The Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood

Priesthood in Latter-day Saint usage is not a class of person but a delegated authority, and it comes in two orders with a clear division of labour. The Aaronic or lesser priesthood, named for Aaron, holds what the movement calls the keys of the ministering of angels and of the preparatory gospel. Its three offices are held by young men from the age of twelve: deacons pass the sacrament to the congregation, teachers prepare it and assist in ministering, priests may bless the sacrament and perform baptisms. A twelve-year-old carrying a tray of bread along a pew is exercising priesthood in the movement's own understanding of the word, and that is not a devotional flourish but the literal position.

The Melchizedek or higher priesthood, named for the king of Salem who blesses Abraham in Genesis, holds the keys of the spiritual blessings of the church. Its offices are elder, high priest, patriarch, seventy and apostle. It governs confirmation and the gift of the Holy Ghost, blessings of healing by anointing, the temple ordinances, and every presiding office above the ward level. A man ordained an elder at eighteen may then serve a mission, and later be a counsellor in a bishopric, a bishop, or nothing more than an ordinary member for the rest of his life, and the ordination is unaffected either way.

Both orders are conferred by the laying on of hands by someone already holding them, and a Latter-day Saint can usually recite the chain by which his own ordination is traced back to 1829. Authority is understood as a line, not a status.

The practical consequence of Latter-day Saint priesthood is that a congregation of several hundred people is run entirely by its own members in their spare time. The bishop who leads it is unpaid and holds an ordinary job. So is every counsellor, every teacher, every clerk, every organist and every leader of the youth and children's organisations. Nobody is trained in a seminary; nobody applies for a position; nobody is promoted. A member is called to a task by someone above them, serves for a few years, is released, and returns to the pews, possibly to be called to something quite different. Local leaders are drawn from the congregation they serve, which means a ward in Manila is led by Filipinos and a ward in Accra by Ghanaians within a few years of its founding, and it is a large part of why the movement grows where it does.

Only the general officers of the church, the apostles and seventies and a handful of others, receive a living allowance, and the church publishes little about it. Everything below that level is voluntary.

The most publicly debated feature of the arrangement is that ordination is restricted to men. Women hold most of the teaching and leadership positions in a ward that do not require ordination, run the Relief Society and the children's and young women's organisations, serve missions, and officiate in certain temple ordinances for other women, but they are not ordained. Since 2018 the church has taught that a woman set apart to an office exercises delegated priesthood authority in that stewardship. Whether that distinction is sufficient is argued about openly, and the argument has not resolved.