Women in the Church

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I am here with the ever spiffy Ian Wilkes. Ian, how are you, sir?

I am doing well today, Mr. Bennett. How are you?

Good, good. Spiffy got a little bit of a smile out of you there.

Oh, I like Spiffy. I can't remember what it was Spiffy means. Uh, remind me.

It's just spiffy, nifty, nice, wonderful. Spiffy actually usually talks about kind of like how well dressed you are.

Right, okay.

Well, it's— so anyway, I, I just I've been ruminating on that and I thought you might enjoy that as the adjective of the day.

Thank you. I feel a little bit underdressed, but I'll try to compensate with my contribution to the podcast.

Well, this is only an audio podcast, so nobody can see you.

So that's true.

If you hadn't said anything, they would just assume you're in a bow tie and a tux and I'd forgotten that.

We're audio. I would have to guess something like that.

Yeah, because we do—

you and I are doing this over video, over Skype. Uh, yeah, I'd forgotten we were audio, but I'm back in the room now, so I'm good.

That's right. So we'll just allow everybody to create their image of both of us really well dressed and spiffy as all get-out.

We're all looking spiffy.

So anyway, So we're addressing a news topic. We're a little bit late to this party, I think, because this, this sort of blew up all over the Mormon bloggernacle and Twitter and everything else for a while. And it's kind of died down. But I think it's worth talking about. And that's that for the second time in just a few months, the church has released an Instagram post that has really stirred the hornet's nest and stirred up a lot of reaction, much of it, um, controversial, and much of it pushing back against the church on women's issues. You know, in conference we heard from Annette Dennis, And she gave the talk about garments and all this other stuff, but she's also the one who said, "I know of no other organization that gives more authority to women than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." And there was a huge kerfuffle about that, and there was a huge pushback. And she actually spoke in conference, which I thought was really kind of a bold move. To highlight her after she'd been so controversial. But this time, this is, this is a talk that was given by Camille Johnson that was highlighted on Instagram. Camille Johnson is the General Relief Society president of the church. And this talk was about motherhood and the importance of putting motherhood first. But, you know, so I'm going to quote a little bit from the talk here. She said, I pursued an education, both undergraduate and a law degree. I was married midway through my legal education. I had my first son the year after I passed the bar. I had babies, and my husband and I loved and nurtured them while we were both working. It was busy, sometimes hectic. We were stretched and sometimes tired. I supported him and he supported me. Family was and still is our top priority. So the whole thing is about the importance— the church is really focusing on the fact that the worldwide trend is for people to get married later, if they get married at all. And to have fewer children than they had in the past. And the church is a little ahead of that curve. The church still gets married younger than the worldwide average. But, but that, that age has gone up. It used to— I think when, when, when I was— I, I got married at the age of 26 and I was very concerned because most of my friends in the church were already married. And most of my friends outside of the church were not, and we're not even talking about it, not even thinking about it, because most of them, most of them are married now. But they got married usually kind of in their early 30s. Seemed to be the, the kind of average age for— I'm just talking very anecdotally. I don't have hard numbers in front of me, but the point is the church is emphasizing, hey, everybody, make sure you get married, make sure you have a lot of kids. And Camille Johnson was tasked with giving that talk about getting married, having kids just in time for Mother's Day. And she was a high-powered attorney, a practicing attorney for, for most of her life and for most of her career. And so they put this on Instagram And everybody pointed out the fact that when she got married, it was 1987, and President Benson had just given a talk where he was reiterating an earlier talk by President Kimball, both of which talked about— President Kimball's talk in 1977 was called "Mothers, Come Home." And he said in that, wives come home from the typewriter, the laundry, the nursing, come home from the factory, the café. No career approaches in importance that of wife, homemaker, mother, cooking meals, washing dishes, making beds for one's precious husband. I'm sorry, I'm laughing, but it was just so condescending. And children, come home, wives, to your husbands. Make a home a heaven for them. Come home, wives, to your children, born and unborn. And President Benson, uh, she, she was probably about 20 years old or so when President Benson was reiterating this, said, it is a misguided idea that a woman should leave the home where there is a husband and children present to prepare educationally and financially for an unseen eventuality. And so Camille Johnson, for whatever reason, she talked about the idea that she received personal revelation that this was the appropriate decision for her and for her family. And she, I think, has been a great model of someone who was able to do it all, who was able to have a rewarding career and also have a close-knit family and have children and all of that sort of thing. And but the problem is that in doing so, the personal revelation that she received was contrary to what the prophets were teaching at the time. Now, if I can get a little personal here, I don't really want to talk a whole lot about my, my family. Specifically, you know, my wife is very private and doesn't discuss these sorts of things. But in general terms, we got married in 1994, and I met my wife when I was getting my undergraduate degree in the theater. Really, really marketable degree there. But I got my undergraduate degree in theater from the University of Southern California, and she had gotten a biology degree from BYU and came to USC for her master's degree in physical therapy with the intent of being a physical therapist. And she graduated and we got married. We got married right after she graduated. And she, throughout our marriage, has worked professionally as a physical therapist. She worked full-time when we first got married. When we started having children, she started working part-time. And she's kind of fluctuated. All of our kids are out of the house now, and she doesn't work quite full-time, but she works, I think, 30 hours a week is what