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For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the twenty-first century, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is an essential part of Sabbath-day worship. This ritual meal has come to serve as both a memorial to Jesus Christ and a renewal of Church members’ commitment to keep his commandments. It is a familiar scene for churchgoers: priesthood holders (often teenage boys) in white shirts and neckties prepare, bless, and pass morsels of white bread and thimble-sized cups of tap water to the congregation in a solemn, reverential manner. Part of the beauty of the service is in its simplicity, as it is often performed against a backdrop of scratchy wall coverings, hanging basketball hoops, and folding metal chairs. The sound of clinking plastic cups echoes throughout the chapel, and the musty smell of wood benches and crumb-covered pew cushions fill the air. This is what Sabbath worship looks like for many Latter-day Saints. With some regional variations, one can find similar services nearly every Sunday in meetinghouses from Salt Lake City to São Paulo and from Auckland to Accra.

The administration of the Latter-day Saint sacrament, however, did not always look, smell, sound, feel, and taste the same as it does today. This chapter traces the history of this sacred ordinance from the Church’s organization in 1830 to the present. Beginning in the early Restoration period, the Prophet Joseph Smith and other Church leaders adopted both theological and procedural elements of the Lord’s Supper from their previous religious backgrounds, adapted them with new scriptures and modern-day revelations, and folded them into the ritual life of their new faith. The preparing, blessing, and passing of the sacrament was then shaped by time and place, as Latter-day Saints migrated to the Salt Lake Valley and scattered throughout the Great Basin region. Without handbooks and centralized policies governing sacramental procedures in the nineteenth century, the administration of the bread and water/wine varied between congregations, often depending on the preference of local Church leaders. In the twentieth century, as the Church began to expand outside the pioneer corridor, Latter-day Saint leaders harmonized the various sacramental procedures, codified them into handbooks, and standardized the ordinance into the look and feel that Latter-day Saints have come to expect today.

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The sacrament has been a main feature of Latter-day Saint worship since the earliest days of the Restoration. According to some accounts, the Prophet Joseph Smith introduced the ritual of bread and wine at the inaugural meeting of the faith on April 6, 1830. On that occasion, Smith and Oliver Cowdery followed God’s command to “bless bread and break it with them, and to take wine, bless it, and drink it with them.”[1] Beyond brief references such as this, there is little information about how the bread and wine were prepared, distributed, and cleaned up, let alone what the ritual meant to communicants.

To better understand Latter-day Saint conceptions of the Lord’s Supper, it is important to note that their views are based not only on Last Supper narratives in the New Testament but also on a narrative in the Book of Mormon. Latter-day Saints believe that the Book of Mormon contains an account of Jesus Christ appearing to the ancient inhabitants of the Americas soon after his death and resurrection. During this climactic visit to the New World, the Savior instituted a Last Supper-like meal of bread and wine, but with important differences. As he distributed bread to the Nephite multitude, Jesus explained, “And this shall ye do in remembrance of my body, which I have shown unto you” (3 Nephi 18:7). This reference to the resurrected body of Christ was a marked difference from the accounts in the New Testament that focused on the impending suffering and death of Jesus. For most Christians, the Lord’s Supper served as a memorial of the Crucifixion—a final meal before betrayal and arrest. For Latter-day Saints, the sacrament might remind communicants of life after death through resurrection—that is, of the risen rather than soon-to-be-crucified Savior. To what extent early Latter-day Saints interpreted the sacrament through this new scriptural lens is unclear. But this unique account of a second ceremonial meal of bread and wine had the potential to separate the Church from the rest of Christendom, reframing the Lord’s Supper in profound ways.[2]

There is evidence that Latter-day Saints did not always strictly follow these new scriptural narratives. This was the case with the sacramental prayers. Both the Book of Mormon and the revelations received by Joseph Smith provide specific blessings for the bread and wine (see Moroni 4–5; Doctrine and Covenants 20:75–79). Over time, Church leaders ensured that these prayers were carefully followed and recited with exactness, word for word, and repeated if necessary. But during the early Restoration period, priesthood-holding men who blessed the bread and wine sometimes offered extemporaneous prayers over the emblems. The free-flowing, unscripted prayers might have resembled the formal blessings in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants with slight variations, but Latter-day Saints did not seem to feel strictly tied to these scriptural blessings. This allowance for some variation in sacramental prayers was similar to the practices of some Protestant ministers at the time who, looking to avoid formal prayers and set liturgies, believed ad-libbing allowed for more sincere expression as guided by the Holy Spirit.[3]

Because prayers rarely appear in early Latter-day Saint records, it is difficult to determine how often and to what degree officiators deviated from those prescribed for the bread and wine. In 1845, however, George D. Watt transcribed sacramental prayers given by Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball in Nauvoo, Illinois, providing a glimpse into their improvised nature at the time. Both apostles followed a basic outline of invoking the name of God and asking him in the name of Jesus Christ to “bless and sanctify” the bread and wine. But there was also room for variation. Young began his prayer with, “Our Father in Heaven, in the name of Jesus we pray that thou would bless and sanctify this bread to the use of and benefit of all that take of it.” He further asked that the bread become “the bread of life” to all who partake, “realizing what thou hast done for us.” He added, “Our Lord[,] help us to repent of all our sins[,] to return from all our evils[,] to do thy will and work righteousness that we may be accepted of thee.” Heber C. Kimball is said to have given a similar extemporaneous prayer over the water.[4] Even the slightest alteration to a word or two would be noticeable to a modern Latter-day Saint, let alone full sentences like those employed by Young and Kimball. Yet it appears that, at the time, this was common practice.

Those administering the sacrament continued to improvise at the table until Church leaders took corrective action decades later. When Brigham Young visited Payson, Utah, in 1865, for example, he “called attention to the administering the sacrament, noticing how few in blessing the bread and water followed the form laid down in the Doctrine and Covenants.”[5] He made similar observations in Paris, Idaho, in 1873, and offered a stern rebuke against the practice. “When you administer the sacrament,” he taught, “take this book [the Book of Doctrine and Covenants] and read this prayer. Take the opportunity to read this prayer until you can remember it. You cannot get up anything that is better, and not even equal to it. . . . The people have various ideas with regard to this prayer. They sometimes cannot hear six feet from the one who is praying, and in whose prayer, perhaps, there are not three words of the prayer that is in this book, that the Lord tells us that we should use.”[6] Latter-day Saint leaders continued to correct extemporaneous sacramental prayers into the 1880s and 1890s.[7] A verbatim reading of the written forms became the standard over time, but this practice required continued admonishments from Church leaders and eventually led to the printing of sacramental prayer cards at the turn of the twentieth century.[8]

The extemporaneous nature of the sacramental prayers highlights one of the defining features of the early Latter-day Saint movement: the constant evolution and growth of procedures. There was a looseness to policies and sermonizing in the early Church that modern Latter-day Saints in the current era of handbooks and global correlation might not recognize. The Church and its practices evolved little by little as Joseph Smith received, printed, and distributed additional revelations. He and other early Latter-day Saint leaders were in a constant process of “figuring things out.” The intricacies of the sacrament and its administration were very much part of the gradual development of the Church and its policies and procedures.

Even the name of the ordinance varied. Although the Church’s founding documents in 1830 called it “the sacrament,” Latter-day Saints referred to the ordinance by a number of monikers, including but not limited to “the bread and wine,” “the Lord’s Supper,” “the Communion,” “the Passover,” “the Eucharist,” “the flesh and blood,” and “the feast.” In fact, one of the most common ways to refer to the ordinance in the 1830s was “breaking bread.”[9] These names carried over from other Christian traditions and reflected the varying meanings of the Lord’s Supper that converts brought with them into the new faith.

When, where, and how often the sacrament should be administered were likewise unsettled questions during the lifetime of Joseph Smith. The Lord’s table was spread for the first time on April 6, 1830—a Tuesday. It appears that the sacrament was not administered again until a Church conference three months later on June 9—a Wednesday. Further, Sunday was not designated as the day to meet and administer the sacrament each week until a revelation was received in August of 1831, a year and four months after the organization of the Church (see Doctrine and Covenants 59:9). In the meantime, members were counseled to “meet together often” to administer the ordinance (Doctrine and Covenants 20:75). However, early Church records suggest that the sacrament continued to be performed sporadically until the completion of the Kirtland Temple in 1836. At that point, the temple provided adequate space and shelter for large congregational worship services.[10] Yet even then, members and missionaries away from Church headquarters continued to administer the Lord’s Supper only when occasion permitted. For example, Latter-day Saints in 1840s Iowa performed the ordinance “every second Sabbath.”[11] This pattern of performing the sacrament more frequently among the main body of Saints than in the outlying settlements continued after the migration to Utah, when “country wards” outside of Salt Lake City distributed the emblems in regional meetings, sometimes just once a month.[12]

In terms of who administered the Lord’s Supper in the early Latter-day Saint movement, Joseph Smith’s revelations called on elders in the Melchizedek Priesthood and priests in the Aaronic Priesthood to be responsible for officiating at the sacrament table and blessing the bread and wine/water. Yet early records reveal other Church leaders, such as apostles, bishops, and missionaries, breaking bread and filling cups. The scriptures did not mention the passing of the emblems to the congregation, though the role was similarly filled by various priesthood-holding men—not primarily by deacons in the Aaronic Priesthood, as would become the case later in the Church’s history.[13]

The practice of preparing the sacrament (as modern Latter-day Saints have come to understand it) would not become a responsibility of teachers in the Aaronic Priesthood until the 1930s, a period we will examine later in this chapter. Joseph Smith’s revelations did not specify who should procure the bread and wine, nor who should set up and take down the sacrament table. As was the case in other aspects of the Church, Latter-day Saint women filled in where the scriptures were silent. Indeed, women seemed to have a strong sense of stewardship over sacramental objects for much of the Church’s history. While records from the 1830s and 1840s are sparse on this topic, later accounts from Utah reveal a network of women baking and bringing the sacrament bread; washing and caring for the sacrament dishes; and making and laundering linens for the sacrament table. It appears their contributions began during the earliest days of the Church.[14]

Women’s contributions were not limited to baking bread. Latter-day Saint women also became the primary vintners in Zion, following an August 1830 revelation that Church members “not purchase wine . . . of your enemies” (Doctrine and Covenants 27:2–4). Elizabeth Ann Whitney was one such contributor. She explained that her family had “a very great quantity of red currants, from which we had ourselves manufactured wine.” Emphasizing that the wine they produced was “purely domestic, or homemade,” and thus in compliance with the revelation that Joseph Smith had received, they were able to partake of “this wine [they] had appropriated for the sacrament.”[15] Similarly, when John Murdock served as a missionary in Delaware County, New York, he used wine made by Latter-day Saint women. Murdock had not been able to administer the sacrament for over six months before baptizing Benjamin and Deidamia Turner and their twenty-three-year-old daughter Amoranda on July 21, 1833. Just weeks later, on August 11, Murdock administered the sacrament for the first time in the region. “By my advice,” he noted in his diary, “the [Turner] sisters gathered currants and made wine for our communion.” The wine was likely made sometime during the three-week period following the Turners’ baptisms, as Murdock noted how he personally witnessed the women strain the berries through a white cloth. Three weeks would have been enough time to harvest, press, and bottle the juice and allow it to ferment.[16]

It is difficult to assess how Latter-day Saint women may have viewed their role in preparing the sacrament. The sources tying women to the ritual in the early Latter-day Saint movement are scarce and vague. It is clear that women participated in the ordinance but not necessarily what that participation meant to them. The preparation was not always the most glamorous work. In fact, it was likely a thankless job, performed behind the scenes and outside of meetings. Some women may have found these seemingly simple tasks empowering, allowing them to contribute to their new faith. Perhaps the acts of baking bread, of picking, pressing, and bottling grapes, and of caring for the dishes and linens served as their unique form of consecrated labor—their sacrifice for God. Or perhaps for some women it was all mere drudgery, a messy process that required time and effort and stained hands and clothes. Most likely, the work meant different things to different women in ways that scholars may never fully understand. What is clear is that women contributed to the sacrament in important ways from the early Restoration period into the twentieth century.

