168 - How Relief Society Helped Restore the Temple with Lisa Olsen Tait - E44B Oct 27 - Nov 2

Summary

Church History Matters, Ep. 168

How Relief Society Helped Restore the Temple with Lisa Olsen Tait

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

---

Overview

In this in-depth episode, hosts Scott and Casey are joined by Dr. Lisa Olsen Tait, Managing Historian for Women's History in the Church History Department, to discuss the founding, purpose, and historical context of the Nauvoo Relief Society. Through an exploration of both historical sources and doctrinal developments, they highlight how the Relief Society played a pivotal role in temple preparation and the “restoration” of priesthood, particularly focusing on the inclusion of women in temple ordinances. The conversation also maps out the dynamic grassroots origins of the organization, its doctrinal significance, its intertwining with the onset of plural marriage, and how these threads shaped Latter-day Saint women's participation in forming the celestial kingdom.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Relief Society as Temple Preparation (01:14–03:04)

• Lisa Olsen Tait: Joseph Smith saw the Relief Society as a "temple preparation organization." (01:29)

• The formation of Relief Society (Mar 1842) closely followed the announcement of the Nauvoo Temple (D&C 124).

• The organization paralleled priesthood quorums: a president with two counselors, part of the church, not a separate entity.

  “Joseph Smith seems to have seen the Relief Society as a basically a temple preparation organization.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (01:29)

2. Historical Context of the Relief Society (11:19–13:00)

• Relief Society was not the “oldest women's organization in the US” as myth sometimes states; women’s benevolent societies already existed by the 1840s.

• Formed in response to real needs: thousands of new arrivals in Nauvoo were destitute, sick, or in need of charity.

• The immediate impetus: Margaret Cook (seamstress) and Sarah Kimball collaborated to help temple workers by sewing clothing, sparking the formation of the society (14:00–17:00).

  “Most women’s organizations at the time, if affiliated with a church, were auxiliaries. The Relief Society is part of the church.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (21:53)

3. Revelation and Grassroots Origins (17:09–18:04)

• Relief Society is a direct result of “bottom-up revelation,” sparked by women’s desire to help and solidified through Joseph Smith’s direction.
• Many Church auxiliaries began with grassroots responses to local needs.
• Casey: “Relief Society is a great example of a grassroots effort...that’s when the revelation comes.” (17:09)

4. “In the Order of the Priesthood”: The Relief Society & Priesthood Pattern (19:07–22:49)

• Joseph Smith’s statement: he wished “to organize the sisters in the order of the priesthood, not under, but in the order of the priesthood.”
• Pattern of the priesthood: The Society was organized like the church’s priesthood quorums, but included women.
• Over time, the term “auxiliary” was found to be problematic; today, Relief Society is considered “essential”, not auxiliary (22:23–22:49).

5. Relief Society, the Temple, and Women’s Inclusion in the Priesthood (24:35–33:51)

• The development of the Relief Society marked an expansion of priesthood roles to include women, especially through preparation for temple ordinances.
• Whitney (early bishop) to Relief Society:

  “It takes all to restore the priesthood.” (25:57)
  Meaning both men and women participate in this work.

• Nauvoo temple ordinances were innovative in including both men and women as recipients and as workers (“priests and priestesses”).

  “They are literally creating the celestial kingdom...the network of sealed relationships and people...the priesthood of the temple is the people.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (26:06)

• The “Anointed Quorum” (men and women) became the proto–temple workers, later known as “priests and priestesses” (33:51–34:06).

6. Gender Dynamics, Hierarchy, and Historical Uncertainty (29:33–33:51)

• Nauvoo innovations unfolded within a broader context of “male headship.”
• Sources are ambiguous about Joseph Smith’s ultimate vision for women’s ecclesiastical roles; much is left to interpretation.
• Lisa: “All I can say is that it’s there and it’s super important and the sources are very ambiguous and incomplete...” (29:33)

7. The Term “Priestess” and Restoration as Innovation (35:35–37:09)

• Early church records show temple matrons were referred to as “priestesses,” reflecting an elevation of women’s roles.
• Lisa: would welcome a return to “priestess” as a title (35:46).
• Casey: Emphasizes that some Restoration innovations (like women’s inclusion in temple priesthood) are genuinely new, not only restorations of previous dispensations:

  “God is doing some things today that he hasn’t done before that are completely new innovations...” (36:37)

8. The Relief Society’s Operations in Nauvoo (38:06–41:20)

• Focused on caring for the poor and “saving souls.”
• Meetings were practical and based on grassroots needs—members pooled thread, fabric, money, and effort to support those in distress.
• Operated with remarkable autonomy for women, within the male “headship” structure but with real trust and latitude from church leaders.

9. Suspension, Rebirth, and Eliza R. Snow’s Role (41:20–46:06)

• After Joseph’s death, the Relief Society faded due to turmoil, Brigham Young’s ambivalence, and external crises—but women continued mutual aid informally.
• Officially revitalized in Utah (1867) under Brigham Young’s commission, guided by Eliza R. Snow.
• Relief Society was the “mother” of later organizations, including Young Women and Primary.

10. Relief Society, Polygamy, and Temple Work (49:16–54:33)

• Relief Society, temple ordinances, and polygamy in Nauvoo are inextricably linked, and many records were deliberately limited because of the secretive introduction of plural marriage.

• Emma Smith’s struggles with polygamy intersected with her Relief Society leadership and slowed women’s inclusion in temple rituals.

  “The records are pretty thin...it’s all inextricably connected with the introduction of plural marriage...so we wish we had a deeper understanding.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (49:28)

11. On Faith, History, and Testimony (55:12–60:35)

• History can’t “prove” spiritual realities, but it can bear witness to experiences and motivations.
• The human experiences, testimonies, and faith of early (and later) Latter-day Saint women and men are powerful, even amid historical messiness or ambiguity.

