‘You shouldn’t come to the temple drunk’ — The ever-changing rules and rituals of LDS temple worship

For much of its history, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a faith centered around meetinghouses, which were a buzz of activity throughout the week.

That is far less the case today. Leaders have reoriented the 17.5 million-member church — outside of the home, at least — around a new focus: temples.

Go as often as circumstances allow has been the mantra poured from the pulpit at General Conference and repeated in Sunday worship services. And even if members cannot go, they are urged to prepare to do so by living the standards — pay a full tithe and no extramarital sex, tea, coffee, alcohol or tobacco — required of temple attendees.

But as Jonathan Stapley, author of the newly released “Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship,” explained in a recent episode of The Salt Lake Tribune’s “Mormon Land” podcast, the approach to these sacred sites and the liturgies housed there would come as a surprise to many Latter-day Saints of previous generations.

Here are lightly edited excerpts from that show about that shift, as well as a look at other evolutions in meaning and practice in Latter-day Saint temple worship over time.

Not all of the rituals that faith founder Joseph Smith introduced stuck. What are some of the ones that came and went? And what does it tell us that Latter-day Saints no longer perform them today?

From the beginning, the temple was viewed by church leaders and members as a special site for physical healing. People would be immersed in the temple fonts, and there was a special baptismal prayer that was offered. They had both male and female temple healers. These are people whose job it was to take the sick who came to the temple and anoint and bless them. The temples were viewed in some ways as a site of pilgrimage for healing up until the 1920s.

There’s a lot of aspirational resonance with scripture. Jesus healed at the temple, and it’s a place that’s holy.

In the modern era, we understand that it’s probably not wise to bring sick people and immerse them in water that other people are using or to have people touch them. So there’s a pragmatic element. But, ultimately, the decision to move away from that sort of healing in the temple was based largely on the emphasis of doing proxy work for the dead. Latter-day Saints have baptism, confirmation and their temple ceremonies — an endowment, washing and anointing and sealing ceremonies. They do that for themselves, for the living. They also do that for their ancestors who are dead.

In the 1920s, they were running out of resources in the temples for the people who wanted to participate in those salvific — meaning saving — ceremonies. So they pivoted. They said, “Look, we’re not going to have healing in the temple anymore. We’re not going to have temple choirs. We’re going to cut down on the food offered. We’re going to focus on the work that can only happen in the temple.”

Latter-day Saints are frequently taught that the temple rituals are sacred, not secret. But some parts are intended to remain secret and not be discussed outside the temple. How did you walk that line in writing the book?

Latter-day Saints promise, they use the language of covenant, but it’s a promise, to keep certain elements of the temple ceremonies isolated to the temple and not discuss them outside of the temple. These are a small portion of the overall ceremonies, but for the majority of the church’s history, church leaders have instructed members to basically keep the entirety of their experiences isolated to the temple. So there is a small bit that church members promise to keep secret.

How church members and church leaders protect the sanctity or enact the secrecy of the temple does change over time. For example, during Joseph Smith’s life, in General Conference, he talked about items of the temple ceremonies that would later in the 20th century be no longer permissible for discussion. In the late 19th century, church members and church leaders would talk about things in the newspaper and in General Conference, again, that perhaps later in the 20th century would not have been considered appropriate. So for me, as a historian, I largely went by the people themselves, how they conceptualize it. So if I was talking about the church in the 19th century, I could use the norms of the 19th century to discuss that. With the understanding, most church members would be aware today that in the last decade, the church has really moved to greater transparency with regard to the temple.

For the rituals still practiced today, when were they introduced and when were they formalized?

In Kirtland [Ohio], this is in the mid-1830s, we have the introduction of the first ceremonies that a Latter-day Saint might be familiar with today. They’re not in this exact same form, but men, priesthood officers, are washed and anointed and prepared for an endowment in Kirtland. That’s the language that they’re using. It’s not a formal endowment ritual. It’s an endowment of power, a charismatic outpouring of God’s power on them to prepare them to evangelize. But they have that washing and anointing.

In Nauvoo [Illinois], they build a temple, and this is the place where Joseph Smith reveals the set of rituals or ceremonies that Latter-day Saints would recognize as the foundation for what they experience today.

Under Brigham Young’s leadership [after Smith’s slaying], they have to bring hundreds of people through a day. So they start systematizing and regularizing. They introduce a new sealing text. They introduce new characters to the endowment drama.

They head west, and it’s really not until the St. George Temple in 1877, so 30 years later, that they have a temple again. And it’s there that they really start systematizing again. They start writing down the temple ceremonies for the first time.

How long would it go?

It’s somewhat ambiguous, but I think it’s safe to say maybe five or six hours.

And the endowment is now down to an hour.

An hour and change.

It’s important to realize that most people in the 19th century and early 20th century who were practicing Latter-day Saints might have gone to the temple for themselves and never returned in their lives. The people who did proxy work were a minority. Today, because of greater accessibility due to the sheer volume of temples that have been constructed, the digitization of the liturgy that allows for greater language access and the relatively small amount of time it takes to perform the ceremonies, people are now able to go to the temple regularly. It allows them to participate in the temple liturgy in ways that simply were impossible in previous generations.

How do you think that accessibility changes the role that the temple liturgy plays in the lives of Latter-day Saints now compared to 100 years ago?

I’m a practicing Latter-day Saint, and we’ve had local leaders encourage us to go to the temple weekly. In the early 20th century, we had church leaders, apostles, who confessed to not going to the temple since they went through their first time.

What does that mean then? The temple is still doing that core work of creating an identity for these people and helping them construct their place in the cosmos. But layering temple worthiness, the requirements to get a temple recommend, on top of this sort of regular temple worship, really transforms what is not only required to go, but what it means to be a Latter-day Saint beyond the liturgy. It’s a commitment to live a certain way, to do a certain thing and to construct your time and identity around this exclusivity that’s located within this building.

When did the worthiness element enter?

It’s a long process. Early on in Nauvoo, we see the first recommends to access the temple font that are based on whether you volunteered your time to help build the temple. So if you helped build the temple, you paid your tithing, you could access the temple font.

Up through most of the 19th century, church leaders would often talk about things that you shouldn’t do if you were going to the temple. You shouldn’t come to the temple if you’re drunk, they said. You should pay your tithing. But really, it wasn’t a formal rule and every bishop got to choose who could go to the temple. If your bishop would vouch for you, they would write a letter, send it to the church president, and he would check it off, and you could go to the temple.

So there was bishop roulette even then.

Absolutely. The first printed cards appear in the late 1890s and early 20th century. But as far as I can tell, the first list of questions doesn’t appear until the 1930s. And church leaders have talked about the focus on the Word of Wisdom in the 1920s, but I’ve seen some correspondence to suggest that strict adherence to the Word of Wisdom and complete abstinence wasn’t a requirement until the late 1930s or early 1940s to get into the temple.

How has this incredibly close study of the temple altered your own temple experience?

I’ve been researching Latter-day Saint history for several decades now. That study and this book, in particular, have provided me with the tools to create meaning out of the ceremonies that were at first disorienting.

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