I’d love to be able to write that it was an amazing 6 days, and my daughter loved every minute. I’m sure it was a lot of work for those involved running it. My daughter, along with the other YW attending, including investigators and less-active girls, enjoyed meeting other youth from elsewhere. They have some fun and crazy pictures. But the girls were aggravated by quite a few things. And they were seriously aggravated by something in particular that was said. Our YW have complained about it over the weeks following, and I don’t blame them.
First off, the dress rules are as crazy as those at BYU, though not quite as crazy as BYU-I; this is sort of a fun week, not a business conference thank goodness. Capping it all, however, one day of the week gets treated as a Sabbath, so you know, that’s Sunday dress all day, even though there’s nothing about the activities that would require such dress, and it isn’t a Sunday. Yep, I’m not crazy about this whole ‘we’re going to pretend it’s a Sunday’ thing. Running through the whole week there’s the seemingly arbitrary way in which things that will and will not ‘offend the Spirit’ (clapping to express appreciation of musical talent displayed at evening devotionals was thoroughly frowned upon) are invoked at every turn, and on the ‘Sabbath’ that was magnified. Because the one thing FSY is supposed to be is a great spiritual experience for our youth. A worthy aim, perhaps, but hard to achieve if you’re constantly putting backs up by harping on about small things.
I think we can take it as read that everyone’s clothing choices are being monitored. But on the ‘Sabbath’ the girls came in for extra scrutiny, primarily because they were wearing skirts rather than the usual jeans, combats or tracksuit bottoms. Anyway, lets just say, safety pins were applied to many of those skirts, because many smart skirts at the moment are straight with a shortish split at the back (it makes walking easier). But apparently the splits failed the modesty test, so the girls had to hobble along hoping the pin didn’t burst open, and give them a nasty scratch instead. One poor girl, who’d been fretting about whether her skirt would pass (it did), finished up being sent back to change her very nice shirt, which she’d never imagined would be an issue, because, although it did have sleeves, those sleeves were lace. So let’s see, stressing out young women about their ‘Sabbath’ dress on a Thursday, requiring them to hobble along with safety pins in their skirts, none of that offends the Spirit, apparently. The final indignity dress-wise, was having to spend the entire days’ activities in dress shoes, because who doesn’t kick off their shoes at least, when they get in from church? Feet crying out for relief, they don’t get in the way of feeling the Spirit either.
So, having got dress out of the way, lets look at what else happened. It being a ‘Sunday’, they were split for YM and YW presentations. Sadly this did not preclude the male leader from addressing the YW during their turn in the theatre. What happened? Well, at one point several of the YA counsellors filed on stage to perform the FSY medley. I’m told one of the girls in the auditorium wolf-whistled (though not loudly enough for everyone to hear), when the YA guys walked onto the stage. The male leader nearly had a stroke. He might have expected that kind of behaviour from the boys, he said, but from the girls it was unconscionable. Finishing up with, how dare they disrespect priesthood holders like that! My daughter tells me she was with him on the not wolf-whistling part, because that’s not good for anyone to do to anybody, though she was ticked off that he appeared to expect a different standard from the girls than the boys. But that last reference to priesthood holders was a huge problem. How was that relevant? If it’s wrong, it’s wrong to do to anyone. She was seriously annoyed. Unfortunately, it didn’t end there. At the end of that, the girls came in for a huge lecture about how if a boy fails to go on a mission, it’s because there’s a girl at the bottom of it. And they had better not be responsible for any boy failing to serve a mission now or in the future. Now my daughter was furious. All the girls were. They’ve been complaining about it. Every week we YW leaders have been listening to their sarcastic ‘oh yes, because if a boy does something wrong that’s out fault, he can be 100 miles away, but it’s still our fault’. They recognise the error of the message, but they are angry, and I don’t blame them. It is experiences like that, which erode respect for priesthood leaders. That session was a feel the Spirit fail. And don’t blame the girl who whistled. Would it have been better if she hadn’t? Probably. But this is a meeting with youth. Some of them less active, whose parents were desperate for them to attend and have a good experience, and who had miraculously agreed to put up with the crazy dress restrictions for a week to do so. Not everything will go the way you expect. There are appropriate ways to respond and allow the Spirit to teach. Ranting at the girls, brandishing the priesthood as a weapon to ‘put them in their place’, and telling the girls they’re responsible for boys’ failures wasn’t one of them.