she's— she works for Intermountain Healthcare. And she's worked our entire married life. And it's never been an issue for us. I don't ever even remember it being controversial. For us, by 1994, I can remember the day after our wedding, I woke up in our honeymoon suite and we watched General Conference. Got married on September 30th, 1994, and the next day was General Conference, and it was the solemn assembly that installed Howard W. Hunter as the president of the church. And President Hunter was only president of the church for 9 months.. And so I don't even remember anything significant from his presidency. And I remember that President Hinckley came in after that, and President Hinckley softened this rhetoric considerably. Talked about things like, do the best you can. And, you know, sometimes you may have to work out of the home, sometimes you may not, or whatever, but do the best you can. And all of this rhetoric had kind of been softened. By that point. So I don't remember, and I'm not sure if my wife would say she remembers, feeling any kind of guilt or any kind of shame, shaming from church leaders. You know, our leaders knew that Laurel worked and it wasn't a problem. We never had any kind of pushback from the institutional church over this.. But Camille Johnson undoubtedly would have, given the timing of when she began her professional career. She was beginning it at a time when the church was really adamant about the idea that women should not work out of the home. And the pushback on Instagram over Camille Johnson's talk is not really criticism of her decision. I don't— there really isn't any criticism of her decision. And the thing that— the one element of this also that I hadn't mentioned is that once she started getting pushback, there was a comment on Instagram that was made by President Dallin H. Oaks, who jumped on and said, Camille Johnson, you're a wonderful example of motherhood. You're a wonderful example of putting your family first, and we just think you're marvelous. That's— I'm paraphrasing, but it was very much— clearly it was very much intended to bolster her credibility and, and back her up as she was taking this heat from the comments on Instagram. But the heat of the comments from Instagram weren't, how dare you work outside the home? It was, can you please acknowledge the fact that what you did was contrary to what the church was teaching at the time? And also lots of comments from heartbreaking comments from women who are of the same generation who very much wanted to pursue careers and felt like they couldn't because the church was telling them they couldn't. And so they were like, here, I did all this. And a lot of stories of women who said, I didn't pursue a career. I followed the prophet's advice. My husband died and I was left without an education and no way to support the family and had to go back to school and go back to work later in life. Other people saying, my husband left, left me without any skills and I had to manage a household where I wasn't able to provide for the family and all those sorts of things that come up when, you know, that, that the advice of the church in the '70s and '80s insisted wouldn't come up, insisted essentially, look, you have to have faith, you have to have faith in the Lord that if you stay home and you don't work, that you're fulfilling the Lord's desires and everything's going to work out. And all these people saying it didn't work out. I regret not having a career. I regret not having an education. My kids are out of the house now and I don't know what to do with myself. I would love to have a marketable skill and I don't. I mean, I mean, these are all the different kinds of stories and they were just deluged with these kinds of comments. And a lot of them were just, hey, you know what? It's fine. It's fine. All I want from you, Sister Johnson, is just some kind of recognition. That what you did was a personal decision that was not consistent with what you were being taught in church. Everybody feels like they're being gaslighted here, that, that they're essentially saying that, well, what Camille Johnson did was, oh, it's fine. Everybody was doing it. You could do that if you wanted to. I mean, the church wasn't stopping you. So all the defenders sort of come out and say, what are you talking about? I mean, you can always work. It would— I mean, and this is the problem with a church, with an institution that refuses to acknowledge mistakes, refuses to apologize, refuses to take accountability for any kind of misstep, is that here we are now in 2024. I have not heard anything for a very long time in General Conference where they say, women, you shouldn't work. And then that's just not something that's discussed anymore. It's quietly been shelved. It's quietly not talked about anymore. And in today's world, it's very, very difficult for anybody but the, the very wealthy to survive on a single income, particularly when you have a lot of children. The church wants you to have lots of children, although that they've kind of softened that rhetoric too. But they're still saying, you know, get out there, have children, multiply and replenish the earth. I mean, that's part of the temple covenant and all this stuff. And the church refuses to acknowledge that the way we approach this issue now is in any way different from how President Benson and President Kimball approached it. And so this is, this is where we find ourselves. And for me, it always just sort of comes back to the idea that the central problem with the church today is the false doctrine of prophetic infallibility. The idea that the prophets have never done anything wrong. They've never taught anything that was a mistake. And so that we can't even, they can't even come out and say, we don't think this was a mistake, but we've changed. We've changed our mind now and the world has changed. And so now we don't have any problem with anybody working out of the home. They won't say that. Just as they won't say, oh, you know what? All of the things that we talked about with regard to race prior to 1978, were completely and totally wrong. They've kind of said that, but they just— they won't say that the ban was wrong when they banned Black people from priesthood and temple blessings. But there's just this refusal to acknowledge, to acknowledge that change happens. We keep pretending that the church hasn't changed at all while the church has changed drastically. And we don't— we're not even willing to acknowledge that the change has happened, let alone apologize for anything that we may have done wrong prior to the change. So that's the whole thing. I mean, that's the issue as I framed it. And as you looked at this, Ian, is your reaction consistent with any of those kinds of feelings? How do you— how are you seeing this? How is this impacting you?

