oh, hey, you know, you were asking for restaurant recommendations. Here’s one, blah, blah, blah. So trust me, if I wanted to misbehave, anybody who wants to misbehave can find a way.
SH: Absolutely. In the age of online dating apps, I mean, seriously.
CW: Oh, Exactly!
SH: Anyone can get anything they want anytime. You know?
CW: Right. I don’t need no silly Sunday school presidency to fool around.
SH: Right, right.
CW: So maybe it has nothing to do with fooling around and it has everything to do with what you just said that men have to be in charge if there’s a woman in the room.
SH: I think there are a lot of women in the church who would say, can’t you just be happy about this?
CW: Oh, I’m happy about it.
SH: Well, I’m happy about it too. Okay. Maybe can’t- Why are you complaining about this good change? I guess what we,
CW: because it’s both and
SH: because it’s both and it’s both. It is. I really do feel like it is.
CW: Well, okay. And okay, we’ll talk about that in a minute. Let, I wanna finish making a point here about, like I said earlier, do we just treat all women as Jezebels and men as humans who can’t control themselves?
And I want to play you a clip about,
SH: okay,
CW: about this from our episode on Purity Culture with CA, episode 253. And she told the story, let me just play the, play it and then we’ll talk about it. So give me 35 seconds, Susan.
CA Larsen: And then she went on to tell about how, when they met on campus in like the lecture halls and the buildings on campus for their church meetings, that they would turn tables sideways in front of the front row of chairs.
So in case the young adult women sat in those chairs, that the men on the stand couldn’t see their legs and how short their, if their dresses were short.
SH: You have to be kidding me. I refuse to believe that. Can that possibly be true?
CA Larsen: I know, yeah.
SH: Oh my goodness.
CW: Okay. Susan, do you still have the same reaction to that-
SH: Yes.
CW: -story that CA told that women can’t even sit on the front row now, when she told that story, I was like, okay, this is a new one. I mean, I went to BYU for four years. I have never heard this one. And then, Susan, we got this email. A couple days ago,
SH: Oh dear..
CW: In response to that exact story.
SH: Okay,
CW: and here’s the email.
She said, in listening to this episode, I was reminded of a horrible memory at BYU in 2021. -Okay? 2021- we had stake conference in the Smith Field House. I sat down on the front row with my roommates and within a few minutes a man came up to me and said I needed to be [00:25:00] re-seated because of my skirt. It was just past my knees, fit BYU standards, but only girls with long dresses could sit in the front row, so the men up front could not see up their skirts.
They only said my skirt length was not allowed on the front row. I had been recovering from knee surgery and that was the most comfortable spot to sit. In addition to that, I felt shamed, embarrassed that I was asked to move in front of so many students. I wrote a long letter to the stake president explaining how awful this entire situation was.
Next stake conference, that front row was seated with all men. That was their solution to the problem.
SH: I am dying. I’m dying, Cynthia.
CW: You should be.
SH: How can this possibly be true? How can this be true?
CW: So again, are we really gonna treat all men as if they can’t control themselves? That like men in leadership, bishop, stake presidents, high counselors, whoever are who, whoever are sitting on the stand, at a BYU stake conference- they cannot control themselves?
Whatever that means, whether it’s mentally or physically, or both, that we literally can’t have women sit on the front rows unless their dresses go all the way to their ankles. So we have to treat men this way, and then we have to treat women as if they’re all Jezebels. That we’re all here to seduce men. I don’t even know.
SH: I don’t know either. I don’t even know how to respond.
CW: But that was 2021.
SH: Yeah. We’re talking about five years ago,
CW: right? Not 1971. Maybe. Maybe in 1971. I could be like, okay wow, that was a different time
SH: Yeah. But I feel like in 1971, we would not have been obsessed with that.
CW: Ooh, say more.
SH: I just feel like it’s gotten worse. I mean, granted, I was a child in 1971 and it’s not, that’s not long past the days of women having to kneel down. Well, girls having to kneel down at school to make sure that their skirts touched the floor, but I-
CW: You know what? You’re right.
SH: -like I never had, I, I don’t know, I guess as a kid growing up in the United States in the 1970s and early eighties, I never had the impression that we were that backwards. Like, okay. I saw a clip the other day on the internet of some crazy from some fundamentalist religion. I don’t even know who he was- railing about women’s leggings, about women wearing leggings and even railing about them when the leggings, like when would they, when they would wear them under skirts, but you could still see those leggings.
You could see that fabric. And I saw that and I thought, that is crazy. And you are crazy. But I would never have thought we were that crazy, except this email is that crazy.
CW: This email is that crazy. And you know what, while you were talking about what it was like in 1971, that reminds me, and we’ve talked about this before on the pod, like my mother-in-law was at BYU in the late sixties, early seventies, and they wore strapless and sleeveless dresses.
SH: Sleeveless. Absolutely. Yeah.
CW: So you are 100% correct. I feel like it’s maybe getting a little bit better, but then reading this email from 2021 makes me think actually we’re not
SH: Right. Right.
CW: So I, I don’t know.
SH: Well actually, my daughter got hauled in or reported to honor code for having leggings under a skirt once.
