After seeing gender inequities in the Church, Bryndis Roberts decided to join Ordain Women. But even before that, she pointed out gender problems within the Church.
Roberts: [I was] very proactive in raising questions and wondering why things were done this way. Whether it was questioning why we had to have a priesthood holder there when we had Relief Society events; whether it was raising the question as to why the little girls only met every other week; whether it was raising a question about why don’t we affiliate with the Girl Scouts? Whether it was advocating for a class called Strengthening Single Mothers. So, I continued to do things in my church role that were, at least in my mind, trying to address some of the disparities and the inequities, but I did not do them from the context of being part of Ordain Women. I did them for from the context of just being a woman in the ward who sees these things.
GT : Were people receptive to your admonitions?
Roberts: I think I made some of the men in my ward probably as uncomfortable as I made my missionaries when I was raising some of the questions. Because when I raised the question, for instance, about why? I have never been one to accept that something is a rule. If it’s a rule, then it needs to be written down, and I want to see that rule because it often has been my experience that people will read words and think that words say things that words do not say. So, when I raised the question about why do we have to have a priesthood holder? Show me the rule. I felt that then people went off and had to come and look to find the rule. Of course, it was in handbook number one.
GT: The secret one.
Roberts: The handbook that I don’t get to see. But then they came back and said, and I think the language said something to the effect of, “Priesthood holders should instruct members of the church, particularly women and children, not to be alone in an unlocked building.” Well, I mean, I don’t know, you can read that sentence backwards, you can switch the words around, you can do whatever you want to with that sentence. That sentence simply does not say that a priesthood holder has to be present, when a bunch of grown women are holding a Relief Society event at the church, it simply does not say that. So I pointed that out that this rule does not say that.
Kate Kelly was the founder of Ordain Women until her excommunication. What happened next? Bryndis Roberts discusses the aftermath, and the new structure of Ordain Women Leadership.
GT: Okay, and so how did you go from, “Hey, I’ve just got my profile on the web page,” to now you’re in charge?
Roberts: Probably, because if I’m going to do something, I just believe in jumping in with both feet. So, I put up a profile maybe in September 2014. I was invited to join the executive board in December 2014. I helped with a number of projects, and then as time rolled on, and we needed to elect a chair-elect, I was nominated as Chair-elect and served four years chair-elect and then moved into the position of Chair of the Executive Board.
Kate Kelly was excommunicated, and several women reported losing their temple recommends due to their association with Ordain Women. I asked Bryndis Roberts if she felt members of the group were being targeted.
Roberts: I don’t know if I would go so far as to call it a purge. I think, for some of us, as more and more questions were raised in our minds about things that the Church was doing, or even the Church’s response to our requests that the church do things differently or consider doing things differently. I think some women left the church as a result of those actions. For me, I was released from being Relief Society president in June of 2015, and in July of 2017, my temple recommend was taken away. Now, I’m trying to see the actions that I participated in prior to being released from being Relief Society president in 2015. My name was carried as a proxy in the second priesthood action, which would have been in, I think, that would have been in April of 2014. Then in October of 2014, we had what we called a local priesthood action, where we encouraged people to try to go and get admitted into the priesthood meeting in their local areas, and I joined two other women in Georgia. We went to one of their stakes, the stake of one of those women to try to, to the stake meeting house or wherever they were having that the priesthood meeting, to try to get admitted into that meeting. We were not allowed to join, we were turned away at the door. But other women were allowed to come in, people out in California, actually, and some places here in Utah.
…
GT: Okay, so, alright, wow. So, let me just give you kind of my perception and tell me if you think this is a legitimate perception. After Kate was excommunicated, in my eyes, it seemed like the profile of Ordain Women went down. But it sounds like you were still doing actions. Was there a purposeful lowering of the profile, if you will, so that you wouldn’t be quite as confrontational?
Roberts: I don’t accept that were ever confrontation. I mean..
GT: And I agree with you, but can you see that the brethren felt that Kate especially was confrontational?
