Temple Garment

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints publishes what it wants understood about the garment, and that published account is the level at which the matter is public. Members who have received the temple endowment wear the garment under their ordinary clothing. The church's handbook describes it as an outward expression of an inward commitment, a reminder of the covenants made in the temple, and asks that it be worn as instructed, not altered, and treated with respect.

It also asks, plainly and repeatedly, that it not be displayed, photographed or exhibited, and members are directed to dispose of worn garments privately rather than to give them away. The church produced a short public film in 2014 showing sacred clothing precisely because it preferred to set the terms of what was shown itself. Its own statement is that the garment is private in the way that many people's religious practices are private, and that treating it as a curiosity is what members find objectionable rather than the fact of its existing.

The garment carries marks that refer to the covenants of the temple. What those marks are and what they mean belongs to the temple, the church asks that they not be reproduced, and this entry does not set them out. That is a boundary the atlas keeps deliberately, and stating that it is being kept is more useful than pretending there is nothing there.

The garment as first worn in the nineteenth century was a single one-piece union suit reaching to the ankles and the wrists, buttoned at the front, of the general shape of the underwear of the period. It has been altered several times since. Sleeves and legs were shortened in the 1920s under Heber J. Grant, a decision taken by the church leadership and communicated to members. A two-piece version, a top and bottoms, was introduced in 1979 and is now the ordinary form. Further revisions in recent years have produced lighter fabrics, additional cuts, and options intended for members living in very hot climates, alongside adjustments to the women's garment.

Two things follow from that history. The first is that the design is not itself held to be revealed: it is administrative, it is announced, and it changes when the leadership decides it should. The second is that what does not change is the covenant the garment refers to, which is why members describe alterations to the cloth as unremarkable and alterations to the practice as another matter entirely.

That distinction is worth stating in a reference work, because outside accounts frequently treat a change of fabric as though it were a change of doctrine. It is not, and the church has been consistent about which of the two it is doing.