My last post on the temple in Cody? Maybe, for a while at least.

As a young man, I served a two-year mission (1972-1974) in German-speaking Switzerland, where a temple has been located (in Zollikofen, just outside of the Swiss federal capital of Bern) since its dedication by President David O. McKay in September of 1955.  Once, while I was serving in mission headquarters in Zürich at the end of my time there, I browsed through some of the materials relating to the announcement and construction of the temple.

There was, as there very commonly is, opposition to the building of the temple in Switzerland.  I recall looking at one image — I can’t recall whether it was published in a newspaper or as part of an opposition leaflet — that purported to show what the temple would look like when constructed, superimposed upon a photograph of the actual site.

It wasn’t even remotely accurate.  The temple shown was actually the Salt Lake Temple, which is quite unlike the temple in Zollikofen.  Moreover, the superimposed image was of a building that was at least four or five times the size of the actual Salt Lake Temple — thus making its center eastern spire somewhere between one thousand and thirteen hundred feet high.

In large and very lurid letters adjacent to the image — photoshopped before photoshop was a thing — the publisher of the document demanded to know “Do you want this in your neighborhood”?

Well, of course, nobody would want such a monstrosity in his or her neighborhood!  No sane person could possibly desire such a thing.  So massive an object would probably alter the weather patterns and affect local gravity!

I couldn’t help being reminded of that disingenuous old piece of propaganda when, looking this morning at the latest developments on the Facebook page of the group calling itself “Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods.”

I saw a nighttime image, first, of the pristine area in which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proposes to build the Cody Wyoming Temple on land that was donated to it for that purpose.  That land, the critics say, should be left just as God created it — and God evidently created it zoned residential, with a dry gulch to the south, houses to the east and west, and, on the north, such natural features as a Hampton Inn and Suites, a Walmart Super Center, a Tractor Supply Company, Cassie’s Steakhouse, and Bubba’s Bar-B-Que.  (See https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/cody-wyoming-temple/aerial/.)

Then, someone offered up the same nighttime image again, but this time a temple had been photoshopped onto it.  And not just any temple.  No, in order to give an idea of what the Cody Wyoming Temple will look like when completed, the helpful photoshopper imposed an image of the Draper Utah Temple upon that rustic, unspoiled Wyoming scene.  That’s the Draper Utah Temple, whose 58,300 square feet will make it roughly six times the size of the 9,950-square foot Cody Wyoming Temple.  A valid and fair comparison, don’t you think?

One other thought:  Some — including some members of the Church — have wondered why the Church persists in seeking to construct a temple where at least some local residents oppose it.  (From my vantage point, certainly, there is no way to determine whether the opponents represent a majority of the population of Cody or merely a vocal minority, perhaps even of a particular housing tract.  There have been, so far as I’m aware, no credible surveys or polls that would answer that question.)

I’m not privy to whatever discussions of this matter might be occurring at the highest levels of Church leadership, but I can hypothesize the following:

Virtually every time we propose to erect a temple, there is opposition.  As Brigham Young famously put it,

We completed a temple in Kirtland and in Nauvoo; and did we not hear the bells of hell toll at the time we were building them? They did, every week and every day . . .  Do not pay tithing, unless you want to; do not help to build this Temple unless you want to; do not put forth your hands to one day’s work, unless you want to . . .  If you grudgingly put forth your means to help to gather the Saints, it will be a curse to you; it will mildew, and every effort you make will wither in your possession . . .  if you wish this Temple built, go to work and do all you can this season. Some say, “I do not like to do it, for we never began to build a Temple without the bells of hell begining to ring.” I want to hear them ring again.  (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 8:355-356)

If we were to capitulate to such opposition in every case, we would never build a temple.  Nowhere.  Not anywhere.

Now, are there potentially legitimate issues to be worked out?  Can plans for lighting be modified, for example?  Might the steeple be lowered?  Certainly.  And such compromises have been effected with regard to numerous temples in the past.

However, the Sixth Fleet of the United States Navy used to deliberately sail through the claimed territorial waters of Libya in order to demonstrate its right and its capacity to do so.  (Libya claimed sovereignty over coastal waters extending two hundred miles into the Mediterranean — a claim that no other nation accepted.)  It’s not a precise parallel, but there is something to it:  To acquiesce in an illegitimate claim is to grant it a kind of legitimacy, which will only grow with more cases of acquiescence and the passage of time.  To cave in before opposition is to embolden and encourage opposition.  Where there are legitimate issues, we should seek accommodation.  Where the issues aren’t legitimate — where, for instance, they involve implicit or explicit religious bigotry (as some, at least, of the arguments against the Cody Wyoming Temple plainly do) — we should not, we cannot, surrender.  Rights that go undefended are rights that will be difficult to reclaim.

I’ve posted six prior comments here about the controversy that has been generated against the proposed Cody Wyoming Temple.  (See, in chronological order, “A small tempest about a small temple in Cody,” “In the world after the Fall,” “Once More, on the Conflict in Cody.” “An Update on the Continuing Crisis in Cody, Wyoming,” “Peggy Brown, Dale Brown, and the Cody Wyoming Temple,” and “My Last Comment on the Temple in Cody? (Probably Not).”  This is my seventh comment.  And I doubt that there will be a great many more.