Benjamin E. Park: LDS Church President Russell Nelson’s billion-dollar gamble

Denominational institutions in the United States have had a bad go of late. According to a host of surveys, the fastest-growing religious identity is the “nones,” or those who refuse allegiance to a particular church. The “spiritual but not religious,” as a trite phrase aims to capture. Ecclesiastical organizations, therefore, have struggled to maintain congregants.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not been immune from these cultural currents. While the Utah-based faith has done comparatively well when placed among other major traditions, anecdotal and polling evidence shows younger Latter-day Saints have been leaving the fold in substantial numbers.

Latter-day Saint leaders have experimented with several methods to better seal their anti-institutional generations to the institution. They have attempted to be more transparent about thorny historical topics. They have revamped the youth program. They have launched large weekend single adult gatherings. Time will tell how lasting and successful these, and other, initiatives will be.

But in terms of money and resources, one initiative appears at the center of church President Russell M. Nelson’s vision for binding members to the faith: temple construction.

Deep pockets for vast temples

It has been hard to ignore the expedited rate for temple construction in recent years. Since Nelson became the faith’s leader in 2018, he has announced 168 new temples, more than doubling those sacred structures already in existence.

The temple has been the pinnacle of the Latter-day Saint religious experience since the first such structures were constructed, at great cost, in church founder Joseph Smith’s lifetime. The ordinances performed therein provide the faithful significant and eternal blessings. Individuals receive rites that promise celestial glories if they remain righteous, and couples are sealed together in a marital bond that transcends death. Members are encouraged to return again and again to perform the same rituals for the deceased, offering them a chance to “accept” the gospel in the post-mortal realm. The temples’ benefits cannot be calculated.

Their financial cost, conversely, can be assessed. While some newer temples feature a more streamlined, and therefore cost-effective, model, they all cost millions of dollars. Some come with an especially hefty price tag. Idaho’s recently completed Pocatello Temple, for instance, cost nearly $70 million; its limestone flooring came from Bethlehem and the wooden doors from the Congo River region of Africa. The faithful believe these extravagant flourishes are justified as a testament to their devotion and a signal of the site’s spiritual significance. God’s people have always sacrificed substantial means for their holiest places.

These expenditures are also enabled by the faith’s investment portfolio, which is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Indeed, the temple spending spree has come to justify the faith’s financial reserves. Leaders have shifted from defending their vast savings as a “rainy day” fund to instead explaining that the money facilitates these sacred structures.

Yet providing a reason for accrued accounts is far from the only impetus for temples increasingly dotting the Earth. Their construction costs also appear to be an investment in Nelson’s hope for how to retain members in an era of disengagement.

The temple path to ‘activity’

To remain an active member after baptism, declared Gordon B. Hinckley, who presided over the church from 1995 until 2008, converts required three things: a friend, a responsibility and gospel nourishment. The instruction was a reaffirmation of the long-held belief that the faithful should be fully ensconced within the church through constant movement. “How long can rolling waters remain impure?” a Latter-day Saint scripture asks. To avoid backsliding, one must be perpetually in motion. It makes sense, therefore, that a member’s standing was often described as whether they are “active.”

But for a tradition built on personal progress, few individual benchmarks exist for adult members. Once members receive the temple endowment and, if married, are sealed to a spouse, there is a lack of future goals to which they can look forward. Their primary injunction is to stay on the “covenant path” and “endure to the end.” The lack of motivational enticements is especially acute for the increasing number of single adults who already fit awkwardly in the family-centric community.

So how do church leaders aim to keep adult members “active” in the faith and committed to the church, especially in an era of rampant disengagement?

The temple appears to be their proposed solution. While many of the recently announced locations will serve Latter-day Saints who previously did not have convenient access to a temple, a substantial number will be in areas that were not starved for an additional sacred structure. Especially in America. Both Dallas and Houston areas received second temples. Twelve more were announced for Utah (30 are now built or planned), including in cities that were already home to large, and somewhat underused, sanctuaries. There may come a day when Latter-day Saint temples dot the Wasatch Front akin to the faith’s chapels.

There is an institutional hope expressed in each of these announcements, a reason for expending billions in construction costs. The temples, in church leaders’ minds, should serve as an anchor for each community in a sea of disaffiliation. That is because they not only draw from financial reserves but also require local investment: Each temple requires substantial buy-in from the area’s congregations. Members are not only encouraged to attend as patrons but also staff the structures as volunteers. They are assigned as ordinance workers, participate in ward temple outings, and arrange youth temple trips. They are informed when attendance is waning and sometimes tasked with participation quotas. They are expected to do family history research, discover names that lack salvific ordinances, and then go on their behalf. There is no excuse not to, after all, given the building is just down the street. And remember, the church put trust in the town when they decided to build these structures at a substantial price. Temple work is seen as a privilege.

All these activities require a temple recommend, the great signifier of activity. To participate in temple work, to receive all these blessings, one must be in good standing. This means attending church, paying tithing and sustaining leaders. To be, in other words, fully committed. A Latter-day Saint community with a temple, therefore, means a community filled with temple-recommend- carrying members — At least theoretically.

Nelson likely hopes that these temples will retroactively spur the activity that would have justified their construction in the first place. They are physical tokens of his optimistic faith that the church can avoid the fate of so many of America’s mainline churches whose congregants are leaving in droves. “If you build it,” the voice told Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella in “Field of Dreams,” “they will come.” “If we build them,” Nelson seems to be urging, “they will remain.”

It is yet to be seen whether the gamble will succeed. Perhaps future historians will point to this period as a massive overreach, with hundreds of little-used temples appearing as much a symbol of loss as they are drains on the budget. Or perhaps they will be pillars of an energetic and thriving faith.

Nelson, now 100 years old, will not live long enough to see if the investment pays off. But few innovators, successful or otherwise, ever do.

Benjamin E. Park teaches American religious history at Sam Houston State University. His latest book is “American Zion: A New History of Mormonism.”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.