Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: We are changing our church schedule. We have now readjusted to a two hour block. But did you know that in the sacrament we used to have musical performances during the administration of that ordinance? And did you know that the term beehive for young women is partly inspired by Boy Scouts? Our church has changed a lot in the last couple hundred years of our history. Welcome to Informed Saints. I'm Jasmine Rapley, we've got Neil and Stephen, and we're talking about church changes. There's been a lot over the last 200 years and I've been fascinated to dive into the history of how the church has changed over time.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: And I think something that I think is like, based on our lived experience, since we're all millennials, the idea that the church schedule changes a lot is a little foreign to us because like the change from the three hour block
[00:00:41] Speaker A: to the two hour block, that's massive.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: That was like the first change I can remember, at least. I don't know for sure.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: That was monumental for me.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: So the frequent changes over the last few years feel a little unusual, but it's kind of, it's nice to know and it's helpful to put in context this broader history that we have of it.
[00:01:00] Speaker C: I'm just really sad that I will never have the opportunity to give my ranting conspiracy theories in high priest group now on my doctrine speculation now that we don't have high priest groups anymore.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that is a bummer, I'm not gonna lie.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Well, one of the things that I think is interesting is when I think of church, I have a very cemented idea of what that is. You've got these components, sacrament meeting, Sunday school, primary, and then like young men's, young women's priesthood, relief society, and like that's the recipe of what church is. But that is a relatively recent conception and obviously that's been our entire lifetime since none of us were alive before 1980. But I just think it's fascinating that before 45 years ago, like not all of those ingredients were necessarily included in what church meant and not all of them were even like church things or it's not, it didn't mean the same thing. A lot of these programs, some of them came from the top down. They were inspired programs at the profit instituted, others were like grassroots started efforts that were trying to fill like a cultural need that eventually gets adopted at higher levels and becomes more like religiously infused and things like that.
But when it comes to our history here, so obviously we're dealing with 2026, the beginning of this year they announced we're going to go to a new two hour block which looks like this. We've got sacrament meeting for an hour and then second hour is going to be split between Sunday school instruction for youth and adults and children. And then the second half of that hour is going to be those gendered classes, to use an imperfect terminology there. But Aaronic priesthood, young women's, young men's Relief Society, Elders quorum, all that jazz, and then primaries in there too.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: So these are all those ingredients though that you were talking about that we're used to as defining church.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: We're used to these ingredients. Super stable. Before this we had the introduction of the two hour block. In 2019 or in October of 2018. They announced that this was gonna be the new block. And instead of splitting second hour between those Sunday school and other classes, you would rotate every other. And that's what we've been doing for the last few years. And we have this new transition. A lot of people have very strong opinions about if this is a good change, if this is going to be too hard. And we're not here to necessarily have that debate. But I do think it's helpful to kind of like understand that change is just like the most consistent thing about our church history.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: I think we didn't have that debate. Jasmine. I think the, the truthfulness of this church rides or dies on whether we have one class, it's 50 minutes or two classes, it's 25 minutes. Right? No, just kidding.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Well, I'm excited about the changes. Personally. I think there's like a lot of advantages. But I, I do appreciate a lot of like the concerns and the like the friction people feel with like these, these new changes. But looking at the history like I've been just fascinated by how church has evolved over the last couple centuries and how change is ever present and some of the tensions and the friction that we feel today, like those aren't new either. Every time the church introduces changes, like a lot of those same forces are at play of like oh no, I don't like this change or oh no, this is really good and a really interesting one is going to be with the sacrament. But so pre2019 was the three hour block. This is the one of the goat.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: It does, yes.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: This is the real one true church right here. That's right, one true church schedule.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Hour one, sacrament reading, hour two, Sunday school and then hour three was we split up into priesthood quorums and then young women's relief cycle. First primaries in there as well, or the foyer.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Hour three could also
[00:04:34] Speaker A: hour two and three. But before 2019, it was the mysterious beyond. As far as my living memory. And that's probably the biggest oversight of this episode is that we don't have a single boomer on the panel. Here's like, living memory of this.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Not even a Gen X.
[00:04:49] Speaker C: Or shout out to the boomers in the comments, give us your recollections, give us your memories.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Because if I get stuff wrong, like, it's going to be in your living memory of things I get wrong. So please do correct me. But also, it is not entirely my fault. We reached out to multiple people to help us, like, flesh out the history for this episode, and multiple of them said no. But it's also. We're filming this during Education Week, so a lot of the experts on this particular part of history were busy. So, yeah, that's on us. But I. I do think it's cool to. To. To go through this history because there's just, like, so much here, and it just warps my conception of, like, what church even means because it looked so different depending on how old you are. And one. One thing that is. Is hard about this is that we're not drawing from, like, a specific article or book on this topic because it's kind of all fragmented.
[00:05:37] Speaker C: Hasn't been written yet, has it? Like, the standard work on it.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: That's. I think, because the conception of, like, what church is, is kind of a misnomer. Like, for our generation, church is those ingredients. For anyone older than that, like, church just looked different and took so many different shapes. And so, like, you have to go. I had to go to, like, a history of the young women's program, a history of Aaronic quorums, the history of the primary, history of the Relief Society, history of sacrament. We need to kind of put together, like, okay, this is the history of, like, what church looks like on Sunday.
So let us begin. We're going to start with sacrament meetings. So we're going to kind of do like, a master timeline over time. But I do want to start with sacrament meeting, because this is the heart of our Sabbath worship. This is really where it begins. And when was our first church meeting class?
[00:06:21] Speaker C: You mean like the restoration? April 6th.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: That's right. April 6th, 18th. We all know this. This was kind of like the famous organization of the church. This is also the first sacrament meeting of the church. But a lot of people don't realize that it was held on a Tuesday, not a.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: Is that right? Oh, my goodness.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Like, I just Assumed it was Sunday. And I think I knew it was different than, like, our normal Sunday worship, but I think I kind of still assume Joseph Smith gets up and says, welcome, brothers and sisters.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: We're going to read the word announcements.
Yeah.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: We just kind of subconsciously project, like, our modern experience onto what they would have felt.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: So if this was a Tuesday, is there an alternate timeline where we're Second Day Adventists?
[00:07:02] Speaker C: That's a good joke, Gail. Well done.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good. But it was very different.
In fact, the earliest days of the church sacrament meeting was not standardized at all. You didn't even always partake of the sacrament during some of these worship meetings. And it wasn't always on Sundays. It was mostly adults. Children weren't that commonly attending these worship services, and that was common throughout 19th century Protestantism as well.
