Here’s one you didn’t see coming: “The Garment of the Holy Priesthood,” by Elder Holland, the first of the featured articles in the September 2024 Liahona (the monthly LDS magazine for adults, formerly called the Ensign). Once upon a time, LDS garments were a private thing, something that wasn’t talked about publicly or even over the pulpit on Sunday. Well the times they are a-changin’. First there were several direct discussions of LDS garments in the April 2024 General Conference, such as Sister J. Annette Dennis’s talk “Put Ye On the Lord Jesus Christ.” Now this Liahona piece by Elder Holland. I have heard reports of recent LDS sacrament meeting talks of the finger-wagging variety related to LDS garments. Definitely not a private thing anymore. I expect bishops will soon be dealing with reports from the LDS Garment Police: “Bishop, I saw Sister X at the grocery store last week and guess what she wasn’t wearing.”
I’m not going to go through the newest Holland talk. That’s an exercise for the reader. Instead, I’m going to take a broader view of the new emphasis and offer some constructive comments.
Roads not taken. You can’t emphasize everything. By choosing to double down on LDS garment wearing, lots of other possible alternative topics are not emphasized. For example, they could emphasize scripture reading, and issue better manuals to support it. Lots of other alternatives that might really benefit individual church members and local units. It wouldn’t be hard to list a dozen better alternatives. Because …
Are there any benefits? Is Sister X really better off if she wears LDS garments 95% of the time rather than 50% of the time? Is anyone? Oh, you might say, what about the physical and spiritual protection they offer obedient LDS wearers thereof? Even LDS leadership has rejected the idea of magical garments that offers physical protection, although many members still embrace the idea and repeat folklore to support it. As for spiritual protection, remember that the garment is just a symbol. This has been expressly stated more than once. If there’s any protection, it’s from what is symbolized (Jesus Christ, or obedience to covenants/commandments, or whatever), not from the symbol itself. It’s like a CTR ring: the benefit is from actually choosing the right, not from wearing a ring. And …
There certainly are costs. To individuals, the costs range from various ailments (rashes, infections, etc.), heat-related discomfort (no small consideration as Planet Earth heats up), and just plain being sweaty and smelly half the time for four or five months each year. If your summer day consists of getting dressed in your air-conditioned house, driving to work in your air-conditioned car, working in an air-conditioned office, eating lunch in an air-conditioned restaurant, then driving home in that A/C car again — you may not experience discomfort and you may not all over your LDS garments. But if you are making policy for the entire Church, you need to take into consideration the circumstances of all Church members, women as well as men, in all countries and climates.
Another type of cost is that some members will read Elder Holland’s talk, roll their eyes, and think this is the last straw on the reasonable camel’s back. Other members, the 60% garment wearers, may now realize this is an all-or-nothing game and says, “Why bother even trying? They’re going to judge me anyway.” Doubling down on this is going to alienate or frustrate a lot more members than it is going to edify or uplift. And there’s a PR cost as well …
Not a cult? I usually chime in with a comment defending the Church when the typical “it’s a cult” post or discussion happens. You can reduce your attendance, stop attending at all, or formally cancel your membership without too much bother or blowback. In Utah you might lose a friend or two and possibly get the evil eye from your neighbor (or maybe a plate of cookies on your doorstep). Family friction, well that’s your family and your family problem, it doesn’t happen in all LDS families so don’t blame the Church. But lately …
But lately the needle is moving. First we don’t want to be called Mormon anymore, a perfectly decent reference that the Church and its leadership used and even embraced for over a century. This confuses most non-LDS persons, who are likely to wind up the short discussion with a missionary or an LDS person who is trying to explain where they go to church without using the M-word with the conclusion, “So you are Mormon. I thought so. You attend the Mormon Church. Right?” Now we’re moving the whole LDS garments practice and discussion from the private realm, where it received little or no public discussion even in LDS circles, to the public realm, with regular discussion of our symbolic undergarments. It’s getting harder to claim, “No, we’re not a cult.” Try telling your average church-going Christian, “Yes, we’re Christians just like you.” Their reply is likely to be, “Well, no, not really. We don’t get upset if you call us Lutherans or Catholics and we’re happy with off-the-shelf Fruit of the Loom like everyone else.”
There is a different side of this discussion, of course. For some LDS, it’s not a bother at all, it’s a privilege, or at least that’s what they will say when asked. And that’s not just those who live a fully air-conditioned life. You might wear a suit or uniform to work at some jobs, and you might have to dress up to eat at some restaurants, and you wear LDS garments if you have been through the LDS temple. That’s just part of life, so this thinking goes. I’m not saying to these LDS (and there are many of them) that they *should* be bothered by the new emphasis or the topic in general. But at the same time it should be acknowledged that there *are* lots of Mormons who *will* be bothered by garment retrenchment rather than garment accommodation or relaxation. The new approach seems to be another example of, “Let’s make the Church smaller but more righteous.” It’s not clear where the stopping point of that shrinking process is. And it runs entirely contrary to the missionary program and proselyting outreach of the Church. Hey, there’s a reason so many converts don’t stay active very long. The Church is becoming less and less welcoming to more and more people.
Okay, let’s have some discussion.
- Can you propose other topics or issues that are more deserving of emphasis in the coming year than doubling down on LDS garment wearing?
- Any benefits to LDS garment wearing you’d like to propose? Remember, leadership is explicitly saying they are symbols, so don’t attribute to the symbol any benefit that properly belongs to the underlying thing that the symbol represents.
- Costs? I don’t want to dwell on the negative, but if you have a negative cost feature to the new emphasis that I didn’t touch on or didn’t properly summarize, go ahead and weigh in.
- How’s your personal cult-meter trending? Do you think the Church getting more culty or less culty in recent years?
Wheat & Tares 
“Let’s make the Church smaller but more righteous.”
This is something to think about.
I recommend “Let’s Be Good Neighbors”.
Talk, talk, talk about how to connect to others who believe differently then we do (including spouses, avoiding “unrighteous dominion” against teenagers, etc.) and how to actually repair relationships (instead of finding ways to disconnect through self-righteousness).
Let’s talk about “differentiation” and how our morals and values don’t necessarily need to be threatened by the differences in morals and values that others have.
Let’s talk about how to “mourn with those that mourn” in a faith transition.
Where’s the needle on the Cult-O-Meter?
Was visiting family out of state earlier this year, part of a conversation with one of my “less active” brothers went ~thusly:
Me- …a cult is something that takes up all your time and all your money.
Bro- Some people say the LDS Church is a cult.
Me- That’s what I was kinda thinking…
The Catholic Church’s cathedrals are proudly thrown open to the whole world. The Mormon Church’s Temples are closed to the public and require special underpants for entry. We Gentiles will never see your Michelangelo ceilings and rose windows.
>
It is simple. Garment wearing is a costly signal. It sucks, especially for women. So if you do it, you are in the group and can be trusted. Every Mormon has been on vacation and seen a family that looks Mormon and is then verified by garment lines!
it is simple. Garments are a costly signal. They suck, especially for women. So if you wear them, you are part of the group and can be trusted. Just like a gang tattoo. Every Mormon has been on vacation and seen a family this looks Mormon and then it is verified by the garment lines!!!
