BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, a special report on the rebuilding of Salt Lake City. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, are building an enormous new downtown development—high end shops, condos, and offices. Is that emphasis on wealth and consumerism compatible with Mormon values of modesty and thrift? Does it leave any room for the poor, or for the variety that helps make up vibrant city life? Lucky Severson reports from Salt Lake City.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: By the looks of things, downtown Salt Lake City has found the pot of gold at the end of the stimulus rainbow. Where else would you find 1600 construction workers on a project so immense it will transform the core of a city? But this is not stimulus money, not even one cent of local taxpayers’ money. This project, known as City Creek Center, is funded entirely by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, and their development partners. Stephen Goldsmith was the city planning director during the Salt Lake Olympics.

STEPHEN GOLDSMITH (Associate Professor of Architecture and Planning, University of Utah): This is unprecedented. This is the single largest private development project going on in the United States today.

SEVERSON: When it’s completed in 2012, the new city center, directly across the street from the church’s temple, will include millions of square feet of retail and office space. Only the church knows the price tag, and they declined to be interviewed for our story, but the project’s cost is expected to top $1.5 billion, a price they’re willing to pay to transform Salt Lake City. Natalie Gochnour is chief operating officer of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce.

NATALIE GOCHNOUR (Chief Operating Officer, Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce): We have the headquarters of an international religion. We’ve hosted the world in the Olympics. So we want to build a world city.

SEVERSON: Outsiders often don’t know that, in the city itself, a majority of residents are not Mormon, and some locals are concerned that the diversity of a vibrant downtown will give way to a squeaky-clean Mormon enclave in City Creek Center. Daniel Darger owns the Blue Iguana Restaurant not far from Temple Square.

DANIEL DARGER (Attorney and Owner, Blue Iguana Restaurant): There’s no question in my mind it’s going to fundamentally change the nature and the whole culture of that part of downtown. I think primarily their goal is to get a lot of their members here and to gain control of not only the politics, which they already have, and the economy, which they already have, but the atmosphere of the whole downtown.

SEVERSON: Before the City Creek project got underway, not many would have thought of Salt Lake as a world city. It was losing its population to the burbs. Downtown was becoming a ghost town, and that wasn’t good for business or the church’s image. Elbert Peck is the former editor of Sunstone magazine, an independent journal for Mormon intellectuals.

ELBERT PECK (Former Editor, Sunstone Magazine): When I was a child, I remember coming downtown with my grandmother, and she’d walk all of Main Street stopping off at every little shop and every little boutique. It was a wonderful, vibrant downtown.

SEVERSON: But in the late ’60s, Salt Lake began to face the suburban flight that was sweeping the nation. In an effort to reverse the trend, the church developed two downtown malls on land across from Temple Square. [CORRECTION: While the church did develop the ZCMI Center, Crossroads Plaza was developed by Crossroads Plaza Associates, an investor group not affiliated with the church. The church acquired Crossroads Plaza in 2003.] Rather than revitalizing the street life, though, the enclosed malls drew shoppers into the parking garage and then sent them right back to the suburbs, leaving the rest of downtown in bad shape.

PECK: Salt Lake City was dying, and the city was becoming seedy, and image and promotion is very important to the missionary work of the church.

SEVERSON: The church is again trying to revive the streets around Temple Square, and now to get people out of their cars they’ve got TRAX, an increasingly popular light rail system that was built ten years ago. Ryan McFarland is the economic development manager for the city’s mass transit system.

RYAN MCFARLAND (Transit and Economic Development Manager, UTA): A transit-oriented development is just this. It is a walkable community that’s typically higher density and that provides for all of your needs.

SEVERSON: Strongly opposed at first, TRAX up and running is now warmly embraced, and the transit system is expanding with 70 miles of new track, some of which is federally funded. The church strongly encourages its downtown employees to use mass transit, and the new development will be serviced by two TRAX stations.

MCFARLAND: This is the core of downtown. This is the City Center station. This will be the central business district where people don’t necessarily need their car. You can walk to the supermarket. You can walk to the restaurant you want to go to.

SEVERSON: From the beginning, Mormons have been pioneers in the field of city planning. Even before Joseph Smith was assassinated, they planned and built the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, which at the time rivaled the metropolis of Chicago, only Nauvoo was designed around the church’s temple, which is center to Mormon theology. Salt Lake City was designed in the same fashion. The new plan, though, is a little different. It incorporates the church’s values and old-fashioned capitalism. Jason Mathis is the executive director of the Downtown Alliance.

