Growing up in the Church, I was always taught that what makes our baptism different from everybody else’s was that we had the authority from God via the Priesthood to preform them. This also extended to all the other ordnances. God’s authority was required, so much so that in many of the ordnances the words “By the authority of the Melchesidec Priesthood” is part of the actual wording of these ordnances.
We Mormons believe that there was a general apostasy from the church as founded by the Apostles. They used to have that priesthood authority, but lost it, although no one can point to a particular date or action that caused this loss of priesthood power. We are thus called a restoration church, since we have restored something that is lost.
But (and there is always a but in Bishop Bill’s posts!) how does D&C 121: 36-37 affect this authority?
36 That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.
37 That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.
D&C 121
What it is saying is that if a man exercises “unrighteous dominion” he loses the power of this priesthood, and the authority to use it. This rises all sorts or questions.
The Stake President that set me apart as a missionary was excommunicated a year into my mission for carnal knowledge of the Stake Relief Society (she was also excommunicated). If his horizontal extracurricular activity was going on when he set me apart (which it probably was), I believe that meets the very definition of unrighteous dominion. So his priesthood authority was withdrawn. Was I really a missionary? By what authority did I preach the gospel? Is that why my dusting of the feet did not work?
Another example, what if the person that performs a baptism was beating his kids and wife at home? Another classic definition of unrighteous dominion. So he loses his priesthood. Is the baptism valid?
One explanation put forth by church members I’ve heard is that if the person getting baptized believes faithfully that it’s valid, then God will recognize it. If this is true, then one could extrapolate this and conclude that a person getting baptized by a Baptist minister and believes that he has the authority to baptize them, then the baptism is also recognized as valid by God. Extrapolating even further, everybody who received ordinations and baptisms throughout the last twenty centuries believed in the authority of the priests performing the rites, and are thus recognized by God.
Another possible explanation put forth by faithful Mormons is to claim that priesthood authority is like a professional license, and is valid until forfeited in some kind of legal proceeding, which would be an excommunication in a religious context. D&C 121 has nothing about a formal proceeding to strip the man of his authority. Also, there is no historical evidence that the entire Christian clergy went through such a proceeding over the past 2000 years, thus requiring the restoration.
So which is it? How do you solve this paradox? Is D&C 121 sacrosanct, and do men lose their priesthood when they practice unrighteous dominion, so everything they do is invalid, done without power? Or are the ordnances still valid because of the faith of the recipient, thus diminishing the actual restored power because it lies in the mind of the recipient and not actual keys passed down. What of other faiths ordnances if the recipient believes it is of God?
Wheat & Tares 
Good morning
Take the chance to listen to recent LDS discussions on the Priesthood restoration with Mike and John. So many details of what we were taught, does not match the actual time line. (We thought we studied church history, wrong!).
What actual Priesthood authority did JS have?
He kept expanding his grandiose and dilusional stories with a new Bible prophet visit of the month. Then, JS would back date the event, any time someone else questioned his own authority. (Now many sections of D &C finally make sense and each excommunication in the early LDS church).
The concept of LDS Priesthood authority sounds good, but it never happened.
For generations my family was duped by one of the greatest conman. The dominant narrative is not true.
I can only wish ordnance required authority from God.
I’m not usually one to correct a spelling error, but I believe your intended word is “ordinance”.
(Ok, maybe anonymously, with a Sharpie, on a poster at work, or something like that.🙃)
Add “prophets” like Brigham Young who exercised a LOT of unrighteous dominion. Was every ordination and action by Brigham done without authority? Is the whole chain of each person’s line of authority corrupted?
I love these verses in D&C 121 and I feel the truth of them deeply. For me they aren’t about individual priesthood ordinances, or about passing authority to others. To me it’s a warning to bishops, stake presidents, and other administration in the church that the priesthood authority doesn’t give them the right to push others around and attempt to take away the personal spiritual authority to make decisions, that exists in the people in their care.
I think leaders (of both sexes, at home or at church) violate these verses when they use their authority like a club, telling adults under their authority, what they may and may not do, and that these commands are direct from God. This is coercive, a way to silence different points of view, disagreement, discussion, and to stifle personal revelation based on individual circumstances.
I believe leaders should leave plenty of room for individual circumstances and the exercise of personal revelation, in every direction they give. For instance, if the stake presidency gets up and tells members all of them should go to the temple monthly no exceptions, this is unrighteous dominion. If the bishop gives a talk telling all members they are unfaithful if they engage in discussion on social media, that is unrighteous dominion. If leaders extend callings in such a way that leaves no room for members to share more information on individual circumstances (God has called you to be Relief Society President, rather than our bishopric asks you to consider this calling), that can be unrighteous dominion.
