This week’s Equality is not a Feeling post illustrates the number of males and females who have access to the Church Handbook of Instruction, Volume 1. This is based on data from the following post by April on Exponent II: The Sealed Book.
Each square in the below chart represents 9 people.
One red square = 9 women who have access to Volume 1 of the Church Handbook of Instruction (the 9 women from the 3 auxiliary presidencies).
13,111.1 blue squares = 118,000 men who have access to Volume 1 of the Church Handbook of Instruction.
Women cannot even see the rules by which we are governed.
[For more posts in this series, click here to see the archive.]
The absurdity of the whole “motherhood=priesthood” comparison hit me pretty hard this past weekend in Stake Conference as the lists of name of those who had ‘advanced’ in the priesthood were read from the pulpit. If motherhood equals priesthood, shouldn’t the names of all the women who gave birth in the last six months also be read and presented to the congregation?
Keep them coming. This is excellent.
Wow. Just wow.
And before anyone steps up to say, “Oh, you wouldn’t want to read it anyway – it’s just a bunch of administrative minutiae. I don’t know why *anyone* would want to read it if they didn’t have to.
CHI 1 is the book with the rules about interview propriety, temple sealing policies, definitions of things like “apostasy” and “serious transgression:, guidelines regarding calling missionaries (and requirements for them to serve), and responsibilities for administering church welfare among other things.
The “administrative minutiae” in this handbook profoundly affect women during the most important and/or trying times of their lives. The rules, expectations and procedures are clearly laid out, but if you don’t have access to the rules, expectations and procedures, there’s no way to know if the powers-that-be are following them or not.
If the only way you can find out whether your local leaders are deviating from church policy is to ask those leaders for a copy of the rulebook, chances are most women with questions/concerns aren’t going to feel empowered enough to ask.
It’s much easier to “play by the rules” when you know what the rules are. And it’s much easier to protect yourself from cheaters if they know you have access to the rules as well.
The powers that be are fully aware of these disadvantages of not knowing the rules. Why do you suppose they keep them hidden to themselves? Just more power-plays. If Mormon women would stop pandering to males respect might grow. As long as there are puppets like Sherri Dew and others who listen to drivel like hers… there is going to remain the male authority of smoke and mirrors. Refusing to be subject to arbitrary rules women had no say in making, and the lay-people are not even allowed to see… well, that alone says a WHOLE LOT, eh?
Are you sure those 9 have access? Wow. That just totally sucks.
I cannot read a sealed book. If I can’t read it, I’m not governed by it.
I too question the real validity of 9 women in a ward having access to the handbook. I have been both ward and stake YW President, and ward and Stake Primary President, and I was NEVER in a meeting where the handbook was even present or discussed. I certainly never had access to it. If the President of an organization in the church doesn’t have access to the handbook, I doubt that any of her counselors would. I’ve been away from the church several years now, so if there is a new policy that the handbook is freely available to the women officers, I’d be interested in a copy of that — something in writing and signed by the men who would have dictated that new policy. I ALWAYS considered the handbook to be very secret — never could figure out why, but it angered me on several occasions that I just couldn’t look at it to clarify something. I doubt that’s changed, but would love to be proven wrong. I have many daughters and granddaughters whom I would love to enlighten about this change. It certainly would give them a little more power within the organization.
Not 9 women in a ward or stake, but nine women in the WHOLE church…
If one lines up the number of men and women in the church that DON’T have access the picture looks a little bit better though.
I’m one of the 98.4% of the men in the church that do not have access to CH1 (apart from wiki-leaks that is).
But, being a man, you could be called into a position that not just permits, but REQUIRES you to access this book. And you (and each of the several million other men currently without official access) have better odds of being called into one of those 118,000 positions than any of the several million women waiting for one of 9 callings which give them access to the rulebook.
118,000 positions (most of which are local and) which rotate on a relatively frequent basis versus 9 positions which rotate every 5 years among a very limited pool of women who come to the attention of the General Auxiliary Presidents in the first place.
Yep. Better odds that a man’s going to be asked to use that book at some point in his lifetime than that a woman’s going to be asked the same thing during some point in her life. Unless, that is, somebody amends the policy and decides there’s no good reason to keep administrative minutiae hidden/private.
Just a clarification: The 9 women are the three General Auxiliary Presidents and their counselors: That is, these women:
https://www.lds.org/callings/relief-society/leader-resources/relief-society-presidency-board – only the first three.
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/new-young-women-general-presidency-april-2013
https://www.lds.org/callings/primary/leader-resources/biographies – again, only the first three.
If you read the post Heather original used for this data, you’ll find it could be slightly inaccurate.
http://www.the-exponent.com/the-sealed-book-church-handbook-of-instruction-volume-1/
She states: My data are incomplete because I had trouble finding any information at all about the nonecclesiastical, corporate structure of the church, so I was unable to fill in numbers for Church Department Heads or for Directors of Temporal Affairs.” Some of them could be women.
Well, Dominic. Even if there were 900 women department heads or directors of temporal affairs, that would only add about 100 more red squares. That looks to me like it would still be a WHOLE bunch of blue squares and about 1 row of red squares. Still a *teensy weensy* bit out of balance, dontcha think?
