Scott Woodward: Hi, this is Scott from Church History Matters. Before we pivot in this series to covering a few of the other branches of the Restoration, we want to hear your questions about succession in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So next week we will be honored to have with us a special guest to help us respond to your questions, Dr. Daniel C. Peterson. He’s an author and scholar on a variety of Latter-day Saint topics, and he’s the president of the Interpreter Foundation, which publishes and promotes LDS scholarship. And we wanted to bring Dr. Peterson onto the show as well because the Interpreter Foundation is about to release a full-length feature film on the Succession Crisis of 1844. He is a deep well of knowledge, so please do us all a favor by submitting your thoughtful questions. You can submit them any time up to September 5, 2024 to podcasts@scripturecentral.org. Let us know your name, where you’re from, and try to keep each question as concise as possible when you email them in. That helps out a lot. Okay, now on to the episode. Between the presidencies of Lorenzo Snow in 1898 and Russell M. Nelson today there have been a few key clarifications relative to the inner workings of church government at the level of the church presidency, and on today’s episode of Church History Matters, we want to talk about them. The first of these clarifications deals with the confusion introduced during the presidency of Joseph F. Smith surrounding the role and position of the presiding church patriarch within the church’s hierarchy. The second clarification is regarding the important question about who can serve in the First Presidency. Is it entirely the prerogative of the president of the church to choose who serves as his counselors, or are there constraints in place which he must abide by when doing so? And a third clarification deals with what happens when you have a church president who is incapacitated due to poor health and is therefore unable to actively lead the church. To what degree can his counselors lead the church without him, and what, if any, restraints are there to their authority in this circumstance? Interesting questions. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today, Casey and I dive into our seventh episode in this series dealing with succession in the presidency. Now, let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hello, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: We’re back, and—

Scott Woodward: We are back.

Casey Griffiths: —we’re coming up on—I don’t—are we at the end or at the middle of succession?

Scott Woodward: Yeah. We’re at the end of the LDS branch of succession.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And we’re about to pivot around and then go find out about some of the other branches that we have kind of only skimmed over so far in this series, but we want to circle back around and start talking about the other branches of the Restoration, like our friends, The Church of Jesus Christ, known as sometimes the Bickertonites.

Casey Griffiths: The Bickertonites.

Scott Woodward: We want to talk about the Community of Christ, for sure.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah!

Scott Woodward: And the Strangites and even the FLDS church.

Casey Griffiths: Ooh. That’s going to be spicy.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So I think that’s going to—we’re going to start doing that in two weeks from today’s episode, so that should be fun.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So today—that’s probably the best way to say it: we’re wrapping up the view on how succession happens in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Then we’re going to start these branches of the Restoration and bringing some guests from each one of those branches to kind of share their story, talk a little bit about it, give you a panoramic view of Restoration churches, but today we’re bringing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in for a landing up to the present.

Scott Woodward: Yes. I think we’re going to end with Russell M. Nelson today, aren’t we?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. We’re going to go all the way to President Nelson’s current tenure—by the way, they just announced a nice—they’re going to have a hundredth birthday celebration for President Nelson.

Scott Woodward: That’ll be next week.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: His birthday is September 9, so that’s exciting.

Casey Griffiths: The oldest president of the church since John, if John was the president of the church. I don’t know.

Scott Woodward: Do we know how old John ever got? Do we know that?

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know. I wonder at a certain point, if John stopped celebrating his birthday, too, if he was just like, eh, once you’ve had 300 of those, it’s not a big deal.

Scott Woodward: John—well, I’m going to say President Nelson gets first place, because I think John’s got to be in a special category. It’s almost like—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —that’s cheating—

Casey Griffiths: It’s not fair.

Scott Woodward: —you know?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. President Nelson did it naturally, so he gets the recognition that we’re there, and we hope he sticks around for quite a while longer. I’d be okay with 120th birthday celebration for President Nelson.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, so President Nelson, happy birthday.

Casey Griffiths: Happy birthday, President Nelson. Thanks for all you do. Appreciate you.

Scott Woodward: Sure love you.

Casey Griffiths: So let’s see where we’re at, all right?

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Last time we sort of ended on the appearance of Jesus Christ to Lorenzo Snow, where President Snow makes it clear that he did give instructions related to succession. He told them to reorganize the First Presidency right away, and that was kind of the capstone on the somewhat tumultuous 19th century processes of succession where they were doing the best they could, but there was a lot of improvisation and a lot of inspired direction of movements to kind of set up this system where, at the death of the president of the church, the senior apostle becomes the leader of the church. The church has that phrase that we love, the apostolic interregnum, and as time went on, that gradually got shorter. Three years after Joseph Smith, three years after Brigham Young, two years after Wilford Woodruff, and since Lorenzo Snow and the Savior’s intervention in 1898, just a couple of days, just long enough to hold the funeral for the former president of the church, and then get everybody together and reorganize the First Presidency, and along the way, they’ve worked out a system of seniority where the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve is designated by when a person was ordained an apostle and brought into the Quorum of the Twelve, because there are apostles that haven’t served in the Quorum of the Twelve.

Scott Woodward: Apostles at large, we call them.

Casey Griffiths: Apostles at large, which is a really cool title—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —to have, and so these principles are pretty well set today and have been, I’d say, since about Lorenzo Snow, but, Scott, maybe you want to give us a recap of the highlights that we’ve covered in the last few episodes.

