Today is the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg (or maybe he didn’t? either way, that’s the cultural narrative). In doing so, he both posited things about the church that he felt were problematic, and welcomed debate about those issues. Almost inadvertently, he kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

I have neither the goal nor the desire to kick off any type of Mormon Reformation, but hoo-boy, do I have some grievances/ideas/theses about the Mormon church. Sometimes I feel like the policies and practices we have in place are actually stumbling blocks to creating Zion, rather than building blocks. So, in the very-loosely-defined spirit of Luther (and possibly more in the spirit of Festivus’ Airing of Grievances), I present my Ninety-five Theses for the present-day Mormon Church.

Church is too long. We need a two-hour block, and we need it now. We need more snacks. I don’t care if this takes the form of a between-the-hours snack break or a monthly break the fast fellowshipping meal, or something else, but there should be an opportunity to break bread with one another and informally chat. The nursery toys should be cleaned more often. Relatedly, the nursery toys should be a budget priority. Our children need more than broken plastic cars and dolls that are missing arms. Primary should be more active. Those kids have been (or will be) sitting through all of Sacrament meeting and possibly some classtime without moving. Let’s get those kids dancing and singing and moving their boogie-bodies. Primary & nursery teachers are a gift to the ward, and should be treated as such. They need reliable backup lists and team-teachers when at all possible. To quote a new convert I spoke with recently, “y’all’s hymns sound like we’re at a funeral every damn time.” Let’s get the tempo up to where it needs to be, and let’s try to add some gusto in our singing. Also, can we get some hymns that are more active and sound like praise? I wouldn’t mind some moving and some clapping, too. Let’s pretend that we’re happy to be singing at church. Don’t just show up at somebody’s house without calling! Missionaries and well-meaning church leaders, I’m looking at you. This has been aptly named “well-intentioned social terrorism” by leading experts and makes people less likely to fellowship with us, not more. If you keep making appointments with people and they don’t show up… maybe that’s a hint that they don’t want to hang out with you, and that’s ok. Also, don’t show up at somebody’s place of employment, or wait for another tenant of a building to go through the door so that you can get to a person’s front door without ringing a bell. Again, if they don’t want to talk to you, then they probably have a good reason. Don’t try all sorts of creative ways to trap them into a conversation. Relatedly, when somebody sets a boundary, respect it. If they say, “I don’t want visiting teachers right now,” don’t assign them visiting teachers who are just extra sneaky about visiting teaching. Youth leaders should be trained in how to respond to and/or report issues of child abuse. Honestly, we all should, but especially youth leaders. We have a proud cultural history of beards, and so any prohibition of beards on church-affiliated campuses or for temple workers needs to be abolished immediately. Neckties are the pantyhose of men and should be culturally optional. The Word of Wisdom is some good advice, and let’s get back to that. A cup of coffee shouldn’t keep you out of the temple. For the love of Pete, please dump the Boy Scouts. And Cub Scouts. Less meetings. PEC and Ward Council should be merged and all leadership should attend the one meeting. Make the priests properly wash their hands before preparing the Sacrament. And enforce it. I’m talking surgery-level scrubbing. “Follow the Prophet” sounds like it’s a theme song for a cult. Get rid of it. Being in a minor key makes it even more terrible. Stop interviewing teenagers behind closed doors without another person present. Stop talking to minors about masturbating. Also, adults. Don’t talk to anybody about masturbating. Why are we talking about masturbating at church?! Let’s make the temple clothes for baptisms for the dead a little less see-through. Have the girls help pass the Sacrament. There is nothing in the scriptures that prohibits this, and passing the Sacrament tray around isn’t required to be a priesthood function. Bring the Sacrament to the mother’s lounge. If the Sacrament is the most important part of our Sunday service, it should be made available to all, including those feeding their babies. Relatedly, those wards that only provide the Sacrament to those who are seated in the chapel because the people in the lobby didn’t get to church on time?? Stop that right now. Limiting access to the Sacrament based on arrival time is high-level Pharisee nonsense. Women’s garments should be sleeveless, or at least without that little bunch under the armpit, which is unnecessary and uncomfortable. This one may be controversial, but get rid of the one-piece garments. Just… no. Stop the worship/emphasis on The Family™. If you’re going to talk about defending the family, you’d better be talking about all families, not just the ones with cis-gendered, heterosexual parents who are married and who have 3+ children born in the covenant. Families, as a social unit of