The article:
Earth tones, golden ceilings grace temple
TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo. Motorists zipping along Highway 40 near St. Louis can't miss the nation's newest Mormon temple. The large white building is poised above the highway, its 150-foot spire topped by a golden angel. For most Americans, that's the only view they'll get of a Mormon temple. For a few weeks, though, the public is getting a rare chance to satisfy its curiosity about the temples and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members are known as Mormons. An open house began last weekend and runs through May 24, a week before the temple is dedicated and closed to all but church members.
More than 300,000 visitors are expected to don white plastic shoe coverings and traipse across the thick, beige carpets. They will glimpse richly furnished rooms where Mormons perform ceremonies for the living and the dead.
"We have no intent to be secretive about what goes on in here, but we are trying to preserve what is sacred," Elder J. Richard Clarke says.
Mormon temples are unlike any church, synagogue or mosque in the world. There are no grand meeting spaces or sanctuaries. They are not even used for regular weekly worship. Instead, believers meet Sundays at local chapels for receiving the sacrament, instruction and worship.
The St. Louis temple resembles a luxury hotel. The style of the sofas and chairs is "transitional," between contemporary and classical. Domed ceilings are decorated with gold.
The earth-tone color scheme becomes lighter toward the upper floors, symbolically representing progress toward heaven. As always, the baptismal pool is on the bottom floor. The Celestial Room, representing the highest degree of glory in heaven, is on the top floor. Mormons undergo sacred ceremonies in their temples, including baptisms for the dead. Weddings, called "sealings," also are performed there. And Mormons exchange promises with God in rituals called endowment ceremonies.
Mormons, who wear white inside the temple to symbolize purity and equality, believe these ceremonies are necessary to reach the highest degree of glory in heaven.
After performing them once for themselves in the temple, they stand in many more times for deceased ancestors. Mormons believe it is up to the immortal spirits to accept or reject the ceremonies performed for them.
"These temples are symbolic centers of what it means to be Mormon," says Jan Shipps, a Methodist scholar who has studied the church.
There are 50 Mormon temples worldwide; the St. Louis temple is considered a medium-size one. Fifteen more are planned, including six in the USA, to accommodate the church's fast- growing and far-flung membership.
Most temples have a spire topped by the angel Moroni (moh-RHON-eye). Moroni was said to have appeared to church founder and prophet Joseph Smith, then a New York farm boy, in 1823 and told him where to find engraved plates that became The Book of Mormon.
Sitting in the gold and white Celestial Room, under a crystal chandelier, Elder Clarke is momentarily at a loss for words. A floor-to-ceiling stained-glass window bathes Clarke in light. Its panes are shades of gray and white except for a few clear prisms that bend the rays into colorful sparkles. It is not a window for seeing out. Mormons go to the temple to get away from the world.
In this room, Clarke says, believers try to get very close to heaven, to review promises they've made and the lives they've led. "I'm not generally an emotional man," Clarke says, "but the temple always melts me."
By Lori Sharn, USA TODAY