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As Latter-day Saints migrated westward and colonized the Great Basin region in the nineteenth century, there were still no centralized Church handbooks governing all aspects of sacramental administration, and the Lord’s Supper continued to look different depending on time and place. Of course, Latter-day Saints had the Doctrine and Covenants and letters from headquarters, but priesthood and Church government was in many ways an oral tradition in nineteenth-century frontier settlements. Local leaders—often immigrant converts with little experience in the Church—used a mix of scriptures, personal observations from sacrament services in Salt Lake City, and good judgment to manage the Church in their far-flung communities.

Depending on when and where one looked, one might find a number of variations in the sacrament. At different times, Latter-day Saints met indoors or outdoors, every week or once a month.[17] Older and more mature men passed the emblems in most Latter-day Saint congregations, but after 1877 one might see young men begin to participate in small numbers. The officiator blessing the emblems might do so standing, sitting, or kneeling, perhaps with both arms raised or with the right arm to the square. The metal flagons at the table used to refill the cups might or might not have their lids opened during the prayer—and the prayers, as mentioned above, might vary widely between wards. Some congregations were strict about the bread being used, preferring white over wheat, possibly with the crusts removed.[18] Some stakes practiced a more closed communion than others, restricting those who were not members of the Church from partaking of the emblems.[19] Indeed, members did not always know what to expect in sacrament services across units.

That was certainly the case for Latter-day Saints traveling through southern Utah, who might get an unexpected gulp of wine from the sacrament cup. After the migration to Utah, most congregations used only water in the Lord’s Supper. However, in order to bolster their efforts as a self-sufficient community and to produce wine “of [their] own make” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:6), the Saints turned to growing vineyards in the warmer climates around St. George, Utah, beginning in 1861. At its peak, Latter-day Saint wine-making projects manufactured thousands of gallons of wine a year. Despite potential markets and an established infrastructure to sell or trade wine throughout the pioneer corridor, sacramental wine was not used much outside of St. George beyond private sacrament meetings among members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve in Salt Lake City.[20] Wine was unique to southern Utah sacrament services until the manufacturing plants were closed in the 1880s and the use of sacramental wine was discouraged in the 1890s.[21]

While one might find wine being used in sacrament services in southern Utah, in other parts of the territory one might come across a kneeling congregation during the sacramental prayers. Indeed, the Doctrine and Covenants revealed that the person blessing the bread and water or wine should “kneel with the church” (Doctrine & Covenants 20:76). There was much debate about the interpretation of this scripture in the nineteenth century, and wards and stakes adopted different practices. When President L. John Nuttall of the Kanab Stake noticed Latter-day Saints sitting during the prayers in 1879, he “desired the Saints to kneel at the prayer on the sacrament.”[22] Other Latter-day Saints similarly reported entire congregations kneeling together during the prayers.[23] Yet this was far from a universal practice. In 1893, for example, Franklin Marsh Ogden of Richfield, Utah, visited his grandmother in Salt Lake City and attended Church services with her in the Nineteenth Ward. He was surprised when “all knelt down as a congregation when the blessing on the bread and water was given for the sacrament,” because in his central Utah town, the Saints always remained seated during the sacrament.[24]

The practice of congregational kneeling during the sacramental prayers was disputed even among the apostles. George Q. Cannon, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1888, believed “where circumstances permit” that “the elder and the whole congregation should kneel together.” However, he witnessed congregations sit during the sacramental prayers in meetings where Joseph Smith and Brigham Young presided. Thus, “he did not feel disposed to say that it was wrong” if Latter-day Saints remained seated in the pews. Another apostle in the same meeting, John Henry Smith, counseled Church members to “conform as strictly as possible to the written word” and encouraged congregational kneeling.[25] Yet in 1893, Joseph F. Smith, a counselor in the First Presidency, explained that having the whole congregation kneel was “quite difficult and probably inappropriate.” There was just too much “confusion and noise.” The small size of Latter-day Saint meetinghouses and the limited space between the pews “[made] that practice rather impracticable.”[26] From these examples, we can see that even the most senior Church leaders had differing opinions on the matter.

The dispute over congregational kneeling was officially settled in a meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in June 1901. Elder Rudger Clawson of the Twelve attended the meeting and reported that “in order to establish uniform procedure through the church,” the General Authorities had decided “that one, and only one—the party officiating—should kneel.”[27] Besides seeking consistency between the wards, Elder Marriner W. Merrill of the Twelve suggested that group kneeling was indeed a space issue. “[I]n our circumstances,” he wrote after the meeting, “the whole congregation cannot kneel.”[28] These different performative elements in the sacrament across congregations reveal the loose and free-flowing nature of Church policies that carried over from the early Restoration era of the 1830s and 1840s. But the discourse around the Lord’s Supper also reflected some of the communitarian impulses unique to the Latter-day Saints in the early Utah period. In the twenty-first century, the sacrament has come to serve largely as a measuring stick for individual commitment to the Church and personal communion with God; in the nineteenth century, however, the ritual meal also served as a sign of fellowship among churchgoers. The administration of the sacrament, for example, was often preceded by public confessions and group forgiveness.[29] Additionally, Church leaders during the early Utah period cautioned Church members against participating in the sacrament if they harbored ill will toward other members of the congregation, echoing the language of Latter-day Saint prayer circles at the time.[30] “What are we partaking of these emblems for?” Joseph F. Smith of the First Presidency asked in 1892. “If I have aught against my brother, it is my duty to go to him alone and talk it over in prayer and settle that difficulty before partaking of the sacrament.”[31] Elizabeth A. Howard gave similar counsel to members of the Nineteenth Ward Relief Society in 1888: “I ask myself when I partake of the sacrament, is there a person that walks the earth I would not speak to?”[32] Harmony between communicants was essential for the Saints of the time to unlock the full potential of the Lord’s Supper. If contention existed, the bread and water might be withheld from the entire congregation until restitution was made. A dispute between even two people could spoil the ordinance for all. This practice was meant to build unity, and the absence of the sacrament could be a sign of fractured community.

Perhaps the best example of Church leaders withholding the sacrament on a large scale was the so-called reformation period beginning in the 1850s. Perceiving low morale and a lack of adherence to Church teachings among members, leaders called the Saints to repentance, rebaptism, and recommitment to the faith. At the peak of this campaign, the sacrament was being prepared in a November 1856 worship service in Salt Lake City. However, before the members could partake, President Jedediah M. Grant, the second counselor in the First Presidency, demanded “every person to leave the bread in the salvers and the water in the cups and not partake of the sacrament.”[33] The emblems were then “removed from the table” and “withheld from the Saints for some months.”[34] The ban on the sacrament spread throughout the Church, reaching as far as the mission fields in Great Britain.[35] It was a startling action. The Saints had grown accustomed to the administration of the Lord’s Supper each week. Wilford Woodruff called it “a loud sermon to the people.”[36] Indeed, the churchgoers felt its absence and celebrated its return. “The sacrament was restored this afternoon to the Saints,” Thomas E. Jeremy wrote about the end of the ban in April 1857. “Thank God for His kindness to His people, and I pray in the name of Jesus Christ to my Heavenly Father that He may bless me and my family that we may ever be worthy of partaking of this most holy ordinance acceptably.”[37]

Not every Latter-day Saint at the time deserved suspension from the sacrament; no doubt some lived their religion. But the moratorium on the Lord’s Supper had an intentional communal purpose. According to Heber C. Kimball, the first counselor in the First Presidency, “There are a great many people in this congregation and in this valley who could justly and beneficially partake of the sacrament, but they are prohibited for the present in consequence of the wickedness of some who would also partake and thus eat and drink to their condemnation.”[38] The collective nature of the ban put the responsibility on Church members to encourage one another to repent and resolve conflicts. Inasmuch as the sacrament was an expression of union and fellowship among the Saints, its loss was a shared burden, and its reconciliation required group effort. When the Saints in Kanab, Utah, could “no longer feel the spirit of brotherhood,” the sacrament was withdrawn from the congregation for several months in 1875.[39] Similar communal bans took place in Saint David, Arizona, in 1886, and in Honeyville, Utah, in 1894, again reflecting the close-knit Latter-day Saint communities of the nineteenth century.[40] Even the faithful were excluded for the behavior of others.

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Inasmuch as the sacrament reflected the Latter-day Saint communitarian project in the nineteenth century with group bans, shared cups, and congregational kneeling, the ordinance was shaped by an age of national reform at the turn of the twentieth century, a period often referred to as the Progressive era. Some of these changes have already been noted, but this period in Church history saw the end of the following practices: the use of wine as an emblem (1892), extemporaneous prayers (1890s), multiple-ward sacrament meetings (1894), right arms to the square (1898), and congregational kneeling (1901). This was also a time defined in part by national movements in and innovations toward health and hygiene, juvenile rehabilitation, and scientific management, among other economic and social reforms. A younger generation of Latter-day Saints who had studied at universities outside the Book of Mormon Belt were returning to Zion in greater numbers with progressive-minded ideas. Their new understanding of the modern world would have a major influence on the Church and its sacramental policies. Indeed, some of the most recognizable features in the administration of the Latter-day Saint sacrament today were introduced at the turn of the twentieth century.

