Introduction and Guest Background

Dane Laverty [00:00:00] Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

John Dehlin [00:00:17] Hello, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. My name is John Dehlin, your host, and I'm very excited to have you with us today. And today I'm also pleased to have with us Dane Laverty. Hello, Dane.

Dane Laverty [00:00:30] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Now, Dane Laverty is the creator of a new site, a new website, and it is called agitatingfaithfully.org and I read about this, I don't know, on Facebook or somewhere last week, and here's what the website says. The primary purpose of this site is not to be a blog, but to provide a forum for church members to be counted in their support for gender equality. So that is the purpose of the site, and it also talks a little bit about female clergy in the LDS Church. So, Dane, before we jump into that, let's just have a little bit of an introduction about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Dane Laverty [00:01:14] Sure. So my name is Dane Laverty. I'm currently living in California. Recently moved here. I've got my wife and three kids and are enjoying the sunny weather after having spent the last four years in Oregon. Before that, my wife and I went to school at byu. I spent three years studying computer science and then switched to modern dance and ended up graduating in dance. And now I'm back in computers doing things like designing websites. So that was awesome. Where the work on the site came from was just an extension of the work that I do every day.

John Dehlin [00:01:53] Okay, so you're a modern dancer, huh?

Dane Laverty [00:01:57] I have been a modern dancer. I wish I were one at the moment.

John Dehlin [00:02:00] So have you ever watched so youo Think youk Can Dance?

Dane Laverty [00:02:03] You know, I never have.

John Dehlin [00:02:04] What? It's a great show for our listeners. It's a great show.

Dane Laverty [00:02:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:09] Well, that's cool. Well, modern dance and computer science, I haven't heard about that connection before, but that's cool. Tell us about your relationship with the church. Like, you know, growing up and stuff.

Growing Up Active in the LDS Church

Dane Laverty [00:02:23] Yeah, definitely. So I grew up an active member of the church. I served a mission as an active member of the church, and I am currently an active member of the church.

John Dehlin [00:02:32] Where did all these things happen?

Dane Laverty [00:02:34] Grew up in California. Cameron Park. The promised land, I think. Trying to convince my wife of that still. All right, where's that about?

Dane Laverty [00:02:45] What?

Dane Laverty [00:02:45] You haven't heard of it? Oh, no. It's a little town just east of Sacramento, halfway between Sacramento and Tahoe.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] Okay, cool.

Dane Laverty [00:02:52] Yeah. Then after graduating, went to BYU for a year and then served my mission in Japan, Kobe, Japan. Oh, and I know that they closed the mission shortly after I left. I don't think there's any correlation there. And it might be open again. I haven't heard, but yeah. So served in Japan for a couple of years and. And then returned to byu, got married, and I'm living the dream.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] Okay. All right. So you're married. Temple marriage, right?

Dane Laverty [00:03:28] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] Tell us about your. A little bit about your faith, your testimony. What. What type of believing Mormon or non believing Mormon are you?

Dane Laverty [00:03:38] Can I answer that in a roundabout way?

Dane Laverty [00:03:40] Sure.

Dane Laverty [00:03:41] So I'm going to tie that into the Agitating Faithfully site because I think that this is part of a story arc that doesn't make sense on its own and maybe something that I think other people identify with.

John Dehlin [00:03:55] Okay, cool. So you'll tell. So why don't you tell us about your narrative and then loop in Agitating Faithfully as it plugs in.

Dane Laverty [00:04:06] Great, I'll do that. So historically, my experience with the church has been extremely orthodox. Growing up and serving a mission, the paradigm I worked in was anything said by an authorized church authority was doctrine and eternal truth. And so as a missionary, this was a great thing because it really compelled me to do a lot of study and a lot of searching. And every time we would switch to missionary, a new location or a new apartment, I was fascinated to search through the materials that had been left there by the previous missionaries. And so I'd find all the old ensigns and I'd find all of the various books or things that other missionaries had left and, and really tried to inhale from them and build this whole. Correlated is a sticky word, but I don't mean it in the church correlation sense, but just an internally correlated, consistent, coherent view of the world where everything matched everything else and every doctrine and every statement had its place.

John Dehlin [00:05:17] Okay.

Dane Laverty [00:05:20] Incidentally, it was actually as part of that searching as a missionary, which was where I got my first hint that maybe things weren't as simple or as clearly laid out or as consistent as I might have wanted them to be. And this was reading from when I discovered the history of the Church books. And I think most members of the church who are familiar with their Doctrine and Covenants know that at the beginning of each section of the Doctrine and Covenants, there's a header giving the historical context for that section. And then within the header there's also a reference to some part of the history of the Church books. It'll say HC135 or HC263 or whatever it is. Right. And so it was reading the last of the History of The Church Series, Volume 6, when it describes Joseph's experience immediately proceeding and during the martyrdom when he and Hyrum were killed. And the part that grabbed me was right before that, when Joseph and the guard had ordered some alcoholic beverage to share together, kind of as a last meal kind of thing. And that was like an earth shattering revelation to me. And I'm thinking, here's the prophet, the one who revealed the Word of Wisdom to us. What's he doing before he dies? Ordering wine, I think it was. And how do I make sense of this when everyone knows that the prophets follow the Commandments and the commandments are clear, and we Mormons, we don't drink, that kind of thing.

John Dehlin [00:06:58] Okay.

Dane Laverty [00:07:01] And I didn't have an answer at that time, but it was enough to kind of sit and stew my mind. And it was when I returned back to byu, I had the opportunity to take a couple of classes from Spencer Fluman.

Dane Laverty [00:07:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] I love that guy. Did you like that guy?

