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196 - Do Men and Women Share the Priesthood? | Church History Matters I Women & Priesthood Series
01:14:44
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- [00:00]
A
Brigham Young once said, quote, there is no woman on the face of the earth that can save herself, but if she ever comes into the celestial kingdom, she must be led in by some man.
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B
Just like the language surrounding priesthood changed, the language surrounding priesthood and women changed.
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C
She writes an editorial saying, women in this church do not hold the priesthood. They must face this fact calmly.
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A
Prior to this, the Relief Society had a lot of autonomy. After this, it has less.
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B
If women held priesthood in connection with their husbands, what does that mean? And what authority does it give them?
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A
Did that fracture in any way the established cultural assumptions of male headship or not yet?
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C
I think that's one of the reasons that it's had so much staying power within Latter Day Saint discourse.
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A
Hi, Lisa. Hi, Casey.
- [00:55]
C
Good to see you both.
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A
Welcome.
- [00:56]
B
Good to see you both, too.
- [00:58]
A
And the trio returns.
- [01:00]
B
Yeah, we're getting into our groove. Kind of as a triumvirate. Is that the right word to use? That's classic from antiquity. We're like Octavian and Mark Antony and the other guy who nobody remembers in Roman history. I'm the other guy, by the way. That's what I'm presenting myself as. But we are a triumvirate for a good reason. We are walking through the history of women in the church. And to do that, we pulled one of the great experts on women's history in the church, Lisa Olson Tate, who's with us today. And so far, we started last week with grand ambitions to just do a big overview, but we really only made it to Nauvoo, and that's okay. We. We enjoyed ourselves along the way. All right, so before we dive into what we're talking about today, let's just quickly recap some of the stuff that we talked about last time. Catch you up. Lisa, why don't you start us off?
- [02:02]
C
Yeah, Casey. So we're talking about the history of discussions about women and priesthood in the church over time. And that means that we need to understand priesthood and how we've understood priesthood over time. And then what's women's relationship to that? So as. As we discussed last week, we talked about in the beginning of the Restoration, there's this kind of fundamental understanding that priesthood is the people, it's the men who are ordained to priesthood offices. And we might talk about a man's priesthood as the office that he holds. So your priesthood might be elder or deacon. This understanding of priesthood rests on this paradigm of male headship that we talked about, which is a biblical paradigm. Right. That Christ is the head of man. Man is the head of woman. And so there was no understanding or expectation at this point that women would fit into priesthood, would be part of priesthood, that priesthood was something that applied to women. Now, we did also talk a little bit about the revelation to Emma in the summer of 1830 that talks about her being ordained to expound scripture and exhort the church, which are functions that could be seen as well. We could see the revelation as kind of establishing the possibility of an official position for Emma and that by extension, for women. And we talked about how the meaning of the word ordain was not as narrowly defined at the time as it came to be later and as exclusively related to priesthood. But at the same time, ordain is the word that we use for conferring priesthood upon people, for bringing people into the priesthood order. And so that language seems significant, but there is no evidence that Emma ever actually really filled a public role in the early church until the time of the organization of the Relief Society. So the potential was there from the beginning, but it's not until later that it really starts to be realized.
- [04:25]
A
Yeah. And then things kind of pick up in the 1840s in Nauvoo in terms of additional priesthood definitions, if you will. Two others emerged there we talked about. One was the temple priesthood, right. Those who officiate in the ordinances of the temple as the Nauvoo temple is being built, in fact, as it's being commanded to be built in section 124, the Lord says he's going to reveal some new things relative to the priesthood of that temple. And what we come to find out is that those who officiate in the temple are, wait for it, men and women. So in 1843, we get a group of women who are endowed and sealed to their husbands and are brought into what sometimes referred to as the anointed quorum, sometimes referred to as the holy order, or sometimes just referred to as the priesthood. And these become the first temple workers. And these women are absolutely essential because they will administer certain ordinances in the temple to women. So with a temple in Nauvoo, we now have a dual gendered priesthood, if you will, a temple priesthood. That's definition maybe three here, and then the fourth and final definition, which to me is the big kahuna here. It's this eternal holy order of kings and queens, priests and priestesses. It's a network of sealed relationships that form the celestial kingdom. So Joseph Smith referred to this sealed network as the priesthood. He taught that the restoration of the priesthood, that's a phrase we throw around a lot. But Joseph said that the restoration of the priesthood is actually the process of linking the entire human family together. It's an intergenerational chain of parents and children, turning the whole human family into one eternal priesthood order in eternity. So in that view, the priesthood isn't fully restored until the whole human family is welded together. It's an ongoing cosmic project. And we should mention too, Bishop Newell K. Whitney's insightful comment that bears repeating that we talked about last time, which is when he was speaking to the women of the relief Society in 1842. He said, it takes all meaning, both men and women, to restore the priesthood. And I hear two important things in his words with these Nauvoo definitions of priesthood. Like, number one, it takes female administrators as well as male administrators to complete the ordinances for all women and men who've ever lived. Right. And then two, this Joseph Smith final definition of priesthood, like the eternal priesthood, will consist of priests and priestesses, kings and queens. So it will take both men and women to fully restore the fractured family of God into an eternal priesthood. And although this understanding is more obscure now than it was back in 1840s, Nauvoo like this hasn't been lost. Today you go to the temple and you just listen to the wording and the ordinances. It's all still fundamentally there, isn't it? Like this is all. All the ordinances are structured around funneling women and men into this eternal priesthood order of kings and queens, priests and priestesses.
