LDS Church Mandates Women Pray in Meetings

In a shocking setback for the nearly 8 million women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the leadership of The Church announced today that female church leaders will be required to offer opening and closing prayers at the faith’s semi-annual General Conference meetings, held each year in April and October. Addressing the historic change in policy, President Henry B. Eyring noted, “It has been a longstanding tradition in our church to exempt sisters from the mandate that all church officers pray in general conference. We did this out of our love and respect for their divine role as daughters of God.” 

Elder W. Craig Zwick, a member of The Church’s “First Quorum of the Seventy,” explained the excessive burdens those face who are called to pray. “First, they ask you to pray several months in advance, so by the time General Conference comes around, you’ve most likely forgotten. If you’re lucky enough to remember, and you’ve been assigned to give the closing prayer, you find yourself unable to participate in the time-honored tradition of falling asleep in those big red chairs as soon as the lights go down. Instead you only get to sleep until the intermediate hymn, your second half nap non-existent. Finally, it’s ridiculously nerve-wracking not to know how long you need to pray until you stand at the podium. Between songs, testimonies, and talks of variable length, and a TV cut-off time of 12:00 PM, you can be asked to pray for anywhere from seven seconds to seven minutes, and you won’t know how long until you see the clock on the podium. Have you ever tried to pray for exactly four minutes and thirty-seven seconds? And it’s not like you can open your eyes to glance at the clock mid-prayer with millions of children watching to catch you peeking.”

He continued, visibly annoyed, “And why is it that I’ve been asked to pray 17 times in 18 years? It’s like someone suggests they make assignments alphabetically but shake things up by starting at the end. Every. Single. Time.”

Linda K. Burton, Relief Society General President, who has been slated to offer the invocation at this April’s opening session, spoke of the change. “Evidently this change was brought about because hundreds of oppressed sisters wrote letters to church leadership decrying what they considered an injustice: the fact that our male counterparts take the bullet for us and offer prayers in General Conference. The careless actions of these unthinking women have now had a detrimental effect on the Relief Society as a whole. Fortunately, they were very thorough in their correspondence, providing their telephone numbers, addresses, blog URL’s, and Pinterest user names in  their letters. We know where they live.” She smirked, “I hear there’s a church-wide shortage of nursery leaders....”