The ceiling of the Draper temple celestial room, a room representing the celestial kingdom, a metaphor for the highest moral law. Mormon temples and everything that goes on in them, is highly symbolic, including the elements of architecture-->
I seen an episode of Big Love--one episode. Apparently that one more than most people. With an average viewership of 1.9 million per episode, Big Love is the equivalent of foreign films for cable.
HBO has nevertheless renewed the series for a fourth season, and reflecting the liberal anger at getting their butts kicked on Prop 8, the show is incorporating distorted portrayals of mainstream Mormons. Where lack of talent and imagination failed, perhaps controversy can succeed.
This Sunday's show purports to show aspects of the Mormon temple ceremony. Ooooh. Inside scoop on all the secret Mormon stuff. I bet you want to watch it now, don't you?
Of course you could always come to Salt Lake City and tour the Mormon Temple recently completed in Draper. Its been open to the public for eight weeks and has had over a million visitors processed by 32,000 Mormon volunteers. My father-in-law loved it. They even feed you snacks afterwards. Yeah, not quite as salacious and sensational as Tom Hanks and his fellow liberal bigots would have you believe.
Whether Hanks etal manage to boost ratings and ridicule Mormons is an open question, but he has insulted a few million of them. No matter though, Mormons are unlikely to cut off his head, well, at least I hope that's true...
The baptistry.
The oxen represent the 12 tribes of Israel (a metaphor for the children promised to Abraham in his covenant with God). The baptistry is used solely for proxy baptisms for the deceased. A person stands in for the deceased individual and is baptized by immersion. Other ordinances are also performed for the deceased who did not have occasion to receive them during life. This is related to that web of antemortal relationships Mormons believe they should forge. -->

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.The sealing room. There are several of these in a temple. Couples are married or "sealed" for this life and the next, preserving their relationships with each other, their children and their parents, creating a mesh of eternal relationships. The concept is fundamental to the reason Mormons are such prominent genealogists.-->



Comments (1)
Tom Hanks puts this brouhaha into perspective (and waxes prophetic) at the 3rd season premiere of Big Love:
"There's gonna be lies, and secrets, and discoveries, and problems. Television!"
Posted by Chino Blanco | March 13, 2009 2:37 PM
Posted on March 13, 2009 14:37