Roberts: I can’t speak to what the brethren felt, okay? Certainly, we have not had since April of 2014, an in-person action that had the amount of participation that the first two priesthood actions had. I think there are a lot of reasons for that. Part of that is that the Mormon moment has passed. You know, the Mormon moment that sort of grew out of Mitt Romney running for president and all of that. Then I think, people were very hopeful before Kate was excommunicated. A lot of people were very hopeful, there had been signs, albeit small ones from the church, that perhaps church leaders were willing to listen, and were willing to make some changes. I mean, the Let Women Pray campaign has been held and a woman had actually prayed. I mean, we had at least somewhat of a history of seeing that our concerns had at least been listened to, and perhaps, while our leaders might not be be willing to acknowledge that there was a direct cause and effect between us raising our concerns, and the change being made, changes had been made. So, I think there was a hope, an expectation, a prayer, that there would be a very different response from the church to the two priesthood actions. When the response was to excommunicate Kate, I think a number of people did have to say, “Okay, maybe I was wrong about how the church is going to react to this.”
Roberts: But I don’t think it was so much fear that led people to maybe not be as much involved, maybe it was more of a recognition or a change from having a hope that the church would change to recognizing, “Oh, they’re digging their heels in. they’re not going to change,” and deciding that energies would be better spent elsewhere. So, you know, I reject the notion that women were filled with a spirit of fear. The women with whom I work are not fearful. They’re brave, their courageous and so I don’t think that there was ever a spirit of fear.
GT: But it does sound like there was, for some women at least, a spirit of resignation, that this isn’t going to help?
Roberts: I think there were for some women and for some men, but I think there was also, maybe a regrouping and saying that we will do actions that maybe won’t put people in the limelight so much, but, they will let the brethren know that people are still concerned and that we still have these questions, but I just reject and I bristle at the notion of thinking that a spirit of fear entered into the discussion.
Do you think Ordain Women’s profile has dropped? Has the issue decreased in importance since 2014?
Wheat & Tares 
All are alike unto God, black and white, male and female, is quoted in the explanation for declaration 2 on giving the priesthood to all men.
Women will recieve the right to exercise the priesthood, the same as the men, when the leaders can bring themselves to do it.
Geoff-Aus, amen to that. We learn in the temple that we will be priestesses unto the most high God. I don’t understand why it is such a controversial thing to talk or ask questions about. It is important that women start learning more about their true eternal purpose. The church is under-using 50% of their spiritual powers.
“After seeing gender inequities in the Church”
If there were not gender inequalities, the word “gender” would not exist.
GEOFF -AUS asks someone else to do his work: “Women will recieve the right to exercise the priesthood, the same as the men, when the leaders can bring themselves to do it.”
Be the leader. Then the follower.
“Do you think Ordain Women’s profile has dropped? Has the issue decreased in importance since 2014?”
It’s not my church. It is neither important or not important to me.
If you believe there is anything genuinely divine about Priesthood, then one waits for God to appoint whatever he is going to appoint on the day he appoints it. If there is any demanding to be done, it is to GOD, rather than demanding God’s servants disobey God.
If you do NOT believe in the divine providence of Priesthood, well then it’s nothing. Nothing to desire, nothing to get exercised over…
UNLESS to you it is power and dominion over others, and you wish to have some of that, which to me seems likely.
“Priesthood holders should instruct members of the church, particularly women and children, not to be alone in an unlocked building.”
In Hawaii, more specifically Aiea ward, two men, usually military (sometimes me) would patrol outside the building at night while women were doing whatever they were doing.
“where we encouraged people to try to go and get admitted into the priesthood meeting in their local areas,”
I don’t really care if women want to sit in on priesthood meetings, particularly if I am teaching. The more the merrier! My ward has had combined meetings each month for a very long time.
If they are coming for the sole purpose of being confrontational well that’s a different matter. I don’t mean mere challenge; I love a good challenge. But confrontational, demanding, angry; none of that belongs in church regardless of your gender.
As to access to the CHI, Church Handbook of Instructions, as a test I asked my bishop to see it. He handed it to me, I thumbed through it briefly, didn’t see instructions on how to locate the secret entrance in the temple to where the gold hoard is stashed, gave him back the book. End of my interest in the CHI. Your mileage may vary.
