Inside the Mormon temple: What I expected, what I saw

Today, my wife and I toured the recently renovated San Diego temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the Mormons).

The LDS church just finished a nearly three-year renovation project, and because of it, the temple needs to be rededicated. Before that occurs, non-Mormons are allowed to tour the property. The open house lasts several weeks, and the expectation is that 700,000 people will come through.

Once the temple is rededicated, it will be closed to all non-Mormons, as it had been closed for the three decades before the renovation.

Our guide told us that 1,200 visitors are taken through the temple each hour, with 40 people in each tour cohort. The process requires considerable coordination, since the interior rooms of the temple are surprisingly small, but the dozens of volunteers managed to pull it off well. Our tour took about 45 minutes.

No photos or videos may be taken inside, so the photos I give here are from the official LDS website for the San Diego temple. Let me walk you through them.

1. The exterior (see photo above), with mirror-image wings except that the tower on the right has the statue of the Mormon angel Moroni on top. The temple complex is located hard against Interstate 5 and so is seen by tens of thousands of people each day.

2. The entrance. If it reminds you of a hotel entrance, that’s because the entirety of the interior has that flavor.

3. The foyer/reception area. Notice the paintings. There are many biblical scenes throughout the temple, all painted in what I think of as the “Mormon style.” You no doubt are familiar with the kitschy style of Thomas Kinkaid, whose paintings appear in far too many American homes. The “Mormon style” is different but, to my mind, of equally modest artistic merit. The Catholic equivalent might be Italian holy cards of a century ago.

4. The grand staircase.

5. Another staircase. Notice the beige carpet. It’s used throughout the temple. All guests and all volunteers were issued white booties, which were placed over shoes by volunteers sitting near the entrance. I don’t know if church members are obliged to wear the booties at all times or if they wear them only during the open house. Given how light and easily stained the carpet is, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were the former.

6. Patterned windows, in colors similar to the walls and carpets. There were no clear windows and no windows that told stories, the way stained-glass windows do. Each window consisted only of geometric shapes.

7. An “instruction room.” There is a small chapel in the temple—not much larger than this room—but nothing remotely comparable to the nave of a Catholic church, even of a small Catholic church.

8. The baptismal font, on two levels. The font stands on the backs of twelve oxen, a biblical motif. We were guided along the upper level. It is in the font that Mormons are baptized “for the dead,” a chief goal being to see that all of their ancestors, as far back as they can be traced, are baptized into Mormonism.

9. The Celestial Room. This is the main room of the entire temple. If it reminds you of a hotel lobby, well … Our guide invited us to sit for a few minutes here, without talking to one another, so that we could meditate and feel uplifted by the surroundings. There are other rooms, such as where marriages occur, but this is the focal point of the architecture.

As you would expect, all the LDS volunteers were upbeat, smiling, and polite. They excelled at shepherding thousands of people daily through what really is a fairly cramped space. They clearly were proud of their temple.

I have to acknowledge, though, that Bramante and Michelangelo and the others responsible for St. Peter’s Basilica need not worry about latter-day competition.

I accept that devout Mormons feel uplifted when they visit their temple, the way I feel uplifted when visiting a finely designed Catholic cathedral. I say I accept that, but I have trouble understanding it, since their temple seems so non-religious to me.

In Japan, which I have visited about 30 times, I have been to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, the “religiosity” of which I could sense immediately, even though the religions were so foreign to my own in terms of doctrine and history.

I just didn’t get that sense at the Mormon temple. To me, it felt cold, not comforting. There was nothing to inspire awe. It isn’t just that there is a Real Absence. That can be said also of Protestant churches, but even in Protestant churches, I get an immediate sense that the place has been set aside for religious rites that I can have some sympathy with, some appreciation for. I just didn’t feel any of that on this tour.

In its spires, the Mormon temple mimics Catholic cathedrals built in the Gothic style. At a distance, the pure-white temple catches the eye, particularly when illuminated at night, but up close the exterior architecture strikes me as artificial, as make-believe, as something that might have been constructed on a Hollywood back lot. Similarly with the interior, which consists of rooms that Conrad Hilton might have ordered up for some of his nicer hotels.

We live down the street from the nearest LDS “ward,” which is the term for what Christians call a neighborhood church. I’ve never been inside, though I understand that “Gentile” visitors are welcome. I understand the building consists of a single “worship room” and multiple small offices. It is at the wards that Mormons perform their weekly religious duties; the temple is for marriages and baptisms of the dead and for not much more.

I have written elsewhere that Paul Claudel underwent an instantaneous conversion in 1886, while standing within Notre Dame Cathedral during Christmas vespers. I have read of other people coming into or back into the Catholic Church largely because of how its grand edifices moved them.

Of course, I can’t know whether any visitor to the San Diego temple will be so taken by the experience that his mind and heart will be moved to embrace that very American faith, but I can say that if such a thing happens, I won’t be able to understand how it can happen.

(Editor’s note: This piece was posted originally on Facebook and is re-posted here with the kind permission of the author.)