Yeah, I see it in the way you see it, but I see it in other ways through another set of lenses that I think adds to our perspective. So let me offer you some other perspectives in addition to what you share, because I think there's some other very important forces at play here, Jim. I concur with what you said, but I don't fully accept it's all signposts towards prophetic infallibility. I think that's a factor, but I think there are bigger forces at play, as I say. For perspective, let me share this. I've just drawn a little map here on this piece of paper, and I think your perspective and many perspectives of individuals who see this, who read this and provide a reaction to these remarks, they see it through, I think, a geographical lens. Salt Lake, you know, central Utah or Utah-based lens, if you like, you know, conservative Mormon, traditional, you know, the home base, if you like, in terms of that perspective. Then I think it changes the further away you get from the center of gravity from Salt Lake, you'll get different perspectives across different cultures, different, even within the United States, different cultures, different geographies. You'll have a different historical context and perspective to an extent. And then if you go further outside of the US, like where I come from, you get a different perspective again. And then if you throw into the mix a place where I grew up, so non-Mormon, not Salt Lake, you know, we saw Mormons as a cult. I mean, it was, very strange, bizarre religion. But even back in the, at that time in the, you know, the '30s, '40s, '50s and earlier, and '60s, maybe less so in the '60s and less so in the '70s, there was a conservative traditional family model of husband and wife. So forget the church for a moment. Men married women. That was just how it was. Uh, they had children. Uh, they— the man went to work and the woman stayed at home. That was England, you know, UK, many parts of Europe. And that was the way it was probably up until the '60s, maybe '70s. That traditional, um, family, uh, uh, makeup has been like that for a very long time until probably the last, you 30 years or so, things have changed quite radically. So, and the church has come through, you know, as a conservative Presbyterian Protestant, uh, I think, uh, originating, uh, or influenced religion, which is what the Mormon Church is, I believe, from the materials that Joseph Smith read and how that influenced him. The church, uh, followed the same pattern as Church of England people Uh, you know, husband and wife, he went to work, she stayed at home. And so in, in many ways, it's no, it's no different. And, and it's come from that position, uh, into, or trying to, you know, bring itself into the, uh, into the modern world, into the modern thinking. They've got all these pressures on them now to, to, um, change, you know, an old-fashioned stance on what that traditional, uh, arrangement was back then. But that's not unique to the church. That's what I'm trying to say. The other thing I think is a major force at play here, and again, this just doesn't extend to the church. This is an issue, historical issue, and a problem even today in certain cultures, certain parts of the world where women simply don't have the same rights as men. I mean, you know, you don't have to look very far to see certain cultures, certain nations around the world who simply don't give, even now, give a woman a right to vote. Some countries don't even let women drive. If you look at some of the history in the UK, for example, the suffragettes who were part of this votes for women campaign and they fought for a long time for right to women to vote in UK, they went to great lengths, extraordinary lengths to establish the rights of women in the UK. Emmeline Pankhurst, her daughters were involved. There's a small group of women who were founded in Manchester in England, and they formed a Women's Social Political Union, WSPU, in 1903. And the idea was to help women get access to the same rights as everyone else, the suffragettes, as they're known quite famously. And so across the world over centuries, across different cultures, different geographies, women have not had the same rights as men. And we see that today, and we see even in the, uh, you know, in parts of the Western world, they're like equal pay, for example. You're talking about women going to work, well, what about equal pay for women? What about extending all the rights, uh, to everyone that men receive, anyone receives, to, to women across the Western world, that, that's still not happening for, uh, women's rights as far as I understand them. And I, I'm not an expert obviously on this. I'm sure there are— well, I know there are many people out there, uh, especially women who understand this more than I do. But my understanding as a man of women's rights is that women are entitled to the rights as everyone else, equally, fairly, in every, every opportunity. Equal pay, uh, as a right to go out to work, right to provide for the family. Right to have children or not, that's an important right. And why do men have more rights than women in some cultures, some geographies? I also see another force at work here, Jim Bennett, where, and this does apply to the church, but also extends beyond the church to political organizations and different cultures where men feel threatened by women. They don't want women to have the same rights. This is very true in the church, by the way. There's no way you would see, you know, back in the days of Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, or that time, a woman having anywhere near the same rights as man. What about the priesthood? I know women, people, women who are good friends of mine who don't want the priesthood. But there are also women out there who would like the priesthood, who would like the equal authority, to have the same level of authority. Call it priesthood or whatever, uh, in the church, to be able to perform, uh, callings in church. I, in the past, I think, as I've, uh, held those, uh, old-fashioned views myself, growing up in a conservative, uh, semi-religious Church of England background where women were seen in a certain way and they were expected to perform a certain function, certain role, you know, in the home, and that was their role, and, uh, shouldn't even think about, shouldn't talk about changing that. The man had his role, the woman had his role, etc. I think the church, as I say, the church has been part of that whole culture, and there are elements in the world that want to keep women back. And I think some men feel threatened, intimidated by women, and they don't want women to lead. And I have no problem myself, personally, I was come from this old-fashioned thinking that women don't have the priesthood and don't need the priesthood. And they don't lead the church. This is the thinking I came from and actually taught. It's the men who lead the church. But now my position has changed. And I would be very happy, very comfortable. And in fact, quite pleased, actually, if a woman were to be a bishop, or to be a stake president. And I think that, you know, many women out there would do a lot better job than some of the brethren that I've worked with, frankly. So I think some men in the church is— even now, I think the church, the leaders of the church feel they can only go so far with the, you know, the women's movement in the church. And I suspect that there are some brethren at different levels in the higher echelons of the church who feel threatened at the prospect of women leading, actually women taking over. And I've seen that on a stake level, I've seen it on a ward level. I've seen misogynistic and old-fashioned thinking from, you know, men who look down on women and think that, you know, the place is actually in the kitchen or in the home cleaning, etc. And I think that's I think that's dying out. I hope it's dying out. So I think there's all the things that you said, plus all the other forces at work. Notwithstanding, I think the church will have to move towards a position where it will recognize women's rights in full. I don't think they— I want to be clear and say that the church, in my opinion, does not yet fully recognize and accept in full all the rights and the entitlements that women have and should have. And then the work thing, as you were saying, you know, there's, there's many, many quotes, um, including in the article that you've provided, where it says, 'A husband is expected to support his family, and only in an emergency should a wife secure outside employment. Her place is in the home, to build the home into a heaven of delight. Numerous divorces can be traced to the day when the wife left home and went out into the world into employment. So they have a, you know, a very clear risk or communicated risk or threat that, you know, the women work outside of the family, that traditional family arrangement there, then they could get divorced. It's a very backward way of thinking, but that's how they thought back then. And again, growing up in the Church of England in the UK, partly active in the Church of England, a little bit at least, and growing up in that community. That's how they thought as well back then, Jim Bennett. That was nothing to do with the Mormon Church. So the church has come a long way since Brigham Young. And I've got some quotes here that could be considered quite offensive about women and women's rights from Brigham Young. No surprise there, which I won't quote because I think they're quite offensive. But the church has come a long way. I think, and will continue to go further, and eventually, I hope, will accept in full all women's rights. And does that mean women will have equal opportunities and rights to lead in the church? I hope so. I'm okay with that. If that's what women want to do, why not? It's their choice. But, and to your point, you know, we're living in a very, very challenging financial economic, um, climate right now with inflation still pretty high. Uh, I can't speak to the cost of living in the US right now, but I hear it's very expensive. I could tell you right now, uh, Jim Bennett, cost of living in Canada is through the roof. Utility bills, interest rates, mortgages, etc. You know, men and women, um, husband and wives have to work flat-out full-time jobs just to get by. The same is in the UK. They have to, some of them have to take two jobs. So husband and wife, one's got two jobs, one's got a job just to get through. How you can live on one salary now is, uh, I think it's quite rare. I don't know the stats, but it's quite rare. So again, I, I concur with what you said, but I would add those other, uh, perspectives. Which I think are still very much alive forces influencing essentially a male-dominated leadership, which is what you've got in the church.