So actually, now that I say that, we are as crazy as anyone else. I mean, her skirt was a little short, but she had leggings on under it, so it was okay, but actually it wasn’t. Okay.
CW: Was this at a church school?
SH: This was at Southern Virginia, yes, it was at a church school.
CW: Okay. Okay. I, I’m speechless.
SH: I know.
CW: Legging leggings under a dress. Okay.
SH: Right. But the skirt was, you know, too short.
CW: Okay. This is just reminding me, oh my gosh. That just triggered a memory 15 or so years ago when I’m in a stake young women’s presidency. And we went to Salt Lake for like general training. And so it’s the general or general young women’s presidency who are doing different trainings.
And they had a q and a portion and some woman just like me, an award presidency or stake presidency, raised her hand and asked about the leggings, skirt thing. And one of the general leaders said, well, my question is she wearing that outfit as pants or as a skirt? Because if she’s wearing it as a skirt, that skirt is way too short.
But if she’s wearing it as a pants, well she probably shouldn’t be wearing pants to church. Anyway. Anyway, it was just bizarre. So this is 15, 20 years ago. And that’s probably about when your daughter was,
SH: Okay, yes. Yes.
CW: So I don’t know if the leggings pants thing is still an issue today.
SH: Interesting.
CW: But-
SH: I don’t know, either [00:30:00]
CW: But this goes to prove that our obsession over women’s clothing really has only gotten worse since the sixties and seventies.
SH: I feel like it has. I feel like it has, Ugh.
CW: Ugh, can we move on? Let’s move on.
SH: It’s a doubling down. Yeah.. We’re gonna move on.
We’re gonna move on off of that topic. And we are going to-we wanna talk about a Facebook post that was made by a friend of both of ours. Jackson Washburn. A lot of people may recognize his name if they’re active online in LDS circles. Harvard Divinity grad writes about a lot of different church related topics and religion related topics.
But anyway, I just wanna read a part of that post. It was, his post was in response to the policy change about women Sunday school presidencies. And part of the post said this- Historically, latter-day saint women have prophesied and received revelation. They’ve witnessed angels and administered blessings by the laying on of hands.
They have offered the Lord’s Supper as military chaplains. They act as priestesses in the temple. All of these are already performed through God’s power, which is priesthood power. Ordination plus comparably, equal ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and social standings and opportunities as men are all fully theologically possible within a restored gospel framework.
The destiny of the daughters of our heavenly parents is that of unmatched transcendent power, glory, and perfect unity with God, while inheriting all of God’s same qualities, attributes, and creative abilities. I want the ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and social experience of latter-Day Saint women to better reflect that.
So he’s suggesting that he doesn’t see any doctrinal, any real prohibition against. Ordination for women, right. And lays out, you know, some good arguments. Why? Well, as you can imagine, the comments have entertained us for days.
CW: Oh my gosh. I just have to tell the listeners that. Susan, you texted me before I had even seen the post.
You texted me and you said, this is the gift that keeps on giving- meaning the comments.
SH: The comments.
CW: So I hope you had a bucket of popcorn as you…
SH: I mean, the comments were just beautiful and I just-
CW: Share some of your favorites.
SH: Okay. I just pulled up a few of my favorites. I won’t tell who their bio though.
It was a public post. So everyone who commented should know that they’re putting it out into the world, right? And so here is, here are some of the favorites. Ultimately, what this boils down to is the church is led by Jesus Christ. It is his church. There are reasons not known to us for the structure and way things are done, but he knows what way to lead and grow his church.
I don’t know why women can’t be called to priesthood callings, but I do know that women have the priesthood and that this church is true, which means all things that involve the structure of this church are also true.
CW: Oh boy.
SH: There it is. Right?
CW: It’s all true or it’s all false.
SH: There it is. And then here’s where we get.
That’s how sacred women are because this comment just gets better. There is so much more that we do not know that he does. I like to think of it with our Heavenly Father. We know so much about him, yet so little of our heavenly mother. That’s how sacred women are. But to keep them away from worldly judgment and malice, he has protected her and is taking the abuse on himself, which is how all men should treat women.
Instead of putting women in the position to receive public criticism and have a world full of malice and judgment, we protect them and help them see their divine roles as women.
CW: This is such a biggest pile of bullshit. ‘cause I don’t even know how keeping women out of priesthood callings protects us from malice and judgment from the world.
Because if he, that’s the parallel he’s drawing.
SH: That’s the parallel that he is drawing. Is -
CW: heavenly father is protecting heavenly mother, just like priesthood holders are protecting us by oppressing us.
SH: Yeah. Women are too good to be in these callings, Cynthia. That’s how sacred women are.
CW: Just, I can’t.
SH: Okay. But also, was there one word in that comment that was a surprise to you? Like as a woman who spent her lifetime in the church?
CW: Oh zero. I’ve heard that canned comment recycled over and over and over.
SH: And also the idea that the church is led by Jesus Christ, and so anything that happens even structurally is also true capital T. Right. I mean, these ideas are just foundational to my church experience, but to see it laid out like that, it’s crazy. It’s crazy.
