Why Latter-Day Saint Women Should be Ordained into the Priesthood

According to the scriptures and the temple endowment ceremony, the women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints should be ordained just like the men into the priesthood.Show more

In first Corinthians 11: 3-16, Paul teaches that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. This is not to imply that the husband is to “act as Christ” in the place of Christ as the head of the wife. In other words, the husband is not the vicarious Christ for the wife, nor for that matter, any other member of a family as well. Such a reasoning would lead to the implication that Christ is not God, and if Christ is not God, how could God have then paid the price for the sins of the world? Such a way of thinking actually denies the atonement.
The scriptures teach that Christ is the head of the Church. It also teaches that the members of the Church are the Body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:27 reads, “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” The words, “In particular” refer to each member of the Church regardless of gender or marital status. The Apostle Paul goes on to say, “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.” (1 Corinthians 12: 12-18)
The Apostle Paul teaches here that the head of the Body of Christ, the Church, is not more in one member of the Church than another member. With that being said, Christ being the head is the authority of the Church and that authority which he is is not more in one member of the church than another, whether a member be male or female, married or unmarried. If this is the truth in heaven then this is also the truth on earth. For Jesus declared in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Because Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church and the Head is not in one member of the Body of Christ more than another regardless of one’s calling in the Church or gender as is stated in holy scripture, the Christ’s priesthood is equally within every member of the Body of Christ. For where Christ is, being the head of the church, so is Christ authority, the Holy Priesthood of God.
In the Psalms 82:6, it states all children of the Most High, regardless of gender, are sons of the Most high. It reads, “I have said, ye are gods for ye are children of the Most High. The word for children in the Hebrew and the Aramaic languages is the word “sons”. This in essence means that all children of the Most High are his sons, which includes his daughters as well. In January 2019, temples ordinances of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints throughout the world, including one of it’s covenants, met with a revelatory change: no longer are the women of the Church required “to hearken to the counsel of her husband, as her husband hearkens unto the counsel of the Father.” This change in the temple endowment means that the wife is to answer to the Lord just as her husband does in equal direct manner instead of turning to her husband in her obedience to the Lord. This means her husband is no longer the mediator between her and the Lord thus reconfirming the fact that the Head of the church (Christ) is just as much in the women of the church as in the men. Likewise, just as male members of the church are to follow the Lord with their faces unveiled, so too are the women of the church. As such, because the divine relationship the women of the Church have with the Lord is no less than the men and the women of the Church no longer depend on her husband in their obedience to the Lord, she too has the direct right to be given the priesthood as do male members of the church and the policies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints need to be revised in accordance to this right.