There has been a lot of comment and confusion over numbering designations applied to various sessions of October Conference this year. I may be shown later to be mistaken, but I think the numbering confusion can be resolved this way:
We’re using two different numbering conventions.
One convention is, in casual speech, to simply apply ordinal numbers to the sessions in their chronological order:
The Women’s Meeting was the first session of Conference.
Saturday morning was the second session of Conference.
Saturday afternoon was the third session of Conference.
The Priesthood Session was the fourth session of Conference.
Sunday morning will be the fifth session of Conference.
Sunday afternoon will be the sixth session of Conference.
But the Conference sessions have, in the past, at least, had a distinctive numbering session that requires us to distinguish between general sessions of Conference, which are open to a general audience, and the Priesthood session (and now Women’s meeting), intended for a specialized audience. Under that traditional system of designating sessions, and with the addition of the Women’s meeting, the sessions would be formally named:
The Women’s Meeting was the first session of Conference.
Saturday morning was the first General Session of Conference.
Saturday afternoon was the second General Session of Conference.
The Priesthood Session was the fourth session of Conference.
Sunday morning will be the third General Session of Conference.
Sunday afternoon will be the fourth General Session of Conference.
Those traditional designations may have now become too confusing, so that some other system will need to be adopted, or else we’ll all have to stop and consider which designation is being used at any given time. And of course a speaker or pray-er may, through a slip of the tongue, make a mistake. It’s less likely that the formal announcer at the opening of a session would slip, since she or he is presumably reading from a script.
My two cents, as of this evening.
The distinctive designation of *general* sessions was more necessary in the past, when there were Welfare sessions and other specialized sessions.
The last few conferences, the priesthood meeting was listed as the Third General Session of conference, even though it isn’t completely general. But I do remember when there were welfare sessions, etc.
This time around, President Uctdorf designated the general women’s meeting as the first session of general conference, and then the priesthood session was designated at the fourth.
But if anyone is unsatisfied with that, we could number them in binary, in which case, the women’s meeting would be #1 and the priesthood session would be #100.
Laura, have you reviewed some record that refers to the Priesthood Session that way (link?) or are you relying on memory? I’d like to pin it down.
This link isn’t quite what I’d like, since it doesn’t number the sessions, but it does distinguish between general and other sessions as recently as 2012, and is sourced to lds.org.
I don’t recall a priesthood session ever being numbered as a “general session.” But I guess the official Conference Reports would be the place to check.
But I’m always baffled by “Stake General Priesthood meeting.” Do they have “stake general conferences,” “stake general officers,” “stake general Relief Society presidents,” and “stake general authorities”?
After Pres. Uchtdorf’s comment last week about the Women’s session being the first session, we immediately took notice of when the KBYU-TV announcer said this morning “This has been the first session of….” and didn’t differentiate it as the first general session. And then Pres. Eyring opened the PH session as the 4th session. But then I can also remember when the welfare session was on Thursday night, followed by two sessions on Friday, and then the Saturday and Sunday sessions like we have now.
Ardis, I’m going from memory. But I’m remembering the Sunday morning session being introduced as the fourth general session, which would only work if the priesthood meeting had been the third general session (because they weren’t counting the RS or YW meetings as part of general conference.) I don’t think that would be in the printed conference talks, but it might show up in video recordings. I’m sorry I don’t have better memory and/or documentation.
The Sunday afternoon session last conference was referred to as the fifth and final session by Presiddent Uchtdorf about one minute into the session.
I consulted the April 2011 Conference Report*, which is the most recent I found online.
The introduction to the Report identifies the morning and afternoon sessions as “general sessions,” as distinguished from the Saturday evening “general priesthood session.”
The headings for the sessions are “Saturday Morning Session,” “Saturday Afternoon Session,” “General Priesthood Session,” Sunday Morning Session,” and “Sunday Afternoon Session.”
In the introduction to each session, the Conference Clerk called them “first session,” “second session,” “general priesthood session,” “fourth session,” and “fifth session.”
In the actual session, the member of the FP conducting identified the sessions the same way as did the clerk, with the exception of saying “priesthood session” rather than “general priesthood session,” and “fifth and concluding session” instead of just “fifth.”
Based on this, it seems that the non-priesthood sessions are still referred to as “general sessions,” but they may have dropped the potentially confusing reference to numbered “nth general session,” and simply numbered the actual sessions. And of course, the women’s meetings in their various incarnations, have never been included in the Conference Report at all. It remains to be seen if that will continue.
