Church and Olympics: When Latter-day Saints welcomed the world

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Early Wednesday morning, Utah time, the IOC confirmed in a final vote that Salt Lake City will host the 2034 Olympic Winter Games .

Hours later, the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games kicked off with the first matches of the soccer tournament .

Now’s a good time to ask, do you remember the “Molympics?”

If you said no, it’s because the cringy term never gained popularity. It had been suggested by some who incorrectly predicted The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would turn the 2002 Olympic Winter Games into its own proselytizing showcase.

It was a tightrope, welcoming the world literally to the doorstep of church headquarters in a city founded by Latter-day Saints without being seen as using the opportunity to burnish the church’s image or to evangelize, as The New York Times put it then.

But when the Olympics ended, the consensus was that the church, by stepping back, “looked golden” in the aftermath, a Washington Times reporter wrote.

Two major decisions squelched the concern about a “Mormon Olympics”:

First, President Gordon B. Hinckley announcement in 2000 that the church would not proselytize during the Olympics changed the tone of most media coverage leading up to and through the Olympics, wrote J.B. Haws, author of the Oxford University Press book “ The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Fifty Years of Public Perception .”

Second, the church’s public affairs department decided not to pay millions to NBC, the American broadcaster of the Olympics, for advertising time “to create a positive impression” of the church, The New York Times reported .

“The Church has been careful from the beginning to walk a fine line between being supportive of the Games and Salt Lake Organizing Committee, but not acting in a way that detracted from the efforts of the whole community in Utah, not just Latter-day Saints,” church spokesman Michael Otterson said.

The church remained front and center in many ways. The backdrop for the Medals Plaza where the Olympic champions received their gold medals included the Salt Lake Temple and the Church Office Building, which was covered by a one-ton, 28-story-tall banner of an Olympic figure skater. The Church Museum of History and Art bore a building wrap of an Olympian on a skeleton sled. And each night, the Olympic Rings were projected on the west side of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

On the eve of the Games, President Hinckley raised the Olympic torch as the relay reached Salt Lake.

“The subtle approach, in the end, was a brilliant move by the church,” Post reporter Hank Stuever wrote.

And yet Latter-day Saints were involved in every event as Olympic volunteers and the church was an indispensable Olympic partner, Haws wrote. For example:

• Weeks before the Olympics began, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee did not have enough local families to host the families of Olympic athletes. When SLOC asked for help, the church filled the quota in days.
• When there was a shortage of volunteers for the 24-hour call center, church volunteers made up the difference.
• BYU suspended classes for two weeks so students could work as volunteers at the events, and church leaders sent a letter to congregations encouraging members to volunteer.

Historically, the dropout rate for Olympic volunteers was 15-20%. The attrition rate for Salt Lake volunteers was less than 1%, SLOC COO Fraser Bullock told Haws. And many of those volunteers were returned missionaries who spoke the languages of Olympians from around the world. IOC chairman Jacques Rogge said he was greeted in his native Dutch at least 20 times while he attended events.

Of course, there were volunteers from every Utah faith group. In fact, the churches in the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable combined to provide temporary living space for the city’s transient population during the Olympics. The Latter-day Saints provided food and bedding from Welfare Square, Haws said.

The Church of Jesus Christ provided the land, at no charge, for the Medals Plaza and gave $5 million to build the plaza’s infrastructure.

Haws argued in a compelling paper that the public perception became that the church did not influence the running of the actual Olympics. In fact, Rogge said that the church had been “absolutely invisible to us” while he was there, but that the church was ever in the backdrop.

The First Presidency hosted meetings with Rogge, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, U.S. President George W. Bush and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

With 3.5 billion watching on television, the then-Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Opening Ceremonies as U.S. Olympic team athletes held a tattered American flag from the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Meanwhile, reporters who descended on Salt Lake from around the world flocked to church headquarters in search of stories about the faith. The church set up a temporary News Resource Center in the Nauvoo Room of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on Temple Square and called the program “Friends to all Nations.”

“It was just constant,” Otterson told Haws about the stream of journalists. “It was exhausting, but it was incredibly exhilarating.”

Additional church volunteers with language skills gave dozens of interviews a day. The policy of avoiding proselyting was critical, Haws argued.

“It seems difficult to overstate the impact of that policy,” he wrote. “This move diverted much of the public’s focus from concerns about the Church as an institution , thus opening up column inches and bandwidth for features on Mormons as individuals .”

To read Haws’ excellent piece, visit BYU’s Religious Studies Center website here .

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What I’m reading

My late father passed on a love of Bob Newhart’s comedy to me. Newhart died last week, and I read several tributes. My favorite was this one, which said Newhart’s comedy still stands up .

Here’s a great, personal look at the stunning story of a BYU student who qualified for the Paris Olympics .

Great behind-the-scenes information and insight into Jimmer Fredette’s bid for an Oympic gold medal .

Behind the Scenes

The church did want to focus on Jesus Christ during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games. So it launched “Light of the World: A Celebration of Life,” the first theatrical spectacular held in the Conference Center. It ran for 14 performances from 5 February to 2 March, before a total audience of more than 290,000.