Lighting The Cody Wyoming Temple

Rembrandt's Moses — “Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law” (1659), by Rembrandt
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

A new item went up today on the still completely dead and perpetually unchanging website of the Interpreter Foundation: “Come, Follow Me — Old Testament Study and Teaching Helps (2026): April 20-26: Exodus 19-20; 24; 31-34 — “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do”

And don’t forget to stay current with, or to catch up on, the series of weekly Becoming Brigham mini-documentaries that the Interpreter Foundation is producing in cooperation with Redbrick Filmworks. All of the currently available episodes are accessible free of charge at becomingbrigham.com. And if, as my mother used to say, you’re a real glutton for punishment, you can watch my thirty-seven-minute debacle at Informed Saints, with Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot: “Scholar DEBUNKS the Biggest Lies About Brigham Young”

Incidentally, the interview that I did with Rappleye, Rappleye, and Smoot has generated considerable hostile response from vocal haters of Brother Brigham. One repeated accusation has been that Brigham Young favored slavery and/or owned slaves and/or advocated that Latter-day Saints own slaves and/or pushed a bill through the territorial legislature making chattel slavery the law of the land. Such misconceptions might once have been pardonable, but no longer. I set forth my reasoning on the matter (and I suggested a book that puts my conclusion beyond any trace of reasonable doubt) in a presentation to FAIR last August: “Brigham Young and Slavery.” And, coincidentally, the Becoming Brigham crew (Mark Goodman, James Jordan, Russell Richins, John Donovan Wilson, Camrey Bagley Fox, and I) will be filming on the subject of Brigham Young, race, and slavery most of next week.

Oh, and one more note regarding Becoming Brigham: The principal purveyor of the theory that Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered by Willard Richards and John Taylor, acting on orders of Brigham Young, has surfaced in the comments to the interview. Among other things, he accuses me and Mark Goodman (the director of Becoming Brigham) of “manipulat[ing] and gaslight[ing] Cambry” — plainly, he intends Camrey Bagley Fox — and pronounces our behavior “reprehensible.” Although, of course, he expects such behavior from me, he says that he had thought Mark a good guy and expected better from him. (He wants me to pass his comment on to Mark.) My question: Can anybody who has watched Becoming Brigham explain to me what on earth he means? Mark and I (and the other members of the team ,James Jordan and Russ Richins and John Donovan Wilson) like and respect Camrey. We’ve all spent a lot of time together and have become almost family. What is he talking about? How are we supposed to be “manipulat[ing] and gaslight[ing] Cambry”?

The Cody Wyoming Temple as it will look. — The proposed Cody Wyoming Temple as depicted in an official rendering for a public meeting. Fair use, I hope.

The location and construction of the Cody Wyoming Temple, which is nearing completion but not yet dedicated, was strenuously opposed (including in the courts) by some residents of the area. The massive 9,950-square-foot temple would, they predicted, hide the local mountains, block the night sky, loom threateningly over the town, and so forth. I’ve had some fun here, from time to time, checking on the fulfillment of those prophecies, which I regard as having been wildly sensationalized and alarmist.

Ten days or so ago, a thread erupted on the Peterson Obsession Board (POB) about the new exterior lighting at the temple in Cody. This thread included a nighttime photograph of the new temple that does, indeed, make it look uncomfortably bright, obtrusive, and disturbingly garish. The photograph was taken, on the POB, as evidence that stargazing in the Cody area is now dead, that the dire jeremiads issued by the temple’s critics have been fulfilled, and that promises made by the Church can never be trusted. My supposed prediction that the temple would be “as inconspicuous as possible” (which, needless to say, I never actually made) has been revealed, they say, as at best disingenuous.

Here are three additional articles on the topic

Cowboy State Daily (3 April 2026): “Cody Temple Lights Up For First Time, Neighbors Aren’t Happy: The exterior lights on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Cody temple were switched on for the first time this week. Neighbors who opposed the project say it shines into their homes.”
Cody Enterprise (6 April 2026): “Temple lights disrupt neighborhood living”
Cody Enterprise (8 April 2026): “City has no regs on architectural lighting for commercial buildings”

And I throw this little item in as a bonus freebie:

Powell Tribune (17 March 2026): “Powell man arrested for threatening to kill construction workers at Cody LDS temple”

Now, admittedly, I’m not there in Cody. (Neither are the folks at the POB.) I haven’t myself seen the Cody Wyoming Temple. Not now, not previously. Not during the day, and not during the night. So I can’t really judge the lighting from my current very distant vantage point. (As my father used to point out when we were watching the Dodgers play on television and we questioned an umpire’s call on a pitch, the umpire was observing things from right behind the plate, while we were at least twenty miles away — and sometimes almost three thousand miles.)

But I do note that the temple’s lighting looks much more chaste and restrained in the first photograph given by the Cowboy State Daily than it does in that article’s second photograph, which seems to be the same one that was weaponized on the POB. (Also notice how bright the lights are that surround the commercial area to the left of the second photograph’s center.) So, too, with the photograph that accompanies the first Cody Enterprise article. (For example, compare the outdoor parking-lot lights for the temple in the latter article with the similar but apparently much more glaring outdoor lights shown in the former article.). And here are some recent photos of the temple in Cody from the website Temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.. They were taken by several different photographers, but none of them appears to show the temple looming monstrously over the city, obscuring views of the mountains, or blocking the night sky. And, notably, in the nighttime photographs that were taken on 31 March 2026, the illumination seems again to be rather chaste, relatively subdued and modest, and somewhat restrained: https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/cody-wyoming-temple/photographs/.

It’s also important to bear in mind that the articles and complaints — and the POB thread — about the temple lighting appear to center on a test of the temple’s lighting that occurred on the above mentioned 31 March, when everything appears to have been ramped up to maximum strength for at least a while. So, anyway, says the second Cody Enterprise article, which also appears to depict low storm clouds for that evening — something that would clearly have affected the temple lights’ impact on the night sky. So the lighting shown in the most offensive photograph may or may not represent the final status of things. Moreover, according to that article it appears that the Church agreed to reduce the intensity of the temple lights by 50% after the last person leaves the temple around 11 PM every night, the brightness being controlled by timers.

In other words, it may not yet be time to pronounce the Church guilty of gross dishonesty, shameless contempt for its neighbors, and aggressive imperialism. Give it a few days.