Restoring the Elect Lady

Introduction

Who among the figures of the early Restoration went to the Hill Cumorah on September 22, 1827, to retrieve the golden plates? Who was called by revelation to produce a book under heavenly direction? Who was further commanded to minister to the Church and to expound the scriptures, with the promise “it shall be given thee” what to teach?¹

One answer to these questions is, of course, Joseph Smith. Another equally correct answer is his wife, Emma Hale Smith.

The role envisioned for Emma in Joseph’s spiritual manifestations was that of a partner in ministry. This intended partnership is apparent from the angelic manifestations that resulted in the Book of Mormon and from a pair of July 1830 revelations. The earlier of these (Doctrine and Covenants 24) elucidated the ministries of the Church’s leading elders, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery; the latter (D&C 25) elucidated Emma Smith’s ministry as the Church’s “elect lady whom I have called.”

This “elect lady” revelation called Emma to a ministry that paralleled the ministries the revelation to the leading elders gave Joseph and Oliver, a ministry that also overlapped the ministerial prerogatives that the Church’s constitution, the Articles and Covenants, assigned to the Church’s various ordained officers. We can best understand Emma’s appointed ministry by reading the elect lady revelation (D&C 25) against the backdrop of the Articles and Covenants (D&C 20) and the leading elders revelation (D&C 24).²

Emma’s revelation, Section 25, described her authority without categorizing it in priesthood terms or explaining exactly how it related to priesthood. Surprisingly, although Sections 20 and 24 spell out the authority of the Church’s ordained officers, they also do so, in their earliest forms, without reference to priesthood. The ordained offices in the Church at this time—teacher, priest, and elder—were recognized as carrying divine authority but would not be referred to as priesthood or classified as Aaronic or Melchizedek until 1832.

This seeming deficit in those early revelations may actually be an asset in gaining a clear view of Emma Smith’s ministerial authority and the Restoration’s larger vision for women’s spiritual authority. Despite statements by several presidents of the Church (including, most recently, Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks) affirming that women in the Church exercise divine authority, women’s authority has been a subject of controversy.³ Twenty-first century conflicts over this subject have often centered on demands for women’s ordination to priesthood in what have heretofore consistently been male offices, without reference to how women’s authority manifested at the Church’s origins. Serendipitously, the absence of priesthood terminology from the 1830 revelations calls attention away from the label used for the spiritual power promised to Emma Smith (and from dichotomized positions in a latter-day culture war) and focuses attention instead on what Emma’s ministry actually was and what it empowered her to do. In examining the elect lady revelation, we can focus not on the form of godliness Emma possessed but on the power thereof.

Emma Hale Smith’s Role in the Coming Forth of the Book of Mormon

Joseph needed Emma in order to bring forth the Book of Mormon. As I have documented in my book, The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon’s Missing Stories, prior to Joseph’s final visit to the Hill Cumorah to acquire the golden plates, the angel told him he could only acquire the plates by bringing Emma to the hill with him—as his wife. It was thus Joseph and Emma who went to the hill on September 22, 1827, to bring home the sacred book. Months later, it was again Joseph and Emma who began the work of translating it, with Emma acting as the first translation scribe. Joseph and Emma began the bringing forth of the Book of Mormon as ministerial coworkers.

Joseph and Emma’s intertwined ministerial roles would be further clarified in the aforementioned tandem revelations given in July 1830. These revelations, in turn, built on the Articles and Covenants in whose light they must be understood.

Articles and Covenants: Background to Emma’s Ministry

Understandings of divine authority in the Church began to be formalized almost immediately upon the Church’s legal organization on April 6, 1830. By April 10, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery had revealed the Church’s Articles and Covenants.⁴ This revelation would be accepted as binding by vote of the Church’s first conference on June 9, 1830. The revelation identified Joseph as a presiding elder and Oliver with him as another presiding elder, one “ordained under his hand” (D&C 20:3).⁵

The Articles and Covenants laid out the authority of the elders, and of other officers, in ways that are often unfamiliar despite appearing in our canon of scripture. Although as modern Latter-day Saints we have become accustomed to identifying divine authority primarily as the power to perform sacraments, or ordinances, the Articles and Covenants expressly deny this authority to certain ordained offices, indicating that some were ordained to exercise ministerial authority without sacramental authority.