- [07:40]
B
So we should also mention amidst all this that a lot of our records and our understanding of what was going on is linked to the Nauvoo Relief Society, which, the more we look into it and we line all these factors up, it seems like one of the primary purposes of Relief Society was getting the women of the Church ready for the temple. In fact, Joseph Smith explicitly stated that he aimed to make the Sisters of the Relief Society a kingdom of priests. Those are the words that are in the minutes. It wasn't just supposed to be a service club. It was a preparatory school for the temple in some senses. But while the Relief Society was really important in Nauvoo, there were some struggles. The Relief Society is suspended in March of 1844, and if we're being totally honest, we don't know the exact reason why. One narrative is that there were statements made in the Relief Society that condemned plural marriage. That's true, but other historians have framed this to be that they weren't condemning the introduction of Plural marriage. They were condemning the liaisons that John C. Bennett was involved in the spiritual wifery that he carried out. But the honest truth is the last record of the Nauvoo Relief Society is In March of 1844, just a couple weeks before Joseph Smith is killed in Carthage Shale. And we don't have absolute documentation as to why the Relief Society ended. It just ends. And by the way, a third factor could have just been everything kind of was discombobulated. In the wake of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum, the church shifts into survival mode, and a lot of organizations sort of are collapsed into familial arrangements because we've just got to get everybody across the plains and into the church's new headquarters, which is going to be in the Intermountain West. So Brigham Young made some statements about Relief Society, but he also said, said that once they were established in their new home, he wanted to get up Relief Society again when he felt that the women were ready to support the leaders of the church. So after the westward exodus and the saints arrive in Utah, for the next two decades, the Relief Society was reestablished in 1867 under Brigham Young's direction and drawing on its original Nauvoo Foundations with Eliza R. Snow as its president. In fact, Lisa, if I'm not mistaken, Eliza used to carry around the minutes from the Nauvoo Relief Society as she organized new relief societies and kind of used those as the guidelines to set them up. Is that correct?
- [10:11]
C
Yeah, that is. And it's really cool to see at the church history library, you can pull up, you know, call up some 19th century relief society minute books, and you can see that they were using the Nauvoo minutes as their model because the title pages will be very similar. They'll use that Nauvoo Relief Society minute book as the model and then say, American Fork Relief Society, their title page will look a lot like that Nauvoo Relief Society minute book. And we know from the discourses of Eliza R. Snow, which we've published on the Church Historians press, and from the minutes and the records that we have, we know that Eliza literally carried that minute book around, and she read from it, she taught from it, and she considered that, I mean, Joseph had told them at the first meeting, your minutes will be your constitution. And so she used that constitution throughout the late 1860s, 70s into the 80s, as she is leading Relief Society.
- [11:20]
B
Yeah, and we should mention, too, that there were sporadic attempts here and there to start up relief societies by women that remember The Nauvoo organization. It's just in 1867, that's when it becomes an official work of the church. Brigham Young recruits Eliza R. Snow and puts her to work. And she really is kind of the engine that drives the recreation, the re. Establishment of the Relief society in the 1860s.
- [11:44]
C
Yeah. Well, so that brings us up to the second half of the 19th century, and that's where we want to pick up today on our discussion about the background of discussions on women in priesthood. We should probably talk about how this concept of women and the temple and temple priesthood, how that carries over into the second half of the 19th century, because, as we know, they leave the Nauvoo Temple behind. And then it's not until 1877, when the St. George Temple is dedicated that the full slate of temple ordinances is implemented. They worked really hard to try to provide places for temple ordinances early in the Utah experience. So there was a building called the Council House. There were some performed in Brigham Young's office that was kind of between the Lion House and the Beehive House. And then, of course, the Endowment house is built in the 1850s. Those were places where people could be baptized for the dead and endowed and sealed primarily for the living. Those ordinances for the dead were not performed until St. George, but this allowed saints to at least receive their endowment and be sealed at the time. And, of course, all along, anytime temple work is happening, women have to be part of that. And Eliza actually served for many years overseeing what they would have called the women's work or the women's department in the endowment house.
- [13:29]
A
And don't they call Eliza R. Snow a priestess in the house of the Lord? Wasn't that one of her titles?
- [13:35]
C
And that was a title that was used up until about the turn of the 20th century, a little past the turn of the 20th century. And there was an understanding that the head of the Relief Society was also the head of women's work in the temple. And they maintained that through Eliza and then Zina DH Young and then Bathsheba Smith. And it was after the. After Bathsheba dies in 1910 is when that starts to change.
- [14:07]
A
Is that because of the proliferation of temples that you can't just have one woman in charge of all the temples
- [14:13]
C
or, you know, it's a good question. I don't know if we have done enough work yet to totally understand the evolution of this role that eventually, by the 1920s, is being called temple matron. But after Bathsheba dies, Emmaline Wells becomes president of The Relief Society. And I don't know if she was quite elderly by that point. I don't know if that had something to do with it. She was so oriented towards public work, suffrage, and just the ongoing work of the Relief Society that she just, for whatever reason, was not as identified with the temple. And so I don't know how that played into it, but what happens is that Joseph F. Smith appoints one of his wives, Edna, to become what they called the president of the sister workers in the Salt Lake Temple. And so from that point on, then after Edna, then it becomes the wife of the temple president, which by the 1920s is George F. Richards. And his wife becomes, I think, the first woman called matron of the Salt Lake Temple. We're doing some work right now, actually, on a project in our department to try to understand this history a little bit better. So I can give you broad strokes, but we really don't have a granular understanding of how this all evolved, just kind of that high level understanding. Now, we know that if we go back a little bit, we know that Brigham Young had been commissioned by Joseph Smith to put the temple ordinances in order. You may have heard some form of the quote where Brigham says, you know, Joseph told him, we've done the best we could, but this isn't arranged right. I want you to take it in hand and get the temple ordinances, you know, better organized. And Brigham Young took that charge very seriously for the rest of his life. That was something that was very important to him. We talked last week about the vision that Brigham Young had in 1847, where he was just longing to talk to Joseph Smith and to have better understanding about the temple. And as part of that vision, he sees how the human family was organized in the premortal world. And he understands that we need to reconstruct and recreate that organization of the human family, and that that's what we're doing in the temple. And he's taking that to heart very seriously about how do we do this, how do we understand it better? We know that he introduced some new characters and elements into the endowment after Joseph Smith's death. And we'll refer you again to Jonathan Stapley's recent book, Holiness to the Lord, that really traces this history of temple worship in more detail. And I believe Brigham acted in good faith and that he was doing the best he could and was totally on board and sincere in trying to get this right, trying to get it the way that he understood Joseph Smith had taught him and the way that he Thought that the Lord would want him to do it.
- [17:27]
A
Yeah. And we know that the Utah Temple liturgy, what comes out of Brigham Young's reconstituting of the temple ordinances incorporates several elements of male headship, including, for instance, the curse of Eve, women's covenant of obedience to their husbands, and other elements that essentially inscribe women's subordination. Right. And we don't. We don't actually know how much of this Brigham Young added and how much was there originally. That is something of a puzzle. But, I mean, there's no question that Brigham Young was a proponent of male headship, as were most of the church leaders of the time and people out in society generally. Like, for instance, Brigham Young once said, quote, there is no woman on the face of the earth that can save herself, but if she ever comes into the celestial kingdom, she must be led in by some man. He said that in 1845.
