Changes Announced to the Salt Lake Temple and Manti Temple

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced several changes to the Salt Lake Temple and Manti Utah Temple this last week. Here are my thoughts. 

Ending live acted endowment:

I will miss this. I only rarely went to these temples, but it was always neat when I did to have live actors and I feel it helps you realize certain aspects of the endowment ceremony that can be missed in a film presentation. At the same time, this makes sense in order to accommodate many languages. I wish they could have kept at least a session a day or even a week with live actors, but it is what it is.

The Salt Lake Temple Changes:

1. The loss of the murals in the Salt Lake Temple Creation Room, Garden Room, and World Room: This is a huge loss. The murals are all over 100 years old. The press release said they wanted to keep these, but were unable to save them. There are many reasons for this, but probably the main reason is that the work to strengthen the temple to withstand earthquakes was damaging the murals enough that it was easier to simply remove the. I wish that the church would commission artists to repaint these rooms to either match the style or in a new style as was done in Nauvoo and Manti in the past. I would be overjoyed if the church leaders changed their mind and announced this, but I realize that is very unlikely. The cost of repainting these murals, although significant, would be a very small portion of the cost of this project and I think worth it. So, I am disappointed, but I will have to live with it. I am happy that they won't be putting in a 1980s interior like they did with Logan, so at least there is that.

2. Moving the baptistry from the historic temple and into the annex and adding a second font:

I am fine with this. When you are underground it is difficult to tell where you are, so moving the font makes a lot of sense. Adding a second font also makes sense and really should have been done a long while ago as the baptistry is a major bottleneck in temples. Architecturally I love the baptistry rendering. I only have 2 small issues. First, I wish the font was still raised above the floor like the historic font. In fact I wish the new baptistry was a faithful reproduction of the original font room, or at least one of the two baptistries was. But the rendering we have looks great and is probably more accessible. The second issue I have is that the rendering shows a railing system with glass walls. This looks great, but it reminds me that this is not how the pioneers built it. I would rather have a 1890s style picket railing, even if it obscured the font a little. But both of these are minor architectural items. Otherwise, I love what they are doing. 

3. Adding 2 endowment rooms: 

It makes a lot of sense to use the space where the font is for new endowment rooms and I like the renderings. I just wish that this didn't trigger the mural removal in other rooms. I wish they had added 2 rooms for single room presentation of the endowment, and used the other rooms for a progressive endowment. I think both could have run side by side. But the church leaders studied this and came to a different conclusion, so we will have to live with it. The new rooms look great. 

4. Removing the cafeteria: I have no problem with this. Most temples now just have a small break room with a microwave and refrigerator for workers to use on their breaks. 

5. Updated Terrestrial Room (now Veil Room):

I like the rendering a lot. The new veil layout works well. I like the pews, although the temple never had pews, so it would have been more historical to use opera seats. Really the only issue I have is that there used to be a plaster vase with flowers/fruit above the art glass window above the veil. It looks like this is being removed. I wish they would put it back in, even if they moved it to a different wall, which I guess is possible. 

6. Updated Celestial Room: 

I love the rendering of the celestial room. This matches the old black and white photos and adds beautiful colors that were lost in the 1960s remodel. Also, sconces on columns have returned, historic wallpaper has returned, etc. I like that the furniture looks much more period appropriate. I also love the additional art glass below the arched window at the veil. It matches and is an improvement. I did notice that the statue of a woman and children above the art glass window has been removed. This statue was supposed to be an Angel of Peace and is original to the temple, but it puzzled people who thought it was the virgin Mary, or a greek goddess, so I understand why it was removed. I hope this becomes a museum piece. I really hope they keep the cherub/cupid on the staircase to a sealing room and don't remove it. I think it is more recognizable as a symbol of love. 

7. Additional Sealing Rooms:

I like that they are adding more sealing rooms so couples aren't rushed through their wedding day. I also love the rendering, particularly the carved (or possibly cast plaster) fruit and flowers in the ceiling beams. These nicely match those in the celestial room.

The Manti Utah Temple Changes:

The planned loss of the murals makes me very sad. The world room murals in this temple are in my opinion the latter-day saint equivalent to the Sistene Chapel in Catholicism in that they are the finest and grandest art in our church and they also tell a scriptural time lapse. I don't understand why these would be removed when this temple is remote and doesn't need additional capacity and it would probably be better to build a temple in Richfield or Price if additional capacity is ever required. The only reason why they are doing this that I can think of is that this temple is too hard to seismically retrofit without removing them and so I will have to defer to that judgement. It is a shame though, especially because after the Logan Utah Temple was gutted, the Manti Utah Temple was restored due to President Spencer W. Kimball and others expressing regret that they had destroyed the pioneer craftsmanship and murals in the Logan Utah Temple. Now it seems like we have forgotten that regret and are planning to destroy temple murals again. I wish that these could be preserved or carefully scanned and repainted or high resolution printed and returned to the walls of this temple. But I am not in control and the First Presidency are ultimately the ones with all the facts and the inspiration to make this decision. Still, it hurts to lose these. I am optimistic that the remodeled rooms will be done period appropriate and that we won't end up with what happened in the Logan Utah Temple where the interior looks like the 1980s and really clashes with the exterior.

*Update: The church announced that Manti will not have murals destroyed and it will be preserved. So I'm no longer sad about that.

Those are my thoughts. We will have to support the decision of church leaders unless some miracle causes them to find a way to save the Manti murals and they decide to repaint the Salt Lake murals.