Throughout the month of June, young men and young women of the church will study the priesthood. The introduction to this section of the Young Women curriculum contains this note:

Be sensitive to young women who live without priesthood authority in the home or have negative examples in their lives.

By all means, do be sensitive to such situations, but I wonder why it did not occur to the authors to remind teachers to be sensitive to the fact that all of the students in the class are young women and therefore excluded from the priesthood?  Sensitivity to this issue is paramount as we prepare to discuss the priesthood in Young Women’s class every week for a whole month.  Some of the young women in your class may feel concerned, frustrated or hurt as they watch their male peers administer sacred ordinances of the priesthood every week and receive higher offices of the priesthood every other year.  Spending a month discussing ordinances they are not allowed to perform and offices they are not allowed to hold could exacerbate these feelings.

How can you be sensitive to young women who struggle with their exclusion from the priesthood?

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While my husband was off at Priesthood Session this evening, I attended the Ordain Women Launch Event, which another attendee charmingly dubbed “Priestesshood Session.”  The crowd was sparse when I arrived yet entering was difficult because of the large number of TV cameras to dodge.  I am excited to think that someday there will be archived footage of the back of my sweater blocking a camera or two as I zigzagged through the room to attend this historic event.  By the end of the speech, however, the room had filled up–with a surprisingly close ratio of male and female attendees.

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The place to begin to improve society is in the home….We are trying to make the world better by making the family stronger.

President Gordon B. Hinckley, 1997

Temporal Responsibilities and Eternal Roles

The title of this chapter invokes a powerful image, one that hearkens back to ancient Roman times where priestesses kept ritualistic hearths in service to the gods. Women have always played an important, yet often unrecognized role in keeping and protecting hearth and home. In fact, the lesson gives examples of women throughout the scriptures who have done exactly this.

Faithful women and men have been true to this theology of the family and followed these standards, doctrines, and practices whenever the gospel has been on the earth. “Our glorious Mother Eve” and our “Father Adam” were leaders for their children, teaching them “the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.” Rebekah and Isaac ensured that priesthood covenants and blessings would not be lost for their family. A widow in the city of Zarephath was able to take care of her son because she had faith to follow the prophet Elijah. Two thousand sixty young warriors fought valiantly to protect their families, trusting their mothers’ promise that “God would deliver them.” As a young man, Jesus Christ “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man,” nurtured by the love and concern of His mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph.

It does not matter if we are single or married, mothers or childless, each of us makes up an important piece of our mortal and human families. We will perform our roles differently depending on our individual circumstances but each of us does so in good faith.

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Differentiating between Priesthood and Priesthood Holders

While we sometimes refer to priesthood holders as ‘the priesthood,’ we must never forget that the priesthood is not owned by or embodied in those who hold it. It is held in a sacred trust to be used for the benefit of men, women, and children alike. 2 -Dallin H. Oaks

How is the priesthood different from priesthood holders? Why would it be important to differentiate between the priesthood and priesthood holders?

Many Latter-day Saints have never been married. Others are single because of the death of a spouse, abandonment, or divorce…They can enjoy the blessings, strength, and influence of the priesthood in their lives and homes through the ordinances they have received and the covenants they keep. (From the DIMK narrative)

Just as I was preparing to serve a full-time mission, my father left our family and the Church. Under these circumstances, it was difficult for me to leave home for two years, but I went. And while I served the Lord in a faraway land, I learned of my mother’s strength at home. She needed and appreciated the special attention she received from men who held the priesthood—her father and brothers, her home teachers, other men in the ward. However, her greatest strength came from the Lord Himself. She did not have to wait for a visit in order to have the blessings of the priesthood in her home, and when visitors left, those blessings did not leave with them. Because she was faithful to the covenants she had made in the waters of baptism and in the temple, she always had the blessings of the priesthood in her life. The Lord gave her inspiration and strength beyond her own capacity, and she raised children who now keep the same covenants that have sustained her. 28 -Author’s Name Withheld

How can we have the priesthood in our lives if we do not have a priesthood holder in our lives?

The priesthood is “without father, without mother, … having neither beginning of days, nor end of life” (Heb. 7:30), nor maleness nor femaleness. It is head to them both. Male and female alike come under it and must understand their true relationship to it, one to serve as priest within it, the other eventually as a priestess. Men here are given the priesthood power, but both man and woman must bring themselves into submission unto it, rather than she unto him as a person. The man must assume the same relationship of honor and obedience to priesthood truths and doctrines that the woman does. That is, it precedes them both. For the man to assume that because he “holds” the priesthood that it is his or that he is somehow exalted in importance is a serious distortion. – Gib Kocherhans Reference A

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In 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks made a choice to violate a local ordinance that required African Americans to give up their seats to White passengers.

In retrospect, this was a very good choice.  Although it cost her personally, by resulting in her arrest, her choice accomplished a much greater good for her country.  Her actions motivated the Montgomery Bus Boycott, one of the greatest civil rights movements of American history, and caused the United States Supreme Court to strike down the bus segregation ordinance in 1956.(Reference a)

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