I think to some extent the focus on garments is a result of our general old school business approach to religion. Business teaches us (or at least used to teach us) that objectives should be clear and measurable. Garment wearing is easily measurable. The really important goals are subjective and hard to measure. Am I following Jesus Christ’s teachings? Do I love God? Do I love my neighbor? How do I mourn with those that mourn? Do I feed the hungry and clothe the naked? Am I trying to develop Christlike attributes?
The important questions are hard. I have to figure out what they mean, then more work to figure out how to improve. It’s much easier to ask if I’m wearing garments day and night.
I have come to the conclusion that someone assigning me a symbolic object, and telling me what it is supposed to mean to me doesn’t work very well. At points in my life I’ve had various symbols that were meaningful to me. Some have been physical objects, others have not, but they were meaningful because *I* picked the meaning and the symbol. Garments increasingly feel like someone else’s symbol.
While we spent some time discussing garments at my house yesterday, we spent far more time discussing changes to the handbook, particularly those around transgender individuals. Perhaps that will be a blog post of it’s own in the future, so I won’t get into details other than to say that as a parent of a trans kid, I see the changes as a step in the wrong direction. My wife had friends reach out to talk about it, and to mourn with her as she mourned. My observation is that those who performed that Christian act aren’t much for wearing garments. While all have been through the temple, I’m fairly confident that some of them don’t wear them at all anymore, and probably none of them wear them like The Brethren would like. Clearly, the actions of a few people on one day aren’t some kind of definitive statement about the natures of The True Garment Wearers as compared to The Garment Samaritans, but it’s hard not to feel that. To paraphrase one of these friends, is this really The Plan? Lectures about whether you’re wearing your underwear good enough?
I struggle to understand those who would look at the daily lives of members of the church and conclude that telling them to wear their garments more is high up on the list of things that will make their lives better and the lives of all of humanity around us better. And even if your ultimate goal is to increase garment utilization rates (I can just imagine an SPC chart in the COB tracking this) this doesn’t even seem to be a good way to accomplish the goal. Maybe it’s my own disobedient nature, but lectures about what I’m supposed to be doing rarely make me want to change. Loving and serving others invites the Spirit and that motivates me to change myself to be better. As of yet, the Spirit has not decided to motivate me to worry about my underwear. Maybe it’s on His to-do list, and He’ll get to it if He can ever manage to cure my indolence, cynicism and selfishness. But for me and where I’m at right now, this whole garment thing that’s been going on for the last 6+ months is a stupid distraction from so many more important things in life.
This is a quote from article in regards to questions about personal circumstances including medical issues:
“Trusted family members and leaders might be consulted about a personal matter. There is, however, very clear direction given in the initiatory ordinances, and there is forever and ever your Father in Heaven, who knows you and loves you and understands everything about your circumstances. He would be thrilled to have you ask Him these questions personally.
Please don’t misunderstand. As you reach out for divine guidance, the Spirit will not inspire you to do less than follow the instruction received in the temple and the prophetic counsel shared by the First Presidency in their recent statement. A loving Father will not help you rationalize doing less than you can to align with His standards of devotion and modesty that will bless you now and forever. But does He understand your questions, and will He help you receive the blessings of respecting the garment and keeping your covenants?
Yes! Should you also consult with competent medical and health professionals when needed? Of course! Should you disregard common sense or look beyond the mark? I pray that you won’t.”
Let me see if I understand Elder Holland, if I have a medical issue that worsens with wearing garments, I can 1) talk to family and leaders 2) pray to God or 3) consult a doctor. However, if any of these sources, including God, tells me to do anything other than wear garments day and night, then they are wrong.
It seems quite simple in the end. I guess I’m supposed to wear garments no matter what. So why should I bother talking to others or praying about it?
The tone deafness in this article, with fear mongering and a complete lack of empathy for female bodies is amazing. I’m a woman who did have to stop wearing garments because of a very personal medical condition. If I were still in the church, I would read this talk and be wracked with guilt and it would make me question the direction I had received from God.
Constantly questioning your own spiritual impressions, thoughts, understanding, and sanity is hell. It is so unhealthy that this is being promoted. With his talk on mental health, I would have expected better from Elder Holland.
And the gaslighting at the end of the quote about not looking beyond the mark is infuriating. Church leaders are mandating that their members look beyond the mark. Jesus is the mark, not the underwear that represents a covenant with Him. Common sense means people should use their own judgment and be square with their own conscience and relationship to God. Common sense is not having old men mandate your underwear choices.
If there’s one thing LDS are really good at it’s virtue signaling. There are many examples. Dressing full-time missionaries the way we do (relaxed a little recently) is a signal that we are out there in force. Putting temples everywhere is a signal that we are strong. Avoiding Starbucks hot chocolate is a signal that we avoid the appearance of evil. And requiring garments for the most faithful is a strong signal that we are a unique and righteous people.
For some reason, spirituality and righteousness in the LDS church are not private affairs. It’s all about the signal we send.
Agree with ji, PWS, and josh h.
The reality is that those that have already re-claimed authority over their clothing choices (including me) are not at all swayed by anything said by Elder Holland and will not be re-surrendering our autonomy. And those that were more inclined to follow the rules now that the stick to hit the rest of us over the head with (already seen it on social media and it’s just gross).
Personally I would never tire of discussions on how to support the marginalized. YMMV.
Here’s the thing: I never made a covenant to wear garments 24 hours a day. I was “instructed to wear them throughout [my] life.” And I do. And I also take them off when I damn well feel like it. It’s none of Elder Holland’s or anyone else’s business as to when I choose to wear them and when I do not.
The idea that anyone has ever covenanted anything about garment wearing is utter codswallop. And the fact that the Church suddenly cares more about my underwear and steeple sizes and other codswallop issues is really ramping up my Cult-o-Meter to 11.
For me the “cultiness” of a church isn’t so much about demands made by the organization, but about the relationship of members to authority. It’s why I often say the LDS church isn’t a cult but some of its members belong to one. What I’m observing here is that the general leadership of the church seems to think they need make this a question of public discussion because they can see they are losing the battle. So maybe it makes them look a little more culty, but it may also be a sign that more members are developing a less culty relationship with the church.
>
This emphasis on garments is in line with almost every talk in the last GC: personal religious piety. It seems the leaders’ vision of how to spend an ideal life is being in the temple, being in church, being in other church meetings, reading scriptures and praying at home, enacting religious rituals. So much isolation, insulation, from the world. It is an obsession with the self; it is navel-gazing. Meanwhile the world around us is changing rapidly, with so many social, political problems and questions! Where is the model of how to engage in the world with love and faith? Where are the examples and helpful suggestions of ways to live Christ’s commandments to help the sick, hungry, lonely, or imprisoned?
“Pedro, I don’t know how they do things down in Juarez, but here in Idaho we have a little something called pride. Understand? Smashing in the face of a pinata that resembles Summer Wheatley is a disgrace to you, me, and the entire Gem State.”
I consider Napoleon Dynamite to be the best depiction of Mormonism I’ve ever seen. There is no church, no Temple, no special underwear, not even parents. But there is a sense of community in Preston that accommodates dumb kids (and adults) living out their normal lives. To me this is the good tolerant Mormon society.