[00:07:28] Speaker C: I was going to say, isn't this a lot of this a holdover from Methodism, especially? Like, I think there have been some studies done that a lot of early Latter Day Saint converts are predominantly Methodists. Right.
And they're just kind of bringing with them their Methodist.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Like, this is how worship practice, right?
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. A lot of the practices we're kind of bringing in from our Protestant surroundings, and it's really not until we get to Utah that we start to kind of like, solidify, like, what is our tradition of worship. And it included singing, praying, preaching, confirming ordaining. So, like, that's pretty familiar. But it might have looked different. Like, I. I learned just recently that, like, even singing the hymns was done differently. I assume, like, the Spirit of God we still sing today. And that one was written and sung at the Kirtland dedication, so I assume it was just, you know, the way we sing it. But a. It would have been sung to a different tune. A lot of the hymns we. Of the early church were different tunes, but also it probably would have been lined out because you had a lot of people who were either illiterate or didn't know all the tunes. So whoever was leading the music would sing the first line, the Spirit of God, like a fire is burning. And then the congregation would repeat, the Spirit of God, fire is burning. And then you go through the whole song just repeating line by line like that. Obviously, it would be.
[00:08:36] Speaker C: That seems right. Rather tedious. I don't know.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Like, I. I feel like it definitely takes the gusto out of that and
[00:08:43] Speaker B: man, like, the pressure on the person having to lead that out. You just have to sing right in front of everybody.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: And from what I understand, the person leading out the music was often, often, not always, but often the same person, like conducting. The one giving the sermons, the one praying. Like whoever was leading the meeting was not just conducting and then sitting down. Like they really had a lot of pressure on them. But it definitely was like a different way to sing. And that was coming from a Protestant background as well. And there was actually kind of during Joseph Smith's day, a little bit of 10 between if we should line out songs or sing them all the way through. Because singing all the way through was what you did in the old world. It's what the Catholics did, it's what the Anglicans did. Here in Protestant America we don't have like trained and professional choirs. We are like homegrown, we are accessible, we are of the people. So like people preferred the lined out singing. In a lot of Protestant America, we ended up adopting singing through pretty early on choirs pretty early on, but still in the earliest days of the church. There's some of this interesting. Anyway, that's more of a tangent.
So one interesting thing is that we didn't even connect the sacrament to Sunday from what we can tell until like 1831 when we get DNC 59. It talks about offer up thy sacraments on my holy day. And it talks about this is on the Sabbath. These are the things you do. And that's kind of when we start to connect sacrament with Sabbath. And that's what you, that's the day you do it on. Because we also have a meeting they held in June 9th of 1830. We don't have a lot of records of those early meetings, but in 1830, so before this revelation was given, they had a, a meeting where they administered the sacrament. And it was also on a Thursday, like not on a Sunday, So not consistently on Sunday. And it wasn't every week either. In the early days of the church, some people were doing it bi weekly. Sometimes it was like less often than that.
So not a ton of consistency. And also keep in mind that we did not have church buildings in the earliest days of the church. So and when the story of the first division, we're familiar that like Joseph Smith's going to these camp meetings and all of this stuff and this kind of environment where you would worship outdoors with someone preaching and with these large crowds was probably more common with the Latter Day Saints because they didn't have church buildings and they had wards. But from what I understand it was more for like administrative tithing, united order purposes and less for weekly worship. And so the saints worshiped more Communally, together. Just like all the saints in Kirtland or all the saints in Missouri were
[00:11:00] Speaker C: getting, I think even in Nauvoo. Right. The preferred thing was to go in the grove there, west down the hill by the temple, to listen to Joseph Smith preach or whatever and. Yeah. And do worship services there.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Exactly. So they're outside or sometimes they're meeting in private homes. But you obviously have a space issue there as well. So outdoors was preferred when the weather allowed for it. But also these sermons were long, like multiple hours. Like, I can't even. I think one hour sacramenting is my max. But these people were sitting through two to three hours of sermons from Joseph or Parley.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: That's very normal for the 19th century, like Protestant world as well.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: I've got a fun anecdote about that.
So Ethan Smith, Reverend Ethan Smith, of view of the Hebrews fame. Right.
I've tracked down accounts from his congregants. What kind of a preacher was Ethan Smith? And there's one account that says that Reverend Smith would pray for, quote, upwards to an hour by the clock in saying his prayers in their congregational services there in Vermont. So imagine the closing prayer we sometimes have, you know, Brother Smith is kind of going along with this opening prayer. Imagine an hour long opening or closing prayers that.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: That puts to shame even those General Conference prayers, man. Like, good grief.
But I will, I will say this multiple hour sermons does sound preferable to like the Quaker form of worship where sometimes like you would literally go and you'd sit silent unless someone felt moved upon and you would have whole meetings.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Oh my.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Where you all.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Just last Sunday.
[00:12:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Where you would, like where everyone would just sit silent and there would end up being nothing. And then eventually you'd all just leave. Right. And so at least you have somebody talking to you.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: That is true. But you can also appreciate maybe why children weren't always attending these meetings. Like, you're standing multiple hours. Not great for kids. But also it was fairly common during that day, from what I understand, to even do multiple services. Like you for the Latter Day Saints. You might have a morning sermon service that goes for a couple hours in the morning and then in the afternoon you might have a sacrament meeting where you again have kind of a camp meeting, but you're also administering the sacrament. And then once wards were established or they've been our. They've been established already. But once ward started to take more prominence in your Sabbath worship, then, like, what you would have, your camp meeting would be like kind of on a stake level in Utah, and you would still have, like, those two meetings. And then if you had a ward meeting on top of it, you'd then meet in the evening. Like, talk about Marathon Church.
This wasn't everywhere, and it wasn't through all periods. But in some of the early days in Utah, and in fact, like, this whole communal worship with the Saints, as opposed to locally in your wards was prevalent enough that we had, like, a church wide, basically Utah or Salt Lake City wide, general morning worship meeting in the Salt Lake Tabernacle that lasted all the way until 1876. And then there was also a general afternoon worship service that went until the 1890s, when they finally discontinued that. And by that point, like, everyone's worshiping in their wards and their stakes, and that's kind of more standardized.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: I do like this. Like, when I went on my mission to Virginia, that was how a lot of churches operated at the time. Right. Is they just had, like, they had a morning service and an afternoon service, and whoever wanted to attend whichever service. That's just, like, kind of how it worked.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: So not of our faith.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Not of our. Like. Yeah, just like in Virginia, all the churches out there, all the Protestant churches.
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
So let's talk about the sacrament specifically, since that is the heart of sacrament meeting. We're used to this image of, like, table trays, deacons and priests and teachers being part of this.
