Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843 ---Part 2

As in Brigham Young's 1845 statement, church administrative power is the real context for all subsequent denials that women have priesthood. If women have priesthood, the often unexpressed fear goes, they might challenge the administrative powers of males who have been ordained deacons, teachers, priests, elders, seventies, high priests, and apostles. Conversely the argument is that since women have not been ordained to one of those offices, they do not have priesthood. First Presidency counselor Charles W. Penrose made this argument specific in 1921: “Sisters have said to me sometimes, `But I hold the Priesthood with my husband.' `Well,' I asked, `what office do you hold in the Priesthood.' Then they could not say much more. The sisters are not ordained to any office in the Priesthood. . . .”

However, such reasoning ignores Joseph Smith's earliest revelation defining the priesthood in Doctrine and Covenants 84. Ordained offices are not the priesthood but only “appendages” to the priesthood: “And again the offices of elder and bishop are necessary appendages belonging unto the high priesthood. And again, the offices of teacher and deacon are necessary appendages belonging to the lesser priesthood which priesthood was confirmed upon Aaron and his sons” (D&C 84:29-30). According to an 1835 revelation, even the apostleship is an appendage to the Melchizedek priesthood, for “all other authorities or offices in the church are appendages to this priesthood” (107:5).

Priesthood exists independently of church offices, but church offices are appendages which cannot exist without the priesthood. As church president Joseph F. Smith told general conference, “If an Apostle has any authority at all, he derives it from the Melchisedek Priesthood.” He added that “all the offices in the Church are simply appendages to the Melchisedek Priesthood, and grow out of it.”

A woman does not need an appendage to have priesthood. According to Joseph Smith's teachings to the Relief Society and to the Anointed Quorum, a woman receives Melchizedek priesthood when she receives the endowment. The confusion of priesthood office with priesthood has characterized many contemporary discussions of women and priesthood.

However, just as counselors in the First Presidency were “ordained” by Joseph Smith, Emma Smith was “ordained to expound the Scriptures,” and her counselors were ordained to preside over the Nauvoo Relief Society. In the nineteenth century the word “ordain” was also used for appointing persons to proselyting missions and to heal. However, I find no evidence that Mormon men ever ordained a woman to a specific priesthood office of the church.

Nevertheless, every endowed Mormon woman has received the Melchizedek priesthood from 1843 to the present. In 1912, Apostle James E. Talmage affirmed: “It is a precept of the Church that women of the Church share the authority of the Priesthood with their husbands, actual or prospective; and therefore women, whether taking the endowment for themselves or for the dead, are not ordained to specific rank in the Priesthood. Nevertheless, there is no grade, rank, or phase of the temple endowment to which women are not eligible on an equality with men.”

For the above reasons, the relationship of women to priesthood should not be compared to the LDS church's pre-1978 denial of priesthood to anyone of black African ancestry. In that case Joseph Smith authorized the ordination of one African-American, Elijah Abel, to the offices of elder and seventy. Brigham Young reversed this and taught that it was contrary to God's will for anyone of black African ancestry to hold priesthood. This became doctrine and all persons of black African descent were denied priesthood and the temple endowment. A subsequent prophet had to obtain new revelation allowing ordination of blacks to priesthood.

In contrast the documents and leaders of early Mormonism affirm that women receive priesthood through the endowment. New revelation would only confirm this reality not create it. However, unaware of the female priesthood theology in Joseph Smith's Anointed Quorum, current LDS presidents and apostles regard new revelation as necessary to change a twentieth-century definition that is now regarded as doctrinal. For example, President Spencer W. Kimball announced in June 1978: “We pray to God to reveal his mind and we always will, but we don't expect any revelation regarding women and the priesthood.” This was just after his announcement of the revelation authorizing the priesthood to men of black African descent.

