A Spy in the Temple
- At May 23, 2004
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
11
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.
couscous1021
Yay!
“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”
LMAO!! I immediately pictured a bubbling jacuzzi baptism. Great line. Chest-deep, huh? Pretty shocking. I was also raised Catholic, and I believe I had just a token sprinkle poured over my head when I was baptized in ’77 or ’78. One thing I can say about my old Catholic faith- they knew how to keep things comfortable. If your checks clear, you can get any kind of ceremony you want.
I was hoping the Bob Bill spoke of would be you- that way we can get more of the story while he hammers out part two!
It all sounds pretty interesting…I wonder why the number of female loves is capped at three? Is there some significance to that number? And is the temple a place for learning, or celebration? What priority is placed on community worship as opposed to singular study?
admin
I Am That Bob
I have no idea why men can be “sealed” to just three wives, but I’m sure Bill will have an answer. I assume the notion that men can have three eternal wives, but women just one husband is rooted in the LDS Church’s bigamous past, and of course its continuing deep and abiding respect for women’s rights.
c3fyn
Wow. I wish I had written that. Somebody needs to give you money for writing it. I would, but I’m broke. Your finishing line is perfect. I can particularly relate due to having been through the emotional/spiritual grinders of Fundamentalist Protestantism (“Former seminary students, uni…eh, it’s all a lie.”). There is something strangely suffocating about these kinds of places, with everything in its place, and a place for everything…except of course for your humanity and individuality.
Brrrrr!
admin
Hey, that’s quite a compliment. Thank you. I’m pleased that you enjoyed it.
I’ve been thinking about fundamentalism a lot lately, at home and abroad, for obvious reasons. Our home-grown mullahs are no more tolerant than the Taliban, just better restrained by law and tradition. Fundamentalists have no doubt of the rightness of their positions (Bush has said explicity that he has no doubt about going to war, “none whatsoever,” according to Bob Woodward). But doubt is the human condition, and to banish it is to diminish our humanity.
Speaking of American Mullahs, has an excellent post today on the Christian Reconstructionists.
shunn
Re: I Am That Bob
Actually, I think you may be conflating disinformation from the temple tour with a piece of misinformation propagated in Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven. I don’t recall the three wives thing being mentioned on the tour, but Krakauer mentioned in repeatedly in his book.
Joseph Smith may have said once that a man needed at least three wives to achieve salvation, I’m not sure, but that’s not a doctrine the Mormon church teaches anymore. You have to be sealed to at least one wife, yes, but after that there’s no theoretical limit on the number you could legally collect and add to your eternal harem.
shunn
Great post, Bob! (And not incidentally a good incentive to me to get my ass in gear and finish my own report.)
It’s fascinating to me to read this and get to see the temple tour through the eyes of someone coming to it not cold but not steeped in the tradition. It was a revelation to me that you and the others all found the atmosphere in the temple funereal. As soon as you said it I could see that, but it’s not a designation I would have come up with on my own.
Thanks for coming along, and for reporting.
alphistia
another spy in the temple
enjoyed your blog entry on your tour to the new Mormon temple in Manhattan. For another lapsed Catholic’s look, my own impressions are here
http://www.livejournal.com/users/alphistia
admin
Re: I Am That Bob
“My Eternal Harem”
It has, you must admit, a sort of ring to it.
I think I gleaned the three wives rule from a sidebar conversation our guide had with a young couple in the sealing room. I may have misunderstood him, not being privy to the whole conversation, and he may have been dissembling.
admin
Praise from the praiseworthy. I’m glad you liked the post. It was interesting to read your reaction to the tour, and for the same reason I wish Laura, Jim and Liz had written about it.
Another recovering Catholic,, took the same tour (different night), and wrote about it here. As with your travelogue, it’s fascinating to see what details he noted that we did not. I was especially struck by the Marriott connection.
admin
Re: another spy in the temple
Hey, welcome to the monkey house.
As I said to Bill, in the post just above, it is fascinating to see other people’s perspectives on the temple. I’m not as sure as you that the LDS church is salvagable: I’ve been through Utah, and if this country ever has a religious dictatorship (well, more of a religious dictatorship than the current administration), it will look like Deseret.
shunn
Re: I Am That Bob
I begin to wonder now. This three wives things is cropping up in enough places that it makes me curious. Who knows what in context Brother Creigh was speakingmaybe it was a specific examplebut now I’ve begun wondering if the church isn’t softening that infinite wives doctrine.
Can anyone comment?