Joe Smith and Brigham Young are honored in many sermons regularly.

Which other presidents are considered to be loved and honored. Why?

First of all, worshipped and honored are not the same thing. They are not synonyms. JS is the only one who might qualify as worshipped, though even that is a stretch. There is one hymn about him that could fairly be described as worshipful. It's interesting that there were no LDS landmarks on the Salt Lake Valley named for Joseph Smith until the old Hotel Utah was renamed in the 1980s or 90s.

Brigham Young's collected sermons in the JoD are now items the Church leaders would rather the members didn't read or even know about. The recent essay on the racism of the Priesthood policy regarding people with African ancestry pretty much throws Brigham under the bus. We hear the name a lot because of BYU and the settlement of the west, a pretty major event in American history where BY played a significant role. But worshipped? Not really.

I can't even name the church presidents in order after BY. Woof Woof, Taylor, a Smith or two or three (I don't remember), Grant, McKay, Lee, SWK, ETB.

Ah, ETB was revered for his politics, not his charisma or inspiring leadership.

McKay was respected for his emphasis on education. It was under him that BYU expanded from a so-so local university to a nationally known school. He also created or expanded schools in New Zealand, Hawaii, and secondary schools in Samoa. It was largely under his direction as an apostle and later president that LDS Church changed from mostly an intermountain church to an international church. Plus, he looked the part of a religious leader. He lead the creation of the Mormon Church that the Baby Boomers grew up with, so he is remembered fondly by many of them. Again, that is hardly worship.

Since McKay, I would say that GBH is the most popular president, largely because he was in the First Presidency for so many years. He had the Conference Center built, and all the temples that popped up like mushrooms during his tenure. I think he desperately wanted the Conference Center named after him, but he wasn't able to pull that off. He had his enemies in the hierarchy.

Rusty appears to be trying to make a name for himself, but the fact that we call him Rusty means we are not all that worshipful about him. Too soon to tell what his legacy will be.

Many mormons consider the word worship to mean "pray to." Worship also means adore, love, revere and honor. The words actually are synonyms.

Is McKay your favorite church president?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2018 02:35PM by Cheryl.

Hugh B Brown is my favorite almost-president. As an educator, I admire what McKay did for education in Mormon culture, though Mormons have for a very long time been supporters of education. Other than that, I don't really have a favorite. Hunter perhaps. He was the closest to a normal human being.

As others have said, whoever is PSR is adored. When he dies, whoever is next is adored. Interchangeable parts. Hinckley tried to stand out above the others, and so is Rusty. I don't think they will succeed.

When I was growing up it was all about GBH. People my age all seemed to definitely revere him. I think a lot of people remember the prophet who was in charge when they joined or came of age. So for me that was GBH and to a lesser extent Monson. Even years after his death we had an institute teacher who would often show us GBH clips and talk about how great he was with PR.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2018 12:25PM by nonsequiter.

My dad did.

Whoever the current one is gets the most adoration, prayers, ears, and parrot-like repetition of whatever he says.

The previous ones are only brought up if they happen to have said something that supports whatever view or topic someone needs for an article or church talk.


JS and BY are revered but not quoted much in context. After all, the current prophet has the most recent instructions from God.


Then you have the Bible prophets who also manage to get used for examples if they can make the Bible story fit whatever they are trying to portray.

I have noticed that, save for Smith, all former prophets get relegated to the status of "those who were speaking as men" upon their deaths. So I'd say that only Smith has reached Jesus-status. "Jesus Smith"--that's what Hinckley called him.

True, but there are a LOT of teachings of Jesus that have been relegated to the dustbin of history too. It's like the church says, "thanks Jesus, we can handle it from here."

The office itself is worshipped. Whoever is filling the position is a figure head.

Smith and Young are revered generationally by Mormons for founding TSCC. Joseph gets the most acclaim for being the only one to have personally attested to having spoke and been contact by many biblical figures, including God and Jesus Christ themselves. The only one of the trinity he didn't claim to personally see was the Holy Ghost.

Smith gets the most worship because of all the Mormons who claim he sits at the right hand of Jesus Christ at the throne of God. And that what he did by restoring TSCC to the earth was more important than Moses saving the Israelites from the Egyptians.

Even Brigham Young didn't get that much worship for taking over the reins.

The living prophet is the one who is thought to still be talking to God for mormons.

The goal is to keep them elevated on a pedestal. It is a form of idolatry. And of course to concentrate their power.

I kept graven images on the wall.

According to popular belief, Boyd K. Packer was a "Grand Brown-Noser-Sucker-Upper." So, he probably worshipped all of them from his birth (1924) until death (2015). So, he probably sung praises for Heber Grant to Monson.

My daughter has a photo taken with herself and Boyd K. Packer, from summer camp one year in upstate New York.

I still have it in her room where she left it when she moved away.

