One question that frequently gets asked about the Mormon Church - both inside and outside of it - is, "Why aren't Mormon women ordained to the priesthood?
Gender Sameness or Gender Equality?
I believe this question finds its basis in the fact that the world defines and manages gender equality differently than we do. Increasingly, the world seems to think that the only way men and women can be equal is if they are the same and are given identical opportunities in life. But in everything from physiology to emotional make-up, to the way our brains are wired for different tasks, we are anything but. To deny this is to ignore basic human science.
In the Mormon Church, gender equality - indeed human equality - is about the worth of the human soul, combined with much-variegated individual potential. My wife happens to be better at taking care of our children than I am, and I happen to be better at earning the money that makes our household operate. This has more to do with career training than with our physiology or personal talents. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't be allowed to switch roles if we choose to, but neither does it mean we should be expected to. My wife and I are very different in a lot of ways. But that doesn't stop us from being a team, nor does it make one of us more of a human being than the other.
One of the most important tenets of the Mormon faith - one made possible by the priesthood - is this: that my wife and I have been ordained and prepared to take on equally important yet different roles in the hereafter as we inherit the kingdom of God together.
Additionally, as members of the Church and believers in Christ, many of us have felt the great love and personal involvement of God touch our lives. Nothing increases the sense of worth of any human being like feeling the power of the Savior's atoning sacrifice at work in your mind and heart, feeling that you are truly worth the time, trouble, and even great sacrifice of almighty God. It truly is a life-changing experience to know and experience in a very real way the fact that the Lord did and and will still do such great and marvelous things for me, and for you. This experience causes us to cease to concern ourselves with our own worth, or with comparing ourselves to each other, and instead causes us to see other human beings as equally in need of the Lord's grace, and as being in need of something I personally may have to offer.
The Irrelevance of Status
Another social issue with which the world is concerned - especially in the context of gender equality - is equal opportunity. The world strives to offer equal opportunity in compensation - a noble enough thing in itself, but there is no compensation for service rendered under the auspices of the lay clergy in the LDS church - not in the Relief Society, and not in the Priesthood.
Not understanding what the priesthood is, the world views advancement in the LDS priesthood as ascension of a hierarchy - an opportunity not afforded to women. The members of the Church at the time of Christ made this same mistake of believing the priesthood to be an opportunity for achieving status in the kingdom of God. In response to this, the Savior taught them what I personally consider to be the central doctrine of the priesthood - one that turned their concern about status on its head:
Status vs. "Licensing"
If the priesthood can be said to be a ladder
to climb, then I defy any member of the LDS Church to
argue with this statement: as high as he may be said to have climbed, Thomas S.
Monson, the current president and the prophet, seer, and revelator, the
only man on the earth to hold all the offices, keys and authorities of
the priesthood, looks up to his Mother. He looks up to his Wife. Neither of these women hold the priesthood, but without them, his own priesthood would never have been possible.
Without the women of the Church, there would be no prophet or apostle, or any other "officer" in the priesthood - both because we would never have been born and because we would never have been properly trained to receive it.
The Relief Society - An Help Meet For the Priesthood
The world has failed to take notice of the fact that Mormon women have an exclusive organization all their own - one in which men are not allowed to be officers or to participate in any way.
Some may ask why women are not seen passing the sacrament or performing baptisms. When a young girl asked this question, her mother answered it by asking why men don't have babies! In the process of childbearing, the women procreate and then "train up in the way they should go" the future bearers of the priesthood and leaders of the Church. (see Proverbs 22:6)
We might also ask why it is that when the bishop appropriates ward resources for meeting the needs of someone in the neighborhood, it isn't the men who are mobilized - at least not initially. The men or the local priesthood may be asked to support this effort, but it is carried out under the leadership of the Relief Society presidency. Not only that, but only women of the Relief Society are allowed to hold presiding positions in the children's Primary and in the Young Women organizations. While serving as a Primary teacher myself, I served under the leadership of the Primary - a presidency composed of women.
Just as Eve was to be considered "an help meet" - an equal - to Adam, even so, the Relief Society is considered to be "an help meet" for the priesthood - an equal. The priesthood is organized to address the spiritual needs of the people who hold it as also of those whom they serve. But the Relief Society was organized to address the spiritual needs of those who belong to it and the temporal and spiritual needs of those whom they serve. In terms of real output, here in the Mormon Church, the Relief Society holds equal importance to the Priesthood.
