171 - The Power of Temple Ordinances & Work for the Dead with Jonathan Stapley - E45C November 3-5

Summary

Church History Matters Podcast

Episode 171: The Power of Temple Ordinances & Work for the Dead with Jonathan Stapley – E45C November 3-5
Date: October 30, 2025
Hosts: Scott & Casey (Scripture Central)
Guest: Jonathan Stapley

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Overview of the Episode

This episode delves deeply into the historical and theological development of temple ordinances in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly during the Nauvoo period and onward. Hosts Scott and Casey engage with renowned historian Jonathan Stapley to explore Joseph Smith’s evolving cosmology, the origin and implications of baptisms for the dead, expanding temple practices, gender and priesthood, and how these practices shape and are shaped by Latter-day Saint community life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo-Era Cosmology and the Purpose of Ordinances

• Cosmology Redefined
  • Joseph Smith restructured traditional Christian cosmology, creating a new religious worldview regarding God, the afterlife, and the interconnectedness of souls.
    • “In Nauvoo, Joseph Smith just completely obliterates sort of that traditional... dichotomy of heaven and hell. He introduces kind of a history to God, a history to our souls and our spirits. He gives us the temple ceremonies and the work that they do.” (A: 07:54)
• Heaven as Relationships
  • Heaven is conceptualized as a network of eternal relationships, not merely a reward or separate realm.
    • “The end game was this interconnected network of relationships that ultimately he described as kings and queens, priests and priestesses... Heaven was this thing that we built, we constructed, and that’s the end game.” (A: 11:37)
• Sociality as the Essence of Heaven
  • “You’re saying heaven is relationships, it’s all relational.” (C: 12:59)
  • “Yeah. And you’re stuck with it. You have to fix it or you... got to redeem it...” (A: 13:02)
  • Joseph Smith viewed hell as “alone—being disconnected,” inverting traditional conceptions of damnation. (A: 11:37)

2. Baptisms for the Dead: Development and Theological Significance

• Origins in Immediate Need
  • Joseph Smith revealed baptism for the dead in Nauvoo (1840), responding pastorally to grieving members. The practice began creedal, outside standardization.
    • “He gives the idea. And then people go out and do it. Like there’s no church handbook of instructions at this time...” (A: 15:00)
• Cosmic and Legal Foundation
  • Baptism for the dead considered a law “from the foundation of the world.”
    • “He says, look, in the beginning, before the foundations of the world, God established the laws and ordinances by which we’re redeemed... And then he goes to say, hence baptism for the dead.” (A: 15:00)
• Communal Salvation
  • Early Saints saw salvation as communal, not merely individual—a web binding the living and the dead through active remembrance and ordinance, not only “checking off boxes.”
    • “From the earliest moments of the restoration, salvation was a communal affair. It was a community thing. They were building the city of Zion...” (A: 22:29)

3. Temple Ordinances’ Interconnected Path

• Baptism as Adoption
  • Baptism was viewed less as an individual covenant and more as entry or adoption into the family of God, the beginning of integration into the sealed network.
    • “It was more commonly talked about as a means of adoption... integrating these deceased associates into the family, we’re creating that welding link...” (A: 22:27, 22:29)
• Ordinances Progression: From Adoption to Exaltation
  • Baptism is “the gateway,” and subsequent ordinances (washings, anointings, endowments, sealings) shape members into “kings and queens, priests and priestesses,” reflecting the structure of heaven.
    • “We have these temple ceremonies that take the believer and are going to turn them into something else... structure relationships and identity in new ways.” (A: 24:09)
• Inclusive Priesthood in Nauvoo
  • Nauvoo’s introduction of priesthood expanded beyond male ecclesiastical function—priests and priestesses included women, as seen in Joseph Smith’s address to the Relief Society.
    • “Men and women... they call it a quorum. They also call it the priesthood... men and women, you know, they met with the priesthood tonight, or my wife was brought into the priesthood... they’re talking about priesthood as a group of priests...” (A: 27:39)
    • “Joseph Smith tells the Relief Society, I’m going to make you a kingdom of priests, like in the days of Enoch and Paul...” (A: 28:24)
• Modern Language vs. Historical Context
  • The term “priesthood” has shifted meanings—understanding Joseph Smith-era usage requires a return to contemporary definitions (“group of priests,” not ecclesiastical authority).
    • “No, I think it’s a group of priests or the capacity of priests. I think, [that] is the best historical, contextual definition for this period.” (A: 30:13)

4. Temple Practices in Broader Restoration Movements

• Post-Joseph Schisms and Why Other Groups Didn’t Adopt Baptism for the Dead
  • Many restoration offshoots rejected Nauvoo ordinances because of their association with controversial practices (e.g., polygamy).
    • “That complication with plural marriage was one of the big reasons why the temple liturgy largely was not adopted by other Latter Day Saint traditions.” (A: 37:11)

5. Evolving Temple Ordinances: Practice & Policy Over Time

• Nauvoo to Utah to Present
  • Early years saw fluidity and practical adaptation—creedal prayers, proxy work, sealings, and systematization as temple work scaled up.
    • “They go from endowing a handful of people, a couple dozen maybe, to doing thousands... that requires some systematization.” (A: 40:07)
• Changes and Reforms
  • Temple ceremonies, clothing, prayers, and logistical practices have evolved in response to doctrinal clarification, scale, technology (use of film), and changing church policy.
    • “We get white baptismal clothes maybe in the 1890s... what I’d really love to figure out is when we decided short sleeve jumpsuits, unisex jumpsuits.” (A: 39:18)
    • On Endowment Evolution: “In 1877, we have the first temple again. And that’s when they write down most of the ceremonies for the first time. And they go through a series of revisions...” (A: 41:27)
  • Expanding roles for women as healers in the temple, gradually curtailed by the early 20th century.
    • “So they had men and women who were called to administer to the sick at the temple... taken out of the temple about... 1923, early twenties.” (A: 43:33–43:46)