Do women WANT men in their meetings? It appears not; so why do women want to attend men’s meetings? I suspect most do not. They might try it once and discover how men can somehow turn a priesthood lesson into a discussion of whether Ford pickup trucks are better than Chevy, and on what criteria. (Generally Ford is better, but has earned the nickname “Fix Or Repair Daily or Found On Road Dead).
As it happens my wife would hugely prefer to sit with me in a priesthood meeting rather than attend Relief Society; but it has nothing to do with priesthood per se but simply the way a room full of men is more interesting to her than a room full of women which apparently they can be very mean to each other as they establish a hierarchy.
Bill, that looks an awful lot like aBYU shirt, for such a BYU-hater as yourself to be wearing 😉
Sometimes Michael 2 just cracks me up! Sometime I appreciate his comments for other reasons. E.g., ” But confrontational, demanding, angry; none of that belongs in church regardless of your gender.”
I have seen exactly that behavior from some men in stake meetings and have heard of it in other meetings. It can be significantly damaging.
I have also heard from a very liberal friend, often critical of the church and its leadership, of an occasion when she sat behind some women at a Sunstone symposium and couldn’t help overhearing them identifying themselves as Ordain Women board members (none were Kate Kelly and I was not told who they were) and carrying on in ways that exhibited exactly the same kind of behaviors they complained of with respect to men as priesthood holders and church leaders. I don’t know to what extent my friend’s observation was accurate, but if there were any reasonable basis for it, it doesn’t suggest that anyone should want that group in charge of church functions any more than those current male church leaders at whatever level who exhibit confrontational, demanding, controlling, or angry behaviors.
Michael 2
Some great points, except: It is my church. I am the church. So are you and the rest of us.
Let me take you back to my youthful days. I was sitting in the second level window seal of one of the old tabernacles my ancestors helped build. I was 14 years old and my Scottish mother was glaring at me to get my arse back to the bench next to her. Pronto, or there would be hell to pay. She would not hesitate to physically hit her children in public including church meetings and the bigger the kid the harder she whacked them. I had a 3 inch plastic black widow spider tied onto a piece of thin fishing line. I was dangling the spider down through the air vent and dancing it millimeters above the bald head of old Bro. Fjeldsted. A rather buxom and immodest girl about 2 years ahead of me sat behind him and was about to wet herself she was laughing so hard. I was planning to swing that spider over her direction and maybe plop it right down the front of her dress.
I remember this as if it was yesterday because of what happened next. Elder Bruce R McKonkie was at the pulpit and in friendly territory. In the audience had to be John Lund who wrote the popular book called The Church and the Negro and many other strong supporters. Big Bruce roared (dang, he was almost 7 tall in my memory).
The Negro will never receive the Priesthood. Never! I give it to you as a sign in the name of Jesus Christ, that if you ever see a Negro at the sacrament table, knoooow this church is in deeeep apostasy! If you ever see a Negro in the temple knoooow…..
I was astonished. I lost all interest in spiders and boobs, all fear of a strict mother. Here was the most influential apostle of the day giving a definitive answer unlike anything I had ever heard in church before or since. The debate was finished. I saw people leave the church over this in the coming years. It was mighty hard to go to college and try to defend this teaching.
Then the 1978 revelation came. To his credit Elder McKonkie admitted he was wrong. There was nothing divine about that teaching. Or that sign he gave us.The progress began and continues slowly today.
If there is anything genuinely divine about the Priesthood, I defy you to show me an instance when an apostle could not be more adamant about something and also could not be more wrong. We cannot tell when they speak as error-prone men and when they speak for God. See, this little Utah boy would spend 4 or 5 decades of his life living in the South in wards where we have black young men doing the sacrament every week. And I am reminded every week that Big Bruce was wrong about the most important issue of the day. (It still is a huge issue living in a county that is 45% black a and 44% white). If McKonkie could be wrong then anyone of the others could also.
