3 From Men to Boys: LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829–1996

During Fast Sunday in a typical contemporary LDS ward, male deacons, ages twelve and thirteen, fan out through the ward’s population, distributing and collecting blue fast-offering envelopes. At the chapel, ordained male teachers, ages fourteen and fifteen, put white or clear sacrament cups into thirty-six-holed trays, place them with empty bread trays and slices of unbroken bread on the sacrament table, and cover all with a fine white cloth. During the sacrament meeting, other teachers are posted at chapel doors as ushers, though they escort no one to seats. Priests, ages sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, break the bread and then bless the bread and the water, reading the prayer from a printed card. Deacons carry first the bread trays, then the water trays, among the congregation according to a predetermined order. After the meeting, the teachers clear off the sacrament table, clean the trays, and put trays and tablecloths away. During the next four weeks, many of those same teachers and priests accompany adult men to the homes of members as junior companion home teachers.1

This rare photograph of a sacrament meeting in the tabernacle in Ephraim, Utah, in the early 1870s shows three mature men officiating at the sacrament table. Courtesy Church Archives.

In the LDS Church today, teenage boys are ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood offices of deacon, teacher, and priest according to their ages. Adults holding these offices are either newly active after “stopping out” in one of these stages during adolescence or are newly baptized members. In contrast, nineteenth-century presiding authorities called adult males to the Aaronic Priesthood, allowing these offices to only a small number of youths.

To document when, why, and how the three Aaronic Priesthood offices shifted from men to boys, gradually and sometimes informally, requires a detailed and somewhat complex analysis.2 Bishops, although Aaronic Priesthood officers, are not included since they preside by Melchizedek Priesthood authority.

General Authorities directed the transformation; but none cited publicly (and available records do not record) any specific revelation or divine inspiration that prompted or confirmed the changes. Rather, the policy evolved gradually, punctuated by sudden spurts, in response to practical needs. Elder Bruce R. McConkie acknowledged that youths now receive priesthood because of “needs of the present day ministry,” a practice that has been “confirmed by the inspiration of the Spirit” to those holding “the keys of the kingdom.”3 Still, the transitions were not always smooth nor free from ambiguities for leaders and members.

Without understanding these shifts in Aaronic Priesthood work, LDS leaders and historians cannot accurately interpret many early Church records, teachings, and events.4 Historical awareness of priesthood offices and quorums is vital to understanding the role of the LDS male throughout history; priesthood callings and quorum membership have been men’s primary participatory involvement and connection with Mormonism. Although all Mormon women currently “belong” to Relief Society, and all members belong, at various points, to Primary, Young Men’s or Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association (MIA), Scouts (if male), or Sunday School classes, such involvements are not comparable to “holding” the priesthood. Priesthood is something the recipient has. It is a permanent and lifelong possession that exists even when the bearer lives where there are no wards or other Church units. Women do not “have” or “hold” the Relief Society.

To assess what it has meant to be a Mormon male in the sweep of LDS history and how the religion has defined and redefined masculinity will require examination of more than priesthood involvement. What participation and expectations, for instance, are or have been built into Primary, MIA, Religion Class, Scouting, and Sunday School, seminary, Institute, and missions over the years? This paper explores, but is not the definitive treatment of, the Aaronic Priesthood or its relation to and management by General Authorities, stake leaders, or Melchizedek Priesthood quorums. Nor does space allow us to explore deeply the gender and masculinity issues these priesthood developments reflect or influence.5 Rather, I focus on the historical development of the offices of deacon, teacher, and priest as they have related to male maturity levels, and on how and why such functions have been altered and adapted over time.

The transformation of Aaronic Priesthood occurred in six stages, identifiable in hindsight but probably not fully understood by their participants.

1. 1829–46. Adult males were called to Aaronic Priesthood offices as Church needs required.

2. 1847–77. Men holding the Melchizedek Priesthood became “acting” deacons, teachers, and priests. Their primary work was that assigned by revelation to priests and teachers: to teach the Saints righteous principles in their homes and to administer the sacrament.

3. 1877–1908. Every youth between twelve and twenty was expected to receive at least one Aaronic Priesthood office, usually that of deacon, but Melchizedek Priesthood holders continued to “act” as home teachers6 and to administer the sacrament.

4. 1908–22. Aaronic Priesthood work was redesigned for youth with offices linked to age, with routine advancement of the worthy and active, with new duties designed for youth, including handling the sacrament, and with teachers and priests involved in ward teaching.

5. 1920s–50s. These new age-linked Aaronic Priesthood functions became firmly institutionalized.

6. 1960s–90s. As part of the Priesthood Correlation program, ward teaching became home teaching, a Melchizedek Priesthood quorum responsibility, with Aaronic Priesthood males assisting as junior companions.

Accompanying these six periods of priesthood realignment were five interrelated developments that influenced the transfer of Aaronic Priesthood offices from men to youths.

1. Introduction of the temple endowment for missionaries or bridegrooms where proximity to a temple permitted; since the endowment required ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood, these men were unavailable for Aaronic Priesthood offices.

2. Concerns for young men unprepared for missions and other adult responsibilities in the Church.

3. Tracking all teenage boys through all three Aaronic Priesthood offices instead of selectively using some in only one or two offices.

4. Redefining priesthood family visits and watchcare as Melchizedek rather than Aaronic Priesthood responsibilities.

5. Providing youthful deacons, teachers, and priests with useful priesthood assignments fitted to their ability levels—tasks that in many cases require no priesthood authority to perform.

1829–46: 
Aaronic Priesthood for Mature Males

In May 1829, John the Baptist bestowed the Aaronic Priesthood on Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, then both in their early twenties.7 Compared to the Melchizedek or higher priesthood, this was the lesser priesthood. An 1830 revelation (D&C 20) assigns several weighty duties to priests, teachers, and deacons. Granted the “keys of the ministering of angels,” Aaronic Priesthood bearers are to preach, teach, expound, exhort, baptize, and administer the sacrament; to visit members in their homes and exhort them to pray vocally and secretly and to fulfill family duties; to ordain other officers; and to conduct meetings whenever higher officers are absent. Ordained teachers are to watch over the Church constantly; strengthen members; eliminate iniquity, hard feelings, lying, backbiting, and evil speaking; ensure that the Church holds regular meetings; and assure that members perform their duties. Ordained deacons are to assist the teachers, but no specific assignments are spelled out. Only mature persons can adequately perform most of these responsibilities; and Mormonism’s first generation clearly recognized that mature males should take on the duties of being “standing ministers unto the church” (D&C 84:111).

The earliest mention of ordained deacons is in the Painesville Telegraph on October 25, 1831. The first priests were fifty-nine-year-old Joseph Smith Sr., forty-seven-year-old Martin Harris, and two thirty-year-olds, Hyrum Smith and Newell Knight. Among the first teachers were forty-nine-year-old Hezekiah Peck, thirty-two-year-old Christian Whitmer, thirty-year-old Hiram Page, and twenty-year-old William Smith. Titus Billings, one of the first deacons, was thirty-eight. During the Church’s first decade, Aaronic Priesthood offices were conferred on a few selected youths including William F. Cahoon, ordained a priest at seventeen, Don Carlos Smith, ordained to “the priesthood at 14,” and Erastus and James Snow, teachers at fifteen and seventeen respectively.8 Such cases are few.

Martin Harris became one of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon and was a close friend of Joseph Smith Jr. Harris served in a variety of Church callings, such as deacon, missionary, and high councilor. Courtesy Church Archives.

William F. Cahoon’s youthful experience as a teacher visiting the Joseph Smith family is fairly well known, although some retellings place it in Nauvoo instead of in Kirtland, where it occurred about 1831. Cahoon, born in 1813, visited the Smiths as an eighteen-year-old priest:

Being young, only about seventeen years [eighteen] of age, I felt my weakness in visiting the Prophet and his family in the capacity of teacher. I almost felt like shrinking from duty. Finally I went to his door and knocked, and in a minute the Prophet came to the door. I stood there trembling, and said to him, “Brother Joseph, I have come to visit you in the capacity of a teacher, if it is convenient for you.”

He said, “Brother William, come right in, I am glad to see you; sit down in that chair there and I will go and call my family in.” They soon came in and took seats. He then said, “Brother William, I submit myself and family into your hands,” and then took his seat.

“Now Brother William,” said he, “ask all the questions you feel like.”

By this time all my fears and trembling had ceased, and I said, “Brother Joseph, are you trying to live your religion?”

He answered, “Yes.”

I then said, “Do you pray in your family?”

He said “yes.”

“Do you teach your family the principles of the gospel?”

He replied, “Yes, I am trying to do it.”

“Do you ask a blessing on your food?”

He answered, “Yes.”

“Are you trying to live in peace and harmony with all your family?” He said that he was.

