First I must say this: Hooray! The publication of the Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes has been a long time coming?one hundred and seventy one years, to be exact. The Beginning of Better Days: Divine Instruction to Women from the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. by Sheri Dew and Virginia H. Pearce, presents powerful words and meaningful experiences, both with the Nauvoo Relief Society and with its interpretation.

Why the excitement? The Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes contain the organizational founding of the Relief Society, a female counterpart to priesthood and patriarchal leadership. The women elected lady leaders and established a purpose: to save souls and provide relief to the poor. ?We are going to do something extraordinary,? said Emma Smith, first president of the Relief Society and the prophet?s wife. ?We expect pressing calls,? she continued, ?and extraordinary occasions.?[1] Officially sanctioned, the Relief Society engaged in religious, charitable, economic, political, and cultural activity and initiated a new emphasis on recording, remembering, and retaining the authority of the past. The Minutes record information about women and their connection to God, to the temple, to priesthood, to families, and to each other. Here Joseph Smith connected members of the Relief Society with ancient women, he empowered them to act as holy women, and he provided them with the information they needed to forge through mortality and beyond.

After Brigham Young officially disbanded the Relief Society in 1845, Eliza R. Snow carefully wrapped up the Minutes and carried them across the plains, keeping them until another period of ?better days? would come for this ancient Society.[2] When Young reinstated the Relief Society in 1866 and called Snow to lead the effort, she pulled out her well-worn minutes and got to work. She brought the Minutes with her as she traveled throughout the territory, using them as a tangible example to teach proper order and appropriate spirit.[3]

Various iterations of the Minutes have surfaced here and there. Selections appeared in the Deseret News and the Woman?s Exponent, often with discreet editing which twisted meanings.[4] Emmeline B. Wells had had painstakingly copied her own version, which she used to consult and study and emulate as she served as the fifth General Relief Society president. Amy Brown Lyman also had her own copy.[5] The Joseph Smith Papers have published on their website scans and transcriptions of the minutes? full run. (Here.)

Deseret Book published the collection of Joseph Smith?s six sermons to the Relief Society in the summer of 2012. The Beginning of Better Days is a beautifully designed book with space for notes, inviting readers to study, ponder, note, and engage with the content. The Minutes have become tangible once again, inviting a deeper understanding of Joseph Smith and his concept of holy women.

Virginia Pearce and Sheri Dew present interesting introductory insight into the Minutes. Their essays provide two very different examples of how twenty-first century women have engaged with the Nauvoo Relief Society. Pearce?s essay opens with an insightful personal epiphany about women in the temple and the priesthood. Her account of her own spiritual enlightening presents perhaps the most orthodox feminist approach published by Deseret Book. Dew?s essay seems more devotional, recognizing the turmoil of many women as they have struggled with questions of equality and priesthood. Dew presents a pro forma explanation for why women don?t have the priesthood, quoting significant general authorities to back up her view. The edited sermons take up forty pages, while introductory essays by Pearce and Dew make up eighty-six pages. While the book invites personal engagement and application, the format presents more of two women?s interpretations than actual primary material with which to engage.

The focus of this edition of the Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes is on Joseph Smith?s sermons. They are powerful and noteworthy. But the women?s voices themselves are missing. We lose the rich conversation of the Nauvoo women, their interpretation, their expression of faith and love and question and concern. We don?t see the way they understood and practiced Joseph?s words, or what prompted their eventual demise. Also missing is the historical context to such issues as plural marriage, women blessing each other, speaking in tongues, or other practices common in the Nauvoo Relief Society. Nor do we see how the Minutes were picked up again by Sarah Kimball in Salt Lake City with ?Relief Society Minutes, vol. 2,? where she carefully recorded the renewal of the Society in a new time and place, following the same instruction and memory as before.[6]

Jill Mulvay Derr and Carol Cornwall Madsen?s future volume of foundational Relief Society documents promises a wealth of information, including primary documents, annotations, a lengthy biographical register, and analysis of the Nauvoo and early Utah Relief Societies. As careful historians, they will provide the rich context, the conversation, the nuances, the relationships, and the outcomes of Nauvoo and Joseph Smith over the next fifty years.

These really are the beginning of better days. Just you wait.