Without an appeal to new revelation about female priesthood office, Eliza R. Snow, Zina D. Young, and Sarah M. Kimball presumed to organize the Relief Societies of pioneer Utah wards with women as “deaconesses,” “teachers,” and “priestesses.” Existing records do not show precedent in Joseph Smith's teachings for ordaining women to church offices of deacon, elder, priest, bishop, or high priest, or for feminizing those titles. However, Eliza R. Snow held the honorary title of “Presidentess” as president of the Relief Society. Some women called Eliza, Zina D. Young, and Bathsheba W. Smith by the less appropriate title of “Presiding High Priestess.” This referred to their role as “president of the women's department” of female ordinance workers in the Salt Lake Endowment House and Salt Lake temple.

The endowment anoints Mormon women to become queens and priestesses. From 1843 to the 1920s, thousands of women also received confirmation as eternal queens and priestesses through the second anointing. Currently some women have received this “fullness of the priesthood” with their husbands. In the Salt Lake temple, the second anointing still occurs in the “Holy of Holies” room. [Writing at the request of the Church's First Presidency, Elder James E. Talmage states that "this room is reserved for the higher ordinances in the Priesthood relating to the exaltation of both living and dead" (The House of the Lord 192-194)]. The second anointing for both men and women is distinct from ordination to church priesthood offices.

Like Miriam of the Old Testament and Anna of the New Testament, any LDS woman may have the gift to be a prophetess. That personal relationship with God has nothing to do with church office. It was not uncommon in the nineteenth century for patriarchs to promise a Mormon woman that “thou shalt be a natural Prophetess in the house of Joseph . . .”

One church president even maintained that a Mormon woman could be a revelator for the entire church. Concerning the hymn “O My Father,” President Wilford Woodruff told the April 1894 general conference: “That hymn is a revelation, though it was given unto us by a woman—Sister Eliza R. Snow. There are a great many sisters who have the spirit of revelation. There is no reason why they should not be inspired as well as men.” This hymn-revelation from Eliza R. Snow to the church is one of the earliest statements in Mormon theology about a supreme goddess, the “Heavenly Mother.”

A church president continued to affirm the role of women as prophetesses into the twentieth century. “I believe that every mother has the right to be a prophetess and to have the gift of sight, foreseeing prescience, to foresee danger and evil and to know what to do in her family and in her sphere,” Joseph F. Smith affirmed in 1913. “They are prophetesses, they are seers, they are revelators to their households and to their families . . .” Without ordination to specific offices of priesthood, women have avoided aspirations and abuses common to church offices reserved for men (D&C 121:34-40).

For a hundred years after Joseph Smith said “I now turn the key to” LDS women, their most common and well-known priesthood activity was in performing the ordinances of healing. The focus on healing may have resulted from Brigham Young's distrust of nineteenth-century medical practice combined with the fact that Mormon women received gynecological and obstetrical care from midwives and female physicians. These two factors spared LDS women the questionable treatment which the male medical establishment inflicted on women throughout the rest of Victorian America.

It is essential to recognize that nineteenth-century Mormon women performed healing ordinances by virtue of the priesthood they held, not simply as an act of faith. For example, in the previously cited blessing to Caroline Cottam in March 1853, the presiding patriarch sealed on her “the blessings and Priesthood which Abraham sealed upon his daughters, with power to heal the sick in your house. . . .” In the patriarchal blessing to Elizabeth Bean two months later, John Smith also said that her priesthood gave “you the power to heal the sick and to understand all the principles of the priesthood, and mysteries that have been kept hid from before the foundation of the world.” Eliza R. Snow and Zina D. Young wanted to limit the exercise of healing ordinances to women who had received the endowment because they believed that endowed women had received priesthood.

LDS church leaders continued to authorize women to perform healing ordinances even after the hierarchy stopped affirming that women received priesthood through the endowment. Two factors guaranteed the continuation of these healing ordinances by LDS women. First, consecrated oil was applied directly to the affected part of the body. Second, the Victorian era's attitudes (despite their repressiveness toward women) enhanced Mormon women's role as healers. It was unthinkable for LDS leaders to allow men to touch any private region of a woman's body to accomplish healing, especially in connection with pregnancy, childbirth, or a “female problem.”

