Transcription
So, you want to know more about how the second anointing became a central part of LDS temple worship, only to later decline to near nonexistence. Last week, I did a "So You Want to Know More About" video on the origins of the second anointing, how it aimed to solve the problem of salvific assurance, how it was the culmination of Joseph Smith's temple rituals, how it was rooted in some social conditions and disputes taking place, including in Smith's own home, and then how it played a role in the succession crisis used by Brigham Young to assure his leadership over the LDS faith.
But even after the Saints left Nauvoo and left behind the Nauvoo temple, the second anointing still had a fascinating and unpredicted life. After [snorts] a couple of decades of neglect, it became a central part of LDS temple worship, but then later largely disappeared. So, in this video, I'm going to explain how the ritual of the second anointing evolved, how it shaped LDS temple experience and expectations, discuss how questions over recommends, or who should get access to the ritual, largely resulted in its decline, and then touch on how the ritual still exists, though in a reduced and somewhat awkward form. Let's dig in.
After the Latter-day Saints, led by Brigham Young, relocated out to the Great Basin and established Salt Lake City, there were a couple of years of largely neglect. The Saints had built an endowment house and did some temple rituals in various places like Ensign Peak, but the second anointing was not among them. It wasn't until late 1866 and early 1877 where Brigham Young seems once again anxious to return the teaching of the second anointing. It might have been related to the Mormon Reformation taking place during that same time, where there was a great worry and concern over who was actually righteous and perhaps offering some rewards for those who go above and beyond service. Regardless of the circumstances, Brigham Young teaches the second anointing again and introduces several new people to the practice. And we know this because of Wilford Woodruff's diary.
Now, this is part of my "So You Want to Know More About X" series that I sometimes do on Fridays, that places a lot of significance on primary sources, which is why I'm going to be quoting from quite a few in this video, and you can find them linked in the video description. Here is how Wilford Woodruff's diary records Brigham Young teaching about the second anointing on December 26th, 1866.
"The subject of the endowments and second anointing was presented when Brigham Young, when President Young said that the order of the second anointing was for the persons to be anointed to be clothed in their priest priestly robes, the man upon the right hand and wife or wives upon the left hand. The administrator may be dressed in his usual clothing or in his priestly robes as he may see fit. The meeting should be opened by prayer. Then the administrator should anoint a man a king and priest unto the most high God. Then he should anoint his wife or wives queens and priestesses unto her husband. There should be but one man anointed at any one meeting. If more than one man is anointed in a day, they should come together and open by prayer as though there had not been any meeting before, and thus continued to the end."
And just to remind you about how the LDS Church is uncomfortable with public discussion, seeing it as really sacred. This is how Wilford Woodruff's diary looks like on the online catalog for Woodruff's collection. Notice that entire portion is just blocked out. But thankfully, we have people who have transcribed it, having access to the originals, and you can find a link to the Wilford Woodruff diary on the wonderful Wilford Woodruff Papers website in the video description.
Once the Saints then finished some of their pioneer temples, first St. George in 1877, and then Manti, Logan, and Salt Lake City, the second anointing becomes a crucial part. In fact, there are often rooms set aside for that ritual in particular. In the Salt Lake City Temple, there is the Holy of Holies. Here's a photograph of the interior. You'll note the domed ceiling. This is what it looks like from the second floor, by the way, where the dome intrudes upon the dressing room on the floor above. And then in the other temples, there is typically a ceiling room that could be set aside for second anointings when necessary. And what's important is this ritual was taught as not just the culmination, but necessary to assure your exaltation, which meant that it was a cornerstone of LDS temple worship.
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As temple worship became more of a central part of the Latter-day Saint experience once those pioneer temples are completed, the second anointing was widely seen as the necessary culmination. Members were taught that it was the expected capstone of these rituals, the final say that makes sure the conditional promise that they received in the earlier ordinances of endowments and washings and anointings. It also became a core ordinance for vicarious rituals. Those who are deceased, they wanted to make sure that they too receive those ordinances, just like any other ordinance that's necessary for the highest degree of the celestial kingdom. The second anointing was something that they were taught to look forward to and therefore they petitioned for it.
