Progress was bumped upward inside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the faith recently announced that female members could and would now be called as Sunday school presidents and their counselors. Those are church positions that formerly had been reserved only for men.

Suddenly, women can also fill those roles — although there’s a big exception attached to that alteration, one we’ll get to in a minute. More progressive Latter-day Saints will take whatever forward movement can be celebrated, especially when it includes increased leadership opportunities for an entire gender inside an organization thought by believers to be part of God’s kingdom on Earth.

Some say this overall move might be a harbinger of positive things to come for female Latter-day Saints — in a faith that often limits the roles, especially roles of authority, for women. For starters, maybe let women serve as financial clerks or in the church’s Sunday School General Presidency. But these are mere guesses in a top-down church where change can be glacial.

The ultimate deciders

Change happens when prophets and apostles — all men — say it happens, not a moment before. And those in the faith who hope for more leadership opportunities for women, those so eager for advancement in that regard, are caught between that hope and their belief that church authorities are, in fact, inspired by God.

In the church, men and boys are the ones, the only ones, to hold priesthood office. While it’s true that women are empowered to conduct certain processes, for example in temple ceremonies, it’s also true that when congregational leaders in Northern California allowed women’s leaders to sit on the stand during Sunday services, that practice was quashed by a higher-ranking male authority.

That’s a big topic that can be saved for another day.

Why no mixed-gender presidencies?

The focus here falls back on the new policy governing the construction of Sunday school presidencies, be they made up of women or men. And here’s the thing: They cannot be made up of both, the top male leaders declared. They have to be one or the other, all brothers or all sisters, all suits and ties or all dresses and skirts.

Why?

Could it not be useful to have, say, a woman as the organizational president, guided by the insights and perceptions of a man as a counselor, or a man as president, advised by a woman?

Too often in the church, only one gender — usually male — is represented in leadership roles. But it might be downright revelatory to have the input of both women and men in decision-making processes, in presidencies. If women had more — but not necessarily exclusive — say in the way the world is run, the world would be a better place.

The same could be said for a church, particularly one that is thought by participants to be God’s church. Let women and men consult with one another to find best solutions and best outcomes.

The easy presumption here is that church leaders are disinclined to call both men and women into presidencies because they’re either afraid that Mars-versus-Venus arguments might break out or even more afraid of the opposite — that close associations could lead to even closer associations, the kind that might heat up and explode into mental or physical hanky-panky. Every Latter-day Saint has heard the stories, apocryphal or otherwise, about bishops who hook up with Relief Society presidents and then run off with tithing dollars.

Actually, I had a distant relative, a bishop, who did that, minus the tithing theft. It was one wild, saucy story, straight out of a Harlequin romance novel. But I digress.

In reality, in most cases, dictating policy based on that kind of fear misses the wider benefits that could emerge from mixed-gender leadership, whether it’s in Sunday school or elsewhere. Let women and men labor together. It happens every day in homes, schools and workplaces. Let them serve together, let them help church congregations together, let them bless the lives of others together. It will be all right. If improper relations are going to erupt inside a congregation, they’re going to happen, regardless of who’s called to serve where.

Good on the faith for inviting women into new roles. But at some point, the church needs to trust its faithful members — women and men — and treat them as adults.