6. Change and Latter-day Saint Tradition

• Expect Change in Ordinances
  • Change is a normative part of the church’s history, from sacrament prayers to baby blessings to how women have participated in ordinances.
    • “We should expect change. I think some people are surprised by change.” (A: 48:09)
    • “During Joseph Smith’s lifetime and up until the 1860s, we extemporized the sacrament prayer every Sunday. So we didn’t use the [written] prayer... we just made it up every week.” (A: 49:11)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Heaven as Relationships:
  • “Heaven was being connected... where those relationships existed, heaven existed... Heaven was this thing that we built, we constructed, and that’s the end game.” (A: 11:37)
• On Modern vs. Historical Priesthood:
  • “It’s impossible to understand what’s going on in Nauvoo if we don’t use those earlier definitions.” (A: 28:24)
• On Ordinance Change:
  • “People have wrung their hands over [ordinances cannot be changed] because... anyone who’s gone to the temple in the last 10 years has known that we change how we do things there... The law hasn’t changed. We still need to do the things.” (A: 30:34)
• On Doing Church as Community:
  • “I go to church, and I go to church gladly because I am there to meet with the community of saints... build Zion. Ultimately... we’re all going to be bound together in ways that can’t be broken. We’re going to constitute the structure of heaven. And I go to church on Sunday to contribute to that labor.” (A: 51:14)
  • “One of the most important things you can do on the Sabbath isn’t necessarily take the sacrament... but it’s handing the tray to somebody else so that they can. We’re doing this together.” (A: 52:37)
• On Living with Change:
  • “Nothing has to be perfect. It has to be sufficient.” (A: 47:34)
  • “It’s okay. It’s entirely okay that we do the prayer as it’s written and that we want to get it exactly correct... but it’s also okay that they did it differently.” (A: 49:11)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Joseph Smith’s Reimagined Cosmology – 07:10–11:01
• Heaven as a Network of Relationships – 11:01–14:53
• Origins of Baptism for the Dead – 15:00–18:42
• Baptismal Theology and Communal Salvation – 19:00–23:19
• Development and Connection of Temple Ordinances – 24:04–26:35
• Women and Priesthood in Nauvoo – 27:42–30:13
• Other Restoration Movements & Rejecting Temple Ordinances – 33:18–37:15
• How Ordinances and Temple Practices Developed After Nauvoo – 37:57–46:29
• Surprises in Ordinance History & Normalization of Change – 48:09–50:33
• Personal Testimony and Living Temple Principles – 51:14–54:07

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Conclusion: Testimony and Implications for Community Life

Jonathan Stapley concludes that his historical study has fundamentally changed how he approaches church life—he now views church as a communal project, a work of building Zion together, not a consumer experience. Participation in ordinances and communal worship shapes both individuals and the broader relationships that constitute “the structure of heaven.” The history of temple ordinances, with their continual adaptation and focus on communal connection, underlines that Latter-day Saint faith is, at its core, relational and ever-evolving.

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Suggested Follow-Up:
For listeners interested in more, see Jonathan Stapley’s books ("Holiness to the Latter Day Saint: Temple Worship," "The Power of Godliness"), and the mentioned podcast episode from the Maxwell Institute with Amy Harris and Rosalyn Welch for the evolving theology of sealings and adoption.

Transcript

[A]

If you were to ask anybody today, why are we building temples? I'm not sure that anybody would give you that response.

[B]

You struck on such a rich vein of material that I wish I would have thought of it.

[C]

What is the end game, then, in Joseph's mind that all of these ordinances are arcing toward?

[A]

We're all going to be bound together in ways that can't be broken. We're going to constitute the structure of heaven.

[C]

You're saying heaven is relationships. It's all relational.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, for me, one of the most important things you can do on the Sabbath is. Isn't necessarily take the sacrament of the bread and water, but it's handing the tray to somebody else so that they can.

[B]

Hello, Scott.

[C]

Hello, Casey. Welcome to another Voices of the Restoration bonus episode.

[B]

Yes, this one focuses on baptisms for the dead, but I think we're going to call it Nauvoo Ordinances. Like the. What's the B.H. roberts phrase like? His chapter is titled Doctrinal Developments in Nauvoo. And I've always sort of loved that as, like, a broad description to say there's a lot going on here, and baptisms for the dead is. Is the. That is most based in the Doctrine and Covenants. But we're going to start with that and then expand outwards because we have an amazing guest with us today. Jonathan Stapley is here.

[A]

Yeah, it's good to be here.

[C]

So excited to have you with us, man. You just had a new book come out, like, I think yesterday, as of the recording, and it's all about the temple. It's called Holiness to the Latter Day Saint. Temple Worship. How are you feeling about that book and its reception so far?

[A]

It's been exciting. It's great to have it out. I guess the press underestimated the demand, so there are no copies anywhere, apparently.

[B]

I bought it on Kindle and it was a good deal. And if you need a physical book, it'll be coming, but you can get it in E format right now, and it's well worth your time. And, Jonathan, I've got to say, like, I envy you because you struck on such a rich vein of material that I wish I would have thought of it. But your work is primarily the history of ordinances in the Church, which I can't believe, like, nobody has really focused on this very much up until now because it's such a big part of what we do and what brings us together and what really makes us a people.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, for me, it was the thing I mean, growing up, it's the things that I ordered my life and kind of worldview around, these things that we do. They had a lot of power for me as a young Latter Day Saint. And then as I started researching and writing in the history of our tradition, it was the area where there was the most happening for me and also the most surprises. My first work I did, I did some collaborative work with a scholar named Chris Wright. And we looked at, at healing ceremonies in our tradition. And you know, it was really common in the 19th century for women to administer, lay on hands, anoint, seal the anointing. And I just didn't understand how that worked and how it was even possible. And from there it's just gone from one ceremony to another. Just kind of working and seeing how it comes together.

[B]

Well, as you could see, we're so anxious to jump into the discussion that we're jumping the gun. Let me give your bio and then we'll start through here. So let me just do this quickly and then we're off to the races. All right. Jonathan A. Stapley is an award winning historian and scientist. He writes on topics related to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, especially liturgy and practice. He is the author of the Power of Godliness, Mormon Liturgy and Cosmology and Holiness of the Latter Day Saint Temple Worship. And we were just talking about your second book, which just barely came out. The Power of Godliness has been out for a couple years and it's also excellent. So, so good. In addition to that, Jonathan's authored numerous articles and book chapters. He holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University. He is also the founder of a BioRenewables and has worked with the Church history department. So, Jonathan, we're glad to have you here. Just really quickly if I can. I spent last weekend with a different restoration denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ, the Bickertonites. It's kind of there. And watching the sacrament, I was thinking of you because basically we started with the same ingredients and they cooked up a whole different meal where they're drinking wine and using a common cup. And they didn't. Only the ministry could pass the sacraments. So I couldn't like even take the cup and hand it to the person next to me because I wasn't part of the ministry and they were so strict about it. And then when they knelt down to say the prayer, they didn't use the prayers from her own eye, which sort of surprised me. And so one of the reasons why I love your work is to show how you can take the basic ingredients which are in the scriptures, and cook up a whole different meal. And even in our church, at times, we've taken those basic ingredients and cooked different meals to kind of meet the needs of the times that we're in. So amazing, amazing stuff. Tell us what led you. You told us a little bit. But what led you to study the history of ordinances in the church besides the things that you've already mentioned?

