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The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship by David John Buerger This is a placeholder. I was going to read Magic World View next, but decided I needed to read a history of the temple as I struggle to decide what to do about renewing my temple recommend. . .
I ran through this one pretty quickly. I really don’t see any controversy here. Well, I’m actually not even sure if this book is held as controversial in the church’s eyes, because it doesn’t really make arguments about any truth within the church. It simply outlines the history and reasoning of temple practices. It doesn’t give away any tokens or signs, other than ones already known in history’s and the public’s eye (which is most of it, sorry but true). It merely acknowledges origins I would suppose could be unsettling for those that haven’t ever looked into it. I liked the book, but after all the research I’ve done on the topic and the stuff given in other books, I don’t think I came off with a much greater view of temple worship. I guess it’s worth reading if you haven’t even heard about the cinnamon and whiskey tub. I read this book and really liked it. I felt so much more comfortable about the temple after reading it. It made me feel like I had a grasp on how it all came to be. That is what I like. I want to see how things developed, and possibly what was going in people’s minds at the time this all came about. Then I can make my own judgments and conclusions. The book is mostly composed of quotes from personal journals and Church documents. The candid and unemotional treatment of the subject was excellent. I really couldn’t tell what the author thought of the subject. In fact, I ended up Googling him to see what his relationship was to the Church. I read this one based on Valoel’s recommendation about a year ago, and I really liked it for the same reasons. Breugger is I guess no longer a member or is inactive at least, but it was hard to tell that from reading the book. I didn’t consider it too controversial. Just lots of history I didn’t know previously. I really enjoyed seeing the changes through time in the meaning of the temple and ordinances. It was just interesting. I did a review of it at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/863568http://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/863568” class=”bbcode_url”> So, I had a whole post almost completed on this book with a chapter by chapter summary, but my computer died and I lost the whole thing. Lame! Basically, I agree with the things others have written. This book is very interesting and was a relatively quick read. It helped me to better place the temple into LDS theology and understand the historical perspective. It made me consider new things about the endowment, understand the symbolism better, and obtain a great appreciation for the temple. There were lots of interesting historical facts and historical tidbits that I didn’t know previously. I highly recommend this book for a better understanding of the temple. It actually seemed like a very respectful treatment of the temple, although I suspect some places would make TBMs uncomfortable.
i agree with brian, this is a great book if you want to see how the temple developed over time. it definently doesn’t tell you anything new about the doctrines of the temple but it’s a great history. if you’re looking to learn something new, it’s still a worthwhile book because you’ll learn what early church members thought of the temple and how their thoughts developed along with the ceremonies. if you’re looking for buerger’s personal thoughts on the temple you’re not gonna find them, just quotes from history. very well documented as well. Just finished reading this book and thought I’d bump this back up to the top, since it’s been a few years since the last post. I know there are quite a few of us who have issues with the temple, so I thought this might be interesting to some others. It’s a quick read, and very interesting. You probably won’t find a lot of information here that you don’t already know, but I really appreciated the way it covers things like the development of the temple ceremonies (without getting into ‘sacred/secret’ territory), garments, celestial/plural marriage, second anointings, and even different versions of the temple video. Unfortunately, it was written in 1990, and hasn’t been updated since then, so some of the statistics at the end of the book are outdated. Overall, I didn’t find it to be a book that would hurt or help a person’s testimony of temples. But, it was a very interesting read.
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