A Spy in the Temple

Theological Spelunking
On Tuesday past I went down the rabbit hole with silvertide, Laura, Jim and Liz on the Apostasy Tour of the soon-to-be-dedicated Manhattan Temple of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You can see Bill’s blog for the in-depth report, Part One of which he’s already posted. It is, as always, fascinating to follow Bill as he unpacks Mormon theology and sociology. I was just there for the hot chicks.

What’s Past is Prelude
I was raised in the Catholic Church, which for my generation, and the parishes in which I lived, was like being sent to Turkish prison. The Catholic schools of my youth were run by predatory, post-menopausal nuns in full killer-penguin habits. Religious indoctrination was in the Catechism, not the Bible, and Church was a dimly-lit building that stank of incense and fear sweat, where we schoolchildren spent a couple of hours a week practicing Vatican aerobics: stand, kneel, sit, kneel, stand, kneel, stand, sit, kneel, kneel, kneel, fucking kneel. God help you if you rested your bony ten-year-old ass against edge of the pew while you were kneeling: the least you could expect was a verbal rebuke from one of the wimpled corrections officers; the most you could expect was a horny-handed slap that made your ears ring and left a red handprint on your face for hours.
Priests then were rather more remote figures (which, knowing what we do now about how widespread among priests is the taste for pedophilia, was probably a good thing): they were the officers of the Church, and the nuns were the non-coms. Priests lived like medieval princes, in well-appointed rectories with cooks and servants. Nuns lived in more humble convents where they did their own cooking, cleaning, sewing and probably minor surgery. I can infer some of the class envy this inspired by the brutality with which the nuns treated their charges.
Though the reforms of Vatican II were slowly trickling down to us in the trenches, the Church of my youth was still a medieval fiefdom ruled by remote lords and their distaff overseers. School and Church were a seamless blur of regimentation and arbitrary punishments. How anyone extracted anything remotely spiritual or transcendent from that dungeon atmosphere is frankly beyond me.
God is Our Business, and Business is Good
By comparison, the Mormon faith as I’ve seen and read about it is a Chamber of Commerce religion. Mormons are trained from the womb in public relations through public speaking in church, and by not-quite-compulsory missionary service for two years upon reaching their majority. Considering the reactionary nature of the LDS Church, and its metastasis into the workings of government in Utah and several other states, it has gotten remarkably little bad press. Everything I know about the official position of the Mormons on matters ecclesiastical and social puts them in the same ideological gulag as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, yet the Mormons are much better at putting a mainstream face on their organization.
The Manhattan Temple and the tour we were given is representative, I think, of the meticulous care with which the Mormons maintain their public facade. Even on a tour day, with hundreds of people tramping through the building (granted, in church-provided plastic shoe covers), the temple is immaculately, antiseptically, painfully clean. It is also very lavishly appointed: lots of fine-grained white marble, rich, light-colored carpeting set off by jewel-toned upholstery, gleaming woodwork and acres of blindingly white plaster details. Every flat surface held a vase of expensive artificial flowers (you had to touch them, as Laura did, to discover they were fake). Overall the effect is one of uncluttered opulence. “Nothing is too good for God’s house,” our tour guide said, several times. Though the LDS Church isn’t big on icons–no crosses or pictures of saints–there were a few elaborate murals in the “instruction rooms,” (the significance of which Bill will no doubt explain), and a back-lit, floor-to-ceiling stained glass picture of Christ walking with two apostles after His resurrection. The work’s execution was unremarkable, I thought, except that one of the apostles bore a striking resemblance to Paul Simon. Well, “the Jordan River is chilly and wide…”
A Strange Preoccupation with Personal Hygiene
Not once, but twice, during the tour we were led through locker rooms where Mormons change into their praying gear: apparently religion is a full-contact sport to these folks. The ecclesiastical garb was described as white trousers and shirts for men, and white dresses for women. What struck me were the rows of gleaming sinks and toilet stalls, enough for a basketball team to use without any crowding: clean (of course), well-lit, and upscale in an indefinably churchy way. The restroom tours punctuated the viewing of the baptismal font, a circular, chest-deep pool the size of a resort jacuzzi, but presumably without the massaging jets. The font was raised on the backs of a dozen not-quite-life-sized marble oxen, which one sixtyish woman on the tour counted aloud, to her evident satisfaction. The baptismal font was (surprise!) spotless: I’ve drunk dirtier water from Evian bottles.
Besides our tour guides, and guides leading the groups before and after ours, church members were posted at the entrance to almost every room: men in dark suits and white shirts; women in colorful, modest dresses. All of these minders were volunteers, and were neatly, if not extravagantly groomed. Imagine a JCPenney catalog on the hoof, and you’ve pretty much got the idea. The overall effect was a startling uniformity: you see more individuality in an infantry platoon. And this was in their street clothes; one can only imagine how anonymous they’d be in white ecclesiastical garb.
The Medium is the Message
My preoccupation with the temple’s physical appearance in this report isn’t an accident: I think the temple is meant to stand in pristine contrast to the dirty, chaotic streets of New York, and by extension, to the complicated, untidy lives of would-be recruits. The architecture and interior design reinforce the message: this is a nice, clean, safe place; nothing untoward is going to happen here. It is the kind of public relations that Disney executives would sacrifice their children for. It is also unsettling and politely fascist.
Everything from the opening video presentation (as slick a piece of corporate marketing as I’ve ever seen), to the architecture, to the professionally friendly demeanor of the regiment of guides, says “Don’t worry: we have all the answers. We’ll tell you everything you need to know.” The whole presentation says if you’re neatly dressed and polite on the outside, you must be good on the inside. If your temple is spic and span, so shall be your soul. The whole place was an advertisement for the virtues of conformity, order and correctness.
We Few, We Happy Few
I won’t speak for what my companions made of this Alice-in-Wonderland evening, except to note that they had rather different outward reactions. Bill maintained a sphinx-like demeanor through the whole exercise, appropriate, I suppose, for someone who knows where all the theological bodies are buried. Laura went back and forth between looking worried and amused. She also had the funniest line of the night: after our guide explained the Mormon marriage customs at great length (women are “sealed” to their husbands, and their husbands alone, not just for life, but for eternity; men can be sealed to as many as three women), Laura leaned over and said, sotto voce, “Yeah, but we can fuck anybody we want.” Jim and Liz, who I gather are recovering Catholics, took in the proceedings with a kind of bemused curiosity. I noticed them holding hands once: I don’t know if this was from affection or the need for mutual support.
For me the whole experience was interesting, and informative in a way that I’m sure the LDS Church didn’t intend (though the guides conspicuously avoided discussing most articles of Mormon faith in any depth). The carefully choreographed tour, the unctuous patter of the guides, the expanses of marble and plaster, and the Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes left me feeling as though we were a group of prospective buyers of funeral crypts. More than once I entered a room half expecting to see a casket laid out in its center.
Physically and spiritually it was a clean, well-lighted place that spoke to me not of eternal life, but of impending death.