When I was a teenager in the Mormon Church, my MIA leader showed a film to all the girls about the importance of temple marriage. It emphasized the superiority of temple marriage over civil or other-religious marriage. If I recall correctly, one scene of the movie showed a sweet young couple who did not get married in the temple and the young man died in a car accident. How tragic, the film showed, a marriage that only lasted a short while when it could have been eternal.
Perhaps it was for that reason that when I wrote my own wedding vows, only three months out of Mormonism, I included the phrase, “forever” and not, “until death do us part.”
However, I have since learned details about the LDS temple ceremony. Of course only temple-recommend relatives and friends can attend the actual event. There are no rings exchanged – nor vows between the husband and wife. Each does make vows — but to the LDS church, not to each other. There is no commitment to stay together in the sickness, health, richer, poorer, better or worse phases of life. There is only commitment to Mormonism.
And there's another thing missing from the LDS temple ceremony. A culture which is based on the teachings of founders who slept with many, many women –a culture which teaches that men will all be polygamists in heaven– certainly would never ask the groom to “forsake all others.”
Now, I don't see much in that which is superior to Christian marriage.
For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today(Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
