And after weeks of study, this is what I have gathered, in summary:

Elder Boyd K. Packer has stated that the way Mormons now conceive of priesthood authority—restricted to men, identical with administrative authority, and opposite to motherhood–is not necessarily grounded in scripture; it may be just as much an outgrowth of tradition or custom.  Priesthood keys are, in fact, rather haphazardly defined in scriptures, and they do not map neatly onto current LDS Church administrative functions.  LDS Church historians date the implementation of our current concept of priesthood (as identified with men only and with exclusive administrative authority, and in opposition to motherhood) to the middle twentieth century, as introduced by leaders like John Widtsoe.  Before Widtsoe, there is evidence of a more expansive notion of priesthood in Mormonism, dating from the moment in 1843 when Joseph Smith made the daring and I’d argue revelatory decision to interpret Exodus 40: 12 – 15 to apply to both men and women, effectively vesting women with priesthood through the endowment ceremony.  An expansive sense of priesthood authority survives into the early twentieth century in the continuing practice of LDS women giving blessings of healing and even washings and anointings preparatory to childbirth.  This practice contracted during the 1920s and 1930s.  Correlation as an administrative program was introduced in the 1940s and 1950s and was used as a premise to contract the authority of women over their own auxiliaries in the 1960s and 1970s, as historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has remembered.  We have seen a very modest recent correction in renewed emphasis on the use of mixed-gender councils at the level of ward decision making.  But if we track the institutional authority of LDS women from the 1840s to today, could one plausibly characterize the situation of Mormon women as a restoration incomplete?

My goal this week is to follow the distinction Elder Packer has made and to understand the distinction between practices based in tradition or custom and practices that reflect a consistent and coherent LDS doctrine.  Recently, we’ve seen the Church quietly set aside a longstanding custom of not inviting women to pray at General Conference.  This was purely tradition; it was not reflective of a consistent or coherent LDS doctrine.  Are there other customs in the way we assign authority that do not in fact have a foundation in consistent or coherent LDS doctrine?

It appears that there is a subarticulate LDS doctrine that endowed LDS women do enjoy  priesthood power, even if they are not ordained to  priesthood offices.  Many Mormons take this as a deduction from the fact that LDS women conduct some temple ceremonies with authority delegated by the temple president, as well as by the fact that women in LDS temples participate fully in the priesthood-bearing rites described in Exodus 40: 12 – 15.

The distinction between a general priesthood power and specific administrative authority is often framed through the language of priesthood “keys.”  But to study the scriptural definitions of keys is to find that keys outlined in the scriptures don’t neatly or consistently cohere with the shape of administrative responsibilities in the contemporary LDS church.  In our current handbook, some positions are restricted to male priesthood holders that do not in fact have particular scripturally-delineated keys associated with them.  The question that emerges for me, then, is, if the handbook restricts a particular administrative responsibility to a male Melchizedek priesthood holder but there are no keys associated with that position, is this restriction based on custom (as in the case of women praying in sacrament meeting or General Conference)? 

 There are some gender-restricted callings that are clearly based in custom only.  For example:

Ecclesiastical positions customarily restricted to men that do not require priesthood power or authority (office / keys)

• Sunday School Presidencies
• Church historian

Then, there are gender-restricted callings that stipulate Melchizedek priesthood but have no particular keys associated with them.  Is this a case where if a woman is in fact viewed as being capable of holding delegated authority, as women do in the temple, women might someday be permitted to serve in these capacities as well? For example:

Positions restricted to Melchizedek priesthood authority holders in the current Handbook but that do not hold scripturally-indicated priesthood keys

• Witnesses to baptisms and temple sealings
• Stake and ward clerks
• Stake and ward executive secretaries
• Stake high council
• Ward and stake mission leaders
• Bishopric counselors
• Counselors in temple, mission, stake, branch, district, and ward and stake auxiliary presidencies

There are also non-calling associated responsibilities that are customarily restricted by gender, but this restriction is clearly customary and does not have a consistent and coherent doctrinal foundation.  For example:

Responsibilities that do not require ordination to Melchizedek priesthood office

• Blessing the sick (by historical precedent)
• Blessings of comfort and counsel before childbirth (by historical precedent)
• Father’s (and mother’s) blessings

There are also responsibilities that are restricted to male Melchizedek priesthood holders by the current Handbook but that do not entail scripturally-indicated priesthood keys and / or delegated authority.  For example:

Responsibilities that under current Handbook policies require ordination to Melchizedek priesthood office

• Dedicating homes and graves
• Consecrating oil
• Blessing babies
• Witnessing baptisms / sealings

And there are responsibilities that scripture clearly associates with priesthood keys.  For example:

Responsibilities that under current Handbook policies require ordination as well as delegated Melchizedek priesthood authority / keys

• Temple endowments
• Setting apart
• Baptisms
• Confirmations
• Ordinations
• Presiding at meetings and over stakes, wards, branches, and quorums
• Worthiness and ordinance interviews
• Church discipline
• Issuing callings

What to do with these distinctions, I’ll get to next week.  But in the meantime, it’s worth noting that many, many administrative responsibilities within the institutional culture of the LDS Church that have nothing to do with priesthood at all have been customarily restricted by gender, and this sends a powerful message about the value of women’s experience and authority within the Mormon world.  These non-ecclesiastical segregations should be viewed as purely customary.  Still, left uninterrogated, they seem to communicate the stamp of divine intent. I’m thinking here, for example, of the boards and leadership of all LDS Church subsidiaries and Church-owned corporations including universities (BYU, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, etc.), corporations (Bonneville, etc.), boards and leaderships of Church subsidiaries including universities (BYU, LDS Business College, etc.), corporations (Deseret Management Corporation, including Bonneville Communications, Deseret Book, etc.), Church Educational System, Humanitarian Services, LDS Family Services.  If Mormonism truly values equality, where better to begin than by striving for 50%-50% representation on the boards of all major Church subsidiaries and within the leadership of Church-owned corporations?  This isn’t even a matter of ecclesiastical authority or doctrine!

Send your query to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow @askmormongirl on Twitter.

This understanding of priesthood seems to emerge in the middle decades of the twentieth century during the “Correlation” movement—an administrative and theological project undertaken by LDS Church leaders to standardize, modernize, and codify Mormon doctrine and practice for uniform administration in a growing and newly global church.

We see one document of this correlation movement and its consolidation of priesthood with the authority to administer the LDS Church in John Widtsoe’s Priesthood and Church Government (1939). Widtsoe culls from a range of Mormon source-texts (Journal of Discourses, for example) a number of statements that he organizes into a rationale for the alignment of priesthood powers, patriarchal authority in the family, and church administration.  This is not a logic originating with Joseph Smith, but one that emerges with the modernization and correlation of twentieth-century Mormonism.

The correlation movement also seems to have produced the first formally articulated “correlation” of priesthood with gender roles.  Historian Sonja Farnsworth locates the first mention in LDS history of motherhood as the female correlate to male priesthood in the 1954 revision of Widtsoe’s Priesthood and Church Government. This modern motherhood-priesthood dyad grew into a powerful element of Mormon identity, as the LDS Church established missionary and public relations campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s that mobilized a particular definition of family and especially in the Church’s formal opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

The way we understand priesthood today dates to this mid-twentieth century moment in Mormon history.  It is a product of correlation.  The correlation movement gives us a vocabulary for priesthood that we utilize today:

Offices:  This term is now used to refer to the ranks of priesthood ordination available to men: deacon, teacher, priest, elder, high priest, and so forth.

Keys:  This term is now used to refer to specific authorizations to administer LDS Church rites or “ordinances” as well as to the authority to function in specific callings.

Fullness / power:  There are several terms one finds in use to indicate access to priesthood power beyond offices and keys. The term “fullness”  appears in D&C 124:28 in reference to the temple, as the place where God will “restore” “the fullness of the priesthood.”  As introduced by Joseph Smith, the idea of the “fullness” of the priesthood originally referred to powers conveyed to men and women through the LDS temple rite known as the second anointing. (For more, read here.)  Today, however, it is increasingly common to hear the phrase “fullness of the priesthood” used by Mormons who want to gesture towards an equality of status shared by men and women who have received their temple endowments and / or entered into eternal marriage.  One also occasionally hears the term “power of the priesthood” used in this broadly inclusive sense, as Elder M. Russell Ballard taught in April General Conference:  the power of the priesthood is accessible to men and women, even if the “authority” of the priesthood is restricted to men. This understanding seems to be underscored by the language of D&C 121, which specifies both “rights” (authority) and “power” (fullness) of the priesthood.