The earliest version of the Articles and Covenants appears to have established the offices of elder, priest, and teacher, but by the time the earliest surviving version was recorded, deacons had been added to the revelation as assistants to the teachers. Most of the duties and powers of each, as established in the revelation, were ministerial: “An apostle is an elder, and it is his calling to . . . teach, expound, exhort, baptize, and watch over the church . . . ” (D&C 20:38–42). The priest was called to “preach, teach, expound, exhort” (D&C 20:46). Teachers were called to these same ministerial responsibilities, and to “watch over” and “strengthen” the Church (D&C 20:53). In addition to ministering, priests were also authorized to “administer”—that is, to bless the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, to baptize, and to ordain others. Elders received additional sacramental authority to give the gift of the Holy Ghost and to ordain other elders, in addition to the ordinances performed by a priest.

Whereas elders and priests could perform ordinances such as the sacrament and baptism, deacons and teachers were expressly forbidden to do so: “Neither the teacher nor the deacon has authority to baptize nor administer the sacrament.” Yet, despite the teachers’ absence of sacramental authority, the revelation went on to further develop and emphasize their substantial ministerial authority—“to warn, exhort, expound and teach and invite all to come to Christ.” Teachers (and eventually also their assistants, the deacons) were thus ordained to ministerial authority to teach, exhort, and expound, but not to sacramental authority. So, under the Church’s revelatory constitution, the authority of the ordained Church offices established in the Articles and Covenants sometimes included sacramental authority, but it always included ministerial authority. Divine authority was usually exercised ministerially and only occasionally sacramentally. In illustration of this, members of the Church are baptized only once but are to be ministered to throughout their lives (Moro. 6:4).

Subsequent developments in ecclesiastical practice have not changed this but may have made it harder to notice. Teachers and deacons—originally adult men—are now adolescent priesthood-bearers-in-training. As such, they have been given responsibilities to assist those who administer (i.e., bless) the sacrament by helping prepare the sacramental emblems and distributing them once blessed, neither of which constitutes an ordinance in itself or invokes sacramental authority.⁶ This practice may give the appearance that deacons and teachers exercise sacramental authority, when in fact, they only assist those who do, reinforcing the mistaken perception that all ordained authority is sacramental in nature. Emma’s promise via revelation from Joseph that she would be “ordained under his hand to expound scriptures, and to exhort the Church, according as it shall be given thee by my Spirit,” has therefore not been widely recognized as a promise of authority because it did not specify sacraments or ordinances she might perform.

Realizing that much of the ordained authority of elders and priests and all of the ordained authority of deacons and teachers is ministerial in character, we are prepared to recognize the authority granted to Emma in July 1830.

“Ordained Under His Hand”

Against the backdrop of the Articles and Covenants accepted in June 1830, the significance of Emma’s “elect lady” revelation given just weeks later begins to become clear. Both the leading elders revelation and the elect lady revelation were given in July, shortly after Joseph made his translation or inspired revision of the Genesis creation account of Adam and Eve.⁷ This work set the stage for revelations that would establish individual male and female ministries.⁸

When Emma is told in the elect lady revelation that she is to be ordained, the language of ordination is left theologically ambiguous for modern Latter-day Saints because the term “priesthood” is not used and her authority is not classified as either Aaronic or Melchizedek. Yet while the nature of Emma’s authority may appear theologically ambiguous, it is ministerially precise. Emma’s authority is not given a name or category but is given substance. Building on the Articles and Covenants, this revelation makes clear that Emma received authority and identifies what this authority empowered her to do.

