4 July (cont.)
I-84 in northern Utah




My first lesson about the LDS church (short for “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”): they don’t meet at the big
temple anymore.  It is an historic building only now.  Brigham City alone has about 24 “wards” that meet all over town.  As a very
nice lady at the Smith’s Supermarket where I parked informed me, “You can’t go but three blocks in this town without finding
one.”  She directed me to one a couple blocks away, home of Brigham City’s 1st and 9th wards according to the sign out front.  
Here I go, my humble glow-in-the-dark “BOO” boxers all that stands between me and the Lord.

*                      *                       *                 *

The first thing I noticed about the LDS church is that all the men and
boys wear starched white button-down shirts and dark ties --just like
the missionaries wear if you’ve ever seen them.  If not for the women,
who dress conservatively but in any color they choose, it could have
been the Ground Control room at NASA.  Of the 50 or 75 males above
toddler age in the room, I was one of maybe three or four without the
shirt and the only one without a tie.  I have neither in my wardrobe, so
I’m not to blame for not adhering to the dress code.

The second thing is that there are tons of babies and small children.  
Latter-Day Saints seem to procreate at a prodigious rate.  There was a
constant din of the coos and babbles and, occasionally, shrieks of the
little ones; a nice feature I thought, but not for everyone, as attested to
by the adjoining room where I was told people can sit and listen to the
speakers without being bothered by munchkin talk.

The “sacremental meeting”  is a solemn affair, and that is being as gracious as I can be as an eyewitness.  To tell the truth, most
people looked staggeringly bored.  We began with hymns…or, well, with “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and “America the Beautiful,”
which are in the LDS hymn book (along with our closing number, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” all three verses), then a laborious
communion of white bread and water (not even non-alcoholic wine or grape juice), distributed silently by unsmiling young men
and consumed not as a group but at one’s own pace.

Then a man called Brother Smith came to the podium to speak, and this is where it gets interesting.  He was giving a very run-of-
the-mill 4th of July speech about America and the blessings we have and the freedom we enjoy and about taking his kids camping
without fear of being bombed, etc –very flat, stunted delivery—but when he got to the part about people in this ward who have
family members fighting overseas, he choked up hard, couldn’t speak.  He took out a white handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes.  
After maybe half a minute he tried to resume, but he kept letting out this kind of inward-pulling cough to try and keep it all
contained within himself.  It was the most amazing display of emotion-choking I have ever seen.  He literally took about three
minutes to deliver thirty seconds of material about LDS folks in combat.  I thought I might have to go up and do the Hiemlich, but
he finally finished his thoughts, then apologized to everyone for “being so emotional” and sat down.  No one clapped, no one went
over to hug him or shake his hand, not a word or gesture of response.  That was strange to me coming from ACF, where people
will hug you or lavish you with praise if you so much as wink in the name of Jesus.

I thought there would have been some version of a sermon coming next, but much to my delighted surprise, the whole
congregation was invited to share testimonies, either up at the pulpit or with a microphone brought to their seats.  We heard about
a dozen, and man, they were good.  Really sincere; no one who spoke sounded like they were just going through the motions,
doing the Mormon thing because their family raised them that way and so on.  Each speaker gave a moving account of little ways
that Christ was working in their lives.  All but two or three did the same painful choking-back-tears routine as Brother Smith, but
none so dramatically.  They all included some variation on “I know this church is true” or “I know this gospel is true,” and they
all concluded by saying “I speak this in the name of Jesus Christ,” and all sat down to the same strange dearth of response.  Such
as bizarre mixture of emotion brought to the surface and pushed back down at once.

(I had a passing notion to ask for the microphone and say, in my best redneck drawl, “I just got one question: y’all got yer own
kinda unnershorts?”  Just to stir things up.  Fortunately it was just a passing notion.)

And that was it.  We sang the national anthem, an elder threw out the last pitch, and my first LDS church service was in the
books.

As people started filing out, a very pretty, unmarried young lady in a rose-colored blouse came over to welcome me.  She had
given one of the more tearful testimonies about the little angels she is privileged to teach in Sunday school, and afterwards she and
I shared smiles from a few seats away.  So she came up to me all bubbles and glee and said, “Hi!  Are you new in our ward?”  In
retrospect what I should have said was, “Yes I am, and my wife and I just separated so I’m looking for a hot Latter-Day Babe to
show me around –are you free?”  Instead I said, “No, just passing through.”  I swear to God, she physically recoiled when I said
that, as if she had just noticed my face was melting.  Her friend was watching and she jumped in and said something like, “Well
welcome to our ward anyway.”  Pink Blouse Girl just kinda grinned timidly and said nothing.  I thanked them both for welcoming
me, being the frightening Outlander that I am, and started to reconfigure my dating plans for the night, figuring Wyoming or
maybe western Nebraska might be a better place to hang out than Brigham City.   



would do well to build their house on the LDS rock.  In fact some mainstream Biblians might could learn a thing or two about
sincerity by listening to these testimonies.  Biblianity rejects the LDS church because it places the Book of Mormon on the same
plane as the Bible, and in theory, having not read a word of the former yet, I have no problem with that –except that in practice
this makes them a People of Two Books, so I am a double heretic in the LDS fold.  All I know, as a Christotheist, is that Christ is
big enough to overcome the differences and the self-centered squabbles of interdenominational conflict, and that’s why both the
LDS church and the Western Orthodox Church can produce good fruit.

I would go on to say “this concept applies to all world religions as well,” but we’re not ready for that yet, so again, forget I
mentioned it.

(Chapter 2 continues --next page)

Next -- Chapter 3
Here's the historic Mormon Temple in the
heart of Brigham City, Utah.  If you're looking
for a real-time LDS Sunday service, don't go
here.  Ask the lady at the customer service
desk at Smith's Supermarket.
(photo courtesy of www.dreambreeze.com)
LDS missionaries in their NASA-inspired unis.
Go ahead, I dare you to make them laugh.
Joseph Smith, dashing
visionary and founder of the
LDS Church, as portrayed by
the Reformed Latter-Day
Saints.
(www.pbs.org)
OK, so maybe they were exaggerating a little on Mr. Smith's dashingness.
This image came from one of the plethora of websites
(www.lifeafterministries.com) set up by Biblian organizations to show the
Mormons the error of their ways.  See, a True Church gets very rankled
when another True Church claims to be the one and only True Church.  
Thus, the holy war between the LDS and the Western Orthodox Church
over the right to proclaim the True Christ.
(And while you snicker at this manipulation of the image of Joseph Smith,
consider what the Western Orthodox Church has done by portraying Jesus
Himself as a light-skinned, blue-eyed European Savior.)