Should Women “Hold” the Priesthood?

 

In an August 2026 Salt Lake Tribune article,¹ Jana Riess asks why so many younger women are leaving the LDS Church. She cites her own research with Benjamin Knoll, as well as a BYU Studies article, Ryan Burge’s 2025 Spiritual Seismology Survey, and Pew’s 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study, which all agree that younger Latter-day Saint women are leaving the Church at a faster pace than their older female coreligionists and their male counterparts. Riess’s research suggests that there are three reasons for this increased exodus: politics, purity culture, and powerlessness.

Younger women tend to be more politically liberal than older women or men of all ages and may not feel comfortable in a Church that has a general conservative bias. They also may be disaffiliating, says Riess, as “a backlash against the extreme sexual ‘purity culture’ that was taught when many young Latter-day Saint women were teens.” It is the third factor, however, that I wish to focus on in this post. Riess points to “a growing disconnect between the power young women experience now in most aspects of their lives compared to the powerlessness many report feeling at church. In the church, women cannot hold the priesthood, bless or pass the sacrament, baptize a convert or make policy decisions. . . . Because in a church that does not permit women to help create the policy decisions that affect them, some feel there’s only one way to be heard: voting with their feet.”

Although some Church leaders have tried to smooth over this disconnect by insisting that women do indeed share in the priesthood, these explanations ring hollow when women cannot “hold” the priesthood, be ordained to priesthood offices, perform most ordinances, or participate in councils where policy and doctrinal decisions are made. A woman in today’s Church, for instance, cannot become a bishop or stake president or Apostle. Why not? There is not, to my knowledge, a revelation from the Lord that specifically says only men can “hold” the priesthood, and certain passages in the New Testament suggest that some women in the ancient Church held offices we would today consider priesthood offices. The most common answer to this question usually boils the reasons down to tradition. In the modern Church, only men have occupied priesthood offices, therefore this practice should continue.

But are there good arguments for perhaps rethinking tradition? I believe there are. In three past issues of Dialogue,² I addressed questions surrounding priesthood and presented such arguments, often obliquely or buried in footnotes, primarily because as editorial director of BYU Studies I felt I had to be cautious. But now that I am retired and free from such concerns, I feel compelled to make these arguments candidly and unapologetically. I do this not to make waves or to criticize Church leaders. I do it in the spirit of offering Church leaders a rationale (or several) for making a drastic change to Church policy that would, I believe, increase the faith and retention of members, both female and male.

I will present two arguments—one historical/linguistic and one logical/theological—to support the idea that women should be able to “hold” the priesthood and be ordained to priesthood offices in the LDS Church.

 

What Is Priesthood?

The standard LDS definition of priesthood is “the power and authority that God gives to man to act in all things necessary for the salvation of God’s children.”³ What most members (and likely many leaders) of the Church do not realize is that this definition is uniquely LDS and is not even scriptural. Priesthood as a form of abstract authority does not appear in the Bible or the Book of Mormon, and it begins to coalesce in the revelations given to Joseph Smith only after about 1834. In the earliest days of the Restoration, priesthood was understood exactly as the surrounding Christian churches understood it, and that definition still persists in all other churches today.

If you look in almost any English dictionary, you will find two definitions for the word priesthood, such as these taken from the dictionary I have at my desk: “1: the office, dignity, or character of a priest[;]  2: the whole body of priests.”⁴ Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary gives similar definitions that would have been common during Joseph Smith’s lifetime: “the office or character of a priest” and “the order of men set apart for sacred offices; the order composed of priests.”⁵ In other words, priesthood is either the condition of being a priest or a group of priests. These definitions are in keeping with other words that use the suffix -hood. Motherhood, for instance, is the condition of being a mother. A neighborhood is a group of neighbors. The LDS definition of priesthood, by contrast, does not make linguistic sense. We would never say, “She holds the motherhood” or “She exercises her motherhood.”

Interestingly, the LDS definition of priesthood as abstract authority does appear in the four-inch-thick Webster’s unabridged dictionary I had access to at BYU Studies. It lists a third definition: “the authority to speak and administer in the name of Deity given in the Mormon Church by ordination; also the body of those so ordained including those of the Aaronic as well as the Melchizedek orders.”⁶ The existence of this unique LDS definition explains why, when non–Latter-day Saints refer to the former priesthood ban, they use terminology like this, from a 2012 Atlantic article: “Blacks could not be priests.”⁷ People of other faiths or no faith at all would never say, “Blacks could not hold the priesthood.” Such a construction would make no sense to them.

