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
Famous quotes containing the words women, church, christ and/or saints:
“Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?”
—Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 18:21,22.
“If the Christ were content with humble toilers for disciples, that wasn’t good enough for our Bert. He wanted dukes’ half sisters and belted earls wiping his feet with their hair; grand apotheosis of the snob, to humiliate the objects of his own awe by making them venerate him.”
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“It is an art apart. Saint Francis of Assisi said—”All saints can do miracles, but few of them can keep hotel.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)