  “History is about bearing witness. And that’s where the faith part comes for me.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (58:25)

• Encounters with both fallibility and revelation in the record—moments “where people are clearly working above their level”—strengthen Lisa’s faith.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the temple and the Relief Society:

  “Jehovah's misunderstanding of what they're doing with the temple is they are literally creating the celestial kingdom.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (00:00)

• On collaborative revelation:

  “There’s very much a collaborative process of revelation taking place.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (17:43)

• On women and priesthood restoration:

  “It takes all to restore the priesthood.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait quoting Bishop Whitney (25:57)

• On innovation in the dispensation of the fullness of times:

  “God is doing some things today that he hasn’t done before...”
  — Casey (00:06, 36:37)

• On responsible historical analysis:

  “When we don’t know, we need to say we don’t know, but we also need to not use that as a way of deflecting away from discomfort.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (54:10)

• On the human side of church history:

  “To me, those moments of humanity make the moments of revelation stand out more clearly...when we can see that people are clearly working above their level.”
  — Lisa Olsen Tait (59:40)

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:14 – Relief Society as temple preparation
• 11:19 – 1840s context and the roots of women’s organizations
• 14:00 – Margaret Cook, Sarah Kimball, and the grassroots origin story
• 17:09 – Grassroots efforts and collaborative revelation
• 19:07 – “In the order of the priesthood,” patterns, and leadership structure
• 25:57 – Bishop Whitney: “It takes all to restore the priesthood.”
• 29:33 – Inclusion of women, “Anointed Quorum,” and historical ambiguity
• 35:46 – On reviving the term “priestess”
• 36:37 – Restoration includes new, not just restored, doctrines
• 38:06 – Day-to-day operations of the original Relief Society
• 41:20 – Suspension, Winter Quarters, and revitalization under Eliza R. Snow
• 49:16 – Connections among Relief Society, temple, and polygamy
• 55:12 – Faith, history, and bearing witness

---

Conclusion

This episode offers a richly-sourced, thoughtful, and candid exploration of the Relief Society’s purpose, its roots in temple preparation, and its unique role in the restoration of priesthood in the “dispensation of the fullness of times.” Dr. Lisa Olsen Tait’s expertise brings clarity to the historical nuance and continuing relevance of the organization, as well as its connections to temple, priesthood, and evolving gender roles in Latter-day Saint religious life. The conversation models responsible, faithful historical inquiry—honoring the complexity of the record while identifying deep currents of spiritual innovation and collective effort, women and men together, at the heart of Latter-day Saint history.

Transcript

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Jehovah's misunderstanding of what they're doing with the temple is they are literally creating the celestial kingdom.

[Casey]

God is doing some things today that he hasn't done before.

[Scott]

This is a reference to something unheard of. Like it's not in the Old Testament temple priesthood, it's not in the New Testament temple priesthood, but it's in the dispensation of the fullness of times temple priesthood for sure. It's men and women working together to restore, like you said, humanity in that network of sealed relationships, the that constitutes the celestial kingdom.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

It takes all to restore the priesthood.

[Scott]

Meaning it takes men and women.

[Casey]

Hello, Scott.

[Scott]

Hello, Casey. Welcome to another special episode here of Church History Matters. We got Voices of the Restoration, which is, I guess in some ways in conjunction with section 124 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Casey, we're talking about the Relief Society.

[Casey]

That's correct, yeah. And we have a guest here today that we're really excited to have with us, Lisa Olson Tate. Say hi, Lisa. Okay, Lisa, good to have you with us. And I've got your bio here, but there's been a lot of good women's history done in the last little while, and you've kind of been at the center of a lot of this. And so we're glad to have you here to walk us through some of the histories surrounding the the founding of the Nauvoo Relief Society.

[Scott]

And Lisa, just before we started recording, I threw out this question. I said, what does Relief Society have to do with doctrine and Covenants 124? Because there's not a lot of explicit connection there. But I loved your, your instant answer. Do you want to tell our audience what you just said?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Joseph Smith seems to have seen the Relief Society as a basically a temple preparation organization.

[Scott]

Love that. The Relief Society is organized about what, a year and two months after the Nauvoo Temple is announced in doctrine and covenants 124. And so I love that it's a temple preparation society. So there's your teaser. Now, let's go in the order of things here. Kasey, do you want to read the bio here and then tell us a little bit more about Lisa?

[Casey]

Lisa Olson Tate is the managing historian for Women's history in the Church History Department. She's the co author of the recent book the Latter Day Saint Young Women's Organization 1870-2024, which we should mention is available at Deseret Book. Excellent book. She served as the general editor or historical advisor on the Saint series. She contributed to Revelations in Context and several other department projects, including the Gospel Topics Essays. Before joining the Church history department in 2013, she taught religion classes at BYU Provo for three years. She received a PhD studying American liter and Women's Studies from the University of Houston. So, Lisa, we're glad to have you with us. In addition to the Young Women's History, I hope everybody's aware that in Gospel Library there's an entire tab under the Church History spot that's women's history and it has some great resources. That includes at the Pulpit, which is a collection of women's discourses, and Daughters in My Kingdom, which is a great history of Relief Society and maybe the most important, the first 50 years of relief Society, which is a collection of documents you helped with the the first 50 years of relief Society, if I recall correctly. Is that right?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Not much. They were wrapping it up around the time when I joined the department. I sure have used it a lot though.

[Casey]

That's a gold nugget that sometimes gets a little buried in the Gospel Library and people don't realize is there lots of good stuff and good material for you to dig through.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

We should also mention the Church Historians Press website. Church historians press.org and First 50 Years of Relief Society and At the Pulpit are both there, but so are the diaries of Emmaline Wells, the Discourses of Eliza R. Snow. There's a prison journal of Belle Harris, who was a young mother who was put in prison during the anti polygamy crusade with her baby and she kept a journal while she was there. We have a site on on Church Historians Press. We have some pages on Carry on the Young Women History and there's some really fun stuff there. The book itself is not up full text there yet, but we have the images and we have a really fun gallery of all the jewelry and awards from the young women programs over the years. And people might really enjoy taking a look at that. Like if you're cleaning out your mom's jewelry box and you find an MIA pin, you might not know what it is. Well, that's why we put that up there so you can find out or you can see where your own medallion fits into the history or whatever. So lots of good stuff on Church Historians Press and lots more on the way.

