A temple garment (also referred to as garments, or Mormon underwear) is a type of underwear worn by a vast majority of adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement, after they have taken part in the Endowment ceremony. Garments are worn both day and night and are required for any previously endowed adult to enter a temple. The undergarments are viewed as a symbolic reminder of the covenants made in temple ceremonies and are seen as either a symbolic or literal source of protection from the evils of the world.
The garment is given as part of the washing and anointing portion of the endowment. Today, the temple garment is worn primarily by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and by members of some Mormon fundamentalist churches. Adherents consider them to be sacred and not suitable for public display. Anti-Mormon activists have occasionally publicly displayed or defaced temple garments to advance their opposition to the LDS Church.
Temple garments are sometimes derided as "magic underwear" by non-Mormons, but Mormons view this terminology to be misleading.
Read more about Temple Garment: Purpose, Sacredness Among Members, Garment Origins and Evolution, LDS Church Teachings, Use in Protests
Famous quotes containing the words temple and/or garment:
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“An actor rides in a bus or railroad train; he sees a movement and applies it to a new role. A woman in agony of spirit might turn her head just so; a man in deep humiliation probably would wring his hands in such a way. From straws like these, drawn from completely different sources, the fabric of a character may be built. The whole garment in which the actor hides himself is made of small externals of observation fitted to his conception of a role.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)