Do Our Callings Define Us?
“Our callings don’t define us.” This quote from a sincere LDS Stake President keeps running through my brain. I have no doubt that he believes this claim and that he genuinely appreciates the people in the Stake. I don’t think he sees himself as above others. But his position literally places him at the front of every congregation he visits and everyone defers to his authority. His calling does define him; even if it’s not supposed to define him.
For the changing of male leaders to happen in the ward recently, for example, the entire Stake Presidency attended, along with a High Councilman, filling up the leadership row in the chapel. Their status was on full display. When they released the current leadership, they purposefully emphasized how a man once a Bishop would always be honored with the title of Bishop.
But their callings don’t define them.
They then called the new Bishop and his status in the ward immediately and noticeably changed. He is now a Bishop and will have authority and esteem where ever he goes for the remainder of his life. In fact, he was invited to a woman’s activity soon after, where a room filled with females stopped their activity to listen to the Bishop offer the final, definitive words about motherhood. No female leaders were invited to speak.
But his calling doesn’t define him.
I can’t help but contrast this with the release of Relief Society or Primary Presidencies. While I sometimes hear Elder’s Quorum presidents honored with “President” long after release, the same respect is not given to female leaders. More telling, we don’t have special titles, long thank-yous, or huge tributes when Sunday School, Young Women, or Primary teachers are released.
But their callings don’t define them.
I once listened to two former elders laugh at a former female missionary who dared to use the phrase “We baptized” in reference to the individuals she converted. How preposterous that she viewed her work as a missionary as baptizing!
But their callings and titles don’t define them.
Pictures like this one circulate all time. Oddly, there’s never one of these for the minimal leadership positions available to women.
The “Teachings of the Livings Prophets” class I took at BYU in the early 2000s literally required students to remember where apostles met their wives and held their first jobs for tests; as if they were celebrities. Everyone acted like this was perfectly normal for a college course.
People line up just to catch a glimpse of a prophet and speak of General Authorities reverentially. Their stories become canonized, perfected, and exaggerated.
But the prophet and apostles aren’t defined by their callings.
Perhaps when you gain specific, recognized authority as a male at 12 years old, when a congregation literally cannot function without your (priesthood) presence, it may make it easier to ignore the status, social currency, and assumed authority that comes with a title. The benefits – both spiritual and temporal – of callings may be more difficult to differentiate when so many are open to you simply due to your sex and when they change the way people look at you for the rest of your life. You know, the way they always deferentially refer to “President So-and-so” when referring to a woman’s time serving as Young Women’s President 20 years ago?
Many men will joke that priesthood is mostly meetings and setting up/taking down chairs to minimize these benefits, but how would many men feel about being regularly referred to as “The Bishop’s husband” or the “The Temple President’s husband?” What if their usefulness and status was mainly due to their association with a woman’s authority? How about if a Stake President asked the husband’s of stake female leaders to stand, so they could be applauded for all of the unseen (calling and title-free) work they do behind the scenes to make their wife’s important work possible?
In addition, how often has a woman spoken as the primary/main/last speaker at a meeting they attended? Why is this the case? Is there some status associated with having the last, most important word?
So much of patriarchy is this performance of humility and insignificance in a system that screams the opposite. Latter-day Saints may claim that all callings are equal and no member’s contribution is more important than another’s, but our actions say something entirely different.
If our callings shouldn’t define us, then how do we make this a reality? Perhaps it starts with men in the church recognizing the ways in which they benefit from both the status inherent in their callings and the demonstration of humility that comes with minimizing that status?