Some scholars have attempted to expand the definition of priesthood used by Latter-day Saints. For instance, Casey Griffiths and Scott Woodward interviewed Church historian Lisa Olsen Tait in a series on their Church History Matters podcast.⁸ In these podcasts, they brought up the idea that since women are permitted to participate in performing temple ordinances, they must hold some sort of priesthood authority. If this is true, we should ask why women can perform ordinances in the temple but not outside of it. Griffiths, Woodward, and Tait seem to agree that there is a special sort of temple priesthood. But women’s participation in temple ordinances for some reason still does not grant them the authority to baptize, to hold office, or to preside in priesthood quorums. Because this “temple priesthood’ is rather nebulous and raises more questions than it answers, in this post I will focus instead on the accepted and more restrictive definition of priesthood used in the Church outside of temple walls.

The standard LDS definition of priesthood is certainly not an ancient concept. It does not appear in the Bible. And the word priesthood appears only eight times in the Book of Mormon, all of them in the book of Alma and all of them referring to the condition of being a high priest. For instance, Alma₂ delivered the judgment seat to Nephihah and confined himself “wholly to the high priesthood” (Alma 4:20), in other words, to the office of high priest over the church. Indeed, priesthood was not an important concept in the Book of Mormon, although authority certainly was.

The traditional usage of priesthood is also ubiquitous in the early documentary history of the modern Church. In the earliest records, priesthood refers to the office of priest, and high priesthood refers to the office of high priest. In a meeting held on October 25, 1831, for example, both Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon spoke of elders having the privilege of being ordained to the high priesthood, or being ordained high priests. The high priesthood was not an overarching authority that included the office of elder. It was simply the state of being a high priest. As Joseph’s concept of authority expanded, and as he needed to share authority with others, priesthood evolved into something more encompassing than just the condition of being a priest. It eventually became a form of authority that was divided into a lesser and a higher priesthood, each including several additional offices (such as deacon, bishop, elder, and Apostle).

So, what does this historical and linguistic development of the concept of priesthood have to do with women “holding” this priesthood? To put it as simply as possible, if priesthood as authority granted by God to humans is not an ancient concept but is a modern development that did not even exist when the Book of Mormon was translated or when the Church was organized, then we cannot look to ancient records to shed any light on why this authority might be withheld from women. And if there is no revelation to Joseph Smith stating that only men may receive this authority by ordination, then the only argument we have for denying such ordinations to woman is tradition.

But even tradition leaves a window cracked open. In the third meeting of the Nauvoo Relief Society, Joseph Smith spoke to those gathered together. According to the meeting minutes, Joseph said “that the Society should move according to the ancient Priesthood, hence there should be a select Society separate from all the evils of the world, choice, virtuou[s] and holy— Said he was going to make of this Society a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day— as in Paul’s day— that it is the privilege of each member to live long and enjoy health.”⁹

Joseph loved to share authority with others, as long as he could stand at the pinnacle, and so he apparently wanted to pattern the Relief Society after the ancient priesthood, as he understood it, making the women “a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day.” In the temple today, men and women are told that someday they will be “kings and queens, priests and priestesses.” What is a priest? It is an office created to perform the work of God. If so, then what is a priestess? It seems obvious that it is the female counterpart to the office of priest. So, if women are promised in the temple that they will someday become priestesses, why not now? Why only in the hereafter? Why will a form of equality reign in the eternities that is denied us now? Is this really God’s will, or is it perhaps just social custom, tradition?

It appears from the linguistic history of the word priesthood in early Mormonism that Joseph recognized scriptural offices, such as priest, bishop, apostle, and deacon, but he needed a way to organize them. So, he gradually altered the meaning of the term priesthood and expanded it from its traditional meaning of the state of being a priest so that it eventually became a vessel that could contain all the offices mentioned in scripture. He then divided it so that a lesser priesthood vessel contained the offices of deacon, teacher, priest, and bishop and a higher priesthood contained the offices of elder, seventy, high priest, patriarch, and apostle.