The reasons the revelation came in 1978 and not 1968 or even 1958 are complex. My mother was a secretary in the church offices in the early 1950’s. When the US Supreme desegregated the schools (Brown vs Board of Education ) in 1954, Elder Hugh B.Brown suggested it might be time to extend the privilege of holding the Priesthood to all races. He could see the future if we did not. Others of the Q15 were not in a generous mood, for another 24 years!.
Black folks remember who was with them and who was against them during the civil rights movement. Even today this stubborness and tardiness in coming to our senses is a huge drag on missionary work and a built-in faith crisis for every black convert.
Sitting around waiting on the Lord is historically inconsistent with the reality of how change happens. You have a naive, black and white, ham-headed and rather primitive view of the Priesthood. One day you will join Elder McKonkie admitting you is wrong. Because, you are basically a great person and McKonkie is not bad company, really. It is your journey not mine.
The Priesthood should also be instructed not to be alone in an interview with a young and potentially impulsive teenage woman with a vivid imagination and sharp tongue. For their own safety, not to mention the grooming that the interview invariably does, even if otherwise entirely harmless.
I would rather be shot at than have someone like daughter at age 15 decide to falsely accuse me of inappropriate behavior. The marines die with honor. The weinsteins live with disgrace and rot in hell.
Finally, it doesn’t matter which meeting you are attending if you are spending most of your time on your phone. At any given time at least half of the congregation is on their phone in my ward. They might as well be home in the easy chair as disrupting or contributing to a gathering of same gender or mixed gender church folks. Doesn’t really matter if both gender specific meetings are boring us to spiritual death.
Pres. Hinckley famously stated, in a public interview in relation to female ordination: “But there’s no agitation for that. We don’t find it. Our women are happy. They’re satisfied.”
Ordain Women tried to agitate faithfully and thereby showed that some women are not happy with the status quo. While some small but positive changes resulted from their efforts to elevate the issue, ultimately there were excommunications (quite visible) and TR cancellations (not so visible) and lots of women who just lost hope and respect for the institution and left. The issue that spurred LDS leaders to take action was public activity trying to get admission to the LDS priesthood session. That’s a fairly petty issue to draw the line at — they could have just allowed interested women to attend. It would have been a generous move and caused no harm. They weren’t boycotting the meeting and trying to convince people to *not* attend. They just wanted to attend the meeting! How Mormon can you get?
The actions against Ordain Women leaders had the same result as the November Policy: it slammed the door on internal change and led many active and hopeful members to give up on positive change and exit activity or membership. So it turns out the reason there is no agitation by LDS members on this or other topics is because those who agitate, faithfully or not, are expelled or disciplined.
Dave B.
Amen and amen.
One for staying on topic. Two for being right on the target.
Counter-question: was Ordain Women ever viable?
The biggest thing they did was queue up for tickets to the priesthood session. The biggest changes they appear to have influenced are the live broadcasting of the priesthood session on local Utah TV and radio, the change to allow girls as young as 8 to attend the women’s session of conference, holding the women’s session of conference on the Saturday of General Conference once a year at the time that priesthood session was held, and holding the priesthood session only once a year.
By and large, Ordain Women simply didn’t attract a lot of church-goers to participate. Church-goers seemed to prefer the traditional order of things and found Ordain Women bizarre and antithetical to LDS values and gender norms.
I think you forgot about Let Women Pray was a product of Ordain Women. After Wear Pants to Church, the Church began allowing female employees and sister missionaries to wear pants.
I was surprised to hear that membership is as large as ever, but it does sound like enthusiasm had waned since 2014.
I would like to add here a fair warning. When I watch the rising generation of women (I don’t live in the US) they will NOT accept the status quo anymore. They will rise up for sure and start talking and demanding answers to all the hard questions that are still hanging like Damocles’ Sword above the church. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet brothers. Give it another ten years and a LOT more will need to be revealed, otherwise we will lose most of this upcoming generation (now teenagers). And no ” Home Centered, Church Supported” programs will prevent that from happening.
Mike writes “Michael 2: Some great points, except: It is my church. I am the church. So are you and the rest of us.”
The institutional church is top down. The members also constitute a kind of church, bottom up, but I don’t use the word to denote the mass of conflicted citizens loosely organized around some overlapping ideas seeking to impose their wills upon others.
