Relief Society
Based on Wikipedia: Relief Society
In March 1842, a seamstress and her employer sat down to discuss sewing shirts for construction workers. What emerged from that conversation would become one of the largest women's organizations in human history, with more than seven million members spanning 188 countries. But the path from a small sewing circle to a global institution was anything but straightforward—it involved secret marriages, power struggles, a dramatic disbanding, and a thousand-mile exodus across the American frontier.
A Constitution Rejected
The story begins in Nauvoo, Illinois, a city the Latter-day Saints had built on a swamp along the Mississippi River after being driven from Missouri. Sarah Granger Kimball, a woman of means, and her seamstress Margaret Cook wanted to help clothe the workers constructing the Nauvoo Temple. Their solution seemed simple enough: form a ladies' society and invite neighbors to help sew.
Kimball asked Eliza R. Snow—a poet and close associate of church founder Joseph Smith—to draft a constitution and bylaws for the group. Snow did so, and they submitted the documents to Smith for his blessing.
His response surprised them.
Smith called the constitution "the best he had ever seen." Then he rejected it entirely. He had something different in mind: an organization he would design himself, patterned, he said, "after the priesthood." This wasn't going to be just another ladies' sewing circle. Smith envisioned something with real institutional structure—a presidency, counselors, and a formal hierarchy that mirrored the men's organizations in the church.
Twenty Women Above a General Store
On March 17, 1842, twenty women climbed the stairs to the second-story meeting room above Smith's Red Brick Store. Joseph Smith was there, along with church leaders John Taylor and Willard Richards. The women had come to form their society, but on Smith's terms, not their own.
Smith proposed an unusual structure for the time: the women would elect their own president, and that president would choose her own counselors. Emma Smith—Joseph's wife—was elected to lead. She selected Sarah Cleveland and Elizabeth Ann Whitney as her counselors. John Taylor then ordained and blessed all three women, giving the organization a formal religious sanction rare for women's groups in that era.
After some discussion, the group settled on a name that now seems wonderfully direct: "The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo."
Joseph Smith laid out the society's purpose in terms that mixed practical charity with moral oversight. The women would "provoke the brethren to good works," search out those in need, and administer to their wants. But they would also correct morals and strengthen virtues—essentially policing the behavior of the female community so that male church leaders wouldn't have to spend their time "rebuking."
This last bit reveals something about the era's assumptions regarding gender. Women were being given real organizational power, but partly so they could discipline other women and spare the men the trouble.
Growth and Collapse
The Relief Society exploded in popularity. Within two years, membership had grown to 1,331 women—remarkable growth for a frontier town. The organization became so large that it had to split into four branches, one for each of Nauvoo's municipal wards. Visiting committees fanned out across the city to identify who needed help.
Then, abruptly, it ended.
The last recorded meeting of the Relief Society in Nauvoo took place on March 16, 1844. What happened? The answer involves one of the most controversial aspects of early Latter-day Saint history: plural marriage, the practice of men taking multiple wives.
Emma Smith had been using the Relief Society as a platform to speak against plural marriage. The irony was bitter: several of the society's own members and leaders were secretly practicing it, including some who were married to Emma's own husband. Joseph Smith himself had counseled the society against "exposing iniquity"—a veiled reference to keeping the practice hidden.
The tension became untenable. Joseph Smith suspended all meetings of the Relief Society.
Three months later, Joseph Smith was dead—murdered by a mob while imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois. Brigham Young took leadership of most Latter-day Saints and, desiring to continue plural marriage without Emma Smith's opposition, formally disbanded the Relief Society before leading the Saints west toward the Great Salt Lake.
The Record Book Goes West
When Eliza R. Snow joined the exodus to the Salt Lake Valley in 1846, she carried something precious: the Relief Society Book of Records, the minutes from those early Nauvoo meetings. The organization no longer existed, but Snow preserved its memory.
For a decade, women continued to gather informally. They still cared for the sick and poor—they just didn't have a formal structure for doing so. Gradually, new organizations emerged in the Utah settlements. In 1851, women established a Female Council of Health. In 1854, responding to Brigham Young's call to assist Native Americans in the region, women in Salt Lake City formed an "Indian Relief Society" to make clothing for indigenous women and children.