CW: It’s crazy, but I think this is a very genuine feeling. Like I, I know people like to use the phrase like mental gymnastics. You know, to describe. Well, he’s doing a lot of mental gymnastics. I don’t think he’s doing any mental gymnastics.
SH: No. I think that’s the problem.
CW: I think it’s very genuine.
SH: I think it’s very genuine also and I mean, like, I don’t wanna make fun of people’s, this stuff sits near and dear to people’s heart, right?
And I don’t ever wanna make [00:35:00] fun of people’s testimonies. I’m gonna use air quotes there, because what I really mean by it is the beliefs that people hold sacred, I guess. And I feel like these are an expression of beliefs that he holds sacred. But what are the women of the church to do in the face of that?
We have nowhere to go in that comment that shuts down everything.
CW: That’s a really good point.
SH: So since
CW: it’s the Ace of Spades,
SH: it’s the ace of spades on a couple of different levels. And so when someone throws that down on the table and you can clearly see that it actually is driven by their sacred beliefs, like where is this space for women for change or for and for our own experience even within a comment like that.
Okay. Let’s just have a couple more. You are more converted to being progressive than to Christ’s doctrine. Women get the priesthood in the second anointing, but it’s of a different character. This priesthood has been administered since Nauvoo. The problem is that the second anointing has become too rare when tens of thousands received it in the 18 hundreds, women’s primary privilege and responsibility is rearing up a righteous posterity.
CW: Oh my gosh.
SH: Most callings that are clamored after would greatly tax the raising and nurturing of children.
CW: OH! Okay. I hadn’t seen this one, Susan.
SH: There’s so many things in here. Okay. Speaking of Ace of spades, does it get ace of spades-ier than the second anointing? Like someone puts that down in the conversation of what can you even do about that?
We have no information about it. It’s secret.
CW: Uhhuh.
SH: Wait, I was gonna say sacred, but not secret. I think it’s just secret, but secret. And who even knows if that’s a thing, we’re not privy to that information.
CW: Well and neither is this guy he thinks-
SH: Of course he’s not. He’s-
CW: good grief. He doesn’t know anything about the second anointing either. Give me a break.
SH: But it’s the kind of like super ultra mega sacred dialed up to 11 thing that you can put down. And no one can argue with it, right? Because no one has any information. There’s nothing you could craft an argument with about that. So that’s another way of shutting things down.
And then I love that he uses the word clamored. Women are clamoring after callings. That’s how he would see this conversation. He would see the we’re clamoring after callings.
CW: Yeah, clamoring after them. But they’re kept from us ‘cause they would tax us. Tax us in the raising and nurturing of children.
Okay. First of all, pass me to smelling salt so that I can revive myself so that I’m not so taxed. So that I can raise children unto the Lord and also have this calling. But even, let’s just say he’s right. Okay. You and I do not have children in the home.
SH: No.
CW: I am not taxed with the raising and nurturing of children anymore.
SH: No,
CW: Neither are you.
SH: Right? Haven’t been for a long old time now. It’s been a long time.
CW: So this guy is a bozo. Like he’s not even-
SH: But also aren’t men also raising and nurturing children during the years that they had those big callings.
CW: Don’t be silly, Susan.
SH: In theory
SH: Yeah. I’m just talking crazy talk. All right.
It gets crazier. Are you ready? Okay. Here we go. If the priesthood stands in representation of Jesus Christ, who is a man, I think there is certain symbolism in restricting the priesthood to men as it embodies the person of Christ as he is- a male. I have never in my life heard this one. This one is new to me.
CW: Oh really? Oh really?
SH: Jesus was a man. And therefore the priesthood is only for men because Jesus was a man.
CW: I, okay. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I haven’t heard that one specifically, but I have heard that’s why priesthood is for men is because Jesus’s 12 apostles were men.
SH: Yes. Yes. I have heard that. I have heard that.
CW: But this one, you’re right, is kind of new. Jesus was a man. So…
SH: Well, I mean, God is a man in our church generally believed to be, we talked about heavenly father mainly, right? First and foremost. So like where does that leave? Where does any of this leave women? All right. Okay. Sorry, go ahead.
CW: No, I just wanted to say, speaking of mental gymnastics, the mental gymnastics that occur to keep women banned from specific callings that require ordination is just laughable to me because Jesus only called men, but they were also Middle Eastern men. And yet today we call white men, Hispanic men. We call-
SH: Oh right. Mostly not Middle Eastern men.
CW: Right. Mostly not Middle Eastern men.
SH: Almost entirely not.
CW: They choose one category and say therefore, but they don’t choose another category and draw the same conclusion.
SH: All right. I’m just gonna share one more comment with you, and this one may make your head explode. I don’t know. It’s sort of the [00:40:00] cherry on top of all of it. Are you ready?
CW: Okay.
SH: Having served as an LDS Bishop, I had no doubt that the sisters in the ward could run everything better. When you look at the world in general, there are more single parent homes run by women, and I believe that sadly that is because men often feel they have nothing unique to offer.