Scott Woodward: Yes, I do. The succession process has not always been smooth, nor did it develop smoothly, and that’s kind of what we’ve been trying to show throughout this series, that, in fact, there was no set succession process in place when Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed in Carthage Jail. Now, we did talk about in our first episode that there were eight possible paths of succession that could be deduced from the teachings and revelations or actions of Joseph Smith, and so in the weeks following the martyrdom, there was a struggle that developed between Sidney Rigdon, who was Joseph’s first counselor in the First Presidency, and the Twelve Apostles, which was led by Brigham Young, and we spent a few episodes on that, and then we talked about how for spiritual and practical reasons, when this was actually put to a vote, the people, the saints, overwhelmingly chose Brigham Young and the Twelve as their leaders. While that seems like a resolution to the plot, that turned out to be just the beginning.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, lots of questions. Lots of questions still remaining.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, so many questions, still. Uh-huh. So at first Brigham and the other apostles lead the majority of the church into the wilderness out west as a quorum of equals, but Brigham eventually became convinced that it was necessary to reorganize the First Presidency, which in his mind would then free the apostles up to carry out their missions to preach the gospel to the nations as special witnesses of the name of Christ. Now, that move, as natural and automatic as it might seem to us today, was actually contested by some of the members of the Twelve, chiefly Orson Pratt, but others were also not on board, but after a series of spirited discussions, Brigham eventually convinces the Twelve to reorganize the First Presidency in 1847, which they do. Then Brigham leads the church for some thirty years, but with his passing in 1877 the questions surrounding succession rear their heads again. In fact, just before his death, we talked about how Brigham had reordered seniority in the Quorum of the Twelve based on continuous service—

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —which clarified certain questions about the two Orsons, the Two-Orson problem, Orson Hyde and Orson Pratt, who had both spent some time out of the quorum, and so this reordering of seniority based on continuous service is what leads to John Taylor being sustained as the third president of the church, but, again, it took nearly three years to convince the rest of the Apostles to reorganize the First Presidency again after Brigham Young’s death and before John Taylor becomes officially the president of the church. But then after John Taylor’s death, we get a new generation of apostles and another episode. We talked about how, once again, apostles raised serious questions about succession by seniority, and the most ardent seeker of this new generation was Heber J. Grant—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —whose questioning prompted Wilford Woodruff to write a series of letters that defended the principle of succession by senior Apostle. And then again, there is a series of intense discussions held by the Apostles during this time, but through the steady and patient leadership of Wilford Woodruff we eventually, again, get unity among the Apostles that is going to be key going forward in reorganizing the First Presidency quickly. In fact, following that struggle with the Heber J. Grant group, President Woodruff counseled Lorenzo Snow to work to build unity in the quorum. So President Woodruff was the president. Lorenzo Snow was then the next senior apostle, and President Woodruff wisely counseled him to build unity in the quorum now so that when I pass, this can be a lot smoother, and it turned out to pay off really well, because when President Woodruff passes away in 1898, that was the smoothest succession yet from President Woodruff to Lorenzo Snow when he assumed leadership. So unity turned out to be a key principle in reorganizing the First Presidency immediately. And we talked about how the Savior appeared to President Snow in the Salt Lake Temple and instructed him to reorganize the First Presidency immediately, which Lorenzo Snow doesn’t tell anybody until he asks the quorum how they feel about reorganizing immediately, and they all say, we think that’s a good idea.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And it was only then that Heber J. Grant notes, “Then he told us that the Savior had instructed him in the temple the night after President Woodruff died to organize the presidency at once. Very interesting just to watch how unity among the Twelve is so key, and that’s a principle I haven’t really paid a lot of attention to, Casey. I’ve always just kind of assumed that the Twelve are always united, but when you dig into the history, you realize they have not always been united, and that seems to stifle progress in a lot of ways.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: We talked about unity in the Twelve being a really key thing that brought about the 1978 revelation with President Kimball, which lifted the priesthood and temple ban, and I think we see that again here on this topic. Once they are united and feeling like, yes, let’s move forward, like, the Lord makes his will known pretty quickly to President Snow, and so it’s pretty instructive.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I’ve always—I mean, this is sort of how the sausage is made, right, where it’s messier than we want it to be, but it’s messy because you’ve got strong personalities here that care deeply about what they’re doing—

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —and so it was faith-affirming to me to see that these intense discussions take place. I’ve always wondered why the Savior appearing to Lorenzo Snow isn’t a bigger deal. Like, honestly, that feels like the Savior endorsing the succession process and saying, yeah, this is the right way to go, but it also speaks to Lorenzo Snow’s personality, that he wanted the Twelve to be unified, it seems like, before he shared that experience with them. Like, he didn’t want to use that experience as kind of a hammer to sort of say, hey, this is the way it is, and this is why. First he asks them, and once they’ve demonstrated unity, then he says, good, because Jesus appeared to me yesterday and told me to do it this way. But that’s interesting. I wonder if we should give a little bit more weight to that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And we haven’t, because historians generally, you know, don’t like to delve into the supernatural. They would probably frame it as Lorenzo Snow said that the Savior appeared to him—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —or noted some kind of supernatural experience, but—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —historically that was something that sort of changed the game and sort of cemented the succession process that we use in the place.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and I wish we had a firsthand account of President Snow talking about that.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: All historians would want something like that. That’s the gold standard, but what we do have is his—is it his niece? His great niece, Allie Young Pond?

Casey Griffiths: It’s his granddaughter.

Scott Woodward: Is it granddaughter? Okay.

Casey Griffiths: I think so, and then it gets cycled through LeRoi Snow, who I believe is a son, who writes a lot of stuff about his life a little bit later on. I don’t think it’s published until the 1930s, either—

Scott Woodward: OK.

Casey Griffiths: —the specific experience where she talks at length about him describing it, and so maybe it doesn’t quite pass the standard to put it in the Doctrine and Covenants, or—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —something like that, but I just think it’s a big deal that maybe doesn’t get its due.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and that’s the most intimate account, but then we do have in Heber J. Grant’s own notes, he talks about—I mean, here’s the quote: he said, “When we had finished our discussion about whether we should organize the presidency at once,” he said, “then and not until then did Brother Snow tell us that he was instructed of the Lord in the temple the night after President Woodruff died to organize the presidency at once.” So Heber J. Grant makes a big deal, and he was there in the room, and he says, he didn’t tell us until after we had already come to unity on that, and that stood out to him.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So that’s a good source, it just doesn’t have all the juicy details that Allie Young Pond shares, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and if I had been there and I was Heber J. Grant, I would have said, “Maybe you want to write this down. Maybe you want to share an account, like, about . . .”