primary support and love, are worth defending. “The Family™” is code for being homophobic and it’s antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. Relatedly, we have turned church leaders into idols that we worship. Stop making a false equivalence between fallible humans who are called to positions of leadership/authority and Jesus. They are not Jesus. We worship Jesus, not them. We are supposed to obey God and Jesus, not church leaders. We have moved the center of our worship onto human beings who make mistakes and who see through a glass, darkly, and it belongs on God and Christ. Full stop. Women are not necks who turn heads. We are people with our own necks and heads. So are men. We should work together in a collaborative and equal fashion. Ordain women. Change the temple language so that women are covenanting with God, not through their husbands. Stop carpeting the walls. Why do so many buildings have carpet running up the walls? That carpet is itchy and scratchy and makes it very difficult for toddlers to walk against the walls, because it’s not pleasant to touch or hold on to. I am all in favor of having ward members help clean the building, but if we could get professionals in to make sure that the bathrooms and kitchens are properly cleaned and sanitized every so often, that’d be great. Please make the women’s session for women, and have it be either 12+ or 18+. I feel like having the 8-12 year-olds really infantilizes the whole thing. They’re children, and that’s ok. They don’t need to be there. Let’s hear from more women in General Conference. This would hopefully naturally happen should we ordain women (see Thesis 30) but black men have been ordained for almost 40 years and we still rarely hear from them. So, relatedly… … make a concerted effort to have more diversity in leadership, and in talks during General Conference. We should value the experiences of all people in this church from all demographic groups. Either pad the pews, or make church shorter. Some of us have tailbones that haven’t fully healed from multiplying and replenishing the earth, if you catch my drift, and have a hard time sitting on hard surfaces for that long. Engage more with community groups and civic outreach. Do more interfaith service work. I want to see more Mormons starting soup kitchens and doing anti-poverty work. I may be biased, but every ward should call a Ward Social Worker to help both the Bishop and Relief Society connect people with resources in the broader community. More security for missionaries, especially those serving in high-crime communities, and especially women. I know way too many women who have been sexually assaulted on their missions because they were asked to be places that were unsafe and known for being hostile to women. Increase the budgets for congregations outside the US. Wards in Mexico shouldn’t be receiving less money-per-person than wards in the US. Fund fewer shopping malls. Make the mother’s lounge more than an afterthought when planning buildings. Nursing mothers deserve more space than the broom closet, separate spaces to change diapers (without stinking up the whole mother’s lounge), and comfortable chairs. Put changing tables in all of the men’s restrooms. Women aren’t the only people who change diapers. More global hymns. Less songs about Zion in the mountains and more songs celebrating the cultural diversity of the church membership. Take the Star-Spangled Banner out of the hymnbook. Also My Country ‘Tis of Thee and America the Beautiful. And God Save the King (even though it’s been a Queen since forever). It’s fine to be patriotic, but having those songs in the hymnbook smacks of nationalism and colonialism in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable. Have a Gospel Essentials 2.0 Sunday School class. Basically it would be a Sunday School class discussing the basic tenets of the gospel, but in a much deeper philosophical/theological way than in the normal class geared towards investigators. The “Mission President’s Wife” needs an official title that makes her co-equal with her spouse. Female missionaries should be called as District/Zone leaders, with authority and stewardship over both male and female missionaries. Please remove the bit in the handbook about asking members to consult with their bishops before getting their tubes tied or a vasectomy. Why on earth should a couple have to consult their ecclesiastical leader before making a choice about their reproductive health and family size?! And what bishop really wants to sit down with a couple, only to have them say, “So, bishop, Jeff here is thinking about getting snipped and wants to hear your thoughts”? Screen-print the garments instead of sewing in the symbols. Children always pick the most inopportune time to ask, “Mom, what’s that on your nipple?” and it’s awkward for literally everyone. Now, I can’t find a documented source for this one, but it’s my understanding that if a child is born through surrogacy, the child is sealed to the man whose sperm is used *and the surrogate mother* until the child is later sealed to the biological mother and the biological father in the temple. WHAT NONSENSE IS THAT. The uterus/vagina through which a child is grown/birthed should not matter more than the DNA used to create that child. If this is true, that should change. If not, please let me know because