Dear Monty, In your answer to B. Young’s question about how to get into a LDS temple, you mentioned that their services are held in a chapel. Are these services open to the public? hergrace
Link to the Staff Report being discussed: What happens to a nonbeliever who sneaks into a Mormon service? – Dex
[Edited by C K Dexter Haven on 06-01-2001 at 07:52 AM]
The standard Sunday sacrament meetings are open to anyone who wants to attend. It’s strongly suggested that you dress nicely, just for politeness’ sake.
Weekly LDS Church services, held at chapels, are open to the public. These consist of Sacrament Meeting, which is a general worship service, followed by Sunday School for the adults and Primary for children, and a third set of meetings segregated by age and gender – Priesthood Meeting for the men, Relief Society for the women, and Young Men and Young Women meetings for the youth.
Short answer: yes, regular Latter-day Saint (“Mormon”) church services are definitely open to anyone (provided, of course, the person isn’t just there to disrupt them, as some of the more rabid anti-Mormons have been known to do).
LDS services fit into a 3-hour block. To over-simplify a bit, the first hour has various organizational meetings (adult men, adult women, young men, young women, children); the second hour has Sunday School classes; the third hour is Sacrament meeting (everyone together in the chapel, passing of the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, a few sermons, a closing prayer). For some congregations, the order is reversed (i.e., it starts with Sacrament meeting).
Each LDS congregation is determined by geographical boundaries and is called a “ward”. A given chapel may serve for one to as many as four different wards (with different but possibly overlapping meeting times).
A ward is run entirely by the volunteer service of its members; there is no paid or professional clergy. The exception: several hundred people at the highest levels of LDS church government (known as “general authorities”) who have been asked to devote themselves full-time to church service–either for a few years or for the rest of their lives–receive (if they need it) a modest living allowance; however, many are retired professionals and live off their own savings instead.
OK, I’m probably at the “more than you wanted to know” stage, so I’ll stop there. Except to say that this URL is an LDS meetinghouse “locator” (given a city or a zip code):
http://www.lds.org/basicbeliefs/meetinghouse/1,6017,352-1,FF.html
Hope this helps. …bruce…
P.S. My thanks to Monty for a clear and accurate answer to the original question. 
I’ve been attending too long in a ward that ends with Sacrament meeting. As noted in one of the other posts, the vast majority of wards start with Sacrament meeting, then Sunday School, then the meetings of the different organizations. …bruce…
hergrace: It’s “Mormon,” not “Morman.”
bfwebster: You’re quite welcome. FWIW, I’m LDS but am not “temple eligible.”
Why the secrecy/eletisim surrounding the Temple services? Sounds a little like the LDS are reverting to the Old Hebrew Temple system where the Gentiles were allowed into the outer court, Jews into the inner court, priests into the Temple and only the High Priest into the “holy of holies”. Jesus’ death was supposed to change all that, what with the tearing of the curtain before the alter and all…
Please explain someone!!
Gp
It’s part of our religion. You are not forced to be part of the religion, so it really doesn’t affect you. As I mentioned in the staff report (http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmormoninvade.html), the Temple’s private property - owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Just as you don’t permit strangers to enter your house (private property, no doubt), the LDS have rules on whom they permit on what they consider to be sacred ground.
This is a matter of semantics: you say “revert” whilst I say “honour sacred ground.”
That’s your interpretation. Evidently, the LDS have a different view.
Done.
P.S. I left off the following from the staff report:
This is my, Monty’s, answer and I am not an official spokesman for the LDS Church. If you’re interested in the official view on many questions, you can find the official website at http://www.lds.org.
I think the issue that troubles me is the implication that there are those who are worthy of entering the “holy places” and those who are not. Jesus’ teaching and practice definately seemed to contradict this (one of the reasons he was despised by the religious authorities of his time) - his revolutionary message was that EVERYONE could now have access to the Father through the Son. Consider the story of the prayer of the pious man and that of the tax collector - it was the tax collector, who was barred from approaching the alter, who went away righteous before God.
I appologise if I sound like I am critisising your beliefs, it really is just that I am thinking a good deal about my feelings toward LDS believers at the moment. I have heard it said on these boards that LDS consider themselves Christian. Therefore I really want to explore this difference between my beliefs and yours, as this concept of “access for all” and the community of saints/priests (i.e. needing no intermediary between us and God) is central to my faith, and if it is missing from yours, then I have issues with that…
Leaving aside the Temple issue, what are LDS beliefs concerning the priesthood of all believers??
Gp
I shared an office with a Mormon for several years in grad school, attended Mormon social activities, was best manb at a (non-Temple) Mormon wedding. THEN I moved out to Salt Lake City for a few years. I find the Mormons fascinating.
Since I was in Salt Lake, I thought I’d try to get the full experience. I attended Mormon Sunday services at the local Ward. As noted above, you can certainly get in, and the parisioners are perfectly willing to explain it all to you – after asll, you’re a potential convert. The service is interesting. As a former altar boy, I was intrigued by the communion service of white bread and water (very obviously not wine). There was also a separate and required education session – a sort of “Sunday School” for adults.
