Temple worship has changed in important ways since the 1830s. In Kirtland, Joseph Smith promised the Saints power from on high to preach the gospel and revealed washing and anointing rituals. By Nauvoo, his vision had grown, resulting in a temple endowment that constructed heaven on earth—ritually declaring men and women the celestial kings and queens from John’s vision in Revelation. Later leaders followed Joseph’s precedent of change, from Brigham Young’s adjustments to President Russell M. Nelson’s focus on Christ-centered covenants. In this interview, historian Jonathan Stapley discusses his book, Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship.
Don’t Miss Our Latest Interviews!
Be part of a growing community exploring topics like the Kirtland Endowment and the Law of Consecration.
Book Overview – Holiness to the Lord
What is your book about, and how does it bridge “the gap between silence and expose”?
It is no secret that Latter-day Saints have a robust culture of privacy (or even secrecy) with regard to the temple. There are important religious reasons for that, but the result is that both insiders and outsiders have often been left without constructive information. And since the days of Joseph Smith there have also always been people willing to expose the temple ceremonies to the public gaze.
In recent years, church leaders have found new ways to share elements of temple worship with the public that in the past have been restricted. Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship is a scholarly history of the development of the temple ceremonies and the beliefs that Latter-day Saints have had in conjunction with them.
It is drawn from extensive research and presents information that is accurate and reliable.
Joseph Smith’s Teachings and the Early Temple Endowment
How early did key elements of the temple liturgy appear in Joseph Smith’s teachings?
Important concepts of temple worship appear almost immediately after the organization of the Church. Joseph Smith engaged in what Princeton scholar Seth Perry describes as “performed biblicism.”
Joseph identified archetypes from the bible and then worked to materialize them among the Saints. Within the first year of the Church, he dictated a revelation that explained that, like the ancient disciples in Jerusalem, the Saints needed to be “endowed with power from on high.”
Additionally, he looked to John of Patmos’s Revelation, where he saw a concourse of kings and priests surrounding the throne of God, dressed in the robes of the ancient Israelite temple priesthood. These are just two of the biblical concepts that were essential to Joseph’s revelation of the temple.
How did the shift from a more general New Testament “power from on high” to a specific Hebrew Bible model of priestly consecration change how early members understood their own identity and relationship to God?
This is such a fascinating question. In Kirtland, and in anticipation of the House of the Lord’s completion, Joseph Smith directed all priesthood officers to participate in a set of rituals based on the consecration of temple priests in ancient Israel.
They were washed and anointed and had blessings sealed upon them. Importantly, these consecration ceremonies had no effect on a person’s office in the church. Elders remained elders, and priests remained priests.
What it did do, however, was begin to materialize the vision of heaven in the present. Christians of all sorts had reference to the kings and priests in John’s vision, and the royal priesthood mentioned in 1 Peter. Joseph Smith introduced ceremonies to transform believers into this heavenly concourse in the present.
What did “clean from the blood and sins of our generation” mean to early Latter-day Saints?
Early on, Joseph Smith received revelations directing officers in the church to preach the gospel. There is some inter-textuality in these revelations with both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, in that these evangelists had the responsibility to warn the people of this generation.
They would be welcomed first to the school of the prophets and then into the House of the Lord in Kirtland and be declared clean from the blood and sins of their generation.
Men had to preach the gospel, whereas women did not.
Women were integrated into the temple ceremonies the following decade. But women were not yet public ministers of the gospel. Women weren’t called as evangelizing missionaries until 1898. So when church leaders brought women into the temple, they differentiated the ceremonies for men and women based on the expectations that men had to preach the gospel in order to be cleansed from the blood and sins of their generation, whereas women did not.
And that differentiation has remained to the present.
How did Joseph Smith redefine “covenants”—and how did that shape the temple endowment liturgy?
Covenants are an important part of the Hebrew Bible and Christian theology. I always like to recommend Scott Hahn’s Kinship by Covenant as a great volume to learn how covenants functioned anciently.
In the ancient Near East, covenants were the legal, religious, and ethical means to extend the duties and privileges of kinship to others, within various categories of relation and degrees of bilaterality. Perhaps most famously, the Lord covenants with Abraham to be his God and divine kinsman.
Latter-day Saints often think of covenants as specific promises.
Over time, the language of covenant had become appropriated by attorneys and incorporated into contractual documents. Joseph Smith followed that path a bit, and in the temple, he used the religious language of covenant to describe specific promises or oaths that church members were to make as they progressed through the endowment.
Latter-day Saints consequently often think of covenants as specific, isolated promises.
Race, Priesthood, and Temple Access in Latter-day Saint History
When did the idea of a biblical curse on the descendants of Cain begin?
They arose largely by the end of the first millennium CE and spread to Western Europe by the fifteenth century. As I write in the race chapter:
These ideas are absent in the Bible and existed specifically to justify the exploitation and control of Black people. They facilitated the murder, rape, and abuse of millions.
Jonathan Stapley, Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship
I think that church leaders’ acceptance of these ideas early on is certainly a cautionary tale. It is understandable, considering the cultures in which they lived, and I’m grateful that Joseph Smith grew to increasingly reject the broader society’s views of Black people.
But there is also no question that these beliefs caused a tremendous amount of harm both within the church and outside of it. We always need to be vigilant about what ideas we accept uncritically.
What did your research reveal about priesthood restrictions?
I think that most Latter-day Saints will be surprised to learn that Joseph Smith did indeed reveal a priesthood restriction. This restriction was explicit and incorporated the language of the temple, but it was specifically directed to Missourians and those who aided them in the war against the Saints.
