Mormons Open Doors to Discuss Religion

Ever since the first Mormon temple was built more than 150 years ago, they have been the subject of...

Ever since the first Mormon temple was built more than 150 years ago, they have been the subject of speculation and suspicion. The temples are imposing structures where private and sacred rituals are performed, and where outsiders are almost never welcomed.

(ABCNEWS.com)
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Inside Mormon Temple: No Cameras Allowed

The next morning, journalists were packed into a church van and driven south to the town of Draper, where this new temple was recently completed. It's the 129th in the world.

In the weeks before a temple is dedicated, outsiders are encouraged to visit and it's a huge open house.

Once that's over, the only people who can enter are church members who have a bar-coded "recommend" card, which means their local church bishop believes they are living clean, chaste lives.

ABC cameras were not allowed inside.

"The temple is just a great, wonderful place," said Cook. "You're coming out of the world and you're coming into this great peaceful temple."

The highest point in the temple is called the Celestial Room, designed to symbolize the peace and tranquility of heaven.

"When we come to the temple," said Ballard, "we take off our street clothes and dress in white. I would have on a white shirt, white tie, white trousers, white socks and white slippers. ... And everybody then is on a wonderful, equal basis."

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"And you're realizing that the workaday world isn't nearly as important as your family," Cook continued.

Family is at the center of the temple rituals. There is a sealing room, where couples are married for eternity and bound together along with their children. In the Mormon religion, the family is the route to eternal salvation.

In another room, the Latter Day Saints perform one of their most controversial rites: "baptisms for the dead."

Members stand in the heated, chlorinated pool and are baptized in the name of their dead ancestors. Those ancestors can be given the option of converting to Mormonism in the afterlife.

"And the people who are deceased, that isn't binding on them," said Cook. "We, in a loving manner, make that available to them and they choose whether or not they want to have it."

But they don't just do this for ancestors of Mormons. Church members have scoured the world, creating a database of hundreds of millions of names, names that are systematically submitted for baptism. This includes, most controversially, Holocaust victims.