I am excited to introduce Bryndis Roberts. We will talk about her conversion from the Baptist Church to the LDS Church. She definitely gave her missionaries a run for their money, as she asked more questions about the Church’s past polygamy practices and priesthood/temple ban.
Roberts: Well, I asked them about both polygamy and the priesthood, ban. I started out with polygamy, because, once I got my quad, I very quickly read through the Book of Mormon, I got to the book of Jacob, particularly the second chapter of the book of Jacob, and I think it’s like, verses 31 through 35, which, I mean, it’s really almost like a rant against polygamy about you know how it is–the Lord is saying, it grieves him that the man have wounded his daughters, by doing this, etc, etc, etc., and basically says, a man shall have only one wife. So I said to the missionaries, I’m a little bit confused, because this seems to me to be pretty straightforward, saying no to polygamy. So how in the world did y’all ever do that? Their response was to refer to, I think it’s the 30th verse of the second chapter of Jacob, which says something like, “If I will allow, raise up a seed unto to me,” as the reason for why the church later started practicing polygamy, and I was just like, “I don’t think that says that, but, you know, I’m going to give you that when you go on, if that’s, that’s your response. Then about that time, I started asking them a lot of questions about the priesthood ban, which, because, although I was taking the lessons, I was also reading other things about the church.
GT: Okay, so it wasn’t tunnel vision.
Roberts: No, it was not tunnel vision. Then that’s when they proceeded to bring a number of the black members. I almost felt like–I mean, because I didn’t know a whole lot about the ward, but seemed like they were bringing every black member of the ward and it was always male members, because you know, well, since I lived alone, for the missionaries to be able to come to visit me they had to bring another male member with them and so they were always bringing black male members to try to talk to me about the priesthood ban and they made various statements as to why.
There are many people in the LDS Church who notice gender inequities within the church. What are some of these disparities? Bryndis Roberts tells what she noticed, and what she tried to do about it.
Roberts: One thing that just struck me and I still don’t understand, and particularly in a ward like ours, why the little boys and girls, the little boys had meetings every week, but the little girls only met every other week. In an inner-city ward, all of the children were just subject to so many temptations and so many things that made me think that the little girls needed a weekly bolstering or recharging or protection, whatever you said that the little boys got from meeting on a weekly basis, the little girls needed that just as much. So I didn’t understand that difference.
I found it interesting that while the church had fully embraced the Boy Scout program, the church had refused or did not embrace the Girl Scout program, which I had had involvement with prior to joining the church had actually been a troop leader. I felt because of my prior involvement, that that program would bring as much to the lives of the little girls as the Boy Scouting program was bringing to the lives of the little boys. I could see particularly in other converts, the joy in the men when, right after joining the church, or shortly after joining the church, they were ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood and it was like a progression, whereas the women converts had no real sign of progression for them. Then I started looking around at things in our Ward that we had to wait for things to get done, because there were not enough Melchizedek priesthood holders to do these things. In fact, my own temple class, I joined the church in January of 2008, didn’t receive my endowment until October 2009. Part of that was because we were looking for a priesthood holder to teach the temple prep class.
Is there patriarchy in the Baptist Church (where she was a member previously?)
Roberts: I felt that the priesthood lifted Mormon men above the patriarchal institution and made them administer it in a in a way that was full of benevolence and righteousness. So, I recognized it was a patriarchal institution. I guess, I dared to believe that it was somehow a benevolent patriarchal institution. {Chuckling.}
GT: Okay, so different than the Baptist Church?
Roberts: Yes, different in the sense that, I guess I put a lot of stock or a lot of hope, or a lot of faith in the concept of the priesthood, the whole idea of the Melchizedek Priesthood in the whole idea of reaching back to when Abraham was visited by the high priest or visited with the high priest. That whole concept made me think that somehow it was going to be different in Mormonism.
GT: Is it different?
Roberts: Sadly, I found that there were many examples, far too many examples of Mormon men engaging in what could only be called unrighteous dominion.
What are your thoughts on Girl Scouts? Are you on board with the removal of Boy Scouts? Do you think women should have more opportunities in the church, like serving as Sunday School President, Membership/Financial Clerk, or Temple Prep teachers?
