New book maps the evolution of LDS temple rituals in more detail than ever before

Latter-day Saints, so the stereotype goes, love to talk all about their faith with those outside the fold.

Or, at least most of it.

Temple worship has always been an awkward topic for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aware of just how far outside the Protestant mainstream its ritualistic clothing and performances fall. Recent institutional efforts toward transparency — including a series of YouTube videos — have shed some of the culture of silence surrounding the practices, but not all.

That is where historian Jonathan Stapley’s new book, “Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship” comes in.

Yes, anyone can go online and find a former Latter-day Saint sharing all kinds of details about the temple. But unlike most of those content creators, Stapley, himself an active church member, does not ascribe the word “culty” to any of the practices. Neither does he divulge those things temple worshippers are explicitly told not to reveal outside the building’s hallowed walls.

Equal parts respectful and specific, the text also goes to greater lengths than any other to provide the historical roots and evolution of current Latter-day Saint temple worship.

“Stapley’s book,” Mormon studies scholar Benjamin Park said, “is the most exhaustively researched analysis on LDS temple worship yet.”

To accomplish this feat, Stapley combed through original source material only recently released by the Utah-based church, including journals, meeting notes and correspondence by past members.

The story that emerges from his synthesis is one of generation after generation of faith leaders adapting the rites’ format and language in response to evolving social norms, technology and beliefs.

As Stapley writes, the rituals church founder Joseph Smith introduced “existed in a very different context and with shifted meanings” than they do nearly 200 years later.

The early days: Male and missionary-focused

From the beginning, Mormonism was focused on evangelizing, and it was to aid this effort that Smith introduced the first rites in 1831 in Kirtland, Ohio.

Smith, Stapley argues, was inspired by the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus tells his disciples they must be “endowed with power” before heading into the world to preach his good word.

“This idea of receiving power from God, particularly to aid in the ministry or aid in evangelism, was present in American Christianity at the time,” Stapley said in an interview. “But Joseph Smith envisions more than a vague allusion to the New Testament. He wants God to fill the Saints with power, reliving the miracles of the Bible.”

To this end, the faith’s founder, pulling from elements in the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Mormon, introduced multiple cleansing rituals, which participants carried out in rivers, the upper floor of one member’s store and, upon its completion, the Kirtland Temple.

In the beginning, only men — including, in just a few cases, men of color — performed these ceremonies, done largely in preparation or upon fulfillment of their evangelizing duties (women were not sent out on missions until 1898).

One purpose was to increase the spiritual power of the initiate. Another, the historian writes, was to signify that, in attempting to bring others out of sin and into the light, the missionaries had been purified of the “blood and sins” of their listeners.

‘Nearly impossible for modern readers…to imagine’

These washing ceremonies ranged from a simple foot scrub to, starting in 1836, a head-to-toe sponge bath. In the case of the latter, officiants would wash the nude body of the participant and anoint it with perfumed alcohol — this at a time when personal hygiene meant something different than it does today.

“It is nearly impossible for modern readers,” Stapley writes, “with their daily hot showers, detergents and washing machines to imagine the physical change” these washings would have wrought on participants. This would have been especially true in the winter, during which many appear to have simply sat out bathing altogether.

But smelling better was not the goal of the practice. Rather, participants saw this as a precursor to outpourings of God’s spirit. According to journals from the time, the men were not disappointed. Some saw visions. Others spoke in tongues. A few of particularly strong faith reported witnessing angels.

Anointed priestesses

Not until the Latter-day Saints settled Nauvoo, Illinois, did Smith formalize the washing and anointing ceremonies (the latter now used consecrated oil in lieu of alcohol), as well as expand them to include women.

But not all women. Black convert Jane Manning James petitioned for access to these rituals. Again and again, she was denied access because of her race (a formal priesthood/temple ban had been imposed on all Black members in 1852). Indeed, many Latter-day Saints of color, albeit not all, faced difficulty obtaining, if not outright rejection from, temple ordinances. That changed in 1978, when church leaders rescinded the faith’s priesthood/temple ban for Black members.