Underneath Jared Hess’ graphic description of day-to-day Idaho Mormonism there is a plot. I lived with people in the Midwest that think the movie is a stupid teen flick. But they don’t get it because they never lived there. I only got the Bohemian connection while watching the Czech film Closely Watched Trains. In this clip, it’s easy to see where Napoleon, Deb and Uncle Rico came from. Another little town in a galaxy far far away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH5upnByEi4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH5upnByEi4 Watching Napoleon Dynamite dozens of times has changed my life in odd ways. I have a wolverine hat. I wear lots of odd T-shirts, and still crave one from Kanab. 20 years later lines from the movie are still quoted regularly. Watching it I can feel that intermountain dry summer heat….like a Mormon sunbath….
It’s
>
Well, I completely disagree that modesty is a “benefit” of garment wearing, but the Q15 clearly do as evidenced with how Elder Holland finally said the quiet part out loud:
The Q15 is currently making a big push on garment wearing. They’ve largely been very careful to stick to two reasons:
1. The garment reminds people of temple covenants. This is the traditional reasoning.
2. The garment represents Jesus. This reasoning appears to be pulled out of thin air (read the comments on this post to see some fun comments from other seasoned members who also have no idea where this new “garments = Jesus” doctrine came from), yet it was used in both Dennis’ GC talk and Holland’s Liahona article. That said, it is an image that resonates with some people. After all, why wouldn’t you want to wrap yourself in Jesus?
The Q15 seems to also have been very careful to avoid telling people to wear garments for modesty reasons. Why? Well, it’s not doctrinal, plus they know that many members are pretty sensitive about Church leaders defining a standard of modesty for them. Holland really appears to have slipped up, though. He said the quiet part out loud. He openly admitted that garment wearing is about modesty.
We’ve now had 2 GC talks and a Liahona article in the last six months, and not a single one of them has even attempted to address the elephant in the room. If Church leaders want members to wear garments, why don’t they alter them so that they are compatible with modern clothing? One woman recently found that less than 10% of all dresses sold at Macy’s are compatible with garments: https://bycommonconsent.com/2023/08/04/how-hard-is-it-to-find-a-garment-friendly-dress/, so asking why garments can’t change is truly a valid and practical question today. Church leaders’ silence on this issue is truly deafening. Come on, Q15. The garment has been modified in the past to accommodate current fashions. Why can’t this be done again today? Why are members supposed to just blindly accept that whatever the Church is selling at Deseret Book is the celestial underwear that God wants all Church members to wear?
I completely agree with @Mary about Holland’s “looking beyond the mark” comment. Christ is the mark. Underwear is not the mark. Church leaders are the ones looking beyond the mark by doubling down on garment wearing like this.
In my previous post, I managed to not include the link to an interesting discussion from seasoned members who are as baffled as I am about the newly introduced “doctrine” that “garments = Jesus”. Here is the link: https://exponentii.org/blog/garments-never-reminded-me-of-jesus/. Be sure to read the comments section.
I think the emphasis and micromanaging on garment wearing is a clear attempt to control women. Elisa insightfully wrote in her April 13, 2024 Wheat and Tares post:
“A woman deciding whether and when to wear garments is often a first step into her claiming authority over her own body and soul. Once she makes that decision, she may realize that there are a lot of other things that the Church has asked her to do that she doesn’t want to do anymore.“
Women provide almost all of the unrecognized labor that keeps this church going. Importantly, they are primarily responsible for passing along the beliefs and practices to the next generation, as mothers and grandmothers. If women feel empowered to pick and choose which beliefs and practices they want to pass along, the tenuous authority of our all male leadership will weaken. After all, this is a completely voluntary organization.
The recent hardline rhetoric on ridiculous things like garments, steeple height, whether trans people can go to the bathroom without chapterones, etc. looks like an example of the gambling term tilt: “In gambling, tilt is a state of mind where a player loses control of their game and makes costly mistakes due to frustration, animosity, or bad luck…in poker, tilt can cause players to: Play hands they shouldn’t, Bluff too much, Become overly aggressive, and Make decisions they know aren’t correct.” (AI generated definition). I think leaders are panicked about their losing control and they are responding in all the wrong ways.
I haven’t worn my garme ts for years and have replaced my tie on Sundays with a ribbon and cross. I don’t sweat the small stuff. I live y own Christian life. Haven’t been struck by bolts of lightning yet.
If God wanted his people to wear a symbol of Jesus and it is open to discussion… I guess we could wear a crucifix? That one actually makes sense.
This: “We don’t get upset if you call us Lutherans or Catholics and we’re happy with off-the-shelf Fruit of the Loom like everyone else.”
And this: “Let’s make the Church smaller but more righteous.” and: “The Church is becoming less and less welcoming to more and more people.”
And this: “Is Sister X really better off if she wears LDS garments 95% of the time rather than 50% of the time? Is anyone?”
And this: “the fact that the Church suddenly cares more about my underwear and steeple sizes and other codswallop issues is really ramping up my Cult-o-Meter to 11.”
So here’s the thing: I’m sort of ambivalent about claims that we are ‘culty’ per se. It’s hardly necessary to go THAT far, in my opinion; the more-natural-and-lower-bar response is simply to react/conclude that all of this stuff and emphasis seems, well, just plain weird. Or misguided. Like, what are we doing? THIS is what apostles are talking about in the 2024 church magazine?
At home we’ve increasingly been having conversations lately about how – in the current environment – it would simply feel strange to show up at church, or be exposed to stuff like this, as a new “friend” of a missionary (what we used to call “investigators”). As in…. who would this appeal to? Those of us in the fold already can ably roll our eyes at periodic (or even frequent) bad EQ lessons or the ups and downs of bad publicity or weird HQ policy foci. But imagine that your first exposure to the church is being handed the latest Liahona… or reading about the Church trying to flood the McKinney TX planning office with emails… or any recent GC talk on ‘defending the family’… would it resonate?
Which also leads me to point out yet one more ‘cost’ to add to Dave’s OP here: that this is the kind of stuff that generally alienates and serves to drive away the current youth of the church. Anecdotally: as a father of a pretty savvy young adult who possesses a current mission call, I can tell you that there’s constant underlying stress (on my part) to try to influence/”herd” that young person’s focus away from some of this ephemera and back onto focusing on gospel basics or excitement about mission service or what have you…. but young adults like him definitely tend to see and notice SEC fines and the church trying to bulldoze the good folks of that small town in Texas into accepting a taller building than they want, and all this garment policing etc. It’s just a headscratcher to young people.
I’ll add that one way this can play out is that this type of weird SLC/HQ “stuff” can seem foreign or disconnected to the actual lived gospel in the local ward or stake. (And hence local lived experience can be a positive counterpoint to odd stuff one sees in the news or the Liahona…) But other times, these alienating macro issues are negatively complemented or reinforced by odd things that happen locally as well. To cite another current anecdote: our recent stake YM/YW camps last month overlapped by a day in the same location, but instead of constructing some fun/supervised joint/coed activities, the organizers instead sent strong messages of “no interaction is allowed” and literally instructed the younger YM to, should they encounter a YW there, raise their arms up and wave their hands and mock scream and run away. It’s weird. And the youth thought it was weird. (They all interact with each other in the halls of the highschool, so why this artificial ‘scare tactic’ and sexualizing everything?)