JASON MATHIS (Executive Director, Downtown Alliance): My sense is that right now people are pretty enthusiastic about this, and even some of the critics in the past have said, “Well, we recognize this is going to be a really good thing for our community.”

SEVERSON: It’s unlikely that a development of this magnitude would be possible in any other US city, because no one organization owns so much downtown property, and that will include satellite campuses for two church schools. As the church’s influence expands in Salt Lake City, the interests of the non-Mormon community often conflict with those of the church, creating what Stephen Goldsmith calls a “we-they” divide.

GOLDSMITH: The community needs to understand that we do have a certain Vaticanization, if you will, of this end of town. The changing demographics of Salt Lake City, just Salt Lake City by itself, really does create a “we-they.” There’s more of a “we-they” in this community than I’ve seen in my lifetime.

SEVERSON: The “we-they” divide became more pronounced a few years ago, when the church purchased property adjacent to Temple Square and converted it into a private park known as the Main Street Plaza. That controversy grew to a full boil earlier this year when two men were found kissing in the plaza and were evicted by church security guards.

GOLDSMITH: When we privatize the public way, which is the single most important thing in the city is that democratic space of streets and sidewalks—when we lose that, we begin to lose some of that democracy. Remember, this is now private property. City Creek Center will basically control time, place, and manner of anything that happens interior to that project. So if a couple who happens to be same-sex is kissing each other after buying a wedding ring, that could be a problem.

SEVERSON: Critics worry that the church’s social policies, such as abstention from alcohol, will dictate the city’s culture. Jason Mathis says Salt Lake is not Las Vegas and doesn’t want to be, but that people here genuinely want to welcome other people.

MATHIS: It’s something that we’re really paying attention to, really trying to break down those barriers. I want people who might come downtown and go to a bar to also feel perfectly comfortable experiencing Temple Square, in the way that Parisians might experience the Cathedral of Notre Dame whether they’re Catholic or not.

SEVERSON: Even though the city has a non-Mormon mayor, and non-members outnumber members, Salt Lake is surrounded by suburbs and towns that are heavily Mormon—people who will come to the new downtown and who rarely oppose what the church proposes, even when it hurts. That includes Janice Heilner.

JANICE HEILNER (Store Owner): When we go to the temple, everyone takes their street clothes off. They have locker rooms and you can change into a white outfit.

SEVERSON: Janice operated a successful store across from Temple Square called Dressed In White until the church moved her to another location to make room for the City Creek project.

HEILNER: I was disappointed, but I could see the greater good in the whole thing. I know we were a casualty of the whole downtown redevelopment, but I realize that downtown needed a face lift. The only reservation is, will I be able to go back? I mean, you know, a new mall is going to cost a lot of money. I might not be able to afford the rent.

SEVERSON: Her reservation is probably realistic. City Creek, after all, is a for-profit, private development which favors national chains and allows it to bypass the affordable housing requirements of public developments. Higher end condos overlooking Temple Square could go for as high as $2 million.

PECK: They’re trying to make it pay for itself, first of all, because the church doesn’t like to put in money that it’s going to lose. You can’t fault them for that. But it’s going to be a high-end mall, and it’s going to be high-end apartments. But there needs to be addressed low-income housing in the city, that’s for sure.

SEVERSON: Stephen Goldsmith, the former director of city planning, is now an associate professor at the University of Utah who teaches a class about the ethics of shaping communities. He says he sees a disconnect between the business side of the church, which is constructing 900,000 square feet of retail space, and the values the church constantly preaches.

GOLDSMITH: Some of those values are frugality, modesty, humility, and it’s interesting to see how a temple to consumerism somehow is aligned with those values. What church do you know of that’s building retail space any place else in the world?

PECK: Within the church, within the scriptures, there’s a strong river of theology that is very anti-materialistic, and so there’s a conflict there. It’s the same conflict that Christians have from the New Testament, and Mormonism has pretty well made its peace with the modern consumer, capitalistic, materialistic society, and Mormons have to deal with that individually.

SEVERSON: There are parts of the development that almost everyone can agree on. City Creek is a green project, with green buildings, recyclable water, and even though the recession has hurt most of the country, the City Creek project has sheltered Salt Lake from the worst of it.