No, I think that's accurate. And I know that my father always used to say that the standards of the world and the standards of the church during his lifetime were not very different. And I think that's kind of what you're saying, is that in the, in the '50s and '60s or earlier than that, a woman working outside the home was unusual, not just in the church but in the world at large. I think that's absolutely right. And, and so the church, the church's position for a very long time wasn't particularly controversial because that's the way that the world sort of worked back in the day. I think by the time you got to the '70s and certainly the '80s, that was changing, and the church wasn't really willing to change with it. You know, I— the, the environment was changing, the work environment was changing, uh, women had gone through, um, the sort of the feminist movement, the women's liberation movement was the way they talked about it back then. That sounds like a quaint phrase now, but, you know, feminism as we understand it was born largely in the 1960s and the 1970s. And that was when Gloria Steinem famously said, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. And, you know, the idea, it was very much that women need to be liberated from this, this archaic idea that they are supposed to only be homemakers. They aren't supposed to have careers. They aren't supposed to have educations. I remember even the joke when, when I was in, in college, a lot of women would go to BYU and they would say, oh, they're there to get their MRS degree. They're only there to find a husband. And as soon as they find a husband, they're going to— they might graduate, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is finding a husband, settling down, getting married. But by, but by that point, by the time I was in college, that was a really kind of silly idea to everybody outside of the church. But the church was still sort of clinging to that. And, and I don't see I don't see that anymore, uh, even in the church. You know, I've got two daughters, both of whom are very qualified professionals. My oldest daughter is going to graduate from the University of Utah Medical School this Friday, and she is going to head off and begin her career and her internship as a doctor, uh, in Milwaukee. She's gonna do one year in Milwaukee, and then she's going to finish her residency at at Northwestern in Chicago. And, you know, I mean, and it hasn't occurred to anybody that that's inappropriate. You know, she's a BYU graduate, uh, but I, I have a cousin who is a doctor. She is a woman, as you can tell by my use of the pronoun, and she, uh, got her undergraduate degree at BYU and was counseled. This was probably about 10 years ago, so this was in the 21st century, but she was counseled by someone who was saying, you know, you shouldn't be in this pre-med program because, uh, you're taking up a spot that a man could use, and a man is going to have to— is going to have to feed the family. And, you know, so the vestiges of that are still there. And, but the thing, the thing that's so frustrating— so, so, so, so you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Uh, that was, that was the norm. It was the societal norm for a good long time while the Brethren were pushing that societal norm. But it is no longer the societal norm, and it is no longer overtly the norm in the church. It's, it's not being taught in conference anymore. It's not being pushed in conference anymore. Thankfully, in my mind. But we are pretending— the thing that's frustrating, the thing where infallibility comes into play, is we are pretending it has always been this way. We are pretending that, oh yeah, what Camille Johnson did, well, yeah, a lot of women did that, and that was totally fine and totally natural. And it wasn't. It wasn't. Camille Johnson was bucking the trend when she did this. And good for her for doing that. But it's not good for her to not acknowledge that reality and not acknowledge the pain of the women who wanted to pursue similar kinds of careers and were discouraged from doing that by the church. And the church refusing to accept any accountability, any kind of, you know, for a member of the First Presidency to jump onto Instagram and say, Oh, Camille Johnson, you're just such a great example of what women can do and what they should do is, is a slap in the face to Ezra Taft Benson in 1987. Taft Benson would not have jumped onto Instagram if Instagram had existed and applauded Camille Johnson's choices. He would have condemned them. And as we've moved beyond that, but we haven't moved to a point where we can acknowledge the pain or we can acknowledge the mistakes, and we're gaslighting everybody. That's the phrase that keeps coming up again and again and again. We're just saying, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we've always done this. What, what, you didn't know that? You didn't know you could pursue, become a lawyer in the '80s if you were a woman and a member of the church, and the church would applaud you for it and eventually make you General Relief Society president? And all these things that President Kimball and President Benson decried openly and insisted that you should stay home and make home a heaven for your beautiful husband, or what was the— I mean, that was the phrase that just made me chuckle. It was like, give me a break. You know, the idea that a woman is sort of an appendage to her husband.

