ST. GEORGE, Utah — Jeffrey R. Holland, acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-highest presiding body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said on Saturday the rituals performed in the movement’s global network of temples will keep younger members engaged with the nearly 200-year-old faith.
Mr. Holland, 83, a native of this southwestern Utah city, led the rededication ceremonies on Sunday for the St. George Temple, a little more than four years after it was closed for renovations and expansion. Nearly 670,000 visitors toured the facility during an open house this autumn, church officials said.
The 17 million-member church has been buffeted this year by reports of a sexual abuse scandal and a high-profile lawsuit over member contributions called tithing.
Some younger Mormons — the popular name for church members — have left in recent years over doctrinal issues or due to dissatisfaction with the church’s stance on same-sex marriage and relationships, both of which are forbidden.
Asked if he had concerns about retaining younger members, Mr. Holland replied, “We all worry about that.”
He said the church has “always been in a culture, and our culture right now is not as inclined toward religiosity and at least institutional religion, as in some earlier years. That’s an issue we face as we go out into the highways and byways of life.”
Mr. Holland, a St. George native baptized at the temple at the age of 8, said the challenge of retaining young members presents an opportunity.
“We do believe that our message is so attractive and so enticing and offers so much that for that same young generation, who are seeking or searching for something, and they call it often call it spirituality, if not religiosity,” he said. “We have an answer to somebody’s questing for spirituality. And we can build the institutional promises around the covenants and the ordinances that go with it, but our initial message can be exactly what those young people are looking for.”
Church officials point out more than 72,000 missionaries are serving around the world, which will lead to the opening of 36 new missions in 2024. The church reported enrollment in religious education for college-age members has increased by 57,000 over the past two years.
Temples such as the St. George structure are closed to the public after dedication. Only church members with a pass called a “recommend” are allowed inside to participate in various rituals sacred to the church, founded in 1830. Among these are marriage “sealings” and proxy baptisms for deceased relatives who never had the opportunity to hear the LDS Church’s message but can in the afterlife.
Mr. Holland’s attachment to this temple began when he was a boy, living, he said, “half a mile” from its grounds. His baptism there as a member occurred because at the time it was the only church facility in town with a baptismal font. Today, new members are usually baptized in a local meetinghouse.
“I grew up assuming everybody had a temple,” he said. “As children, I suppose we took it for granted. … I didn’t realize how rare it was until I became a little older.”
Mr. Holland performed rituals there and was sealed to his wife, Patricia Terry, in 1963. She died in July, about a month after the couple’s 60th wedding anniversary, a loss he called “devastating.”
He said the nature of marriages performed in the temple is different: “When we perform a marriage ceremony, there is no ‘till death do you part’ language, that concept is not part of our theology.”
Mr. Holland said, “It wouldn’t be possible for me to talk about heaven or the talk about eternity. If Patricia Terry were not there with me, that wouldn’t be heaven, whatever it would be.”
While church President Russell M. Nelson, 99, told Mr. Holland earlier this year that the apostle would rededicate the temple, the longtime LDS leader nearly didn’t make it.
Last spring, both Mr. Holland and his wife came down with a COVID-19 infection and missed the semi-annual churchwide General Conference meetings. In August, two weeks after his wife’s death, he was hospitalized for “ongoing health complications,” according to a church statement. Five weeks later, the church said he was recuperating at home.
“I’m grateful for the privilege of being alive, that I was so near to death for so many weeks, and then to be healed,” he said. “I don’t claim any role in it. I was kind of a third-party observer in this healing and renewal process. But I’m the beneficiary of that. And I’m eternally grateful. I have another chance.”
Mr. Nelson had previously indicated Mr. Holland’s service as a church leader was far from over. In his latest appointment, he is second in the line of succession to the church presidency.
“I remember once, he said to me in a conversation, ‘And when you sit in this chair, dot dot dot,’ and I said, ‘Excuse me, president, but I’m not sitting in that chair, and I won’t be, and he leaned across the desk and said, ‘You will be sitting in this chair,’” Mr. Holland said.
“I didn’t cross him on those kinds of matters ever again,” he said.
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