The Mormon Olympics?

Ever since the June 1995 announcement that Salt Lake City would host the 2002 Olympics, the question is out there: Are these the Mormon Olympics?

To many people, it certainly appears that way. The leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been encouraging their members to welcome the tens of thousands of Olympic visitors expected to throng the Utah capital in two weeks. Church leadership donated the use of land near the famed Temple Square for the Olympics medals plaza, a location that puts the plaza in a direct line with the Salt Lake Temple spires. They also donated the use of land near the Olympic Winter Sports Park. And the church is currently training 5,400 church members who will serve as volunteer hosts when the Olympics get to town.

But if you look below the surface, it becomes clear that far from being a church-sponsored festival, the 2002 Winter Olympics have presented something of a dilemma for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nearly three-quarters of Utah's citizens are Mormon. Yet for well over three years after the announcement that Salt Lake City's bid to host the games was successful, the church stood virtually silent about the games. Why? One reason church leaders did not speak about the games to their members until late 1998 may be the division that existed in the church hierarchy about whether trying to get the Olympics for Salt Lake City had been a good idea.

I learned about this division when I interviewed Church President Gordon B. Hinckley about the role of Mormonism in Salt Lake City back before any hint surfaced that bribery might have been involved in the city's successful bid to get the games. People were just beginning to get excited about the Olympics, so I asked Hinckley whether the church actively supported the effort to make Utah an Olympic site. His answer: "Our people were on both sides of the question."

And what was Hinckley's position? He replied that his position didn't matter. "They are coming and we are honored." When I asked whether he thought the fact of Salt Lake City's emergence as an Olympic site might undercut its symbolic importance as the center of Mormonism, he replied that he was "not at all worried."

"I am optimistic," he said. "The gathering here of people from all nations will be a significant thing." For that extended period of time, "Salt Lake City will be on the world map and Mormonism will be a part of that, inevitably." He continued, "It is going to be a great opportunity for us." Then he added: "We must seize that opportunity." He was not saying that the church ought to seize the Olympics as an opportunity for Mormon missionaries to convert visitors to Mormonism. Instead, Mormons are calibrating their actions and their words--downplaying, in fact, their urge to convert.

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