The Development of LDS Temple Worship, 1846-2000: A Documentary History

In LDS theology, temple rites do more than inspire meditations on eschatological themes. Ideally they provide stability and comfort in the temporal world out of the belief that families can be “sealed” together for eternity. This is not without theological complications. For instance, early in Mormon history, the question was asked regarding which man a child should be attached to in the afterlife: his biological father or the man who murdered his father but was now married to his mother?

Another question raised in frontier Utah was whether to seal orphans of African descent to their adoptive Caucasian parents. Mormon bishops asked whether a woman could attend the temple after marrying a non-Mormon. The Church’s First Presidency puzzled over how to handle posthumous sealings for nineteenth-century polygamists in Mexico for whom the records had been destroyed.

Since 1846 when the first temple with private rituals was completed in Nauvoo, much has changed regarding the content of the ceremonies, policies, and practices: who is married to whom and, for instance, standards regarding temple garments for nursing mothers. The documents assembled in this collection include excerpts from leaders’ diaries, minutes of Quorum of the Twelve meetings, pastoral letters, sermons, and official publications. They include both carefully crafted statements and less formal, behind-the-scenes deliberations.

Devery S. Anderson is co-editor of Joseph Smith’s Quorum of the Anointed, 1842-1845 and The Nauvoo Endowment Companies, 1845-1846, which together won the Mormon History Association’s 2006 Best Documentary Book Award. The current volume continues the same theme. Anderson recently completed a book about the lynching of fourteen-year-old black teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 and has begun a biography of LDS Apostle Willard Richards. His articles have appeared in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (Best Article Award, Dialogue Foundation, 1999), the Journal of Mormon History, Southern Quarterly, and elsewhere.