Who will he choose as his counselors? Will Henry B. Eyring be given a break in his declining years, or is he in for life? Will President Oaks choose some fellow lawyers (step right up, Elders Cook and Christofferson!) or avoid them? More importantly, will he choose some fellow hardliners, or select at least one more compassionate voice to advise him? I think this will strongly signal the direction he wants to steer the Church. Contrast a presidency with Elders Bednar and Andersen as counselors versus one with Elders Uchtodorf (unlikely, I know, but a guy can dream!) and Gong, for example. Or what if he called Elders Soares and Kearon, not only from the junior end, but also not Americans? How cool would that be?
Perhaps an even bigger question is who he’ll call to round out the Q12. I do a bad job of keeping track of the likely candidates, but of course there are more fundamentalist and more liberal possibilities. (If you’re interested, here’s a W&T post where a guest poster looks at possibilities and suggests it will be Gérald Caussé.) Again, his pick will signal where he sees the Church going, and although I fear he’d prefer a hardliner, I was very pleasantly surprised by President Nelson’s selection of Patrick Kearon, so I guess you never know.
I’m curious to see whether First Presidency members will go back to giving multiple talks each Conference. President Nelson ended this practice, I’m guessing because he was worn out and tired of speaking himself, but I can imagine President Oaks hoping to get his message and vision for the Church out, and deciding to give as many talks as he can. This might seem a small thing, but with so much of our curriculum now being recycled Conference talks, it could make a difference.
I wonder if President Oaks will have the courage to cut bait on the project of having the Church cozy up to evangelical Christians. The shooting of Charlie Kirk and the attack on an LDS church building in Michigan last weekend, and particularly the rhetoric around the events has made clear (as though it were ever unclear) that evangelical Christians will never accept us as part of their club. They don’t like our claims of exclusivity, our multi-tiered heaven, our authoritarian power structure, our extra scriptures, our temple worship, or our deification of humans. These are not small differences between us. I think this project, which dates to at least Gordon B. Hinckely, is clearly doomed to fail, regardless of how many Mormons pledge allegiance to Trump, or baptize Kirk by proxy in the temple, or vote for anti-LGBTQ and anti-woman legislation. And it should fail. I for one don’t want to be associated with evangelicals and their prosperity gospel, racism, and cackling with glee when they calculate how many people they’re sure will end up in a flaming hell. Our own tendencies toward prosperity gospel, racism, and triumphalism are bad enough.
Will President Nelson’s shift to calling every new idea revelation and tinkering a lot with Church programs (and temple ceremonies) continue? Will President Oaks take us back to three-hour church? Four-hour? Will ministering go back to one visit a month? Will he increase it to once a week? Or will he mostly leave things as they are?
I understand President Oaks was originally called into the Q15 to help GAs counter the threat of the gays. Worrying about LGBTQ people has clearly been a central question, if not the central question of his time in the Q15. Now that he’s achieved the top spot, what will he do about it? Will he excommunicate people for being gay or trans? Will he require their family members to cut off contact with them if they want to retain a temple recommend, or membership at all? To be clear, I hope he doesn’t, but I don’t think this kind of thing is outside the realm of possibility.
Will he canonize the Proclamation on the Family? He seems like maybe the last chance for it to happen, with President Nelson surprisingly uninterested in doing so (perhaps not wanting to elevate a Hinckley-era project above his own proclamation) and Boyd K. Packer long gone.
Will he tell his fellow Q15 members to back off on the ridiculous amount of quoting of the prophet and praising his name that became the norm with President Nelson?
“I understand President Oaks was originally called into the Q15 to help GAs counter the threat of the gays.”
How did you come to have that understanding?
“Worrying about LGBTQ people has clearly been a central question, if not the central question of his time in the Q15.”
Oaks was called to the quorum of the twelve in 1984. I could have missed something from his first 30 years as an apostle. but I listened to a lot of talks, and I don’t remember his now-frequently-voiced concerns about religious liberty starting until around 2015 when any-sex marriage became the legal norm in the United States and running a church out of sync with that became a concern.
I’m very curious about the prophet-quoting. When I analyzed this (https://qhspencer.github.io/lds-data-analysis/presidents), I concluded that past history before he was president of the church suggests that Nelson has always placed a particular importance on whoever is currently president of the church, more than anyone before him or likely to be after him. I predict things revert to normal levels, thank goodness.
I think Oaks would love to canonize the proclamation, but I think the current norms (going back at least as far as the 1978 revelation) are for there to be a consensus among the Q15 for such actions, and that if such a consensus existed it would have been done by now. So I predict that won’t happen.
One thing I’ve been curious about is how Oaks will behave now that anything he does is 100% under his own brand. It’s one thing to do things from behind the scenes as an apostle. The top dog is the one that gets marked by that change. For example, we (those of us who are online and who dislike it) know he was behind the Proclamation, but the average church member doesn’t really know that.