- [18:26]
C
But we all. Without getting too detailed, if we think about our temple experience, we can see how that was implemented and instantiated into the temple ceremonies. So it wasn't just the idea, but
- [18:43]
A
it was enacted, like, up until President Nelson's presidency. Right. And we're talking really recently that that was removed.
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B
And I think it's fair to say that in this time period, that was seen as sort of wholesome. You know, the idea men and women need each other, that men are supposed to be protectors and guardians of women and stuff like that. It seems a little paternalistic today, but at the time, I think this was pretty mainstream, wasn't it?
- [19:09]
C
Everybody knew that's how the world worked. Yeah. Men are in charge of women. Women knew that. Men knew that women were starting to not like it so much and starting to push back a little bit by this point. But, yeah, fundamental structuring principle for society and. And religion.
- [19:27]
A
Yeah. So, again, whether whether or not those ideas were there originally when Joseph Smith first instituted the endowment, or whether Brigham Young added that, as he did some other things, we don't know. But in any case, what this shows us is that while it was exciting and an expansive thing to include women in the priesthood of the temple, it did not mean that they were thinking of parity or equality between men and women. In the same way that we would talk about it now, the understanding of temple and priesthood that was introduced in Nauvoo lingered, but it was increasingly displaced, I would say, by emphasis on the priesthood as the governing structure of the church as it expanded with things like wards and stakes and bishops and stake presidents as well. As auxiliaries like the women's organizations and young women's and Sunday school and primary. And there's evidence that Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff and Lorenzo Snow all retain the Nauvoo sense of the priesthood, being those who entered into the order of the priesthood in the temple. But they're also occupied with establishing and administering the priesthood in an ecclesiastical sense. And I would also add that it's during this time period that the idea of the priesthood develops further into the power and authority of God concept. This is when it really starts to take hold. I've noticed and I've just, I haven't done a thorough study. Someone someday I hope just does a full on study of this. But here's some examples of quotes that you start to see crop up. For instance, in 1856, Brigham Young says, let us submit to him God that we may share in. He calls it this invisible almighty godlike power which is the everlasting priesthood. Interesting. So now it's power. In 1866, Brigham Young refers to men in the church as vessels of the holy priesthood. In 1878, Wilford Woodruff spoke of God's servants as holding this priesthood. Now we're starting to talk about it as holding in 1879. The next year, Lorenzo Snow also spoke of stake leaders as those who hold this priesthood. In 1880, John Taylor spoke of holding the priesthood. In 1870, 82, Wilford Woodruff referred to priesthood as delegated power of heaven. And so we're starting to see again that shift. Maybe we could call it a fifth definition of priesthood that is now coming into the church which is quite normative today of priesthood being a godlike power or delegated power from heaven.
- [21:58]
B
That's like the standard definition in the church today that we use.
- [22:04]
C
I think that more what we could say abstract definition of priesthood, like it's kind of there, it's kind of latent in some of the early revelations. And it's a matter of what gets emphasized and then how the context for how we understand priesthood shifts over time. So it's not as simple as like Brigham Young or John Taylor or Wilford Woodruff sits down and says, I think we should change the definition of priesthood. But there's just a complex process going on in how we're thinking about this very large concept over time.
- [22:39]
B
Yeah, it seems like it happens organically and that there's no specific moment we can say this is when the definition changed.
- [22:47]
A
And I always wonder, I don't know. Again, someone needs to do a full on Study on this. But I wonder if, like, holding office in the priesthood became holding priesthood.
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C
Yeah.
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A
That those who are in the priesthood, those who belong to the priesthood, have authority to do things or have power to do things. And therefore, as a shorthand way of talking about that, the priesthood is the power to do things. The priesthood is the authority to do things. I wonder if those got kind of smushed together and out of that came this idea of priesthood is the power of God that we hold or something like that. I don't know, but that's my working theory.
- [23:22]
C
Well, and we have section 84, the power of godliness that's manifest in the ordinances of the priesthood. And gee, ordinances is a whole other word of its own. And we could go off on how that changed in meaning over time. So it's just very complex. And I think for listeners at a high level, I think that's what is important to understand, is that there's this dynamic process, as there always is in human culture and human language, with ideas, with meanings, with the context in which those are being used and understood. And so it's like you say, kind of an organic process that. That plays out over time. And I also. I mean, it raises the question of, you know, where is the Lord in all of this? You know, is there some perfect, pristine definition of priesthood that he wants us to have? That doesn't seem to be the case because we have seen our prophets talk about it and emphasize different things over time. And I think that just speaks to the power and importance of ongoing revelation and how our leaders and those with the keys and how they are inspired and led to teach us and implement policy and procedure according to what is needed and what makes sense at the time within this concept, where there are some stable elements to this concept of priesthood as coming from God, as being powers, being authority, as being the people who are part of the order and so forth. But within that large concept, there are different ways that it can be talked about and emphasized over time. And I don't think the Lord has a problem with that, given our documentary record for our prophets and how they've talked about it over time.
- [25:22]
B
That might actually be part of the conversation, that it shifts over time.
- [25:28]
A
Yeah. And it's not like the Nauvoo definitions have gone away, as we mentioned. Those are still definitely there in the temple, that is the temple structure. Yet there's these ways we talk about priesthood outside of the temple that seems really to follow that track, doesn't it? This idea of priesthood has power that we hold.
- [25:48]
B
And we should also note that just like the language surrounding priesthood changed, the language surrounding priesthood and women changed. So during these decades following Nauvoo, we start to hear language that speaks about women holding the priesthood with their husbands
- [26:06]
C
in connection with their husbands.
