About the Pants

You may have heard about the All Enlisted, wear pants to church movement. To any who may read my little blog who are feminists, I am sorry to say that I just didn't get it. I had no idea that women felt so strongly about the gender roles in our church. Such as:

“I feel unequal when there are more (a lot more) men’s voices in religious texts, meetings, leadership positions, and decision-making bodies.”

“I feel unequal when callings that don’t necessitate the priesthood are given only to men: Sunday School Presidency, Brigham Young University Presidents, Church Education Commissioners, Ward Mission Leaders, recommend takers at the Temple, etc. (Similarly, men are not currently called in Primary Presidencies and could be.)”

“I feel unequal when women have less prominent, prestigious, and public roles in the Church, even before and after child-rearing years.”

“I feel unequal when males handle 100% of the Church finances.”

To me there really is just no issue, these things do not bother me, and please do not judge me as a naive follower blindly going along with what I have been brainwashed into believing is correct. For me it is much more simple. I believe in the gospel of Christ. I believe that we have a prophet today who leads our church in the direct path that God wants. I believe in the organization of our church to provide for people all over the world, to account for the well-being of people all over the world, to account for the progression of our church and missionary efforts and to account for temple work for the dead. I have had the privilage to have the Holy Ghost touch my heart confirming the truth behind the gospel of Christ as taught in the Bible and Book of Mormon, truths that have a little less to do with gender roles and a little more to do with serving our fellow man and bettering ourselves inwardly about navigating life with the accompaniment of the Holy Ghost to help us individually understand our roles our responsibility to ourselves and others.

Furthermore, as proclaimed to the world

"Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose....By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners."

I feel that God has a good intent as to why women are feminine and men are masculine and that we should celebrate our roles. Of course the men have these time-consuming callings, positions and occupations within the church because it is believed, and I feel well proven through the test of time, that women are meant to nurture their families and children and in order to do that they need to be at home spending time at home. There are situations when women need to work, there are time consuming callings that are issued to women in our church, not trying to say I know why things are the way they are, but by lessening the responsibilities of women in the auxiliary organizations of the church we leave them with more time to care for the sick, the needy, the afflicted. Leave the number crunching to the men, and women can use the divinely given talent to be as Christ was continually observant and able to seek out the needy.

This act of protest is moot. We go to church to worship Christ not to make a societal statement. There are far better issues to be worried about far better endeavors that we can spiritually invest ourselves in than worrying about what people wear to church, yes I know that protest was a symbol of something deeper, see above.

The board is now open for discussion.

Oh and for the record, my view on wearing pants to church is I don't care. Our church is founded on modern day revelation on the believe that we follow the instructions of living prophets and they have asked us to wear our best, to be practical, to keep pride out of our hearts and congregations. The Sabbath is a day set apart, a day for worship a day to address God our creator and Christ our Savior, to commune in sacred ordinances and everything from your thoughts to your outward appearance should be in accordance with that. If your best is pants, if you feel that your Sabbath day observance is just as special and set apart in nice slacks, then power to you. There are many aspects of our church that are not written out in exactness, we have agency we need to understand and practice making the best decisions in life based on our spiritual feelings with guidance from the Holy Ghost. Christ the greatest leader of all taught in parables that we might learn for ourselves, this issue of pants is just the same.  I like to believe the best in people, and I feel that is model of our church, so I feel that most people do not intend to make others feel outcast for dressing differently.