Evolution and history of the Temple Recommend Questions

“Forbidden Four” Word of Wisdom compliance was not a requirement until the 1930’s under President Heber J. Grant. I have a family story from the 1950’s of a great grandmother from Utah that still didn’t understand that Mormons don’t drink tea or drink alcohol socially.

I’ve heard the fence question too from people.

I would think the child support question is a fairly recent addition the past couple decades.

I’ve heard stories of BPs and SPs asking married couples about specific sexual activities within their personal life (which would not be fornication nor adultery), implying that there was a list of what was allowed and not. I think these problems with varying local interpretations of what is “proper” or not lead to the central leadership pushing a simple, generic, question about living the law of chastity. That was a good move, IMO.

I swear that Bored in Vernal did a fascinating history of the Temple Recommend questions, but I couldn’t find it. (It may have been on her old, now retired, site.) Great Basin Kingdon by Leonard Arrington has some of the questions asked during the “Reformation” of the 1850’s. Jedidiah Grant proposed a list of pretty invasive questions for Home Teachers, and some unusual questions. (There was no temple built in Utah yet, so temple recommends weren’t necessary.) As I recall, there were things like “do you pray 3 times a day?”, “have you ever taken a cow that did not belong to you?”, “do you bathe weekly?” I got a chuckle out of some of them, but was amazed at how invasive some of them were.

As for tithing, well during the Brigham Young period, they lived the United Order, so they gave much more than 10%. When the government started vigorously prosecuting polygamists (1870-1890) and confiscating church property, many people knew that if they paid tithing, it would end up in the government’s hands, so why pay tithing? After the Manifesto in 1890, the government quit prosecuting so hard, and over time gave back most of the property they had confiscated. (Some church property was used to pay for the US Trustee to oversee the property. There was a big stink over the Trustee overcharging the church for his services. Congress fired the Trustee and put someone else in his place.)

Anyway, I’m sure you’re familiar with the movie Windows of Heaven where President Snow went to St. George in 1899 and promised the saints it would rain (after a severe drought) if they would pay their tithing. That was the point at which tithing became re-emphasized. I don’t remember when it became a temple recommend question, but I think it was in the 1920’s or 30’s. (Probably 20’s because the 30’s were the era of the Great Depression, so I doubt it was instituted then.)

If I may go on a tangent for a bit, one of the things I was amazed to learn in Great Basin Kingdom was the fact that one of the big problems Gentiles had with Mormons in Utah was not necessarily polygamy, but United Order. The United Order was “ideal socialism” and the Mormons set price controls to eliminate price gouging. Capitalism was seen as taking advantage of your neighbor, and highly denounced. The gentiles used polygamy as an excuse to shut down the United Orders and enter the Mormon markets. Congress did its best to hurt the Mormon economy to shut down polygamy. In a lot of ways polygamy, was the scapegoat for ridding Utah of the United Orders.

Great Basin Kingdom is a little dry in some parts, but it has some amazing information. Here’s a link to 4 posts I wrote about the book that relate to United Order/Polygamy prosecutions (see 3-6 on this link) http://www.mormonheretic.org/?s=great+basin+kingdom

you are basically supposed to think and do exactly what the Church tells you to.

We’ve had this particular debate many times. I understand what you are saying; I just don’t agree with the conclusion as you word it. It makes it much easier organizationally if everyone things and acts alike (in any organization), but that’s not the message that actually is taught exclusively at the meta-level. For every Elder Packer or McConkie, there’s an Elder Wirthlin or Brown. The local culture often pressures toward it, but the local culture also often encourages against it – including many, many local leaders.

I believe we can find something from the writings and statements of Church leaders to support just about any conclusion we want to reach – so I think you and I BOTH are “right” on this one, if that is the point. I’m going to post something here that posted on my own blog this morning that deals directly with what I mean by this.

Is it the way that 85% of the church membership see it and want it? Yeah, I would say so.

I agree with that.

Not intending to hijack this thread, but it’s interesting to me that the WoW was added to the list of TR questions, and yet it took the church several years, if not decades, to evolve to the “not-a-drop” standard we have today. My mom attended BYU in the sixties, and she told me that coffee drinking on campus was still common even then.

On the other hand, it’s only been a few years since President Hinckley introduced the “no multiple earrings” standard. The membership seemed to pick up on that one pretty quick and seeing multiple earrings in church is now pretty rare, at least where I live in the heart of the MorCor. Maybe we as a people are becoming quicker to obey?

Maybe the cost of removing multiple earrings is just lower than the cost of giving up coffee!

There’s some very interesting background on TR questions in the book Mysteries of Godliness. I highly recommend the book in general. A few facts I found interesting (there were more, but I’m going from memory here):

– originally recommends were just that – your bishop recommended you unbeknownst to you (rather than you asking to be interviewed for admission).

– members as young as 12 could be endowed.

– married men were told to abstain from sex with their wives for several days around menstruation; there was a purification time frame required.

I had asked in the late 80s what the question about associating with other groups meant, and I was told it specifically referred to polygamous sects (even though the question doesn’t state that), and that it had been added because there were several active splinter groups at that time. Unfortunately, I think some local leaders want to interpret that question more broadly than it was intended. The wording is vague as to be nonsensical. The church itself associates with groups whose views & interests differ from their own. We do all kinds of interfaith and joint actions with various organizations who have some converging interests, but plenty of interests that don’t coincide.

Hawkgirl’s understanding matches my own – not that that proves anything.