10.5.2012 – 10.5.2012  18 °C

Our day to day was a drive into Salt Lake City. SLC isn’t that far from Nephi (where we stayed last night) so we decided to detour thru the surrounding mountains and come into SLC from the east. The drive up to Provo was uneventful with us just driving thru a couple of small towns and lots of farms! Provo itself seems to be the next biggest town behind SLC here in Utah and is home to the Brigham Young University.. I wonder if you can study theology there?

The town is a really nice university town and it actually has plenty of lovely parks and outdoor areas so we stopped in by a creek and had some morning tea. Our drive continued up from Provo and into the mountains surrounding SLC. The drive was really picturesque and we found the home of the winter Olympics on the back side of the SLC mountains. It looks like they have pretty good facilities here so might need to chalk it up as another likely skiing candidate!!

The drive into SLC is via the route that the original Mormon pioneers used. It must have been a tough descent for the wagons because the mountains surrounding SLC are pretty damn high and the descent in a car is steep enough… Anyway, we descended the mountains and arrived bang into the middle of town.

Another 30mins later and we had found the temple square and had settled into the adjacent shopping mall for some lunch. Straight after lunch we found a likely place to stay had checked in and had a small rest.

By 4pm the batteries had recharged and we drove back to the temple square to check out the home of the LDS church. The home of the church takes up 4 city blocks (most of which seems to be administration type buildings). The temple (which reminds me a bit of Westminster) is quite a nice granite building that is not open to the public (in fact, its not even open to all LDS members..). Looking at the display case in the visitor centre it is clear that the interior is very opulent, palatial even. We were able to take a glimpse in the Tabernacle and were fortunate enough to hear the organist practicing on the large pipe organ. We left the temple square and headed across the street to the Mormon history museum. Here I was hoping to understand more about the Mormon’s trip across America to SLC.

Well I got that and so much more.. I even scored a copy of the Book of Mormon! I was fortunate enough to find a lovely Mormon scholar who was happy to answer all of my questions about the LDS church, the beliefs and the foundation of the church here in Utah. (At this point, if you aren’t interested in the LDS and its history skip to the end of the last couple of paragraphs of the blog where I return to my usual recital of the day’s events).

The LDS was founded by Joseph Smith (JS) in 1823. Joseph was 14 and living with his family in the state of New York. His family were all devout Christians but his mother and father were from different denominations and he was questioning which church he should join. He decided to pray to God to understand which church was the true church. Apparently, at this point he received a divine message from God and Jesus. They told him that the Christian faith had been corrupted over the centuries and that if he remained faithful to them, they would divulge information to him that would help him to found the true church here on Earth.

For years, nothing happened until he was 17 when he again was visited by a celestial being (this time the prophet Moroni) who explained to him that he (Moroni) was the last prophet here on the American continent and that the true words of God could be found on golden tablets that had been hidden here on the continent hundreds of years ago. The culmination of all of this was that Joseph Smith received the golden tablets which he then translated (with the help of another person) into English thereby creating the Book of Mormon.

The LDS use the Bible (King James Version) but also use the Book of Mormon as another set of texts that support the teachings from the Bible. They are Christians, they believe in God and his son and believe that Jesus will return to Earth. The key difference is the Book of Mormon. The book apparently tells the history of the first Christians to come to the Americas. These Christians came to the Americas in the time of the Old Testament about when the Jews were sent into slavery in Egypt (the time of Moses). This sect, flourished in the Americas and they are the ultimate ancestors of the Native American Indians (I wonder what the Indian’s say about that??). The last prophet in the Americas was Moroni (the celestial being that JS saw on multiple occasions). The sect’s teachings were written down by Moroni onto golden tablets that were buried into the ground in upstate NY and were delivered to JS. These golden tablets are no longer on Earth. Moroni returned them to God after they were translated into English. To prove that the golden tablets existed eleven friends(?) of JS were shown the tablets and signed their name at the start of the Book of Mormon that the tablets existed and that the information contained in the Book is an accurate representation of the gold tablets…

From here, JS went on to preach to whoever would listen about his visitations and the word of God according to him. Within a couple of years he had thousands of supporters and was driven out of the eastern states. The Mormon faithful first settled in Illinois and built their first temple in Nauvoo. This was fine for a couple of years until the quantity of Mormon people started to outweigh the other denominations in town. At this stage there was still a lot of queries and prejudice and so it culminated in JS and his brother being shot dead and the faithful needing to continue to move westward.

At this time, Brigham Young took over the leadership of the church. He prayed to God who gave him a vision of where the faithful needed to head and so moved the whole church congregation (at this stage at least 16,000) westward towards Utah. Eventually, the group crossed the mountains outside of SLC and arrived at the banks of the lake. Brigham Young announced that they had arrived, and the church of LDS was founded here in Utah.

The Mormon scholar who I spoke to today also confronted me on the key modern day prejudice of Polygamy. She asked me what I knew of Polygamy and what I believed. I told her that I knew of the stereotype, that some members of the church still practice polygamy. I also told her that I understood that it was against the law. She reiterated to me that there are no members of the LDS church who practice polygamy. The few people who claim to practice polygamy are not members of the church but use the church as an excuse… (I didn’t discuss this with the scholar but I still believe that all stereo types are based on something so I’m not sure I totally believe her). Off the topic, but interesting anecdote.. LDS is Latter Day Saints… Latter Day (meaning modern day) Saints, just means all who follow the church. They don’t have Saints in the form of saints performing miracles, aka Catholic Church they just have parishioners.

All in all, I really enjoyed my afternoon as I now believe I have a greater understanding of this branch of the Christian faith. Do I believe everything she told me? Am I going to become a practicing LDS member? Well, I found a lot of what she told me hard to swallow. However, all faith must be based on something, so who is to say that the LDS have it all wrong?

My conversation with this scholar went for at least an hour (probably longer) and poor old M&D were sitting waiting for me! I didn’t even get a chance to see the whole museum (because I was chatting for so long). Thank goodness they were both understanding about my need to have my questions answered.. Oops.. I guess I owe them one!!

We headed back into town and found a bar!! Now, this is straight amazing, because the whole time we’ve been in Utah we haven’t seen a bar and to buy alcohol M&D have had to go to the ‘state run liquor store’ to buy beer or wine!!! The bar was pretty standard but we were fairly overwhelmed to even find one (and especially in the heartland of the LDS). After a couple of drinks and some yummy bread with hummus and olive dip we took M back to the hotel and we headed out to the Tabernacle to see the choir practice.

If you ever come to SLC you need to see the choir! The Tabernacle is this huge building that reminds me of a basketball stadium (in that it is oval shaped domed building). This is where the similarities end!! The interior is quite church like, huge pipe organ at one end, rows of chairs at the other end with a balcony running around the top with more seating. The choir are accompanied by a full orchestra (mainly stringed though, not too many wind or brass instruments). Thursday’s is practice day (Sunday is performance) so anyone can enter and see them practice for their weekly telecast. (The choir is telecast every Sunday so that all LDS members can enjoy their music). The choir must be made up of over a hundred people.. Amazing! The hymns they were practicing weren’t hymns I had heard before but they reminded me more of orchestral music than the usual run of the mill Sunday music you would hear in a church. Just awesome! Both D and I thoroughly enjoyed their hour and a half practice session.

Song of the Day– Madonna, Like a Prayer