So when stuff like this unfolds – whether in the form of garment retrenchment signalling or local scare tactics regarding mixed gender interaction – it’s a major distraction from the core of the gospel, it inadvertently projects the notion that the church is weird/irrelevant, and it makes the onramp for adult commitment much more difficult in my view, because I increasingly believe that stuff like this basically serves to “sort” young people into three buckets: 1) unaware or think it’s fine; 2) inclination to think it’s weird and start eyeing the exit; or 3) inclined to think it’s weird but remain committed in part due to herculean efforts of trusted support personnel. And I guess my point is: we seem to be banking the future of the church predominantly on category 1. Category 2 is out the door, literally or PIMO. And how long will category 3 keep fighting the good fight?
Because this is the broader context:
women/YW in particular are leaving church. (and not just ours…) https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/13/gen-z-women-less-religious/74673083007/
and if you’re imagining that our church setting seems increasingly unfriendly to progressive mindsets, it’s not just your imagination: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/there-is-almost-no-liberalizing-religion
data like this is sobering. yet we seem to be willing to put essentially (what i think of as) the future of the church membership body/composition at risk, just to (as Dave puts it) guilt a subset of some endowed members from 50% garment wearing to 95% garment wearing.
@mountainclimber479, I think your point about modesty is the heart of the issue. Church leaders view, mostly female modesty, and by extension garments, as a way to prevent premarital sex. Even though young unendowed women don’t wear garments, the expectation of wearing garments in the future creates a culture of female modesty. I really think male church leaders are worried that young men are already tempted by secular young women in a hypersexualized culture. They want the LDS culture to be different.
I bet church leaders also believe that having to remove garments before sexual activity will make some young people think twice before breaking the law of chastity. This would be my guess.
Modesty, as defined by men in their 80s and 90s, is what leaders want to continue perpetuating, which is why the designs don’t change.
Another angle is that if garments are no longer important or necessary, leaders may fear that members will think temple attendance is no longer important or necessary. Maybe it’s like a domino effect with garments, temple attendance, tithing, etc.
I know a former temple president who still is actively participating in the ordinance work. He told me that among the older men who are sealers, etc., that their white slacks often have urine stains. The temple presidency often has to address this issue. As one who survived cancer, I can attest that aging, prostate issues and other ailments affect many middle and older aged men. The current garment design does not allow for successful use of pads to prevent leakage. For that reason, some men are shifting to form fitting briefs which work better with pads. Until the garment is radically redesigned, more will only wear the garment top and not wear the bottoms for practical health and dress reasons.
As a registered nurse, I don’t wear the garment. There are not cuts/fits that are not visible with my surgical scrubs or even my other scrubs when I am on the med-surg floor. When patients who are LDS or non-LDS can look at me right away and tell I am LDS because they can see outlines of the garments through my scrubs, it creates huge barriers to me being able to deliver effective care given the complex (and sometimes fraught) social dynamics between LDS vs non-LDS.
Interestingly enough, the church handbook contains this carve-out for military, firefighters, law enforcement officers, or government security agents (Church Handbook 38.5.7):
I find it quite interesting that these professions skew heavily male. It seems as though some male endowed members are being given more leeway and license to follow the spirit than women.
The above sentence is an excerpt from the 1st presidency statement. I heard one woman say something to the effect of, “being a woman is an activity that cannot reasonably be done while wearing the garment.” Who am I to argue with that logic?
Any benefits to LDS garment wearing you’d like to propose?
For many members, wearing the garment is an exercise in suffering, discomfort, and physical pain. Maybe wearing the garment, a painful and excruciating endeavor, will make members think about the suffering that Christ made in performing the atomement? To be clear, I think this is an absurd and ridiculous rationale, but I’m really trying to find some link between the garment and Jesus Christ and this is about all I can come up with.
This article is confirmation to me that garments’ days are numbered.
Talking about it like this confirms there’s a problem (the problem is us! It’s always us!). They’re not going to win on this.
The church is losing the thread. Holland, or someone above him, is intent on having Holland losing what little cred he had. I had already stopped wearing garments. If this kind of talk hits my ward, I will no longer be attending. This push will only compound the existing problems with members generally not having anything close to a healthy relationship to their bodies or to the bodies of others. To frame it as something Jesus wants is disgusting, disturbing, and all around duplicitous. Things will only get weirder in the LDS church. They have completely lost touch, and yet sure seem intent on making sure ‘their’ marks are all over bodies of the members. And the way that Holland article is cited is quite unbelievable. Wresting the scriptiures, thy name be the contemporary LDS church. Good riddance.
I checked MountainClimber’s suggested similar post (Exponent II), and now more fully appreciate the struggle that women have with garments. One comment was especially interesting: My temple recommend interview is coming up in a few months and I’ve been thinking about this, too. This is the response I’m planning to give when asked about garments: “I’m not comfortable going into details, but I do wear them when I feel like it is appropriate.” I’ll just leave it at that.
Let’s just leave it at that.
Kindly allow me to scream: the garments have NOTHING to do with modesty! To say that they have anything to do with modesty is to go beyond the mark. It is like unto some apostles not that many years ago coming up with all kinds of reasons why Blacks would never receive the priesthood–they made the reasons up in order to explain something, and today the church rejects all of those reasons.
How do I know that garments have nothing to do with modesty? I will use the male body since I am a man. If it were immodest for a man to show his shoulders, then BYU basketball players would not wear immodest uniforms that show their shoulders. If it were immodest for a man to show his chest, then BYU swimmers would have to wear bathing tops, but they do not. BYU has all kinds of male athletes in uniforms that expose skin normally covered by garments. Those uniforms are not immodest. We all agree that showing male genitalia in public would be immodest, but almost no one thinks that a basketball player or a track and field runner in a tank top uniform is being immodest.
I read in LDS Living many years ago a letter from a mother who complained about her neighbor 8 year old boy who rode his bicycle in their neighborhood in a tank top, and this poor mother lamented the bad example–bad because of immodesty–that this boy was setting for her own children. Many readers commented to support the mother, instead of calling her what she was: ridiculous. There is nothing immodest in an 8 year old boy wearing a tank top while riding a bicycle. If a parent wants to dress her child uber-conservatively so that even from toddlerhood to cover all of the body parts that one day will be covered by the garments, that is her business, but she is wrong if she calls a child’s dress immodest.
I sincerely regret that Elder Holland cited modesty as a reason to wear garments. The original garments may have covered Adam and Eve’s nakedness, but they don’t serve that purpose today. Regular clothes cover my nakedness, and my underwear are unseen. It is not my underwear, my temple garments, that stop people from seeing my nakedness. A member of the CoJCoLDS can be perfectly modest with clothes that show shoulders, and there is nothing wrong with a man removing his top to swim or to run or to do other activities. There are no marks on the sleeves or shoulders. And for men, the top has marks, but they don’t cover what we would consider immodest nakedness.
I wear garments, but sometimes I don’t. I don’t wear them when my wife and I do the marital thing. I sometimes don’t wear them when I go to the doctor. I don’t wear them when swimming, and I get all the way naked when showering or bathing. I’m not much of a gym person, but I don’t wear them when exercising. I believe that do wear the garments as instructed in the temple, and I do wear them day and night. When asked in the temple recommend interview if I wear the garments as instructed in the temple, my answer is an unequivocal yes, and I think that is perfectly honest. Maybe, just maybe, the garments are made for men, instead of men being made for the garments.
I’ve been garment free for close to 10 years. I really see no purpose to wearing them other than lucky charm-like superstition and single virtue signaling. They aren’t like the hijab which is a big time outward virtue signal, but you can tell if people are wearing them.
