Updated essay on Joseph Smith - women & priesthood

[Guest]

Women and Priesthood Today

In some respects, the relationship between Latter-day Saint women and priesthood has remained remarkably constant since Joseph Smith’s day. As in the earliest days of the Church, men are ordained to priesthood offices, while both women and men are invited to experience the power and blessings of the priesthood in their lives.56 Men and women continue to officiate in sacred ordinances in temples much as they did in Joseph Smith’s day. Joseph taught that men and women can obtain the highest degree of celestial glory only by entering together into an order of the priesthood through the temple sealing ordinance. That understanding remains with Latter-day Saints today.

The priesthood authority exercised by Latter-day Saint women in the temple and elsewhere remains largely unrecognized by people outside the Church and is sometimes misunderstood or overlooked by those within. Latter-day Saints and others often mistakenly equate priesthood with religious office and the men who hold it, which obscures the broader Latter-day Saint concept of priesthood.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... n?lang=eng

How do women exercise priesthood authority themselves?

Today, Latter-day Saint women lead three organizations within the Church: the Relief Society, the Young Women, and the Primary. They preach and pray in congregations, fill numerous positions of leadership and service, participate in priesthood councils at the local and general levels, and serve formal proselytizing missions across the globe. In these and other ways, women exercise priesthood authority even though they are not ordained to priesthood office.

[_Fence Sitter]

Latter-day Saints and others often mistakenly equate priesthood with religious office and the men who hold it

I don't understand why this happens.

[_I have a question]

Such service and leadership would require ordination in many other religious traditions.

Which is code for “Other churches give female leaders the priesthood, we don’t. Because they’re women.”

[_DonBradley]

Women perform endowment ordinances for other women.

And women act in various callings and responsibilities in the church. While this has not traditionally been defined as priesthood, that's only because there's been an inconsistency in how the term "priesthood" has been used.

Priesthood has long been defined by Latter-day Saints as divine authority. When any member of the church is set apart by the laying on of hands to act in a certain calling, that person is, by definition, acting in the authority of their calling--i.e., by divine authority. If priesthood just is divine authority, then all members with callings, men and women, are acting with priesthood authority. That this is so is a very new recognition within the church, but that recognition is a tremendous step forward.

Don

[_Stem]

Women perform endowment ordinances for other women.

And women act in various callings and responsibilities in the church. While this has not traditionally been defined as priesthood, that's only because there's been an inconsistency in how the term "priesthood" has been used.

Priesthood has long been defined by Latter-day Saints as divine authority. When any member of the church is set apart by the laying on of hands to act in a certain calling, that person is, by definition, acting in the authority of their calling--i.e., by divine authority. If priesthood just is divine authority, then all members with callings, men and women, are acting with priesthood authority. That this is so is a very new recognition within the church, but that recognition is a tremendous step forward.

Don

I wonder how LDS will adjust woman's role in eternity. For years it was said that a woman is one of many wives of a godly man. It was always assumed, it seems to me, that more women will be found in the real heaven than men and men will have their pick of the multiple sisters wandering the pearly streets.

Should the Church start teaching us what a woman might be doing? I mean we can't pray to any woman, so can she interact with the Holy Ghost like God does so she knows what we're doing here? Or does she sit in front of her heavenly TV box and watch us? Are there tons of women with the one Dad God and we're all children of them? We all have different moms and what might that mean? Do we carry her traits or just his traits? Are we created, I mean really, are we born from some eternal God mother? Or are we formed from materials and intelligences laying around?

I admit I'd get encouraged by the small steps it seems the Church made, often only to see it go backward again, but the real issue was never can the Church appear a little more modern in how it views women? it's really is there really a meaningful place for women? According to the teaching it certainly doesn't seem so.

[_Stem]

Also, I think the chart is always a good tell.

Will we one day see a smirking, magnanimous appearing 95 year old woman leading the charge married to a man decades younger than her? I don't mean that as some personal dig on Nelson, per se. I"m pointing out the default in the culture. Of course, as is currently constituted, we'd never see women gracing the upper echelons of the Church. It will always be women behind or underneath the man. I don't think that's no small obstacle for the Church.

[_Fence Sitter]

Also, I think the chart is always a good tell.

Will we one day see a smirking, magnanimous appearing 95 year old woman leading the charge married to a man decades younger than her? I don't mean that as some personal dig on Nelson, per se. I"m pointing out the default in the culture. Of course, as is currently constituted, we'd never see women gracing the upper echelons of the Church. It will always be women behind or underneath the man. I don't think that's no small obstacle for the Church.

This is the problem and it is rooted in the fact God in Christianity is almost always viewed as male. In Mormon theology it is three times as bad since we view the trinity as three distinct male figures. No matter what changes are made here to incorporate women into positions of authority, the church is always going to be a patriarchy as long as God is viewed as just a male figure.

The church can continue to make claims about how everyone shares in exercising the priesthood either through temple ritual or callings but the reality is the problem isn't the fact women don't get to use the priesthood, it's that their use is much more limited than men and most times dependent on the permission of a male to use it. Yeah, women get to ride in the car but they don't get to drive.
There is no doctrinal reason women couldn't be involved in leadership roles at all levels. The current geriatric leadership still views the world through am Ozzie and Harriet lens and it is costing them their youth who do not hold the same restrictive views on gender roles.

[_Gray Ghost]

Women perform endowment ordinances for other women.

And women act in various callings and responsibilities in the church. While this has not traditionally been defined as priesthood, that's only because there's been an inconsistency in how the term "priesthood" has been used.

Priesthood has long been defined by Latter-day Saints as divine authority. When any member of the church is set apart by the laying on of hands to act in a certain calling, that person is, by definition, acting in the authority of their calling--i.e., by divine authority. If priesthood just is divine authority, then all members with callings, men and women, are acting with priesthood authority. That this is so is a very new recognition within the church, but that recognition is a tremendous step forward.

Don

Notions of priesthood derive from the Tanakh. And of course there, there was no connection between holding priesthood and being a prophet. Priesthood roles were confined to the temple. Returning to that model might be one way forward.

[_Dr Exiled]

Women perform endowment ordinances for other women.

And women act in various callings and responsibilities in the church. While this has not traditionally been defined as priesthood, that's only because there's been an inconsistency in how the term "priesthood" has been used.

Priesthood has long been defined by Latter-day Saints as divine authority. When any member of the church is set apart by the laying on of hands to act in a certain calling, that person is, by definition, acting in the authority of their calling--i.e., by divine authority. If priesthood just is divine authority, then all members with callings, men and women, are acting with priesthood authority. That this is so is a very new recognition within the church, but that recognition is a tremendous step forward.

Don

I find "tremendous step forward" hard to swallow. It looks more like gaslighting to me by the authors. Do you think the step forward will ever put a woman in the Q12/FP part of the above chart?

[_Stem]

Notions of priesthood derive from the Tanakh. And of course there, there was no connection between holding priesthood and being a prophet. Priesthood roles were confined to the temple. Returning to that model might be one way forward.

Gray Ghost, thanks for showing up again. Losing interest over at MD&D is a direct result of your disappearance.

This is an interesting point. But the problem of men running the show and women assisting, at most, would still persist.