Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

In this Board question Rating Pending pointed out in his aside that "in the early days of the Church, endowed members made their own garments and they were often full-length, and worn during hard physical labor." As soon as I read that I remembered reading somewhere that early church members actually ONLY wore garments in the temple. So, obviously, I had to go Googling and find the source. It was from this "History of the Garment" from "an unofficial church historian" (dubious, I know!). I read it probably a year ago, and you can read some of the highlights on this Cougar Stadium thread.

Around the end of page 8, beginning of page 9, it says that is wasn't until "Beginning in 1906 Joseph F. Smith made it mandatory upon all endowed saints to wear the garment day and night whether they were in prayer or not.* [as it says in the document, previously people had been told to wear garments "in prayer," or at the temple is the supposed meaning] It was his feeling that the Lord had restored through Joseph an exact pattern of the garment that should be worn constantly, and that it would provide the saints with a standard of modesty. His successor disagreed." In 1964 and 1994 the leaders reiterated that members should wear their garments at ALL TIMES, and obviously we haven't heard much on the topic (like, in GC I mean) in the last ten years (maybe they are due to remind everyone again?).

Anyway, I wasn't sure if this was an appropriate comment for the Board itself, since it is unrelated to the question (and I almost asked my own question about it, but then I found the document and it has citations, so I'm satisfied). Hope you all find it interesting.

-- P.S. I just realize where I read it before, it was in answering a question for the Board last year! Weeeird.

I love reading history tidbits like this, Mico, thanks for sharing!

Hugs to your face.

Thanks UnluckyStuntman, though who knows how true it is. Thanks, Whistler, for asking this further question. I feel like the real answer here is probably something like "some early saints wore garments all the time, other didn't, and it wasn't necessarily 'doctrine/commandment' until later generations."

P.S. I feel so weird going on about this since it is irrelevant to my current beliefs. Go figure, religion is fascinating.

haha yeah. Thanks Rating Pending! I was too lazy to find out myself.