The point, though, regarding women is that since this evolution of the meaning of priesthood is a modern phenomenon, we cannot look to ancient patterns to determine the exact shape and parameters of this authority we today call priesthood. And in Joseph Smith’s revelations, nowhere do we find a specific prohibition against women “holding” this priesthood.

Greg Prince very cautiously addresses this issue. He writes, “Smith never explicitly confirmed or denied the possibility of women assuming a role equal to that of men at all levels of church ministry and administration. However, in the course of his ministry women gradually began to do things which today are generally associated with priesthood.”¹⁰ He adds, “There is no record that Smith ever stated or implied that women would eventually be ordained to the same priesthood as men. Neither, however, did he indicate that such ordination was not possible. There is abundant evidence, both from Smith and from other contemporary church leaders, that a trend of gradual ecclesiastical empowerment of women was anticipated, though perhaps not to full parity with men. Most statements suggesting increased female empowerment carried caveats.”¹¹ Prince concludes, “In summary, no definitive evidence exists indicating that Smith intended to ordain women to the same priesthood as men. Nor did he proscribe such a possibility.”¹²

It is altogether possible that Joseph’s reluctance to grant full and equal authority to women may have been the consequence not of his own beliefs and understanding of God’s power but instead of the societal constraints under which he lived, for women in the 1830s and 1840s were in many ways legally and societally subservient to the men they married and were related to. In many ways, Joseph was pushing against those limitations through his sharing of authority with women. Since the legal and societal constraints of coverture no longer exist in our day, at least in theory, perhaps they should no longer constrain the thinking of Church leaders in the twenty-first century. We might well ask what Joseph would do if he were alive today.

The Source of God’s Authority

In my article titled The Source of God’s Authority: One Argument for an Unambiguous Doctrine of Preexistence, I explore the rather audacious question of why God can exercise authority over us. I point out that in Joseph’s early writings, God is assumed to have created the spirits of men and women (see, for instance, 2 Nephi 2:14 and Moses 3:4–7; 6:36, 51). But in 1833, Joseph received a revelation that introduced the idea of uncreated intelligence (D&C 93:24). And in 1839, he began teaching that individual spirits were not created but have always existed: “The Spirit of Man is not a created being; it existed from Eternity & will exist to eternity. Anything created cannot be eternal.”¹³ This doctrine appeared on several different occasions (August 1839, February 1840, January 1841, March 1841, April 1842, and April 1844 [the King Follett Discourse]).

This shift in a significant doctrine raises an important question. If God created our spirits, then obviously he has every right to exercise authority over us. But if he did not—if we always existed as sentient beings—what gives God the right to exercise authority over us? My answer to this question, I believe, had not been suggested previously, but here it is: “If, as Joseph boldly declared, we are eternal beings whose minds or intelligence could not be created, and if, as the account of Abraham suggests, God came down in the beginning among a group of already existing beings, then we were, in a very real sense, self-existent and independent, and God, no matter how much more intelligent or perfect he was, would have had no right to dictate to us how we were to exist. To put it in modern terms, he did not conduct a hostile takeover of our eternal spirits or intelligences. No, this is not how God would behave. More consistent with the pattern he has established in all his dealings with us, he likely entered into a covenant relationship with his future children. Seeing his glory and intelligence when he ‘came down,’ we naturally desired to become like him, so we accepted his offer to become our Father, and he promised to place us in a ‘sphere,’ or repeated spheres (see D&C 93:30), where we could progress, where he would institute laws that would enable us to advance.”¹⁴

So, if we ask the question in a slightly different way, we might say, what is the source of God’s authority over us? And the answer would be that he has authority over us because we consented to it. In other words, God’s authority over us originated with us. Why is this insight important to the question of granting women the priesthood? The answer, which was ancillary to the main point of my previous article and was therefore buried in a footnote, is central to the main thrust of this post: “If 100 percent of us consented to give our Father authority over us, why should we think it is somehow appropriate that he then share that authority again with only half of us?”¹⁵ If priesthood, as we have come to define it, is authority God shares with us to do his work (which is also our work), why should we assume that only half of us can receive and exercise that authority? If men and women truly are equal in the sight of heaven, it makes no sense for women to be excluded from an authority that they actually granted our Heavenly Father. That would be eternally unfair.

