Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

This Is The Place

Salt Lake City, UT - 2 October

"It is enough. This is the right place. Drive on."
- Brigham Young (attrib), July 24 1847

History records "This is the place" as the words used by Brigham Young to indicate to his fellow Mormon settlers that he'd had enough of riding in the back of a covered wagon with Rocky Mountain spotted fever and that they might as well build their new home in the valley which they had just entered, by the Great Salt Lake. It's since become a kind of unofficial slogan for the city and the state, as well as being the title of the state's official song (the lyrics to which it's best to draw a veil over).

So it came to be that the Mormon settlers built what became Salt Lake City, having been driven west to escape first a spot of bother in Illinois (where Mormon church founder Joseph Smith was shot dead by vigilantes) and then a bit of church in-fighting. The states further east also did not take well to polygamy, which Young himself practiced with zeal - marrying (although not legally under US law) a total of fifty women during his life. A canny soul, Young on one occasion exploited the fact that polygamous marriages were not legal to avoid paying alimony to an ex-wife by pointing out in court that as they had never been legally married he could not be liable to pay maintenance. It has to be mentioned at this point that contrary to myth, polygamy is not practiced today by Mormons - it was essentially given up at the end of the nineteenth century in exchange for admission to US statehood.

"Oh, him? He's harmless. Part of the free speech movement at Berkeley in the sixties. I think he did a little too much LDS."
- James T. Kirk (attrib.), Star Trek IV.

It's certainly hard to escape from signs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (mercifully and universally abbreviated to LDS) in modern Salt Lake, so I headed downtown to take a look at the Church's spiritual home, Temple Square. This surprisingly compact complex lies at the centre of the original city, at the origin of the city's grid system, and at the centre of Utah's political and social life ever since Mormon settlers arrived. There are two particularly significant buildings here. The first is the actual Temple itself. This was built to the specifications of Young himself and is actually quite an imposing building - more so because the interior remains firmly off-limits to non-members of the LDS Church. The larger and more astonishing building next door is the enormous LDS headquarters building - 26 floors of offices and administration. I don't think the Church of England has anything this vast on its books.

There are other things around the square - most notably the surprisingly small Mormon Tabernacle, home of the Choir of that ilk and currently closed for refurbishment. There's also a lavishly-appointed visitor's centre full of displays about the LDS church, with assorted Elders and Sisters around to lead tours and answer questions. All the people I spoke to were perfectly friendly and more interested in talking about the buildings than religion, although I get the impression that if I'd shown any interest at all in that side of things they'd have been extremely happy to advise. Fortunately, as I decided many years ago to follow a cheerful fence-sitting form of agnosticism that just involves being nice to people and not beating up old ladies, fare-dodging, voting Conservative or drinking more than 6 pints of beer in an evening I didn't feel any need for further spiritual fulfilment. Furthermore, I don't want this travelogue to turn into a tedious discussion of comparative religion - as far as I'm concerned, whatever rings your bell in the line of religion or the lack thereof is fine with me, although I did find it a bit strange to find myself looking at a lot of the people around me and thinking "I know what sort of underwear you're wearing.".

One thing becomes very clear when looking around Temple Square, though - the LDS Church is very wealthy. There are clear advantages to titheing your members' income, although I can't see the C of E getting away with trying that one.

After taking a bunch of photos of what are really a fairly impressive collection of buildings, I repaired to the Borders which stands across the road from the square to have a latte in the café upstairs which has a nice view across the square. Mormons aren't allowed to drink tea, coffee or alcohol, so I was amused to find that they gave me an extra shot of espresso for free as "we'd only waste it otherwise". Later on, suffering slightly from the caffeination brought on by drinking a 4-shot latte I found myself wondering if that prohibition might in fact not be such a bad idea after all.

Posted by mpk at October 3, 2005 10:21 PM