I disagree that BKKKP was a great admirer of all the prophets. When I said GBH had his enemies in the hierarchy, BKP was primarily who I had in mind. I don't think they cared for each other at all. IMHO, GBH thought BKP was a bull in a china shop, screwing up all his carefully constructed cons to save Mormonism from itself. BKP, OTOH, thought GBH was a mealy-mouthed con artist who didn't have any real principles.

IMHO, they were both right.

Hinkley was admired but Kimball was adored. Those of you old enough to remember he had all those health problems all time and members were always praying for the profit. That raspy voice could get the attention of everyone at an instant. Something reverential about it. He was always on his death bed but somehow kept going till he was 95.

There was something to the Kimball name, especially amongst the old timey families in Utah, all the pioneers looked up to the Kimballs even the Youngs.

When I was very young I remember how my grandparents and parents appeared to love David McKay, he was surrounded by loving crowds when he visited churches or walked on the street near the Hotel Utah.

Kimball was also adored in a similar manner. When I was 18 I was serving at an usher when he dedicated our new church house. As we were standing around him waiting for his car to come to the side of the chapel he hobbled over and spoke to me for maybe 2 minutes. Of the the youth there that day I was probably most unlikely to go on a mission, he told me that I should go and would do great things. That really had an impression on me going on a mission. Everybody in the ward wanted to know what he had told me, and I just kept it to myself. You would not believe what a big deal this was to some members that he had initiated a conversation with me. Boy was he wrong about me doing great things as a missionary. I was also taken by how short and feeble he was. It's true the later Star Wars movies captured him pretty closely with Yoda.

McKay was definitely seen as a "prophet" in the old school definition of the word.


"The president of the French Polynesian Mission, Ellis V. Christiansen, was nervous about the forthcoming meeting. True, permission to take a group of Saints to the temple in Hawaii had been granted by President McKay, but that day a special messenger, Ernest C. Rossiter, a former president of the French Polynesian Mission, had arrived direct from President McKay in Salt Lake City. The news he brought was stunning. The Saints had been asked not to make their long-sought voyage. According to Brother Tapu, President McKay gave no explanation. He merely asked Brother Rossiter to “go and stop them. They won’t make it, and if we allow them to come, we’ll be in trouble with the [French] government. We’ll be responsible for them. So you go and stop them.”"
https://www.lds.org/new-era/1976/03/a-prophets-warning?lang=eng

I think he was dead from his early 70s, maybe late 60s.

David O. McKay has a huge tall white monolith tombstone in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. My grandpa and other relatives are buried close by, and as a kid I would walk by McKay's tombstone when my family visited the graves on Memorial Day.

Gordon B. Hinckley has a tombstone a short distance away from McKay's. It is smaller than McKay's, but it is built from the same granite that was used to build the Salt Lake Temple and the Conference Center.

McKay probably has the most impressive grave of any prophet. Does that mean he is the most revered? Maybe. People must have revered him enough to make such a huge and expensive memorial.

It is interesting that the monolith is white like his impressive white hair.

My grandpa and grandma were Mormon, but not active. Their tombstone is very impressive also. I won't say more about it because if I did people might look for it and guess who I am.

Even though I am not a believer, McKay still impresses me. He was a "great man" and impressed people outside the Church. He impressed President Johnson and Cecil B. DeMille. He high school class thought a lot of him. One day he walked off the train in Ogden in a very crowded, noisy and busy area and people became quiet and said, "who is that?"

Mormon Heavenly Father's only begotten son _would_ _have_ been the most worshiped, but Mitt tripped on his way to the Oval Office.

Having had time to think it over, my vote goes to Howard W Hunter, who in his college days played saxophone in a jazz band. Just like Eric K.

Compare that to Hinckley, whose main claim to fame, besides being a lying SOB, was that he had some bleeping tree in his back yard that provided wood for the lectern in the Great and Spacious Building. Blech. I think he kept bringing up the bleeping tree so they'd name the building after him.

Hunter wasn't president long enough to get much of a reputation, but he did seem more normal (i.e. less Morgbot) than the rest of the fossils. And a saxophone, that all by itself gets him more brownie points than the rest of them. So what if Monson could wiggle his ears. >*|*<

my vote is for Wrinkley because he was at the wheel for so long.

... a lot of the adults would speak endearingly of Kimball and McKay.
But I always felt they just wanted to make it very clear to all the other converts how much longer they had been mormon!

Molly Mormon One: "I'll never forget the first conference after Kimball became prophet, and he (gush, gush) (exalt, exalt) (sniff, sniff).

Molly Mormon Two: Indeed sister, I remember that. And he spoke so lovingly of David O. McKay, who was president when my parents got baptized, so it struck a chord with me (gasp, gasp), (bow, bow) (weep, weep).

Barf barf.

I can't tell you how many times I heard about McDonkey's Transfigurating to Christ Talk.