In celebration of Ordain Women’s fifth anniversary, we sponsored a panel at the 2018 Sunstone Symposium in Salt Lake City titled “Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Many Voices of Ordain Women.” As we look to the future and a new organizational structure that emphasizes both individual and collective, local and global activism on women’s ordination and gender equality in the Church, the panel not only drew on the past to inform a discussion of our initiatives going forward but also featured the thoughts and experiences of a number of OW executive board members and supporters who share the common vision of a more equitable religious community. The following was presented by OW profile holder and supporter, Margaret Toscano.
Mormon women have a stronger theological and historical claim to priesthood than do women of any other Christian denomination. Nevertheless, from the death of Joseph Smith, Mormon male priesthood leaders have systematically opposed, punished, and silenced women who have publicly asserted that claim. In this short presentation, I wish to forefront just a few key events in Church history that demonstrate how LDS leaders have covered-up or dis-informed Mormon women regarding their right to priesthood.[1]
As a Mesa, Arizona girl growing up in the LDS Church, I accepted what I was taught, namely, that men have priesthood and women have motherhood—which struck me as an unfair arrangement even then. In the 1970s, as a student at BYU, I began to question this assertion and commenced my research on the underlying theological and historical bases for it. What I learned was that Joseph Smith had promised the women of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo all of the rights, privileges, keys, and blessings of the priesthood, and also that he had actually ordained or instructed women to be ordained to the fullness of the Melchizedek priesthood in 1843 and 1844. While I was engaged in my research, I received my own temple endowments. The combination of my spiritual experiences in the temple, together with the historical information I was gathering, led me to believe and feel deeply that I had received priesthood through my endowment. Notwithstanding this belief, I was still not certain how the temple priesthood related to the priesthood to which men are ordained in the Church.
In the 1970s, Joseph’s speeches to the Nauvoo Relief Society were not readily available. When I finally read his original language, I was shocked at the directness and clarity with which he promised priesthood to women. I realized that the historical record had been doctored. His statement that he intended to make the Relief Society a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day and as in Paul’s day had been changed to support later Church leaders’ denial of priesthood to women.
I also learned that Joseph not only promised priesthood to women but that he acted to fulfill that promise. The documentary evidence shows that Emma Smith was anointed and ordained to the highest and holiest order of the priesthood on September 28, 1843. The exact language of that ordination makes Emma Smith historically the Elijah Abel for women’s right to priesthood ordination. Other women were likewise ordained in that same period. Later church leaders have obscured Joseph’s promises and have asserted that these ordinations of women are not equivalent to the ordinations of men in the Church but are merely about marriage sealings and celestial partnerships. Joseph Smith’s clear statements to the women contradict these assertions. And his last discourses to the Church demonstrate that he believed that the fullness of the temple priesthood embraced all the other orders of priesthood that had been revealed to the Church at large, and that the church priesthood was not complete nor fully restored without the women participating. I accept Joseph’s view. Notwithstanding, I believe with Ordain Women that LDS women cannot be content with the temple priesthood alone, but women must be ordained both to priesthood and church offices, just as men are. I do not believe that the LDS Church can be right before God until women sit in all the councils of the Church: the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve, Stake Presidencies, Bishoprics, etc.
Through my research, I also became aware that, after Joseph’s death, LDS church leaders from Brigham Young to the present have made various attempts to bury Joseph’s expanded view of priesthood and his ordinations of women. The most important and depressing of these attempts occurred in the 30-year period between 1892 and 1922. What happened, in brief, was this: On March 17, 1892, at the 50-year celebration of the organization of the Relief Society, Sarah M. Kimball read this statement:
President [Joseph] Smith stated that the meeting [in Nauvoo] was called for the purpose of making more complete the organization of the Church by organizing the women in the order of the priesthood.
