The Women’s Ordination Movement in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: Historical and Sociological Perspectives Nancy Ross, David J. Howlett, and Zoe Kruse In The Angel and the Beehive, sociologist Armand Mauss chronicled how leaders and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon) made changes to fit into White Evangelical American society in the twentieth century, a process that Mauss described as assimilation.1 In parallel to the LDS story but unanalyzed by Mauss, the leadership of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church/Community of Christ) invested in a similar “assimilative” process, but drew closer to mainline Protestant norms, including ideas about expanding women’s roles in the church and in society. These competing trajectories pushed the two Restoration churches farther apart in belief and practice.2 By the end of the twentieth century, the most obvious marker of this distance was the passage of a resolution at the 1984 RLDS World Conference that permitted the ordination of women. 1. Armand L. Mauss, The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 21–31. 2. William D. Russell, “Ordaining Women and the Transformation from Sect to Denomination,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 3 (2003): 61–64; William D. Russell, “Grant McMurray and the Succession Crisis in the Community of Christ,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 39, no. 4 (2006): 27–57; Wesley B. Spillman, “Adjustment or Apostasy? The Reorganized Church in the Late Twentieth Century,” Journal of Mormon History 20, no. 2 (1994): 12. Mormon Studies Review, vol. 9, 2022, pp. 00-00 © 2022 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois MSR 9.indd 15 10/18/21 10:10 AM 16 Mormon Studies Review RLDS conversations about women’s ordination in the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century were consistent with broader conversations about the status of women in Christianity and American society. Whereas charismatic and holiness communities more typically accepted women’s ordination in the late nineteenth-century United States, in the post–World War II era, the so-called “Protestant mainline” embraced the issue. The latter shift was due, in part, to women’s ordination becoming part of what it meant to be a liberal religious community in the US, and, concomitantly, what it meant to resist liberal tendencies. The RLDS Church’s debates on and implementation of women’s ordination follows this pattern. From 1870 to 1910, RLDS leaders and members debated whether women’s ordination would require a change in church policy or whether the call of the Spirit was enough to legitimize the practice. By the 1920s and 1930s, a new generation of RLDS leaders maintained that women’s ordination might be inevitable. By the 1970s, RLDS feminists both advocated for ordination and raised deeper questions about the problematic nature of hierarchical priesthood power. When the pro-ordination camp realized its long-awaited victory in the 1984 World Conference, some RLDS feminists were disappointed that the church chose to maintain its priesthood system instead of opting to share more power with ordinary members. Ultimately, this change demonstrated the RLDS Church’s alignment with mainline Protestant norms more than it illustrated a deviation from Mormon movement trends. This brief essay has three goals. First, we seek to acquaint readers with primary and secondary sources for studying women’s ordination in the RLDS Church, which are rich and accessible but surprisingly absent from studies of “Mormon women.” Second, we seek to bring sociological and historical context to women’s ordination in the RLDS Church. These perspectives do not just tell us how RLDS fit within larger trends in American Christianity; they also show that RLDS Church members helped create such cross-cutting trends. Furthermore, they show that women’s ordination, rather than being an aberration in the Mormon tradition, is one of the logical, though not inevitable, outcomes of being an American-born church that kept company with other American MSR 9.indd 16 10/18/21 10:10 AM Women’s Ordination Movement / Ross, Howlett, and Kruse 17 churches. RLDS, as we will show, kept company with holiness and charismatic groups in their initial phase, and liberal religious denominations after the Second World War. Third, we will present the history of women’s ordination as something more than an institutional history and center the voices and scholarship of RLDS women in the telling of it. Women, Ordination, and the Holy Spirit: 1870–1910 Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Protestant denominations expanded roles for women. Women were involved in the missionary movement, ladies’ aid societies to support and raise money for congregations, and social reform movements like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Between 1870 and 1910, a handful of new Wesleyan/Holiness churches ordained women from their founding, justifying this decision by pointing to women’s active leadership in the primitive church