[A]

Yeah, so what you didn't mention is that my PhD is in carbohydrate chemistry, which is an atypical route to Mormon history, but maybe not. We've got an inclusive group of inclusive historical community, that there's a long tradition of circuitous paths, scholarship. And so I. I wrapped up my dissertation in 2004, started a company, and I was less researching and more doing executive stuff. And I still love research. I love researching, writing. And the church is in my bones. It's something that's a huge part of who I am. And so it was natural just to use those research impulses I learned in graduate school and apply them to that aspect of my life. And. And it was at a time when universities were just beginning to digitize their collections. So I've lived up here in Seattle for the last over 20 years, and I just started doing the spade work. And it was evident really, really quickly to me that the questions that I had when faced with the historical record weren't answered or answered completely in the existing scholarship. So it just kind of was a perfect opportunity to do the work myself and with the great collaborators I've had over the years.

[C]

That's awesome. As we talk about the Nauvoo Temple ordinances, I want to read a little sentence from your new book and ask you to maybe elaborate a little bit on this. Here's what you said about the last five years of Joseph Smith's life. Okay, so he gets out of Liberty Jail, 1839, and then he's going to die in 1844. Nauvoo. He's going to. I mean, here's how you say it. Quote. It is difficult to narrate the changes during that half decade. It is not a simple story. During these five years, Joseph Smith not only revealed an expanded set of ceremonies for the temple, but also a new cosmology elucidated by it. Close quote. And I've heard you use this word, cosmology, a lot. And in the book, you go on to define it a little bit. And I thought maybe before we went into the particulars of the Nauvoo ordinances. Maybe you could tell us what you mean by cosmology and what you understand from kind of a zoomed out picture, like what is Joseph doing from a 10,000 foot view in those last five years that all these ordinances are going to then kind of fit into? If you could kind of maybe paint that picture.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. So oftentimes in modern culture when we talk about cosmology, we often think about astrophysics. But cosmologies have been part of human existence since the beginning, Right? Genesis incorporates a cosmology in the Scriptures. We have the book of John where it talks about God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. The world in Greek in that scripture is the cosmos with a K. So God so loved the cosmos that he sent his son. And in Greek, the cosmos isn't just, just the, like the planet or the people that live on it. It's the whole of the things, right? It's God, the heavens, the astral planes, the angels, how they relate to each other, the structures of power, the plenitude of beings in the great chain of belonging. All of that is the cosmos. So God loved that. And so he sent his son. And we, I think we often diagram out things like the plan of salvation. We like circles with arrows and you know, we call that the plan of salvation. But what it really is is it's a diagram, it's a religious cosmology. When you think about what it was like in the beginning of Joseph Smith's restoration, you got converts that were largely former Protestants who believed in a kind of a dichotomy of heaven and hell. They may have believed that God created humans out of nothing when they were conceived or at birth, the human soul. And in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith just completely obliterates sort of that traditional. I mean, he's been working on it for a while. We have the three degrees of glory. But he introduces kind of a history to God, history to our souls and our spirits. And he gives us the temple ceremonies and the work that they do. And every generation, you know, talks about the work of the temple a little bit differently. You know, when I was a missionary, we had, I served in France and we had a video we like to show together forever, this beautiful couple and the kids. That's what the temple is for. I think we talk about covenant path and exaltation today a little bit more then for Joseph Smith, what he was describing was this grand history of creation spirits. But ultimately the temple was to transform this Group of believers, human beings into heaven that he saw in the Scriptures. So in the Book of John, or, I'm sorry, the book of Revelation, John of Patmos reveals he has this vision of the throne of God surrounded by this concourse of kings and priests. He describes it. They're wearing the white robes of the ancient Israelite temple priesthood. They say that it's by the blood of Christ that they were made into kings and priests. And Joseph Smith takes that and he says, yes, this is exactly correct. But it's not just kings and priests, it's queens and priestesses. And the temple is what transforms people into this thing. He introduces the possibility of sealing. So we have a new religious worldview of what the history and purpose of the universe is.

[B]

I remember a couple years ago, we brought some scholars from Community of Christ and we took them through the Jordan River Temple, which was having an open house. And that was the comment that one of them made to me. He goes, I finally get you guys. It's not really a theology, it's a cosmology, were his exact words.

[A]

Dude, well, that's gold. Yeah.

[B]

And you kind of hit the nail on the head that it's not a map, which is what theology is sometimes described as. It's a worldview. It's a way of seeing the universe and its purpose behind it. And so much of that is ordinance driven. Ordinances are reinforcing in our minds. This is what the universe is actually like. This is what the cosmos is like. So love that idea.

[C]

So this cosmological idea, when you say the ordinances in Nauvoo are going to sort of play into this reworking of, like, our understanding of the whole world of human relationships. Like, what is the end game then, in Joseph's mind that all of these ordinances are arcing toward? We're going to have, you know, innovations of baptisms for the dead. We're going to have washings and anointings, endowments, sealings, etc. Like, what is all that trying to then create, like, what is the telos, Right. The end game of, like, all of this as you understand, like, the cosmology Joseph was driving toward.

[A]

Yeah, I think there's kind of two interconnected ideas there. First is, Joseph Smith rejected the traditional conception of hell. He said in his King Follett sermon, last general conference sermon, last general conference of his life, he says, I don't fear hellfire. It don't exist. Because he talked about hell being separate and alone, being disconnected. And the inverse of that is heaven was being connected so what Heaven, the end game, was this interconnected network of relationships that ultimately he described as kings and queens, priests and priestesses, to use the previous terminology. But it was so much so that where those relationships existed, heaven existed. So they were constructing heaven in the temple through the temple ceremonies. And where those relationships didn't exist, there was no heaven. It wasn't a thing that you got like a cookie for doing well. Right. Heaven was this thing that we built, we constructed, and that's the end game. And it's harrowing in some ways because you get what you get. We're stuck with what we have. It's not like, oh, you know, you get out of, like, all your problems and your relationships, you get to heaven, you don't have to worry about that anymore.

[C]

You're saying heaven is relationships, it's all relational.

[A]

Yeah. And you're stuck with it. You have to fix it or you.

[C]

Got to redeem it. You gotta. Yeah, okay.

[A]

And to reiterate, he said, that's only through the blood of Jesus that we can do this, but we still have to do it.

[C]

Is this partly behind his section 130, that comment where he says the same sociality that exists among us here will exist among us there, only it'll be coupled with eternal glory. Like, that's the end game. It's the sociality that seal a network of relationships, like you're calling it?

[A]

Yeah, absolutely.

[C]

Glorified relationships. I love that.

[B]

Sociality is such a broad term that sometimes in class I have a difficult time pinning down what he means. Jonathan, have you found anything that kind of gives us a narrower understanding of what he might have meant when he said so?

