I was always a believer in Joseph Smith’s quote: “Mormonism is truth…The first and
fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a
right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or … being …
prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men.”
Actually accepting this always put me on the Liberal end of
Mormonism, as I was willing to talk to anyone and go to any church. I felt I
could learn just as much about God in a Buddhist temple as in an LDS sacrament
meeting.
I visited just about every kind of religion you can imagine,
but one of the most interesting experiences came when visiting La Iglesia Luz
del Mundo [The Church of the Light of the World].
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| Small Placard in Salt Lake City |
Their building was half a block from my SLC apartment. Late
one night I was walking and I saw people coming in and out of the church, at 10 p.m. It was not Christmas or any
other common Christian holiday.
From my apartment window I could see the church and checked
periodically. By the time I went to bed they were still there, it was after midnight. This was curious to me to
say the least.
The next day I walked by the church to see when services
were. They have services every day, 3 times a day. I decided to go to one that night at 8 p.m.
I want to press into the mind of the reader that this was a
most curious experience which included many strange things visually and audibly
and in just about every way, I will do my best to describe all of these
details. Also an important note the church was entirely in Spanish (I am
fluent). I was the only white guy present. This is significant in terms of
culture and customs.
First, appearances: this building is a historic building in
Salt Lake City, it even has the plaque marking it as a historic site. However,
the lettering, billboards and decorations are painfully anachronistic and cheap
looking (see picture of the name of the church for example).The letters are
cheap black and white letters that are normally used on the windows of office
buildings. And the letters are not even put on straight. Most American’s would
find it unbearably tacky.
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| The juxtaposition of historic architecture and some tacky not perfectly straight lettering |
The inside had the same anachronistic mixing of beautiful,
turn of the century Gothic (and Romanesque) architecture, with tacky plastic lettering and fake
flowers. They have a very ostentatious display, almost like the Vatican with a
large gold chair and red carpet, but everything was so obviously plastic and
fake it just came across as tacky (see pictures).
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| The ornate front of the church. The throne and fake flowers are just tacky. Notice the screen projector on top of the pipes. The organ is not used. Names and lettering on each side (also unevenly spaced). |
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| Notice the date on the pillar: 6 April 1926 |
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| This symbol is throughout the church, not really sure what it means. |
From the pictures you will likely also notice some other
curious things (at least I did). If you look closely under the two names written down the pillars you will see two dates. Under Samuel, February 14, 2014, under Aaron, April 6,
1926. April 6? I wondered what the
significance was. As it turns out, after talking to some members after the
meeting I found out that April 6 1926 is the year the church was, listen
closely, “restored.”
I asked, “Aaron formed your church on April 6?”
“No, we believe that Christ formed the church, Aaron was
just called as an Apostle to restore
the church.”
Sound familiar? Well if you ever taught the missionary lessons
it should. It was uncanny how similar the language they used was to that which I
used on my mission.
Apparently, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, Aaron Joaquin
“restored” the Church on April 6, 1926 down in Mexico during a time of religion
upheaval. He was persecuted for his beliefs, but he still kept preaching and
stuck to his belief. He started a small congregation that grew and was
ostracized by their neighbors. They were
persecuted and even driven out until they formed their own city in rural
Mexico. They built their city centered around the temple, a large ornate building they eventually built (not making this stuff up). Their temples are now throughout Mexico, Central America, South
America, and a few in the United States.
As I learned more of the history, multiple times I felt like
pinching myself and saying out loud, “Is this for real?” It was definitely a
twilight zone experience. I felt like I was meeting Mormonism’s younger,
Mexican brother.
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| A picture of the main temple of La Luz Del Mundo church in Mexico. |
I did feel like the cult of the leader was perhaps even stronger
than in Mormonism. The other date on the wall, 14 of February, is the birthday
of Aaron’s successor, Samuel. “Why 2014?” I asked. “Because that was the most
recent celebration of it (strange, I know, maybe the guy is sensitive about his
age).” So it turns out that the current Apostle’s birthday is basically the
biggest festival they have (a little narcissistic perhaps?). These posters
pictured below were outside recently (as it turns out Samuel began his ministry
in 1964). Also, and most interestingly, what was the reason for them being
there all night long?
Despite the fact of that they meet three times a day; they do not
usually stay all night. What was the occasion? “The apostle of God is sick.”