GOUCHNOUR: You know, people say there’s no safe harbor from this recession, but in downtown Salt Lake City there is. We’re on high ground here.

MATHIS: I think, though, the church doesn’t want to lose money on this, but I think that their motives have much more to do with being good community stewards, with creating a community that is going to last for the next hundred years.

SEVERSON: As for those who have concerns—

GOLDSMITH: God grant me the strength to know the things I can change and the things I can’t. I think this is a time for the community to say let’s develop the kind of city that we want. Let them develop the kind of city that they want, and maybe we can shake hands some place along the way.

SEVERSON: The church has said that the money for City Creek will come from investments and not from members’ tithes. Funding for the project was reportedly set aside before construction began.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Salt Lake City.

ABERNETHY: That story was a collaboration between this program and public broadcasting’s Blueprint America project.

Major support for Blueprint America is provided by:

MARY ALICE WILLIAMS, guest anchor: California’s gay marriage law remains in legal limbo. The state’s Supreme Court judges have less than two weeks to either uphold or strike down the gay marriage ban known as Proposition 8. Prop 8 passed last Election Day, in large part because Mormon churches mobilized for it. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints withstood blistering criticism from outside the faith. Now resentments are festering inside the Mormon community. Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Dr. Pam Chan is an OB/GYN and a lifelong Mormon living in San Francisco. She found herself deeply conflicted when she got the message that her church was going all out in support of Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in California.

Dr. PAM CHAN (Member, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): There would be little announcements made here and there, announcements about how we might be able to volunteer our time to, you know, go door-to-door, to hand out flyers, to stand on street corners with signs, and these little announcements, you know, I’d hear and I’d look around and wonder, “Is everyone okay with this? Does anyone besides me see a problem with this?”

Pam Chan

SEVERSON: Ron Packard is a lawyer, a former Mormon bishop and former mayor of Los Altos, California. He is now a councilman who supported Proposition 8 and says it’s extremely rare for the church to get involved in ballot issues.

RON PACKARD (Former Mormon Bishop): I think that they made an exception to their general policy of not getting involved because they have a core concern about the protection of families and the possible disintegration of families in modern society.

SEVERSON: The church’s official position is that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God, and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for his children. Mormons believe they are led by a modern-day prophet who receives revelations from God, and when the prophet speaks members usually follow. But with this issue Dr. Chan discovered that other active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were also strongly opposed to the church’s position on gay marriage.

Dr. CHAN: Our church is the church of Jesus Christ, first and foremost, and my understanding of the Gospel of Christ is that it’s a Gospel of love and acceptance. So it seems like a policy that’s about discrimination, which often goes hand in hand with fear and hatred, not about love and acceptance, and that for me is really troublesome.

SEVERSON: Bob Rees is a retired professor of literature at UCLA, a former Mormon bishop and a church scholar.

BOB REES (Former Mormon Bishop): In reality, this is an issue which has divided our society. It’s divided churches. It’s divided families, and some individuals are divided within themselves.

LISA FAHEY (Member, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): So during the rallies I had some signs that said “Straight and Active Mormon for Marriage Equality” because I wanted to let people know, and I got a lot of attention for that. People came up and shook my hand and hugged me and told me, “Thank you very much.”

SEVERSON: Lisa Fahey and Kim McCall are also active Mormons, also conflicted.

Ms. FAHEY: That’s my whole point for speaking out — letting other people know that you can vote “no” or you can be for gay marriage and still be an active Mormon.

Ron Packard

Mr. PACKARD: The church has a long tradition of encouraging thinking members to not be afraid to speak up — beginning with Brigham Young. He said doesn’t want blind allegiance. He wants people to pray about it, think about it, and come to their own conclusions.

SEVERSON: In the year 2000, a majority of California voters approved a proposition stating that only a marriage between a man and a woman was valid. Eight years later, the California Supreme Court ruled that the ban on gay marriage violated the state’s constitution, and that’s when the drive began to amend the constitution with Proposition 8, and that’s when church leaders sent out a letter to its members calling on them to donate their time and money to an unequivocal moral cause. Although many churches and a majority of Californian’s supported Proposition 8, Mormons were probably the most organized and donated almost half the $19 million generated for the campaign.

Mr. REES: And I think there’s no question that the church’s involvement in this was determinative. Many people were unprepared for the effectiveness of the church in doing what it does. I think the church was probably unprepared for such a strong negative response to its involvement.

