Temple (Latter Day Saints)

In the Latter Day Saint movement, a temple is a building dedicated to being a house of God and is reserved for special forms of worship.

The Community of Christ operates one temple in the United States, which is open to the public and used for worship services, performances, and religious education.

The Latter Day Saint movement was conceived as a restoration of practices believed to have been lost in a Great Apostasy from the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Latter Day Saints in Kirtland, Ohio, were commanded to: Latter Day Saints see temples as the fulfillment of a prophecy found in Malachi 3:1 (KJV): "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts."

Far West was also platted along the lines of the City of Zion plan and in 1838 the church began construction of a new, larger temple in the center of the town.

Plans for the temple in Nauvoo followed the earlier models in Kirtland and Independence with lower and upper courts, but the scale was much increased.

Some temple ordinances were performed before most of the Latter Day Saints followed Brigham Young west across the Mississippi River.

The RLDS Church—now called the Community of Christ—owned the Kirtland Temple from 1901 to 2024, which it used for worship services and special events but also open to visitors, including various Latter Day Saint denominations interested in the building's historical significance.

In the late 1880s and in 1890, a desire to continue the ordinance work in temples was a significant consideration preceding Wilford Woodruff's decision (announced in his Manifesto of September 1890) that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would discontinue its practice of polygamy.

In 1887 the US Congress passed the Edmunds–Tucker Act, which disincorporated the church and directed federal officials to begin seizing its assets, potentially including its temples.

After a conversation with Woodruff, Logan Temple president Marriner W. Merrill stated that the contemplated public announcement prohibiting additional polygamist unions was "the only way to retain the possession of our temples and continue the ordinance work for the living and dead which was considered of more importance than continuing the practice of plural marriage for the present.

"[8] Temples have held numerous purposes in the Latter Day Saint movement, both historically and their differing expressions today.

[12] Ordinances are a vital part of the theology of the church, which teaches that they were practiced by God's covenant people in all dispensations.

The construction of the Nauvoo Temple and the teaching of the full endowment by Smith are seen as the final steps in restoring the church founded by Jesus Christ following the Great Apostasy.

Initially, the church constructed temples in areas where there were large concentrations of members: Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Hawaii, and Alberta.

However, hostile action by non-Mormon citizens resulted in the expulsion of all Latter Day Saints from the area in 1833, and the planned temple did not proceed beyond the laying of cornerstones.

In 1946, the City of Independence had the hole filled in, and the lot today is mostly covered with grass, with the Church of Christ's meetinghouse and a few trees at the northeast corner.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite) endeavored to construct a temple in the mid-1840s in Voree, Wisconsin, according to a rather elaborate plan devised by their prophet James J. Strang.