While details about the nature of marital and family relations in the celestial glory have not been revealed, according to the quasi-scriptural “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” we are all children of “heavenly parents,” not just a Heavenly Father. Further, while in this life “fathers are to preside over their families” and “mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children,” “fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”¹⁶ How partners can be equal when one presides over the other is apparently an eternal mystery, but we must assume that if earthly parents are to be equal, then heavenly parents must be also. Can they be equals, though, when one holds authority that the other does not? We know precious little about a Heavenly Mother, but if she is indeed an equal to our Heavenly Father, we must assume she also holds authority over her children, an authority that we granted her.

 

Conclusions

Today we see a concerning exodus of members from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, especially among younger women. One primary cause of this lopsided disaffiliation is the unequal status of male and female members. No amount of rationalization or dancing around the issue can prevent many women in the Church from feeling both inferior and limited in their participation. The Church has made a few concessions, such as allowing women to speak and pray in worship services, to act as witnesses to ordinances, to function in leadership roles in missions, and, most recently, to serve as Sunday School presidents and counselors. But the fact remains that women cannot “hold” the priesthood or be ordained to priesthood offices.

The question Church leaders must wrestle with is whether these limitations are divinely appointed or are merely tradition. This post has presented two arguments in support of the latter proposition. Indeed, the second argument insists that God’s authority ought not be restricted to only half of his children because that authority came from all of his children in the first place. This is an audacious claim, but I believe it is both logically and theologically sound, if we accept Joseph Smith’s later teachings. If we do not, then where do we draw the line? Before he determined that priesthood is an abstract authority or afterward? When looking at the doctrine of priesthood and the related doctrine of premortal existence, we must acknowledge that Joseph’s theology was not consistent from the start. It developed over time. And if so, we perhaps ought to ask where his theology would have landed if he had lived another twenty or forty years. I suspect that if he had, he would have increasingly shared priesthood authority with women. This appears to be the direction he was headed.

We cannot know what Joseph would have done, but current Church leaders can certainly take a lesson from President Spencer W. Kimball, who wrestled in prayer over the priesthood ban that prevented Black men and boys from participating fully in that priesthood. An even larger ban is still in effect. What would heaven’s answer be to a similar plea? We cannot know unless we ask.

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1. Jana Riess, “Why Are So Many Young Women Leaving the LDS Church?” Salt Lake Tribune, August 5, 2026, https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/08/05/why-are-so-many-young-women/.

2. See Roger Terry, “The Source of God’s Authority: One Argument for an Unambiguous Doctrine of Preexistence,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 49, no. 3 (2016): 109–44; Roger Terry, “Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 1: Definitions and Development,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 51, no. 1 (2018): 1–37; and Roger Terry, “Authority and Priesthood in the LDS Church, Part 2: Ordinances, Quorums, Nonpriesthood Authority, Presiding, Priestesses, and Priesthood Bans,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 51, no. 2 (2018): 1–40.

3. “Priesthood,” Topics and Questions, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/priesthood?lang=eng.

4. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, tenth edition (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1993), s.v. “priesthood.”

5. American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 ed., s.v. “priesthood (n.),” accessed September 22, 2026, http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/priesthood.

6. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1993), s.v. “priesthood.”

7. Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, “How (George) Romney Championed Civil Rights and Challenged His Church,” The Atlantic, Aug. 13, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/how-george-romney-championedcivil-rights-and-challenged-his-church/261073.

8. See, for instance, “How Are Women Connected to the Priesthood?” episode 1 of Women and Priesthood Series, Church History Matters Podcast, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GO1lsQ1vBw.

9. “Minutes of the Proceedings of the Third Meeting of the Relief Society,” March 30 [31], 1842, Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book, p. 22, Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 2, 2026, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/nauvoo-relief-society-minute-book/45.

10. Gregory A. Prince, Power from On High (Salt Lake City: Signature Books,” 1995), 201.

11. Prince, Power from On High, 204–5.

12. Prince, Power from On High, 208.

13. Discourse, between circa 26 June and circa 4 August 1839–A, as Reported by William Clayton, p. 13, Joseph Smith Papers, accessed September 18, 2026, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-between-circa-26-june-and-circa-4-august-1839-a-as-reported-by-william-clayton/3?highlight=The%20Spirit%20of%20Man%20is%20not%20a%20created%20being;%20it%20existed%20from%20Eternity.

14. Terry, “Source of God’s Authority,” 135.

15. Terry, “Source of God’s Authority,” 138, fn. 65.

16. The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng, emphasis added.