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Preface

This history is a work of scholarship and love, presented with gladness during the sesquicentennial year of the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is the story of the women of the Church and the sacred promises that bind them to God and to the community of his saints. It is a record of women's unique stewardship within that community as members of Relief Society.

Every Latter-day Saint woman is a woman of covenant. Each at baptism entered into a covenant with Jesus Christ, promising to serve him and keep his commandments, and each subsequently received the gift of the Holy Ghost as companion and guide. An ever-increasing number of sisters have augmented these covenants in holy temples. Latter-day Saints, men and women, enter such vital covenants through divinely revealed ordinances performed by the authority of the holy priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. These sacred rituals signal the covenant or "coming together" of God and his daughters and sons, God promising great blessings to those who honor their promises to him.

The story of Relief Society has been shaped by such covenants, promises that not only bind men and women to God but also bring them together as brothers and sisters in "the fold of God," the Church, so they can "look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another." (Mosiah 18:21.) The holy priesthood restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith is the Lord's instrument for bringing his saints into this "unity of the faith," that as they become one, he might claim them as his own and dwell among them. (Ephesians 4:13; D&C 38:27; D&C 104:59.)

The story of the women of Relief Society is tightly interwoven with the story of men called and ordained to offices in the priesthood. Since its founding by the Prophet Joseph Smith in 1842, the Relief Society has been counterpart, companion, and complement to the priesthood quorums. Like the men's quorums, the Relief Society has worked in connection with and under the direction of the presiding authorities of the Melchizedek Priesthood, which "has power and authority over all the offices in the church in all ages of the world, to administer in spiritual things." (D&C 107:8.) United under priesthood direction, Latter-day Saint women and men further the Lord's work of exaltation for all of his children.

The Relief Society has played an essential role in that work; its members have ministered graciously and creatively to the temporal and spiritual welfare of those within and outside the Latter-day Saint fold. Indeed, Relief Society's efforts to forward the kingdom of God on the earth have resulted in significant political, economic, education, and social achievements, an impressive and important part of the society's many-faceted past. Programs and responsibilities in these areas have changed dramatically over time, influenced by changing circumstances in the Church and in the world at large. The remarkable flexibility of the Relief Society in temporal matters and its responsiveness to the needs of a given time have been possible because of firm grounding in its central spiritual purpose, "to save souls."