But, like, none of these aspects that we tend to think of as quintessential would have been standard in the earliest days of the church. Certainly not like our manufactured little custom trays to fit plastic disposable cups would have been common in the 1830s, but there's actually a lot. So when you strip down the sacrament, it's basically just bread and wine. That's how Jesus implemented it in the New Testament. It represents, or foreshadows, like, his suffering and his sacrifice, but he also institutes it in the Book of Mormon, where it represents his resurrected body. So there's Latter Day Saints have a little bit of, like, a multifaceted approach with the sacrament. But it took us a while to kind of standardize what. What we do. In the earliest days, we had different names for it. Sacrament is what we use today. And we kind of think as terms of like, Eucharist is very Catholic or Communion is very Protestant, but those were interchangeable. In the earliest days. We hadn't really standardized our language.
Bread and wine instead of bread and water, we drank from the same cup. There were varying quantities, different prayer postures, extemporaneous. Like, there's a. There's a ton. So, like, we'll go through these. First of all, wine doctrine covenants. I think it's 27 talks about how, like, you need to use wine of your own make. So the saints would do that. They wouldn't even always use grapes. They would. We have a couple accounts of people using currants, which is kind of like a grape, like berry, but still they would use, like, different things and then ferment them and make their own wine. Interestingly, though, once they get to Utah, it seems that it kind of centralizes or localizes more to southern Utah, where you can grow grapes better. After that, people start to transition more to water towards the end of the 19th century, but with losing the disinfectant qualities of alcohol, you run into another challenge of the sacrament, and that's hygiene.
So in the earliest days of the church, you used a common cup to drink the water or the wine. And then towards the end of the 19th century, it was more commonly water, and everyone would use the same cup. Or you maybe have a few cups that got passed around kind of thing.
[00:16:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: And that was pretty common. And now that's the. Sounds disgusting to us today. But we also have the hindsight of a lot of knowledge about germs and stuff.
[00:16:41] Speaker C: I was gonna say you mentioned common cup earlier, and I kind of grimaced a little bit, and I thought, this is where you're going with it. You maybe already have it. But the account of, you know, we wanted to be up at the front of the building and not the back, so we'd be the first ones to drink from the cup, as you get
[00:16:53] Speaker A: some accounts like that kind of stuff.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: I can't remember who I heard this from, but I remember hearing a story about someone's grandmother or something, talking about how they were advised that, you know, they.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: That is my grandmother.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Thank you very.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: Your grandmother.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Okay.
But the advice was to, like, well, like, drink from close to the handle of the cup because that's where you know, fewer people.
But then, like, she looks down the row, and that's like, literally what everybody's doing. Because that's like the. That's the common advice. Right. So you're like. Right.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: And then you've got, like, kids who are drinking out of it, and, you know, you get that delightful toddler backwash.
And then you might see someone wipe their nose and drink from the sink. Like, so even. Even people who didn't know all about pathogens and germs back then, still, I mean, they could understandably be a Little squeamish about kind of sharing the same cup. And this lasted. I mean, we did this all the way from the 1830s all the way up until the 1900s. Around 1911 is when it starts to fade out. My grandmother, in living memory, she remembers doing the common cup. Now, she was born in 1920, I believe. Yeah, 1920, when it had mostly been phased out. But she was kind of in a small, little rural town where you had some of these, like, lingering practices.
But interestingly so, at this point in time, in, like, their turn of the century, you know, people kind of started to learn about germs and things like that. But it was still somewhat new concept. And so in 1911, one ward started to experiment with implementing individual cups to just have better hygiene. But then in the night in 1918, that's when it really took off, because the Spanish flu, all of a sudden there was a pandemic that kind of expedited the desire to have better hygiene. But interestingly, this was actually a point of tension between Latter Day Saints. There was absolutely a contingency of saints who were very resistant against using different cups.
[00:18:43] Speaker C: Solo cup purists, have you seen. I've seen little collections. Sometimes they come up on the antiques market where it's like little trays of, like, silver or lead. It's like a proto sacrament tray. Maybe I can find a picture to show here. But I've seen them pop up occasionally for sale. They still kind of linger around where. Yeah, it's usually like, silver, I think lead or copper. You don't want little plastic. Yeah, but it wasn't. But it wasn't little. But it was little metal cups. Yeah. And maybe like 12 row of, like, 12 or 14 of them or something. It's kind of cool.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I think we did, like, a fireside once up at a church up in, like, northern Salt Lake area or something that it's one of the older buildings that still survives, and they had, like, a little, like, museum display section which had some of these, like, old sacrament cups and stuff.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Oh, cool.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: One thing I'm curious about is when they have just that one cup, how long did sacrament take?
Because, like, we've all been in the meeting where sacrament takes a long time with the passing the trays because it's really full or whatever. If you've only got one cup, you're
[00:19:46] Speaker A: passing, but there's multiple cups going around.
This is an engraving in the Salt Lake Tabernacle sometime in the 19th century. So you've got the cup. This preacher is, like, holding A cup, the middle, but then there's a few other cups going around.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: So it wouldn't necessarily just be one single one, but you're still sharing a lot. I imagine it still took a long time.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: But interestingly, there was a little bit of tension because of a maybe, like, finances. Like, this was back in the day where every ward had to, like, raise their own money. And maybe they felt like, well, we don't want to, like, have to pay for manufacturing all these little individual cups or whatever. But I think the bigger one was some of the cultural and religious ideas about it. There was a more traditionalist group of people who felt like, well, Jesus Christ introduced the sacrament with, like, a shared cup, and Joseph Smith introduced the sacrament with a shared cup. If it was good enough for Jesus and Joseph, like, it's good enough for me. There was somewhat of a, you know, Jesus is going to protect me mentality. Even, like, you know, hygiene be darned. There was even one woman who said, I am not afraid to drink or have my children drink from the same cup as my brothers and sisters. My fear is that my children and I may not live worthy to partake of the sacrament. So there's a little bit of, like, religious, like, what's. What's important is the ordinance, hygiene be darned kind of thing.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: I just want to point out real quick for our listeners today. We have certain things in the church that there's some tension and anxiety about changes being made. And, you know, people, they wonder, should we be changing this or that policy, this or that practice? I just kind of hope we appreciate the irony that, like, literally over something as small as, like, the way we sing our hymns or, like, what kind of cup we use in sacrament. That stuff has set people off before.
