page_title: Culture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
section_title: Genealogy
hierarchical_section_title: Culture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints / Genealogy
caption_attribution_description: English: Family History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.
context_page_description: The basic beliefs and traditions of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a cultural impact that distinguishes church members, practices and activities. The culture is geographically concentrated in the Mormon Corridor in the United States, and is present to a lesser extent in many places of the world where Latter-day Saints live.
  In some aspects, Latter-day Saint culture is distinct from church doctrine. Cultural practices which are centrally based on church doctrine include adhering to the church's law of health, paying tithing, living the law of chastity, participation in lay leadership of the church, refraining from work on Sundays when possible, family home evenings, and home and visiting teaching. The church also emphasizes the moral standards that Mormons believe were taught by Jesus Christ, including personal honesty, integrity, obedience to law, chastity outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage.
  The majority of Latter-day Saints live outside the United States. Therefore, even though the global differences are important, there are some common traits around Latter-day Saints worldwide.
context_section_description: Genealogical family history research is an important aspect of Latter-day Saint tradition, stemming from a doctrinal mandate for church members to research their family tree and perform vicarious ordinances for their ancestors. Church members believe the ordinances "seal" or link families together, with the ultimate goal being an unbroken chain back to Adam and Eve. Church members are able to do genealogical work in various family history centers throughout the world, usually located in LDS meetinghouses. The advent of personal computers prompted the church to create a specialized file format known as GEDCOM for storing and exchanging these records. Since then, GEDCOM has become a de facto standard that almost all genealogy programs support.
  The church maintains a website called FamilySearch to access genealogical records, which typically contain birth, death, marriage and family group information. Church records also contain information on personal ordinances of members as well as vicarious temple ordinances such as baptism, endowment, and sealing to spouse, parent, and child. Genealogical and church related information is maintained in permanent storage in the Granite Mountain vault in the Wasatch Range of the Utah mountains. The church is currently working to digitize all of these records and make them more readily available.
caption: The church's Family History Library in Salt Lake City
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