Precious husband.

Her precious husband, yes. I mean, what about your precious wife, husbands? You know, you hear every Mother's Day— I didn't hear this because I was doing music and the spoken word, but every Mother's Day at sacrament meeting, you have these men give talks where they put women on pedestals and say, oh, women, you're so wonderful, you don't need the priesthood because you're so much more righteous than all the men. And so isn't that great that you don't, you know? And I don't know a woman that has ever listened to that talk and got, oh, I feel so much better, oh, that was really uplifting. They always come out and just sort of stick a finger in their throat and go, gag. The pedestalizing of women is not the same thing as giving them authority and giving them respect. And so the whole idea of priesthood authority and the whole idea, you know, that women are equal in the church is just belied by reality. You know, if you have to keep telling women that they are equal, they're not equal. You know, if they're equal, they're going to know it, they're going to feel it. And if a woman can't— there isn't any decision a woman can make in the church that can't be overridden by a man. There isn't a single decision. You know, my, my wife was primary president for a very long time, and, and she could call her counselors and she could call the teachers, but if the bishopric didn't want to use them, but the bishopric didn't like it, they could override it. They could say, nope, sorry, we're, we're not going to do that, or we can't do that because we have in mind that this person should be serving this way, and that sort of Whatever. The point being that what the church now does, how the church now functions, is very much at odds with how the world at large functions. And it's becoming increasingly anachronistic and increasingly difficult to justify. And I think it's increasingly an incentive for young women to leave. The church. You know, my daughters, uh, are respected professionals in their secular lives, and when they go to church, they're second-class citizens. They can't— they, they're not going to have any kind of leadership position. My daughter the doctor is never going to be my daughter the bishop unless the church makes changes. And so these are all things that that sort of feed together into the zeitgeist. But it just gets harder and harder and harder, I think, to come up with plausible explanations for why women are second-class citizens in the church. And all my life, you know, I was there when all these things were taught. And I'm a man. And I, or I was a boy growing up in this, and I look at my parents' generation, and I looked at my own mother who, who did get a degree. Uh, she graduated with a degree in music. She was pregnant with me at her graduation from American University in Washington, DC. But, uh, she never worked outside of the home. What she did was She taught flute lessons. She's a flautist and she taught flute lessons in the home. And she did that all the time we were growing up. And I have some of my earliest memories are walking in on her flute students. She would teach flute in the front room, in the living room, and I would walk in and demand her attention and she would shoo me away. And I eventually got— I all of us— there are 6 children, I have 5 siblings— and all of us came to respect her space and her time as a flute teacher, as a professional in that limited regard. I mean, that wasn't a huge career. I don't think it was a huge moneymaker, but I think it gave her a certain amount of identity and purpose beyond just you are a woman who is a homemaker and a mother and nothing else. And it became, it became more pointed though when my father was elected to the United States Senate. My mother started to refer to herself as an LWO. I said, what's an LWO? She says it stands for lovely wife of. You know, this is, this is Senator Bob Bennett and, uh, his lovely wife Joyce. And, you know, it, it's always, here's the senator, he's the centerpiece, he's the focus. Here's the wife, she's an appendage, you know. And she, she was in the senatorial Congressional Wives Club that they finally changed to the Congressional Spouses Club because The very title said that women couldn't be senators, and more and more women are senators, and that's becoming more and more common. But still, you know, we have a vice president who is a woman, and that's the first time in American history that we have a vice president who is a woman. And, and I remember when that happened, my wife was like, I didn't realize just how, how much I needed that. How much that meant to see a woman in that position of power, that position of responsibility. And so, you know, I— so I look at my mother and I look at my father's career and I see that totally reflected in church culture. You know, when Pat Holland died, Jeff Holland's wife, the headline in the Deseret News was wife of Jeffrey R. Holland passes away. Well, this is a person with a name and an identity. And Pat Holland was a very well-educated woman who was a prominent speaker and a prominent educator. But the church— in the church, she— all she was was the LWO. She was the lovely wife of, of Jeffrey R. Holland. I remember going to Barbara Ballard's funeral. We've talked about that because that's where I saw David Archuleta sing. And that was a funeral that was attended by the entire First Presidency and the entire Quorum of the Twelve. And the whole funeral was all about Russell Ballard and how Barbara Ballard was such a great support and was just so lovely and helpful. She was such a great LWO to Russell Ballard. And, you know, when you talk about the funeral, if I said I went to Barbara Ballard's funeral, you'd say, who? And I'd have to say, well, she's the wife of— she's the LWO of Russell Ballard. Oh, okay. You know, and the pinnacle of this for me was going to Sue Banks' funeral. You know, our mission president, Ben B. Banks, who I saw at Mike Maddox's funeral. He's 92 years old and great health and is doing great. But when I went to his wife's funeral a few years back, the whole funeral was focused on how content Sue Banks was. She was so content that that word kept coming up and it drove me nuts. I don't want anybody to say at my funeral that I was content. I, you know, because inherent in that word is the implication that, that you were given less than, but you were still content with it, that you didn't have everything you wanted, that you weren't able to do everything you wanted, but you were content with your lot in life. You know, nobody at the— no, when When President Nelson dies, no one is going to call him content at his funeral. They're going to talk about his great achievements, both in the church and as a surgeon, and all the great things he did. And he had— he was just out there. And at Sue Banks' funeral, it was she was content to let her husband soar, and she was content to stay home and raise all 8 children. And she was content to be there when her husband had all these church assignments that took him out of the home and took him away and took him to do all these things. And she then— and that model just doesn't work anymore. I don't know if it ever worked. I mean, I don't know if I were to talk to my mother, if she would say she was content. I think she probably would. But is that true? You know, uh, her mother was the General Relief Society— I'm sorry, General Primary President for the church back at a time. So she was the daughter-in-law of David O. McKay's— maybe she was David O. McKay's daughter-in-law, married to David O. McKay's oldest son. And my grandfather Lawrence McKay was the general Sunday school president of the entire church. And this is back in a time when correlation hadn't really happened, and so the Sunday school was its own church and the primary was its own church. And so she sort of had her own kind of sweeping organization that, yes, it was subject to the priesthood but had a great deal more autonomy than current primary presidents would have. Uh, so the church back then kind of, you know, if you, if you look back in the polygamy days and a lot of things, a lot of historians talk about the fact that since the husband was scattered in these polygamist homes, had all of these different households, that when the husband would come to some of these households, he was very much an invader. He was very much an outsider because these are people that had their entire lives sort of structured independent of this man who was an absentee father and an absentee husband because he was married to multiple women. And, and a lot of these women had created sort of lives and autonomy within the confines of that terribly patriarchal structure. And so you look at it and you say, okay, the church has lurched in all these different directions and at different times has given women different responsibilities, but all throughout it's entirely patriarchal. It's entirely the man is always in charge. The man can always override anything a woman wants to do, and that's never changed. And what this kind of an episode with, with Sister Johnson highlights is just how, how difficult that is going to be to persuade people to accept that model, to say to young women, yeah, grow up and you be an LWO for the rest of your life. Even if you have your own career, even if you have your own education, you are still primarily an LWO. It is your husband who is the centerpiece. It is your husband who is the focus. It is your responsibility to support your husband. And we never say to husbands, it is your responsibility to support your wife. It is your responsibility to encourage her professional goals. It is— we never talk about your precious wife unless we're pedestalizing them, unless we're putting them on a pedestal and looking at them and saying, aren't they pretty? Aren't they wonderful? They're not allowed to do anything, but we can admire them from afar. So So I'm not— you're on the outside, I'm on the inside, but I'm not willing to give the church maybe as much of a pass as you're willing to give them. Because yes, I think you're right. For a very long time, that it really wasn't that different in the world than it was in the church. But now that it is different, I think the church has to make, has to make accommodations, has to adapt, or we're going to become an we're on our way to becoming an anachronism, and intelligent, educated, professional women are not going to sit still for being second-class citizens when they show up at church. Do you think that's an accurate assessment?