So, like, you know, maybe just appreciate that, you know, it's a little overkill on some of these things. And, you know, I don't belittle when people who have concerns, but, like, you can argue over anything if you want to. So, you know, maybe try not to miss the forest for the trees kind of thing.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Fascinating, because, like, we actually aren't this far removed from a very similar situation because the concern was over hygiene. And they even said it was the progressive members of the church that were
[00:21:46] Speaker C: pushing for progressive members. The Progmos are pushing for more cups.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: The conservative members were trying to preserve some of, like, the religion, religious symbolism they saw in it and also the communal symbolism. So they saw that partaking the sacrament wasn't just about renewing your covenants of baptism. Individually, it was about like communing with the saints and we, we symbolize that by sharing the same cup. We're all together, we love each other. And there was even a sense that you shouldn't partake of the sacrament if you have ill feelings towards someone in the congregation. So it was known that people would like, go up to people before the meeting started to like, apologize or just kind of make up and things like that. And so there was like more of a communal sense than. Than we definitely do now. Sacrament is very much not about community as much as it is my individual relationship with God. And so conservative members were kind of afraid of losing that aspect as well. So like, I can appreciate that and I kind of like, oh, that is kind of nice that it's about communing with each other and not just with God.
But it is interesting that there was kind of a prmo conservative tension a little bit and that.
[00:22:44] Speaker C: Do you think if Desnat was around back in the day, they'd be pushing for single use cup? You know, I don't know.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: But like, think about it. We had the COVID 19 pandemic and there was definitely contingency of the church very concerned and wanted to social distance. And there was another contingency that was very concerned and wanted to gather with the saints. And like you could see both perspectives.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny and I do think that's. It's easy to like, think it's silly to be concerned about the sacrament cup now, but I actually appreciate that like there were like, there were concerns that were grounded in the deterioration of like the communal aspects and, and things like that. And you know, even religious symbolism, I think, like, it. It's worth noting that like, we sometimes become attached to the form of certain things and how they're done.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: I do.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: I love ritual and I love tradition
[00:23:28] Speaker B: and it's not even like official doct. Whatever, but we adopt ideas about the symbolism of doing things a certain way. And that is part of what makes change hard. Right. And I think we can appreciate the loss of that. And like, I don't even think it's a bad thing that we attach that kind of symbolism to certain practices and we can appreciate the loss and the concern over the loss there while also recognizing that like the church is still true as these things change. And maybe we should be a little more mindful, like, what are we losing and how do we compensate for that as we make these changes, you know?
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah, like, I don't know if we've ever really compensated for the Communal aspect of the sacrament.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: And that's a persistent concern. Like, as things change. I mean, when people have angst over the changes that are happening now, that's something you hear a lot, is that we've seen, even just since, like, the 1990s, when we were all growing up, we've seen a deterioration of, like, the communal aspects of worship.
And I've personally felt some of that. Like, I just. Like, you don't feel like the communities are as strong as they used to be. And I also feel the ways that I've contributed that I am not as good of a home teacher or ministering brother as my dad was. He was phenomenal, and he trained me to be good at it, but I just have not.
[00:24:41] Speaker C: What you're saying is you're a failure.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: There are definitely some things about the sacrament worship that we're gonna go over that I was like, man, I wish we still did that. It is so cool.
So one of those things is that we had varying quantities.
I definitely wish we still did more of this. So in some cases, you kind of ate until you were full. Like, it wasn't just like a little tiny crumb on a tray. You. There was plenty of bread and wine.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: The fast Sunday loophole.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Some wards are great on fast Sunday and they're generous with those pieces, but, like, it was more of a. Like a communal feast with the saints kind of thing. Not always, but depending on, like, what group you were with, you might get varying portions.
[00:25:18] Speaker C: Isn't that also what we think the earliest Christian eucharistic feasts were? Like, they were literally agape feasts.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Like, we are here to love each other, to commune as saints. And so, like, we share a meal together. More literally, this wouldn't have been a huge meal. It's bread and wine, but still varying quantities depending on where you were at or what time in history.
Also, we used. So the way we prayed. The posture for prayer has varied over time. Now you would have a priest kneel down and read the sacrament prayer off a card or memorize it. In the olden days, you might pray with one hand uplifted to the square. You might pray with both hands raised towards heaven. And in this picture, this one is from. I don't actually remember what date this is, so early 1970.
This is showing the person with both arms uplifted. It looks like they're sitting. Sometimes they'd be standing. So it wasn't completely standardized, like, how you pray for the sacrament.
[00:26:11] Speaker C: That's pretty great, by the way. That whole Tableau that's like quintessential 19th century Mormonism, quote, unquote. You've got Joseph Smith with the angel Moroni in the background with his hand uplifted. With his hand uplifted, yeah. Then you've got the old patriarch, you know, with the beard, praying over the sack with hands uplifted. Like, I kind of love everything about this. That's. That's pretty great.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: It was hard. Yeah, it's great.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: It's super based, man.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: But also, the prayers we said weren't always the same, which is crazy because we have them in ancient scripture. In the Book of Mormon, our sacrament prayers are listed out, and in the Doctrine and Covenants, they're listed out. So you would have assumed that would have been standardized, like really early on, very cemented, but it wasn't. This is Brigham Young in 1845. This is a documented prayer, sacrament prayer that Brigham Young gave in Nauvoo. And this is being quoted from an article by Justin Bray. So that's why it's like not the full quote. But he talks. He says, our Father in heaven, in the name of Jesus, we pray that thou wouldst bless and sanctify this bread to the use and benefit of all that take of it. He further asked that the bread become the bread of life to all who partake, realizing what thou has done for us. And then he added, our Lord, help us to repent of all our sins, to return from all of our evils, to do Thy will and work righteousness, that we may be accepted of thee. So, like all of that is very different from our sacrament prayer today. Today, if you miss one word, the whole congregation notices. Whereas this was fairly common, we also have Heber C. Kimball giving extemporaneous prayers. And it apparently was fairly common that it just wasn't cemented, the sacrament prayers. But Brigham Young himself, by 1865 at least, it seems to have been more solidified because by 1865, he's visiting a ward in Payson, and they give kind of an extemporaneous prayer and he chastises them for not sticking to the Scriptures. So over that time period between 1845, 1860, that's kind of when we start doing verbatim the scriptures or the prayers that's in the Scriptures.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: And yeah, I mean, you already mentioned this, but that is kind of interesting because that April 6th meeting. Well, not really in the April 6th meeting, but right within months of the organization of the church in April 6, you have DNC 20, which has supposed to do that. The Prayers lifted straight from Moroni 4 and 5 and says, this is how you're supposed to do it. So that's actually really interesting that we have a bit of a history of, of doing it differently. And it took some time before that became standardized.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And this part is really interesting too, that we're used to young deacons and teachers and priests doing the sacrament. But in the early days of the church, all the way up until the 1900s, it was mostly more mature men. The adult men were the ones who administered this ordinance. So that it had the same, like, the amount of reverence it deserved and things like that. But this also was partly because at this point, teenage boys weren't necessarily ordained to Iran, a priesthood office. That change didn't really start to happen until 1870s to through 8. 1920s was kind of this priesthood reformation where that shift happens, that we want to start giving our teenage boys more responsibility, help them, like, mature in the gospel. And so we start ordaining them to priesthood offices at younger ages. But until that point, adults were the ones who were ironic priesthood holders.