We know who was behind the PoX, but most church members don’t know the ins and outs of these things like those of us online do. It sure looked to me like Nelson played his hand cleverly by doing the PoX while Monson was still alive (yet totally not in charge due to dementia), then got to “undo” it when he took over, as if he hadn’t put the unpopular policy in place to start with! Is this a lesson that Oaks has also learned? That you will get credit / blame for what happens when you occupy the top spot, but plausible deniability when you don’t? If so, he could moderate some of his worst impulses (e.g. his September 6 purge and desire to excommunicate people for ideological reasons, and his bigotry toward LGBTQ people).
I hope you’re right, Quentin, that the quoting of the top guy was a Nelson-specific thing. I love that you analyzed and found it was another of his idiosyncrasies!
Hawkgrrrl, interesting analysis! I hope knowing he’s the one who will get the credit or the blame gives him pause in his more extreme ideas.
John: “How did you come to have that understanding?”
The experience is too sacred to share.
I feel like Oaks has been more moderate recently, but fear that his declining health will have a huge impact on his abilities to preside and innovate. It will be an interesting weekend!
I have wondered how much of his monomania regarding fighting against all things queer is due to him being given that assignment decades ago as a young and talented legal mind. I feel like the damage done to thousands of LGBTQ people and the church is obvious and the people we have allied with (and many of our own members!) are now engaged in destruction of our constitutional system, which is alarming to him. I will be very interested in whether this causes him to moderate and to try and distance the church from the evangelicals. I hope so.
On chalking things up to revelation, Oaks will continue that at least to a degree. He’s made too many statements about things like inspired policies, authorized by the Lord, those with priesthood keys, etc. He’s going to chalk anything he does up to “this saith the Lord” while also lacking to courage to state it that boldly.
That said, I don’t see him making monumental changes to programs, etc that widely impact the whole church. My expectation is that he’ll codify more things behind the scenes to take out some of the gray. Like the handbook additions last year with rules about trans people attending church, using bathrooms, being around kids, etc.
Lastly, he most definitely will continue the push he started last year for more disciplinary/membership councils.
John Mansfield, Oaks wrote this in 1984, either shortly before or after being called as an apostle. You can see that he has been worrying about LGBTQ people for a very long time.
Eyring will remain in the First Presidency until his death. The more interesting question is who will be appointed as the Second Counselor. Most likely, it will not be one of the younger apostles, such as Kearon. I think it will most likely be Bednar – he is quite young (relatively speaking, of course), holds similar views to Oaks and will likely become the president of the church in the future.
I cannot be the only one who laughed out loud when Oaks basically said, “OK, we are in way over our heads with all of the temples that Nelson announced. We need to take a breath, figure out how to actually build all of these things, and then we will get back to a more realistic schedule of announcements.”
Of course, then the theme of “Oaks Unleashed” emerged: all Family, all the time. Proclamation canonization odds just increased significantly.
I also think that the odds of Bednar in the new First Presidency stand at about 97.4%…and that Peter Johnson may be the next apostle.
Dr. X: Yeah the temple announcement was pretty funny, especially when he was quick to add defensively that he definitely was rejoicing with Pres. Nelson when all of his prior temple announcements were made. Makes me think he was smiling through gritted teeth every time the list of announced-but-not-started temples grew. Surely the church has the same kind of charts as in Ziff’s old post on that.
It does make me curious which temples Nelson was ready to announce this conference that have now been shelved.
Here are my own predictions about the Oaks presidency after this weekend’s Conference:
1. Pres. Eyring will be retained in the First Presidency.
2. Elder Bednar will be elevated to it.
3. The Proclamation on the Family will be put to the general membership for a sustaining vote as Official Declaration No. 3 at the next General Conference (April 2026).
4. If the newest apostle isn’t from the ranks of the Presidency of the Seventy, it will be . . . Ahmad S. Corbitt.
It’s hard to know what to expect but I will give it a go, these are my optimistic predictions:
1. Agree Eyring will be retained
2. Uchdorf will return to FP
3. Proc will remain just the Proc
4. Peter Johnson for the Q12
” Will he require their family members to cut off contact with them if they want to retain a temple recommend, or membership at all?”
Pretty sure he’s said the opposite.
President Oaks seemed to think it was fun being in the First Presidency with a heart surgeon. Maybe he’ll pick a cardiologist, Elder Renlund. I wonder about putting Pres. Holland in the presidency, using the same logic that Pres. Nelson used to elevate Pres. Oaks to that quorum.
“I understand President Oaks was originally called into the Q15 to help GAs counter the threat of the gays.”
How did you come to have that understanding?
“Worrying about LGBTQ people has clearly been a central question, if not the central question of his time in the Q15.”
Oaks was called to the quorum of the twelve in 1984. I could have missed something from his first 30 years as an apostle. but I listened to a lot of talks, and I don’t remember his now-frequently-voiced concerns about religious liberty starting until around 2015 when any-sex marriage became the legal norm in the United States and running a church out of sync with that became a concern.
I’m very curious about the prophet-quoting. When I analyzed this (https://qhspencer.github.io/lds-data-analysis/presidents), I concluded that past history before he was president of the church suggests that Nelson has always placed a particular importance on whoever is currently president of the church, more than anyone before him or likely to be after him. I predict things revert to normal levels, thank goodness.