Dane Laverty [00:07:18] You know what's funny is it's just recently in the last couple months that I've learned that he's like a big celebrity and whatever Mormon studies world there is as a student, I just thought he was another teacher, but I thought he was a teacher who knew a lot and had answers to a lot of my questions.

John Dehlin [00:07:34] I actually don't know if he's a. I don't know if he's a celebrity, but there was a summer where Richard Bushman invited me down to BYU to speak to the symposium that he was running on Joseph Smith and Mormonism and stuff. And Spencer Fluman was part of that summer seminar. So I got to meet him there. And it was really cool to find out that there are professors, religion professors at byu, who know all the tough stuff and who aren't afraid to teach it. And he came across this. One of those teachers that's actually willing to talk about Peepstones and polyandry and the Book of Abraham. Is that what your courses were like with him?

Dane Laverty [00:08:14] Yeah, and that's exactly what you describe. The experience that I had in this particular instance was after class or during class, I had said. So I came across this passage in the History of the Church and it says, Joseph Smith was drinking alcohol before he died. What's up with that? And he gave me the historical context and explained that the Church's interpretation of the Word of Wisdom has developed over the last many years that we've had it, and that among early members of the church, it was interpreted as moderation, and that it wasn't until Heber J. Grant and beyond that it became the abstinence standard that we have today.

John Dehlin [00:08:55] Right. Kind of around the Prohibition movement times in the early 1900s, right?

Dane Laverty [00:08:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] Yeah. Okay.

Dane Laverty [00:09:01] All right.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] So that rocked your world a little bit.

Dane Laverty [00:09:03] It did. And not enough that I was going to. Going to explode or anything, but it was enough to get my attention. And you're reading in there and you catch other things about the Kinderhook plates and about Zelf and these other little obscure fun tidbits of Mormon history that are fascinating but that are not easily. That are not easy to integrate into a conventional view that jives with everything else that is taught in correlated materials.

John Dehlin [00:09:33] Okay, I'm with you.

Dane Laverty [00:09:34] Great.

Recognizing Gender Inequality in the Church

Dane Laverty [00:09:37] And so the next experience that figures into this narrative was this is six years ago, and I got a call from a good friend of mine who's also. Who was at the time an active Mormon and is still an active, believing, faithful member of the church. And in the course of that call, we started talking about the priesthood ban. And I don't remember if we were talking about race in particular at the time, but we were talking about the priesthood. And he just kind of made the offhand comment that he expected entirely to see within his lifetime that women would receive the priesthood. And this was the first time I'd ever heard that sentiment expressed by anyone that was an active member of the church. And especially to hear it expressed in such a. What's the word I'm looking for anyway? And an unremarkable way.

John Dehlin [00:10:32] Matter of fact.

Dane Laverty [00:10:32] Yeah, yeah. Very, very matter of fact. Very observational. And again, in my mind, this is a complete heresy to hear someone say something like this.

Dane Laverty [00:10:41] Right.

Dane Laverty [00:10:44] And so we talked for that a bit. And again, this is another kind of data point that enters into my consciousness to make me think, you know, maybe the world's not. Maybe the doctrinal landscape isn't quite as clear and quite as consistent as I'd imagined it was. But I'm pretty sure that it is that consistent and that it is that clear and that women will never receive the priesthood. But, hey, if you can think that maybe I need to give this a little bit more thought than I had been.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] Okay. Did you have any particular sympathies for women or their plight, or is there anything that made you kind of sensitized to equality or the.

Dane Laverty [00:11:23] You know, really. It was about the same time that I had gotten an address given by a church leader, a copy of an address that had been given by a church leader some years previous where he identified the three evils. And I'm trying to remember where exactly what they were. One of them was feminism, though, right?

John Dehlin [00:11:42] Feminism. Intellectuals and homosexuals, the great three enemies of the church, according to Boyd K. Becker.

Dane Laverty [00:11:48] There we go. And I had never heard of that. And while at this time was still very much in my view of, again, anything that has been said in an authoritative sense by an authoritative member of the church who bears his authority to use the word three times has got to be true and consistent with all of the other doctrines of the church. And so at this point, feminism was very clearly still an evil in my mind. And it was a situation of men and or women grasping for privileges that were not theirs and trying to claim things that they didn't have the rights to claim. Okay, and so again, the short answer to your question is no. I had no feminist predilections at the time. Let me qualify that, though. I had no conscious fear feminist predilections at the time. I'm going to jump back a bunch of years. When I was in high school, there was one particular girl that I had dated who was not a member of the church. And we got on the topic of gender equality and homosexuality. And again, she expressed very matter of factly, I can't believe that there's people in the world that would put down women or that would put down homosexuals or would say that men and women aren't equal in every way. And. And again, it's one of those experiences where you realize not everyone in the world believes the way that I do. And I did my best to convince her that my views were, of course, right. And I think that the intellectual depth of my convincing was, hey, you're wrong. And it was one of those situations where in saying, hey, you're wrong, something inside of me knew that she was right because there was nothing I could put behind, hey, you're wrong, that had any logic or reason or consistency or

John Dehlin [00:13:43] substance to it other than so there.

