My brother-in-law Z– came to visit this weekend, and after an extraordinarily fun day of touring wineries and visiting friends in Sonoma, we awoke the next morning to find ourselves hazy-headed with an open schedule. So we decided to visit what my wife and I have called the “Mormon Castle” since we moved to Oakland: an imposing temple perched in the Oakland hills, clearly visible from most parts of the Bay. I was excited, but also mildly apprehensive that a confrontation with a believer could turn sour pretty rapidly.

We arrived with no expectations, but decided it could be fun to tour the visitors’ center, upon entering which, we were immediately accosted by a doe-eyed twenty-something who was secreting a mucilaginously welcoming demeanor. She introduced herself, but I promptly forgot her name. Her badge read “Hermana T–”, which I initially thought to be a feminine form of Herman.

She sat us down next two to other gentleman: a hardened-looking man dressed in black leather, and his adult son who looked terribly inconvenienced and desperately in need of a cigarette. I began asking Hermana questions about the history of the building, and of the western migration of Mormons to Utah. However, I was soon cut short when she directed us to focus our attention on the larger-than-life statue of Jesus in front of us, and his presumptive voice that was being piped in from above. It was the standard “get to the father through me” stuff that you’ll hear from most Christians, and was pretty uninteresting.

When she returned, she eagerly asked us what we thought of the presentation, and all I managed to muster “this room is cool.” Z– said it made him wonder who did the voice. She seemed unfazed when we admitted we didn’t feel touched by Heavenly Father over the course of the presentation.

Hermana, and her associate, who I’ll call Hermana Dos, then asked us if we wanted to watch a 20 minute presentation. Z– and I looked at each other, back to the Hermanas, and said “sure, why not.” They took us to the entrance of a presentation room that I could tell from the lobby contained dioramas. My heart sank, as I was then sure we were entering a Hell House. Luckily however, it turned out to be nothing more than a rather boring video about the story of a Mormon family. It was presented in vignettes, as we moved from exhibit to exhibit. It laid the “importance of the family” theme on pretty thick, but didn’t say anything that surprising. Finally, we ended up in a room where we watched a short video about the role of the Mormon Temple in the lives of the family, and how Mormons are “sealed” to their spouses and children, so they can spend eternity together.

When the lights came up, the Hermanas picked on Z– to ask a question, and he obliged. “I grew up in a Christian church,” he said “and from this presentation, I don’t see a difference between that and Mormonism.” The Hermanas looked at each other, and then to the man in leather: “maybe you can answer.”

Turns out he was a recent convert — two weeks a Mormon — who was ostensibly trying to straighten out his wayward son. The man looked down solemnly for a moment, and then cast piercing (but somewhat vacant) gaze directly into my eyes and said “love. It’s the love.” He went on to explain how Mormonism had led him out of bad times, which made me feel icky (read: vaguely malicious/immature) for visiting what I thought to be a theological petting zoo.

We wrapped up the visit in a fantastically beautiful room with soaring windows looking out over the Bay. I tried to extract some more details on dogma and doctrine from Hermana Dos, but she was more interested in having us interact with a touchscreen kiosk that explained the different rooms in the temple (since we were “unclean” and therefore forbidden from entering to see them ourselves). I tried to get her to state the church’s position on evolution, but all I could elicit was a vague distrust of Darwinism, and that we are not apes. Nothing on the age of the earth.

I also asked (rather pedantically) how you could expect to be together with your nuclear family for eternity, if your spouse will still be “sealed” to her parents and your children will be sealed to their spouses etc., to which she responded “we have faith that it will work out, though we do not understand.”

Hermana Uno returned for her comrade, and they left us for a moment while we marveled at the display of Books of Mormon in different languages. I salivated over the Mayan copy.

They returned with literature for us, as well as an (English) copy of the book, inscribed with a handwritten blurb from each of them on the front cover. We said our goodbyes and thanked them warmly.

–

It was an interesting experience and I’m glad we did it, but it wasn’t life altering. Mostly what I took away was that Mormons are deeply preoccupied with the concept of family, surely because they believe you’ll be with yours for eternity. In retrospect I remember hearing this before, when Proposition 8 was on the ballot. At the time, a source I read stated that the measure carried great meaning for the eternal family: if gays can marry, then shit gets all fucked up. My visit to the temple brought this fact into sharper focus.

Also, I gathered from the presentation that Mormons obsess about the afterlife in a way that would be foreign to most “vanilla” Christians. Each of their temples has a “celestial room” which partially replicates the place where you’ll lounge with your ‘fam in perpetuam. This gave me the feeling that they’re a creepier death cult than mainstream Christians.

As for the nitty-gritty on the history of the Mormon church, I think I learned more from South Park’s Mormon special.

The sisters Hermanas were great sports. They were very kind and did an excellent job leading the tour and answering questions. They never seemed judgmental or rude, although Z– and I were on our best behavior. I just hope that someday they make it out of the church, for their and their children’s sake.

Tags: Evolution, Family, Jesus, LDS, Mormon Castle, Mormon Temple, Oakland, Prop 8, Religion

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2012 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.