In 1878, the Salt Lake stake president both undercut and reaffirmed the priesthood authority of women. “Women could only hold the priesthood in connection with their husbands; man held the priesthood independent of woman,” Angus M. Cannon began, then he concluded: “but women must be careful how they use the authority of the priesthood in administering to the sick.” Aside from being president of the central stake, Angus was also brother of first presidency counselor George Q. Cannon.

His counselor in the Salt Lake stake presidency acknowledged in 1884 what he saw as the only reason that women performed healing ordinances for women: “There are often cases when it would be indelicate for an Elder to anoint, especially certain parts of the body, and the sisters are called to do this and blessing follows, but in each instance let her act by request of the Priesthood.” The stake counselor next expressed his own discomfort with “sisters who claim they have been blessed and set apart by the authority of God to anoint the sick of their own sex.” He emphasized that each LDS woman “holds Priesthood in connection with her husband, but not separate from him.” He concluded with a tirade against the “vain ambition” and “grave mistakes some of our sisters have made in seeking to raise herself [sic] to an equality with man in all things.” This was a significant retreat from the confident affirmations of female priesthood by the men in Nauvoo's Anointed Quorum. These 1884 statements by the Salt Lake Stake counselor were symptoms of a growing misogyny in the guise of male priesthood superiority.
By the early 1880s death had taken all the general authorities who had specifically stated that the endowment conferred priesthood upon women. Joseph and Hyrum Smith died in 1844, and John Smith joined them a decade later. Heber C. Kimball died in 1868, and Brigham Young in 1877. Sidney Rigdon had been excommunicated in 1844 but continued to affirm Nauvoo's “female priesthood” until his death in 1876. In 1881, both Orson Pratt and Joseph Young died.

By 1888 Mormon misogyny was linked with denials of women's authority, and this resulted in a public comment by Apostle Franklin D. Richards. He said: “Every now and again we hear men speak tauntingly of the sisters and lightly of their public duties, instead of supporting and encouraging them.” Apostle Richards added: “There are also some who look with jealousy upon the moves of the sisters as though they might come to possess some of the gifts, and are afraid they [LDS women] will get away with some of the blessings of the gospel which only men ought to possess.” Because of this “envy and jealousy,” Apostle Richards said some Mormon men “don't like to accord to them [Mormon women] anything that will raise them up and make their talents to shine forth as the daughters of Eve and Sarah.” Franklin D. Richards is the only general authority to publicly acknowledge that jealousy and fear are the basis for the opposition of some Mormon men against the spiritual growth of all Mormon women.
As late as April 1896 Apostle Richards reaffirmed the independent source of women's authority to perform healing ordinances. This senior apostle and church historian instructed LDS women that they have “the right” to say these words in administering to the sick: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ & by virtue of the Holy Anointing which I have received.” Until 1900 the First Presidency also authorized women to use the word “seal” in this ordinance.

Although church president Joseph F. Smith endorsed the role of women in performing healing ordinances, he diminished the basis on which they did so. President Smith and his wives jointly performed healing administrations for church members. In 1903, for example, Alice Kimball Smith anointed a stake president's daughter and then President Smith sealed the ordinance.88 Beginning in 1908, however, Joseph F. Smith instructed that it was not necessary for a woman to be endowed to perform anointings and blessings for the sick. That statement removed for the first time the ordinance of healing from the priesthood conferred upon women by the endowment.

From the 1890 Manifesto ostensibly banning polygamy to the early 1900s, the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve redefined many LDS doctrines. The relation of women to the priesthood endowment was only one of these redefinitions.

However, the First Presidency continued to authorize women to anoint women for healing—only because of the church practice of using consecrated oil directly on the affected parts of the body. In December 1935 the Presiding Bishopric and First Presidency discussed a report that Apostle John A. Widtsoe had instructed missionaries in Europe to “anoint the head only.” The presidency disagreed with this change and decided that “if the sick person desires to be anointed by the elders on the afflicted part, this may be done and the sick person [be] allowed to drink some of the consecrated oil.”