Although it appears to have overwhelmingly escaped comment, the language the elect lady revelation used to describe Emma’s ordination by Joseph is identical to the language the Articles and Covenants had recently used to characterize Oliver Cowdery’s ordination by Joseph:

Oliver Cowdery . . . the second elder of this church, and ordained under his hand (D&C 20:3).

And thou [Emma] shalt be ordained under his hand to expound scriptures, and to exhort the church, according as it shall be given thee by my Spirit (D&C 25:7).

Each was “ordained under his hand.” Because this language about Oliver’s ordination had been given in the Church’s constitution in April and accepted as canonical in June, the verbatim echo in Emma’s promise of spiritual power in July could hardly have escaped notice—particularly by Joseph and Emma. This echo of Oliver’s ordination in Emma’s ordination offered her an assurance: She would receive divine authority as real as his.

But to what was she ordained?

Not, it seems, to one of the offices established in the Articles and Covenants. The titles for these offices—elder, priest, and teacher—had been clearly identified there, yet none of these titles was applied to Emma in the July 1830 revelation. And the prerogatives of her authority, while paralleling and overlapping those of these offices in striking ways, do not precisely match any of them (as identified in the revelation). Thus, as noted in modern Church publications, she was given neither an office in the Aaronic priesthood nor in the Melchizedek priesthood. Rather, Emma was promised distinctive ministerial responsibilities and powers in connection with her role and title of “elect lady.”⁹

Emma was thus given, by revelation and by the imposition of hands, a vital ministry and the power to perform it; yet this power was not given a name beyond the title of elect lady, or given a theological explanation. In line with this, BYU Idaho professor Scott Woodward, summing up insights on Emma’s ministry from Church History Library historian Lisa Olsen Tait, has suggested, “she [Emma] was ordained to something. We don’t have a name for what she was ordained to.”¹⁰ But we do know specifics of what that power could do.

Emma’s promised power as elect lady specified two prerogatives she would share with the officers identified in the Articles and Covenants: to exhort and to expound. The spiritual power she then exercised did not extend to ordinances as it would in 1843, when she was authorized to officiate for other women in the ordinances of the temple. Rather, the 1830 authorization the elect lady received gave her ministerial responsibilities and prerogatives not identical to but evoking those of a teacher, whose authority was entirely ministerial in character. As a teacher exercised divine ministerial authority in his calling, so also did Emma in hers.

To more fully understand the responsibility and authority Emma was given, we need to understand the origin of her title of “elect lady.”

“The Elder unto the Elect Lady”

The title of “elect lady” given to Emma in July 1830 is widely recognized to have been derived from the Second Epistle of John in the New Testament, which begins: “The elder unto the elect lady . . . .” But to identify derivation is not to provide explanation. Why was Emma given this title from the scriptures?

The answer is to be found in the construction in which the title was used in 2 John, which juxtaposes male and female honorifics: “The elder unto the elect lady . . . .” This epistle is a sacred text given from the elder to the elect lady—not unlike the July 1830 revelation itself, which Joseph revealed for Emma. Joseph’s title in the Church at this time, it will be recalled, was “first elder”; Emma’s was elect lady, making Joseph and Emma a precise parallel to the male-female spiritual dyad introduced in the opening of 2 John. “Elder” and “elect lady” are masculine and feminine equivalents or counterparts—positions of distinction within both the New Testament church and the Restoration. Emma Smith was given the ministerial title of elect lady, almost certainly, to evoke the New Testament origin of her ministerial role and to establish the parallel of her ministry with that of Joseph as first elder.

The drawing of ministerial titles for both Joseph and Emma from the New Testament suggests not only a deliberate pairing of their ministerial roles but also a dual restoration. As Joseph’s divine calling restored the position of elder from the New Testament church, so Emma’s divine calling restored the position of elect lady from the New Testament church. A restoration of ministry and divine power from biblical times is reflected also in the 1842 establishment of the Relief Society and the 1842–1843 reception of temple ordinances by both men and women. As the Gospel Topics essay “Joseph Smith’s Teachings about Priesthood, Temples, and Women” on the Church’s website notes regarding a speech by Newel K. Whitney, who received private instruction from the Prophet Joseph Smith to the newly formed Relief Society:

These revelations and ordinances imparted new understanding of the interdependent relationship of women and men. As Bishop Newel K. Whitney expressed it shortly after receiving his endowment, ‘Without the female all things cannot be restor’d to the earth. It takes all to restore the Priesthood.’

