Why We Need a Sotomayor in the General Relief Society Presidency

United States citizens have lately been regaled with the tale of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina from the South Bronx who got diabetes at age 8, lost her father at 9, and fought her way to Princeton with the encouragement of her strong-willed mother. Her future influence on the Supreme Court remains to be seen. But President Obama believes that Sotomayor's qualities and qualifications will add empathy to the judicial philosophy of the nation's highest court. She has "a common touch and a sense of compassion, an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live," he said.

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The Most Unwieldy Name Ever

...Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment Meeting. And it doesn't even have a good acronym. HFPE does not make it.

When they changed the name, and all the good little RS sisters were running around trying to train themselves to call it by its proper new name (at the time we were asked not to shorten it), I promised myself I would keep calling it "Homemaking meeting" as a matter of principle. Now I've noticed it's become appropriate to refer to this meeting as "Enrichment."

But I think this long-standing RS staple is dying.

Enrichment meeting has been dwindling for quite some time. When I first married in the early '80's, homemaking was held during the day in most wards. But attendance was falling fast due to a greater number of working women. I don't recall a directive ever coming from "the top," but one by one the wards and stakes decided that in order to get a bigger attendance, they would hold the meetings in the evenings. Meetings were a mix of fellowship, food, crafts and projects, learning of skills, and spiritual talks. It was a night to dress up and get out of the house, impress your friends with your cooking skills, and partake of a bit of refinement. How nice it was to wash that infant cereal out of your hair and sit down at a table dressed in a fancy cloth and adorned with flowers!

But soon attendance began to drop again. In a woman's whirlwind life, some things had to go, and for many, homemaking didn't have the importance to make the final cut. I was still at home with 8 small children, and needed a night out, so I faithfully attended month after month, but now I mingled with only the 60-and-above crowd, the Homemaking Leader, Homemaking Counselor, and their committee. Under General RS President Mary Ellen Smoot, there was a revamping of the program. This is when we took on the cumbersome name of "Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment Meeting." The new program became effective in January of 2000. We were told to always refer to the meeting as "Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment." We were also asked to substitute the majority of hands-on projects with more formal spiritual instruction. At the time I noticed that Enrichment meetings changed their tenor and became more similar to the Sunday meeting where the sisters sat and listened to a speaker. Instead of revitalizing the program, interest and attendance continued to plunge.

In 2004, the HFPE took a drastic turn when guidelines were changed. Directives were sent from the RS Presidency in Salt Lake City that meetings would be held quarterly instead of monthly. One to two stake enrichment meetings would be held, and each ward was encouraged to organize small-group activities for sisters with similar interests. More official clarifications were made in a circular dated January 1, 2006.

After a couple of years of implementation, I see a variety of results among the wards and stakes I have personally visited. There are a few wards who have made a spectacular program out of this. The four quarterly meetings are well-advertised and interesting. I find the more popular ones to be activity-focused, or centered around a dinner. These successful wards are usually blessed to have a highly motivated small-group specialist who has mobilized groups of women to meet regularly tying quilts, scrapbooking, exercising, reading books. Unfortunately, the majority of wards with which I am acquainted have dull, lackluster and poorly attended quarterly meetings, and few, if any midweek activities.

I'm showing my age when I admit that I look back on the "good old days" with fondness. But I don't think Enrichment could ever be the program it was. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of money to put together the type of thing that I remember. Women don't have as much time as we used to. In the '80's I recall ten or more of us showing up at the Church early in the morning, toddlers in tow, working most of the day to get everything set up for that evening's Homemaking Meeting. I don't think modern-day wards have great numbers of SHM's. (The ward I'm in now has two.)

I don't want to see HFPE die. I become apoplectic when I think of the possibility of losing this great institution which gave me so much support as a young mother. But I am beginning to fear that, like its name, this RS appendage has become too unwieldy to continue. People don't put their whole lives into the Church like they used to. The branches have overcome the roots and are now beginning to wither.

Another Gift Taken

Years ago at a women's retreat Sister Aileen Clyde was invited to be the featured speaker. In the course of her remarks she told the story of how the Prophets manuals came to be the course of study for the Relief Society. Previous to 1989 the Relief Society had been responsible for their own Sunday curriculm and manuals. Sister Clyde said that the RS Presidency and their board were in the process of preparing new manuals when they were approached by the First Presidency asking them to read the new Brigham Young manual and approve it for use in Sunday meetings. After reviewing the manual, they reported that they did not feel this should be the new course of study for the women of the Church. The First Presidency asked them to take the material back and pray about it again. Their answer was the same. They rejected the material a second time, but were told to go back and read it again. As the disheartened Relief Society Presidency met together, they realized that their efforts to stop the correlation of Sunday lesson material were fruitless. They must accept the inevitable with good grace. Sister Clyde's point in sharing this story was that sometimes things don't go the way we would like them to, and how to make something good out of a disappointment.

To me, however, the knowledge of how this shift in control of RS curriculum came about is important. Does it make you as furious as it does me? Just as I mourn the loss of women's privilege to perform blessings of healing and comfort, I mourn the loss of women's autonomy to create lesson manuals specific to their needs. I do this without hope that the current policies regarding these issues wil change.

I do see that the leaders of the Church and the writers of the Prophets manuals have been cognizant that the manuals could use some improvement with regard to their relevance for women. Over at VSOM I have posted a review of my thoughts on the upcoming manual containing the teachings of Joseph Smith and it's relevance to it's woman readers.