Consequently when men stopped anointing various parts of men's bodies with consecrated oil for healing, it became possible to exclude women from anointing and blessing the sick. That policy change did not become final for another decade. In 1946 Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith informed the Relief Society general presidency that it was no longer approved “for sisters to wash and anoint other sisters.” Instead, he said that women should “send for the Elders of the Church to come and administer to the sick and afflicted.” Thus a century of Mormon women's sacred ordinances no longer had the approval of the church's hierarchy. An era had officially ended.

However, some LDS women had been undermining their own priesthood ordinances by questioning whether their gift of healing had institutional approval. As early as 1913 Relief Society general president Emmeline B. Wells expressed hope that “the blessing will not be taken from us” by disapproving general authorities. And in 1935 a woman asked if it was “orthodox and sanctioned by the Church today” for women to perform such healing ordinances. Relief Society general president Louise Y. Robison replied that “it is our earnest hope that we may continue to have that privilege, and up to the present time the Presidents of the Church have always allowed it to us.” Female blessings and healings could not long survive such tentativeness expressed from top to bottom in the Mormon women's ranks.

The Book of Mormon warned that gifts of the spirit such as healing would die only through unbelief (Moro. 10:8, 11, 19, 26). LDS women have the same access to gifts of the spirit as men and can exercise their faith in healing. Anciently the apostles tried to circumscribe the exercise of spiritual gifts by condemning a person who healed the sick but who was not a follower of Jesus. Jesus answered their objection with the words, “Forbid him not; for he that is not against us is for us” (Luke 9:50). Mormon men need this biblical reminder updated, “Forbid her not, for she that is not against us is for us.” No woman needs a man's permission to lay her hands on her child's head and utter a blessing. Whether by priesthood endowment or spiritual gift, an LDS woman may give a blessing to anyone, in or out of her family, in or out of the church.
To some LDS men this is a frightening prospect. Several even reportedly threatened to kill a devoted Mormon who recently suggested that women should have the opportunity for ordination to every priesthood office. A death threat has no bearing on what God confers on women, but it is unfortunate evidence of misogyny in modern Mormonism.

Such death threats are also an extreme version of the attitude about women expressed in a well-publicized statement by a current general authority. If the female portion of humankind were to receive the priesthood, he wrote, then “the male would be so far below the female in power and influence that there would be little or no purpose for his existence [—] in fact [he] would probably be eaten by the female as is the case with the black widow Spider.” Perhaps if persons with that view learn that every endowed LDS woman already has the priesthood, they will not feel threatened by women who desire to exercise the gifts of God to them in faith, power and humility.

In any event the contemporary cliché “Women hold the priesthood only when they hold their husbands” is as demeaning as it is untrue. Neither should priesthood-endowed women be limited by the condescension of one church leader: “We can hold it [priesthood] and share it with our wives.” Nor constrained by his claim that every Mormon husband “needs to feel dominant... Young sisters, if you take that role from him, the one he needs, you reduce his manhood . . .” That is very close to the other general authority's view of independent women as man-eating spiders. In the contemporary LDS church, there are uncomfortable evidences for Apostle Franklin D. Richards' century-old observation that jealousy and fear motivate LDS men to limit LDS women.

In fact, LDS church president Spencer W. Kimball spoke against gender condescension. “Our sisters do not wish to be indulged or to be treated condescendingly; they desire to be respected and revered as our sisters and our equals,” he told general priesthood conference. “I mention these things, my brethren, . . . because in some situations our behavior is of doubtful quality.” President Kimball also wrote a forward to the Brigham Young University publication of Hugh W. Nibley's discourse on the ideal of marriage in God's Eden: “There is no patriarchy or matriarchy in the Garden; the two supervise each other . . . and [are] just as dependent on each other.”