Scott Woodward: Future generations need to know.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I mean, we’re talking, like, twenty years later, Joseph F. Smith has a vision of the spirit world, and immediately afterwards, he sits down his son, Joseph Fielding Smith, and says, I need you to type this out for me so that it’s all there. And if Lorenzo Snow had chosen to do that, we might have an additional section of the Doctrine and Covenants that codifies succession, but we don’t, and that’s okay. It’s just that this is kind of a landmark that sort of sets it in place and makes me feel like we probably won’t have major deviations from the succession by seniority process because the Savior’s endorsed it.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, exactly. Because ever after Lorenzo Snow, like, we have always done rapid reorganizations of the First Presidency. The apostolic interregnum has been counted in days and weeks, not years after this.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and it seems like there’s never really been a question of, is the senior apostle going to ascend to the presidency? Like, the biggest exception I could find was when David O. McKay passed away, Joseph Fielding Smith was 93, and there were some people who raised the question of, is that too old? That, by the way, is the age Russell M. Nelson was at when he becomes president of the church.

Scott Woodward: That’s right.

Casey Griffiths: And, interestingly, in that general conference, if you go back and look, Harold B. Lee actually uses the letter that Lorenzo Snow wrote to Heber J. Grant to defend succession by seniority and says, no, this is the way it’s going to be, which is interesting because Harold B. Lee was next in line, and I think he was about twenty years younger than Joseph Fielding Smith, but it was his way of saying, Nope, the Lord’s established it this way. We’re not going to change.

Scott Woodward: On with the pattern.

Casey Griffiths: They started to have this robust historical record that basically established, this is how we do things. We’ve got inspired decisions made by previous leaders. We’ve also got this record that we can draw from to say that we feel like this is the right way to go.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Interesting.

Casey Griffiths: However, there were still a few little wrinkles that had to work themselves out, even if the major points of succession had happened, and that’s what we’re talking about today. Today’s burning question is, what are the remaining key lessons learned about succession from the 20th century into our time? And so there’s a lot that went on, and some we could have talked about but we won’t, like the Harold B. Lee, Joseph Fielding Smith issue, but we picked a couple episodes: There’s three major kind of things that happen that we want to sort of focus on, and the first is the succession of Joseph F. Smith.

Scott Woodward: So these are small wrinkles. These are not massive wrinkles.

Casey Griffiths: No.

Scott Woodward: We’ve ironed out all the massive wrinkles in our history, but between Lorenzo Snow and Russell M. Nelson there are three minor wrinkles we want to talk about.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. All right. Episode one is the succession of Joseph F. Smith.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: In diving into the sources, I was sort of surprised to find that we always assumed Community of Christ was kind of the whole, hey, the Smith family is the big deal, but it seems like at least in the 19th century, there was a big feeling that the family of Hyrum Smith was a big deal, too. We noted that after Brigham Young died, Daniel H. Wells, who was a member of the First Presidency, actually prophesied that Joseph F. Smith, the son of Hyrum Smith, would become president of the church, and everybody at the time kind of took that to be a sort of, eventually, not right now, though some did say it, and Heber J. Grant, even though he got a severe talking to at one point in his life by Joseph F. Smith, when he got made a stake president, also appears to have really been like, why don’t we have Joseph F. lead us? He’s a Smith descendant. He’s younger. He’s vital. He’s the whole deal.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It wasn’t until 1901, when Joseph F. Smith had been an apostle for something going on around thirty-plus years, that Lorenzo Snow passes away, and he becomes the senior apostle. And, again, a lot of this is wrapped up in the fact that he’s the son of Hyrum Smith, but he’s a really gifted leader in his own right, and that all sort of gives him this elevated status.

Scott Woodward: So not just that he was president of the church, but he is Hyrum Smith’s boy who has become the president of the church.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: It was, like, extra special.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and part of the story here, too, is—we don’t talk about this a lot, but there was an office in the church known as the Church Patriarch that was lineal. It was passed from father to son and it generally stayed within Hyrum Smith’s line. It actually continued into the 1970s, and we did have a form of lineal succession, it just wasn’t for the president of the church. That’s what Community of Christ did, at least initially.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It was for church patriarch. At one point in time, Joseph F. actually was considered to become the patriarch of the church. They had talked about maybe making him the patriarch. I don’t know if that meant that he would have been serving as an apostle simultaneously—

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: —and just been the patriarch at the same time.

Scott Woodward: So you said it’s generally been Hyrum Smith’s descendancy. Was there ever an exception where there was not a Hyrum Smith descendant that was the Presiding Patriarch?

Casey Griffiths: Not that I know of, but there was a time period when there wasn’t an active Presiding Patriarch. Because it was a lineal office—Community of Christ ran into the same thing, basically. Like, what do you do if a person’s in lineal succession and their time comes and you don’t feel like they’re ready and prepared? They did do that one time, where they just suspended the office temporarily.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And what’s unique is when Joseph F. becomes president of the church, it seems like he felt like this idea of patriarch had been neglected, and so he does something kind of unprecedented: He asks if the Presiding Patriarch could set him apart as president of the church.

Scott Woodward: Whoa.

Casey Griffiths: And at this time it wasn’t really known.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, that’d be a major departure from what had happened up to that point.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. In the past, all the apostles together had set apart the president of the church, and he asked specifically if he could be set apart by the church patriarch. At the time, it was his brother, John Smith, who was serving as church patriarch, and Joseph F. was set apart as president of the church by John Smith.

Scott Woodward: Wait, so President Joseph F. Smith was set apart as president by the Presiding Patriarch, his brother, John Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay, there’s a little church history tidbit that we don’t hear about hardly ever.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, it’s a little bit different, right?

Scott Woodward: It’s a little church history nugget.

Casey Griffiths: And, I mean, we’re not saying he doesn’t have the authority because they already had the authority—he was the senior apostle, you get all the keys and authorities necessary when you get made an apostle.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: It’s just this time was surprising to a number of members of Quorum of the Twelve. They started to become concerned, and in a meeting about a month after he became president of the church, Joseph F. also argues that the church patriarch should be sustained before the Apostles are sustained.

Scott Woodward: Like, at general conference.

Casey Griffiths: In general conference, you get up, you’d sustain the First Presidency, you sustain the Apostles. He was saying that before they sustain the Apostles, the church patriarch should be sustained, and this raised concerns. Like, one of his counselors, Anthon Lund, said that’s going to give the impression that succession might go through the church patriarch before it gets to the apostles, because we’re sustaining them in kind of a hierarchical order. He’s basing his argument off section 124, verse 124, which reads, “First”—now, note that word, because that’s what he’s going to make his argument based off of.

