Kate Kelly, the founder of Ordain Women, writes this in response to a recent article from Valerie Hudson Cassler critiquing feminist agitation in the church in general, and Ordain Women specifically.

After destroying the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and crew return to Oz in search of the rewards promised to them by the wizard. The fearsome projection of the wizard on the screen tells them to scram, but Toto sniffs him out and pulls the curtain back revealing the flustered old man. The wizard is shaken up by the fact they can see that he’s just a regular guy controlling everything from behind a curtain. In one last-ditch attempt to get the courageous party to ignore reality and give up their quest for their well-deserved reward, he insists again through the booming loudspeaker, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

Former BYU professor Valerie Hudson Cassler recently published a response to the Ordain Women website in Square Two, the online publication she helped found. Called “Ruby Slippers on Her Feet,” her lengthy and dismissive critique of Ordain Women argues that asking for power from men is “anti-feminist.” Yet nowhere in her 9,334-word piece does Hudson address the fact that Mormon women are systematically excluded from all positions of clerical, fiscal, ritual, and decision-making authority in the church. Her attempt to justify a world-view that has been carefully constructed to rationalize the place of women in the church comes across not only as ironic, but just as flustered and frantic as the wizard’s cry, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

Far from being “anti-feminist,” Ordain Women is an assertion of radical self-respect. It is an attempt to declare, in full recognition of the fact that we are already equal in the sight of God, that a church that fails to manifest that equality throughout its structure can do better. See for example, nat kelly’s recent post.

Participating in Ordain Women is nothing short of a struggle to be fully engaged and living up to our potential as Mormon women. This struggle must not get stymied by the mental gymnastics that are required to convince ourselves that our current station is where we are meant to be. It must begin with an authentic effort to transform the situation for Mormon women, not in some lofty, hypothetical realm, but right here, right now. We do not accept history, or Hudson’s theology, as our destiny. In her academic work Hudson sees so clearly the need for equitable access and opportunity outside of Mormonism. Why is she unable acknowledge this need within our religious community?

We are not asking for power from men, we are asking to share power with them. As faithful Mormon women, we believe this power comes from God. Intelligent women can disagree as to whether we currently participate in priesthood power in or outside of the temple; however, the ability to exercise that power in any concrete, official way can only come through the leaders of the church, whom we sustain. To affirm that men and women are equal in the sight of God and do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality in the quotidian existence of Mormon women is a farce.

I cannot “learn for myself” that I can bless a baby in sacrament meeting. I cannot “learn for myself” that I can baptize a convert I find in the mission field. I cannot “learn for myself” that I can assume a leadership calling over a ward or stake. These concrete realities cannot be superseded by any amount of delusion about some eternal equitable eventuality. We are in no way victims. We are powerful, capable, faithful women and assert that we ought to be recognized as such within the structure of the church.

Professor Hudson states, “In the Church, priesthood holders must also ensure that women are given equal voice.” In the church we envision at Ordain Women, no one would need to ensure that women are consulted, because we will take equal part in those decision-making bodies, quorums and meetings. No one will have to ask, “I wonder what the Sisters think?” We will be at the table. Hudson asks, “Do not questions of who has or does not have authority fade as we truly incorporate the principle of unanimity in our councils?” The answer, clearly, is no. While I love Hudson’s idyllic portrayal of non-hierarchical decision-making, the reality is that our present structure does not support lateral decision-making. All organs of the church are presided over by one person, president or leader, nearly always male. Despite some rhetoric to the contrary, this includes Mormon families: “By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families…”

There are clearly changes Professor Hudson, like most feminists, would like to see in the church. However, Hudson does not seem to recognize that these changes will not “come to pass” on their own accord. While she lauds the first woman giving a prayer in General Conference as a welcome change, she gives no credit to the thousands of women of the Let Women Pray campaign who faithfully agitated for this change. Hudson, apparently, gives credit for this historic adjustment in the Conference schedule to the Brethren alone.

It feels to me is as if Hudson has so internalized the messages of the patriarchal culture around which she has lived and built her career that she is lashing out at Ordain Women in a misguided horizontal attack on us. Paulo Freire describes this phenomena in his seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As Freire explains, it is only as we realize the ways in which we are “hosts” to dangerous, outdated thinking that we can contribute to the midwifery of our own liberation pedagogy.

I agree with Hudson on one point: We cannot depend on the incremental charity of the Brethren to cede us our power inch by inch. We do not have to stoically accept our condition and resign ourselves to believing it is something it is not. We must take it upon ourselves to create the space we want to inhabit–not in our minds, but in our chapels and homes.

Ordain Women has pulled back the curtain on the gender exclusivity of the priesthood, and opened up a new conversation. We have created this movement in an attempt to transform what has so far been a monologue about priesthood power in the church into an interactive dialogue. Although it can be frightening to challenge the status quo and the candidly acknowledge that the roots of inequality run deep, it is a necessary step. We have seen the man behind the curtain, and without the ordination of women, no amount of emphatic insistence that women already have an equal place in the church will make it so.