These early Utah organizations operated independently. Each ward—the Latter-day Saint term for a local congregation—had its own society answering to its own bishop. There was no central women's leadership connecting them. They engaged in similar activities: sewing for Native Americans, caring for impoverished emigrants arriving after the long trek west, weaving carpets for local meetinghouses. But they weren't coordinated.
The 1858 Utah War—a confrontation between Latter-day Saints and the United States federal government—disrupted even these fragile local organizations. When much of the Latter-day Saint population temporarily fled south from Salt Lake City, most of these independent societies didn't survive the dislocation.
Resurrection and Standardization
In December 1867, Brigham Young decided it was time to bring the Relief Society back—this time permanently and churchwide.
Eliza R. Snow finally had a use for that record book she'd carried across the plains. Using the minutes from the original Nauvoo meetings as a kind of constitution, she created a standardized model for local Relief Societies. The Nauvoo women's words became the template for how Relief Societies would operate everywhere.
Snow and nine other women began traveling to wards and settlements in 1868, helping establish organizations wherever they went. By year's end, all twenty Salt Lake City congregations had Relief Societies, as did congregations in nearly every county in Utah. The pattern held: women would assist the local bishop in caring for the poor, collecting and distributing both money and goods. They nursed the sick, cleaned homes, sewed carpet rags, planted gardens, and—importantly—taught religious doctrine to one another.
In 1880, Snow was formally called as General President of the Relief Society, giving the organization central leadership at the churchwide level for the first time. But Snow had already been providing that leadership informally for years.
An Ambitious Vision
Under Snow's leadership, the Relief Society developed ambitions that went far beyond sewing circles and charitable visits. The organization sent women to medical school. It trained nurses. It opened the Deseret Hospital. It operated cooperative stores.
Perhaps most strikingly, the Relief Society promoted silk manufacture and built grain storage facilities. Women saved wheat and constructed granaries—practical preparations for times of scarcity that also gave women control over real economic resources. This wasn't just charity work; it was economic development led by women.
In 1872, the Relief Society helped launch the Woman's Exponent, one of the first women's publications in the American West. Though technically independent from the church, the newspaper was closely affiliated with the Relief Society and served as a voice for Latter-day Saint women until 1914.
Snow also helped establish what would become the Young Women organization (for teenage girls) and worked with Aurelia Spencer Rogers to create the first Primary Association for children in 1878. By 1888, the Relief Society had grown to more than 22,000 members across 400 local congregations.
In 1891, the organization took a step that situated it within the broader American women's movement: it became a charter member of the National Council of Women of the United States, adopting the formal name "National Women's Relief Society."
What Meetings Looked Like
Early Relief Society meetings were held twice a month. One meeting each month focused on practical work—sewing and addressing immediate needs of the poor. The other meeting combined religious instruction, discussion of "elevating and educational topics," and testimony bearing, a Latter-day Saint practice where individuals share personal expressions of faith.
Women were also encouraged to develop cultural opportunities for their communities. This wasn't just about material charity or religious observance; there was an element of what we might now call community development or civic engagement.
The Relief Society Magazine, launched in 1915, served as the organization's official publication until 1970. By 1942, membership had reached approximately 115,000 women. By 1966, it had grown to 300,000.
The Correlation Revolution
The 1960s brought a transformation that dramatically reshaped the Relief Society—and not everyone was happy about it.
Church leaders implemented something called "Priesthood Correlation," a comprehensive effort to centralize and standardize all church programs and materials. The official purpose was to prepare the church for worldwide growth: standardized lessons would be easier to translate and would work in any culture.
The side effects, however, were significant. The Relief Society lost much of the autonomy it had enjoyed for decades. Most notably, it lost control over its own budget. Decisions that had once been made by women were now subject to centralized church oversight.
The Relief Society Magazine became a casualty of correlation. Its final edition appeared in December 1970. The magazine was merged with several other church publications into a single periodical called the Ensign.
Historians have described this transformation as "radical." The Relief Society remained a large and influential organization, but its relationship to central church authority was fundamentally different from what Eliza R. Snow had built in the nineteenth century.