Yet to study the ways these terms have been defined is also to find the limits of our current definitions.

For example, we find in Exodus 40:12 – 15 a description of rituals administered in the tabernacle erected by Moses.  Those familiar with LDS temple rites will recognize that in LDS temples these rites are now extended to men and women.  Exodus 40:13 states that Aaron by virtue of these rites “may minister unto me in the priest’s office”; Exodus 40:15 states that these rites “shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations.”  These scriptures raise the question of why LDS women who have also been through these rites today are not acknowledged in day-to-day Mormon life as priesthood holders, and even priesthood “office” holders. Why the euphemistic use of the motherhood-priesthood dyad in day-to-day Mormon life and teaching rather than an open acknowledgement of the implications of Exodus 40?

Those familiar with LDS temple rites also understand that by the Correlation-era definition of keys as authority pertaining to specific offices, women who administer LDS temple rites may also be understood to hold keys as they perform their duties. Again, why are these keys not acknowledged in day-to-day LDS life and in the way priesthood is taught in our manuals and over the pulpit? Rather than the priesthood-motherhood dyad?

It also seems that the way we use the term “keys” today does not map neatly onto the set of priesthood keys identified in scripture.  For example, in D&C 13, the keys of the Aaronic priesthood are identified as “the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentence, and of baptism by immersion;” D&C 84 adds the key of “the preparatory gospel.” D&C 84 describes the keys of the “greater” priesthood as the “key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God;” D&C 107 adds to it “the right of presidency, and power and authority over all the offices in the church in all ages of the world, to administer in spiritual things.”  (These sections of the D&C specify these keys as belonging to men, but this was in 1832 and 1835, long before Joseph Smith’s 1843 introduction of the endowment for women.)

These scripturally indicated keys are not co-extensive with the range of responsibilities now reserved to men in the LDS Church.  I am thinking particularly here of the Melchizedek priesthood keys to “administer in spiritual things.”  It is not indicated (in scripture at least) that these keys include the exclusive right to administer the temporal affairs of the Church, including curriculums, budgets, membership records, investments, personnel decisions, public prayers, and so forth. Nor are powers of healing by the laying on of hands indicated in these scriptures as keys to be restricted to Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood holders.  Historians like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich remind us that Mormon women did in fact exercise a greater range of administrative authority until the middle decades of the twentieth century than they do now, and the history of Mormon women’s healing by the laying on of hands is well documented .

I’ll close with a quote from Elder Boyd K. Packer I came across while studying this week.  He has a very Widstoe-like article laying out principles of priesthood and church administration that was published in the 1993 February Ensign, an article entitled, “What Every Elder Should Know—And Every Sister as Well—A Primer on Principles of Priesthood Government.”  Here are his closing words:

“There are some things about the priesthood that every elder should know if he is to understand how the Church is governed to have things right before the Lord. There are principles and precepts and rules which are often overlooked and seldom taught. Some of these principles are found in the scriptures, others in the handbooks. Some of them are not found in either. They are found in the Church. You might call them traditions, but they are more than that. They are revelations which came when the Brethren of the past assembled themselves, agreed upon His word, and offered their prayers of faith. The Lord then showed them what to do. They received by revelation, ‘line upon line, precept upon precept,’ true principles which form the priesthood way of doing things. (See Isa. 28:13; 2 Ne. 28:30; D&C 98:12.)”

These words really struck me.  For Elder Packer acknowledges what historians of LDS priesthood and Church government have shown: that the way we do things now is not the way things have always been done.  Some understandings that now structure the practice of LDS priesthood are “not found in either” scripture or handbooks. They have emerged from the process of continuing revelation, which for me means God’s long dialogue with a people.  History does not support an understanding of our current priesthood structure as identical to that in the lifetime of Jesus Christ, or Joseph Smith.  The use of the term priesthood as an umbrella term for male-only authority to perform ordinances, administer all church affairs (temporal and spiritual), preside as patriarch in the home, and exclusively practice powers such as healing by laying on of hands, and as the dyadic correlate to motherhood, is a product of the middle decades of the twentieth century.  We already see movement away from this correlation-era understanding in directions from LDS Church leaders to use desegregated male-female councils in decision making.  And we see evidence of its internal contradictions and limitations when we try and reconcile it with LDS temple worship.

Seeking clarification at these pressure points may lead to better understanding of what priesthood is.  But I suspect that more pragmatic considerations—inefficiency, inability to staff all positions now segregated by gender—may be an impetus to further seeking.  Are there positions now segregated by gender that do not in fact require priesthood keys but that we have traditionally under our correlation-era understanding of priesthood assigned to men only?

Readers, I’ll leave it there for this week. Thank you for letting me share what I have been studying. As always, I look forward to learning from you in the comments below.

1. 1.    Can anyone find evidence in A) canonized scripture B) canonized revelation C) the words of Jesus Christ or D) the words of Joseph Smith that indicates the value of gender roles in the plan of salvation? (And yes, we all know that temple marriage is required for exaltation–but marriage does not necessarily mean gender roles.)

Commenter Matelda22spy wrote:

Female prophets in the Bible:
Luke 2:36-38.
Acts 21:9
Exodus 15:20
Judges 4:4
2 Kings 22:14
Isaiah 8:3

Female deacons:
Romans 16:1

Female apostle?
Romans 16:7

“Apostle” has its own meaning in the LDS Church. Maybe we best not count on its biblical meaning being exactly the same? In the Bible it appears to have been more synonymous with “missionary” than “leader.”

For example, in Romans 16:7, a woman named Junia is called “prominent among the apostles.” Meaning she was a missionary, i.e. an apostle? Some editors have changed it to the masculine Junias, but the original text contains the feminine.

Maybe other women have been similarly edited out of the scriptures, and restraints upon them edited in. Joseph Smith himself expressed concern that the Bible had translation errors and corruption, did he not?

Yet if men truly do play every role and serve as every voice/writer in the Bible, I see that as a point against religion, not a point against women. I’m not about to take anyone’s or any Church’s word for it that God expects nothing from me except procreation.

James 1:5

Commenter Michael S. went to the Joseph Smith papers, where he read notes from the Relief Society organization (http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book?dm=image-and-text&zm=zoom-inner&tm=expanded&p=19&s=undefined&sm=none)

“[Prest. J. Smith said] that the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood, hence there should be a select Society separate from all the evils of the world, choice, virtuous and holy— Said he was going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day— as in Pauls day”.

This is fascinating evidence to consider given the contemporary LDS emphasis on the priesthood-motherhood dyad / division of labor. The scriptures do not talk about a gendered division of labor in such terms.  They do talk about female prophets, apostles, and deacons.

It also appears that Joseph Smith did not talk about a gendered division of labor in such terms.  He did talk about the Relief Society as a “kingdom of priests” to whom he turned “keys.”

The priesthood-motherhood dyad / division of labor seems to enter  LDS discourse in the middle decades of the twentieth century.  Sonja Farnsworth’s classic study “Mormonism’s Odd Couple:  The Motherhood-Priesthood Connection” finds that “A survey of Mormon writings indicates that motherhood and priesthood were first officially linked in the 1954 revision of Apostle John A. Widtsoe’s book Priesthood and Church Government.” (Please read the entirety of her essay here: http://signaturebookslibrary.org/?p=975)

Of course, the motherhood-priesthood dyad takes its most formal and commanding shape with the Proclamation on the Family in 1995.  In asserting the eternal nature of gender as we know it on earth in twentieth-century European and Euro-American contexts as a basis for division of church responsibility in church leadership, the Proclamation actually innovates perspectives on gender that are not present in scripture.  The Proclamation has not been canonized as scripture.  Is it a revelation? This is a very sensitive subject because any statement issued by the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles must be regarded with great seriousness. It is also a fact of record that when Elder Boyd K. Packer described the Proclamation on the Family as a “revelation” in an October 2010 conference talk, that language was edited out prior to the talk’s publication in the Ensign.

