Latter Day Saint Movement Prayer and Invocation Tradition

This entry addresses the wider Latter Day Saint movement's prayer tradition beyond the two fixed sacrament prayers on the bread and water catalogued individually elsewhere in this atlas, since Latter-day Saint practice, most prominently within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquartered in Salt Lake City but including other denominations tracing their origin to Joseph Smith's founding movement, involves extensive personal, family and congregational prayer beyond those two fixed sacramental texts, including specific temple ceremonies whose content is understood within the tradition as sacred and appropriately confined to endowed members in good standing, material this entry does not describe or reproduce here. Ordinary Latter-day Saint personal and public prayer outside the temple and sacrament contexts is generally extemporaneous rather than fixed text, following a recognizable pattern, addressing God the Father, closing in the name of Jesus Christ, but composed spontaneously by the individual praying rather than recited from any set liturgical formula, a structure that gives most Latter-day Saint prayer a considerably less textually fixed character than the two specific sacrament prayers already catalogued.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints explicitly and publicly acknowledges that its temple ceremonies, including the endowment ceremony and specific ritual clothing and covenants associated with it, are sacred rather than secret in the church's own preferred framing, meaning access is restricted to members holding a valid temple recommend rather than being concealed as a matter of embarrassment, a distinction the church itself draws explicitly in its own public communications about temple worship. This entry follows the church's own stated approach by describing that such restricted temple practice exists and involves prayer and covenant-making, without describing its specific content, consistent with how the church's own members are expected to treat this material outside the temple setting itself.

Other denominations within the wider Latter Day Saint movement, including the Community of Christ, developed with different and generally less restrictive approaches to temple worship and sacred ordinance following historical splits after Joseph Smith's death, meaning practice varies across the movement's different branches beyond the largest Utah-based church alone. The church has periodically adjusted specific temple ceremony wording and procedure over its history, changes it presents as reflecting ongoing revelation to church leadership rather than as arbitrary alteration, though the underlying principle that temple content is confined to endowed members has remained consistent throughout these adjustments.