In Mitt Romney's Neighborhood, A Mormon Temple Casts a Shadow

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In Mitt Romney's Neighborhood, A Mormon Temple Casts a Shadow
By Sridhar Pappu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 15, 2007; C01

BELMONT, Mass. -- It is late in the afternoon, just hours after this town's most famous resident and current Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, delivered a speech in Texas to address questions about his Mormon faith. And for all the clamor surrounding him, here at the Boston Massachusetts Temple -- a controversial edifice that Romney helped build -- there is only silence. In the foyer, men in white suits and women in floor-length white dresses greet those of the Mormon faith who have "temple recommend" cards allowing them entry to the rooms beyond... Built of marble imported from Italy, the temple sits on a hill high above this well-heeled suburb, surrounded by tall trees, an immaculate lawn and an even more immaculate parking lot. Though it isn't as luminous as its Washington counterpart, it's said that on clear days you can see the steeple, with its gold-leaf statue of the angel Moroni, five miles away in Harvard Square. Unlike "meetinghouses," which serve as chapels where Mormons and non-Mormons can gather, sing hymns and listen to sermons, there are no regular Sunday worship services at a temple. (The building is in fact closed on Sundays.) Instead, this is a place for different rituals -- ceremonies for eternal marriages, occasions where you can bind yourself to family members for eternity or retroactively baptize the dead.

Despite its pristine appearance, though, this temple is the product of a messy civic battle that went all the way to the state's highest court. For many on both sides, the debate is still raw seven years after the temple opened. John Forster, the onetime spokesman for a group of neighbors, says, "I don't care what they believe. Why did they have to put a facility for the whole Northeast in a residential neighborhood? Romney and other Mormons always tried to cast themselves as victims of oppression and religious discrimination and it was never about that. It was about square feet."

Grant Bennett, who represented the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the temple's construction, called the endeavor a "significant struggle." Like Romney, Bennett came east from Utah for graduate work at one of the Cambridge schools -- he studied at MIT, while Romney earned business and law degrees from Harvard... It was Bennett who was charged with helping the president of the Mormon Church, Gordon B. Hinckley, look over the property in Belmont in 1995... By the time of his visit, prominent members of the Mormon faith had become established in Belmont. In addition to Romney, there was Kim Clark, dean of the faculty at Harvard Business School from 1995 to 2005, and now president of Brigham Young University's campus in Rexburg, Idaho. There was his HBS colleague Kent Bowen, a noted research scholar. And there was Romney's longtime friend John M. Wright, president of a boutique investment-banking firm dealing with mergers and acquisitions.

Hinckley wouldn't tell the world of his intentions until the following September. In its original conception, the building was to be 94,000 square feet with six spires reaching high into the New England sky. The central spire would be 144 feet high and topped by the angel Moroni, the figure said to have come to young Joseph Smith in 1823 and supposedly one of the authors of the Book of Mormon. Even Bennett, in retrospect, says, "It was a very large building on that site. It was 94,000 feet on top of a hill in a residential area and it was very, very prominent." Too prominent, it turned out, for those who were to live alongside it...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121401846.html