Parallel July 1830 revelations given for Joseph and Emma Smith, respectively as the Church’s first elder and as elect lady, bear witness that divine power of ministry from the New Testament church was given in the restored Church to men and women alike.¹¹

Parallel Revelations

The tandem nature of Joseph and Emma’s restored callings is reflected in the tandem revelations given for them.¹² These revelations established parallel and intertwining ministerial responsibilities and powers between the elect lady and the leading elders, and these revelations show signs of having been structured so as to correlate the responsibilities of these male and female officers.

Oliver Cowdery had for some time served as a successor to Emma in her role as scribe. Yet the leading elders revelation commanded Oliver Cowdery to go on missions to bear “my name before the world,” supplanting his role as Joseph’s scribe (D&C 24:10–12). The elect lady revelation therefore gave Emma back her original scribal role, enabling Oliver to be sent to preach (D&C 25:6).

The revelations closely intertwined Emma’s and Joseph’s ministries, which each revelation referred to as “thy calling” and “office” (D&C 24:9; 25:5). Joseph was to visit the branches of the Church; Emma was to go with him and serve as a scribe (D&C 24:3; 25:6). Joseph was to “write” what was given him by revelation; Emma’s time would be “given to writing” (D&C 24:5–6; 25:8). Joseph would have many afflictions; Emma was to comfort Joseph in his afflictions (D&C 24:1, 8; 25:5) The Church was to support Joseph; Emma was to be supported by him from the Church (D&C 24:3; 25:9).¹³

Significant, distinctive ministerial powers were given to Joseph and Emma that were not given to others. For instance, the Church’s first elder and its elect lady were each authorized to expound the scriptures “as it shall be given” by the Spirit (D&C 24:5–6, 9; 25:7). While “expounding” was a ministerial prerogative of all the ordained officers specified in the Articles and Covenants, within the 1830 Church, only Joseph and Emma were specifically empowered to deliver expositions of scripture to the Church as these were given to them by the Spirit.¹⁴

Most strikingly, each had been called to bring forth a sacred book. Joseph was told, “Behold, thou wast called and chosen to write the Book of Mormon” (D&C 24:1). July 1830 was a curious time for the leading elders revelation to affirm Joseph’s calling to translate the Book of Mormon, since this was a work he had completed over a year earlier. The reaffirmation of Joseph’s calling to translate the Book of Mormon at this time suggests a deliberate parallel with the elect lady revelation’s affirmation of Emma’s calling to bring forth a sacred book under divine inspiration, “as it shall be given thee”—a book of hymns:

And it shall be given thee, also, to make a selection of sacred hymns, as it shall be given thee, which is pleasing unto me, to be had in my church. For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me (D&C 25:11–12).¹⁵

Viewed in light of the parallel leading elders revelation, the elect lady revelation can be seen to have carefully balanced Emma’s ministry with Joseph’s. Each had been divinely called (D&C 24:1; 25:3)—he as elder (D&C 24:3, 5, 9; cf. D&C 20:2); she as elect lady (D&C 25:3). Each was to expound the scriptures by revelation (D&C 24:5; 25:7) and to bring forth a sacred book under the power of God’s Spirit (D&C 24:1; 25:11). Thus, not only were Joseph and Emma’s ministerial titles of first elder and elect lady established in parallel, so were the responsibilities and prerogatives they were given in their ministries. The New Testament-based vision for men and women restored in the 1830 Church was thus one of partnership in ministry.

Conclusion

When we place the elect lady revelation in its original context, a new picture begins to emerge of Emma Smith’s spiritual power and relationship to Joseph Smith’s work, illustrating a Restoration vision of partnership in ministry.