and the call of the Holy Spirit.3 Like these charismatic churches, the RLDS Church, reorganized in the 1850s after the 1840s Nauvoo diaspora, propagated a religious culture that embraced spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues, faith healing, and prophecy.4 By the 1890s, some members began to affirm women’s religious authority through these charismatic gifts. In the Pacific Slope Mission of California, High Priest D. S. Mills felt moved “by the power of the Holy Spirit” to ordain Emma Burton to give administrations (blessings) of healing to sick women. Outraged opponents saw this as an ordination of Burton to the priesthood.5 Apostle T. W. Smith, the supervisor for the Pacific Slope Mission, directly responded to this incident, indicating that 3. Michelle Sanchez, “Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: The Rise of Women’s Ordination in the Holiness Tradition,” Priscilla Papers 24, no. 4 (2010): 17–22; Susie C. Stanley, “The Promise Fulfilled: Women’s Ministries in the Wesleyan/Holiness Movement,” in Religious Institutions and Women’s Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream, ed. Catherine Wessinger (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 141. 4. Clare D. Vlahos, “A History of Early RLDS Spirituality, 1860–1885,” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1992). 5. L. Madelon Brunson, Bonds of Sisterhood: A History of the RLDS Women’s Organization: 1842–1983 (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1985), 41; Becky MSR 9.indd 17 10/18/21 10:10 AM 18 Mormon Studies Review women could not hold priesthood office.6 Several RLDS Church members strongly reacted to Smith’s prohibition. Sister E. G. Hodge, an old Nauvoo saint, wrote a letter, published in the Saints’ Herald, saying: “I do not like to hear them say that woman cannot hold the priesthood or do this or do that. . . . Are we not all one in Christ Jesus?”7 The issue came up again in April 1905, when a proposed resolution at General Conference sought to obtain ordination for women working with the Zion’s Religio Society, a Book of Mormon reading group for church youth.8 As clergy received discounted train fares, women’s ordination would have had practical value. The issue was referred to the First Presidency and Council of Twelve, who reported that new revelations would be required for such a break from tradition and that in the absence of such revelation they could not support women’s ordination.9 Questions about women’s ordination, though, would not go away. Renewed Discussion of Women’s Ordination: 1920–1930s Even as the Nineteenth Amendment granted White women voting rights, Protestant women lobbied for equal opportunities in churches. For example, building on previous attempts, in the 1920 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the International Association of Women Ministers (IAWM) sent a petition to the Methodist Episcopal Church’s General Conference to “approve ecclesiastical equality for women,” but was unsuccessful.10 In the 1924 General Conference, L. Savage, “A Journey toward the Ordination of Women in Community of Christ: A Historical Literature Review” (MA thesis, Graceland University, 2005), 49. 6. T. W. Smith, “Can Women Hold Office in the Church of Jesus Christ?” The Saints’ Herald 37, December 20, 1890, 825–28. 7. Savage, “A Journey,” 49. 8. L. Madelon Brunson, “Stranger in a Strange Land: A Personal Response to the 1984 Document,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17, no. 3 (1984): 11–17. 9. William D. Russell, “The Last Smith Presidents and the Transformation of the RLDS Church,” Journal of Mormon History 34, no. 3 (2008): 46–84. 10. William T. Noll, “A Welcome in the Ministry: The 1920 and 1924 General Conferences Debate Clergy Rights for Women,” Methodist History 30, no. 2 (1992): 91–99. MSR 9.indd 18 10/18/21 10:10 AM Women’s Ordination Movement / Ross, Howlett, and Kruse 19 Methodist Episcopal Church women secured ordination as lay preachers but not full clergy rights. A 1920 editorial in The Saints’ Herald reported on ordination debates in the Presbyterian Church. Editor Sam Burgess took the occasion to comment on the prospects of women’s ordination in his church. Burgess indicated RLDS scripture did not prohibit women from ministry, but that the ordination of women would require “a change in the constitution of the church.”11 The broader deaconess movement among mainline Protestants began a slow decline in the 1930s, but RLDS President Fred M. Smith considered the possibility of creating such an order.12 In 1936, Smith stated at a women’s gathering that he was considering “ordaining” deaconesses to an “Order of Dorcas.”13 At this time, some Protestant deaconesses and their supporters had begun to advocate for the full ordination of women.14 Nevertheless, while Smith confided in his protege Garland Tickemyer that women would someday be ordained to the priesthood,15 open advocacy for women’s ordination would not happen again among RLDS for the next thirty-five years. RLDS Feminist Activism: 1970–1984 A generation after the ordination controversies of the 1910s and 1920s, a number of mainline Protestant denominations rapidly accepted the practice. Northern and Southern Presbyterians did so in 1956 and 1965, 11. Sam Burgess, “The Position of Woman in the Church,” The Saints’ Herald 67, June 23, 1920, 593–94. 