No changes from new Mormon chief
Russell M. Nelson will be 2nd oldest church president
SALT LAKE CITY — The man set to become the next Mormon church president is a 93-year-old former heart surgeon whose conservative track record on the religion’s leadership panel has led Mormon scholars to predict he won’t make any major changes.
Russell M. Nelson is likely to be formally named to the post in the coming days under longstanding church protocol designed to ensure a smooth handover by giving the post to the longest-tenured member of the governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Nelson has been on the panel for three decades.
President Thomas S. Monson died Tuesday night at his home in Salt Lake City after leading the church for nearly a decade. He was 90.
Nelson would become the second-oldest person to be named president of The
Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. Only Joseph Fielding Smith was older, by one month, when he became church president in 1970.
Expect more “continuity than change” from Nelson, who seems to maintain a conservative interpretation of church doctrine while trying not to alienate anyone, said Patrick Mason, associate professor of religion at Claremont Graduate University in California and the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies.
“He has a generous impulse within him, but it coexists alongside a fierce commitment to orthodoxy,” Mason said. “There’s no indication from his previous service that Nelson sees himself as a reformer.”
Scholars don’t expect Nelson to deviate from the church’s current stance on LGBT issues. The faith has opposed gay marriage and homosexual activity amid widespread social acceptance while trying to foster an empathetic stance toward LGBT people.
In a 2016 speech, Nelson defended the religion’s decision the year before to adopt new rules banning children living with gay parents from being baptized until age 18 and clarifying that people in same-sex relationships are considered apostates, meaning they can be kicked out of the religion.
That policy drew harsh criticism from gay church members and their supporters, who considered it a major setback from recent progress.
Nelson said in the speech that the new rules came from a revelation that Monson and other leaders received that gave them “spiritual confirmation” that it was the right thing to do after many states legalized gay marriage.