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What the Church Itself Says About It

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What the Church Itself Says About It

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.

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