Holiness to the Lord: Latter-Day Saint Temple Worship

Across a wide array of religious traditions, temples are sacred, private spaces where observers can worship with other members of their congregation. Temple worship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly called the Mormon Church, is kept virtually secret from outsiders. And even Mormons themselves might find certain aspects of worship confusing. While respecting the privacy of church members, Jonathan A. Stapley’s Holiness to the Lord provides an insightful, fresh overview of Latter-day Saints temple worship, including the initiatory washing and anointing rituals, the endowment ceremony, and relational sealings.

Within a year of organizing a church in the early 1800s, Joseph Smith began revealing liturgies, introducing increasingly expansive ceremonies and cosmologies and establishing temples as their liturgical center. After Smith’s murder, church leaders worked to broaden access to the temple liturgy, bringing forth regular periods of change and reform. Stapley offers new insights into both the historical exclusion of Black people from the temple and the simultaneous integration of Native Americans, Polynesians, and other non-white racial and ethnic groups into the religion. He traces the contemporary fight against racism in the church and its adjacent communities, all while centering temple liturgy and the religious construction of participants’ inclusion into a priesthood of heaven and earth.

Stapley’s deep dive into Mormon history, cosmology, and ritual sheds fresh light on contemporary Mormonism.

Jonathan A. Stapley is an award-winning historian and scientist.