Finally, as is often the case, when a large group are gathered together, it’s going to be somebody’s birthday, or maybe several somebodies’ birthday most days. In celebration, the youth would sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the individuals concerned, on the appropriate days. Except, on this ‘Sabbath’, which wasn’t even a Sunday anyway, and on which there was yet another birthday, the youth were told they shouldn’t sing ‘Happy Birthday’ that day, because it would ‘offend the Spirit’! Excuse me! The Spirit doesn’t want to celebrate our birthdays with us when they happen to fall on the Sabbath? What kind of insanity is this? Have these people never seen the Children’s Songbook? Have they never experienced primary children singing birthday songs to those who’ve had a birthday recently? Is the Spirit some staid kill-joy? I don’t think so. Anyhow, whilst ‘Happy Birthday’ was declared inappropriate for ‘Sabbath’ singing, the youth were required to sing ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ on that same ‘Sabbath’ as a warm up to learning the FSY medley. A glaring inconsistency that they didn’t fail to notice.
All in all, it seems to me this ‘let’s pretend it’s Sunday’ resulted in a whole lot of unnecessary aggravation for the leaders, the youth, and especially the girls. The huge pressure that resulted from trying so hard to manufacture an extra-spiritual atmosphere seems to have backfired. Why do they do it? Wouldn’t it have been better to have had a more relaxed atmosphere, meeting the youth with love and concern, being happy to celebrate achievements and birthdays? If we want our youth to experience the fruits of the Spirit, I’d suggest we need a different approach.
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Hedgehog, I agree with you and your local YW. Our Mormon “culture” is both the best of us and the worst of us. My kids were teenagers in the 80’s and early 90’s and all went to EFY at least once. 3 out of 4 of them thought some significant parts were “lame” and overbearing on the “spiritual” stuff. But, those called into “leadership” tend to be (though some well-balanced ones slip through) traditional, anachronistic, and TBMs. They are the bath water that has to be suffered by those of us that still think there is a baby in there.
Ugh, I’ve never been in a church organization that’s refused to sing Happy Birthday, even on the Sabbath. It’s an interesting idea to set aside a random day as the Sabbath. I’ve been in a LDS branch that did Sabbath on Saturday, and one of my roommates had a conniption about doing non-Sabbath stuff (shopping) on Sunday, even though we had already had observed the Sabbath the day before. It was an interesting exercise for me in appreciating what the Sabbath meant as opposed to my cultural affiliation with Sunday. Doesn’t sound like it worked at all with the kids, though.
The mission comment makes me want to punch that leader in the face. Just because Elder Scott talked about righteous women influencing his decision to go on a mission doesn’t mean every boy that decides not to go should point to the women in his life for failing to properly motivate him. I suspect the “priesthood holder” comment was a cultural term interchangeable in his mind with “young men,” just like boys shouldn’t whistle at “daughters of God” like that. That I’m willing to credit to a generational gap. The mission comment? No, that’s sheer idiocy.
Clothing is a minefield. It’s rare to have a presentation/demonstration where all participants come out feeling positive and inspired. If people decide to tackle it, they need to have a lot of tact and compassion. Doesn’t sound like that was the case. 😦
Sounds like that particular day was a bust. Hope the other days were better.
Mary Ann, I always love your comments.
Hedgehog, I have 3 kids in primary and it is exactly this type of baloney that makes me want to dissuade my children from attending these charades. The gospel and the spirit are authentic. No need to pretend it’s the “sabbath” with a bunch of arbitrary rules on Sunday or any other day to connect with Christ. In fact, I’m more concerned that all these invented rules and manufactured, so-called *spiritual* experiences are distracting our youth, confusing them with a false spirit, and leading them carefully away from the true gospel.
Yikes. “A glaring inconsistency that they didn’t fail to notice.” This is the key. Kids are very keyed into hypocrisy. Leaders in “yes man” organizations are notoriously tone deaf about hypocrisy. People who mistake authority for competence almost always are.
…if a boy fails to go on a mission, it’s because there’s a girl at the bottom of it. Here we go again!
fbisti, yes. Before my kids decided if they wanted to attend (one did, one didn’t) I made enquiries, since these were people I didn’t know, and was assured that the leading couple were carefully chosen, having served in callings such as stake presidencies, institute etc. Events only confirmed my fears of that demographic.
MaryAnn, I guess that kind of exercise done in your branch can be interesting. I don’t think that was how it was presented to the youth though, and of course they still had Sundays as normal both sides of the event. I do tend to baulk at that kind of thing myself.
