The only square block in a sea of circle holes.
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.
Great article. S.o. .v.e.r.y. .t.r.u.e.
All I can say is, with the comments this girl made I’m wondering why she finds it difficult to figure out why she is a single LDS.
Well, tyson my boy, I think she’s a bit bitter ;I
You, being the young age you are, don’t have to worry about this 😉
Plus, well, you are going to be a wealthy old man 😉
Well. Wow. I have several responses to this article and to your post about it. And I think we could have a good discussion. Sometime. But blog comments don’t seem to be the right place for it. So remind me one day.
Just to clarify things. I don’t agree with all that she has to say, but there are points that I do agree with.
My OH my! Not sure how to respond to that article. The girl really has some issues to work through. From reading her views on life, there is no wondering why she is still single. What an attitude!
I think it’s a little bit too easy to read an article like this and dismiss the whole thing with, “Well, she has a bad attitude, so no wonder she’s not married.”
What do you say, then, for the 72% or whatever of singles out there who have GREAT attitudes and aren’t married?
I think Leigh is right–there are a lot of things going on here, and we won’t figure them all out like this. But we’ll never be able to understand and support each other if we’re so quick to categorize and write people off. Please understand, I’ve been guilty of this myself, but I don’t think it’s right.
I’m sorry, Kerry, but I disagree on the take on Janna’s attitude. I’m Craig, whom Chris refers to as the source for the article, and I knew Janna (and Rachel for that matter) when I attended Langley.
Janna is a very bright woman—not “girl”—indeed a very bright person, some of whose views lie outside the mainstream culture of corridor Mormonism. But that certainly does not make her undateable, nor off-limits for marriage.
Sadly, however, I think with a lot of the more outspoken and liberal LDS women of the East Coast, young corridor Mormon men who pass through simply don’t know what to do with them. They reject them for unconscious cultural reasons wherein they still expect subservience from a wife.
I don’t think Janna has a bad attitude per se. Yes, she is blunt about how she feels about reaching 33 and being treated with the same sort of organizational infantilism the Church dishes out for all of its unmarried adults, regardless of their age. I don’t think that’s particularly surprising.
Moreover, you have to give consideration to the fact that Janna was once younger. Many factors play a part in how she and Rachel and other women in the church (and men for that matter) wind up passing 30 without being married, and it doesn’t all lie on their shoulders.
Too often in the Mormon Church, when things don’t work out for a person, we ascribe it to a sin or a lack of faith or some other failing on their part. I think John 9 is worth studying in such cases.
Seldom do we consider the possibility that circumstances or even the institution itself might have had a role to play, and that’s ultimately what’s being said here. There are enough over-30 singles in the DC area that the Church could have several SA wards, but it chooses not to. That says a lot.