Their wives are better nurturers than they are. In mortality the priesthood gives men something unique to offer to try in some way to be equal to their wives who serve more naturally.
CW: Bingo card.
SH: We know that in eternity we will share priesthood differently, but in mortality at the current time, the Lord has seen fit to help the men take a step up by serving with priesthood.
CW: Oh my gosh. There it is.
SH: There it is. We have to give the men something special to help them rise to the occasion because-
CW: To make them be equal to us.
SH: Here’s the thing about all those comments, I wanna just put ‘em in context of one thing. And that is, I mean, they’re all ridiculous, right? And they all pushed all the different familiar buttons and they’re all these things.
CW: Yeah, there’s nothing new.
SH: But the fact that you and I could just look at that thread and pull comments out and it like distilled all of those ideas that we always complain about that some women may say, I’ve never heard those ideas at church. I don’t know what you guys are complaining about. I’ve never had that experience.
Right. We didn’t make any of this s#%@ up because it all shows up in one Facebook post. It’s like, there it is. Like you say the thing and there it is. And I didn’t do the exact numbers ‘cause it didn’t add up all the comments on that thread. But I am going to hazard a guess just by what I saw that the, it was 92% men who had something to say about-
CW: Oh, for sure.
SH: What Jackson proposed.
CW: Oh yeah.
SH: And I feel like that’s telling also.
CW: Well I am part of the other 8% who decided to rage text on that comment thread. So here’s my comment.
SH: Oh, lay it on us.
CW: I find the comments here fascinating. Whenever discussions like this arise, all the folks in favor of the status quo jump through a lot of hoops to explain why women can’t be ordained and why men need, in quotes, priesthood, fine, whatever.
Keep your cosmic power, boys. Let women have decision making power instead. But as it is right now, there is not one single decision a woman can make in our church that cannot be overruled by a man- that needs to change. The following is an excerpt from my book, co-authored with Susan Hinkley, and then I went on to quote Melissa Inouye, how she talks about, you know, fine if we have to keep some type of complementarianism, fine, put women in charge of all the money,
SH: right?
CW: Like, there are things we could do now,
SH: right?
CW: Without ordination that we still choose not to do things that could really make, we could get us really close to equality. If the men had to come to us for any decisions about money.
After I read that about Melissa, I said, unfortunately, we don’t have anything even resembling the type of interdependent relationship that Dr. Inouye suggested. This is all in our book. Instead we have a system where men are the gatekeepers for all of the spiritual and organizational involvement of women. Women are completely dependent on a man’s approval of her worthiness to participate in our highest ordinances, her ability to interact with the organization through callings and assignments, and the list goes on.
SH: Thank you so much for saying it.
CW: I don’t know. I just think, you know, these 92% men who are doing the mental gymnastics to think of a reason why women still need to be kept behind men. I think, okay. Let’s just say that this is exactly how Jesus wants it. Can you not just sit with the ouchiness of being in an organization wherein an entire group of people gets to be in charge of another group of people and they never get to switch places?
SH: Right?
CW: Like, can they just not sit with the ouchiness of that? That’s all I’m asking.
SH: No I don’t they can because they’ve never experienced it. I think it’s so far outside their realm of experience that they can’t really imagine what that would be like.
CW: That’s true. You’re right. ‘cause that would require a lot of curiosity.
But we also know women who would also, I hate to say women who carry water for the patriarchy.
SH: Well, you just said it so-
CW: but I’m just gonna
CW: Well, I did, but that sounds really derogatory.
SH: It does. It does.
CW: But you know, this is our ranty our Rage Cast. So I guess I’m just gonna say things that normally I would try to find a better wording for.
But there are plenty of women who also would echo every one of those comments that men just made. So,
SH: absolutely.
CW: And yet they know what it’s like to be the group that’s always in charge of, so that’s a hard one.[00:45:00]
SH: Alright, Cynthia, shifting gears, let’s talk about Easter. How do you feel about it?
CW: Great. Until we get into it, I won’t feel so great. Go ahead.
SH: I mean, I don’t know. I love this topic because this topic is so, so both and to me and this topic is actually the one where I personally would apply the subtitle.
It’s not gaslighting if God does it. Because I have so many feelings about our church’s sudden turn toward Easter. And when I say Easter, I mean like the liturgical calendar.
And holy week. Capital H. Capital W,
CW: right.
SH: And right. I mean, I just feel, so this started several years ago, and I mean, I’m gonna be the first to say that I actually wrote an essay.
I think it’s been two Easters ago now. I don’t think it was just last year. I think it was the year before that Wayfair did a Lenten essay series, and I kicked off Lent for Wayfair that year with that essay. And so I, I was excited that we were doing this and I was excited to get to contribute that essay and to engage with thinking about Lent and what it could mean to me and all those things.
And then, like last year, I think I talked about on the podcast, at some point our bishop got up to the pulpit and asked people to consider engaging with Lent. You know, he got out in front of it and talked a little about what it meant to him and stuff. And I thought, okay, this is weird. And then this year, suddenly we have this whole Palm Sunday thing going on. And it’s not just my ward because I’ve heard about it from lots of people. Like the church decided to get out in front of Palm Sunday. Actually, I think they made an official announcement some months back that we were going to celebrate-
CW: They did
SH: Palm Sunday and it was gonna be a big deal.
