The women who requested tickets to LDS general priesthood meeting and / or intended to stand in line that evening to get stand by ticket seating have caused a real change.
General Priesthood broadcast was the major guys night out event of the spring and autumn social seasons – sometimes with dinners out afterward. With this announcement the LDS priesthood holding father can watch the broadcast at home with his wife and kids. This is change amid change.
LDS general priesthood meeting to be broadcast live and online for the first time
Joseph Walker
Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865586991/LDS-general-priesthood-meeting-to-be-broadcast-live-for-the-first-time.html
Published: Tuesday, Sept. 24 2013 10:35 a.m. MDT
Updated: 4:00 p.m. 24 September 2013
SALT LAKE CITY — For the first time, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will offer the male-only priesthood session of the upcoming general conference over live broadcast television and in real time over the Internet.
In a pre-conference press release issued Tuesday morning, church officials indicated the priesthood session of its 183rd Semiannual General Conference on Oct. 5 will be broadcast live on BYUtv and two online resources, LDS.org and the Mormon Channel. According to the press release, the church has chosen to do so "as part of a continued effort to make general conference proceedings more accessible to members around the globe."
Until now, the priesthood session has only been broadcast live to LDS meetinghouses via the church's extensive satellite system. To see it live, men and boys have had to travel to meetinghouses equipped with satellite dishes or attend the session in the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City.
The new procedure mirrors the pattern used for the live broadcast of LDS general Relief Society and Young Women meetings, which are held one week before general conference in the fall and spring, respectively.
On the surface this decision seems a shrewd move to disarm the women who want to attend the meeting in person and who ultimately want ordination to the priesthood. The Deseret News posted this article the same afternoon. It generated quite a lot of comment on-line, including a comment from a reader in Omaha who noted “God has order in his priesthood and his church.” It would probably be more accurate to put it this way
God has his Order in the Church.
LDS Church responds to priesthood meeting request by activists
Joseph Walker
Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865586996/LDS-Church-responds-to-priesthood-meeting-request-by-activists.html
Published: Tuesday, Sept. 24 2013 11:55 a.m. MDT
SALT LAKE CITY — This Saturday, hundreds of thousands of women around the world will participate, either in person or via broadcast, in the annual general Relief Society meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
An estimated 20,000 will congregate in the Conference Center for the meeting.
Seven days later, a much smaller group of women — probably somewhere between 150 and 200 — plan to approach LDS Conference Center ushers and ask to be admitted without tickets to the priesthood session of the church’s 183rd Semiannual General Conference. For the more than 70 years that the priesthood session has been conducted in the format that it follows today, men and boys 12 years of age and older have been exclusively invited to attend the session, often coming together as fathers and sons.
The women, who last week formally requested tickets to the Oct. 5 priesthood session, will not be admitted.
“It is the hope of the church that the priesthood session will strengthen the men and young men including fathers and sons, and give them the opportunity to gather and receive instruction related to priesthood duties and responsibilities,” church spokeswoman Ruth Todd said Tuesday in a letter to the group, "much the same way parallel meetings are held for sisters, such as the general Relief Society meeting.
"It’s for these reasons that tickets for the priesthood session are reserved for men and young men and we are unable to honor your request for tickets or admission."
Todd also invited the women to “view the live priesthood session broadcast, as well as the other general conference sessions, on lds.org, The Mormon Channel or BYUtv.”
This will be the first time the general priesthood session of LDS conference is broadcast live to a general television or Internet audience. In a pre-conference press release issued Tuesday, church officials indicated the live TV and Internet broadcast of the session is "part of a continued effort to make general conference proceedings more accessible to members around the globe."
"We are pleased that the church has demonstrated its ability to change to be more inclusive by making the session available through live broadcast," said Kate Kelly, one of the organizers of the action to request priesthood meeting tickets for women. "This is an important step toward a future where Mormon women will participate side by side with our brothers in all areas of church leadership and life."
However, the church's two decisions — to deny entrance to women and to broadcast the priesthood session live — will not curtail the planned action, Kelly said.
"We will be in the line for standby tickets to the priesthood session on Oct. 5 to demonstrate our continued willingness and desire to attend," said Kelly, who indicated the group will meet at City Creek Park at 4 p.m. to pray and sing and then walk together to the Conference Center to ask for admittance. "We are demonstrating our faith by standing at the door and knocking."
Besides, she noted during a telephone interview last week, "this isn't really just about going to priesthood meeting."
"This is about the ordination of women to the priesthood," said Kelly, an international human rights attorney in Washington, D.C., who is one of the founders of Ordain Women, an Internet-driven campaign that professes to be for “Mormon women seeking equality and ordination to the priesthood.”