I was interested in the “forbidden” temple ceremony, of course, both as a student of religion and because it is forbidden. Besides, as a profound admirer of Sir Richard Francis Burton the prospect of attending a forbidden religious service “in disguise”, as he had made the hajj to Mecca and Medina, was very tempting. Burton had visited Salt Lake City in the 1850s, but I don’t think the Temple was ready for anyone to visit, and he was very conspicuously in town, so I doubt if he tried to crash the Temple. In any event, if I were to try and visit the Temple it would not be a violent visit, like the ones chronicled above, but a respectful and scholarly quest.
I never did try. Besides the danger, it seemed crass. If you’re interested, there are picture books, and you can visit a Temple after it’s been built or repaired, but before its consecration (like the one here in Belmont, Massachusetts). If you’re curious about the Mormon ceremonies, these are not really secret anymore. There have been the apostates and the dissatisfied since the beginning, and they have been publishing these ceremonies for over a hundred years. Finding out about them is even easier now – you used to have to hunt down these books, or send away to such groups. Now you can find this stuff on the Internet.
So let’s say you’ve acquainted yourself with the Temple geography and have boned up on Temple ceremony, gotten yourself a Garment and forged or borrowed or stolen a Temple Recommend. I don’t know what I suggest below for a fact, but I suspect this. The Mormons are the most technological faith I know of. Catholics eventually got around to installing “hearing aids” in confessionals, but these are not commen still, and they haven’t carried things much farther. The Mormons, in contrast, have had monitors at their baptismal fonts for years (they look like the “Molten Sea” outside the ancient Jerusalem Temple, balanced atop the backs of twelve oxen, so you can have that whiole Biblical value of pi = 3 argument about them.), displaying the names of the person baptized and the vicarious spirit as well. I’d not be at all surprised to find that the Temple recommends had been computerized as well. This in itself does not guarantee that they will catch you, but it increases the odds, as there are all sorts of ways to check at this point.
But let’s say that you actually do get in, unsuspected. Most Temples now have videotaped services, I understand. It’s a natural response to high volume and limited church officials, but it’s still a bummer (like tyhose traffic court sessions with a taped judge). I believe that the Salt Lake City temple, the one in Temple Square, still has live services. So let’s say you get in there. Congratulations! You now get to attend a long and possibly boring religious service. For some people, that might be punishment enough.
Objectivity demands that I point out that the Primitive Church also excluded all but full members from its most important service.
pixie: you pretty much have to be sinless to be able to get in the Temple, or believe you are.
It engenders a feeling of not-good-enough for most human beings, who aren’t.
It does mitigate grace completely and relies on works to get you points with God.
In 1 Peter, it states that ALL believers have the preisthood.
Which is one of the MANY differences between christianity and mormonism.
This is what is worrying me - I just want to hear a LDS say it and explain it to me, so that i can understand thier position more fully…
Gp
IANAM (I am not a Mormon), but most faiths and oranizations have ceremonies and rituals that are restricted to believers, or have other requirements excluding the general public. For example, only Catholics, and in fact, only Catholics who meet certain requirements can take communion. Only Muslims can visit Mecca and Medina. In Judaism, only Kohanim can redeem the first born. Freemasons have all sorts of rituals closed to the general public. I don’t know if the LDS practice is any more secretive or elitist. To the best of my understanding, LDS temples are places where Mormons practice religious rituals they don’t believe non-Mormons should see. I don’t see why that’s a problem.
One thing caught my interest…the staff article said the police were called when the family pushed past the security guard, and they searched the premises (assuming I interpreted the meaning correctly.) So there seem to be exceptions or circumstances where it’s OK for non-card holders to get in (unless all the cops were card holders!)
Doesn’t mean anything really, just something to wonder about…
“Going to the temple” isn’t just going to the temple. There wouldn’t be any point in just going into the building and looking around. (Though if you want to do that, you can go to an open house before a temple is dedicated). When we go to the temple it’s to do temple work. The endowment ordinance involves making certain covenants with God which we take very seriously. It wouldn’t be a good thing for someone to make those covenants who wasn’t prepared to keep them.
We believe that everyone has access to God and has the right to personal revelation. But there are certain things that need to be done through the priesthood. The priesthood is the authority to act in the name of God. Those who hold the priesthood perform baptisms, bless the sacrament (the bread and water), and do other specific things that need to be done with authority.
“The priesthood of all believers” isn’t really a phrase that we use much, so I’m not sure what it’s meant to entail.
I would guess that the policemen probably were LDS. St. George has a very high Mormon population. I’m sure they wouldn’t have too much trouble finding a few policemen with current reccommends.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by grimpixie *
**
You have “issues” with the way a faith other than your own is constructed? Why in the world would you have “issues” with something that has absolutely nothing to do with you?
That’s like having “issues” with the pattern that your neighbors wallpaper their bedroom.
Or, rather, it only allows its most important service to be performed by those who are most true to the faith.
“Objectivity”… ::snort::