Last year I added a spoiler alert to the Christmas blog post I wrote for Ordain Women. Basically, I said, it’s been my experience that Santa brings us gifts regardless of whether we’re naughty or nice. They’re freely given, no strings attached, unconditional.
Christmas celebrates an invitation to participate, warts and all, in the miraculous generosity of a God who doesn’t horde love or power but shares both liberally. Unfortunately, we’re often not as generous as the God we worship, particularly when it comes to sharing power. We tend to guard access to it as if it were in short supply, refusing to acknowledge that only power used to empower others is limitless and everlasting. Sharing power is essential to amplifying it. This is the message of Mormonism—except when it comes to empowering women.
A friend once noted that there was simply no place for a woman, born with the talents of Moses, to use her gifts in the LDS Church. Similarly, a female financial wiz presently can’t even count a ward’s tithing, nor can a gifted psychologist, barred from becoming a bishop, use her considerable skills in pastoral counseling. This has to change. Why not help others understand that there is simply no reason to leave untapped the countless talents, abilities, and aspirations that could be shared more readily, if the Church opened priesthood ordination to women and empowered them within the institution to use their gifts in full measure?
An Ordain Women profile is a concise, thoughtful statement on what the ordination of women would mean to you personally and/or for the institutional Church. It is a gift of yearning and hope for a religious community that better reflects the radical inclusiveness of Christ’s message. OW welcomes submissions from those who are faithful Mormons, those who might return to the Church but for gender inequality, or those who care deeply about the LDS Church and its members and are concerned about how gender inequality and the marginalization of women negatively affect all of us.
Isn’t this season of gift giving the perfect time to share the gift of an Ordain Women profile?