Dallin H. Oaks selected Clark G. Gilbert to fill the Q12 vacancy left by Jeffrey R. Holland’s passing in December. Needless to say, as a person on the fringe of the Church, I’m not happy with the choice of such a boundary-policing culture warrior. But of course nobody asked me! Elder Gilbert enters the quorum much like President Oaks did in that he’s far younger than any more senior member, so he already looks like a good bet to one day be Church president.
Here’s a look at the Q15 members’ ages. They’re ranked by increasing seniority.
Note that I cut off the zero to fifty years part of the graph at the bottom to better focus on the interesting part. The trend is obvious, and unsurprising, that the more senior members are older. The real outliers are David A. Bendar toward the right side, and then Elder Gilbert all the way to the left. It’s not a surprise that, as the most junior member, he’s the youngest. But he’s the youngest by seven years, an unusually large gap.
Here are monthly predicted probabilities for each Q15 member to be Church president, based on a mortality table from the Society of Actuaries.
Note that I’ve extended the graph out 40 years instead of 30 as I’ve typically shown it in the past. Most of it looks familiar. Elder Bednar has a big mountain of probability, but now Elder Uchtdorf has a little time in the sun when he’s most likely. And to the right, Elder Gilbert also has a big mountain of probability mostly in the 2050s and 60s.
Also, as I’ve done a number of times before, I ran a little simulation, drawing 10,000 sets of random numbers and comparing them to each Q15 member’s age and the mortality table, to simulate each of their remaining life expectancies, and the resulting likelihood of becoming president. I described the process in more detail in this 2023 post, although I’ve since moved from doing the calculations for each future year to doing them for each future month. The simulation runs out 60 years. Here are the results:
Elder Gilbert is only just barely getting his toe into the quorum, and already he has a better shot of becoming president than anyone else but Elder Bednar and President Uchtdorf.
Thank you for the update. The question of what this chart looks like now has been on my mind ever since the announcement last week.
13 apostles have been called into the quorum who were at least 5 years younger than all those ahead of them. 5 of them became president of the church, 6 did not, and two more are still living. So, I guess at a rough level, it supports the idea that a 7 year gap does give you a 50% change of becoming president some day. But I also think it’s worth it to remember the “inevitable” presidencies that never were. The list is below with the age gap (in years) between them and the second youngest apostle when they were called.
19.8 Lee
17.2 Monson
14.2 Abraham Woodruff
11.8 Joseph F Smith
11.5 Bednar
8.3 Holland
8.2 Grant
7.1 Gilbert
6.6 John H Smith
5.8 George A Smith
5.8 Cannon
5.4 Evans
5.0 Oaks
LDS presidential “terms” do not always turn out as predicted, either. Harold B. Lee was 73 years old when he succeeded the 95-year-old Joseph Fielding Smith in July 1972. He was the youngest president since Heber J. Grant in 1918 (62). Most members were excited to have a relatively young prophet and expected a long and productive “reign.” However, Lee died just 17 months later in December 1973, the second-shortest presidential term (Howard W. Hunter only served 9 months). Lee was succeeded by 78-year-old Spencer W. Kimball, a surprise to many as he had suffered from major health issues. My faithful, 96-year-old mother is convinced that Lee (who she considered a racist) was removed so that Kimball could receive the 1978 revelation making blacks equal.
The conclusion is that while the odds may favor a particular apostle, anything can happen at any time, whether it’s the Lord’s will or just fallible mortal bodies.
I hate to find one more great advantage of being an *old* lady, but I am just glad that I won’t live to see this guy become profit (spelling quite intentional) of the church. He is just in general the kind of guy that Jesus would never pick as an apostle.
I would be very interested in seeing how you make these graphs. I am wondering if I could have Claude code something like this, as I don’t know the first thing about coding. It would be interesting to see how Gilbert’s chances would change if Kearon was president for shorter or longer than in this prediction.
Further on Dave W’s point…Gilbert is taking the place of Holland,whose age gap as youngest apostle was more than Gilbert’s.
Evans (born 1906) died in the presidency of JFS Jr. (born 1876).
Abraham Woodruff(born 1872) died in the presidency of JFS Sr.(born 1838).