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Yes, the short answer is yes. But there is a lot to say beyond that. In the last week I have seen a few people point to statements by various church leaders that ordinances [n1] are unchanged from the foundation of the world (insinuating that older ways of doing things are perhaps superior–fundilicious). The thing is, these are the same church leaders that presided over some of the largest changes in our ordinances. Anyway, here is a brief summary of some of the major shifts in just the first five ordinances revealed in the Restoration. Other liturgies experienced perhaps larger changes, but that isn’t the point. All but the last ritual below find anchoring in Moroni’s ecclesiastical and liturgical missives. They are introduced to the church with Joseph Smith’s Articles and Covenants (D&C 20) by way of Oliver Cowdery’s Articles of the Church of Christ.



Baptism

We have long made a case for baptism by immersion and sneered at the Christian world for sprinkling. With the changes to our own liturgies in the last two decades, I think we might be less likely to do that now. Baptism was extremely chaotic during the first fifty years of the church, and there were different baptismal rituals to join the church, to rejoin the church, to recommit to the church, to be healed, to prepare to go to the temple, to join a united order, etc. I think I have six different baptismal prayers in my files, despite the revealed prayer. Then we have the non-canonical details such as what to where, how to hold your hands, and whether there should be witnesses all taking shape over the history of the Restoration. For example, requiring priesthood officers to be witnesses was a change introduced in my lifetime.

Confirmation

Unfortunately, we have very little documentation on how confirmations have been performed. They weren’t rituals that were often recorded. Someone needs to do the work on this, because, while I could probably figure it out, l don’t know when the “receive ye the Holy Ghost” phrase became required.

The Lord’s Supper

I think most church members realize that we used wine for the Lord’s Supper and that the revealed prayers had to be changed to accommodate the water. I imagine that most people don’t realize that there was a period when we didn’t even use the revealed prayers at all. We just sort of free-styled it. There was also a short period when official liturgical instructions required white bread. Also relatively unknown is that the idea of the Lord’s Supper being a renewal of baptismal covenants is non-canonical and a twentieth-century innovation. My hunch is that it arose to fill the hole that ending baptism for the renewal of covenants created.

Ordination

We have a revealed text for ordinations, but we don’t use it. When people started fiddling around with the ordination pattern, John Taylor said it was contrary to scripture, improper, and wrong. So did Lorenzo Snow. However, younger folks carried the day and now we “confer” a priesthood, and then “ordain” to an office. There are several dates you could point to for the formalization of this new pattern. I think 1964 is a solid choice.

Baby Blessings

Baby blessings are really an odd inclusion in the Articles and Covenants. They don’t fit the pattern and are mostly anomalous within the Antebellum context of the Restoration. Naming the child as part of the ritual is non-canonical but documented early on. The idea that fathers should bless their babies is a twentieth century idea.

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