But also, we'll talk more about the. The priesthood changes later. But also neckties and the white shirt and tie thing didn't become more standard until about the 1920s. And that was mostly because then it had transitioned to teenagers had been doing the sacrament. And teenagers are notorious for being sloppy. And so they're like, okay, gotta, you know, shape up, dress uniform, gotta dress. We've gotta have kind of more of a standard uniform to show respect for the sacrament. But, okay, this is the one that I wish we really still had today. They used to play music in the sacrament administration instead of silence like we have today.
There'd be a musical number going, or maybe the organist would keep playing or things like that. And I kind of love that, and I kind of wish we still had that.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: I agree. I agree. When I go to the temple, I like when you're in the waiting room before your endowment session begins and you can sit there with your family, with your spouse, whatever, and just kind of reverently meditate and contemplate. But it's nice to have music.
I don't think music takes away from thinking about Jesus. In fact, it helps me think more about Jesus when we have nice music playing. You know, same thing with artwork.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: Like, I feel like it helps me focus my worship instead of just kind of wander.
But also, there were some complaints about that change. So that went away in 1940s.ish with David O. McKay. He seemed to feel that silence was A more appropriate way to show reverence. And that is a completely valid perspective.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: He must have grown up a Quaker.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: But some parents kind of, you know, had a hard time with the fact that now that it was so quiet that the children could be heard.
And so now parents are, like, having to take their kids out or feel that pressure, whatever. But also, meeting houses were evolving around that time too. So that actually had lobbies before. You didn't necessarily have a lobby on your meeting house. And so now parents can take their kids out if they want. So, you know, trade offs, give and take.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: The other thing that they used to have that I wish we still had today is they had the congregation used to kneel during the administration of the sacrament, which I think is absolutely beautiful. I love that show of ritual reverence.
[00:31:08] Speaker C: It's also very Catholic, by the way, speaking about those Papists. No, just kidding. I think that's actually. I know some Mormon fundamentalist groups make a big deal about this because it says in Moroni with the instructions, it says the priest kneels with the congregation. There's some ambiguity. Does it mean the priest is kneeling in front of the congregation? Does it mean the congregation kneels with the priest? Whatever. The point is, I get why that was a thing and why, for some people think that should be a thing.
I do have some holy envy for my Catholic friends where they take it very serious when the literal presence of Christ comes before you in the form of the wafer, the Eucharist wafer, God, absolutely.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: I love that sense of physical worship that I'm honoring God in this way. But also, we didn't have those fancy kneeling pews that Catholics always have. But I think they eventually did away with the kneeling. And the reasoning was that it was a little distracting. It's a lot of noise getting out. And certainly for older, older members of the church, that would be really, really hard.
It's hard on your knees. I'm sure the boomers who have this in living memory are like, yeah, no way I could do that now. But I. I wish we had that, because I think it's just a beautiful symbolism. So that is the sacrament. Now, let's talk about auxiliaries. And that's in quotes because I know that's not the proper term these days. But the extra things that have now become church, like Sunday School and Relief Society and primary. Let's talk about those and how they've all come to be folded into what is now known as church. Because they all started as not Ch. Church. They all started as separate things. I'm sure we're all familiar with the Relief Society. They got founded in 1842 by Joseph Smith. So this was like a top down. I've been inspired. Or Emma also felt like she wanted to have like a society for women. And Joseph Smith talks about like, now I'm turning the key. It was somewhat preparatory to the endowment. There's some connections to priesthood here. That's a great conversation for another time. But it was primarily a relief society, a charitable organization. It was not primarily a. A Sunday school, give spiritual lessons, though it was always spiritually overtoned. It was about giving. Charity was its primary function. And it ran pretty independently for a number of years. You know, you'd establish local ones. But eventually was disbanded in 1845 because of rising persecution tensions. And of course, the martyrdom of Joseph Smith.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: And the migration.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: And the migration, the exodus, it kind of just like fizzled out in 1845.
So that is how the women initially get started again. It's separate, it's independent, it's its own thing. Then in 1843 is the first vestiges of youth program. I don't have any 1840s picture. So these are the young performing missionaries in Nauvoo today. The closest thing I've got.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: But Heber, I was gonna say, man, they had those name tags back then even, huh?
[00:33:50] Speaker C: Good color photograph. Hi, Jeff. Photographs in 1843, huh?
[00:33:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: But in 1843, Heber C. Kimball wanted. Felt the need that, like, we want to form the moral character of our youth. We don't want them becoming hooligans or whatever, especially since, you know, young children and youth aren't always attending worship services. How are you going to educate them about the gospel? And so he would invite people to his home and he established the Young Gentlemen and Ladies Relief Society of Nauvoo. So he kind of made it as a spin off of the Relief Society, but his first younger men and women who instruct them on worthiness, morality, you know, just good things. And they would meet once a month until they left Nauvoo. That also kind of fizzled out. But that's kind of our first little youth thing.
[00:34:36] Speaker C: I feel like we have an opportunity here to bring back for the church today another youth group from Nauvoo, the Whistling and Whittling Brigade.
These guys who, like, kind of low key, would, like, kind of stalk and intimidate, you know, apostates or strangers in Nauvoo. But yeah, there's a fun thing about that. You can go Kind of read up.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: They're police band kind of hang out
[00:34:58] Speaker C: and try roving bands of kids trying to scare people. I don't know, it's. It's pretty funny.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Great.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: But then our first Sunday school, really also in Nauvoo, you've got like some Sunday schools that are pretty informal. But 1849, when we're in Utah, is the first more formalized version of it where again, children aren't necessarily attending worship services as much. And so this convert, Richard Ballentine, he was a, a Scottish. He. He had a Scottish pastor background. And so he wanted to start educating the children of Zion on the gospel. So he built a room in his house that could fit a bunch of kids and he started to, to teach them Sunday school. And so that was the beginnings of Sunday school in Utah. And you eventually would like, even administer the sacrament in these Sunday schools because the kids aren't necessarily attending church in the same way.
And it followed some of the other Sunday schools from like Presbyterian traditions and other Protestants to provide children good instruction on religion.
