Regular readers know this, but it bears repeating from time to time: The articles in “The View from …” series are writings and speeches I run across that have some bearing on what women were taught concerning their roles in life and the Church, at different points in our history, and by different sources (some official, some largely unofficial). I do not agree with every article, or every point in the articles I generally agree with, nor do I present them as expressions of current Church teaching. These are simply the raw materials of history, the sources that might someday come together in a study of the changing views of women in the Church.
“Girls, Preserve Your Purity”
By Bishop Walter Stevenson (London, England)
In his book “Bandoola” Col. Williams (Elephant Bill), tells of a young forest assistant’s first experience of getting a herd of elephants across a river in flood. The elephants milled around until a young female struck out to swim across, then all the others followed. The young forest assistant expressed his surprise that the one to lead the across should be a young female and not one of the big tuskers. The Burmese elephant boy said, “Well, Thakin, men will always go where women go, but women will not always go where men go. Why should elephants be different?”
This simple statement by an uneducated Burmese elephant boy is wisdom indeed. I would that our girls would learn this simple truth. I spend much time helping girls and boys and married couples sort out their marital problems and love lives, and I am appalled by girls’ lack of understanding of men, and by the gullibility of women today.
There is much talk today about equality of the sexes, emancipation of women, and of this being a man’s world. The sexes never have been and never will be equal in the sense that some try to make them. Men and women are not only different physically and emotionally, they have different roles to play.
Man was built for and ordained to work, overcome and subdue (see Genesis 3:23 and Moses 2:28), and was endowed with physical strength and an aggressive spirit for this purpose. He is basically a hunter and protector.
Woman was made to be a mother. Her purpose is to bear and raise children, to love, pacify and educate them. To this end she was designed and given what we call the maternal instinct, and the emotions and physical stamina to go with it. While man cannot bear children he will never be equal to woman, and so long as woman preserves her femininity she will never be equal to man.
Women, as part of their feminine make up, long to be loved and needed. Ever since the fall of Adam, licentious men have exploited this need to suit their own ends. Men have been exploiting and seducing women ever since the sons of Adam went astray. Today women are deceived, seduced and deluded by exactly the same methods as a thousand years ago. So much for emancipation.
To a woman, love and sex are synonymous, but to a man sex and love are two entirely different things. It is possible for a man to have a perfectly satisfying sexual experience with a woman he has never seen before. If only women would understand this fact, much of the unhappiness that I have to deal with could be avoided.
Girls, honour your body. It is a temple of God and He has given us the Word of Wisdom and laws of morality to keep it pure. This is the last dispensation. God is choosing parents for choice spirits who will usher in the Millennium. This business of sex, marriage and morality is part of God’s plan. It is the means by which spirits can come to this earth – the only means. The purpose of marriage is to build a bridge for spirits to enter this world, and to create the atmosphere for their proper upbringing and education. “That man may fulfill the measure of his creation.”
On earth we can build a family unit with the spirits the Lord entrusts to our care, that will last for eternity. Jesus Christ told us to build treasures in Heaven. What are the treasures we can build in Heaven? Priesthood, knowledge, personality traits and developed talents, and family members who are sealed in the Temple. The Temple is the door to the Celestial Kingdom and exaltation, and you cannot go to the Temple if morally unclean. Satan exploits this to the full. “Live for today, have fun, avoid responsibility, free love, no disgrace in fornication It is the thing,” he says. Yes, it is the thing today. The thing that is destroying us. many girls today only experience love affairs, not love.
We are not placed on Earth to fail. We are here to obtain glory and it is the women who set the standard and lead the way. The old saying, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” is very true. Men always have and always will follow women.
Girls, you are God’s chosen creatures: you are co-creators with him. Without you, his plans would fail. Don’t sell yourself cheap. Realize your full value, and don’t worry about depreciation. We cannot sin and get away with it. Most sin can be forgiven but the consequences of sin remain with us and has to be borne. I have had many weeping girls in my office testifying of this fact. When a choice girl indulges in sexual sin, she becomes soiled and secondhand and remains so. This, and the psychological effects of it, ruins many marriage, causes much unhappiness, and many delinquent children.
They say that it is no disgrace to have an illegitimate child today. That may be so in the eyes of the world, but it is not the Lord’s way. Very few of these children have a normal family upbringing. Everyone loves a baby. It comes into the world pure and undefiled, but when the child starts toddling and prying it needs constant attention, a mother, and a father. A girl alone who has to earn a living, either has to put the child in a home, or in the care of someone else, losing the mother-child relationship which is so important.