Dane Laverty [00:13:45] Yeah, yeah. So then I could say, I know you're wrong, because I've been taught that that's wrong my whole life. And so a lot of this narrative arc to the part that I'm at in the story, and as I continue going, a lot of this narrative arc is going to center around the theme

John Dehlin [00:14:03] of

Dane Laverty [00:14:06] people believe different things than I thought people believed. Not everyone in the world believes the things that the people close to Me believe. And that's a big mental shift in how we view life and how we view ourselves and how we view the world. And so, anyway, jumping back to. So I got off the phone with my friend and he had said, yeah, I expect, fully expect in my lifetime to see that women will receive the priesthood. And I'm thinking, you can't think that. Then it was a couple years later that, again, continuing my search, trying to gain as much knowledge about church doctrine and church teachings and the words of the prophets as I could, that I finally came upon some of the Blogger NaCl sites. And so this would have been in 2005. Okay, I guess. And, yeah. And particularly Times and Seasons. And By Common Consent were the two that I didn't know anything about blogger nacl or anything about LDS websites. And I was very hesitant to look for information online again, because I'd been warned that so much of what you find online can be damaging to your faith and is untrue and things like that. But as I looked through some of the stuff written, particularly on Times and Seasons, I really enjoyed Adam Greenwood on By Common Consent. I really enjoyed Kevin Barney. And I realized, here are people who have more knowledge than I have, who are more open to receiving knowledge than I am, and who I'm finding that I really respect. I feel that they are people that I can in some ways aspire to understand, if not to be like, okay, and. And it was also during this time that I discovered feminist Mormon housewives. And. And it was a sight in the state of mind that I had had when I'd visit once or twice and I'd say, whoa, whoa, whoa, I. I can't touch this. I know, I know that you guys are way off the radar here. I'm going to go back to my safe Times and seasons because we talk about safe things there.

John Dehlin [00:16:16] All right.

Dane Laverty [00:16:19] But it's one of those situations where once you become part of a community, you really only have so much power over the level of exposure you have to the different parts of that community. And so the ideas from the feminist blogger NACL sites were things that I would encounter. And over a period of months and of years, I slowly came to the realization that. Essentially the conscious realization of what my gut had told me back in high school, which was that the arguments against feminism are baseless or poorly constructed. They don't resonate with me. I guess that's a better way to say it. I didn't find any substance in them that resonated with me. Whereas the arguments for feminism and As I heard these many, many women on these sites expressing their frustrations, their experiences, and the difficulties they faced, particularly in things that I took for granted in the way that you're treated by other members in the church, the way that you're treated by children, the way that you're treated by leadership. A lot of those things that, because I'd never experienced. And again, this goes back to my theme of assuming that everyone in the world believes the way that I believe, assuming that everyone in the world experiences the same things that I experience, and really finding. No, that's not the case here. We've got not just one woman, not just two women, but dozens and dozens of women who online are willing to say, hey, I'm a member of the church. I love the church, and I appreciate all the things that it does, but there's really some tough stuff going on here. Right. And so that it was, and I can't emphasize how important it was that it wasn't one person and it wasn't two people. It was the revelation to me that this is a widespread phenomenon. There's lots of women who are encountering this, and I can't just brush their stories aside and say, oh, you're bitter. Because that's where I'd start with. I would hear a couple of these stories, and I'd say, well, here's a bitter woman. Here's a bitter woman. She's had a tough time, and I'm sorry that life's tough for her. But, hey, that's the way it is for all of us sometimes. But after you get 100 stories, then it gets a lot harder to say, oh, you're just a bunch of bitter women. And at some point you have to say, no, you're Daughters of God, you're my sisters, and you're having a really hard time. Maybe I should try and understand why you're having a hard time. Maybe I should try and make sense of this. And the rule that I, as a brother in the church, play in this experience for you.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] So just give us a sampling of some of the pain or suffering or struggles that these women that you're referring to have had that kind of pulled on your heartstrings a little bit.

Dane Laverty [00:19:24] I was afraid you were going to ask it, because I'm not very good at pulling them back up.

John Dehlin [00:19:27] No, it's all right. It's all right.

Dane Laverty [00:19:29] The kinds of experiences give a general sense. Yeah, the general sense were the kinds of things where you would have women in ward leadership positions who would attend their leadership Meetings, but not be taken seriously by the. By the bishopric. Or you'd have young women who are treated disrespectfully by the young men. And the young men feel that they have the right to do that because, hey, we're the Aaronic priesthood holders. You're just the young women. This is the order of things. And, and my own experience in the church, I don't know that I can say especially one way or the other. My own experience in the church has been that people are people. And I've worked with great people in the church. In fact, in the leadership positions. I don't know that I could think of any awful, horrible people that I've worked with. But they have definitely been human beings, part of the culture that they exist in. And so that's what it was for me was seeing this isn't a Mormon specific phenomenon. And with agitating faithfully and with my own experience in feminism, I never want to come across as saying, hey, we've got a problem here in the church that is specific to the church. We Mormons are horrible people because of this. What I see is we've got a problem here in the church. That's the same problem that millions of people outside the church are dealing with, but that doesn't alleviate us of the responsibility of dealing with it within, inside the church.

John Dehlin [00:20:59] Right, right. So do you consider yourself a feminist? Can a guy be a feminist?

Men as Advocates for Women's Equality

Dane Laverty [00:21:04] Yeah, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:21:06] So give us your definition of feminism.

Dane Laverty [00:21:09] The kind of tongue in cheek definition that I see tossed around is a feminist is someone who believes that women are human too. And that works for me. There's. Yeah, that's good. I'll just leave it at that.

John Dehlin [00:21:23] And do you think women have a lower status in the church, just overall, your observations?

Dane Laverty [00:21:30] Yeah, there's no way I could say that they don't. And let me give you one particular example of this. This is going back to my time at byu. One of the things I loved about being at BYU was the opportunity I had to attend General Conference at Salt Lake, which I haven't gotten to do for a while. And I had a group of friends and we'd go up to Salt Lake every conference and listen to the church leaders speak. And I went this one particular time with a girl and I actually don't even remember who she was, but I very clearly remember we were talking about the speakers at the conference and one of the women, one of the sister leaders, got up to speak and she said, as soon as the sisters start speaking, I stop listening because I know that what they have to say isn't as important as what the apostles have to say.