I then turned to Sister Emma, his wife, and said, “Sister Emma, are you trying to live your religion? Do you teach your children to obey their parents? Do you try to teach them to pray?” To all these questions she answered, “Yes, I am trying to do so.”

I then turned to Joseph and said, “I am now through with my questions as a teacher; and now if you have any instructions to give, I shall be happy to receive them.”

He said, “God bless you, Brother William; and if you are humble and faithful, you shall have power to settle all difficulties that may come before you in the capacity of a teacher.”

I then left my parting blessing upon him and his family, as a teacher, and took my departure.9

Kirtland and Missouri Stakes, 1834–38

The Church’s first two stakes, at Kirtland and in Missouri, had elders, high priests, and, after 1835, seventies—men holding what became termed the Melchizedek Priesthood.10 But priests, teachers, and deacons handled congregational matters. (Wards did not exist until the Nauvoo period.11) In the mid-1830s, Joseph Smith sent word to Church officers in Missouri that “the Teachers and Deacons are the standing ministers of the Church, and in the absence of other officers, they will have great things required at their hands. They must strengthen the members; persuade such as are out of the way, to repent and meekly urge and persuade everyone to forgive each other all their trespasses, offences and sins.”12

In 1834 and 1835, the Missouri teachers quorum tackled a variety of tasks that required adult abilities: two labored with a brother having a tobacco problem, one worked with a couple having domestic difficulties, two tried to settle a dispute about steers, one labored with a person “for lying and extortion,” and one took a deacon along to “settle a quarrel” among three “housewives.”13

In 1838 the Missouri stake’s priesthood passed a resolution that “the teachers, assisted by the deacons, be considered the standing ministry to preside each over his respective branch.” A contemporary analogy said elders “quarried the stone” and sent it to Zion, where Aaronic Priesthood bearers “polished” it. In February 1838 the Missouri high council recommended that each neighborhood “choose for themselves a teacher, who is skilled in the work of God, faithful in his ministry, full of the Holy Ghost, and a friend to Joseph Smith . . . to take the watch-care over them and preside, . . . who shall be assisted by the other teachers and deacons in the branch.”14

Adult deacons assisted the priests and teachers and took care of places of worship, a traditional responsibility for deacons in Christian churches.15 For example, Henry Norman, an LDS deacon in England, probably in the 1850s, “had not only to seat the people in the house, but Make the wine for the sacrament, from the grape, & had my house licensed for preaching.”16

Outside stake jurisdictions, priests and teachers presided in some branches. When missionaries converted clusters of people, they usually ordained one or more to conduct local religious affairs. In April 1840 England had thirty-five elders, fifty-five priests, thirty-seven teachers, and ten deacons. In both stakes and missions, Church staffing needs determined how many priests, teachers, or deacons were ordained.17 Stakes sometimes called presidencies for Aaronic Priesthood quorums; but except for Missouri’s teachers quorum, before 1839 no full quorums of forty-eight priests, twenty-four teachers, and twelve deacons existed as described scripturally (D&C 107).

Plans drawn in 1833 for temples in Missouri and Kirtland reserved four rows for the presidencies of the “Aaronic Priesthood,” meaning a bishopric, and of the priests, teachers, and deacons quorums.18 Such honors were certainly intended for men, not boys.

Aaronic Priesthood Matters at Nauvoo, 1839–46

In Nauvoo, stake (but not ward) Aaronic Priesthood quorums were organized and reorganized between 1841 and 1846.19 Priests and teachers sporadically made home visits. From January to June 1845, the priests, teachers, and some deacons met at least monthly to coordinate such visits. The twenty-one priests averaged twenty-nine in age, although four were teenagers between seventeen and nineteen. Two-thirds were newly ordained; their average age at ordination was twenty-eight, eight were English, and the average length of time in the Church was four years. None had held higher office.

In short, Aaronic Priesthood practices in Nauvoo differed little from 1830s practices in Kirtland and Missouri: adults and selected older teens received Melchizedek and Aaronic Priesthood offices according to Church staffing needs. This pattern endured in general outline for the founders of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, organized in 1860 among Joseph Smith’s followers who disaffiliated from the Twelve.

But two seeds were planted at Nauvoo that influenced future Aaronic Priesthood functioning in the LDS Church: the introduction of the temple endowment, for which Melchizedek Priesthood was a prerequisite, and the development of wards. Within forty years, these local units would eliminate stake Aaronic Priesthood quorums and make numerical quotas irrelevant except for deacons. At Nauvoo, Church officials created wards as local governing units headed by a bishop. In Utah, each new settlement area was considered a potential stake and was given a stake/branch/settlement president. Next, each settlement received one bishop, then more as growth caused the creation of additional wards. A high council, then a patriarch, completed the stake’s organization. Because wards were the local unit of governance after the 1840s, priests and teachers did not preside except in missions or in emergencies.

1846–77: 
Melchizedek Priesthood Holders Fill Aaronic Priesthood Offices

During the Saints’ exodus from Nauvoo, Aaronic Priesthood quorums dissolved. At Winter Quarters, the Twelve created twenty-two wards and assigned a bishop for each, continuing the Nauvoo model. In camps and on the trail west, here and there leaders called men temporarily to serve as acting teachers to handle the needs of the moment. Salt Lake Stake was created on October 3, 1847, nine weeks after the Saints’ arrival in Salt Lake Valley. On February 14, 1849, nineteen wards were created for Great Salt Lake City. Simultaneously, Presiding Bishop Newel K. Whitney started organizing stake-wide quorums for priests, teachers, and deacons for the already ordained.20

Wards, Bishops, and a Corps of Teachers

By the early 1850s, wards were considered the main local unit and bishops were the chief local officers, a norm that has continued to the present,21 yet most revelations relating to priesthood were given prior to this time. As a result, general or Presiding Bishops were designated as the presidency of the Aaronic Priesthood (D&C 107:87–88; 68:16–17). During the Brigham Young period, Presiding Bishop Newel K. Whitney and his successor, Edward Hunter, exercised that presidency primarily by directing bishops in ward meetings, tithing, ward properties, and charity.

Ward bishops called men and some youths to enter the stake-level deacons, teachers, and priests quorums, but their duties were carried out in the wards. Bishops Whitney and Hunter held regular biweekly bishops meetings to coordinate public works, tithes, resources, immigration and immigrants, the needy, and the Aaronic Priesthood.

During the pioneer era, home visits assumed a more standard form. The bishop assigned men to do priests’ and teachers’ duties: to visit ward members, check on spiritual well-being, canvass for contributions, settle disputes, and help the needy. Some teachers heard charges of wrongdoing and decided guilt or innocence; but bishops handled most of these cases. The teachers quorum, in other words, was usually viewed as a ready source of manpower for such responsibilities as administering the sacrament, helping the needy, or, most urgently, conducting the home visits. (Visits varied from weekly to quarterly—or were simply sporadic.) Stake quorum leaders and the Presiding Bishopric periodically spearheaded drives to “fill up the quorums.”22 The primary goal was to supply necessary workers, not to see that all worthy males held priesthood office.

Endowments and Recruiting among the Aaronic Priesthood

It was generally the order to confer the lesser priesthood on those who had not received the higher priesthood. The number of those eligible thus was not large because, by the 1850s, the Church required missionaries from Utah and men marrying in the temple or Endowment House to be Melchizedek Priesthood holders.

The endowment was selectively introduced by 1843 in Nauvoo, made widely available to worthy men and women in 1845–46, and performed on a massive scale just before the exodus.23 When the Endowment House was completed in Salt Lake City in May 1855, the First Presidency strongly encouraged Saints to keep the house busy.24 For example, in May 1856, Dry Creek (Lehi), American Fork, Pleasant Grove, and Provo were assigned to send twenty people each for endowments and Springville to send forty. In issuing these quotas, Heber C. Kimball, Endowment House director and counselor in the First Presidency, encouraged bishops to send “many of the young and sprightly persons, who are strict to obey their parents.”25

Records of the Kaysville elders quorum for 1865 show that thirty-six of its first members were ordained elders as teenagers, most in the Endowment House. Fourteen-year-old Ephraim P. Ellison, for example, was endowed on March 24, 1865.26 A sampling of Endowment House and St. George Temple endowment records for the 1870s shows that the average age for male endowments was twenty-two, that the most popular age was twenty-three, and that several were endowed at fourteen.27 Thus, the endowment made it nearly impossible to find capable and active men in wards near temples who did not already hold Melchizedek Priesthood. “We have many times tried to fill up these quorums by those who have not received Melchizedek Priesthood,” Presiding Bishop Edward Hunter complained, “but [they] have been almost immediately called out to receive their endowment, leaving vacancies.”28

In reaction, beginning in the 1860s, some leaders worried that the endowment was being bestowed too freely. Thirteen years before the first Utah temple opened at St. George in 1877, Brigham Young commented that perhaps men should “receive the [endowment] ordinances pertaining to the Aaronic order of the Priesthood” before missions but “do something that will prove whether you will honor that Priesthood before you receive” the Melchizedek Priesthood.29 Had splitting the endowment been implemented, Aaronic Priesthood quorums could then have included returned missionaries. However, it was apparently more a warning to be worthy than a serious proposal.