In effect, nearly all authoritative statements by modern apostles have been inaccurate concerning the matter of women holding the priesthood. Church historian and apostle Joseph Fielding Smith juxtaposed such an inaccurate perception with its actual contradiction: “Women do not hold the priesthood, but if they are faithful and true, they will become priestesses and queens in the Kingdom of God, and that implies that they will be given authority.” As indicated by the earlier quotes from Elder Smith's own relatives in the Mormon hierarchy, it is through the temple ordinances that women receive priesthood on earth in training for their role as queens and priestesses in eternity.

In 1958 Elder Smith highlighted this contradiction between the official denial that women have priesthood and the actual authority they have through the temple endowment. He began with the unambiguous declaration that “the sisters have not been given the Priesthood.” However, he immediately undercut his argument by describing women's role in the temple: “And you sisters who labor in the House of the Lord can lay your hands upon your sisters, and with divine authority, because the Lord recognizes positions which you occupy . . . because the Lord has placed authority upon you.” He added that temple ordinances performed by women are “binding just as thoroughly as are the blessings that are given by the men who hold the Priesthood.” His only resolution for the paradox between modern denial and temple experience: “Authority and Priesthood are two different things.” That distinction works only because contemporary Mormon theology gives two meanings to the word “authority.”

“Authority” means both power and permission. In the first sense authority is the priesthood power of God. Through the endowment both men and women receive God's authority or power of the Melchizedek priesthood. Men also receive priesthood power through ordination to specific office. The second sense of authority is the permission of the church. Neither males nor females can exercise their priesthood without permission of the church. However, both males and females have received such permission from the church in various ways.

For LDS males conferral of power and the permission to exercise priesthood in the church come in stages. First, males are ordained to priesthood office which is defined in terms of administering to others. The priesthood that they receive in the endowment is the same priesthood power conferred on them in stages by ordination to office.103 The offices of “king and priest” come provisionally to men through the endowment and in fullness through the second anointing. As Brigham Young preached in 1843, “For any person to have the fullness of that priesthood, he must be a king and a priest. . . . A man may be anointed king and priest [in the endowment] long before he receives his kingdom [in the second anointing].” Second, males receive formal permission from the church to exercise their priesthood in behalf of others.

There are two ways in which the LDS church gives formal authority for males to exercise the priesthood they receive by ordination and the endowment. First, through the ordinance of being “set apart”—as a missionary, temple ordinance worker, or church presiding officer such as stake president or auxiliary president. Second, church leaders give verbal “authority” for males to use their priesthood for specific occasions or ordinances such as administering the sacrament, baptism, confirmation, and administering to the sick through anointing, sealing the anointing, and blessing. This applies to Mormon males from the age of twelve onward.

For LDS women Melchizedek priesthood does not come in stages of ordination but in the temple endowment. Historically LDS women also have received church authority to exercise their Melchizedek priesthood power in behalf of others. Like LDS boys and men, females receive the ordinance of being set apart as missionaries, temple ordinance workers, and presiding officers such as auxiliary presidents. And as already discussed LDS church leaders have given verbal and written authority for LDS women to perform priesthood ordinances including blessing and healing. Church policy revoked that permission in 1946 but could reinstate it at any time. In addition LDS church leaders could extend permission for endowed women to administer the sacrament, baptize, confirm, and confer the gift of the Holy Ghost, since those ordinances are within the powers of anyone who has received the Melchizedek priesthood.

In today's church a woman who has received the temple endowment has more priesthood power than a boy who holds the office of priest. However, the priest has more permission to exercise his priesthood than does the endowed woman to exercise hers.

Mormon women already have God's priesthood of spiritual power. Without asking permission they may draw on the power of the Melchizedek priesthood that is theirs by birthright and by divine endowment. However, it is necessary for endowed women to receive permission of the church to use their priesthood in church settings to administer the sacrament, baptize, confirm, or administer temple ordinances. Without ordination to priesthood offices, each endowed LDS woman already has the opportunity to fulfill in her life the prophet's promise: “I now turn the key to you in the name of God.”