195 - Can Women Be Part of the Priesthood? | Church History Matters I Women & Priesthood Series

Church History Matters

Scripture Central

Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 75 minutes

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Summary

In this episode of Church History Matters, hosts Casey Griffiths and Scott Woodward sit down with special guest Lisa Olsen Tait to explore one of the most frequently asked and historically complex questions in Christian history: Were women ever allowed to be priests or hold priesthood authority? Together they examine the evidence not only within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but also across broader Christian traditions, tracing how different communities have understood women’s spiritual authority over time. From the early Christian world to modern debates, the conversation carefully separates assumption from documentation and myth from history. The discussion also highlights a pivotal moment in Latter-day Saint history—temple worship in Nauvoo, where in the Nauvoo Temple men and women participated in sacred ordinances involving priesthood functions in ways that were new and significant. What did this mean in the 1830s? How did early Latter-day Saints understand women’s relationship to priesthood power? With careful scholarship and a positive, faith-centered approach, this episode offers historical clarity while inviting thoughtful reflection on women, authority, and divine partnership throughout Christian history.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Is there any place in scripture where it says that priesthood only consists of men?
0:05.3	Other churches had priests. Fundamental question was authority. Women could be prophets,
0:10.7	meaning they could speak with the spirit, but they could almost never be priests. In the second
0:15.1	half of the 19th century, there are women who begin to be ordained. Women were primarily identified through their relationships to men,
0:22.4	as a daughter, as a wife, and everybody just assumed that this was how the world worked.
0:27.7	At the time of the restoration, there was no expectation or understanding that women would be
0:32.7	part of the priesthood of our church. Without the female, all things cannot be restored to the earth. It takes all
0:40.6	to restore the priesthood. There's going to be things that happen in Navu that have never happened before.
0:46.8	The priesthood of the Navu temple would include both men and women. A dual-gendered temple
0:53.6	priesthood. That is unprecedented. And this is a new
0:57.9	idea. This is a radical departure.
1:03.8	Hello, Scott. Hello, Lisa. Hello, Casey. Nice to see both of you. And it's also refreshing to have a third host with us today.
1:15.2	Lisa Olson-Tade is joining us for this series on women and priesthood. And Lisa works in the church
1:22.1	history department. And just if I can, last week we talked a little bit about the place of women within the church.
1:30.2	Personal anecdote, I have a wife and three daughters, and I often go home and tell them what we've talked about.
1:36.7	And we struck a nerve on one particular subject, which was, I said, Lisa, that I made a joke to you about women's pockets. And I thought this was an amusing anecdote, but it turned into a, it turned into a really, a really, really, really passionate, I don't want to use the word screed from my wife and my daughters about women's pockets and
2:03.2	why haven't we fixed this?
2:05.4	And I said, actually, Lisa said we could do a whole podcast on just women's women's fashion.
2:11.9	And they were like, do that then.
2:14.1	But I said, do it.
2:15.6	Lisa is an important person and she's kind of on loan and so we don't want to monopolize
2:19.5	her time. But that's just one example, right?
	...

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