Another source of depletion was invitations from Melchizedek Priesthood quorums to join their units. No permission for ordination was required from bishops, stake presidents, or the quorums to which the men already belonged, and the higher status made such ordinations desirable. This recruiting also drained Aaronic Priesthood quorums.30 Higher quorums also recruited the unordained, since Aaronic Priesthood was not a prerequisite.31

Edward Hunter as Presiding Bishop (and hence Aaronic Priesthood president) criticized “lesser priesthood men rushing to be ordained High Priests or Seventies.” Brigham Young and his counselors echoed in 1877: “It has been a difficult thing to keep young men in the elders quorum or in any of the quorums of the lesser priesthood.”32 However, with no policy against it, future Apostles Francis M. Lyman and Rudger Clawson were ordained elders at sixteen, and Clarence Merrill was ordained a seventy in 1857 at the same age.33 In short, Melchizedek Priesthood quorums absorbed capable LDS adult manpower like a sponge, leaving few to receive Aaronic Priesthood ordinations.

Early Solution: Acting Priests, Teachers, and Deacons

In 1849 as the Salt Lake wards were organized, Brigham Young articulated three principles of Aaronic Priesthood work to then-Presiding Bishop Newel K. Whitney. These principles shaped Aaronic Priesthood duties for the next three decades and beyond. First, priesthood home visits and watchcare were the Aaronic Priesthood’s primary duty. Second, choose “the best High Priests, the most substantial men” to be acting teachers, he instructed, so that wards could be “perfectly visited.” Melchizedek Priesthood includes and encompasses the Aaronic Priesthood, so Melchizedek Priesthood bearers have inherent authority to perform all Aaronic Priesthood duties, ordinances, and functions (D&C 107:10–12). Third, they should “take young men with them, that they might also have experience in teaching,” thereby implementing the apprenticeship system already suggested (D&C 84:106–7).34 No age guidelines were included.

Because those holding the Melchizedek Priesthood can act in all the offices of the Aaronic Priesthood if called upon, bishops and stake Aaronic Priesthood quorum presidencies called and set them apart as acting priests, teachers, and deacons.35 As early as 1852, Whitney was telling bishops, “If there be no members of the lesser priesthood in the Wards to act as teachers, take High Priests or Seventies or any other wise man.”36 Similarly, First Presidency counselor Jedediah M. Grant told Fort Ephraim Saints that “it is a good plan for the Bishop to have plenty of Lesser priesthood, that is, the High Priests & Seventies ordained [set apart] to act in the office of teacher & visit at least every family once a week.”37 Here and there, some bishops ordained a few mature youths as teachers so that ordained teachers and priests served with acting teachers and priests.

Whitney’s successor, Edward Hunter, often preached, “Select the best men for teachers” to his bishops.38 Acting teachers or acting priests consequently became ward officers, second in importance only to bishoprics in terms of practical ward work, and were sustained as ward officers. Most bishops met regularly with their quorum of acting teachers to hear reports about members and to transmit announcements, policy changes, and appeals for labor or contributions. “There was more depending upon the lesser priesthood than the High Priests or Seventies or Elders,” Bishop Hunter said.39 He called the lesser priesthood the “regulars,” not the reserves.40 They were “the laborers,” the “acting priesthood,” the doers in the wards. “The greatest engine in the Church is the teachers,” President Jedediah M. Grant asserted. “It was very seldom we were called to exercise the Higher Priesthood,” another leader observed.41 Ordained teachers and priests, Bishop Hunter taught, were the Lord’s authorized “watchmen to guard against all manner of iniquity” ranging from intoxication to Sabbath breaking and parental neglect.

Throughout Brigham Young’s presidency, Melchizedek Priesthood men handled almost all Aaronic Priesthood work in Utah, doing double duty by “acting in both priesthoods.”42 One elderly man was a seventy who served as an acting teacher in two wards, an acting priest in one, and in the presidency of the stake’s deacons quorum.43 Another man, an elder, was both an acting deacon and acting teacher.44 Bishop Hunter often exhorted priesthood men to “magnify both priesthoods,” and Apostle Matthias Cowley’s statement, “I was an elder before I was a deacon,” was easily understood during the pioneer period.45

Each ward’s corps of acting teachers or block teachers was small, sometimes but a dozen men. In Salt Lake City’s Thirteenth Ward, home to many General Authorities, “the bishopric and block teachers, about twenty men, shouldered the ward’s leadership and performed its labors.”46

The most important duty of acting teachers was home visits. A survey of minutes during the pioneer era shows that these teachers visited eight to twenty families monthly, quarterly, or randomly. Because many wards assigned two men per block, by the 1850s, the appellation of block teachers developed.

By ordination and revelation, priests and teachers were peacemakers. “There was a power to settle difficulties vouchsafed to the lesser priesthood,” Bishop Hunter taught, “that no other officer or member of the Kingdom can accomplish.” Courts could decide cases, but only priests and teachers could reconcile the embittered parties: “The order of the church is to call in the labors of the teachers & if they cannot reconcile the parties it cannot be done,” he taught.47 In many wards, the teachers not only monitored the members’ behavior but heard charges of sinful behavior, investigated allegations, and determined whether repentance was satisfactory or whether disfellowshipment or excommunication should be imposed. In Manti, “the right way was to bring a case first before the teachers meeting.”48 A Kanab bishop in the 1870s instructed that “it was the teachers’ right to investigate a case and decide upon it, & if it did not give satisfaction, they had the right to appeal.”49

Acting teachers not only performed the revealed duties of priests and teachers (home visits, watchcare, and dispute resolution), but also collected fast offerings,50 assisted the poor, and administered the sacrament. In addition to ward sacrament meetings, a general valleywide sacrament meeting was held Sunday afternoons at the tabernacle from 1849 until 1894.51 During the 1850s, Bishop Hunter assigned wards to bring the bread, have water ready, and then administer the sacrament. Ward bishops delegated acting teachers to handle these jobs, since they, and not ordained priests, were already assigned this task in local wards.52

In short, Melchizedek Priesthood holders acting in Aaronic Priesthood offices during Brigham Young’s presidency were a trusted and hardworking ward elite. But what was the impact of this policy on young men and boys?

Slight Use of Young Men and Boys, 1849–73

Ward and stake records for the early 1850s indicate that a small number of “young men” and “boys” continued to receive priesthood callings while the system of acting officials was growing up. In 1852 a Brother Fielding asked at a bishops’ meeting, “Should we ordain young men and boys who are wild?” Apostle Erastus Snow “presumed Bishop Hunter would be guided by the spirit, and the ordination may make them the best of men.”53 Perhaps the youngest boys ever given LDS priesthood were George J. Hunt, ordained a priest at age nine in 1861, and Solomon W. Harris, baptized and ordained a deacon at age eight.54 It was not unusual for men in their twenties to be called “boys,” especially if they were single.55 “Ordain our boys to the lesser priesthood,” bishops heard in 1852, “that they may commence in the harness,” while 1854 minutes recorded approval of “the youth being ordained to the lesser priesthood; they were now doing quite a good work.” One ward reported that “the principle portion of the young men had been ordained to the lesser priesthood.”56

In the nineteenth century, “there was no sequence of events that marked the progress of boys from childhood to manhood,” historian Anthony Rotundo reported, “and there were no key ages at which all youngsters reached important milestones.” “The . . . transition from boyhood to manhood began in a boy’s teens and lasted until his twenties or even thirties.” When it had any name at all, this period “was called youth.”57

However, by the mid-1850s, Church leaders expressed caution about ordaining unmarried men. In October 1856 general conference, President Young expressed disapproval of ordaining inexperienced “young men” as deacons:

When you have got your Bishop, he needs assistants, and he ordains Counsellors, Priests, Teachers, and Deacons, and calls them to help him; and he wishes men of his own heart and hand to do this. Says he, “I dare not even call a man to be a Deacon, to assist me in my calling, unless he has a family.” It is not the business of an ignorant young man, of no experience in family matters, to inquire into the circumstances of families, and know the wants of every person. Some may want medicine and nourishment, and be looked after, and it is not the business of boys to do this, but select a man who has got a family to be a Deacon.58

