Middle Initials And “Mormonism”

Home, sweet home. — This is not the hospital in which Elder Holland was being treated. It’s a stand-in. It’s the one in which I was born, and it’s locatedl in southern California. Incidentally, the fact that I was born in a hospital inescapably suggests that there were hominids even before me, since some sort of tool-using organism must have built it prior to my birth. (Public domain photo from Wikimedia Commons)

You should really take a couple of minutes to read Elder Dale G. Renlund’s account of what he — a physician, by the way — explicitly identifies as the miracle of President Jeffrey R. Holland’s recovery from a very serious illness that brought him to the brink of death: “Of President Holland’s health and recovery, Elder Renlund writes, ‘God is in the details’: ‘It was a miracle’: Elder Renlund writes on social media of visiting President Holland in the hospital and witnessing his critical condition and then miraculous recovery”

A still fairly young Winston Churchill — Brother Winston S. Churchill at 42 (Painted by William Orpen in 1916)

I’ve just noticed some sardonic remarks elsewhere about the miracle of Elder Patrick Kearon’s call to the Twelve despite his failure to use a middle initial. Apparently, the use of middle initials is a unique and weird characteristic of Latter-day Saint leaders — to choose just a few examples, in the cases of Heber J. Grant, David O. McKay, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson, Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, and Henry B. Eyring — and, as such, is deserving of scorn.

I mean, the list of prominent Church leaders using middle initials is almost infinite. Think, for example, of such Latter-day Saint luminaries as General Ulysses S. Grant, General Robert E. Lee, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Warren G. Harding, Herbert W. Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, General George A. Patton, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Edward M. Kennedy, William F. Buckley Jr., Gerald R. Ford, George H. W. Bush (two for the price of one!), George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump, John G. Roberts Jr., Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Think, too, of the current all-LDS Joint Chiefs of Staff: General Charles Q. Brown Jr., Admiral Christopher W. Grady, General Randy A. George, General Eric M. Smith, Admiral Lisa M. Franchetti, General David W. Allvin, and General Daniel R. Hokanson. The only outlier is General B. Chance Saltzman, who probably just confused his middle initial with his first name.

Curiously, by contrast — and despite the fact that Latter-day Saint leaders are commonly regarded in some critical circles as simply aping the culture of corporate America — not a single one of the CEOs of Fortune’s Top Ten uses a middle initial.

The Helsinki Finland Temple — The third of the three temples currently located in Scandinavia is this one, just outside of Helsinki, Finland. The other two are in Sweden and in Denmark. A fourth temple has been announced, this one for Norway. (LDS.org)

Religious freedom news from Scandinavia, of all places:

“Denmark’s parliament adopts a law making it illegal to burn the Quran or other religious texts”

“Religious Freedom Upheld in Finland—Again: A prominent Member of Parliament and a Lutheran bishop have been found not guilty of “hate speech” for publicly quoting Scripture and confessing their Christian faith in Finland. But is their trial really over?”

Denmark's first LDS temple — The Copenhagen Denmark Temple, one of three temples in Scandinavia — the others are in Stockholm and in Helsinki, and a fourth has been announced for Oslo, Norway — was created within and (to a substantial degree) beneath a preexisting Latter-day Saint meetinghouse.
(LDS.org) My paternal grandfather was Danish, though never a Latter-day Saint..

At this time as throughout the year, I’m grateful for friends. My wife and I joined with three longtime friends just last night at one of their homes. We shared delicious food, of course. More importantly, though, we shared favorite Christmas carols and stories. We talked of poems and prayers and promises, and things that we believe in. These are people that we have known, now, for the better part of our lives. One is a former bishop of ours. We’ve traveled with them and shared both good times and difficult times with them. Our lives have been the richer for them.

Sweden's first temple — The Stockholm Sweden Temple is actually located outside of the Swedish capital, in a village called Västerhaninge. (LDS.org image)

“Not by Bread Alone: “You Can Take Your Hand Off Africa Now”: A New Short Film about President Kimball, David M. Kennedy, and the Revelation on the Priesthood”

For more information on the “Not by Bread Alone: Stories of the Saints in Africa” series, go to https://notbybreadalonefilm.com/en/
For more information in French, go to https://notbybreadalonefilm.com/fr/
To see all of our posts about The Church in Africa, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/africa/

An artist’s rendering of the planned Oslo Norway Temple, from the Church’s website. (I hope and assume that this will count as fair use.) My father would have been very happy to see a temple being built in his Lutheran mother’s home country.

Here are a couple of items from the “Brigham Young University” section of the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:

“BYU has a new No. 1 ranking: University with the most students studying abroad: BYU has long been a top school for study abroad; No. 1 ranking is a first”

“National math associations agree: BYU’s got some of the best math programs in the country”

But, of course, there is still other material in the Hitchens File that is crying out for your impassioned condemnation. I offer just a pair of examples here:

“Latter-day Saints Around the World: December 7, 2023: Hundreds clean up hurricane debris in Mexico, people with physical disabilities provided with blanket sets in Korea and Latter-day Saints honored for Turkey earthquake relief efforts”

“Where to see Christmas lights at temple visitors’ centers and historic sites in 2023: Christmas lights are scheduled for Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Mesa Arizona Temple, Temple Hill in Oakland, Los Angeles California Temple, Washington D.C. Temple, Mexico City Mexico Temple and the Hamilton New Zealand Temple”