If you look through the First Presidency Letter Books, which are available at the LDS Church catalog, you see letter after letter from members appealing for either them or their deceased to get permission to go through the temple and receive their second anointings, and that they're often trying to jump the the steps, the process of getting qualification and receiving that recommend that had to be issued from local authorities. But then that raised a question, a question of what does it take to become worthy for the blessing that assures you becoming kings and queens, gods and goddesses? How do you make sure you're giving it to the right person? Because remember, this assured their exaltation. It's not something that was still just conditional.
And so you see very early on church leaders becoming worried that we're becoming too, I think the technical term is, "loosey-goosey" and allowing those to receive access to the temple. And they worry that we're being too open and many Latter-day Saints are just expecting it. So in 1887, for instance, John Taylor and George Q. Cannon sent out a letter of instructions to church authorities saying this, respecting second anointings: "Too great care cannot be observed in selecting and recommending persons for the sacred ordinance. Men and women who receive it should have proved by years of faithful service in the cause of God and unshaken loyalty to the principles of righteousness that they are fit subjects to receive it. If the door were opened and the authorities were permitted to recommend freely those who they thought suitable, we fear that many unworthy persons might be recommended for this ordinance."
So you see these conflicting assumptions that principles that are going to come into conflict. On the one hand, seeing this ritual as a necessary culmination that all Latter-day Saints should strive for, yet on the other, a fear that if we get too loose with our standards, we're going to be granting people access who are not worthy of it. So over the ensuing years, over the next three decades, you get increasingly urgent petitions from church leaders insisting on local authorities to be more selective in who they're allowing. At one point, even telling local authorities that, just so you know, if you grant, if you give someone a recommendation to get their second anointing, and then that person eventually apostatizes, it's going to be on you. You are going to be judged for that. Think about that, you know, degree of accountability now being placed on the local leaders. They emphasize that recipients of the second anointing should have gone above and beyond expectations. It's not just a general faithful life, it has to be an exceptionally faithful life. Um, and so eventually thousands are going to receive it. Um, but there were these very high standards. Either it's the reward in the final years for someone who lives an exceptionally faithful life, or it's the entrance into leadership. And those are the two primary criteria. But even then, there was worry that too many people are receiving it, which is going to lead to the next stage in the story.
Because starting in the 1920s, the standards for those who receive the second anointing changed fundamentally. Heber J. Grant, who is president of the church from the 1940s through the through the from the 1920s through the mid-1940s, institutes a new policy. The the process by which someone gets their recommendation. No longer could they be recommended by local authorities. Now, the recommendation could only come from apostles. Which, due to the sheer, you know, dynamics of that, means that the number is going to decrease substantially. And a key figure in this story that I want to highlight is George F. Richards. He was an apostle. He was ordained to the apostleship in 1906, in the wake of the several apostles who were dropped from the quorum due to the Second Manifesto and debates over polygamy. And then he was made president of the Salt Lake City Temple in 1921, a position that he holds until 1938. George F. Richards, perhaps more than anyone else in the 20th century, shapes the standardization and correlation of LDS Temple rituals, which he does from his position as the Salt Lake City Temple president. He standardized them across different temples. They had different temples had different practices and different dynamics in the endowments. And Richards is like, "Hey, maybe they should all have the same." That's the type of thing that he does. He also puts a lot of those rituals in writing that had previously been just passed down through orals. And by the way, um, his diaries were just made available by the LDS Church. You can find them at the Church Historian's Press website. And there, as you might imagine, he's very coy on details, but you'll find in those diaries lots of discussions of "Today we formalize the endowment, yada yada yada."
And then one of those documents we get from George Richards's hand is a letter from around 1925 directed to local authorities, and it says this: "Bishops are not to issue recommends for second anointings. That is the province of the president of the church. As a general rule, such recommends are issued only in behalf of those who have had endowments in their lifetime and have been sealed and lived together faithfully as husband and wife, and who have been valiant in defense of truth and active in all good works."