Even allowing for Young’s typical hyperbole, overstated to make a point, he was apparently not denouncing younger apprentices but rather insisting that senior teachers and priests be mature and capable. What Aaronic Priesthood ordinations Young’s sons received, if any, are not known, but at least ten of his seventeen sons who survived childhood received Melchizedek Priesthood ordinations and endowments between the ages of eleven and seventeen, on average at 16.9 years.59 Apostle Wilford Woodruff, when called to a mission in 1849, ordained nine-year-old Wilford Jr. a priest “so he could act in his father’s absence to administer the Lord’s supper to the family.” He reordained this son at age thirteen, for an unknown reason. At sixteen, young Wilford was ordained to the Melchizedek Priesthood and endowed.60

Priesthood as Part of Youth Improvement Efforts

Eliza R. Snow admitted that “no thought was bestowed upon [the] spiritual culture” of Zion’s first generation of children until parents realized that “the spirit of the world had crept in among our young people.” As a result, children “often manifested but little regard for religious exercises,” and “young men generally sent on a mission were extremely ignorant of the first principles of the Gospel.”61 Children’s shortcomings stemmed in part from the fact that most adults and almost all youth did not regularly attend sacrament meetings, in good part because of tiny chapels. Sunday Schools flourished for children in the 1870s, but the smallness of meetinghouses meant they were not expected to attend sacrament meetings.62 Salt Lake City’s Ninth Ward reported in 1870 that only 31 of its 181 families regularly attended Sunday services and that 97 (50 percent) were “perfectly indifferent.”63 Hardly churched and often barely schooled, many young people had limited religious experience and understanding. And unquestionably, some behaved badly.

Forty-four percent of Utah’s population by 1880 were fourteen or under—and Zion had its share of misbehavers.64 Complaints from Salt Lake City, Provo, and St. George included generalizations (“the growth of wickedness among our young people,”65 “rowdyism is rampant”) and specifics: “crowds of uncouth boys loitering around the stores halloing in the streets, and breaking horses on the Sabbath”; country boys with “uncouth and ill manners in refusing one half the road on meeting teams”; boys’ “efforts to destroy the benches and dirty all they could with their feet, using pencils on the walls and nails on the rails of the bannisters”; roughs harassing a mentally handicapped Swiss boy and “strip[ping] off his clothes”; swearing (a leader told some deacons to stop saying “by hell”); youths coming home at all hours of the night “intoxicated and using the vilest language”; deacons going outside to smoke as soon as their meeting was dismissed, and boys considering that “when they can smoke a pipe or cigar, or chew tobacco it is a sign of manliness,” or drinking whiskey for the same reason, “a gang” spitting “tobacco juice on the floor” at lectures and choir practices, forming gangs (“Provo roughs and Salt Lake roughs”); and boys throwing stones to break windows or “each others heads.”66 Noting such misbehaviors, leaders, who valued these youth, felt the Church could do more to help them.67

The auxiliary organizations were created to prevent boys and girls from growing up unindoctrinated, untrained, and unappreciative of their religion—Sunday Schools in the 1860s, Mutual Improvement Associations for young women in 1869 and for young men in 1875, and children’s Primaries in 1878.68 Leaders also began a modest effort to call boys into priesthood activities during the mid-1870s. Salt Lake Stake President Angus M. Cannon wanted bishops “to draw the young men into positions in the Priesthood and thus an excellent experience, and, at the same time, preserve them from evil associations.” He reported a “marked improvement” in his own sons after they were ordained.69 Priesthood service, proponents argued, like involvement in the auxiliaries, would help keep boys from evil practices while inculcating skills to qualify them for adult church service.

However, a primary reason for ordaining the youth was that adult men were reluctant to serve in the Aaronic Priesthood offices. Brigham Young instructed Edward Hunter in fall 1873 that each stake should have “a full quorum of Priests, Teachers, and Deacons properly organized.”70 A few months later, Hunter lamented that “he had tried to have the quorums of the lesser priesthood filled up for over 15 years past” but that the goal was “not quite accomplished yet.”71 “Nobody wanted to be a Deacon” and some declined to “condescend” to be ordained to these lesser offices.72 “It is a difficult task,” one bishop lamented, “to find a sufficient quantity of efficient teachers. I have thought of calling upon some of the boys.”73 “It is very hard to get the older men to act as Teachers,” another noted, “but the young men come forward and are willing to take their parts and therefore we have to appoint young men where older ones should be.”74 A third recruited boys as deacons but wanted “a man selected as President of the Chorum the same to have general charge of this meeting House.”75

Some bishops, naturally, resisted the new trend. Samuel G. Ladd, president of Salt Lake Stake’s priests quorum, asked bishops to fill his quorum with “good responsible men and not boys.” Priests, he said, should be “experienced men.”76 Similarly, Ephraim’s bishop, Canute Peterson, told his ward priesthood holders in 1874: “We might think that these quorums should be filled with young men, but the Kingdom of God had increased and there was evils and iniquities in the church, and it is the duty of the lesser priesthood to look after these things, and for this reason men of experience was called.”77

Despite reluctance, however, the reversal of a twenty-five year trend had begun, and bishops handpicked young men to be ordained deacons in the ward or at stake deacons meetings. In 1874, “many of our young men were being ordained to the offices of the Lesser Priesthood” in Provo.78 A small number of “boys” or “young brethren” in Salt Lake City began attending deacons meetings with the older, acting deacons.79 Most of these young deacons were fourteen or older, although James Leach, president of Salt Lake Stake’s deacons quorum and acting bishop of Salt Lake Second Ward, enthusiastically suggested: “Boys from 10 years of age and upwards should come and be ordained deacons; they can assist to clean up the house.”80 Two years later, he reported that in Salt Lake Valley some hundred “boys” recently had been ordained as deacons.81

In the mid-1870s, deacons prepared meetinghouses for meetings; ushered; hauled food, fuel, and goods to the needy; and helped with the sacrament—tasks not beyond a youth’s ability to handle. At monthly meetings of the Salt Lake Stake deacons quorum, the young newly ordained deacons received much seasoned advice: clean the meetinghouse; dust the seats; polish the stove; carry in coal; light the fires; have the sacrament trays, table, and clothes clean and neat; usher people to their seats; help keep order during church services; and even clean the “back-houses”—apparently the outhouses.82

But young, ordained deacons did not replace acting deacons. In 1877, the year Brigham Young died, Elder Matthias Cowley queried, “If we were all to stay away (from Aaronic Priesthood quorum meetings) because we are Elders or Seventies, where would the teachers and deacons quorums be?”83 In Salt Lake Stake “the teachers quorum was made up mostly of elders who owed their allegiance to the Higher Quorums,” while its priests quorum “was mostly made up of men having higher ordinations.”84 In mid-year, the First Presidency matter-of-factly noted that “when deacons, teachers and priests have been wanted it has generally been the case that seventies and high priests have had to be taken to act in those offices.”85 Although Brigham Young died in August, he and his counselors had already taken the position that all boys needed at least some priesthood experience.

1877–1908: 
All Boys to Receive Some Priesthood

The Priesthood Reorganization of 1877

Five months before Brigham Young’s death in August 1877, he dedicated the Church’s first fully functioning temple (St. George) in April. The temple connected the Church’s priesthood operations with the heavenly priesthood, and that connection inspired the First Presidency and Twelve to thoroughly restructure and revitalize Utah’s stakes, wards, and quorums. In the three decades of Church growth in Utah, a number of makeshift arrangements had developed—Apostles serving as stake presidents, unordained bishops, nonfunctioning quorums, too-large stakes, aging local leaders, and too few wards.

On July 11, 1877, the First Presidency issued a momentous circular letter that became the Church government handbook of its day.86 None of the Aaronic Priesthood policies were new: home visits were an Aaronic Priesthood responsibility, qualified adults should do it, and young men should assist. High priests, seventies, and elders, when called upon by bishops, “should be willing to act in the offices of the lesser priesthood until priests, teachers, and deacons of the necessary experience are found.” Other instructions to the bishops reiterated that “all . . . grievances and disputes” should be “settled by the Lesser Priesthood.” Consequently, the policy continued to be to call “good faithful men” who are “exemplary in their moral conduct to act as teachers.”87

The 1877 epistle clearly assumed that Aaronic Priesthood holders would be adults when it warned that “if teachers, priests and bishops, or other officers, suffer iniquity to exist in the church . . . without taking action against it, they become partakers of other men’s sins and they are unworthy of their positions.” In dependent branches too small to be wards, “the bishop, to whose ward it belongs, should appoint a priest to preside, if there is one; if there is not, a teacher can be appointed” or a high priest or seventy could “act for the time being in the capacity of a priest.”88

What was new for the Aaronic Priesthood, however, was the First Presidency’s restructuring of quorum affiliation by ward instead of by stake. In organizing quorums of forty-eight priests, twenty-four teachers, and twelve deacons, the First Presidency circular said, “If there should not be a sufficient number for a quorum in one Ward, then they should be taken from others contiguous to it and most convenient for communication and meetings.” Stake Aaronic Priesthood quorums ceased to exist.89

But perhaps the most far-reaching new policy was this: “It would be excellent training for the young men if they had the opportunity of acting in the offices of the lesser priesthood” as an apprentice “companion” to an “experienced priest or teacher.” Not only would they thereby obtain “very valuable experience” but they “would be likely to place a higher value upon” Melchizedek Priesthood in the future. This policy affirmed the idea then current that every boy should receive some priesthood office.