It is foretold, without much authority I think, that at some point 2/3 of the LDS will apostatize, and of them, 1/3 will return, leaving a net 50 percent loss. No indication is given over what issue will drive it, and I wonder if that represents the big split at Joseph Smith’s death. But I feel that it is reasonably accurate and still in the future.
I suppose there’s a third church, and that is local traditions particularly in Utah where this particular flavor of church extends tentacles into social life. Back in my youth people wouldn’t even go see a movie unless the church magazine of the day approved it.
For me, church is just a religion around which is wrapped some governance. I seem to be a LOT freer than others to pick and choose without feeling guilty about it particularly if I am dismissing ideas of this third church, the local traditions of which I don’t really have a dog in that fight so to speak.
When in the Navy the other sailors would ask to see my horns I found the question ridiculous; one does not grow horns by going to church. It’s just a church! But I realize that to many people, Mormon is a race, maybe even a different species entirely and not quite human
There’s a Youtube video, several actually, where an elephant is chained to a post in the ground. The chain is relatively inconsequential; the elephant could easily break it. But he does not try because he FEELS chained. In his elephant babyhood the chain was strong enough to actually hold him; by adulthood he no longer tests the chain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqlkHzKoPPU
The application of that to this topic or any similar topic is that a great many people are tied to an idea of the way things are and it is not charitable to believe they can simply change their minds about the way things are; it is for them (and to some extent for me even though I’m a convert) “just the way things are” and to change it is like changing the orbit of the moon: (1) impossible and (2) why would you try? Someone else will come along and change it again (and again).
At the other extreme is people that consider Mormonism not only a democracy, but one where the tail wags the dog and its one thing today and another thing tomorrow and that’s our unchanging God changing on a daily basis; life is wonderful but how much would you sacrifice for such a thing? Probably not much.
Mormons are in a somewhat similar position as Catholics. Should Catholics suddenly let their priests marry, it rips the foundation out from under any claim of authority. Its reasoning probably made sense at one time; which is to say, I do not characterize their decisions as mistakes and neither do I characterize the Mormon church as making mistakes. It makes decisions the parameters of which are not entirely known and quite possibly your own decision would have been different but it’s not your church. If you want to decide policy, start a church and have it like Burger King, exactly your way!
I am gradually developing a sense that Mormonism might not be entirely top-down, and I find that a little disturbing. Maybe the tail CAN wag the dog, in which case I may be obeying your will rather than God’s will.
I don’t know how many of you have watched the recent sister to sister event that was part of the byu women’s conference. My sister sent me a link to submit my comments and questions beforehand. I have to say, since it said to tell us is what is on your mind it was mostly comments rather than questions, on my part, with frustration showing through. I don’t recall I was especially diplomatic either. So no chance they were going to be read out. But just the chance to send them in and have them read them was important to me. And they did say they had read all 5000 or so submissions.
Anyway, afterwards my sister and I talked about what we had put, and I was quite taken aback by the similarity in a number of the issues we raised. My sister has always been much more of a wanting to do the right thing, model member, whereas I have always been outspoken and cranky. Heck, if my sister has got to the point where it’s getting to her, it’s not just the next generation, it’s current adults who once their children start reaching adulthood just haven’t the patience to play the game anymore.
Priesthood was not a topic addressed at the sister to sister event though they did say there had been a lot of questions on the topic and that it had been addressed in a different session. Well I’m waiting to see the transcript of that, but the report on the session I looked at yesterday did strike me as helpful…
arganoil warns “we will lose most of this upcoming generation (now teenagers).”
I concur that many of today’s teenagers (including mine) will find other paths to walk. I am unwilling to change my path to conform to theirs; they are free to conform their paths to mine or continue finding their own path. Having some sense of destination seems useful but obviously I am old fashioned in that regard.