I’ve had a bee in my bonnet about this for a while. BYU and other church-affiliated campuses should have coffee available as a courtesy to visiting and/or nonmember faculty and students. And, honestly, if students want to drink it, I don’t think it’s a sin. See Thesis #14. Missionaries shouldn’t ask members to commit to finding “x” number of people for them to teach by a certain date. Changing one’s spiritual beliefs and/or home is a big deal. I’m not going to force that on my friends or family because you have a quota to fill. Stop measuring the success of missionaries by how many people they teach and/or baptize. Have missionaries do more service. Maybe make lasting partnerships with organizations in your area, and commit to having a certain number of missionaries available to them for a certain number of hours per week (so that organizations can depend on that continuity). “By their fruits ye shall know them!” Let’s make sure we’re bearing good fruit. Let missionaries call their parents more than twice per year. I know that we want them to focus, but especially with lowering the mission age, many of these kids are away from home for the first time. Let them call their moms or dads. It might actually make them more effective as missionaries, not less. Let sister missionaries wear pants whenever they want, especially if they’re serving in places where they’re riding bikes, or where there is a high incidence of mosquito-borne illnesses. Let families plan their own baptismal services. Let them invite the people they want and have people close to the individual being baptized speak. I know that there are a lot of baptisms in the Wasatch Front, but turning them into assembly-line functions makes it less special for the people being baptized. Let families celebrate this ordinance and rite of passage in a way that’s meaningful to them. Get rid of the one-year temple penalty on civil marriages within the US (and some other countries, I think). Let people plan their marriage and/or sealing in a way that best works for them and their families. Open up sealing ceremonies to everyone, regardless of “worthiness.” I don’t think we need to perform sealing ceremonies for everybody, but let family members and friends witness the ceremony and celebrate with their loved ones. Allow cooking in the kitchens. We could be teaching all sorts of skills in there if they weren’t for “warming only.” Allow children of same-sex couples to be baptized. What is this nonsense. I can’t believe I even have to say that. Relatedly, stop excommunicating married people in same-sex relationships. Let them come to church, partake of the sacrament, and hold callings. Hold them to the same standards that we hold heterosexual couples to, and encourage commitment, fidelity, and love. Truthfully, I think there’s space to allow same-sex relationships to be sanctified and sealed in the temple. Taylor Petrey’s “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology” has some insight on this. Amplify the fourth mission of the church: Care for the Poor and Needy. Tackle it not just on a case-by-case level, but on a systemic level. This has been improving in recent years, but broaden the catalog of “acceptable artwork” for church buildings. Let’s see artwork that reflects the diversity of the membership. Put pictures of female general leadership in the building, and not just in places where only women and children gather. Call women into the Sunday School presidency and men into the Primary presidency. Stop treating young single adults (or old single adults, for that matter) as not-fully-formed members of the Body of Christ. Have them serve in positions of authority. Don’t require their activities to be supervised by married members. Trust them to make decisions as adults. Use the buildings during the week. Sure, there are probably insurance/liability issues, but other churches have found ways to work through them. Hold literacy classes. Help with childcare. Provide pop-up food banks or shelters. Let them be used for elections. These buildings sit empty through 90% of the week, and could be used to do so much good in the community. Model disagreement within church leadership. I would love for members of the Quorum of the Twelve to give conference talks that disagree with one another, and to acknowledge that they disagree. So much of our issue is thinking that there is one answer to every question, and that everybody needs to fall in line. Instead, we need a multiplicity of viewpoints, of ways to think about different issues, and a dialogue on so many topics. I know that the Quorum of the Twelve disagree with one another behind closed doors, but I would love to see them model a civil conversation of how to respectfully disagree and still be fully in line with church teachings. My hope is that this model would trickle down to provide much more substantive/interesting discussions in local church meetings. Revamp the Sunday School curriculum so that the teacher’s manual is less of a call-and-response. Acknowledge thorny issues in the manuals and provide a variety of ways to talk about/understand those issues. Some wards still only allow men to be the final speakers in Sacrament meeting. Stop it! Women can speak last, too. Create coming-of-age rituals for the girls in the church. This could be corrected with ordaining women (see Thesis 30), but girls need