Young women theme

I have an ongoing series about the young women values, but I have not actually introduced the topic. Bad writer, bad bad. So, the mormon church is enamored of lists, especially for the young people. You have lists of goals to do, goals accomplished, all carefully correlated and neatly packaged. You have lists of tasks:
Sunday meetings 3-5 hours
Wednesday mutual 2 hours
Friday dances 3 hours
Firesides 2 hours
You have lists that you write for qualities you want in your eternal companion, topped by a strong testimony in the church and a willingness to follow the prophet. Lists all provide information about eternal progression but cannot measure or dictate internal spirituality. However, these lists are for everyone. Everyone must do the same things in the right order to be saved.

One of those lists is the young women's theme, chanted every week in wards throughout the world. The fact that it is chanted, not read, takes away the need or ability to think about it or analyze it. All the young women, ages 12-18, stand together, and repeat together the theme. This next bit is taken from the church's website:

Young Women Theme

The Young Women theme helps each young woman understand her identity, purpose, and destiny as a daughter of God. Young women and their leaders repeat the theme during Sunday opening exercises and at other Young Women gatherings. Additional words or themes repeated in conjunction with the theme are not necessary or appropriate.

We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him.
We will "stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things,
and in all places" (Mosiah 18:9) as we strive to live
the Young Women values, which are:
Faith
Divine Nature
Individual Worth
Knowledge
Choice and Accountability
Good Works
Integrity and
Virtue.
We believe as we come to accept and act upon these values,
we will be prepared to strengthen home and family, make and keep sacred covenants,
receive the ordinances of the temple, and enjoy the blessings of exaltation.

Notice the church's own preface says that additions are not necessary and should not be a part of it. My young women's posts are taking each of these values, and the new one virtue, and examining what young women are being taught and how I think these values are destructive in the lives of the members.

Retrospectively, the chanting of the theme really creeps me out. I remember that I had it memorized before I even went to young women's. My older sister had a poster of it in her room, and I would lay on her bed, and look at the poster from my unique-upside-down angle and read it over and over. When I finally went to young women's I didn't need to read it, I never tripped up. I repeated it loudly and proudly, pausing and breathing at all the right moments.

Now I see that chanting impedes thought. Rote learning and memorization has nothing to do with analysis, with critical thinking. And chanting also reinforces group think and conformity. If someone is off step with the repetition, the overwhelming majority will get them back on track. When you chant, you breathe in unison. There is a tug, a cadence, a pattern, and you are in line with it, or you don't exist. Dissenting voices cannot be heard (which seems to be an overarching theme of the church itself).

The conformity, the group identity is reinforced by the words themselves. WE are daughters (collective we. No individual relationship sought or condoned. Daughters collective, also presents women in a subservient role as both woman and child) of our heavenly father (not only an authority in the family, but a cosmic authority) who loves us and we love him (ethos argument, appeal to emotions. This is how you interpret the religion, spirituality through emotions, what feels right) We will (firm future, collective backed up by other mormons) stand as witnesses of god (other witnesses from the book of mormon. The job description of witnesses seems heavy, but in practice, there is equivocation. The "witnesses" of the book of mormon and the gold plates said they saw a vision with their spiritual eyes. How much of a witness is that? Members believe that the prophet talks with god face to face, but the present prophets never say that, equivocating under the guise of "it's too sacred to talk about," the same equivocation that makes the masonic temple rites secret. Prophet's witness of god is no more than the testimony warm fuzzy feelings of the average member) at all times and in all things and in all places (by quoting scripture here, you are invoking a deity. It is the fallacy of authority. Perfection is expected and there is no room for failure. Expectations are all encompassing. Members are commanded not to equivocate) as we strive (again with the collective effort, collective salvation. I remember a lesson that pictured members of the church as mountain climbers tied together: one falls, we all fall. We can't go on with inactives. We are saved together. Reactivation of failing members, hunting down those who have strayed is absolutely necessary) to live the young women values (internalization, everything at church must be followed. Young women values should become an active part of your life, something not just repeated, but lived).