Gerontocracy - with Greg Prince

Hello and welcome to the very latest episode of Inside Out. I'm your co-host Ian Wilkes, and I'm back here as always with the delightful Mr. Jim Bennett.

Hello, Jim. Hello, Ian. How are you, sir? You are also delightful.

Well, thank you very much. I'm doing really fine today.

How about you?

How's your day?

Hanging in there, doing just fine.

Good, good.

Well, we are excited again to bring back our wonderful Greg Prince. Greg, welcome to Inside Out.

Thank you. I guess I'm not delightful, but that's okay.

Did I not use the word wonderful? I, uh, did I? One thing was enough. Wonderful.

Okay.

We are, Greg, you are wonderful. And I wanna, I want to say how, uh, wonderful, how grateful we are, that you're back on Inside Out. You've not got fed up of us so far.

And I'll say delightful. Even if Ian won't, I will. I think you're absolutely delightful.

Greg, you are delightful. How's that? Okay. So I always look forward to these conversations. I know Jim does. I know many, all of our listeners do. And it's just wonderful to have you back. So we really appreciate you taking time to meet back with us. Um, you know, for the benefit of listeners, I think you've been on Inside Out now maybe what, 6 times approximately?

Uh, this is number 12.

Haha. My God.

12. You, I stand corrected, Greg. Thank you so much, uh, for correcting me. So we've been, uh, uh, really enjoying the conversation around your, uh, roadmap for improving Mormonism., and we've, we've highlighted this really important document as a strategic document and a document that we believe the church leadership should read and listen and understand and implement. So we've been going through your roadmap, and the last topic we covered was polygamy. And I think this one, as we get into the roadmap and as we're getting through that, we wanted to talk about, uh, gerontocracy, if I pronounce that right. I think it's pronounced differently in the UK, gerontocracy. Um, just for the benefit of our listeners, what is that, Greg, and in the context of the church?

It is governance by elderly people, as in geriatrics, the same root.

The same root, the same word connection. And is that a problem? Is that an issue? Is that a good thing? Is it a mixed thing, or is it a negative thing, or is it all of those things?

Well, if we look backwards, we get the answer. It's a mixed thing. If we look forwards, that's where the discussion will get interesting. Right.

So as we get into this, um, from a high-level perspective, are there not significant benefits for calling and assigning people with long experience into the senior leadership callings? You know, if you look at the, the, the apostles, they're senior individuals, some of them very senior. We had President Nelson recently passed away and he was 101 years old. And it seems that they bring quite an extraordinary level of experience into the leadership. At the same time, there's an argument or case against that where people suggest or recommend that new blood, young blood even, should be brought into the leadership so they get a, a balance in terms of the, uh, the age demographics. Could you speak about the history of, uh, this issue with regards to the leadership previously and early on in the Restoration? I, I don't think they were as old as they are now. Uh, again, if you speak to that and correct that based on any history.

Yeah, that's an easy one to answer. Life expectancy wasn't very long then, and so, uh, generally it was infectious diseases that took them out. Uh, cancer was not an issue because cancer is primarily a disease of aging, but you rarely had leaders living into their 80s and 90s in the 19th century, whereas now you rarely have a church president who does not live into his 90s. Harold B. Lee was one remarkable exception. He became church president, I think, at the age of 73 and died unexpectedly, uh, just a year and a half later. But generally, not only do we have church presidents who live into, or in the case of President Nelson, live past their 90s. Um, but they become president at an older age than their predecessor. So you've got a potential dilemma on both ends of that, and that's what we'll be discussing today. To your question, Is there an upside to experience? Absolutely there is. Generally, these men, by the time they sit in the president's chair, have been an apostle for at least 40 years. That's a lot of experience. Uh, and that means a lot more than it used to, because until the death of President McKay, the Quorum of the Twelve were essentially staff officers. And that is, none of the Church departments reported to the Twelve. They all went directly to the First Presidency. So in a simplification of it, the tasks of the Quorum of the Twelve were largely to speak at General Conference and to conduct stake conferences with the various callings that stake conferences would require. So when they got into the president's chair, very often They didn't have a lot of experience in governance, even though they had a lot of experience in ministry. That makes sense so far?

It does make sense.

Absolutely.

When I was called as— sorry, were you going to speak? Go ahead.

Yes, because at the death of President McKay and at the instigation of Harold B. Lee, who then was the first counselor in the First Presidency, but the de facto president because Joseph Fielding Smith was ailing. Right from the start and didn't live that much longer. Lee transformed church governance, and Ian, you'll understand that much more than our listeners in the United States. We transformed from an essential monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. Prior to the death of President McKay, the church president had been both head of state and head of the government. After Lee did his reforms in the early 1970s, the church president remained head of state. The president of the Quorum of the Twelve now, rather than just making assignments for speaking at stake conferences, now became the real head of government. He became the prime minister. So, the plus of that is that now, because the Twelve, from the time they go into that quorum, have administrative functions that they didn't have prior to the 1970s. They have much more administrative experience under their belts once they get into the president's chair. Now, it's a balance because with increasing experience comes increasing age. And so if you can envision a, a balance with two dishes in it, as one goes up, the other one tends to go down. I think it was Mike Wallace who interviewed President Hinckley and commented about the gerontocracy, and President Hinckley, who was very quick on these type of things, said, yes, isn't it wonderful that we bring all that experience? And it is, but that's not the end of the sentence. There's a but there.

Yeah, I agree with that. I, when I asked you the question earlier about, you know, is it a good thing or a bad thing or is it mixed? I was thinking about the same question from my own experience. And years ago when I was called, many years ago when I was called as a young bishop of an award that I was relatively new in, the advice I got from the stake president was to call two more experienced people. I'd never been a bishop before. And people who were in the recommendations that were, that these people would, it wasn't presented like this, but that they knew where all the skeletons were, so to speak. They had this long history in the ward, which I didn't have, but that combination of experience and me being a young bishop worked really well. I relied on their experience and their insight at At the same time, I felt at times, and we talked about this openly, about the openness to new ideas and trying new things. And so I brought some new ideas in, but I built on their legacy, their experience. In fact, this was a conversation that came into the interview with President Oaks, now the prophet, when he reorganized our stake. He called 3 relatively young people, including myself. I think I was in my 40s when I was called to the stake presidency. And we're all quite young. I think there's only 2, 3 years between us. And again, we drew on experience across the stake, but we also brought some new and fresh ideas into the presidency. And that worked really well, actually. It was kind of experience and balance versus this new thinking coming in as well. A note, by the way, that President Eyring has been in the First Presidency. This is his fourth First Presidency, if I've got my information right. I think he was— he not a counselor to President Hinckley, President Monson, President Nelson, and now President Oaks. That, that's interesting. What does that tell you? What are your thoughts, Jim? What, what does that tell you?

