The institution
The Unchanging Ordinances Changed
Eternal, revealed, unalterable, and revised repeatedly in living memory. The First Presidency said so itself.
The point in one sentence
The temple endowment is presented as an eternal ordinance restored by revelation, and it has been substantially rewritten several times in living memory, a fact the First Presidency's own 2019 statement acknowledges by saying ordinances are "adjusted periodically."
The documented changes
Revisions to the endowment in living memory
This table stays on changes documented by FAIR, the Associated Press, and Religion News Service. No hearsay reconstructions.
| Year | What changed |
|---|---|
| 1990 | Removal of the penalties, the symbolic gestures accompanying covenant obligations, and of the five points of fellowship, and reduction of the role of the preacher figure |
| 2005 | Further revisions to the washing and anointing (initiatory) ordinance |
| 2019 | Removal of the covenant in which women hearkened to their husbands as men hearken to God; wording made substantially more equal |
| 2023 | Further shortening and revision of the presentation |
Sources: FAIR, Changes to the temple endowment; Religion News Service, Jan 3, 2019
FAIR's own page documents the changes: Changes to the temple endowment. The 2019 changes and the First Presidency statement were covered by Religion News Service.
Concede these first
- The pre-1990 penalties were self-directed symbolic oaths, not threats against anyone else. FAIR is right to object when critics sensationalize them, so describe them exactly or not at all.
- A living church claims continuing revelation, and adjusting practice through revelation is internally consistent. This is the honest core of the believing answer.
- This page deliberately describes no ceremony content beyond what FAIR and mainstream press have published. The point does not require details, and members' sense of sacredness deserves respect.
What survives the concession
The difficulty is not that the ceremony changed. It is what the specific changes imply. The covenant asymmetry between men and women was not a presentation detail; it defined the relationship between a woman, her husband, and God inside the Church's most sacred ordinance. If the 2019 version is correct, then for 176 years women covenanted to something God did not actually require. If the pre-2019 version was correct, the current one is deficient. "Adjusted periodically" is doing an enormous amount of work in that sentence.
And each change tracked the surrounding culture with a lag, the penalties leaving as public squeamishness about oaths grew, the gender language leaving as the surrounding society's expectations changed. Revelation that consistently arrives a generation after the social pressure is hard to distinguish from the social pressure.
Why this should make you question
Members were taught, and many were disciplined for suggesting otherwise, that these ordinances came from God in their particulars. The particulars are now different. Either the particulars never mattered, which is not what was taught, or they mattered and were wrong, which is not what a restored ordinance is supposed to be.