to mark their maturation into adulthood and feel welcomed and needed by their congregation, too. Give them responsibilities and ways to serve their ward community. Call the female presidents of auxiliaries “President.” Similarly, call the wives of mission presidents “President,” unless they get a better/co-equal title (see Thesis 49). We should be talking about President Bingham and President Oscarson the same way we talk about President Nelson and President Callister. Have women pray in General Conference. Remember how we tried that and it was awesome? What happened?? Have General Women’s Session alternate with General Priesthood Session every year in April/October. DONE! Teach about prominent women in the scriptures and church history. Make sure the men and the women know about our spiritual forebearers. Stop doing Trunk-or-Treats. Unless you live somewhere that Halloween doesn’t otherwise exist, and you want to celebrate it for some reason, actually go out and trick or treat with your community instead of doing a quick grab in the church parking lot. Have mothers hold their babies during baby blessings. Encourage activities that are inclusive. Fathers/Sons campout is great, unless you don’t have a father or you don’t have a son, or you have three brothers who all get to go camping but you’re stuck home. I’m not saying that we can’t do activities that are just for certain groups, but examine the gendered makeup of these activities. Are the boys always camping and the girls always doing crafts? Maybe flip that script once or twice and have the girls go camping and the boys do crafts. I promise it won’t cause the earth to stop spinning on its axis, and you might meet the needs of some people who are excluded from the traditional activities. Please, please, please turn up the heat in the Chapel. I swear the thermostats are exclusively set by people who are wearing suits. Some of us women are wearing skirts and dresses and we are freezing. Embrace our glorious theology of a Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine. God isn’t just a He. Change the YW theme to say “We are daughters of our Heavenly Parents, who love us, and we love them.” Focus on people over numbers. I know that it’s hard to measure outcomes and program success without quantitative data, but try to find innovative ways to determine whether your ward is healthy and functional beyond “percentage of adults with active temple recommends” and “percentage of households being home taught once per quarter.” Allow wards to do special musical numbers that are outside the hymnal. I’m not saying you just allow anything, but we hear “Consider the Lillies” all the time in Conference and that isn’t in there. Some wards are pickier about this than others, but realize that not all uplifting music is in the hymnal. Have less stuff run up through the RS President and Bishop. I know that oversight is important because things really do go off the rails sometimes, but our poor Bishops and RS Presidents) are overworked. Maybe the Bishop doesn’t have to sign off on the visiting teaching assignments, for example, and maybe the RS President doesn’t need to approve every activity. Less micromanaging, more delegating. Change youth standards to be more inward reflections than outward. When talking about modesty, don’t just talk about what body parts need to covered, but talk about what it means to be modest in all of your thoughts and deeds. When talking about the Word of Wisdom, talk less about what substances to eat/drink and more about what it means to treat your body with respect and have moderation in all things. If we set less outward markers on what it means to be a righteous Latter-day Saint, we’re more likely to build an inner spiritual foundation that is based on principles instead of actions, and we’re also less likely to judge others who aren’t outwardly conforming. Allow women to be sealed to more than one man in the temple, similar to how men can currently be sealed to more than one woman. We do this after women are deceased anyways (after women die, you can seal them to any husbands she had during mortality) with the idea that God will sort it all out in the end. I think we can be confident that God will sort it all out in the end if we do it in mortality, too, and it reduces unnecessary anguish to divorcees, widows, widowers, and their families. No Sacrament meeting start times after 2pm. I really love our lay ministry, but provide more training for Bishops and RS presidents. I would love to see some sort of weekend training where new bishops/stake presidents/RS Presidents/maybe even auxiliary presidents get two days of serious, intensive leadership training. I would love to see them talk about ministering, and about knowing when you are out of your depth and to refer out to professionals. Temple films that reflect age and racial diversity in the people being portrayed. Home teaching standards that are more similar to the new visiting teaching standards. More ministry, less formality. Serve people in the way they need/want to be served! Put stained glass in the chapels. We suffer from a tragic shortage of stained glass in our meetinghouses.

And that’s that! What do you think? What theses would you add? Which would you remove? What could make practiced Mormonism more like Zion to you?

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