In a step toward gender equity long championed by feminists, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is opening a leadership role to women that has traditionally been filled only by men.

The Utah-based faith will now allow women to lead and join Sunday school presidencies, who oversee the teaching of scriptures and church doctrine to members.

“The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have determined that, effective immediately, the bishop may call a man or a woman to serve as ward Sunday school president,” the First Presidency wrote in a letter to church leaders worldwide on Wednesday. “If a man is called as Sunday school president, he must hold the Melchizedek Priesthood, and his counselors and secretary must be male members of the ward. If a woman is called as Sunday school president, her counselors and secretary must be female members of the ward.”

In short, there will be no mixed-gender presidencies.

In any given congregation, “Sunday school presidencies may at times be composed of men and at other times of women,” the letter said, “based on circumstances in the unit and the inspiration of leaders.”

This change does not apply to stakes (regional collections of congregations) or at the general church level. Those positions will continue to be held by men. The faith has, for instance, an all-male, three-member Sunday School General Presidency.

Sunday School General Advisory Council member Sara Daniela Acosta emphasized the spiritual benefits of this change.

“Whether led by men or women,” Acosta, who works in language training at Provo’s Missionary Training Center, said in a news release, “Sunday school presidencies will continue to help members learn together, teach each other, grow in faith and draw closer to their Savior.”

Sunday School General President Paul V. Johnson noted the change gives lay bishoprics “additional options as they prayerfully consider who should lead the effort of teaching and learning in their wards.”

“At the time of our call as Sunday school leaders in 2024, the First Presidency gave us a charge — as they have done with previous presidencies — to improve teaching and learning in the church,” Johnson said in the release. “There are many capable women and men who can help strengthen gospel instruction and foster spiritual growth.”

‘Long overdue’

Two years ago, Sam Brunson, a Latter-day Saint law professor and blogger in Chicago, questioned why women were excluded from serving as Sunday school presidents.

“Why does it need to be a Melchizedek Priesthood holder? Honestly, no idea,” he asked in a By Common Consent post. “Teachers can be men or women, priesthood holders or not. The Sunday school presidency doesn’t administer any ordinances. Largely, as far as I can tell, they ensure that there’s someone to teach [the classes] every Sunday school week and, if they really want to go the extra mile, provide some teacher training.”

Brunson is thrilled with this change.

“It’s terrific,” he said Wednesday. “It’s long overdue but a move for the better.”

Brunson believes, however, that the limitation to same-gender presidencies is “stupid.”

“Anyone who works in the real world,” he said, “engages in mixed-gender meetings.”

Even so, the move is still a cause for celebration, Brunson added. “Baby steps are still steps.”

He argues every ward should immediately release the male Sunday school presidencies with gratitude and put in all women in their place.

“Men have been doing this for a long time,” Brunson said. “We have a lot to make up for.”

Emily Jensen, web editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, expressed happiness and frustration at the news.

She was delighted with the historic opening to women but troubled by the requirement of same-gender presidencies, which, she said, “flies in the face of welcoming women to ward councils.”

It feels like “they think members are a bunch of horny teenagers who can’t be trusted,” she said, adding sarcastically, “because there’s nothing more sexy than a Sunday school presidency meeting.”."

Jensen knows of Latter-day Saint men and women in leadership having affairs, she said, “but that’s agency and not proximity.”

Historical flexibility

This is “a return to a prior practice that included men and women serving together in presidencies, typically with women serving as secretaries but sometimes as ‘assistant superintendents,’” Latter-day Saint historian W. Paul Reeve said. “Nettie Kirchhoff, a Black pioneer and founding member of the Oshkosh, Wisconsin, branch was called as Sunday school secretary in 1904 to work with the male superintendent and assistant superintendent. That pattern was not unusual. In the Lark Ward, in the Jordan Stake, in 1920, an all-female Sunday school presidency replaced an outgoing male superintendent.”

Several commenters on social media mentioned that in the more recent past women were sometimes tapped to serve in these presidencies, again mostly as “secretaries.”

One wrote that her “progressive” ward at church-owned Brigham Young University installed a female student as Sunday school president in 1976. But she was “released” within two weeks.

Neylan McBaine, who suggested this move more than a decade ago in her book, “Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact,” was pleased to see the church adopt it but disappointed it took so long.

“My daughter has been serving as an unofficial Sunday school president in her Northeast ward for the past two years, attending ward council,” McBaine said in a text message. “Even though her ward is two-thirds women, the ward council is still two-thirds men. At the very least, this will help balance the leadership of the ward to be representative of its actual composition. At best, it will give more leadership opportunities to women in wards like hers.”

It also acknowledges that “the qualifications for those callings are outdated and perpetuate harmful stereotypes,” she said, “such as the idea that men are better scriptorians or better educated, better capable of leading and making decisions for adults.”

The Sunday school change was among several updates to the church’s General Handbook announced Wednesday, mostly about the rules and requirements of the all-volunteer members who staff the church and its various programs.

The one most unexpected was the elevation of women to the position of Sunday school president. It now joins the list of recent gender-equity efforts in the church: allowing girls and women to serve as witnesses of baptisms and temple sealings; revising temple language to be more inclusive; and letting women serve full-time missions at age 18.

McBaine and Brunson are still waiting for other moves they have proposed — such as women serving as clerks and auditors who handle local church finances and allowing teenage girls and women to pass the sacrament, or Communion, as boys and men do now.

“Passing the sacrament is a very visible, somewhat high-profile way to serve in the church,” Brunson said in a 2024 “Mormon Land” podcast. “We clearly can see that it doesn’t require priesthood. But the girls aren’t given the same types of visible responsibilities. … And they notice that exclusion.”

Given this recent revision, Brunson said Wednesday, he has faith that even the sacrament change “might be coming.”