John Dehlin [00:22:18] Oops.

Dane Laverty [00:22:19] Yeah. And to me, to hear that said not from a boorish guy, but from a girl who would understand the plight of these women, that was an insight that, yes, women do have a lower status in the church.

John Dehlin [00:22:33] It's something that, I mean, there are lots of historical examples. You know, one clear example is I don't remember a woman ever praying in General Conference. Have you ever seen a woman pray in General Conference?

Dane Laverty [00:22:47] I know that there's a few of the kind of ongoing observations about General Conference and who we refer to as present and who president, that we don't refer to members of the women's auxiliaries as president, we refer to them as sister, but we refer to the men as president. And what's up with that? Who gets to pray? Those kinds of things. They are. I think there's subtle issues that would be really easy to identify and address.

John Dehlin [00:23:18] Wouldn't it be fantastic? One thing that I'll tell you a couple things that have kind of gnawed at me a little bit over the years. One is just the level of intense respect that the male leaders get in the church. I remember going to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert and President Monson and maybe a couple of the 12 came in and everybody stood for him, but there was no acknowledgment of their wives who were right there with him. And also, if you think about the entire church curriculum, what percentage of the authoritative quotes or the quotes that are meant to teach and inspire, what percentage of those quotes in the curriculum come from men versus from women? And I understand why that's true because we believe in the priesthood and because, you know, the priesthood is the way the church gets managed. But, you know, I do ask myself what message that sends to my daughters, to other members of the church, if the only sources of light, truth and knowledge, or if 98% of the sources of light, truth and knowledge are only men, do women get the message that their voice is a little bit less important?

Dane Laverty [00:24:31] Sure. And this is the part where I want to step back and say a lot of these issues that you're observing here aren't. This is me going into the defend the church mode, which I think is important in this. A lot of these are historical and traditional. 98% of the quotes and the materials come from men because we've got a male led church hierarchy. And so some of these issues are core issues and some of these issues are just issues that are the results of other structures or things that are in place. And this is where I come from with again, the Agitating Faithfully site is what's the message that I want my daughters to hear at the church? I've got two daughters and one son. And I hope that my daughters and my son, that each of them have as much opportunity as much all of the responsibilities, all of the blessings, everything that the church has to offer, I want them all to receive all of it. And so this is why I feel like I want to make my voice heard as opposed to just saying, you know, this is a problem I'm not going to deal with. It is. I think that the church offers a lot of really good things. I think that for families, for individuals, for growing up, for social experiences, and that all sounds really weak. Let me bolster that and say for communication with God, for personal revelation and for a sense of spirituality, the church touches on really a wide spectrum of the human experience and can bless or can hurt in each of those areas. And I've seen it bless in each of those areas. And those are the blessings that I want my daughters as well as my son to receive.

John Dehlin [00:26:21] Right. So what do you. So tell me about what led you to actually start a website.

Launching the Agitating Faithfully Website

Dane Laverty [00:26:31] You know, I couldn't even now that the website started, I was asking myself this the other night, what even put the idea in my head? I can't even remember what put the idea in my head. But a few months ago I started building it and in what spare time I have ended up putting the thing together.

John Dehlin [00:26:49] Did you consult with any women, sort of in the idea and the concept, get support, you know, board of directors or anything like that?

Dane Laverty [00:26:58] No, no, none of that. This is just. This is a spare time hobby weekend kind of thing. I probably wouldn't have heard it if I had consulted a few more people, but I know it is a sensitive topic for a lot of people. So I just felt, well, let's just put this together, put it out there, and 99% of initiatives like this blossom for a day and then fade in a week and are never heard from again. I started this knowing that the 99% case is that the site will go up, it'll get some attention, people will sign up, and then two weeks later people will forget that it ever existed. And if that's all that it is, I'm fine with that. I hope it can be more than that. I hope that it can be something that really helps people find support or solidarity, whatever they can get out of it. But if it's nothing more than my own personal testimony to the universe that I want my daughters to have the same opportunities that my son receive, then that's enough for me.

John Dehlin [00:28:07] Okay, that's cool. What do you hope to achieve with the site? What would be your goal? The clouds part, the heavens open. The Lord says, you know, the Lord says, dane, thy will be done. What would an agitating faithfully church look like?

Dane Laverty [00:28:30] Well, it's not about a church, but I'll answer that in a few different ways, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] No, I meant an agitating faithfully inspired church.

Dane Laverty [00:28:37] Sure, sure.

John Dehlin [00:28:39] Well, first, start with the genesis of the quote, the title. Give us a little history on the source from the title.

Dane Laverty [00:28:49] Let me step back a second from that. Even the key point of focus for the site isn't feminism generally. It's specifically finding an opportunity. Excuse me. It's specifically about extending priesthood to women in the church. And this comes from the quote, like you said. If you go to the website agitatingfaithfully.org and you look at the top of the site, you've got a quote or an exchange between David Ransom. I should probably pull the site up in front of me so I can quote this, right?

John Dehlin [00:29:26] Who's David Ransom?

