I was there ten years ago, the first time a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) announced in General Conference that LDS women already have priesthood authority, despite the brethren’s ban on women’s ordination.
Okay, I wasn’t in the room where it happened. I was right outside the door, standing in the rain, listening on my phone. I tried to come inside to listen to Elder Dallin H. Oaks’s talk, but I was denied entry to the Conference Center because I’m a woman.
And he didn’t tell women this news, not directly. He told a live audience of 20,000 men and boys—no girls allowed. But he knew we were listening in. It was the first time the Priesthood Session was broadcast live over the internet. This concession was a tiny bone thrown in the general direction of the Ordain Women movement. Hundreds of us had tried to attend the previous Priesthood Session, as a signal of our willingness to hold the priesthood, and here we were again.
“Since these subjects are of equal concern to men and to women, I am pleased that these proceedings are broadcast and published for all members of the Church,” Elder Oaks said to his all-male audience, while equally concerned women like me were getting drenched in the rain outside the guarded door. He continued,
“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? When a woman—young or old—is set apart to preach the gospel as a full-time missionary, she is given priesthood authority to perform a priesthood function. The same is true when a woman is set apart to function as an officer or teacher in a Church organization.”
(Dallin H. Oaks, The Keys and Authority of the Priesthood, April 2014)
At this point, he added an important disclaimer. A woman’s priesthood is “under the direction of one who holds the keys of the priesthood,” or in other words, under the direction of a man.
Elder Oaks was building on ideas shared by Elder M. Russell Ballard a few months earlier during a speech at Brigham Young University.
“Those who have priesthood keys—whether that be a deacon who has keys for his quorum or a bishop who has keys for his ward or a stake president who has keys for his stake or the president of the Church who holds all priesthood keys—literally make it possible for all who serve or labor faithfully under their direction to exercise priesthood authority and have access to priesthood power.”
(M. Russell Ballard, Let Us Think Straight, August 2013)
He didn’t call out women specifically there, but it is fair to infer that “all who serve or labor faithfully” under the direction of the males he did mention—like the bishop or the 12-year-old deacon’s quorum president—might include women. But he tried not to let the exhilarating suggestion that we ladies could exercise priesthood authority while serving under the direction of a 12-year-old boy go to our heads. He clarified,
“Now, sisters, in speaking this frankly with men, may I also exercise a moment of candor with you. While your input is significant and welcomed in effective councils, you need to be careful not to assume a role that is not yours. Ward and stake councils that are the most successful are those in which priesthood leaders trust their sister leaders and encourage them to contribute to the discussions and in which sister leaders fully respect and sustain the decisions of the council made under the direction of priesthood leaders who hold keys.”
(M. Russell Ballard, Let Us Think Straight, August 2013)
Elder Ballard also pointed to the temple endowment as a source of priesthood power for women.
“When men and women go to the temple, they are both endowed with the same power, which by definition is priesthood power. …All who enter the house of the Lord officiate in the ordinances of the priesthood. This applies to men and women alike.”
(M. Russell Ballard, Let Us Think Straight, August 2013)
He did not explain why this kind of priesthood power only makes it possible to officiate ordinances inside temple walls but not out in public, where women continue to be banned from officiating ordinances.
“You just don’t understand,” is the typical, patronizing response given to women who can’t see how church leaders can claim women have priesthood authority while continuing to ban them from the priesthood.
But according to late apostle Boyd K. Packer, it was never supposed to be hard to understand who has the priesthood.
“Some members of the Church are now teaching that priesthood is some kind of a free-floating authority which can be assumed by anyone who has had the endowment. …Do not miss that one simple, obvious absolute. Priesthood ever and always is conferred by ordination by one who holds proper authority, and it is known to the Church that he has it.”
(Boyd K. Packer, The Temple, the Priesthood, April 1993)
This kind of priesthood authority that church leaders are now claiming women have despite their continued ban on women’s ordination, the kind that comes without authority to administer ordinances outside the temple or give blessings or lead congregations, the kind that is so nearly invisible you have to squint really hard to find it, is anything but obvious.
