Universal Life Church Invites Mormon Women to Become Ordained Ministers
Seattle, WA (PRWEB) July 02, 2014 -- In June, leaders of the Universal Life Church were gravely disheartened to hear that Ms. Kate Kelly, a devout Mormon woman, was excommunicated from her family of faith as a result of her efforts to expand the office of minister within the Church of Latter Day Saints to include that church’s female members (a title of privilege and responsibility offered freely to all male Mormons).
In response, the Universal Life Church formally extended an invitation to Ms. Kelly and other Mormon women to become ordained ministers.
The Universal Life Church has dedicated itself to promoting the freedom of all individuals – be they black or white, female or male, gay or straight – to become ordained and preach their own truth to the world. Indeed, the church proclaims, are all children of the same universe.
The Universal Life Church has declared that it will readily welcome these women into its accepting and equitable family of faith. Ms. Kelly is clearly a woman of tremendous faith, and has a deep and clear commitment to her calling as a spiritual leader. She, along with her supporters in the Ordain Women organization, deserve the ritualistic and administrative authority they seek as ministers, an authority that the Universal Life Church is pleased to provide.
The current leaders of the Mormon church, for their show of stubborn chauvinism, are to be condemned for their failure to openly hear and engage with a substantial portion of their committed congregation who seek to share their faith with the world as their male counterparts are invited and encouraged to.
In excommunicating Ms. Kelly, the Mormon church believes it permanently severs her from her loved ones in the afterlife – a devastatingly excessive show of aggression against a wife and daughter whose only desire was to participate more actively in her religion.
Just as this select group of passionate women has heard and attempted to answer their call to ministry, the members of the Universal Life Church, too, have heard a call: a call to embrace those marginalized by a leadership desperately clinging to old structures of power, a call to empower those who would seek to use their hearts and minds and voices to exact positive change in the world.
Ms. Kelly and women of the Mormon faith, the hearts of those at the Universal Life Church ache for you and your painful position. Those at the Universal Life Church will continue to hope, wish, and pray that the Morman leaders will eventually realize that (as they did in the 1978 with regard to men of African descent) it is time to open their arms to a wider community.
Until that day, however, the Universal Life Church invites and encourages all those who feel so compelled to become ordained ministers; together, the church believes, humanity can build a better faith.
Brother G. Martin Freeman, Universal Life Church, http://www.themonastery.org, +1 2064789500, [email protected]
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