Next we've got. Okay, so some developments in the Relief Society are happening into the 1850s. So after it was disbanded in the 1840s, Brigham Young is directing the establishment of local relief societies again in 1854. That is pretty short lived because as soon as the Utah War happens and the Civil War happens again, it kind of fizzles a little bit and it becomes a little bit more fragmented. Not much is happening. And then in 1867, Brigham Young asked Eliza Snow to renew the Relief Society in a much more formal way. And at this point, it becomes more like, this is official, this is here to stay. We never see the Relief Society go away after this point. But then Sunday school starts to see some developments around this time too. So the Sunday school that, that Ballantine had established becomes known as the Parents Sunday School Union for their children. It eventually gets renamed as the Deseret Sunday School Union. By the 1870s, you've got hundreds of Sunday schools that are proliferating throughout Utah. And as I already mentioned, they administer the sacrament and they start music instruction for the children during this time.
Now, 1870 is also when we start to get really the beginnings of the Young Women program.
They begin, this is under the direction of Brigham Young. This is during the Mormon Reformation period and also like the retrenchment period, this time where we want to make sure our youth are morally formed and upright and upstanding and not getting influenced by the worldly influences of the world, like
[00:37:24] Speaker C: Petticoats thank you very much. Pioneers and Petticoats. Everybody's seen that. Excellent, excellent show. And it's all about this retrenchment. That's the whole theme in Pioneers and Petticoats.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: Exactly. So in the context. Context of this, Brigham Young has. Mary Elizabeth Horne established the Ladies Cooperative Retrenchment Association. This is for adult and young women. But there's a young ladies department. He asks to be part of this for the younger women. And Ella Young Empree is the president of that one. Now that's the beginning of young women's. Beginning of Young Men's is 1870s. Again, this is not 1870s. This is like, like something in the 1919s. But I got it from the church website, so it's young men something.
[00:38:06] Speaker C: Yeah, looks.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: It looks like the first church ball of all time.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: So the, the picture's a bit of a mismatch. But this is during the time when we start to see the transition towards young men. Youth. Teenagers get ordained to the Aaronic priesthood because ironic offices before this point were doing pretty mature stuff. Like this is what kind of blew my mind. Like, like you hear the office's deacon, teacher, priest, and the teacher one always felt like a misnomer and just weird because they don't do any teaching. They prepare the sacrament.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: Well, that it is. I mean, that is when you first get involved in the home teaching program
[00:38:42] Speaker C: or the ministering program says it's what you're supposed to do with it.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: You're supposed to be an actual teacher. And that's what it was before kind of the youth transition adults who were called to be teachers. That was their role basically to be home teachers. You were called specifically to be ordained to this office and your role was to. To check on families, to go to families, see if they are fulfilling their religious obligations and see how they're doing things like that and to. To be a teacher. And so that was the main role. And they ended up like doing some pretty mature stuff, like having to solve domestic disputes. Like if you have problems in your marriage, you go to your bishop now. But like, the teachers were there to like, solve disputes.
[00:39:20] Speaker C: I don't want to get involved in your weird, you know, divorce thing going on. Keep me out of that man.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: Or if there were like conflicts in the community, like the teacher's role would be to help delay, like, you know, be a mediator and peacemake with among the saints. So like, there was some pretty mature stuff they had to do. Obviously you could understand why like maybe a 14 year old.
[00:39:36] Speaker C: And of course a 14 year old should do it. I was just gonna say who, who better equipped to do a 14 year old well in.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: You can appreciate like I, I can appreciate like I'm, I have the same discomfort Stephen does. But you can also appreciate like how helpful that could have been. Again, talking about like the communal aspects of, of our religious practice. Like how helpful it would be to actually have a subset of the priesthood that is basically like called to teach families and to help them when they have problems at home and to help them work through and to maybe take some of that burden off of bishops and stuff like that. And to do like. I feel like there's a potential like real strength that could provide that is maybe missing in society today.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: I agree. But the problem with this system or the challenge they faced is that, that they had fewer and fewer mature adult men who were in the Aaronic priesthood because it's a lesser priesthood and because you needed to have the Melchizedek priesthood to be endowed to go on a mission eventually. Like you were just running around of Aaronic priests, you, they were advancing in their priesthood and you had fewer and fewer people able to fill those roles. And it was also during this time that there was a sense that like, we really do need to give our young men more responsibility. We need to help them develop more. Like they're getting lost all of this stuff. And so it's during this broad era between the 1870s to 1920s is that we really start to see this move toward, let's see if we can give our teenagers some more responsibility by ordaining them to a bronic priesthood office. And so that's when you also start to see the shift in what these roles do.
Before the sacrament wasn't necessarily passed by the deacons and the, the sacrament wasn't necessarily prepared by the teachers. Women could even often help with like preparing the linens and bringing the bread and things like that. Like they were more involved in that. And then as they want to ordain men to these offices, we start to cement like, okay, deac, pass, teachers, prepare, priests, bless. And some of these other rules that we know today start to develop.
And it's by from the 1870s to 1908, every youth between 12 and 20 was expected to receive at least one priesthood Aaronic priesthood office, usually a deacon. But an interesting thing is that often you still had Melchizedek priesthood holders that were essentially called to act as an Aaronic capacity because they still were dealing with this tension of like, we still need Teachers that are dealing with mature, heavy stuff. So they would call. Call you to be an Aaronic teacher, even if you were a Melchizedek priesthood holder. So there was that kind of odd, clunky mixing of the two for a little bit there. And eventually it develops into what it is today. But that is where we also start to get the beginnings of our young men's program. So in 1875, they started the Young Men's Mutual Improvement association, which was supposed to support the development of young men, but it was also like, it was not ironic priesthood quorum. This was separate. So it was a little bit more independent, maybe a little bit more about, like, developing activities, secular emphasis of moral character, less about spirituality.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Now this is something where the residual effects were still felt, at least when I was growing up, because you would still sometimes call young men's and young women's mutual when I was a kid. Right.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: That's how we get it.
[00:42:47] Speaker C: Indeed.
[00:42:47] Speaker B: And of course. And you're probably gonna lead into this at some point, but like the MIA Maids. MIA Maids, right. That's this Mutual Improvement Association.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And right after, in 1877, the former ladies Retrenchment association, whatever, renames to Young Ladies Mutual Improvement association to match what the men had established in 1875. And yeah, like you said, I think that like Gatherers of Light and Messengers of hope is pretty clunky and things like that. But imagine having to say Young Ladies Mutual Improvement association every single time you want to talk about the thing. Like, that's amazing mouthful.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Even that acronym. Y L, M, I A. Yeah. It doesn't roll off the tongue.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Not at all.