We as a Latter-day Saint people have lagged behind the Restoration’s prophetic leaders in our vision of what the Restoration is. The Saints have often popularly understood the Restoration as the now-complete reintroduction of exclusively male positions of spiritual authority from the world of the Bible. Various developments in our early history—including the introduction of the Relief Society, women’s role in performing temple ordinances for other women, and Emma Smith’s calling to a ministry under the New Testament title of elect lady paralleling Joseph’s ministry as first elder—demonstrate that there was much more to be restored.

The vision of restoring female ministerial power was inaugurated in the very earliest days of the Restoration, but should we assume that the use of this power has been brought to its full fruition? President Russell M. Nelson admonished those who “think the Church has been fully restored,” “you’re just seeing the beginning. There is much more to come.” And President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has stated, “the Restoration is an ongoing process; we are living in it right now.”¹⁶

Atop the hill Cumorah, nearly two centuries ago, Joseph Smith could not initiate the restoration of our foundational scripture alone; only Joseph and Emma together could do that. And if the Restoration could not be initiated through the ministry of one gender alone, it surely cannot be completed without the full, divinely intended development of the spiritual powers of both male and female.¹⁷ Like the inspired promises to Emma, the form such spiritual flourishing will take must be given by the spirit of revelation.

As the work of restoration continues to unfold, prophetic revelation may yet further expound the spiritual power given to the elect lady to build a more perfect partnership of men and women in ministering to all God’s children.

Donald Patrick Bradley, Sr. (B.A., BYU; M.A.; USU) is a historian specializing in the early Restoration. Don’s research focuses on Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and plural marriage. He is the author of The Lost 116 Pages: Reconstructing the Book of Mormon's Missing Stories, and winner of the Mormon History Association's 2021 Best Article Award. He is the incredibly proud father of Nicholas Bradley and the late Donnie Bradley.

Art by James Rees.

1. Readers present at the September 2013 John Whitmer Historical Association Conference in Council Bluffs, Iowa, will recognize the interpretations here as the same I presented there under the title “Elder and Elect Lady: Male and Female Authority in the July 1830 Revelations.” The present paper is a version of that same work and of my resulting 2014 paper. For thoughts from Fiona Givens in reaction to those earlier versions, see “A Society Meet For Male Priesthood,” Difficult Run (blog), January 20, 2014, and Fiona Givens, “Joseph Smith on Mormon Women and the Priesthood,” Patheos (blog), July 10, 2014.

2. See Articles and Covenants, circa April 1830, Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/articles-and-covenants-circa-april-1830-dc-20/1. This manuscript varies somewhat from later publications of the Articles and Covenants.

3. See Dallin H. Oaks, “The Relief Society and the Church,” Ensign, May 1992, 34–37; Dallin H. Oaks, “The Keys and Authority of the Priesthood,” Ensign, May 2014, 50–51; and Russell M. Nelson, “Spiritual Treasures,” Ensign, November 2019, 76–79. It appears that growth in understanding on this subject is occurring, “line upon line,” even at the Church’s highest levels. In his 1992 General Conference talk, then Elder Dallin H. Oaks identified Latter-day Saint women as exercising divine authority “related” to and under the direction of priesthood authority; in his 2014 talk he identified the divine authority exercised by women as priesthood authority delegated under the direction of priesthood leaders who hold the keys. Needless to say, my own understandings are also subject to evolution, and the views in this paper reflect only my own interpretations and are not meant to speak for the Church itself or for others I quote.

4. Although the Articles and Covenants usually credited to Joseph Smith alone, Oliver Cowdery inserted his name as a co-revelator in the heading of this revelation (and this revelation only) in Revelation Book 1, p. 36, Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-book-1/36. And work in progress by the author tentatively titled Learning the Spirit of Revelation: Oliver Cowdery as Revelator and Translator further documents Oliver’s role in co-revealing the Articles and Covenants.