Earlier this week, Sister J. Anette Dennis, First Counselor in the General Relief Society General Presidency, paraphrased Oaks’s and Ballard’s words.
“There is no other religious organization in the world, that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women. There are religions that ordain some women to positions such as priests and pastors, but very few relative to the number of women in their congregations receive that authority that their church gives them. By contrast, all women, 18 years and older, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who choose a covenant relationship with God in the house of the Lord are endowed with priesthood power directly from God. And as we serve in whatever calling or assignment, including ministering assignments, we are given priesthood authority to carry out those responsibilities. My dear sisters, you belong to a Church which offers all its women priesthood power and authority from God!”
(J. Anette Dennis, Worldwide Relief Society Devotional and Testimony Meeting, March 2024)
When the LDS church quoted Sister Dennis on its Instagram account, readers posted more than 13,000 comments, most of which were rebuttals from LDS women. Why has the response to Sister Dennis’s words been so much more negative than the responses Oaks and Ballard received ten years ago?
I hope this isn’t what’s happening, but it could just be another textbook case of gender bias. We accepted these words when they came from a man with (obvious) authority. When we heard the same thing from a woman, we felt more skeptical and knew we had more latitude to disagree.
It might be because the same words sound more like a betrayal when they come from another woman. We know our woman leaders are not elected by women to represent us, but rather appointed by men to serve at their disposal as female representatives of the brethren. Even so, we can’t help but want the women closest to the (obvious) authority figures of our church to advocate for us instead of gaslighting us.
Maybe it’s because when we first heard these speeches, we hoped they were a signal of change to come. Now that some of the brethren were willing to concede that priesthood wasn’t equivalent to maleness, and that women can and do exercise the priesthood, shouldn’t ordaining women to priesthood office be a natural next step?
A decade later, we know that didn’t happen. Our male leaders dug in their heels and refused to ordain women even when a worldwide pandemic kept many women socially distanced from the priesthood-holding men in their congregations, unable to partake of the sacrament or receive priesthood blessings when they succumbed to the virus.
We’ve seen the rhetoric around LDS women and priesthood change before. In the 19th century, back when it was socially acceptable to say such things, church leaders openly asserted that only men could hold the priesthood because they were the superior sex. By the mid-20th century, the rhetoric reversed. Suddenly, women were too good to need the priesthood. And now we have a new era, when women don’t get ordained to the priesthood because we already have it. When the reasoning behind a church policy changes so drastically, that’s a clue that the reasons were never doctrines, just excuses.
It’s time we stopped making excuses and ordained women to the priesthood—the obvious kind of priesthood.
This post is part of a series related to the March 2024 debacle where 8,000+ comments, largely by women, responding to the LDS Church’s Instagram post quoting Sister J. Anette Dennis appeared to have been deleted for several hours. Though the comments were restored, Sister Dennis’ talk and the Instagram post have inspired significant thought and conversation.
Not doctrine, just excuses. Over and over and over forever and ever and ever. Amen.
I think you’re right that women felt much safer to push back on words from a top female leader than when something offensive comes from an apostle’s lips. It also definitely hurts even more when it comes from a woman, who you’d hope could understand why things are so problematic for us in the church. Unfortunately, it appears that church leaders choose women who will strictly represent their views, not women to represent the membership to them.
The fact that the church has allowed all those rebuttal comments to stand, instead of deleting them, is evidence that it is safer. I don’t think church would tolerate 14,000+ comments(the count has increased since I wrote this yesterday) critiquing something a male leader said. They would shut it down.
This feels like an important observation in this larger conversation.
I am fine with ordaining women to the priesthood.
My concern is that “including women as priesthood holders” wouldn’t solve the root problems of a) respecting women’s competency and including women’s perspectives and voices (that is a “worldly trap” after all in the “church vs world” binary narrative), b) making the priesthood authority structure more relevant for men (the men that are needed to run the church administration – there would be years of fallout before the ward-defining guidelines actually stopped prioritizing men), c) change a culture where women thrive on “soft influence” and men on “direct authority”.