[A]

I don't think so. I mean, he talks about wanting to be raised up with those he loves. He wants these relationships. He's hungry for kinship, but he's not like a fundamentalist, like we use the term today. He is. He believes deeply in these. This sort of relationality. And so he wants to experience these things that we experience today forever. He doesn't want them stripped away. I think it's so powerful, again, to just be a little recursive, that hell is alone. That's what hell is for him. And as an introvert, you know, I'm like, well, it's not that bad.

[B]

Yeah. I'm thinking of the whole Jean Paul Sartre, like, hell is other people, you know? But you're saying to Joseph Smith, hell is not having other people around. But that does kind of capture his feeling. Right. You know, there's that classic quote, where he says, send me and the Latter Day Saints to hell and we'll kick the devil out of doors and turn it into heaven. Basically, that doesn't matter where we're at. What matters is that we're together, and that is what will create heaven in our minds.

[C]

That's awesome.

[B]

So, Jonathan, tell us a little bit about the origins of baptisms for the dead and how they fit into the development of ordinances in the church.

[A]

Yeah. So Joseph Smith reveals baptism for the dead early on in the nauvoo period. In 1840, he's giving a sermon. He notices a grieving mother whose child has passed away, and he gives the idea. And then people go out and do it. Like there's no church handbook of instructions at this time. They're not waiting. They go out and start doing the work. And then over the next several years, Joseph Smith introduces policies and practical refinements over how it's done. And I think, importantly, there's this sermon he gives in 1843, in summer of 1843, June. He reiterates some ideas that are in section 128. But he says, look, I'm going to use the term ordinance in a different way than people are sometimes used to hearing in our tradition. He says, look, in the beginning, before the foundations of the world, right, God establishes, established, the laws and ordinances by which, you know, we're redeemed. So laws and ordinances is what's called a legal doublet. Terms that are used in legal settings in America, like aid and abet, free and clear, breaking and entering. They're like near synonyms, often with different etymological backgrounds, Latin and German, to reinforce a particular idea. And we're familiar with the idea that ordinances are laws because we have municipal ordinances. That's a term a lot of people have heard. And the ordinances of the church then are the laws of the church. So other traditions, Protestants, use the term ordinances instead of sacraments, like. Like Catholics and some other Protestants use the term sacraments. And that means a ceremony that conveys grace. But some Protestants didn't like that idea because they wanted to be saved by faith alone. So they started saying that these things like baptism were laws that you had to do, but they didn't actually convey grace or they didn't do any cosmic work. So we adopted that terminology. But what he says in the ceremony, in the sermon in 1843 is that God established the laws and ordinance at the foundations before the world was created. And they cannot be changed. You cannot change the ordinances, the laws. And then he goes on to say, hence, baptism for the dead. That's why we have baptism for the dead. In section 128, it says that baptism for the dead was established at the foundation. Right. And I think that we're used to the idea that baptism for the dead was revealed. And, you know, we're the kind of the only Christians on the block doing it. But according to Joseph Smith, it was the law at the beginning. Baptism for the dead was planned on. Arguably it was the norm because far more people will be baptized for the dead than will ever be baptized for the living. So it was the basic. Like, it was the principal idea to start with.

[C]

Do you think it's part of what D&C124, verse 41 talks about when it says, I'm going to reveal stuff that has not been had from before the foundation of the world that's particular to the dispensation of the fullness of times. If we could put those two ideas together, this was planned from the beginning to be put in place in the dispensation of the fullness of time so we could retroactively baptize for the dead. Because the laws don't change and everyone needs a chance to have this. Is that a fair way to kind of encapsulate all that?

[A]

Yeah. So I don't have very strong feelings about what happened before 1500. Basically. I don't really know much about that. I know there's the reference by Paul to baptism for the dead. I don't really have strong feelings or ideas about that. What I do know is that what you describe is entirely applicable to what we have got going on today, for sure.

[C]

So it was a law that was put in place. Baptism is the law. And in order to enable all mankind to be able to obey that law, there needs to be a way for those who didn't have that opportunity here to obey it. Hence baptisms for the dead, which was just there from the beginning in terms of the plan, basically.

[A]

Yeah. And that's reiterated several times in section 128, that it's. It's there from the foundation.

[C]

Okay. Can I ask you another question relative to 128?

[A]

Sure.

[C]

So Joseph, he's connecting baptisms for the dead to this welding together of the family of God. Right. Like verse 18, particularly, he's talking about baptisms for the dead in connection with Malachi 4, verses 5 and 6, about turning the hearts of the children to fathers and fathers to the children, and Casey and I were wrestling with this a little bit last week when we're saying, like, when Joseph says, what is the link between the fathers and the children? Behold, it's baptisms for the dead. And we were like, wait, that's not what any Latter Day Saint today would say. We would say, no, it's sealing of children to parents in the temple. That's what we would say today. What's going on in verse 18 with this idea of the sealing link being baptisms for the dead? Is this Joseph just clearing some of the initial ground that's going to eventually develop into all the ordinances? Or. Or is there something about baptism for the dead itself that links the generations? Like, what's your thought on the theology going on here?

[A]

It's an awesome question. So I think it's worth it to just kind of historicize the current ideas that we have that we feel are normative. Right. So it's not until the 1890s that latter day Saints can go to the temple and do sealings. Back child to parent ceilings back past more than a generation or two. Like. Like it's against church rules to do that, those sort of ceilings. Until Wilford Woodruff has a revelation and announces it in General conference.

[C]

So before that, what were they doing?

[A]

That's a great question. Right. There was several things that they were doing. There was a practice of adoption where you would, instead of sealing people back several generations, you would be sealed to other church members. So it's more kind of lateral, the ceilings instead of a long chain. I think it's important. And this is something that Amy Harris has written about. She has a book on it, and if I can plug the Maxwell Institute's podcast with her and Rosalind Welch, it's fantastic work on this issue. Specifically, I think it's super important to recognize that more than checking off a box, these ceremonies are to actively make a connection between people. Right. And so in this first generation, they're virtually all converts. Many of them have deceased family members who never had the chance to hear the gospel. Right. And they're desperate. The rates of mortality are so, like, astronomical compared to today. And so they're actively worried about people they know who have died without having the opportunity to hear the gospel. And so they are actively making a connection by thinking about them, turning their hearts to them, and doing a baptism for the dead and then having that recorded in the books of the law. Right. Of the Lord, or the records of the temple that function as kind of a cosmic record. The way we talk about baptism today is A way to make covenants. It's part of the covenant path. Or we make baptismal covenants, certain promises. In. In Joseph Smith's day, it was more commonly talked about as a means of adoption. It was a sign of your commitment to God and the covenant, not a covenant. So God's covenant of redemption and that we're part of the family of God, children of Christ.