- [26:08]
B
Let me dive into this. In connection with their husbands. Yeah. So let me dive into this. In the 1850s, this starts with church historians, include George A. Smith and Willard Richards, that start working on what we now call the history of the Church. And as part of that, they incorporate some of the minutes from the Nauvoo Relief Society, but they alter them to reflect a more comfortable, at least to them, understanding of gender hierarchy. And I should note, this was fairly standard historical practice at the time that you didn't publish documents completely, completely unaltered. You kind of massaged it and everything there. And by the way, this is good history that's found in the first 50 years of relief Society, that wonderful book that's in Gospel Library you can go look at. But we're looking at a couple things. For instance, wording in the Nauvoo minutes was rewritten to say things like he, meaning Joseph Smith, spoke of delivering the keys of the priesthood to the Church and said that the faithful members of the Relief Society should receive them in connection with their husbands. That was the way it was recorded in 1855. So they're writing this again into the history of the Church so everybody can have access to this. So the original language actually was he spoke of delivering the keys to this society and to the Church. The key change here was that this language that women would receive the keys of the priesthood in connection with their husbands, that's what they're adding in. And this became a pretty common expression in the second half of the 19th century. Clearly, it refers to the temple and relationships, covenants and the ordinances of the temple. But what does it mean in the ecclesiastical sense? We don't really know. It never really got worked out. If women held priesthood in connection with their husbands, what does that mean? And what authority does it give them, if any? And so questions about this arose fairly commonly. For instance, one of my favorite instances is John Taylor. This is in 1880, when he's president of the Church. He's talking about ordaining the Relief Society presidency, and that's the word that he usesordain. He said, I set thee apart to preside over relief societies in the Church, and I confer on thee this power and authority and ordain thee to this office. So you can see him using the word ordain there differently than we would use it today. And then they're actually in a meeting, and some of the original members of the Nauvoo Relief Society are there. And John Taylor's explaining what that ordination, what that authority that the Nauvoo Relief Society was given. And he said this. He said, on the occasion of the organization of the Relief Society by the prophet Joseph Smith at Nauvoo, I was present. John Taylor, Sister Emma Smith was elected president and Sister Elizabeth Ann Whitney and Sarah M. Cleveland, her counselors. And then he stated this. He said the ordination then given did not mean the conferring of the priesthood upon those sisters. Yet the sisters hold a portion of the priesthood in connection with their husbands. And the record of this meeting says that he actually turned to Eliza R. Snow and Bathsheba W. Smith, members of the original Nauvoo Relief Society, and said, do you concur with that? And they both signaled that that was how they understood it as well.
- [29:40]
C
And what this example of John Taylor shows is how this language is in flux because he uses both terms set apart and ordain. And yet when he's done, he feels the need to say, okay, I just said ordain, but this is what it doesn't mean. So the sense of ordain as being a very specific term referring to a very specific action in regard to the priesthood, what we're seeing is that that is taking shape in this period in a way that it hadn't existed before. And so Taylor is feeling this need to clarify in light of how meanings are shifting.
- [30:22]
B
Let me ask really quickly. The part that gets me is that he turns to Eliza Arsenau and Bathsheba W. Smith and asked them that's how they understood it. Is it possible that there was an understanding that just we can't see in the minutes because they agree with him, at least according to the minutes of this 1880 meeting.
- [30:45]
C
All the minutes say is that Sister Snow and Sister Smith concurred and said that this is how they had always understood it. The problem is that we're almost 40 years past the fact here. And so even though he was there, if you go read March 17, 1842, in the Nauvoo Relief Society minutes, it's John Taylor who ordains Elizabeth Ann Whitney and Sarah Cleveland as Emma's counselors that day. So he was there. He's a firsthand participant. But it's also 40 years down the road. Meanings are shifting. The memory is being filtered through what has happened since. And so he's not making anything up. He's giving the best accurate version that he knows. But we can also see how the circumstances of 1880 are shaping the way that this conversation takes place in terms of wanting to clarify what authority women did or didn't have. And there's apparently a felt need to make that more clear. So there's that. But then this is also a really good example of this commonplace expression about women holding the priesthood in connection with their husbands. Taylor says, a portion of the priesthood in connection with their husbands. That was another way that they would often say it. You know, it's a. As we say, it's kind of a common expression throughout the 19th century. It's never absolutely settled. And we do have records. Like, I think there's. Like, I think about 1885. I think it's Salt Lake High Council, where there's a meeting and someone says this, and someone else says, well, I've never heard that before. And other guys are saying, me either. I've never heard that either. And so. So it's not that this is ever like settled doctrine that gets worked out, but what it is is this lingering understanding from Nauvoo combined with the shifting times and trying to hold on to that understanding from before, but also trying to make it work within the way that they're thinking and practicing things now. Another example, this is also in first 50 years. Franklin D. Richards, an apostle in 1888. His wife, Jane, is the president of the Relief Society, the Stake Relief Society in Ogden. And he's speaking to the Ogden Relief Society Conference. And in the course of this talk, it's a really amazing talk. It's quite an interesting talk. You should read the whole thing. But he turns to the Nauvoo Relief Society minutes, and he reads from them, only he's reading from the edited version, the 1855 version, with the in connection language. And he's really, as I say, the talk is really interesting. He's very outspoken about men who, he says, are jealous of women's power and position and want to hold women back and not allow them to do things. He says, I'm sorry to see this feeling. The brethren should understand and see that in so doing, they are opposing themselves. So that's really interesting. But then he goes on and he says this. He says, I ask any and everybody present, meaning men who have received their endowments, what blessings did you receive, what ordinance, what power, what intelligence, sanctification or grace did you receive that your wife did not partake of with you? I will answer that there was one thing that our wives were not made special partakers of, and that was ordination to the various orders of the priesthood which were conferred upon us. Aside from that, our sisters share with us any and all of the ordinances of the holy anointing, endowments, sealing, sanctifications, and blessings that we have been made partakers of. Now I ask you, is it possible that we have the holy priesthood and our wives have none of it? Now, this is a really interesting statement because it reflects this understanding, it reflects this way of talking about it that's common at the time. But it also suggests that there's some pressure on that, that there's maybe some controversy or things are shifting to the point where people are not as clear about it as maybe they thought they were at one point. And so this kind of shows us this moment, this transitional process where the older understandings are fading. One of the aspects of this way of talking about women in priesthood in connection with their husbands, one of the questions that it raises is, what does that mean? What kind of authority does that give? Does it mean anything? And as you said, that never really fully gets worked out. And a lot of times the place where those questions arise is in connection with women's healing practices, laying on hands to administer to the sick or whatever. We're going to talk about that in the next issue, in the next episode. So I know listeners might be kind of going, well, what about that? What about that? So let's just assure him we are going to, to treat that in, in a lot of detail next time. But for now, we're just trying to understand how they were talking about women's relationship to priesthood because the Nauvoo understanding lingered. There was a sense that women were part of the priesthood and there was a connection there. But given the way that things were shifting and the emphasis was changing, it didn't make as much sense as it used to. And so it's a transitional kind of a period.