I think the biggest problem is that “salvation” looks kinda like a variation on “the hero’s journey” and some of us actually think that the “heroine’s journey” is an actually more useful description for what the process is (before we are mansplained to that “of course the hero’s journey is universal and amazing”). As part of my heroine journey, I had to “revisit myself” and “revise my meaning assigned to specific experiences” – which meant departing from the “covenant path” to do it.
I was part of Ordain Women and the rainy day that April talks about here, and my perspective always was that ordination wouldn’t solve any of the problems in the church – but that it was the first necessary step to start tackling them. Women and girls will never be seen as equally intelligent or valuable to men and boys until they’re given the same opportunities, and we can’t even begin that long, difficult process until women are also given the priesthood.
Alternately, 100 percent of the women take a “heroine’s journey”, leave the church, and never come back – and it crumbles without us.
Ordaining women will not solve all the problems. But I believe ending the female priesthood ban is a necessary part of the solution.
Whoa. This is incredible. Thank you for the research, history, powerful writing, and insight. Your essay is well structured and clear. Thank you for this.
The drum I keep beating is that why can I not be sealed to my second husband?! Oh yes, I can after I die… but not now since I am sealed to my late husband… but wait! I can request a cancellation of my sealing to my late husband and do it now… come on! If I can be sealed after I am dead, why not NOW?!!!
I’ve heard of someone being granted an exception but it was a long process with an appeal to the first presidency, which is ridiculous as you point out why it shouldn’t matter
Yes!! Thank you!!!
Deb, that is such a great example of a sexist policy that affects women in a deeply personal way and exists because we have a system where only men have authority to make church policy. It is so apparent that it is a policy written by men. Men want to be sealed to any woman they marry, so they allow that for themselves. Men are uncomfortable with the idea of being replaced after they die with a woman’s second husband, so they disallow that.
Thank you so much for this post.
I was assigned to teach the 2014 talk in RS that summer, and boy howdy, I pushed back! But unless you were in my ward, you didn’t know that because I didn’t say anything online. That year, the talk combined with a couple of personal situations changed me in so many ways.
The difference in response now to Elder Oaks then – did you take these circumstances into consideration:
I don’t think we used social media then the way we do now – yeah, it existed but the LDS women’s community within it hadn’t formed yet and/or built up to the current levels.
Over the past 10 years, we’ve had a lot of teasers that didn’t amount to anything. The biggest for me was President Nelson’s talk in the October 2019 women’s session was entirely about women and the priesthood, including studying specific scriptures. Which I did, and became absolutely convinced that in April 2020, all the hoopla about the Restoration anniversary was leading up to something for women. Instead, we got Oaks doubling down that ONLY MEN PRESIDE. The irony that he immediately followed Sister Bingham who gave a great talk about men and women working together was enough to choke a horse.
The conversation about Heavenly Mother has exploded in the past few years, despite Elder Renlund’s 2022 admonition to cool our jets.
No matter who said it, it looks like a lot of women have hit their limit, and they’re not going to put up with the platitudes anymore.
Was the 2019 admonition perhaps in response to the temple changes? I’ve been on the outskirts (ie mostly out until recently) so not sure of the timing of those
There were a lot of changes to the endowment and sealing in January 2019 (no more veil covering the face, Eve got more lines, etc). The talk in October 2019 was positive and motivating, and seemed to be making a declaration of “women, this is what you have.” I thought, “thank you for finally explaining this,” rather than feeling patronized for “you should have known this already” like Oaks in 2014. I was not aware of any negative feedback (not to say it didn’t happen, but I didn’t see it). The temple changes and talk may very well have been intentionally connected – that hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes sense.
There were further endowment changes in 2022, overhauling the introduction to outline the covenants and to focus the whole thing more on Christ. I’ve been only a couple of times to see those changes so I can’t speak to them.