Yes that is right Samuel Joaquin had the flu or something, and so these people
were doing 24-hour all-day all-night prayer sessions for him. People would
leave to go to work, and they would sort of “take shifts” during the night, but
there were people praying (and a lot more as you will soon see) all night long. Wow I thought, that is dedication,
or at the very least, insanity. I am not sure when exactly Mr. Joaquin
got better (I did not bother to check up), but one thing I am pretty sure of is
that a lot of other people got sick from lack of sleep.
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| A poster recently outside the church. It says: "Apostle of Jesus Christ, Samuel Joaquin Flores, The Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, celebrates 50 years of communion apostolic anniversary." |
Okay to the meeting. It was instantly apparent that it was
an extremely conservative church. The congregation was separated by gender,
women on one side (the speaker’s left) and men on the other. The women were all
very modestly dressed. This was not like Mormon women who sometimes “push the limit”
and show their knee caps or even (gasp!) some thigh. These women were covered
quite literally head to foot. They all covered their hair with a sort of scarf and wore ankle-length dresses. Obviously no sleeveless dresses
were around. There were none of the spicy Latina girls you would meet at
the Catholic Church wearing miniskirts and low-cut tops. Not at all. Anyways enough about the women!
They read a letter from the “Apostle” about how he was under
the weather and needed their support. They even put the letter up onto the
projector screen (you
can see the projector screen in the picture, but the screen is up). After this there were three or four people who spoke.
What was curious was that at the end of every speaker’s talk they would get
super emotional and start to cry. Not only would they cry, but people in the
audience would also start crying and appearing as if they were in emotional
trauma. Some would even approach the stand and prostrate on the ground as if in
pain. But all the emotion was so obviously fake. As soon as the speaker was
done he would go down and start talking to someone (I would watch them) and
they were perfectly fine, no tears or emotion in their face at all.
All speakers spoke way too long, and all were over-the-top
ridiculously emotional. This was like Fast and Testimony meeting times 500 on
the fake-emotion scale. At least in Fast and Testimony meeting some speakers show genuine emotion, and
lots don’t cry at all. But here it was every
single speaker.
Then it was time for a song. I like singing. I picked up the
hymn book, turned to the song, stood up with the rest of the congregation (which
is what they do apparently), and began singing along with them. I did not know the tune, but luckily neither did anyone else. It is against their
religion to use musical instruments (they have the organ because it is a
historic building and they can’t take it out), so everyone just sings whatever,
but most Latinos do not have formal musical training, so it was pretty bad to
say the least. And it gets worse.
These people sing. I mean they sing. They made that annoying guy in sacrament meeting who sings
two decibels above the rest of the congregation combined seem like a muted
sheep. These guys belted it out like there was an air-raid and they needed to
warn their neighbor three blocks away. It was incredible. I actually liked it
(as it turns out I am that annoying
guy in sacrament meeting, so for once I fit right in). However, about half way
through the song I noticed something strange.
I heard what sounded like dying cats. I also noticed the song was getting
quieter. I looked around trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. I
noticed some members had stopped singing and were crying out as if overcome
with emotion. They had even fallen to their knees on the floor. Others had gone
into the aisle way and were basically lying on the ground crying and moaning
almost as loud as they had sung.
As the song progressed, so did the number who switched from
singing to crying. It was like there was a sniper picking people off from the
balcony. Pretty soon everyone was
down for the count. Everyone except me of course. There I was, already singled
out because I was the only tall white guy, but now I was the only person standing and singing. I was
not going to fall down and start crying in fake emotion, so I just stood there
alone and sang. Not knowing the song didn’t help. It was awkward to say the
least.
After the song was over, everyone returned to their seats,
and it was like nothing had happened. The tears gone, no pain or emotion were
left on the faces.
And you can’t end a meeting any better than that.
I stayed and talked to a few people. One missionary guy
talked to me about their beliefs. But after talking for all of 30 seconds I
realized that, though he tried to make it a discussion, there was no room for
questioning. What he said was the truth, no matter what.
I left the building feeling like I had left this weird
wormhole out of the modern world. Then I remembered all the similarities
between Mormonism. This really was Mormonism’s younger Mexican brother. Samuel
Joaquin is basically their Brigham Young (likely with quite a few similarities). I used to wonder what it would be like to
live during the early days of the church. Perhaps now I knew.
I had shiver run down my spine. I was glad it was over and I
will never again have to sing a made up tune A Capella in the
middle of bunch of crying Hispanics. Praise Samuel Joaquin!