For women viewed as white, however, “there was a kind of liturgical script that was developed where female priestesses, basically, washed and then anointed the initiate and pronounced a formal prayer on her,” Stapley said, explaining the rite mirrored what men were doing for other men at the time.

“And that’s the basis,” the historian said, “for what Latter-day Saints experience today.”

Minus, that is, the nudity.

The Freemason factor

Another major change that occurred in Nauvoo was the evolution of the washing and anointing from a stand-alone ceremony to the first step in a much longer ritual Smith introduced after becoming a Freemason.

In it, patrons moved from room to room in a symbolic reenactment of the creation, Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, humankind’s mortal journey and ultimate return to God’s presence. All dressed in “priestly” clothing, initiates were taught to view themselves as entering a separate, holy society.

“Joseph Smith is quite clear in Nauvoo, explicitly and repeatedly, saying that the work of the temple is to turn this body of believers into this literal material heaven,” Stapley said. “He’s taking humans and changing them into kings and queens, priests and priestesses, incorporating women into the vision of heaven. And they’re doing that in the present — heaven is now on earth.”

Those who participated in this ceremony, men and women, he said, “called themselves the priesthood.”

Around this same time, “sealing” went from referring to instances in which men ordained as high priests “sealed up” an individual or group to salvation, to the creation of eternal family units.

This language stuck. Today, when Latter-day Saint couples are united in eternal marriage in a temple, they are said to have been “sealed.”

Temple rites today

Gradually, Stapley explained, church leaders whittled down the once “full corporeal” experience that was the washing and anointing to what now consists of a temple worker placing single drops of water and oil on a person’s head, followed by a blessing, or prayer. Since 1960, templegoers have been able to experience the washing and anointing separate from what has now become known as the endowment.

This dramatic portrayal of the creation and the story of Adam and Eve has also become a shorter — it’s down to an hour — more passive experience for participants, who today spend much of it watching a digital video.

As for sealings, arguably the biggest difference in practice between then and now is the discontinuation of the practice of uniting one man to more than one living woman (men who remarry upon the death of a spouse can be tied to their new wife without breaking any previous sealings; since the beginning of the 20th century, women have been permitted to be sealed to only one man).

Yet, throughout all these changes, Stapley stressed, “there’s a through line.”

Then and now, Latter-day Saints who participate in these rituals, he said, “are seeking power from on high. They’re seeking to construct the material heaven of kings and queens and priests and priestesses.”

Rituals for the dead

If there is one topic Stapley doesn’t spotlight, it’s the Latter-day Saint practice of performing all these rituals, plus baptisms, not only for oneself, but also on behalf of those who died without doing so.

In the book’s epilogue, he notes that Smith, “leaping from enigmatic verses in the New Testament,” first revealed so-called proxy baptisms, now performed in temples, before teaching that the entire liturgy was open to the deceased.

“‘You who have any dead friends must go through all the ordinances for them the same as for yourselves,’” Stapley quoted the faith’s founder as saying toward the end of his life.

As the liturgy evolved for the living, so it did for the dead.

Glancingly mentioned in the book is the ever-widening scope of this effort for the deceased, thanks to the advent of modern genealogical research — a field the church has invested in heavily. Today, one person can harvest and submit the information needed for hundreds of ancestors in need of “having their work done.” As a result, those performing the rituals on their behalf often have only a distant, if any, connection to the individuals.

Then again, for Smith, religion was always the work of connecting humanity not only to God but also to one another.

“For Smith and the believers that followed him,” Stapley writes, “salvation was always relational.”

What does Stapley think would shock Smith the most about today’s temple liturgy?

“I mean,” he said, “I think he would be ultimately fascinated by digital video, the fact that we could have instantaneous translation. I think he would love it.”

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