To watch this video on YouTube, click HERE.
Video transcript:
Why can’t women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pass the sacrament? This is a question that I have, but more importantly, one that my niece, Becca, is going to have one day, and I want to make sure that I’m ready to give her a solid answer. So I went down the rabbit hole, and what I found at the bottom was… well, you’re gonna want to see it.
But as I was thinking about where to even begin finding the answer to this question, out of the blue, I got an email from the Church News, reporting that the Church had just barely published a new article about the history of Women’s Service and Leadership in the Church.
And that’s where I found golden nugget #1. The article mentions that in the past, “women sometimes prepared the sacrament table.” As you know, the 3 offices of the Aaronic priesthood are deacon, teacher, and priest. For my entire life, it has been the duty of a teacher to prepare the sacrament, and the duty of a deacon to pass the sacrament. To hear that teachers haven’t always prepared the sacrament made me wonder if the duties of a deacon might have been different in the past as well.
After some Googling, I found this book that looked super promising, but it wasn’t available for free online. But it was available at my local library. But my wife was out with the car getting an oil change, and my hold was about to expire. So I jumped on my bike, got to the library, found the book, and… while it had some cool info about women preparing the sacrament, it didn’t really say anything about passing the sacrament. Foiled!
But not really, because embedded within the Church’s article.] Unfortunately, this article didn’t say anything about passing the sacrament, but, like a forgotten Cheeriocheerio left behind in the crack of a chapel pew, I noticed a footnote.
That footnote took me directly to this 1996 article, about the evolution of priesthood duties over time. You guys, this article totally rewired my brain. In the early years of the Church, Aaronic priesthood holders were largely adult men, not young boys. Another source noted that “For the first seventy years since [the Church’s] inception, leaders entrusted older men of the higher, Melchizedek Priesthood with the task to distribute the emblems in sacrament services.” That’s a fancy way of saying adult men passed the sacrament.
It wasn’t until the 1870s that it started to become more popular to ordain younger boys to Aaronic Priesthood offices, and it wasn’t until 1908 that the Church officially established the deacon/teacher/priest progressive age bracket system. That system helped frame Aaronic Priesthood offices as stepping stones towards greater Melchizedek Priesthood responsibilities in the future.
I learned that as these offices became more defined, leaders needed to also define which specific responsibilities would be associated with each office. Now hang on here a minute, I thought, Doctrine and Covenants 20 already outlines the duties of these priesthood offices. Is that where deacons are instructed to be the passers of the sacrament? I jumped into D&C 20, and the answer to that question is a resounding no. But the plot thickens, because in addition to outlining what deacons should do, it turns out that D&C 20 also outlines what deacons should not do. And in verse 58, I found golden nugget #2:
“But neither teachers nor deacons have authority to baptize, administer the sacrament, or lay on hands….”
Hold the phone. If deacons aren’t supposed to be administering the sacrament, why are they … administering the sacrament? What is going on here?
Re-engagement: I’m trying to answer Becca’s question about why women can’t pass the sacrament, but now I’m also wondering why deacons can pass the sacrament.
I used LDS General Conference Corpus and found that leaders were quoting this verse in general conference in the early 1900s, so the problem wasn’t that leaders were unaware of it. Clearly, I was missing something. I found some helpful information, but eventually I called in the cavalry. Whenever I’ve got questions about how ordinances or ceremonies have changed over time, researcher and author Jonathan Stapley is the ace up my sleeve. This is his bread and butter. So I sent him a message on Facebook and said, Hey, I’m looking for info on this topic. Are there any wildly helpful sources that I’m not aware of yet? Of course, the answer was yes, and this particular source brings all of this together.
This is the Latter-day Saint apostle, Francis Lyman. He almost became the president of the Church, but he died before President Joseph F. Smith, which led to Heber J. Grant being the next president. Anyway, in 1898, Elder Lyman spoke at the First Sunday School Convention of Tthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The question was asked, “Have members not holding the Priesthood the right to pass the sacrament?” Elder Lyman responded,
“You pass it to one another, do you not, all the time, all you sisters and all you brethren? Then why ask the question? The administering of the sacrament is not passing it to the people. The administering of the sacrament is when the brethren offer the prayer in blessing the bread or water.”
Holy paradigm shift, Batman! OK, so passing the sacrament wasn’t considered to be part of administering the sacrament. That answers that question. But you guys, Elder Lyman just explained that passing the sacrament actually requires no priesthood authority at all.
And from Hartley’s article, I found that President Heber J. Grant said something similar 30 years later. And I quote, “President Heber J. Grant wrote to a mission president in 1928 that there was ‘no rule in the Church’ that only priesthood bearers could carry the sacrament to the congregation after it was blessed. While it was ‘custom’ for priesthood men or boys to pass around the bread and water, he said, ‘it would in no wise invalidate the ordinance’ if some ‘worthy young brethren lacking priesthood performed it in the absence of ordained boys’ and he had ‘no objection’ if it were done.”
So, what is the answer to Becca’s question? Why can’t women pass the sacrament? Because it’s a task that has been assigned to the deacons, as per the current Church handbook. That’s it. Leaders felt like the deacons needed to be given a responsibility, and that’s what they gave them. It’s still an awesome and sacred privilege, but passing the sacrament is not intrinsically a task that must be done by priesthood authority, it’s a task that has simply been assigned to priesthood holders. It’s the same reason why teachers prepare the sacrament or, more recently, why the young women organize the youth to greet people as they come into sacrament meeting. These are all responsibilities that have been delegated to certain groups, and how those responsibilities are divvied out has changed in the past and could absolutely change in the future. Maybe women or even older primary kids could be assigned to pass in the future. Maybe the young men and young women will switch off every other week? Who knows.
I’m not advocating for anything. I’m fine with whatever our leaders decide. I’m just pointing out that the way we currently do this could change at any time without violating any doctrines of the gospel.
In fact, there are lots of customs, practices, and traditions in our faith that could change at any time. We listed a whole bunch of them in this video. Some of them might surprise you. Go check it out. I’m gonna go look for more Cheerios.