Barbara Morgan Gardner - The Priesthood Power of Women: In the Temple, Church, and Family

2019 Barbara Morgan Gardner

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Morgan, Barbara E., author.

Title: The priesthood power of women : in the temple, church, and family / Barbara Morgan Gardner.

Description: Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019019838 | ISBN 9781629725604 (hardbound : alk. paper) | eISBN 978-1-62973-894-9 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: WomenReligious aspectsThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. | PriesthoodThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. | PriesthoodMormon Church. | Women and religion.

Classification: LCC BX8643.W66 M667 2019 | DDC 289.3/32082dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019019838

Printed in the United States of America

Publishers Printing, Salt Lake City, UT

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Book design Deseret Book Company

Cover photo OpheliaX / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Art direction by Richard Erickson

Design by Heather G. Ward

To my parents,
Sharon Elaine LeBaron Morgan
and Alvin Wright Morgan Jr.,

for their faithfulness in seeking and
acting upon divine truth

Contents

Introduction

For Such a Time as This

O ne of the landmark policy changes President Thomas S. Monson made as President of the Church was the adjustment in missionary age for young adult women and men. re receiving their endowments while still teenagers.

I have taught religion for more than two decades now, and since the change in missionary age, I have heard more questions in class and in my office regarding women, the priesthood, the temple, and family responsibilities than ever before. Young women are asking incredibly insightful and pertinent questions and trying to better understand how the teachings of the temple apply to their lives and to their roles as women in the Church and in their families.

In fact, nearly 75 percent of all of my female students at Brigham Young University have received their temple endowments. These young women are wise, curious, intelligent, doctrinally grounded, and faithful. Their questions are invigorating, exciting, and extremely important. It is not just the returned missionaries that are asking these questions. I was surprised, when I recently served as a stake Young Women president, at how sincerely curious and faithful the young women were. This rising generation has been asked by the prophet to enlist in the youth battalion of the Lord to help gather Israel. Like President Russell M. Nelson, I too believe that these youth are the best the Lord has ever sent to this earth. They are strong, resilient, obedient, faithful, determined, spiritual, and pure. They are not perfect, but they have what it takes to help in this great gathering. For leaders, teachers, and parents, it is no longer acceptable to simply sidestep some of their difficult questions and bear our testimony.

And its not just the youth and young adults asking these questions. There has been a surge of women and men searching for answers, and the leaders of the Church are encouraging them along this noble path.

Questions Regarding Women and the Priesthood

Some of the questions Ive been hearing include: What is the priesthood? Do women have the priesthood? What is the significance of temple clothing for women? What is my role as a woman in the Church? Why are men the only ones ordained to priesthood offices? What are priesthood keys? How does one obtain priesthood authority? What is the difference between how the priesthood functions in the family and in the Church? What does it mean to preside, and how is presiding determined? If men and women are supposed to be equal partners, why does one preside? What does it mean to nurture? What is priesthood power? How does priesthood apply to women? When women are endowed with priesthood power in the temple, is that the same power received by men? What is the role of the Relief Society in the Church? What is my role as a Relief Society president in calling counselors or working with the elders quorum president? What is the role of women in the salvation of souls? How do we distinguish between the priesthood received by women in the endowment and the priesthood received by men when they are ordained to a priesthood office? What is the role of men and women in the home in regard to covenants made in the temple? Why does any of this matter?

Through the years I have asked and tried to answer these and similar questions in conversations with students and a number of members of the Church. We need to understand these things better. Imagine, for instance, the power that comes to a single sister, or the wife of an inactive or nonmember husband, who realizes that because of the covenants she made in the temple, she has priesthood power in her home. President M. Russell Ballard taught, When men and women go to the temple, they are both endowed with the same power, which by definition is priesthood power.... Access to the power and the blessings of the priesthood is available to all of Gods children. That woman may be blessed by a priesthood holder who comes into her home and performs an ordinance of the priesthood, but she is not without the priesthood.

Imagine the strength of a Primary teacher when she realizes she can make promises to the children in her class because of the priesthood authority that she was given when she was set apart for her calling. Imagine the difference it makes for a mother to know that, as a nurturer, she has the primary responsibility of teaching the gospel in her home. Imagine the strength of a husband and wife, sealed together in the temple, when the two of them realize that together they have entered into the patriarchal order of the priesthood (the new and everlasting covenant of marriage), that each of them is a contributing partner in the creation of an eternal family, as coequals, without one being the boss over the other.

All members of the Church, especially the women, are the very ones who need to be prepared to teach truths regarding the priesthood. If we dont teach them, who will? Who will answer the questions of the young women when they go through the temple for the first time? Who will accurately prepare the Primary girls for their first callingwhich they may receive even while still in Primaryand explain to them that they will have priesthood authority? Who will teach the Primary girls in their temple preparation class about the power of the temple? Who will mentor our daughters and help them through difficult times, especially against the culture of modern society (which we have been told so many times will only get worse), if it is not the mothers, aunts, sisters, and women leaders? Who will help unify the sisters of the world with truth if the faithful and strong sisters do not know and understand true doctrine? How will we as women use the priesthood power we have been endowed with in our homes, communities, and world if we dont know what it is, let alone how to call upon it?