TOM (The Other Mike) reveals he’s Scottish:
“I was 14 years old and my Scottish mother was glaring at me “
There’s a fair bit of that in me as well; McBride, McGregor (became Greig or Grieg when McGregor was banned), McBain and others through my mother. It makes me usually intensely loyal but I can also be intensely independent, seemingly a strange mix but it means if I am loyal to you I have chosen to be so and its thus pretty reliable. It also means I can unchoose it if you change the parameters much.
Hedgehog –
I have a ‘100% in’ sister (in her 40s), and she also is having all the same questions about the role of women. When she told, I nearly fell out of my chair I was so shocked. I never saw that coming.
Even more though, I’m seeing it in the 20-somethings. We have several in our ward who I’m friends with that are ‘taking breaks’ because attending a ward where the older generation is presenting a very traditional viewpoint on womanhood is driving the younger generation nuts.
I frequent a Facebook group for early morning seminary teachers, and this as you can imagine is a very orthodox group that is charged with teaching the gospel daily to high school students. The topic of women’s ordination came up recently and i was stunned how openly and casually these teachers, mostly female, spoke of how ‘we don’t know why women aren’t ordained’ and how they ‘fully expected women to be ordained in the future’. There was a little pushback from some teachers, but most felt confident in expressing pro-ordination views and didn’t appear to fear any negative consequences for doing so. The whole thing expressed to me just how far the Overton Window has moved on this issue. And it is because of the groundwork and conversation Ordain Women started.
Moss, I think that was not at all uncommon even 40 years ago. By the 90’s when Joseph’s organization of the Relief Society became better known as happening along lines paralleling priesthood then I think even more saw this. The problem is that there are lots of very different ways to interpret this. I think some of the objections to Ordain Women is that it came off as privileging one view (the gender blind type of feminism) over others (say the view of parallel yet independent ways of viewing feminism and masculinity that are empowering to both genders). One could for instance say women are already ordained in the temple and that the Relief Society was intended as a sister organization to the Elders Quorum.
I’m not saying that’s what the future holds, mind you. I don’t know. But I suspect there are many people completely open to the Lord revealing things in a new way who were very uncomfortable with ordain women because of tactics and because of hte perception of there being one correct way to do this.
Moss asserts “me just how far the Overton Window has moved on this issue. And it is because of the groundwork and conversation Ordain Women started.”
Oh? And who laid the groundwork that led to Ordain Women? Never mind, I’m pedantic. You seem to be giving all credit to Ordain Women when that organization is as much a consequence or product of the times as the producer of the times. Anyway, I seem to have misplaced my Overton Window, don’t need it anyway. Is that the thing where today it’s a sin, tomorrow it is tolerated and the next day embraced? Doesn’t sound much like a pathway to Heaven.
arganoil: “We learn in the temple that we will be priestesses unto the most high God.” Check what is said again. I believe it’s “to the New & Everlasting Covenant” (aka polygamy, according to D&C 132) and NOT “unto the most high God” which is what is said to the men. No thanks.
Moss: I agree with Clark on this one. Back in the 80s, most of the people I knew in the church assumed that 1) women who were endowed already basically had the PH, and 2) eventually they’d just be full on ordained. The fact that Ordain Women got so much pushback was honestly a huge surprise to a lot of us, one that did great damage to the church in our eyes in revealing how they REALLY feel about women. In short, not great.
“to the New & Everlasting Covenant”
I haven’t been to see the new temple ceremony yet, but I am seriously hoping this is not the wording. That’s just gross.
Angela, argonoil, At least before and after 2005, it was “queens and priestesses to your husbands” — said to the group generally and referring to the initiatory where I suspect “husband” was singular, but I’ve never heard it. That language is publicly available on-line. Despite comments from some Brethren and in a long-since deleted “lecture at the veil,” there was never any covenant not to reveal that language. What changes may have been made recently to that language in the women’s initiatory I expect never to know. I do not recall if there was a change in the welcome and introduction part of the endowment. I’ll listen for that next time, but don’t plan to report back.
