The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will use
the 2002 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Salt Lake
City, to clear up misunderstandings about the church.
The Mormon church in
Temple Square, Salt Lake City will provide the backdrop
for the nightly medals ceremony during the Summer Olympics
telecast on NBC. |
"The church's highly organized public affairs department
is already working to ensure that the world gets a positive,
and accurate, view of Latter-day Saints," according to Stephen
Scott, a religion reporter for Knight-Ridder newspapers in
St. Paul, Minn.
The church has mailed glossy Utah calendars to reporters
covering religion and sports, and its media website has downloadable
video clips and sound bytes for broadcasters' use.
Although it is not an Olympic sponsor, the church has donated
a key parcel of downtown land across from the Delta Center
for the medals plaza. This will put its Temple Square headquarters
in a picturesque backdrop for the nightly medals ceremony
that will be televised by NBC.
The church also will run a media center on Temple Square
for journalists. Gary Sheppard, who has written several books
on Latter-day Saints, said the Olympics will be a "huge PR
opportunity for them."
"Having an event like this taking place within the homeland
of the Mormon Church and that being such a prevalent backdrop
for the Olympics will confer a certain amount of mainstream
legitimacy," said Sheppard, associate professor of sociology
at Oakland University in Michigan.
The church, which now counts 11 million members, more than
half of them outside of the U.S., has always attracted suspicion
and accusations, said Scott.
Questions persist about polygamy, which was renounced by
the church in 1890, and many Christian groups, including the
Southern Baptists, and other evangelicals, do not consider
the Mormons to be Christian and have launched campaigns to
convert them.
"We feel the Olympics will offer a good chance to clear up
some of those misunderstandings," Lynne Cropper, the church's
Minnesota public affairs director, told Scott.
The church's desire for acceptance has been anything but
passive. In a highly publicized event in 1997, thousands of
Mormons in covered wagons recreated the 1,030-mile, 19th-century
migration from Illinois--where Brigham Young and 70,000 followers
had been persecuted--to Utah.
Edelman PR Worldwide, Chicago, handled publicity for the
event.
This August, in Sea Trek 2001, hundreds of Mormons will sail
in tall ships from Copenhagen to New York in a reenactment
of another 19th-century migration--from Europe to America.
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