[00:43:28] Speaker C: By the way, I'm pretty sure that the YMCA is around the same time, late 19th century. I think this is like sort of Christian progressivism, right in the lower KP Progressivism, Right in the sense of like, social progression, social improvement, things like that. So we have both in the church and out of the church, this renewed, like, social emphasis on we want to
[00:43:46] Speaker A: develop our youth better 100%. And from what we can tell, a lot of the times they met on Tuesdays. And this is the kind of thing that the young women would. Would do in some of their meetings. It was. They'd have. So they'd meet on Tuesday, so it's not Sunday, but they would still have singing prayer, Bible lecture, a biographical sketch, musical exercise, book of Mormon or church history, a declamation alternating with select reading, whatever that means, report of current events or an essay, a scientific lecture, distribution of queries, and then closing exercises. Singing in another prayer. So, like, it's, it's pretty broad. They have a lot of spiritual stuff, but then also like educational refinement kind of things going on here.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: And, and I do actually think that's kind of continued at least when we were youth. I, I remember you'd have activities that would be like educational oriented, sometimes even like career oriented and stuff like that.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was all kind of in one. So instead of having like your Sunday lesson and then youth night, where it would be more fun activity, it's like you just met once a week and this is what you did. And it spiritual and secular. And it's kind of hard to like tease out like what was officially a church program versus not just because like everything in Utah, everything was the church and the church was everything. But at the same time, like, this wasn't a department of church headquarters. They weren't getting funding from church headquarters. It was still running fairly independently. You had to fundraise for everything you wanted to do for every program from the primary to the young women's. And there was no correlation. So it was very independent. And so it's, it's hard to wrap your minds around like this young women's program that is nothing like the young women's program I grew up in. But still it's like that was its predecessor.
And then we've got.
And just an interesting side bit on sacrament meeting. It wasn't until 1896 that fast Sunday became on Sunday. So for a while, apparently they did fast day on Thursday.
And that's when you would do your fast offerings and go without food. But to make it easier for people who were working, they then said, okay, well, we'll make it the first Sunday of each month. So that's just a fun sidebar.
Next. By 1908, priesthood meetings were happening on Monday nights, so all of your quorums would be on Monday nights. But eventually they got approval in the 1930s to move them to Sunday mornings before worship service.
And then 19. Okay. So the period of 1908 to 1922 is kind of the second half of this priesthood reformation, where we're officially like, linking Aaronic priesthood quorums with specific ages. Like, you're at 12 years old, you're a deacon, at 14 years old, you become a teacher and things like that.
[00:46:21] Speaker C: That.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: And with new duties that are kind of assigned to each one, that looks more like what we are today. And then in the 1960s is when the Aaronic priesthood becomes. Or the 1960s is to the 90s is kind of when all the priesthood, all the young men really become part of the correlation program. And then ward teaching becomes home teaching, which is now a Melchizedek Priesthood Quorum responsibility instead of a priesthood quorum responsibility prior to. But you've got Aaronic priesthood holders that like serve as junior companions. Like you went home teaching with your dad.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:46:53] Speaker A: So that's how we got there. Today 1915 is a fun one because that's when we get the beehives. That is not the picture of a beehive. That is just a beehive in 1915.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: That's literally a beehive.
[00:47:04] Speaker C: That's literally a beehive. Yeah. What are you talking about, Jasmine?
[00:47:07] Speaker A: Yeah, some guy in 1915. But that's when the beehive program was introduced and it was actually modeled after the Campfire Girl Girls to kind of complement the wmmia, the Young Men's Mutual Improvement association and the adoption of Boy Scouts because they were adopting Boy Scouts around this time. And so they wanted to kind of complement that and give girls a somewhat complimentary experience. So they had this beehive program. So today. Well, not today anymore, but it used to be beehives was just the 12 to 13 year olds. Beehive kind of described a whole program for young women's that was a little bit more outdoors camp oriented. That's kind of the beginning of Girls Camp.
1929 is when the church implements church wide. We're going to do a girls camping program.
Then 1928 we implement Adult Sunday School by David O. McKay. He establishes a worldwide adult Sunday school. I don't know if before that point it was Sunday school was just for kids. I think there was like adult Sunday schools happening, but it was just kind of not consistent. So I think this was just like, yes, everyone who's an adult attends Sunday school now. And we also have like Sunday schools for kids. Kids. And then he also in 1928 implemented this very interesting mashup where he instituted a single meeting for both Aaronic Priesthood Quorum and Sunday school. It didn't last very long. It ended in 1937. So I'm guessing mashing those two things together didn't go very well. But I don't know. I'm not the expert. 1930s was when we finally permit priesthood meetings to be held on Sundays. And so this is kind of the beginning of where we get like your Sunday becomes extra packed and extra full because all those extra auxiliaries end up coming on Sundays but they're not together in a block. Yet they're just on Sunday. So you would meet for priesthood early in the morning and then you'd go to your Sunday meetings.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Hey you, you still have early morning priesthood meetings. At least when I was growing up you still would occasionally have like a steak meeting at 7am and then you
[00:48:58] Speaker A: would still meet like your young women would meet on a different day of the week. Relief Society might meet on a different day, Primary might meet on a different day. And that lasted for quite some time in 1934.
That's when it changes from Young Ladies Mutual association to Young Women's Mutual Improvement Association. They felt like women's was the more modern term in 1934.
And that's also when they do the age change. The entry age is set to 12 instead of before. It was at 14 apparently, but it still went up until like you're 30. So being a young woman was a much broader span.
And then it's in the 1940s-60s that they start to realign these classes where beehive becomes cemented as like this younger class of 12 to 13 year olds. My maids. And then the gleaners for the 16 to 17 year olds. It's a reference to the book of
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Ruth that, you know, the wheat.
[00:49:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: But then in 1959 they changed gleaners to laurels.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Do we know where that came from? Laurels?
[00:49:54] Speaker A: I didn't look it up, but I assume it's a reference to like Greek laurels. Like you're a winner, victorious. I don't know, I should have done my research. But I'm not the expert on this. I'm your teemu version. So 1970 is the big big year where the correlation revolution happens. So this is when the church office building is being built. This is when everything just like collapses under the church. Up to this point everything is still like somewhat kind of independent, but it's also kind of church run. But everyone's doing their own fundraising, everyone's building their churches on their own. Everyone's still kind of using their own manuals and their own like curriculum.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: I think it's kind of interesting that like we have this pre correlation era era that we're talking about where like in on some level the church was like really just all encompassing for the culture at least like in the inner mountain west.
