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Women of the Restoration 1830-1842

Meeting together in the Nauvoo Relief Society in 1842, Latter-day Saint women heard the Prophet Joseph Smith make a statement that they and generations of their daughters would not forget: "This Society is to get instruction thro' the order which God has established-thro' the medium of those appointed to lead-and I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time." The Prophet's turning of the key to women opened to them new opportunities for service and learning and granted them authority to carry out new responsibilities within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It marked, as he predicted, "the beginning of better days" for them and for their organization. Commissioned to save souls and look to the poor and needy, Relief Society women were set apart and empowered to fill that ministry. Unity furthered their work and made them sisters who would "cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another," with the hope that they would one day "sit down in heaven together."

The Relief Society has advanced its work from 1842 to the present not as an independent organization but as an integral part of the Church. Following the Church's organization in 1830, Joseph Smith gradually established the priesthood quorums, and offices necessary for carrying forward the work of the kingdom of God on earth. In 1842 he organized the Relief Society, an elect body of women, to serve as counterpart and companion to the men's priesthood quorums. In effecting the organization, he appointed women to their first offices in the Church, emphasizing "the necessity of every individual acting in the sphere allotted him or her." The women understood that their new responsibility was a "high and holy calling," and that the Church "was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized."

As the church organization was perfected in Nauvoo, so were the Church's highest ordinances perfected. Through revelation, and in anticipation of the completion of the temple then being built in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith introduced sacred temple ordinances that endowed women and men with spiritual power and sealed them together in marriage for time and all eternity. Through this "new and everlasting covenant," parents were bound in eternal union with their children. Thus, before his death in Nauvoo, the Prophet clarified important roles for women in both church organization and divine ordinances.

The Relief Society was not the only female benevolent society at the time of its founding. It shared and continues to share with many other women's organizations a concern for charitable work, community work, education, women and children's health, and opportunities for sisterhood. Later, at various times, Relief Society would join with other women's organizations in unitedly advancing common purposes. Notwithstanding these important connections, Relief Society has maintained a sense of separate identity, uniqueness, and sacred mission to be understood only within the context of the "restoration of all things."