By the time someone becomes prophet they are too old to really be capable of being the chief administrator of a large and complicated organization. A mayor of New York City once said the city could run pretty well for five years without a mayor. As long as there is money for the payroll the people who actually run the city show up and do their jobs and the city runs.

I think the church is similar. It just sort of runs and might actually run better without a meddling prophet like Rusty. Most of these old guys just let things run. Rusty has turned church headquarters into one massive construction zone and turned the word Mormon into a forbidden name we shouldn’t use. He’s the exception. Most prophets are like Monson.

Once in a while you get a guy who thinks "dictator for life" means he actually gets to dictate.

But why shouldn't a prophet believe in his own imaginary super powers?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2024 06:38AM by bradley.

Prophets are just talking heads.

The Holy Ghost is their mascot.

Oops, meant to reply to OP.

We got your point, Jimmy buffet.*











*More apposite, surely, than "Jimmy Buffet."

I think that's true of any large organization. The CEOs tend to be the "big picture" people. Of course, with the Rusty Bucket, the big picture includes throwing tantrums over the use of the word, "Mormon."

I questioned the man’s sanity over the Mormon fit he as having.

My mom took down my rock group posters and replaced them with a hideous First Presidency group photo of Ezra Taft Benson. It's a travesty because none of them are smiling, save for GBH who looks like the Mc Donald's Grimace character.

The fact that Mormons love their prophets to be modeled on the muppets Statler and Waldorf makes Russ's job so easy.


It's also called figurehead. Like a king who has all the perks and none of the real power aside from showing up to look important on special occasions. I always thought of the prophet's stage and podium at GC as a poor man's version of the Buckingham Palace balcony with the whole "family" lined up for the little people from the village to be in awe of.

The mantle is greater than the intellect. Ya think?

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> By the time someone becomes prophet they are too
> old to really be capable of being the chief
> administrator of a large and complicated
> organization. As long as there is money for the
> payroll the people who actually run the city show
> up and do their jobs and the city runs.

Agreed. The very succession mechanism--you must be really, really old--proves that the prophet is otiose. With rare exceptions, the church is an enormous self-sustaining machine requiring nothing more than occasional grease.


------------
> I think the church is similar. It just sort of
> runs and might actually run better without a
> meddling prophet like Rusty. Most of these old
> guys just let things run. Rusty has turned church
> headquarters into one massive construction zone
> and turned the word Mormon into a forbidden name
> we shouldn’t use. He’s the exception. Most
> prophets are like Monson.

Here I disagree somewhat. It was Hinckley who started the construction boom and "let's go shopping" Monson let it continue.
Today's church is just old rich guys spending money as their predecessors have for roughly three decades. Otherwise Nelson's most salient policy is probably the name change, no? I suspect we'll be back to using the word "Mormon" within a decade.

That does not, however, invalidate your headline point that the the prophets are largely figureheads overseeing an institution that continues imperviously chugging along.

I think Mormon will start creeping back as soon as Rusty is six feet under his Salt Lake Temple granite tomb stone.

Yep.

McDonald's is also a huge landowner and has a similar mascot.

Ha! Ha!

They are mascots for the membership at large. Their main job criterion is being a cheerleader for the general membership. That's who gets called and promoted. Their main job duty is to tell the members that they are all perfect people. So the answer to your question is a resounding yes.

Agree that the prophet is a figurehead. Jesus is their mascot.

Joseph through Snow or Woodruff, which ever was last, ran the show,


Grant send the next two Smith's tried to run the show, but steadily lost power.

By the time Mckay took over, it was a losing battle.

Kimball pulled a coup and ousted lots of the old timers including descendants of Smith, Young and Taylor.

After Kimball I think they all became mouth pieces, front men and PR figures for the real power behind the throne that for lack of a netter name, I'll call the modern council of fifty.

I think you shortchange Hinckley, who dominated the church from the late Kimball years until his own senescence in about 2000. He stayed out of the limelight but he had real power.

Kimball, Benson and Hunter were all pretty much geriatric paperweights and Hinkley was running the show from the late Kimball years up to his death.

I also believe Russell Nelson being called as an apostle was a result of Kimball’s demensia. He calls his doctor who he’s seeing a lot as a patient. We currently see he was a bad choice.

Having looked at the dates, I think you are right.

Nelson was made an apostle in 1984, at which point Kimball was 89 years old and within a year of his own death. He was 'round the bend at that point. I can imagine that when asked who the new apostle should be, he simply said the name of the last person to have visited his sick bed--his doctor.

Hinckley, who was running the show by then, probably thought Nelson was as competent and bureaucratic as any other candidate and on those grounds decided not to intervene.

I want to imagine that Nelson was the compromise candidate!

It wasn't much of a compromise. There was zero support in the quorum for the Latino candidate.


ETA: Rumor had it that the swarthy gentleman had been on the fence post so long that it was difficult to heed the call of nature.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2024 01:49PM by Lot's Wife.

So...  You got over holding back, huh?




Hahahahahahahaha!

But just you wait, missy...

What do EOD and a soft-boiled egg have in common?

Hinckley was a PR guy. Nelson had a loyal track record and having a renound heart surgeon as an apostle would get attention from the media and be a church bragging point.

The problem with Nelson is he’s too disruptive and radicle. It’s because he has a big ego. You want a Monson. A stuffed suit who lets things roll but has a good public image. You get a guy who’s like fasten your seatbelts you have seen nothing yet! That’s trouble. Maybe it’s strategic the church mostly has burned out old dudes as prophet. They usually don’t rock the boat much.

Nelson has not been radical by any stretch of the imagination.

Several church presidents have changed the church's name. In the early 2000s Hinckley discouraged the use of the word "Mormon" and emphasized "Latter-day Saints." Then the FLDS surfaced in the news and he reversed course, using "Mormon" instead of an "LDS" that sounded too much like "FLDS." Nelson is merely returning to the campaign against the word "Mormon." There's nothing new there.

As for politics, every president since Benson has tried to cut the obvious ties to right-wingers. Hinckley was fully committed to mainstreaming, which meant not siding with the right. Monson, for example, had stake presidents read to their congregants a letter emphasizing telling members to vote for people of sound moral character--which was a plea not to endorse Trump. Both Hinckley and Monson emphasized ecumenicism as well, including trying to appear cooperative with the Catholics and others. Again, Nelson is merely following in their footsteps.

The same is true of the construction boom, which was initiated by Hinckley. As he told a relative of mine, "I earned it and I'm going to spend it."

You are right when you describe prophets as conservative bureaucrats but wrong when asserting that Nelson differs from that pattern. There is nothing he has done that differs significantly from what Hinckley and/or Monson did.

Nelson has changed church culture quite a bit already. One obvious change was removing the Third Hour, and another has been dismantling the Home Teaching program. He has also removed Moroni and replaced him with a Lutheran idol under what looks like the Arch of Baal. Some of these effects are unintentional but he has had an effect. His handling of 2020 and 2021 was also appalling, and showed no initiative or insight.

If a new musical debuts on Broadway which features a 90 year old with catchphrases, Take your vitamins, buckle your seat belt- you haven't seen anything yet! and wandering around the stage with a lighted pen while chasing 50 year old women, would the church scrap Nelson's plan to mainstream the church?