Review
Title: Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Liturgy
Author: Jonathan Stapley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year Published: 2025
Pages: 217
Format: Hardback
Genre: History; Theology
ISBN: 9780197799796
Price: $29.99
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
The temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have often presented an aura of mystery and exoticism to non-members. Much of this mystery stems from the sacred and private nature that church leaders and worthy church members attribute to their temple activities. That same sense of mystery also extends to many church members. While our regular church meetings are open to all and appear quite informal compared with many other religions, by contrast, our temples present a more formal, exclusive, and ritualistic type of worship that is often a surprise to first-time temple attendees.
Historian Jonathan Stapley addresses these elements of secrecy, sacredness, and exclusivity in his new work, “Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Liturgy,” a history of LDS temple worship published by Oxford University Press. While the Church has become more open over the years about discussing the physical purpose of temples and temple ordinances through open houses, publications, and online information, much of that sense of mystery remains. In “Holiness to the Lord,” author Stapley has brought together perhaps the most comprehensive and respectful treatment to date of the history, theology, and cultural importance of temples while still respecting the privacy and sacredness with which members extend to their temple experiences.
“Holiness to the Lord” begins with a discussion of the development of the elements of temple rituals and ordinances by Joseph Smith, Jr, during the first years of the Church’s founding. Stapley points out how these elements took form over a fourteen-year period as the Saints began proselytizing and growing in numbers. The church was not even a year old when Smith dictated a revelation directing the Saints to move to Ohio from New York in anticipation of being “…endowed with power from on high,” which church members interpreted as an event like the Pentecost in the book of Acts in the New Testament [1] There in Kirtland, Smith and his followers were to build a house of the Lord in preparation for this anticipated outpouring of blessings and power, the beginnings of the temple liturgy.
Smith’s vision of the order of heaven was steeped in a series of sanctified ordinances that sealed relationships here on earth in the afterlife, what Stapley has elsewhere described as the “cosmological priesthood.” [2] Heaven, in that context, was not so much a reward or place of eternal rest, but an ordered relationship of families and fellow saints ordained as kings and queens and priests and priestesses through biblical archetypes and rituals. This more complex theology continued to develop through the exodus from Ohio, thwarted efforts to build a New Zion in Missouri, and the establishment of a new community and more formal temple in Nauvoo than existed in the Kirtland area.
Stapley relates in subsequent chapters how the temple liturgy has changed over the years. He explains that concepts such as exaltation, sealings, and the purpose and practice of wearing temple garments, including dressing the dead for burial, have changed over the years. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of “Holiness to the Lord” is seeing the theology of the Church through the lens of change in temple worship. Initially, Joseph Smith made the developing temple ordinances available only to his inner circle of supporters and leaders, later expanding them to all deemed worthy to receive them. Stapley devotes a chapter to the issues surrounding race and the temple/priesthood ban. The exclusion of those of African ancestry from ordination to the priesthood and from participating in temple ordinances began following Smith’s death, and was later restored following President Spencer Kimball’s 1978 revelation ending the ban.
Another change from Smith’s initial theology had to do with Smith’s perception of the nature of the preexistence and eternal afterlife. The concept of a cosmological priesthood, not fully developed during Joseph Smith’s lifetime, evolved under subsequent prophets, resulting in the reordering of policies and practices related to temple ordinances. Smith’s vision of “uncreated and coeternal spirits” was revised to include “viviparous spirit birth” as literal spirit children of Heavenly Parents [pps 97-100].
Many current church members are of an age that has seen repeated and significant changes in the wording of the temple rites, the dramatic presentation that is part of the endowment itself, the administration of baptisms for the dead, and the washings and anointings of the initiatory work. The access to temples has also dramatically increased in the last couple of decades, as a couple of dozen temples a few years ago now number in the hundreds worldwide. For decades, only four temples existed outside the borders of the United States. As an example of the growth in temples, the church now has one operating temple in Nigeria, with six more either under construction or in the planning stages. In fact, according to recent announcements, more temples are either planned, under construction, or in use outside the United States than within its borders.
All of this change complicates church members’ understanding of an unchanging Deity and orderly theology. Stapley quotes historian Stephen Taysom:
Western religions find ways to “make necessary changes to remain viable” while simultaneously employing narratives upholding an unchanging religious stasis…Change in the Latter-day Saint temple is buffered within a narrative of unchanging religious experience by the principle of “ongoing revelation.” [p 73]
In “Holiness to the Lord,” Jonathan Stapley has researched and produced an invaluable and respectful examination of the Church’s unique temple experience and placed it in the context of a growing new religion, changing and adapting to new circumstances and a developing theology. Most current members would hardly recognize the church activity of the first generation of Latter-day Saints as compared to our correlated and highly ordered church activity of the 21st century. No one should be surprised if more change takes place. “Holiness to the Lord” represents a valuable primer in how change is managed in the church through the example of temples. Similarly, we should not be surprised to see continued changes. Understanding this process of change will better prepare members to understand and assimilate greater changes in the future.
[1] D&C38:32
[2] Stapley, “The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology,” Oxford University Press, 2018