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Video Transcript:
When we talk about Latter-day Saint temple changes it’s normally the controversial stuff that takes the limelight — but there are so many other mind-blowing changes that have happened over the years that you’ve probably never heard of before. Those are the ones we’re going to talk about today. Buckle up.
Number 10: Did you know that before 1960, any baptized children (boys and girls) could go to the temple and participate in baptisms for the dead? It’s true. Wards would organize temple trips specifically for the primary kids. Here’s a transcript from President David O. McKay’s journal that notes the end of that policy. These days, you can’t do baptisms for the dead until you’re old enough to be in the Young Men’s or Young Women’s program. But throughout the rest of this video, keep in mind that just because you’re used to doing things a certain way today doesn’t mean they’ve always been done that way, or have to be done that way in the future.
Number 9: The temple endowment is a ritual drama in which participants essentially step into the shoes of Adam and Eve and play out the plan of salvation. Historically it was much more interactive than it is today. In fact, in the “garden room” of the Nauvoo temple and in the later Endowment House in Salt Lake City, we have records showing that temple patrons would actually eat raisins or other fruit as part of this reenactment, symbolizing the fruit of the Garden of Eden and the fall of Adam and Eve.
Number 8: Did you know that the first baptisms performed in the Salt Lake and Logan temples were actually not the traditional baptisms for the remission of sins that we’re used to today? They were actually baptisms of healing. You’ll remember the story of Naaman from the Old Testament, and how his leprosy was healed after washing himself in the Jordan River 7 times. LDS healing baptisms were based on stories like that, and often involved being immersed multiple times. This practice was phased out in the early 20th century. Some leaders had different ideas of what healing rituals should look like, and they also wanted to make temple fonts more available for the more central proxy ordinances we’re familiar with today.
Number 7: Historically, in addition to baptisms of healing, blessings of healing were, of course, not always but often performed in the temple. The Garden Room of the Salt Lake temple was regularly used for these healing blessings, which were performed by men, women — or both men and women together. At this time, these blessings were not officially associated with a specific priesthood office, but they did indeed involve anointing with oil and the “laying on of hands.” And hang tight because we’re going to come back around to this topic when we get to number 2. These healing blessings in the temple were largely discontinued in 1921, but interestingly, many of these blessings of healing actually happened in conjunction with a temple prayer circle, which leads me to…
Number 6: Did you know that prayer circles haven’t always just been a temple thing? One source reports that “some prayer circles were formally organized apart from the Endowment ceremony. Membership in these special prayer circles, which began in 1851 and continued until 1929, did not depend upon Church position. Other prayer circles were formed for priesthood groups … all of them formed under the authority of the First Presidency….” Many church meetinghouses actually had rooms specifically for prayer circles. The First Presidency changed this policy on May 3rd, 1978, consolidating prayer circles to the temple.
Number 5: This building next to the Salt Lake City Temple was called the annex. It was where temple patrons would have their temple recommends checked, and where they would change clothes and wait for an endowment session to begin (the annex was connected with the temple itself through an underground tunnel). Historically, there actually used to be a temple choir that would sing primarily in the annex, but also at special events and whatnot outside the temple. The temple choir was discontinued in the early 20th century under Salt Lake temple president and apostle George Richards. He was trying to streamline and standardize the temple experience. The choir wasn’t essential, so it didn’t make the cut, but how cool would that have been!
Number 4: The very first motion picture presentation of the endowment was produced in 1955 by a guy you might have heard of before named Gordon B. Hinckley. In order to portray the creation in the temple film, the Church actually contacted Disney and bought the rights to a few minutes of the Disney movie, Fantasia. My understanding is that they swapped out the music track, and that was the creation in the temple.
Number 3: This next one I have next to zero information on, so I apologize in advance — but multiple historians have confirmed to me that some early temples actually had libraries. They contained both religious and secular books. I don’t know how big the libraries were, or who was allowed to use them. I hope somebody smarter than me publishes more research on this in the future, but super interesting!
Number 2: Many Latter-day Saint men carry around a small vial of consecrated oil, which today is used to anoint the sick before a priesthood blessing of healing. Today, we don’t have any guidelines on where olive oil has to be consecrated and set apart for this purpose. But back in the day, the preference was that oil be consecrated in the temple, within a prayer circle. There actually used to be a little shop at the gate of the temple grounds where you could purchase oil that had been consecrated in the temple. Both men and women could purchase and use it. There’s a whole fascinating history for how oil used to be used in ritual healings — it hasn’t always been a drop or two on the head — but that’s an episode for another time.
Number 1: Alright, this one is wild, but stick with me because we need to lay a bit of groundwork: Today, if a sealed husband and wife get legally divorced, the sealing still remains intact until one of them seeks a sealing cancellation. But whether or not the sealing is canceled, the man can potentially still be sealed to a new spouse. Thus, he would technically be sealed to two women. The ex-wife could potentially also be sealed to multiple male spouses, but only vicariously after death. Many Latter-day Saints are of the opinion that those policies will equalize across genders at some point in the future. But what many don’t know is that the current policy for men actually did apply to women in the Church up into the early 1900s.
For example, Brigham Young’s daughter, Susa Young Gates, was sealed to Alma Dunford in the Salt Lake Endowment House in 1872. They got a civil divorce several years later, but their sealing remained intact. Susa then went on to marry Jacob Gates in the St. George temple in 1880. She was technically sealed to both Alma and Jacob until 1890, when Wilford Woodruff approved a cancellation of her sealing to Alma Dunford. You guys, this kind of scenario was pretty normal in early Utah before sealing cancellations became more normal around the 1890s. And it wasn’t until the 1910s or early 1920s that it became policy for women to only be sealed to one living man at a time.
If you’ve learned something new in this video, you probably have historian Jonathan Stapley to thank for it, whose work was indispensable for this. And if you want to continue to have your mind blown, go watch this interview that we recently did with him. I’ll see you there.
Learning More:
— Go read “Holiness to the Lord” and “The Power of Godliness” by Jonathan Stapley for more info on many of the points from this video.
— “Female Ritual Healing in Mormonism,” Jonathan A. Stapley & Kristine Wright in Journal of Mormon History, vol. 37, No. 1 (Winter 2011), pp. 1-85 (85 pages): https://tinyurl.com/5a3njxyt
— “‘They Shall Be Made Whole’: A History of Baptism for Health,” by Jonathan A. Stapley & Kristine Wright in Journal of Mormon History, (Fall 2008): https://tinyurl.com/3puuyxad
— “‘Pouring in Oil’: The Development of the Modern Mormon Healing Ritual,” by Jonathan A. Stapley (BYU RSC): https://tinyurl.com/4dcrj3p6
— “On the Potter’s Wheel: The Diaries of Heber C. Kimball,” edited by Stanley B. Kimball, pp. 165 mentions raisins used during the temple endowment: https://tinyurl.com/yck65r9d
— “Latter-day Saint Prayer Circles,” by D. Michael Quinn: https://tinyurl.com/yck7c42s