Mormon leadership wasn’t always geriatric. Founding prophet Joseph Smith was only 38 when he was murdered in 1844. Brigham Young was 46 when he led the Saints on their trek to Utah. But according to Mormon sociologist Armand L. Mauss of Washington State University, the seven men chosen to lead, teach and inspire the LDS Church over the last 50 years have all either died within two years of taking office or become so disabled that for 25 of those years their two chief counselors have had to assume day-to-day leadership of the church. Just a year ago, when it was obvious that president Benson was unable to function, Hinckley himself assured the faithful that the Lord could still reveal his mind to the church. ““Inspiration and revelation’’ are not limited to the president alone, he said. Each of the ruling 12, Hinckley declared, also enjoys these gifts.
To concerned Mormons like Mauss, it is apparent that the visionary leadership of Joseph Smith has long since given way to a more bureaucratic exercise of collective church authority. In the last century, he observes, Mormon presidents have received only two major revelations. In 1890 prophet Wilford Woodruff revealed – in the face of considerable pressure from the U.S. government – that Mormons were no longer to practice polygamy. Then in 1978 Spencer W. Kimball announced that the all-white Mormon priesthood would be open to males of African-American ancestry. The latter revelation might have come a decade earlier, Mauss insists, if prophet David O. MacKay ““had not been fading in and out of consciousness’’ at the age of 94. Apostles who opposed including blacks, says Mauss, packed the president’s office with counselors who stymied the reform. Now, with Hinckley, the Mormons have a prophet who brings vigor to a church that, in millennial terms, was only born yesterday.