[Scott]

That's church historianspress.org love it. So let me ask a follow up question to your bio here, Lisa. Like, tell us a little bit more about your background and how you became involved in the study of Latter Day Saint history.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Well, all of my college degrees are nominally in English. But I was always more interested in history than English, or I should say than literature with a capital L. And I was doing my especially undergrad and master's degrees at the time that cultural studies was a very important field within English departments. It really enabled me to combine a lot of historical work with training in how to carefully read texts and being attuned to texts and where they come from and how they're constructed and so forth. I was doing my master's degree at BYU back in the mid-1990s, and I took a class on the humanities and Territorial, Utah, from Arthur Bassett. Some of our people will know Arthur Bassett, and he was great. And one of his assignments was to go down to the stacks in the basement of the library and and find some Latter Day Saint periodicals from the 19th century. And so that was how I found the Young Woman's Journal and Susan Young Gates. And I opened up the first volume of the Young Woman's Journal, and there was Susa writing an editorial that was about how you should be putting garments on babies from the time they're two years old so that they'll get used to wearing them. And I was just kind of hooked after that. It was such a distinctive voice and so interesting.

[Casey]

Can you elaborate a little bit on that? I've never heard that before.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Well, I mean, this was. You can look it up. It's in the first volume of the Young Woman's Journal, one of her editorials. And she claimed that her father, Brigham Young, had taught that. So she was very interested in clothing, not just from a fashion point of view or primarily from a fashion point of view, but she was interested in clothing as, like how especially women's clothing could be made more healthy and less heavy and cumbersome. And, you know, there was just a lot of discussion about. About dress reform in the 19th century. And she was right in the middle of that. The Early Young Women's Journal especially, just full of articles on various things related to clothing and dress and fashion and so forth. And, I mean, it's not a major focus. It was just an editorial that I read that just kind of blew my mind a little bit, you know, something I'd never heard of before, and I hadn't. I'd heard the name Susie Ungates, but I didn't really know anything about her. You know, between that and other things in the magazine, it just drew me in. And I ended up writing my master's thesis about her and her fiction. And then I ended up, when I went to the University of Houston, writing my dissertation on the Young Woman's Journal under Susan's editorship and how it was a reflection of the culture of the Church of the Latter Day Saints at the turn of the century in the midst of all of these really crucial transitions that were taking place away from polygamy and communal economics and joining national political parties and achieving statehood and so forth. And so there's all this fascinating intergenerational stuff going on as the adult women are writing in the Young Women's Journal to and about the younger women and basically freaking out about all the changes that are happening and what is this going to mean and what are we going to do about it? And so it's just a really fascinating window into the dynamics of cultural change in the church and just in general.

[Casey]

And I'll say Susa is a fascinating figure just in her own right. And I'm really happy to say that she is a major figure in the Saints volumes too. I think you're probably responsible for that.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

I've had a little to do with that, but I mean, I wasn't the one who made like, final decisions on having her in there. It's just that her story is so compelling. And ever since I, especially since my PhD program, I've been working towards writing about her. I have published several articles, including one on her divorce, which took place in 1878 and was just, just devastating and is also a really fascinating window into gender dynamics of the time. I've kept a project going about Susa for a lot of years now, and I still actually am committed to writing a book about her, but probably less of a traditional travelogue, biography of everything she did from year to year in her life and more thematic about her contributions to the Latter Day Saint tradition. For example, she was the one who came up with the idea that men have priesthood and women have motherhood. We all know that's had a lot of legs in, in the church, and it actually originated with her own struggle to figure out why she was a girl and not a boy and, and what that meant her life. So anyway, I could talk about her and, and all of this history for a long time, but that was what drew me in. And then when I was in graduate school and then when I was teaching at byu, I just became really involved in the Mormon History association and the community of scholars around Latter Day Saint history, and that helped me position myself for the. Well, they came recruiting me when to join the Church history department in 2013.

[Casey]

Well, we'll look forward to your Susie Young Gates book. I know she was sometimes referred to as the 13th apostle.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

There's one source where she refers to herself that way. And then that has gotten a lot of attention. I don't actually set a lot of stock.

[Casey]

Well, I'm going to steer the car a little bit towards Relief Society then, because that's our purpose today, is to talk a little bit about the founding of the Nauvoo Relief Society. So, Lisa, can you set the scene for us? What's the context of the organization of the Relief Society? And is there anything similar to this anywhere else in the 1840s? Where does it come from?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Unfortunately, for a long time, and again, like we could trace the history of this, there was a tradition among Latter Day Saints that the Relief Society was the oldest women's organization in the United States. And that's not true. We might be able to claim the oldest continuous. The point is that by the 1840s, there's a lot of ferment about reform and, and about gender and women and so forth. People may be familiar with the famous women's rights meeting that Susan B. Anthony and others held. And actually, it wasn't Susan B. Anthony. She wasn't there, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton was and some other women held in seneca Falls in 1848. So it kind of has its roots in abolition. And then the women who are involved in abolition start going, wait, we're not being treat any better. And there are a lot of women's organizations springing up in the United states by the 1840s. Most of them are what were called benevolent societies or charitable societies, sewing societies, ways for women to get together and collectively pool their efforts and their resources to address usually local needs for charity, to help the poor, to help, you know, groups that they identified that were needing help. This is a time of growth in cities, in settlements in the United States. I mean, it's just a. It's a country on the move and expanding, and there's a lot of need and a lot of call for charitable efforts. And so women had been forming these benevolent societies for some time already by the time of the Relief Society. Within the church, there's a couple of important contexts. So one would be just the influx of people into Nauvoo. So by 1842, they've been in the commerce Nauvoo location for a few years, 3ish years since the expulsion from Missouri. And so you have scores and hundreds and thousands of people who've arrived with nothing, who've lost everything, who are destitute. It's you know, the well known stories about malaria, what they called the ague. Everybody's sick, there's a lot of suffering. The poverty makes the suffering worse. And then by 1842, you're starting to have hundreds if not thousands of converts coming into Nauvoo every year from elsewhere in the United States, but also from England. And so many of these people are arriving with very little. And the economy in Nauvoo is not very well developed. There's just more need than the local economy can address. So that's one important context, is just there's a lot of need in Nauvoo at this time. You know, going back to the earliest revelations of Joseph Smith, we have an imperative, we have a command as Latter Day Saints to take care of the poor and the needy, to build a society where there is no poor and where people are united in faith and good works. So that's one important context. Then the other would be the temple and the construction of the Nauvoo Temple. And we'll talk more about that as we go along here. But what's most germane is that the immediate impetus for the organization of the Relief Society is Margaret Cook, who was a seamstress who worked for Sarah Kimball, who was a young woman married to a non Latter Day Saint at the time. He later joins the church, but he's quite, they're quite affluent, comparatively speaking. They have resources. And so she's hiring Margaret to sew for her. And together they start to think we would really like to do something to help support the workers who are building the temple. And so they come up with this idea. Margaret says, I would love to sew but I need material. And Sarah says, well, I'll furnish material if you will. So and so from there they, they launched the idea. Well, let's form a society. Let's, let's form a group that will do this charitable work to help support the completion of the temple. From there, I mean, I think the story is pretty well known. They enlist Eliza R. Snow, who at this point is really just known as a poet. She's been writing poems for, you know, to proclaim the saints position and their experiences and so forth for a number of years at this point. And, but she's a writer, so they ask her to write this bylaws for their new society which then they show to Joseph Smith. And Joseph says, well, this is great. I've never seen anything better than this. I, I don't know how many bylaws he'd seen for women's organizations at that point. But he was impressed. But he said, the Lord has something better for you and I will organize you in the pattern of the priesthood after the pattern of the church, or in the order of the priesthood after the pattern of the church. And so that then changes, shifts in a really profound and consequential way, the charter and the understanding of what this organization is going to be. It's not just a benevolent society now. It's part of the order of the church. It's part of the order of the priesthood. And so that becomes the foundation and the really important impetus for what the Relief Society becomes.

