In what reads like a final plea ahead of a potential lawsuit, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has issued a letter to the Dallas suburb of Fairview once again calling on the town’s leadership to approve a downsized version of a proposed temple the two parties agreed to in November.
“It is troubling,” states church Stake President Daniel M. Trythall, a lay regional leader, “that members of the Town Council seem to have already withdrawn their support from the agreement made during the recent mediation.”
(Shelby Tauber | Special to The Tribune) The lot where a proposed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple may be built in Fairview, Texas, is photographed in May 2024. The faith already has a meetinghouse in the area.
Trythall’s letter to the mayor and council reiterates that the church remains willing to swallow the denial of its original plans — despite the belief that doing so “substantially burdens the practice and expression of religious beliefs for the church.”
The ecclesiastical leader then urges Mayor Henry Lessner and council members to provide “assurance” that, if the church submits the application for the smaller design, the town stands ready to give it the green light.
Ominously, Trythall notes that “our religious rights could be compromised if the town does not honor its word as agreed to during mediation.”
Those interested in reading the entire document can do so by visiting a church’s website, which now hosts a page laying out the back-and-forth with town officials over the faith’s planned McKinney Texas Temple.
Fairview’s mayor, for his part, repeatedly has encouraged the church to submit the redesign for consideration.
(Henry Lessner) Fairview, Texas, Mayor Henry Lessner has repeatedly encouraged the church to submit the revised plans to the town, vowing to personally vote in favor of approval.
“I don’t know how many times we have to say this,” Lessner wrote in an email Monday. “There is a process that the church is very aware of that they need to follow. This is no different from any other entity wanting to build in Fairview or any other town.”
As to whether doing so would result in a favorable outcome for the church, Lessner explained that, “for myself, I have repeatedly said that I would vote to approve the mediated building design.”
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As for his council colleagues, he said in a March 7 episode of the “Mormonish” podcast that he believes they “will approve this.”
In his letter, though, Trythall reports that the church “sought to engage with council members individually to discuss their commitment to this compromise” but was “met with refusal.”
During the mediation, rare on the part of the church, the Utah-based faith agreed to shave approximately 54 feet off its initially proposed 174-foot-high building (spire included), and shrink its overall footprint from around 45,000 square feet to roughly 30,000 square feet.
Not all Fairview residents deemed this compromise acceptable, and Lessner has faced a backlash for the agreement.
Since then, the elected official has equivocated in public on the town’s commitment to the new design, leading the church’s lawyers to threaten the rural enclave of 11,000 residents with a lawsuit.
Lessner said he has repeatedly requested a meeting with high-level Latter-day Saint leaders, while at the same time raising funds from around the world for a potential legal fight.
“I have had zero response from the church to my request to meet with a decision-maker,” he wrote in Monday’s email, explaining he is specifically interested in discussing the proposed steeple, which residents have complained remains too high.
Latter-day Saints view temples, unlike the more common meetinghouses, as the most sacred places on Earth, buildings where the faithful participate in their religion’s highest rites, including eternal marriage.
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