[C]

Right. Like there's lots of. Lots of verses about how we become the children of Christ and.

[A]

Exactly.

[C]

Heirs in the family. Yeah.

[A]

Yep. And so by integrating these deceased associates into the family, we're creating that welding link that joins us all together. I also think it's a little easy to think of salvation. I think we've hung out with Protestants long enough that we start to think about it just as a individual effort type thing. Right. It's just. It's my business. It's about me, my salvation's about me. But I think from the earliest moments of the restoration, salvation was a communal affair. It was a community thing. They were building the city of Zion, where if your name wasn't written in the book of remembrance and you didn't have an inheritance, then you would not be there in the city of Jerusalem at the end, you know, in the final wrapping up moment, like everybody was participating together. And that's made more explicit through the Temple.

[C]

So the idea of baptism, not just as a covenant where I'm promising I'll be obedient to God's commandments, but rather the way or the mechanism by which I become adopted into the family of God is the way in which they're probably thinking about this. And Joseph in verse 18 of section 1:20 is thinking about this as people are baptized and we do baptisms for the dead, we're bringing them into that family, that eternal family, that cosmology you were talking about, about the sealed network of human relationships, like baptism is the beginning of that. Is that, is that a fair way to summarize what you're saying?

[A]

Yeah, I think so.

[C]

That's awesome. Okay, so and then from there come the other ordinances of washing, anointing, endowment, etc. And then we're off to the races. Wow. We want to talk about all that too.

[B]

How do baptisms for the dead connect to the other temple ordinances revealed in Nauvoo?

[A]

This is, I think, where the idea of the covenant path is sort of useful because we have this sequence of events. We have the Articles of Faith today. It's been edited a little bit, but when he wrote it, he wrote you know, we're saved by the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. These ordinances are faith, repentance, baptism, and the reception of the Holy Ghost. Right. That is the basis, you know, of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's part of the Great Commission, what we do. And from there, then we have these temple ceremonies that, again, take the believer and are going to turn them into something else. We're not merely believers anymore. We're going to structure relationships and identity in new ways. So he says, you know, in. In that final general conference, we're going to build the temple, and we're going to go there and be washed and anointed and endowed. Kings and queens, priests and priestesses. Right? That's. That's what he says we need to do. And so baptism for the dead is central because, again, it's part of the. From the foundation of the world, necessary for everybody. These rules apply to everybody. Everybody needs faith, everybody needs to repent, everybody needs to receive baptism and the Holy Spirit. And then everybody needs to be integrated into this heavenly concourse that surrounds the throne of God and become, as he says, kings and queens, priests and priestesses. And it's the work of the temple that does that.

[C]

So is it fair to say that baptism is like the gateway or like the act of adoption into the family of God? But it's one thing to kind of be born again into the family, and then it's like another thing to grow up and be positioned to be. To be able to sit on the throne as a king and a queen and a priest and a priestess. So the other ordinances are fashioned to kind of help us develop into that. Is that fair or how would you say it?

[A]

Absolutely. And to relate to each other in formal ways. Right. Many Christians believe that the love they have for other human beings will be stripped away and they will focus all their adoration to God in heaven, and that will be their focus. There's something beautiful about that adoration of God and that overwhelming grace of Christ. I think Joseph Smith is saying that we can still worship God and have relationships and that these relationships are they're going to become part of the structure of heaven.

[C]

Become part of the structure of heaven. That's so cool.

[A]

You think about what are the specific temple ceremonies, Right. Well, we wash and anoint based on the washing and anointing of the ancient Israelite temple priests. They're using that as a pattern. They're taking the clothing from the book of Exodus that the temple priests wore, and they're incorporating that into the Ceremonies of the temple, all of that. Right. It's evocative of those becoming a priest or a priestess. They talk about the temple. In fact, during Joseph Smith's lifetime, they don't have a temple. So Joseph Smith gets a group of people together and they administer the temple ceremonies where they can. But the people that participate in those ceremonies, they write in their journals how they called this group. They call it a quorum. They also call it the priesthood. Men and women, you know, they met with the priesthood tonight, or my wife was brought into the priesthood or joined the priesthood, might make some people uncomfortable, but when you're thinking about, oh, they're talking about priesthood as a group of priests and which type of priests, the priests of heaven, you know, then that all kind of makes sense.

[C]

Yeah. We're not used to talking about priesthood in the sense of the people. And yet in my. In my studies, like the very first time, at least in the King James version of the Bible, the very first time priesthood shows up is in Exodus 40, referring to the washing and anointing and clothing in the garment of Aaron's sons and forming them into a priesthood. We literally have a. Like the first time that the word is used, it's about forming a group of people into a hood of priests, a group of priests who will officiate the ordinances in the temple. And so you're saying in Nauvoo, this. This starts to happen with men and women.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Explicitly.

[C]

And how significant is that in your. In your estimation?

[A]

Well, I mean, I think it changes everything. There are lots of issues regarding gender and the priesthood that we haven't worked completely through as a people, as a tradition. It's a little probably above my pay grade, but I think what's so informative about the Nauvoo era, and it's something we got wrong, scholars got wrong for, I think, decades. We started going back to these records and seeing references to women being called the priesthood. Joseph Smith tells the Relief Society, I'm going to make you a kingdom of priests, like in the days of Enoch and Paul. Right. And like, wow, you know, what is that? But it's made concrete in the temple. Right. And we need to be fair. Church leaders have told us in, you know, for decades that we don't want to refer to the men in the church as the priesthood. We're trying to. Our kind of modern era, we're trying to use priesthood in a different way. But it's impossible to understand what's going on in Nauvoo if we don't use those earlier definitions. Like, it just turns it into a mess.

[C]

The angle of trying to understand a historical document or even understand Scripture. Right. There's. There's no sense in the Doctrine and Covenants in which we use the modern term priesthood just to mean that, like the, the power and authority of God that men hold. Like, if you put that on any scriptural reference in the Doctrine and Covenants, you're probably gonna. You're probably resting it a little bit. Right. Because they're not talking about it like that yet. Yet we do now, but that's not how they were referring to it. Which becomes a really important exercise when you're reading historical documents, which scriptures are. And Joseph Smith's teachings are. So, so I don't know. Put a fine point on that for our listeners here. Jonathan Lake, when we're studying the history of Joseph Smith, especially his teachings about the temple and the revelations about priesthood, how should we think about that term? Is there a better phrase than just the people?

[A]

No, I think it's a group of priests or the capacity of priests. I think, think that is the best historical, contextual definition for. For this period. Again, there's still. We have the Melchizedek priesthood and the Aaronic priesthood.

