Mormons are breathing easier after reading Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, which many worried would cast them as the same kind of one-dimensional villains as Catholics were in his past volumes.
Worse, they thought, he would expose and possibly caricature their closed-door temple rituals.
But, it turns out, Brown mentions The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints only twice in his 509-page book. The first reference uses LDS history as an example of religious teachings that don't hold up to "scientific scrutiny." Then, late in the book, he adds the Mormon practice of baptism for the dead (which he calls "baptism of the dead") to a list of practices that could seem weird if taken out of context.
However, one of Brown's major themes -- that humans have the potential to be gods -- echoes Mormon teachings.
"That should resonate with Latter-day Saints," says Mark Koltko-Rivera, of New York City, a Mormon high priest and Master Mason. "I know this is our doctrine that causes the most trouble with other Christian churches. But it is a central belief that we should be more open about and celebrate."
It would have made fictional sense for Brown, who reportedly visited several Utah LDS and Masonic sites in 2006, to create a Mormon character as his anti-Masonic foil. After all, antagonism between the two groups goes back a long way and often was contentious, even violent.
In the 1840s, many LDS leaders, including church founder Joseph Smith and apostles Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, became Masons and organized a Nauvoo Lodge under the auspices of the Grand Lodge of Illinois. It wasn't long before nearly every male Mormon in the area had joined.
At the same time, Smith introduced LDS temple rituals that included secret handshakes, signs and symbols like the all-seeing eye, the compass and square (tools of the mason's trade) along with the sun, moon and stars that paralleled Masonry.
Soon, other Masons felt that the Mormons were dominating the fraternity. The Nauvoo Lodge was suspended in 1842. Many Mormons believed that Masons contributed to the murder of their prophet June 27, 1844. Smith reportedly began to utter the Masonic distress call, "O Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow's son?" as he fell to his death from a second-story window after being shot by a mob.
In 1859, a Masonic lodge was established by Johnston's Army at Utah's Camp Floyd, but it didn't accept Mormon candidates. At the same time, Young forbade Mormons from joining and refused to allow any Mason to hold priesthood leadership positions in the church.
It wasn't until 1984 that LDS President Spencer W. Kimball removed the prohibition against Latter-day Saints becoming Freemasons. Later that year, the Grand Lodge of Utah discontinued its own ban on Mormon membership so that, in the ensuing years, many LDS men have returned to this part of their heritage. Some people suggest that Smith copied Masonic rituals for his LDS temple, but Koltko-Rivera thinks that's too simplistic. Instead, he says, it was just the trigger for Smith's divine inquiries.
"Masonry prepared Smith for a vision of the Latter-day Saint endowment," Koltko-Rivera says. "The two ceremonies are complementary. Both are fascinating but in very, very different ways."
The LDS endowment is about exaltation in the hereafter, he says. "The Masonic ritual is about being a good, good person here."
On the same day -- Feb. 2, 2008 -- as the body of LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley was laid to rest, Glen Cook became the first Mormon to serve as the state's Masonic Grand Master. Hinckley's funeral cortege drove down Salt Lake City's South Temple, a street that boasts both Masonic and Mormon temples.
Cook feels equally at home in both.
"The LDS endowment is a creation drama involving Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and after the expulsion, consisting of covenants between God and man, to include women," Cook said in a speech last month at the Pennsylvania Academy of Masonic Knowledge. "The Masonic ceremony is placed in Solomon's Temple and the participant's obligations, while taken before his God, are obligations regarding his behavior to his fellow man, particularly other Masons. ... We [Masons] meet together with men regardless of professed creed, regardless of the nature of the great architect in whose name a man takes his obligations, caring only about the manner in which he performs those obligations."