I do. I do. I listen to what you said, and I— it's hard to disagree with, with any of that. I want to add a few more thoughts, uh, if I may. Um, across the world, Jim Bennett, across different cultures, different geographies, typically, generally in business, certainly in my opinion, women do not have the same rights. They just don't. I just don't see it. Uh, in the church, the, the, the women do not have or enjoy the same rights or the powers or the privileges. When I, uh, remember just thinking on some of the things you've been saying there, when the brethren have said, uh, that, um, we've taught this that the women are righteous enough not to have the priesthood. You don't need the priesthood. I think that's total bullshit actually. And I see it differently now. And I see that as the infallibility of men, not just prophets, just men in general, forget them being a prophet or an apostle. And that they're worrying, concerned that And the fear that they have that, my goodness, a woman might take over and might even do a better job. And, and the man hasn't got the control anymore. We see that across so many different cultures across the world. And so what better way to keep, keep women down is to say, look, you don't need the priesthood authority. I mean, what a very awful way of, of tricking women into thinking that they don't need authority or, you know, but in actual fact they do because they can't make a really defining decision in the church. As you say, it goes through a man. By the way, one of my best counselors as a bishop was a woman. She was amazing and frankly offered a lot better counsel than many of the male counselors that I had. And that idea didn't come from me, it came from another leader who I knew really well, who was just—

You called her as a counselor?

No, sorry, sorry, let me qualify. So I had— no, I want to be clear. So I was in the bishopric, two male counselors, with the advice I got from somebody who was a mentor of mine in the church, said, Bishop Wilkes, use your Relief Society president as a counselor. Okay, so I didn't— she wasn't a counselor, obviously. You know, uh, as in the literal sense. But I confided in her like a counselor, and as my Relief Society president, and she was amazing and gave me extraordinary counsel, often higher quality than some of the counsel I got from my actual male priesthood counselors. She was extraordinary. And again, I was saying earlier that to keep women down, keep them in the place tell them they don't need the priesthood. So women— so a lot of women don't want the priesthood, and that's, uh, a choice. Um, I just think they should consider the opportunities that come through, uh, being a leader. I think they'd be fantastic leaders, actually. I think we'd do better in the church if we had more women leaders. I'm not just saying to be politically correct. I actually believe that because I've worked with extraordinary women in the church who I find are better communicators than men. They're more in touch with their emotions, more in touch with the, you know, the other emotional side, emotional intelligence of women, I think, is in the church is deeper than men in my experience.