"We consider ourselves to be prospective priesthood holders," she continued, "and we want to go to priesthood meeting so we can show our leaders that we are ready for both the benefits and responsibilities of the priesthood. That is our focus."
Kelly was born in Oregon and reared by parents who converted to the LDS Church. A lifelong Mormon, she is a BYU graduate who served in the Spain Barcelona Mission. Today she is the chorister in her LDS ward's Relief Society. She referred to those experiences as she explained why she believes LDS women should receive the priesthood.
“To me, agitating on the issue is a question of self-respect,” she said. “I respect and value the church and myself too much to be silent on this question. I truly believe that God wants us all to equally share the burdens and blessings of the priesthood. The ordination of women would put us all on equal spiritual footing with our brethren, and nothing less will suffice.”
“Equality is an interesting term,” said Sister Linda K. Burton, general Relief Society president, in a video posted last April featuring the leaders of three LDS Church auxiliaries talking about the role of women in church leadership. “It doesn’t always mean sameness. We are of equal value no matter where we are — in the church or in the home. In the home we are co-equal spiritual leaders. I think that’s an important thing that sometimes is misunderstood. We can have equality while having different roles.”
For the most part, Sister Burton said, “I don’t think (LDS) women are after the authority (of the priesthood) — I think they are after the blessings. And they are happy that they can access the blessings and power of the priesthood.”
The empirical research seems to support Sister Burton. For their landmark book, “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” David Campbell and Robert Putnam conducted two extensive surveys on religion and public life in America. They found that an overwhelming majority of LDS women — 90 percent — are opposed to priesthood ordination for women. By comparison, 52 percent of LDS men oppose priesthood ordination for women.
More recently, the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life conducted a national survey of Mormons in America. It found that overall 87 percent of Latter-day Saints — 90 percent of LDS women and 84 percent of LDS men — are opposed to women being ordained to the priesthood. The number climbs as high as 95 percent among those who claim a high degree of religious commitment. Even among those who claim a lower degree of religious commitment, 69 percent are opposed.
Kathryn Skaggs, who writes her widely read blog, A Well-Behaved Mormon Woman, from her home in Murrieta, Calif., said she believes she speaks for that vast majority of Mormon women when she expresses frustration "that this small element within the church who are pressing for the priesthood use the media to draw attention to themselves, as if they speak for all Mormon women."
"They don't represent us," Skaggs said in a telephone interview. "That's not to minimize those who have these passionate feelings about women being ordained to the priesthood. But my personal church experience suggests that most of us are at peace with how the Lord has chosen to establish his kingdom upon the earth. And there's a bit of resentment that the beautiful messages of conference might be overshadowed by this small group that doesn't even represent the feelings of mainstream Mormon women.
"I just really have a hard time feeling good about it," Skaggs continued. "They are taking the attention away from the reason we have general conference in the first place: to listen to what living prophets have to say to us. Instead, they are trying to get the living prophets to listen to them. That just seems wrong to me."
Writing on Patheos.com, BYU professor Margaret Blair Young, well-known for her detailed work on the history of black Mormons, said she would not be surprised to see more privileges extended to women in the near future. But, she observed, "this will not happen through press conferences.”
“For all who seek change of any kind in the church, I urge patience and faith,” Young wrote. “Cling to the things you value and don’t forget them as you seek positive change. We are not the Church of the Infallible Prophet, nor the Church of Your Particular Issue, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We are a community, still learning lessons in loving one another and providing support for each other in our various journeys.”
For the Ordain Women movement, Kelly says, that journey won't end with the church's decision not to admit them to this October's general priesthood meeting.
"We operate on the Lord's time," she said. "We are not demanding anything. We are respectfully requesting that the brethren petition the Lord and ask if it is time that women are given the priesthood.
"Of course we believe it is God's priesthood," she said, responding to a question that is often asked of her by Latter-day Saints who do not approve of the Ordain Women movement. "If we didn't believe that, then why bother? But we all know the priesthood has been expanded over time. Christ expanded it to the Gentiles. In 1978 it was expanded to all worthy males. We see this as just another expansion whose time has come."
And so, she says, "Ordain Women will remain intact."
"We will continue to seek ordination through action and discussion," she said. "We plan to move forward in creative, faithful, courageous ways."
Which Skaggs says she understands and respects, in a way.
"I think it's very natural for LDS women to ask why the order of the church is the way it is," she said. "I think we've all asked it in one way or another, at one time or another in our lives. But most of us have received the witness that this is God's living church on the face of the earth, and we are willing to accept that this is the way the Lord would have it be. Just knowing that that's his will, it makes it easier to say, 'Thy will be done.'
"So I'm not going to be upset or frustrated or angry, because I know and trust that this is the Lord's decision," she continued. "I don't have to know why. I just have to know that this is the way the Lord has laid it out, and continue to believe and exercise my faith in him and his living church."