Let’s make the Church smaller but more SELF-righteous.
Garments have NOTHING to do with modesty. It goes beyond the mark to say that they do.
I will agree that garments do cover those areas whose exposure would be considered immodest, but they also cover other areas whose exposure is not immodest.
For example, look at the church’s university’s sports uniforms. I will talk only about men because I am a man. BYU basketball players perform, on camera even, in tank tops that expose their shoulders and upper arms. BYU swimmers perform with no tops at all, exposing their areolas and nipples, and this is not immodest. BYU would not allow its athletes to play in immodest clothing.
We do not wear garments today for modesty. While the original garments given to Adam and Eve may have served the purpose of covering their nakedness, we have clothes today that do that. We do not wear temple garments to prevent other people from seeing our nakedness.
I read an article years ago, in LDS Living I think, where an LDS mother complained about her neighbors, who allowed their 8 year old boy to ride in their neighborhood wearing a tank top. She thought that such dress was immodest–that was the word she used–and she wanted to know if she was right. Many commenters supported her, instead of telling it like it was: she was being ridiculous. There is nothing immodest about an 8 year old boy wearing a tank top for outside play, and anyone who thinks such dress is immodest is sick and has a warped mind.
I have a few thoughts. First, I’ve been surprised by how angry some of the people I know are about this specific retrenchment and yes, it is perhaps the straw that is breaking some camels’ backs from what I’m hearing.
To post-menopausal me, garments are a symbol alright. They are a symbol of the church, something that is ill-fitting, that was literally not designed for me, that is not good for my health or mental well-being, a distraction from the good things about following Christ, and something that makes me look like a weirdo to normal people. They are an embarrassment. So yep, they are a symbol of the church. That about sums it up. They remind me of Steve Martin’s short story The Cruel Shoes.
I suspect that one hidden reason the current leadership is so anti-missionary efforts is that they did not serve missions. I honestly can’t imagine that most people who served missions would be taking the types of actions we are seeing. I suspect a President Uchtdorf would not touch this nonsense with a ten foot pole, for example (as a convert, not a previous missionary). It takes a true lack of listening and empathy to get where we are. Whether we are becoming more culty, we are certainly becoming more authoritarian with less emphasis on individuality and choice. To quote Kamala Harris: “We are not going back.”
Let me sum up the problem the LDS church leadership faces. They democratized the temple and temple rituals. All adult members are not only told to go to the temple but the leadership has made clearing the bar to qualify for the temple about as low as it can possibly be. The LDS culture enthusiastically sends any who are willing to the temple. The reality is what we should expect: The more “democratic” you make something, the lower the quality of participation.
This exact situation happened with missions and in two ways. As it concerns missionaries, the church lowered the bar and allowed just about any young adult to go on a mission. What followed was a great increase in the number of missionaries coming home early. So many came home early that nowadays a missionary coming home early is hardly noticed. In response the church leadership has made adjustments to the mission protocol – allowing more frequent contact with home, liberalizing dress, offering more mental health support to missionaries, etc. I have no judgment if this has made missions and missionaries better or worse. I can observe that the expectations of missionaries of today are much different than the expectations were of missionaries of Gen-X.
As it concerns missionary converts, back in the 1970s and 1980s, the missionary program so democratized baptism to the LDS church that for a while and in certain missions, thousands of people were baptized with absolutely no evidence of spiritual conversion or religious commitment. I recall an argument made by advocates for this program to be that baptism allowed the person better access to the gift of the Holy Ghost, and this would help the person to become fully converted. Well, that argument did not work out very well, did it?
And so with the democratization of the temple endowment the church leadership may be repeating the same miscalculation. They have argued that having people go to the temple and get on the “covenant path” will allow many more members to become highly committed Latter-day Saints. Maybe. But perhaps having people go to the temple who haven’t developed the discipline of religious orthodoxy means there will be many LDS members having punched the temple ticket who have no inclination to follow the orthodoxy certain leadership desires.
It’s ironic that there’s so much emphasis on Jesus made the minutiae of the Law of Moses obsolete, and then the LDS Church can’t seem to move past having a tedious, codified policy on things like how people wear their underwear.
Just as the church had seemed to take a step back on Pharisaical garment regulation, they brought them right back.
It’s underwear. It’s only real advantages are (1) in its symbolism for the wearers and (2) social signaling. If I’m in Utah (or anywhere in the Mormon corridor), it’s pretty obvious to tell who is wearing garments and who isn’t, even just when standing in line at the store. I really couldn’t care less about what underwear people wear, but sometimes inferring whether a person is LDS or not can be socially useful.
From a practical perspective, garments are just not designed very well and they really don’t have great fabric options. The world of textiles has come a long way in the last couple decades, and the church just hasn’t kept up despite some efforts. Improved design and a better fabrics would go a long way in making them more comfortable and practical without sacrificing their symbolism.
Another real physical cost is that they essentially double the amount of laundry a person has to do. Instead of washing a normal pair of small underwear, you have to wash essentially a second full set of clothing for each day.
Hmm…I think it’s a mixed bag right now. I don’t know that I’d frame it as more or less culty, although it surely will seem that way from outside. I think we’re seeing the symptoms of two things:
If you flip back through the conference talks from April 2024 and October 2023 you can really see the divide forming. You have the old guard preaching doom, gloom, sad heaven, and spiritual elitism. Then in stark there were talks like Elder Soares waving everyone back to Jesus and Alan Philips talking about being less judgemental and building communities.
About the social signalling of garment wearing, it must be appreciated that the more the importance of garment wearing is emphasized, the more important the signal becomes.
It is quite a paradox that garments have become an outward sign of religious devotion. They are underclothes and until very recently they were something non-LDS heard about but never saw. Now we all see the thing, especially when it is not seen!!
Georgis, you are obviously a man, because for women, the garment forces the church’s definition of modesty. Women’s garments are designed to keep dresses long enough to cover them, and that a woman cannot wear many of the tops and necklines that show a little more skin, so while garments *should* have nothing to do with modesty, they act as modesty enforcers for women.
Go read that article that someone linked to at Exponent about how hard it is to find women’s clothing that do not expose the garment. And compare the length of men’s garments to women’s. Women on average are shorter, yet women’s garments are actually cut longer through the inseam. Back in the days when I wore the icky things, I compared my garments to my husbands. I am in the “petite” category of women, shorter than average. My husband is 6’3” so taller than average. Yet my garments were 5 inches longer than his. Why? To prevent women from wearing shorter dresses or shorts. I had to wear capri length shorts that came below my knee to cover my garments and my husband could wear shorts that came to just above his knee. So, women’s garments are designed to enforce a certain level of modesty, while I totally agree with you that men’s garments have nothing to do with keeping men modest,
Mormon underwear has to be one of the funniest conversation points people can discuss.
What other religions have made underwear the focal point of their righteousness?
Perhaps one day Mormons should all be required to only wear their garments and nothing else.
imagine if Holland were to make that a requirement?
we would literally start to see the Mormons wandering around Utah county in their polyester polygamy panties.
so stupid.