[Casey]

And one of the most interesting things about Relief Society in my mind is we tend to think of everything in the church as top down, like a revelation came and it's established. But Relief Society is a great example of a grassroots effort. Right. That these righteous women like Sarah Kimball and Margaret Cook and Eliza R. Snow are saying, hey, how do we help? And then they go to Joseph and that's when the revelation comes that it's sparked by their sincere desire. Not a divine revelation from God, though God does get involved for sure.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

And that was actually pretty typical in the 19th century. Most of the auxiliary organizations, as they came to be called, have their roots in someone identifying a need on the local or the grassroots level. And so there's very much a collaborative process of revelation taking place.

[Casey]

Yeah, it's taken place at all levels in the church. The bottom, the top. The revelation comes to Sarah Kimball and Margaret Cook. And I want to point out one thing I learned. I went to Nauvoo last year and Sarah Kimball is Sarah Granger Kimball. She's the daughter of Oliver Granger, the guy who's mentioned in section 117. His sacrifice shall be greater than his increase. This wonderful person. And this is his daughter. And like you mentioned mentioned, she's married to a non member who's going to join later on. But she's not coming from the ideal family situation, I guess you'd say.

[Scott]

Can I ask a follow up question, something that you alluded to? Elisa? I've seen a couple different versions of this. Here's a version of what Sarah Kimball says about that founding moment. She said that Joseph said, tell the sisters their offering is accepted of the Lord and he has something better for them. And then he says, I will organize the women under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood. You read a different version of that. But this idea of organizing them under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood, what do you understand that to mean what's in Joseph's mind as he's explaining that.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Yeah, that quote that you referred to, Scott, seems to come from 1883. A year earlier in 1882, which was, you know, 40 years since the organization of the Relief Society, Sarah Kimball recorded a reminiscence where she put it this way. She said that Joseph pronounced it the best constitution that he ever read, then remarked, this is not what the sisters want. There is something better for them. I have desired to organize the sisters in the order of the priesthood, not under, but in the order of the priesthood. And then I will organize you in the order of the priesthood after the pattern of the church. That's actually really important. And we can talk more about that. But that gets to the connections between Relief Society and the temple.

[Scott]

Say more about that because I think that's so interesting and I think very not well understood.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

It does point to a little bit of difficulty with the sources because we have Sarah Kimball, 40 years later, reporting what Joseph Smith said to her. And there's no reason to, you know, think that she was making it up or anything, but it would be nice if we had actually an 1842 source on. On that, but we don't. And Sarah Kimball, of course, is the critical figure because she was the. The one who kind of initiated the organization. So however we express it, this idea is really important. So in the order of the priesthood, let's talk about pattern of the church first, because that's easy. So after the pattern of the church, well, what do we get? March 17, 1842. We have the meeting in the upper floor of Joseph's Redbrook store, where the Relief Society is organized. There are 20 women present, including Sarah Kimball, Margaret Cook, Eliza R. Snow, and Joseph proceeds to organize them. And what is the first thing they do? They elect Emma Smith as the president of the Relief Society, which Joseph says is a fulfillment of the ordination and the revelation that was given to her back in 1830, which is section 25, and I'm sure you guys have talked about that already. Then she chooses two counselors. And Joseph says at this meeting that this society is to have this pattern of leadership. It's the same pattern as the priesthood quorums, a president with two counselors. And so when we say the pattern of the church, that's what we're talking about. It's important to recognize as well that the Relief Society is part of the church. It is not a separate side entity. And that was the case with most women's organizations at the time. If they were affiliated with a. A religion, a church, a denomination, or a local congregation, you would have, say, a woman's auxiliary or a woman's organization connected kind of to the side of that congregation. The Relief Society is part of the church.

[Scott]

I hear it talked about as an appendage or as an auxiliary. So how, when we say Relief Society.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Is an auxiliary, auxiliary is a problematic term. I'll say more about that in a minute. It is definitely not the term that was used for most of the 19th century.

[Casey]

And recently we've also been asked to stop using that term to describe Relief Society today. Right. Like five or six years ago, we would have said the Relief Society is an auxiliary. I believe there was official direction to, like, say, no, it's not auxiliary. It's essential.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

