201 - History of Women's Service in the Temple | Church History Matters I Women & Priesthood Series

Church History Matters

Scripture Central

Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2026

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, hosts Scott Woodward, Casey Griffiths, and Lisa Olsen Tait explore the rich and often overlooked history of women’s interaction with temple worship in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Beginning in the era of Joseph Smith, they examine how women participated in sacred ordinances, contributed to temple preparation, and understood their relationship to priesthood power within these holy spaces. Tracing developments from the early days of the Church through the 20th century, the discussion highlights how women’s roles in temple work expanded and adapted over time. From the Nauvoo Temple to later temple practices, the hosts uncover key moments, teachings, and experiences that shaped women’s spiritual authority and participation. This episode offers thoughtful insight into how temple worship has been a central place for women to engage with covenant-making, service, and the power of God throughout LDS history.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a time when family relationships are often fractured by death.
0:04.3	This sort of paves the way for this explosion of genealogy and temple work.
0:08.9	This is the biblical endgame.
0:11.3	There's been great effort made to expand the availability of the temple experience,
0:16.7	both as a patron and a temple worker.
0:19.4	Just to emphasize how important St. George is, it's the first
0:22.5	temple that has all the ordinances. This is an era when the word modesty starts becoming associated
0:28.9	with clothing rather than just behavior. These temple ordinances, marriage ceilings, all of this
0:35.3	is introduced at the same time as plural marriage.
0:38.2	The principles haven't changed, but the practice has changed quite a bit.
0:42.1	In the part of the presentation where they partake of the fruit, everyone partook of a raisin.
0:47.9	That's fascinating.
0:51.7	Hello, Scott, hello, Lisa.
0:53.9	Hey, guys. How are we? Yeah. Hey. We're back. And today we're tackling the subject that, if I'm being honest, I've really wanted to talk about, which is women in the temple. Women serving in the temple. It overlaps with a lot of things that we've already discussed, but this is our
1:12.2	focused episode where we're going to be going through the history of women serving in the temple.
1:25.5	Because we're talking about the temple, which we did an entire series a few years ago on the development of temple ordinances, we kind of developed this standard disclaimer.
1:36.3	Because this is an area where a lot of faithful Latter-day Saints sometimes get a little uncomfortable.
1:42.3	What can we talk about the temple outside the temple?
1:45.0	And we were just talking a few minutes ago about how there's been kind of this beautiful
1:48.8	opening up about the temple, right, in the last couple years.
1:53.6	It's been marvelous. We've had conference talks about the covenants of the endowment.
1:58.2	We've got whole webpages on Church of Jesus Christ.org
	...

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