A restriction can be overcome by faith and repentance.
In reality, this restriction was never enforced. I argue that it was a descriptive restriction, not a prescriptive restriction. That is to say that the idea that a certain people do not have “right to the priesthood” is something that can be demonstrably overcome by faith and repentance.
And I also argue that in the Book of Abraham, Abraham’s family, along with the Egyptian Pharaohs, were under a similar restriction/curse. I think the complete argument is a little too lengthy to include here, but the texts are, I believe, quite clear on the matter.
How did the 1978 revelation help heal the “fractured cosmos” of the Saints in the temple?
I think we are doing better now at discussing how, before 1978, we had a temple and priesthood restriction. For a long time, people talked about a “priesthood ban” that focused on men’s ecclesiastical offices. By barring black people from the temple, Brigham Young prevented black people from being integrated into the family of God—the interconnected network of kings and queens, priests and priestesses constructed on the temples’ altars.
The 1978 revelation did lift the restriction against ordaining black men to priesthood offices, but perhaps more importantly, it returned to black people the rights that were endowed and sealed.
It was a return to both John of Patmos’ and Joseph Smith’s vision of the heavenly concourse comprised of men and women from “all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues,” and who “stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes.”
Contemporary Changes in Temple Worship and Policy
What does the historical record say about changing temple ordinances?
It is quite clear that Joseph Smith regularly changed and altered patterns of worship that we commonly call “ordinances,” as have subsequent church leaders. It is a feature of living faith as opposed to being a bug.
In short, it is important to understand how the meaning of “ordinance” has itself changed over time, and how Joseph Smith and subsequent church leaders have negotiated changes in our sacred ceremonies over time. I have a whole section on this in Holiness to the Lord that contextualizes some commonly circulated Joseph Smith quotes that indicate that “ordinances” can never change.
Why was ending the one-year wait between civil marriage and temple sealing significant for Latter-day Saints?
Church leaders have always encouraged Latter-day Saints to be married in the temple and simultaneously restricted who has access to the temple. This has caused hard feelings for many, as family members who have not qualified for temple recommends have been unable to attend temple weddings. This conflict had become increasingly common with the growth of the church, and I think social media amplified those feelings of loss and sadness.
In many countries worldwide, temple marriages are not legally binding, necessitating a separate ceremony. In 2019, church leaders announced that the policy of requiring a one-year wait between a civil ceremony and a temple sealing was no longer in place in countries like the US. Families could choose to have double ceremonies if they wanted to integrate family members who could not access the temple.
It turned out that with the closing of temples the following year during the COVID lockdowns, many people found the change both timely and prophetic.
How does today’s understanding of the Latter-day Saint temple endowment compare to Joseph Smith’s time?
This is a difficult question to answer. But I think it is clear that during Joseph Smith’s lifetime, people more commonly associated the endowment with Christ’s Great Commission in Luke-Acts.
The resurrected Lord appeared to his disciples and commanded them to take the Gospel throughout the world, building up the Kingdom of God. But, he told them in the language of the King James Version to wait—to tarry in Jerusalem—until they were endowed with power from on high. The early Saints imagined themselves as reliving the New Testament commission from Christ.
Joseph Smith also talked about “priesthood” in a different way than we do today. Those who participated in the temple ceremonies during the Prophet’s lifetime talked about how they comprised the “holy priesthood.” The temple made them into priests and priestesses in heaven and on earth.
We largely frame the temple that way less today.
Final Reflections on Priesthood, Temple Ritual, and Heavenly Identity
Is there one especially meaningful idea about the temple liturgy that crystallized in your mind while writing this book?
I think that, like my last book, The Power of Godliness, this one has significantly shifted my perspective on the intersection of priesthood and the temple.
As I write in the introduction:
Throughout his ministry, Joseph Smith repeatedly identified biblical archetypes which he ritualized. The culmination of this process was his expansion of John of Patmos’s apocalyptic vision. In describing his theophany, John quoted a heavenly hymn to Jesus, who “redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth” (Rev. 5:9– 10).
Elsewhere the vision included “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” who stood before the heavenly throne “clothed with white robes” having been cleaned in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:9– 14, also 1:5– 6).
This was temple imagery from the Hebrew Bible appropriated and recast to describe the Christian heaven. Through Joseph Smith, this vision of heaven became the concrete product of the Latter- day Saint temple liturgy.
Jonathan Stapley, Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship
Don’t Miss Our Latest Interviews!
Get new interviews and articles from leading scholars delivered straight to your inbox.
About the Scholar
Jonathan A. Stapley is an award-winning historian and scientist holding a Ph.D. from Purdue University. He is the author of Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship (2025) and The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (2018), both published by Oxford University Press. His peer-reviewed articles—on topics ranging from ritual healing and baptism for health to gender dynamics in Mormon ritual—appear in leading journals such as Journal of Mormon History and BYU Studies.
Further Reading
- What Was the Kirtland Endowment?
- How Did Wilford Woodruff Influence the Development of Temple Doctrine?
- What Is the History of the St. George Temple?
- Did Moroni Dedicate the Manti Temple Site?
- What Is the Law of Consecration?
History of the Latter-day Saint Temple Liturgy
- Holiness to the Lord: Latter-day Saint Temple Worship (Oxford University Press)
- A Cosmic Identity (Wayfare)
- The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology (Oxford University Press)
- The Development of LDS Temple Worship (Signature Books)
- “The Last of the Old School”: Joseph F. Smith and Latter-day Saint Liturgy (BYU Religious Studies Center)
- Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness: Why a Temple? Why Sacraments? (By Common Consent)
- Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism (Journal of Mormon History)
