Earlier this year, significant changes were made to the LDS temple endowment. As a follow-up to an earlier essay about the patriarchal theology of the endowment ritual, this essay will explore the evolution of the LDS endowment over the past 33 years regarding the covenants female patrons make.
The Adam-God doctrine may be a “deadly heresy” in the current LDS church, but ideas that have their origins in this doctrine remain at the center of Mormon theology today. Let’s discuss how current temple worship and LDS teachings/policies regarding gender and sexuality continue to be influenced by ideas initially developed as part of Young’s polygynist cosmology.
The lessons this week are focused on directing members to identify the ways they are blessed by restored priesthood authority and the rituals and ordinances pertaining thereunto. A major emphasis of the lesson materials is devoted to gender complementarianism and gaslighting women into accepting the policy of male-exclusive ordination in the LDS church.
This week’s Come, Follow Me lessons use the revelation addressing the Shakers, and another on spiritual discernment, as a platform to propagandize heteropatriachal marriage as essential to God’s “plan of exaltation.”
The effort to discipline Natasha Helfer for ethically performing her role as a certified sex therapist highlights the spiritually abusive practice of excommunication and how the system is ripe for the exercise of unrighteous dominion.
The temple endowment has long been a tool that indoctrinates members to accept a hierarchy that exalts men by subjugating women. Perhaps then it is unsurprising to see the earliest uses of the proxy endowment ritual for the dead being used to do the same to deceased women.