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General Conference, Now 20% Shorter!

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The Church announced yesterday that, starting with October Conference this year, the Saturday evening session (priesthood in April, women’s in October) will be discontinued. I have a few thoughts on this change, but they don’t really hang together at all, so I’m just going to list them.

  • I’m all for fewer meetings, particularly in General Conference. Ten hours of meetings over a weekend is a lot! I appreciate President Nelson’s willingness to tinker with Church practices and not just assume that the way things have been must be the way things will be.
  • As I read former Ordain Women board member Heather Olson Beal pointing out elsewhere online, it seems like this change can be traced to OW’s actions several years ago where women asked to be admitted in person to the priesthood session. In response, clearly in an attempt to take the wind out of OW’s sails, the next year the Church started broadcasting and streaming the priesthood session like it did other sessions. But now that this session is available to anyone, the Church’s announcement reasons, what’s the point of having it at all?
    This change is being made because all sessions of general conference are now available to anyone who desires to watch or listen.
    This argument seems odd to me. It says that the crucial characteristic that made priesthood session priesthood session was that it was closed, and no random people (especially not women, apparently) could listen in. I had always thought that what made priesthood session different was the content: there are talks there directed to priesthood holder that don’t really apply to non-priesthood holders.
  • It’s not at all surprising that with the ending of priesthood session, women’s session is also ended. It does seem like the “if it’s not closed, what’s the point” argument does not apply to women’s session, so that’s not a reason to end it. But of course, in a patriarchal church, it would be surprising if women got to do an extra thing that men weren’t doing. So the end of priesthood session also means the end of women’s session.
  • It seems inevitable to me that the ending of the gender-specific sessions won’t end speakers in Conference wanting to talk to only men or only women. This will just mean that these talks will now occur in the remaining general sessions. I’m guessing that there will be more talks aimed specifically at men than specifically at women, although perhaps this will be a good thing, considering how often talks aimed at women are about enforcing gender roles.
  • As Peggy Fletcher Stack and Scott D. Pierce’s article points out, this change will almost certainly lead to fewer women speaking in Conference, as the women’s session was typically a chance to hear from three women, even if few spoke in the general sessions. This graph shows the number of women (including one YW who spoke last year) speaking each Conference since 2010. Up until the women’s session and priesthood session started alternating in April and October, there were typically two women speaking in the general sessions, plus three more in the women’s session. (The graph includes the RS and YW meetings before they were official Conference sessions.) It seems likely that two women speaking per conference is the norm we’ll go back to. This change will flow through to the rest of the curriculum too, which is so much all Conference all the time now, and we’ll hear from hardly any women at all. I’d like to hope that this was an unintended side effect of the change, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was a very much intended effect.

  • Getting rid of the women’s session means women won’t be conducting meetings in the Conference Center. When I was working on a project recently where I watched some video of Conference sessions, I was struck by how much I liked seeing women conduct. I hadn’t ever seen it before, as I hadn’t watched video of these sessions before, and instead had only sometimes read the talks from the sessions. It’s a sad message to send that women can’t ever be conducting a general-level church meeting, although I guess as with the previous point, perhaps this is an intended effect and not an accident.
  • At least in my experience, Saturday night sessions were the only ones that had any kind of fun social aspect to them. I’ve seen comments by friends on Facebook, who have fond memories of getting treats with friends after priesthood session, for example. While that wasn’t something I did as a kid, I’ve been in a couple of wards as an adult where men and YM socialize either before or after priesthood session. And I know my wife has done similar social activities around women’s session. Getting rid of this then seems consistent with President Nelson’s MO to not see value in anything fun.
  • This change also seems kind of consistent with the change a couple of years ago where the Church announced that women could serve as witnesses for baptisms and other ordinances. Serving as a witness for ordinances was clearly devalued in the eyes of Church leaders when they extended it to women, because they simultaneously extended it to baptized children. The evolution of Saturday night sessions has worked in the same way, although it has taken a longer time to play out. When only men got to go, and women only had a Conference-adjacent meeting, priesthood session was valuable. When women’s session was formally added to Conference, and then alternated with priesthood session, it became less valuable and has now been eliminated. If everybody gets a Saturday night session, nobody gets a Saturday night session.
  • In addition to reducing the number of women who speak, this change seems likely to lead to a decrease in how many non-Q15 men who speak. I don’t feel much of a loss in not hearing from Seventies as often like I do with hearing from fewer women, but I do wonder if this trend might continue further. Maybe in the future, Conference will feature only Q15 speakers. Or perhaps only the First Presidency, and other speakers’ talks will be written, but then just put on the Church website like the statistical report is now. Or perhaps just the President will deliver one definitive talk and we’ll call it good.
  • Unlike changes like the move from a three-hour block to two, and the combining of elders’ and high priests’ quorums, it seems like this change will be easy for a future Church President to undo, should he choose to do so. It’s just twice a year, and there wouldn’t be nearly the logistical issues to work out. I have to wonder if the ease of this possible change might not make it more likely to occur.

What do you think of this change?


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