Is the endowment ceremony weird? If its so sacred why do a lot of people leave the church or become disillusioned with the church? I'm not endowed but I have friends who have become atheists after going through the temple.
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Is the endowment ceremony weird? It dependents on how you receive it. For first-timers, and those who lack a context, it's all that and more. But "weird" doesn't do it justice, either. The Endowment is both simple and complex. It's part tutorial, part ceremony, a rite of passage and a celebration of truths taught openly on Sunday, et cetera. My first time, I took one look around me and wondered what gives. I've spoken to a number of people whose confusion and anxiety made it a freaky, discomforting, experience. For some, it has been a valid reason to break from the faith.
But for many others, it is a beautiful experience, one that enriches their understanding and gives meaning to their life. To write the Endowment off as "weird" is to miss the point. If and when you have this experience, you may recognize a similarity between it and rites of passage created by societies all over the world. Each community has some institutional way of sharing with the next generation what it means to be part of this community. Such ceremonies differ from community to community, mostly in the way each reflects that community's unique identity. But in purpose and function, so many of these share a similar architecture.
One criticism I frequently encounter is that the Mormon Endowment ceremony is just a rip-off of Freemasonry. The typical Mormon reply is that Freemasons and Mormons are drinking from the same river, but that Mormons - through revelation - are drinking further up the river from the Freemasons, whose rituals are a degradation of ancient forms handed down.
I don't buy it.
I doubt the Freemasons go back that far. Their group was started during the Enlightenment, as the Middle Ages gave way to the Modern period, and religious dogma was giving way to logic, free thought and science. The ceremonies of Freemasonry - which are easy to uncover these days - are about reason, character, fraternity and community. Freemasonry created an umbrella under which people of goodwill could get together - regardless of religious affiliation. Its ecumenical nature, as well as its emphasis on reason, put it at odds with the Medieval Church. To many early Americans - including George Washington - it was a movement that fit well within the American character. In fact, many early Founders were Freemasons.
To Joseph Smith, there was a lot in Freemasonry that was fascinating and inspiring. But the community Joseph Smith wanted to found would not be a secular one where religion boiled down to a few guiding principles that focused on ethical conduct. Joseph Smith wanted to incorporate the sense of fraternity and incorporate the sense of organization. But Joseph's focus was not merely fraternal. He envisioned an organization, for men, women and children, that would teach people who they were, what God expected of them, and how they could rise to their full potential.
Don't be surprised if you read or hear that the Endowment contains symbols and rituals that trace back to Freemasonry. You can see as much when you look at the exterior of the Salt Lake Temple, which is caked with Masonic emblems. In fact, most of the early leaders of the LDS Church were practicing Freemasons. Joseph Smith was a 33rd Degree master mason and the master of the Nauvoo Lodge. A rift opened up between Nauvoo and Freemasons elsewhere when Joseph Smith said he could outdo Solomon, but that comment is largely misunderstood. Joseph Smith's point was that, in the development of temple worship, he was bringing forth something greater than the rituals of the Freemasons.
There are people out there who trash the Endowment by drawing parallels between it and the rituals of the Freemasons. As Joseph Smith was a very active Freemason, this is not hard to do, just as it's not hard to find a lot of Scottish hymns in the early hymnal of the Church. Big deal. If you look at the rituals of Freemasonry and then compare them to other rites of passage, developed and practiced by societies around the world, you will find functional similarities that have less to do with one group copying the other than with the psychological and sociological purpose of such ceremonies. It's like comparing the baptism of a nine-year-old Baptist with the Jewish Bar Mitzvah and rough equivalents among Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. In the case of certain symbols, the connection between Mormons and Masons is undeniable, but just as Jesus's Last Supper took the form of the Jewish Passover -and remade it into something new - the Endowment's superficial similarities to Freemasonry fuel the fires of gossip, but only to a point. In the end, the aims of the two ceremonies are distinctly different are the Mormon Endowment turns out to have a very different focus.
What comes across as weird is the idea of active audience participation, in conjunction with a dramatic presentation. Some will flinch when I compare the Endowment to the Rocky Horror Picture Show but both involve a presentation where a story is presented but the audience, rather than passively watching events unfold, are invited to participate in certain controlled ways. In the Rocky Horror Picture Show, it's all lighthearted fun as audience members throw rice at a married couple imitating the newlyweds on-screen. Audience members yell things out and shoot squirt guns as a way of not taking things too seriously. In the Endowment, it's a lot more serious and the audience participation consists of having each woman participate as if she were Eve while each man participates as if he were Adam.
Anyone familiar with the Catholic mass cannot be totally ambushed by the above presentation. The Mass involves a quiet, dignified, service but one that also involves certain stylized surroundings, with a priest who is dressed for the part, with those in attendance going through various stations as they "stand up, sit down and kneel" in response to various lines of the mass. This is very different from the standard sermon and plate-passing of many Protestant churches. But with Mormons, the ecclesiastical distance between priest and parishioner collapses. Mormons invest each worthy male with some office and/or calling in the priesthood while Mormon wives share some aspects of the priesthood with their husbands. This means that instead of a priest standing over a table, saying prayers in Latin while he eats and drinks the sacred host, Mormons train themselves, and one another, to be their own priests to each other. Not surprisingly, the Endowment walks men and women through the Creation and the story of the Fall, but has each participate in the telling. Furthermore, that story is told as an explanation for the meaning of life as well as a backdrop for establishing what it means to be a true Mormon.
The real meat of the Endowment is the dramatic revelation of the Plan of Salvation. While the details and mechanics of this presentation are best left to be discovered, the concepts discussed in the temple are taught openly in Sunday school. Mormons believe that each person is a child of God, created in his image, who lived in heaven before being born into this world. Mormons believe that this world was created as an arena in which people could make their own choices, and be responsible for those choices. Mormons believe that, central to the plan, there would have to be a savior and that Jesus was called, from before the foundation of the world, to be its Savior. While the Endowment goes on to put participants through a kind of interactive journey - from the preexistence to the Garden and from the lone and dreary world to eternity - the most important part of the Endowment is a set of commitments critical to life's basic mission. Among other things, Mormons are committed to study the scriptures, obey the Word of Wisdom, keep the commandments, keep the law of chastity, pay an honest tithing and avoid every unholy and impure practice. They are committed to building up the kingdom of God on Earth.
Because most people who have joined the LDS Church have typically come from a protestant group, it's not surprising that some of the people who attend the temple for the first time will be shocked. For those who are used to church as involving little more than a preacher up on stage, preaching his sermon, it probably does feel weird to dress up, make several costume changes, engage in an interactive ceremony and otherwise let go of the linear world in favor of a presentation that can feel utterly multifaceted.
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