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Honours His Priesthood

“I am so grateful for a husband who honour his priesthood.”

We’ve all heard this said in testimony meeting. What does it mean? How does one honour his priesthood?

Does it encompass home teaching? I’ve heard women say this even though their husbands don’t go home teaching.

Does it encompass attending priesthood meetings? I’ve heard women say this even though their husbands don’t come to elders quorum.

Does it mean to be righteous? Women can be righteous, so that can’t be it.

How does one honour his priesthood?

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Kim Siever

Queer Mormon poet with radical political views. I have been married 27 years, and we have 6 children. Sunday school president. Served in the Utah Provo Mission.

16 thoughts on “Honours His Priesthood”

  1. From a May 1991 Ensign article titled “To Honor the Priesthood” by Elder J. Richard Clarke of the Presidency of the Seventy:

    May I offer two suggestions to help us better honor the priesthood:

    • Live righteously to merit the power of the priesthood.
    • Aggressively search out opportunities for quorum service.

    However, knowing you I doubt this will quote or, for that matter, the entire Ensign article satisfy your question.

  2. It certainly doesn’t clarify why these women think their husbands honour their priesthood. I think it is a rare thing to see an elder aggressively searching for service opportunities.

    That being said, Elder Clarke did state that these were suggestions to better honour our priesthood, implying that there are other ways that are worse to honour the priesthood. What ways are those?

  3. Perhaps the remarks made by Elder Russell M. Nelson, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, during and April 1993 General Conference Preisthood Session will add insights your question: “How does one honour[sic] his priesthood?”

    You can read it at:

    LDS.org–>Gospel Library

    Church Publications
    Magazines
    Ensign
    1993
    Ensign May 1993
    Honoring the Priesthood

    http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates$fn=default.htm$xhitlist_q=honor%20priesthood$xhitlist_x=Simple$xhitlist_s=relevance-weight$xhitlist_d=$xhitlist_hc=%5BXML%5D%5Bkwic%2C0%5D$xhitlist_xsl=xhitlist.xsl$xhitlist_vpc=first$xhitlist_sel=title%3Bpath%3Bcontent-type%3Bhome-title%3Bhit-context%3Bfield%3Azr%3Bfield%3ARef

  4. Actually, Elder Nelson’s talk didn’t really seem to address what it means to honour one’s priesthood other than saying “honoring the priesthood also means to honor your personal call to serve.”

    If that is all it is, then certainly home teaching falls under this call to serve.

  6. I should add that honour is a correct spelling as is honor. Being Canadian, we use Canadian spellings rather than US spellings s no need to add “sic” after it. :)

  8. Personally, I agree with you Kim, I do not know how a woman can say that the priensthood is honoured by one that does not act in a way that honours the power priesthood holders hold to act on behalf of our Heavenly Father. That is to say, there is a distinction between one who is called an Elder and one who is an Elder: the distinction being honouring the priesthood. Perhaps a woman who is saying this is still learning about the priesthood, and has yet to discover what is still unknown to her. In other cases, it is possible that a woman is dealing with issues where she needs to convince herself, and others that things are well for her family.

    In the end,having been raised without it, I value the priesthood. I am grateful to live at a time when it is on the earth.

  9. First of all,

    I love the way you Canadians spell.

    Honour–Saviour–Behaviour–etc. It’s cool,

    Secondly, I don’t know, maybe honoring the priesthood simply means being true to it–in so far as one understands it.

    Jack

  10. The original post asks, “Does it mean to be righteous? Women can be righteous, so that can’t be it.”

    I don’t see how that follows. The fact that woman can be righteous doesn’t mean that a man’s righteousness is not honoring his priesthood.

  14. That’s fine too. The fact that a non-priesthood holder can be righteous doesn’t mean that being righteous is not a way of honoring the priesthood.

  15. I think those women said that about their husbands simply because their men are not philandering alchoholics. Not really the proper criteria in my opinion of course.

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