Funnel of Love and Money

The Mormon Temple across the street they’ve been giving the old spit-n-polish to since before we moved here 2.5 years ago is finally finished. But before they officially consecrate it, they’re opening it up to the public, at least the public who live close enough to be inconvenienced when faithful from all over this part of country converge on our block for three weeks starting next week.

So there we go. An invite-only tour of a place that my kind otherwise wouldn’t be permitted within 500 feet of. I got on my Sunday-Go-To-Funeral duds and, with The Missus and The Boy in tow, hiked the two blocks to the recently refurbished monument to austerity.

The entire grounds were filled with stationed church volunteers. The first one we encountered directed us away from the temple to an adjacent building. I leaned over to The Boy and said, “They’re going to funnel us very carefully.” When he asked me what I meant by funnel, I said, “Just watch.”

And their were indeed plenty of… well, let’s call them what they were: guards. Very nice church members, very helpful, very smiling, and very very committed to making sure that no one deviate from the Funnel. At one point, as were being led into one of the rooms, The Boy and I were holding hands and I did a kind of small centrifugal-force gag that placed me about a foot past the allocated entrance, and I immediately found a smiling stranger by my side, directing me back 12” to the approved entranceway.

The tour started with a video outlining the story of the Church of Latter Day Saints. It was a little long, but well-produced. It seems they were persecuted a lot (they completely left out why they were persecuted, but it was their story and I thought they had a right to spin it any way they pleased) and they really like tall, wide, white buildings. Every new head leader since the beginning—not that long ago, it’s a young religion—seems to starts building some as soon as he gets bumped up to the top gig.

After the vid, we were funneled into a long corridor and led to a row of sparkly-faced teen Mormons who put hospital booties on our feet because they didn’t want their new Temple all scuffed up before it even opened.

Our guides kind of skimmed over the more non-traditional aspects of their set of beliefs as they ran them down for us over the course of the tour. But I wasn’t there to pick nits. They were inviting heretics into their Holy of Holies. I gotta give them respect for that, and can’t help but think that if more religions took outreach chances like that instead of just trying to reduce their rival religions’ populations, the world might be just a little bit less of the sorry mess it is today.

The place itself was and wasn’t what I expected. It was austere and ornate, but I was looking for the grand, main assembly room, and apparently there isn’t one. They took us through lots of smaller rooms and chambers and explained what each one was and how it was used, but the grand assembly area isn’t even in the temple proper and it has a basketball court painted on the floor.

The baptism room was pretty impressive. It had a baptismal pool supported by twelve white oxen (representing the twelve tribes of Israel), and I immediately thought of Moses coming down the mountain, and whispered to The Missus, “Are they waiting for the workmen to come and paint the bulls golden?” Then I remembered all the statues of Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus and sundry deified saints in the Catholic churches I grew up in and felt the warm glow of dickishness fill me. Hypocrite, thy name is Hypocrite.

As to the décor… Wow. If heaven has a funeral parlor, it probably looks exactly like this place. I remember everything being a dazzling, golden white. One room in particular, an entire wall was adorned with dazzling golden-white coffin-bunting from floor to ceiling. The Boy grabbed both of our hands when we entered and held on for dear life until we were back outside.

The walls were also decorated with paintings of the Savior in various bucolic scenes, either all by the same hand or in a very rigorously-enforced style. I had to suppress a smile as I passed by the ones of Jesus and the Indians and frontier men dressed like Gabby Hayes… But really, the Mormons’ story isn’t any more or less crazy than most religions’ origin myths. Maybe it’s just because it’s supposed to have occurred on American soil that makes me extra skeptical. And they have angels delivering golden tablets to people, I don’t know. Hey, it explained the interior’s color scheme though.

Without the giant cathedral-like room I had been waiting to see (look at the picture at top—it sure as hell looks like they’re packing a cathedral in there. Or a Hyatt), I found the tour a little anticlimactic, moments of hilarity aside.

There was an amusing moment at the snacks stop at the end of the tour. Helpful senior LDS gentlemen and ladies were working the room, following up with everyone on how their experience was, do you have any questions, that sort of thing. This one hulking, elderly chap walked up to our table and put his hand lightly on my shoulder from behind. “So. Did you work on this building?” he asked me without the question mark.

Yay! Almost three months riding a desk and I can still pass for blue-collar. I felt ten feet tall and bullet-proof.

In the end, I still think that the money they poured into 2+ years of renovation could have been put to better use building schools or walk-in medical clinics in the poor parts of town or shoring up existing crumbling infrastructure. The construction dudes—one of whom I could pass for—would still be working, and the end product would be a blessing for the entire city, not just an aesthetic upgrade for the faithful. No doubt the Church is engaged in many good and charitable works, but it’s still no excuse to throw two-and-a-half years’ worth of construction dollars at making your place of worship look cooler.

What would Jesus do? I’ve read a lot about Him helping the sick and the poor, but I missed the chapter on his building projects.

But that’s the church leaders, and leaders need to leave their legacies. I don’t fault the lovely folks we met on the tour. Like I wrote on the comment card, I’ve never gone to a place where the nicest guy or gal in the room isn’t a Mormon, even before moving to Idaho. Whatever they drill into those people in all those little chambers turns out reliably awesome human beings.

On the walk home, it occurred to me what a shame it is that a scheming legacy-seeker like Mitt Romney—the way Odd Man Out among his LDS brethren—is the face of Mormonism in this country today. Any one of the doddering docents on hand for our tour would present a much more accurate snapshot of what the average Mormon is like to the American public. It would be like having pedophile priests be the face of Roman Catholicism in this country… oh, wait.