Well, it tells me that President Eyring has sort of been at the center of what's been going on for longer than just about anybody else and probably knows where all of the bodies are buried, so to speak. I have a soft spot for President Eyring because he went to high school with my father. They were very good friends. And he's essentially exactly the same age as my father and looks a bit like my father. So every time I see him, I imagine what my father would be like if he were still with us, which he is not. But I mean, I think it goes back to, Greg, what you were talking about with regard to the institutional, you know, experience that these men bring to their callings. I'm looking— so we are covering some of the ground, Greg, and I hope you'll forgive us, that you covered in the Mormon Land podcast not that long ago. But I listened to that and was really impressed with a lot of what you had to say. I'm looking also at the roadmap that you've written, and that's where we are here with this podcast is the gerontocracy section on your roadmap. But you talked about on that podcast and in the roadmap about pulling Lester Bush out of retirement, so to speak, to talk about this. Lester Bush being the great I mean, his essay on race and the priesthood essentially was, I think, instrumental as a catalyst for President Kimball, who read that essay and recognized the wisdom in it. And that was— I think it's very easy to draw a straight line between that essay and President Kimball's work on eventually receiving that priesthood revelation. But you talk about, in that article, you go through, you have 3,000 data points, which goes through the entire history of the Q15 during, I think it's, what's the timeframe on that?

Well, let me give you a little bit of background, Jim.

Yeah, please.

I met Lester about 20 years ago. About 3 weeks after we moved to Maryland in 1975, serendipitously we moved into the same ward that he had moved into the prior year. I had no idea of that. Uh, we were invited to speak in sacrament meeting afterwards. A gentleman came up and said, that was a nice talk. My name's Lester Bush. And that's where a very close relationship began. We remained the closest of friends until his death 2 years ago. But Lester, uh, was not only a friend, he was a mentor and a role model in the sense that here was a man whose terminal degree in college was an MD. He had no training in the writing of history, and yet he wrote an article that in my mind was the most important article written about Mormonism in the 20th century. You can argue that it really changed the church. It was not the only effector of that, but it was huge. So he really was the role model much later when I decided that rather than just grouse about why something hadn't been written, write it yourself. But his professional training took him into the Central Intelligence Agency. That largely because his father had been in the OSS during the war, and the CIA grew out of the OSS. So Lester Bush Sr. became the head of finance for the CIA. Uh, one of Lester's first assignments when he joined was to keep track of the health and presumed longevity of world leaders., and you can immediately appreciate why that would be useful intelligence for a country to have. He showed me back in the '70s graphs that he had generated that year by year for 30 years moving forward, what were the probabilities that anybody in the Q15, meaning the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve, would become church president. All he was doing was to take the knowledge that he had gained from his professional life, shift a couple of degrees, and say, what about the church? So when he and I were talking later about this, uh, because we'd talked about it decades earlier, I said, why don't you work with me and let's do a dialogue article about it? And he did. He came out of Asian retirement. It was the last thing that he ever worked on. And we were scratching our heads for a while thinking, how do we put numbers on the effect of declining health on the performance of the Q15? Because they don't give you a health status report in the Church News. Uh, and what we decided upon turned out probably to be the very best— that we could have agreed upon, and that was the ability at each of the general conferences every 6 months to deliver one's own address. I, I phrase it that way because in the latter years of President McKay's life, He didn't do that. He had one of his sons.

Yeah, my grandfather delivered several of those.

Yeah, yeah. And so, uh, the ability to deliver one's own address became that surrogate. We went back to 1897 as our starting point because that was when the church began to publish conference reports, which was an end-to-end transcription basically of everything that happened during the General Conference. It included statistical reports, but it included the complete text of all the sermons that were given. And at every General Conference, every member of the Q15 speaks if he is able to speak. Not so for the Presiding Bishopric or the Seventies, or now with the women's auxiliaries, because there aren't enough speaking slots. But given that, we then said, all right, let's just make a massive database Uh, and it was actually 3,500 points that we accumulated there. And what we did was just conference by conference every 6 months for over 100 years, which of the Q15 were able to get a plus mark, meaning to stand up or sit in General Conference and deliver their sermon. In the pre-JET era, Not all of them were able to come back from foreign assignments for each general conference. So we just gave them a bye and didn't count it a plus or a minus. What we saw was until the 1960s, many, if not most of them, didn't miss a general conference, meaning they went from being well enough to deliver their conference address. To being dead within 6 months. Others would miss once and then it was generally out. It was rare that they missed more than once, and it was just reflective of the status of medicine at that time. Beginning in the mid-1960s, and President McKay was the primary example of it, medical care had advanced to the where we were able to keep the body functioning longer, significantly longer. So another way of putting it, not intending to trivialize it, is we were better at maintaining health from the neck down than from the neck up, because dementia is a disease of aging. And what I term the zone of dementia, meaning what's the age at which it really starts to become a significant issue? Uh, it's about 85 years of age. And the deeper into that zone you get, the higher your probability of having signs of dementia. It's, it's really that simple. So the zone has not changed. What has changed is that many more people are moving into that zone. Because we're living longer. And so in the, really in the first probably, oh, century and a half of the church's existence, dementia was just rarely seen, if ever, because people weren't living long enough to move into that zone. In a similar fashion, cancer was not seen in those early years because it, like dementia, is a disease of aging.

Yeah.

In your, uh, it's fascinating. In your roadmap, you, you say our central hypothesis, which proved correct, was that advances in medicine throughout the 20th century resulted in greater longevity, longevity, but only from the neck down. I thought that was fascinating. Uh, you know, the calling of a bishop, is pretty grueling. You know, you've got your full-time job, you've got your family, if you're studying as I was at the time, and you've got all these members in the ward to look after. It's absolutely— I just sometimes struggle. I just didn't know how I could get through the calling at times. So, and that, in contrast with being a full-time apostle, I can't imagine the pressure and intensity from a grueling schedule that the apostle has. We have a global church. They have to be other parts of the world, often dedicating temples, announcing this, going to conference, et cetera, managing, organizing the operations of the church, reorganizing stakes, et cetera. And there's definitely obviously a correlation between productivity and performance and the increasing responsibility and demand on these individuals that the church has. Would it not be better to introduce a, like a, like an apostle emeritus? I don't think you mentioned that in the roadmap, but would it be a good idea to have this cutoff limit, say 80, 85 years old, subject to health, subject to, um, you know, a regular checkups to make sure that these individuals are healthy and strong. And if they're not, surely releasing them, calling them into some apostle emeritus so they can spend time with the family, uh, it's spend time recovering, getting stronger, healthier if possible, or at least spending the rest of their life in a, uh, less pressurized situation and then call others who are fit and healthy. That, I think, ticks a lot of boxes. You get new blood coming in, younger blood. Senior apostles who are struggling with health get a release valve to go and live the rest of their life in peace. Uh, their respect that we have for them is not diminished. It seems also a little bit, uh, I'm not sure if cruel is the word, but it seems, uh, just unfair to put all that pressure on these senior individuals until they die. Seems like the calling will end up killing them at some point. Um, what are your thoughts about calling apostles into some kind of emeritus and like they do with other Jehovah's Witnesses? Do you have any thoughts?

