Hi there, wire-religionless sinners, professor Anthony Sweat here, welcome to another great

episode of the Religion Departments podcast, where we bring you recent publications from

the BYU Religion faculty.

A number of years ago, I gave a devotional about the temple to a large group of Latter-day

Saints.

As part of my presentation, I taught about the five major covenant laws that we promised

to follow as part of the presentation of the endowment.

And the meeting was over, and I was talking with various people who had attended, and

older gentlemen approached me with more of an accusation than a question.

He said something like this, I don't think you should have discussed those covenant

specifically in a public place like this.

I appreciated his concern to keep the teachings of the temple endowment sacred as we should,

and I could also understand where he was coming from, knowing that through my research

on the temple, that there used to be instruction to not discuss anything that happened inside

the temple outside of its holy walls.

But also knowing that many of the brother and in recent years have discussed the temple

covenant publicly, I told him that much of what I cited came from them, and even showed

him a statement from President Benson listing the temple covenants in order and encouraging

us to teach about them better.

He said something like this, President Benson said that?

And I said yes, he did, and I showed him my source and my quote.

He then paused for a second, and then said, well, I don't think President Benson should

...