Renovation offers rare chance to see inside Mormon temple

Spires are familiar, yet mysterious, sight to many drivers

KENSINGTON, Maryland — For anyone who drives around the Capital Beltway, the soaring white spires are a familiar sight — and yet a complete mystery to most.

Maryland children have grown up believing that the fairy-tale building was Disneyland, or heaven itself. Drivers sitting in maddening Interstate 495 traffic have likened the building to the Emerald City so often that pranksters started writing “Surrender Dorothy” on the nearby bridge.

Finally, for the first time since the 1970s, all those curious onlookers will finally have their chance to peek inside.

It’s not heaven or Oz, it’s the temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kensington. The Mormon Church allows only members inside its 156 working temples. So, since this one opened in 1974, only the Washington area’s 40,000 Mormons have had access.

But the church will be renovating the Kensington temple, starting next March. That means, as Bethesda magazine noted this week, that there will be a brief window, when the renovations are complete and before the rededication, when the temple will not yet be dedicated and thus will be open to non-Mormons.

Mark your calendars for 2020. That’s when you’ll get to take your tour.

At the Kensington temple, guests have always been welcomed at the visitors centre adjacent to the temple, and on the grounds, where the church puts on a spectacular Christmas light show.

In a statement, the church said that the temple itself needs updates to its mechanical systems and new furnishings and fixtures.

The temple isn’t used for worship services. Those take place in meeting houses and chapels, which are open to any guest who wants to attend a service on any Sunday.

Instead, Mormon temples host weddings and adoption ceremonies, and offer members quiet places for prayer and reflection.

Each time a new temple is dedicated, the church offers open houses before the consecration.

So, if you just can’t wait until 2020, get yourself to Cedar City, Utah, or Meridian, Idaho, this October and November, or to Frankfurt, Germany, in 2018.

The church currently has a dozen temples under construction, from Rio de Janeiro to Rome to Kinshasa, the capital of Congo.