We, we dealt with this in the Dialogue article, which was published in 2016. Um, I, I got to know one of the members of the Seventy who had been in the Seventy before the First Quorum was reconstituted. He said that in the mid-1960s, the 7 members of the First Council of Seventy— that's what was as many Seventies at the general level as existed at that time before before President Kimball reinstituted the first quorum and then second, third, and whatever quorums. But he said the Seven of Us were called in to meet with President McKay, and he said, I want the Seven of You to look at the Office of Seventy, which at that time existed at the general level with those seven men, and at the local level each stake had a single quorum of Seventy. Throughout the church. He said, look at it historically and then make recommendations for the future. But he said, whatever your recommendations are, they must be unanimous. Well, he said that they worked on this and they came up with what they felt was a very good proposal. The problem was that two of the seven were hung up on service for life. I was called for life. And he said, the other 5 of us were trying to say, we're trying to give you back your life, but it didn't work. And so, uh, they needed to wait until those 2 men died because that requirement of unanimity didn't go away. He said, so when President Smith became the president, He called us in, gave us the same charge, but the same result. The same thing with President Lee. And it was finally President Kimball who called them in for the fourth time. And he said, by then these two men had died, and then we got it through. But he said, hm, the provision for emeritus status for the Seventy was there in the mid-1960s. It's just that it took them another 10 years to outlive those who were the naysayers and get that into effect. I said, did you suggest that maybe the Quorum of the Twelve should have an equivalent status? He chuckled and he said, it was above our pay grade, but we had opened the door if they had chosen to walk through. And clearly they didn't. So it's a long way of circling back around, Ian, to your question. I think that the only way to make this work in the long run, if you want younger leadership, is to establish that emeritus status. Now with the 70, it's age 70. Uh, with the Quorum of the Twelve, pick whatever number you want, but pick a number where most of them are still going to have their fastball because you need it for that job. And then say you will serve until that age, and if by that age you are not the president, then you will be placed on emeritus status. And as you two said earlier, Sometimes you have a medical condition that reduces your ability to serve even before you've reached whatever that age is. So I would think that you'd want to have a provision for a medical emeritus status as well, so that the man could be released with dignity, with a vote of full thanks. And then be able to spend whatever remaining years he has dealing with his own health. Now, what does that do to the office of president? Well, you need to set the age higher for that than you do for the Quorum of the Twelve. But again, it should be an age where they are still likely to have their fastball. And we can talk about this in a minute. When they lose that ability, two things happen to that balance that weigh against experience. One is that things that should be done don't get done because counselors are generally reluctant to step in and do what the president has the power to do. The other is that some things that shouldn't get done do get done because there's a power vacuum. And so, so there are two categories of things that don't go the direction we would like them to see because you have an ailing president. And having both the age, emeritus, and for the presidency as well, the medical emeritus status allows you to get around those.

Yeah, you talk about that on Mormonland as well, and I, in going through the Roadmap, you, you discuss this power vacuum, and I kind of want you to elaborate on that because I'm not sure if I fully under— I mean, you focus on 3 different events that happened that were essentially the result of the, these power vacuums. You talk about, uh, when President Kimball was incapacitated, that Elder Mark Peterson went after more than a dozen key figures in Mormon studies.

Yeah, let me back you up, Jim.

Sure, please.

There were four. Four in the final years of President McKay, even though he did not become totally incapacitated the way President Kimball and Benson did. He was slowing down, and President Brown, who was his first counselor, misunderstanding a letter that Sterling McMurrin had written to the McKay sons about a conversation he had had with the president about the policy of blacks and priesthood. President Brown concluded this can be changed administratively, and he did it. But very quickly after he did it, Harold B. Lee, who was out of town at the time, learned about it, was furious, and reversed it. Then as soon as President McKay died, he released Brown from the First Presidency. That was enormously painful situation for President Brown. There had not been the release of a sitting member of the First Presidency since the death of Brigham Young almost 100 years earlier. So that was number one. Power vacuum led to something that blew up internally. Now, they kept that quiet, so the rest of the church didn't know about it, and most people still don't know about that. The second with President Kimball was that as he became incapacitated, two senior apostles, Ezra Taft Benson and Mark Peterson, and one junior apostle, Boyd Packer, acted out their antagonism towards the modernization and professionalization of the Church Historical Department. Leonard Arrington had been brought in as Church Historian in 1972, the only Church Historian we've ever had who had doctorate-level credentials in the field. This was a huge threat to the very traditional-minded apostles, and so they decided, in the absence of input from President Kimball, because he was incapable of giving input at that point, that they would dismantle the History Division, which they did. They released Leonard Arrington as Church historian. They sent him packing to BYU, and the other historians who had been in that division found work elsewhere. It was a devastating blow to modern Mormon historiography, and the residual effects lasted for decades after that. What you had started to refer to, Jim Bennett, came immediately after their success in dismantling the History Division, that Mark Peterson on his own decided that he was going to, uh, beat up on some of the historians So he had a couple of his aides draw him what was basically a hit list of people who had published primarily in Dialogue and Sunstone and a short-lived independent newspaper at BYU called Seventh East Press. He called on the phone personally the stake presidents initially of 8 of these men, all of them were men at that point, and instructed them to bring these men in and basically to beat them up. He didn't say excommunicate them, and none of them were excommunicated, but it was pretty traumatic for some of them. One of them had not been able to have children. He and his wife had applied to what was then, I think it was called Church Social Services, became Family Services later, for adoption. And he was told by the president that if he published anything else, forget the possibility of adoption. That kind of stuff, which just should not happen. Lester Bush was one of the 8 men who were fingered by, uh, Elder Peterson, but he had the good fortune of having as his stake president Bill Marriott. And when Bill met with him, Lester assumed he was going to get hammered, so he went in prepared. And the opening question was, I understand you published some articles on church history. Could you tell me about them? Lester said, I spoke nonstop for over 2 hours. And he said at the end, Merritt kind of leaned back in his chair and said, that's fascinating. Thank you for coming in. If I can ever assist you. If you want me to read anything before you publish it, let me know. I'd be happy to do it. But that was an unfortunate thing that could not have happened if there were a functioning church president. So that, that's McKay with blacks and priesthood. It's Kimball with church history. With Ezra Taft Benson, by the early 1990s, he was totally out of commission. This became a major issue with his grandson, Steve, who was—

I remember that.

Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist in Arizona. And Steve resigned his church membership in protest. Said, you're trying to represent that my grandfather's running the church and he's totally incapacitated. Into that power vacuum, you had the insertion of what became known as the September 6th. That 5 people primarily who had published on church history were excommunicated. A 6th was disfellowshipped, uh, and it became one of the dark episodes in modern church history. Again, having major repercussions on the writing of church history for a full generation after that, that the younger aspiring and very bright historians figured out that was not a minefield they wanted to walk across. And so they switched jobs and went into other fields. It's just now, really, that we're seeing a very welcome influx of young historians and that show up at the Mormon History Association meetings. Number 4 was during President Monson's term when he was, uh, sinking deep into dementia. And in November 2015, you had the introduction of what's generally just called the policy. And everybody knows what that means. It was a policy that punished not only same-sex couples, whether or not legally married, but punished their children. That their kids could not be baptized and even their babies could not be blessed. So much for the the sins of the parents on the children. But tho— those, Jim, were the four instances you have a power vacuum at the top and something dreadful happens in the absence of firm leadership. Uh, to say nothing in all those years of what were the things that should have happened that couldn't happen because even the counselors didn't want to cough the prerogative of the president. That, I think, is one of the things that happened with President Nelson early on, is that people thought, wow, isn't it great, all these things he's doing. A lot of those things he was doing were logjammed because President Monson had been incapacitated. So it was more a case of just undoing the logjam than suddenly coming in with all these new initiatives.

Well, that's true, but you make the point, you use the example of the Polynesian Cultural Center.

Yes.

President McKay, you know, the Twelve wouldn't approve it, and President McKay just said, "Wendell, build it." You know, "Go forward. I'm in charge." I get the sense with President Nelson particularly, it's very clear that in 1990 he gave a talk that was almost word for word the same as the talk that he gave in 2018 about the correct name of the church. But after 1990, President Hinckley came in, slapped him down publicly and unprecedentedly, I think. I mean, the idea of, okay, you heard this talk 6 months ago, here's why it's wrong. You know, you don't ever, ever see that happen. And clearly President Nelson sat on that idea, the idea that the name Mormon is offensive to God and a victory for Satan, and sat on that idea for 38 years, and then came out and launched it, and very clearly did so, I think, unilaterally. I, I, I'm very interested to see whether or not that endures, because I don't think that there are any other sort of champions who are as offended by the word Mormon as President Nelson was. And I think it will probably just sort of— that the word Mormon is likely to sort of creep back into the vernacular and become acceptable. I don't know how long it will take for that to happen. Maybe that's an entirely different episode. But the point— go ahead.

In the Mormon moment, which is surrounding Mitt Romney's run for the presidency, So back it up, 2011 through 2012, a lot of people who visited Times Square in New York saw a billboard that was probably 6 stories tall with a lot of pictures, a very diverse looking group of members, and the headline, I am a Mormon.

Right.

It was also on the taxi cabs. It was when the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon was launched. And rather than fighting the name at that point, we co-opted it. We said, ah, yes, the Book of Mormon. Now you've seen the play, read the book.

Right. I mean, and I think we did so successfully. Yeah, I actually— my cousin, I have a cousin who whose ex-wife is an advertising executive who was hired by the church, and she was the brains behind the I'm a Mormon campaign. And one of the great stories behind that is that in preparation for that, she sat down with the Quorum of the Twelve and showed them the episode of South Park, the Joseph Smith episode. Ian, are you familiar with that episode? I am, yes. Joseph Smith was called a prophet. Dum dum dum dum dum. And she just said, this is how the world sees you. And they were savvy enough at the time to recognize that co-opting the word Mormon was important. And, you know, they went forward and did that. And then President Nelson comes in and we do a 180 and all of a sudden We— it's so amazing to me how many people now, they're even afraid to say Latter-day Saint. I mean, we're the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they go, I'm not a Latter-day Saint, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like, okay guys, you're taking this way too far. That, that— I mean, I, I don't want to necessarily get into the, the pros and cons of that, but, but I do want to demonstrate that that when a new president of the church comes in, it's not just that they open the logjam for things that have been backed up. And I think with President Nelson, I think you— there isn't a case to be made necessarily. There, there are a lot of initiatives that couldn't go through because President Nelson wasn't healthy enough. Uh, there may be some that he didn't agree with, and so they didn't go through. Through. But do you see any kind of, um, sort of pet project, uh, in terms of President Oaks that is on par with that? I mean, I know there are a lot of people that are sort of expecting this huge anti-LGBTQ push because that seemed to be President Oaks's focus. For a lot of his, his time. I don't necessarily think that's the case, but I'd be very interested to hear if you think there is some sort of project, and maybe that that's it.

Lester Bush was not only a smart guy, he had a lot of wisdom. And back in the Kimball years, a lot of us were worried, what is this church going to look like if and when Ezra Taft Benson becomes president because Benson's political views had been so extreme that, uh, his son was a national officer of the John Birch Society, and people were just fearful that the church would become an extension of the John Birch Society. But Lester said no. He said, I'm actually looking forward to him being president. He says, because when you move into the president's chair, they can't cover for you anymore.

And what do you—

they can't cover for you anymore.

Now, what do you mean by that?

If you're an apostle, they can always kind of push it away and said, well, he's not speaking as the Lord's anointed. But when you're in the president's chair, that's the default position. Yes, you are. And so you have to be a lot more careful, and the people around you are likely to make certain that you are more careful in what you say and what you do. And that turned out to be the case. Uh, with the case of President Kimball, his son Ed had told me that his father was the best follower in the church, would never have changed anything. And then he became president, woke up and decided, I can't follow anymore. I've got to lead. The point is that once they sit in the president's chair, If they are willing, then the world can change because of them. And I think most recently, that's what you saw with President Nelson. Before he became president, he was the one who stood up in Hawaii and, from my information, had not bounced that speech off of any of his colleagues. They were caught totally by surprise. And he announced that the policy was in fact a revelation. And then he became president, and 3.5 years later, with as little fanfare as possible, he was the one who had to walk it back.

Hmm.

That may be the most dramatic example of, of how men can change when they get into the president's chair. So I don't know where President Oaks will go with things, but it could be a big surprise, just as what Spencer Kimball did, not just with blacks and priesthood, was a big surprise to all of us. Now, Jim Bennett, you had mentioned the Polynesian Cultural Center. That was one instance where the president ignored a 12-nothing vote by the Quorum against it, and went ahead with it anyway. But there are other instances where they just used the bully pulpit and said, this is what's going to happen. Not long after that, he announced the Provo and Ogden temples. The Twelve didn't know about that until they heard the press release. And then more recently, according to the people I've talked to, When President Nelson announced there was going to be a medical school at BYU, 12 knew nothing about it. So it does happen and it opens the possibility that if a new president felt inspired to initiate some type of emeritus status with Q15, the way to do it would be to get up and say, this is what we're going to do, because you're not going to get 15 votes in favor of taking half those men out.

