Commentary: What does new LDS messaging really say about women in the church?

As someone who has studied the way women’s voices have been amplified and silenced in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, especially online, I found it fascinating that three different statements about women and the church shared in the past week all reflected the same theme.

Overall, the church is telling women, “We need you, but stay in your place.”

The first statement came from apostle Dale G. Renlund, who spoke at a women’s conference in Arcadia, California. The second was from a global Relief Society broadcast, also headlined by Renlund and reflecting views of church leadership. And the third was an official church Gospel Topics piece, “Women’s Service and Leadership in the Church.”

What else do these statements tell us about how the church regards women in 2025?

‘I turn the key to you’

First, we aren’t trusted with our own history.

In the broadcast, the women of the Relief Society General Presidency — the philanthropic and educational women’s organization within the church — spoke in broad and glowing terms about the organization’s 1842 founding in the Red Brick Store in Nauvoo, Illinois. But they left out how church prophet Joseph Smith famously told the first Relief Society sisters, “I turn the key to you.”

This is not the first time that statement has been removed from the church’s official discussions of the founding moments, likely because it might lead some to think Smith was conferring priesthood authority, as priesthood “keys” could imply “authority.”

Similarly, the new Gospel Topics essay tells the story as follows: “In 1842, Joseph Smith organized the Relief Society through divine revelation after the pattern of the priesthood. This gave women authority, sacred responsibilities and official positions within the structure of the church.”

The Relief Society leaders also invoked the care the early sisters offered in helping male church leaders in Nauvoo. While that’s true, another goal of the organization was to discover who among them was participating in polygamy with male leaders. Polygamy caused heartache and rifts in the Relief Society, with some women being excluded from the organization because they were suspected of being plural wives. This conflict would lead to the disbanding of the group under Smith’s successor Brigham Young, a hiatus that lasted for two decades. All this conflict is obviously too messy for leaders to discuss.

And whenever leaders bring up the Relief Society history, I am reminded of how the organization lost its independence in the 20th century. While in the early days it was a side organization to the church, with its own leaders, fundraising and finances, the Relief Society is now run by the church and its male leaders. The new Gospel Topics essay discusses this, but it presents the expansion of male authority in glowing terms:

“The Relief Society once maintained its own programs, raised its own funds and administered its own budget. As the church grew throughout the world in the 20th century, church leaders received revelation that led in the 1960s and 1970s to greater coordination, standardization and simplification of the church’s programs. This process, known as correlation, included bringing all church organizations within general and local priesthood lines of authority.”

This narrative totally erases privileges women have lost from not being allowed to oversee their own organization anymore. Even if you argued the Relief Society was within the structure of the church, as the essay does, it is clear the women’s society needed to be “correlated” further under male leaders.

Priesthood power vs. priesthood authority

Second, we are expected to redefine historical language to fit the current narrative that diminishes women’s roles.

The Gospel Topics essay fumbles an answer to the question, “I’ve heard that Relief Society presidents were once ordained. Is that true?” The essay claims ordination in this sense — meaning the conferring of priesthood office via prayer and laying on of hands by another who holds a higher priesthood office — meant something different in cases regarding women. It also adds that former President John Taylor later clarified Joseph Smith didn’t mean priesthood ordination.

I laughed at the section in the essay that says women used to prepare the sacrament table “and gave blessings to heal the sick in the name of Jesus Christ but without invoking priesthood authority.” It recounts this history but includes entire paragraphs quoting President Dallin Oaks about how all power in the church is priesthood power.

It’s progress that the essay concedes that women used to have much more of a role in administering the church than women do now. However, it simultaneously insists women don’t have the priesthood and that all of those holy acts are done under the auspices of priesthood power.

Additionally, in Renlund’s Relief Society broadcast address, he said, “You can call on the powers of heaven to receive personal revelation and understand the doctrine of Christ.” This reference to calling on the powers of heaven is used to describe those with priesthood authority. But, leaders argue, it’s not priesthood authority when a woman does it — just priesthood power.

From this, we can infer the church is splitting hairs over definitions to keep women in their place.

Second-class citizens

That leads to the third and final point, which is that women remain second-class citizens in the church.

All the church’s recent statements offer effusive praise about women, paired with emphatic assertions that “we need you.” Renlund said in the Relief Society broadcast that Jesus Christ “needs your influence in his church. Your efforts to serve God’s children through Relief Society are vital.”

Similarly, Relief Society General President Camille Johnson wrote in the introduction to the new essay: “We hope all women understand that their families, the church and the world need their inspired wisdom and influence.”

But the broadcast as a whole gives off another message. The female leaders of the Relief Society were the second stringers in their own broadcast, as Renlund gave the headline talk. He is even listed first in the church’s newsroom article about the event, documented as the speaker “joined by” three women.

Meanwhile, the Gospel Topics essay asks, “How can church members help ensure that women’s voices and perspectives are valued and respected?” Even the question itself is directed to men as the members of the church, perpetuating women as second class within the church. And it’s notwithstanding all the deliberate instructions to include women in a patriarchal hierarchy, such as noting the importance of listening to women and making sure they are in your meetings.

Unfortunately, until this behavior is modeled in the highest echelons of the church, it’s clear why men aren’t including women at the local level.

The leaders know this is a problem. At the Arcadia meeting, Renlund said, “The reason for the asymmetry between men and women regarding priesthood office ordination has not been revealed.”

Part of me wants to shout, “You are the revelators! You are the ones to ask these questions!”

And while he acknowledges church leaders “haven’t done as good a job as I think we can” to address gender imbalances “within the bounds that God has set … so, we’re going to do better,” these three statements together do not give me hope they are going to improve any time soon.

Emily W. Jensen is the web editor for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and co-editor of “A Book of Mormons: Latter-day Saints on a Modern-Day Zion.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.