Penalty (Mormonism)

The penalties were similar to oaths made as part of a particular rite of Freemasonry practiced in western New York at the time the endowment was developed.

On May 4, 1842, Joseph Smith instituted the endowment ritual in his Red Brick Store in Nauvoo, Illinois to some of his closest circle of adherents later termed the Anointed Quorum.

Grant appointed a committee charged with revising the endowment ceremony which was done under the direction of apostle George F. Richards from 1921 to 1927.

While the gestures remained unchanged, the church removed the explicit descriptions of the three methods of execution and replaced them with the phrase, "rather than do so, I would suffer my life to be taken.

[20] Historian Wallace Stegner wrote “It would be bad history to pretend that there were no holy murders in Utah and ... no mysterious disappearances of apostates".

[21] Another historian Juanita Brooks stated that violent enforcement of religious oaths was a "literal and terrible reality" advocated by Brigham Young "without compromise".

Woman in temple clothing circa the 1870s, depicted with a knife symbolically referenced in the penalty to allow ones body to "be cut asunder and all your bowels gush out." [ 1 ]