And then the next week would be general conference. And so that’s why we were gonna make Palm Sunday a big deal. Right? So, okay. Here I have some questions.
CW: Let’s hear it.
SH: Why do I have mixed feelings about our church wanting to embrace this stuff? Why? Because I really like, one of the things I love when I go to the Episcopalians is they’re tuned into the liturgical calendar.
And I find it fascinating and I find it resonant and I find it, I find all these kind of like, possible nourishment there that I don’t get in the way that our church moves through its courses of study. And so. Why can’t I just be happy about this?
CW: Okay, Susan. But here’s the thing is we’re not really doing the liturgical calendar, so you still have to go to the Episcopalians to celebrate that because following the liturgical calendar would mean that we did like the scripture readings for that week.
Like every week has a specific assignment. We’re not doing that. We’re just,
SH: Right, right yeah. Holy Week is a whole journey.
CW: Yes.
SH: In other Christian denominations. Like there’s stuff going on every day and the weeks leading up to it, you’re preparing. And it’s like this really emotional thing that’s going on.
We’re not engaging with any of that stuff. We just suddenly decided we wanted to talk about Palm Sunday. Except do we really talk about like what it really means for Christians who celebrate Palm Sunday? Like do we, are we really tuned into what that would be? So like we’re sort of wanting to do it, but we’re not really wanting to do it. And also we don’t wanna do it enough to actually have a church service on Easter. We’re still having general conference on Easter. I can’t believe it. And surely no one can take this seriously until we’re willing to have church on Easter. Here’s my question. I don’t know the answer to it.
Maybe you do. Why is it set in, in, what kind of stone was it engraved and was it by Moses or someone else? That general conference is always the first Sunday in April. No matter what else is happening,
CW: I think it would be so easy for the church to say if it will, general conference will always be the first Sunday in April, unless it falls on Easter, in which case-
SH: hundred percent, hundred percent.
CW: That would be so easy to have it the week before or the week after, if it falls on Easter.
SH: I think what the official announcement actually said was, if stake conference falls on Palm Sunday in your stake, then you’ll go to stake conference. I think that’s,
CW: oh really?
SH: I think that, yeah, there was some mention of stake conference.
CW: You’re right- now that you say that, you’re right.
SH: So like, we are not willing for one second to set our church organization meetings aside for even the resurrection. I don’t know what I don’t know what to make of it.
CW: Okay. You started out with the question of like why do you have mixed feelings?
Why can’t you just be happy? And first I thought, okay, well, ‘cause we’re not really following the liturgical calendar, so that’s probably one reason. You’re not happy. But the second reason is going along with Holy week means we’re now [00:50:00] adopting the cross in a way.
SH: We’re gonna go there.
CW: Okay.
SH: We’re going there.
CW: Okay. You go there then. Go ahead.
SH: Well, okay. This whole, the cross is part of the framing of this whole conversation that I wanted to have because you sent me a picture of something that the missionaries dropped off at your daughter’s house, right.
CW: Uhhuh in Dallas, Texas.
SH: In Dallas, Texas. That was an invitation to church on Palm Sunday. Am I right about that?
CW: Yes.
SH: And it’s got a cross on it. It’s got a cross on it.
CW: Yeah.
SH: And you were saying what is going on?
CW: Yeah. And maybe that’s the other part why it’s so itchy is all of a sudden the cross is okay. This is the gaslighting part that you wanted to put in our subtitle. Right?
SH: Yes, it is. Because also the church newsroom had a post out this week of these new statues that have been installed on Temple Square.
And if you can’t see the comment section on Jackson Washburns post, go to the church newsroom post where you can read the comments section and you, no matter-
CW: we’ll link to it
SH: no matter how long you’re waiting in the doctor’s office, you are gonna be wholly engrossed in that comment section.
I’m telling you, it’s the rabbit hole that just never ends. It’s incredible. But these statues will Yeah. We’ll link to one of them, one is Christ in Gethsemane. One is Jesus carrying the cross. And in the picture, it’s so fascinating. It’s this gigantic cross.
CW: Yes.
SH: With Jesus under it in front of the temple.
I don’t think that latter day saints are used to seeing the cross. In front of the temple like that.
CW: Oh. And they said so in the comments.
SH: Oh, the comments are crazy. And we’ll get to a few of those. But if you and I love the cross, like why does it make me cross to see it suddenly appearing on all these church materials?
I mean, okay. I remember so clearly sitting in a gospel doctrine class in Wilmed, Illinois, and it’s gotta be like 1983, maybe 4, 1984. And the Sunday school teacher is going off about how the Catholic church is the great and abominable whore of all the earth, right? I mean, yes. This is something that was specifically taught
CW: Uhhuh.
Thank you Bruce R McConkie.
SH: Thank you. Bruce R McConkie. Many of us grew up hearing that. And internalizing that message- so great that we’re not doing that anymore. And because I genuinely love the cross. It’s a thing for me. I’ve had this whole relationship with the cross going on great. That I can feel comfortable wearing my cross to church now.