Is a division of spiritual labor and authority founded in mortal biological differences an eternal principle?  Neither the scriptures nor the words of Joseph Smith appear to suggest so; the Proclamation on the Family does.

(As I was writing this, the phrase that kept coming to my mind was that the essential spiritual significance of mortal biological gender differences must be “hazarded with great diffidence.”  That’s a phrase straight out of Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) from the section where Jefferson attempts to locate essential significance in mortal biological differences of race. Jefferson attempted to use eighteenth-century science to argue that differences between blacks and whites went deeper than skin tone and indicated essential differences in human capacity.  Science since the time of Jefferson has troubled the idea that “racial” differences are substantial or essential.  Contemporary science also complicates the picture on gender as an essential and dualistic or dyadic difference.  We now recognize that gender differentiation in the human species takes place along a spectrum that includes ambiguously sexed and intersex individuals.  What significance if any is to be assigned to this spectrum of human variation is not clear.)

And now, here’s the second question I asked last week:

2.  How can we know what really counts as priesthood?  Which of the functions we group under the broad umbrella term “priesthood” now are really priesthood-limited responsibilities?

I received a wonderful message from reader Ronda, who reached out to a major historian of modern Mormonism.  His response is here:

 I spent a decade immersing myself in every primary and secondary source I could find that touched on priesthood in order to write Power from On High, and I have continued to ponder the subject in the 18 years since the book was published.  I have not changed my mind on a single, significant point in the process.  Here is my current synthesis:

There were no institutions in ancient times that bore any resemblance either to Aaronic Priesthood or Melchizedek Priesthood as we now have them within the LDS Church.  There are similarities, to be sure, in some names and some functions; but to say that LDS Aaronic Priesthood and Melchizedek Priesthood represent a one-for-one restoration of anything ancient does not hold water.

That said, there clearly was a priestly class, sometimes delineated by inheritance, sometimes by individual calling, through which some semblance of order was imposed on whatever structure there was at the time and place—because even at a given time during the New Testament period there were different churches in different areas behaving differently.  Hence, the letters of St. Paul.

In addition to the “called and ordained” priesthood, there was what St. Paul referred to as the “priesthood of all believers.”  More about this a little later.

Both the concept and the form that priesthood took within the LDS tradition were evolutionary and somewhat arbitrary.  For example, the notion of “authority” was what took Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery away from the translation process and to the waters of baptism.  For another two years the word “priesthood” was not even employed with reference to that authority.  Consider the fact that we have only three ordinance prayers (outside of temple rituals, which came much later) that have stipulated wording, and all three pre-date the formal founding of the Church in 1830: the baptismal prayer and the two sacramental prayers.  These are the earliest ordinances and they are the only ones that do not invoke, by name, the priesthood of the officiator.  Why?  Because there wasn’t a thing called “priesthood” at the time the prayers were formalized.  The over-arching names of Aaronic Priesthood and Melchizedek Priesthood were not introduced until 1835, and what they meant then was not a one-for-one relationship to their predecessors.  This is why the notation in the History of the Church that the June 1831 General Conference was “the first time the Melchizedek Priesthood had been given” was so problematic—problematic for the dual reasons that it was written in 1838 and applied anachronistically later terminology to an earlier period; and that what we recall as the restoration of the Melchizedek Priesthood (a similar anachronism) occurred in 1829 and not 1831.  See the problems emerging? 

Likewise, the offices within each priesthood umbrella were patched together somewhat haphazardly and over several years; and the very definition of a priesthood office is arbitrary. That is, we designate offices by tradition and not by function.  (In a circular definition, an office is whatever we say an office is.)  Thus, bishop is an office, but stake president, regional representative, area authority are not, even though functionally they all behave the same way.

The “complete” priesthood did not emerge in 1829.  What emerged then was the “authority” half, the legalistic part.  Sidney Rigdon provided the impetus for the other half shortly after he joined the Church late in 1830.  He traveled to New York to meet Joseph Smith, and within a few weeks was the scribe for a revelation (now LDS D&C 38) that called for the fledgling church to move to Ohio, where the elders would be “endowed with power from on high.”  Rigdon was drawing on Luke 24, wherein the resurrected Christ told the apostles whom he had already ordained (i.e., given “authority”) that they were not yet permitted to take the gospel to the world.  To do so, they needed a second element, which was “power from on high.”  They were told to tarry at Jerusalem until they received that endowment—an event known as the Pentecost that occurred a short time later and is described in Acts 2 (same author as Luke).  Rigdon’s break with Alexander Campbell (Rigdon had been a bishop in the Disciples of Christ movement that Campbell started) came over this issue, with Campbell acknowledging that gifts of the spirit had been part of the ancient church, but denying their legitimacy in the contemporary church.  Rigdon argued the opposite, that gifts of the spirit were essential to the True Church that he was seeking.

It is essential to differentiate between the non-contingent half of priesthood, which is legal authority that holds regardless of the worthiness of the officiator; and the contingent half (“power from on high”), which is the power through which the extraordinary can occur.  Put differently, a baptism performed by a bearer of the requisite priesthood will be recognized by the Church as valid even if he was an adulterer or murderer at the time he performed the ordinance.  But a blessing of restoration of health will be contingent upon the ability of the officiator to tap into the “power from on high.”  It is not automatic, and I suspect you have seen instances where great damage has been done by men who promised, in the context of a priesthood ordinance, something that they could not deliver.

Now, in light of the above statements, consider the following editorial that was published in the Improvement Era in 1931:

“Can any one, without the Priesthood, pray and have his prayers answered?  Or receive the Holy Ghost, with its gifts and manifestations?

The answer is Yes.  Men, women and children who do not hold the Priesthood have had their prayers answered millions of times in the history of Christianity the world over and in the history of this dispensation.  Men, women and children also receive the Holy Ghost after baptism through the laying on of hands.

May one have revelations and visions of heavenly beings, without the Priesthood?

Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery did so.  In May, 1829, John the Baptist appeared to them, and that was before either of them had been ordained.  It was John, in fact, who conferred the Priesthood upon them.  This function of having visions, of course, was exceptional in their case.

If, then, one may pray, may have his prayers answered, may have the Holy Ghost bestowed upon him, and may exercise many of its gifts, without holding any Priesthood, what is the place of Priesthood on the earth?

Chiefly Priesthood functions in connection with organization.  That is, the greatest need of Priesthood is where there is a service to be performed to others besides ourselves.

Whenever you do anything for, or in behalf of, someone else, you must have the right to do so.  If you are to sell property belonging to another, you must have his permission.  If you wish to admit an alien to citizenship in our government, you cannot act without having been commissioned to do so by the proper authority.

Now, a religious organization, or the Church, is in the last analysis a matter of service.  You baptize someone, or you confirm him, or you administer to him in case of sickness, or you give him the Sacrament or the Priesthood, or you preach the Gospel to him–what is this but performing a service?

Now, when it comes to earthly power to perform a definite service, we call it the power of attorney in the case of acting legally for someone else, or the court and the judge where it is a question of acting for the government.

But in the Church of Christ this authority to act for others is known as Priesthood.”  (“Priesthood Quorums–Why Priesthood At All?” ["All Melchizedek priesthood material is prepared under the direction of the Council of the Twelve"]; Improvement Era 34(12):735, Oct., 1931

I encountered this article while doing a deep search for the priesthood book.  I’ve never seen anyone else refer to it, perhaps because they don’t like what it says for today’s rigidly patriarchal church, and yet it speaks clearly to me what the possibilities are for today.  On the one hand, it acknowledges that women are entitled to the gifts of the spirit, something that was obvious to church members in the 19^th century but has been pushed into the shadows beginning in the early 20^th century.  On the other hand, it focuses on priesthood as being essentially legalistic.  The overall tone of the article is consistent with women’s exercise of “power from on high,” the spiritual side of our understanding of priesthood, and leaves unanswered the question of women acting in the legalistic aspects of priesthood.