I think Oaks would love to canonize the proclamation, but I think the current norms (going back at least as far as the 1978 revelation) are for there to be a consensus among the Q15 for such actions, and that if such a consensus existed it would have been done by now. So I predict that won’t happen.
One thing I’ve been curious about is how Oaks will behave now that anything he does is 100% under his own brand. It’s one thing to do things from behind the scenes as an apostle. The top dog is the one that gets marked by that change. For example, we (those of us who are online and who dislike it) know he was behind the Proclamation, but the average church member doesn’t really know that.
We know who was behind the PoX, but most church members don’t know the ins and outs of these things like those of us online do. It sure looked to me like Nelson played his hand cleverly by doing the PoX while Monson was still alive (yet totally not in charge due to dementia), then got to “undo” it when he took over, as if he hadn’t put the unpopular policy in place to start with! Is this a lesson that Oaks has also learned? That you will get credit / blame for what happens when you occupy the top spot, but plausible deniability when you don’t? If so, he could moderate some of his worst impulses (e.g. his September 6 purge and desire to excommunicate people for ideological reasons, and his bigotry toward LGBTQ people).
I hope you’re right, Quentin, that the quoting of the top guy was a Nelson-specific thing. I love that you analyzed and found it was another of his idiosyncrasies!
Hawkgrrrl, interesting analysis! I hope knowing he’s the one who will get the credit or the blame gives him pause in his more extreme ideas.
John: “How did you come to have that understanding?”
The experience is too sacred to share.
I feel like Oaks has been more moderate recently, but fear that his declining health will have a huge impact on his abilities to preside and innovate. It will be an interesting weekend!
I have wondered how much of his monomania regarding fighting against all things queer is due to him being given that assignment decades ago as a young and talented legal mind. I feel like the damage done to thousands of LGBTQ people and the church is obvious and the people we have allied with (and many of our own members!) are now engaged in destruction of our constitutional system, which is alarming to him. I will be very interested in whether this causes him to moderate and to try and distance the church from the evangelicals. I hope so.
On chalking things up to revelation, Oaks will continue that at least to a degree. He’s made too many statements about things like inspired policies, authorized by the Lord, those with priesthood keys, etc. He’s going to chalk anything he does up to “this saith the Lord” while also lacking to courage to state it that boldly.
That said, I don’t see him making monumental changes to programs, etc that widely impact the whole church. My expectation is that he’ll codify more things behind the scenes to take out some of the gray. Like the handbook additions last year with rules about trans people attending church, using bathrooms, being around kids, etc.
Lastly, he most definitely will continue the push he started last year for more disciplinary/membership councils.
John Mansfield, Oaks wrote this in 1984, either shortly before or after being called as an apostle. You can see that he has been worrying about LGBTQ people for a very long time.
https://archive.org/details/PrinciplesToGovernPossiblePublicStatementOnLegislationAffectingRightsOfHomosexua/page/n19/mode/1up
Eyring will remain in the First Presidency until his death. The more interesting question is who will be appointed as the Second Counselor. Most likely, it will not be one of the younger apostles, such as Kearon. I think it will most likely be Bednar – he is quite young (relatively speaking, of course), holds similar views to Oaks and will likely become the president of the church in the future.
I cannot be the only one who laughed out loud when Oaks basically said, “OK, we are in way over our heads with all of the temples that Nelson announced. We need to take a breath, figure out how to actually build all of these things, and then we will get back to a more realistic schedule of announcements.”
Of course, then the theme of “Oaks Unleashed” emerged: all Family, all the time. Proclamation canonization odds just increased significantly.
I also think that the odds of Bednar in the new First Presidency stand at about 97.4%…and that Peter Johnson may be the next apostle.
Dr. X: Yeah the temple announcement was pretty funny, especially when he was quick to add defensively that he definitely was rejoicing with Pres. Nelson when all of his prior temple announcements were made. Makes me think he was smiling through gritted teeth every time the list of announced-but-not-started temples grew. Surely the church has the same kind of charts as in Ziff’s old post on that.
https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2024/04/24/temples-announced-and-temples-completed/
It does make me curious which temples Nelson was ready to announce this conference that have now been shelved.
Here are my own predictions about the Oaks presidency after this weekend’s Conference:
1. Pres. Eyring will be retained in the First Presidency.
2. Elder Bednar will be elevated to it.
3. The Proclamation on the Family will be put to the general membership for a sustaining vote as Official Declaration No. 3 at the next General Conference (April 2026).
4. If the newest apostle isn’t from the ranks of the Presidency of the Seventy, it will be . . . Ahmad S. Corbitt.
It’s hard to know what to expect but I will give it a go, these are my optimistic predictions:
1. Agree Eyring will be retained
2. Uchdorf will return to FP
3. Proc will remain just the Proc
4. Peter Johnson for the Q12
” Will he require their family members to cut off contact with them if they want to retain a temple recommend, or membership at all?”
Pretty sure he’s said the opposite.
President Oaks seemed to think it was fun being in the First Presidency with a heart surgeon. Maybe he’ll pick a cardiologist, Elder Renlund. I wonder about putting Pres. Holland in the presidency, using the same logic that Pres. Nelson used to elevate Pres. Oaks to that quorum.