Alexander McRae, bishop of a Salt Lake City ward, had told a general deacons meeting that “all boys in this church should learn the duties of a deacon,” while a stake priests quorum officer believed that “it is the right of every boy born in the priesthood as a legal heir to have a portion as soon as he is able to magnify it.”90

Increased Ordination of Youths

Within a year, hundreds received the Aaronic Priesthood, usually becoming deacons, and the practice of ordaining boys became well established. A Cache Valley bishop in late 1877 felt pleased that “a source of strength had been opened up through the organization of the Aaronic Priesthood, the young men acquitting themselves creditably.”91 But ordination was not linked to any particular age. In Hooper and West Weber Wards, leaders ordained “all the boys above fourteen years.”92 “The duties of a deacon are so easy,” a Tooele leader noted in 1881, “that a boy of 12 or 14 years can do the duties.”93 Nineteenth Ward in Salt Lake City, during the 1870s and 1880s, ordained boys as young as nine and as old as nineteen.94 In 1887, Apostle Francis M. Lyman told Contributor readers that “all our young men of fifteen years and upward receive some degree of the Priesthood.”95 In 1888 when Grantsville Ward organized its Aaronic Priesthood, it ordained eighteen priests ages fifteen to twenty.96 In 1896, Salt Lake Sixth Ward ordained four deacons who were twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and sixteen.97

But some bishops, adhering to quorum maximums in the Doctrine and Covenants, allowed only twelve deacons at a time, and many adolescent boys reached adulthood during the 1880s and 1890s without Aaronic Priesthood callings.98 For example, Anson B. Call was ordained an elder in 1884 without ever holding an Aaronic Priesthood office because his brother, the bishop of their Bountiful ward, “did not know that they could have more than one quorum in a ward at a time.” Call felt “very badly when I was not chosen as one of the twelve for the Deacons.” In contrast, Tooele Ward in 1883 had six deacons quorums so that all the local boys could be ordained.99

Tooele leaders also believed that “it was just as necessary for the young men to be ordained Deacons, Teachers, and Priests, as it is for school children to study in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, readers, for we must start at the lower round of the ladder and work up step by step.”100 Such stepwise advancement through the ranks was not universally implemented. James E. Talmage was ordained a deacon, a teacher, and an elder, but not a priest.101

Deacons’ Callings and Duties

Because the revelation assigned no specific duties to deacons, bishops assigned young deacons ordained after 1877 a wide variety of tasks. In 1879 the Salt Lake City Sixth Ward deacons were collecting fast offerings, supervised by the acting teachers.102 Deacons cut firewood for the poor, delivered food, and continued to act as meetinghouse custodians. Henry W. Hawley, a deacon during the 1880s, complained that too much work was involved in cleaning and heating the meetinghouse, so he resigned not just from the assignment but from being a deacon!103 In 1896, Apostle Joseph F. Smith observed: “It is in our day very necessary at times to select wise, judicious, experienced and sober men to fill the office of deacon,” meaning in part men capable of maintaining the larger chapels.104 Many wards, however, began hiring custodians during the 1890s, and the practice was widespread after 1900.

During the 1870s and 1880s, a few wards started letting deacons pass the sacrament. In 1873 in Kanab Ward, the acting teachers blessed the sacrament and the deacons “pass[ed] it to the people.” When a ward member objected, citing the Doctrine and Covenants requirement that priests “administer” the sacrament, Bishop Levi Stewart told him that Brigham Young said passing the sacrament was not administering it, so it would be “perfectly right” for deacons to pass the sacrament.105 St. George deacons in 1877, and Fourteenth Ward deacons in Salt Lake City in 1883 were passing the sacrament.106 At the general bishops’ meetings in 1883, in response to a question about whether deacons had the right to “carry around the sacrament,” Bishop William L. N. Allen advised the group that the stake high council had recently decided yes.107 In 1886, Kanab Stake leaders allowed deacons to pass the sacrament vessels but only if they were “sedate, responsible persons.”108

Churchwide, however, few deacons or priests administered the sacrament. Elders acting as priests, rather than the ordained priests, administered the sacrament in most wards because people believed that young men could not give proper dignity to the ordinance.109

Young Teachers and Priests

Although youthful deacons became fairly common, young teachers and priests did not. Teachers quorums continued to be filled primarily by adults, although some missions called on youths to make up manpower shortages.110 An 1881 report from Payson, Utah, noted that “aged men were selected to act as Priests, and the best men they could get for Teachers.” Such priest-teacher pairs “usually visited the ward.”111 In 1902, Apostle Rudger Clawson noted that ordained teachers were youths between fourteen to twenty—“not . . . quite qualified to go out and teach the families of the Saints” unaccompanied by older men; however, he noted, some wards had called priests as companions to the ward teachers.112 LeGrand Richards, later Presiding Bishop, was a youthful ward teacher in Tooele, Utah, just after the turn of the century. He and his senior companion prayed before making their visits, both gave messages in the homes, and they offered to pray before leaving. One woman told him they were the first ward teachers who offered to pray with her and her children since she came to Zion.113 Priests, teachers, and deacons continued to be considered ward officers, sustained in ward conferences, through the early twentieth century.114

The natural confusion between ordained and acting teachers resulted in an official explanation in the Improvement Era in 1902:

There are in every ward a number of brethren selected to be acting teachers, under the direction of the Bishopric. These are usually men holding the Melchizedek Priesthood, but called to act in the lesser or Aaronic Priesthood for visiting and teaching purposes. They are appointed as aids to the Bishop, and he or one of his counselors presides at their meetings.

The teachers’ quorum . . . is another body entirely. It consists of twenty-four ordained teachers presided over by three of their own number. They do not hold the higher or Melchizedek Priesthood. They act in the capacity of teachers in the ward to which they belong when called to do so under the direction of the Bishopric.

But the two bodies of teachers should not be confounded. The acting teachers selected by the bishopric as their aids do not form a quorum at all. They have no fixed number, or distinct ordination as teachers.115

Lowry Nelson was a junior ward teacher about 1906 in rural Ferron, Utah. “On horseback,” they visited “families living on farms outside the village,” usually monthly to find out if anyone was in need or ill. In these pre-telephone days, “a monthly checkup served a purpose.”116

1908–22: 
Designing a Youth-Level Priesthood

For three decades after the 1877 reorganization, Aaronic Priesthood work was characterized by the dual recognition that it was a good thing to introduce boys early to quorum activity but that most of the ward’s real work required adult men’s involvement. Presiding Bishop William B. Preston succeeded Edward Hunter in 1884 but gave virtually no new instructions regarding Aaronic Priesthood work and stopped holding the general bishops meetings. They had become unnecessary because the monthly stake priesthood meetings implemented by the 1877 reorganization gave bishops regular contact with stake presidents through whom General Authorities funneled most instructions for the wards.117

Charles W. Nibley, who succeeded Preston in 1907, strongly advocated youthful ordination and systematic Aaronic Priesthood work as important training for future Melchizedek Priesthood holders. He was a key promoter of such during his bishopric service to 1925.

Two factors influenced a reappraisal of Aaronic Priesthood work: missionary demographics and a greater interest in youth that was sweeping the nation as part of the Progressive Movement. During most of the nineteenth century, Mormon missionaries were typically married men. In 1886–90, 18 percent of missionaries were single; however, by 1895–1900, the figure was 51 percent.118 A major reason was economic: a growing number of married men were salaried employees with larger mortgages. Sunday Schools and the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association (YMMIA), but not priesthood quorums, provided training in public speaking and gospel study. In 1912, Nibley argued that better training of priests would silence “the present complaint which we sometimes hear that young boys are sent upon missions who are not prepared, and even, sometimes, not worthy of the authority of the higher priesthood.”119

Second, throughout America, “Progressivism” generated a climate of concern for the mental and moral health of youth, for preventing juvenile delinquency, and for providing recreational facilities and opportunities. Coupled with a second emphasis of Progressivism on reforming government, schools, and business, the time was ripe for upgrading and reorganizing Aaronic Priesthood work. Efficiency experts armed with scientific studies and psychological insights were showing organizations how they could more effectively budget, manage, monitor reports, communicate, and produce measurable results. In the spirit of the times, Church auxiliaries were adopting new teaching methods and activity programs that appealed to the youth and to adults, age-grouping their classes, and providing centralized direction.120

Recognizing that priesthood quorum work “had been neglected,” that “a great many young men” were not involved, and that Sunday Schools and Mutuals “had been actually doing the work that the quorums should do,” such as teaching and developing speaking skills, General Authorities decided in 1908 to try to upgrade priesthood work throughout the Church.121

In early 1908 a General Priesthood Committee on Outlines was called to generate lesson manuals for local priesthood quorums and to evaluate ward-level priesthood activity.122 Rather than producing a manual or two and disbanding, the committee found itself involved in a broad range of priesthood policy matters and remained active until 1922. At first the committee consisted of two Apostles and the Presiding Bishopric but grew to nearly twenty, including members of the Sunday School, YMMIA, and Religion Class general boards. President Joseph F. Smith had requested at April 1908 general conference that boys be given “something to do that will make them interested in the work of the Lord.” Responding with enthusiasm and creativity, the committee proposed the major reforms known as the “Priesthood Movement.”123

Table 1 
Changes in Age of Ordination, 1908–70

Elements of Priesthood Reform

A major development was the committee’s recommendation that each boy move systematically through the Aaronic Priesthood callings. They suggested fixed age groupings: deacons should be ordained at twelve, teachers at fifteen, priests at eighteen, and elders at twenty-one.124 These groupings let the committee write age-specific lessons and gave quorums a social function.