Scott Woodward: That’s, like, the first word in the verse: “First.”

Casey Griffiths: The word first. Yeah. So, “First, I give unto you Hyrum Smith to be a patriarch unto you, to hold the sealing blessings of my church, even the Holy Spirit of Promise, whereby ye are sealed up unto the day of redemption, that ye may not fall, notwithstanding the hour of temptation that may come upon you.”

Scott Woodward: So the whole point is that it says, first the patriarch. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Here’s what Joseph F. says, okay? So here’s his argument: he says, “It may be considered strange that the Lord should give first of all the patriarch, yet I do not know any law, any revelation, or any commandment from God to the contrary that has ever been given through any of the prophets or presidents of the church. At the same time, we well know that this order has not been strictly followed from the day we came into these valleys until now, and we will not make any change at the present, but we will first take it into consideration, we will pray over it, we will get the mind of God upon it, as upon other subjects, and be united before we take any action different to that which has been done.

Scott Woodward: Whoa.

Casey Griffiths: He’s saying, hey, I know we haven’t done this, but he’s a scriptorian. He’s saying, maybe we should be thinking about this, and we’re going to pray and think about it. And it sounds like he’s sort of putting the church patriarch into the mix when it comes to succession, which, again, could be a major, major thing.

Scott Woodward: So he’s reading verse 124 of section 124 so carefully that he’s pulling out of the word first, when the patriarch’s mentioned first before other church officers, as potentially signaling that it’s the Lord’s will that the patriarch be sustained first in the church, and the concern of some of his brethren, like Anthon H. Lund, his counselor, would be, well, if we sustain the patriarch first, even before the apostles, that’s going to create in the minds of some members of the church a feeling that maybe the Presiding Patriarch should be the next president of the church? Is that what’s happening?

Casey Griffiths: That seems to be kind of the direction that they’re headed in, and Joseph F. is basically saying, I know we haven’t done this, so I’m not trying to disrespect any past practice, but I think we ought to take a look at this.

Scott Woodward: Got it.

Casey Griffiths: And the record seems to indicate that they did have some serious discussions over what the role of the Church Patriarch was going to be. So, for instance, about a year after this, on April 6, 1902, they’re discussing it, and apparently Joseph F. kind of tables it. He says, “Any decision on the question was delayed for the time present until we could look into it,” and it doesn’t seem like they ever fully resolve this, though they do do a couple things—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: —during Joseph F.’s presidency that sort of elevates the role of Church Patriarch. So they start using the term Presiding Patriarch, which gives him kind of a leadership connotation. He asked the Presiding Patriarch to regularly speak in general conference, which hadn’t really been happening. The church patriarch had only spoken in general conference once during Brigham Young’s presidency, for instance.

Scott Woodward: That’s, like, thirty years.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And maybe the second and more significant event is that the church patriarch was sustained as a prophet, seer, and revelator alongside the apostles for the first time in general conference starting in October 1902.

Scott Woodward: Wow. That’s a big deal.

Casey Griffiths: That’s a big deal, right? And that does seem to sort of put him on the level with the First Presidency and the Twelve, though, again, I mean, as time goes on, it seems like President Joseph F. Smith eventually came around to seeing the wisdom of keeping the system the way that it was, because by the April 1913 general conference, this is twelve years after he’s become president of the church, he actually endorses succession by seniority. He says, “There is always a head in the church, and if the presidency of the church are removed by death or other cause, then the next head of the church is the Twelve Apostles until a presidency is again organized of three presiding high priests who have the right to hold the office of First Presidency over the church.”

Scott Woodward: Okay, so that sounds normal.

Casey Griffiths: That’s kind of the last word he makes on it, but after Joseph F.’s death, this is when Heber J. Grant becomes president of the church, another Presiding Patriarch brings this up. So it’s, again, raised by Hyrum G. Smith. This is the son of John Smith, who’d become the church patriarch. James E. Talmage was present in the meeting, and he noted that in the meeting—well, this is what James E. Talmage wrote: I’ll just quote it, and—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: —we’ll sort through it. James E. Talmage in his journal wrote, “At intervals for years past, the Presiding Patriarch of the Church has called the attention of the Brethren, mostly in private conversation, to the fact that he finds an inconsistency in the order of presiding officials of the Church as they are presented today for the vote of the people in comparison with Doctrine and Covenants section 124 verses 124 and 125. He has repeatedly asked for a consideration of the matter. Today the decision of the First Presidency and Twelve was made a matter of record to the effect that the Presiding Patriarch of the Church ranks in order of office between the Council of the Twelve and the First Council of Seventy, and that his name should be presented in such order for the vote of the people as has hitherto been done. Revelation, too, and the history of the church combine in making plain the fact that no officer stands between the Council of the Twelve and the First Presidency of the Church.”

Scott Woodward: That’s a big deal.

Casey Griffiths: “However, this was not the plan to which Presiding Patriarch Hyrum G. Smith asserted any claim, but he asked whether in view of the Lord’s having mentioned his great grandfather Hyrum Smith first in order of the priesthood, the place of Presiding Patriarch is not that of First Officer of the Church ahead of the First Presidency. As stated, it was the unanimous decision of the Council that the order heretofore observed shall be maintained unless the Lord reveals another course of the one to be followed.” So that’s James E. Talmage. He’s saying—

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: —they set it down, and they sussed it out, and this issue of “First” comes up—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and the First Presidency and Twelve basically decided, well, we feel like in order of authority you’re under the Quorum of the Twelve but above the Presidency of the Seventy.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: And so that’s where we’re going to sustain you in general conference so we don’t get the wrong idea.

