His father, Frank D. Holland, was a convert to the LDS Church while his mother, Alice, came from a long line of Latter-day Saints.

degree in 1966 with a thesis on selected changes to the text of the Book of Mormon,[10][11] while also teaching religion classes part-time.

[12] At Yale, Holland studied with American literary scholar and critic R. W. B. Lewis and authored a dissertation on the religious sense of Mark Twain.

While studying at Yale, Holland served as a counselor in the presidency of the LDS Church's Hartford Connecticut Stake.

He also served as director of the Melchizedek Priesthood MIA and as chair of the Young Adult Committee for the LDS Church.

As the church's commissioner of education at the time Oaks was released, Holland was supposed to compile a list of candidates to be the next BYU president.

[17]: 42  In order to supplement the school's funds, Holland launched a fundraiser called "Excellence in the Eighties" which sought to raise $100 million from 1982 to 1987.

[17]: 115  Regarding violations of the Honor Code, if a student requested their names be removed from the church records, Holland instituted a policy in which they would have to receive special permission from the board of trustees in order to remain enrolled in school.

[17]: 122–23 During Holland's presidency, the weekly independent student newspaper, The 7th East Press was shut down due to writing about controversial topics.

[23] Holland had the re-establishment of religious instruction as the "hub" of BYU's academics as one of his significant administrative goals.

While he did not initiate any significant changes along these lines, his public communications regularly emphasized the importance of religious education.

[24] Holland was called as a general authority and member of the First Quorum of the Seventy on April 1, 1989, bringing an end to his term as BYU's president.

Prior to his call as a general authority, Holland served as bishop of a single adult ward in Seattle, as a counselor in the presidency of the Hartford Connecticut Stake,[5] and as a regional representative.

[15] From 1990 to 1993, Holland and his wife lived in Solihull, England, where he served as president of the church's Europe North Area.

[29][30] In church general conferences in the fall of 2007 and spring of 2008, Holland gave sermons that directly answered accusations that Latter-day Saints are not Christians.

[35] On June 10, 2015, he addressed the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Foreign Affairs in the House of Lords at the UK Parliament.

[41] In 2020, as chairman of the executive committee of the BYU-Hawaii board of trustees, he announced the appointment of John S. K. Kauwe III as the institution's new president.

[42][43] In August 2021, Holland spoke at BYU's annual conference for faculty and staff and the speech sparked controversy within the LGBTQ+ community.

[44] In the address,[45] Holland asked the faculty to defend the doctrine of the LDS Church, BYU's institutional sponsor, with the use of metaphorical "musket fire.

[50] Their oldest son, Matthew S. Holland, served as president of Utah Valley University from 2009 to 2018[51] and has been a general authority since April 2020.

[52] Their youngest son, David F. Holland, is the John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History and Interim Dean of Harvard Divinity School.