New leaders for the LDS Church

The identity of at least one of the new leaders of the LDS Church is a signal that Mormonism is no longer the tradition that it used to be.

Despite the candidacy of a prominent member of the church for the Republican nomination for U.S. president, there were virtually no political overtones in Monday’s news conference in which officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that the new president of the church is Thomas S. Monson.
Bruce Olsen, the head of the church’s Public Affairs Department, conducted the news conference which was held in the lobby of the Church Office Building on the central campus of the church in Salt Lake City. He opened with a reminder that the church takes no position in political contests. He also warned members of the press that questions touching on politics would be ruled out of order.


The disclosure of the name of the new church president was not news to anyone in the room or anyone in the church. Monson’s succession to the role as the LDS president and prophet was foreordained by virtue of his call to become an apostle and member of the church’s Council of the Twelve back in 1963 when he was only 36 years old. This made him the apostle with the longest service in the Council which determines who will succeed to the office following the death of a church president/prophet.
The real revelation issuing from the news conference was the identity of the new church president’s Second Counselor. He is Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a native German who had only been a member of the Council of the Twelve for a little over three years.
Every church president selects two counselors and they, along with the President, make up the “First Presidency,” the highest authoritative body—the Saints call it a quorum–in the church. Members of the LDS Church understand “callings” to the First Presidency not as appointments made for practical reasons, but as inspired prayerful choices. Typically, however, the apostles selected as Counselors in the First Presidency are apostles of long standing, church authorities whose decades of experience permit them to participate in a course of decision-making that allows the church to move forward on a steady course in keeping with historical precedent.
In this instance, President Monson chose Henry B. Eyring as his First Counselor. Eyring is reasonably new to the Council of the Twelve, having only been elevated to that position in 1995. But his selection was not surprising since he had been a member of the First Presidency during the final years of President Gordon B. Hinckley’s administration.
Monson’s selection of Uchtdorf as his Second Counselor was more than a surprise. It was a real departure from precedent. Although Peggy Stack had included his name in the speculation about who would be named as Counselors to the new president in a Salt Lake Tribune article Monday morning, it appeared so far down the list that prognosticators virtually ignored the possibility that the German apostle would be the choice.
President Uchtdorf–that is now his title—articulated what may be the most important spiritual dimension of his new calling when he said that it is a sign that “no longer are there foreigners in the Kingdom of God.” He spoke as well of the church as more than international. He referred to it as the church universal. From a more practical perspective, Uchtdorf’s being a member of the First Presidency is a signal that leaders of the LDS Church are very much aware of the implications of the institution’s current international character as a body whose U.S. membership is surpassed by the numbers of members outside the boundaries of this nation.
Salt Lake City remains Mormonism’s center place. But the new composition of the First Presidency says to the church and the world that no longer is it prudent for the entire First Presidency and Council of the Twelve to be composed of DNA Mormons from the Mountain west.
Romney, who interrupted his campaign activities for President Gordon Hinckley’s funeral on Saturday, resumed his campaign almost as soon as the obsequies were done. If any reporter asked him for his reaction to Monday’s LDS Church news, his response did not make its way into the national news.

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