Wheat & Tares 
My thoughts on Girl Scouts? They are gender discriminating. BSA accepts girls; GSUSA does not accept boys. They also do not want BSA to refer to themselves by the neutral “Scouts”. I await a logical explanation for that, but I won’t hold my breath.
Sister Roberts, all of our youth meet every week. Your ward scheduling seems to have been localized.
My 13-yr-old son is the only boy of Scouting age active; and his leader has kept the program going for him, gratefully. We’re moving to another part of the State where hopefully, local troops will be active in the city.
According to the Handbook, Temple Prep Teachers can be women (husband and wife). She might be the better teacher. Also Family History Teachers can be women. In our Ward, a Sister is in charge of the FH Center.
Responding to markablog, I have been in multiple wards where activity day girls (ages 8-11) met 2x a month, while their counterpart boys actually did meet weekly for their scouting activities. It may be different now, but in 2008, this was happening.
AD girls still only meet once or twice a month. Boys in cub scouts meet weekly. Markablog is likely referring to the YM scouting/YW programs, which both meet weekly.
I’m glad we are doing away with boy scouts and have no interested in girl scouts. I don’t see why we have to segregate by sex for our non-Sunday programs. Why not integrate instead?
As I understand it from my own days leading my daughters’ troops, the Girl Scouts specifically prohibit religious institutions and churches from sponsoring troops. The reason I was given is that they want to encourage diversity in each troop so that the girls learn to appreciate and cooperate with others who have different beliefs.
ReTx asks “Why not integrate instead?”
For a while we had wonderful scouting experience dis-integrated with all the geeks in one patrol, the misfits and bullies in one patrol (and thus isolated from their usual victims) and the athletes in a third patrol. It worked well, reduced conflicts and allowed each kind to develop his kind. It was most effective on the misfits since they were unable to accomplish anything at all until narcissists learned to cooperate with other narcissists.
mamalynnie writes “so that the girls learn to appreciate and cooperate with others who have different beliefs.”
Does it work? I suspect that generally speaking it doesn’t with the exception being that knowing other systems of belief exist and are widespread seems useful.
My 9 year old daughter loves Girl Scouts. She has despised the last 4 activity day.girls activities and today swore she won’t go again. They spent 3 activities “preparing” for general conference, then went to “sit quietly” on temple grounds today.
In the same time period, in girl scouts She did a flag ceremony for a national girl scouts board meeting, practiced coding a video game, did fire safety plans for each home, made crafts, had a party celebrating meeting goals with cookie sales, and worked on service project at a camp.
No question which is more rewarding and useful for a 9 year old girl.
“so that the girls learn to appreciate and cooperate with others who have different beliefs.”
Indeed. One upvote and four downvotes (so far) on my different belief. Learning to appreciate different beliefs is not apparently natural for a human being, but must be encouraged, perhaps with regular doses of different belief; starting small of course, suggesting that since the sun was created on the 3rd of 7 days of creation they might not be 24 hour long solar days.
EZ, the quality of both scouts and activity days really depends a lot on the person in the calling. There are some who do a great job and some who don’t. I’m not sure I’d want to draw generalizations based upon one example from each. I think Church programs can intrinsically be worse just because people are called out of the congregation. Scouts and girl scout programs typically have volunteers who selected the job themselves because they love it enough to volunteer time. While that doesn’t always guarantee better activities, it certainly incentivizes it. Especially since the volunteer pool is so much larger than one ward or branch.
Sometimes a little patience is in order. I remember when I was first called to scouts. I’d done scouts, but up in Canada where it was very different from what happens in US wards. No one told me what to do. There were training meetings but I found it difficult to attend due to work. Ideally I’d have had a leader and I’d be the assistant with the leader showing me the ropes. But I didn’t have one. Needless to say that first calling wasn’t terribly good.
The second time in the calling some years later I just more or less said, “screw it” to the formal plans and just did activities that were fun and educational often relying on pinterest. Those were very successful.
So I’d cut the programs a bit of slack and perhaps mention something to the primary president about your daughter struggling because of the types of activities.