I’ve written about this twice before, but this time I’m going to be completely blunt: the church needs to allow women and girls to pass and prepare the sacrament. Like yesterday. The Doctrine and Covenants expressly prohibits deacons and teachers from administering the sacrament, which means passing and preparing it are not administering it. Thus, the only grounding for requiring priesthood to do those things is tradition.
And here’s the thing: if we’re arbitrarily preventing women and girls from doing something on the basis that we’ve always prohibited them from doing it, we’re sending them a message. And that message is, “You’re second class, and your contributions are less important.” It doesn’t matter how many times we tell women and girls that they’re important, because our actions and policies send the second message.
So why am I posting this for a third time? For one thing, apparently I haven’t been blunt enough in the past. A second is an email from my ward that I just received. For various reasons, we don’t have a lot of youth. (I think we have one young man (though the continuing pandemic means I may be off by one or two.) But I know we have at least two young women, because those two are my daughters.) Because of that, the email asks members of the Elders Quorum to sign up to prepare and pass the sacrament, explaining (accurately) that it’s a way strengthen our relationship with the Savior and serve the ward.
Guess who doesn’t get to strengthen their relationship with the Savior and serve the ward in that way? That’s right: my daughters. Again, based on a cultural limitation that has no scriptural foundation at all.
The young man in our ward has mentioned that being able to pass the sacrament has significantly improved his engagement with and enjoyment of church. And I’m truly happy for him. But it also hurts my heart and my soul because my daughters (again arbitrarily) don’t get the chance to do that.
I don’t know why the church has maintained this policy, even as it has walked back from other nonscriptural policy choices. But this is one that needs to change immediately. It doesn’t require any revelation. It doesn’t require any change to our doctrinal position. It doesn’t require giving women and girls priesthood. It doesn’t require rereading or reinterpreting scripture. Because again, to be clear, administering the sacrament can only be done by Melchizedek priesthood holders and priests. What deacons and teachers do is not by virtue of priesthood, and there is absolutely no scriptural reason it can’t be done by people who do not hold the priesthood.
Which, again, means these gendered restrictions send a very clear message to women and girls.
Update: A friend on Twitter had an ingenious idea about how wards could implement this immediately (like, literally tomorrow) without any policy change:
Several years ago, the bishop of the Hyde Park Ward here in Chicago started having girls stand outside the nursing room. A deacon would bring the sacrament tray to a girl, who would carry it inside. And the church gave its stamp of approval to the innovation. And honestly, there’s no theological difference between giving a girl the tray outside of a room and giving it to her immediately after handing it to the deacon.
So let’s move forward in actually showing women and girls that they are as central to the church’s function as we say they are. Let’s let girls strengthen their relationship to the Savior, serve the ward, and find meaning at church in the same way we let boys. There’s nothing standing in our way.