Like their Protestant counterparts in Progressive-era America, Latter-day Saints harbored a growing concern for the wellbeing of their young men and women. Church leaders believed their youth might fall prey to the perceived evils of an increasingly urban and secular society.[41] This fear was rooted in major demographic and social changes in Salt Lake City in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Between 1880 and 1890, the city’s population more than doubled from 20,700 to 44,800, and many of the newcomers were not members of the Church. The proportion of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City declined during this period from nearly four-fifths to about two-thirds. Utah also rapidly urbanized around this time with the establishment of lumber yards, smelting refineries, and railroad depots as well as sugar, dairy, and meat processing plants. In 1890, Utah was considered 65 percent rural and 35 percent urban, but by 1910 it had become nearly an equal mix. Many Church members also moved away from the Intermountain West in search of jobs in bigger cities—part of a growing outmigration from Zion at the time. The Church was indeed coming out of obscurity and entering a new era of assimilation and accommodation. Some parents and leaders worried the youth would get lost in the fray.[42]

To thwart the threat of “juvenile delinquency,” Latter-day Saint leaders began looking for ways to encourage young men to stay true to the Church and its teachings. In 1908, a committee tasked with studying the matter recommended that young men be ordained to different offices in the Aaronic Priesthood at fixed ages: deacons at age twelve, teachers at fifteen, and priests at eighteen. Each quorum of teenage boys would also receive a set of pastoral responsibilities. As part of their duties, priests would bless the sacramental bread and water each Sunday, while deacons would pass the emblems to the congregation. Beginning in the late 1930s, teachers in the Aaronic Priesthood would set the sacrament table.[43] These changes represented what one historian aptly referred to as a shift “from men to boys,”[44] and teenagers have played a critical role in the administration of the sacrament ever since.

As juvenile reform took hold in Progressive-era America, a national hygiene and sanitation movement swept the nation as well. Germ theory, or the idea that microscopic pathogens could invade the body and cause disease, had been promoted by scientists for decades, but it gained more acceptance with the general population in the 1890s.[45] At this time, public health advocates across the country mounted a campaign to warn the masses about these “invisible enemies” and “silent travelers.”[46] They increasingly blamed the shared cup chained to public drinking fountains as a main culprit for spreading germs. Soon, churches began to question common vessels in communion services. However, switching to individual cups was not an easy change for some faiths. There were potential theological ramifications. Some pointed out that Jesus used “the cup” in the Last Supper (Luke 22:17), suggesting that only one cup should be used in the ordinance. Debates among ecclesiastical higher-ups ensued, but many Protestant churches began to adopt individual cups as well. In 1891, the Scovill Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Cleveland, Ohio, introduced individual cups into the Lord’s Supper—believed to be the first church in the United States to do so.[47]

Despite this trend, Latter-day Saint sacrament services did not adopt the practice of individual sacrament cups as quickly as some other churches, though many members of the Church were aware of the debates over individual cups in the East. The newspapers in Utah occasionally made references to this point of controversy.[48] These reports captured the attention of Selden Irwin Clawson, a member of the Eighteenth Ward in Salt Lake City. Clawson, a mechanical engineer with several patents to his name, saw the potential of using individual cups in Latter-day Saint sacrament services and pitched the idea in December 1900 to George Q. Cannon, the first counselor in the First Presidency. Clawson later wrote that Cannon seemed favorable to the idea and that he would consider the proposal after a trip to California. When Cannon died in April 1901 before returning, Clawson interpreted his death as “an omen from the other world” warning him not to meddle with the sacred ordinance. He shelved the idea of individual sacrament cups for the next ten years.[49]

In the meantime, the national health and hygiene movement gained traction in Salt Lake City. In 1902, James Charles Elliott King, the Salt Lake City health commissioner, condemned the use of shared vessels in communion services. He called the cups “filthy” and “exceedingly dangerous” and wondered “why the churches do not change their custom.”[50] Some did over the next several years, including the First Congregational Church in 1904 and the Westminster Presbyterian Church in 1906.[51] Two years later, Andrew J. Stewart, a Latter-day Saint physician from Mount Pleasant, Utah, “strenuously condemned the common usage of the communion cup as it now exists in a great many churches.”[52] Yet, Latter-day Saints continued employing the common cup in sacrament services. The calls for change were followed by the installation of hygienic drinking fountains along Main Street in Salt Lake City in 1909. Around this same time, a statewide increase in tuberculosis cases and deaths forced some Latter-day Saint Sunday Schools to close.[53] There was much momentum swinging toward change in sacrament cups.

Against this backdrop of disease, death, and mounting public pressure, Selden Clawson once again proposed that Latter-day Saints adopt individual cups for the sacrament. In September 1910, he made his case in the Eighteenth Ward Sunday School. Enlisting the help of David L. McDonald, a neighbor and physician, Clawson brought a microscope and petri dishes to the meetinghouse “to have the members see the germs of diphtheria and of tuberculosis.” McDonald instructed the class that “persons may have the diphtheria germ in the mouth and not know it at the time they partake of the sacrament. These germs and many others are left on the rim of the cup and passed along the row to others.”[54] Indeed, McDonald went so far as to blame the shared sacrament cup for an outbreak of diphtheria in Gunnison, Utah, wherein “thirty or more” people contracted the disease and several people died. The demonstration by McDonald and Clawson made their stance on the matter clear: the use of individual cups rather than a communal cup was a matter of life and death.[55]

The idea of germs on the chalice was not a surprise to many Latter-day Saints. Those who lived through the change in sacrament cups later reminisced that the common cup often contained more than just water. They remembered a host of tastes and smells attached to the sacrament cup that made their stomachs turn.[56] Because infants could partake, some churchgoers reported slobber and food particles floating atop the chalice.[57] The sight of runny noses, drooping mustaches, and long beards of other members discouraged some from participating altogether. Some considered faking a sip, while others searched for the cleanest-looking spot on the rim, often wiping the cup with a handkerchief before pressing their lips to it. It was a bit of a cat-and-mouse game to find the safest place from which to drink. The place where churchgoers sat was also a gamble, as members were likely to find out if the “previous drinker had recently been chewing peppermint or had eaten onions or fish.”[58] Church members in the common cup era often arrived at the meetinghouse early and chose their seats carefully. Indeed, the front row was the most desirable spot in the room, where they would be among the first to drink.

Individual cups were a welcome change for many but not all Latter-day Saints. Despite the evidence for its safety, some resisted the idea of switching to more hygienic cups. Clawson spoke of how a “strong conservative group opposed the change” to individual sacrament cups in his Sunday School class. He later wrote, “Those opposing the change agreed that Joseph Smith the Prophet approved and used the goblet. The duly appointed servants of the Lord blessed and consecrated the sacrament. For any of the Saints to question it showed their weakness in the faith.”[59] There was a “Jesus is my protection” mentality among Church members at the time. One woman in the class remarked, “I am not afraid to drink or to have my children drink from the same cup as my brothers and sisters. My fear is that my children and I may not live worthy to partake of the sacrament.”[60] For this woman, the risk of disease was the price to pay to participate in the sacrament. If her family fell ill on the Lord’s errand, so be it. The debate over sacrament cups in the Eighteenth Ward thus reflected broader tensions emerging between liberal and fundamentalist Christians in America at the time. Latter-day Saints, like their Protestant counterparts, blended reason, rationality, and faith in uneven ways.[61]

But Clawson was not alone in his pleas. He convinced some of his Sunday School class of the danger of germs. “The progressive members,” he wrote, “argued that in the beginning wine was used [in the sacrament]. Wine contained alcohol which was therapeutic to germs. Therefore, people using water are exposed to contagious diseases. If the individual sets could be used, we will avoid contagion that precedes disease.”[62] The debate was brought before the Eighteenth Ward bishop and the Salt Lake Stake president before finally reaching the highest councils of the Church. President Joseph F. Smith sympathized with Clawson but questioned whether Latter-day Saints would accept a change to the traditional method of administering the Lord’s Supper. He assumed Church members would “prefer to use the old system.” Clawson ultimately received approval to test individual sacrament cups in the Eighteenth Ward, which began to take place on June 11, 1911.[63] Despite their positive reception and a strong endorsement from the First Presidency, individual cups spread only slowly to other Latter-day Saint congregations over the next several years due to cost and germ theory denialism.[64] It was not until the influenza pandemic of 1918 that they spread more rapidly throughout the Church.[65]

Although seemingly small and insignificant, the shift to individual sacrament cups represents some of the generational tensions of a church in transition. It was not easy for some aging Latter-day Saints to abandon time-honored traditions. Indeed, some members felt like casualties in the Church’s quest for assimilation. This is a constant theme throughout Church history that continues today. The uniqueness of the Church is continually questioned as the next generation balances its peculiarity with public acceptance. Some Latter-day Saints found changes in something as simple as sacrament cups as a step toward being “just another church,” rather than God’s chosen people who are set apart from the world. Looking at the shift in sacramental cups highlights these enduring anxieties.

Individual sacrament cups also represented a transition away from the Latter-day Saint communal identity of the nineteenth century. Before it was seen as a transmitter of contagion and a site of contention, the common cup was the great equalizer. Everyone drank from it regardless of race, class, gender, age, or position in the Church. No one was above it.[66] But the shift to individual cups marked an end to the group mentality in sacrament participation. It was no longer seen as the communal meal that required peace between churchgoers. Rather, the sacrament had become a demonstration of personal commitment and a time of individual self-inspection. Communicants were encouraged to think about Jesus, not their neighbor. Elder David O. McKay of the Twelve recognized the difference over time. “I remember when I was a boy,” he explained in 1929, “that there was emphasized even more than we hear emphasized now the necessity of no one’s partaking of the sacrament who had ill feelings toward another.” He remembered men approaching one another on Sunday mornings in a spirit of apology and forgiveness in order to partake of the sacrament with a clean conscience. He lamented the loss of some of those practices as the Church evolved.[67]

***

At about the same time that Latter-day Saints abandoned common cups in the 1910s, Church leaders began to place increased emphasis on Sabbath-day observance and sacrament meeting attendance as more essential parts of discipleship. In the nineteenth century, one could be considered a fully active Latter-day Saint and only occasionally attend Sunday worship services. A person’s commitment to the faith was often manifested through their participation in establishing settlements, communal living, and public works projects, not necessarily gathering at the meetinghouse. Indeed, as late as 1920, the Church’s average sacrament meeting attendance was just above 15 percent.[68] But with Latter-day Saints no longer establishing new colonies in the American West, Church leaders began to reemphasize the holiness of the Sabbath, with the sacrament ordinance at the center of Sunday worship. With this renewed focus, Church leaders looked to make the ordinance a more consistent, reverent, and sacred experience.

