Call to Action: Addressing the Temple “Issue”, Period.

Layne (at FMH) and Rebecca J (on BCC) have recently discussed online the apparent policy in some temples where women having their periods are excluded from participation in baptisms for the dead. After hearing all the stories we are calling on the power of She-Ra and FMH to help solve the issue through a little grassroots effort.

The spirit of this call to action is one of cheerful Mormon helpfulness to ensure that the temple experiences of young women, new female converts, or any woman who wishes to participate in the sacred ordinances – especially baptism for the dead – are smooth and positive.  Otherwise, the extant possible  embarrassment of being unpredictably excluded from ordinances because it’s “that time of the month” may continue to publicly embarrass and unnecessarily shame many a worthy woman

1 –  Women in some temples are being told or asked not to perform baptisms if they are having their period.  We have confirmed through the recent experience of many readers at FMH and BCC that this practice is still being enforced, if sporadically, within the temples.

2 -The sporadic nature of this enforcement is causing particular problems when youth or other groups go to the temple since it is catching many leaders and parents unaware, leading to situations that often embarrass young women.

3 -The underlying logic and reasoning behind these actions is unclear.  There still appears to be an active folk doctrine of “ritual uncleanliness” or even “impurity”, where a bleeding woman may somehow render the temple defiled. The origin is unclear – this may have been taught by temple workers, leaders, or at very least inferred by some based on their experience with the practice.

We have not been able to track down, to this point, a history of where this “policy”originated. However, we have verified two accounts from current or recently-released temple presidents reporting that  *there is no centralized, church-wide policy* which recommends or requires the exclusion of menstruating women from baptisms.

Such decisions appear to be left to individual temple presidencies to regulate. This helps explain why there seems to be so much variation in past and current experiences for temple patrons. Based on the comments and experiences unearthed on these posts it appears likely that such a policy was widespread in the past.

The first and most powerful thing we in the bloggernacle can do is to systematically collect information about the policies and practices of each of the active temples.

Here is a link to a public Google Doc, prepared by CynthiaL.

The first, “Temple Policy” helpfully lists every active temple along with its contact information. What we are asking you to do is to call your local temple this coming week and ask specifically what the temple policy is.  Fill out the designated space on the Doc based on your conversation with the temple baptistry worker/coordinator/temple leader etc.

We would like multiple, different informants for each temple.  However, we don’t want to overwhelm any given temple.  Before you call your temple, please open the spreadsheet, and if you see more than 10 responses for your temple consider calling another temple.  We encourage you to stick to temples to which you have a specific connection.  When you call please identify your connection to the temple and reason for asking. For example, if you are a youth leader or parent of a YW, RS president, work on a church temple committee etc. it is good to let them know this.  We don’t want anyone to feel like they are being “attacked” by an outside group/persons with no local interest in the response.  This is neither our intent nor within the spirit of what we are trying to achieve.

There is also a second tab in the spreadsheet entitled “Recent Experience”. If within the last 6 moths, you have personally witnessed a situation where a policy excludes or discourages menstruating women from participating in temple ordinances, please record your experience here. (We have mostly discussed exclusion from baptism, but if you have witnessed exclusion from initiatories, endowments, or other ordinances please let us know!)  We are focusing only on recent incidences rather than historical ones.

The idea behind this sheet is to provide usable information so that we can inform a temple either 1) if their policy allowing baptisms to all women has not been clearly communicated and acted upon by its workers or 2) help demonstrate to a temple which still officially holds this policy the negative experiences it might be causing.  Temples, especially big temples, face a difficult challenge in training and monitoring large numbers of consistently shifting volunteer staff.  We can help by providing them timely feedback to identify where problems are occurring so they can deal with them positively and proactively.

Systematically collecting this information will give us a chance to see the extent of the problem. After enough information is collected we will report out the results and use this data to discuss how best to proceed.  Hopefully we will find this a minority policy and mostly an issue of simply better educating volunteers to comply with current policy.  Simply repeatedly asking the question of each temple will probably lead to a number of productive conversations.  It will put us in a good position to help temples that hold this minority practice understand that it is unnecessary. We can put together a positive plan for addressing areas of concern, and may even try and find a way to give the data to the appropriate individuals in the COB, YW presidency, or local temple presidencies along with an explanation.

The temple should be a safe place for all women, period!  Let’s make it happen!