Scott Woodward: So this is the patriarch of the church. The Presiding Patriarch is the one raising this issue to the Twelve and saying, are we sure we have it right? Because section 124 seems to put the patriarch above any of the other officers of the church. That’s a bold move for the—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —Presiding Patriarch to bring this up himself. And by the way, just for context, I just pulled up section 124. I just want to give a twenty-second version of what they were seeing. If you look in verse 124, it does say, “First the patriarch.” Then verse 125 says, then “I give unto you my servant Joseph to be a presiding elder,” and then counselors, verse 126. And then verse 127, 128, 129, 130 is, and then I give unto you the Quorum of the Twelve. And then in verse 131, “and . . . I give unto you [the] high council.” So that’s what they’re seeing, right, is why does the Lord put patriarch first, then he talks about Joseph Smith and his counselors and the twelve and the high council. And so I don’t think it is sufficiently clear in the text to make an argument that the Presiding Patriarch should preside over the church or should somehow be listed before the apostles in terms of seniority, but I do see where their question’s coming from.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Right? Because for some reason, that’s all we can say, for some reason, the patriarch is mentioned first here, and yet there is no reason given as to why, and so I guess they’re just wrestling with that. Are there implications that we’re not seeing here that we should incorporate into the church, they’re wondering, and the conclusion, according to James E. Talmage here, is, no. No, you’re not going to be above the First Presidency or the Twelve. You’ll be between the First Presidency, Twelve, and then the Seventy.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So nobody comes between the First Presidency and the Twelve. I think that’s the big takeaway here.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I’ve got to say that I really like the fact that they can have an intense debate over one word—

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —that appears in the Doctrine and Covenants, just that it says “first” and then gives that order, but I totally agree with their decision here. I just completely do. I think lineal succession, the idea that there’s kind of a royal line within the church, makes me really uncomfortable. And maybe—I mean, there’s plenty in the scriptures to suggest, you know, a royal house of Israel or that God provides blessings to your descendants if you’re righteous and stuff like that.

Scott Woodward: Sure, sure.

Casey Griffiths: But I just am more comfortable with the idea of a meritocracy.

Scott Woodward: Meaning?

Casey Griffiths: Where a person’s called by revelation based on their merits and not necessarily their last name. I’ve got to say, I work a lot with Community of Christ, and they don’t use a lineal succession system anymore, but I just don’t think it worked out very well for them when they did use it. They wound up with a series of leaders that felt relatively unprepared, some that didn’t want to lead the church, and it was a real—it felt like it was unfair to them and unfair to the church, too, and so I’m glad that the apostles in the Heber J. Grant era kind of put an end to this.

Scott Woodward: And that kind of leads to the question of, like, so do we still have a Presiding Patriarch in the church today? I think the answer is no, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. We don’t.

Scott Woodward: So when did that stop?

Casey Griffiths: Okay, so I looked into that, and the office of Presiding Patriarch continued in the church until Spencer W. Kimball was president of the church. So at the April 1979 General Conference, they’re doing sustainings, and it was N. Eldon Tanner, actually, that announced that Eldred G. Smith, who was the Patriarch at that time, was going to be made an Emeritus General Authority, and the office was no longer necessary—

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: —and for the first time in 77 years, so since Joseph F. Smith, the Presiding Patriarch was not sustained as a prophet, seer, and revelator.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: The explanation given in General Conference by President Tanner: he said, “Because of the large increase in the number of stake patriarchs and the availability of patriarchal service throughout the world, we now designate Elder Eldred G. Smith as Patriarch Emeritus, which means that he is honorably relieved of all duties and responsibilities pertaining to the office of Patriarch to the Church.

Scott Woodward: That was that.

Casey Griffiths: He became emeritus. I never met Eldred G. Smith, but he was—he went around and did firesides. He used to actually do firesides where he would bring out the clothes—

Scott Woodward: Clothing of Hyrum Smith, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —that Hyrum Smith was wearing in Carthage Jail, and he did give patriarchal blessings. Like, I’ve met a number of people who said, I got my patriarchal blessing from the Presiding Patriarch. But when he passed away in 2013, they didn’t choose anybody to take his place, and the office has remained vacant.

Scott Woodward: 2013 is official moment where we no longer had a Presiding Patriarch, even in emeritus status, so officially 1979.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And then he continues as an emeritus Presiding Patriarch who still gave patriarchal blessings, and then he dies in 2013. Okay, so since 2013, that’s only eleven years, that office has remained vacant. Interesting.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and other than what President Tanner said in the 1979 General Conference, I don’t know of any official explanation that was given for ending the office. Seems like the office is a big deal in the Doctrine and Covenants, but I can also see how the lineal nature of the office makes it a little uncomfortable. And the office did have a little bit of an up and down history. Maybe we need to do an episode on that, specifically.

Scott Woodward: Give us a—like, a thirty-second version. What do you mean by “an up and down history,” just off the top of your head?

Casey Griffiths: Just stuff I already mentioned. Like, there was an instance in time when they felt like the person who was next in line—because it’s a lineal office of succession, you’re going off, like, the eldest Smith descendant—wasn’t ready, and so they left the office vacant for a number of years there with everything else. And I—again, I don’t know of any serious aberrations or any time where the patriarch went off the reservation other than William Smith, who was patriarch right after Joseph Smith was killed, but it does seem like we just were—they don’t give, like I said, any explanation other than it’s just really not necessary for us to have this office anymore.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, what did he say? Because of the large increase in the number of stake patriarchs—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —and the availability of their service throughout the world. It’s impractical for someone from Columbia to come to Utah to get a patriarchal blessing, for instance, right? Or church members in Venezuela or Spain to come over, and so it sounds like the reason that this office has gone away is because of the size of the church.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: I mean, that’s what I’m reading here with Elder Tanner’s statement is it’s impractical to have one patriarch in the church. It made a ton of sense in Kirtland. Made a ton of sense in Nauvoo.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And then we come to Utah, it still makes sense, but now we’re starting to spread throughout the whole world, and it becomes much less practicable to have one patriarch, so now we’re calling patriarchs throughout the church in different stakes, which now calls into question, well, then what’s the role of the Presiding Patriarch? And I saw, yeah, I think I can just see it as a natural progression of the size of the church, really.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: What he was then is essentially what each patriarch is in everybody’s stake now, minus the fact that you don’t have to be a descendant of the Smiths. You don’t have to be in the Smith family to be a Patriarch, so . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay. Now, besides giving patriarchal blessings, did the Patriarch have any other duties or responsibilities? Because they made him an emeritus Patriarch and said that he’s relieved of all of his duties and responsibilities, but then he kept giving patriarchal blessings, so I was wondering what else were his responsibilities?

