I was perusing some of my friends blog when I found a friend of mines The Once and Future Craig. I’ve known Craig for many moons now. We first met when I wanted to learn more about Linux and the world wide web. This was back in 1996. I had found a site called Mission.net. After much bothering, I was able to take over the day to day operations of this machine.
Today he had an interesting post about the fact that the Langley Singles Ward was kicking all 31 and above singles out.
The article this generated in the “Washington City Paper” is a very interesting and very well written piece of prose.
The fact that it made it to a non member/non-SLC Tribune newspaper is very telling.
The crux of this article is that the Church is built to get married. By the time you hit 30, you’ve been in the singles ward for 10 years. Obviously you haven’t figured out how this all works yet.
So I’ll be quoting some of the parts I really like..
“Then, during the announcements and church-business portion of the service, the bishop informed the congregation that there would be a number of administrative changes in the near future. He read the policies one by one and then dropped the bombshell: Though the Langley leaders had not been strict about it, singles wards were designated for people between the ages of 21 and 30, and in keeping with the letter of the law, all members of the Langley singles ward age 31 and older would have to leave the singles ward in a few weeks and return to their local family wards.”
I love that there is that magical number right there.
Taylor believes single women feel more pressure because they have less control over matters. Men are the ones expected to do the asking and the pursuing; if they’re not married, it’s commonly perceived to be by choice. And when they’re unsuccessful, they’re told they simply need to be more proactive. Women, on the other hand, can be as righteous and worthy as humanly possible and still be home alone on a Friday night, left to wonder if they might be doing something wrong.
And lastly
One recent Sunday at her new family ward, Taylor sat through a Relief Society lesson titled “Preparing for an Eternal Marriage and Family.” Several married women decided to share stories of friends who didn’t marry until very late. One by one, these women tearfully tried to boost the spirits of the single women in attendance by talking about girlfriends who persevered until they were finally blessed with marriage at the advanced age of 28. And 31. Taylor couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She squirmed and waited for it to end, but the stories kept coming. Finally, she couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “Thirty-one is not late,” she yelled, exasperated. “Eighty-two is late.”
It’s a pretty good read. For those with sensitive eyes, she does swear, so if you don’t want to read some swearing, of course, don’t click.
The points the entire article make are pretty legitimate. The Church is continueing to find that it has more and more single members. Elder Oaks referenced this in his talk about “hanging out”. I’ve also seen this in my singles ward. More and more of my generation are not making it to the “golden” cut off age.
Frankly the Leadership has no idea how to handle this. I think more and more this generation will become the Lost Generation. It becomes very hard to be single and active as one gets older. The Leadership doesn’t know how to deal with it either, because, lets face it, they were never in this situation.
Being single is almost like a handicap in a family ward.
I don’t know what the solution is, but the Church will need to start addressing this anyways. When this makes news in a Public Newspaper, well, then it’s not so small of phenominon.
Or the Church can just continue to watch the Singles fall away into inactivity.
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