Meanwhile at the Salt Lake Tribune, Peggy Fletcher Stack saw the announcements pretty clearer. Her report had a certain butter won’t melt in her mouth tone.
Women can see, but not attend, the Mormon priesthood session
Religion • LDS Church to broadcast meeting live for the first time, but won’t let women into the Conference Center.
Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56914470-78/priesthood-session-women-tickets.html.csp
Published: September 24, 2013 03:23PM
Updated: September 24, 2013 05:29PM
Ordain Women sees the LDS Church’s historic announcement that next week’s general priesthood session will be telecast live for the first time as a step forward. But, in the end, the group is still being shut out.
For the past few months, Ordain Women, which is pushing to open the faith’s all-male priesthood to females, has been asking for tickets to the Oct. 5 priesthood session of the 183rd Semiannual General Conference.
The meeting has been off-limits to women, even wives of LDS presidents and apostles. Traditionally, it has been the only one of the five sessions broadcast only to Mormon chapels and not publicly available.
On Tuesday, the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that “the priesthood session will be shown live for the first time through expanded channels, including LDS.org, the Mormon Channel and BYUtv.”
When asked whether Ordain Women’s plan had prompted the decision to telecast the session, church spokeswoman Ruth Todd said in a statement that “broadcasting the priesthood session ... is simply another step in reaching a worldwide audience in a way that makes sense in a global church.”
In a letter directly to Ordain Women, Todd wrote: “Tickets for the priesthood session are reserved for men and young men and we are unable to honor your request for tickets or admission.”
Even so, more than 200 women in the group still plan to wait in the standby line at the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City for tickets to the session.
“We will stand with men and boys who did not reserve tickets in advance of the priesthood session,” said Kate Kelly, one of Ordain Women’s organizers. “There may be more tickets available now that people can choose to watch the session at home.”
The group sees this effort for tickets “as a continuation of us asking, seeking and knocking,” Kelly, an international-rights lawyer, said from Washington, D.C. “It demonstrates our willingness to receive the priesthood and to accept the responsibilities that come with it.”
Female participation falls outside the purpose of the priesthood session, Todd wrote to Ordain Women.
It is meant to “strengthen the men and young men, including fathers and sons,” she wrote, “and give them the opportunity to gather and receive instructions related to priesthood duties and responsibilities.”
Todd explained that the priesthood session is for men what the general Relief Society and Young Women sessions — held in October and April the week before the two-day conference — are for women.
“We welcome you to view the live priesthood session broadcast,” Todd wrote.
But the two women’s meetings — unlike the priesthood session — are not considered part of general conference, Kelly noted in a statement, “and male priesthood holders always preside over and speak at this meeting, whereas women have never been permitted to preside over, speak at (with one exception in 1946), or even attend the priesthood session in the Conference Center.”
In the past, she said, major announcements were delivered at the priesthood session, including “the Perpetual Education Fund [which provides loans to Mormon students abroad to further their schooling], changes in temple recommend policies and availability, and announcement of new temple construction.”
Kelly pointed out the letter came from the church’s Public Affairs Department and not from its male authorities.
“We don’t see our actions as contradicting anything that was said to us directly by leaders,” Kelly said. “Our intention is to communicate a message to our leaders and to the Lord.”
If they are denied in-person access to the priesthood meeting, these activists plan to return to City Creek Park a block away to “continue our call for the ordination of women.”
After all, Kelly said, that is the group’s ultimate goal.
© Copyright 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
THE CONCLUSION:
Hard to tell if the general authorities realize that certain decisions of late have started aligning Church leadership to a decision to ordain women to the priesthood
Elder Russell M Nelson, chairman of the Missionary Department and father of about nine daughters, gets to oversee The Lord Hastening His Work. His roll in all this is open to some interpretation, including that of Trojan Horse. The decision to drop minimum female missionary age from 21 to 19 could conceivably bring in a high percentage of young women missionaries. Percentages in the 40s, maybe even in the low 50s. Over the years, priesthood leaders and boy missionaries have treated sister missionaries rather like Cinderellas before the Ball in the Missionary Department. The Missionary Department treated a mission as a rite of passage for boys and as a result the whole enterprise did have a certain boys PE quality to it. Some -- if not most -- men tolerated the young women but did not exactly encourage them -- when they came in small numbers. If they come in large numbers, then the issue becomes this – why shouldn’t women get actual leadership opportunities in the Missionary Program if they represent a large percentage of the missionaries?
In early October, women can watch the priesthood broadcasts for themselves instead of just reading the text, can gather in the great body of the priesthood receiving instructions from its prophets/leaders. Preparation time.
As for me: Only the latest development that makes "guys nights out" increasingly harder and harder to get.
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