Myth 1 | All Temples Must Have the Statue

Myth #1: All Temples Must Have an Angel Moroni Statue

This book has covered this topic in various forms already, but here are some facts and information to consider.

When the tradition of adding a statue to every temple was started in 1982 with the Atlanta Temple construction, there were already 20 temples in operation around the world. Of those 20, only Salt Lake, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Seattle and Jordan River had statues. That was only one quarter of the temples. Even today, as many older temples have had statues added, there are still a fair number without. More recently the number of temples without statues has increased, dramatically. This massive decrease roughly coincided with President Russel M. Nelson’s focus on Christ over all else.

Additionally, In the last half a decade, the decision has been made to remove the statue from a pair of temples that had previously had it.

For a full list of temples without the statue, see Chapter 7, Moroni by Sculptor.

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