An unabashed activist, the Rev. Tom Goldsmith battled for the climate, immigrants and LGBTQ individuals and against nukes and the LDS Church’s Main Street Plaza.
Nelson’s headstone gets assist from temple renovation
(Michael Stack | Special to The Tribune) This notation appears on the monument that will mark church President Russell M. Nelson s grave in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. May 10, 2021.
It has become a common practice for a husband or wife to erect a headstone for the couple after only one has died waiting to list the death date for the surviving spouse to be engraved later.
Still, mourners strolling through the northwest quadrant of the historic Salt Lake City Cemetery might be startled to see a tall granite shaft emblazoned with the name Russell M. Nelson and the words “Seventeenth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
‘Mormon Land’: Longtime left-leaning Unitarian pastor reflects on his 34-year ministry in a red state LDS Zion
The Rev. Tom Goldsmith, who will deliver his farewell sermon Sunday, recalls his fight over the Main Street Plaza, his church providing sanctuary to a Honduran immigrant, and congregant Tim DeChristopher’s monkey-wrenching of a federal auction.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Rev. Tom Goldsmith shares a laugh Tuesday, May 11, 2021, during his final staff meeting outside on the lawn at the First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City. Goldsmith is retiring after 34 years at the head of the Unitarian Church.
George Pyle: Other nations have always sent us their best
Those who make it to America through all that danger and misery are just what we need.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Vicky Chavez laughs at the cheers of her friends and family, prior to leaving the First Unitarian Church for the first time in three years, April 15, 2021. In January 2018, Chavez sought sanctuary at the church, living in a converted Sunday school classroom for more than three years with her two daughters. Chavez and her two daughters have been granted a stay and are no longer considered a priority for deportation by the United States. Chavez will remain in the United States for at least a year while lawyers continue to plead for permanent residency. At right is a doll of President Joe Biden that Chavez hand-knitted herself.
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Ms. Chávez has been granted a stay of removal for one year, but ICE has yet to withdraw its fines policy. Even as changes in enforcement priorities give new hope that her family and others might leave the confines of sanctuary churches, these retaliatory fines cast a shadow over any prospect that these families have of being truly free.
The hope for change wrought by a new administration
permeates the halls and corridors of sanctuary churches. Jesus made it clear that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, with no boundaries placed on how far to extend this neighborly policy. He also provided a litmus test for pleasing God: giving food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty and (most of our nation has conveniently forgotten) welcoming the stranger.