Well, you, you were very— I, I bet I can't get you to do this here either. Maybe I'll try to get you to do this off camera, but, uh, on Mormonland, you were asked if you thought that there was some leader that would do that.

Yeah, I'm still not going to divulge because I don't have any inside information. It's just, gee, if I were guessing on this, who would I guess? We can talk about that off camera.

Yeah, because it sounds like you have a guess. So I'll let anybody who's listening to this ruminate as to what that is.

Yeah, because I talked to her about it when we went off camera.

Oh, okay. I will. I'll see what she has. She is one of my great inside sources. She has so much insight, Peggy Fletcher Stack. She was very close to President Hinckley particularly, but she— I think a lot of the apostles are very comfortable talking with her about things that they may not be comfortable talking to other people about. But it's just fascinating to me that, you know, as I watched President Oaks in this last conference. I was really impressed with his talk for a number of reasons, but there really was this sort of— I mean, it's a cliché to say that you can see the mantle, but it was very clear that he is now humbled and that he recognizes sort of the weight of what has fallen on him in a way that I think is clearly visible. And I think maybe one of the best indications of that is when I was singing with the Tabernacle Choir at President Nelson's memorial service, which was not the funeral. They were just like a couple of days after he passed away. They put together a very quick memorial service in the Tabernacle, and President Oaks walked into the Tabernacle and everybody stood up, as is the custom. And it's a custom that I kind of find somewhat annoying because it feels like it's almost an act of worship. And I remember when President Hinckley was president of the church, he seemed almost embarrassed by it. He would all be come in and he'd be, oh no, no, no, stop. And, but President Nelson sort of reveled in it. You know, we'd all stand up and President Nelson would walk into the conference center and He'd stop and talk to somebody as he walked to his chair. Just be like, we're all standing here, guy. Could you please get to your chair and let us sit down? At this memorial service, President Oaks, everybody stood up and he was almost visibly anxious about it. And he did this very quickly. No, no, no, no, no, no. Sit down. Sit down. And it was very much this kind of, I don't know if it's, I'm not really president of the church yet. But you could just sort of tell by his whole affect just how significant that was and how sort of unsettled he was by the kind of mantle that had fallen on him. Am I just sort of imagining that, or is that a real sort of thing?

I think it's a real thing. I had told the story on the Mormonland podcast of Mike Grulichus. Mike Was that?

And I knew Mike Kourilakis.

Okay.

He was an amazing guy.

Well, he's in the same ward as your uncle.

Yeah. Yeah.

In fact, he and Howard worked together on a lot of issues.

Yeah.

Mike had been an executive for CBS, and when they decided to do the Polynesian Cultural Center, they asked him to get deeply involved in the programming for it. And, you know, the programming is the center. It's what makes it a tourist attraction. It's not the buildings. And he told me that he was, he received a call from Salt Lake asking that he would pick up Harold B. Lee, who was coming back from the South Pacific on Church business and would be speaking at stake conference. So he picked him up in Honolulu and they drove up to the Church compound in Laie, which has, which had the temple and what was then the Church College of Hawaii, now BYU-Hawaii. And then there's this big construction site. Lee says, what's that? And Mike said, well, it's Polynesian Cultural Center. And Lee just blew up and blew up again the following day from the pulpit in stake conference. Now fast forward a few years, Lee is the president and Mike got a call from Art Haycock, who was the secretary to the president, asking that he and his wife, Lorraine Day, come and visit with the president the next time they were in town, which was a few weeks later. So we walked in, and Lee began the conversation by saying, "I called you here to apologize to you." It's almost impossible to imagine a church president doing that, but that's what he did. And he went on to say, when I blew up, I was not in command of all the facts. And by that time, the cultural center had become, and I think still remains, the number one tourist attraction in the Hawaiian Islands. Uh, when they were leaving, Mike turned to Art and said, what was that about? And he said, Mike, I've sat here for a lot of years, and when men move from from one chair to the president's chair, you can see change. He said he didn't guarantee there's going to be change, but he said, I've seen it again and again, that once they have that mantle, their world looks different. And the ones who are paying attention, as Spencer Kimball did, changed the church as a result. So I, I have no way of predicting what President folks will or won't do. But, uh, I'm, I'm certainly open to the possibility of being pleasantly surprised.

Hmm.

To, to me, the church says things and does things that seem very odd, strange, and somewhat silly at times. I, I, I hold out that, you know, when a president is called into that sacred office of prophet, that we will get the very best of him, that he will speak for God and be bold and really take the church in the direction the Lord wants to. That doesn't always happen. Jim, you mentioned the example with President Nelson of the change, not using the name Mormon, which seemed absolutely absurd to me. I just, I just couldn't make sense of that. I mean, what we're going to do, rename the Book of Mormon The Book of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It just, it just seemed so strange. And even on my family side who were active, very active in the UK, some of those folks as well thought it was a bit strange. We built this brand of, of, you know, I think President Hinckley said Mormon means good. And, you know, we use that name and the campaign that you talked about was all over the UK. It was in London on the underground. There was a On the underground, there was a big Marvin message there. It was everywhere. It was, uh, quite successful as well. Uh, the roadmap, uh, when I read the roadmap, it connects a number of very important dots for me across a range of different issues. And I see the connections, uh, through the documents a lot of the time. And there's a connection with, uh, aging apostles. And their relevance to young people. Here we have most, you know, entirely senior, very old men leading the church. And in your roadmap, you talk about boredom in sacrament meeting, being able to connect with the messages, connect with the speakers, connect with, you know, what we're listening to and the competition that leaders face and families and parents face competing for time of young people and their iPhones and their, you know, social media. It's a very different world that we live in today. We didn't have this when we were growing up. And so I, it's interesting, I think, to see the leadership from a youth perspective and the fact that you've got all these old folks with all this experience, but very senior people, that seems to have at best very little relevance to some of the young people. When I was called as a bishop, and we did this on the stake presidency as well, we had this vision and this goal of involving young people in almost everything that we did. Up until that presidency, there was a period and this was, I think, was same when, when I was the bishop as well, the adults would lead the youth meetings all the time, most of the time, and I saw very little involvement and engagement with the youth and even with primary, some of the kids in primary, and I wanted to change that. I wasn't the only one doing that. Other people thought as progressive as that, but I very much involved the youth— they're planning the agenda, planning the meetings, planning youth events, activities, etc. And so I see a disconnect between what I'm hearing from young people in the church and in the world— remember, this is a church for the world, not just for the members— and the relevance that they have to young people. I also see that at times church politics and personal agendas, like perhaps President Nelson and the push for the temple and the change to the name of the church, or pushing, you know, saying that, you know, when we use the word Mormon, it's a victory for Satan, which is just the most strangest thing I've ever heard, frankly. And so you get these personal agendas coming through, and perhaps they're speaking as a man, but no, they're not. They're speaking as a revelator and a prophet, say revelator. What, but what seems very odd to me is that these personal agendas seem to trump the revelation at times, or even the great cause of the church. In strategic planning, it's universal that, you know, if you have a, a roadmap and the roadmap identifies, you know, where you are, uh, where, where you come from rather, where you are now and where you're going to and why and how you get there. That's, that's the fundamentals of a roadmap. What seems to be missing at times is that the leaders seem to not know what's ahead of them in terms of the issues or their direction that they're taking. And don't seem to have at times, in my mind at least, a clear roadmap of where we are now and where we're going and the issues that we have to address. And I would add on to that as well, seems to be inept at times at being able to call people who have the relevant experience to take the church to where it needs to go in line with where the Lord would want it to go. You know, when you hire senior executives in these big organizations, you look at their experience, their insight, their credibility, their progressiveness, the skill and experience and knowledge that they can bring to the organization. And they come in, if you've hired the right people, They take the organization from where it is into a greater situation than it was, more profitability, better work environment, uh, bigger market share, et cetera. And you hire the people with the relevant skills. It seems that the church is, um, perhaps not, uh, as organized or structured in that way that they're not hiring or calling people with the relevant vision and the relevant skills. So I've made a few points there. I got, I get these points. They come out at me, they stand out at me when I read the roadmap. Greg, do you see it in the same way? Do you, you see those points and could you make connections?

