If a female tried to get into the priesthood session of GC...

[Blueintheface]

FTR, I don't find church boring, in fact I really enjoy church....just not SS on many occasions.

I found the sacrament to be the most boring. I could usually participate enough or listen intently enough in class to stay engaged but sacrament was often not solemn or spiritual; just boring.

[Northwestcoug]

Are we on Old Testament again?

Don't worry about missing 5 months of OT. I bet they'll teach it again in 2018.

[The_Douger]

Don't worry about missing 5 months of OT. I bet they'll teach it again in 2018.

Plus, we just got out of the book of Genesis. It will be easy to catch up!

[creekster]

Plus, we just got out of the book of Genesis. It will be easy to catch up!

Just got out of genesis? Is someone bucking correlation??

[Solon]

Jeff is perhaps the only person who has been a complete jerk about the whole thing. He makes a wonderful stereotype.

I guess it all evens out, though:
The Dude is one of the only reasons I still show up on more Sundays than I miss.
His posts consistently remind me that most of the BS doesn't really matter, and that going to church isn't really about me at all.

It's probably a net loss overall, though, since I'm sure that Pheidippides' tithing far outweighed mine.

[Moliere]

Plus, we just got out of the book of Genesis. It will be easy to catch up!

Just go see Noah and then the Donny Osmond version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and you'll be caught up.

[The_Douger]

I teach primary, so we're just getting in to the start of Exodus. Moses just killed a guy and then led the people through the Red Sea. I sense a golden calf coming on.

[CardiacCoug]

We have new Gospel Doctrine teachers who are really smart, enthusiastic, progressive the past 6 months. Attendance and participation are way up.

Agree completely when people just use the lesson straight from the manual it's pretty horrible and I really can't sit through those lessons.

P-diddy, my curiosity alone to see what approach the Area Authority would take would make me want to have them over. You're not really interested/curious in what they will say to you?

[SeattleUte]

Yikes.

The Economist had an article last week about women in Saudi Arabia. While I don't want to go overboard with comparisons, there were a few interesting things in the article that made me think of the OW movement.
(Here's the article: http://www.economist.com/news/middle...ing-themselves)

1. A Saudi Arabian government poll back in 2006 found that 89% of Saudi women thought they should not be allowed to drive.
While the "women don't want the priesthood anyway" approach falls down as a logical argument, there is a strong rhetorical current among many LDS women that things are great the way they are and they have no need/desire for priesthood. The status quo can be a hard nut to crack. We shake our heads at women thinking they should be prohibited from driving. I wonder if, someday the majority of membership will shake their heads at LDS women having claimed that they shouldn't have the priesthood.

2. Change is slow because the highest echelons of Saudi political/religious leadership are really old (the current king will turn 90 this summer).
Even though reforms & changes are trickling down to Saudi women, the age of the leadership is viewed as a hindrance to true change. This also implies that the changes are just a matter of generational norms - inevitable, but slow as hell when leadership holds on into the dotage years. The most persuasive activists seem dedicated to working within "the system" (religious & political), especially since these women have no intention of discarding Islam (not that they have a choice in that respect, but the activists clearly have religious devotion).

3. Religion & Tradition often beat Logic & Science.
A growing group of Saudi women have started to agitate for change. In the midst of a campaign to mobilize women for a car-driving protest last year, in September, 2013, a Saudi Sheikh warned Saudi women that driving could ruin their pelvises & ovaries, hindering fertility.
Read about it here: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/vari...rns-women.html

Again, I don't want to overdo the comparisons, but the women's movement in Saudi Arabia has some striking similarities to the OW movement in the LDS church.

That should give us all pause.

Don't apologize. The comparison is spot on. The only thing that makes Dallin Oaks etc. any better than the Saudis is that they are in America amid its moderating secular influence. Even then, it's quite shocking how backward they continue to be. Fighting social progress in America has been the LDS Church's special mission. Dallin Oaks, the most educated of the 12 right now, even makes no bones about explicitly condemning humanism, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. He knows the source of the LDS Church's grief. If you take their rhetoric to its logical conclusion it's a medieval ethos. They are cut from the same cloth as the Saudis.

[SeattleUte]

It's more incredible you take that statement at face value and not for the purpose for which it was intended even though I hinted strongly at the intent in the statement itself.

Jeff is very smart but very literal. He does this all the time. Maybe it's an engineer thing. He'll probably not take my post about the LDS GAs being like Saudis other than for the purpose intended.

[Moliere]

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/06/p...o-all?lang=eng

This is truly a poorly written article and the title is a bit misleading. It seems to messed around some church doctrine but never really explains how priesthood power is available to everyone, unless she means to say its available to everyone but only through men.

[TripletDaddy]

It was written by a woman so critics can't complain. If a woman thinks it is ok, then it should be ok.

[Moliere]

It was written by a woman so critics can't complain. If a woman thinks it is ok, then it should be ok.

She also has no right to receive revelation for me as she's not in my priesthood hierarchy line. It's almost like the Deacons Quorum president telling me what to do.

[CardiacCoug]

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/06/p...o-all?lang=eng

This is truly a poorly written article and the title is a bit misleading. It seems to messed around some church doctrine but never really explains how priesthood power is available to everyone, unless she means to say its available to everyone but only through men.

I think there is progress being made here. She's sort of expanding on this idea of DHO from last conference that women really do in fact exercise priesthood authority/power even though they aren't given priesthood keys:

DHO: We are not accustomed to speaking of women having the authority of the priesthood in their Church callings, but what other authority can it be? When a woman—young or old—is set apart to preach the gospel as a full-time missionary, she is given priesthood authority to perform a priesthood function. The same is true when a woman is set apart to function as an officer or teacher in a Church organization under the direction of one who holds the keys of the priesthood. Whoever functions in an office or calling received from one who holds priesthood keys exercises priesthood authority in performing her or his assigned duties.

Yeah it's still not where the Church needs to be or eventually will be, but it's a nice idea and it's progress: women exercise priesthood power according to DHO.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Jeff is very smart but very literal. He does this all the time. Maybe it's an engineer thing. He'll probably not take my post about the LDS GAs being like Saudis other than for the purpose intended.

lol.

I will always love you, man.