Great. All of those things, but what I need is for a leader somewhere to stand up and talk about it. Because the last thing I heard was a general conference talk from Jeffrey R. Holland saying we do not use-
CW: Yeah in 2022
SH: cross iconography. Right. It wasn’t that long ago. That we just had a talk throwing the cross under the bus again, making sure that we all understood that we’re not doing crosses.
Well, fast forward to 2026. Jeffrey R. Holland is no longer in those meetings and suddenly we’re doing crosses. And I would love someone to stand up in general conference and to get real with me about why people why the men in charge have determined that the cross is appropriate for use at this time.
I’d love to know. I wanna know, connect the dots for me, man. I will go with you if you will invite me into the conversation. Invite me to follow you, and it is very likely that I will follow you there.
CW: I mean, and this just goes back to what we were raging about with Sunday School, right? Like the reasoning they gave was ridiculous that, oh well women have something to contribute too. Here we’re not even given a reason. It’s just completely-
SH: No, we’re not hearing anything
CW: It’s completely silent about why all of a sudden we’re like, yay. The cross, like and Google Maps. Now there’s a cross on LDS churches.
SH: Right? Right. But then it starts to get damaging in the way that members use it against each other. And this is what appears in that comment section. And I got to thinking about gaslighting. I thought, okay, that’s a term that gets used a lot. And I read an article this week about gaslighting. NPR happened to put one out.
I thought it was so kind of the universe to drop something in my lap talking about gaslighting right when I needed it. But there was this quote in it that really explained the problem to me and why it does feel like gaslighting to me. And here’s what it says. When you begin over time to accommodate to somebody else’s reality, and you’re giving up pieces of yourself along the way it can be what many people say is soul destroying.
And so it feels like gaslighting because of women, [00:55:00] like, one in the comment section who talked about how it’s painful for her because it destroyed her large Catholic family when she turned her back on the cross in order to join our church. But the missionaries made it very clear to her at that time that we don’t worship dead Jesus.
We worship living Jesus. That you wouldn’t wear a bullet around your neck, right. As a symbol of something that had killed someone. And so she caused very real pain in her family and experienced very real pains in turning her back on that symbol. And so she goes and sets her pain down in a comment section like this.
And what she’s met with from other members is a whole lot of- The church has never had any prohibition against crosses. This makes perfect sense for these statues to be on Temple Square. Of course, we want a statue of Jesus in front of the temple, and of course he should have the cross. He died on the cross.
Of course, we acknowledge all of these things. I don’t know where you ever came up with that, and that’s when it becomes gaslighting, but also when my church sends out official materials with the cross on them, it feels like gaslighting to me.
It feels like gaslighting to me because of all the years that I was developing this relationship to the cross and didn’t feel at liberty to wear it at church, like I would be hurting people by doing that.
CW: So to the people that jumped in on this comment section to this woman saying, we never did that. I, first of all, again, because I always wanna give people the benefit of the doubt, some of them might be genuine, like maybe they never sat in a ward in Illinois in 1983 and had someone talk about the evils of the cross and Catholicism and all that.
I don’t know, but I’m guessing most of them absolutely know, and they’re just trying to tell this woman to kind of like, why can’t you just be happy that this has changed. I just wanna give just a quick little jump in here with quick history. So, Gordon B Hinkley in 2005, you know, I said to you, Susan I can never not hear Gordon B Hinkley saying the line about, for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ while our message is a declaration of the living Christ. Right. Right. Like I will always hear that line from Gordon in my head. And actually in the book we’ve talked about this book before on the podcast, banishing the Cross, The Emergence of a Mormon Taboo by Michael Reed.
He says this, Bruce R McConkie was less tactful and more sensational than Hinkley. In his influential book, Mormon Doctrine, McConkie not only asserted that the cross was a pagan symbol introduced to Christianity via the Roman Emperor Constantine, but he also declared its sign to be the mark of the beast.
Under the entry Catholicism McConkie’’s book said, see Church of the Devil.
SH: Ah. Unbelievable. Also totally what I’m used to. Totally believable.
CW: Totally believable. Yes,
SH: totally believable. Someone-
CW: I heard that my whole life
SH: Yeah.
CW: My, my whole life about the Catholics, you know, the scripture in the Book of Mormon about costly apparel.
SH: Yes.
CW: People were like, oh yeah, that’s about the Catholics. ‘cause look how, look at their clergy dress. And their robes and their gold and this and that. And I was like okay. But we’re the ones with billions in the bank so maybe we shouldn’t be saying anything about that.
SH: Some of someone in the comment section dropped a few different references, Joseph Fielding Smith in 1961 saying that wearing crosses was quote in very poor taste and inconsistent to our worship, and comparing it to wearing a replica of a weapon that killed a loved one.
So I think that might be where the bullet line comes from. That we’ve all heard. David O. McKay in 1957, counseling against using crosses on jewelry. He said it was a quote, Catholic form of worship. Bruce R. McConkie, of course describing that wearing crosses was inharmonious with our worship.