If you're leadership of a church and you're looking at your broad flock, which of two demographics are you going to be most concerned about? Over 70 or under 20? And you know what the answer to that is. Over 70 is the age of most of those men. Uh, I, I had a great friendship for the last 3 years of his life with Paul Dunn, and Paul, hands down, was the most effective minister to youth that I have ever seen in this church. Not only could he reach them, he could change them. They would say when they would walk out of a meeting where another General Authority spoke, well, that was nice. Or maybe they wouldn't say that. They would come out of a meeting where Paul spoke and they were changed and they remained changed. I spoke with some of his early morning seminary students from nearly 50 years earlier And they said, let me tell you one of the lessons he taught us. I thought, wow, 50 years ago and you can remember that? I can't remember what anybody said in sacrament meeting yesterday. Yeah. And so here you have his ability to reach the most important demographic, but we've got a double dilemma. Because on the one hand, you're talking about leaders that may be 3 generations older than that crucial demographic. We've all got kids. It's hard for a parent to understand what's going on in their kid's mind. Add 2 more generations of separation to that, and, and how close do you think they are to deciphering what's going on there and how to steer that person? The other is that we have created in part by intent and in part by necessity layers of insulation that separate the laity from the hierarchy. When I was a missionary, we could walk into the Church Administration Building. We couldn't just walk in to an apostle's office, but you could walk in to the secretary's And now you go through layers of security and metal detectors and everything else. These men, from the time they leave their house on an assignment until the time they get back, are with handlers. And those handlers, you know it because you were at that level, they're going to try to tell them what they think they want to hear and show them what they think they want to see. Because you always want to put your best foot forward. I was at a lunch years ago at the Mormon History Association meeting with one of the General Authorities, and I said, do you ever take the pulse of the members, like have focus groups? Oh yes, yes, we do that. Well, who do you invite? He said, well, usually it's bishops from the Salt Lake Valley. And I just, I came out of my chair. I said, there's your problem. You need to hear from people who are angry at you, because if you don't hear that message unfiltered, you're never gonna fix what's wrong. Cool. So you've got that double dilemma there of many of them being 3 generations older than the most crucial demographic under their jurisdiction, and they don't hear the message because by the time it gets to them, it's been filtered through how many different filters. Yeah.

This point here is one of the key red threads running through the tapestry of the roadmap. It's so important, yet it's so misunderstood and so missed. The church leadership don't seem to understand this, not to the extent that they should. This relationship between connecting with grassroots, connecting with people that really want to have an honest conversation and challenge and ask questions and, hey, what about this? And what do you think about this? And it's the mechanisms and the procedures seems to be missing. I think they had them years ago. I mean, as a bishop, we had access to, you know, I could call the General Authority. I remember having a conversation with Jeffrey Holland, uh, he was the area president for the, for Europe West. And I called him and we had a chat and his son was, uh, coming into town and I was trying to connect with Matt. This is after the mission, Jim, a few years ago. I was, I think I was a, I'm not sure what, doesn't matter what I was doing, but I wanted to connect to them and we chatted on the phone and it seemed, you know, I was only waiting for a few minutes. He came to the phone. I don't think that would happen now, but But that accessibility, that connection, that relevance and listening to the grassroots seems to have disappeared. And what I can't understand is, is there seems to be no appetite for change. It might change under Elder Oaks, but I don't expect it will. But you've got this very locked, seemingly isolated, a limited access to this group of men that have such a powerful influence on its members. And to some extent, a little bit beyond that, you know, politics, for example, in Utah, the church has a huge impact on politics, but we don't seem to be able to access them. You know, I mean, the idea of having them coming onto the podcast and having a conversation, just a, it's just an, you know, a normal conversation without, we don't ask a load of questions. We're not going to trip them up or trick them just to have a conversation about questions and issues and direction of the church, et cetera, and relevancy and issues of the day. I, it seems impossible. I can't, as visionary as I try to be, I can't see that ever happening. I'm hopeful that Matt Holland will come on. Uh, there's doubts over whether that will happen or not. We'll see. But the accessibility to these leaders who impact so many people's lives and the relevance to young people, it just seems to it's just so narrow and, you know, I just, it goes against, I think, what Christ taught and what God taught in the scriptures. You know, we have a direct line to God through prayer and revelation. We have a direct line to Christ. We have the representatives of Christ on the earth, you know, who speak for the, speak the will of the Lord and speak for the Lord, et cetera, for the whole world. Yet we can't seem to have access to them. And also, if it's so important to get the message out about the gospel and where we're at and the relevancy, and this great organization with all these many answers to many of the world's problems, not all of them, but some, some answers for sure, why are we not going on to the big media channels and talking about these things and having these conversations, uh, in the media, in the full glare of the public, and being unafraid and speaking up, and I've mentioned this before, and having the confidence to go on and discuss important issues of the day. I'm not saying going on and I'm not saying expecting to have all the answers, but coming on to have these conversations and addressing these issues and being relevant to the world, being relevant to youth, being relevant to the issues of the day and being part of the conversation. It just seems it's going backwards and shrinking and They're very narrow-minded. Am I completely out to lunch?

No, not at all, Ian. If I were to sit you down and show you the videos of General Conference talks that I had selected and ask you to tell me the year that they were given, how successful do you think you'd be?

Not, not many. I, I, I can think of just a handful of talks, including Paul H. Dunn, by the way, that I can remember that actually had an impact on me. But most of them are just blend into nothingness, frankly.