So, a couple key key changes here. One, only the president can recommend who gets the second anointing. Two, it's not something done for those deceased, not a vicarious work, it's only for the living. And three, it has to be an exceptionally faithful life, which means that it's not going to be as commonly expected as it was before. The results of this policy change were immediate and substantial. Within just a couple decades, those second anointings slowed to a near trickle. In 1942, George Richards calculates in a memo that up until, um, up until around 1925, when he changed the policy, over 32,000 Latter-day Saints had received their second anointings. Since that point, only eight had received it. So, going from 32,000 receiving it, mostly between the 1870s and the 1920s, to only eight from 1925 until 1942. And perhaps more worrying to Richards was that half of all the general authorities in 1942 had not received it. And he urged the leaders that, hey, maybe at least all the leaders should have their second anointing.
Now, it seems clear that Richards regretted this turn. He expected the number of people who would receive the second anointing to slow, but not altogether disappear. Seven years later, in 1949, Richards writes a poignant letter to the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve, expressing his worry that we have "practically discontinued the discontinue the administration of the second anointings in the church." I'll read that again. He worried that the church has "practically discontinued the administration of second anointings in the church." He feared that they were being too careful and, as a result, the Lord could not be pleased with them, because again, this was the capstone ordinance. This was the central culmination of those priestly promises that were just not being received by others. And so he urged the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve to start ordaining more people to the second anointing.
So, one question that, of course, has to be raised, I'm sure many of you have been yelling at for the last few minutes, is why? Why was there made this major decrease? On the one hand, of course, there was a concern that it had been too ubiquitous, so we needed to pull that back. There's also some concerns that it was becoming public knowledge. There's a reported case of one man who received the second anointing, goes back to his congregation in Idaho and told everyone about it, and that really made the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve mad.
But there's also another interpretation that needs to be considered. Because during those same decades, the 1920s and '30s, where we got the decline in second anointings, is also when the church is really worried about the growing fundamentalist movement. And one of the things that these fundamentalists claimed, who were practicing polygamy and claiming the church had gone into apostasy, is that "We have received our second anointing, and so therefore we are chosen. That shows our privileged status. That shows that you can trust us." And so once the fundamentalists are breaking off into their organized group, there's a fear that they're infiltrating the church and still receiving their ordinances. And we have some reason to believe, based on evidence from the time, that the church leaders were terrified of these fundamentalists receiving their second anointing. And so to keep them out, we're going to cut out everyone receiving those second anointings.
Now, all of those factors played into it. But overall, it's within this context of church leaders becoming so worried that unworthy people are receiving those anointings that they basically cut it back to near zero. Now, Richards succeeded in getting the church to approve the second anointings for at least some leaders, but it certainly did not return to its pre-1925 status. And we have several points of evidence that show this is the case. And I'll link to some of these pieces of evidence in the video description.
One is David O. McKay's diary. So, David O. McKay presides over the church in the 1950s and 1960s. His diaries are voluminous, have lots of important insights, and thankfully, because they were not donated to the LDS Church, we have access to them. And here is one entry from October 25th, 1966. There is a fascinating moment where they discover that the Manti Temple had a book of people who received the second anointings. And the temple president was like, "Hey, do you want this?" And the church was like, "Absolutely, we want this. We don't want anyone to know have that. We don't want that record to be out of our control." And then in the midst of that discussion, we get this entry: "President Tanner, that's N. Eldon Tanner, a member of the First Presidency, mentioned that following this discussion, the question was raised about individuals in the Quorum of the Twelve who haven't received their second endowments." Likely a reference to second anointing. "I asked that I be given a list of names of the brethren of the Twelve who have not received these blessings." And then, uh, the next month, on November 23rd, 1966, we get this entry in the McKay diary: "We went over a list of the brethren of the general authorities who have not had their second anointings. I asked President Joseph Fielding Smith to officiate at these ordinances in behalf of these brethren, to be assisted by Elders Spencer W. Kimball and Elder Kimball when Elder Kimball returns from South America." So, even some members of the Quorum of the Twelve did not have their second anointings in the 1960s. That shows how rare the practice had become.
