Women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The status of women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been a source of public debate beginning in the 19th century, when the church found itself at odds with the federal government over its practice of polygamy. Despite the legal and cultural issues related to the LDS practice known as plural marriage, 19th century women played a significant public leadership role in Latter-day Saint culture, politics, and even doctrine. Indeed, some view the role of women in the 19th century Church as the zenith of women's institutional and leadership participation in the church hierarchy.
In the mainstream of the church today, women continue to have a significant public role, mostly in non-ecclesiastical areas such as art and culture. Ecclesiastically, the church is firmly committed to traditional gender role.
Women also have retained a certain degree of authority in some areas, including a number of leadership positions, which include authority over children or other women, although these women leaders are subject to supervision and guidance by priesthood-holding leaders. Women are "endowed" with priesthood power, but are not ordained to priesthood office. Though not considered clergy, women play a significant part in the operation of local congregations. Women teach classes to adults, teenagers, and children. Women also organize social, educational, and humanitarian activities. Women may also serve as missionaries, and a select few may perform certain ordinances such as washing and anointing on behalf of women in Latter-day Saint temples.
Within and outside the church mainstream, there is a minority of Latter-day Saint women who raise concerns regarding Church policy and doctrine. However, women (and men) who are viewed as publicly oppositional toward the church's patriarchal structure are often subject to ecclesiastical discipline, including excommunication for apostasy.
Read more about this topic: Women And Mormonism
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“All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.”
—James Wright (1927–1980)
“Jesus: Senor, the widow Gomez delivered a son this morning, a boy.
Guthrie McCabe: Bully for the widow Gomez.
Jesus: But Senor, it has been more than a year ago since Senor Antonio Gomez has been buried in the church house.
McCabe: Well, there’s some men y’a just can’t trust to stay where you put ‘em.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“The little Jesus came to town;
With ox and sheep He laid Him down;
Peace to the byre, peace to the fold,
For that they housed Him from the cold!”
—Lizette Woodworth Reese (1856–1935)
“The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin’s Russia: it’s like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.”
—Tony Benn (b. 1925)
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
—Bible: New Testament, Ephesians 2:19-22.