- [36:25]
A
Yeah. And we need to really bring that to its head at what we call the priesthood reform movement that occurs under Joseph F. Smith. Right. That's of kind where he tries to pin this all down definitionally and structurally in the church. Right. Like, for those who haven't really heard of the priesthood reform movement, let me just give a quick summary. So under Joseph F. Smith, this is an early 20th century effort, starting in like 1908, to reactivate priesthood quorums that had kind of gone a little soft and a little squirrely, a little sporadic. It was to strengthen the male leadership participation. It was meant to standardize governance in the church. It was meant to reinforce priesthood authority as the organizing center of church life. It helped transition the church, really, from a frontier religious community into a more systematized, globally scalable institution. Like, that's the right. This is what it does. That's the positive. However, the priesthood reform movement also is going to pull back on auxiliaries in the church, probably unintentionally, maybe, but it does serve to begin curtailing women's autonomy and prerogatives in the church. Prior to this, the Relief Society had a lot of autonomy. After this, it has less. Is that fair to say? Lisa? Feel free to jump in on that one.
- [37:53]
C
Yeah, relatively speaking, it's still going to enjoy quite a bit of autonomy for a while. But this is setting the precedent. Priesthood is preeminent over everything, and therefore women's organizations are going to be subordinate to that priesthood structure.
- [38:09]
A
And another subtle shift happens during this time period where Joseph F. Smith separates priesthood from office in terms of ordination, further solidifying priesthood definitionally as the power of God. So he this is where we get the practice of maybe, you know, if you've seen one of these recently or you can remember, when someone's ordained to the priesthood, we use that language. They are, let's see, how do we say it? Lay our hands upon your head and confer the priesthood either of Aaron or of Melchizedek and ordain you to a specific office. Boom. So confer priesthood, ordain office. There was a lot of debate over this, whether that was the right way to do it or not. Like Lorenzo Snow said, we shouldn't do it like that. This is before Joseph F. Smith. He said one should not confer the priesthood and then ordained to office within that. John Taylor also weighed in and said, no, we shouldn't do it like that. The Book of Mormon just says, ordain them to the priesthood, just confer the priesthood. That's it like. And so when Joseph F. Smith comes along and he starts kind of pushing back on that understanding, and then people push back on his pushback, and eventually he says it's a distinction without a difference. But today we do follow the Joseph F. Smith way of conferring priesthood and then ordaining to office. But what that does, again, is makes the priesthood something that you receive, that you hold, and then you have an office of the priesthood. Right. And then. And then he also basically tries to set the record straight on women holding priesthood with their husbands during this time. Like he, he. So John Taylor said in, in. In 1879, very clearly he said, do women hold the priesthood? Yes, in connection with their husbands, and they are one with their husbands. So that's an 1879 understanding. Fast forward to 1907, and Joseph F. Smith explicitly teaches this. He says, quote, a woman does not hold the priesthood in connection with her husband, but she enjoys the benefits thereof with him. So there you go. So now, during this priesthood reformation, the understanding is shifting to women don't hold the priesthood, but they share in the blessings of the priesthood. That's actually a more common way to hear people talk about it today. Right. And this is the time period where that sort of shifting. Now, the temple, of course, is authorized and administered by priesthood authority, we would say today. But during this time, it's no longer seen as like a site where priesthood is created. We're not creating the eternal priesthood. At least that language is not being used. We begin to lose that sense of priesthood as people, which is understandable now. Right, because the definitions and emphasis on priesthood are now becoming completely male identified. Right. We're kind of losing that Nauvoo sense of a women temple priesthood and the men and women creation of the eternal holy order of kings and queens, priests and priestesses. So this, this concept of priesthood starts to require, almost, right, the exclusion of women. Women are authorized, they'll say, to serve in the temple by the authority of male leaders, which is always the case on some level. But going forward, we're not going to see those who've entered into temple covenants as belonging to the priesthood. That kind of language starts to sound out of place. And so the concept of what our friend Jonathan Stapley calls the cosmological priesthood, this eternal holy order that we're trying to create, starts to fade, at least in church general use, even though, again, it's still there in the temple even today. As you go back, go and listen, that language is still there. We just don't frame it that way, we don't emphasize it that way. From this time, kind of moving forward, it starts to really fade in the church.
- [42:07]
C
Something that I've looked at quite a lot and that I think is very interesting. That grows out of this period and grows out of this shift comes through our friend Susan Young Gates, who, as I think we talked about, I've done a lot of work on her. Susa was. She was Brigham Young's daughter. She grew up in the Lion House, so she grew up around Eliza R. Snow and all these other great women. And she was a leader in the Young Ladies Association. And then by the 19 teens, she is on the board of the Relief Society and is also the editor of the Relief Society magazine. And so she has this platform where she's publishing articles and editorials every month. And Susa was a thinker, and Susan spent her life thinking about and trying to work out what did it mean to be a woman. She was very keenly aware of how it curtailed her life's opportunities and experiences that she was a daughter of Brigham Young and not a son of Brigham Young. And she had been through some experiences that really brutally illustrated to her the advantages that men had over women in this time. So she's thinking a lot about that. She was very involved in women's organizations and so forth around the turn of the century. And then by the 19 teens, she's become very involved in temple work and genealogy, as they would have said it back then. And this is the overriding mission and passion of her life, is to do the work and to try to teach and help other people do the work as well. She's very close friends with Joseph F. Smith, and as I say, she grew up with Eliza, with Zina, with all of these great women. So she's seen the way that these discussions have unfolded over time. And in fact, in 1888, at almost the same time that Franklin Richards was given that talk that we were just discussing, Susan is writing letters to Joseph F. Smith asking him questions about women and priesthood. So clear back in the 1880s, she's really thinking about this discussion a lot. So by the 1910s, she sees the way that things are shifting, and she is aware that it's a bit a big change, that in the past, we've said women hold the priesthood in connection with their husbands, and now Joseph Pfaff is insisting, no, they don't. That is not the way it works. And in fact, she goes so far. In 1915, she writes an editorial in the Relief Society magazine. Actually, I think it might be 1914, she writes an editorial saying, women in this church do not hold the priesthood. They must face this fact calmly. So, as if there's like something you got to be calm about there, right, that registers that there's some kind of a wrenching change taking place. The way that she ultimately works this out for herself, and then because of who she is, she starts teaching it to everyone else, is that she comes up with this idea that men have priesthood and women have motherhood. So this is what we call the priesthood motherhood paradigm. So, for example, in 1926, she and her daughter, Leah Widtsoe, publish a pamphlet about Latter Day Saint women. And one of the questions that they deal with is, well, you know, what about women in priesthood? And I guess I should pause here and say, let's talk about the context a little bit as well. By the first two decades of the 20th century, women in Utah have the vote as part of the Utah state constitution in 1896. But in the first two decades of the 20th century is when the critical mass forms and the momentum forms that leads to the amendment in 1920 granting universal female suffrage. And so these are decades where there's a lot of discussion and a lot of awareness about women, about gender, about the relationship of men and women, about equality, about those kinds of things. And so this male headship paradigm is coming under pressure in this context of advancing opportunity and equality for women. And so it's harder to talk about that unselfconsciously than it was, say, in the 1840s or the 1860s. There's more of a kind of a felt need to explain, well, why don't women have the priesthood? Because isn't that unequal and unfair? And James Talmage publishes some articles and things around this time that kind of take that up. And so there's this whole context for Susa and the way that she's coming to this conclusion. And here's what she and leah write in 1926. Office and priesthood carry heavy responsibilities requiring constant labor and time. No woman could safely carry the triple burden of wifehood, motherhood, and at the same time function in priestly orders. But they affirmed her creative home. Labor ranks side by side in earthly and heavenly importance with her husband's priestly responsibilities. So they're setting up this opposition or this parallel between priesthood and motherhood.
