Women To Pray In April'S General Conference

[smac97]

Here: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56026380-78/women-general-conference-lds.html.csp

For Mormons yearning to see women take on more visible roles in their religion, their prayers have been answered:

The Salt Lake Tribune has learned that LDS women are scheduled, as of now, to offer invocations or benedictions at next month’s General Conference — an apparent first in the faith’s 183-year history.

Church spokesman Scott Trotter would not confirm or deny the female prayers, saying only that "decisions on speakers and prayers at General Conference were made many weeks ago."

Trotter made a similar statement about the schedule in January after a group of Mormons launched an effort called "Let Women Pray in General Conference." The activists urged the faithful to write letters to six high-ranking LDS leaders, including apostle Jeffrey R. Holland and three women who oversee church auxiliaries.

The drive generated about 1,800 letters from 300 participants, said Analisa Estrada, a Salt Lake City graphic designer and one of the organizers. "The letters were beautiful and heartfelt."

"Let Women Pray" backers personally delivered the letters to the various leaders or their secretaries, Estrada said, but have heard no direct response.

They were naturally pleased by the news.

"I am really excited," Estrada said Monday. "It’s the kind of thing that came out of a lot of personal prayers on part of the organizers and the letter writers."

For most of the LDS Church’s history, its General Conferences have "tended to be pretty much male-oriented meetings," said Andrea-Radke Moss, a historian at church-owned Brigham Young University-Idaho, "simply because the [Mormon women’s] Relief Society had carved out its own autonomous space for female discourse, prayer, etc., at their own conferences."

...

Nowadays — and during the past two decades — LDS women leaders routinely speak in General Conferences. As far as historians can tell, though, no woman has ever prayed at the general meetings.

"I am unaware of any woman ever praying at General Conference. If it ever happened, it was generations ago," Parshall wrote in an email. "Ever since the ‘Let Women Pray’ movement started, people have been combing the conference reports, but no one has turned up anything yet."

In 1978, then-church President Spencer W. Kimball made an official statement allowing women to pray in Mormon sacrament meetings, saying "there is no scriptural prohibition against sisters offering prayers" and adding that it is "permissible for sisters to offer prayers in any meetings they attend."

The statement did not, however, mention the church’s large semiannual gatherings.

Radke-Moss said seeing women pray from the pulpit at the April meeting will be "marvelous," yet "long overdue."

In LDS culture, "it’s OK for men to speak to both men and women, but it’s usually only OK for women to lead and teach other women or children," the historian wrote in an email. "I love anything that opens the way for women to have spiritual and doctrinal expression in front of mixed-gender audiences."

Sounds cool.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Calm]

The Salt Lake Tribune has learned that LDS women are scheduled, as of now, to offer invocations or benedictions at next month’s General Conference — an apparent first in the faith’s 183-year history.

So I want to know what is their source?

There is nothing in the article that I saw that indicated anything other than the reporting of a rumour.

[Nemesis]

Dupe