The Relief Society is actually an extension of the priesthood. While Mormon women may not be ordained to the priesthood, when they hold office or perform any service in the Relief Society, they hold an office organized and authorized by the priesthood. They have authority to designate other leaders - an authority given them through the priesthood. They perform services that are essential to the mission and function of the priesthood. The women in our Church are, in fact, thus allowed full participation in the priesthood through the organization of the Relief Society in the way which the Lord whose Church this is has designed and ordered.
The Purpose of the Priesthood
The world - including some members of the Church - seems to think the Mormon Priesthood is a status symbol or a means of aggrandizement in some sense. I'll reiterate here: it is not. Our prophets and apostles have been very clear: the priesthood is a humbling burden to bear, an opportunity to be not so much a leader as a servant. The priesthood is designed to reflect something the Savior taught:
"...he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." (Matthew 23:11-12)
The functions of the Church were designed by our Creator and tailored to the needs of those asked to shoulder them. Those needs are spiritual needs defined by Him, not the needs defined by the world or by society. Men are given the priesthood, not because we deserve it, but because we need it in order to learn things we came into mortality to learn. Women are not given the priesthood because it isn't what they need for their spiritual development. In so many ways, women are naturally wired to sacrifice and to serve those around them. I have been utterly amazed at the ways my wife sacrifices for me and my children. I don't consider myself capable of this same kind of sacrifice, and this is precisely why I need the priesthood. The priesthood calls upon me to sacrifice time and effort, to act in the service of others in a way that requires me to be more and better than I would otherwise be. The priesthood calls upon me to step up to the spiritual plate, to be worthy of the companionship of my wife and of my association with the other women around me, both inside and outside the Church.
My wife and I may be very different, and I may hold the priesthood, while she does not. But we consider ourselves equals in all things. In Mormon theology, the "head of the household" is organizational only, more a label than a fact. I may technically be the "head of the household" and am therefore responsible for the spiritual instruction of my family. But my wife and I both know that, in many ways, she's the one who "wears the pants". There is in truth no "winning vote". Consensus is reached because we trust each other to be more concerned about doing what is right than we are about who made the decision. We are able to trust each other in this way because, with rare exception, we actually are more concerned about doing what is right for our family than about who made the decision. It helps a great deal that our decision to marry was built in no small part on the fact that we knew each other deeply enough to realize how closely aligned our priorities and values are.
The world seems to feel that women ought to be entitled to the "status" of the priesthood - a "status" that for faithful Latter-Day Saints (both men and women) does not exist. Those concerned about such status should know that, as of this writing and notwithstanding my upcoming ordination as a high priest, since our marriage, my wife has held higher, more visible positions in our congregation than I have, despite not being ordained to the priesthood. She has served as the second counselor in the Young Women organization, whereas I've hidden on the bench behind the organ during the hymns in sacrament meeting. Those concerned with such status should know that there are about as many callings and offices in the Church exclusively filled by women as by men. Just look at the number of organizations in which the women alone are allowed to preside. Those concerned with such status should know that, while the men are tied up making administrative decisions and allocating resources, the women are in the trenches, overseeing the execution of those decisions and personally seeing to the placement of those resources right where the need for them is most poignantly felt: in the personal lives of the members of the Church and their neighbors. Their work is often much more visible, and much more deeply felt and recognized.
After I am ordained a high priest, and no matter what calling I may asked to bear because of it, I will still always value deeply the women in my life; I will still always very much look up to my Mother, look up to my Wife, and look up to my "little" Sister. (She's all grown up now) And in the course of fulfilling such callings, I will likely have both opportunity and obligation to depend upon and to recognize the great value the women bring to our Church, position in the priesthood - or lack thereof - notwithstanding.
Also of Interest
for comparison:
Offices of the Priesthood in the Ancient Church
Offices of the Priesthood in the Latter-Day Church
Priesthood Leaders Must Be Called of God/Unpaid - Ancient Church
Priesthood Leaders Must Be Called of God/Unpaid - Latter-Day Church
Church page
Mormon.org: Women in the Church
Elder Ballard: Women Are Essential to God's Work
Roles of LDS Women: http://melissabeutler.blogspot.com/
Gender Sameness or Gender Equality?
I believe this question finds its basis in the fact that the world defines and manages gender equality differently than we do. Increasingly, the world seems to think that the only way men and women can be equal is if they are the same and are given identical opportunities in life. But in everything from physiology to emotional make-up, to the way our brains are wired for different tasks, we are anything but. To deny this is to ignore basic human science.
