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The
LDS Church has multiplied its numbers and spread its faith around
the globe
By
Jan Shipps
for Headwaters News
For the past 50 years, the Mormon story has been neglected
by nearly everyone except the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints
While the hostility from outsiders that the Saints faced in the
19th century has by and large disappeared, the chasm that persists
between Mormons and non-Mormons is revealed by the way Western history
is written nowadays.
All too often, the story of the Western past (and especially the
history of the Rocky Mountain West) is fashioned so that it resembles
a doughnut. Those who write it circle all around the Mormon culture
region, especially Utah, leaving a empty space where the Mormon
story should be.
The historians of Mormonism -- most of them members
of the church -- fill in the hole, but often write as if the significance
of the world outside Utah is negligible.
What happened in the 19th century, as the Mormons were driven from
Ohio to Missouri to Illinois and, from thence, to the Great Basin,
is familiar to nearly everyone. So do most people know the story
of the kingdom the Latter-day Saints built in the tops of the mountains
where Brigham Young presided and where the inhabitants practiced
polygamy.
After the Saints were forced to relinquish their peculiar marriage
system in order for Utah to be admitted to the union, the Mormon
story fades into the background.
Except for Olympic Games saga last year, many of the people who
pay close attention to what is going on in the Rocky Mountains seem
to have missed the dynamic developments in Mormonism in the past
few decades.
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Simmering
tensions that divide Utah erupt over plaza, newspapers and public
land
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
Nov. 20, 2002
It's at times an uneasy truce between Mormons and
non-Mormons in Utah, and sometimes it's not much of a truce at all.
Several issues in the past year have deepened the rift between church
members and gentiles -- in Salt Lake City, across Utah, and beyond.
Perhaps the most symbolic is the ongoing controversy
over control of the block of Salt Lake City's Main Street between
North Temple and South Temple.
The church bought the block in 1999 in a deal brokered by the former
mayor, but only on the night the City Council approved did church
officials make known they intended to ban inappropriate behavior,
including smoking, swearing, sunbathing, loitering undue noise and
protesting.
The ACLU sued, arguing the church was infringing on freedom of speech
in a public place, and eventually, the 10th
Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling that the church's move
changed the plaza from a "pedestrian-friendly area" to
an ecclesiastical park.
Current Mayor Rocky Anderson flipped back and forth between relinquishing
and keeping the city's easement since the ruling, and LDS officials
have promised a trip to the Supreme Court.
More recently, church leaders produced a slick pamphlet arguing
their case and rallying
support among the faithful and the sympathetic. They say they're
not trying to influence local politics, although the seven-member,
all-LDS
City Council contends it has the authority to revoke the city's
easement.
Critics see the church maneuvering blatantly where it's usually
more subtle, Anderson says he'll block any attempt to revoke the
easement, and the whole issue has deepened the religious chasm.
"It's religious politics at its most deplorable; Salt Lake
is being run like a theocracy," said
one of the plaintiffs, a pastor at the the First Unitarian Church.
The spirit of community, which the plaza symbolizes and always has
from its inception, is best fostered by that result," keeping
the plaza tranquil, said
LDS Elder Lance B. Wickman.
Perhaps the most bitter fight has been between the church-owned
Deseret News and Salt Lake's larger and independent newspaper, the
Tribune.
Both have shared some resources under a joint operating agreement
for years, after the family that owned the Tribune for generations
sold its control five years ago.
Dean Singleton's MediaNews, which owns the Denver Post and 48 other
papers, bought the Tribune and control of the
joint operations in January 2001 but was granted control by a judge
only last July.
The family had sued to exercise what it said was its claim to buy
back the paper, but underlying all the claims were the Deseret News'desires
to become a morning paper and get out of the Tribune's shadow.
Singleton was seen as amenable to church views, and media watchers
worried Utah's independent news would be undermined by what some
see as the church's mouthpiece.
The Tribune was for sale at all only because then-owner AT&T
feared a Mormon backlash, according to one executive. The company
worried that the Tribune's often critical stories about the church
would result in lost business for AT&T's cable franchise in
Utah.
And the most potentially far-reaching was the church's attempt to
buy a tract of Wyoming public land that's both a national historic
landmark and sacred to church members.
As many as 200 converts pushing handcarts died in a blizzard in
1856 at Martin's Cove, and church officials wanted to buy 940 acres.
Utah Rep. Jim Hansen and other Mormon members of Congress
introduced a bill authorizing the sale, and the House passed
it in June.
Critics denounced the sale, saying the church could restrict public
access or provide a less-than-complete historical interpretation
at the site.
Many critics, including Wyoming's congressional delegation, worried
the sale of public land to a church would set
a precedent that could open large tracts or of public land and
sacred sites to other religious groups -- Indian tribes, for instance.
The bill stalled in the Senate, due largely to Wyoming's opposition,
and
in part to Hansen's tactics, and is considered dead, at least
for this year.
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