Perhaps this has been discussed to death on CG or even here, but I haven't noticed it and I haven't looked much.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/blogsfa...hurch.html.csp
When I was a missionary we went one Sunday to an RLDS meeting. There were women blessing and passing the sacrament, but also there was a blessing in the middle of the main meeting in which a mother (accompanied, as I recall by other women) blessed one of her children who was sick. As foreign and peculiar as it seemed to a born and raised Utah mormon, the idea seems perfectly normal to me now.
For much of the first 100 years of LDS history, Mormon women could lay their hands on the sick, anoint them with oil, and offer a blessing for their recovery. They felt a special obligation to bless their own children and other mothers during pregnancy “confinement” and childbirth. That all ended in the mid-20th century, when the practice became the exclusive realm of the men-only Mormon priesthood.
At an April 1844 Nauvoo General Conference, the authors note that Young declared, “I want a wife that can take care of my chi[ldre]n when I am away — who can pray — lay on hands anoint with oil & baffle the enemy.”
Young was such an advocate of female healing, Stapley and Wright argue, that in 1869 he chastized women who were seeking blessings from men, saying: “Why do you not live so as to rebuke disease? It is your privilege to do so without sending for the elders. ... ”
Young was such an advocate of female healing, Stapley and Wright argue, that in 1869 he chastized women who were seeking blessings from men, saying: “Why do you not live so as to rebuke disease? It is your privilege to do so without sending for the elders. ... ”
When I was a missionary we went one Sunday to an RLDS meeting. There were women blessing and passing the sacrament, but also there was a blessing in the middle of the main meeting in which a mother (accompanied, as I recall by other women) blessed one of her children who was sick. As foreign and peculiar as it seemed to a born and raised Utah mormon, the idea seems perfectly normal to me now.
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