Dane Laverty [00:29:27] David Ransom. He's an Australian TV personality. And this was an interview that President Hinckley had had with David Ransom. And the interview wasn't specifically about feminism or women in particular. It just came up as part of the exchange. And at one point, David Ransom asked, at present, women are not allowed to be priests in your church. Is it possible that the rules could change in the future? And President Hinckley's response, which really caught my attention, was, yes, meaning, yes, it is possible the rules could change in the future. Yes, it is possible that women could be allowed to be priests in the future. And then President Hinckley goes on to say, but there's no agitation for that. We don't find it. Which again, just really grabbed my attention because his response wasn't, we don't have revelation for that. His response wasn't, the doctrines prevent that from happening. His response was just, we don't hear anyone in the church asking, we don't hear any movement in the church for women to be priests. And so the way I read that is, yes, yes, we'd be more than happy if we found the need for women to be priests. If we found that there was a desire out there for women to be priests, that's something that could happen, but we're not seeing that desire. So it's Just not an issue that we're going to address right now.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] Okay, so that's the source of the quote, agitating faithfully. And so your idea is that, you know, maybe. Oh, go ahead.

Dane Laverty [00:30:58] Yeah. And along those lines, like I said, agitating faithfully is specifically about extending the priesthood to women. One of the questions I've gotten from my mom in particular, my mom and I have had the chance to talk quite a bit about what I'm doing here. And one of her questions has been, why are you focusing on priesthood? Aren't there other ways that we could approach gender equality in the church? Not only that, but do women are. Do women really want to have the priesthood? Maybe it's the case that women are fine or happy without it. It'd be just extra work. Which is something I hear a lot from both men and women in the church. Defending a male only priesthood is, well, why would a woman want the priesthood anyway? It's just a bunch of extra work to me. First of all, my mom's right. There are a lot of issues at play in the culture of gender and in the culture of how men and women relate to one another in life generally and in the church in particular. The reason I choose priesthood is it's such a key symbolic point. I think that if the priesthood were extended to women, that wouldn't magically solve all of the gender issues in the church overnight. However, I also believe that until the priesthood is extended to women, it is such a signpost, it's such a beacon stating men are more worthy of your attention or of your respect or of having the opportunity to lead, more worthy of being followed. It's really such a signpost that says that, that until that particular issue of a male only priesthood is addressed, that I think a lot of the other issues can't be effectively addressed.

John Dehlin [00:32:51] So why isn't it a woman's role to advocate for this instead of, you know, a man's role?

Dane Laverty [00:32:57] That was kind of one of the first responses I got. The first site to pick up, the Agitating Faithfully site was the exponent. And I don't know if you're familiar with it. Exponent is, yeah, I'm familiar. Okay. Is one of the feminist blogger nacal blogs. And so they had put a link to my announcement of the Agitating Faithfully site. And there was a little bit of acknowledgement that it is kind of too bad that this site wasn't started by a woman. But interestingly enough, one of the comments was something along the lines of, but since it was started By a man. At least people will take it seriously. And that's kind of ironic or sad or whatever it is in its own right. I imagine too, again, going back to feminism and gender issues, not being a church specific issue, but being a societal issue generally. When I was at BYU studying computer science, my classes were 95% male and 5% female. So perhaps the reason that Agitating Faithfully was started by a man is that we've got a lot of male web application programmers out there. It's just a reflection of that statistic. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:34:12] Okay, but I mean, just in general, what makes you, you know, is there a good or a bad thing about a guy sort of trying to lead a movement like this? Or is this something better left to women? Or are you just trying to do your small part?

Dane Laverty [00:34:27] No. So I actually haven't had a chance to really talk about this site. So let me put that in and answer your question at the same time. The Agitating Faithfully site at its core is a list of names. It's a place where people who support extending priesthood to women or people who support gender equality in the church can go and add their name to a list of people who support gender equality in the church. After the site was announced, it was quickly signed up by quite a few women and there were no men at first. When the first man signed up, he sent me an email and said, hey Dane, I don't know if this is appropriate for me to sign my name here. I don't know if you just want this to be a women's only thing. And so to answer your question about what role should men play in agitating to extend the priesthood to women? I don't think the role of social change or the role of agitation is a male female issue. I think that's just something where anyone who wants to sign up and help out, please sign up and help out. Make your voice heard. And this links back into your earlier question about what's the ideal goal for me for Agitating Faithfully. The ideal goal isn't some kind of radical, foundational regime change, church change, any of that kind of stuff. The ideal goal for me is that people in the church who feel who. The people in the church who feel that women should have the same opportunities that men have realize that there are other people out there that feel the same way. And at its core, that's the extent of it for me. I believe I'm making a bet on this site. I'm betting that in every ward out there there's a couple or about a handful or maybe a dozen, maybe more than that. People who internally harbor sentiments of gender equality. But because it's not something that we can talk about at church, or because it's such a sensitive topic and it doesn't come up at church, don't realize that there's actually hundreds and thousands of other people out there who feel the same way. And that, like I say, at my heart of it agitating faithfully then is an opportunity to. To achieve some kind of solidarity where people can realize I'm not the only person who feels this way. I don't have to feel like I'm alone in the church.

John Dehlin [00:36:56] Gotcha. So tell me your view of revelation and the role of the prophet. I mean, someone could argue that this is God's job to tell his prophet that it's time for women to make some change as big as this. This is something that happens through revelation, you know, and this is outside the channels. I remember when Albert Peck, the former editor of Sunstone, had an interview with Gordon B. Hinckley, the man who you were kind of basing this on, and he was doing Sunstone and really proud of it and feeling like he was building the kingdom. President Hinckley's response to Albert Peck was, who called you to this? Implying what makes you think this is something that's your role and responsibility? This is the prophet's role and responsibility. So I would ask you, who called you to this?

Revelation, Priesthood, and the Path to Change

Dane Laverty [00:37:47] Well, I think that a. I think that's an important question to ask. One of the reasons that I feel comfortable approaching the question of extending priesthood to women is that it's not a doctrine in the sense that we have. You tell me, do we have a scriptural basis for a male only priesthood? Do we have anything in the scriptures that prohibits women from receiving the priesthood?