The Modern Relief Society
Today, every Latter-day Saint woman eighteen or older is automatically considered a member of Relief Society—there are no dues or membership fees. Women under eighteen who are married also join, as do unmarried teenage mothers seventeen or older who keep their children. The transition typically happens the year after a young woman's eighteenth birthday, moving her from the Young Women program into Relief Society.
Each local congregation has its own Relief Society presidency: a president and two counselors selected from among the congregation's members. This local presidency operates under the direction of the congregation's bishop or branch president. Above the local level, stake or district Relief Society presidencies supervise multiple congregations.
At the top of the organization sit three women called by the church's highest leadership—the First Presidency—to serve as the General Relief Society Presidency. These women are based in Salt Lake City and are considered "general officers" of the church. While they are not classified as "general authorities" (a term reserved for certain priesthood leadership positions held by men), they are the highest-ranking women in the church's hierarchy.
Since August 2022, the General Relief Society Presidency has consisted of Camille N. Johnson as president, with J. Anette Dennis and Kristin M. Yee as her counselors.
How Meetings Work Today
Following changes made in 2019, Relief Society meets twice a month for approximately fifty minutes per meeting. A member of the presidency or another assigned woman presents an educational lesson. The curriculum has evolved over time: from 1997 to 2016, lessons drew primarily from a series called "Teachings of Presidents of the Church." Since 2019, the curriculum focuses mainly on recent messages from the church's general conference, a biannual gathering where senior leaders address the entire membership.
The Relief Society also leads the church's literacy efforts, teaching basic reading skills to both members and non-members who need them. It's a practical manifestation of the organization's founding impulse toward both spiritual and temporal welfare.
Ministering Sisters
One of Relief Society's most distinctive features is its system of personal connections among members. Every woman in the Relief Society is paired with another member, and these partnerships are assigned by the local presidency to watch over specific other members. These assignments are called "ministering" assignments.
Ministering sisters are expected to make regular contact with the women assigned to them. Ideally, this means personal visits in the member's home, though contact by phone, email, or meeting in other locations also counts. The emphasis is on building genuine relationships and looking for opportunities to serve—noticing when someone needs a meal delivered, help with childcare, or simply a friendly conversation.
This system replaced an older program called "visiting teaching" in April 2018, when church president Russell M. Nelson announced a restructuring that combined the women's program with a similar men's program into a unified "ministering" framework.
Temporal and Emotional Welfare
Along with the local bishop or branch president, the Relief Society president is considered essential for meeting the practical and emotional needs of congregation members. The Relief Society presidency teaches principles like self-reliance, provident living, personal and family preparedness, and compassionate service.
Many congregations have a woman called as a "Compassionate Service Leader," responsible for organizing responses when members face emergencies or hardships—coordinating meals for families with new babies, organizing help when someone is hospitalized, or mobilizing assistance after natural disasters.
Quarterly evening meetings provide opportunities for women to learn practical skills, work on service projects, and simply spend time together outside the formal Sunday worship schedule. Local congregations can also organize additional gatherings for women with shared interests or needs.
The Building by the Temple
In Salt Lake City, the Relief Society occupies its own headquarters—a physical symbol of the organization's significance within the church structure. The Relief Society Building is separate from the church's main administrative offices, a distinction no other auxiliary organization enjoys. Notably, it sits closer to the door of the iconic Salt Lake Temple than any other building.
This architectural arrangement echoes the Relief Society's unusual history. Born from a rejected constitution and the vision of a controversial prophet, dissolved in the turmoil of secret marriages and persecution, reborn on the frontier through the determination of one woman who carried its records across a continent, transformed by twentieth-century centralization yet still claiming millions of members—the Relief Society stands as something genuinely unusual in the landscape of religious organizations.
Its motto, drawn from the biblical book of First Corinthians, has remained constant since the beginning: "Charity never faileth."
Whether one views the organization's evolution as adaptation or loss, the numbers are striking. From twenty women above a general store in a Mississippi River town, the Relief Society has grown to encompass more than seven million members across nearly every nation on Earth. The seamstress and her employer who just wanted to sew some shirts could never have imagined what their conversation would set in motion.