Moroni Statue Part 2

Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a Biblical perspective. Be with us for this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism. I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. Yesterday we began looking at an article that was in the LDS Church News, an article written by Valerie Walton.

It came out on July 30, 2020. Why do temples have the angel Moroni on top? And we were looking at some of the history behind this, as it says, this iconic figure that you find on top of many, not all, but many LDS temples. And in yesterday's show, we were talking about the Nauvoo Temple, the original Nauvoo Temple. It said in this article that the Nauvoo Temple had a weathervane angel, and that's true. It had an angel that was kind of sideways, I guess you could say, Eric, with a trumpet, but it wasn't at all like you would imagine on a Mormon temple today. I did not know this, but the article brought out that weathervane angels were extremely popular in the United States, and the way it's worded in this article, I guess we can be left to assume that that's why you found one on the original Nauvoo Temple. Not that it had any significance to the angel Moroni, like angels on top of temples have today, but certainly this idea of weathervane angels being very popular almost happened on the Salt Lake Temple, and this is what this article brings out. When the Latter-day Saints arrived in Utah and began work on the Salt Lake Temple, early sketches of the temple also showed weathervane angels. As we were prepping for this, I remembered a picture, a photograph, that I had taken while visiting the Beehive House downtown. If you go into the Beehive House, and as we know, the Beehive House, part of that building was Brigham Young's office when he was the territorial governor. But if you go into one of the rooms, I remember seeing a picture of the Salt Lake Temple, and I was looking at it very closely, and I noticed it did not have the angel on top of the spire that it certainly has now. It had a weathervane angel, and I took a photograph of it. I have a picture of this, and if you want to see it, all you have to do is go downtown and visit the Beehive House and look for a picture of the temple. I'm sure that's the one I saw as well. When it says, as you read, Eric, when the Latter-day Saints arrived in Utah and began work on the Salt Lake Temple, early sketches of the temple also showed weathervane angels.

Well, there's one right in Brigham Young's office, downtown in the Beehive House. So this article is absolutely correct, and you can see that picture for yourself. The article goes on and says, however, by the 1890s, architectural trends had shifted and it became commonplace for grand public buildings to feature statues. Quote, So the church is wanting to keep this angelic figure, but they decided to switch to a standing figure because that is what the architecture of the time was doing. End quote, Ut said.

And we should mention that Ut, U-T-T, is Emily Ut. As we mentioned yesterday, she's a curator for the Church History Department, and Valerie Walton, the author of this article, is citing her in this piece. But the next paragraph I found very fascinating when it talks about Cyrus Dallin. He was the one who was commissioned to come up with the statue for the Salt Lake Temple.

What does that paragraph say? Cyrus Dallin, whose ancestors had joined the church but left it soon after they arrived in Utah, was not a member of the church, but was commissioned to sculpt an angel statue for the Salt Lake Temple. He turned down President Wilford Woodruff's request at first, stating that he didn't believe in angels, but Dallin's mother soon persuaded him to accept the commission. I wish the article went into a little bit more detail to tell us why did Cyrus Dallin's ancestors leave the church after they arrived in Salt Lake City. I'll bet you that's a story in and of itself because, as I understand it, a lot of immigrants coming to Utah were not really enamored with what they saw when they arrived because many of them had been told, for instance, that those rumors about polygamy were just that. They were rumors.

Well, if you arrived after 1852 when polygamy was announced publicly, you found out very quickly that they weren't just evil rumors, that that was a fact of life in the Salt Lake Valley. It is quoted to say some of those earliest sketches don't give him a name and some of those earliest sketches called him Gabriel. It's likely that Dallin's statue was originally Gabriel, which was very common at the time for churches. And I found that to be quite fascinating as well because you would naturally assume that to put a statue of an angel, such as the one they have on the Salt Lake Temple, that it was already understood that this was the angel proclaiming the restoration of the gospel. But yet, that doesn't seem to be the case, that even after this angel was designed, it was still thought that it could possibly be referred to as the angel Gabriel, which of course was popular also. The article continues, They don't mention who this apostle was. I would find that interesting who it was that offered that suggestion, but it seems clear from that paragraph alone that Moroni was not the intended name for that statue.

Some particular apostle, we don't know who it was, offered the suggestion that the statue that was designed by Cyrus Dallin, who didn't even believe in angels, but his statue would then be dubbed the angel Moroni. And as soon as you have a leader say it, all of a sudden it catches on. It's kind of like the story about Brigham Young saying, this is the place, drive on. Again, nobody knew that in the first several years after the Mormons had moved to the Salt Lake Valley. That was never understood to be the history when Brigham Young came into the valley till years later. And we still don't even know if Brigham Young really said that.

It's, again, another part of what we assume to be Mormon folklore. One thing that a lot of people may not know is there are different types of Moroni statues on various Mormon temples. They don't all look the same.