Who let our secrets out to those nine women?
Wow! Knowledge is power. We lack it. But this graphic is a powerful tool, thank you!
I’m also interested to know how we can be sure that those 9 women do have official access.
The positions those 9 women hold are specifically identified in the distribution list.
I think this may be the best one yet. Even if one could show that motherhood and priesthood were meant to complement each other (which no one can, because it is not doctrine, and even The Proclamation has an entire section on motherhood and fatherhood without the priesthood being mentioned once), how on earth should this mean that women should not be allowed to know the rules by which they are governed?
Motherhood and Fatherhood are complementary roles. The role of the priesthood is largely administrative. Is there anything administratively that men do that women cannot do? Can women not balance budgets, supervise, organize, offer counsel, conduct, preside? The other responsibilities assigned to the priesthood are the ordinances, such as giving blessing of healing, baptizing, etc. Do any of these require testosterone or a penis?
So this isn’t the handbook you’re talking about: http://www.lds.org/manual/handbook? This one is online for everyone to access. Just curious to know if there is another handbook and what exactly it’s about.
Yes, Lisa. There’s another one–vol 1–that you and I (and the millions of other women in the church) will never be able to access unless we get the priesthood or are called into one of the general auxiliary presidencies…
(You can find illicit copies online, but that’s not the point…)
So everyone on this issue is really THAT worked up??? Could we find some other molehill to turn into a mountain? NO, LDS women are not “governed”, as in ANY religion there are rites and ordinances that we CHOOSE to accept and follow or reject and not follow. YES, if I asked to read the Handbook (regardless of the volume) I could read it, there are policies that are followed (just like any other religion) that follow the doctrines we believe (just like any other religion), however most don’t pertain to anything I am responsible for, so until I AM responsible, I care why? Since the LDS doctrine that family and God are THE most important thing to focus on in this life ( and has remained so for almost 200 years), I’m not exactly sure why anything Mormon/LDS NEEDS to be picked apart and criticized? We are a growing church, exponentially so! We do not bribe, coerce, manipulate,force or demand that people join this church. We inform, invite and present the opportunity to join and if the answer is no, we move on! If you desperately need a mountain to die on, I hear Everest is lovely this time of year!
Again it’s the men vs. women thing? I tend to agree with Karla. Find a more worthy mountain to die on.
Observer, it’s a series. They go up every Wednesday. ;)
That’s what I was talking about — the series.
It’s really rude to barge onto someone’s blog and tell them not to blog about what they’re blogging about. It’s their space. You’re a guest. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read.
But setting that aside, *really*, you think it’s a waste of time to advocate for women to have equal access to decision-making power? Really? I just find it difficult to believe that anyone would be that hard-hearted.
Ziff,
Heather is a thoughtful, considered individual, and I have confidence in her to respond to me as she sees fit, publicly and/or privately. Besides being a blog, this is a forum of sorts. If I have violated the terms required of participants in my comments (which I don’t think I have, nor apparently does she), I would accept the consequences of that. Merely disagreeing in a forum (a blog that opens itself up to comment has to accept a divergence of opinions) seems insufficient. Your being upset that I disagree with various things is your affair.
To comment here has been an interesting experience that has had me consider both how and what I state. There are a variety of comments to review, some of which have been quite embarrassing to read in their awkwardness. There have been angry rants and thoughtful and even insightful posts.
From my college days, when I was first exposed to “contrary” thinking in the LDS sphere, I’ve observed a variety of thoughts and manners of expressing those thoughts about the church and its doctrines. I have certainly taken a lot of note of those. There are ex-Mormons and former Mormons who participate here, besides regular members. If this were a blog about woodworking or pottery, I have no doubt that there would or could be strong feelings there, too, but the peculiar state of things LDS is because of the consideration of revelation, and leaders who are led by revelation, there’s a particular respect for that basis. There’s a lot of slicing and dicing of what (and how) leaders say (or don’t say) things. There’s room for understanding and misunderstanding. There’s also things that are known, and things that aren’t or can’t be known. Unfortunately, things that are known aren’t universally known, which is where troubles come in. But that’s the nature of revelation — it’s individual. We suppose that at some time, when Christ comes and makes all things known to us, questions might end. However, we also know (or are given to understand) that even in the presence of God, dissent occurred. From the prophecies that exist, the millennium of peace after Christ returns will end in dissent. Everyone has to choose, and choose whom to serve or side with. There can be static in the process of trying to hear the Lord, or the Spirit: offense, tradition, misunderstanding, strong emotions, idées fixes, and so on. Christ very plainly stated in the Book of Mormon that contention was not of Him, and it wasn’t pleasing to Him. Is there a fine line separating discussion and contention? Or is it a broad line? There are various metrics that can be used to measure that, but which metric? This blog has a more wide-ranging swing than one normally finds in church meetings, but do we all strive to keep the Spirit with us in all that we do and say, even here? I hope so.
Back to my post: I was agreeing with Karla. I thought she raised a good point. We only have so many minutes in the day, and how do we use them?
There’s another way to get access to the handbook: bittorrent. There wasn’t anything in there that surprised me.