Well, I don't believe— I don't mean to interrupt you, but I don't believe that women don't want the priesthood. I know that women that there are many women that will say that, and I think they kind of believe that, but I think that comes from a lifetime of being told that you shouldn't want the priesthood. And so for a woman, you know, for my mother to say, well, I really would have liked to have the priesthood, she would never ever say that. I don't think she would ever admit that even to herself, because to admit that would be to admit that the church was wrong, that everything that she was taught was inappropriate, that, you know, that, I mean, because women are constantly told, you shouldn't want the priesthood, you shouldn't be. And so I think that is, I think the reality is that everybody craves equality. And we don't treat women equally. So anyway, I don't mean to interrupt you, but—

No, no, that's not that. No, that's a really good point. I think you're right. I think The women who say they don't want the priesthood, but they secretly, privately do. I don't know.

I just think they want to be equal. I think they want to be treated equally. And I don't see, I mean, I don't think they're out campaigning for office, but I think they want to be treated equally. And I don't see a way to treat them equally without giving them equal authority.

Yeah, and I would add to that by extending equal opportunities to all women. So everyone, Jim Bennett, men and women, have equal, fair, balanced access to leadership and authority in the church. And if people choose not to, like a man, if you don't want a calling and you say no, right? You get called to be a bishop and you don't want it, just say no, right? Sorry, Bishop Bennett, I can't do the calling. I don't want to go, whatever, right? But at least that opportunity has been extended. So let's go one step further and extend the authority and the power to women and let that woman decide for herself if that's what she wants or not. But at least let's extend it. A few more points if I'm able, and I'll just zip through them here. You mentioned earlier about Camille Johnson's talk, and I agree with you. There's a major own goal here, missed opportunity to at least balance the comments, you know, with their experience and go to work and try and juggle all these things when she was, you know, a lawyer and went to work, etc., by at least referencing, at least talking briefly in context that at the time that was contrary to what the church was teaching. Couch it some other way, whatever. She looked through the prophets under the, under the bus, but at least provide some context. And I think her talk has been vetted, it's been screened, and, and she probably thought and felt like that. I don't know. I wanted to say that it's been kind of screened out, but again, it's another missed opportunity for the church to provide that balanced concept. The other thing as well is this— my goodness, this is an interesting point that came up— is having the children component, where, you know, back then women were encouraged to stay at home and bear children, right? Have babies, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9 babies, bigger families back then. I think the church would like to have the same number of children being born, considering the significant drop-off in number of convert baptisms and the pressure now to increase child of record baptisms in order to, at least rather to offset some of the decline in the, in the, in the baptismal record of people, you know, joining the church through, through baptism. I think the church would like to have more women have more babies. But how does it do that without being seen to be, you know, throwing itself back into, you know, back into the past, into the Dark Ages? I, you know, we do measure child of record baptisms. And so that'll be interesting to see how the church, you know, reconciles with that. The other thing as well I want to highlight is, so, so I missed a missed opportunity and an own goal by not referencing that in King Mills Johnson's talk. I think it's pretty, pretty poor performance on the part of the church, frankly. The other thing as well, you talked earlier about society does stuff and then the church responds. Okay, there's a pattern and I don't think we've talked about it. You might have referenced it. There's a whole podcast on this, Brett, I think. Where the society does something, especially in America. It happens in the UK or Norway or Germany or Japan or Africa. So what big deal? The church doesn't pay attention to that. It pays attention to what's happening in America. Certainly pays attention to what happened in Newtown. It pays attention to what's happening in, uh, Salt Lake because it's an American church. This is a worldwide church. Didn't take into account what's happening in the world or other women's rights in the world or all these issues that are across the world where women have zero rights. Not interested in that. What happens in America and Salt Lake, Utah, that's where the church gives 99% of its attention. And so when, when things change, society, societal changes happen, occur in America and Utah, Salt Lake, the church responds afterwards, not before, not during. Society does something, a law is passed, the church has this wait-and-see policy, read the reaction of people, et cetera. And then some revelation happens or some inspiration happens. It's just, it's just so obvious. And there's a pattern there. And the other thing I wanna throw into the mix here, which you articulated extremely well, and I feel equally compelled to kind of reference this important point here is that like your daughters, Jim Bennett, your family members there who were, you know, you've got daughters of extraordinary talent and leadership. I too have a daughter who's equally talented with incredible leadership skills and capability, just a very intelligent individual, and frankly, really has very little patience for this, you know, misogynistic, chauvinistic thinking, this old-fashioned thinking where, you know, she, she, she hasn't got access to write, she'll speak up. She's very talented, very skilled, been in her workplace for, you know, 8 years. She's part of a, I think she's part of a company women's in leadership group within the company, which is great. So, We are seeing change in certain parts of the world. We're seeing incremental change, I think, within the church. The church still doesn't recognize, uh, or extend full equal opportunities to women. I think it's afraid of, uh, of that, uh, like it's afraid of so many other things. But like I say, I think when, you know, a society changes, and it will, more pressure will come to bear on the church than the church will have a revelation, make some changes. Uh, perhaps, uh, coming to the end here, one of my final, uh, contributions to the podcast, which I— is a quote here, and it's attributed to Jim Carrey, who's a Canadian comedian. I think it's Jim Carrey. I quite like it. Uh, he says, behind every successful man is a woman rolling her eyes. And I, I quite like that. But my, my final thoughts are this, that men and women are equal and should be equal in every way. But notwithstanding the, you know, there's physical differences and there's other biological differences which to do with biology, et cetera, we're different in that way, but we're not different in value. We're not different in contribution, you know, in terms of what we can do. Everybody individually, whether men or women, you know, black or white, young or old, Regardless of cultural background, has something unique and distinct to offer. You know, we all have different sets of skills. We're all equal in value. We all have something to contribute, something that we can bring some value to. And let's think, let's work like that. Let's think like that and be equal and extend those opportunities in an equal way to everyone else. And let's appoint or call or hire people based on merit, based on skill, based on capability, based on integrity. What about all those factors that, you know, come into decision-making when we're working with people? And so I think, you know, the church still got a long way to go to extend those rights. And I think, you know, I think we're going to see another 10, probably 15 years before that happens. But I, I'm glad we have this conversation. And as I say, I wish Camille Johnson would have at least provided a little bit of perspective and some context, but at least referencing, you know, those— that life she had in the midst of the counsel that was being communicated and the direction was being given by the brethren for women not to go to work, and I think that's a missed opportunity. But again, we, we hope that the church will change and improve.

