![]() At conference, leaders deliver what are understood to be divinely inspired messages on how members should act and think about their relationship to God. It is frequently the site of development and affirmation of Church doctrine, policy, and culture. ![]() General conference plays an important role in the Church and in its members’ lives. Even taking into account the expected effects of the Church’s overwhelmingly male scripture and all-male priesthood hierarchy, women are quoted less, cited less, and acknowledged less than one might expect from an organization whose president recently told women, “We need your voice teaching the doctrine of Christ.” This article contends that their treatment of these voices is indicative of women’s status in the Church more broadly. Church leaders quote men more than sixteen times for every one time they quote a woman. The quotation patterns in fifty years of general conference addresses reveal that, despite increasingly vocal commitments from Church leaders to the equal though separate status of women and men, those leaders continue to treat female voices as less authoritative than male ones. ![]() When the most powerful leaders in the Church use their limited time in the spotlight to highlight someone else’s words, they send a signal about how that source should be perceived. This article argues such quotation choices reflect Church leaders’ views on authority. In all, though almost one third of Jones’s address about women’s roles was focused on other people’s voices, women were not among her selected sources. Additionally, in the middle of her speech, a video played of Nelson speaking to a group of children. In her eleven minutes at the pulpit, Jones quoted current Church president Russell Nelson four times, previous Church presidents three times, scripture six times, and a previous apostle once. Jones’s speech, delivered at the Church’s semiannual general conference, exemplifies a long tradition of Latter-day Saint rhetoric, particularly in her use of quotation. Though it certainly may be impossible to measure women’s influence on families, it is to some extent possible to measure the influence that leaders like Jones and Nelson believe women have on the Church. women have, not only on families but also on the Lord’s Church, as wives, mothers, and grandmothers as sisters and aunts as teachers and leaders and especially as exemplars and devout defenders of the faith.’” Nelson taught, ‘It would be impossible to measure the influence that . . . In her 2020 address to the worldwide membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Primary general president Joy Jones declared, “President Russell M. ![]() Listen to the Out Loud Interview about this article here. ![]()
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