Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
The recently leaked videos of Mormon authorities discussing sometimes-thorny issues behind closed doors exposed no stunning secrets or unexpected statistics.
But they did provide stark visual verification of what believers long have known about their faith’s top leaders:
They are mostly older, white and male.
As the camera focused on speakers giving lectures and apostles asking questions — on topics ranging from how to help single members to how to encourage food storage and convert more Muslims — almost no women or people of color were in sight.
And among the apostles, a few were in their 60s, but some were well into their 80s and 90s.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has made some changes since the briefings were filmed between 2007 and 2012. Today, at least one woman sits on three high-ranking executive committees, a few non-Americans have inched up the leadership ladder, and the age of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has dipped a tad.
But the process of picking apostles who eventually could become the Mormon president, considered a “prophet, seer and revelator,” remains the same — which almost guarantees the presiding quorums will always be a kind of gerontocracy.
Today’s apostles typically are appointed in their 60s. They stay there until death, with the longest-serving man taking the helm of the 15.6 million-member church when his predecessor dies.
That system, some say, can produce problems — including leaders who suffer physical and mental impairments. The current president, 89-year-old Thomas S. Monson, who became an apostle 53 years ago at age 36, is growing increasingly frail and addressed members at the faith’s recent General Conference for barely nine minutes.
Some wonder if an LDS Church president could resign his office — the way Pope Benedict XVI did — and hand the leadership to a younger, more vibrant man. Could the church institute a mandatory age — say 85 — at which apostles would be granted emeritus status (as it began doing in 1978 with general authorities in the Seventy)?
Categories: Church, Mormonism, The Muslim Times