- [48:11]
A
Can I ask a question? I mean, for me, there seems like an obvious missing piece here. Because men are dads. We have fatherhood. So what's the role of fatherhood at this time? And why is she not equating fatherhood with motherhood? Instead, she's equating motherhood with priesthood?
- [48:32]
C
It's a really good question. In those letters that she and Joseph F. Smith exchanged back in the 1880s, we only have his letters. Somehow, hers didn't get saved. But from what he writes to her, he quotes from her letters, and we can kind of get a sense of what she was asking him and what she was saying. And apparently in one of her letters, she went off on this rhapsody about the joys of motherhood and how Wonderful motherhood is and so forth. And I don't know if that early, if she's explicitly posing priest, you know, motherhood as the parallel to priesthood, but Joseph F. Smith's not having it. He just kind of kiboshes this whole line by saying, well, you can praise and rejoice in motherhood all you want, but you should know that the joys of fatherhood are at least equal. And so he's equating motherhood and fatherhood, but there's also, I mean, again, like, it's really complex, right? Because when does Mother's Day become a holiday? Do you know? I don't actually remember the exact year, but it's in the 1910s. And so a lot of women's, what we would now call like women's activism and, and even like feminist activities and positions were based on invoking motherhood as a type of authority and mothers having. And women, because they are mothers having special gifts and special reason that they need to be involved in the public sphere and so forth. So there's a lot of discussion around motherhood at this time, and maybe that's playing into this as well. But I think the fundamental thing that they're trying to do is to say, well, if priesthood equals men, if there is a gender specific thing about. About priesthood, then what is the gender specific thing about women? And that is the ability to be mothers, to give birth and to be mothers. And so I think that that's what she's trying to do.
- [50:44]
B
The other thing I'm thinking about during this time period too is this is sometimes called by church historians the transition, where we're going from this kind of radical religion in the west that practices plural marriage and is sort of like throwing off all kinds of traditional gender and religious roles. And then when we ended plural marriage in 1890, we're trying to become more normal. We're trying to move to the mainstream. And it feels like the idea of women holding priesthood wasn't super mainstream for most Christian religions during this time. But uplifting womanhood and motherhood and talking about how special home and family is does seem like a message that we can connect with as a people. And that normalizes us quite a bit. I mean, even today, the standard line about Latter Day Saints is they're weird, but they have great families and things like that. And so I can't blame them for going this direction, to be honest with you. And I also in some ways admire Susa for holding up motherhood as being something that is equivalent to priesthood that has equal Value. But you're right. I mean, fatherhood, I guess, is equated with being a priest or it's not seen as a separate thing. That's a little odd that they went
- [52:08]
C
that direction in 1929. Sousa explains it in terms of an eternal gendered hierarchy, and she says, quote, Yep. And that is also something that Joseph F. Smith doubled down on in those letters back in the 1880s. Again, I would love to talk more about it, but we probably don't have time to get into that today. But he, he laid out this eternal gendered hierarchy and in 1929, and Susa then attributes her ideas to him and as a way of bolstering her the authority of her ideas. Right. So here's what she says, quote, when wherever you'll find a superior woman, you'll find a man just one step ahead of her who will be her leader and guide, as Christ is the head of all men holding the priesthood. So Susan's saying it's okay that men have priesthood and women have motherhood because. And she doesn't quite say it explicitly, but what she's saying is, because there is this eternal order where men are the head and, and no matter how great a woman you have, there's always going to be a man who's just a little bit better and a little bit ahead of her. Did Susan really believe that? I don't know, but that was. That was where her thinking went and where her justification went. Now, Leah, with Susan, that was the
- [53:36]
A
thing she was very comfortable saying publicly speaking into the culture of the day, like that was very culturally accepted. Interesting.
- [53:45]
C
Well, I think by 1929, she knew that it was. Would be a controversial thing to say. And I think that by. I mean, this is close to the end of her life. She dies in 1933, and I think by that time she's like, I don't care what anybody thinks. This is the truth, and I'm going to lay it out there, and people need to believe it. And she was long past the point of having much to do with feminism at that point, and it had actually become quite conservative. So again, there's like a whole context there for that.
- [54:18]
A
Did women's suffrage and women getting the vote in the US around this time, did that fracture in any way the established cultural assumptions of male headship or not yet?
