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Elder Holland: What They Heard is Not What He Said
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“If we are an extension of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Elder Holland said, “taking a significant amount of sacred tithes and other precious human resources, all of which might well be expended in other worthy causes, surely our integrity demands that our lives be absolutely consistent with and characteristic of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ . . . in harmony with the Lord’s anointed, those whom He has designated to declare Church doctrine and to guide Brigham Young University as its trustees.”
However, he also urged BYU employees to teach, to advocate, and, sometimes, to defend those doctrines and standards. He cited a 2004 campus speech in which the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell had said that, in a way, Latter-day Saint scholars at BYU “are a little bit like the builders of the temple in Nauvoo, who worked with a trowel in one hand and a musket in the other. Today scholars building the temple of learning must also pause on occasion to defend the kingdom. I personally think this is one of the reasons the Lord established and maintains this university. The dual role of builder and defender is unique and ongoing. I am grateful we have scholars today who can handle, as it were, both trowels and muskets.”
Like other faithful Latter-day Saints, Elder Maxwell recognized the accuracy of Susan Evans McCloud’s hymn lyrics, that
“The truths and values we embrace
Are mocked on every hand.”
He also understood the need to defend them.I was in the audience for those 2004 remarks, in which Elder Maxwell expressed his appreciation for scholars at BYU who defended the claims, scriptures, and teachings of the Restoration against attack. (As far as I recall, he didn’t refer in any way to homosexuality or homosexuals.) The illustration that he used clearly drew upon an account given in Nehemiah 4 (especially verses 16-18). In it, the Jews who have returned from the Babylonian captivity to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple are obliged, because of threats and attacks from their neighbors, to work with one hand while holding a sword in the other—a defensive measure, not an aggressive one, that plainly has nothing to do with homosexuality.
Elder Maxwell’s modified biblical metaphor was adopted by then-Elder Dallin Oaks in 2017, when he exhorted members of the BYU faculty to increase their defense of the Church and its teachings: “I would like,” he said, “to hear a little more musket fire from this temple of learning.”
Referring to Elder Oaks’s appropriation of the imagery, Elder Holland importantly observed that “He said this in a way that could have applied to a host of topics in various departments”—just as, in fact, Elder Maxwell had applied the musket metaphor more generally.
“But,” Elder Holland continued, “the one he specifically mentioned was the doctrine of the family and defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman.”
This is easily understandable: Issues of gender, sexuality, and the nature of families loom very large today in our culture, law, and politics, and societal trends related to them clearly and increasingly clash with the standards and teachings of the Church. Accordingly, Elder Holland’s own speech alluded fairly prominently to such matters—in, by my quick estimate, four of forty-four paragraphs of the published text:
“I have focused on this same-sex topic this morning more than I would have liked,” he said, adding that “I pray you will see it as emblematic of a lot of issues our students and community face in this complex, contemporary world of ours.”
In other words, the speech was not, as many have claimed, primarily devoted to issues of same-sex attraction. He simply chose gender issues to represent the other areas in which the teachings of the Church come under attack, areas in which some members of the BYU faculty might be well situated to help. And, I add, the speech was neither hateful nor angry; as anyone can learn by simply watching it online:
“My Brethren,” said Elder Holland, “have made the case for the metaphor of musket fire which I have endorsed yet again today. There will continue to be those who oppose our teachings and with that will continue the need to define, document, and defend the faith. But we do all look forward to the day when we can “beat our swords into plowshares, and [our] spears into pruning hooks,” and at least on this subject, “learn war [no] more.””
Specifically referring to those who experience same-sex attraction, Elder Holland said,
“Let me go no farther before declaring unequivocally my love and that of my Brethren for those who live with this same-sex challenge and so much complexity that goes with it. Too often the world has been unkind, in many instances crushingly cruel, to these our brothers and sisters.”
But, he also said, “we have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy, or that orthodoxy and loyalty to principle not be interpreted as unkindness or disloyalty to people. As near as I can tell, Christ never once withheld His love from anyone, but He also never once said to anyone, “Because I love you, you are exempt from keeping my commandments.” We are tasked with trying to strike that same sensitive, demanding balance in our lives.”
Plainly, just as with Elder Maxwell’s 2004 use of the musketry image and Elder Oaks’s 2017 reappropriation of it, the reference is not to military combat, let alone to hateful prejudice or violent bigotry, but to intellectual contestation and reasoned argument—which are, after all, at or near the very core of scholarship and higher education. And what they said was completely consistent with the exhortation of 1 Peter 3:15: “Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear”—or, in the more contemporary language of the English Standard Version, “with gentleness and respect.”
