The Latter-day Saints buried their prophet on Saturday. Thousands attended the service in person and millions more faithful watched in chapels around the globe, as well as on the internet. What they saw was an unusually personal ceremony for a very public man who led and to large degree defined the contemporary Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Notwithstanding the numbers and titles of participants, Gordon Hinckley’s funeral was a family affair both in word and sacrament. It was an extraordinary display of what makes Mormonism tick.

Gordon Bitner Hinckley died at the age of 97, having been in the church’s leading councils since 1958 and served as its fifteenth president since 1995. He shaped the church through a half century of growth in 160 countries. A third of its present membership joined during his tenure as president. His counsel to them was more practical than sublime: be better neighbors, stand a little taller, and choose the right. He was much loved for living these virtues. Displaying remarkable vigor late in life, he traveled to meet church members on every continent, responding to their needs with curricular, welfare, and building programs whose costs are impossible to imagine and no one will admit.

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Obviously, as shown by yet another case of a death sentence for speech considered an insult to the Prophet Muhammad, some Muslims hold beliefs that preclude certain kinds of speech. And, yes, the death penalty has a distinctly chilling effect on free speech.

It cannot be said, however, that all Muslims do or that Islam in general does preclude such freedom. Neither can it be said that only Islam has this problem with some of its proponents. A similar variety of response to heresy and insult has historically characterized Christianity. Even today, many Christian communities censure, shun, shame, disfellowship, and excommunicate those deemed a threat to the faithful. Thankfully, burning people at the stake has fallen out of fashion.

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