12. Fred M. Smith, “A Program for the Women’s Work,” The Saints’ Herald 82, November 12, 1935, 1452, 1459. 13. “President Smith Addresses Women: Outlines Ideals and Aims for Group,” The Saints’ Herald–Conference Daily Edition, April 7, 1936, 54; Savage, “A Journey,” 30–31. 14. Jenny Wiley Legath, Sanctified Sisters: A History of Protestant Deaconesses (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 157. 15. “RLDS Church women may join priesthood,” UPI, April 6, 1984, https:// www.upi.com/Archives/1984/04/06/RLDS-Church-women-may-join-priesthood /6891450075600/. MSR 9.indd 19 10/18/21 10:10 AM 20 Mormon Studies Review respectively; some northern Methodists in 1956; some Lutherans in 1970; and Episcopalians finally in 1976.16 Concurrent with the rise of second wave feminism, activists formed small, grassroots organizations in a number of denominations to advocate for the ordination of women. Some women from these smaller groups joined larger ecumenical organizations, like the IAWM and Church Women United (CWU), that engaged in advocacy work. As these mainline Protestant churches moved to ordain women, the RLDS Church engaged in the process of discerning women’s ordination too.17 In April 1970, a handful of liberal RLDS faculty members at RLDS Church–owned Graceland College (now University) founded Courage: A Journal of History, Thought, and Action.18 That same month, delegates at the World Conference (the renamed “General Conference”) discussed a resolution that addressed women’s underrepresentation on church committees. The Australian delegation presented an alternative motion that affirmed women’s leadership and asked church leadership to clarify its position on women’s ordination.19 Delegates, however, voted to table the resolution. In a Courage editorial later that year, the board identified two significant problems in the church: women’s inequality and “a shortage of priesthood manpower.”20 Others expressed concern that the full talent of the church was not being employed due to the male-only priesthood.21 Another advocate, Carolyn Raiser, posed the question “Why do women want to be in the priesthood?” and provided her own answer: “Some 16. Kate Bowler, The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 38–39. 17. Barbara Brown Zikmund, Adair T. Lummis, and Patricia Mei Yin Chang, Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 11–12. 18. Russell, “Ordaining Women and the Transformation from Sect to Denomination,” 61–64; William D. Russell, “Courage: A Liberal Journal Foreshadows RLDS Doctrinal Shifts,” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 28 (2008): 137–56. 19. Brunson, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” 11–17. 20. Editorial Board, “The Role of Women in the Church,” Courage: A Journal of History, Thought, and Action 1, no. 2 (1970): 110. 21. Edwards, “RLDS Priesthood,” 6–11. MSR 9.indd 20 10/18/21 10:10 AM Women’s Ordination Movement / Ross, Howlett, and Kruse 21 women involved in the emerging women’s rights movement within the church would answer ‘We don’t!’” She explained that some women associated the priesthood with authoritarianism and, therefore, did not wish to join it.22 During the 1970s and early 1980s, women’s ordination was a frequent topic of debate at World Conference. Church leadership continued to state that the barriers to women’s ordination were not theological but related to church tradition and cultural bias against women in leadership positions.23 A more conservative faction disagreed, arguing that male-only priesthood was theologically necessary. RLDS fundamentalist Richard Price, for instance, published a widely circulated book, Saints at the Crossroads, which warned readers about women’s ordination. Even as conservative RLDS members feared women’s ordination, some feminist members left the RLDS Church because progress was too slow.24 Like many mainline Protestant denominations, RLDS women formed their own grassroots feminist advocacy organization, which grew out of meetings of the RLDS Women’s Caucus in 1975 and 1976.25 They called this organization AWARE (1976–1997), a nod to the feminist consciousness-raising objectives of their group. AWARE members held women-only gatherings in which they worshipped together, sponsored conferences that explored feminist theology, supported local women running for public office, created action plans to advocate for equal pay for women who worked for the church, and wrote letters expressing their solidarity with excommunicated Mormon feminist Sonia Johnson.26 Ultimately, AWARE women not only advocated for 22. Carolyn Raiser, “Women’s Liberation in the Saints’ Church,” Courage: A Journal of History, Thought, and Action 3, no. 1 (1972): 44. 23. Spillman, “Adjustment or Apostasy?” 12. 