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The recent redesign of Latter-day Saint temple garments has turned a normally private practice into a public conversation — demand was so high the Church’s website briefly struggled to keep up, suggesting leaders may have underestimated how strongly these changes would resonate, especially with younger members and women.
In this episode, Dialogue co-editors Caroline Kline and Margaret Olsen Hemming sit down with Nancy Ross and Kristine Haglund to explore what garments mean today: as sacred objects, as cultural symbols, and as instruments that shape behavior and identity in the Church. Together they trace the history and theology of garments, unpack the social dynamics that keep them shrouded in silence, and consider what the recent redesign — and the large public interest it revealed — tells us about evolving gender expectations, embodiment, and religious belonging in Mormon life.
Guests:
Nancy Ross — coauthor of the forthcoming Mormon Garments: Sacred and Secret. Drawing on a survey of over 4,500 Latter-day Saints and extensive qualitative research, Ross (with Jessica Finnigan and Larissa Kanno Kindred) examines the layered meanings of garments: devotional, regulatory, intimate, shame-producing, and identity-shaping. The book illuminates how garments function both as sacred clothing and as tools of social control that intersect with gender, sexuality, and agency.
Kristine Haglund — writer and scholar of Mormon culture and religion, and former editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Haglund brings historical perspective and close reading of cultural practice to questions about secrecy, theology, and changing norms.