Well, I think the church will change and improve. I think the church has changed and improved, and I think it would be churlish not to acknowledge that. Uh, we are in a different place than we were when Camille Johnson was starting her career, and I think it's a better place. And The thing that frustrates me is that we are the church that, that is built on a foundation of continuing revelation. When we all, we pride ourselves on the fact that the canon is still open, the heavens are still open. We can receive more scripture. We can receive more revelation. One of our articles of faith is that we believe that the Lord will do many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God, will reveal, will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God. And, and we don't— and yet we insist that we don't change. We insist that we can't change. You know, doctrine can never change. This can never change. And prior to anything, I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying the church needs to do anything. I'm not saying the church needs to give women the priesthood. I'm not saying any of that. What I'm saying is, at the very basic minimum, we have to admit that change is possible. And that, I think, is the real crux of the problem with Camille Johnson's talk is that she's act— we've changed and she's acting like we haven't. And that just gets so— it makes it so difficult for us to address any of the myriad of problems that we have, whether it's women's issues, it's LGBTQ issues, it's racism, all of these things. We're now really focused on getting rid of racism and President Nelson created this relationship with the NAACP, a big civil rights organization in the United States, and, you know, has received an award. And the Tabernacle Choir— I'm heading out in September to go sing at Spelman and Morehouse Colleges, which are traditionally Black universities. They came and sang with us at Music and the Spoken Word and were magnificent. We're going to return the favor and go and sing with them. And we're building all these bridges with the African-American community. And we aren't able to acknowledge that we've changed. We're just trying to pretend this is kind of always how it's been, and it's not. So that to me is the thing that frustrates me almost more than, than just the specific problem with women, because this, this problem extends to every problem in the church. It extends— if we can't acknowledge that we are a changing church, that we are a church, then, then, then we need to stop talking about continuing revelation. We need to stop talking about that being real, because what good is continuing revelation if it can't change anything? So I very much appreciate your perspective on this. And I think you're right. I think we will change. I think actually the changes with regard to how we treat women will probably come before the change in how we treat change. I don't know, I don't see any movement in church leadership toward the idea that they can accept that they've made mistakes and they can accept that we can change and learn from them and grow. I see absolutely none of that. And, and so That to me is the change I would like to see the most. Is that too pessimistic?

No, I think that's very fair. And just one thing I would add to that, uh, for me is I think the problem, when it's stripped down to its, uh, grassroots, is generally, and I think widely actually, that it's a problem that men have with women's— with women having authority. Well, a lot of men out there, Jim, who simply can't accept or get past the notion that a woman might have or should have more authority than them. It just— in the psyche of, of a lot of men. And, uh, I think that is— I think the church's, uh, male thinking, I think that's, uh, representative of lots of societies as a whole. So I would, yeah, I think, I think the problem is as fundamental as that.

I believe I would agree with you. The only way women can have power is if men give it up. And nobody likes to give up power. Doesn't matter who you are. When you have power, the instinct is, okay, I'm going to keep it, I'm going to hold on to it. And in order to empower women, The men who have all of the power in the church need to be willing to give it up. Yeah, there's really no other way to get there.

So there's no media.

So anyway, I very much agree. So we're two men talking about women.

What do we know?

So what do we know? Behind us, there are women rolling their eyes, but hopefully, hopefully we can make sure that these women are beside us.

Yes.

They're equal.

I think if— sorry, go ahead.

No, just going forward, that's the goal. And I think we need to do everything we can to demonstrate the importance of giving up power in order to be able to create the equality that I think all of us crave.

I concur. And if there's anything we've said wrong or we misunderstood something because we're We men, I think we've come to this, into this conversation with genuine intent. At least we don't have answers. We're certainly not perfect or experts on the subject of women by any means, but I think we have good intent. And you're right, I think you're something real. I think men have to release the power and have confidence that women can do equally good, as good a job as any man.

And we'll let that be the last word. So thank you all for listening, whether you are a man or woman or whoever you are, we're grateful to have you here and we hope to see you next time on Inside Out. Thank you very much, Ivan. Ivan, let me do that again. Thank you very much, Jim.

Thank you. We should keep that in, but thank you, Jim.