John Dehlin [00:38:14] Yeah, we have divine revelation. We have leaders that communicate with God, and this is not the way that they've ordered things. Isn't that all we need to know?

Dane Laverty [00:38:24] But that's not the question I asked you.

John Dehlin [00:38:26] Okay.

Dane Laverty [00:38:28] In the scriptures, do we find anything in either the ancient or the modern scriptures, anything prohibiting women from receiving the priesthood? And you'll find that there's nothing scripturally that says the priesthood is for men. Women cannot receive the priesthood. There are times in the scriptures where the word men is used, but the scriptures generally use men in the universal sense. And I feel comfortable approaching it that way with the scriptural references to priesthood also. So we don't have anything in our scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:39:00] The scriptures don't say like in the Doctrine and Covenants, it doesn't say only men could have the priesthood.

Dane Laverty [00:39:05] Right.

Dane Laverty [00:39:05] There's nothing about that in there. The scriptures are silent on the question of gender and priesthood.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] Really?

Dane Laverty [00:39:10] Yeah, yeah. And so that's the first reason I feel comfortable with this. If this were a question of me opposing revealed principles from God, then this would be a whole different topic.

John Dehlin [00:39:22] What you're saying is that the church leadership has kind of overlooked half its members, just oops, we forgot.

Dane Laverty [00:39:27] Well, and so then this is where you go to the second half, which is without any scriptural or explicitly revelatory support for a male only priesthood, then how do we get to where we're at? How do we explain the situation that we're in? And the best example I have of this or the best analogy I have for this is it's not an example or an analogy. I don't know what the word is for it, but whatever it is that when the church publishes something or the church makes a policy or a statement, we as members of the Church by default assume that that statement is revealed and supported by the inspiration that the prophet receives, or we assume that statement is the best wisdom that a group of men leading the church could come up with between themselves. And in other words, what I'm saying is that by default we either ascribe statements of church policy as being revelation with the backing of God or the wisdom of well meaning and very intelligent people who are doing their best to lead the church with the light knowledge that they have. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:40:42] Sure.

Dane Laverty [00:40:43] And so then we see discussions about this take place, for example, when the ensign, if you look in the ensign or if you look in a gospel doctrine or a Gospel Principles manual, and the Gospel Principles Manual has some statement that comes up in a class, there will be someone who says, well, yes, we know that this statement is doctrine because it's in the Gospel Principles Manual. And the Gospel Principles Manual is published by the Church. And it wouldn't be published by the Church if the Church didn't approve of it and if the First Presidency didn't approve of it and the prophet didn't identify it as doctrine and revelation. And so there's a lot of implicit assumptions in there when we look at our materials and either say, yes, this is revelation because the Church has printed it, or we say this isn't revelation, it's church policy and people doing their best with what they've got. Okay, and so the key question then in this whole debate, if there were a debate, and I Don't think that there is a debate right now about extending priesthood to women. I think that there's one side talking and that doesn't make it a debate. But if there were a debate, what the question would come down to is, is a male only priesthood a doctrine of the church or is it a current policy of the church? A policy that's a result of tradition or of just ongoing expectations and no one has thought to change.

John Dehlin [00:42:03] It's a lot like the blacks in the priesthood.

Dane Laverty [00:42:07] And blacks in the priesthood, of course is an excellent analog to this. When blacks were not allowed to receive the priesthood, the rhetoric within the church was very clearly that it was doctrinal, that blacks could not receive the priesthood because God said so, because of revelation or doctrine or for whatever eternal principle that it was a divine decree. Since the priesthood ban has been lifted, the rhetoric within the church has switched much more towards that was a policy at the time. And kind of this similar to what I was saying with women of the priesthood and there being no scriptural support for it. When we look and say, well, there really was no scriptural support for the priesthood ban from blacks either, we as church members reconfigure our thinking and say, you know, what we thought was doctrinal, now that we're looking at it a little more closely, maybe it wasn't quite as doctrinal as we thought. Maybe it didn't have as much scriptural or revelatory or prophetic support as we thought it had. And, and this was that same realization that I had with women in the priesthood where I said, where I say, now that you look in the scriptures or you look at the revelations that we've received from the prophets, and as far as I'm aware, we have no revelatory and no scriptural support for a male only priesthood.

John Dehlin [00:43:32] Right. Okay, so this, this takes me to a different kind of line of questioning. You know, when a fundamentalist sort of takes shots at the current LDS Church and says we need to, you know, we need to schism and start this small little group that stays more true to Joseph and Brigham. The biggest concern I have with that approach is that I don't read anywhere in my understanding of Joseph or Brigham where they prophesied or allowed for that type of thing to happen. My reading of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, which I'll admit is not as extensive as others, is that the church was going to, you know, grow and expand and eventually consume all nations. And so similarly, when I think about how Joseph and Brigham set things up, I Don't think that they set it up in a way to where, you know, some guy somewhere is going to sort of feel like a major change needs to happen and so he's going to start a petition and, and, and eventually that's going to lead to some type of change. Now I know you, you know, you're doing this more as a sign of what you care about than because you are really trying to push for change. But it, you know, it begs the question, why wouldn't Gordon, why wouldn't Thomas S. Monson be asking these questions, being in tune with God? Why wouldn't God be prompting this to happen? What's your sort of epistemological worldview such that you would think that this is appropriate as a believer? Now I'll just say this one last thing. If you were a disbeliever and you sort of secretly just wanted to see changes in the church, then I could see a movement like this happening where you kind of pretend to be a believer, you pretend to be committed to the church, but in reality you just want to see social change. And so you do it this way. But I have a hard time seeing someone who considers themself a believer thinking that this really is God's plan and that the leaders currently are at the helm, but that they've overlooked something so fundamental. But the search is still true and it's still God's one true church on the earth. And Thomas S. Monson still talks to a prophet, but with 50% of the church population, he's kind of out to lunch. You see what I'm saying?

