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http://www.hughhewitt.com/a-conversation-with-lds-elder-jeffrey-holland/
HH: So Elder Holland, you’ve got this vast global perspective –
Africa, Asia, before that, who know what else, and it seems to me that
intolerance is on the rise not just in the United States where it’s
actually kind of gentle. But today, an American blogger was hacked to
death in Bangladesh. He was an atheist. He’s also Bangladeshi. And he
was in the Hitchens mold.
JH: Yeah.
HH: A new thinker, in quotes.
JH: I’m with you.
HH: No one should ever be attacked that way, but it seems to me
endemic that people of faith, and people of no faith at all, are all
coming under threats of violence.
JH: Well, it seems like every day, I had not heard that incident, but
these incidents that we read about or hear about almost literally every
day, I think, are genuinely frightening. We do have, the Middle East is
another area that I supervise, so I watch very carefully, and read with
some anxiety what can happen and does happen in those locations. I
visited with some Maronite leaders in Lebanon recently, and they’re
just, they’re just very fearful – fearful for their lives and their
safety, especially in a spot like Lebanon, but also worrying about
Christian flight. They’re very concerned that there won’t be any
Christians left in the Middle East if this kind of atmosphere prevails,
if this kind of threat continues, and whether it’s a physical threat and
the loss of life, or whether it’s just to be uncomfortable to be a
Christian. That’s a legitimate concern in lots of places in the world.
HH: And I’m sure the prayers of religious believers of all sorts
across the globe are with the 300 plus Assyrian Christians who have been
kidnapped by Islamic State.
JH: Yeah, I was just thinking of that example.
HH: Yeah, and so I just was reminded when you were president of BYU, you opened the LDS Center in Jerusalem, correct?
JH: I did. I did.
HH: How does that fare? And tell people about Israel’s approach to religious freedom.
JH: Well, we were only able to, we had, let me start back. With, in
the aftermath of the Six Day War in the 60s, we took our first students
into Jerusalem, a Christian campus, Latter Day Saint people obviously
very interested in the Holy Land. So we took our first students in, in
’67 and ’68 and ’69, and then all those years watched for a place to
house them. We had lived in hotels, we’d taken them to whatever
accommodation we could find, and finally got a piece of property on
Mount Scopus, of all places. That’s a miracle in its own right.
HH: Wow, yes.
JH: But we got that property and built the center, and it’s been
prosperous ever since. We’re 25 years now in that wonderful building.
Our architect was cited for and received the Israel prize partly for the
work on our center. It is an absolutely gorgeous architectural piece.
Teddy Kollek said to me personally that he thought it…
HH: The mayor of Jerusalem.
JH: …the mayor of Jerusalem who helped us in a courageous way to get
that building built in the name of tolerance and religious freedom. But
when I took him through it at the conclusion of the construction, he
said this may well be the most beautiful building built in Jerusalem in
the last one hundred years. That’s a bold statement. Anyway, we’re
there, and it does do well, but we have challenges, and we have to have
our young people, have our students mindful that there are places they
don’t go on a certain day. There are things they won’t do on a certain
day. And we have a very good relationship with the Israeli Security
Forces and the local police. And they will every morning give us a
briefing and say do not go to the old city, or of course, we will never
go to, for example, most parts of Bethlehem. There’ll be places in
Hebron we wouldn’t go. We just, safety and protection for our students
is our first concern. But once they’re there, and if they can be safe,
we want them to have a great experience in the Holy Land. And so far,
it’s working, 25 years of success.
HH: That is amazing. Now I want to contrast that with other parts of the world where no missionaries of any faith can go.
JH: Right.
HH: And I think more doors are closing than are opening across the globe. Do you agree with that?
JH: Yes, and I have two elements of those. Much of that’s in Asia, if
you broadly define Asia, and certainly Communist China, and the Middle
East. Many of the Islamic nations, we don’t have any missionaries. And
if we have any presence at all, it’ll be an ex-pat or somebody at the
embassy, or somebody on a corporate assignment. We try to serve them. We
try to provide a congregational experience for them, small as that
congregation might be, but no attempt to do missionary work, and
probably many of those doors closing.
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