SEVERSON: The church may also have been unprepared for the number of members who opposed the church’s proclamation. Members who are still active like Laura Compton, a church organist and mother of two, who operates a Web site called Mormonsformarriage.com. She says the site still gets lots of attention and in the run-up to Proposition 8 was getting thousands of hits a day.

LAURA COMPTON (Mormonsformarriage.com): The comments that we have gotten are a lot of members who say, “Thank you so much for creating this community. I felt so alone.” A lot who said, “Because you have this site, I’m able to continue going to church.” A lot of people who have called us to repentance for what we have been doing, and a lot of outside people who’ve said, “Thank you for showing us that not all Mormons, you know, want to take away our rights to marriage.”

Ms. FAHEY: It’s been really difficult to be a member of the church during this time. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that possibly I should be excommunicated, and that’s really hurt me, because I feel like I’m really a very loving, forgiving person.

Kim McCall and Lisa Fahey

Mr. REES: The most unfortunate thing for me in all of this thing that happened over Proposition 8 was the divisiveness, the acrimony. Each side began in some sense emotionally and spiritually dis-fellowshipping or excommunicating the other side.

SEVERSON: Ron Packard says the most fierce opposition has come from gay rights advocates that have rallied against the church around the nation. He’s says he on a blacklist because he supported Proposition 8.

Mr. PACKARD: There’s some people who’ve lost their jobs because they supported Proposition 8.

SEVERSON (to Mr. Packard): Really?

Mr. PACKARD: Yeah.

KIM MCCALL (Member, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): So one of the dynamics of the church over the last hundred years is to move more and more mainstream. Okay, we looked very sort of un-American. You know, Brigham Young was opposed to the Pledge of Allegiance [Editor's Note: Mr. McCall's statement about Brigham Young is in error. Brigham Young died in 1877. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892], and we looked really outside the mainstream, and there’s been a, you know, more American than thou now we’re the most patriotic people. Okay, we weren’t very monogamous. Now we’re more monogamous than everybody else. You know, we’ve got to be. You know, we’re so worried about polygamy in our history and how odd it makes us look that maybe we need to overreact.

Mr. REES: I think there is little question that a from a public relations point of view the church has suffered over its involvement in Proposition 8, and I know of people who have had second thoughts about joining the church over this issue. I know some of our missionaries have had a difficult time finding open doors and open hearts because of this.

Mr. PACKARD: A majority of the people of the United States don’t want same-sex marriages. So for the majority we may have, instead of getting a hit we get a halo. Whenever any organization gets involved in the political process, there’s going to be some who consider it a hit and others who feel that they’re a hero.

SEVERSON: Ron Packard says the church does not discriminate against gays, that his niece and some of his friends are gay, and that the church does not have a policy of denying the sacrament to homosexual members. But Lisa Fahey says there are still members who don’t understand what it means to be gay.

Laura Compton

Ms. FAHEY: I even had some friends say that they still think that homosexuality is a choice. I don’t think the church leadership feels that way but members — some members feel that way, wrongly of course.

SEVERSON: Bob Rees says as a bishop he counseled gay and lesbian members who felt they were not wanted in the church.

Mr. REES: We have congregations who are not inclusive of the homosexual members of their congregations. We have families in which brothers and sisters don’t speak to one another over these issues, and I as a Christian, I can’t understand that. It breaks my heart.

SEVERSON: Laura Compton says since Proposition 8 the church leadership has become more flexible, making it known that members can still be in good standing even if they oppose the church’s position.

Ms. COMPTON: This has not challenged my faith, no. My faith is independent of the morality or the politics of gay marriage. It’s deeper. My faith is in a Christ who loves everybody and wants everyone to come to him, and a God that loves the world no matter whether they are Mormon or Muslim or Jewish or Catholic, and wants all of us to be there and all of us to treat each other like we’re brothers and sisters and not like we’re them and us.

Mr. REES: The function of faith communities is to make a home a for us, and I think that many of our Latter-day Saint brothers and sisters feel homeless, because we haven’t created a home for them. But I see that changing. I think there is much more understanding.

SEVERSON: As other states take up the issue of gay marriage, Mormon church leaders this time around have not asked members to get involved. Meanwhile, the California Supreme Court is once again considering the constitutionality of the ban on gay marriage. Their decision is expected soon.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in San Francisco.