Mormon church excommunicates Kate Kelly
Kate Kelly is a Mormon activist. She is a fighter for women’s rights in the Mormon church. Kate Kelly launched the website Ordain Women. The website states the following.
Ordain Women aspires to create a space for Mormons to articulate issues of gender inequality they may be hesitant to raise alone. As a group we intend to put ourselves in the public eye and call attention to the need for the ordination of Mormon women to the priesthood.
The site further lays out the following.
The fundamental tenets of Mormonism support gender equality: God is male and female, father and mother, and all of us can progress to be like them someday. Priesthood, we are taught, is essential to this process. Ordain Women believes women must be ordained in order for our faith to reflect the equity and expansiveness of these teachings.
For this, Kate Kelly was first put on informal probation. When she refused to take down her website, she was given a charge of apostasy. Today she was excommunicated from the Mormon church. She was emailed a statement from the all male church panel that said the following.
” . . . our determination is that you be excommunicated for conduct contrary to the laws and order of the Church. This means that you may not wear temple garments or contribute tithes and offerings. You may not take the sacrament, hold a Church calling, give a talk in Church, offer a public prayer in behalf of the class or congregation in a Church meeting, or vote in the sustaining of Church officers. These conditions almost always last at least one year. If you show true repentance and satisfy the conditions imposed below while you are no longer a member, you may be readmitted by baptism and confirmation.
“In order to be considered for readmission to the Church, you will need to demonstrate over a period of time that you have stopped teachings and actions that undermine the Church, its leaders, and the doctrine of the priesthood. You must be truthful in your communications with others regarding matters that involve your priesthood leaders, including the administration of Church discipline, and you must stop trying to gain a following for yourself or your cause and taking actions that could lead others away from the Church.”
The Mormon church has excommunicated a woman because she wanted equal rights for women. These sick policies of exclusion and prejudice permeates this church and many others.
This is the same church that had a policy that blacks were not eligible for the priesthood between 1849 and 1978. Black men and women could not take part in ceremonies in Latter Day Saints (Mormon) temples. Mormons used a disputed biblical passage, the Curse of Ham to justify their racism and this racist policy.
The men that excommunicated Kate Kelly are just men. One hopes she will disregard their evil deed, and leave the church in order to escape an oppression that no one should have to live under. One hopes that all thinking women will not subjugate themselves to male domination any longer in any venue.
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Egberto as a Mormon I appreciate and thank you for your passion for equality. It is essential in a world filled with fence riding and inconsistency that one express their feelings with great fervor. I would say that this situation provides all of us with an opportunity for dialogue about what is right, what is fair, and what is true. Firstly, I think all would benefit greatly to attend a Mormon church service and witness the pedestal that our leaders and men throughout the church put their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and all women on. I did not grow up Mormon and I can state, unequivocally, that I see so much appreciation for women and how beautiful and amazing they are. In addition to my admiration for the central nature of women in our lives I would say that it has been the position of the church from the beginning that the priesthood be a responsibility that men are to bear, not for prominence, wealth, position, or anything of the like, but to serve, and to sacrifice for others–including the sisters in the church. In a world where you are criticized for changing or adjusting to the winds and perspectives of the masses and then in the same breath criticized for staying true to what matters to us and what we truly believe matters to our Heavenly Father how can ones voice really be heard? Can you really say that, because I believe in the doctrine of the priesthood that I don’t love my wife or I don’t respect her position in this world or in our home or the church, or worse that I don’t treat her as an equal? That would be like saying that, because I choose to paint in black, white, and shades of grey that I don’t appreciate color. That I don’t have reverence for my daughters bright blue eyes or the perfect purple, orange, and red of an Arizona sunset.
I know that this life affords us many opportunities to learn and to develop ourselves and the doctrine has always been consistent; we hold motherhood & womanhood in a sacred light. We believe as many do that womanhood and motherhood is a miraculous thing. To denigrate or demean its sacredness or how we see womanhood by stating, because we believe it to be an essential role of man to hold the priesthood, that we are oppressing or holding back the women in our lives is a complete travesty and an interpretation, not fact, and certainly not true. The priesthood is greater than a man, a woman, than anyone. We believe it to be the power of God given to the earth for the purpose of ensuring our (everyone’s) eternal progression. All people benefit from the blessings that this power can provide. Just as women and men are essential to the creation of life and benefit from that experience (even though men can’t literally carry life inside them) both genders benefit from the priesthood. Both can contribute in their own way to its effectiveness and continuation.
Egberto and those who have posted forgive my diatribe. I just want to share the perspective that most find unpopular, but is what I feel and believe with all my soul. Please know I love and appreciate all the hard work that goes into having an opinion and wanting the world to have a chance to hear it. So lets do what truly brings progress. Let us put down our verbal swords and respect each other’s views. Let us not perpetuate what stops us from being a nation of freedom and a place to actualize dreams by giving in to fear, derision, and hatefulness. Those only have one desire; to silence hope.
First of all thank you so very much for your thoughtful response. My prose did not come from a position of hate but from a position of wanting everyone to have the ability and access to all they are physically and mentally capable of doing and achieving. My mother is a Mormon. I was initially very upset because I knew of the church’s racists past. But then again my wife is a Baptist and I am aware of their racist past as well. My neighbors who I love dearly, whose daughter was like my daughter’s sister, and who I always to as ‘her other dad’, are dear to me.
My concern is that while in the past many kept quiet when their positive desires were stifled, today is much different. The feelings that one believe they were not entitled to because of some scripture that deemed it wrong need not be tolerated any longer. I am so proud of what Kate Kelly did. I would hope had my daughter been Mormon she would do the same not only for herself but for all women who are not comfortable speaking up. Male domination must end just like all the other kinds of domination we have had throughout the centuries.
Again, thanks for reading, thanks for commenting, and do know I respect your opinion.
rspray1
It is beautiful how you treat women. I will not dispute this. But I would assume that you do this because it is your CHOICE, not because the church says this is the way to treat a woman. Conversely, if a woman wishes to stay at home, raise children, clean the house and all of the things that we traditionally call “women’s work’ and it is her CHOICE, it is a wonderful thing.
Now we get to the crux of “male domination”, rspray1…much of what a woman can or cannot do, according to culture, religion and even law in many countries, is not a matter of CHOICE, but of the male-centric world she lives in that says she may/can not. This is not love, this is not respect, this is control, and it is certainly not CHOICE.
Females may be physically weaker, generally speaking, but not universally so, just as men are not always strong. Each should be allowed to attempt…and to fail…at whatever they CHOOSE. Just that simple. Even, and especially, if that choice is to serve the God of their understanding, and their fellow human beings.
I was mormon for six years and yes, women are on a pedestal. That pedestal is surrounded by a guilded cage. I cannot count how many times I heard, “Women may (go to school, work, travel, etc) but why should they have to? The men will take care of that.” Why should women have to go out into the hard world? Men do that so that women may stay safe at home. Men wield the priesthood because they need the extra responsibility to keep them in line. As creators of life, women already have the connection with god, etc. It was embarrassing and enraging to have my entire self reduced to a biology I didn’t choose. To hear apologetics every church service on why men needed so much extra help to be righteous-but were more qualified to be leaders and decision makers for it. By the end of it I absolutely hated such a corrupt and degrading doctrine. I still do.