The organizations formerly known as auxiliaries are now just called organizations within the church. And so there's a whole really. Actually a really interesting history to the use of that term over time. President Oaks gave a really important talk about the Relief Society and the church in 1992. That was the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Relief Society. And I think it's an April conference of 1992 that he gave a talk. And this was one of the things that he stress. The Relief Society is not a separate organization. It is part of the church. And that has been the understanding all along, and that's been very important. If we go back to the earliest days of the church, the organization of the church priesthood, the concept of what comes to be called priesthood, is there even before the church is organized. And they seem initially to have just, without examining any assumptions, kind of embraced the definition of priesthood as it was understood in the world and in Christianity at the time, which is the order of men set apart as priests. So the priesthood is the people. The priesthood is the men who hold priesthood office who have been ordained. And of course, we know that through the 1830s, Joseph does a lot of work. There's a lot of revelation that comes in establishing priesthood quorums, leadership structures, duties, mandates, you know, all of that. There is no indication anybody thought of women in connection with priesthood. Everybody, male and female, knew that priesthood is men. That's just the way it works when we get to 1842. Now Joseph is working towards introducing the endowment. And in fact, he first administers the endowment to a group of nine men about six, seven weeks after the organization of the Relief Society. So early May of 1842. If we look at Joseph's teachings to the Relief Society, if we look at his teachings about the temple. If we look at the revelation in section 124, I won't be able to pull the verse out of the top of my head. 41, 42. Somewhere in there, it talks about my house and the priesthood thereof. There is a priesthood of the temple. And shortly after, he is among the first, that first group to receive the endowment. Newell K. Whitney, who is the bishop of the church, his wife is Emma's counselor in the Relief Society. He comes and speaks to the Relief Society, and you can see that he's very excited. He's very thrilled with what he has learned and what he's received from Joseph. Bishop Whitney tells the Relief Society, in the beginning, God created male and female and bestowed upon man certain blessings peculiar to a man of God, of which woman partook, so that without the female, all things cannot be restored to the earth. It takes all to restore the priesthood. And his mind is blown by it.

[Scott]

Meaning it takes men and women to restore the priesthood.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

The priesthood in the ultimate sense that the temple enacts. The idea of the temple is, you know, jealousness. Understanding of what they're doing with the temple is they are literally creating the celestial kingdom. They are creating the network of sealed relationships and people. And remember, they think of priesthood as part people. So the priesthood of the temple is the people who have entered into this highest order of the priesthood through receiving the endowment and sealing ordinances in the temple. So Whitney is. Is teaching this in May after. After he's received the endowment. But even before that, if you look at Joseph Smith's April 28, 1842 sermon to the Relief Society, and there are a few other places, but this one is especially critical in Joseph kind of laying out that he is preparing women to enter into the priesthood of the temple, and that the Relief Society is an important part of that progress of making that happen. Just to finish my thoughts, so the Relief Society, then, is an integral part of. Of preparing for the temple. And again, it's so important to understand what a departure this is to say that the priesthood as understood in the temple is going to include women, because that has not been the case. And then to establish the Relief Society is kind of a parallel to the priesthood quorums and to give women official position and leadership in the church. Also a very big departure and a very consequential departure over time.

[Scott]

First of all, hallelujah. I've never heard anyone articulate it so clearly. Lisa, this is so awesome to have you explain it that way. You said, I'm not sure which Verses they are. And then you said them perfectly is verse 41 and 42 of section 124.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

I've looked them up a few times.

[Casey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Scott]

And part of that, and Casey and I, we. We touched on this in our discussion of Section 124. But when he says, I deign to reveal unto my church things which have been kept hid from before the foundation of the world that he says are particular to the dispensation of the fullness of times, then the very next thing he mentions is the temple priesthood in the Nauvoo Temple. And he doesn't mention women here explicitly, but I am 100% on board with you, Lisa, that this is a reference to something unheard of. Like, it's not Old Testament temple priesthood. It's not in the New Testament temple priesthood, but it's in the dispensation of the fullness of times temple priesthood, for sure. It's men and women working together to restore, like you said, humanity in that network of sealed relationships that constitutes the celestial kingdom. And I just think that's so beautiful. And you just hit it so well. Thank you so much. That was awesome. And with that, I just want to ask a clarifying question. Bringing women into the temple priesthood, priesthood order. My understanding is that is Joseph, as he's forming what's going to be called the Anointed Quorum, or it's kind of like proto temple workers of the Nauvoo Temple. Sometimes they're referred to as the priesthood or the holy Order. It's men and women together who become those first temple workers. Is that where this is all going in your understanding? Is that the. The women being brought into the temple priesthood? Is this proto group called the Anointed Quorum or the Holy Order or the priesthood?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

So the anointed Quorum is a later term that's used retrospectively. They don't use that at the time, but we do have journal entries and things and documents where they do refer to themselves as the priesthood, the quorum, and so forth. There is some question as to what the implications of that are and how often the quorum meets to do church business when there are women present and how much they have a sense of themselves as the men. And we do the stuff and the women just come when they're doing the prayer and the ordinances and so forth. And so there have been certain claims made about that initial quorum or priesthood order that included men and women and about what the implications of that were for women and what Joseph Smith intended it to mean for women. All I can say is that it's there and it's super important and the sources are very ambiguous and incomplete to understand exactly what Joseph was thinking and what the, what the full vision was for that. And it's important to understand that these revelations, these new developments, were implemented within a context of what we call male headship. And this was the age old tradition. Christ is the head of man, man is the head of woman. So there's this hierarchy based on gender. And so men are the center and women are the appendages. And so even though there is all of this expansive radical meaning and potential in what happens with the temple and Relief Society in Nauvoo, it's also implemented in a context where everybody knew that there was this gender hierarchy and that affected the way that it was rolled out. Now, some people have wanted to say that that was Brigham Young, that he was the misogynist who's, you know, imposing these male centric views on the temple and on what happens later. We certainly have quotes from him that can be read that way. What we don't know is what Joseph taught, and we don't know how much that was Brigham Young's development and how much that was Joseph Smith's understanding. We just don't. We just don't know. So we have to be careful about what we claim and the implications of what we claim about this history, even though it is still a very inspiring and very important history for us to know and understand. And there are consequences for it. So the first endowment's given in May of 1842, and it's not until September of 1840, 43, that Emma is initiated into the temple ordinances. And it seems to be the case that Joseph felt she had to go first because no other women were initiated into that order until Emma was. And then from there, Emma takes a leadership role in administering the ordinances to other women. So that basic understanding, if you remember with baptism for the dead, at first everybody's just getting baptized for every, everybody. And then Joseph says, no, women for women, men for men, you know, and they, they figure out this gender divide for it. From the very beginning of the endowment and so forth, it's always understood that women are going to administer to other women and men are going to minister to other men. And this is one of the reasons that women are absolutely central and essential to the work of the temple, because we have this understanding that it has to unfold, unfold on these gendered lines. And so it's after that point then that Brigham Young and Marianne Young and others begin to be initiated into this quorum, this group, as you say. And then after Joseph Smith's death, when the temple is completed to the point that they can begin doing ordinances, then that group becomes the core of what we would now call temple workers. They would have called themselves priests and priestesses, I think.