Casey Griffiths: It seems like, at least during the Joseph F. Smith era, he acted as a kind of counselor to the Twelve, and if you’ve ever gone back and seen those organizational charts from the ’70s, there was always the First Presidency of the Twelve, and then off to the side was this little—

Scott Woodward: Patriarch.

Casey Griffiths: —postage stamp, yeah. Patriarch of the church.

Scott Woodward: That’s right.

Casey Griffiths: But like I said, just an evolution in church government. So that’s one wrinkle that gets resolved in the 20th century is what’s the role of the patriarch? They established that the patriarch is important, but then later on, as the church expands, the role of the patriarch becomes unnecessary, and it goes away.

Scott Woodward: Boom. Okay, so episode two. Here’s another unique phenomenon we want to talk about today among the leadership of the church, which is kind of this tendency to develop something of a dynamic duo in the First Presidency.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Meaning, like, there’ve been several instances where two counselors in the First Presidency remained, and they serve under several different presidents. Like, the earliest instance of this was George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith. They served as counselors under John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, before Joseph F. Smith becomes church president himself. The second instance of this, which we want to talk about now, is J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay, who served as first and second counselor to Heber J. Grant and George Albert Smith before David O. McKay becomes church president in 1951.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And a third dynamic duo, by the way, and maybe the most influential and long-serving pair, were Gordon B. Hinckley and Thomas S. Monson.

Casey Griffiths: Uh-huh.

Scott Woodward: And they served as counselors to Ezra Taft Benson, Howard W. Hunter, and then once President Hinckley becomes church president, President Monson’s his counselor, then President Monson becomes president of the church. So we’ll talk more about them in a moment in episode three here, but let’s come back to J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay. So J. Reuben Clark is interesting. He’s kind of a 21st-century anomaly among the apostles.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Like, he wasn’t serving as an apostle when he was brought into the First Presidency in 1933. I mean, it kind of shocked a lot of people, right? This guy who was not an apostle was brought in as a counselor in the First Presidency. He’s just a high priest in the church, right? And . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. It seems like the procedure always is you’re an apostle and then you get called into the First Presidency. This guy comes out of nowhere. Like, he could have been the—

Scott Woodward: Yeah!

Casey Griffiths: —the gospel doctrine teacher. Now, he was a significant figure: He was the U. S. Ambassador to Mexico. So he was well known in public life.

Scott Woodward: He was.

Casey Griffiths: But in the church, like, he hadn’t had any leadership role—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —in the hierarchy of the church, and all of a sudden, bam, he’s in the First Presidency, which I think was surprising to some people.

Scott Woodward: And he is one of those apostles at large. He was not a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, and so a few years later they actually bring him into the Quorum of the Twelve just for, like, a second in order to, like, kind of mark his seniority, which is super fascinating.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, they declare him a member of the quorum so that he’s in the line of succession.

Scott Woodward: So, yeah. So J. Reuben Clark, he serves together with David O. McKay during some of the most challenging times of the 20th century, and they do this while Heber J. Grant led the church through the Great Depression, World War II. I mean, these are some tough times. Now, David O. McKay was senior in the quorum to J. Reuben Clark, Jr., and so he’s going to become the president of the church after George Albert Smith passes away, and at that time, President McKay makes a move, Casey. He shocks other leaders of the church when he names Stephen L. Richards as his first counselor and then moves J. Reuben Clark to be second counselor. What’s shocking about this is that J. Reuben Clark was the first counselor and he just got, “relegated,” right, into the second counselor position.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So, you know, many church members wonder, like, was this some kind of demotion? How’s President Clark going to respond, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and some historians make a much bigger deal out of this than others. Apparently, from people that knew them, David O. McKay and J. Reuben Clark had very different leadership styles as well. David O. McKay was super loving, come on in, I’ll give you a hug. J. Reuben Clark was down to business, very direct. One historian, that’s D. Michael Quinney, that talks about how there were McKay men and Clark men among the leadership of the church.

Scott Woodward: Oh, boy.

Casey Griffiths: But it really seems like David O. McKay just had a really close relationship with Stephen L. Richards. They were close friends, and he wanted him to serve as first counselor, and so he moved Stephen L. Richards into the first counselor slot and moved J. Reuben Clark into the second counselor slot, which was surprising and, according to several of J. Reuben Clark’s biographers, was pretty hard on President Clark. Like, President Clark did wonder if he’d done something wrong and struggled with it.

Scott Woodward: Which only makes it even cooler when he stands up in general conference, this is in 1951, and he says this: This is the first time church members have heard from him since this move, and he stands up and says, “in the service of the Lord, it’s not where you serve, but how. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one takes the place to which one is duly called, which place one neither seeks nor declines.” Bam. What a good example.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Now, he does eventually become first counselor when Stephen L. Richards passes away in 1959, and he’ll remain in that first counselor slot until his death in 1963, but the important thing to underscore here is that this episode clearly shows us and kind of establishes this idea that the choice of counselors in the First Presidency belongs to the president of the church, and it’s not dictated by any sort of previous arrangement, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: There’s not seniority that gets you in one spot or another in the First Presidency. A more recent example, for instance, is Elder Uchtdorf. He was a counselor in the First Presidency to President Monson. And then in 2018, while he’s serving as second counselor in the First Presidency, and then President Monson dies, he then goes back into the Quorum of the Twelve, and Elder Dallin H. Oaks was then brought in and made the first counselor, with Henry B. Eyring being moved from first counselor to second counselor. So we have recently seen a similar shuffle like this.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And it’s this—kind of this J. Reuben Clark, David O. McKay era that really first kind of shows us that that’s totally fine and the prerogative of the president of the church.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and it seems like they did the work there of establishing the precedent because—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —I mean, I didn’t hear anybody, like, shocked when President Uchtdorf went back into the Quorum of the Twelve.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, not really, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: In fact, the biggest pain for me has been in class, like, shifting between saying President Uchtdorf and Elder Uchtdorf, which I mess up—

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —all the time, because I was just used to him being in the First Presidency, but—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —doesn’t seem like Elder Uchtdorf saw this as a demotion either, and President Nelson explained pretty plainly, why he wanted Dallin H. Oaks in the First Presidency, too.