As someone who has been involved in online Mormon feminism for over ten years, I personally don’t think a weak online Mormon feminist community was the issue. I remember a thriving and bold Mormon feminist community that was organized and highly active on the internet, as well as using the internet as a tool to organize in-person activism.
I love your points about additional disappointments over the last decade that may be fueling frustrations for LDS women. For those who may not remember everything Trina mentioned, I’ll post some links.
The April 2020 call for women to study specific scriptures about priesthood before General Conference: https://exponentii.org/blog/when-the-church-asks-the-ladies-to-study-male-only-priesthood-before-general-conference/
It seemed like something big was about to happen for women regarding priesthood; why else would the church want women and only women to study up on priesthood? It appears that the real reason they assigned just women is because they assume women are less knowledgeable and need extra homework to keep up.
Here is Oaks’s talk from that session, with its many mentions of stuff women are not allowed to do because men preside: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2020/04/36oaks?lang=eng
And Bingham’s talk about men and women working together: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2020/04/34bingham?lang=eng
Here is some great discussion of Renlund’s 2022 talk that had a chilling effect on discussion of Heavenly Mother and even on mentions of Heavenly Parents: https://exponentii.org/blog/elder-renlund-heavenly-mother-is-not-a-weapon/
April, thank you for sharing these links. I really appreciate your wealth of knowledge.
I also thought Nelsen was gearing up to give women the priesthood during this general conference. I was so dismayed and angry when the priesthood talks reinforced the status quo and introduced nothing new for women. This was the last straw for me with attending church. I decided to take a break from it after this conference, and I haven’t been back. There have been changes in the church that have brought me hope about leaders viewing women as human beings and children of God, but these changes have always come with other messages and policies that communicate clearly these men don’t think women are like them. They don’t believe women should have the same opportunities or the same recognition. They don’t believe women will even become deified the same way in the eternities. Women are supporting characters in an all male story.
I feel sorry for Sister Dennis. I’m sure she thought she was sending a message of empowerment by claiming priesthood power for endowed women.
Unfortunately many of us have been alive long enough to member when LDS women were actively discouraged from becoming endowed until mission or marriage. Im glad we encourage single women to become endowed whenever they choose, but I suspect it’s because they did some sort of statistical survey showing endowed women are more engaged with the faith, could not determine the endowment was causal or coincident, and decided to just get everyone signed on just in case it was causal.
No woman is ordained or has priesthood conferred on her in the temple, I’m sorry to say. Do remember there is, in fact, a separate conferring of priesthood upon male proxies before the temple endowment that no woman, alive or dead, receives.
It is my opinion that our (very) modern claim that endowment is one of power is contrary to what Brigham (guy who essentially wrote the thing) intended. Brigham said the endowment was to teach us the secret handshakes and passwords to get to God. I don’t think early LDS saw it as an endowment of power but some sort of gnostic endowment of knowledge.
All of this, to me, means all this talk of female power through endowment or marriage or whatever is gaslighting by well-meaning but ill-informed people claiming what they wish would happen has.
I always wondered if there was a separate ceremony in the temple for males that included the priesthood. My husband never confirmed it when I asked him so maybe it’s a secret? Is it part of the initiatories?
For me, it was the betrayal of a woman trying to gaslight other women that made me more angry. It was not at all that a woman is “easier to attack” because I have no problem getting angry at top church leaders. I can take a certain amount of downright stupidity and blindness from OLD old men, but when it comes from a woman with less life experience who came of age after the women’s movement, then I feel like slapping the brat silly. Sorry, but that is the impolite feeling. Old men, I might forgive because they were born prior to the 1960s women’s movement, but from a younger woman it is nothing but a betrayal of her sex for more ability to influence those with the real power. So, she sold us out. She’s an Aunt Tom (instead of the Uncle Tom who sold out salves) maybe from more recently Aunt Liddya from the Handmaid’s Tale. Maybe we should start calling our “women’s leaders” who are nothing but mouth piece for the men over them and not leaders at all, Aunt instead of Sister.
I notice I am too angry to even say the traitor’s name. Right now, she is just Aunt Liddya.
