Ponderings from Temple Square
 
By Kevin Brooker
For The Calgary Herald - Calgary, Alberta
 
Last week I spent a few sunny hours wandering around Temple Square in Salt Lake City, the spiritual epicentre of the world's 13 million followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as LDS, or more commonly, the Mormons.

It wasn't my first time. I visit this site every three decades, like clockwork.

And there is still, I notice, much to digest in both the teachings and buildings of this uniquely American expression of longing for Zion. For one thing, I don't think I have ever been in a cleaner space. Hospitals could take lessons here.

It's not just the toilets that sparkle. From the luminescent paintings of Nebuchadnezzar to the heroic statues of Adam and Eve posed in front of a dioramic Eden, there is an ethereal glow to every joyous display of faith. This is a religion that is not afraid to walk you up a spiral ramp and show you what a domed, celestial heaven actually looks like.

For the record, there are stars, clouds, Saturn and a big marble Jesus.

Cynics might point out that the characters in the paintings appear rather blond for the Middle East of 2,000 years ago. Yet the missionaries who conduct the constant stream of tours proudly wear flags from home nations as diverse as Malaysia, Japan, Switzerland and Ethiopia.

Moreover, on that very day, Utahns were commemorating the moment exactly 30 years earlier when then church president Spencer W. Kimball received a revelation from God to extend the priesthood and temple ordinances to all worthy male members, thereby breaking Mormonism's colour barrier, if not its gender one.

I noticed other changes since my last visit. Gone, it appears, are such effigies as the one I remember where Joseph Smith Jr. discovers buried golden tablets in upstate New York, tablets which he said revealed a continuing saga of Christ that picks up in North America after resurrection.

I probably don't have to tell you that Mormon theology is arcane and, frankly, astonishing in its claims. But is it any more so than that of the mainstream Christianity which often derides it? As the unchurched person I am, that's a hard call to make.

Still, I can't help but take away the impression that from a brand-management perspective, modern LDS is downplaying its quirky origin story in favour of a more outwardly appealing, generic form of worship. Especially lately, with polygamists from the fundamentalist branch of the religion so frequently in the news in both Canada and the U.S., Mormonism faces unique public-relations challenges.

All of this makes Temple Square an interesting place to ponder the fate of those 430 children briefly exhaled into custody from the FLDS Yearning for Zion compound in Texas, only to be returned home last week to suffer an additional, all-new form of trauma.

I feel for those kids, of course. But I also feel for Texas welfare officials who are damned regardless of how they act, what with the public apparently being torn between trying to prevent child abuse and respecting the sanctity of parenthood.

I for one don't know what to think, and it's not just because I've watched so many episodes of Big Love, the fictional HBO TV series, which follows -- quite sympathetically -- the convoluted dramatics of a modern polygamist family in suburban Salt Lake.

When I think of a culture that pursues "plural marriages" with very young women, I'm as mystified as when I ponder the notion that Jesus met and preached to Indians. When people assert their free will, who am I to tell them when they must marry, or otherwise interfere with their having eight children before they're 30?

In a lot of cultures, parents supervise mate selection. Many tell children they will burn in hell unless they follow a specific moral program, or deny women the right to participate in the priesthood.

We may not personally agree, yet a truly free society requires broad standards of tolerance.

Kevin Brooker's column appears every Monday.
 
canada.com
Originally published Monday, June 16, 2008
 
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