The garment symbolizes being “hid with Christ in God.” We become — each one of us who wears the garment — a holy temple–a “vessel of the Lord” wherein is poured the holy oil of anointing. And so yes–those who wear the garment are symbolically “clothed in Christ.” It is a beautiful symbol–a reminder that each one of us might have the “record of heaven” to abide within us. And that more than anything else is what makes the Lord’s people a “peculiar people.” Or, in other words, a “hidden” or “sealed” people.
Anna, yes, I am a man, and I admitted such in my post, so I’m not sure what to make about your “you are obviously a man” statement. I hope that being a man doesn’t make me a villain! Maybe I was unclear, so kindly allow me to rectify my error. Some people use the garments to enforce modesty, and this is wrong, whether for men or for women. I used the example of men in my post because, as a man, I don’t write about women’s underwear. Is it immodest for a woman to show her shoulders? I don’t think so, if my opinion matters. BYU women basketball players also show their shoulders (per results from a google photo search). Would it be immodest for an 8-year-old girl to wear a tank top while riding her bike in SLC? I don’t think so.
When I wrote at the beginning that the garments have nothing to do with modesty, perhaps I should have written that the garments should have nothing to do with modesty. That garments are used to enforce modesty reflects on the rottenness in our state of Denmark (speaking metaphorically–I have nothing against the Danes). My last statement also need not be read misogynistically, so I’ll rephrase: “Maybe, just maybe, the garments are made for people [instead of men], instead of people [instead of men] being made for the garments.” I did not intend to insult women. I think my allusion will be clear to any readers at this site: Mark 2:27, where Jesus allowed flexibility in the “rules” for keeping the sabbath day. Maybe some flexibility should be extended to garments as Jesus said they should be to the sabbath.
I do apologize for not being clear in my first post. I meant no disrespect to the women.
@Jack: Fine, if you like the symbolism and you like wearing the garment. But wearing the garment shouldn’t be mandatory to appreciate the symbolism of being “hid with Christ in God,” nor should it be the only way a believer is allowed to express that symbolism.
My cult-meter redlined the second I learned about the temple penalties. Picture any movie protagonist stumbling into a room full of robed figures miming mutilating themselves should they reveal their secrets. To any outsider, that reads instantly as a cult. And yes, the language of the penalties has been removed but the gestures have been preserved in opaque symbols that are supposedly mysteries of godliness.
”Can you propose other topics or issues that are more deserving of emphasis in the coming year than doubling down on LDS garment wearing?”
Welcoming refugees and immigrants, combating racism, stewardship over the earth and our natural resources, anti-bullying, nurturing healthy self-esteem, and critical thinking and research skills come to mind.
Georgis, now that I totally agree with. The garments should not be being used to enforce modesty. Yet, they are used that way. And I think it is a misuse of the garment that actually damages what they should stand for. Women’s garments are designed with excess fabric so they hang down, poke out, shift, bunch, and it gets very hard to find clothing that covers them. They could design them so they work with modern clothing if they wanted to. But for women, the church wants the side advantage of keeping their women well covered.
Brigham Young changed the garment when his daughters started refusing to be married in the temple because they wanted to wear the styles from the Eastern US. It has been done before to accommodate women’s styles, and there is no good reason not to change again. What is “modest” is different now than it was years ago and yet the church’s standard is stricter now than it was in the 1940s when BYU homecoming queens were in strapless evening gowns.
Anna, imagine this. a garment tank-top. The garments have no markings on the shoulders or sleeves, so they don’t need to be there. Garments at one time went from the ankles to the wrists, and now go from the knees (or thereabouts) to the upper arms. Why couldn’t we have tank-top garments for both men and women? While we’re dreaming, I’d like a tighter fitting bottom that actually held the jewels in place, perhaps even compression shorts. Hey, compression shorts and a compression tank top!
On the subject of modesty, when I was YMP I attended a Sunday YM/YW combined meeting led by the bishop, and the stake YW presidency attended that Sunday. Somehow the question came up about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, which the bishop said was not pornographic, although anything could be used for illicit purposes. The visiting stake YW presidency almost fell out of their chairs and argued with him, but the bishop held his ground. The following Sunday a stake presidency counselor called me aside and privately asked me what happened, and I explained it, and I told him that I thought that the bishop was 100% right. I also told the counselor that Sears catalogues had pictures of men and women in underwear, and in my youth we always had a Sears catalogue in the house, and that wasn’t pornographic either. I then told the bishop privately that the stake YW presidency had obviously ratted him out. I never heard anything more. I wonder what other gossip happened? How many people did the YW presidency tell about our flawed bishop and the damage he was doing to the youth in Zion?
It seems a solid 20% of the instagram reels that pop up for me are someone explaining why garments are so amazing. I saw one young woman do a package opening of the garments. I’m shocked about how much attention they are getting. Where are our prophets, showing us how to be Christian?
I’m so f***ing embarrassed I used to be Mormon.
Some members are in special categories and no one judges them if they don’t wear garments while they work—football players, musicians, and actors come to mind. Yet when someone performs hard labor in 100 degree weather with 90% humidity we expect them to wear garments. There appears to be a subtle caste system at play.
We also might concern ourselves over the environmental impact of garments. More fabric in landfills (watch the Brandy Hellville documentary if you want to see the impact of fabric clothing disposal). More laundry. More luggage transported in airplanes when members travel. More fuel spent for air conditioning for members who wear extra layers of clothing.
Georgis, you may not personally have a problem with a child, male or female, with their shoulders showing. But the LDS church does.
In 2011 they published a story in the Friend with pictures called Hannah’s New Dress where a four year old girl is taught to wear a t-shirt under a sundress. I tried to add the link to article but it wouldn’t paste, sorry. It was around this time i was the piano player in primary and they had a lesson for sharing time where the mandatory lesson from head quarters was to teach modesty to the primary kids and part of that lesson (as laid out explicitly in the handout from Salt Lake) included telling little girls that the sundresses without sleeves they were wearing were immodest. I got to watch little 4 and 5 year old girls squirm in that sharing time. Four year old children do not purchase their own clothes but they were taught to feel shame about them that week. And to feel shame about their exposed shoulders.
A few weeks later i was a sub in nursery. And there was a two year old wearing a sundress BUT their parent had put a sweater on them so their immodest shoulders were covered. And i got to watch grown adults try desperately to keep a sweater on a two year old without admitting to themselves out loud that the reason they were wrestling with a two year old over a sweater was because they had been taught that this kid’s shoulders were somehow sexual.
This is what was being taught ten years ago to children and babies in diapers. Not just the For Strength of Youth booklet, which is directed at teenagers, where shoulders were specifically called out as needing to be covered for girls. The LDS church taught 4 year olds girls they must cover their shoulders.
So it is nice that shoulders being uncovered on children doesn’t bother you. But it absolutely bothers the LDS church.
I second Niki’s comment. I am the mom whose daughters wanted to wear shoulder displaying sundresses at home at at church. I was a mom at church wrestling with their 2 year old in that way. Both of my girls would take off the sweaters at church to bare their shoulders whenever they felt more rebellious (which was funny). One is a teenager now, the other is 7. We haven’t been in the pews confronting this issue for several years now, but I still remember.
In our family culture, I squash a budding mutiny between the girls and their father by saying, “we do not show our shoulders in the common rooms in our house as a token of respect for their father”.
