For his 101st, recalling a minor incident with Pres. Nelson

President Russell M. Nelson entered his 102nd year of mortality today.  Remarkable.  Here are a few links that seem appropriate to the occasion:

• “Church Releases Photo of President Nelson on the Eve of His 101st Birthday”
• “President Nelson’s Op-Ed in Time Magazine Hits the Right Note”
• “As President Nelson turns 101, here’s a look at how he’s brought temples ‘closer’ to Latter-day Saints: ‘Construction of these temples may not change your life, but your time in the temple surely will,’ the church president has taught”
• “Happy 101st Birthday President Nelson: His Prophetic Promises”

I thought that I myself might take the opportunity to share an experience that I once had with President Nelson.  I may have shared it before, but perhaps not.  It isn’t inspiring; it’s just a tiny bit funny.  At least now, in retrospect.  First, though, I’ll offer a little background:

When my wife and I were living in Egypt, Pope Shenouda III (1923-2012) was serving as the head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, the 117th Pope of Alexandria and the Patriarch of the See of St. Mark.  Among other things, he was active in ecumenical meetings with Catholic and Orthodox leaders.  But he was evidently not so enthusiastic about Christian churches that were outside of what he viewed as the apostolic or episcopal succession.  Or, at least, that’s what I gathered from a story told to me by our Cairo friend and neighbor Rev. David L. Johnson, who was at the time the (Lutheran) pastor of the nondenominational expatriate Ma‘adi Community Church, south of Cairo.

As a leader in Cairo’s small Protestant expatriate community, David had once made an attempt to meet with Pope Shenouda.  He was kept waiting for a very long time in an outer reception area, and then was treated, as he saw it, rather disrespectfully when he was finally admitted into the papal presence.  As he told me soon afterwards, he had the distinct impression that, while Pope Shenouda recognized Catholic and Orthodox clergy as validly ordained fellow priests, he regarded Protestant clergy as mere schismatic laymen.

I recall a time many years ago, after I had joined the faculty at Brigham Young University, visiting the Jesuit Saint Joseph University of Beirut.  One night, Father Samir Khalil Samir S.J., a prominent scholar of medieval Arabic Christian literature and a contributor to BYU’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, came to visit me in my lodgings there at Saint Joseph.  We talked at some length about the state of Christianity in the Middle East, and the conversation turned to Pope Shenouda, of whom Father Samir was, to put it mildly, not a fan.  Shenouda, he said, had gone out of his way to block various Protestant groups, and even the Assyrian Church of the East, from joining the Middle East Council of Churches and was a major obstacle to Christian unity in the region at a time when Christian unity was urgently necessary in the face of rising Islamist fundamentalism.

Father Samir was sitting on the corner of my bed.  Apropos of Shenouda, he reminded me that the medieval monks had a way of dealing with what he called “troublesome popes”:  “A little poison in a cup,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “et voilà.  A new election!”

That was an absurdly long introduction to a very slight anecdote regarding President Nelson:

For two or three years, I met twice annually with what was called the Middle East Advisory Committee of the Church.  I was never formally appointed to it, so far as I’m aware, and was certainly never formally released from it.  I simply stopped being invited, and I’m not sure that it still meets.  (If it does, it may consist entirely of General Authorities now.)  Conference time is a busy time, but it was the time when the General Authority area president who oversaw the Middle East, a member of the Seventy, was back in town.  For a while, the committee was chaired by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Twelve.  I think that Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf met with us at least once.  Mostly, the chairman was then-Elder Russell M. Nelson.  He was chairing the meeting when this incident occurred.

One day, our conversation focused for a few minutes on the difficult time that the Church has had in gaining full legal recognition in Egypt.  We’ve been working on such recognition for decades now, and, although we’ve made friends and some progress, we’re still (as I understand it) not fully there, not where we ideally want to be.

Pope Shenouda came up.  (Maybe I brought him up.  I don’t remember.)  Owing to a particular encounter with an overzealous and very undiplomatic past member of the Cairo Branch, an American who was living in Egypt in his private capacity as a businessman but who also saw himself as advancing the cause of the Church there, Shenouda had taken particular notice of the Latter-day Saints in Egypt and had developed a particular hostility to us.  And, given the religious tensions in Egypt, the Egyptian president was simply never, ever, going to grant legal recognition to the Church over the strenuous objections of the country’s leading Christian figure, who was an informal member of the president’s consultative council.

I commented on the matter, telling something of the story, but then sagely remarked that Pope Shenouda was about eighty years old and, given his age, certainly wouldn’t last much longer.  After which time and with a new leader, I said, perhaps our chances might improve.  Having made my valuable contribution, I sat back with satisfaction until I realized that Elder Nelson, too, was eighty years old.  Open mouth, insert foot.

No umbrage was taken.  Nothing was said.  And he has been friendly since then.  (Not that we’re close associates or social buddies.  I don’t want to exaggerate matters.)  But I had embarrassed myself.  Of course, it wasn’t for the first time and, sadly, it hasn’t been the last.

Posted from Gleneden Beach, Oregon