One of the lasting additions from this era was the wearing of white shirts and conservative neckties among boys passing the sacrament. The tradition can be traced to the 1920s. Prior to that time, there had long been complaints that deacons failed to take the sacrament seriously. As far back as the 1870s, when Brigham Young encouraged teenaged boys to participate more in Aaronic Priesthood work, local leaders refused to assign them the administration of the sacrament because of the lack of respect they showed toward the sacred ordinance. Bishops often chose more mature Melchizedek Priesthood–holding men to act as priests, teachers, and deacons in performing these sacramental duties.[69] Even after Aaronic Priesthood reforms in the early 1900s gave young men more of a role in the Lord’s Supper, adult Latter-day Saints registered complaints about the behavior they witnessed at the table. Deacons were often heard talking, snickering, and making “other unnecessary noises” prior to and during the administration of the sacrament. Other deacons would point fingers, chew gum, doze off, or “hitch at [their] trousers every half minute” throughout the meeting. Their dress and grooming habits also failed to meet the expectations of some members of the congregation, with deacons wearing an array of tattered and wrinkled shirts, sweaters, and coats. Some felt that there was no dignity in the deacons’ appearance and behavior, and that the Lord’s Supper deserved the best.[70]

Earl J. Glade Jr. decided to do something about it. Glade, a Young Men Mutual Improvement Association supervisor in the Highland Park Ward in Salt Lake City and an emerging young professional in the broadcast radio industry, tapped into a national dress-code trend in the workplace at the time. In the 1920s, looking to replace the lampooned image of the ragtag traveling salesman with one of professionalism and respectability, business leaders throughout the United States increasingly required workers (particularly salesmen representing their companies) to wear starched white shirts and neckties. The uniforms, it was believed, inspired compliance, created a team-first mentality, and enhanced pride in one’s work.[71] Uniforms had already been employed by Latter-day Saints in schools, sports, and Boy Scout programs. Glade saw an opportunity to fold these ideas about men’s workwear into the deacons’ quorums of the Church.[72]

Glade proposed a “uniform apparel for passing the sacrament” for boys in the Highland Park Ward in September 1928. The dress code consisted of “a clean, white shirt with a neat bow tie and dark trousers.” The uniforms were met with instant success. The adult members of the ward were said to be “greatly impressed” with the demeanor and solemnity shown by those passing the sacrament. The twelve- and thirteen-year-old deacons themselves “adopted the plan unanimously,” and the matching outfits energized the boys, even helping to bring some back to the faith that had been wavering. Additionally, younger boys—the deacons-in-waiting—looked forward to the day they too could don the white shirt and black bow tie.[73] Glade stated that the uniform “peps up the group appearance, and we all like to belong to a snappy-looking group.” He added, “Boys in their early teens are starting to think about how they look! We capitalize that instinct, and the quorum gets the benefit.” Beyond the apparent social benefits, the deacon uniforms prepared the young men for Latter-day Saint manhood. The ensemble, Glade believed, disciplined mind and body and trained boys in “proper grooming,” “gentility,” “the art of personal control and the fundamentals of order,” “dependability,” “promptness,” “loyalty,” and “reverence.”[74] The uniforms inspired more than just respect for the sacrament. They readied the boys for life.

The deacon uniforms in the Highland Park Ward soon “attracted widespread attention and approval,” and nearby wards and stakes adopted similar plans for their boys passing the sacrament.[75] Some dress codes varied between congregations and might include white trousers and long neckties rather than bow ties. Deacons’ uniforms spread into more remote corners of the Church after Glade presented about them at an Aaronic Priesthood general convention in April 1933. The white-shirt-and-bow-tie uniform earned the endorsement of “prominent church leaders,” according to Glade, likely referring to Elder Joseph Fielding Smith and Elder Joseph F. Merrill, of the Quorum of the Twelve, and Presiding Bishop Sylvester Q. Cannon, who presided at the convention. Following his speech, Glade published an article on the value of deacon uniforms in the Church’s Improvement Era magazine. Within a few years, there were reports of deacon uniforms in Arizona, California, and Oregon.[76]

What began as the innocent adoption of deacon uniforms grew into an elaborate performance in passing the bread and water. Some local Latter-day Saint leaders included “additional features” in their instructions to the deacons, such as lining up the boys according to height, having them march with their left arms behind their backs, and teaching them to never lower the sacrament trays below their waists. In their efforts to encourage reverence, these well-meaning ward leaders enforced strict requirements on those administering the sacrament.[77] Others dramatized the administration. Robert L. Simpson later remembered passing the bread and wine as a twelve-year-old deacon in the Hollywood Ward in the 1930s and recalled how the young men employed “a system of musical chimes” to signal the opening of red velvet drapes, revealing a painting of the Last Supper just before the sacramental prayers. He referred to it as the “‘Hollywood’ version of the sacrament.”[78] Latter-day Saint leaders at the general level increasingly discouraged such practices, hoping to avoid what they termed “formalism” in the sacrament.[79] But while some of these new elements were discontinued, many have survived and continue to be seen in the Church today.

One practice that gained popularity at the midcentury period is the use of the right hand in partaking of the sacrament—a practice that is still being discussed today. Latter-day Saints had long been encouraged by individual Church leaders to take the sacrament with the right hand, but it was never a universally accepted rule.[80] As far as can be concluded, communicants throughout Church history have not been denied the bread and water when reaching with left hands. However, there have been varying opinions on the matter. In 1946, President Joseph Fielding Smith, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles at the time, downplayed the need to take the sacrament with just the right hand. He grouped the practice with other “changes and innovations” that “are innocently adopted, but in course of time there is the danger that they will become fixed customs and considered as necessary to the welfare of the Church.”[81] In 1952, the First Presidency discussed whether taking the sacrament with the left hand constituted “a breach in proper procedure,” but they concluded that it did not. “The Brethren felt we should keep away from formalities,” President David O. McKay noted after the meeting. “They felt that while the partaking of the sacrament is a covenant [and] that it is the custom to use the right hand in making covenants, failure so to do would not vitiate the covenant.”[82] An Improvement Era article in 1955 mentioned that taking the sacrament with the right hand was “deemed advisable” but that “certain people do not have right hands” because of injury or disability, thus rendering its universal practice unfeasible.[83]

Yet around this time, President Joseph Fielding Smith took a stronger stance against reaching for the sacrament with the left hand. In a seeming reversal from his earlier statements, President Smith published a short article on the right hand as “a symbol of righteousness.” He cited scriptures mentioning the use of the right hand, although they were not in reference to the sacrament. “The right hand or side is called the dexter and the left the sinister,” he concluded. “Dexter connotes something favorable; sinister, something unfavorable or unfortunate. It is a well-established practice in the Church to partake of the sacrament with the right hand and also to anoint with the right hand, according to the custom which the scriptures indicate is, and always was, approved by divine injunction.”[84] As Smith pointed to somewhat ambiguous scriptural references and modern American cultural norms as the basis for not using left hands, taking the sacrament with only right hands continued to be customary but not required—that is, the practice was taught but was not strictly enforced.[85]

As Church leaders sought answers to the right-hand-only question, they also codified the passing of the bread and water to the presiding authority first. This was another practice that had long been taught by individual Latter-day Saint leaders but had not been universally followed. In fact, some earlier Church leaders seem to have even discouraged the practice. John E. Booth, bishop of the Provo 4th Ward in 1894, remembered attending a Sunday service in which Brigham Young presided, likely in the 1860s. President Young sat on the opposite side of the room from the sacrament table, and when one of the priesthood holders carrying the bread skipped a row of people to deliver it first to the prophet, Young “censured that conduct quite severely.” According to Booth, Young “stated that when it came to partaking of the sacrament all were equal, and the Latter-day Saints should partake of it as their turn came. None should be passed in order that a superior officer might be served first.”[86] Another Latter-day Saint remembered similar sentiments coming from President Heber J. Grant in the 1920s after a deacon skipped others to serve him first. “We all come here as children of God, equals, and there’s no deference being shown to anyone,” he allegedly said.[87]

After President Grant’s death, however, Church leaders clarified that the practice of passing the sacrament first to the presiding authority should be strictly followed. With the Church expanding both nationally and internationally, the era of lifetime bishops and stake presidents—when everyone knew who presided in a meeting, because that person served for decades—was gone. Latter-day Saints were more mobile than ever, and wards and stakes experienced turnover in membership and leadership like never before. Against this backdrop, Church leaders believed passing the sacrament to the presiding authority would serve as “a lesson in Church government” to the younger boys in the Aaronic Priesthood, teaching them to recognize the order of priesthood offices. Anticipating that some Latter-day Saints might interpret the new rule as overly deferential to leaders, President David O. McKay, a counselor in the First Presidency, explained in his April 1946 general conference talk that it was meant “not to honor [the individual] but the office.”[88] Less than a month later, the First Presidency sent a letter to bishops and stake presidents outlining the policy. It was added to the next version of the Church’s general handbook in 1960 and has been a staple in sacrament meetings ever since.[89]

The same First Presidency letter that taught boys to pass the bread and water to the presiding authority first also ended the practice of playing instrumental music or congregational hymns during the passing of the sacrament. Prior to this policy change, it was almost never quiet during the sacrament. During the early years of the Church, leaders often delivered sermons as the emblems were distributed. They would abruptly pause for the sacrament prayers and then resume their talks.[90] Over time, it became more common to have music playing during the passing of the sacrament, and the songs were not limited to official hymnbooks. Latter-day Saints often chose classical selections, like Bach or Brahms, while employing a range of instruments, from woodwinds to brass. By the 1940s, however, Latter-day Saint leaders looked to redefine the sound of worship. Led in large part by President David O. McKay, Church officials had come to believe that the absence of sound was the essence of worship.[91] For some, background music was distracting and disruptive; a period of meditative silence was preferable. Church leaders began to teach more widely that a quiet room provided the best medium to commune with God.[92]

Latter-day Saints had mixed reactions to the 1946 announcement. Aurelia Shimer, the music director in the Murray 1st Ward, lamented the new policy, and she was not alone. “Many people were unhappy,” she later wrote. “It seemed odd to have it so quiet.” The reverential music was replaced with what she believed to be awkward silence. The babble from newborn babies in the congregation was suddenly augmented, whereas the music had once muffled them. Shimer also missed the messages about Jesus that were reflected through the “sweet refrains.”[93] Melda Hacking of the Timpanogos 1st Ward had a similar reaction to the First Presidency announcement. As a ward organist, she had played the devotional music during the passing of the sacrament for twenty-eight years, from 1918 to 1946. The sacramental music had become an integral part of her Sabbath worship and Church service. “I loved that assignment,” she wrote. But the new rules meant fewer ward organists were needed, leaving Hacking without a calling. “It was a sad day for me when word came from Salt Lake that the playing of music during the sacrament was to be discontinued,” she wrote. “Music has always been a very important part of my life.”[94]