In the Mormon Church, gender equality - indeed human equality - is about the worth of the human soul, combined with much-variegated individual potential. My wife happens to be better at taking care of our children than I am, and I happen to be better at earning the money that makes our household operate. This has more to do with career training than with our physiology or personal talents. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't be allowed to switch roles if we choose to, but neither does it mean we should be expected to. My wife and I are very different in a lot of ways. But that doesn't stop us from being a team, nor does it make one of us more of a human being than the other.
One of the most important tenets of the Mormon faith - one made possible by the priesthood - is this: that my wife and I have been ordained and prepared to take on equally important yet different roles in the hereafter as we inherit the kingdom of God together.
Additionally, as members of the Church and believers in Christ, many of us have felt the great love and personal involvement of God touch our lives. Nothing increases the sense of worth of any human being like feeling the power of the Savior's atoning sacrifice at work in your mind and heart, feeling that you are truly worth the time, trouble, and even great sacrifice of almighty God. It truly is a life-changing experience to know and experience in a very real way the fact that the Lord did and and will still do such great and marvelous things for me, and for you. This experience causes us to cease to concern ourselves with our own worth, or with comparing ourselves to each other, and instead causes us to see other human beings as equally in need of the Lord's grace, and as being in need of something I personally may have to offer.
The Irrelevance of Status
Another social issue with which the world is concerned - especially in the context of gender equality - is equal opportunity. The world strives to offer equal opportunity in compensation - a noble enough thing in itself, but there is no compensation for service rendered under the auspices of the lay clergy in the LDS church - not in the Relief Society, and not in the Priesthood.
Not understanding what the priesthood is, the world views advancement in the LDS priesthood as ascension of a hierarchy - an opportunity not afforded to women. The members of the Church at the time of Christ made this same mistake of believing the priesthood to be an opportunity for achieving status in the kingdom of God. In response to this, the Savior taught them what I personally consider to be the central doctrine of the priesthood - one that turned their concern about status on its head:
"...he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest. And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all." (Mark 9:33-35)
"...Jesus called them to him,
and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over
the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise
authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Mark 10:42-45)
Even the priesthood that lends God his power and authority in His kingdom is more about service to us, more about His ability to make grace available to us, than about anything else. To put it in the words of the Savior, "...my grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in (mortal) weakness..." (2 Corinthians 12:9)
Even the priesthood that lends God his power and authority in His kingdom is more about service to us, more about His ability to make grace available to us, than about anything else. To put it in the words of the Savior, "...my grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in (mortal) weakness..." (2 Corinthians 12:9)
Status vs. "Licensing"
My upcoming ordination to become a high priest has caused me deep reflection that has made me realize some things about the priesthood.
Far from being an opportunity for achievement of status, the priesthood really is about service to others. The priesthood organizes the service efforts of the men by way of, not so much a hierarchy, but rather by what I'll call "licensing". For the world to ask why Mormon women aren't ordained to the priesthood is tantamount to asking why the airlines don't offer RN certification to their stewardesses. For starters, per the organization of His Church and the commandments God has given us for its operation, it isn't ours to offer, and secondly, the "licensing" afforded by the priesthood makes it legal in the kingdom of God for men to perform tasks other than those required of the women of the Church. We'll talk more about that in a moment.
Most adults in the United States have a class "D" driver license that allows them to operate a motor vehicle on public roadways. We don't look at bus drivers and wonder why we're not allowed to have a class A endorsement. We don't look at truck drivers and wonder why we can't have a CDL. We don't view truck drivers or bus drivers as being of higher status, or better human beings than the rest of us. The reason for this is that we don't consider the question of status to be relevant in this context.
The more I "advance" in the priesthood, the more I realize the same very much applies here. In placing me in this new office, the Lord and His Church give me, not a higher status, but rather a higher expectation that more service of a specific nature be rendered on my part. They make it legal for me to perform that function, by virtue of my having proven myself to be as prepared for it as a weak mortal such as myself can hope to be, just as any other license indicates and follows appropriate training. My "advancement" in the priesthood does not constitute ascension of a hierarchy any more than getting my class A endorsement would. It just means I have a new "office" or "endorsement" in the priesthood.
In placing me as a high priest in the Melchizedek priesthood, the Lord has given me neither crown nor throne, neither robe nor scepter. Quite to the contrary, the Lord has but approved my apprenticeship in His service - training that is certain to be grueling. In doing so, he has not afforded me a position of greatness. Rather, he has put me at the feet of the members of the Church and handed me a wash basin. Soon, He will expect me to follow in His footsteps, and learn to wash the feet of those whom I am called to serve. I pray that He may make of my hands a cleansing and a healing agent to dirty, sore, and injured feet that are traveling rough roads. I pray He will make me worthy to walk in the footsteps He left behind - footsteps that lead inevitably toward no more than service to others.