Dane Laverty [00:46:03] Sure. And the part of your question I want to key in on is your statement that you have a hard time imagining that the church structure set up by Joseph and Brigham early on in the church was designed for some random guy somewhere to come up with some proposition and try and change church policy. And the reason I want to key in on that statement is that's the very reason I feel comfortable doing this. Because what you said there, the church was not designed for is exactly how we got, for example, our current primary program and our current Sunday school program. Those weren't top down changes. And I wish I knew my history better, but I don't know the names involved with it off the top of my head. But my recollection is that the primary program that we have today is the result of one particular woman and the group that she started in Utah with her work with the children in the church there that was very successful in that area and expanded to the other areas. And eventually the church said, oh, wow, we kind of don't have a children's program in the church, but these members of the church have taken it upon themselves to create a children's program. And it's really darn cool. We better integrate that into the church. And so it got integrated. And we had the same experience historically with our Sunday school program where we had kind of an informal bottom up development of a Sunday school program that church leaders later realized this is a useful tool, something that our church is lacking and we could really benefit from. And so then was integrated into the correlated church program and continued on the way that we have it today. And so I feel that as a believing member in the church, that I have the right and the opportunity to make a statement of, of belief, to express the ideas that I have. And if those ideas are valuable and useful, people will respond to them. And if enough people respond to them, other people will realize, hey, there's something useful here. Maybe this is something we need to take a closer look at.

Risks, Consequences, and Feminist Community Response

John Dehlin [00:48:22] Okay, Now, I imagine you've heard of the September six, right?

Dane Laverty [00:48:27] I have.

John Dehlin [00:48:28] Okay. And just for our listeners, I'm sure most know, but in 1993, several feminists were kind of making their voice heard, being kind of strident, calling for women to get the priesthood and other things. And several were excommunicated, you know, and that, you know, for some would say set the feminist movement in the church back a decade or two. So you realize that the church hasn't always looked fondly on people doing what you're doing.

Dane Laverty [00:48:58] Sure.

Dane Laverty [00:48:58] And fortunately it's been a decade or two. I think we're at a part where there is discussion, at least online, taking place openly about the role of gender in the church and the traditional roles of gender as regards both to the priesthood and to leadership and to family and the different areas in the church where gender plays. I'm not aware of any stifling of that conversation. And it's one of the things that I feel grateful for in the church is that by and large, and with certain exceptions, as you pointed out with the September 6, but that by and large, the church leadership has been one that supports inquiry. If you look at our doctrinal history, we've got all sorts of kind of bizarre lines of reasoning that people have explored and taken, and many of them have died, but some of them have succeeded and continue to live on with us. I think that the ability to ask questions and to discuss things in a reasonable way is one of the strengths of the church that we've got.

John Dehlin [00:50:08] Okay. So are you at all fearful of potential consequences?

Dane Laverty [00:50:16] The only. If I'm fearful, it's not for anything as big as what you'd be talking about. I'd be fearful that people in my ward at church would look at me funny. I'd be fearful just for the local social consequences because I've got good friends at church and I've got good friends at church who would probably vehemently disagree with what I'm doing. And so not that I worry for my membership in the church as much as I worry just for my friendships in the church.

John Dehlin [00:50:45] So you think the days of the church punishing people for stuff like this that they're kind of in the past?

Dane Laverty [00:50:51] I hope so.

John Dehlin [00:50:52] You hope so. Have you been Facebooking about this on your Facebook page?

Dane Laverty [00:50:57] I have.

John Dehlin [00:51:00] Has anybody expressed frustration or sadness or disappointment or anger at you for doing this?

Dane Laverty [00:51:08] I don't think I've gotten any of those particular responses. The closest I've gotten are people that have expressed concern or incredulity at it. But what we're looking at right now is an extremely nascent movement, if it is a movement. The Agitating Faithfully site was officially announced all of three days ago. So I think that there's plenty of inroads yet to be made. And most of the people I know have probably no idea that I'm doing anything like this.

John Dehlin [00:51:41] Right. Well, a few more may learn after we publish this podcast. Okay, so you haven't suffered any collateral damage yet, Family wise or friends wise? You don't anticipate any collateral damage from church leadership. What. What do you see coming out of this? And what do you. What will you do to make this. Are you just going to put the website up here and just see what happens, or are you going to try and really put some energy behind this to really see if it can get some legs?

Dane Laverty [00:52:21] That's one of the big questions I've been trying to answer for myself in a couple of ways. First of all, just because I'm a person with a life, I'm limited the amount of time and resources I have to put into the project. But beyond that, I don't want it to become one of those distasteful political pressure movements. I don't want to be the guy who's cheerleading for the site and sending emails out to everyone saying, all right, let's get our numbers up to this high this week. Let's reach out there and really, really make a splash. I don't know if it's my personality or what? It's just not the kind of guy I am. As I see it, there's two kinds of evangelism that a person can be involved in. There's an evangelism to convert people who are unconverted to a cause, or there's an evangelism to find the people who were already converted to a cause and gather them together. And so that's my interest in the site. I'm not interested in changing the mind of anyone whose mind isn't already changed. I think that the discussion that takes place, the dialogue that takes place on the feminist blogs is a lot more conducive towards that end. Like I said, with my own conversion into the feminist movement came as the result of the ongoing dialogue that needs to take place in order for those kinds of internal changes to happen. And agitating Faithfully just doesn't have. Isn't built to do that. So in terms of evangelism, I'm not out there to convert anyone who's not already converted. I'm out there to help those who are converted and don't realize other people are converted. Find a home.