Second, the General Priesthood Committee, struggling with the assignment of producing lesson materials for teachers, dealt with the problem that ordained (young) teachers were seldom assigned to be acting teachers.125 The debate was a stimulating one. Committee member B. H. Roberts argued that ordained teachers and priests bore the scriptural responsibility for home visits and that others should not do it. Another member, Joseph B. Keeler, who was also president of Utah Stake, disagreed, asserting that “until teachers and priests are qualified to do this work, it will be necessary to call in the elders, seventies, and high priests to do the teaching.” Roberts responded: “When will the quorums ever do the work required of them if they are put aside and others appointed for their work?” Keeler answered that “even the brightest of young men lack experience and it would always be necessary to have older men go with them to assist them in this work.”126

The committee’s solution was to rename these visits “ward teaching” and to redefine the program according to two principles: (1) elders have a scriptural obligation to “watch over the church” much like Aaronic Priesthood mandates (D&C 20:42), and (2) ward teaching was a bishop-supervised task independent of a specific office. By 1912 the committee created and implemented a standardized, structured churchwide ward teaching system and published a series of monthly messages in the Church’s magazine for adults, the Improvement Era.127 One message explained: “Ward teaching is a calling, just as missionary work abroad is a calling,” and “no quorum is solely responsible for it.”128

Apostle David O. McKay explained the new ward teaching program at general conference in October 1912. His twelve suggestions became a blueprint for at least the next three decades. Most dealt with stake and ward supervision and reports. He acknowledged the Church’s traditional practice by observing, “Ward teaching requires the most experienced men in the ward. High priests, seventies and elders should look upon it as one of the most important duties of their calling.” However, he added, this ideal “does not prevent younger men, who hold the Aaronic Priesthood, from being employed also.” Another suggestion, reaffirming the apprenticeship principle, was that “every young man holding the office of priest” should be “properly trained” by working with an older and experienced man.129

This new program worked well; percentages rose steadily during the next decade, from 31 percent in 1912 to 54 percent in 1914 and 64 percent in 1920. At an Aaronic Priesthood convention held in Salt Lake City on October 2, 1921, Salt Lake Stake reported that, of its 718 ward teachers, 280 priests and teachers had done ward teaching the month before.130

New Duties for Aaronic Priesthood Bearers

The October 1911 general conference heard a report that the deacons were in fair condition but that teachers and priests quorum were not functioning: “The local authorities generally fail to grasp the dignity and importance of the calling of the teacher and priest, and the boys cannot help but feel, as far as quorum work is concerned, that the organization has broken down and that they are being held on a kind of waiting list until they are old enough to be ordained elders.”131 The report continued with revealing Churchwide statistics: “There are 9,300 Teachers, 20,255 Deacons. In sixty-seven wards not one ordained Teacher and in twenty-one not one Priest. In slightly over one-third of the wards there is only one-half of a quorum of teachers, and in only fifty wards is there half of a priests quorum or more. . . . We have failed to live up to the Lord’s plan.”

The committee saw that one solution would be new assignments geared to the age abilities of boys. About a year later, Bishop Nibley sent a circular letter to bishops outlining numerous tasks the priests could do.132 The reaction was enthusiastic. By fall 1913, some 500 out of 715 wards had priests classes, and 258 wards had quorums of at least twenty-five priests.133

To similarly invigorate teachers quorums, a 1913 Improvement Era article urged the bishops to make teachers “active and useful” and provided a list of suggested activities.134 A master list of youthful tasks in 1916 summarized what deacons, teachers, and priests were already doing in various wards:

Deacons: Collect fast offerings, carry messages for bishops, pass sacrament, prepare fuel for widows and elderly, care for the poor, pass out notices, pump organ at meetings, maintain church property, care for church cemeteries, keep order in meetinghouses, maintain meetinghouse grounds, assist in primary work, assist in Religion class work, usher, do Boy Scout work, attend the doors at meetings, distribute special notices.

Teachers: Assist in ward teaching, assist with sacrament, instruct Boy Scouts, take charge of meetings occasionally, speak and sing at meetings, collect ward funds, assist in renovating meetinghouses, cut wood for poor, sing in choir, be clerks in branches, serve as officers in the auxiliaries, notify priesthood quorums of meetings.

Priests: Administer the sacrament, pass the sacrament, assist in ward teaching, be Sunday School officers or teachers, be Mutual officers or teachers, baptize, be ward choristers, carry messages for bishopric, hold cottage meetings [preaching the gospel in homes], assist the elders, do missionary work in the ward, read scriptures at ward meetings, supervise fast offering collecting, help bishop care for tithes, help bishop with wayward boys, take part in meetings, haul gravel and make cement walks around meetinghouses, help with teams to level public squares, help supervise ward amusements.135

A relative few of these activities were scripturally assigned: priests and teachers assisting with ward teaching, priests administering the sacrament, and priests baptizing. However, most of the other jobs on the long list are tasks that can be done by anyone in a ward, male or female, assigned to do them. (See “Assignments Not Requiring Priesthood Authority” below.)

Although most of the pieces of the priesthood movement were in place by 1916, the General Priesthood Committee continued to add refinements and encouragement for another five years before it was released, the First Presidency deciding that the next adjustments would be made by “existing quorums” and auxiliary leaders.136

One young man who advanced through Aaronic Priesthood ranks during this period was Harold B. Lee, later Church President. His ordinations show that the announced ordination ages of twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty were only recommendations: Lee became a deacon just before he turned eleven, a teacher the month before he turned fourteen, a priest two months before he became sixteen, and an elder four months before age nineteen.137

The deacons of Richmond Ward in Utah in 1915 show that efforts to recruit more young men to priesthood ranks were largely successful in this area. Improvement Era 18 (July 1915): 838.

In mission areas, because of the lack of temples, adult men were sometimes ordained to only the Aaronic Priesthood. The 1878 and 1891 statistical reports for Europe show that close to 20 percent of LDS men held some priesthood office, roughly the same figure as in U.S. stakes. But in the United States, about 25 percent of all priesthood holders had Aaronic Priesthood, compared to 40–44 percent in Europe. In 1891, European priests outnumbered deacons by about two to one, the reverse of the stakes’ 1:2 ratio. Melchizedek Priesthood bearers outnumbered Aaronic Priesthood bearers 3:1 in the stakes but only 3:2 in Europe. The Australia Mission had a policy from 1896 to 1928 that men did not receive the Melchizedek Priesthood until they had immigrated to Zion and were ready to make temple covenants. Branch officers presided by Aaronic Priesthood authority. When local members protested, demanding the Melchizedek Priesthood for branch leaders, the mission replaced them with missionaries. British Saints learned of the general priesthood reforms in 1908; but in early 1909, when European Mission President Charles W. Penrose discussed the duties of priests, teachers, and deacons, he obviously assumed that men held those offices. However, by the year’s end, he instructed that Church ward teaching regulations be carried out among Saints “everywhere,” provided that Melchizedek Priesthood holders “may be called to officiate in the duties” of the lesser priesthood, “and they can take with them either priests, teachers, or deacons if necessary or expedient.”138

1920s–50s: 
Institutionalizing the Youth Priesthood

The next three decades were a time of implementation as old ways gave way slowly to the new. It took a generation of labor for the priesthood reforms to be widely accepted and in reasonable working order.