While it is perfectly natural for human beings to seek opportunities to prove their worth in the world, the way the Church helps us do that is by offering us opportunities to serve that are perfectly tailored to our capabilities and needs, not as the world sees them, but as God sees them. It is by taking Him up on that offer and by getting outside ourselves to serve others, rather than by seeking or achieving status that we leave our most significant mark on the world.
The Offices of Mother and Wife
Anyone who has had, not just a biological source from whence they sprang, but an actual hard-working, sacrificing, faith-testing, courage-mustering, devoted, full-time parenting Mother, will put such a woman on a pedestal and consider her title of "Mother" to be a higher office in the priesthood than that of any deacon, teacher, priest, high priest, patriarch, sealer, prophet, seer, or revelator.
Any man who has had for his wife a best friend, an equal, a partner, a counselor, and a trainer in the acquisition of true manhood in the gospel will put his Wife on a similar pedestal, and call her office as such a higher office in the priesthood than any he will ever come to hold.
Because of the gospel, and by virtue of the ordinances of the priesthood, I have had the unimaginably great blessing of being raised by just such a mother, and of being married to just such a wife. The priesthood ordinance of sealing made husband and wife of my mother and father, and I was born into the covenant of the priesthood because of it. In giving birth to me, and in fulfilling all the Lord required of her in raising and training me in the priesthood, my Mother officiated in and executed her responsibility in the priesthood. Similarly, the priesthood made my best friend my wife. By virtue of that sealing, and in the fulfillment of her covenants with respect to me, she has officiated in and fulfilled her responsibilities in the priesthood.
In so doing, these women, without the benefit of holding the priesthood themselves, have demonstrated their worth in the eyes of God, and proven to be of eternal worth to me. It has been their service rendered and not any office or calling in the Church that made it so.
Without the women of the Church, there would be no prophet or apostle, or any other "officer" in the priesthood - both because we would never have been born and because we would never have been properly trained to receive it.
Remedial Training
Earlier, I referred to the fact that women and men have different tasks in the Church. The end purpose of the Church is to serve the spiritual and temporal needs of its people. This requires organization, an attitude and willingness to serve others, and a capacity to nurture.
Good women naturally sacrifice in order to organize, serve, and nurture, usually without even being asked to do so. But even good men, by our nature, will thumb our noses at the Honey-Do list taped on the refrigerator and circled in red, find some munchies in the house, and sit down to watch the Superbowl.
The priesthood is a remedial course designed to organize, train, and motivate the men of the Church to strive to emulate our Mothers and our Spouses in the hope of one day being able to consider ourselves worthy of them. Because of their natural tendency to do these things, the women of the Church are not required to advance through training and licensing in the offices of the priesthood - they are permitted to simply get to work serving others.
In taking upon myself new offices in the priesthood over the years, I have not felt that I had received a new stripe or medal to wear on some uniform, or that I had acquired more bullet-list items to place on some spiritual resume. Rather, I have merely demonstrated that in my life, the remedial training is working. My becoming a high priest only means that I have qualified to receive remedial training for the "big leagues": more intense, more demanding, more service-oriented callings in the Church.
The Relief Society - An Help Meet For the Priesthood
The world has failed to take notice of the fact that Mormon women have an exclusive organization all their own - one in which men are not allowed to be officers or to participate in any way.
Some may ask why women are not seen passing the sacrament or performing baptisms. When a young girl asked this question, her mother answered it by asking why men don't have babies! In the process of childbearing, the women procreate and then "train up in the way they should go" the future bearers of the priesthood and leaders of the Church. (see Proverbs 22:6)
We might also ask why it is that when the bishop appropriates ward resources for meeting the needs of someone in the neighborhood, it isn't the men who are mobilized - at least not initially. The men or the local priesthood may be asked to support this effort, but it is carried out under the leadership of the Relief Society presidency. Not only that, but only women of the Relief Society are allowed to hold presiding positions in the children's Primary and in the Young Women organizations. While serving as a Primary teacher myself, I served under the leadership of the Primary - a presidency composed of women.