Where does that leave us as we move forward?  In my opinion there is no canonical obstacle to the ordination of women in the LDS Church.  However, I see the situation as analogous to that of blacks and priesthood ordination, in the sense that while exclusion of both groups from ordination has been a matter of policy rather than canonical doctrine, the status quo is so firmly entrenched that it will require a revelation to move the Church to a new position.  In this vein, I find it interesting that William Critchlow, an Assistant to the Twelve, broached the subject in the October 1965 General Conference:  “When He whose business priesthood is wants the sisters to have it, he will let his prophet know, and until then there is nothing we can do about it.”  While that’s clearly not enough to hang one’s hopes on, nonetheless it is significant that he did not slam the door shut. 

And that’s the end of his letter.  Setting aside his final conclusions, the major take-away here I think worth noting is that the organization of priesthood offices and their relationship to administrative offices in the LDS Church has changed over time. Underscoring this point is a wonderful bibliography BYU has compiled of studies on the emergence of priesthood organization published on-line here: http://rsc.byu.edu/es/archived/firm-foundation/28-mormon-administrative-and-organizational-history-source-essay Even a quick glance at this bibliography reveals that the current understanding of priesthood which lumps together priesthood offices, priesthood keys, administrative offices, and institutional authority and then positions these all as the essential complement of motherhood is particular to late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century Mormonism.

The correlation movement in the twentieth-century encouraged LDS people to view our theology as a set of fixed and stable terms.  This was a good way to organize a curriculum that could be taught to a rapidly growing membership around the world.  It does not necessarily tell the whole story of a changing and evolving system of spiritual and institutional administration that our faith’s most careful scholars—like those acknowledged in the BYU bibliography—have richly documented.

In summary: the way it is is not the way it has always been.  It has not always been the case that priesthood is the name under which spiritual and administrative offices are referred to men alone as a complement to the biological function of motherhood.

Which leaves me hungry a) for a semester off from work to read the entire BYU-published bibliography and b) for a clearer understanding of how to differentiate the fullness of the priesthood, the offices of the priesthood, and the keys of the priesthood and what relationship they bear to positions of authority in administering spiritual power and institutional power.

And that is where I’ll leave it for this week, friends.  I await your thoughts.

I hope you will dig into the Sonja Farnsworth essay and, better yet, into the BYU bibliography, and report here what you find.

Parting question:  fullness, offices, keys—what other terms do we use today as LDS people to understand what priesthood is and how it works?

Thank you all for your thoughtful participation in this study hall.  I love that regular Mormon people take their faith so seriously.  I am learning a great deal from you, and I hope you are learning too.

Send your thoughts and queries to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow @askmormongirl on Twitter.

What we have instead is an accretion of scriptures, historical events, personal experiences, and interpretive impulses–a chaotic body of data that is typically managed in order to tell the story the speaker wants it to tell.   Every faith tradition has a theological history rich in chaos, and Mormonism is no exception.  What we can see at best as we begin to piece together the history of thought on questions like “What is priesthood?” and “What is the relationship of gender to priesthood?” is the human outlines of our hunger for the truth and the way in which the terms of our search for the truth have evolved over time.  Mormons call this process continuing revelation.  The more we learn about change in Mormon history and doctrine and the more prepared we are to be candid, we must acknowledge that human dispositions and error play a vital role in shaping Mormon doctrinal history–especially on questions of power and its administration.

The problems come when we mistake human impulses and dispositions for Godly intentions and assume that what seems familiar and right to us is in fact essentially reflective of reality.

For example, we now hear a great deal of talk in connection with priesthood about gender complementarity–the idea that the spiritual work of mothering is the intended complement to priesthood offices. This idea is spoken as if it is gospel truth–self-evident.

But is there one scrap of evidence in A) canonized scripture B) canonized revelation C) the words of Jesus Christ or D) the words of Joseph Smith that supports the notion that motherhood is a spiritual office that is the complement of priesthood?

Because unless someone can find me this kind of evidence, candidly, I believe we have to set this whole notion aside as well-intentioned (and by some, deeply felt, but for others, deeply counter-experiential and nonsensical) folk doctrine.  I am mindful that Valerie Hudson and other well-regarded scholars have put forward various accounts imagining the spiritual value of motherhood.  But these have no foundation in doctrine and bear virtually no resemblance to the actual practices and values (aside from rhetorical) of the contemporary LDS Church. They are as fanciful and speculative as Orson Pratt’s 19th century ponderings that spirit children are conceived in a manner that mirrors earthly procreation.  Fact is, we simply do not have a body of doctrine that establishes the role of gender in the plan of salvation.  Pretty much everything we can say about Heavenly Mother–that she exists–is the product of post-1843 speculation confirmed only in retrospect by later prophets like Gordon B. Hinckley.  We do not have evidence for Heavenly Mother in canonized scripture, canonized revelation, the words of Jesus Christ, or the words of Joseph Smith.  Sad fact, but there it is.  What we do have is the projection of familiar 19th century European-American assumptions about motherhood and gender (which are not universally held) onto the nature of God and eternity.  We have speculation, not doctrine.  We also have the use of the idea of complementarity as a rationale for excluding women from authority over the institutional, financial, political, and socio-cultural life of our community.  Again, this is a strange permutation of the use of the term “complementarity,” as we note if we compare our experience in a Church where 19th century Euro-American gender norms rule to the way complementarity is understood and practiced in non-Euro-American societies.  An indigenous Mormon reader of the column wrote in with this note:

[Lakota anthropologist] Bea Medicine and others define gender complementarity not only as recognizing gender differences, but, and this is important, sharing power and decision making.  She observes, “The cultural mandates from symbolic and mythic structures did actually reflect duality and complementarity in economic and social roles” (Medicine 141).  

We do not have duality and complementarity in Mormonism, except in our imaginations.

We must know what something is not in order to be able to understand what is.

This problem extends not only to the folk doctrine that has accumulated over the years to legitimate late 20th century gendered power segregation within LDS institutional life but to the way priesthood has been redefined in this time period to conflate administrative, ecclesiastical, ritual, spiritual, familial, and social offices.  Another reader wrote this week with the same concern:

With all the commotion around priesthood ordination, I determined to start studying what priesthood really means and how it has been described since the restoration. I’m finding that definitions are very inconsistent! Sometimes it’s God’s authority in general, sometimes it’s his power broadly, sometimes it’s specific keys, etc. The church’s most recent “worldwide leadership training” on priesthood authority only confused me more, with quotes like “I use my priesthood keys to perceive and meet the needs of my quorum” (what? Isn’t that just the spirit? so bizarre). I’m finding that keys and authority are even ill-defined; what are keys, specifically? They’re talked about generally all the time, but what specific keys come with ordination to the Aaronic priesthood, and how are they supposed to be used? Anyway, I have determined to try and study it out more, because it’s hard to know where women fall in all this when it’s unclear what priesthood even means, how it relates to spiritual gifts, etc. 

Exactly.  What really counts as priesthood?  Is healing the sick a priesthood office? Is managing the Church’s stock portfolios a priesthood office? Is presiding over a Church-owned university a priesthood office? Is saying a benediction a priesthood office? (It was classified as such during my lifetime.) Is serving on the High Council a priesthood office?

We must know what something is not in order to know what it is.

Okay, readers, next week we’ll start in on some readings.  But for now, I leave you with a couple of questions:

1.  Can anyone find evidence in A) canonized scripture B) canonized revelation C) the words of Jesus Christ or D) the words of Joseph Smith that indicates the value of gender roles in the plan of salvation? (And yes, we all know that temple marriage is required for exaltation–but marriage does not necessarily mean gender roles.)

2.  How can we know what really counts as priesthood?  Which of the functions we group under the broad umbrella term “priesthood” now are really priesthood-limited responsibilities?

Send your thoughts to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow @askmormongirl on Twitter.

My friend Jim put into words something I’ve certainly been feeling.  When I started this blog, all but a few women were still afraid to say “Mormon feminist” in public and those who did could face tremendous pushback.  That’s the legacy of the Mormon feminist firings and excommunications that started in 1993 and went on for almost a decade.  But just in the last twelve months there has been an incredible burst of energy and organizing:  Pants-to-Church, Let Women Pray, the gorgeous new “I’m a Mormon Feminist” website with real live profiles (add yours?), and most recently, Ordain Women.  (There are more, but I can’t even keep up with them.  Really.)

