Patriarchy is Exhausting
Some people will forever remember being in the audience for a Beyonce or Taylor Swift concert, but Stassi Cramm’s ordination service on the evening of Sunday, June 1 is my equivalent. That evening, she became the prophet-president for Community of Christ and the first woman to serve as the leader in a Latter Day Saint church.
Earlier this month I was at Community of Christ’s World Conference in Independence, Missouri. I was there to give the John Whitmer Historical Association’s Wallace B. Smith tribute lecture with my colleague David Howlett. We spoke about how people changed their minds about women’s ordination during and after the 1984 World Conference.
While I was excited about giving this talk, I was most excited about the vote to approve Stassi Cramm’s call to serve as the prophet-president of Community of Christ and the ordination service that was tentatively planned for after the vote.
On Saturday morning, the conference officially opened with a procession and ritual from a local indigenous group, hymns, and further blessings on the proceedings. We heard testimonies from the outgoing First Presidency. At the end of their testimonies, the First Presidency was officially dissolved and Mareva Arnaud Tchong, president of the Council of Twelve Apostles stood at the podium to preside over the conference. Mareva brought forward Stassi’s call to be approved.
Afterward, Katie Harmon-McLaughlin, Director of Formation Ministries, described the discernment process that produced Stassi’s call. Apostles Angela Ramirez and Lachlan McKay both described their experiences of naming a new leader, describing Stassi’s long career in full time church ministry and also bearing their testimonies that they felt her call come from the Holy Spirit. A descendant of Joseph and Emma Smith, he referenced Emma ordination and how she would likely be smiling down on the conference proceedings.
Priesthood quorums (filled with adults of all genders from around the world) discussed Stassi’s call that afternoon and reported back to the conference delegates and observers on Sunday afternoon. Priesthood quorum support for Stassi’s call was nearly unanimous.
Then the delegates voted. From my seat as an observer in the Auditorium balcony, I could see the delegates seated by mission (stake) center on the conference floor. When Mareva asked the delegates who approved the call to raise their hands, it was nearly unanimous and the energy in the room was intense and exciting. It seemed like only 10-20 delegates raised their hands to vote no.
Mareva asked those who were participating in groups at remote locations to vote, the children’s caucus voted, and as a conference observer, I was invited to raise my hand to approve Stassi’s call. I was glad to participate in this way. It was an everyone-crying-tears-of-joy experience.
It is hard to communicate how joyful, celebratory, and healing it was as a former-Mormon-now-ordained-Community-of-Christ-elder to raise my hand. With so many things going so terribly wrong in the world (wars, fascism, etc) particularly during the last year, collectively we were all desperate to rally around something good and squeeze every last drop of good feeling out of the moment.
When Mareva announced that the motion to approve Stassi’s call had passed, Stassi returned to the Auditorium while the congregation sang two hymns whose lyrics had been composed by one of the church’s great and recently passed powerhouses, Barbara Howard. Instead of being able to process down the aisle and up to the stage, Stassi was hugged down the aisle by delegates. People of all genders, priesthood holders and regular church members, were excited to participate in this sacred process.
The ordination service was on Sunday evening. I got there 75 minutes early to get a good seat and to hopefully hold some seats for friends – other former Mormons who had converted to Community of Christ. When I arrived at the Auditorium, the other early folks were mostly older women who shared my commitment to getting a good seat for this momentous event.
Grammy award winning organist Jan Kraybill was in top form and her playing communicated so much energy and celebration.
Choirs from Africa, Tahiti, and Independence all sang in celebration.
One of my favorite parts of the service was Mareva’s charge to Stassi, where she gave strong words of counsel for this responsibility because “We are not here to crown a leader” (timestamp 47:31).
When it was time for the ordination to take place, Stassi invited friends and family from around the world to join her on the stage. There were older folks together with young adults and babies and toddlers, together with Stassi’s grandchildren. The now-former prophet-president Steve Veazey and Mareva laid their hands on Stassi’s head and performed the ordination.
The closing hymn was The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning (sung in English, French, and Spanish) and I have never felt such intense joy in congregational singing. By the last verse, the volume of the organ was at 11.
By the next morning, I had a church hangover, but I was so glad to witness this.
And so, to the point of my title, during the sessions of opening, voting, and the worship services in between, I saw people of all genders from a variety of places speaking English, French, and Spanish, Tahitian, and Portuguese on the stage doing the work of the church together. While we had gathered to made decisions about church leadership and policy, the whole conference experienced reminded me that we all participate in the work of the church because church is not about the person at the top, but about the work we do together. Church is a team sport.
To my final point: to create, educate, and cultivate a community where women and gender expansive folks are excluded from meaningful decision making and from performing nearly every ritual and ordinance in the church is an awful lot of work. It takes curriculum writers, leaders at all levels, and women gate keepers to carefully and consistently police boundaries and make it unthinkable for all people to fully participate in the life of the church. To sustain that level of exclusion as a community norm that is rarely challenged over generations is downright exhausting. It takes so much work.
So while people often talk about the difficulty of inclusion work, and creating inclusive communities *is* hard, let’s also remember that the work of exclusion is probably harder, but we’re just used to it. The machinery of exclusion is a constant loud churning in the background of our lives. Patriarchy is exhausting.