Just as Eve was to be considered "an help meet" - an equal - to Adam, even so, the Relief Society is considered to be "an help meet" for the priesthood - an equal. The priesthood is organized to address the spiritual needs of the people who hold it as also of those whom they serve. But the Relief Society was organized to address the spiritual needs of those who belong to it and the temporal and spiritual needs of those whom they serve. In terms of real output, here in the Mormon Church, the Relief Society holds equal importance to the Priesthood.
The Relief Society is actually an extension of the priesthood. While Mormon women may not be ordained to the priesthood, when they hold office or perform any service in the Relief Society, they hold an office organized and authorized by the priesthood. They have authority to designate other leaders - an authority given them through the priesthood. They perform services that are essential to the mission and function of the priesthood. The women in our Church are, in fact, thus allowed full participation in the priesthood through the organization of the Relief Society in the way which the Lord whose Church this is has designed and ordered.
The Purpose of the Priesthood
The world - including some members of the Church - seems to think the Mormon Priesthood is a status symbol or a means of aggrandizement in some sense. I'll reiterate here: it is not. Our prophets and apostles have been very clear: the priesthood is a humbling burden to bear, an opportunity to be not so much a leader as a servant. The priesthood is designed to reflect something the Savior taught:
"...he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." (Matthew 23:11-12)
The functions of the Church were designed by our Creator and tailored to the needs of those asked to shoulder them. Those needs are spiritual needs defined by Him, not the needs defined by the world or by society. Men are given the priesthood, not because we deserve it, but because we need it in order to learn things we came into mortality to learn. Women are not given the priesthood because it isn't what they need for their spiritual development. In so many ways, women are naturally wired to sacrifice and to serve those around them. I have been utterly amazed at the ways my wife sacrifices for me and my children. I don't consider myself capable of this same kind of sacrifice, and this is precisely why I need the priesthood. The priesthood calls upon me to sacrifice time and effort, to act in the service of others in a way that requires me to be more and better than I would otherwise be. The priesthood calls upon me to step up to the spiritual plate, to be worthy of the companionship of my wife and of my association with the other women around me, both inside and outside the Church.
My wife and I may be very different, and I may hold the priesthood, while she does not. But we consider ourselves equals in all things. In Mormon theology, the "head of the household" is organizational only, more a label than a fact. I may technically be the "head of the household" and am therefore responsible for the spiritual instruction of my family. But my wife and I both know that, in many ways, she's the one who "wears the pants". There is in truth no "winning vote". Consensus is reached because we trust each other to be more concerned about doing what is right than we are about who made the decision. We are able to trust each other in this way because, with rare exception, we actually are more concerned about doing what is right for our family than about who made the decision. It helps a great deal that our decision to marry was built in no small part on the fact that we knew each other deeply enough to realize how closely aligned our priorities and values are.
The world seems to feel that women ought to be entitled to the "status" of the priesthood - a "status" that for faithful Latter-Day Saints (both men and women) does not exist. Those concerned about such status should know that, as of this writing and notwithstanding my upcoming ordination as a high priest, since our marriage, my wife has held higher, more visible positions in our congregation than I have, despite not being ordained to the priesthood. She has served as the second counselor in the Young Women organization, whereas I've hidden on the bench behind the organ during the hymns in sacrament meeting. Those concerned with such status should know that there are about as many callings and offices in the Church exclusively filled by women as by men. Just look at the number of organizations in which the women alone are allowed to preside. Those concerned with such status should know that, while the men are tied up making administrative decisions and allocating resources, the women are in the trenches, overseeing the execution of those decisions and personally seeing to the placement of those resources right where the need for them is most poignantly felt: in the personal lives of the members of the Church and their neighbors. Their work is often much more visible, and much more deeply felt and recognized.
After I am ordained a high priest, and no matter what calling I may asked to bear because of it, I will still always value deeply the women in my life; I will still always very much look up to my Mother, look up to my Wife, and look up to my "little" Sister. (She's all grown up now) And in the course of fulfilling such callings, I will likely have both opportunity and obligation to depend upon and to recognize the great value the women bring to our Church, position in the priesthood - or lack thereof - notwithstanding.
Also of Interest
for comparison:
Offices of the Priesthood in the Ancient Church
Offices of the Priesthood in the Latter-Day Church
Priesthood Leaders Must Be Called of God/Unpaid - Ancient Church
Priesthood Leaders Must Be Called of God/Unpaid - Latter-Day Church
Church page
Mormon.org: Women in the Church
Elder Ballard: Women Are Essential to God's Work
Roles of LDS Women: http://melissabeutler.blogspot.com/
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