Dear Ask a Feminist,
I’m fine with most of what I read about WAVE so far, but I have a problem when people start talking about refuting the prophets’ words and counsel (i.e. birth control, mothers staying home), as if they knew more than the prophet and then their resistance was the cause of the church’s change? That stuff just scares me, because they seemed to be saying we know more than the prophets in these areas. So, is he only a prophet when you agree with him, or when he agrees with you (that’s kind of a rhetorical question)?
Sincerely,
Trying to Understand
Dear Trying to Understand,
I can completely understand your resistance to that concept and I can see why you would read it as such. These issues are extremely complex and when they are summarized it can seem that we are saying one thing when in reality we are trying to communicate something very different.
This is a tough question and very complex. Basically, (I can only say from my perspective) I in no way think that my understanding is a) more correct than the prophets and leaders or b) for the whole church. I do not advocate criticizing our leaders. I love and value their counsel and as such I follow it. For example, I’ve been taught to prayerfully go to the Lord with the words of my church leaders. I have been taught that as a wife and mother I have stewardship over my family. I take that very seriously and when I receive general church counsel given to all church members, I go home and prayerfully decide how I can apply that to my family. For your specific questions, I the church has historically given advice on birth control and maternal working and in each of these cases I have prayerfully counseled with my husband and the Lord about what we should do as a family and then we make the decision based on the best spiritual, emotional, physical, and economic knowledge that we have. We try to make the best decision for our family.
We are encouraged as members of the LDS faith to follow this pattern and prayerfully counsel with the Lord about all of our decisions. Our leaders are inspired and one of the greatest tools we have as members of this particular church is a belief in continued revelation. We have a living prophet on the earth today in order for us to receive counsel for our times. Some LDS feminists attribute the changes we see in prophetic counsel over the years on birth control and maternal working as reflections of general trends in these personal prayers. Many women counseled with the Lord and decided that birth control was a beneficial to their families and around that same time our leaders’ counsel reflected that general change. Many women counseled with the Lord and decided that working (defined broadly) was beneficial to their families and recent prophetic counsel reflects this. Similarly, we can look at the historic cases of polygamy and blacks in the priesthood. In all of these cases we assume that our Prophets were inspired as well as in tune with the needs of the church members on the earth at this time.
Sincerely,
Ask a Feminist
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