If the mother puts the child in a nursery during working hours, when she sees it in the evening she is often too tired and ill-equipped to give the child the attention it demands from a mother. The mother has little time for social life and meeting a good man who might marry her. This leads to a feeling of resentment to the child, or sometimes to a life of promiscuity with all its attendant evils. A single woman with a child is easy prey for the wrong kind of man.
The Lord’s plans are perfect. He is our creator and He knows in what environment we function best, and can be best prepared for celestial glory. We cannot go against God’ plans and be happy. girls of the Church, I beseech you, keep pure, preserve your dignity and your femininity, set the standard, be true to the standards set by God and choose your boy friends carefully, and the Lord will bless you abundantly.
“much of the unhappiness that I have to deal with could be avoided.”
It seems to me that this Bishop had problems that he had to deal with and in this talk/article he was responding to them in the best way he knew. Are there individual statements that if taken by themselves and used today would be roundly condemned by internet mobs? Yes.
But I get the sense that this talk was the result of one too many girls and women coming and meeting with him because of relationship problems where they were expecting a loving, stable relationship and the man was only expecting quick satisfaction.
Bishop Stevenson was trying to solve a problem that he had to deal with in his day, not make sure his comments could pass through Reddit unscathed. Also, from how he phrases things he appeared to be addressing a group of young women, and not young men, hence the emphasis on the young women’s duty in all of this. I wonder if there is another talk out there by Bishop Stevenson where he addresses the young men on the same topic. It would be interesting to compare the two if it exists.
Was this published someplace? Millennial Star, maybe–in one of its last gasps before it folded?
Yes, to both of you. This appeared in the August 1970 Millennial Star, so almost the very last gasp.
And while it isn’t explicitly paired with this article addressed to young women, the same issue contains Sterling W. Sill’s talk “It’s the Man that Counts,” about developing into the best kind of man. The cover also features a bride and groom. It is not an issue overtly devoted to relationships or gender issues, but it does have a kind of editorial balance that may have been deliberate.
quantum, nearly everything we read these days raises that nagging background issue, “How is this going to be interpreted by people it isn’t addressed to?” doesn’t it? It must have been nice, whether they realized it or not, to be able to speak to the audience you meant to address, without that second guessing and mental editing that plagues us now.
“It must have been nice, whether they realized it or not, to be able to speak to the audience you meant to address, without that second guessing and mental editing that plagues us now.”
This is the quote of the day that summarizes an unfortunate aspect of the time in which we live. I wish this plague was just a phase the world is enduring. Sadly, I feel it will be with us for a long, long time. Please forgive going off-topic.
Well, that was kind of depressing.
I have that reaction in part as the father of daughters, but most particularly as a relative and friend of mothers who work outside the home (both by necessity and by choice), and as a relative and friend of women who are and likely never will be mothers (both by circumstance and by choice), and as a good friend of women who had children outside of marriage (generally by choice, but not in every case). Yeah, it might have been directed toward a particular audience at a particular time, but the Millennial Star had a wide enough audience that this hurts to read knowing who it would have reached, and I’m not even one of the ones this was criticizing or dismissing.
One other thing, a bit more lighthearted, but still serious: Lines like “They say that it is no disgrace to…” always fascinate me—who is the “they”? I always enjoy looking at statements like that, where the opponents are referenced but not actually named, and trying to figure out the intent.
I can interpret just about everything he said charitably, but it is stretching the limits of my charity. For example, I really hope that “Most sin can be forgiven but the consequences of sin remain with us…. she becomes soiled and secondhand and remains so” means “people will treat you as soiled, even if you repent” and not “there is some actual stain the atonement cannot remove.”
If this was just a bishop talking to the girls in his ward, I’d just assume he was doing his best, off the cuff, and I might extend a little more charity. If you publish something in a magazine, though, to be read over and over, maybe a little more second guessing and mental editing would have been a good thing.
I recall a talk by Vaughan Featherstone to my mission some years ago, in which he talked about how the Atonement is totally efficacious against the eternal consequences of sin, but did not always remove the temporal consequences of sin. His example was a woman who had been a prostitute before joining the Church, who was now seeking a call as a full-time mission. He had the responsibility to interview her and tell her No.
My recollection was that the talk was an excellent one, with much food for thought. But what he was teaching was rather different in tone from what was said here.