And Marvin J Ashton in 1990 suggesting that members should carry their crosses rather than display or wear them. Which is interesting to me because that’s very much the idea that Jeffrey R. Holland was hearkening back to in his talk.
CW: Yes, Right.
SH: So, Marvin Ashton had introduced that what, 30 years earlier, I guess.
So-
CW: yeah, it was explicit. I
SH: it’s interesting, it was explicit and it has been. Somebody on that comment section said, is this a revelation? It sounds more like the imagery of the great apostasy.
Someone else said, I think it’s something they’re doing to identify with all Christian faiths. I love Temple Square. I just don’t focus on the cross. There will be a lot of controversy. I think they’re doing it so nothing else can be said.
CW: Oh,
SH: and then she says, maybe it’s a sign of the times that we are living in.
CW: Wow.
SH: So there’s a lot to unpack in those few little lines.
CW: I saw one commenter who said, the muscles on Jesus in that statue are distracting me.
SH: So did I- I saw that
CW: and I was like, wait, I need more information about this. Is it like not having women and skirts sit on the front row in a conference?
SH: Exactly- You said it,
CW: Is this the equivalent, [01:00:00] is this the equivalent for women? You know, we’re turned on by muscles and you can’t have Jesus with muscles. I don’t know. I’ve gone off the rails. Sorry.
SH: Somebody put a robe on that Jesus, Cynthia, it’s not okay. This not okay.
Okay.
CW: Oh my gosh.
SH: Why are we still having general conference on Easter Sunday?
In what world is general conference, first and foremost about Jesus or his resurrection? It just isn’t. To me
CW: it, it’s not, and I think the key word in what we call it is conference. Like this is not a worship service where we even have the sacrament, which is like our most holy ordinance outside of the temple.
I’ve been told that my whole life. And so you would think, at least on Easter Sunday, we would definitely insist on having the sacrament. But instead we have conferences where like we sustain leaders and we hear statistics about members and missionaries and baptisms and that kind of stuff.
SH: How I saw the church describe it themselves on a post today where they were inviting everyone, come celebrate Easter with us at general conference and it said, you will hear messages from church leaders about Jesus Christ.
And also other topics.
CW: Well, that’s honest.
SH: It’s honest. Yes. It is, I’m not sure it’s a compelling missionary tool, but may, maybe it is. My question is, could, can, if this is, somebody suggested it in the comments that they we’re trying to cozy up to mainline Christianity, you know, is that what we’re doing?
CW: Right.
SH: if that is the case, I’m curious to know what you think. Can we move into mainstream Christianity and still maintain our current priorities as a church?
CW: That’s a great question. That’s a really good question. Really good question, Susan, because my, off the top of my head, ‘cause we haven’t really planned too much of this episode, it makes me think, oh, we would have to talk about the covenant path less.
SH: Okay.
CW: If we’re gonna talk about ‘cause right now it’s all all all temples and covenant path. 100%. We’ve talked about that this season.
SH: I just feel like so much of what we talk about and do at church is Mormon specific instead of Jesus centered.
CW: That’s what I should have said.
SH: So like, I really don’t think we can, like, if we’re gonna move into mainstream Christianity, I feel like our, I feel like a fellow Christian would need to be able to walk into any sacrament meeting and recognize Jesus Christ as the centerpiece of that worship service.
But instead, I feel like they are at least as likely if more, if not more likely to get temples or something like tithing or word of wisdom. Or I mean, like, sometimes of your pioneer stories, right? Or the importance of sustaining our leaders. Like the talks could be about as anything that gets assigned that week, but it’s not. I’m not even sure that it’s most likely to be about Jesus Christ.
Even in the, even in general conference, the scriptures are not prioritized in talks.
Like my husband and I watched a session of conference, I don’t remember if it was last one or the one before that, but we both noticed like, hey, there was not a single scripture quoted in that or a single talk about a scripture story.
Wasn’t one.
CW: Oh, I remember when that dawned on me two or three years ago that I’m like, wait a minute. I never actually hear, I mean, we have the primary song, tell me the stories of Jesus. I want to hear. And I think, I never even hear stories about Jesus in sacrament meeting. We always refer to him.
We say, be like Jesus, or This is what Jesus would want us to do. Jesus wants us to keep our covenants, that kind of a thing. But I make sure that when I give a talk, and I’ve been lucky, I’ve been able to give three talks in the last five years in my ward. I only ever evefocus on specific stories of Jesus’ life ever.
SH: This is why I wanna be in your ward, Cynthia.
CW: It breaks my heart, actually, like I take no joy in admitting that out loud, that I never hear stories about his life. It’s always stories of other people’s lives and then they say, you know, like this, like be like Jesus. And I’m like, well,
SH: Well I mean, at least you tried to connect it, but I don’t know.
I would’ve appreciated hearing from the source. Maybe. I don’t know. I guess the moral of all these stories, for me, if I think of the thread that connects them all, it’s really just that I want something more and different from my leaders. I need something more and different. I need them to talk to me about what’s going on.
I think it was in 2016 that I first had the idea, it may have been 14. It was somewhere right in there that I first had the idea. This is a very exciting time to be a latter day saint. It’s an interesting, interesting time.