I’d like to believe that ‘priesthood holder’ was synonymous with ‘young men’ in his mind, but my personal experience with these British CES TBM types leads me to think otherwise. Regardless, I think the girls feel it as a put down, precisely because the priesthood is denied girls & women. Whereas the counterpoint to ‘daughters of God’ would be ‘sons of God’ and both pretty much the same as ‘children of God’, which all would agree includes everybody.
MB, I think that was the worst of it. Every day there was a lot of hype and emphasis about feeling the spirit though. My daughter generally found not, the only time she did was in an informal setting after breakfast when one of the boys was playing an old EFY medley on the piano, when such an experience wasn’t part of ‘the programme’.
Yes Ma’am, I agree. I did have that concern beforehand. I expressed that concern to the stake officer; they were doing a big oversell to get all the youth in the stake signed up. The whole programme seems to be a formula that must be followed exactly, by those running it. In the first place that’s just creepy. And in the second place it leaves them concentrating on following the formula instead of following the Spirit.
hawkgrrrl, Howard, Indeed!
The modesty stuff just keeps veering into disaster. When is one of the general leaders going to bring balance back and put the clothing zealots back in their place. They can enforce whatever standards they want on their own kids but they will sure as leave my girls alone. It is sheer madness, bat-quano crazy madness. It is getting so that our communities have lost all sense of perspective. I am sorry hedgehog. At least the youth are robust generally to this type of craziness, but I agree with you it does overtime undermine respect for the organization and culture. That is so sad especially since it is so easy to avoid. So easy.
I’ve actually wondered if the “CES” types as you say are a bigger problem outside the US than inside the US where they might be tempered with believe it or not more diversity (due to sheer numbers, I assure you).
My wife and I have participated in 2 treks as a Ma and Pa in both. Our goal going in was to insure that the children we were responsible for were safe and had a good time. I would like to emphasize the good time part. I fully believe that the spirit will take care of itself. But, if you do not setup a situation where the youth are willing to share and discuss life then there is never a benefit. All of the spiritual experiences we had with our trek kids happened in a non-organized setting. Occasionally they were instigated because of questions that they had regarding one of the organized programs that had occurred previously. They also tended to occur later in the evening, sitting around a camp fire, well after the majority of the camp had gone to sleep. In my experience, artificial spiritual experiences rarely if ever work and more often then not backfire.
Often I feel that we build too many hedges in the church. We create fake cultural rules based off of a guideline and then take it to crazy extremes. For example, years ago President Hinckley made the comment that we as members should do all we can to avoid planning things in our communities on Mondays to leave time for Family Home Evening (this is very paraphrased). In my stake this came to mean that Mondays could no longer be used for any type of activity, this included things like Scout Camp, Girls Camp, Youth Conferences, etc. So while all other Scouts were headed to camp on Monday, our boys got to lose a whole day and go up on Tuesday. This caused every one of them to be a day behind in most of the activities taking place. Or during Youth Conference one year that started on a Monday morning, all the kids were brought home from the camp they were at so they could participate in FHE, they then slept at home and were brought back to the camp on Tuesday morning. Growing up my family and I would often go to the Church on Mondays to play some kind of game in the Gym because it had more space then was available to us at home. At least now in our stake your new electronic key is controlled from a central location so they no longer work after 5 or 6pm on Monday evenings.
I have never sent my kids to an EFY finding that the cost is usually prohibitive for me. I live in happy valley so I feel like I get more EFY on a regular basis then I would like.
It is unfortunate that our kids have to be exposed to this kind of thing. If they put me in charge of everything we would have a great time and the Spirit could take care of itself with pretty much little to no help from me.
CES types are pretty bad here as well. Had a seminary teacher tell my child that if you wore a beard you were a sinner. They being intelligent enough to write this off laughed but, that type of thing is way more common then not.
rah, I think you’re right about the youth being robust wrt the dress rules. They put up with the safety pins, eye-rolls aside. I don’t think anyone whose skirt had been pinned was looked down upon by any of the others, on the contrary I think there was a fair amount of sympathy for them. But it was annoying for them not to be able to walk properly all day.
I’m thinking EFY is perhaps more of an external thing in the US, Robertm. Here it is imposed from above (now as FSY). The youth are expected to attend every couple of years, and it replaces the youth camps that would otherwise have taken place. The cost is heavily subsidised, and youth are allowed to fundraise in their wards to reduce the cost still further. The FSY programme runs quite late into the evenings, with not much unstructured time.
