The 93-year-old is known for his lecture-style sermons, his advocacy of religious freedom and defending the faith’s stance that marriage between a man and woman is ordained of God.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) President Dallin Oaks waves to the audience as he leaves the stand after the morning session of General Conference in April. The 93-year-old is almost certain to take up the mantle of president following Nelson’s death.
The death of 101-year-old President Russell M. Nelson, a vigorous leader whose tenure was marked by a geyser of policy changes, raises many questions about the future of the global church he led.
Not included in that list of questions is who is most likely to succeed him.
Unlike the Catholic tradition of electing a new pope, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chooses each new prophet-president based on seniority among the remaining apostles.
This means that 93-year-old Dallin H. Oaks, currently the longest-serving apostle and the same age as Nelson when he ascended to the presidency, is all but certain to helm the global faith of 17.5 million members.
Appointed to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles the same day as Nelson in 1984 — but ordained a month later — Oaks is perhaps best known for his relentless focus on the twin issues of freedom of religion and opposition to same-sex marriage.
Oaks’ rise to the faith’s reins was not expected to take place until after Nelson’s funeral, which is yet to be announced.
The pre-apostle years
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Former Chief Justice Gordon Hall and former Justice Dallin H. Oaks visit with Justice Christine M. Durham, during Durham’s retirement reception in 2017.
The Provo native and former University of Chicago Law School professor served as president of church-owned Brigham Young University from 1971 to 1980. Oaks’ legal background proved fortuitous for the church’s flagship school, which faced intense scrutiny during this time by the federal government over the faith’s policy of excluding Black members from its priesthood and temples until 1978.
Oaks, who was reared by a working mother, began his tenure by raising the pay for female staffers and faculty to reflect that of their male counterparts. Recent research, meanwhile, has placed the use of electric shock therapy by researchers on gay BYU students squarely within Oaks’ tenure — a point he rejects.
From BYU, he moved in 1981 to the bench of the Utah Supreme Court, where he served for three years until then-President Gordon B. Hinckley called him to be an apostle. In accepting the lifetime assignment, Oaks, who relished life in a judge’s robes, was relinquishing any chance of becoming U.S. Supreme Court justice, which seemed a real possibility at that point in his life.
Oaks and LGBTQ+ issues
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) President Dallin H. Oaks and wife Kristen speak to young adults at a worldwide devotional in 2023.
As an apostle, Oaks developed a reputation as a stern lecturer attracted to cool, legalistic rationale.
“To understand the teachings and examples of our Savior, we must understand the nature of God’s love and the eternal purpose of his laws and commandments,” he explained in an emblematic sermon delivered in 2018 at BYU-Idaho. “One does not replace or diminish the other.”
Bound up in this vision of a universe governed by unbendable moral rules is, starting in the early 21st century, Oaks’ persistent emphasis on the church’s teachings that the only form of marriage ordained by God is between a man and a woman and that one’s gender is inflexible and assigned at birth.
In doing so, he became the focus of intense criticism, including by at least one member of his own family.
Writing on Facebook, for instance, after one of his many General Conference sermons on the topic, his grandson Jared mourned that Oaks had made “a religious career out of anti-LGBTQIA+ policies, not prophecies.”
Speaking in 2023 to a worldwide gathering of young adult Latter-day Saints, however, Oaks called on listeners to show greater compassion to the LGBTQ+ community and those experiencing gender dysphoria.
Oaks and religious freedom
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) President Dallin H. Oaks speaks at the University of Virginia in 2021.
Tied up in the topic of same-sex marriage and related debates has been, for Oaks, the question of the church’s freedom to restrict its sealing rituals, in which married couples are bound for eternity in the faith’s temples, to male-female relationships.
As an apostle, he has supported compromises with state and federal governments designed, as he has seen it, to preserve the rights of the nation’s LGBTQ+ citizens while enshrining the right of religious groups to dictate their own policies regarding their LGBTQ+ membership.
This included the church-endorsed 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, a federal law codifying same-sex marriage while ensuring religious institutions would not be required to solemnize such unions.
How succession works in the LDS Church
Since the death of church founder Joseph Smith, the mantle of prophet has passed to the next most senior apostle, who is part of a group generally composed of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the governing First Presidency.
High on any new president’s to-do tally is the selection of two counselors for the First Presidency, usually chosen from the pool of apostles. In consultation with them and the quorum, he is then responsible for selecting a brand-new face to join the ranks for the apostles. That man, expected to serve for life, will then enter the queue to become a possible future church president.
Presidents usually announce the new apostle at General Conference.
The next such worldwide gathering? Just five days away.
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