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Lately I have felt like there is such a huge emphasis on the priesthood and its really starting to bother me. Lessons about how the priesthood is the most important thing, the greatest gift, how everything we have is because of the priesthood and done through the priesthood. All of these lessons are exacerbating the feelings I already have of being marginalized as a woman in the church. I feel like this emphasis is to try and hold on to a patriarchy that doesn’t have a place in modern society. Whatever the reason is though, I don’t like it. I leave every one of these lessons feeling like a second class church member or support staff instead of a vital and needed child of God. Yup. 🙂 HSAB..I agree!! It is becoming very disheartening to attend church and hear over and over how lucky I am to be able to support my priesthood leaders in all things. That it is my “gift to of obedience to their inspired counsel that sets lds women apart from other women in the world”. Why cant we discuss at least in part the 3 types of priesthood and functions? I wish they would remember that instead of only emphasizing my second class,servant,behind the scenes,zero true power or influence, role that women are “ordained” to play. Is it August yet? I feel for the women here. In the past I didn’t think about it much but now I am more aware of all these things. Please don’t think all men are happy with the way things are with the priesthood. I am not sure why everything has to be done with the priesthood. In the temple they don’t talk about the creation coming about because of the priesthood or Nephi never mentions it. I would really like to see the women get the priesthood if that is what they want. As I mentioned on another thread, I had a facepalm moment yesterday at church. Someone suggested that community fellowship, service, good parenting and even pot luck after church was only possible because of the priesthood (!!!). I could think of no way to respond that wouldn’t make him look like an idiot and me seem like a jerk. So I bit my tongue. Conceptually, the only thing the priesthood for is needed for is to complete certain ceremonies/ordinances on behalf of God having been commissioned by God. And some of those are done in God’s name in the temple by women.
Revelation does not need priesthood: we ask investigators and female leaders to have revelation and neither hold priesthood.
Leadership of other members does not need priesthood: primary/YW/RS leaders, seminary teachers, senior companion in a sister missionary team all lead others and don’t need priesthood.
mackay11 wrote:As I mentioned on another thread, I had a facepalm moment yesterday at church. Someone suggested that community fellowship, service, good parenting and even pot luck after church was only possible because of the priesthood (!!!). I could think of no way to respond that wouldn’t make him look like an idiot and me seem like a jerk. So I bit my tongue.
At some point, the talk about priesthood is pumped too full. If it’s absolutely EVERYTHING and can’t be identified, differentiated (whatever the right term is!), it’s human to just stop thinking about it, and I assume that’s not what we’re aiming for.
🙂 I was having these exact feelings yesterday in RS. Our lesson was supposed to be all about RS and true charity, but somehow it turned into priesthood worship complete with several sisters mentioning their favorite GA’s and how wonderful it is to have such righteous priesthood holding men leading the church and the RS. 🙄 I really wanted to walk out, but I had to play the closing song so I stuck it out.Idolatry is bad. May Be – we had the same lesson in our ward, to be fair the teacher received the assignment 5 min. before class, so any preparation or oversight I will let slide. However at one point some one mentioned that Priesthood and Relief Society were two arms of the church. Instantly after that comment, one of the most TBM ladies in our ward made the crack, “With RS being the strongest.” (I liked the line) Immediately our President jumped in and stated, “Now that isn’t doctrine”. The teacher volleyied well by making a joke about check your doctrine app or something. But I about jumped out of my chair at President’s remark. Whether the sister really does feel like that,and I believe she does because the remark came from her so quickly, or was just a funny quip – it wasn’t a big deal. Or at least shouldn’t have been made a big deal.
Most of the time I let the Priesthood fight slide off me, because I know it is just a shouting match, with neither side at present making headway, but yesterday caught me.
Quote:Brothers and sisters, the power by which the heavens and earth were and are created is the priesthood. Those of us who are members of the Church know that the source of this priesthood power is God Almighty and His Son, Jesus Christ. Not only is the priesthood the power by which the heavens and the earth were created, but it is also the power the Savior used in His mortal ministry to perform miracles, to bless and heal the sick, to bring the dead to life, and, as our Father’s Only Begotten Son, to endure the unbearable pain of Gethsemane and Calvary—thus fulfilling the laws of justice with mercy and providing an infinite Atonement and overcoming physical death through the Resurrection.
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/this-is-my-work-and-glory?lang=eng The most powerful force known to mankind in time or eternity is the holy priesthood (see N. Eldon Tanner, in Conference Report, Oct. 1979, p. 61; or Ensign, Nov. 1979, p. 42). By it the earth was created and the planets are held in their orbits, but even more impressive is the knowledge that to have “the power of the Melchizedek Priesthood is to have the power of ‘endless lives’” (History of the Church, 5:554). By the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood, the entire Church and kingdom of God on earth functions, is administered, and rolls triumphantly to its foreordained destiny…..