The LDS Church offered a response to the growing concern with ordination last week.  But for me, both Ordain Women and the Church’s response highlighted that there is tremendous inspecificity in our day-to-day use of the word “priesthood.”  It has become customary to use the idea of “priesthood” to simply name everything men do and women do not do in the contemporary LDS Church.   Which is wrong.  There is a far more complicated story—theologically, historically—to know and tell about priesthood in Mormonism.  It’s time to deepen the work and teach ourselves that story.

I am a scholar by training.  Study is very important to me.  Mormon culture can be anti-intellectual, and it has been customary to characterize scholars as people afflicted with or susceptible to pride.  Certainly some of us are, as are people in every profession.  But any scholar worth his or her Ph.D. understands that scholarship is in fact a practice that requires humility and discipline.  It takes humility to unlearn the collection of half-baked ideas and comforting slogans that stand in for truth; it takes discipline to search out and assess data, reflect carefully on the methods one uses to process the data, and to follow the data where it leads. Arrogance is asserting a claim that belies a much more complicated reality; humility for me is acknowledging how complicated reality is and trying to understand it.

That’s what I want to do with priesthood. I want to study.  I want to understand.

So people, I’m gonna get my study on.  I’m convening a study hall.  Right here at AMG.  What is priesthood?  And do Mormon women already hold it?  Let’s study on it.  I’ll bring data.  You bring data.  We reflect, think, discuss, and learn together.

First up, I present an essay by AMG reader “NeoDan,” who describes himself thusly: “Normally peaceable and retiring, NeoDan has no desire to be shot as the messenger while waiting for, as he sees it, the church to catch up to the Gospel.”

Nicely put, Dan.  And now, here’s his case that Mormon women already have the priesthood.  It’s thoughtful and deserves careful deliberation.  That’s what the comments are for.  Read on . . .

What appears to be a grass-roots movement openly making the case for the ordination of Mormon women to the Priesthood, Ordain Women (http://ordainwomen.org) has emerged in recent months in Utah. Drawing strength from similar movements in other faiths, the group called for its first public gathering to be held on the eve of the April 2013 General Conference in Salt Lake City. 

While I admire their courage and wish them well, I believe that their call for the ordination of women needs to be more nuanced than it now appears. As I see it, the real issue should be to recognize that, in fact, LDS women already receive the Priesthood and are literally ordained to its highest office. They have been from the time of Joseph Smith to now. Thus, perhaps a more meaningful call would be for the Church to acknowledge this reality and teach it openly to its membership.

Whatever we may think of his life trajectory and his propensity for severe over-documentation, historian Michael Quinn surely got it right in his paper titled Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843, published in the groundbreaking 1992 book, Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism.2   In it, Quinn argues that when Emma Smith received her Endowment in 1843, she became the first of her gender to hold the Priesthood in this dispensation. He quotes Church leaders of the era as understanding that the women shared the blessings and opportunities of the Priesthood with the men. 

Two examples of many that could be given show how the early leaders of the Church viewed the matter. The first is the Patriarchal Blessing given in 1878 by Patriarch Joseph Young, the Senior President of the Council of the Seventy, to Zina Young Card, a daughter of Brigham Young:

            These blessings are yours, the blessings and power according to the Holy

            Melchizedek Priesthood you received in your Endowments, and you shall

            have them.3

President Brigham Young himself taught in a public 1874 sermon:

            ..the man that honors his Priesthood, the woman that honors her Priesthood,

            will receive an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of God.4

Later commentary 5  on Quinn’s article often makes the point that men and women receive the Priesthood differently; men by ordination, women via the Temple ordinances. This, however, is somewhat simplistic. While it is true that the various ordinations to the Aaronic Priesthood and then to the Higher, or Melchizedek Priesthood received by males seem to have no parallel to the experience of women, there is also a real sense in which these ordinations remain incomplete until the male makes the covenants and receives the knowledge and keys by receiving the Endowment of the Holy Priesthood. Captured in this, the proper name of the Endowment, is the self-evident truth that this very ordinance is when the female receives the Priesthood also.

The logic is simple: women receive the same Temple ordinances and receive the same blessings and keys that men do. How is any of this possible if women hold no Priesthood authority? They must therefore, indeed, “hold” Priesthood authority in a very real sense, even if we don‘t say so. Remember, none of these roles require a woman to be married and therefore somehow receiving her authority from a man.

The parallels with a woman who is set apart as an ordinance worker go even further – she lays on hands and pronounces blessings, even giving the keys of the Priesthood to other sisters, exactly the same as a male ordinance worker does. Again, how could someone who does not hold the Priesthood give others its keys? Certainly, a female ordinance worker ultimately functions under the authority of a male Temple President, but that fact is inadequate in explaining the authority that she exercises. And it certainly does not account for the general parallels inherent in every endowed sister mentioned earlier.

So, even if the Church does not currently articulate it in this way, Quinn is surely correct in his conclusion that every endowed Mormon woman has Priesthood power conferred upon her. The fact that we don’t yet express it in those terms does not change the reality.

In acknowledging the Temple-bestowal of Priesthood upon women, some LDS commentators have noted that the original concept of Priesthood as spiritual power to represent God shared equally by men and women, has changed to refer essentially only to hierarchical, administrative positions in the Church organization. In their view women effectively exercise their Priesthood inside the Temple, although nowhere else.

For some decades now, other scholars, mostly non-LDS, have gone further still, arguing that Jesus conferred formal Priesthood offices upon women as well as men. That may be, but the evidence supporting that notion seems somewhat slim and forced. Mary Magdalene was certainly pre-eminent among the followers of Jesus, even the leading Apostles, but that surely arose from her unique relationship to him, rather than any calling as such.

On the other hand, even if Jesus did not ordain women to specific Priesthood office in his day, that in itself should not mean that it cannot, or should not, be done. Our society is much different than it was two millennia ago and a whole spectrum of faiths have been busy embracing a role for women in their respective priesthoods. They include the Community of Christ, the former Reorganized LDS church, which now has female Apostles and a member of the First Presidency.

Is this whole situation comparable with the bestowal of the Priesthood upon black men? In the beginning the Priesthood was given by the Prophet Joseph Smith to at least one Negro man, but succeeding presidents of the Church apparently yielded to the racist attitudes prevailing in American culture and denied it, even stating that Joseph Smith had made a mistake in bestowing it.6   Denial of the Priesthood to the Negro remained Church practice for over a century. It took the looming issue of thousands of mixed-race Brazilian saints being unable to enter their own Temple and the growing missionary prospects in Africa to force the issue, resolved only in 1978 by President Kimball in a simple but historic administrative action. Perhaps something similar is playing out with the issue of women and Priesthood.

In at least two senses, the Temple Endowment and then, potentially, through ordination in the crowning ordinance of the Temple, the Second Anointing, LDS women already receive the Priesthood. In my view, therefore, what is most needed is simply acknowledgment of this in the Church, rather than any new revelation or appeal to otherwise change current practice.

The interwoven complex of doctrines comprising our understanding of the Godhead, our Heavenly Mother and her roles, the Holy Ghost, the status of Mary Magdalene, and the Priesthood all share something else – in our recent efforts to appear mainstream and “normal” to the public, have all become increasingly neglected teachings in the modern Church. These doctrines, more than any others, define the Restored Gospel. None are of greater relevance to the life journey of every Latter-day Saint.

Surely some official explication on these subjects is long overdue. It would arguably go a long way toward revitalizing the general membership of the Church numbed by the current limited, dumbed-down, menu found in the correlated lessons and the official magazines.

Until then, half of the total Church membership remains effectively disenfranchised. Its women, unaware that they receive Priesthood authority when they are endowed, a blessing that can more deeply bless their personal journey, their family, the community and the Church, remain only dimly aware of their potential station in the eternities to come. They, all of us, deserve better.

Notes

2. D. Michael Quinn, “Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843” in Maxine Hanks, ed. Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), 365-409. 

3. Patriarchal blessing by Joseph Young, 28 May 1878, in Zina Card Young papers, Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, as quoted in Quinn, pp 399 note 46.

4. Journal of Discourses 17: 119.

5. A primary source is Margaret Merrill Toscano, “If Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood since 1843, Why Aren’t They Using It?” in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought vol. 27 no. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Dialogue Foundation: Summer 1994), 219-226. 

