Can non-members pass the sacrament at an LDS church?

I was re-reading some of the essays in Women & Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism (1992), a book I first read in high school, and came across this excerpt in the essay “Sister Missionaries and Authority” by Maxine Hanks:

In the mid-1970s a branch in the southern states consulted a visiting general authority about a lack of men to “pass sacrament.” He instructed them to have sisters in the ward pass the sacrament. The stake leadership protested that “they don’t have the priesthood.” He pointed out that when deacons pass sacrament trays to members in the pew, each person is actually “passing the sacrament” to the person next to him or her. So the branch allowed the sisters to pass the sacrament. (p. 325)

Source: S. Dilworth Young related this incident in a stake leadership meeting in Colorado Springs in 1978. Young was the visiting general authority who instructed the branch to have sisters pass the sacrament. This incident from the notes in the files of Tim Rathbone, who was present when Young related the story. (p. 333)

Let’s just assume that this story is an accurate account of an actual exception that was made to the LDS sacrament practices. I thought this was interesting because I visit the LDS church with my husband once a month, and usually when I visit, I’m handed the sacrament tray and I pass it on to the person next to me. Using this reasoning, couldn’t non-members theoretically pass the sacrament as well?

Or, is it that visiting non-members theoretically should not be passing the sacrament to the person sitting next to them in the pew, but no one tells them not to because it is neither practical nor polite?

I have no interest in serving the LDS sacrament as the deacons do, this post is an idle musing.

Comments

Can non-members pass the sacrament at an LDS church? — 4 Comments

Seth R. on January 7, 2009 at 9:50 AM said:

Well, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, right?

Ritual is important because of the deep human need for symbolic richness in life. Where possible, ritual forms ought to be respected. But I don’t think that ritual should always trump genuine human need. That seems to me to be at least one of the messages of Christ’s mortal ministry.
Zedek on January 7, 2009 at 11:01 AM said:

It is a matter of time. It is just fine for you as a non-member to pass the sacrament to the next person in the pew because for that moment the Deacon has given you permission to do so. However, that permission (authority) is lost as soon as you have helped the Deacon with his duty.
So there is nothing wrong with that.
As for the story above, I would see a doctrinal issue with those not in authority taking the sacrament tray from the Priests an then passing it to multiple people. It shows an extended enough period of time that someone who is ordained should be preforming the action. (but i am not sure)
There are other areas in the church that similar things happen. I.E. the Sunday school teacher getting a substitute to teach the lesson this week, the Elder (missionary) taking a Priest to proselyte door to door for a few hours, The Bishop having his counselor run Sunday meetings while he is on vacation. Etc.
It as matter of giving someone authority to preform something specific for a limited amount of time in order to keep the church running
Bridget Jack Meyers on January 7, 2009 at 8:28 PM said:

Those are interesting insights on this. I’ve never considered the idea that the deacon is temporarily giving me authority to pass it by handing me the tray (and the idea of a 12 year-old giving me any kind of authority makes me giggle, but I get it). Thanks.
Kate on January 14, 2009 at 12:06 AM said:

I don’t know what the standard practice is, but as a nonmember that has gone to sacrament meeting with a friend, I found it interesting that he made sure to pass the tray over me rather than letting me hand it on–even though the next person was several seats away and thus she had to get up and come get the tray. So either he didn’t think I should handle the tray, or he wanted to make sure I knew I wasn’t supposed to take the bread/water itself. (Which, believe me, was the last thing I wanted to do. I went for purely “anthropological” reasons, though he probably hoped otherwise.)

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