Jeffrey R. Holland

President Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Jeffrey R. Holland is a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On November 16, the First Presidency announced that Elder Holland had been called to serve as Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and was set apart by Church President Russell M. Nelson on November 15, 2023.

Elder Holland was born on December 3, 1940, and grew up in St. George, Utah. As a boy he enjoyed sports (especially baseball) and played on every kind of team he could. He attended Dixie High School where he was on the state championship football and basketball teams and lettered in football, basketball, track, and baseball. Patricia Terry, who later became his wife, was a cheerleader there. They dated for two years before Elder Holland was called on a mission to England. While on his mission, Elder Holland realized that he wanted to pursue a profession in teaching. His parents were called on a mission to England at the same time he was serving there. His mother noted that he claimed to be the only missionary who ever said farewell to his parents at both ends of his mission.

Elder Holland returned home from his mission and married Patricia in the St. George Temple on June 7, 1963. Elder Holland graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from Brigham Young University in 1965 and was given the opportunity to teach part-time at BYU while he worked on his master’s degree. In 1966 he completed his graduate work in religious education and was hired as an institute teacher by the Church Educational System.

In 1970, Elder Holland was accepted to a doctoral degree program at Yale. He was also called to be in the stake presidency. By this time the Hollands had two children, Matthew and Mary Alice. David Frank followed soon after in 1973.

In 1974 Jeffrey R. Holland was called as dean of Religious Education at BYU. This was followed by an appointment as commissioner of education for the Church, and then in 1980 he was called to be President of Brigham Young University. While president, he directed a number of projects and helped in the building of the BYU Jerusalem Center.

Other accomplishments in the life of Jeffrey R. Holland include serving, “as president of the American Association of Presidents of Independent Colleges and Universities (AAPICU), on the board of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) and as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Presidents Commission.

For his work in improving understanding between Christians and Jews, he was awarded the "Torch of Liberty" award by the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'rith. He has served on the governing boards of a number of civic and business-related corporations.

On April 6, 2023, the First Presidency excused Elder Holland from Church assignments and meetings for at least two months as he recovered from COVID-19 and began dialysis for a kidney condition. On June 6, he announced on his social media pages "I am pleased to begin slowly returning to work."[1]

Sister Holland passed away on July 20, 2023, "after a brief hospitalization." She was 81.[2] As he detailed in his April 2024 general conference talk, he endured a medical crisis within 48 hours after his wife's burial. "I then spent the first four weeks of a six-week stay in and out of intensive care and in and out of consciousness. Virtually all my experience in the hospital during that first period is lost to my memory. What is not lost is my memory of a journey outside the hospital, out to what seemed the edge of eternity. I cannot speak fully of that experience here, but I can say that part of what I received was an admonition to return to my ministry with more urgency, more consecration, more focus on the Savior, more faith in His word."[3]

Apostleship

On April 1, 1989, Jeffrey R. Holland was called to the First Quorum of the Seventy, and on June 23, 1994, he was called to be an apostle.

Elder and Sister Holland lived in Santiago where he served as president of the church's Chile Area from 2002 to 2004. (At the same time, Elder and Sister Oaks were sent to serve in the Philippines.) Elder Holland told the Deseret News that they were called by President Hinckley to serve in Chile "to take an international church to the people." He was given the assignment "to build strength into the church's local leadership, which then might improve membership retention, and to experience the church in an international setting."[4] [5]. In his general conference talk in October 2002, he remarked, "If the buzz of conversation is any indication, this has proven to be of more interest to the Church than one might have supposed. Whatever your speculation, I think I am authorized to assure you that we are not going to these distant outposts as two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. For those looking for a “sign” in all this, please take it as a sign of a wonderful, growing, international Church, with members and missionaries spreading steadily across languages and continents."[6]

In December 2012, Elder Holland organized the Church's 3,000th stake, located in Freetown, Sierra Leone, also the first stake in this nation in western Africa. Elder Holland said the creation of the Freetown Sierra Leone Stake signifies the impressive way in which the gospel of Jesus Christ is spreading worldwide, “particularly to a place where it is so dearly needed, where they have so little, and have had so much of tragedy. It’s a wonderful statement about what the gospel does in a wounded world, why we take the Church to all people, what it means to them to find it, embrace it, and see it change their lives.”[7]

In November 2018, Holland spoke at a major inter-religious conference at Oxford University. During the same trip, he met with Theresa May, then-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in what may have been the first official meeting of a Church apostle and a British prime minister.[8]

Jeffrey R. Holland Explains the Gospel of Jesus Christ at Harvard

Jeffrey Holland addressed students at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, March 19, 2012, during the annual Mormonism 101 series sponsored by the school's Latter-day Saint Student Association.