As a child of the 50s myself, I have had misgivings about priesthood for women. I was raised to expect differences in the way men and women were treated. And I was pregnant with my second child as primary President, then pregnant with my third child while RSP, and I really could not do it. Both calling were just too much as very unfair to me and my existing children and my husband. Women who are pregnant or with small children need smaller callings, and the bigger callings need to go to those who are not already over burdened or sick with a pregnancy. But then, actually the same goes for men. Men with several small children should not be asked to abandon their wives with the small children while they devote hours and hours a month to the Young men. I have seen divorces because the wife ended up feeling abandoned by her bishop husband.
But Abby is correct that we need to get started toward real equality by giving women real power in the church. The problem women have with priesthood when they say, “I already have too much to do,” is really a problem of the church demanding too much from bishops, from RSP, and all of the big callings. It is not at all a problem solved by not giving women priesthood, as I experienced. The problem is really the church demanding too much and not taking “no” for an answer without blacklisting people as less that good members. We as a church need to be given real permission to turn down callings, until the church catches on the bishop and RSP are big jobs and need to be broken up into less time consuming callings and a whole bunch of other restructuring.
Start with the obvious. Deacon was never meant to be a position for 11 year old children. The job description in the D&C is obviously meant for adults, with the bishop being over a group of adult men. Not children. As set up, the RS was independent of male/priesthood control. Women were ordained to RSP. And back before 1970 correlation when RS went under the priesthood, the RSP had real power in her ward. Yeah, I am young enough to remember. Let’s go back to how Joseph Smith tried to set up the church, instead of more power given to more and younger male children.
Oh Anna, I want to be your friend. I’m feeling like the oldster with these feelings, and I’m grateful that I’m not alone. Mother bless you.
Thanks for your comments Anna. I want to add some articles I have written in the past relevant to the things you mentioned in your last paragraph for people who may be intrigued by what you said and want to read more discussion of those topics..
The shift from the adult-centered roles for the Aaronic priesthood given in D&C and the modern shift to giving those roles to young boys:
https://exponentii.org/blog/my-eleven-year-old-son-and-ordination-to-the-lds-male-only-priesthood/
The history of the Relief Society:
https://exponentii.org/blog/confirming-our-hope-women-and-priesthood/
The effects of the correlation movement on Relief Society:
https://exponentii.org/blog/ordination-is-the-answer-to-correlation/
“Why has the response to Sister Dennis’s words been so much more negative than the responses Oaks and Ballard received ten years ago?”
This may be simplistic, but I think a big factor is that the initial Instagram post just highlighted that first sentence from Sister Dennis: “There is no other religious organization in the world, that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women.” It didn’t (that I saw) offer the context of the quote, in which she acknowledged that some other traditions ordain women.
I myself had a negative reaction to that initial Instagram post. It made Sister Dennis look like she was obtuse and ignorant, unaware that many other traditions have female priests who can rise to the highest levels of leadership. Many of the comments pushing back were emphasizing the authority of women in other traditions, so I think many of these commenters, like I, probably hadn’t seen the full context of the quote.
I’m less outraged now that I see the full context. As your write, April, what she says is very much in line with what other male leaders have been saying for the last ten years. Don’t get me wrong — these assertions that women have an amorphous priesthood power are extremely unsatisfying to me. Clearly, the priesthood that truly matters in this church is the priesthood that allows men to officiate ordinances, lead congregations, determine budgets and responsibilities, choose leaders, and receive revelation for the organization. Women are shut out of all these tasks. I’ll never be satisfied with “priesthood power.” This rhetoric feels empty, like it’s an attempt to pacify and cajole women into being satisfied with their status of having very, very little institutional power.
Great post.
I totally agree with this. Highlighting that line without the context of the talk was a huge mistake by the Instagram account (not that the line isn’t still problematic). When I listened to the broadcast, with full context, while the comparison to other faiths made me cringe, I felt that Sister Dennis purpose was to have sisters claim more authority which I appreciated. I’d like to see that happen in lots of ways including opening the conversation on ordination again. I didn’t hear her say that ordination is not possible. And while the talk was far from perfect, the fact that the topic is being put on the worldwide stage, even in less than ideal ways, is good. I like to think we’re headed on a projectory for more change.