6. Russell W Stevenson, “A Negro Preacher”: The Worlds of Elijah Ables,” Journal of Mormon History vol. 39 no. 2 (Salt Lake City: Mormon History Association, Spring 2013), 165-254.

Okay, beloved readers.  Think, question, respond.  Does he have it right?  What is the data?  Is it valid data? What are our methods for understanding the data? Where does the data take us?

Follow @askmormongirl on Twitter, or send your query (or bit of data on women and priesthood) to askmormongirl@gmail.com.

Today—just today–I spoke with three young Mormons facing the exceptional challenge of living their faith and by the leadings of their conscience:

–A young woman who feels led to speak out on the issue of women’s ordination, but who worries that if she does she will get kicked out of BYU and lose her job.

–A young mother in a conservative Utah town whose neighbors are boycotting her home-based business because she is open about her Mormon feminism.

–And a worthy, believing young man (who I will soon profile at my other gig at ReligionDispatches.org) who has been told he cannot serve a mission because he believes his gay brother is equal in the sight of God and deserves all the same blessings and opportunities he enjoys.

We talked for an hour tonight, this young man and me, and he asked me, finally, “Look, I read your bio—and it left me wondering.  Why do you stay?”

And I told him that I stay because as a Mormon I have experienced God in ways that I won’t deny.  I stay because as a Mormon I belong to a people who—however imperfectly–put their whole lives into their faith.  And I stay because I hope my life—however imperfect—has some value to the people who made me.

This week, the following letter arrived in the askmormongirl inbox:

I am a 21 year-old liberal Mormon feminist. I’ve grown up in Utah all my life and spent the last four years attending Southern Utah University. After Proposition 8, I left the church. I have a close relative who is gay and have always felt that our Heavenly Parents love all of their children, no matter their race, gender, or sexual orientation. I was completely outraged at the actions the Church took, but more than that I felt completely alone.  When I went to college in 2009, I decided not to affiliate with the church at all. All of my roommates were very orthodox LDS and so were most of my friends. While my little family away from home was wonderful and none of them treated me any different, I couldn’t help but feel lost. Although I was still silently bitter with the church, my heart ached for this religion that had always been a part of me. A few years later I became interested in the church again. I started attending meetings as well as praying and reading my scriptures. Everything felt so right, but I was so afraid that people wouldn’t accept all of my “strange liberal beliefs” that I just couldn’t let go of. I felt complete exhaustion from trying to balance the two sides of me that I loved so much.  I randomly stumbled on an interview that you did with NPR one night. I remember feeling hope for the first time in months. I honestly had no idea that there were other people like me out there!  I continued to follow you via Twitter and Feminist Mormon Housewives. A few months passed and I marched myself into Barnes & Noble to buy a copy of “The Book of Mormon Girl.” I bawled through the last half of the book and rejoiced after finishing it. I don’t know how to tell you enough, “Thank you. Thank you so much.” You were the voice I needed when I didn’t have the courage to find my own. You have helped me to see that I can be a part of the religion that means so much to me as well as stay true to my own personal beliefs. I gave my sweet born-and-raised, straight-and-narrow, orthodox Mormon mother a copy of the book to read and it has benefited our relationship immensely. We cried together after she read it as she told me, “Now I understand where you’re coming from.”  I am eternally grateful for you and for the peace that you have given me. You have helped me so much and I am a happier, stronger, more courageous person because of you.

I don’t share this to celebrate myself. Because my role is accidental.  I am just another Mormon with “strange liberal beliefs” who won’t and can’t let go.

I share this to celebrate this very holy Passover-Easter week.  Because the lesson of this week and the stories I heard today is that there is great holiness when we crossover into new places.  This is the story of the exodus from slavery in Egypt to freedom. And the exodus leads through narrow places—straits, or in the Hebrew, mitzrayim—that are utterly terrifying.  We don’t know where we are going.  Only that the way must open.  Easter tells the same story.  There is the tomb, the dead end.  But the tomb is not the end of the story.  By the power of God, the way opens to the other side.

For a long time, Mormon people who feel torn between the faith they love and their conscience have been silent.  We have stayed in narrow places.  We have been silent.  We have sacrificed people we love.  We have been sacrificed.

But there is a new generation of Mormons who are going to face the hard parts of our faith—the mitzrayim—with courage, humility, and openness of heart. They are facing the challenge of living by the leadings of their conscience and with a deep love of their faith.  They’re going to show us how to be open with each other so that (in the words of one of my favorite Mormon hymns) “no longer as strangers on earth need we roam” and we can “come home” to each other and whatever God has in store.

When a young woman finds the hope to try and live her faith and her conscience, and her mother can cry with her and say, “Now, I understand where you’re coming from,” we pass through mitzrayim and out the other side of the tomb of silence and come home.

I am grateful to be a witness.  And I am grateful for belonging to a faith that prepares people to do hard things because they take their faith—and this life and its challenges–so seriously.

Courage, y’all.  Courage.

Chag pesach sameach.  Happy Passover.  Happy Easter.

Much love.

I am a 16 year-old girl, writing because I have developed a deep love and commitment for the LDS Church, but I’m facing horrible hostility from my mother. My mother isn’t just suspicious of the Church as an outsider. She was raised a member in Utah, and became inactive when she left home for college and never looked back. So when she criticizes the Church she knows exactly what she is talking about and seems to speak from a passionate place of hurt.

I was raised with no religious affiliation, and because of this, I lacked the kind of community that my Jewish and Christian peers had in their synagogues and churches. That was why a year ago, my mother, also having a loneliness/community crisis herself, got my brother involved in Boy Scouts via the church, and talked a local ward to let me go to Young Women’s. We loved it just as a secular way to make friends and have fun, but for me it became spiritual. After about 6 months, I knew that I believed in the Church and it was the completion to my desire to find a church. (I was obsessed with God and Christ from an early age despite the lack of discussion in my home). Then came the time to tell my mom.

A month ago I expressed my desire to get baptized and I got a long lecture on how it would ruin my mind–I have been raised a liberal and the majority of Mormons think more conservatively than me–make me lonely (the irony), how disappointed she would be in me, and how it would divide us for the rest of our lives. 

There has nothing been more painful to me than hearing that. I have considered giving up on the Church because I can’t reconcile it with her. But that’s equally painful. My goal was to get baptized this year, but now I’ve thought it may have to wait until I’m in college. Until then I’d still like to go to church and other activities, but I’m afraid of alienating my mother just by doing that. 

How can I foster my faith but stay at peace with my mother especially as a youth?

NJJ

I’ve found, through much prayer and reading of the scriptures, that I believe The Book of Mormon to be true. I really want to be baptized. I’m 18 years old and am going to a community college and living with my parents and in two years, I hope to transfer to a four year. Even before finding that I agree with the beliefs and ideals of the Mormon religion, I was considering transferring to BYU in two years. Now I would like to even more because I honestly want to surround myself with like-minded people. I have never met a member of the LDS church that I did not absolutely love. I’m excited to be baptized.

The only problem is that my parents strongly dislike the Mormon religion, mostly because I am half African American and my mother is very sensitive to any person or group of people that has every been racist toward African Americans or Africans in general. I have not yet gone to her to tell her that I want to be baptized, but I did tell her that I want to transfer to BYU.  She was absolutely furious. She told me that I should go find some nice Catholic school to go to instead, because that “would be better for the purposes I have for going”. So it seems that soon I will need to tell her that I want to be baptized. I have no idea how to go about it. I definitely want to avoid destroying my relationship with my parents, but I need to be true to my faith as well. Also, I know there is a very good chance that when I tell them, they will decide to kick me out of the house. I would have literally nowhere else to go and no way to pay for school over the next few years. I’m terrified of being stranded. I’ve considered waiting a few years until I’m out of the house, but that feels extremely wrong morally. It would be like lying. I really need help.

Funny how life works.  I disappointed my parents when I stepped away from Mormonism.  I came back an unorthodox Mormon feminist Democrat person and, alas, still a mild to moderate disappointment to my parents and other parental-like-folks-who-knew-me-when.  And now I get mail from young women who are afraid of disappointing or even losing their parents on the way into Mormonism.

