dallin h. oaks

LDS Women Hold and Exercise Priesthood Authority

1 Comment
LDS woman being set apart for a calling in the Church.

LDS woman being set apart for a calling in the Church.

“We are not accustomed to speaking of women having the authority of the priesthood in their Church callings, but what other authority can it be?” —Elder Dallin H. Oaks, “The Keys and Authority of the Priesthood,” April 2014 General Conference. Emphasis added.

I’m a Sunday School teacher in my ward, and today I taught about women and the priesthood. I thought I’d share a few thoughts from that lesson, especially in light of current events.

“Simple” Questions

I started my lesson by asking a few “simple” questions about the priesthood:

  • Do women have responsibilities in their callings in the Church?
  • Do women have authority in their callings in the Church?
  • Do women have priesthood authority in their callings?
  • Do women exercise priesthood authority?
  • Do women hold priesthood authority?

The questions start out relatively easy, and most in the class knew the answers, and were ready and willing to respond. But I knew as I progressed through the questions that there was some confusion. Perhaps many of us are likewise stumped when it comes to these questions, or we may think we know the answers when we don’t. [Read more…]

“You Don’t Speak About the Temple” Says Bushman

6 Comments

Dr. Richard BushmanI have just recently begun reading Dr. Richard Bushman’s prominent Rough Stone Rolling biography of the prophet Joseph Smith. I have found it very insightful and excellent, and I’m sure I will share things here that relate to the temple as I come upon them in the book.

This morning, I read a Deseret News article this morning which reported on a talk that Dr. Bushman gave at Weber State University on March 5th. One of the main subjects that Bushman spoke about is Mormonism’s acceptance in America, and the troubles which surround that acceptance. One of those troubles stems from the LDS practice of keeping the temple secret. The report states:

“It is true that we are in a sense secret,” Bushman said. “It will be difficult to remove the suspicions when there is a certain fact to it.”

Bushman said he doesn’t like when Mormons say the temple is not secret, that it is sacred.

“It is secret,” he said. But he appreciates how excellent Mormons are at creating sacred spaces.

“Those temple spaces are just different from the rest of the world,” Bushman said after watching people walk silently with arms folded through the Manhattan Temple before it was dedicated. The process to be able to go into a Mormon temple evolves around keeping it sacred and at the same time, secret.

“Important as anything,” Bushman said, “is you don’t speak about the temple, even to those who go to the temple.”

[Read more…]

Our Daily Focus Should be Eternal

Leave a Comment

The temple is like a great lens. It’s a reflector and a magnifier, a redirector and a viewer. Many have said how attending the temple allows us to leave the world around us and enter a different sphere. It is a place where time and fashion disappear. It is the nearest to God that we can come on earth, but how much nearer can you come when you are in His house?

As such, the temple allows us to redirect our attention and refocus our lives on those things that really matter. If we attend the temple often enough, the things we learn there will spill over into our daily comings and goings.

Sometimes we get too caught up in the world to notice those things that are the most worthwhile. We get so preoccupied by satisfying the world that we forget that we ultimately need to satisfy God. In the October 2000 Conference, Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught,

Maxwell

Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Many individuals preoccupied by the cares of the world are not necessarily in transgression. But they certainly are in diversion and thus waste “the days of [their] probation” (2 Ne. 9:27). Yet some proudly live “without God in the world” (Alma 41:11), with gates and doors locked from the inside! . . . Let us adopt the attitude recommended by President Brigham Young: “Say to the fields, . . . flocks, . . . herds, . . . gold, . . . silver, . . . goods, . . . chattels, . . . tenements, . . . possessions, and to all the world, stand aside; get away from my thoughts, for I am going up to worship the Lord” (Deseret News, 5 Jan. 1854, 2). There are so many ways to say to the world, “stand aside.” (“The Tugs and Pulls of the World“)

Running from place to place, buying this and that, [Read more…]