5. For the reader’s convenience I have used the modern Doctrine and Covenant text of the revelations quoted, except where indicated.

6. Indeed, as is often noted, Church members not ordained to priesthood office, and even non-Latter-day Saint visitors, pass the sacrament down the aisle to others, reflecting that no actual sacramental authority is required for this task.

7. Robert J. Matthews and D. Michael Quinn each independently proposed that Joseph translated Moses 1 immediately preceding the Genesis creation accounts, between June 23 and June 30, 1830. Work in progress by the present author refines this timeline and places the revision of the creation accounts (Moses 2–3) prior to Oliver’s July 1830 relocation to Fayette, New York to court Elizabeth Whitmer. See Robert J. Matthews, “A Plainer Translation”: Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible, A History and Commentary (Brigham Young University Press, 1975), 22; D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994), 23.

8. Joseph Smith may have envisioned distinct leadership roles based not only on gender but also on marital status. Leadership figures involved in Joseph Smith’s July 1830 revelatory corpus include Oliver Cowdery (a single male), Joseph Smith (a partnered male), Elizabeth Whitmer (a single female), and Emma Hale Smith (a partnered female). For further discussion relating these four leaders and four demographics to a four-part structure built into D&C 94, the revealed Plat of Zion, and the Kirtland design for “the House of the Lord” (the temple), see David R. Hall and David R. Hockings, The Law and the Plat of Zion (forthcoming).

9. The Gospel Topics essay titled “Joseph Smith’s Teachings about Priesthood, Temples, and Women” notes that “neither Joseph Smith, nor any person acting on his behalf, nor any of his successors conferred the Aaronic or Melchizedek Priesthood on women or ordained women to priesthood office.”

10. Scott Woodward, Casey Griffiths, and Lisa Tait, “Joseph Smith Promised Female Priests,” Church History Matters, Women & Priesthood Series, episode 202, April 28, 2026, 13:23.

11. For further connection of women’s roles in the Restoration with those of women in the New Testament, see my discussion of Mary Musselman Whitmer as a Mary Magdalene analogue in Donald Patrick Bradley Sr., “Were Nephi’s Small Plates Contained in Mormon’s Gold Plates?,” BYU Studies 64, no. 4 (2025): 38–57.

12. In this paper I compare the elect lady revelation (D&C 25) to D&C 24 and D&C 20. Pioneering Latter-day Saint historian and theologian Maxine Hanks, in independent work, proposes contextualizing the elect lady revelation using other early revelations as well. Maxine has been an important interlocutor for me in my own work and promises to bring great further insight to the elect lady revelation and Emma Smith’s role in the Restoration in her publications.

13. The earliest available text of the elect lady revelation states that Joseph will support Emma “from the church,” referring to him providing financial support to his family as the Church supported him. The modified 1835 text, canonized in the Doctrine and Covenants, says Joseph will support Emma in the Church, apparently referencing his support for her calling. Contrast D&C 25:9 with Revelation, July 1830–C, Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-july-1830-c-dc-25/1.

14. Similar authority would be extended by revelation to First Presidency counselor Sidney Rigdon, though not until 1833 (D&C 100:9–11).

15. Work being published by Maxine Harks brilliantly expounds the significance of Emma’s calling to create a hymnal in the light of biblical narrative.

16. “Interview with President Nelson and Elder Stevenson in Chile,” Church Newsroom, YouTube video, October 30, 2018, 5:09–6:28; Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Are You Sleeping Through the Restoration?” Ensign, May 2014, 59.

17. A flourishing of female spiritual power in the Church, though possibly on the level of many individuals rather than as a communal shift, is anticipated in an invitation from President Nelson to the women of the Church at the October 2019 General Conference: “I invite you to study prayerfully section 25 of the Doctrine and Covenants and discover what the Holy Ghost will teach you. Your personal spiritual endeavor will bring you joy as you gain, understand, and use the power with which you have been endowed.” Russell M. Nelson, “Spiritual Treasures,” Ensign, November 2019, 76–79.