24. Richard Price, The Saints at the Crossroads (Independence, MO: Price Publishing, 1974), 214–17; Russell, “Last Smith Presidents,” 72. 25. “Minutes of the RLDS Women’s Caucus,” January 31, 1976, Marjorie Troeh Collection, Community of Christ Archives, Independence, MO. 26. Marjorie Troeh to Sonia Johnson, undated, Marjorie Troeh Collection, Community of Christ Archives. MSR 9.indd 21 10/18/21 10:10 AM 22 Mormon Studies Review women’s ordination, but also practiced non-hierarchical models of leadership described in articles published by Courage.27 In 1979, RLDS Women’s Commissioner and AWARE member Marjorie Troeh represented the church on the national board for CWU, an ecumenical organization that connected Troeh to those who were doing similar kinds of advocacy work in other denominations. RLDS women became involved with CWU at the local and national levels. CWU, too, had become a much more activist organization in the 1970s compared to its more apolitical stance in the previous decades.28 Consequently, RLDS women found their activism energized by their association with CWU. By the early 1980s, the campaign for women’s ordination within the RLDS Church had spread throughout the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.29 For example, women were being called to the priesthood in local Australian and New Zealand congregations, but their calls were not approved by the RLDS First Presidency.30 Frustrated by this situation, Australian and New Zealand delegates at the 1980 World Conference proposed a resolution authorizing women’s ordination in their local jurisdictions, even if it did not happen in the larger RLDS Church. The resolution failed. In 1984, Sharon Welch, a longtime member of AWARE and newly hired assistant professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School, led an AWARE retreat at a Benedictine abbey in northern Missouri. By then, RLDS feminists had been advocating for more than a decade for goals that were congruent with the emerging Women-Church groups 27. William D. Russell, “The Rise and Fall of Courage, an Independent RLDS Journal,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 11, no. 1 (1978): 115–19; Russell, “Courage,” 137–56. 28. Caryn E. Neumann, “Enabled by the Holy Spirit: Church Women United and the Development of Ecumenical Christian Feminism,” in Feminist Coalitions: Historical Perspectives on Second-Wave Feminism in the United States, ed. Stephanie Gilmore (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 113–34; Marjorie Troeh, interview by Rebecca Angstadt and Payton Armstrong, April 3, 2020, transcript in possession of the authors. 29. Savage, “A Journey,” 82–83. 30. Brunson, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” 13. MSR 9.indd 22 10/18/21 10:10 AM Women’s Ordination Movement / Ross, Howlett, and Kruse 23 in the Catholic Church.31 At the retreat, RLDS women tried to enact this vision, allowing all to participate in the serving of communion, a violation of common RLDS practices in which only priesthood served the sacrament. Feminist groups in other parts of the church had enacted the same transgressive ritual for several years, including an all-women’s congregation in Michigan.32 Though the church hierarchy had long identified revelation as the best path forward for women’s ordination, no such revelation had been forthcoming from the First Presidency until the 1984 World Conference, when church leaders presented the long-awaited document. Some church members were jubilant. Becky Savage, who was present at the reading of the new revelation that became Section 156 of the Doctrine and Covenants, wrote: “I can confirm the overwhelming, stunned quiet that permeated the Conference Chamber when the document was read to the unordained delegates. The second most predominant emotion was joy, and for many, this elation continued several months later.”33 Others, however, had more mixed responses. Marlene Krueger, who had worked in the music and women’s departments, was overwhelmed and did not want additional church responsibilities.34 RLDS feminists who had been exploring the elimination of the patriarchal hierarchy in a Women-Church model had a different critique. For them, women’s ordination felt like a concession instead of a victory. Barbara Higdon, president of Graceland College, reflected on her immediate response years later, wondering if she would accept a call to priesthood with integrity.35 Archivist Madelon Brunson likewise expressed ambivalence and wrote that she felt depressed that the hierarchical church structure would remain intact.36 31. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Should Women Want Women Priests or Women-Church?” Feminist Theology 20, no. 1 (2011): 63–72. 32. Charmaine Chvala-Smith, interview by Naomi Brill, Em Papineau, and Raleigh Williams, March 26, 2020, transcript in possession of authors. 33. Savage, “A Journey,” 87–88. 34. Women’s Commission Oral History Project, Community of Christ Archives. 35. Barbara Higdon, “Present at the Beginning: One Woman’s Journey,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36, no. 3 (2003): 68. 