Even with the absence of music and the addition of meetinghouse foyers to which parents could retreat with crying babies, silence during the sacrament remained elusive. In the 1940s, Latter-day Saints used individual glass cups for the Lord’s Supper, which were fragile and often broke during the meeting. Mayre Naisbitt Nielsen of the Hooper Ward remembered cringing at the sound of shattered glass. “These accidents not only made unpleasant noises,” she later wrote, “but caused worry, frustration, and at times even anger” among those trying to renew their covenants in peace.[95] Jeane Erickson Burton of the Tenth Ward remembered dropping a glass cup and wishing for “the floor to open up and swallow me” out of embarrassment for not only breaking the cup but also breaking the silence.[96]

As the Church transitioned to disposable paper and plastic cups around the mid-twentieth century, a new sacrament meeting soundscape emerged—again with mixed reactions. For some, the pinging of plastic cups in the metal trays was a distracting noise. Diane Brown said that her father “was outraged at the way these noisy new cups disrupted the essential reverence of the sacrament.” However, Brown herself found the noise to be soothing. “I would be lost without the soft symphony of those cups dropping into metal trays,” she wrote. “When concentration is impossible, and the atonement—at best—a mystery, I close my eyes and welcome the hypnosis that comes from focusing on the sound of cups.”[97] Although some local leaders looked to muffle the sound with damp paper towels at the bottom of the trays, the clinking of plastic cups could be heard—for better or worse—in Latter-day Saint sacrament meetings for decades.

***

As Latter-day Saints entered the twenty-first century, the sacrament and its procedures continued to evolve. In 1980, a consolidated three-hour block of Sunday meetings was instituted, followed decades later by a two-hour schedule in 2019.[98] Other minor changes have also seen kneelers, finger bowls, and hand sanitizer come and go from the sacrament table. In 2013, the Church announced that members who suffer from celiac disease or other food intolerance may use a “bread-like substitute” as an alternative for the bread, such as crackers, chips, rice cakes, or cereal.[99] Two years later, Church leaders began a major initiative to encourage Latter-day Saints to “keep the Sabbath day holy,” including a renewed focus on the sacrament. Before the initiative, the sacrament meeting could fall in any order in the consolidated Sunday schedule. But to highlight its importance, the sacrament was made the first meeting in all Church units throughout the world.[100]

The COVID-19 pandemic also reaffirmed the centrality of the sacrament in Sabbath day worship. When Church leaders temporarily suspended Sunday meetings worldwide on March 12, 2020, Latter-day Saints were expected to worship from their couches rather than the pews. But “home church” affected members in uneven ways. For many, the sacrament provided stability during a period of heightened emotion, material hardship, disease, and death. But according to Church policies, women and children were not able to participate in the sacrament without an authorized male priesthood holder in the home to perform the ordinance. Writer Jana Riess lauded the Church for postponing in-person meetings to limit the spread of COVID-19 but lamented “the two-tiered way we are addressing the sacrament.” She estimated that as many as 60 percent of Latter-day Saint women in America were unable to participate in the ordinance at home, either because they did not have a priesthood holder in their home or because of their husband’s inactivity in the Church. Riess predicted a much larger proportion of Latter-day Saint women in the same situation outside the United States, where the Church was less established.[101] Those “doing without” commented on blogs, social media posts, and internet message boards that their Sabbath-day observance felt incomplete without the bread and water.[102] Indeed, the limitations caused by COVID-19 reminded both those who could and could not participate in the ordinance at home of its importance and power, which may have been taken for granted before. The Sabbath day, whether at home or in the meetinghouse, is not the same without the sacrament, and many have felt its loss during the pandemic.

As Latter-day Saints returned to in-person worship services amid the ongoing pandemic, sacrament meeting became a site of contention between COVID deniers and COVID compliers. Some questioned the use of face masks, physical distancing, and the heightened sanitary measures around the administration of the sacred ordinance. Others hoped for even more protections. Writer McKay Coppins suggested that the division among Latter-day Saints in the chapel may have been “a factor of not meeting for sacrament meetings for so long or not spending the same time together in church.”[103] As COVID-19 forced Latter-day Saints to spend their Sabbath days at home rather than at church, many found community in virtual spaces, often with anonymous users who only reaffirmed their own worldviews. The COVID-19 shutdown facilitated this silo effect that cut Church members off from one another.

As these differences have intensified, the sacrament continues to carry the potential to unify. Nothing brings people together like food. Indeed, food brings out the best in Latter-day Saints. When it comes to delivering dinners to those in need, Church members are often quick to grab the clipboard. Plates of cookies often accompany moving trucks along the Book of Mormon Belt. Some Church members may have loathed the former three-hour block of Sunday meetings, but they would happily “linger longer” to “munch and mingle” at the meetinghouse. Indeed, food is a cornerstone of Latter-day Saint culture, and sharing meals is a common act of fellowship, celebration, and welcome in Zion. It may be that Church members need to see the sacrament as the meal it is. Despite its small portions, the Lord’s Supper, by its very name, is a holy meal. Perhaps it can unite the Saints in a post-COVID world.

Notes

[1] Joseph Smith History, 1838–1856, vol. A-1, 23 December 1805–30 August 1834, 26, The Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/33.

[2] Kathleen Flake, “Supping with the Lord: A Liturgical Theology of the LDS Sacrament,” Sunstone, July 1993, 18–27.

[3] Karen B. Westerfield Tucker, American Methodist Worship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 126, 227.

[4] As cited in David W. Grua, “‘Strictly Adhering to the Inspired Form’: Early Latter-day Saint Sacramental Worship and the Canonical Prayers” (unpublished paper presented at “Joseph Smith Papers Conference: Joseph Smith and Sacred Text in Nineteenth-Century America,” Salt Lake City, September 10, 2021). Extemporaneous sacrament prayers continued to be given as Latter-day Saints migrated to the Great Basin region. In 1852, Heber C. Kimball said, “We have dedicated this sacrament to the Father and to the Son, that the saving principles of life may be in it and that, in partaking of it, we may become sanctified. We bless the water as well as the bread and ask God to sanctify it and fill it with life and the principles of salvation.” “Discourse,” Deseret News, February 3, 1852, 2. In 1863, Kimball explained, “We are now partaking of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; when we partake of the bread, let us pray the Father that strength may be given to our bodies that they may not wither, but be strengthened to reach a good old age; when we partage of the wine—or water—which is emblematic of his blood, let us ask the Father that our blood may never be spilled unless it is necessary for the advancement of his kingdom and the glory of God.” “Remarks,” Deseret News, March 11, 1863, 1.

[5] “President Young’s Trip to Utah County Continued,” Deseret News, June 21, 1865, 5.

[6] Brigham Young, “Discourse,” Deseret News 22, no. 33, September 17, 1873, 16.

[7] Donald F. Godfrey and Kenneth W. Godfrey, The Diaries of Charles Ora Card: The Utah Years, 1871–1886 (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 2006), 273, 303, 307; “Sunday Services,” Utah Enquirer, January 15, 1889, 1; and “The Sacrament,” Daily Enquirer, May 11, 1891, 5.

[8] See Charles W. Penrose, “The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,” Millennial Star, December 3, 1908, 778. For sacrament prayer cards, see Francis Marion Lyman, “The Administration of the Sacrament in the Sunday School,” in Proceedings of the First Sunday School Convention, 1898, 77, CHL.

[9] See, for example, Jan Shipps and John W. Welch, eds., The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831–1836 (Provo, UT: BYU Studies), 1994, 117–146.

[10] “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 14 (August 1, 1844): 596.

[11] “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 22 (December 1, 1844): 725.

[12] William G. Hartley, My Fellow Servants: Essays on the History of the Priesthood (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2010), 346–7.

[13] In 1898, Elder Francis M. Lyman of the Twelve was asked whether “members not holding the priesthood” could pass the sacrament. He responded: “You pass it to one another, do you not, all the time, all you sisters and all you brethren? Then why ask the question? The administering of the sacrament is not passing it to the people. The administering of the sacrament is when the brethren offer the prayer in blessing the bread or water. That is the administration of the sacrament.” “The Administration of the Sacrament in the Sunday School,” 74–77. In 1928, President Heber J. Grant explained that there was “no rule in the Church” that only priesthood holders could distribute the emblems among the pews. It had become only “custom” for them to perform this duty, which practice developed during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. Apparently, Grant had “no objection” to allowing “brethren lacking priesthood” to participate in the ordinance if there were no ordained men available. Heber J. Grant to Henry H. Rolapp, June 28, 1928; quoted in William G. Hartley, “From Men to Boys: LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829–1996,” Journal of Mormon History 22, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 130.

[14] Kristine Wright, “‘We Baked a Lot of Bread’: Re-conceptualizing Mormon Women and Ritual Objects,” in Kate Holbrook and Matthew Bowman, eds., Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 2016), 86–87.

[15] Elizabeth Anne Whitney, “A Leaf from an Autobiography,” Woman’s Exponent (October 1, 1878), 71.

[16] John Murdock journal and autobiography, August 11, 1833, MS 1194, Folder 3, Page 21, Image 47, CHL.

[17] The first Latter-day Saint sacrament meeting in the Salt Lake Valley took place in a wagon encampment circle the day after the official arrival of the Saints into the valley on Sunday, July 25, 1847. Wilford Woodruff wrote that they met in the morning for prayer and sermons from Church leaders and then again at 2:00 pm when the “Bishops broke bread to the congregation.” By the next week, the Saints had erected a makeshift “bowery” made of wood poles and a thatched roof of boughs, shrubs, and sagebrush. The bowery provided churchgoers shade and shelter for worship services, but it was not always conducive to providing protection against high winds and cold temperatures. More permanent structures followed over the years, including the Old Tabernacle in 1852, the Salt Lake Tabernacle in 1867, and the Salt Lake Assembly Hall in 1882. Until these buildings were dedicated, the Saints met in varied ways, including outdoor community-wide sacrament services in the summer and smaller cottage meetings in private homes in the winter. Journal entry, July 25, 1847, in Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, ed. Scott G. Kenney (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1983), 3:235. See also Ronald W. Walker, “The Salt Lake Tabernacle in the Nineteenth Century: A Glimpse of Early Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 31, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 198–240; and Walker, “‘Going to Meeting’ in Salt Lake City’s Thirteenth Ward, 1849–1881: A Microanalysis,” in Davis Bitton and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, eds., New Views of Mormon History: Essays in Honor of Leonard J. Arrington (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), 138–61.