I mean, the odd talk, but that's my way of responding to your comment about why aren't we on the big-time media. My response is, why would they have us on if our message is no different than it was 5 or 10 or 20 years ago? If we're not addressing something that is crucial and relevant to today's world, I don't think they're going to be interested. Jim, you lived in that world before, your father lived in it. Am I misstating that?

No, I don't think you are at all. That was one of, I mean, Ian and I talk about this at every conference, but this last conference particularly, there was so much happening in the world that sort of cried out for some kind of direct church response. I mean, the Michigan shooting alone was just so, so indicative of how the rest of the world sees us. I mean, because the response to the shooting was, oh yeah, we shouldn't shoot the Mormons, but we shouldn't say they're Christians. And we've spent so much time politically trying so hard to ingratiate ourselves with the evangelical movement. And that was so clearly a repudiation. And there was one brief mention by Elder Stevenson at the beginning of his talk that had nothing to do with Michigan, that— and that was the only reference to Michigan in the entire conference, other than there were, I think, a couple of references to it in the prayers. There was no mention of Charlie Kirk.

Yes.

Which had just set the world on fire and happened in Utah, in BYU's backyard, essentially. And no reference to any of that. I mean, the one I keep coming back to is 2020, which was the conference that in the middle of the pandemic that was just so tone deaf and just so absent of anything connecting it to what was happening in the world. That we boast about this idea of, okay, yeah, we have living prophets and we have living prophets because we need their teachings for our day. And yet, Greg, exactly as you say, you can, you can mix and match conference talks through eras and find no difference between them. I mean, you have to take the names off of them, you know? I mean, because I could tell you that something was taught here if it has Dieter Ruckdorf's name, and not Mark Peterson's name. But you take the names off them, you read the sermons, and they're interchangeable, and they're mix and match. I, I don't think that's absolutely—

the message is wrong.

No, not at all.

The message is fine, but it's not addressing the crucial issues of the day. I've talked before with both of you about the void in moral authority Even in the world, but particularly in the United States, people who could make a difference are not standing up and taking a risk by calling out bad behavior and saying, we need to do better and here's how. Yeah. If the church were to decide, let's get back into the public square on these issues, it could make a difference throughout the world, and then it would get noticed. Now, it chose to get into that public square on Prop 8. Uh, it, it took an unanticipated hit because of it, but there's no question that it knows how to function if it chooses to step into that role. But it has chosen so far not to step in that. And unfortunately, other religious traditions have made the same decision not to enter that fray, maybe because they're afraid of offending their own base. If that's what a religious organization is fearful of, that to me is a real problem. Yeah.

I, I, I couldn't agree more. I think—

look at the archetype of the prophet in the Old Testament. These were fearless guys who took great personal risk and who didn't do what they did because they wanted to be loved. They probably knew that they're going to be hated and that maybe their life would be endangered, but they knew that the message that they had was crucial. It came from God and they needed to deliver it even though it would be to a hostile audience.

I think you've nailed it. You really have. I mean, there's so many examples in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, of course, and in the early church, Restoration of the Church at the beginning when they, we said before, where the leaders seem to be fearless and they were unafraid to stand up and speak up and say something. And I think the church is lost. I think it's, if you do the math, I mean, is there a disconnect between the prophet and God and Christ? Is the message being communicated but not being listened or understood or interpreted? Keeping in mind that the prophet is the prophet of the only true church upon the face of the earth, which they don't talk about very often now. But what about, that aside, what about just standing up and just coming onto a podcast, this podcast, and if not this one, go into another podcast or just go on some program and talk about the challenges of the day. What are they so afraid of? Why can't they just have that confidence of going on and just talking about issues and providing some answers? Because my goodness, we need it. And if there's any general authority listening to this, and I'm saying this humbly and sincerely, please come on just this podcast, if not this one, some other podcast, show your face, just be seen, have a conversation and be prepared and address the issues of the day and tell us why the church has got some of the answers because it has got some of the answers. I still have confidence in the church. These are smart people, smart, intelligent people. And yes, I believe at times, many times, they're inspired. And the messages in the conference are wonderful. And some of them are very specific and very helpful and useful. So if this is the only true Church of Christ upon the face of the earth, why are we hiding under a bushel? Why are we not showing our talents in a humble way And being brave and courageous and confident and getting out there in front of the public glare and having that strength and that conviction because it's the right thing to do. It's because what God and Christ has told us to do. The church is going completely opposite. It's shrinking. It's hiding. And it seems afraid. And, you know, where there is that scripture that President Banks told us that where there is fear, there is no faith. Well, I just, I do, it just saddens me and it just, the church is losing credibility and it's becoming increasingly irrelevant. And so if there are any general authorities listening to this, just do something.

I've lived in DC for 50 years now. Jim, you had enough contact back here while your father was senator. You know the deal. How often do you hear people who will make a mistake and then try to convince you that they didn't make the mistake? They call it walking it back. Oh no, no, that's not what we really said. What I would love to see from politicians on both sides of the aisle, and I'd love to see from the brethren, is be bold, get out there, and if you make a mistake, then get up and say, you know, I made a mistake. Because number one, that wouldn't make them seem foolish. And number two, they would immediately win the hearts of their constituents who would say not just, oh, now I have confidence in him. They would also say, hey, there's room on the bench for me. Absolutely. Because he makes mistakes just like I make mistakes. That's what I'd love to see, but they're scared to death to misspeak something. If you don't misspeak, you're not doing your job because you're, you're so risk-averse that you're not going to accomplish anything. Jim, you're shaking your head. I can't tell what you're thinking.

No, I, I am absolutely agreeing with you. You're singing my song.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, this is the, You know, President Oaks is famous for saying the Church neither seeks apologies nor gives them. And that has sort of become written in stone to some degree, that the idea of the Church apologizing— the Church is willing to concede that we make mistakes. But I mean, you talk about politicians, the political phrase is mistakes were made. You know, it's It's this. Yes, we— when the church had to pay its SEC fine, it talked about it and it said, we regret mistakes made and consider the matter closed and just kind of ended it. But it didn't end it. I mean, because everybody is continuing to talk about it. Had the church just sort of owned up to it and here's what the mistakes were, here's why we made them, here's why we're not going to make them again, and we are sorry. For these specific mistakes. Because when you say, okay, yeah, the church can make mistakes, and then you come back and say, oh really, which ones? Can you name a mistake? Uh, then you get into trouble because no, no, they won't. I mean, you say, well, was this a mistake? Was the priesthood ban a mistake?

And, and wouldn't it be refreshing to have a leader get up and say, you know, when we talk to you about the need for repentance We speak as people skilled in the art.

