Priesthood

In the United States, beginning with a Louisiana state law passed in 1890, the concept of “separate but equal” was born to justify segregation. This permitted states to allow separate facilities, like restrooms, drinking fountains, buses, train cars and schools for those of different races, mainly Black people and mostly in the South. The legitimacy [...]

I came across an interesting documentary called Thomas Jefferson: A View from the Mountain on Netflix.  I watched it because I could see it was no longer going to be streamed, and I’m glad I did.  (I hope it will be available again.)  While the LDS Church often gets a bad rap about the ban [...]

The headline is clear. Community of Christ will provide sacramental ordinances of marriage, commitment ceremonies, and ordination independent of sexual orientation in the USA. Specifically, after two days of discussion, the USA National Conference formally approved by a required 2/3rds majority the following recommendations to the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve: The 2013 USA [...]

The week from 17 March saw the inauguration of both the new Pope, Pope Francis, and the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. To mark that historic occasion the BBC broadcast a debate entitled Christianity at the Crossroads. The panellists were: Matthew Parris (MP) – former Conservative MP; Dr Anna Rowlands (AR) – Catholic theologian; [...]

The ordain women movement is focused on asking why females should not be ordained.  Let’s flip that around and ask why males are ordained. Discuss.

I decided to do an experiment: if you ran through all the explanations for why the structure of Mormonism isn’t sexist back to back, how long would it take before you completely contradicted yourself? Turns out about 30 seconds. For all we try and magnify the positive and downplay the negative, the fact of the [...]

There has been a  lot of buzz in the bloggernacle lately.  A Facebook group was created in February called Let Women Pray in General Conference.  To the surprise of many, Salt Lake Tribune’s Peggy Fletcher Stack is reporting that women are scheduled to pray in General Conference for the first time next month.  Is this [...]

I recently had a visitor in my Sunday School class, a young Beehive who currently lives in Bali, Indonesia.  I know from personal experience that there is no LDS branch in Bali.  This girl said that her family just attends another Christian church that is in their neighborhood.  This reminded me of when I was growing [...]

I teach a class at our local Mormon church called Gospel Principles.  It is a course designed for people who are not familiar with the Mormon faith who are wanting to learn more, or for those who need a “refresher” course.  This week’s lesson is on the Priesthood. According to the lesson manual, the definition [...]

What is the role of bishop in confession?  What should it be? Discuss.

“Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.”  Tom Stoppard How old is too old?  Is older always wiser?  We retire GAs, but not apostles or prophets.  Should we? Discuss.

A recent Huffington Post article discussed the difficulty the Mormon church has in making an official apology for the Priesthood Ban, and according to the article, the reason is not racism.  This will come as no surprise to most Mormons who are not racist but hesitate to completely throw revered prophets and church leaders under [...]

Understanding the priesthood administrative structure and the balance of authority between stakes and the presiding quorums is one of the keys to understanding gender issues in the church today. Yep. It’s another post about women and the priesthood.

Any woman can receive the power of the priesthood, and with it the ministering of angels and the presence of God. So says Sheri Dew, Virginia Pearce, and Joseph Smith. An interesting new book releases tomorrow.

Everyone speculates, but at Wheat and Tares we are asking our readers for answers. I have a poll, it goes over the following options, but the real goal is to hear what you think.  The options (tightened up to fit in the poll tool that we have) are: I don’t want the priesthood silly — [...]