Scott Woodward: What did he explain? I’m trying to remember.

Casey Griffiths: He said specifically that they were both called at the same time—in fact, that’s what we’re going to talk about next—and that given President Nelson’s age, he was 93, and Dallin H. Oaks’s age, I think he was, like, 85 or something like that, there was a good chance that Dallin H. Oaks would lead the church, so he wanted Dallin H. Oaks close by.

Scott Woodward: To kind of learn the ropes.

Casey Griffiths: To learn the ropes, and it does seem like the two of them have a close relationship, too.

Scott Woodward: So there you go. That’s interesting. Again, not a big thing, not a major wrinkle, but just a tiny, little, like, hmm, this is an interesting moment in our church’s history where we kind of work out this idea of who can be in the First Presidency as counselors or not and how that all works, and so super interesting.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, it establishes a couple of things. I guess you don’t have to be an apostle to get put into the First Presidency.

Scott Woodward: Well, I guess that was established with Sidney Rigdon.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, I mean, that’s the weird thing is prior to the death of Joseph Smith, I don’t think anybody was an apostle that was in the First Presidency. We’re just used to it today.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And then second, that being called to the First Presidency might not necessarily be a lifetime calling. You might not be there until the day you die. You serve where the Lord needs you to serve. And the president gets to choose his counselors, so . . .

Scott Woodward: There you go.

Casey Griffiths: Small, but illustrative.

Scott Woodward: Small, but illustrative.

Casey Griffiths: The last episode kind of brings us up to the present, and it centers around a major question that has to do with our succession process as well, which is if we’re doing succession by seniority, it means that an older person is generally going to be called to lead the church.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And that’s okay. Nothing wrong with that, but what happens when they get to the point to where it might be difficult for them to serve? So we know what happens when a church president dies.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But what if we have a church president that just isn’t healthy enough to fulfill the day-to-day offices? And this centers around one of the most pivotal figures in the history of the church and a personal favorite of mine, Gordon B. Hinckley, who—I love President Hinckley, not just because he signed my mission call, but Chris Blythe on Facebook the other day asked, who would your four people be to go on the church’s Mount Rushmore? And I was like, President Hinckley all the way. He’s just awesome, and he did so much good stuff—

Scott Woodward: Yeah, for sure.

Casey Griffiths: —to help the church. Anyway, President Hinckley was president of the church from 1995 to 2008, but in the decades before, he sort of helped establish, what is the role of a counselor? So let’s set the scene. In 1980, you have three members of the First Presidency who are all facing significant health challenges: so N. Eldon Tanner, who’s the second counselor, has Parkinson’s disease. Marion G. Romney, who’s the first counselor, he started to become unable to function because of age, and President Spencer W. Kimball was actually undergoing serious brain surgery, and so their solution at the time was to call an additional counselor, a third counselor in the First Presidency, which, again, is completely normal.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, it’s fine.

Casey Griffiths: Brigham Young had multiple counselors in the First Presidency, I think up to seven. David O. McKay had around five counselors in the First Presidency.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Not all of them were apostles, either. Gordon B. Hinckley becomes the third counselor, and when N. Eldon Tanner passes away, becomes the second counselor, and during this time period, he’s the only really functional member of the First Presidency.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He struggles with some major questions of, do I just go ahead and do things, or do I need to seek the approval of the president of the church?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Most prominent example comes up in 1983 when we lose two other apostles. LeGrand Richards passes away, and then Mark E. Petersen passes away, and there’s vacancies in the Twelve that stand for a long period of time because President Kimball just wasn’t well enough to basically say, “I’ve received a revelation: Here’s who the two new apostles should be.”

Scott Woodward: That’s serious health concerns, right? If he can’t even name two new apostles, like, he wasn’t doing very well at all, clearly.

Casey Griffiths: He wasn’t doing well, and there’s a really, really great book by Ed Kimball called Lengthen Your Stride.

Scott Woodward: Oh, so good.

Casey Griffiths: Ed Kimball was President Kimball’s son, and so he had access to President Kimball, and he did talk about how during this time, yeah, it was really difficult for President Kimball to even make the smallest decisions.

Scott Woodward: Wow. So President Hinckley’s trying to figure out, what’s my role as a counselor? How far can I exert authority before it has to be the president of the church and I can’t do anything?

Casey Griffiths: What am I authorized to do? What am I not authorized to do? I mean, calling a new apostle is a big deal because—

Scott Woodward: That’s a big deal, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —you’re putting them in the line of succession. You could be choosing a potential president of the church.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: What we’re taking here now comes from the book Insights into the Life of Russell M. Nelson. Sheri Dew wrote this: she writes, “For months, President Gordon B. Hinckley, the only healthy member of the First Presidency at the time, because President Marion G. Romney’s health had also deteriorated, had left standing instructions with President Kimball’s caregivers that if the Prophet’s mind ever cleared, they were to call him immediately, regardless of the hour. Month after month passed with no call. From time to time, President Hinckley looked in on President Kimball, but an opportunity to discuss such a spiritually sensitive topic as calls to the Twelve never presented itself. Then, at about 2:30 AM on the Wednesday morning prior to the April 1984 general conference, the phone rang at President Hinckley’s home. President Kimball was alert and wanted to talk to him. President Hinckley rushed downtown to President Kimball’s suite in the Hotel Utah, where the issue of vacancies in the Twelve was raised. President Kimball said simply, ‘Call Nelson and Oaks to the Quorum of the Twelve in that order.’” That’s Russell M. Nelson and Dallin H. Oaks, and so “two days later, on a Friday morning, President Hinckley summoned Dr. Nelson from the regional representative seminar that was in progress. He asked Russell just one question: ‘Is your life in order?’ When Russell responded that it was, President Hinckley replied, ‘Good, because tomorrow we’re presenting your name to be sustained as one of the Twelve Apostles.’ With that, President Hinckley embraced the stunned Russell M. Nelson, and both men wept. ‘You have permission to go home and tell your wife,’ President Hinckley told him.”