Leader Reluctance

A major obstacle was the reservations some leaders had about giving youth serious priesthood labors. In pre-1920s statements, President Joseph F. Smith criticized “a disposition in the church to hurry boys in the priesthood” or to advance those who were not performing in the offices they held.139 E. H. Anderson of the General Priesthood Committee advocated ordination no earlier than fifteen because “boys were too young at the age of twelve.”140 Bishop Nibley proposed that young men serve missions as priests, rather than as elders or seventies; a successful mission would prove competency and worthiness for Melchizedek Priesthood and the temple endowment. Nothing came of his idea; endowment as a prerequisite for preaching to the world and the need for Melchizedek Priesthood to confirm and to bless the sick were well accepted.141

In many wards, members accustomed to seeing dignified older men handle the sacrament felt uncomfortable when boys took over. In 1909 and 1910, after the reforms had begun, one committeeman canvassed many wards to discover that older men still most frequently administered the sacrament. A second reported widespread reluctance to let priests bless the sacrament, and an Improvement Era article on sacrament procedures talked about the elder passing the sacrament.142 Salt Lake City’s Thirty-third Ward found a compromise and assigned Joseph W. Damron Jr., in his late sixties, to “preside” at the sacrament table during the 1920s to “add dignity and sacredness to the sacrament service” as administered by two young priests.143

There was similar reluctance to let boys be ward teachers. In one of his last public addresses in 1919, President Joseph F. Smith referred to the home visits of acting priests and teachers.144 In 1921 the Presiding Bishopric reported that boys were not being advanced beyond deacons in some wards because they “are not qualified to do the work” (home visiting) required by revelation.145

President Joseph F. Smith wanted Aaronic Priesthood callings to become a training ground for young men as they prepared for greater responsibilities in the Melchizedek Priesthood. Courtesy Perry Special Collections.

In 1922, Presiding Bishop Charles W. Nibley and his counselors spearheaded a “new effort” with “hearty” support from the First Presidency and Twelve to invigorate the “neglected” Aaronic Priesthood. The new program consisted of “advancement . . . for faithful service.” Before each ordination, boys were “given examinations” by bishops to determine their diligence. The ordained teacher “should be assigned districts in the ward where he will accompany and assist the visiting [ward] teachers” while priests “may be called upon to administer the sacrament.” Bishops were urged to use teachers and priests as “youthful ward teachers.” Hugh Cannon, president of Liberty Stake (Salt Lake City), early in the 1920s reported accompanying two boys not older than fourteen on home visits in the Third Ward. The boys gave prayers, led songs, and stuck strictly to the purpose of the visits, thus demonstrating to Cannon “what the Lord had in mind when he placed the responsibility upon the ordained teachers.” In 1927, Cannon visited six families with a young and inexperienced priest who, after his initial nervousness, took part in the home presentations and reported that he enjoyed it.146

Reluctance to depend on young teachers was, however, based on simple realities; and in some ways, the best evidence came during the late 1920s and early 1930s when some local leaders tried to apply the revelations literally. “In many parts of the Church ordained teachers and priests are being encouraged to become ward teachers,” the Improvement Era reported in 1932.147 Two years later, it described how in Cache Stake, “members of the Melchizedek Priesthood quorums are called to assist only when there are no available teachers or priests,” and encouraged similar efforts as scripturally correct.148

The Presiding Bishopric instructed, “We may think that [a teacher] cannot do much by way of [ward] teaching. He can at least learn how to teach.”149 David A. Smith, counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, urged that ordained teachers be assigned to ward teach active families.150 However, in 1940, the Presiding Bishopric recognized that pairing boys as ward teachers was not very effective and that “people will feel better about it if an older and more experienced brother takes the lead.”151 The practice of calling “acting teachers” diminished and died during the 1940s, replaced by the successful boy-adult “ward teacher” team, even though the terminology lingered throughout the 1930s.152

The Aaronic Priesthood Correlation Plan

On June 4, 1925, Sylvester Q. Cannon became the Presiding Bishop. His efforts in behalf of the Aaronic Priesthood reinforced auxiliary changes and peaking concerns about youthful inactivity and reluctance to serve. Surveys in 1931 showed “large numbers of boys” inactive in priesthood quorums, Sunday Schools, or YMMIA.153 Apostle Richard R. Lyman admitted that same year that “the boy problem . . . is tremendously difficult.”154 Proposed as early as 1928 was a plan designed to increase boys’ Church activity through better coordination between auxiliaries and quorums.155 This Aaronic Priesthood Correlation Plan coordinated the YLMIA, YMMIA, Scouting program, Sunday School, and seminary at general, stake, and ward committees with representation from all five groups.156 Announced in connection with April 1931 general conference, this plan, the Improvement Era subsequently explained in enthusiastic terms, “marshalls a large proportion of the man-power of the Church behind a program of training for young men of the Church. It has been called ‘the most important movement in connection with the Aaronic Priesthood since it was restored to the earth.’”157 The plan urged that boys fill quotas of assignments each year, with the result that quorums began keeping more detailed records.158

Bishop LeGrand Richards Energizes Aaronic Priesthood

This plan was the predecessor of LeGrand Richards’s thorough revitalization of Aaronic Priesthood work during the fourteen years (1938–52) he was Presiding Bishop. During his tenure, Aaronic Priesthood work focused enthusiastically on boys’ activity and achievement. “The most important problem of the Church today is the training of members of the Aaronic Priesthood,” the Presiding Bishopric pronounced in 1938. “What the leadership of the Melchizedek Priesthood will be in the future is determined by the training and development of the members of the Aaronic Priesthood today.”159 The Presiding Bishopric created an elaborate achievement program in which boy priesthood holders and their quorums earned awards based on activity, worthiness, and priesthood assignments filled.160 They promoted Aaronic Priesthood outings, better ways to collect fast offerings, sensible sacrament systems, ward committees to keep boy and girl programs fired up, and efficient reporting systems for monitoring church attendance, ward teaching, and fast offering collection.

For five years they sent stake and ward priesthood workers a newsletter called Progress of the Church, which contained instructions about all facets of Aaronic Priesthood work, motivating examples of quorum successes, and statistical charts comparing wards’ and stakes’ activity patterns. At stake conferences, they trained ward Aaronic Priesthood leaders; during general conferences, they trained bishops. Elder Milton R. Hunter praised “the work that has been done under the direction of the Presiding Bishopric of the Church with the boys of the Aaronic Priesthood,” calling it an “outstanding achievement.”161 So successful was the Presiding Bishopric’s program for boys that they were put in charge of the girls’ activity program from 1942 to 1950 and similarly pumped new life into it.162

During the 1940s and 1950s, the Church employed several new lesson manuals, activity programs, award systems, and leadership innovations to keep boys involved.163 From this foundation, wards and stakes have continued to operate quorums for specific age groups and keep boys busy with clearly defined priesthood duties that have changed little since then.

1960s–90s: 
Priesthood Correlation

During the 1960s, Priesthood Correlation produced major restructurings of the Church’s priesthood operations.164 These changes impacted Aaronic Priesthood work in ways not relevant to this paper, except that the Presiding Bishopric’s leadership responsibilities for the Church’s Aaronic Priesthood youth were transferred to the Young Men’s general presidency.

Ward teaching was reorganized as “home teaching” and defined as “much more” than ward teaching. In the new program, which went into operation in 1964, Melchizedek Priesthood quorum leaders, rather than bishops, became responsible for calling, receiving reports from, and supervising the home teachers. Every Melchizedek Priesthood bearer “has this responsibility imposed upon him as an incident to his accepting the priesthood.”165 Home teachers, unlike ward teachers, were assigned by quorums, not by bishoprics.

Marion G. Romney of the First Presidency explained the evolution from acting teacher to home teacher: “By some it has been thought that some of the directions in the revelations referred only to ordained teachers. It would seem, however, that the responsibility has been placed upon every bearer of the Melchizedek Priesthood, and the priests as well as the teachers.” It is the elders’ calling to “watch over the Church,” while priests and teachers help them.166

“Adult Aaronics” after 1908

Although the age-linked quorum advancements solved many problems, they created a persistent problem when boys, who stopped out because of inactivity, tried to catch up. Deacons, not advanced because of inactivity, did not want to return to a quorum of much younger and smaller boys. Adult men who were still deacons, teachers, or priests were obvious misfits. In 1911, President Joseph F. Smith urged bishops not “to mix up the old men, with bad habits, with the young boys.”167 In 1917, the General Priesthood Committee recommended that adult Aaronic Priesthood bearers be grouped separately and have their own presiding officers, but little came of it.168 In 1930, local leaders were instructed to have adult Aaronic Priesthood members meet with the elders quorums.169

However, in 1932 a Salt Lake ward started separate adult Aaronic Priesthood classes, and the idea spread. The separate Aaronic Priesthood program for adults recommended in 1917 was formally introduced and promoted churchwide during the 1930s.170 In subsequent years, the terminology has changed to Senior Aaronics, Aaronic Priesthood Over Twenty-one, Aaronic Priesthood Adults, Adult Members of the Aaronic Priesthood, and, most recently, Prospective Elders. For decades, special reactivation programs have periodically been implemented for them. Since the 1970s, these men have attended elders quorums and have been encouraged to take reactivation lessons and temple preparedness classes.171

Assignments Not Requiring Priesthood Authority

Since 1908, Church leaders have identified and assigned Aaronic Priesthood youths a variety of “useful things to do.” Some assignments, like blessing the sacrament, baptizing, and helping with ward teaching, are scripturally mandated. However, many assignments now associated with deacons, teachers, and priests require no priesthood authority. Examples are ushering, playing the piano in church, or carrying messages.

