See inside the new Pittsburgh LDS Temple

Cranberry Township, Pa. • As houses of worship across much of the Western world shutter their doors due to shrinking attendance, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in the process of adding more than 150 new temples around the globe.

One of the newest completed temples, located in the Cranberry Township suburb of Pittsburgh, is open to the public for two weeks (Aug. 16-31, except Sundays) before being officially dedicated Sept. 15. This rare occasion allows the wider community to walk through a site that will in the future be closed to the public and for Latter-day Saints to share their beliefs and practices.

“We want to be a part of the community, and we want people to understand what the temple is, and to see what happens inside. I think after it’s dedicated, because only we go in the temple, then that’s how people have all sorts of misconceptions about what happens in the temple,” said Linda Johnson, a Cranberry resident and president of the women’s organization the Relief Society in Pittsburgh North congregations. “But when you come through, the temple is very Christ-centered.”

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She added that she hopes visitors from the surrounding community, which she described as welcoming to people of all faiths, would feel peace and God’s love for them at the temple.

The Pittsburgh location is the second temple in Pennsylvania, after the Philadelphia Temple; a third temple in Harrisburg is also being built. Temples aren’t to be confused with meetinghouses, the buildings where church members meet routinely for Sunday worship. There are seven Latter-day Saint congregations in the northern Pittsburgh area, and the temple district encompasses roughly 29,000 members in more than 80 congregations in western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, northeastern Ohio and a sliver of western New York. Previously, church members in the Pittsburgh area had to travel three hours for temple ceremonies.

Church President Russell M. Nelson announced the Pittsburgh Temple in April 2020. The slew of new temples isn’t necessarily correlated with membership growth, said Chris Hoke, president of the Pittsburgh North Stake and a former Pittsburgh Steelers nose tackle. While church growth has seen slow but steady in recent years, the new temples are often a matter of putting these deeply sacred rituals within reach.

“Right now, it’s tied to bringing God’s blessings to all of God’s children,” Hoke said. “There are people that have to fly to another continent to go to the temple, and President Nelson is determined to get a temple in an area that is accessible to all the saints in the world so they can learn more about Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ.”

Operating and maintaining a 32,240-square-foot temple is no small task. Approximately 650 volunteers from the temple district will work there after the dedication, coming twice a month or more. On Thursday, volunteers were already at the site, donning reflective vests over dress pants and button downs to direct traffic. A row of volunteers sat under a tent at the entrance to the temple waiting to adorn visitors’ feet with shoe coverings, and others were stationed throughout the temple. Kenneth Witzel, director of communications for the Pittsburgh Coordinating Council, said around 3,000 Latter-day Saint volunteers would be serving during the open house.

The building is adjacent to a preexisting Cranberry meetinghouse dedicated in 2005, and the two structures, separated by a parking lot, are also connected via a small bridge — a nod to Pittsburgh, the city of bridges.

While many Latter-day Saint temples share similar architectural elements — spires, light-colored exteriors — the Pittsburgh Temple is embellished with motifs that reflect the surrounding area, including Pennsylvania’s state flower (the mountain laurel) and the region’s pink and white dogwood blossoms. Just inside the front door, visitors are greeted by a near-life-size portrait of Christ, and most rooms in the temple feature art depicting Jesus, or altars, which Hoke said point to Jesus’ sacrifice.

The rooms also are filled with soft earth tones, frosted stained glass, plush carpets and lifelike paintings. During the open house, visitors learn about several of the temple’s features, including the baptismal font, upheld by 12 impressively large oxen, where members can baptize deceased family members by proxy; the Celestial Room, a place with high ceilings and crystal chandeliers designed to reflect God’s presence; and sealing rooms, primarily used for marriage ceremonies, where two mirrors are situated on opposite sides of an altar to create a visual representation of being sealed into an eternal family.

“It’s very humbling, because this temple represents the faith of so many who were here before us,” said Johnson, adding that there are people in this area whose family ties to the church stretch back to the 1800s. In the early 1900s, she said, those families went without any meetinghouses or church structures at all. “I hope that we don’t take it for granted.”