[C]

That's more abstract, more ecclesiastical structure. Would we call it that? That's more ecclesiastical structure to administer the church.

[A]

Yeah. And. And if I may, I think one of the greatest examples of this sort of definitional shift is in ordinances, because there's this sermon, the one I mentioned before, where Joseph Smith said talks about how baptism for the dead is foundational right before the world was. It's in that sermon where he says the ordinances can't change. People have wrung their hands over that because, I mean, anyone who's gone to the temple in the last 10 years has known that we change how we do things there. Like, was he wrong or are we wrong if we change things at all? And that's not what he's talking about. He's using a different term. The law hasn't changed. We still need to do the things. But it wasn't that we have to wear white clothes when we're baptized, or we have to do a thing a certain specific way that can never be changed. And priesthood's a great example of that. So if you go to the term and if you go to the diaries and the minutes and you see that women are the priesthood, then something's got to give. Like, we just don't understand it. And so we have to understand it so we have to approach it historically and contextually.

[C]

Yeah. Here's a cool example of what you're talking about. This is a sermon Joseph gave on the 12th of May 18th, 1944. So pretty close to a month before he passes, he says this. Those who are baptized for their dead must receive their washings and their anointings for their dead the same as for themselves, till they are connected to the ones in the dispensation before us and trace their lineage to connect the priesthood. Again, close quote. He's using the word priesthood about this. Like, you're saying this, this cosmological connection of human relationships, like the reason we're doing this work for the dead is to connect with the priesthood. That's good. So could. Could we could just call the end game that the thing at the end of all of this, that the sealed network of human relationships that constitutes the structure of heaven? Could we call that the priesthood?

[A]

Oh, yeah. I mean, so, like, in my books, like, I try not to use the term very often because it's just kind of weird. But, like, I use. That's the term I use. I call it the cosmological priesthood. It's a little goofy, but that. I mean, they. They called it the priesthood. Like when. When Brigham Young in Utah was like, we got to build the temple and then give a reason why it was that, so we could have our children become heirs to the priesthood. If you were to ask anybody today, why are we building temples? I'm not sure that anybody would give.

[C]

You that response, but that's a more original understanding. That's pretty good. That's solid. And by the way, men and women today wear this thing called the garment of the Holy Priesthood. Right? That's what we call. It's in the temple recommend questions.

[A]

Women officiate in the priesthood ceremonies of the temple. They function as priests in the temple.

[C]

And so the thrust of all the ordinances, if I understand what you're saying, is to help men and women together progress toward becoming a part of that eternal priesthood. That group, Kings and queens, priests and priestesses, in a nutshell, that's what it's about.

[A]

Bingo.

[C]

Beautiful, man. Wow. So good.

[B]

Why does it seem like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was the only major restoration movement to embrace baptisms for the dead? Some did, like, I know the cutlerites did baptisms for the dead, but it seems like among the larger movements, Community of Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ, Bickertonite, they never really embraced that idea.

[A]

Oh, man, that is such a. Interesting and Perhaps a tricky question. So after Joseph Smith passes away, there is a fracturing of the Latter Day Saints, and there are various discrete traditions that emerge. We all know that the quorum of the 12 and those that followed them largely made their way to the Great Basin, settling in Southern California, to northern Mexico. There were other groups that stayed out east. And each of those traditions had to narrate their reasons for existence and like, again, build up a kind of an ecclesiology and like a narrative that said, why do we exist the way we do? And the vast majority of them disagreed with Joseph Smith's introduction of plural marriage or polygamy. And we've got to be frank and open about the fact that Joseph Smith's introduction of polygamy and plural marriage did not go well. Right. We have a mass alignment in Utah who says, like, look, we did the best we could, but there's no question that we made mistakes along the way. It was complicated and hard. And while many people received a religious witness that it was the thing that they were supposed to do, there was a lot of believers who just were like, no, I'm out. Emma Smith, even though she participated in the temple ceremonies with Joseph Smith during his life, when the temple opened, she did not go in. So she's living in Nauvoo and she did not go in the temple.

[C]

Do we know why, motivation, or do we just have to infer?

[A]

I don't think we know, but I think that the fact that the quorum of the 12 was running the temple and that her kind of major disagreements with the quorum of the 12 over Joseph Smith's legacy with. Had to have been central to that, to her non participation or exclusion, whatever it was, having plural ceilings in the temple. So I think Emma, even though there was a time she reconciled herself to the process or to the. To the practice, ultimately decided it wasn't something that she could countenance. And so, like the RLDS tradition was inherently anti polygamy. Emma Smith appears to have taught her children that Joseph wasn't a polygamist. And so in various groups, David Whitmer, and this is. I don't want to say they're all fundamentalists, but there's sort of a tendency towards fundamentalism across all people. Right. When. When was it pristine? So for the Whitmers, they left and they were like, it was pristine in 1830. There are some things that happened after 1830 that we didn't really like Book of Mormon's, true. But like, 1830 is where we're gonna like, put our foot down as to, like, the true church. And the RLDS folks, you know, they're looking at mid-1830s, that doctrine and covenants, you know, 1836, doctrine covenants. That's. That's about where we're gonna go. You know, the Hedrickites, maybe the book of commandments, 1833 is for them. And then we have schismatics from the later, the Mountain Church, schismatics that were like, oh, no, no, it was before 1890. That's the best season. There's always a danger for people to be like, oh, maybe it's nostalgia. I mean, there's a lot of reasons, like, oh, the best time was back then. And we're going to focus on recreating that instead of looking forward. I think that complication with plural marriage was one of the big reasons why the temple liturgy largely was not adopted by other Latter Day Saint traditions.

[C]

Because polygamy was so tightly woven with the temple and temple was so tightly woven with polygamy that to countenance, the temple would have been. And association with polygamy, essentially, is that.

[A]

I think so.

[C]

I think so, too. From my reading of the records, it seems like that's the issue. They don't want that. William Marx, right. Emma, she really liked the stake president William Marx in Nauvoo, because he, A, was not for polygamy and B, not for the temple. And probably in his mind, it was the same idea, right? It was those go together in. And so you can't separate them in Nauvoo. So. Okay, another question then. So let's talk longitudinal here. How do the temple order ordinances that were revealed in Nauvoo continue to change and develop after the saints leave Illinois? Like, we know our next temple's not until St. George, right. We're going to get a full fledged temple again. Like, what developments do we see in the way that the ordinances are, I guess, administered, experienced.