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: So, I mean, that brings up another question, which is when two apostles are called simultaneously, they usually just go by age. Russell M. Nelson was older than President Oaks, but it seems like in this case, President Kimball also said President Nelson should be called first, and that explains our current First Presidency, where they’re called at the same time, President Nelson and President Oaks, but President Nelson was designated to be the senior apostle of the two, but President Oaks and he have had this sort of close relationship since they were both called simultaneously, and now they’re serving together in the First Presidency with President Oaks as first counselor.

Scott Woodward: Cool backstory to our current First Presidency.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and, I mean, credit to Gordon B. Hinckley, where, you know, he’s basically the de facto, the functional president of the church during this time. In 1985 President Kimball passes away, and President Hinckley is called as first counselor with Thomas S. Monson as second counselor, and that’s where that counselor relationship starts.

Scott Woodward: To Ezra Taft Benson, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. They’re counselors to President Benson, they’re counselors to Howard W. Hunter, then President Hinckley becomes president of the church and makes Thomas S. Monson his first counselor, and we’re off to the races, but it’s during President Benson’s presidency, because the last few years of President Benson’s presidency as well, President Benson had difficulty filling his role, and this was controversial: One of President Benson’s sons—I’m sorry, it was a grandson, Steve Benson—actually, like, made a ruckus because he thought, you know, the church is presenting President Benson as leading, but he’s not. President Hinckley gives a landmark address during this time where he basically explains, hey, here’s what a counselor does when the president’s unable to serve. So this is from the October 1990 General Conference. It’s called “In … Counsellors There Is Safety.”

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: President Hinckley said the following: he said, “President Benson is now 91 years of age and does not have the strength or vitality he once possessed in abundance. Brother Monson and I, as his counselors, do as has been done before, and that is to move forward the work of the Church, while being very careful not to get ahead of the President nor to undertake any departure of any kind from the long-established policy without his knowledge and full approval.” Then President Hinckley said, “I’m grateful for President Monson. We’ve known one another for a long time and have worked together in many responsibilities. We counsel together. We deliberate together. We pray together. We postpone action when we are not fully certain of our course, and do not move forward until we have the blessing of our president and that assurance which comes from the Spirit of the Lord.”

Scott Woodward: Great quote.

Casey Griffiths: He does kind of establish this whole thing where we’re leading the church, but we don’t want to get ahead of the president of the church, that there’s caution there. But then it does seem like they did take a little more volition upon themselves, too, to lead the church. Because there’s new apostles called during this time, and I’m assuming they got President Benson’s input, revelation . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He has the keys, and he gets the guidance as well. And then, you know, like you said, those—that dynamic duo, Hinckley and Monson, go on to serve with President Hunter, then President Hinckley becomes president of the church. Then President Monson becomes president of the church. So that relationship affects the church from 1985 to 2018, because there’s always one of those two in the First Presidency from that time forward.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. That’s, like, 33 years with a First Presidency that has Gordon B. Hinckley or Thomas S. Monson or both.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: That’s a chunk of church history right there. Wow.

Casey Griffiths: And that is why I would put President Hinckley on the Latter-day Saint Mount Rushmore, because he was president of the church or the second in command of the church from basically 1980 until he passed away.

Scott Woodward: 2008.

Casey Griffiths: 2008, so 28 years, which puts him up there with Brigham Young and Heber J. Grant, even if President Hinckley wasn’t president of the church during that entire time, he was super influential.

Scott Woodward: Wow. Super cool, man. Fun discussion.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So three different little episodes here that we’ve walked through today, the first regarding the Presiding Patriarch of the church, the second talking about the nature of counselors in the First Presidency: who can serve and the prerogative of the president of the church to choose his counselors.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And then third here, what happens when you have a president of the church that has been more or less incapacitated, and all three of those kind of play themselves out in the 20th century, which is super interesting church history. So, okay, Casey, this has been fun. So we’ve got the principles of succession pretty well settled today in the church, right?

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: Do you think there’s ever going to be any new challenges, any surprises coming up? Do we have it all ironed down?

Casey Griffiths: That’s way above my pay grade, to be honest with you. There are some possibilities. For instance, it was kind of a new thing that a few years ago we introduced the idea of an emeritus office. So when a member of the Quorum of the Seventy turns 70, generally they are given emeritus status. Some people have said, what if we did that with Apostles? Like, what if their emeritus age was 90 or something like that? But that’s kind of a powder keg, you know? That’s explosive because now we’re messing with—

Scott Woodward: Pretty speculative.

Casey Griffiths: If that had happened, we never would have had Russell M. Nelson as president of the church. I think everybody would argue that he’s been transformational, that he’s done some incredible things, and so I don’t see any changes happening in the future, to be honest with you, because the system’s there, and it works, and it doesn’t bring up those questions of, ooh, did this person, you know, politic their way into leadership?

Scott Woodward: That’s right.

Casey Griffiths: Sometimes happens in other large organizations. We just go with that simple model President Hinckley set out that you get made a member of the Quorum of the Twelve and you outlive everybody else, and that’s the way of the Lord saying, I need this individual to lead the church. Like, I’m completely comfortable with the way we do it now.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and I think you said it well: Few people foresaw that President Nelson would become president of the church or serve as long as he has, but the principles of succession established during sometimes messy history of the church brought some pretty remarkable leaders to the forefront.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Again, we want to wish President Nelson happy 100th birthday next week on September 9, becoming officially the oldest president of the church in our history.

Casey Griffiths: Couldn’t have timed this better, could we?

Scott Woodward: No, it was awesome.

Casey Griffiths: And happy birthday, President Nelson. Love you. Thanks for all you do.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week, we’re excited to field your questions about succession in the presidency in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with our special guest, Dr. Daniel Peterson. So, again, please submit your thoughtful questions on this topic to us before September 5 to podcasts@scripturecentral.org. We look forward to the discussion. Then, in two weeks time, to round out this series, Casey and I will circle back to where we began and do an overview of the history of some of the other major branches of the Restoration who did not follow Brigham Young and the Twelve to Utah. And, truth be told, we’ve actually got a couple more episodes after that before we fully wrap this series up because we’ve got a few surprise guests we’re excited to introduce you to that we know you’re going to love, so stay tuned. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.