Relief Society president, Bathsheba W. Smith, who had also been present at the Nauvoo Relief Society organization and was a member of the Anointed Quorum, made a number of clarifying statements on this issue: For example, in 1901, she said: “we have not taken these responsibilities upon ourselves, but have been called in the order of the holy priesthood.” In 1905, she boldly stated: “Joseph said he wanted to make us as the women were in Paul’s day, a kingdom of priestesses. We have the ceremony in our endowments as Joseph taught.” Later she declared emphatically: “Joseph gave us [women] everything, every order of the priesthood” and “instructions that [we] could administer to the sick.” Such strong statements were printed in the official women’s publication, Woman’s Exponent. Following this, in 1906, the male church leaders responded to these claims by pressuring the women into retracting their statements and asserting instead that the Relief Society had never been intended to be a priesthood organization, but rather had always been intended to serve under the direction of male priesthood leaders. Then, between 1907 and 1922, top church leaders made one official statement after another denying that women had ever had any claim to any portion of the priesthood whatsoever, thus contradicting the testimonies of Bathsheba Smith, Sarah Kimball, and other women who had direct knowledge and experience of actually being ordained to the highest and holiest order of priesthood under the direction of Joseph Smith, himself.
For the next 60 years, the idea that women had a right to priesthood lay dormant until reasserted by scholars like me, my husband Paul, and Michael Quinn. It is no accident that all three of us were excommunicated for these and other assertions, starting 25 years ago. Supporting women’s priesthood ordination was not the main reason given for either Mike’s or Paul’s excommunication; but importantly, it was the crucial issue for me, the woman. Leaders told me they needed to excommunicate me so that people wouldn’t believe what I said about priesthood.
In 2012, the speeches of Joseph Smith to the Nauvoo Relief Society became available online. This information reinforced the belief of some church members that Mormon women should be ordained to priesthood. Others had become convinced of the rightness of this position by their spiritual feelings or their commitment to equality in the Church. Although many women began to harbor this view from the 1970s onward, their sub-rosa feelings were brought to the surface by the appearance in 2013 of Ordain Women, which provided a forum and support group for the public declaration of the belief that Mormon women should be ordained to priesthood. The importance of group solidarity for encouraging public declarations cannot be overstated.
Kate Kelly’s excommunication in June of 2014 sent a clear message to church members that they would be opposed, punished, and silenced by church leaders for asserting women’s claim to priesthood. Kate became the prime public example, though others have paid the price too. Although these punitive actions are consonant with those perpetrated in the past, it is heartening that this has not prevented individuals from declaring their belief in women’s ordination. Profiles and testimonies continue to be posted on ordainwomen.org. I applaud individuals who are speaking out. But still, ecclesiastical silencing and punishment have chilled the movement, caused people to resign their membership in the Church, and continue to thwart women’s full participation in church governance.
I am glad Ordain Women has remained a public presence, though it appears that the impetus and energy to have a large protest movement advocating women’s ordination to priesthood has, sadly, diminished. Still, even as a symbolic presence, Ordain Women is a vital organization. The power of patriarchal thinking and its concomitant prejudice against women’s ordination will, I fear, continue into the future where, I believe, it is possible that gay marriages will be solemnized in the temple before Joseph Smith’s promise of priesthood to women will be fulfilled. I hope both happen in my lifetime. But if they don’t, I believe the Spirit of God will continue to work with this people until a greater equality is achieved for all, black and white, gay and straight, male and female. The scriptures stand as the standard for the Church, and they admonish us, again and again, to reflect Christ’s love by how we treat each other. We are Christ’s so long as we do the work of Christ, which is to empower the powerless and to relieve the pain of any who suffer.
[1] For documentation of my claims and further evidence, see my chapter “Retrieving the Keys: Historical Milestones in LDS Women’s Quest for Ordination,” in Voices for Equality: Ordain Women and Resurgent Mormon Feminism, ed. by Gordon Shepherd, Lavina Fielding Anderson, and Gary Shepherd (Greg Kofford Books, Salt Lake City, 2015), pp. 137-166.
You can listen to the Sunstone presentation:
Stream here or download. For access to more of Sunstone’s 2018 Symposium, visit their website.