36. Brunson, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” 15. MSR 9.indd 23 10/18/21 10:10 AM 24 Mormon Studies Review Women Ordained and Women Serve: 1985–Present In the 1980s and 1990s, clergywomen in many denominations struggled to achieve legitimacy and parity with clergymen. Sociological studies tracked the low numbers of clergywomen in the early decades of women’s ordination and the large gaps in pay and career trajectories.37 By 2018, women in some denominations were being ordained in larger numbers and, in a few cases, had reached numerical parity with clergymen.38 While the 1984 World Conference approved women’s ordination, the first ordinations did not happen until November 1985, when one hundred ordinations took place, with hundreds following the next year.39 Susan Skoor reported that many women faced local opposition, not unlike what took place in other denominations.40 Yet the growing number of women’s ordinations made the denomination stand out among American churches.41 RLDS priesthood statistics from 1996 show that women made up about 27 percent of all priesthood in the global church.42 In comparison, in 1994 the United Church of Christ had the highest percentage of women clergy of any mainline Protestant church, at 25 percent, with many mainline Protestant denominations sitting at 10–12 percent.43 In the thirty years since the first RLDS ordinations in 1985, the social significance of women’s ordination came into sharper focus, as 37. Eileen R. Campbell-Reed, “State of Clergywomen in the US: A Statistical Update,” October 2018, 1–19, https://eileencampbellreed.org/state-of-clergy/download -state-of-us-clergywomen/; Constance L. Shehan, Jesse Schultz, and Marsha Wiggins-Frame, “Feeding the Flock and the Family: Work and Family Challenges Facing Ordained Clergy Women,” Sociological Focus 32, no. 3 (1999): 247–63; Zikmund, Lummis, and Chang, Clergy Women, 71–76. 38. Campbell-Reed, “State of Clergywomen in the US,” 1–19. 39. Russell, “Last Smith Presidents,” 46–84. 40. Susan D. Skoor, “Women’s Ministries in the Community of Christ: A Personal Reflection,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 27 (2007): 115. 41. Savage, “A Journey,” 95–96. 42. “1996 RLDS Priesthood Statistics,” Saints Herald 144, May 1997, 209. 43. Campbell-Reed, “State of Clergywomen in the US,” 4–5. MSR 9.indd 24 10/18/21 10:10 AM Women’s Ordination Movement / Ross, Howlett, and Kruse 25 denominations took women’s ordination as a sign of which side a group took in America’s culture wars. By the 1990s, America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, had retracted its policies that had allowed for women’s ordination as senior pastors. Reflecting on such developments, Mark Chaves explained that American denominations often utilize women’s ordination “as symbolic display to the outside world” on their collective position toward liberalism within modernity. “To resist gender equality,” stated Chaves, “was, and is, to resist that project.”44 While scholars have expressed concerns over the numbers of those who left in the wake of women’s ordination, this change saved the RLDS Church by allowing many more capable adults to join the ranks of church leadership at the local level and more broadly.45 Many RLDS women celebrated the victory of the 1984 decision, but others viewed this change as a concession to patriarchal hierarchy rather than a win for true equality. Today, five of the members of the Council of Twelve Apostles are women, as is one of the three members of the First Presidency. Women serve at all levels of leadership throughout the global church. Still, the path to women’s ordination was a complex one, with church leaders acknowledging that ordination was a possibility many decades before it became a reality. While a handful of studies detail the institutional debate and process that resulted in women’s ordination, far fewer acknowledge the role of grassroots groups like AWARE and ecumenical groups like CWU. Ultimately, RLDS Church leaders chose to align the church with mainline Protestant norms rather than side with evangelically inflected concerns. This further marked a separation from LDS Church trends and became an important marker of RLDS identity in the late twentieth century. Such actions highlight that there was more than one way to be a Mormon in the late twentieth century, 44. Mark Chaves, “The Symbolic Significance of Women’s Ordination,” Journal of Religion 77, no. 1 (1997): 113, 114. 45. George N. Walton, “Sect to Denomination: Counting the Progress of the RLDS Reformation?” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 18 (1998): 38–62. MSR 9.indd 25 10/18/21 10:10 AM 26 Mormon Studies Review as well as more than one “mainstream” to which an American religious group could aspire. Nancy Ross is an associate professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Department at Dixie State University. David J. Howlett is the Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Smith College. Zoe Kruse is a student at Smith College, double majoring in Quantitative Economics and Religion. MSR 9.indd 26 10/18/21 10:10 AM