And yet you had like a lot of independence with some of these auxiliaries and stuff like that. And now like in an era where the church isn't really near like you can live in Utah and obviously the church plays a big role in the culture here still. But it's not nearly so all encompassing. Right. And yet. But correlation means that like the church actually does exert greater control over a lot of these things than it used to.
[00:51:04] Speaker A: It's true. And I think in some I'm simplifying so much in this timeline. But in some ways the tensions they were feeling was like, oh, now that the church is expanding beyond Utah, beyond the United States, we're coming in clash with challenges like oh, a beehive camping program doesn't work as well in South America as it does here. How are we going to deal with that? All these questions about how to scale and the correlation kind of is one of the solutions to that that like, okay, maybe if we centralize things it can help us administrate this in a way that's going to meet more people's needs on a broad scale. Obviously there's trade offs to correlation. Sometimes they're like the big bag boogeyman of like squashing any good idea. But they like, they're also there for a reason. In the 1960s it starts that you have David McKay really starting to like have curriculum be directed by priesthood leadership and correlation. But 1970s is when it like really picks up. You've got the Relief Society, all of their fundraising magazines. The welfare now comes under Church Correlation and committees and departments. Sunday school is now correlated curriculum on the scripture. And they're on like an eight year rotation of studying all the books of scripture.
The Cesar Deseret Sunday School Union becomes just Sunday School. And again brought under the priesthood umbrella.
18 year olds are now automatically enrolled into Relief Society. And so Relief Society enrollment goes up and your paid dues drops. You used to have to pay dues to being part of Relief Society and young women, they narrow it down to just 12 to 17 years old.
And the curriculum for young men is. So the Young Men's Mutual Improvement association is now officially like folded into the Aaronic Priesthood quorums. And all young men things like kind of happens under that umbrella. Young Women's or the Young Women's Improvement association is now renamed to Young Women's much shorter. And then the church office building is constructed. So a ton happens administratively in this period where we've got like okay, now everything is officially under the church. Now we've got centralization and correlation of all our curriculums. And that is then what brings us 10 years later to 1980. Now we are consolidating everything to the three hour block. And then this is now what we know as Church Sacramenting, Sunday school and then all these auxiliary auxiliaries. And of course then we get to the 2019 two hour block. And now today we're in the, the changed to our block. But man, like, I had no idea our church kind of went through all of those iterations. I'd heard little things like my mom would talk about, like, oh yeah, we used to have to go to young women's on a different day and it was weird and it wasn't really church, but it kind of was and stuff like that. And then like, oh, your Sundays were so long because you'd have like a morning meeting and an afternoon meeting and but like I just grew up with the three hour block, so that's all I knew that this is what churches, three hours of all these departments or these things is what church.
And that's how we get to where we are today.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Well, and I, I can actually remember hearing stories about like, yeah, when all the meetings were spread out and stuff from like parents and, and aunts and uncles or what have you, or even just church leaders.
But yeah, that's, that's actually really fascinating and I think it puts in context like, like we were talking about earlier, sometimes there's a lot of angst over changes. And yes, there are legitimate things to be concerned about as far as like communal aspects and things that might change and we should be mindful of, of that. But at the same time like, and we talked about some of our commentary noting like how some of these changes are tracking with broader developments within American or Protestant Christian society.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't inspired direction and guidance happening all along the way as well. Right. Like you said, a lot of these changes are being made because there are needs that need to be met. And as the church globalizes, you've got to figure out a way to scale the programming for, for people all around the world. And that's part of, I think the globalizing force of the church is a big part of the changes that are ongoing today is like, how do we meet the needs of small communities all over the world?
So I think we can, even as we have some angst over what might be getting lost, I think we can have a little like we should have trust in the church leaders that they are being inspired in how to direct and lead this. But the other thing that I think is actually interesting and I don't know if this is a point you, you wanted to make, but so much of this starts like from the bottom up, like from just like the people see a need. People see a need and they start trying to meet that. And I think like one of the counters to what people feel like is being lost now as far as communal sense of belonging and all that stuff.
[00:55:34] Speaker A: Culture, loss of church.
[00:55:35] Speaker B: Balls. Yeah. Like there are, there are opportunities for individual members and, and people who want to fill that need. Need in your local communities or even like through the Internet. Like a lot of influencers are trying to find ways to fill that need that people feel is being lost. And I think that's okay, like, as long as people understand it's not official church programming and it's not, it's not this official thing. But, like, I think that's actually a good thing. Like it's okay to say, hey, I see a need happening here and I'm going to try to fill it. I'm going to try to provide a sense of community for the men in the church because they're feeling lost. I'm going to try to provide a sense of belonging for women in the church because, you know, they feel like it's being whatever the need might be.
I think it's totally okay and even valuable to have individual members saying, hey, I want to try and see how I can fill these missing needs right now.
[00:56:26] Speaker C: I think there's a lot to that. I also think there's something to consider with the fact that the church is clearly responding historically and today to changing social and demographic trends.
Right. A lot of these programs are coming up when there's temperance movements or retrenchment movements or things like that. Right. They're. They're responding to demographic shifts, you know, and other cultural factors. Look at the cultural factors, you know, today, where people are increasingly moving away from socialization and in person, communal gathering. So much of socializing, such as it is, is now being done online through social media or whatever.
That's not just among Latter Day Saints. That's among pretty much all the industrial West. Right. And even parts of the developing world now is increasingly moving off online, moving digital, shorter attention spans. People don't want to be at meetings for longer than they have to.
So I know, starting with President Nelson. Right. There's a big emphasis on home church. What was it?
[00:57:18] Speaker B: You know, home centered church support.
[00:57:21] Speaker C: Home centered church support. That's the one, you know. So I wonder if this is kind of responding to those trends as well. I would imagine it has to be to an appreciable degree. Because if you're living in a world where most people just don't want to spend three hours at church anymore. If that's going to affect retention, if that's going to affect, you know, people's experience, then they have to make adjustments. So I, I can, I can understand why there's wisdom behind those.
[00:57:40] Speaker A: I think there's always going to be a tension between, like, preserving the beautiful and powerful things about our culture and our religion, plus trying to move forward and meet the needs of a new, new day. And that's never going to change. I think that's what I learned mostly from this. Like, wow. All those, like, tensions of trying to preserve tradition plus trying to meet new needs is just always, ever present. Change is consistent, but it is, it is fascinating. And I do think that the newest changes are inspired and it's going to be exciting to see how we adapt and change to the them.
Please eviscerate us in the comments if I got any of this history wrong.
But also I'm going to be putting a bunch of links to the sources we used in this in the description. Remember, you can study deeply and believe boldly and we'll see you next time.
Sam.