A lot of them are pretty standard, but there are some differences in how they appear. And you wouldn't really even know that unless you saw a very close up picture of the statue, because standing from the ground looking up there, they're up there pretty high. So a lot of the details are probably lost on somebody just looking at it without binoculars or a zoom lens. But it talks about the statue on the Los Angeles, California temple that was dedicated in 1956. Now that was created, as this article says, by a local artist by the name of Millard F. Mallon.

What did Emily have to say about that one? described it as looking like, quote, an Arnold Freiberg painting, end quote. This Moroni has Native American features of Mayan robes, sandaled feet, a muscular build, a trumpet held by an upturned right hand, and gold plates held in his left arm. And, you know, I never thought about that as many times as I had looked at pictures of the Los Angeles temple and haven't been there and seen it myself. I never thought about that, but I called up some pictures on the internet, some close up pictures, and sure enough, that angel is dressed in what they would call a Mayan robe.

In other words, he's dressed kind of like pictures in some editions of the Book of Mormon that have pictures from Arnold Freiberg, by the way. It's true, and this I knew, he is holding the gold plates, which of course, you know, me and the gold plates, I'm wondering, boy, man, he must really be a buff farm boy to be able to hold those gold plates with one arm, because there's just no way if those plates were gold that even Moroni would be able to do that. Especially with the fact that, yes, as an angel, I guess he could lift whatever he wants, but he was lifting this, Moroni was, when he was a human being in the 5th century AD. Then it talks about the Washington DC temple that was dedicated in 1974. Now that one also has a statue of the angel Moroni, but I think what we need to talk about, Eric, is the fact that there are quite a few Mormon temples that do not have the angel Moroni as an icon on top of those buildings.

I remember seeing the temple in Hawaii. It doesn't have a statue of the angel Moroni. The one in Mesa, Arizona does not have a statue of the angel Moroni. St. George doesn't have a statue of the angel Moroni, nor does the Logan temple up in Logan, Utah. It does not have a statue of the angel Moroni. There are quite a few of them that don't.

But there was another article that was written by Peggy Fletcher Stack. She raises this question in the title, Statue of Limitations, under Russell Nelson, fewer and fewer temples have an angel Moroni. And she brings out the fact that there are a number of renderings or drawings of temples that are going to be built, and several of them, she notes, do not have angels on top of them. And of course, it raises the question, is this done purposely, and is Russell M. Nelson, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, purposely reducing the number of temples that have an angel Moroni?

And if so, why? I don't really have an answer for that. You would think that if he's wanting to get rid of this icon, as it's known to be for so many years, what would be the reason? Is he trying to make it appear that they're not really putting a lot of emphasis on Moroni any longer? I don't know if that can be the answer, because we know that in a number of these renderings of temples that are going to be built, some of them will have, at least according to the renderings, the drawings, they will have an angel on top of them. Maybe somebody would think that this is an experiment to see how the Latter-day Saints are going to accept not having Moroni's on top of the temple, and I'm going to suggest they're going to be listening very carefully, because if that perhaps makes it look like more of a Christian church, perhaps we will see fewer Moroni's being built on new temples. Well, wouldn't you think, though, if that was really the reason, they should probably just get rid of all the other ones, just do it in one final sweep, you know? But there is so much prestige in having that angel up there.

In fact, the person who gets to use the crane to be able to lift that up is specially picked, and people come from all over the day, usually a Saturday, where they will lift that up on top of the spire. So it's a big deal for a lot of Latter-day Saints. I'm going to suggest perhaps there would be a number of Latter-day Saints who would be offended if they got rid of all of them in future temples. Well, there was an interesting quote in the article by Peggy Fletcher Stack. This was in the Salt Lake Tribune.

This is the one, Statue of Limitations. It's a quotation from Alan Roberts, who is a Salt Lake City architect who, according to the piece, has worked on many temple exterior designs. This is what he said, Organizations are always looking at rebranding if they think the current brand is antiquated, if it no longer is valid, or in favor. It goes on to quote him as saying, I suppose they are trying to Christianize a church that claims to be Christ-centered.

They would want to gradually pull away from images that don't seem to reinforce that. Such messaging, he says, gives the church a wider appeal. Now this, of course, could lend some credence to the theory, do you think down the road that the Mormon Church will start putting crosses on top of their temples? We encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism. Looking for strategies that will help you engage in meaningful conversations with members of the Mormon Church? Well if so, take a look at Sharing the Good News with Mormons, a new book produced by Harvest House Publishers and edited by Mormonism Research Ministries Eric Johnson and Shawn McDowell. Sharing the Good News with Mormons includes 24 helpful essays from two dozen Christian apologists, scholars, and pastors. Pick up your copy at the Utah Lighthouse Bookstore or order directly from mrm.org.