- [54:33]
C
Well, I think that in general, the women's movement that had been taking shape and building force since the middle of the 19th century, I think had served to largely displace at least overt assertions. Of male headship in a lot of contexts. That's really, I'm really qualifying that. But you know, the Latter Day Saints had reasons that they held on to that, not least of which was the temple ceremonies, right. But by the 1920s, I think just in general, you've had the whole phenomenon of what was called the new woman, which starts taking shape around the turn of the century and is just like the baseline for women's lives, opportunities, rights, equality, participation and so forth has just been rising. And that whole paradigm, like you can't point to a moment where they said, okay, we don't believe in male headship anymore, but by the 1920s, that's become a much less dominant paradigm culturally, but it's still there theologically in the church. And so I think that's why there's this felt need to kind of reconcile, to kind of work through the implications. And Leah, Susan's daughter, who was born in 1874, is very much part of that new woman cohort. She goes back east and gets educated. She's a very active and just a new woman. She's a very modern woman in a lot of ways. And she takes this idea of priesthood motherhood and she runs with it. And she publishes a whole series of articles in the Church news section of the deseret news in 1933 that lays out this priesthood motherhood paradigm in more detail. And in her account, it's a matter of order, it's rational. There has to be a head, and God has designated men to be the head. And that makes sense because it efficiently divides up the labor between men and women and so forth. I mean, never mind that both of these women are spending their lives almost a full time job working in the church, but they're saying, oh, woman, women wouldn't have the time to do all that church work. So like, there's a, there's an inconsistency there. But they're trying to lay out what they see as an ideal vision. And then what happens is John Widsoe, apostle, takes some of Leah's writings about women in priesthood and he incorporates it into this little book that he publishes called Priesthood and Church Government. Anybody remember that one? Because that become a major. Yep, A major reference work for the church for really the rest of the 20th century at least. And he takes these sections from Leah's writings about priesthood motherhood. And because of the way the book is put together, he wasn't doing anything wrong. But just because of the way the, the book was put together, it's not clear that those came from Leah and
- [58:02]
A
Leah is his wife now. Right. Doesn't John marry Leah? Who's Susan?
- [58:06]
C
Yep. Leah and John were married in 1898 and he's quoting his wife. And they very much saw themselves in their marriage in a modern vein as a partnership, as what they saw as more of an equal partnership between men and women, even though they still held to these ideas that had some sense of hierarchy between men and women, especially about priesthood. But because these ideas get incorporated into that book that is so influential, I think that's one of the reasons that it's had so much staying power within Latter Day Saint discourse, because it was given that stamp of approval by being published by an apostle and then used as a reference work for the rest of the century. And so that's how it, you know, that's how this idea comes into the mainstream of the church and we see it get picked up. For example, J. Reuben Clark, member of the First Presidency, says women possess the complement of the priesthood powers, complement with an E, a function as divinely called, as eternally important in its place as the priesthood itself. That's 1946. And we could sit here and multiply quotes for the next hour up to and including the 20 teens when we're still invoking this priesthood motherhood paradigm. So that's been a very, a very powerful and long lasting development to come out of all of these discussions. And really, as you said, Scott, this progressive era priesthood reform era understanding really becomes the stable core of how we talk about it. So men are ordained to the priesthood, women are not. But women share in all the blessings of the priesthood. The priesthood is there to make the blessings available to everyone. And that's been a pretty consistent understanding for 100 years now.
- [60:15]
B
We were talking before we hit record that John and Leah were kind of the dynamic duo, you know. Right. We don't know how much of what wound up in John's writings. And John is absolutely prolific. Like he writes a lot of stuff and some things like priesthood and church government. It's not John A Widtsoe publishing this as a book that he just wants to get out there. He's publishing it on behalf of the church, it's published by the church and it's seen as fairly official and authoritative. It'd just be really interesting. And I don't know if it's ever going to be possible to see how much of that was from John and how much was from Leah and what their conversation's like. Like, I'm just saying I really want to sit at their kitchen table and hear them talking through these things and kind of working it out because they're so influential. But they kind of create these models that we use for the rest of the 20th century. But we don't always realize it because they've sort of faded into collective consciousness of the church.
- [61:18]
C
And I think we should emphasize that from their perspective, this was modern, this was progress. They saw this as an advancement over the old fashioned understandings, this idea of partnership and efficiency and so forth. To them, that was modern, that was progress.
- [61:43]
B
And they sort of set up the, like we said, models that remain throughout the rest of the 20th century, even into our time, a little bit. This idea that women do not hold, but they share in all the blessings and that the priesthood and motherhood are parallel. In fact, a lot of other church leaders kind of play off on this idea. For instance, Joseph fielding Smith in October 1958, he said authority and priesthood are two different things. A person may have authority given to him or a sister to her to do certain things in the church that are binding and absolutely necessary for our salvation, such as the work that our sisters do in the house of the Lord. Our sisters have been given power and authority to do a great many things. The work which they do is done by divine authority. So it is. It seems like he's acknowledging that women have authority, but now he's separating authority from priesthood, which was kind of what they were doing the opposite of in the early 20th century was that priesthood was authority.
- [62:47]
A
I like divine authority. Honestly, I wish we used it like that. I think the ambiguities of. Is priesthood something that you hold or is it a group that you belong to? Like in my dream of dreams, here's what we would do. We would. We would talk about priesthood as a group that you belong to, and we would talk about authority as divine authority. We wouldn't call it priesthood. And we could say women have a divine authority to do certain things in the church and in the temple. Men have divine authority to do certain things in the church and in the temple. Everybody, you know, there's a good clarity to that phrase, divine authority. And don't call it priesthood like Joseph feeling Smith is saying here. They're two different things. Thanks.
- [63:30]
B
And while we've been having this whole conversation, I just keep going back to the more recent statements made by leaders of the church where President Oaks says stuff like authority is priesthood. There's no other kind of authority in the church.
- [63:43]
C
Yes.
- [63:44]
B
That leads us into the 1960s where priesthood correlation is another One of those big movements that changed a lot of things in the church that we don't always appreciate. And the whole correlation movement which took place in the 1960s was about priesthood, but it was also about family. In fact, the stated purpose of correlation, as you note in your article, Lisa, is the priesthood as the Lord intended and as the center core of the kingdom of God and the auxiliaries as related thereto, including a greater emphasis on fathers in the home as priesthood bearers in the family unit. And we're not going to dive into correlation fully here. We're just kind of whetting your appetite. But it seems like there was this attempt to say, you know, Father knows Best, that's a popular TV show from the time, and to give men this charge to be leaders within the home. And tying that to priesthood seems like a really natural connection, especially I'm just spitballing here. But a couple of things that are happening. So we see the rise of communism, which a lot of people are really afraid of. And communism in some iterations saw the family as being bad. Like, let's separate men and women and take their children away and just train them so that they're more loyal to the state than anything. And then at the opposite end of the spectrum is the rise of feminism, which is fueled by all kinds of factors, but again, feels like a threat to the traditional family. So some of this is there's huge cultural forces at work. And I can see leaders of the church kind of circling the wagons and saying, we've got to preserve what we have. And so we became very, very, very conservative in the way that we look at the family and we state these roles that we want people to stay in because there's so much change happening and it's so tumultuous that we're just trying to cope with all that.
