So I need to vent and I'm going to do it here, for conversations sake of course- that is if anyone still reads this.
What the heck is with this "wear pants to church movement"??? It is driving me mental. I can admit there are some things about our church that make us different, a lot of them are more cultural than doctrinal, really truly. Tonight I am so happy that I don't live in Utah, or any of the places where the women who started this crazy facebook page live. I'm super extra happy with the fact that when I was in a leadership role over the women in our ward, we were able to basically tell the women "Wear whatever you want to church as long as it's your best and it's modest", I like that every activity didn't come with the mandate to wear a skirt. I like that we didn't have to stage a "pants protest" during sacrament meeting to let everyone know that "By golly we are not wearing skirts anymore, we are feminists and feminists wear pants!". Good gosh. The amount of eye-rolling I've done today has rivaled the total sum of the eye-rolling I did between the ages of 12-18, that's A LOT. My head hurts. What I have loved, and what I still love are the comments from women around the world, outside of the "cultural hub" of our church, their comments about how they wear pants/skirts/kilts/etc... and nobody says anything are so great.
Dear Utah church members, there is nothing in any current handbook that says women must wear skirts, I know because I had one of those blessed books and no man in his right mind would try to dictate that to a woman in this day and age, at least no man that I know. I go to church with lots of women that wear pants, or have worn pants. Heck I wear cotton tights with above knee-length dresses *gasp* and nobody says a word, are those tights not really pants? Any other day of the week they are... I know a few women who have worn dress pants because they have rowdy kids that they have literally had to crawl under and over pews to catch, and obviously a skirt isn't attire for dealing with kids that crazy. I know women that wear pants or even long skirts because they don't like showing their legs, or they really just hate skirts, had some traumatic experiences as children and will never wear a skirt again, etc... Who knows, but who really cares? Maybe in the bubble it's just another thing for people to nit-pick and criticize each other for, but where I come from if some wonderful lady wants to wear dress pants to church, I'm not judging her.
I don't think God expects any of us to come to church with some sort of agenda. I think He expects us to come to worship Him and His Son. Sacrament meeting, we've been reminded recently, is similar to a funeral service, in the fact that we're remembering our Savior and all that He did for us and continues to do for us. If for some reason it becomes a place for protest, don't you think that's a little disrespectful? If a bunch of women wear pants to church on Sunday, good for them. If the issue is reflective of a deeper concern on the part of a collective group of women, they should probably get together and find a way to reach out to church leadership, write some letters, talk to Bishops and Stake Presidents and use the channels that are there for communication, there are plenty. But please, don't pollute one of our most sacred rituals with your "pants protest". The fact that this is even happening is so silly since, once again, there's nothing anywhere that says you can't wear pants to church.
Rant completed.