[A]

Yeah. So if we're going to count baptism for the dead as a temple ordinance, it is. We do it in the temple. But baptism as a whole, right. It's. It's just a variant of baptism. So we do baptisms outside the temple, but it's Brigham Young in Nauvoo who says, okay, dudes have to be baptized for dudes. You know, women have to be baptized for women. There is various changes to the temple baptismal prayer up until the 1890s, where they're kind of formalized the first font in Nauvoo. This is when Joseph Smith was Alive. They build it out of wood and it rots and the water stinks. And there's this great epistle from the quorum of the 12 where they're like, we will have a font that will not stink. So let's, let's come together and build the stone font. I'm there. I'm here for that. I like chlorine smell in my fonts. And so even though Joseph Smith says, look, this is to be a temple ceremony, they continue to baptize for the dead in the Mississippi River. They baptized along the trail west for the dead. They baptized in Utah outside of a temple. It's really not until we build a font for the endowment house that it's like, isolated to a temple like structure. And then it's not until the 1920s that they limit other types of baptism. So people were baptized for their first baptisms, and they were also baptized for the health.

[C]

Until the 1920s, they were baptized for their health. That's. That's something most church members are probably not very familiar with.

[A]

Yeah. So Joseph Smith taught that the temple font could be used as a place of healing and that they would be baptized for their health. And a lot of people saw healing in the temple through baptism up until the 1920s, when they decided to focus more on the ancestral proxy work as a focus, because you could get healing outside of the temple. And they decided to do all the work there. So that's kind of like all the things that happen. I think we get white baptismal clothes maybe in the 1890s. I'm working on that, trying to figure out, like, when, like, that becomes normative. What I'd really love to figure out is when we decided short sleeve jumpsuits, unisex jumpsuits.

[C]

Hey, those are comfy, man. Those are just quick and quick, zip and go.

[A]

Yeah, but like, typically in the temple, we have long sleeves and we definitely don't wear unisex jumpsuits. So, like, that's a practical choice, but I don't know when we made that. And then for the actual temple ceremonies, the washing, anointing, endowment sealing ceremonies, there is just a whole host of developments in my book. I say, look, we can't cover everything, and it's probably against. It would probably contravene the privacy conceptions of Latter Day Saints if we went through every change. But I think it's worth thinking about kind of generational shifts. So in the Nauvoo Temple, they go from endowing a handful of people, a couple dozen maybe, to doing thousands who go through the temple. And so that requires some systematization. They add new characters. We have the day when they add Peter, James, and John as heavenly messengers. It appears that they write a new sealing ceremony. They spend some time to make sure that all the garments are the same because all the patterns are different. So it's like, okay, we got to figure this out and do hundreds a day. So we see some of that kind of early systematization. Then we have the endowment house era. And throughout all this time, it's active. Everybody participates and does all the things. So it's not a secret that when Latter Day Saints go to the temple and perform an endowment or participate in the endowment, it's a dramatic presentation that's interactive. So it tells the story of what Latter Day Saints call the plan of salvation, where we have the creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, their progression of mortality back to the presence of God. And every individual plays the part of Adam and Eve. Beginning in the 1950s, we've had it on film, and they showed it before that. It was done by actors. And early on, everybody actively portrayed Adam and Eve. So, like, there's a point where Adam and Eve eat the fruit and they had raisins there, and everybody ate the raisins. And that persists up until the. The end of the 19th century. It looks like at least the 1880s. In 1877, we have the first temple again. And that's when they write down most of the ceremonies for the first time. And they go through a series of revisions. We have diary entries like, brigham Young's son is in St. George. He takes off for a month and comes back and he says, man, they've really done a good job improving the ceremonies. He's not really explicit about what they do, but they're clearly revising and updating it for the temple. Now that they have one. That's when they do endowments for proxy for the first time, is in 1877. So they've been doing sealings by proxy since the Nauvoo Temple, but they started doing endowments by proxy 1877, in the 1920s. This is Heber J. Grant's presidency, and he asked George F. Richards, who's an apostle, to become the Salt Lake Temple president. And at that time, Salt Lake Temple president was sort of over all the temples. There's not that many. They go through and systematize again. They take out repetition early on. The endowment, you can imagine as sort of a pre. In some ways a pre Literate way of teaching. So there's a Lot of repetition. You would say the same things over and over, and they limited some of that. That was when they started writing it down completely and sending copies to every temple, making sure that. That there's no deviation because every temple would kind of have their own way of doing things. They took the healers out of the temple at that time.

[C]

What's a healer?

[A]

So they had men and women who were called to administer to the sick at the temple. So people would go to the temple for healing. Women could be administered to by women, and men could be administered to by men.

[C]

And that's taken out of the temple. About when did you say?

[A]

1923, early twenties. What.

[C]

When did that start in the temple?

[A]

Nauvoo. Yeah. We have people going to the temple to be administered to in the temple, and they have it in the endowment house. And there's healers like Zina Young. She becomes a. Later, she becomes a General Relief Society president. But she's probably our best documented healer. And there's a young women's. Like the Young Women's Magazine has this great article on her and talks about how, like, she is working in the temple and people are always coming to be healed by her. It's awesome.

[C]

Didn't she heal, like, over, like a thousand people? I feel like I remember, like, an insane number of. Like, she, like, had a list.

[A]

Yeah. Like in. In a period of years, just hundreds of people came to be blessed by her. So that's happening. We get them shift towards film, which I think is perhaps one of the biggest, because then we can get. It sounds a little crass, but we get special effects and music, which before, we don't really have. We have. We had murals in the temple and different rooms. So we had a creation room and a garden room and a world room that was immersive. It gave us the vision of the whole of the things. As if we were like the prophets who saw the beginning from the end. Our people were immersed in that vision through that technology and with film. It's a novel technology, and it presents it with a new way of experiencing it.

[C]

That's what Gordon B. Hinckley era as an apostle, not as the president of the church. But that's something he pioneered, didn't he?

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. There's great stories about him taking the film to Europe and putting on, like. Like, music. The Motab, I think, at the beginning of the film. Because back then there were import export restrictions on film and they had to watch it before they released it into the country. So a lot of Cool things like that. And people that again, have lived. You know, old timers. There's. From the late 80s to the present, there have been a lot. I mean, there have been seasons where it's been static, but we do lots of different things.

[C]

Yeah. And like you said, like, if you've been in the church and you've been in dad. The last 10 years, you've seen been multiple changes in the endowment tweaks, modifications to the script to what we do. I mean, there's the fundamentals. The fundamental covenants are still there, but there's. Yeah. Been some modifications. So to reiterate what you said earlier, like when Joseph says the ordinances don't change, what he means is the laws of God are not changing here, but in terms of like modifying the presentation of the endowment or like how we do this or that, that can change what kind of clothes we wear, how long the ordinance is. Okay.

[A]

Part of the 1920s reforms was the shortening of the garment from the ankles and the wrists, but it was still kind of one piece. And then during President Kimball's era, they made a two piece garment. And then just this year we've got the sleeveless. So I mean, things like that, they change.