Right, right. Well, and so many people are terrified. So I want to see if I can couch this because I don't want to expose anybody, but I had a conversation with somebody within the church bureaucracy, and if I were to mention his name, nobody would know it. So I'm If you're thinking it's somebody else that I've talked about or know, it isn't that person. This is somebody that people will know, but they've worked in the media department. And apparently the church produced a video called Can Prophets Make Mistakes? And they, the media department is extraordinarily savvy. I mean, the fact that things that get to the Quorum of the Twelve go through multiple filters. The fact is, the people on the ground, the people on the front lines, they do a great deal of research. They do a great deal of focus grouping. There's a lot of surveys. This guy said this video tested off the charts in terms of the positive response that it got. And it went up the ladder and somebody killed it and said, we can't show this. Church can't release this. Church can't admit that it's made mistakes.

Yeah.

That's gonna shatter the faith of the members. And I think to some degree that is actually correct because there are a lot of members that mistakenly have faith in an infallible church, but their faith is built on sand because this isn't an infallible church. And if the church were to sort of rip that bandaid off and say, okay, here it is. We have made mistakes. There would be a short-term blowback, but the long-term trust that would be built as a result would be staggering and wonderful. The church right now is saying we don't trust our members enough to admit to them when we've been wrong. Yeah, brother, get the church.

It gets back, Jim, to that story of your father and Harold B. Lee. Yeah. Of Lee admitting, look, we're mortals. We're trying to do our best. If that message could get across, they would immediately have the unflinching loyalty of the members because that's something that all the members can identify with.

Yeah.

We, we get into this, this thing about, well, we can't change anything because that would mean God is changing. And we have defined God as unchangeable. No, what it means is we're always trying to grasp the infinite. And in doing so, we never get it quite right. So we hope that we gradually get closer. Ian, you're a physicist. You know the word asymptotically. It's a graph where The line curves towards the x-axis, but it never quite reaches it. I think that's a good metaphor for what we're struggling with as individuals and with the church. We're trying to do better, but discerning the divine is not an easy thing. Uh, Jim, this gets back to what I think I've said on one of these podcasts about your great-grandfather McKay. That when he told Arnold Freeberg, don't paint the image of the Savior in your Book of Mormon paintings, Freeberg said, but he's a central figure of the book. McKay's response was, the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. We need to take a step back, a big step back, and in humility acknowledge, um, We know that there is the divine. We cannot begin to fathom the dimensions of that. At best, we are acting crudely to try to discern that. If we could get to that point, my gosh, that just opens the floodgates of empathy and support. It doesn't make you weak. It makes you strong.

I agree so much. You're speaking wisdom to my soul. Being on the outside, my raw reaction is this. I think it's going to be quite common. If the leaders could behave in the way you two have discussed just now, someone like me, and I think a lot of people think like me, would absolutely be in awe. I'd be so humbled. It will be absolutely wonderful for the leaders to behave and think like that. The other thing as well is that I want the church to be different to every other political or corrupt organization or any other good organization. I expect more of it. I expect it to behave like the way you're describing it. Surely it's the way Christ intended for it to be, the way you both describe, that it's not the same as any other organization, that it's not afraid and afraid to misspeak, that it's a different organization because it deals with the salvation of souls. It deals with the salvation of men and families. And therefore our expectations, the benchmark and the standard is far, far greater. And it's okay to say things that are wrong or you make mistakes and to say, hey, look, we got it wrong. We made a mistake. We're coming up to the end here. And I could love to continue the conversation here. But my concluding thoughts before I hand some time back over to you good gentlemen is that when I die and I and God and I and Jesus Christ sit down, I wonder what their reaction would be if I said, mistakes were made, I consider them are closed. I think God wants us to be vulnerable. He wants us to be be honest and to be open and to just say things as we are and as they are. And we get some things right, we get some things wrong, but that surely is the human experience. That graph that you speak of, that to me is striving for perfection. We might not get there in this life. We say by grace after all we can do. I think it's the grace of Christ that helps us get to that that status where we can be worthy enough to be with him. I don't believe God expects us to be perfect. I think he expects us to make mistakes and to learn from them. And I agree with you, Greg, if we could have a leader, and I wonder who that is in the apostleship, maybe that's Elder Uchtdorf or whoever, to have the intestinal fortitude to say, hey, look, you know, let's say it's Come Join Us Now Talk Part 2 that he gave in 2013. Remember that talk? And if you, if to kind of expound on that and talk about fallibility and infallibility, I agree with you both. I think the members, the youth, the world would see that as an extraordinary, refreshing breakthrough and would give them, like me, people like me would give them the confidence I say, hey, this is great. I'd have so much confidence and faith in you because you're admitting that you make mistakes. And now I can trust you instead of you kind of misleading me and not being honest with me. We say you don't make mistakes, but we know you do, but you're afraid to talk about it. Now I've got confidence and trust. They're my final thoughts. Jim Bennett, your comments, and then we'll maybe give Greg some final thoughts.

I know, I think that kind of sums all of it up, uh, and I, I want to give Greg the, the last word. I just really appreciate this discussion. It's very interesting that a discussion about gerontocracy has sort of led into a conclusion about fallibility, uh, because I really think that the, the false doctrine of prophetic infallibility is at the root of just about every major problem in the church, that if we could sort of address that and confront it head-on, and not just acknowledge it but embrace it, embrace the reality that our theology is one where we believe we came to this earth, we came to the mortal experience for the sole purpose of making mistakes. That's the whole reason we're here. See, I just made a mistake. My computer just fell. So, but it's just bizarre to me that that isn't as obvious to the leaders of the church as it seems to be to us. And maybe it is. And maybe I, because I think there are tensions behind the scenes that we don't understand and don't know about. But I very much appreciate Greg. Your insights on this, because I think you really have sort of laid the groundwork for the intellectual roadmap that the church needs to follow to be able to confront these issues and sort of reclaim the kind of moral authority that I think would make such a great difference in the lives of not just church members but of the world at large. So that's my concluding thoughts, and I, I'd love to hear your summation here.

I knew Clay Christensen pretty well. Clay was a professor in the Harvard Business School and generally is credited with coining the term disruptive technology, which means rather than just an incremental change here or there, a new technology comes along that makes an old one obsolete. Think about a cassette recorder. If you really want to get exotic, 8-track tapes, going way, way back. But if you think about church presidents, and rather than saying, oh, they're all great, well, okay, who are the ones that you remember? Are they the ones who maintained the status quo or who disrupted the status quo? And I already know the answer, and you could put names on those. That's what we hope for, because we're in a world where just maintaining the status quo isn't cutting it. So whether it's younger General Authorities or older ones who are less risk-averse, uh, I hope for the time when we'll see more of that disruption.

We'll let that be the final word. As we close here, I want to take the opportunity to thank all of our listeners. We hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. Jim Bennett, as always, thank you so much for your contributions and your insights. It's always wonderful having these conversations with you. And Greg McKeown, a very special thank you again for taking time to come on The Inside Out. And share your thoughts and your wisdom. Thank you, Tim, and thank you to our listeners.