Angela, I wouldn’t interpret views of Ordain Women as implying much about views of women. I know lots of people very distrustful of Ordain Women who are very open to the questions. I think there is, for fairly justifiable and historic reasons, a lot of distrust of groups that try to make doctrine a democratic or political matter. My sense is that those in these groups often mistake this distrust as disregard for the aims. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding gap. I think you see the same thing with how to deal with Mother in Heaven. Some think that because she’s fully god that prayer and worship are completely appropriate while the majority of orthodox members see that as creating doctrine even though they’d be completely open to it if God said to do it. It’s that question of source that’s the ultimate source of conflict yet inexplicably so often missed.
Ordain Women and Overton Window can both be abbreviated as OW. Coincidence? I think not.
Clark: You must have missed my blog post on the very thing you are saying about the conservative bias against liberal tactics: https://wheatandtares.org/2014/06/17/kate-john-liberalism-on-trial/
The problem is, when you are a group that doesn’t have power, you don’t have a lot of options to “agitate for change” or to even make it known that the status quo is harmful. As you say “they’d be completely open to it if God said to do it. It’s that question of source that’s the ultimate source of conflict yet inexplicably so often missed.” Well, if you’re talking about personal revelation, God has said many things to women in the church that don’t match the party line. I know many women, myself included, who followed personal revelation to have a career despite the judgment of church members and the direct contradictory advice from church leaders. Now church leaders have shifted and say it’s up to the person and the couple to make these decisions. If you’re talking about church leaders saying it (as most members would), you’ll grow old waiting for them to do so. They are as enmeshed in their cultural assumptions as the rest of us. They just mostly have outdated ones, particularly about gender roles, due to their age and upbringing.
Sorry about that – when work or family gets busy I tend to tune out blogs. So there are lots I miss. Quickly reading through it, I think it conflates tactics with the right and left. I raise that simply because there are many (perhaps most) on both the right and left who object to the tactics of activists. That of course also ignores the fact that both the so-called left and right are really coalitions of pretty diverse movements. I’d also add that the tactics of certain groups of the right that I find so distasteful are actually explicitly adopting tactics of the left from the 1970’s. So I’d simply dispute policy disputes can be correlated so strongly with tactics. Ironically I think the current broad conservative movement is a great example of this where most intellectual conservatives are sickened by the tactics and behavior of the Trump administration and their strong supporters. Likewise I think on the left we’re finding a gap between activists there and the rank and file of the Democratic party although we’ll see how far the splits end up going given the common enemy of Trump.
That’s not to deny certain commonalities in personality traits and what attracts them to certain parties. But again I’d just note that things are much more complex especially during periods of rapid social change such as the late 60’s to early 70’s or our current period of conflict. So again I’d not dispute say Haidt’s work, but think we simultaneously have to be careful simply because a single axis distorts as much as it illuminates. Again, particularly during periods of disruption. That disruption is not just in broader society but also is I think being manifest as tensions within the church.
All that said there’s clearly bias in all these things. But I don’t think my comments deny that. Quite the contrary. I think I’m more or less pointing out the same gap you point to. I’d just add that I think many would point to questions of authority and ways of knowing. Yet those questions are also wrapped up in the broader societal tensions of the present manifesting particularly in the young as a backlash against all organization and traditions. Acknowledging such biases on both side (and they are readily apparent) doesn’t mean we can’t see why and how the conflict and disruption arises. If anything I think that the easy part to see. The bigger question is what’s driving at a lower level such conflicts. Haidt gives one suggestion tying it to relatively broad yet low level psychological traits. I think there are other elements at play as well.
Clark, the observant one, writes “tactics of certain groups of the right that I find so distasteful are actually explicitly adopting tactics of the left from the 1970’s.”
Such as Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
People are different and it has taken me a lifetime to appreciate just how different.
Michael 2″
You know what the Scots did most of the time? Fight with each other and fight the English. So I think we understand each other- loyal but antagonists.
My mother is 3/4 Scottish – those ancestors were in the handcart companies. She remained Scottish in appearance and temper and intelligenc,e until dementia domesticated her. I can’t write my mother’s Scottish maiden name since it has been banned from many blogs including this one back when I was more radical. My wife attends a evangelical church with a genuine Scottish minister, been here only a fornight or so, and he just rolls his eyes when I claim Scottish ethnicity. We Scots have got to make sure we DON’T stick together.