[C]

Yeah. Okay. I'm even thinking way back to. Brigham Young has an account where he says, when Joseph first introduced the endowments to us in the red brick store, he turned to me and said, this isn't quite right, Brigham. You know, we're doing these things in haste, but I need you to take this and help systematize it.

[A]

Yeah, he says that. Exactly. Yeah. And then when Wilford Woodruff gets up in general conference in the. I think it's 94, 1894, to change the sealing practice, he turns to the temple presidents and says, guys, we've been doing the best we could, but it's not good enough. And there's. I wasn't, you know, Joseph Smith wasn't done revealing, Brigham Young wasn't done revealing. And I'm not. And there's going to be revelation until it's perfect. And honestly, we're a long ways off, I think.

[C]

Wow, interesting. You think we're a long ways off now or back then, or. What did you mean by that?

[A]

I suspect that what is perfect for 1894 is probably not perfect for 2024. I think we do the best we can. I'm not sure that even if we are approaching perfection for the age we're in, if we actually nail it every time.

[C]

Time. Yeah, that will do.

[A]

That's the grace Of Christ. Right. Nothing has to be perfect. It has to be sufficient.

[C]

Yeah. It reminds me of the very first baptisms for the dead. Right. Henry Jacobs just came up with a prayer that he did for that woman to be baptized for her son while Vienna Jacques witnessed. And Joseph, when he found out about it, said, what did you say? What words did you say? And Henry told him what he said. And Joseph thought about it for a second and said, that'll do. That's fine. Authorized. Done. Yeah. That's the grace of Christ.

[A]

Christ.

[C]

That's beautiful, man.

[B]

So what are some surprising things you've learned about your study of the history of ordinances in the church?

[A]

Man, that is such a fascinating question, and one which it's difficult to answer because there's just an unending series of surprises along the way. Right. I've been doing this for 20 years now, and I was surprised then. I'm still surprised today. But what I guess I think I would say is that we should expect change. I think think some people are surprised by change. David Grua, he's a longtime historian at the Joseph Smith Papers Project. He and I have been working on the Lord's Supper. We have a book project. We've been. We started during COVID and haven't got around to finishing yet. But one of the things that we've published on is this idea that during Joseph Smith's lifetime and up until the 1860s, we extemporized the sacrament prayer every Sunday. So we didn't use the prayer that was written. We just made it up every week based on the prayer that was there for folks that are of a particular age, like. Like me, who stressed out at the sacrament table and maybe had to reread it a couple times. You know, that's like, what you. You could do what?

[C]

Yeah, right.

[A]

I think it's a great opportunity. Finding stuff like that is a great opportunity to recalibrate. Like, look, it's okay. It's entirely okay that we do the prayer as it's written and that we want to get it exactly correct. Church leaders have the keys, if you want to use that terminology, to establish those sort of rules. We're a big institution, and we need rules to follow about how to do things, but it's also okay that they did it differently. Same thing for, like, women healing. Right. That was a big part of our tradition. The Relief Society handbook had provision for women to lay on hands and bless until 1968, which shocked some people. Right, right. But I think that's just because our memories are short oh, man, we're going.

[C]

To need to have you come back on and talk all about women healings. Like, I feel like that's another, that's an hour at least or two. But so here you're lifting the curtain, giving us a little peek here. But oh, man, that's a rabbit hole we need to definitely pursue someday.

[A]

It's fun. You could, like, trot out your list of best hits for every ceremony, right? Oh, baby blessings. We used to do eighth day blessings. You would bless the baby on their eighth day old. And that was normative until the early 20th century. We used to have probably half dozen or a dozen baptismal prayers, depending on the circumstances. Like, you can kind of just go down the list of like greatest hits of fun facts.

[C]

That's so cool. Well, Jonathan, this has just been so fun to have you on, and our listeners can tell why we brought you on. You're just an endless well of really fascinating insight on both the trivia, but also the substantive, deep theological cosmological richness of the ordinances. And man, we just are so blessed to have you. So really appreciate it. I do want to ask you one more question as we wrap this all up. We like to ask our guests this as they come on. How has your study, you've been studying church history for a long time, and how has your study of church history deepened, deepened and strengthened your testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ?

[A]

That's a wonderful question. So for me, what I'll say is that it's changed how I participate in church. And it's not anything anybody did around me. I think it's just growing up in America, when I did, it was easy to become a consumer of church. It was like, what is church offering me? What is the sacrament offering me? I'm sitting here considering myself and this is very individual act. And that's not the case anymore. After all this research and writing, I go to church, and I go to church gladly because I am there to meet with the community of saints, people who I love and build Zion. Ultimately, hopefully, we're connected in ways that cannot be broken. Eventually, through the generations, we don't. And perhaps happily, we don't seal ourselves to each other anymore in our same wards. We let our kids do that work through the generations. But ultimately we're all going to be bound together in ways that can't be broken. We're going to constitute the structure of heaven. And I go to church on Sunday to contribute to that labor. I'm grateful to do it. I'm fed through the process.

[C]

What would that look like if someone's like, I want to do that too. How do you do church in that way where you're trying to. To contribute to that process? Is it more of a mindset how you're viewing everything, or are there actual things that you do differently?

[A]

It's a fundamental shift in perspective. I think that one of the most important things you can do on the Sabbath isn't necessarily take the sacrament of the bread and water, but it's handing the tray to somebody else so that they can. We're doing this together, right? It's not uncommon for me to sit through a lesson or a conference or a meeting where people are discussing a topic that I've spent a bit of time thinking about and researching. And I'm not sure that anything in that meeting is going to add to my understanding of the topic. But the act of discussing with each other, being vulnerable with each other, sharing our perspectives and our feelings, changes how we relate to each other. And so what happens is, and this is again, one of the great failures of modern era. You can take 300 Latter Day Saints from diverse backgrounds, throw them together an award. You will get the lessons taught. You will get the casseroles baked and delivered. It will be a smooth operating machine. But it takes time to love each other. It takes work. I'm grateful that there's folks that I'm sure I annoyed when I first came to the ward, but after enough like chairs putting, putting away enough chairs and washing the dishes, after enough ward parties and going to campouts and bringing snacks to nursery and doing all the things that we care deeply for each other and would do. Anything that's hard to replicate on the fly, but ultimately I think that's where we've got to get to.

[C]

That's beautiful, man. Well, thanks again for coming on today.

[B]

Super appreciate it and all the success in the world for your book. Like, honestly, really appreciate the great work that you're doing and we need to have you back again. We need to do a series just on ordinances. We always end our conversations by saying we got a new series idea. So.

[A]

Well, thank you for having me. It's been great. I really appreciate it.

[C]

Yeah, thanks so much.