It may not be politically correct, but he’s not wrong. Not about being a single mother, anyways. But since of us don’t have a choice. Or…our choice is that our possible death. So there’s that.
Just waiting for Anne (UK) to comment as she knew the author!
Really!
Well, this was a surprise.
As Alison said, I knew the author. He was my Bishop and a counsellor on the stake presidency during my youth/YA-hood. His son is one of my facebook friends. I don’t know exactly when he joined the church, but he was certainly one of the longest serving, most experienced men in the country at the time I knew him. Everyone knew him. He and his family stayed in the UK rather than emigrate to the US, as so many of his generation did. His reward was endless responsibility, covering miles and miles, until the day he died. He was a working man, no scholar, not an executive or a lawyer, he was old school. He commanded my respect, and, when I got to know him better, my love. He was a good man.
As for this piece, imho it is very much of it’s time and place. It could have been written by any one of the leaders I can think of who were around then. The opinions were of their time, both in terms of Church opinion, and also in terms of social support then available here. Times have changed now, in so many ways. Bishop Stevenson now has adult grandchildren whose lives would seem far from conventional to the chap speaking in 1970. Were he here in 2016, I suspect his love for them would have helped him overcome any misgivings about lifestyles one might expect from this piece taken in isolation, in the same way that our opinions, views and levels of tolerance change as our circumstances, and the circumstances of our nearest and dearest, change too. And just a final thought (sorry to ramble on so long)- he lived in the same ward as that in which the Millennial Star was written and edited. I am willing to bet he was just asked for thoughts from a talk as a filler, by the editor, who was a good friend, or maybe the editor just transcribed the talk as it happened. The thought that we would be discussing this internationally over 45 years later would have seemed beyond belief.
Wonderful contribution, Anne — thanks. You can ramble as long and as often as you want to. 🙂
I was scared to comment on this one since its such an explosive topic (particularly with recent events at byu). I rather appreciate his candor-I had no idea what a huge difference between men and women there were physiologically when it came to sex until I got married. (Maybe I had leaders speak to me as candidly but I just didn’t get it or tuned them out because I was a grossed out teenager.) I don’t feel like he is trying to tell women that we have to protect the virtue of everyone around us (which has been a common complaint by feminists in the church). Instead he is encouraging women to take responsibility and control of our own sexual purity. It is our own to protect.
I appreciate Anne’s comments immensely as well. I wonder what his comments would be today in light of the recent honor code conundrum at BYU.
Vader’s comment on how the temporal consequences of sin cannot be avoided strikes a chord with me as someone who has been affected by another’s choices regarding sex. There are very real consequences of sexual sin that extend beyond the individual (I think about future sexual partners/spouses/children etc.) that don’t just disappear with repentance. Things will be made right in the eternities but cannot always be fixed while still on this earth and subject to earthly laws.
Amanda — and everybody else —
I really hope you and others won’t hesitate to comment at Keepa, even on explosive topics. People need to be courteous and always remember that Keepa is intended for believing members, and anyone else who is willing to respect that we are believers, and I’ll keep working to be sure that no one is belittled or attacked or otherwise mistreated for any comment that comes from LDS belief (even if, sometimes, a commenter’s opinion differs from mine).
This was a talk addressed to women, and yet until the very latest remarks no woman had commented. I was afraid that was because men have dominated and belittled women’s voices in other gender-related posts (not here, but elsewhere in the bloggernacle), and I’m very glad to have women starting to speak up.
Anyway, thanks.
I was married in 1960, but I can still relate to the environment of this bishop’s pleading. It reminds me of the booklet given to all of us girls in Mutual called “The Heart of the Rose” where we were compared to the rose which needed to develop and mature on our own time. If the petals were pried open too soon, the result would be crushed petals which would never be the beauty that was possible. I never heard a talk during my late teens directed to the boys, it was always to us, that we were responsible for controlling the boys’ actions.
As a male, “I don’t have a dog in this hunt” (as they say in the Deep South), but I just want to tell the women commenters on this post, how much I appreciate your thoughtful and measured responses. It is a real breath of fresh air in the time we live and reminds me of the true Spirit of the many faithful sisters we have in this Church.
Thank you!
Thanks Ardis for the encouragement-I love the space at keepa for this very reason. There’s also a part of me that hates to have any of my opinions or thoughts put down on the internets in fear that they will come to haunt me later…. Much like good bishop’s words are now being read ;).