CW: Do you still feel that way?
SH: I do feel that way. And I feel like that’s what President Nelson was getting at when he said, take your vitamins.
Right. And then he started rolling out a bunch of little changes. And people got very excited about that idea. And the thing is, I feel like we are in a very very changey time. We’re in a chaotic time within the church. I feel like there’s a whole lot there and nobody’s talking about it. What I [01:05:00] really wish that President Nelson had stood up and said was, we’re in a really chaotic time in the world and in the church, and we gotta talk about some stuff.
And, you know, we’re thinking maybe it’s time to start to get closer to some of our mainline Christian brothers and sisters. And we’ve been talking about ways we could possibly do that. And so here’s what we’re thinking. We’re thinking we might like to lean into Easter. Let’s see how that goes this year, we’re gonna move general conference and here’s why we’re gonna do it.
I mean, there. Any part, any sentence from that dialogue would be more conversation than I get about any of this.
CW: Absolutely. And this is the common thread connecting all our disoriented thoughts throughout this episode. The common thread is honesty, right? More than an apology. We want honesty.
So that would’ve been amazing if two years ago, because I did some homework on lds.org where Holy Week, like you said, capital H capital W, the very first time that started showing up, like in the church magazines was two years ago.
SH: Okay. That feels right to me. Yeah.
CW: Before that, anytime it said Holy Week, it was lowercase H, lowercase W.
SH: Interesting.
CW: So yeah, holy was the adjective for week, whereas, whereas now holy week is the noun,
SH: is the thing.
CW: And I just think there’s no way that’s a coincidence. They absolutely said something to each other behind the scenes. But like you, that would’ve been amazing to have President Nelson stand up two years ago, which is when this all started and said, we’re going to lean into Easter more,
SH: and here’s why,
CW: and here’s why, and here’s how.
And please join us.
SH: Yep. Yep.
CW: Take your vitamins and join us
SH: Yep. And join us.
CW: Yep.
SH: Love it. That’s I don’t feel like that’s a huge ask, but I feel like it’s never gonna happen. Also never say never. I’m gonna remain hopeful. I don’t know.
CW: Cool. That’s a good way to end this. Remain hopeful, Susan.
SH: Yeah, That’s all we can do. Thank you, Cynthia
CW: Well, thanks for showing up and raging with me.
Voicemail 1: Hi, Lynn here. My faith deconstruction journey started in my younger years with the allowance of bullying in my ward, demeaning comments from my leaders and struggles with the objectification of women in the church. Many leaders brushed off my early desire to pursue education and service as a missionary by saying that I would meet a man first and that would stop me from serving and pursuing a degree despite my later teenage years where I practically identified as agnostic,
I did serve a mission where I built my understanding of Christianity and Mormonism from nothing. I became converted to the church through my service as a missionary. While serving both my father and older sister left church activity for different reasons. Since returning from my mission into the Utah Mormon culture bubble, I’ve seen the rest of my family leave the church.
It is hard to attend church and hear people sing. Families can be together forever and not get bitter. Knowing that most of them would say my family is done for. It is hard going to the temple since my marriage because of this as well. I’m still strong in my faith, but lacks in my church participation due to the frustrations with the organization, allowing the harm of others through its untrained and unchecked leaders, sexism and just plain stupidity when it comes to the application of doctrine and perspectives regarding people like my family who have stepped away from the faith for valid reasons.
I hope for a day when we can stop the culture of othering people in our faith and remember that church is a hospital for sinners, not a sanctuary for people who think they’re saints.
Voicemail 2: Hi, this message is for Susan. You always talk about an imagination Committee for the church, and I have an idea for you. We recently had a member of the 70 come and visit our congregation. He did not do so in an official capacity. He was just visiting somebody, but they, of course, they did reserve the final moments for him to say what he wanted to say, and he proceeded to give us a glowing report about how amazing the church was doing, what a wonderful year they were having.
And he was basing it all on statistics, missionary numbers, number of missions, blah, blah, blah, treating it like GDP. Can we just change that in the church? Let’s talk about things like happiness and wellness. I’ve heard about the happiness index, and I would love it if the church would start measuring success on, are the people well, are the people happy?
That’s my 2 cents. Thanks for the work You do. Bye.
CW: Alright, go ahead.
SH: Oh wait. I thought you were, I thought you just said, why don’t I.
CW: Well, I did, but then you have the little extra subtitles there, so I didn’t Oh.
SH: But I
CW: just thought I could, I know,
SH: could throw ‘em in as part of our banter. I don’t think either.
So either way is fine with me, however.
CW: Okay I’ll start.
SH: Okay. Alright.
CW: You’re right. [01:10:00] Sure. But after you read these, I gotta read mine because I was on fire.
SH: Read your, oh read. Wait. Do you have some on here?
CW: No, my comment that I made on the post.
SH: Oh, your comment that you read on the post.
Oh. Do you wanna give it now?
CW: What? I don’t care. You can. We could do all the bad ones and then all the good-
SH: Let’s do all the bad ones and then yours. Okay, let’s do that.
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