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*To be clear, the Conference Report is the official published record of conference, and is not the conference issue of the Ensign, though the May and November Ensigns are often informally referred to as “conference reports.”
I went back and spot-checked a few other Reports, and found that LauraN is correct. At least as recently as 2009, the Sunday morning session was indeed referred to by both the clerk and the conducting officer as the fourth general session. I found the same thing in the 1990s. Same thing in 1980: fourth general session Sunday morning. However, in 1980, there was a Welfare session at 7:00 Saturday morning that didn’t get included in the count of “general sessions,” so perhaps the count of “general” sessions was intended to exclude the welfare session, but not the priesthood session. Going back to 1974 when conference lasted three days, I found the sessions simply numbered 1 through 7, including the priesthood session. In 1974, the conducting officer occasionally referred to an Nth general session, but didn’t do so after the priesthood session, except for the 7th session which N. Eldon Tanner called the “last general session.”
But confusedly, in all the years I checked, the introduction to the Report does seem to consistently identify “general sessions” as distinct from the “general priesthood session” and the “general welfare session.”
All that is contrary to my memory in recent decades of the Saturday sessions as being the third and fourth “general” sessions, though perhaps there were some years when they did that, too.
Left Field, I wonder if the “stake general priesthood meeting” terminology developed in the era when stake leaders were all priesthood holders and stake auxiliary leaders weren’t considered stake leadership? That is, maybe “stake general priesthood meeting” was called “general” because it was open to all priesthood holders, in contrast to what we now call “stake leadership” meetings at which a limited subset of stake membership — men and women — is expected to attend? (Merely speculation on my part — I certainly haven’t surveyed historical records to look for patterns.)
Thank you for doing all this online legwork. You remind me that I recently overheard a CHL librarian explaining to a patron that the Church had ceased printing paper Conference Reports, distinct from the conference Ensign issues, as an unnecessary expense. My memory doesn’t seem to want to believe the final publication was quite as long ago as April 2011. I’ll try to clarify that this week and post something here for clarity.
But confusedly, in all the years I checked, the introduction to the Report does seem to consistently identify “general sessions” as distinct from the “general priesthood session” and the “general welfare session.”
Selfishly, I want to highlight this finding of yours because it supports my supposition in the OP. Maybe “confusedly” goes much higher than ‘nacle listeners this weekend, all the way to announcers as well as speakers … but the ultra formality of a printed Conference Reports (maybe controlled by template, or at least with copyeditors who are sticklers) follows the pattern I’ve always assumed was the rule (never having had a particular reason to think about discrepancies, as we do this year after President Uchtdorf’s labeling of the Women’s meeting). (And if that isn’t a confused sentence, I don’t know what is.)
Anyway, thanks to all who have thought about the question, and gone back to read or listen to particular accounts in an effort to document what is said.
You know, this kind of attention to detail is very interesting. It may not mean much, but, then again, it may mean more than we think. A big thanks to those who’ve taken the time and energy to look into this matter.
So, I reviewed Pres. Uchtdorf’s remarks from the General Women’s Meeting, and it looks like he doesn’t actually call it a session (and as I’m typing, he just called the Sunday AM session the “fourth session”). According to Uchtdorf, the General Women’s meeting occurs “as we open another general conference,” and is followed by a week of meetings for general church leadership, then by the “remaining sessions” this weekend. “Remaining sessions” implies at least one prior session, but it’s not clear from Uchtdorf’s remarks whether the Women’s Meeting is a session or if he is counting the week of leadership meetings as (non-general) sessions.
I was hoping for a nod to equality, but all the indicia suggest that the Women’s Meeting has a long way to go to be counted as a General Conference Session. (e.g., it’s the lone public meeting outside of “conference weekend,” it’s less publicized, the church recommends using a different hashtag, the report is published at the end of the Ensign instead of in chronological order….)
I still had “stake priesthood leadership” meetings that were for bishoprics, quorum presidencies, and high priest group leadership, as recently as a couple years ago in Springville. “General” indicates that all priesthood holders should come, not just leadership.
Ardis, I don’t know where we both got our memories of Sunday morning being the “third general” session. I didn’t check every conference of course, but I did go back and check every couple of years starting from the late 70s, and it’s always “fourth general session.” The welfare session is never counted, but priesthood is. But the introduction always makes the distinction we discussed.
I think a lot of the confusion results from two distinct meanings of “general.” General usually means “churchwide:” general authority, general conference, general axillary, general board, general president. But general can also refer to the whole body of the church or the priesthood, e.g., stake general priesthood meeting or (inconsistently) general session of conference.