Every prayer for salvation would be in vain without the holy ordinances being performed by those who have been anointed and appointed to the priesthood. Every hope would be dashed upon the rocks of futility without the voice of authorized servants whose function it is to speak for the Lord in guiding His children in the paths that lead to exaltation and bestowing the blessings of eternity (see D&C 130:20–21). In short, the priesthood is the divine power needed by every son and daughter of God to lift them from a life of corruption, through the merits of the Redeemer, to a spotless life of splendor in the presence of their eternal Father…….
As you think about what it means to be a worthy holder of the priesthood, do you realize that in being given the priesthood a man receives an endowment of the Spirit to enable him to administer the affairs of his own life and the lives of his family in power? Think of it!
I suppose it is possible to make an argument that the Priesthood really is in everything good. The garden analogy: if the planets are kept in their orbits by the power of the priesthood then perhaps plants seed and grow by the same power. If God is responsible for every good thing in our lives and He only acts through the priesthood – then everything good that we have also comes from the priesthood. The blessing of a newborn baby is from the priesthood because it is the priesthood that maintains order in the universe. That the zygote would grow to a fetus and the fetus into a baby is because of the priesthood. So the statement ” that community fellowship, service, good parenting and even pot luck after church was only possible because of the priesthood.” is defensible by this reasoning.Ann wrote:At some point, the talk about priesthood is pumped too full. If it’s absolutely EVERYTHING and can’t be identified, differentiated (whatever the right term is!), it’s human to just stop thinking about it, and I assume that’s not what we’re aiming for.
I agree – but what I feel is an even greater danger is the conflation of this “most powerful force known to mankind in time or eternity” with the brethren and the power that they hold.
If the awesome power of the priesthood can be manipulated by a man “to enable him to administer the affairs of his own life and the lives of his family in power,” why then would a woman not want this same empowerment “to administer the affairs of [her] own life and the lives of [her] family in power.”
Is it any wonder that some Mormon women think that what makes them special in this world is their proximity to and support of priesthood holding men? (and other Mormon women want that same power?)
I remember a couple of years ago before my wife was baptized and I was re-baptized, we were reading D. Michael Quinn’s book, The Mormon Hierarchy: The Origins of Power.We never went too deeply into the book – which seems to be a historical survey of the origins of the LDS sense of priesthood and leadership. We had been wading through an assortment of accounts of the early days around the restoration of the priesthood and the organization of the Church and leadership quorums.
Suddenly, my wife tossed the book onto the coffee table and exclaimed,
“Arthur this is boring!!! All these men seem to be sitting around discussing and arguing about who the big fish and little fish are going to be while the women are somewhere else, probably raising the children and keeping them safe, tending the gardens, washing the clothes and holding the rest of the family life together.”
I think I was still laughing in delight three days later.
Arthur Ruger wrote:I remember a couple of years ago before my wife was baptized and I was re-baptized, we were reading D. Michael Quinn’s book,
The Mormon Hierarchy: The Origins of Power.We never went too deeply into the book – which seems to be a historical survey of the origins of the LDS sense of priesthood and leadership. We had been wading through an assortment of accounts of the early days around the restoration of the priesthood and the organization of the Church and leadership quorums.
Suddenly, my wife tossed the book onto the coffee table and exclaimed,
“Arthur this is boring!!! All these men seem to be sitting around discussing and arguing about who the big fish and little fish are going to be while the women are somewhere else, probably raising the children and keeping them safe, tending the gardens, washing the clothes and holding the rest of the family life together.”
I think I was still laughing in delight three days later.
Thanks for sharing! I actually think that, on the whole, men in the church are very hands-on, practical and service-oriented, but your wife’s comment reminds me of a Neal A. Maxwell line (don’t know the exact words or reference). Something like: For too long in the church the men have been the theologians, and the women the Christians.
I think that’s a tension within a single person, too. How to spend your time and energy, etc.
When I hear the word priesthood now, I look at it as “authorization to serve in the LDS Church”. Not so much as the majestic power to act in the name of God, but as simply and authorized opportunity to serve people within the Mormon institution. But I’m finding I have that opportunity in multiple contexts in the world — not just in the church. There are a million different places you can put your free labor…. Sure, there is a religious component to it in the church that you don’t find anywhere else, but that represents only a small part of the church experience for me.
HSAB, you might want to read my Sunday School lesson summary on the Priesthood and Priesthood keys, if you didn’t read it when I posted it. In that lesson, we talked about the difference between the institutional-ordinance-performing-Priesthood-of-Priests (limited) and the speaking-and-acting-in-the-name-of-God priesthood-of-believers (unlimited). The link is:
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3481&hilit=my+new+calling&start=90#p57939 There are many claims about what the priesthood does but little actual results. It is one of those ideas that is ascribed great power but in reality is manufactured importance.
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