Until very recently, the initiatory was administered while initiates were in a state of nudity--entire during the nineteenth century, partial during the twentieth. By "nudity," I refer to the exposure of body both to being seen and to being touched.(4) Only in early 2005 did church leaders revise the initiatory so as to abolish nudity. This article traces the history of the initiatory and interprets that decline by setting it against intersecting Mormon discourses about the body and the sacred. During the twentieth century, it became common for Mormons to invoke a figure of the body as temple to proscribe exposure of the body outside marriage: like the rites of the temple, the body is to be concealed on the grounds that it is sacred. The decline of ritual nudity in the initiatory extends the imperative to conceal the body into a realm where that imperative was formerly held in suspension. In interpreting ritual nudity and its decline, I pay particular attention to the power relations enacted by the exposure or concealment of initiates' bodies. In this I take cues from ritual theorist Catherine Bell (1992), though I push back somewhat against Bell's insistence that power is produced, not expressed, by ritual.

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In January 2005, an unexpected revision to initiatory procedures all but eliminated ritual nudity. Initiates are now instructed to clothe themselves in the garment in the privacy of a changing-room cubicle, then to place the shield on top of that, before being presented to the washing room. The shield is now closed at the sides, making it, essentially, a robe. The closing of the shield is possible because officiators no longer touch any part of the initiates body other than the head. As the rite begins, initiates are told that they will be washed and anointed "only symbolically"; this symbolic washing and anointing is restricted to dabbing water and oil on the initiates's forehead or crown. Officiators still pronounce the traditional blessings on individual body parts, but they do so while laying hands on the initiate's head, a gesture that will be familiar to Mormon's from ordinances performed outside temples, such as confirmations, ordinations, and health blessings. At the point of the initiatory where officiators used to clothe initiates in the garment, officiators now make a declaration that the initiate's garment is "authorized," then go on to provide the customary instructions about wearing the garment throughout one's life.