This Easter weekend, millions will tune into the semiannual general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Members will sustain Dieter F. Uchtdorf as the new acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. That means they’ll raise their hands to say they support and will stand by him as the leader of the second-highest governing body of the church. He took up the position after the death of the previous president, Jeffrey R. Holland.
But what does the president of the Quorum actually do?
You can think of the job like the prime minister of the church, said Matthew Bowman, a religious studies professor at Claremont Graduate University and chair of Mormon Studies. There’s quite a bit of power invested in the role. Uchtdorf will be something of a liaison between the Quorum and the First Presidency, the top leadership group that includes the prophet and president of the whole church. Uchtdorf will have regular meetings with them.
“The president of the Quorum of the Twelve is often overshadowed in kind of popular consciousness by the president of the church himself,” Bowman said. “But that person is often doing a great deal that may be behind the scenes for most regular church members.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ciara Hulet: What does the president of the Twelve do that could shape life for individual church members?
Matthew Bowman: Oh, a number of things. I think one of the most significant pieces of authority that the President of the Twelve has is that he ultimately assigns different apostles to different committees that run various departments of the church, and can thus sort of indirectly shape the policies that those committees decide.
The mission department, for instance, governs the various missions of the church. They decide where the mission boundaries are. They decide mission policy. And of course, we've seen a number of mission policy changes recently.
The president of the Twelve also runs the weekly meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and decides what issues they're going to discuss. It's his responsibility, essentially, to guide that meeting. And of course, the Quorum of the Twelve does not make any decision unless it is a unanimous decision. They drive towards consensus, and it's often seen as a responsibility of that president of the quorum to try to find that consensus, right, to find places where all the apostles can agree on things, and try to steer the conversation to that way.
CH: This position is based on seniority, right?
MB: Yes, it is length of time of service in the Quorum of the Twelve. At this point, of course, the president of the Quorum of the Twelve is in the First Presidency. That's Henry B. Eyring. So Dieter Uchtdorf will continue to be acting president of the quorum as long as Eyring is serving in the First Presidency.
CH: How will Uchtdorf influence the church?
MB: Yeah, this is a good question. I think because he is the first non-American to serve in this position for quite a while, right? And as such, I think he perhaps has a different kind of set of questions than an American might have, may be quite attentive to the church outside the United States, in particular. And of course, I think the status of the church outside the United States has been of really great concern for the church for a long time, and I think a number of decisions that the church has made have been directed to that end.
When President [Russell M.] Nelson took over the church almost 10 years ago now, Uchtdorf was placed in charge of the missionary committee, and I think he influenced a lot of decision-making about how the missionary department would function. And we have seen, of course, in those intervening few years, a number of changes in the missionary program that I think are largely designed to improve the success of the church's mission outside the United States. I think we can see more of that kind of attention in his tenure as president of the Twelve.
CH: Uchtdorf has a reputation as a “silver fox,” and he teaches with lots of airplane metaphors because he was a pilot. Now that he's back in a higher leadership role, could his popularity change how much influence he has?
MB: Well, I think you know, what it might do is attract more attention to what exactly it is the president of the Quorum of the Twelve does. I think most members of the church have little idea that the president of the Twelve, right, is responsible for assigning other apostles to committees. But should he choose to kind of share what some of that work does, I think, because he does have that kind of charisma, that sort of following, it may attract more attention to the kinds of decisions that he makes and the sort of work that he is doing,
CH: The April general conference marks six months of Dallin H. Oaks as president and prophet of the church. What do you make of his tenure so far?
MB: I think perhaps the most significant decisions President Oaks has made in these first few months is his choice of two new apostles, right? That’s not common, right, for a president of the church to select two new apostles so early in his tenure. And some might look at these two choices, Elders [Gérald] Caussé and [Clark] Gilbert, and be thinking, there's some kind of an interesting contrast there, right? Caussé is sort of a European as well as seen as fairly cosmopolitan, and is probably best known in his tenure as presiding bishop for his concern for the environment. Whereas Elder Gilbert is best known for his tenure as church commissioner of education, when he's made a number of decisions that have really pushed, I think, the BYU campuses towards a greater sense of awareness of orthodoxy within the church.
I think they signal on President Oaks’ part his real comfort with apostles with whom he has worked with already. And it seems, I think, that Oaks wants to fill the Quorum of the Twelve with people whom he is very personally familiar with and presumably has a good working relationship with. And that, then, in turn, I think will signal a sort of presidency in which Oaks, I think, wants to really execute on policies that he feels comfortable with and that he already has a sense for what he wants to do.
