Why does LDS church plan a 3rd Boise-area temple? It’s not just growth
Active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regularly attend churches, also called meeting houses, for Sunday worship services, parties and events.
But for more somber and sacred occasions, such as weddings or baptisms of the dead, members of the church flock to a temple.
“It’s a sacred place — it’s very special,” Jason Nielsen, the president of the Caldwell Snake River Stake, told the Idaho Statesman. (A stake is a geographic area with about 3,000 members of the church.) “We go there to make sacred promises to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.”
Amid the Boise area’s rapid growth, members of the LDS faith will soon get their third such site. The church announced Sunday that it will build a new temple in Caldwell, one of 15 new temples worldwide. No location has yet been announced, but the temple will join two others in Boise (opened in 1984) and Meridian (opened in 2017).
It would be the 11th Idaho temple for the Salt Lake City-based church. The other eight are mostly in South and East Idaho: two in Rexburg and one each in Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Twin Falls, Burley and Montpelier, a small town in near the corner of Southeast Idaho. One, which is still in the planning stages, is in Coeur d’Alene.
Idaho is home to over 475,000 members of the faith in over 1,225 congregations, according to a news release. Nielsen said he didn’t have numbers of church members in Caldwell or Treasure Valley, but the decision to build a new temple in Caldwell was partly “tied to growth.”
That growth comes from people moving to the Boise area from out of state, Nielsen said, and from people converting to the faith, which has been growing worldwide in recent years. As of 2021, Idaho’s LDS population had grown about 13% over the previous 10 years.
Anecdotally, Nielsen said, there was also a sense that the temples in Meridian and Boise were getting more crowded as population grew and members grew more observant.
“It’s not all about capacity — it’s also the faithfulness of members,” he said.
There is not yet a cost estimate or timeline for when the new temple will open, but Lonni Leavitt-Barker, a spokesperson for the church, said it will be open for the public to tour before it is dedicated — after which only church members in “good standing” with the church can enter.
The new temple’s location will be announced “down the road,” Leavitt-Barker said by email, and will include a rendering.
The church’s presence in the state dates back to the arrival of pioneers in 1855, and several church presidents came from Idaho, the release said.
“The church has deep roots in the state,” the release said.
This story was originally published April 10, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