- [65:41]
C
Yeah. Another thing that we could think about, Casey, when we are talking about how these discussions have unfolded, is that at times of transition and cultural pressure is when people feel a need to define and when questions and ideas and topics that have not been as visible all of a sudden become visible because they're under pressure from one direction or another. And so I think that that is important to recognize that really sense well all along. But let's just say since the correlation era, culturally there has been this intensifying discussion about gender and the meaning of gender. And then because we have a male only priesthood, then that gets all entangled and connected to each other. Let's just kind of bring this conversation to a quick Conclusion here, there's so much more that we could say. But, Casey, as you were talking about, you know, in the last 50 or 60 years, all of these cultural changes that have happened, and then all of the changes that have happened in the church, but through it all, that definition and understanding of priesthood has remained pretty stable. And then because of the rise of what was called the blogosphere, remember that? Which then shifted into social media, and there became all these new forums for talking about stuff, and everybody has something to say, everybody has an idea, everybody wants to get in on the discussion. And at the same time, we have had this just outpouring of historical work that has brought sources back to visibility. So the Nauvoo Relief Society minutes weren't really known for a long time. They were in the history of the Church in their edited form. But by the early 1980s, we start to have access to the original documents and go, oh, wait, that isn't quite what we've been saying all along. And. And there's this outpouring of historical work on Joseph Smith and the restoration and the early church and so forth that has just made us aware of these historical discussions and practices in a way that's like, oh, wow, you know, the memory of those was lost. And so we've had this big ferment of cultural ideas, of historical sources and work and so forth, that has brought a lot of debate and controversy to light. And women in priesthood and women's status in the church has been one of the epicenters for those discussions. And we saw around 2010, the early 2010s, kind of an eruption of discussions about women in priesthood in the church. So that leads us to 2014 and the landmark talk by Elder Dallin Oaks. Then Elder Dallin Oaks, the keys and authority of the priesthood. And I think we're pretty familiar with this at this point. He says, we are not accustomed to speaking of women having the authority of the priesthood in their church callings. But what other authority can it be? Whoever functions in an office or calling received from one who holds priesthood keys, exercises priesthood authority in performing her or his assigned duties. And, you know, we just talked about that quote from Joseph fielding Smith in 1958. This is Elder Oaks.
- [69:22]
A
I hear him revising. Actually hear Joseph Fielding Smith. I hear Joseph Fielding Smith raising his hand and saying, what other authority can it be? Divine authority. Just call it divine authority.
- [69:32]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [69:34]
A
They are almost kind of arguing throughout history here. It's so funny.
- [69:37]
C
Yeah, so we talked about that and that. But that has been an influential Formulation over the last decade of understanding about women in priesthood. And then President Nelson was interesting. You know, he said a lot about priesthood power, about women, about the temple. And I think he was trying to reconnect women and priesthood and temple in a way, as we've talked about, that had kind of faded. And in this formulation, and it wasn't only him. It kind of started before he took office as president. But this formulation, then spiritual power becomes priesthood power when it's channeled through the priesthood covenants of the temple. So Sister Bingham, for example, Relief Society General President Jean Bingham, explained, priesthood power is spiritual power, when used for priesthood purposes, available directly to all endowed women who keep their covenants. And she adds, without the need for human intermediaries. So we're emphasizing that women have direct access to the power of God in their lives, and we're calling that priesthood power when it's associated with the temple and temple covenants. And that's been the tenor of the discussion over the last decade or so.
- [71:01]
B
And to me, you know, I know it's a platitude, but I keep going back to that phrase that the most important prophet is the one you're serving with right now. And so I look to them to define the terms and give the explanations that I rely on. And the other thing in the past, I can see as exploratory or a part of the evolution of our understanding of priesthood. And again, I also think that the Lord hasn't clearly defined priesthood, maybe because this is all part of the discussion.
- [71:30]
A
Yeah, that goes back to what Lisa said, right? Yeah. Like, if God wanted. If Jesus cared about us really getting it perfectly down, then he probably would have done something by now. He seems to be okay with this kind of negotiation and the tension between these terms and the user.
- [71:46]
B
I can't deny that when a ministering sister goes to see someone in the church, that that's a priestly function, that's something that a priest would do, or that in the temple, when ordinances are carried out, that that's a priestly function, too, that we have women perform as well. So for me, President Oaks just connected all the dots like a light bulb went on my head when he said there's no other kind of authority in the church because everything we do in the church is of a priestly nature. That's just how I see it.
- [72:13]
C
And if I had to guess, and I'm a historian, so I'm lousy at the future, but maybe when someone writes an update to my article 50 or 100 years from now, they'll look at this period as a transitional period as well, and that there may be. That we may be in a period where we are reexamining and thinking through some foundational things in a way that will lead us forward, and that will be for the Lord to inspire his prophets to. To help us with.
- [72:47]
B
That was well said. And I don't want to downplay any strong feelings people might have over the way that this has happened. And that's part of the reason why we wanted to do this series in the first place. Right. Is to try and at least trace all the threads and see if we could untangle them. And maybe we won't. At the same time, too, the words kept flashing into my head that Bruce R. McConkie said when the. When the 1978 revelation came where he had spoken very ardently in favor of the priesthood policy, that was ended. And then he got up and said, forget everything that everyone has said before us. We spoke with limited light and knowledge, and now we have light and knowledge. And I mean, Elder Oaks made that statement. Now he's President Oaks. And I hope this is seen as a transitional period. Maybe this was a revelation that just didn't come with as much hullabaloo as some other revelations in the past have. But I like the definitions we're using right now, and I see them as really important for us to be part of the conversation.
- [73:53]
A
Well said. Wow. Well, this was really fun today, guys. Thank you. So next time we get to talk about women giving healing blessings in the church and manifesting spiritual gifts that way. Beyond that, we also want to talk about all that stuff you were just saying, Lisa. We don't know exactly. We can't promise how many episodes this is going to be till we get to the end of all this, but we're sure enjoying the ride. So great to be with both of you. Sam.