[18] William A. Hyde, “Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,” Improvement Era 14, no. 7 (May 1911): 577.

[19] Hyde, “Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,” 580.

[20] Church leaders used wine for the sacrament in their meetings until 1906. See Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 261.

[21] Saint George Utah Stake manuscript history and historical reports, July 9, 1892, LR 7836 2, box 3, vol. 4, folder 2, CHL. See also Saint George Utah Stake general minutes, July 5–17, 1892, LR 7836 11, vol. 19, 226–228, CHL. The use of wine in Latter-day Saint sacrament meetings did not end all at once. Instead, it diminished over time. For example, wine was used for the sacrament at the Salt Lake Temple dedication in 1893. See Brian H. Stuy, “‘Come, Let Us Go Up to the Mountain of the Lord’: The Salt Lake Temple Dedication,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 31, no. 3 (1998): 120. Additionally, reports exist of wine being used in the “vineyard districts” of southern Utah as late as 1900. See James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith: A Series of Lectures on the Principal Doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1899), 180; and “Word of Wisdom,” Young Woman’s Journal 11, no. 4 (April 1900): 187. When ten-year-old Olive Woolley of Salt Lake City visited her grandparents in Toquerville in 1904, she remembered being “delightfully shocked to get a mouthful of sweet wine instead of the tasteless water I was accustomed to in the Salt Lake City religious services.” As cited in Dennis R. Lancaster, “Dixie Wine” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1972), 130.

[22] L. John Nuttall, diary, April 6, 1879, MSS 790, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT (hereafter Perry Special Collections).

[23] Joseph Bond Harris remembered how in the Henefer Ward in northeastern Utah “we all knelt down to attend the sacrament service.” “Autobiography of Joseph Bond Harris, Son of Micah Francis Harris and Mary Jane Bond Harris,” (1963), 8–9, Family History Books, FamilySearch Library. John E. Booth of the Provo 4th Ward explained, “As to the mode of administering the sacrament, it matters not so much if the one who administers the same has but authority. Whether he kneels alone, or whether comrades kneel with, or whether the whole congregation kneels with the one administering the sacrament, cannot affect the law itself. It is a mere matter of form and the several forms above mentioned have all been practiced in Provo.” “About Administering the Sacrament,” Daily Enquirer, February 5, 1894, 1.

[24] “Ann Horrocks: 1829–1917” (2013), 1, FamilySearch.org.

[25] “Priesthood Meeting,” Deseret Evening News, September 3, 1881, 3.

[26] Joseph F. Smith, discourse, July 16, 1893, in Brian H. Stuy, ed., Collected Discourses Delivered by President Wilford Woodruff, His Two Counselors, the Twelve Apostles, and Others (Burbank, CA: B.H.S. Publishing, 1987), 3:308. See also Joseph E. Taylor, November 18, 1894, in Stuy, Collected Discourses, 5:21.

[27] Rudger Clawson, diary, June 13, 1901, in Stan Larson, ed., A Ministry of Meetings: The Apostolic Diaries of Rudger Clawson (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), 284.

[28] Marriner W. Merrill, diary, June 13, 1901, in New Mormon Studies: A Comprehensive Resource Library (San Francisco: Smith Research Associates, 1998), CD-ROM. See also James B. Allen, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, March 1978, 23.

[29] Edward L. Kimball, “Confession in LDS Doctrine and Practice,” BYU Studies Quarterly 36, no. 2 (1996–1997): 45–46.

[30] According to an entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, “The formation of the prayer circle suggests wholeness and eternity, and the participants, having affirmed that they bear no negative feelings toward other members of the circle (cf. Matthew 5:23–24), evoke communal harmony in collective prayer.” George S. Tate, “Prayer Circle,” in Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 3:1120–21. See also D. Michael Quinn, “Latter-day Saint Prayer Circles,” BYU Studies Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1979): 102–103.

[31] Joseph F. Smith, February 21, 1892, in Stuy, Collected Discourses, 2:366. This language of harmony and communion in the sacrament was prominent in Latter-day Saint discourse in the nineteenth century. Among the many examples, Elder George A. Smith of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught in 1867, “The occasion of the administration of the sacrament gives rise to reflections peculiar in themselves, such as, Am I what I profess to be? Am I united with my brethren and sisters in heart, while I stretch out my hand with them and partake of the consecrated bread? We are united in relation to our mode of worship.” “President B. Young’s Trip North,” Deseret News, September 18, 1867, 4. In 1887, George G. Bywater said, “None should partake who had malice or hatred in his heart, as it was an emblem of love and forgiveness.” “The Sacrament,” Salt Lake Herald, June 7, 1887, 6. In 1890, John Morgan explained, “We have come together to partake of the sacrament as an evidence that we remember Him and testify that we will live according to the laws He has given us, and also to testify to each other that we entertain feelings of fraternity and are at peace with one another.” “Sunday Services,” Deseret News, December 2, 1890, 3. In 1892, Elder Francis M. Lyman of the Twelve taught, “We should partake of the sacrament worthily and have no hard feelings to our neighbors.” Sanpete Stake Historical Record, May 14, 1892, LR 8046 11, CHL.

[32] Nineteenth Ward Relief Society Minute Book, May 4, 1888, LR 6092 14, vol. 3, 241–42, CHL.

[33] Jedediah M. Grant, “Discourse,” Deseret News, vol. 6, no. 37, November 19, 1856, 291.

[34] Brigham Young to George A. Smith, January 26, 1857, in Journal History of the Church, CR 100 137, vol. 43, 117, CHL.

[35] For sacrament withdrawal in Great Britain, see Lorenzo Hill Hatch, diary, May 28 and July 5, 1857, MS 1480, vol. 2, CHL. For St. Louis, MO, see Erastus Snow to Brigham Young, April 25, 1857, CR 1234 1, box 42, folder 16, 3, CHL. For Farmington, UT, see Joseph L. Robinson, diary, October 24, 1856, in The Journal of Joseph Lee Robinson, Mormon Pioneer, ed. Kevin Merrell et al. (2003), 147. For Manti, UT, see Samuel K. Gifford, reminiscences, MS 8167, 16, CHL.

[36] Wilford Woodruff, “Remarks,” Deseret News, vol. 4, no. 43, December 31, 1856, 340.

[37] Thomas E. Jeremy, diary, April 5, 1857, MS 1248, vol. 3, 241–42, CHL.

[38] Heber C. Kimball, “Discourse,” Deseret News, vol. 4, no. 46, January 21, 1857, 364.

[39] John R. Young to Brigham Young, March 1, 1875, as cited in P. T. Reilly, “Kanab United Order: The President’s Nephew and the Bishop,” Utah Historical Quarterly 42, no. 2 (Spring 1974): 157–58. See also Kanab Ward general minutes, February 7, 1875, LR 4303 11, CHL.

[40] The Saint David Ward example is more ambiguous. On June 27, 1886, the ward sacrament meeting minutes make an ominous reference to the sacrament being “omitted” without explanation. The sacrament was administered the next week, but there is evidence that there was division among members of the ward at the time. At least two people were “cut off from the church” in the following weeks. Saint David Ward general minutes, June 27–August 17, 1886, LR 7745 23, vol. 2, CHL. The Honeyville Ward example is much better documented. Following a very publicized ecclesiastical court case in town, about two-thirds of the ward protested the ruling and signed a petition for a retrial. There was such “disunion and strife” among them that Rudger Clawson, president of the Box Elder Stake, directed Benjamin H. Tolman, bishop of the Honeyville Ward, to withdraw the sacrament from the entire ward. The ban lasted seven months. Eventually, Elders John Henry Smith and Heber J. Grant of the Twelve visited the ward “to bring the people into a condition to partake of the sacrament.” It took several meetings “to harmonize the feeling of the brethren,” but the sacrament was ultimately restored. David S. Hoopes and Roy Hoopes, The Making of a Mormon Apostle: The Story of Rudger Clawson (New York: Madison Book, 1990), 165; Rudger Clawson diary, June 17, 1894, MS 481, box 5, vol. 5, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City (hereafter Marriott Special Collections); and D. Michael Quinn, Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 286–87.

[41] See, for example, Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 45–72; and Richard Ian Kimball, “Muscular Mormonism,” International Journal of the History of Sport 25, no. 5 (April 2008): 549–78.

[42] Ethan R. Yorgason, Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 80–84; and Dean L. May, Utah: A People’s History (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), 164–65.

[43] Preparing the sacrament began to be a responsibility for teachers in the Aaronic Priesthood in the 1930s. The proceedings of an Aaronic Priesthood convention in 1932, for example, suggested that teachers could prepare the bread and water as part of their duties, but it was more of a passing reference than a general church policy. In 1939, however, the practice began to formalize. The Aaronic Priesthood section of the Improvement Era that year listed “four major objectives stressed for 1939,” including “having ordained teachers supervise the preparation of sacrament tables.” The article continued: “Comments are frequently made that priests who are designated to administer the sacrament and deacons who are usually appointed to pass the sacrament are provided for in the Church program, but that the teachers are neglected.” If local church leaders assigned teachers to set the table, it “will eliminate any impression that teachers’ quorum members are not provided for in the sacrament service.” Over the next several years, these suggestions became policy and codified in handbooks. “The Importance of Activity in Aaronic Priesthood Quorums,” Improvement Era 36, no. 2 (December 1932): 104. See also “Four Major Objectives Stressed for 1939,” Improvement Era 32, no. 3 (March 1939): 170; “Teachers to Prepare the Sacrament Table,” Church News, April 2, 1950, 11; and “Suggestions for Aaronic Priesthood Bearers Officiating in the Sacrament Service,” Improvement Era 58, no. 6 (June 1955): 466. The 1940 Aaronic Priesthood Handbook (which was likely written in 1939) makes no mention of sacrament preparation. In the section outlining the duties of teachers, the handbook only mentions that they can help pass the sacrament. The next edition of the Aaronic Priesthood Handbook in 1943, however, has “prepare the sacrament table” under the “Assignments for Teachers” section. Instructions for teachers in the Aaronic Priesthood to prepare the sacrament did not appear in general Church handbooks until 1976. Aaronic Priesthood Handbook (Salt Lake City: The Presiding Bishopric, 1940), 77–78; Aaronic Priesthood Handbook (Salt Lake City: The Presiding Bishopric, 1943), 57; and General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1976), 47–48.

[44] William G. Hartley, “From Men to Boys: LDS Aaronic Priesthood Offices, 1829–1996,” Journal of Mormon History 22, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 106–10.

[45] Nancy Tomes, “American Attitudes Toward the Germ Theory of Disease: Phyllis Allen Richmond Revisited,” Journal of the History of Medicine 52, no. 1 (January 1997): 17–50.