John Dehlin [00:54:12] Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, this is really interesting. So you've got lots of listeners out there who have heard you make the case to describe what you're doing and why. Are there any calls to action that you want to leave with them?

A Call to Action and Closing Thoughts

Dane Laverty [00:54:31] Please Visit the site agitatingfaithfully.org and like I said, there's about one thing you can do on the site, which is sign your name to the list. And so if this is something that you have any desire to make a public statement about, please come sign your name on the list.

John Dehlin [00:54:44] And how many people have signed it so far?

Dane Laverty [00:54:48] We've got 61 people right now.

John Dehlin [00:54:51] 61 people. And many of them are really cool. A lot of them are friends of mine, actually, and that's kind of what made me take a look. 61 members so far. So you want people to go sign up. Is there anything else people can do?

Dane Laverty [00:55:06] The site does have an area for questions where people who are signed up in the site can ask and answer questions. And we'll see what happens with that. There's also a Facebook page for the site. If you go to Facebook and search up agitating faithfully, you'll find that we do have a Facebook presence. See, did you catch that? I just said we have a Facebook presence. That's the kind of corporate ownership. I don't want to make this. This is me. And that sounds awful, too. It's we in the sense that we've got a lot of people who've been willing to add their names and express their support. So, okay, we'll go back to we.

John Dehlin [00:55:43] I think we is good.

Dane Laverty [00:55:45] We is good. We've got the Facebook page. So if you search up Agitating Faithfully, please come and like the page. By like, I mean Facebook like it. And that puts it on your profile and it makes a public statement in, I think, a more effective way than the Agitating Faithfully site does. Most people in the world will never visit Agitating Faithfully. A lot of people in the world visit Facebook. And so if you've liked Agitating faithfully on your Facebook profile, then that's something too.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] Okay, all right. Have the other feminist communities embraced you at all? So there's Feminist Mormon housewives, there's Exponent 2. There's Alophehad's daughters. There's probably others. Have they endorsed you? Have they shown support? Have they gone cold to what you're doing and saying? This isn't the order of things? What type of support are you getting from the feminists out there of those big three?

Dane Laverty [00:56:45] I've sent my little site announcement to those sites along with a few other sites. The only site that has responded of those was Exponent, and they've been very supportive. I'm really appreciative of the level of engagement they've been willing to have with this. I haven't heard anything back from the other feminist sites, although I did see that Wheat and Tares, which is a feminist site in its own right, that Wheat and Tares also put up a link to Agitating Faithfully. So there's some conversation taking place out there on the blogger nacl and I'll be excited to see how it grows and develops.

John Dehlin [00:57:19] Should we put the heat on FMH and the others to step it up?

Dane Laverty [00:57:24] No heat.

John Dehlin [00:57:25] No heat.

Dane Laverty [00:57:26] No heat.

John Dehlin [00:57:27] Come on, man.

Dane Laverty [00:57:29] This is a no heat movement. This is a volunteer movement, a no heat movement.

John Dehlin [00:57:32] Yeah, that's probably wise. If you do things in a low key, fun, kind of chillaxed way, sometimes you don't turn people off and you get a lot more people engaged.

Dane Laverty [00:57:44] Yeah. I just want this to be useful for the people to whom it's already useful.

John Dehlin [00:57:48] And so someday, paint a picture. I'll have you end on this.

Dane Laverty [00:57:52] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:57:53] Paint a picture for how you see the church someday where gender equality is fully realized. Take us to the mountaintop. Paint us a picture of your dream.

Dane Laverty [00:58:05] So this is really easy. And it's really easy because it's really boring. I see the exact same thing that we had happen when women got the vote 100 years ago in America, where people expected some tidal wave of political change now that women have the opportunity to have their voice heard. And ultimately it turned out to be more of the same, that women and men share the same political concerns in similar ways and break along similar lines. And so when the women's suffrage movement succeeded in getting women's suffrage in the United States, ultimately it didn't have a huge change politically. All it had was a huge change. Personally, and I'm totally speaking out of ignorance here, I'm in no way historian. I'm putting together a couple of anecdotes that I heard back in high school, but that essentially the change was that there was no change except more people were involved. And that's the change that I would expect to see in the church. I expect that sacrament meetings would be as inspiring or uninspiring as they currently are. I expect that primary would be as crazy as it currently is and that the only difference is that you would have everyone have a chance to be involved in it and not just a few.

John Dehlin [00:59:22] And does that mean women bishops and women prophets someday?

Dane Laverty [00:59:26] Yeah, that would be fabulous.

Dane Laverty [00:59:28] Really?

John Dehlin [00:59:29] Yeah, it would be. I absolutely agree. I'm with you, brother.

Dane Laverty [00:59:34] All right.

John Dehlin [00:59:35] Well, Dane Laverty, thank you so much for coming on Mormon Stories Podcast. I want to make a final call out to your website agitatingfaithfully.org and the Facebook page Agitating Faithfully. When we post this podcast will post links to both of these sites and I want to wish you all the best in your low key, chillaxed faithful agitating for women equality in the church.

Dane Laverty [01:00:02] Great. Thanks.

John Dehlin [01:00:03] All right, Dane, take care.

Dane Laverty [01:00:04] Bye.

Dane Laverty [01:00:08] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.com if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your ward bulletin and ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixa.com that's Skype. Sky with an E S K Y-E pixton.com thank you.

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