Paper · by Don Bradley · July 1830 · D&C 20, 24, 25
We can grasp the July 1830 elect lady revelation — and Emma’s ministerial responsibility and authority laid out in that revelation — by first understanding how this revelation builds on other scriptures. Why, for instance, does it identify Emma’s office as “elect lady”? It does so because that term is drawn from 2 John’s preface — “The elder unto the elect lady” (2 Jn. 1:1) — where the elder writes scripture for the elect lady. Joseph’s office in the church at this time was “first elder.” Hence, Emma was given the restored female counterpart office — elect lady.
Three Revelations, One Pattern
The meaning of Emma’s revelation is also shaped by its connections to three revelations just preceding it: D&C 20 (the Articles and Covenants); D&C 24 (a revelation for Joseph given in tandem with Emma’s D&C 25); and Moses 2–3. Moses 2–3 — revealed immediately before the paired revelations for Joseph and Emma — concluded with Adam and Eve becoming each other’s helpmates. Thus it set the stage for the two revelations in which the Restoration’s first man and first woman were given their respective callings and commanded to serve one another as helpmates in those callings. Their roles as helpmates in their respective callings can be seen in their parallel revelations:
Emma was to be a helpmate to Joseph in his calling
- Joseph will have many afflictions; Emma is to comfort Joseph in his afflictions (D&C 24:8; 25:5).
- Joseph is to “go speedily” to visit the church branches; Emma is to “go with him at the time of his going” to visit them too (24:3; 25:6).
- Joseph is to dictate his revelations; Emma is to record them as scribe, putting her in Oliver Cowdery’s place (D&C 24:5; 25:6).
Joseph was also to be a helpmate to Emma in her calling
- Joseph was to ordain Emma to exhort and to expound the scriptures by the power of revelation (D&C 25:7).
- The church is to support Joseph; Joseph is to support Emma — “from the church” and “in the church” — in her calling (D&C 25:9).
Joseph and Emma also had parallel callings and ministries
- Emma and Joseph are each addressed by revelation regarding “thy calling” and “office” (D&C 24:3, 9; 25:5).
- Emma was to stand as the biblical female counterpart “elect lady” to Joseph’s male office of “elder” (D&C 20:2; 25:3; 2 Jn. 1:1).
- Joseph and Emma were each to expound scriptures as “it shall be given thee” — the only two in the church thus empowered (D&C 24:5; 25:7).
- Joseph was called “to write the Book of Mormon” and other revelations “as it shall be given thee”; Emma was called to write the hymn book, “as it shall be given thee,” to lead the Saints in worship (D&C 24:5–6; 25:11).
Reading Emma’s Calling Against the Articles and Covenants
Emma’s ministerial authority laid out in the July 1830 elect lady revelation must also be understood in the context of the newly sustained Articles and Covenants (D&C 20), which spelled out church offices and had been accepted by the church just the month before:
- In that revelation, Oliver is called a presiding elder with Joseph, “ordained under his hand”; in Emma’s revelation given soon after, Emma is called an elect lady with Joseph, also “ordained under his hand” (D&C 20:3; 25:7). Emma’s ordination is thus implicitly paralleled with Oliver’s, indicating it to be — like his — a real ordination.
- As laid out in D&C 20, priesthood includes ministerial authority as well as sacramental (ordinance) authority.
- Significantly, the ministerial authority D&C 25 says Emma is ordained to overlaps those of teachers, priests, and elders in D&C 20: teachers, priests, and elders are to “expound [and] exhort”; Emma is “to expound and to exhort” (D&C 20:59; 25:7).
- Emma could not perform ordinances. D&C 20 expressly forbids teachers and deacons to perform ordinances: “neither teachers nor deacons have authority to baptize, administer the sacrament, or lay on hands,” but, like Emma, are ordained to ministerial authority to “expound, exhort, and teach” — making her ordained authority closely parallel to theirs.
An Unprecedented Ordination
Outside of Emma Smith, the first woman ordained in the United States is generally reckoned to be Antoinette Blackwell, in 1853. Although radical sects allowed women to perform ministerial activities before then, the elect lady revelation’s instruction that Emma be “ordained” by the laying on of hands to ministerial office was unprecedented in documented U.S. history to that point.
An irony of later debates over ordaining women is that, once Emma’s 1830 ordination is recognized on its own terms, it becomes clear that — rather than a latecomer to ordaining women — the church was probably the first in the United States to do so. From its inception, the Church of Christ restored scriptural roles of priesthood authority for women that anticipated, rather than lagged, broader efforts toward religious equality for women.
© Don Bradley. Published here by permission. This paper’s own discussion continues into the church’s 1842–1843 Nauvoo period; that later material falls outside this site’s 1829–1834 scope and is omitted here.