Church of Latter-day Saints Cranberry Township temple prepares to open
CRANBERRY TWP — Linda Johnson, like many affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is ecstatic for the opportunity to worship at the recently completed temple on Powell Road.
“To have a temple here is a wonderful thing,” said Johnson. “I think it blesses both the members and also everybody who lives in this area because it is a house of the Lord. It’s very much a reciprocal thing where we feel a lot of love and respect from the community, and we love and respect the community. To me, it’s just a natural extension of that, and we’re just thrilled to be a part of this community.”
Johnson has lived in Cranberry Township with her husband for the last 29 years after moving from London, England. She serves as president of the Relief Society for the Pittsburgh North Stake, an educational women’s organization within the church.
She hopes the opening of the temple, which is set to be dedicated Sept. 15, will create an even stronger bond with the church and the Cranberry community.
The media was invited Monday, Aug. 12 to a media day for a tour of the new temple ahead of a public open house later this month.
When the temple is officially dedicated next month, it will be the 196th operating one in the world and only the second in Pennsylvania after the Philadelphia Temple opened in September of 2016.
“I think for us it’s the fact that we have 29,000 members of our church in 80 different congregations in western Pennsylvania that will use this temple,” said James R. Rasband, a General Authority Seventy and an assistant executive director of the Temple Department, of the significance of the new structure.
“For years they have had a much longer trip to make it to a temple,” he said. “The hope is that having it nearby allows it to become part of their regular worship as opposed to more occasional, yearly or once-in-a-lifetime trips.”
Local leaders within the church don’t get a say in where new temples are constructed.
But when Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President and Prophet Russell M. Nelson announced the construction of the 32,240-square-foot building on April 5, 2020, Cranberry Township representatives were elated.
“The prophet and his assistant counselors are the ones who select the location, but when they selected Cranberry, of course, we were overjoyed,” said Chris Hoke, the president of the Pittsburgh North Stake. “We feel this is a beautiful location and the community here in Cranberry is just fantastic. It’s a really religious-focused and faith-based community that is very supportive of the church and other faiths in the area.”
There are 350 temples that have been dedicated, are under construction or were recently announced. All of those have at least five standard rooms that each serve a purpose, including a bride’s room along with instructional, baptismal, sealing and celestial rooms. Each temple is unique to the location where they reside, and the new location is no exception.
The carefully developed stone bridge leading to the entrance pays tribute to Pittsburgh and its hundreds of bridges within city limits.
The inside is even more decorative with wall-to-wall nylon rugs with dogwood patterns and Pennsylvania’s state flower, the mountain laurel, featured in intricate gold trim and stained glass art around the temple.
“As I’ve gone to some of these open houses and other parts of the world, you see that they connect to the area and culture of that area,” said Hoke, who also is a two-time Super Bowl champion as a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers. “This beautiful bridge is an ode to the city. If you look at the flowers and symbols that are in the temple, I think the church does a wonderful job of doing their research and trying to do things that connect to that culture and what’s important to the people of that area.”
The church expects between 50,000 and 60,000 people to visit the temple ahead of its dedication.
The temple is located at 2093 Powell Road in Cranberry Township and will welcome the public for free tours every day from Aug. 16 through 31, excluding Sundays, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. After those dates, it will be open only to members of the denomination.
