The Mormon Presence in the Landscape

Cities in Utah tend to stand out from other cities found in much of the rest of the United States.  Their defining features are not huge corporate towers, grand monuments to the past, or even sporting facilities which seem to get larger and larger as the years go by.  Rather, their landmark sites are religious buildings that jump out of the developed scenery, usually painted a bright white and illuminated strongly at night.  These are Mormon temples, wherein authorized members of their faithful participate in the higher rites of their religion.  At the time of this posting, there are 136 temples worldwide, with another 15 in the works, the vast majority of which have been built in the last 30 years.  Non-authorized members and non-believers are not permitted entrance into these places, and as such, I have no photos of their interiors to show here.   I do, however, have a picture of the oldest currently operating temple, in St. George, Utah.

This temple ranks prominently in the ecclesiastical geography of the Mormons, specifically, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the largest sect of the religion.  Earlier temples existed in the migration of the faithful, who found themselves frequently on the move.  None of these have survived, and the temple of St. George is the oldest running, completed in 1877.  As is the case with most of these structures found in Utah, it tends to really stand out, even from miles away on I-15.

Other temples around the world tend to blend in a bit more, sometimes even looking like a local structure rather than something so dazzling and alien from a cityscape.  The temple in metro-Detroit, for example, could pass for a synagogue and is but one of many religious buildings found along Woodward avenue.  In Utah, however, the Mormon religion tends to stand out a bit more, even as demographic shifts in the state are changing the census counts.  There is a very long and complicated history behind this, which I will cover when I have had the chance to experience the places where this history took place for myself.  This history involves far more than just Utah; in my opinion, it actually began with a a massive forest fire in Northern Ontario in 1780, which set off a flurry of American religious development that lasted for nearly 50 years.