Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

Authority Without Ordination

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
Authority Without Ordination

The Relief Society presidency is the clearest case of a question the movement has not settled to everyone's satisfaction. Women are not ordained to priesthood office. They lead organisations, teach, preach in sacrament meetings, serve missions, sit on councils, and officiate in certain temple ordinances for other women, and they do all of it without ordination.

Since 2018 the church has taught explicitly that a woman set apart to an office such as this one exercises delegated priesthood authority within her stewardship, a formulation set out at length by Dallin H. Oaks and repeated in the General Handbook. That is a real development in the church's teaching and it is stated here as the church states it. What it does not do is give a woman keys, and the practical limits remain: she is called by a bishop and released by one, cannot administer the fund from which the help she recommends is paid, and has no counterpart above the general presidency.

The historical contrast makes the question sharper rather than softer. The nineteenth century Relief Society controlled its own funds, ran its own grain storage programme, published its own periodical, financed a hospital and trained midwives, and its leaders were public figures in the Utah suffrage campaign. Most of that independent activity was consolidated into central church departments during the correlation programme of the 1960s and 1970s. Historians of the movement, including those writing from within it, treat that as a genuine loss of autonomy, and it is the reference point for much of the discussion now.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.