The OTHER World Series...
Other thread posts as part of the series:
Occultic and Masonic Influence in Early Mormonism (The OTHER World Series)
Life Everlasting: A Definitive Study of Life After Death (The OTHER World Series: Lds author)
Mormonism and Visitations from the Dead (The OTHER World Series)
Enid's Ten Weird Mormon Halloween Costumes (The OTHER World Series)
Admittedly, the Temple Square is pretty imposing. The power structure behind the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints, was moved by some pretty fervent emotions when they raised this edifice, but all the fervor in the world cannot induce any real creativity.
The whole pile of rocks comes out looking like a hodgepodge of every Pantheon and shrine raised since the pre-Grecian civilizations that existed about 4,000 years ago.
From Aldous Huxley, “Faith, Taste and History” - “[I]t was through sheets of falling water that we caught our first glimpse, above the chestnut trees, of a flood-lit object quite as difficult to believe in, despite the evidence
of our senses, as the strange history it commemorates.
The improbability of this greatest of the Mormon Temples does not consist in its astounding ugliness. Most Victorian churches are astoundingly ugly. It consists in a certain
combination of oddity, dullness, and monumentality unique, so far as I know, in the annals of architecture. For the most part, Victorian buildings are more or less learned pastiches of something else—something Gothic, something Greek or nobly Roman, something Elizabethan or Flamboyant
Flemish, or even vaguely Oriental. But this Temple looks like nothing on earth. and yet contrives to be completely unoriginal, utterly and uniformly prosaic.”
One of the harshest critiques of the Temple Square I have ever seen.
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Does anyone know who runs the website?
I’ve been to Temple Square with my family. It was a wonderful place. We thought the statue of Christ surrounded by the universe to be amazingly reverent. No one stopped my mother from leading the Angelus three times and the Apostle’s Creed.
I’ve met the Mormons back home and even read their books. My brother joined after we migrated and it really helped him get his life in order, but it wasn’t for me. I respect their religion but think it’s really foolish to claim a religion that believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God, is God incarnate, and is the only way to be saved is not a Christian faith. Just because they interpret biblical passages differently or have more scripture doesn’t mean they’re automatically not Christian. I’ve learned to trust people: if they say they are Christian because they believe in Jesus and accept him as their Savior, AND they live their lives striving to follow him; then I accept them as Christian even though they are not part of the Catholic religion and despite my church says they aren’t Christians.
Sure, Mormons are definitely not Catholic or Protestant, but Christianity is so broad that it equally has the pope, Josh Duggar, and Vladimir Putin within its ranks.
I grew up being taught that Protestants like baptists and evangelicals weren’t real Christians and were going equally to hell as our indigenous Iglesia ni Cristo sect because they rejected the authority of the Mother Church. However, as I got older, I realized no one really knows for sure since none of us can be proven to have seen or spoken to God. We’re all assuming we know what his will is.
One thing that impressed me with the Mormons is at least the ones I know try to live better and try to live as genuine Christians. I can’t say that about a lot of my fellow Catholics or even an ex-neighbor who used to be a Mormon. He loved attacking the Mormon religion and tried to convince my brother to leave it because it was a cult or false Christian faith. It was hard to take him seriously because my brother’s live improved drastically when he joined because he stopped drinking and smoking, but this ex-neighbor drank, smoked, and constantly chased women.
Jesus said, “By their fruits you will know them.” If Mormonism is so bad, why are their fruits so good?