[Scott]

Yeah. Wasn't Eliza R. Snow, wasn't she called a priestess in the house of the Lord? That was one of her titles as the Relief Society president. She was the priestess of the temple, almost like we would say matron today. Right. But they said the priestess, and that.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Dates more to Utah than to Nauvoo in the case of Eliza. And she was integral to the work of the endowment house even before she was called as the, quote, Relief Society president. But yes, Eliza and Benziona Young and Bathshe the Smith, they were the priestess of the temple. They were the. Sometimes it came to be called the president of the sister workers of the temple, and then it became temple matron. But there was for a while there was this understanding that there was a link between the leadership of the Relief Society and the leadership of women's work in the temple. But Elizabeth Ann Whitney is one of the women who I just love so much and who was part of this initial group. We can definitely see in the records that she was one of these priestesses in the Nauvoo Temple who administered the ordinances to other women, including, let's see, how old would she have been? 17 year old emmaline, later to become Emmaline Wells. But at the time, Emmaline Whitney, who was a sister wife that Emmeline had been sealed to Newell Whitney, Elizabeth's husband. And then she became the one under her hands to give Emmaline those temple ordinances. And that was part of the development of a very close, lifelong relationship between the two of them. And I think it's really beautiful.

[Scott]

Personal question here, Lisa, you don't have to answer, but I just want your opinion. Would you be totally cool if the term priestess came back to refer to women temple workers?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Absolutely. I mean, and so you need to read Jonathan Stapley's new book on the temple where he really lays this out, but he argues, I think, very persuasively and from the sources that Joseph Smith's vision and understanding of the temple, the endowment, this network of people, is rooted in the book of Revelation and the vision of John of Patmos, who sees this concourse of priests surrounding the Heavenly Throne. And that's what Joseph is trying to create. And implement. And of course, in the Bible, it's talked about in terms of priests, but through Revelation, Joseph adds priests. So kings and priests, priests and priestesses is what the vision of the temple was all about.

[Casey]

My read through the Doctrine and Covenants this time. Those verses you two quoted in section 124 have hit me because we always talk about the restoration in terms of things being brought back. And section 124 is saying, and there's going to be things that have never been there before that I'm going to reveal. And that's a paradigm shift, right, to say, hey, we don't need to look for an ancient source for everything. God is doing some things today that he hasn't done before that are completely new innovations, and that's something that's really to be celebrated.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

I think even if that revelation, then, is based on a vision in the Bible, the vision of John, that seems to have really captured Joseph's mind, imagination, revelatory powers, and then he was able to maybe add on to that and take steps to make it real at the same time.

[Casey]

Joseph does say on several occasions that some sort of equivalent organization existed, at least in the New Testament Church. Is that correct to say?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

We don't have Joseph Smith himself saying that, but we have Eliza R. Snow saying that Joseph said that, and she taught that repeatedly in Utah as she was leading the Relief Society later in the 19th century. And Joseph did refer to the electricity lady, right? In. In 25. In section 25, the revelation to Emmett talks about her as an elect lady, and that is a allusion to a biblical verse. And Joseph then alludes to that again at the March 17th meeting. So, yeah.

[Scott]

So in Nauvoo, how is the Relief Society functioning in ways that today, if we went back in a time machine and we looked at it, we'd be like, oh, that's different than how we do it today. Are they operating a little more independently? And what's their kind of relationship, relationship with the. The male leaders of the church? What are they mostly focused on? Kind of paint a picture of what that original Relief Society looked like and how it might be different than how we think of Relief Society today?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Well, I mean, at its core, the Relief Society was to look after the poor and save souls. That was Joseph's commission to them. But they really did understand their core mission as taking care of people. And so it's really fun, actually, to read those minutes of the Nauvoo Relief Society and see how they would meet together and someone would come in and Say, well, there's. This woman is a widow and she has a lot of children, and they don't have any blankets or bedding. And this man has none children. And he's trying to work on the temple and how can we support him? He needs work. He needs help. You know, so people come in with identifying people who are in need. And then someone will speak up and say, well, I can give some. I can give some flax. And then another woman says, I'll spin the flax into thread. Or someone will donate fabric and someone else will sew the fabric into, you know, whatever is needed. And the donations are often very small, you know, $0.25, $0.50. And keeping in mind that this is not really a cash economy, so there's not a lot of cash to go around as it is. And so these donations represent real sacrifice on the part of the women who are making them. So this is how they do. They just. They meet at first, just like every week or every other week. It gets a little less often. In 43 and 44, there's only a couple of meetings. But the core of their meetings is who needs help and what can we do to help them, and what do I have to give? And, like, that's the law of consecration, right? How much is enough? How much do I need? And then what's my surplus? And it might be a spool of thread and it might be 25 cents, but we're going to give what we have and we're going to consecrate. And that's the spirit of what they're doing. There are times, there are several times, I think maybe about seven times, when Joseph Smith comes and visits the Relief Society and speaks to them and. And gives them teachings and exhortations. That April 28th sermon is probably the most substantial of those. There are some other male leaders who come from time to time, but, you know, back in the day, again, everybody knew men are the head of woman. And so as long as we have that hierarchy established, women have a lot of autonomy to do women's work and to work in what was called women's sphere at the time. And so it's not like the male leaders are just, you know, looking over their shoulders or like the women leaders don't dare do anything without consulting the bishop or whoever. They have a commission. It's from Joseph Smith himself. They know what they're supposed to be doing, and they get busy doing it.