This is an excellent post. By this kind of logic: everyone who performs a church function in a calling where they were set apart by a man with priesthood keys, the only people who need ordination are men and boys who hold keys. As April has mentioned officiating ordinances does not require ordination because women do this in the temple. So to make things a smidge more equal, the church could not ordain men or women, and then only ordain men when they are called to a position where they need priesthood keys. Sure you would have a super awkward smattering of 11 year old deacon presidents being ordained and middle-aged bishops being ordained while a bunch of other men and boys remain unordained. But women already have to live with that discrepancy, so why can’t men?
If this became a new policy, it would actually make way more sense than the current nonsense of telling women when they visit a sister’s house they’ve been assigned to that they are exercising priesthood authority. It’s absurd.
There was so much Sister Dennis left unsaid with her quote.
1. Relatively few women are ordained in other congregations. No kidding, so are relatively few men because those churches don’t ordain half their congregations with a lay ministry model. Nice false comparison.
2. Women are endowed because they choose a covenant relationship with God. 8 year olds also choose a covenant relationship with God through baptism. In fact, this binding covenant is the first in the “covenant path.” So I guess all the primary kids 8 and up are also exercising priesthood power and authority. We don’t give callings to children, but children are still asked to do things during primary by women who have been set apart by priesthood holders; therefore, when children perform their assignments, they are exercising godly power and authority.
3. Women belong in a church that offers all its women priesthood power and authority. Why? This part is so interesting because Sister Dennis presupposes that offering priesthood power and authority to as many people as possible (all women 18 and older) is good. It’s assumed that a more equal distribution of God’s power and authority is righteous. The irony of this is astounding. Right so we want God’s power and authority to be distributed in an egalitarian way but just not God’s ordination because that’s super special. When something is special, you only know it’s special because of its scarcity. If everyone had it, even the unwashed masses of women at church, it just wouldn’t be as special. Kind of like salvation. That’s definitely something God doesn’t want just anyone to have. We all know Jesus operates in scarcity mode, not inviting just anyone to come to Him.
Most Christian denominations have a priesthood of all believers model. This amorphous priesthood power church leaders have now decided we get via the temple endowment sounds to me an awful lot like the power of Christ that all those who believe on him and are trying to live a Christlike life can draw on in those other denominations. So no, we are not more empowered, we are less so, because they are tying it to temple covenants rather than baptism / faith.
This is a great point.
As an unendowed member I’ve noticed this as well . Prior to 2014 I was told I had the power of the Holy Ghost to guide me in my callings and lead me through life’s challenges. I don’t hear much about that anymore. Instead this has been rebranded to this vaguely defined priesthood power through covenants I haven’t made, so the way my church involvement is talked about is now less equal than before despite the fact that nothing has changed in terms of what I can actually do.
Brava, April! Thanks for capturing this history and the context in your post. #ordainwomen
Great post.
Two weeks ago, in a devotional at BYU, Elder Renlund spoke about how we covenants bind us to Christ, and the more we leave the tighter we are bound to him. He even used an analogy with exercise bands and brought students up from the audience, binding their hands with the bands to demonstrate. He only mentioned priesthood-ordination for men once, in passing, but the message was ‘seek for all the covenants! The more covenants, the better!’ Once again, if we are to seek after all the covenants and “all the Father has” why wouldn’t this include ordination? Sister Dennis’s remarks with this as a backdrop was especially frustrating and felt gaslighty.
April, youʻve given us a great update to the classic Chicken Patriarchy post! I thought some of the younger women here might not be familiar with it yet:
https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2007/11/30/the-trouble-with-chicken-patriarchy/
Ah, thanks for sharing one of my favorite classics. I think the act that I am writing along the same lines demonstrates how influential this essay was for me years ago.