Now, it seems the next decade, Spencer W. Kimball revives the practice, at least a bit, which makes sense. Remember, he was the one that McKay placed in charge, along with Joseph Fielding Smith, to anoint those apostles who had not received it. And so, there are several historians who catch wind in the late 1970s that Spencer W. Kimball is having people who received their second anointing again. Among those who received the anointing was none other than Leonard Arrington, the church historian. And we know this because he coyly references it in his diary. He receives an invite in March of 1979. He then does a lot of research to figure out the history and practice of the second anointing. And then he and his wife, Grace, were anointed by Spencer W. Kimball for their second anointing on Sunday, April 1st, at a 4:30 meeting held just after that General Conference session, held in the anointing which took place in the Salt Lake City Temple. And then the next week, Sunday, April 8th, uh, they performed the feet washing ritual. Remember, there's the two elements: there's the anointing on the heads of becoming kings and priests and queens and priestesses, and then the washing of the feet, patterned off of the Jesus Christ practice and Martha and Mary in the New Testament.
And then we know that it still has kind of continued since then, thanks to some exposés from some leaders who had left the church, like Tom Phillips and Hans Mattson, who tell their stories of receiving their second anointing. So, we know it's still practiced, but it's still very rare. Um, I had a, my first mission president when I served my LDS mission, a lot longer ago than I'd care to admit. My first mission president, who was a doctor, came from the elite Salt Lake City circles. He once gave a talk to the missionaries about calling and election made sure and referenced the second anointing and said that you've probably taken hands with someone who has had their second anointing. A reference that there are still some elites who have received it, but it's far from ubiquitous.
And I'll also note, and this is, I've been saying a lot of historical documented stuff. This is kind of the rumor stuff. So, take this with how you may. I had lots of friends who worked in housekeeping for the Salt Lake City Temple. They're the ones who would go in and clean at night. And they said that there was a, their their director, the the person in charge of the housekeeping, was always tasked with cleaning the Holy of Holies the Friday before the April General Conference, which seemed to imply that that's when they would still be practicing it. So, it still exists, though in a far reduced and clandestine form.
I think one really interesting question is where will the ritual go from here? There are several potential options. On the one hand, it could become more common again with the with the church going global in the sense of much more transparency, that maybe it will be something that more people will have access to and maybe there will be some discussion of it in public. But with that growth would be once again the return of that fear of initiating people who are not fully worthy. Or, it may remain still very reserved and only given to elite leaders. But, I will note that that common practice, the status quo in the church, seems out of step with everything that everything else the church is doing, which is much more transparent and much more, uh, democratized. That the second anointing ritual seems an awkward fit. Even setting aside the theological consequences of the second anointing that I don't think has been fully reconciled in public. So, I think the third option is maybe the ritual goes away entirely. That maybe it just does not fit in the modern church. And, you know, that's, I think that's a possibility. I think the fact that several people who have received it in recent decades and then have talked about it on podcasts and public is the same concern that led to the church mostly stopping it a century ago, or at least one of those concerns. Um, I wonder if, as the Salt Lake City Temple has millions of visitors next year with their open house, if anything will even be said about the Holy of Holies and what ritual theoretically takes place in there.
I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope it was useful. I hope it gives some context to a larger story that you may know at least a little bit of, and, uh, you now know a bit more of. If you want to read more, I will once again recommend David Berger's article, "The Fullness of the Priesthood: The Second Anointing in Latter-day Saint Theology and Practice," but I also recommend "Documentary History," that's, uh, many ways the many ways the third volume of a trilogy of Saint Nature books. Last week I talked about the Nauvoo Endowment Companies and Joseph Smith's "Coming of the Anointed." This week I'm going to shout out "The Development of LDS Temple Worship," this one just edited by Devery Anderson, which includes a lot of the sources that I highlighted today, including George Richards' important letters. History has never been more relevant than it is today because it gives context to these rituals, even those rituals that have largely faded away and aren't discussed in public, but are still important to understand if you want to comprehend the broad scope of LDS Temple Worship.