[Casey]

There is an end to the Nauvoo Relief Society. I don't know if it's officially disbanded, or does it. Is it disbanded? Or does it just sort of fade away as other crises kind of step in and take its place? Or what happens to the Relief Society of Nauvoo?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

The narrative has been that after Joseph Smith's death, when Brigham is so traumatized, he's angry, he blames Emma in part for the loss of Joseph. He's just in a reactive mode, and I think very overwhelmed. And there are some pretty strident statements that he made. What are the Relief Societies for? They're to relieve us of our best men. And, you know, if you see women huddling together, veto the concern. You know, those statements are made in fairly close meetings with other men. And it's at the same time that, like, they're just being overtaken by events with the. The rise of the violence and the mobs and the need to leave and so forth. And so traditionally, it's been understood that Brigham Young kind of kiboshed the Relief Society there towards the end of their time in Nauvoo. There's been some more recent scholarship that looks at it in a little bit more nuanced way that, you know, maybe it wasn't as definitive as what that narrative makes it out to be. Because when we go to Winter Quarters, for example, Winter Quarters is a settlement of women, in large part because the men are on missions, they're in the battalion, they've gone ahead. And so there's a lot of women in winter quarters. Then they do a lot of the same kind of work in Winter Quarters that they did in Nauvoo in the Relief Society of taking care of each other, looking out for each other. They have meetings. They have spiritual meetings and exercise spiritual gifts together and so forth. And then that kind of carries over into Utah in the 1850s. There are some Relief Societies that we find in the official record, but it's really 1867. As Brigham Young and the Saints see, the railroad is coming and our isolation is ending, and there's a need to fortify the community and the boundaries of the community. They revitalize the school of the prophets. They are really trying to develop home industry and the local economy. And Relief Society then is revitalized within that context. Brigham Young commissions Eliza R. Snow. She was the secretary of the Nauvoo Relief Society, and she has personally kept possession of the Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book. She brought it across the plains. I think it was wrapped in a buffalo robe. So she has the record. She has the institutional memory. She is Brigham Young's wife. And they collaborate and have a partnership on a lot of things. And so she's commissioned to then re establish Relief Society in partnership with the bishops throughout the church throughout the territory. By this time, you have wards, you have, you know, settlements all through Utah in the Mormon corridor. And so she takes on this assignment of reorganizing the Relief Society using the minutes, using the model and the precedents that were set in the Nauvoo Relief Society.

[Casey]

And we need to give her a little bit of credit here, too. The other organizations we call auxiliaries, but we don't anymore. Eliza has a hand in that. Like you're the author of the Young Women's history. Eliza plays a pretty big role. And Relief Society plays a role in creating the Young Women's organization too, correct?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Yeah, you need to have me back on. And let's just talk about young women. But the way it worked was that it was understood that the Relief Society was the umbrella, or I don't think they used this word, but we could say the mother of all of women's work in the church. And so then when the young ladies are organized in 1870 and the primary is organized in 1878, when Brigham Young commissions Emmeline to start saving grain and lead the women in a grain storage movement and so forth, all of those things are under the umbrella, under the purview of the religious society until Eliza's death. Eliza dies in December of 1887. And from that point forward, the organizations kind of start taking their own trajectory. Eliza was acknowledged as the president of the female portion of the human race. That's a quote. She was understood to be the leader of all women's work in the church. And so. So at least initially, those other organizations were under her purview.

[Casey]

We're getting better, and it's because of people like you, Lisa. But sometimes in my class, I'll do an experiment where I say, name five Latter Day Saint men that are from the history of the church. And boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's not hard. They can sing the presence of the church song. But when I say, name five Latter Day Saint women, I'm happy to say that my son students the last couple years have done really good at this, but it was a struggle prior to that.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Who do your students know?

[Casey]

Emma Smith is always top. Lucy Mack Smith, Lizar Snow are the three that they rattle off right off the bat. And then they usually struggle a little bit and say late Kimball, because I talk a lot about her in my class and then usually Vienna Jacques, because she's in the Doctrine and Covenants. And the lesson before, when we talk about Relief Society, we've just pointed out that Vienna Jacques was a witness for the first proxy baptism. So they get her, but it is a little hard for them. If you had to name, like, you're Mount Rushmore of women in the history of the church, who would you pick? And you can do more than four if you want to.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Well, yeah. I mean, you need a whole mountain range. How many of the early women do I know? Well, I could rattle off a whole bunch of names, but who are like my spiritual mothers, who do I live with from day to day, and who. Who has really influenced me? So I mentioned Elizabeth Ann Whitney. I mentioned Emma Line. Eliza, of course, is there and indispensable. I love Zina. Zina DH Young. Her story is so complicated, and she. She's just such a beautiful person despite all that she went through. And if you move forward, I mean, I'm just naming a few people off the top of my head, there's a lot more that I'd love to talk about. Illina Shepherd Taylor, first president of the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement association, also just a towering, beautiful spiritual figure in the history of the church. Susa, of course, when we get into the 20th century, there's Amy Brown Lyman, who was a real leader of the Relief Society in the Progressive era at a really pivotal transitional time. There's Belle Spafford, who became Relief Society General President in 1845 after Amy Brown Lyman, and then she was there till 1974. And so she really shaped the Relief Society in the middle of the 20th century. We did a lot with Art of Cap in the history of the young women and in saints as well. And she's a truly visionary and inspired leader that of church leaders, male or female. She's amazing. So she's another one that we really love and that I really love, as well as Elaine Jack, who was the Relief Society president in the 1990s. And I've really enjoyed getting to know Sister Freeman, Emily Belfreeman, as we worked with her a little bit on completing the Carry on book. She's really incredible. So I could go on, but that's enough for maybe three Mount Rushmores.

[Scott]

So I don't know. Do you want to comment at all about the connection between Relief Society and temple and priesthood and polygamy? How are all those related and connected in Nauvoo?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

We're really grateful for the sources that we have have on the Na' vi Relief Society. The minutes are very rich. I mean, we could just wish that Eliza R. Snow had followed Joseph Smith around, because her transcripts of his sermons are better than almost anything else that we have. So we're really grateful for the sources we do have, but they're pretty thin. Part of the reason for that is that Relief Society temple priesthood, all of this is inextricably connected with the introduction of plural marriage. That was done secretly, confident, however you want to say it. We like to say private and whatever, because we don't like the word secret, but it was done in secret. And then the people who were involved understood themselves to be under covenant, not to talk about it, not to reveal it. So we don't have a lot of firsthand sources to help us understand the beginnings of plural marriage in Nauvoo and how the people who were involved thought about it, how they understood what they were doing, all of the details and motivations and all that. It's just a really, really difficult thing. And so then we add in the fact that eternal marriage, full stop, was implemented in conjunction with plural marriage, and all of that is part of rolling out temple ordinances and temple knowledge. So it's all inextricable. And over time, then that's part of what's happened, was to kind of disentangle those threads of polygamy, of celestial marriage, of Relief Society and so forth. That's one of the complicating factors in understanding. And that's why I say when we talk about this temple quorum of men and women, we wish that we had more sources. We wish we had a deeper understanding of what they were doing and how they were thinking about what they were doing. But it's a function of the source space. I mean, the other thing we could say that that is in the records to some extent, is that it's also all. All intertwined with Emma's struggle to accept plural marriage. There's no question in Joseph's mind that she's the leader, she's the elect lady, she's the one to be in charge of the Relief Society. But again, we don't have great sources. We don't know what she knew and when she knew it and all the discussions and all of that. But there is some sense that her struggle over plural marriage and the way that affected her relationship with Joseph and so forth was also a factor in the way that Relief Society and Temple and everything played out.

