One of the many items pressed into the hands of pedestrians during the Winter Olympics was a care package containing Kleenex, Chapstick, Band-Aids and a roll of Lifesavers.
The folks handing out the baggies were volunteers with More than Gold, a Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated street evangelism team that’s been at the Olympic Games since 1980.
“We’re trying to meet people’s needs so we can tell them about their real need, which is Jesus,” said Debbie Wohler of Tahoe City, Calif., who passed out the packages in a Frosty the Snowman costume.
Of course, the biggest religious presence in Salt Lake City is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon church. The church’s gothic white temple downtown serves as the center of the city’s street grid and the spiritual capital of Utah, which is nearly 70 percent Mormon.
Ironically, the Mormon church took a low Olympic profile so it didn’t appear to be trying to upstage an event that’s about athletics and international goodwill, not religion.
For the Games’ 17 days, which ended Feb. 24, Mormon missionaries were absent from the streets of Salt Lake and Olympic venues. Wary of jokes about these being “the Molympics,” the church let other groups do the proselytizing.
That isn’t to say the church went underground. It set up a center for visiting journalists, extended the hours of its vast genealogical library and staged a multimedia extravaganza recounting its history that sold out a 21,000-seat auditorium.
“Religion is not really what the Olympics are all about,” said Shannon Sudweek, a Mormon visiting Temple Square during the Games with her family from Pocatello, Idaho. “Religion is an aspect of Salt Lake, which makes it interesting to people. But I admire our leaders who haven’t used this as a missionary effort.”
The church’s low profile dates to the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) bid effort. Church-owned businesses donated just $210,938 throughout 11 years. Once the Games were awarded, the church says it stepped in only when asked, including loaning 80 acres for park-and-ride facilities at Park City, a skiing venue.
At the request of SLOC president Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, the church donated a prime block of downtown real estate for the Olympic medal plaza and contributed $5 million to develop it. SLOC later banned the use of alcohol on the site, which critics charged was dampening the Games’ party flavor.
Since the start of the Olympics Feb. 8, the focus of the media and the public was on the athletes and the politics of figure skating, not the Mormon church. That, church officials say, was how it should be.
Other religious groups filled the void, however.
Every day, practitioners of Falun Gong, which borrows elements of Buddhism and Taoism, meditated on downtown streets and passed out pamphlets protesting the Chinese government’s crackdown on them.
The Salvation Army, an evangelical Christian denomination, set up at 14 Olympic venue locations, providing food and drink at four mobile canteens and 10 tents staffed by 300-plus volunteers.
And outside Temple Square, Christian groups that oppose Mormonism handed out their own “Temple Square Visitors Guides” and held placards with phrases such as “Ask about the Mormon Cult.” Such displays are commonplace outside the temple gates, Olympics or no Olympics.
The official church line is that everyone has the right to their own beliefs.
“We truly believe every man and woman has the divine right to worship God according to their own personal convictions,” said church elder Richard Scott. “When people differ from what we hold dear, that’s their right.”
Most religious groups here are not tearing down Mormons. The Baptist effort, for example, included a coffeeshop in downtown Salt Lake with free Internet access, live music and big-screen televisions showing events.
Other efforts seek to build strong interfaith ties in Salt Lake long after the Olympics.
(RNS)
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