When talks are all about “follow the prophet” without encouraging members to seek their own revelation on how these directions fit into their own individual lives, that is unrighteous dominion. Church leadership shouldn’t be about using your own authority to undermine the authority of others. Talks shouldn’t be about telling members what to do like they are soldiers in the army. We are not soldiers in an army, and we shouldn’t be pressured and guilted for seeking our own personal fit with the gospel.
We are not all the same and often leaders assume we are and imagine if we do not immediately follow their directions we are unfaithful. Church should be about inviting us to follow Jesus Christ. Inviting, not commanding. I ask you to look at the whole section in context. It is about compulsion of others and ends with “without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever “.
I believe ” amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man” is a promise to those people who are being abused by coercive unrighteous dominion. This is a promise that although our leaders are fallible, and unwisely try to control us instead of encouraging us, the day will come that controlling leaders will be without any authority or power over us.
I’ve heard that in the case of ordinances, it’s not individual worthiness of the priesthood holder that makes the ordinance efficacious but rather the priesthood keys, which in this explanation seem to exist separate and apart from the individual invoking them.
Really, I’m not sure that makes any more sense though. Can an unworthy priesthood holder legitimately invoke a key? I guess the answer is yes. Which takes us back to the same problem.
I suppose you could say at that point, and only that point, the faith of the person receiving the blessing/ordinance bridges the gap?
Personally, I’m not sure I believe in a god who requires ordinances of any kind, although I have found comfort and connection through ordinances, rites, and practices, not just those of the faith of my birth but other faiths also.
Matthew 22
35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Love and charity are the overriding concerns of the Lord. Ordinances are only useful to the extent that they make us more loving.
The Lord grants spiritual gifts to whomsoever he chooses. The granting of that gift includes the authority to exercise it. The recipient then becomes an agent if that gift is to be used to bless others. Women, LGBTQIA+ and even the Baptist minister in the original post may receive such authority as the Lord so grants.
I could further apply some critical thinking skills to the LDS Church’s claim that it is the sole recipient and guardian of priesthood authority and keys. And likewise to its elevation of temple ordinances as the highest form of worship, and exclusive means of earning exaltation. But I must make allowances that there is a large group of faithful church members who need this belief structure. It is not my role to shake their foundation.
The priesthood ordinance have some benefit and utility. But I prefer to focus on giving service such as visiting the sick, volunteering in a food bank, donating blood, being a compassionate listener and even such mundane tasks as picking up trash along my neighborhood street.
The word priesthood in 121 doesn’t refer to institutional authority or priesthood offices but rather personal power.
Like other comments, I think the value of an ordinance lies entirely in how it affects the one who undertakes the ritual. If it reinforces the internal decision they have made to follow The Way, then it has redemptive value because it gives them mental strength and moral courage when keeping trust in God and doing hard things gets really hard. But it doesn’t have any redemptive value otherwise. God doesn’t need it to grant blessings, including admittance into the kingdom.
So if an unworthy priest performs an ordinance it wouldn’t change anything unless that made the memory of that’s ordinance tainted in the mind of the one who undertook it. And how or who performs an ordinance would really matter as long as the ritual was meaningful to the one who undertakes it.
This latter point might be one of the biggest problems with LDS temple rituals. Masonic symbolism might have been very meaningful for people on the American frontier in the 1830s, but it doesn’t work seem to work very well for many individuals in the 2020s, so it fails at its primary purpose. Yet at same time, a continuity of ritual over a perceived long history can be really helpful commitment tool for another segment of the community (see Queen Elizabeth II) even if they originally found the ritual bizarre, so an institution needs to be careful in how much they revise their rituals in a short amount of time.
This is one of the issues that D Suffer addresses.
Bishop Bill: I enjoyed this post and agree. On a personal note: Historically your posts have been of a high quality in terms of grammar, spelling, complete sentences, etc. This one is not. I sincerely hope you are not having a stroke. 😉
I agree with Margie that I am just not sure that I believe that it is God that requires us to go through these rituals, ceremonies, ordinances, whatever we call them. Why does God need us to be dunked in water, even by some magical authority? To me, God is much bigger than all that. And I just don’t believe in a God that plays favorites by granting his magical power to a certain group of people but not others. Therefore, there is no such thing as priesthood. Or maybe the Protestants have it correct and there is a priesthood of believers and it is only faith after all.
It has been the men of the church who have taught me that they have no priesthood. Oh, they didn’t mean to teach me that, but did by refusing to take away the priesthood of men they KNEW were abusing wife and children. They taught me how unnecessary the ordinances such as the sacrament are when they failed to provide for the single and widowed sisters during Covid. Their rules were more important than the sacrament itself. Even at almost 9 years old, they taught me that my baptism was just for the paper work to get my name officially on church rolls. It wasn’t for me and it wasn’t for God. It was for the institution. So, we have institutional authority that operates for the benefit of the institution. And I should be impressed?