[46] Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 91–156.

[47] Richard A. Burridge, Holy Communion in Contagious Times: Celebrating the Eucharist in the Everyday and Online Worlds (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022), 63.

[48] See, for example, “A Lively Session,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, March 13, 1895, 1; “Local News,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, December 6, 1896, 4; “For Public Health,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, October 29, 1897, 2; and “The Common Drinking Cup,” Deseret News, December 10, 1898, 11.

[49] Selden Clawson, reminiscences, in Helen Clawson Wells papers, MS 257, box 18, folder 6, Marriott Special Collections.

[50] “Germs Lurk in Communion Cup,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, May 6, 1902, 5.

[51] “Innovation in Communion,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 28, 1904, 10; “City and Neighborhood,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 27, 1904, 10; and “Individual Cups Used for Communion,” Salt Lake Telegram, April 9, 1906, 4.

[52] “Physician Attacks Use of Communion Cup,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 5, 1908, 24.

[53] “Wide Prevalence of Disease Shown by State Bulletin,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, January 18, 1908, 12; “Fighting the Great White Plague in Utah,” Inter-Mountain Republican, September 27, 1908, 17; “Tuberculosis Day Observed Sunday,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, April 22, 1910, 5; “The Fight Against Tuberculosis,” Carbon County News, February 18, 2010, 7; “Strict Measures to Fight Tuberculosis,” Salt Lake Telegram, February 21, 1910, 2; and “Fighting the White Plague,” Millard County Progress Review, December 23, 1910, 8.

[54] David L. McDonald, “The Individual Sacrament Cup,” Young Woman’s Journal 23, no. 4 (April 1912): 216.

[55] After Clawson received permission to test individual sacrament cups in the Eighteenth Ward, public pressure increased to make a change. On January 30, 1911, the Association of Health Officers of Utah met in Salt Lake City and deliberated over measures to reduce the spread of disease in the state, including a possible ban on shared communion cups in local churches. That same day, a committee was appointed to study the matter and make recommendations to state leaders. At first, the committee consisted of three Latter-day Saint physicians: Parley Pratt Nelson of Manti, Walter T. Hasler of Lehi, and Herbet A. Adamson of Richmond. However, Hasler and Adamson believed even a hypothetical ban on shared sacramental cups “was going too far,” and both asked to be removed from the committee. Theodore B. Beatty, the state health commissioner, who was not a Latter-day Saint, commented that “it was unusual that so much objection to such a resolution should be raised.” The debate over communion vessels likely had less to do with questions over science and religion and more to do with government influence over religious activity. Indeed, Hasler had earlier voiced support for eliminating shared cups in worship services. “It would not be sacrilegious,” he explained months before, “to devise some other means of partaking of the sacrament to avoid disease germs.” The state medical leaders ultimately compromised and drafted a resolution condemning the practice of sharing cups, but they did not call for a legislative ban on shared cups in churches, schools, and other public venues. Hasler and Adamson agreed to the terms, and the resolution passed with unanimous consent. “Individual Communion Cups Asked,” Salt Lake Telegram, January 30, 1911, 10; “Doctors Discuss Health Measures,” Salt Lake Herald, January 10, 1910, 5; and “Doctors Urge Sanitary Cups,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 31, 1911, 14.

[56] Because the Word of Wisdom was not as strictly enforced during this time, many tobacco users would drink from the common cup—to the dismay of many Latter-day Saints. In 1892 Elder Abraham H. Cannon of the Twelve said, “The man who has been using tobacco comes here and partakes of the sacrament and passes it to some delicate lady, who is nauseated by the smell of tobacco.” “Sunday Services,” Utah Journal, August 10, 1891, 5. In 1897, President George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency agreed with some Latter-day Saints who believed tobacco users should “sit together in partaking of the sacrament, as many of them leave the fumes of tobacco in the water after they have drunk from the cup.” “Editorial Thoughts,” Juvenile Instructor 32, no. 6 (March 15, 1897): 188.

[57] William A. Hyde, the president of the Pocatello Stake in Idaho, wrote that Latter-day Saints had complained to him about partaking of the sacramental water after infants that had “been eating cake” beforehand, causing the infants to leave “particles” in the common cup. He suggested local leaders have a decoy cup “that is different from the sacrament goblets” and have children drink from it as practice for the real thing when they were older. “The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,” 579.

[58] Irwin Clawson to Richard L. Evans, March 22, 1954, in Helen Clawson Wells papers, MS 257, box 18, folder 6, Marriott Special Collections. James L. Jacobs of Sanpete County, Utah, later remembered, “It was interesting to watch people as the water goblets were passed to them. Some would carefully turn the goblets so they could drink right over the handle. Others placed their hands on each side of the goblet and tipped it up but did not actually touch their lips to it. Still others sipped obediently, then wiped their lips vigorously with handkerchiefs to remove any trace that might have been picked up from previous drinkers.” “Sacrament at Conference,” Saga of the Sanpitch 15 (1983): 8. A young Spencer W. Kimball similarly remembered how the deacons were often amused at members who rotated the cup for a spot to drink and how the “supposedly untouched spot quickly became the most used part of the cup’s rim.” Quoted in Edward L. Kimball, Spencer W. Kimball: Twelfth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1979), 55–56.

[59] Selden Clawson, reminiscences, n.d., MS 257, box 3, folder 3, Marriott Special Collections.

[60] McDonald, “Individual Sacrament Cup,” 216.

[61] Like Clawson, Frederick J. Pack faced resistance from members of the Thirty-Third Ward in Salt Lake City. Pack, a scientist at the University of Utah and a counselor in the bishopric, raised the issue of sacrament cups in his own Sunday School class in the fall of 1911. “We are going to ask the people to assist in preventing [the] spread of tuberculosis,” he told a gathering of Latter-day Saints. “We want an individual sacrament service. Let us not be last in adopting new ideas. Don’t go home now and think Bro. Pack was cranky as usual tonight.” But Pack anticipated opposition. When he asked how many would support the bishopric in purchasing a set of individual sacrament cups, he was met with defiance from “the older members of the ward.” The clerk of the meeting noted in the minutes: “Not a unanimous vote. But no negative.” The older group was clearly at odds with those supporting reform. Their refusal to vote was silent protest. Thirty-Third Ward general minutes, September 17, 1911, LR 9120 11, CHL. Joseph E. Greaves received similar pushback to individual sacrament cups in 1919. Greaves, a bacteriologist at Utah State Agricultural College, had lost his wife to influenza the year before. In an instant, he became a widower and single father of five children. The tragedy tested his faith. When he saw the common cup still being passed in his Logan 9th Ward in February 1919, he approached the bishop about the danger in continuing to use a shared cup for the sacrament. Their exchange highlights the hostility between old- and new-guard Latter-day Saints at the time. “Brother Greaves,” the bishop insisted, “do you really think that God would allow his sacred water, which has been blessed by the priesthood, to cause disease, to make people sick?” Greaves responded, “Bishop, do you really think that God would have given us brains if he didn’t expect us to use them?” The bishop rebuked Greaves and told him to repent of his sharp comments, to which Greaves replied, “Horse feathers!” As cited in Frances Lee Menlove, “A Listening Heart: Reflections on 1 Kings 3:5–9,” Sunstone (October 2002): 20.

[62] Selden Clawson, reminiscences, in Helen Clawson Wells papers, MS 257, box 3, folder 3, Marriott Special Collections.

[63] Selden Clawson, diary, June 11, 1911, in Helen Clawson Wells papers, MS 257, box 3, folder 3, Marriott Special Collections; and Thomas A. Clawson, diary, June 11, 1911, MSS B 106, box 2, folder 3, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City. According to an April 1911 Deseret News article, the American Fork 1st Ward had “taken the lead in ordering sacrament sets with individual cups” and that “other wards will no doubt adopt this sanitary method of service.” “Lehi,” Deseret News, April 8, 1911, 12. It is unclear when the American Fork 1^st Ward introduced individual cups into its sacrament services, but it is possible they did so before the Eighteenth Ward in June. “Lehi,” 12.

[64] One of the most common defenses of shared sacrament cups was a literal interpretation of the sacramental blessings. Many believed that the prayer on the water “killed” any germs. Members of the Groveland Ward in eastern Idaho, for example, used a common cup throughout the 1918 influenza pandemic and beyond. In 1921, they had their own debates over the sacrament cup issue. Daniel Foss Olsen, a member of the ward, later wrote about the deliberation between ward members. “Some people were very reluctant to make the change [to individual cups],” Olsen related. “When others pointed out that this was being done as a sanitary measure to keep people from drinking other people’s germs, those favoring the old way responded that the sacramental prayer would kill the germs away.” Janice Elaine Olsen Williams, “Daniel Foss Olsen: Always a Teacher,” 2006, 79–80, FamilySearch.org. Lola Newbold of Cambridge, Idaho, later wrote, “Mother said the water was blessed so we wouldn’t get any germs.” Linda Hamilton Clark and Larry G. Hamilton, “Lola Pearl Newbold Hamilton: The Early Years, 1911–1932,” 2009, 6, FamilySearch.org. Max Francis Jensen of the Independence Ward in eastern Idaho similarly remembered, “Mother would always say it had been blessed if we got a little squeamish about it.” “Life History of Max Francis Jensen,” 1982, 29–30, FamilySearch.org.

[65] Selden Clawson, reminiscences. For additional information regarding the story of Selden Clawson and individual sacrament cups, see Justin R. Bray, “The Lord’s Supper during the Progressive Era, 1890–1930,” Journal of Mormon History 38, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 88–104; and Bray, “The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and the Influenza Epidemic of 1918,” Church History Library Blog, January 14, 2019, https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/blog/sacrament-cup-influenza-epidemic-1918.

[66] There is evidence that some Latter-day Saints fell short of this ideal. Annie Clara Tanner Fotland remembered segregated seating in the Indianola Ward in Sanpete County, Utah, in the late 1880s. “I went to school with the Indian children,” she wrote, “and we all went to church together and took the sacrament from the same cup. But the Indians would sit in the back of the room, and the white people were given the sacrament first.” “Annie Clara Tanner Fotland,” FamilySearch.org. David L. McDonald, the physician who helped petition for individual sacrament cups, expressed similar resentment at drinking from the same cup as people of African descent—although in a non-church setting. See “Individual Sacrament Cup,” 216.

[67] David O. McKay, in Conference Report, October 1929, 12.

[68] Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 125; and Richard O. Cowan, The Living Church: The Unfolding of the Programs and Organization of the Church of Jesus Christ during the Twentieth Century (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Printing Service, 1974), 190.

[69] Hartley, “From Men to Boys,” 104.

