Hey everybody, if you're going to be in Utah over the next few weeks dropping kids off at school or maybe heading back to school yourself, we wanted to let you know about a really special place in downtown Provo called the Compass Gallery. It's a beautiful, expansive art gallery right on Center Street that doubles as a Faith Matters event space. And it's where we've got some really amazing programming happening this fall and designed especially for students looking for support on their journey of faith. To give you just a taste of what we have planned, we're giving away a special gift to anyone who stops by the Compass Gallery and says that Faith Matters sent them. They're open from 12 to 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, so be sure to swing by and pick up your gift from us. And don't forget that students and young adults also get a really great discount on Restore. You can grab your tickets at faithmatters.org slash restore if you haven't already. And if you're in a position to help us sponsor this type of programming, we would love for you to get in touch. You can email us anytime at info at faith matters.org. Thanks so much. Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters.

We're so excited today to talk about the temple. It's a topic we love and that sits at the heart of

our faith, but because of its sacred nature, it can sometimes be difficult to explore openly.

Our guest today is historian Jonathan Staples. He spent the past two decades studying the temple and its role in Latter-day Saint Life.

His new book, Holiness to the Lord, is coming out this fall, and it incorporates a remarkable collection of never-before-seen archival records.

The book explores the temple's earliest origins and the ways that Joseph Smith drew on the book of revelation

and biblical archetypes to transform ordinary people into priests and priestesses through covenant,

community, and ritual. Jonathan also documents the generational shifts in temple practices over time,

and the sacred work the temple has been doing in the lives of Latter-day Saints from the beginning to today.

We were especially grateful that Jonathan was willing to engage with some of the harder questions,

things that don't always fit neatly in a Sunday school setting, but that many of us still carry quietly.

He speaks candidly about temple recommends and garments and the evolving expectations around worthiness.

We got to ask him about the temple's connection to Masonic ritual, the history and the specifics about how similar they actually are,

and also how to sit with a very real pain that can come with conditional temple participation,

especially when that means leaving behind a family member for a temple ceiling.

Jonathan brings both deep scholarship and lived faith to this conversation.

He helps us see the temple as a living, evolving expression of our faith,

one that reflects a divine invitation into connection, transformation, and covenant belonging,

and that draws us into Joseph's bold and sacred project to bring heaven to earth. And with that, here's our conversation with Jonathan Stapley. All right, well, Jonathan, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for your book and for being here for a conversation. We've been looking forward to this all summer. So glad to have you. Thank you. We were just saying, I don't think we've had a temple conversation on the podcast before.

And I think one of the things that was so fascinating to me about your book is that even though

the temple has been such a part of our life forever, so much of this felt like new information

for me.

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