Gospel Topics: Why no "Initiatory"?

[annie.erickson]

Hello,
I am currently teaching a Religion / Family History / Temple class at BYU and not all my students are members of the LDS Church. There are many great and not-so-great resources on the internet, so I would like to make sure I point students to The Church of Jesus Christ's website. I noticed in Gospel Topics that there is not a topic for "Initiatory." I could not find any articles on churchofjesuschrist.org that were about the initiatory. It is not mentioned in the "Endowment" Gospel topic overview or study guide. I found it mentioned briefly in this article: About the Temple Endowment (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/tem ... -endowment), but I feel that it is missing many details. (Not to mention the first photo has a women who looks confused while standing near a temple...)

Would it be possible to have someone create a gospel topic for "Initiatory," and also have it mentioned in the "Endowment" gospel topic?

And, would it be possible to have a different photo for the article "About the Temple Endowment"?

Thank you for your time!

-Adrianne Erickson

[rmrichesjr]

This is a user-to-user discussion forum, so nobody here can influence anything about your suggestions. The three options most likely to be of influence would be the Feedback button or link on a related web page or in an app, asking your stake president to push your suggestions up his chain of command, and any connections you might be able to find among fellow teachers at BYU.

[rmrichesjr]

For more immediate purposes, you might find it useful to search on the Church website for the words "washing" and "anointing". In particular, that search should return a link to this page: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... 0?lang=eng

There is also a book by Boyd K. Packer, "The Holy Temple": https://www.deseretbook.com/product/P5229347.html and https://archive.org/details/holytemple0000pack (I can't vouch for the scanning at the latter link, and I don't know off the top of my head whether the book has the information you are seeking for your students.

[BrianEdwards]

Another helpful reference would be the General Handbook, section 27.2 "The Endowment". In the main part of 27.2, there are two paragraphs that give some details about the initiatory ordinances (washing and anointing, as mentioned above). I agree it would be helpful to have similar info available in the gospel topics, hopefully you submit feedback about this missing info.

[annie.erickson]

Those articles and links are very helpful, thank you!

[sbradshaw]

The initiatory is technically part of the endowment, but often we think of them separately (especially because in ordinances for deceased family members, they can be done on different days). I wonder if it's intentional that there's not a separate article, to encourage people to think of it more as part of the endowment.