(RNS) — President Russell Nelson, the longest serving leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who died last night at age 101, has been such an institution in the church that it’s hard for many members of the faith to imagine the church without him. Most anyone below late middle-age has never known the church without him. By the time I joined the faith in 1993, he had already been an apostle for nearly a decade.
Nelson’s longevity as a leader in the church was such that when he became the church’s president in 2018, it didn’t seem likely a change was in store. I was not alone in thinking he would be a status-quo kind of leader. He hadn’t stood out as a trailblazer in his more than three decades as an apostle. His General Conference talks stressed classic themes, such as listening, caring for the poor and gathering Israel. He flew a bit under the radar.
Other members of the media clearly viewed him as a company man. NBC News said the 93-year-old Nelson “isn’t expected to move the church in major new directions,” while the Chicago Tribune surmised, “Nelson’s record during his three decades in church leadership suggests he will make few changes as he upholds church teaching and seeks to draw new members.” Here’s the now-laughable headline from the Wall Street Journal: “Mormon Leader Thomas S. Monson Dies; Likely Successor Unlikely to Alter Church’s Course.”
We were all wrong. It wasn’t long before Nelson’s energetic leadership shook things up in the church, large and small.
I got my first taste of this when, just two months after he became the president, I happened to have a speaking engagement in the Bay Area the same weekend he showed up at my friends’ stake conference in Oakland. We sat in the fourth row. For security reasons, no one had been informed until that morning that Nelson and his wife, Wendy, would be present.
I liked the low-key aspect of that, and the fact that the rest of the stake program that day just continued as planned. There were more female speakers than male. One in particular stood out to me for the totally refreshing way she kept it real. She was a young mom who characterized her life as a “Pinterest Fail.” She had, she said, followed with precision a certain church-provided script for her life: BYU, temple marriage, baby. Check, check, check.
But her husband was abusive. She had left him three years before that conference talk, fleeing with her young daughter to the safety of her parents’ home. “How had my life, which was on track, turned into an episode of ‘COPS?’” she asked the congregation.
I loved her talk, which was about finding joy when your life doesn’t turn out the way you expect. I loved the fact that she seemed wholly unperturbed to be giving that talk about the demise of her temple marriage in front of the prophet (and about selling her engagement ring to buy Disney passes for herself and her daughter, to make new memories). I loved it that when it was Nelson’s turn to speak, he praised her and every other previous speaker by name. Nelson Unplugged seemed funny, relatable and kinder than I expected.
But Nelson surprised us with his determination, in the months and years that followed, to change how the LDS church operated, and how it was perceived. There were so many changes that I can’t account for them all in one colum, but here are some of my favorites:
Reversing the church’s LGBTQ exclusion policy. In November 2015, the church had initiated a policy barring children of same-sex couples from being baptized, and stating that adults who were in a same-sex marriage would be subject to mandatory church discipline. From the start, I saw this policy as cruel and senseless, and I was heartsick about it.
Nelson initially defended the policy as an apostle, but as president rescinded it, in 2019. Since the reversal just returned the church to its previous state, in which kids of same-sex couples could be baptized just like anyone else, it didn’t seem on the surface that any progress had been made. But looking deeper, it demonstrated something we almost never see in modern Mormonism: a prophet visibly and decisively changing direction in a very short period of time.
In early 2016, then-Elder Nelson was the one who most publicly defended the exclusion policy as God’s will; in 2019, as prophet, he heralded its reversal as God’s will.
Confusing? Yes. But also promising. The reversal showed that everything was — and is — on the table for change.”
Making the temple rituals more inclusive of women. Before Nelson became president, LDS women could only connect to God through a male intermediary in the temple. In 2019 the church removed its “hearken” language, saying that women had to “hearken” to their husbands while men hearkened directly to God. Nelson said women could hearken directly to the Lord. It also expanded the role of Eve (and therefore all women). Months later, the church announced women and girls could be official witnesses to official church ordinances, including temple baptisms and sealings.
Diversifying the church’s leadership. One of Nelson’s very first changes was to call two new apostles who were not white men from the U.S. or Europe, a first in LDS history. He expanded the international representation in the lower Quorums of the Seventy as well. The church’s leadership remains predominantly American and white, but change is afoot. Nelson also forged an ongoing relationship with the NAACP and instructed Latter-day Saints to “lead out” against racism, both in the world and in the church.
Leading the church well through a global pandemic. Many Latter-day Saints believe the Lord will send the right prophet at the right time to lead the church. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, they saw it as providential that a trained physician was in charge of the faith. Nelson closed churches early, changed temple rituals to de-emphasize physical touch and temporarily curtailed missionary activity. He also led by example, pointedly bearing his arm for photo ops as soon as a vaccine became available. These choices were not always popular among church members (even among the most conservative ones who had initially swaggered about having a physician in charge of the church).
I didn’t agree with President Nelson about everything, and I’ve written before about changes he made that I found unhelpful and unnecessary. (Notice that I still use the expedient word “Mormon,” which he explicitly banned, and have not said anything pleasant about the church’s vast hoard of wealth. And while I admire his idea of bringing more temples to different parts of the world, I think the church has gone overboard—too many, too quickly.)
Such is the burden of church leadership — in a thriving and diverse religion, not all members will agree. Yet I will primarily remember President Nelson for the good changes he instituted, well into his 90s and beyond. He may have been the oldest president in Latter-day Saint history, but he’s been one of the most dynamic.
Related:
The top ten changes Russell M. Nelson has made in the LDS Church
Mormon prophet surprises California Saints with surprise appearance