By Sridhar Pappu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 15, 2007
BELMONT, Mass. -- It is late in the afternoon, just hours after this town's most famous resident and current Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, delivered a speech in Texas to address questions about his Mormon faith. And for all the clamor surrounding him, here at the Boston Massachusetts Temple -- a controversial edifice that Romney helped build -- there is only silence.
In the foyer, men in white suits and women in floor-length white dresses greet those of the Mormon faith who have "temple recommend" cards allowing them entry to the rooms beyond. The immaculate space is devoid of decoration save for a portrait of Jesus tending a flock. Volunteers read Scripture to help pass the time. Could this be what it feels like to sit in the waiting room to heaven?
Even to an outsider, there is a serenity to the grounds. Built of marble imported from Italy, the temple sits on a hill high above this well-heeled suburb, surrounded by tall trees, an immaculate lawn and an even more immaculate parking lot. Though it isn't as luminous as its Washington counterpart, it's said that on clear days you can see the steeple, with its gold-leaf statue of the angel Moroni, five miles away in Harvard Square.
Unlike "meetinghouses," which serve as chapels where Mormons and non-Mormons can gather, sing hymns and listen to sermons, there are no regular Sunday worship services at a temple. (The building is in fact closed on Sundays.) Instead, this is a place for different rituals -- ceremonies for eternal marriages, occasions where you can bind yourself to family members for eternity or retroactively baptize the dead.
Despite its pristine appearance, though, this temple is the product of a messy civic battle that went all the way to the state's highest court.
For many on both sides, the debate is still raw seven years after the temple opened. John Forster, the onetime spokesman for a group of neighbors, says, "I don't care what they believe. Why did they have to put a facility for the whole Northeast in a residential neighborhood? Romney and other Mormons always tried to cast themselves as victims of oppression and religious discrimination and it was never about that. It was about square feet."
Grant Bennett, who represented the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the temple's construction, called the endeavor a "significant struggle."
Like Romney, Bennett came east from Utah for graduate work at one of the Cambridge schools -- he studied at MIT, while Romney earned business and law degrees from Harvard. Both are part of a ward -- the Mormon equivalent of a congregation -- that was created in Belmont after the one in Cambridge outgrew its quarters on Harvard Square.
Romney held the unpaid position of bishop of the Belmont ward from 1984 to 1986 and supervised construction of the meetinghouse, which sits at the bottom of the hill where the temple now stands. As both the ecclesiastical and administrative head of the congregation, Romney set up Sunday school assignments and speakers, and counseled people about marital troubles or wayward teenage kids.
It was also his job to reinvigorate those who served alongside him. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen remembers a period during Romney's tenure as bishop when both Christensen and his wife, Christine, were emotionally drained by their religious obligations. One evening the couple sat at their kitchen table feeling depleted when someone knocked on the door. In came Romney, on his way home from work.
"I needed to come here and tell you that God loves you. He's been trying to tell you directly and it doesn't seem like you're hearing him," Christensen recalls Romney saying. "The Lord must have given me the message so that you could hear it for yourselves." The Christensens both broke down crying.
After serving as president of the Boston stake (the equivalent of a diocese) from 1986 to 1994, Romney stepped down for his unsuccessful U.S. Senate run against Ted Kennedy. Afterward, Bennett, now the bishop of the Belmont ward, appointed the future governor to teach Sunday school.
Thus it was Bennett who was charged with helping the president of the Mormon Church, Gordon B. Hinckley, look over the property in Belmont in 1995. For some time Hinckley had yearned to build a temple in the Northeast, with his focus on Hartford, Conn. But when informed that the church owned 8.9 acres close to Boston, he called Bennett asking to see the site.
By the time of his visit, prominent members of the Mormon faith had become established in Belmont. In addition to Romney, there was Kim Clark, dean of the faculty at Harvard Business School from 1995 to 2005, and now president of Brigham Young University's campus in Rexburg, Idaho. There was his HBS colleague Kent Bowen, a noted research scholar. And there was Romney's longtime friend John M. Wright, president of a boutique investment-banking firm dealing with mergers and acquisitions.
Hinckley wouldn't tell the world of his intentions until the following September. In its original conception, the building was to be 94,000 square feet with six spires reaching high into the New England sky. The central spire would be 144 feet high and topped by the angel Moroni, the figure said to have come to young Joseph Smith in 1823 and supposedly one of the authors of the Book of Mormon.
Even Bennett, in retrospect, says, "It was a very large building on that site. It was 94,000 feet on top of a hill in a residential area and it was very, very prominent."
Too prominent, it turned out, for those who were to live alongside it.
For months leading up to the local Zoning Board of Appeals decision in late 1996, Belmont High was the site of tightly packed, emotionally charged meetings where people argued about the temple. For many opponents, the issue wasn't religious freedom, but the town's own ordinances, which set a height limit of 72 feet. Despite protests, the zoning board voted 4 to 1 to approve the original proposal for the temple. Then, it unanimously approved scaled-back plans introduced in early 1997 that slashed the size of the building to 72,000 square feet and reduced the number of steeples to one.
This did not end the tumult. On the first day of blasting, something went terribly wrong, sending rock and debris and dust all over the neighborhood. Another time, an underground explosion caused a rubber mat to overheat, sending flames 20 feet into the air. Neighbors consistently complained about noise from the construction site.
Romney's public role in the debate over the temple was limited. In the spring of 1996, Romney and his wife, Ann, hosted a series of get-togethers with neighbors where both the architect and landscape architect answered questions. In 1999 he temporarily moved to Utah to organize the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. But even when in Belmont, he barely spoke publicly on the issue, Christensen says.
"We had a steering committee and he would attend the meetings," Christensen says. "At one meeting he said his very participation might be a lightning rod for additional controversy since he had run against Ted Kennedy. He was there and would give us advice but did not take a public role."
Two lawsuits were filed against the project. The first, in state court, challenged the variance that allowed the steeple to be built. This was followed by a suit in federal court challenging the right to build the structure itself. It claimed that the Massachusetts law allowing religious and educational institutions immunity from local zoning restrictions violated the U.S. Constitution. Those suing said the Massachusetts law in essence favored the spreading of religion. Both cases were decided in favor of the Mormons. The temple opened without a steeple, but the structure, rising 139 feet, was added after the state Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the Mormons' favor in 2001.
"It's hard to know how much of it was bigotry and how much of it was wanting to try and keep the tranquility of Belmont neighborhoods," says the banker Wright, after watching Romney's Texas speech on the Internet from his office. "I suppose it was a little of both."
Critics of the project still bristle at such comments.
Charles Counselman, a former professor in MIT's planetary sciences department, bought his home in 1997 and later became one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit.
"I was attacked many times in many forums for being a religious bigot or worse," Counselman says. "I don't have anything against the LDS church. The LDS church has had a meetinghouse in this neighborhood for a long time. When I was in college I had two Mormon roommates. I contributed to Mitt Romney's Senate campaign. It's not about that at all. In my mind it's a zoning issue."
When the building was finished (except for the steeple) in 2000, thousands came to tour the site. Among the visitors was Kennedy, who was guided around by Romney, his onetime political opponent. Kennedy called the structure "magnificent," adding he wished that Romney were a Democrat.
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