[Scott]

A factor in what way?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

It was a factor in the sense that, as I talked about earlier, that there was this long period between when Joseph first introduces the endowment and when he is telling the Relief Society that he's preparing them to receive the priesthood endowment and so forth. There's this long period between when he's talking about that and doing it and then when women are involved. And that seems to have been related to Emma's vacillating willingness and ability to make peace with plural marriage. And then in some of the. Especially, like, I think, 1843, some of the other Relief Society meetings later on, there are some comments that Emma makes that can be read as kind of a attempt to squash or undermine polygamy, but those are also pretty ambiguous. And so it's just hard to know exactly. But that is something. If people have read about this, this may be something they've encountered, is this idea that Emma's struggle with polygamy spilled over into how the Relief Society unfolded and how she led the Relief Society Society. And I think there's probably something to that. But I would also just caution us to be really careful and make sure we're looking at those primary sources and. And reading what's there and not just making assumptions and reading our own interpretations into them.

[Casey]

Yeah. And thank you for being responsible about that. There is so much over claiming that's made and not a lot of, hey, here's what the sources actually say. Like, people invent whole stories in their mind with very little substance behind them, especially about this time period, which, like you mentioned earlier, we wish we had more information about, but we just don't. We have what we have, and it's irresponsible to try and over claim.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

I guess it's really important to say we don't know when we don't know, but we don't know. Can also be a deflection. Can be like, well, that makes me really uncomfortable. So we don't really know what that means. Well, you know, it cuts both ways. When we don't know, we need to say we don't know, but we also need to not use that as a way of deflecting away from discomfort.

[Scott]

Wow, what great modeling of responsible historical analysis. That was awesome. Thank you, Lisa. Let's have her back, Casey. This was. This is really fun. Somehow we got to figure out a way to have you back, Lisa, because I feel like there's just. We've just hit the tip of the iceberg in this time together today, and we want to dig deeper into a lot of topics with you going forward. But I do want to ask one final question. We like to ask it to all of our guests. And that's, that's simply this. You've been studying the history of the Church for many years. You're obviously a disciplined historian. You do great work. How has your study of the history of the Church helped to strengthen and deepen your testimony of the Restoration?

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Well, for me, history doesn't prove anything. All you can prove with history is that something happened in the past. But history is a matter of interpretation. And it's also just incredibly messy. You know, you have the past, which is what happened yesterday or anything before that. And if you tried to even right now think back, how could I reconstruct what happened yesterday in my life minute by minute? No, you can't. It just isn't possible. So then we have the sources, and the sources are what gets recorded and left behind. So I did sit down and write some stuff in my journal yesterday about what happened. So I would have a source that I could reconstruct some of that, but it would be really incomplete. It wouldn't tell. In the conversation I recorded between me and my husband, it wouldn't necessarily record his motivation and, and tone, you know, and then history is the narrative that we construct about the past based on the sources. History, when it is done right, when it is done carefully, is rooted in those sources and is very self aware about the questions we're asking, the interpretations that we're arriving at. What is there, what is not there, what we know, what we don't know. There's a whole historical method rooted in the sources that we have to be careful about. So professionally, that's where I live, is trying to better understand the past through constructing historical narratives using the sources. For me, I love history. I got into history because I'm interested in people. And what was the human experience, what's the human condition, what have I people experienced and been through in their lives? And how are we the same over time and how are we different over time? And I just think that history is a spiritual undertaking because it leads me to encounter people and their experience. And I think that's sacred. I think people's experience is sacred no matter what the experience is. I mean, in section 122, the Lord tells Joseph all these things will give the experience, period. He doesn't tell him, you know, what kind of experience, what to do with it, anything like that. It's just experience is a primary good and a primary purpose of this life. And so by studying history, I can share in the experience of people in the past and, and over time. To me, that's really sacred. And what that leads me to. To is that history bears witness. History cannot prove angels and gold plates and revelations and all of those kinds of things. They're part of the historical record. And we can evaluate that on its own terms or on whatever terms, but history doesn't prove any of those things. But our sources that we have for understanding history are full of people, people recording and testifying to their experiences and recording and testifying to their faith. And to me, that's what's really powerful. To hear Susie Young Gates talk about how she gained a testimony when she was 40 years old, to hear Eliza talk about the power of God and how women can access the power of God and the Holy Spirit in their lives, that's really powerful and inspiring to me. So for me, history is about bearing witness. And that's where the faith part comes for me, with history. And I can say that in the time that I've been doing this, over the last however many years, I have been in the records of this church, I have read the diaries and the letters of apostles and prophets and female leaders and ordinary members and so forth. I have read the minutes of meetings. I have read the sermons from general conferences. I have read so many different sources. And especially when it comes to those leading brothers and sisters, the quorums, the meetings, and what they did like, I can testify that their desire was to serve God and build the kingdom, that they were driven by deeply rooted spiritual experiences and faith that they experienced and developed in their own life. At the same time, I can look at those letters and those diaries and those records, and I can see how human they are. And they sometimes say things that just make you go, oh, yeah, that's not the way we would think about that anymore. Or what were you thinking here? Or whatever, you know. But to me, those moments of humanity make the moments of revelation stand out more clearly. When we can see that people are clearly working above their level, you know, that they are working above the human, mortal level, and that the revelation comes and is implemented. So I can testify to that from my own experience of being in the records of the church. And that's where it leads me as far as my own faith and my own witness.

[Scott]

Really well stated. Well, thank you.

[Casey]

Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

[Scott]

I think we could do a whole series, honestly, just on women and priesthood. Like this concept of women and priesthood as you've started to articulate. We could probably do five, six episodes just on that. Thank you so much, Lisa. Such a pleasure to have you with us. This is going to be, I think, a great benefit to those who get to listen to this and really appreciate you being with us today.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Today.

[Scott]

Thank you so much.

[Lisa Olson Tate]

Always really grateful to have an opportunity to talk about these women who I love so much.