The Quorum is a high-level
governing body in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Quorum “helps
set church policy while overseeing the many business interests of what is known
widely as the Mormon Church.”[1]
On December 27, 2025, Jeffrey R. Holland, “a high-ranking official . . . who
was next in line to become the faith’s president,” died.[2]
He was 85. To be at that age and yet next in line to lead a major Christian
denomination is a sign of just how tilted toward the elderly the leadership of
that Church was at the time. Almost exactly three months earlier, Russell M.
Nelson, the then-sitting president of the denomination, died at the age of 101.
Dallin H. Oaks, at the age of 93, became the next president. These ages make 75,
the mandatory retirement age for Roman Catholic bishops, look young, though
Pope John Paul II died at 84 and Pope Francis died at 88—both men while in
office. Especially in Christianity, whose Gospels depict Jesus and his
disciples as much younger men, the question of whether an aged leadership unduly
foists conservatism on what in the Gospels is characterized as a radical
religious movement.
In 2020, a group of
researchers put the old adage that people tend to become more conservative as
they age to the test. Contrary to the folk adage, the study found that
political attitudes tend to be stable over time; however, when attitudes do
change, “liberals are more likely to become conservatives than conservatives are
to become liberals, suggesting that folk wisdom has some empirical basis even
though it overstates the degree of change.”[3]
Regarding religion, research indicates people tend to become more religious as
they age, but this doesn’t answer the question of whether a person’s
religious beliefs become more conventional or orthodox within a religious
institution as the person ages. Simply put, are older people in a congregation more
likely to “upset the apple cart.” To the extent that living through decades has
a thickening effect on the idealism of the youth because the inertia of status
quo, whether of an organization or a society, is difficult to move, even with a
faith that can move mountains.
As a complication, the influx
of social ideology (e.g., social issues) into the religious domain can make orthodox
religious believers seem more or less conservative. I have argued elsewhere
that the overreaching of social ideology onto the religious domain minimizes or
ignores the sui generis nature of both domains. Based on the study on political
ideology changing over time as a person ages, it seems reasonable to posit that
a person’s social ideology is most likely to stay constant, but when it
changes, it is more likely to get more conservative. It is important not to
omit the possibility, however, that very old people can surprise us and actually
shake things up a bit in leading a religious organization.
Russell Nelson “was revered as
a prophet” even though he was “the oldest serving head of the church” when he
died at 101.[4] If
the label of prophet resembles the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures, the
implication is that Nelson spoke truth to power. It may be going too far to say
that his time at the helm of the denomination “will forever be remembered as
one of . . . profound change” because he emphasized global ministry and
increased temple construction.[5]
The need to temper the magnitude of the change reflects the empirical results
of the study on changes in political attitudes discussed above. For instance,
in 2019, when Nelson was in his mid-90s, “the church made a surprise move . . .
by pledging to roll back a series of anti-LGBT policies introduced in 2015 that
had reportedly led to 1,500 people leaving the [denomination] in protest.”[6]
That the motivation to roll back the anti-gay policies may have had something
to do with the loss of membership, and thus money, tempers the magnitude of the
shift in the social ideology in the Church’s leadership. Attention to finances
can itself be construed as conservative. Furthermore, reversing the ban on
children of same-sex parents being baptized and the expulsion of gay members
who are married are not as surprising as the announcement that the denomination
would perform gay-marriage ceremonies would have been.
That rolling back two policies
does not count as profound change is also supported by the fact that just
two years later, Holland gave a speech “in which he called on church members to
take up metaphorical muskets in defense of the faith’s teaching against same-sex
marriage.”[7]
That the speech “became required reading for BYU freshmen in 2024” is itself an
indication that the social ideology in the Church’s governing body and
leadership had not changed.
That both Nelson and Holland
opposed homosexuality even as two policies were rolled back does not mean that
those men had become more conservative, and that were younger men in charge,
the Church’s stance on the social issue would have been more progressive in
2019. Therefore, this case study should not be used to argue that because Jesus
and his disciples are characterized as middle-aged in the Gospels, Christian
denominations should be led by young or middle-aged people or else the
radicalism of the movement in the Gospels can be expected to be hampered by old
men at the helm. In fact, that Nelson did so much—albeit not necessarily of
profound change—in the last decade of his life in leading his denomination
qualifies the typical assumption that people over 85 should be put out to
pasture because they cannot possibly make a difference, whether to an
organization or a society.
Nevertheless, the finding that
when political attitudes do change as a person ages, most often this results in
a more conservative ideology, means that young and middle-aged people can be
included at the highest level of an organization so to counteract or balance
out the admittedly mitigated tendency. In other words, the elderly can make contributions
as organizational leaders and are not necessarily more conservative than they
were, so the need to balance out excessive conservativism, due to age, with
younger leaders, is less though it does exist to some extent. The tendency of
the elderly to resist giving up some power to younger members is thus something
to watch out for in church governance, but the elders need not be replaced
altogether as a prerequisite for religious organizations to be able to adapt to
a changed environment at least to some extent so to be able to survive. It is
not as though a denomination must adopt a progressive social ideology, which I submit
is extrinsic through related to religion anyway, in order to survive; rather,
the mitigated, or muted, tendency of people to become more conservative with
age should itself be countered institutionally in terms of there being ways of
including young and middle-aged members at the highest organizational level of
leadership and governance. Generally speaking, the tyranny of the status quo should
be countered so both change and constancy can have a chance at swaying the day.
2. Ibid.
3. Johnathan Peterson, Kevin Smith, and John R. Hibbing, “Do People Really Become More Conservative as They Age?” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 82, No. 2 (April, 2020), pp. 600-11.
4. Nadine Yousif, “Russell M. Nelson, Head of Church of Latter-day Saints, Dies Aged 101,” BBC.com, 29 September, 2025.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