Even passing sacrament trays among the congregation requires no priesthood authority. With or without priesthood, men, women, and children one by one pass the sacrament tray or cups to the next person down the row. Recognizing this reality, President Heber J. Grant wrote to a mission president in 1928 that there was “no rule in the Church” that only priesthood bearers could carry the sacrament to the congregation after it was blessed. While it was “custom” for priesthood men or boys to pass around the bread and water, he said, “it would in no wise invalidate the ordinance” if some “worthy young brethren lacking priesthood performed it in the absence of ordained boys” and he had “no objection” if it were done.172

Women and custodians usually prepared the sacrament table, so it did not appear on a list of priesthood duties until 1933.173 Metal sacrament trays needed to be polished, and fine white linen or lace tablecloths needed to be laundered, starched, and pressed, traditionally the work of women. Women also baked the sacrament bread in many wards. Kate Coreless of Salt Lake City’s Fourth Ward took care of the sacrament table for a quarter century after 1906. She crocheted the cloth, polished the silver trays, baked and sliced the bread, and set the sacrament table.174

As late as 1943, the Presiding Bishopric publicized for bishops the example of young women in one ward who “take care of washing and sterilizing the sacrament sets after each service.”175 Annette Steeneck Huntington recalled that during the 1930s in Emigration Stake, the “young girls in MIA . . . filled the water cups in the kitchen and placed the bread on the trays. We then prepared the Sacrament table with the cloth and trays on it. It was a wonderful privilege I shall always remember.”176 When paper cups replaced glass cups in sacrament trays during the 1940s,177 “dishwashing” ceased and so did female involvement with sacrament vessels. Although women still launder and press the linen, beginning in 1950, the Presiding Bishopric assigned teachers to prepare the sacrament table, specifically requesting that this task not be delegated to LDS girls or their mothers. However, in 1955, the Presiding Bishopric told Church members that young women “where desired” could be assigned care of the table linens and trays following meetings.178

Although deacons have been assigned by bishops to collect fast offerings since the mid-nineteenth century, no priesthood ordination is necessary. A 1943 Aaronic Priesthood handbook recommended but did not require “that the gathering of fast offerings be assigned to the Deacons.”179 When Bishop Oscar M. Oleson of Salt Lake’s Twenty-fourth Ward lacked deacons during World War II, he asked Beehive girls to canvass half of the ward. “During the past two years they did not once fail to cover their entire district,” he reported. The Church News ran a laudatory article and group photograph of the girls, adding, “Now with an increase of boys in the deacon’s quorum the girls are, rather reluctantly, turning this job back to the priesthood.”180

Since the 1950s, fast offering collection gradually became an official duty assigned to deacons. However, because a number of duties now assigned to deacons, teachers, and priests do not require ordination, leaders have the option at any time to add new assignments for each office to fill or to transfer or share existing ones with other groups.

Assessment of the Transformation

During the past hundred and sixty years, the Church has pragmatically adapted its priesthood offices to meet changing needs.181 Practical experience suggests that 1830 instructions about deacon, teacher, and priest duties, including quorum sizes, were intended to serve the new Church in its early years. Modification was required as the Church developed stakes, wards, bishops, myriads of Melchizedek Priesthood quorums, and thousands of born-in-the-Church sons to train for adult service.

When did the Aaronic Priesthood become a boys’ priesthood? A simplistic answer is: during the period between 1877 and 1908. However, both the question and the answer are misleading. If the question is about offices, the answer is correct, but wrong if it is about function. Functionally, the most important labor of the lesser priesthood labor has always been its home visits, performed primarily by men who were either ordained or acting teachers and priests. Church practice in 1877, as articulated by Apostle John Taylor, was that “Seventies, High Priests, etc. who were called to act as teachers, but were not ordained to this office, they already having all necessary authority, would remain for the present, but would be changed as soon as arrangements could be made and exclusive teachers would fill that quorum.”182 The hope of finding enough “exclusive teachers” was surrendered by 1912. When ward teaching was introduced during the 1912 reforms, the primary responsibility for home visits was transferred, with scriptural justification, to Melchizedek Priesthood bearers, where it has remained ever since, although boy priests and teachers participate as junior companions.

More than a century ago, LDS boys were ordained to “learn how” to be deacons, teachers, and priests by working with experienced men. Today, the apprenticeship principle still operates.183 That is, boys become apprentice deacons, teachers, and priests at ages twelve, fourteen, and sixteen. If they could reach their twenties and thirties without receiving Melchizedek Priesthood, then, as mature adults with years of priesthood experience behind them, they could capably execute all of the more demanding aspects of the work assigned them in Doctrine and Covenants 20. Instead, youths tackle those duties as apprentices and by adulthood receive the Melchizedek Priesthood and added (but not replacement) responsibilities.

After 1908, but particularly since the 1930s, the Aaronic Priesthood has been fully operational as a training, teaching, and service arm in which boys receive at least six years of training in speaking, home teaching, quorum brotherhood, instruction about priesthood theory and gospel teachings, service, loyalty to Church leadership, handling the sacrament, baptizing, ushering, home teaching, and collecting fast offerings. Bringing youths into priesthood service has benefited both them and local church operations. Bishop Hunter’s era was characterized by hard-to-fill Aaronic Priesthood quorums when few youths received priesthood; in contrast, virtually every ward today has quorums to which almost all active teenage boys belong. Thousands of Aaronic Priesthood quorums, multitudes of junior home teachers, routine weekly administrations of the sacrament, and regular monthly collections of fast offerings are surface indicators that the Aaronic Priesthood program is working rather well.

But what are the surface indicators not measuring? How effective have the Aaronic Priesthood operations proven to be for the Church and for priesthood bearers themselves? How well has the preparatory, apprenticeship principle worked in practice? Is the priesthood accomplishing what generations of leaders have pushed hard to have it do? This paper has identified the changing course of Aaronic Priesthood history since 1829 and provided only overview assessments of cause and effect. However, in-depth evaluations of effectiveness of the various Aaronic Priesthood programs require further study. If and when such thorough assessments are made, my historical overviews suggest several basic research questions.

For example, have the massive numbers of quorum meetings, ordinations, the calling and training of leaders, assignments executed, lesson manuals, handbooks, and activity programs produced the expected numbers of well-trained, firmly converted adult priesthood bearers? What are the retention realities? How many deacons, for example, become priests, elders, missionaries, and church-active adults? If significant dropout patterns are occurring, what priesthood program revisions are needed? Are present age-groupings, drawn from U.S. school grades, still the best clusterings for the United States and the myriad of cultures around the world? How involved are eighteen- to twenty-one-year-olds in elders quorums? Would such young men benefit more from raising the deacon age to fourteen, teachers to sixteen, and priests to eighteen? As gender concerns increase, what are the gains and drawbacks for young men and young women caused by assigning priesthood bearers tasks (preparing and passing the sacrament, collecting fast offerings, and ushering) that require no priesthood authority but from which women are excluded because they lack priesthood? Do elders who have gone through Aaronic Priesthood programs show markedly superior gospel knowledge and presentation skills to those of sister missionaries who have no priesthood training? Or are seminaries and institutes preparing youths better for missionary service than priesthood quorums do? Does a larger percentage of priesthood-trained male returned missionaries stay active in the Church compared to female returned missionaries? How well is home teaching being done churchwide? Does the apprenticeship under senior companions produce effective home teachers when junior companions become adults? Are young men receiving meaningful apprenticeship training in terms of the revealed responsibilities to preach, teach, expound, exhort, settle disagreements, teach prayer, and challenge iniquity among members? Further study is needed to assess these matters meaningfully.

Because General Authorities have restructured Aaronic Priesthood work every twenty to thirty years (1849, 1877, 1908, 1928, and the 1960s) to meet changing realities and as inspiration dictates, we can expect further adjustments. International growth, new social demands, and new generations of young people no doubt will cause additional pragmatic reshapings of priesthood practices to better bless both the Church and those ordained to Aaronic Priesthood offices.

This article was originally published in Journal of Mormon History 22 (Spring 1996): 80–136, and received a Mormon History Association “Best Article Award.”