[70] Minutes of the Aaronic Priesthood convention, April 8, 1933, M257.44 M266 1933, CHL.

[71] Dean Brough, “The Story of the Men’s White Shirt,” Conversation, May 13, 2014; James W. Cortada, IBM: The Rise and Fall and Reinvention of a Global Icon (Cambridge, MS: MIT Press, 2019), 236–237; and Jane Tynan, “Utility Chic: Where Fashion and Uniform Meet,” in Jane Tynan and Lisa Godson, eds., Uniform: Clothing and Discipline in the Modern World (New York: Bloomberg Publishing, 2019), 227.

[72] Earl J. Glade, “Highland Park Ward Sacrament Service,” Improvement Era 36, no. 4 (April 1933): 361.

[73] “The 1937 Highland Parker: Twenty-First Birthday Issue,” M277.9225 H638h, CHL.

[74] Minutes of the Aaronic Priesthood convention, April 8, 1933, M257.44 M266 1933, CHL.

[75] “The 1937 Highland Parker: Twenty-First Birthday Issue.” For Hawthorne Ward, see Fred J. Curtis, “The Importance of Activity in Aaronic Priesthood Quorums,” Improvement Era 36, no. 2 (December 1932): 104; and “Hawthorne Ward Makes Outstanding Record,” Improvement Era 41, no. 6 (June 1938): 366. For Fourteenth Ward, see Fourteenth Ward photographs, PH 2842, CHL. For Cottonwood Ward, see Deacons of Cottonwood Ward, PH 271, CHL; For Sugar House Ward, see Paul and Sandra Crookston, “Carlton Crookston and Annie Ruth Griffin,” (2005), 48–49, FamilySearch.org. For Provo 1st Ward, see “Provo First Ward Deacons Have Good Record,” Improvement Era 38, no. 6 (June 1935): 373. For Fourth Ward, see “Pioneer Fourth Ward Priesthood Active,” Improvement Era 41, no. 4 (April 1938), 236. For Wasatch Ward and Millcreek Ward, see “Two Wards Report on Boy Awards,” Church News, February 21, 1942, 3.

[76] For Arizona, see Lela J. Dalton, “The Life Story of Oscar Fernando Jesperson,” (1998), 48, FamilySearch.org; and Virgil Lehi Harris, “A Personal History of Virgil Lehi Harris,” n.d., 15, FamilySearch.org. For California, see Mark Skousen, “Thunder Broke the Heavens: The Life of LeRoy B. Skousen,” (1984), 17, FamilySearch.org; and Robert L. Simpson, “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet,” BYU Speeches, June 24, 1986, 4. For Oregon, see “Uniforms in Sacrament Service,” Improvement Era 36, no. 9 (September 1933): 687.

[77] “Item Number Two: Regulations Regarding Passing the Sacrament,” Improvement Era 58, no. 2 (February 1955): 113, 120.

[78] Robert L. Simpson, “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet,” BYU Speeches, June 24, 1986, 4.

[79] “Suggestions for Increasing Sacrament Meeting Attendance,” Progress of the Church 6, no. 2 (February 1943): 7.

[80] In 1867, Daniel H. Wells taught, “You should always put forth the right hand when taking either the bread or the cup.” “Remarks,” August 18, 1867, Deseret News, vol. 17, no. 7, March 25, 1868, 50. In 1908, Elder George Albert Smith of the Twelve explained, “Our people have been taught to take the sacrament with the right hand; we believe that is appropriate, and proper, and acceptable to our Father.” In Conference Report, April 1908, 36. In 1916, leaders in the First Ward discussed the issue: “Bro Albert Schoenfeld reported that some sisters take the sacrament with their left hand, and with glove on same, suggesting to have this corrected. Bp Duncan pronounced this improper and promised to have it corrected.” First Ward general minutes, March 27, 1916, LR 6581 11, vol. 3, 55, CHL.

[81] Joseph Fielding Smith, Church History and Modern Revelation (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1946), 1:103–104.

[82] David O. McKay, diary, February 20, 1952, in Harvard S. Heath, Confidence Amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O. McKay, 1951–1970 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2019), 43.

[83] “Regulations Regarding Passing the Sacrament,” Improvement Era 58, no. 2 (February 1955), 113.

[84] Joseph Fielding Smith, “The Right Hand,” Improvement Era 59, no. 1 (January 1956): 14–15.

[85] “What is Your Problem?,” Millennial Star 128, no. 12 (December 1966): 76. See also J. Stapley, “2020 Handbook: The Lord’s Supper and the Right Hand,” By Common Consent, February 23, 2020. The issue of right hands has resurfaced in recent years. In 1983, President Russell M. Nelson, who was serving at the time as a Regional Representative of the Twelve and was a former Sunday School General President, wrote about the symbolism of using right hands and referenced Joseph Fielding Smith’s article from 1956. However, President Nelson also recognized some flexibility in the practice. “The hand used in partaking of the sacrament would logically be the same hand used in making any other sacred oath,” he wrote. “For most of us, that would be the right hand. However, sacramental covenants—and other eternal covenants as well—can be and are made by those who have lost the use of the right hand, or who have no hands at all. Much more important than concern over which hand is used in partaking of the sacrament is that the sacrament be partaken with a deep realization of the atoning sacrifice that the sacrament represents.” “Is It Necessary to Take the Sacrament with One’s Right Hand?,” Ensign, March 1983, 68–69. In 2020, President Dallin H. Oaks taught a group of young men, “When we partake of the sacrament, we partake with our right hand, not our left hand. And today, I saw quite a few of the deacons take the sacrament with their left hand. Don’t do that, because you set the wrong example for the congregation if you do that.” As cited in Jana Riess, “A left-handed Latter-day Saints’ dilemma,” Religion News Service, February 27, 2020. Shortly after President Oaks’s message, the Church’s handbook was updated to reflect the practice of using right hands—again, with some flexibility. It reads: “Members partake with their right hand when possible.” General Handbook: Serving in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 18.9.4, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/18-priesthood-ordinances-and-blessings.

[86] “About Administering the Sacrament,” Daily Enquirer, February 5, 1894, 1.

[87] T. Edgar Lyon, oral history, in T. Edgar Lyon Sr. Collection, MSS 2341, box 2, folder 1, 33, Perry Special Collections. See also Gary James Bergera, Confessions of a Mormon Historian: The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971–1997 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2018), 2:108.

[88] David O. McKay, in Conference Report, April 1946, 116.

[89] General Handbook of Instructions, 18 (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1960), 45.

[90] Ronald Walker, “The Salt Lake Tabernacle in the Nineteenth Century: A Glimpse of Early Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 31, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 237.

[91] See David O. McKay, “Meditation, Communion, Reverence,” The Instructor 101 (October 1966): 369–371.

[92] Matthew Bowman, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (New York: Random House, 2012), 187–88.

[93] Merle Casper, Murray First’s First Century: A Commemorative History of the First One Hundred Years of Murray/Murray First Ward (2000), 6, CHL.

[94] “Melda Severina Farley Hacking” (2014), http://dianestokoe.com/jennieandcarl/jennieandcarl_chapter_1.pdf. Elma B. Whitesides Dickson of the Layton Ward later remembered, “It was also the custom to play beautiful music while the sacrament was being passed. Some of my most enjoyable memories are of the melodious music played during this time in meetings. In fact, it was a sacred period devoted to listening to the lovely strains of the organ.” David D. Dickson, “The Life Story of Elma B. Whitesides Dickson” (1987), 6, FamilySearch.org.

[95] A Bicentennial History: Hooper–Kanesville (1976), 64, FamilySearch.org.

[96] Jeane Erickson Burton, “Eldred Hilmar Erickson, 1919–1989,” (2000), 15, FamilySearch.org.

[97] Diane Brown, “The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: Reflections in Fifteen Fragments,” Exponent II 19, no. 1 (1995): 4–5.

[98] “Church Consolidates Meeting Schedules,” Ensign, March 1980, 73–78; “Changes Help Balance Gospel Instruction at Home and at Church,” Church News, October 6, 2018.

[99] General Handbook, 18.9.3. See also “Sacrament Bread Tray,” General Discussions forum, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, October 9, 2017, https://tech.churchofjesuschrist.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29872; and “Celiac disease,” General Discussions forum, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, March 6, 2011, https://tech.churchofjesuschrist.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7193.

[100] “Church Leaders Call for Better Observance of Sabbath Day,” Church News, July 15, 2015; “Leaders Hope Emphasis on Sabbath Observance Increases Faith in God,” Church News, December 30, 2015.

[101] Jana Riess, “When Mormon women can’t have the sacrament,” Religion News Service (blog), March 12, 2020, https://religionnews.com/2020/05/12/when-mormon-women-cant-have-the-sacrament.

[102] See comments on Riess, “When Mormon women can’t have the sacrament.” See also Jared Cook, “Blessing the Sacrament Remotely: Contagion, Technology, and Liturgical Adaptation,” By Common Consent (blog), March 12, 2020, https://bycommonconsent.com/2020/03/12/blessing-the-sacrament-remotely-contagion-technology-and-liturgical-adaptation; Sam Brunson, “Excluding Our Fellow Saints from the Sacrament,” By Common Consent (blog), April 29, 2020, https://bycommonconsent.com/2020/04/29/excluding-our-fellow-saints-from-the-sacrament; ElleK, “Sacrament at Home: Allowances That Could Be Made for Women,” Exponent II (blog), April 21, 2020, https://www.the-exponent.com/sacrament-at-home-allowances-that-could-be-made-for-women-copingwithcovid19; Brunson, “Coronavirus and the Sacrament,” By Common Consent (blog), February 25, 2020, https://bycommonconsent.com/2020/02/25/coronavirus-and-the-sacrament; Brunson, “Shelter-in-Place and the Sacrament,” By Common Consent (blog), March 20, 2020, https://bycommonconsent.com/2020/03/20/shelter-in-place-and-the-sacrament; Violadiva, “The (Male) Privilege of Partaking,” Exponent II (blog), April 5, 2020, https://www.the-exponent.com/the-male-privilege-of-partaking; Maren C., “A Few Questions about the Sacrament and Single Sisters,” Exponent II (blog), June 16, 2020, https://www.the-exponent.com/guest-post-a-few-questions-about-the-sacrament-and-single-sisters-copingwithcovid19; and Cheryl B. Preston, “Women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the COVID-19 Freeze,” SquareTwo 15, no. 3 (Fall 2020).

[103] “The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins on the LDS Church’s quest for approval and its future,” interview by David Noyce and Peggy Fletcher Stack, Mormon Land, podcast, December 16, 2020, https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2020/12/16/mormon-land-atlantics.