Because the story at the heart of it all is the epic intergenerational saga of parents and the power they have over our lives.

Sitting here at my yellow formica-top kitchen table late Sunday night I find it nearly impossible to put the great epic intergenerational saga of parents into words. Other than to say that decades from now, when you have children of your own, you will still be wrestling with the weight of your parents’ legacies, all that they tried to give you and could, or couldn’t, and how their own griefs and needs and aspirations are woven into your own.  You too will sit at a kitchen table with a cup of herbal tea and find it all hard to put into words.

“Honor your father and mother,” says the Old Testament. “Leave mother and father,” says the New.  And Jesus said, “I am come to set a man at variance against his father, a daughter against her mother” (Matthew 10:35).

Is it possible to both honor your father and mother and make choices that challenge their vision for what your life should be?  Is it possible both to love your parents and break their hearts?

These questions constitute one of sacred mysteries at the very heart of what it means to be alive and human.  And mysteries so profound often defy easy answers.  Perhaps the best we can do is face such mysteries with honor.

The sages of the Rabbinic tradition have some very specific instructions about what “honor” towards parents entails—for example, making sure your parents are physically provided for, never cursing or shaming them, or speaking disrespectfully to them.

Perhaps in your cases you can honor your parents by showing them that you have listened to them and understand their concerns.  Make sure you do.  (For example, make sure you study the history of Mormon institutional racism and the experience of Black Mormons and know it for yourself, or make sure you understand why your mother’s Mormonism was a source of such hurt to her.)  Honor them by communicating your gratitude for the way they raised you to be community-loving, principled, spiritual people.  Affirm all that you can of the spiritual legacy they have built into you.

Then, thinking wisely about timing, and in a way that minimizes shame and contention for all involved, make your choices.

That’s the best I can offer.  For I too am in the thralls of this sacred mystery, and I don’t expect I’ll ever have it all figured out. So I’ll turn it over now to my readers, some of whom have more experience with the family politics of conversion than I do.

Send your query to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow @askmormongirl on Twitter.

Now, to this week’s query:

I’m 27 and have been LDS all my life. I recently decided to educate myself on issues swept under the rug by the Church and I guess you could say I’m going through a faith transition. I’m currently in the process of learning about and reconciling our troubled history, but I still believe the gospel at its core is true. I teach Sunday School to a group of 14 and 15 year olds. They’re great kids with strong testimonies, but they regularly come to class regaling stories from the past week of what “crazy lies” their classmates confronted them with. Often these aren’t lies at all; they’re some of those troubling stories from early church history, or past doctrines. My students’ peers are researching the Church online, finding the most bizarre (but historically accurate) parts of our past and culture, and then reporting their findings. What can I say to my students when they bring them up in class? I personally think that these things should be discussed, but at what age? How much information should I give? So far all I’ve said is something about the gift of continuing revelation, and that no matter what wacky thing they’re approached with, if it hasn’t been taught recently, we don’t believe it.

I’m dreading the day one of my students asks, “Is it true that Joseph Smith married a girl my age?” No one ever told me the truth about these things, but then again I never asked because I had no idea. I don’t want to lie, but I don’t want to say too much, either.

Lots of readers are nodding their heads right now—for this is the story of the moment in Mormonism:  we are, one highly esteemed and lately emeritized General Authority said not so long ago, in the greatest period of membership attrition due to loss of belief since the Church’s tumultuous “Kirtland” era in the late 1830s.

The problem, folks say, is exactly as you put it:  the sanitized version of Mormon history taught in our post-correlation curriculum does not address controversial episodes from Mormonism’s very human past—including polygamy, conflicting accounts of origins of Mormon books of scripture, sources of temple practices, and doctrinal changes.  When young people, or middle-aged people, or older people are confronted with plain data that controverts what they’ve learned in Sunday School, the effects for some can be profoundly discouraging or destabilizing.  I’ve often heard the word “betrayal” used to describe the feeling.

Word has it that serious efforts have been underway within the institutional LDS Church to develop resources to better prepare and educate LDS people about controversial aspects of Mormon history.  We see a big step towards that in the Church’s release of the complete Joseph Smith papers http://josephsmithpapers.org/  How many members will dig deep enough to discover that, yes, Joseph Smith did marry at least 33 women, including fourteen year-old Helen Mar Kimball?  How many will hear the family business from the family before they hear it from strangers on the street, or even worse, from internet-savvy, Book of Mormon musical-listening peers in the high school lunch line?  Good clear curriculum on polygamy and other thorny issues can’t arrive soon enough.

But until it arrives?

A whole movement of bloggers and podcasters has grown up to fill the gaps.  Seriously heavy lifting has been taking place for years now at Mormon Stories and similar Mormon podcasts.  The Mormon Stories folks even developed a survey (non-scientific, but still statistically significant) to assess the impact of historical issues on membership attrition.  Find the data at whymormonsquestion.org.

I’ve written here at Ask Mormon Girl about how I personally process complex issues in Church history, but teaching is a more complicated question.   For until the Church provides better guidance what’s a humble Sunday School teacher of fourteen year-olds supposed to do?  Take the shock and awe approach?  Haul out the contemporary translations of the Book of Abraham and serve them up to the kids with some delicious rice krispy treats?  Or, rather, nod and smile and quietly worry that leaving such matters unaddressed is dishonest and potentially damaging?

Surely there must be a middle path, and I’m hoping the readers of this blog will chime in and help us move towards a collective articulation of that path.  Here’s my best shot:  the responsibility to teach young people the foundations and history of their religion is important—sacred, really. It entails serious trust with your ward and its families.  It sounds like you take that trust seriously.  I do too.  I don’t think a fourteen year-old Sunday School class is the place to be introducing the grocery list of the thorny issues in place of the regular curriculum. But I do think young people need to know that history and doctrine are complicated and should be treated with care and thoughtfulness.  Seeing models of care and thoughtfulness helps.  I think it’s possible to introduce the humanity and complexity of Church history—including doctrinal change and the human limits of earlier church leaders—by dealing directly with issues like the Church’s history on race.  Clear, solidly historical and non-sensationalized information on the history of Black priesthood ordination, its interruption, the growth of racist folk doctrine, and the revision of the policy on Black ordination in 1978 is a pretty good introductory course in Mormon complication.  From the general principle, bright minds will be able to infer some applications to other problems in Mormon history.  Let them lead the conversation.

Model an open and non-sensational approach to the tough stuff.  And if you manage to weather your own faith transition, when more hard questions come knocking, maybe you’ll be the one they stop in the church hallway for a sidebar.

That’s my best operating theory.  Readers, what’s yours?

Send your queries to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow @askmormongirl on Twitter. 

My problem is  . . . How do I come out of the closet?

My husband is not completely traditional in his beliefs and opinions. Right now, he is a stay-at-home dad, and I am the bread winner. But overall, he is a fairly traditional Mormon man. I keep worrying that he will see the blogs I read and discover that part of who I am and it will be a major “thing” between us. Do I just come out and say it? Or do I give it to him gently? And if it is gently… how would I do that?

TR

Welcome, sister suffragette!  Want to break the news to husband . . .  gently?  Try some PANTS, perhaps.  Wear them.  To church.  And then to bed.   With your matching “Well behaved women seldom make history” t-shirt.  While reading your copy of Mormon Enigma.  And sporting a grumpy look on your face.  With the covers pulled up to your chin. That should do the trick, right?

I kid, I kid.  But I hear you: this can be scary. I know there are many, many closet Mo feminists out there who crash their browsers and clear their histories after reading FeministMormonHousewives.org in case someone finds out they might be a Mormon feminist.

And my question is:  why?  Why in the world does this feminism word make knees quake and quiver?  Whence the powerful stigma?  We are talking, after all, one of the most rational and accomplished mass movements of the modern era.

This is the movement that won women the vote.  The right to own property.   The right to represent themselves in legal affairs.  Access to education.  Access to higher education.  Birth control.  Family planning.  Family medical leave. (Even though SHAMEFULLY the United States is one of only 8 nations in the world still without paid maternity leave.)   Domestic violence shelters and anti-violence legislation.  Equal pay.   Equal access to school-based sports.  (Really, just getting started here.) You like democracy?  Girls’ soccer?  Breast cancer research?  Feminists say:  you’re welcome.