“What brings me to you today is not a message of reformation but of restoration,” he said, “the restoration of that church Christ established by His hand in the meridian of time and which He has reestablished by His hand in this present time.” (See Apostasy, Reformation, and Restoration.)

Elder Holland explained the centrality of Jesus Christ to Latter-day Saint worship and doctrine. He explained that the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is the full restoration of the primitive Church of Jesus Christ with authority and power derived directly from the Savior and guidance through revelation from Him.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not accept the doctrine of the trinity, since it is nonbiblical and the contrivance of councils (however sincere) held hundreds of years after the ministry of Christ:

“We are not considered ‘Christian’ by some, I suppose because we are not fourth-century Christians, we are not Athanasian Christians, we are not creedal Christians of the brand that arose hundreds of years after Christ,” he said. “No, when we speak of ‘restored Christianity’ we speak of the Church as it was [before] . . . great councils were called to debate and anguish over what it was they really believed.”

Elder Holland took a few minutes to address the amount of attention the Church of Jesus Christ has been receiving during what some call "the Mormon moment" in the U.S., beginning with an obscene satire of the Church, the Book of Mormon Musical and continuing with questionable coverage in the press during the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ.

"I confess I did not believe I would live to see the day that taxi cabs in Times Square would be scurrying about with 'taxi toppers' saying, 'See the Book of Mormon,'" he said. "Of course our quick rejoinder has been, 'Now you have seen the show, read the book.'"

*Click here to read a complete transcript of the talk.

*Click here to listen to the question and answer session that followed his talk.

Temples dedicated by President Holland

St. George Utah Temple (rededicated)

Books by President Holland

Our Day Star Rising: Exploring the New Testament with Jeffrey R. Holland (2022)
Witness for His Names (2019)
To Mothers: Carrying the Torch of Faith and Family with Patricia T. Holland (2016)
To My Friends: Messages of Counsel and Comfort (2014)
For Times of Trouble: Spiritual Solace from the Psalms (2012)
Created for Greater Things (2011)
Broken Things to Mend (2008)
Christ and the New Covenant (2006)
Trusting Jesus (2003)
However Long and Hard the Road (2002)
Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments (2001)
On Earth as It Is in Heaven with Patricia T. Holland (1989)

Quotes from President Holland

"In the gospel of Jesus Christ you have help from both sides of the veil, and you must never forget that. When disappointment and discouragement strike--and they will--you remember and never forget that if our eyes could be opened we would see horses and chariots of fire as far as the eye can see riding at reckless speed to come to our protection. They will always be there, these armies of heaven, in defense of Abraham's seed."

"For Times of Trouble," BYU Speeches, March 18, 1980

"In a world of unrest and fear, political turmoil and moral drift, I testify that Jesus is the Christ--that He is the living Bread and living Water--still, yet, and always the great Shield of safety in our lives, the mighty Stone of Israel, the Anchor of this His living Church. I testify of His prophets, seers, and revelators, who constitute the ongoing foundation of that Church and bear witness that such offices and such oracles are at work now, under the guidance of the Savior of us all, in and for our very needful day."

October 2004 General Conference, "Prophets, Seers, and Revelators"

"Speak hopefully. Speak encouragingly, including about yourself. Try not to complain and moan incessantly. As someone once said, 'Even in the golden age of civilization someone undoubtedly grumbled that everything looked too yellow.' I have often thought that Nephi's being bound with cords and beaten by rods must have been more tolerable to him than listening to Laman and Lemuel's constant murmuring (See 1 Nephi 3:28–31; 18:11–15). Surely he must have said at least once, 'Hit me one more time. I can still hear you.' Yes, life has its problems, and yes, there are negative things to face, but please accept one of Elder Holland's maxims for living—no misfortune is so bad that whining about it won't make it worse."

April 2007 General Conference, "The Tongue of Angels"

"There is a lesson in the Prophet Joseph Smith’s account of the First Vision that virtually everyone in this audience has had occasion to experience, or one day soon will. It is the plain and very sobering truth that before great moments, certainly before great spiritual moments, there can come adversity, opposition, and darkness. Life has some of those moments for us, and occasionally they come just as we are approaching an important decision or a significant step in our life."

"Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence," BYU devotional, March 2, 1999