Sounds like you did a good job on the treks.
To be fair, I should mention our CES guys do also have good points, and the institute instructor I had as a student was pretty liberal for CES. Events of 1993 had an impact, I think. Attitude to priesthood authority on the whole is at minimum disconcerting though.
Hedgehog, I think I misled in how I wrote. The branch didn’t choose to do Sabbath on Saturday just as an exercise, it’s because that is what the LDS church has chosen to designate as the Sabbath in Israel. In Arab countries, LDS branches have Sabbath services on Friday. The church attempts to make it easier on its members to have Sabbath services on days that they are most likely to be able to attend based on the surrounding culture. It was an interesting experience for me to think about what the Sabbath really meant to me versus what I normally affiliated with Sunday (being from the US). I didn’t mean to suggest that wards/branches are allowed to change Sabbath designations on their own. I was trying to give benefit of the doubt to the group organizers that maybe they were trying to teach a meaningful message by arbitrarily designating a weekday as a type of Sabbath. I’m not sure what the real intent was.
I agree with rah on modesty. It reminds me of when a reporter interviewed the General RS, YW, and Primary presidents on modesty for a church news article. She said that she kept asking them, “So what can we put as basic bullet points next to the article for clothing standards?” Apparently the general presidents looked at her like she was crazy. She explained that, in their view, that was completely missing the point. Modesty, they said, is an outward manifestation of discipleship and commitment. Based on that very personal interpretation, it makes sense why kids feel completely dejected after someone critiques their clothing in the name of modesty – it’s like someone arbitrarily saying “You are failing as a disciple.”
Ah, okay Mary Ann. Thanks for clarifying that. My husband attended church in Saudi Arabia for a short time. His father was there representing his employer for a few years, so as a student he’d go over in the summer to be with them. And yes, they met Friday. As a teenager I had a part-time job on a shop owned by a Jewish family. I worked there Saturdays, and they seemed to regard moving the Sabbath as sensible.
When was this church news article interview you mentioned? The answers seem so refreshing, compared to the stuff we hear now. Looks like somebody somewhere was willing to come up with bullet points eventually.
It was published 27 March 2013 – here’s the link: https://www.lds.org/church/news/modesty-reflects-discipleship-commitment-auxiliary-leaders-say
To be honest, my experience with the then EFY was the first time in my life I actually FELT manipulated, and when I realized what had happened (after the fact), I was, shall we say, less than thrilled. Did not return. Do not recommend.
Thanks for that link Mary Ann. I was surprised it was so recent, and it’s a shame those attitudes don’t seem to be filtering down.
PZ. Sympathy. I don’t think any of us like to feel we were manipulated. and I do think that’s a danger with this type of programming. It’s very counterproductive. There’s the danger of the youth confusing emotion with the spirit, but trying to express these concerns can be like speaking a foreign language.
@Hedgehog
The emotion part was what clued me in. I’m usually quite reserved, even when I was younger. So when I started getting emotional, I thought, “Well, this is weird. Why is this happening?” And after a few minutes it dawned on me that my response was the desired response from a carefully orchestrated sequence of events. 14 year old me caught on to that, somehow (I know, surprising that a teen had insight). I guess I’m lucky that the experience didn’t turn me off to the gospel entirely. It well could have. My younger brother has since gone and enjoyed it, but I gave him the “This is what they’re going to try and do to you” speech, so he was at least prepared for it. I was too naive.
PZ & Hedgehog: I vaguely remember something from Preach My Gospel discouraging stories that create a strong emotional response. I didn’t understand the reasoning at the time, but your comments cleared it up for me.
On the other end of the spectrum, how to teach a principle without some element of emotion? Passionless teaching isn’t manipulative, but it doesn’t move the audience to action, either.
Laurel, passionate teaching is not equivalent with emotional manipulation. Think of a professor who is passionate about his/her subject — class members can sense that excitement without being manipulated. Charismatic leaders can also be inspiring without necessarily being manipulative. Motivational speakers (like those at EFY) are effective specifically because they know how to manipulate human emotions. I had a religion teacher who used motivational speaking techniques and his classes were incredibly popular. Once I realized he was manipulating emotions (purposeful or not), I really disliked being in his class. Emotional experiences are easily confused with spiritual experiences, and it’s a common occurrence at youth conferences.
Laurel, I’m pleased to read that the Preach my Gospel manual includes that.
Mary Ann. Agreed.