No one is happy with that explanation – my husband is like, “No – it’s a modesty thing” and then we end up at that rabbit hole that ends at “respect for father” (the girls themselves and I do not care about their bared shoulders). I don’t teach it as an extension of “Modesty” (aka dress suitable for the activity of the occasion), and we are not prepping our daughters to go to the temple. He is the only one who notices or cares about it, so we adapted our dress to make him feel more comfortable and I am not interested in obscuring that motivation.
The girls are not happy with that explanation because they feel like it is a form of “special treatment” for their father. They think they look cuter and are more comfortable in a sleeveless sundresses without a shirt underneath. They comply because it’s habitual and because they do want to keep some peace in our household. They actually have more interesting forms of rebellion going on as part of their developmental processes.
Niki-La and Amy,
If your daughters live in Utah, wait until they access old yearbooks and realize that all of those GA wives and YW/RS Presidencies wore sleeveless and even strapless gowns (gasp!) to formal dances in high school. The world did not end then and I doubt it will end based upon female shoulder exposure. Another issue that just makes us look weird.
Niki-La and Amy, I get that the Church and people in the Church make shoulders a modesty issue, and they’re wrong. We agree. I’ve seen pictures of both Kamala Harris, Jill Biden, Nikki Haley, Susan Collins, and Condoleeza Rice in sleeveless outfits, and they weren’t being immodest. But Amy, are you creating a greater problem by telling your daughters to cover their shoulders “as a token of respect for their father”? Does that not make your husband out to be a very bad man in his own home? But you wrote that he was the one who made it a modesty thing. We only had sons, so I didn’t deal with this issue. A sleeveless or strapless dress at church might not be appropriate, but it positively is not immodest. Appropriateness and modesty are two different concepts. Who judges appropriateness at church? We put signs on our buildings that visitors are welcome, and we don’t ask our greeters to turn people away if the greeter deems their dress to be inappropriate or immodest. It isn’t my place as a member to judge my neighbor for his dress; I should be happy that he or she is there. In my part of the world, business women wear sleeveless dresses all the time. It is neither inappropriate nor immodest.
If shoulders were immodest, then modest people would not expose them in public. BYU basketball players, with the approval of the church, wear BYU-issued uniforms that expose their shoulders in stadiums with thousands of people. If shoulders were immodest, i.e., sexual, then one would think that the Church would require its university to have their athletic teams cover them, and they don’t.
Church members who teach children and other adults that sleeveless dresses are immodest are wrong for the same reason that very senior leaders were wrong before 1978 for preaching reasons why Black men would never receive the priesthood, reasons which the Church today totally disavows. Anyone providing an answer where the Lord has not provided one goes beyond the mark when he or she teaches it as doctrine and truth. I would rather have a woman in church in a nice sleeveless dress, like she might legitimately wear to work, than to stay home because someone told her that she was immodestly flaunting her sexual allures and causing the men to have impure thoughts and physical reactions. A largely inactive family in our ward came to church a few years ago with their teenage and college-age daughters, and the daughters all had nice dresses that were appreciably above the knee. An older man told me, then EQP, that I needed to talk to the father about the length of his daughters’ dresses. I told him that I was happy that the family was at church, and we don’t know what concessions the parents might have had to make to get their daughters there, but that it was not our place to judge them and certainly not to gossip about them. Just a few weeks ago we gave the gift of the Holy Ghost to a woman in a sleeveless dress in sacrament meeting. She wore her nicest dress to honor the Lord, and she was not immodest. The bishop didn’t ask an elderly woman to borrow her shawl to cover this woman’s indecency.
We may judge ourselves but not others, but not judging others is exceptionally hard to do in LDS-dominant areas. At least in the center place, it seems that being judgmental, critical, and unkind to anyone different is baked into the DNA. It is easy for me, who lives in an LDS minority area, to talk about people from UT-ID-AZ, but I do observe, both from my time living there and from transplants in my ward here, that judgment runs deep, and that is sad. I don’t know how to make Saints less judgmental of their neighbors. I guess they first have to want it.
Dave B., you touched on a live wire with this topic. Thanks, and thanks to the commenters. To people obsessed with other people’s modesty, I say worry about your own problems and leave your neighbors alone. Quit judging others, and try being kind. It really isn’t that hard. I’m bowing out.
Georgis, I agree and I gave that a lot of thought actually. My husband draws the line a very specific way and holds the rest of us to a very specific church standard that myself and my oldest do not have the faith in God to back up (from a literal sense).
When we go out in the community, I encourage more clothing (not less) because we have very fair skin and I hate dealing with sunburns. We are transplants to the rural Mid-West from southern CA, so there is a certain amount of sense of “no sleeveless stuff” from a blending in point of view. And to be fair, my oldest and I have “shoulder covers for her” that she will “magically take off” at specific points (though still being appropriately dressed) that she will put on before returning home. My oldest has already told me of specific times when she is grown up with her own household that she will wear sleeveless stuff. We are already having conversations about “the accidental sexualizing of the shoulders” (which she thinks is hilarious) and how to determine what types of sleeveless to wear and where.
My husband was specifically the one who cares what our children are wearing inside our home. My husband is the one who specifically cares about the sleeves. Most people we know literally don’t care or don’t have any skin in that game (pun intended), so he obviously stands out with his preferences. This is a religious tradition, virtue-signaling family culture interpretation he brought with him into our marriage and into our family.
If the choices are:
a) Lie to my children and say that I care (in solidarity with him) about their bare shoulders when I don’t – I can’t do that. My kids rely on my honesty with them because that is the relationship we have.
b) Join my children in a full fledged revolution/lay down the new law as “Mom” and worsen the relationship with my husband – I am not interested in doing that (more then what is already happening).
c) Enforce the compromise that no one likes but everyone gets something they want from it – that is the best decision I see as available right now.
Amy, thanks, and you make a great point. No one knows what goes on behind someone else’s closed doors. Each of us has to figure it out for ourselves, and we need to have the decency, as a people, to respect the decisions and compromises that other people make. We need to treat each other with dignity and respect, and allow them to make it work in their lives. We need to sustain each other in their decisions, even if we think that we would have made a different decision. I respect and sustain you: you are trying to make it work in your family. You deserve nothing but respect and kindness.
If religion is about what you wear or eat, who you have sex with and how, or how much money you can give and then only speculate how it’s used before you get to salvation or how you treat your neighbor, then maybe there’s a problem with the religion.
Sigh. Here is a big miss that I see:
When RMN took the helm several years ago, he had the obvious opportunity as a former physician to parlay his medical experience into a therapeutic theme for his tenure as church president: something simple and powerful like “Heal God’s Children.” This theme would have had the potential to involve the institutional church and the local members in more internal, interfaith, and even secular efforts all across the globe to promote health and healing of all varieties for all of humankind. Given the ambitiousness of such a theme and its genesis in RMN’s previous profession, his oversized ego still would have been stroked; but at least the emphasis would have been to focus our efforts (and all that money!) on fostering good relationships with our proverbial neighbors through compassion, generosity, and dedicated service.
Instead, it appears to me that the command-and-control surgeon stereotype within RMN has largely won out in his church presidency. His pseudo-theological catchphrases like “Higher and Holier,” “Think Celestial!”, and, of course, “Covenant Path,” that are parroted ad nauseum now by the ostensibly orthodox, contribute to an overall theme of something like “Purify God’s Chosen Children” or “Perfect God’s Chosen Children.” It feels to me in all this that the hero/god complex of the really old guy who’s finally in charge of everything is now trying to work itself out, but with some painful repercussions to the rest of us in terms of our relationships to ourselves and to others both in and outside the church.