The charge attached to the Mormon feminist label goes even deeper.  Say Mormon feminist and all of the sudden people A) cannot compute; cannot wrap their minds around the concept, or B) run to all sorts of fearful extremes, like a “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” from the Book of Mormon musical, but this time with Sonia Johnson chaining herself to the gates of the Seattle temple, polyandry, diaphragms, weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and all sorts of dancing TROUSERS!  Trousers on fire!

Truly, it’s a crazy kind of power that happens when you say the words: I’m a Mormon feminist. It’s like telling people you are a unicorn.  A real live unicorn! BAM! I just blew your mind.  Just by existing.  With a smile.

And you might say that mind-blowing is the point of the whole feminist enterprise.  For at its philosophical roots, feminism is an existential project.  Translation:  feminism is about confronting absurd misconceptions that shape day-to-day human behavior and keep us all—men and women–from being our grandest, most joyful and knowledgeable selves.  It’s about setting those absurd misconceptions aside.

Case in point:  remember that feminism is the movement that (especially in the quarters where it is needed) continues a quiet, respectable, and unfailing advocacy for frankness about the existence of God’s creation the clitoris.  And I know you may be blushing just to see that word on a blog.  Truth be told, I blush to write it because I know my mother and people from my ward read this and I just typed the word clitoris.  But really, why should I be ashamed to type the word clitoris? Let’s confront that stigma right now.  What is shameful is not the clitoris but the fact that many women have no idea that intercourse alone does not work for many women.  I am truly not trying to be provocative.  It’s just an important yet often occluded fact of women’s health and marital well-being.  It has to be said. AND FEMINISTS SEEM TO BE THE ONLY PEOPLE CONSISTENTLY SAYING IT.  (Like my friend the Mormon Therapist Natasha Parker Helfer, whose article here you might read if this paragraph is news to you.)

All of this is to say that the shaming of what is not shameful is a powerful weapon.  And it needs to be dismantled with grace, confidence, and humor.  Whoever taught you to be ashamed of feminism was not your ally.  Truly, the same might be said for whoever taught you to be ashamed of the word clitoris.

It’s up to you to put that all behind you.  And who better to do it with than your husband?  He is your husband!  The one who promised to love you always and always.  The one with whom in all likelihood you’ve shared much more unpleasant conversations—about taxes, or bills, or difficult in-laws.  Really, you don’t have a dread disease.  You have feminism!  You’re taking your place in a long and noble lineage that spans Eliza R. Snow to Emma Lou Thayne to Claudia Bushman and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich to you and me.

Try not to worry.  Have some fun with it.  Project shamelessness.  Project humor.  Project confidence.  Take him by the hands and say:  “Of course, I’m a feminist, dear.  Somewhere deep inside you’ve always known it.  And truly, it’s one of the things you’ve always loved about me.  I know you love girls’ soccer, and voting, and equal pay for equal work, and breast cancer research. (Perhaps, too, you like the clitoris?)”

Then, give him a peck and a squeeze, and go about your business.  Keep on  learning, and asking hard questions, and growing—every day, every step, and claim him as your beloved ally.

Because feminism, oh, sister, it’s not the end of the world.  It’s just the beginning!

And, you–dear readers–time to ‘fess up.  Who here is hiding their feminist light under a bushel, even at home?  Who is crashing the browser every time husband (or mom, or dad, or roommate) walks into the room?  And why?

Send your query to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow @askmormongirl on Twitter.

I am a high school senior seriously stressed out about college. I have serious issues with conformity and the lack of diversity at BYU, but I secretly feel like I wont be happy unless I go there, even if that means possibly turning down Harvard, Columbia, and full scholarships to USC and UVa. Can you tell me about your experience at BYU?

JL in Arkansas

My experience at BYU?

Just this week, JL, I was digging through an archive bin in my garage when I laid my hands on a prized letter from Rex Lee, who was the president of Brigham Young University during my years as a Cougar.  It was a letter I received after sending my diploma back after graduation.

That’s right.  I sent back my diploma.  Had to do with the firing of one of my favorite professors, Cecilia Konchar Farr, on some pretty shady grounds:  BYU said it was her scholarship, but we all knew it was her feminism that got Ceil in hot water.  And Ceil wasn’t the only BYU faculty member or student feeling the heat of retrenchment during the 1990s.

Those were some times. 

Here’s President Lee’s letter:

To this day I appreciate President Lee’s gracious response to my 21 year-old expression of hurt and anguish.

But that whole diploma scenario is really only a small part of my BYU story.  You can read more of it in chapter 10 of The Book of Mormon Girl.  There was also silly fun with Mormon girlfriends in the dorms and the ragtag band of friends from the Student Review, the off-campus student newspaper.  And many hours in Utah’s beautiful Wasatch mountains and incomparable red rock deserts.  And bona fide learning in the Karl G. Maeser Building.

(Note that I did not say I got a world-class education at BYU.   Because I didn’t.  My husband got a world-class education.  He went to Columbia University.  Almost every one of his classes was taught by a demonstrated world leader in his or her field. His classmates came from around the world and many were exceptionally connected to world networks of knowledge and opportunity.)

I was a smart, hardworking Mormon girl, like you.  And I too had some options.  But my heart was absolutely set on BYU.

I went in a wide-eyed completely orthodox Mormon girl hoping to study something portable enough to fit into a life following husband and raising children.

And I came out a husbandless (but not boyfriendless) feminist with amazing connections to the world of Mormon thought headed for a Ph.D. program in a big city.

To this day, I wonder if my diploma is still in a file cabinet somewhere in the Abraham Smoot Administration Building at BYU.  And to this day I wonder what would have happened had I gone to the other college that accepted me. The one in northern California with the eucalyptus groves and the famous marching band.  Would I have found that nice nerdy Mormon boy in my small campus ward?  Would I have missed the whole tumult of the Mormon feminist 1990s?  Would I be, right now, sitting in a really sweet gated community with a much more conventional view of the world, a husband in the bishopric, and a killer Pinterest habit? Instead of sitting here with my not-so-orthodox Mormon life and a career I never imagined and running the Alice’s Restaurant of the Mormon bloggernacle?

My dissertation advisor, the wily and beloved Dr. Michael Colacurcio, once told me that when one makes a decision of this level of momentousness, one comprehends but a tiny fraction of the factors that will shape everything that follows.  You’re reading glossy brochures and meditating on abstractions like “diversity” and “happiness” and somewhere in Asia that proverbial butterfly is flapping its wings setting off a chain of random events that will crash your “diversity” into your “happiness” and ruin the rest of your life or, by the same token, make it the best dang life you could never have dreamed of living.

So I’m going to tell you all the regular Mormon stuff—yes, pray about it, and listen to how the spirit guides you.

And, then, remember a few basic axioms:

College is awesome.

Go to the very finest college you can get into.  What does “finest” mean?  Are faculty members world leaders in their fields? Can they connect you with world-class opportunities for study and work?  No matter what Mormons like to say about BYU being the “Harvard of the West,” it is verifiably untrue in most fields by measures of university assessment.  (Take a look at the US News & World Report College Rankings, for one set of assessments.) There are some exceptionally strong fields at BYU, like engineering and accounting.  But notice that BYU’s strengths are in pragmatic fields.  Mormon culture is too anti-intellectual to have fostered enough support for robust inquiry in humanities and social sciences.  There are some truly outstanding faculty members in these fields at BYU, but the faculties across the board are not as strong and faculty may not be in a position to connect you with world-class opportunities for study and work.

Remember too that beyond the classroom the friend connections you make at college can also shape your horizons and life chances.  If you go to an Ivy League or comparable university, you will be making what could be lifelong connections with people from around world bringing a world’s breadth of opportunities.  At BYU, you will be making what could be lifelong connections with Mormons largely from the Book of Mormon belt.  Their attitudes about life and achievements will impact your own.

Wherever you decide to go, learn and live as much as you can while you are there.

Get out with as little debt as possible.

And embrace everything that follows.

Because it’s all connected.

It’s all part of your story.

Make that story a big one.

Readers, what about you?  To BYU? Or not to BYU? How would you advise JL?

Send your query to askmormongirl@gmail.com or follow @askmormongirl on Twitter.