As a social worker, I worked for a while in a battered women’s shelter. You know what I NEVER once saw? A man have his priesthood taken away for beating his wife. I saw them put into new positions of authority in their wards. I saw the wife blamed for “destroying the marriage” when she had already forgiven 70×70 times, and now was trying to protect the children because he had started on them. But she was blamed and he was in good standing with the church.
That is how seriously the men of this church take D&C 121. If beating your wife isn’t unrighteousness dominion, I don’t know what is, but it was treated like any minor disagreement between a couple.
This is just one inconsistency of priesthood that proves it is all imaginary. Another is when men want priesthood it is this grand and glorious power, but when women want it, it is a big nothing burger, and our faithful prayers will heal our children just as well as priesthood. And we have all the blessings of the priesthood, except when Covid comes around and women go a year or more without the sacrament. And just exactly why couldn’t the sacrament be blessed over the phone or through the closed door? Or, because the magic doesn’t work over the phone? Through the door? But if you were in the foyer at church, the magic still worked? Denying the sacrament to single sisters during Covid was unrighteous dominion, so “Amen to the priesthood” of the whole lot of them. Those sisters were less important than the silly rules of the ceremony. But no problem, those sister can think about the words to the prayer and that will be good enough. Either it *is* important or it’s not.
I just don’t get it, and when I asked for these inconsistencies to be explained, I am told I am just being difficult. The whole priesthood thing has more holes than Swiss Cheese, and I don’t like Swiss Cheese.
Agree 100%, Anna.
fbisti, thank you so much for looking after my health. What really surprised me what that you think that my posts are usually “high quality in terms of grammar, spelling, complete sentences”. Being a dyslexic engineer, it takes a lot of effort and help from Bill Gates to form a coherent sentence. Writing on this blog has been a learning process in how to self edit. I see my self as the lest articulate among my fellow blogger, but like that you think they are of high quality! (there was 5 misspellings in the above that Bill flagged for me, including the word misspelling!) Thanks again for your concerns! 🙂
Faith, I’m half way through the MS podcast on restoration of the priesthood. I tried not to make this post about the truth claims of the priesthood itself, but rather looking at how the church applies D&C 121 assuming that the priesthood is that they say it it.
Bishop Bill (and all other bloggers):
GRAMMARLY.
Ask common priesthood, “what is priesthood?” and we might hear something like, “priesthood is the POWER and AUTHORITY to act in the Name of God,” but then ask: “what constitutes the “power” and what constitutes the “authority” and witness the phenomenon of grown men stumble and trip over themselves in an effort to cover up the fact that they simply do not know. Conceptual priesthood has been commodified into fiat currency, and unrighteousness dominion permeates the institution throughout. Joseph warned us.
Is a W&T blog post ineffective when there are issues in terms of grammar, spelling, complete sentences, etc? Does. Not. Matter.
As a random aside, walking around BYU yesterday, I saw a parking stall marked with a sign that said “BYU Official’s Parking Only”. Which one? Kevin? Clark? Russell? Camille? Bonnie?
I think it’s pretty clear that this “revelation” was just Joseph Smiths way of declaring someone else’s priesthood to be void and furthering his own dominion. For all intents and purposes this is not a practiced part of Mormonism except in the cases where members are excommunicated. I’ve never heard this taught with any real sincerity to be in relation to the actions or authority of those in leadership positions.
I think the correct answer to this question goes further than we realize. We should ask how we get any kind of priesthood in the first place. It certainly is not by the laying on of hands only.
Ordination is merely an invitation to rise up and connect with Heaven. In fact, the standard is quite high. D&C 121:41-42 is clear that we have zero power unless we first learn certain principles. “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only(pretty unambiguous) by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile”
I would willingly submit to baptism or any ordinance offered by someone with these attributes. I think a lot fewer men have priesthood than we imagine. A very few indeed.
What bothers me too is that we are told people are given callings by priesthood inspiration and yet though the percentage may be small we hear about bad actors that never should be in such positions. I’m sure we’ve all heard of a few – former bishops etc being arrested for sexual and other crimes. One stake I was in, a very highly respected member held many important callings over the years. His last calling before he was excommunicated was that of patriarch. His fall from grace came after being arrested for sexual interference with teenage boys.
A few years ago there was a thread in an LDS feminist FB group about friends comparing their patriarchal blessings and how puzzled they were at how identical they sounded. After this patriarch died his family found a binder full of ‘patriarchal blessing’ scripts that he obviously just cycled through. They also found correspondence regarding a long term relationship with someone other than his wife. I just don’t understand why people who are obviously not worthy accept such callings? Do they do it for a cover of respectability?
Faith, where are those discussions found?
Thanks!