The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always been a temple-building organization. Temple worship is central to Latter-day Saint identity and theology. They provide saving ordinances found no place else on earth. For nearly a century, Latter-day Saints outside of the United States would often struggle to save for years to participate in these sacred ordinances.
In the late 20th century, Gordon B. Hinckley, serving as 15th president of the Church, had a vision to bring temples closer to home for millions of saints in a growing church. This report explores how temple-building has evolved since the late 19th century, making particular mention of the impact of President Hinckley.
Data for this project came from links at Temple and Church Unit Statistics | ChurchofJesusChristTemples.org. It is a non-profit not affiliated with the Church that gathers publicly available information on temples and related church statistics. I built a web scraper in Python to extract the data used for the below charts which were created using the Plotly Express library.
# Load Libraries
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import math
from scipy.spatial.distance import pdist, squareform
import json
import plotly.express as px
import plotly.graph_objects as go
from scipy.interpolate import make_interp_spline ###
## Extract size data using web scraping
###
url_size = 'https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/statistics/dimensions/'
response_size = requests.get(url_size)
content_size = BeautifulSoup(response_size.text, "html.parser")
# Extract Column Labels
label_info = content_size.find_all("a", class_ = "column-sort")
labs = [title.text for title in label_info]
# Extract Table information
data_info = content_size.find_all("td")
data_list = [title.text for title in data_info]
size_data = pd.DataFrame(np.reshape(data_list, (276, 6) ), columns=labs)### Extract Dedication Data
url = 'https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/temples/chronology/'
response = requests.get(url)
content = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser")
nms_info = content.find_all("tr")
nms = [names.text.strip() for names in nms_info]
data1 = [x for x in nms if "Rededication" not in x ][9:len(nms)]
dedication_data = json.dumps([i.split('\n', 3) for i in data1])
date_data = pd.read_json(dedication_data)
date_data.columns = ["item", "Temple", "Dedication_Date", "Dedicated_By"]
date_data["Year"] = [string[-4:] if string and len(string) >= 4 else "" for string in date_data.Dedication_Date]## Merge Dedication Data to size_dist_data
final_data = pd.merge(size_data, date_data, on = "Temple", how = "left")
final_data.Year = final_data.Year.astype("float")
final_data["SqFt"] = final_data.SquareFootage.replace("-", np.nan).str.replace(",","").astype("float")
final_data["Sealing_Rooms"] = final_data.SealingRooms.replace("-", np.nan).astype("float")
final_data.sort_values(by = "Year", inplace=True)
final_data["Cumulative_Sealing_Rooms"] = final_data.Sealing_Rooms.cumsum()## Create Distance Matrices for extant temples in a given year
gps_coords = pd.read_csv("https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/maps/gps/", encoding_errors="ignore")
## Find Euclidean Distances
temp_data = pd.merge(date_data, gps_coords.filter(["Temple", "Latitude", "Longitude"]), on = "Temple", how = "inner")
temp_data.Year = temp_data.Year.astype("float")
yr = temp_data.Year[2]
def max_dist(df, yr):
junk = df.query('Year <= @yr').filter(["Latitude", "Longitude"])
dist_matrix = squareform(pdist(junk, metric='euclidean'))
mean_distance = dist_matrix.mean()
return mean_distance
temp_data["Mean_Distance"] = [max_dist(temp_data,yr) for yr in temp_data.Year]As a teenager, I remember President Hinkley proposing a new way to get temples closer to members. The Church would design smaller temples to be adjacent to stake centers around the world.
More recently, in the October 2021 General Conference, President Nelson announced the Rexburg, North temple which was planned to be one of the largest temples in the world, I wondered if there was a shift in attitude about temple sizes.
This chart shows the square footage of all temples and the year dedicated. You can definitely see the impact on temple sizes during President Hinkley’s tenure (from 1995-2008).
size_chart = (px.scatter(
final_data.query("SqFt < 300000"),
x = "Year",
y = "SqFt",
color = "SqFt",
title = "Square Footage of Temples by Year",
trendline="lowess",
trendline_options=dict(frac = .3),
labels = {
"SqFt":"FT^2"
}
).update_layout(showlegend = False)
)
size_chart.add_vrect(x0 = 1995, x1 = 2008, line_width = 0, fillcolor = "red", opacity = .2).add_annotation(x = 2000, y = 175000, text = "President Hinkley").show()Each General Conference, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wait with bated breath for the announcement of new temples. From Rexburg, Idaho to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, we can’t help getting excited about sacred temple ordinances becoming more accessible to saints around the world.
I was curious about the average distance between temples and how things have changed over time. I decided to look at the average Euclidean distance between existing temples in a given year. The chart below shows a dramatic increase in distances as temples were dedicated outside the USA. But we also see a peak and decrease as more and more temples are dedicated nearer each other.
This graph also shows a sharp decline during President Hinkley’s tenure as President of the Church.
dist_chart2 = (px.scatter(temp_data,
x = "Year",
y = "Mean_Distance",
title = "Mean Euclidean distance from other LDS Temples over time",
trendline = "ewm",
color = "Mean_Distance",
trendline_options = dict(alpha = .9),
labels = {
"Mean_Distance":"Mean Dist."
}
)
)
dist_chart2.add_vrect(x0 = 1995, x1 = 2008, line_width = 0, fillcolor = "red", opacity = .2).add_annotation(x = 2000, y = 25, text = "President Hinkley").show()Elder George Q. Cannon once said:
“Every foundation stone that is laid for a temple, and every temple completed according to the order the Lord has revealed for His holy priesthood, lessens the power of Satan on the earth, and increases the power of God and Godliness, moves the heavens in mighty power in our behalf, invokes and calls down upon us the blessings of the eternal Gods, and those who reside in their presence.”
This last visualization looks at the total number of sealing rooms dedicated in this last dispensation.
celestial_rooms_chart = (px.scatter(final_data,
x = "Year",
y = "Cumulative_Sealing_Rooms",
title = "Cumulative sealing rooms over time",
trendline = "ewm",
color = "Cumulative_Sealing_Rooms",
trendline_options = dict(alpha = .9),
labels = {
"Cumulative_Sealing_Rooms":"Total Sealing Rooms"
}
)
)
celestial_rooms_chart.add_vrect(x0 = 1995, x1 = 2008, line_width = 0, fillcolor = "red", opacity = .2).add_annotation(x = 2000, y = 25, text = "President Hinkley").show()In an increasingly chaotic world, expanding the reach of temple ordinances provides a solid foundation for a growing number of Latter-day Saints.