This new emphasis and increased inflexibility about garments and garment wearing is frustrating but not surprising in the context of this neo-purity culture that RMN and his ilk seem to be seeking to (re)establish. Make the Church Pure Again? I dunno.
I agree with DaveW’s comment that “Garments increasingly feel like someone else’s symbol.” I agree with KM’s comment that this garment emphasis (among others) looks like an example of “tilt” and death-rattle. I want to agree with The Pirate Priest’s assessment that we’re seeing a generational shift in leadership toward those who may advocate more for healing God’s children than for hectoring them about compliance with superficial performances. And I want to agree with enterprisecaptain’s comment that “This article is confirmation to me that garments’ days are numbered”; I very much hope that the newer, younger leadership will at least take the well-worn Mormon-pragmatist path of survival and send the weirdness of mandating 24/7 religious pillowcase-underwear down the memory hole as the leadership witnesses the continuing hemorrhage of the younger “chosen” generations from the church. Speaking for myself as an elder millennial, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but I am embarrassed by my church—contrary to the sycophantic proclivities and proclamations of some churchmen, I hold that the gospel and the church are not at all the same thing.
Look guys (in Salt Lake), if you want to keep temple garments themselves as a component of the faith, fine, require them to be worn in the temple, but stop making our faith look so bizarre, culty, and unappealing by talking sanctimoniously about garments so publicly and especially by requiring members to be explicitly interrogated in private about their day-to-day use of garments if they want to worship in the temple. Maybe if we dropped this subject (and other thought-policing questions that flirt with cult territory) from the temple recommend interview, we’d have more people willing to patronize all these temples we’re building. Otherwise, these Angel Moroni-less temples may end up standing as mostly empty, cautionary monuments of one surgeon-turned-prophet’s quixotic desire to outdo (and in some respects overturn) the efforts of a previous church president who was naturally more charismatic, visionary, sensible, self-effacing, and beloved by his people.
(On that note, as an illuminating aside here at the end of my comment, a man who works for the temple department recently moved into my ward and has quickly garnered the favor of the ward’s faithful, who lap up any insider info they can get from him about the temple that’s been announced for the area I live in. I guess there’s a certain latent smugness in these churchmen where they can’t help but say the quiet parts out loud sometimes. During a discussion this church employee was leading in an Elders Quorum meeting I attended recently, he disclosed that the temple department itself has not known about HALF of the temples RMN has announced during his presidency until he announced them in general conference to all the church. Are you kidding me?! The church employee spun this, of course, as a sign of RMN’s prophetic mantle. But in a 21st century church that—for better or worse—operates (or is supposed to operate) as a corporate body, committees and departments and all, this revelation just reinforced a nagging image I’ve had for a while now of old men in rusty armor atop worn-out horses trying to joust windmills in honor of delusional loves.)
Pontius Python:
“But wearing the garment shouldn’t be mandatory to appreciate the symbolism of being “hid with Christ in God,” nor should it be the only way a believer is allowed to express that symbolism.”
I agree that there are other ways to express the meaning of the garment. Even so, I think the same might be said of all of the sacraments of the church. And so, regardless of whether or not the ordinances of the priesthood are exhaustive in their symbolism ours is the responsibility as disciples to follow the Savior in receiving them in order to “fulfill all righteousness.”
@Jack, I completely agree. Just as members of the Church follow the Savior’s example of submitting Himself to baptism in order to “fulfill all righteousness”, I believe that members of the Church should also follow the Savior’s example (and the example of Peter, James, John, and the rest of the original 12 apostles) of submitting Himself to wearing His temple garments 24/7 in order to “fulfill all righteousness”. Oh, wait…
As a Mennonite outsider, I try to find religious analogues for the Mormon ways. The garment issue (and related shaming) brings to mind the Talmud and the Pharisees. Kolob brings to mind Purgatory, as both bring order to the unknowable using an imaginary place. And then there’s the Treasury of Merit…I .haven’t figured out the Mormon equivalent to Indulgences yet…..
It took the Israelites and Catholics thousands of years to come up with these systems. It only took Joseph Smith 10 years to come up with equivalent Mormon systems.
>
I know I am probably late to the discussion, but I think the currently vogue description of “weird” applies to The Fifteen and what they choose to emphasize. Weird and sad.
Supposedly, garments now remind us of Jesus. But what if we actually talked about Jesus to remind us of Jesus? At my local ward, we’ve discussed garments over and over since last General Conference, diverting worship time away from conversations about Jesus. If remembering Jesus is the goal, this seems self-defeating.
“Even LDS leadership has rejected the idea of magical garments that offers physical protection, although many members still embrace the idea and repeat folklore to support it.”
I don’t know how many stories I heard growing up of garments literally offering physical protection from wearers in accidents, particularly in the areas of the body covered by the garments. To me it screamed a big desire of the membership to feel the relevance of these seemingly silly pieces of underwear. There had to be validation that they actually did something amazing and weren’t just another rabbit’s foot. And anecdotes and folklore became it. It never ceases to amaze me how fantastic stories of bias-confirming miracles spread among believing communities. Common people love rumors and stories, but only stories that confirm an already-held set of beliefs, not stories that lend credence of other belief systems. Hence lots of garment stories, but no stories of worn crosses and crucifixes offering physical protection. Yet in Catholic culture stories abound of miraculous occurrences from wearing the cross or making the sign of the cross, something deemed heretical and anathema in much of LDS culture.
What bugs me must about “modesty” discourse is that, regardless of what stance we take re: bare shoulders (of people of any gender or age whatever), we are continually conceding to an absolutely unscriptural, undoctrinal redefinition of what “modesty” means. And that the current usage of “modesty” is often polar opposite to its scriptural meaning, and obfuscates our ability to hold conversations about a Christlike virtue that really does matter for the shaping of souls and of Zion as a whole.
Now, I understand that language evolves over time, and that both inside and outside the church, “modesty” has come to mean almost exclusively policing how women’s and girls’ bodies are covered. And it’s worth critiquing that discourse, whatever words we use for the thing we’re talking about. But this bugs me far, far more than the current (futile) push to erase the “Mormon” moniker ever could.
I don’t get why the church is so obsessed with garment they come from the Masons who only wore the. during temple ceremonies and the markings are Mason Markings. I don’t get how they get from the Masons to Christ
When I was a kid we’d rummage around in Grandpa’s attic at his nut farm. One day we found his old Masonic sword. He had no objection to us using it to whack weeds. We broke the tip off in a sword fight with a tree. I don’t know what happened to it. Maybe my brother still has it.
At one time these swords were carried by the guards at the entrances to Masonic Temples to discourage “eavesdroppers” on the secret activities inside the Temple. By time Grandpa got his, it was ceremonial, like an Elk wearing a tooth.
It appears to me that there’s a very strong connection between Masonic swords and Mormon underwear. They both represent secret ceremonies in a Temple. You can still buy the swords, and like the underwear there’s only one source.
There could be a difference in how Mormons use their old underwear though. The old sword was useful for whacking blossoms off of Tansy Ragwort. If we had found old Mormon underwear we probably would have used it to polish furniture or clean the shotguns, but Grandpa wasn’t a Mormon.