The Next Prophet and Mormon Whiteness

Before I dive into the topic of my post, there’s a chart that statistically predicts the likelihood of who the next prophet will be among the members of the Quorum of the Twelve. A friend of mine named Tanner Jasperson made this and he’s way smarter than I am when it comes to this sort of thing, so I’ll let him explain it.

“The results were obtained from simulations run on the US social security actuarial life tables. Those tables predict the probability of living another year based on age and birth year. 50,000 individual simulations were run, and their results were compared to find probable outcomes. It is possible to analytically predict the most probable outcome, but life rarely behaves according to probability. Allowing random simulations to run provides more insight into a range of possibilities rather

than just one single most likely occurrence. The ‘prophet ever’ metric reports the percentage of simulations in which the apostle was prophet for any length of time. The ‘average term if prophet’ metric is the average term the apostle served as prophet in the simulations in which he appeared. It can be thought of as the average ‘window’ in which the apostle has outlived his seniors before his own passing. The probability of all 13 apostles being prophet is zero. This means that outcome did not happen a single time in all 50000 simulations.”

You can get those results here.Thanks for contributing, Tanner!

On the topic of succession, I remember reading comments after Elder Perry, Elder Scott, and Elder Packer died that at least one of the next members called to the Quorum of the Twelve would be a person of color. I saw disappointment when three white men were called to fill the vacancies in the quorum. If memory serves, some were so disillusioned that they accused church leaders of racism and/or nepotism. They said things like “they’re all white,” “they’re all from Utah,” or “they’re all related” as proof of these accusations. Some were offended while others simply felt sorrow.

So what can I, a white dude currently living in Utah, contribute to this conversation? You may think I can’t understand because I don’t know what it’s like to not have my race represented by my leaders. I do have prior work and mission experiences in which I served under racially diverse leaders, but I feel that those experiences amount to very little in this conversation. Instead, I would point to the scriptures as a useful piece of this puzzle that I felt went overlooked and that is my contribution. No anecdotal life experiences, statistics, sociological studies, or anything like that. This is just a scriptural take on the issue.

Jesus’ actions in calling the original Quorum of the Twelve appear nepotistic and potentially racist by today’s standards. Peter and Andrew and James and John were brothers (Luke 6:14; Mark 3:17). Other members of the original quorum may have been brothers or father and son, although those are harder to pin down with certainty. And, with the exception of Judas Iscariot, they were all from Galilee. Jews of the era insisted on what they considered to be racial purity, hence their hatred of racially mixed Samaritans. So these twelve men, some of whom were related, were also from the same province and of the same race.

“Times have changed,” you may say. “The church is worldwide now. The actions of Christ were justified in the circumstances because of the smaller reach of the church.” My response to anyone thinking that is that I’m not a Jew, I’m not an Israelite, and I’m certainly not a Galilean, but the words of these men still impact and guide me. Times may be different, but these men’s words reached well beyond their initial racially homogeneous sphere of influence. We don’t know the exact shade of their skin or color of their hair (ethnographic and archaeological evidence disagree on that), but that shouldn’t matter when we’re dealing with people that God called to leadership positions. The words of a small group of men from a tiny corner of the ancient world have gone on to comfort and instruct billions of people from virtually every nationality and race.

And I don’t think any of this is coincidental. I firmly believe that God puts people in the right place at the right time. I do not suppose George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and others just happened to find themselves in the perfect circumstances to found America. God placed them there. Just as he placed Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, and others to usher in the restored gospel. The same can be said of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Daisy Bates, Whitney Young, and others who were all around at the same time for the civil rights movement. The Lord has a plan for mankind and I posit that He executes it with leaders that He places at key moments in human history. Those leaders may be the same race, from the same area, or even related, but that is not necessarily a coincidence. Although it may be a coincidence that BYU Men's Basketball hasn't won a national tournament since college teams were desegregated. Not sure about that one.

Next general conference, new members will be added to the Quorum of the Twelve. I don’t know what race they’ll be. Maybe Tanner can run an analysis of that and give us some results (though I’m not sure if that kind of thing can be predicted). I do know that the last days are a key moment in human history and that those men will be called by God. Somewhere those men are being prepared to step up to their spot in the great enterprise that is flooding the Earth with the gospel message. I’d end this with a certain well known Martin Luther King Jr. quote, but that seems heavy handed and I’m not Ram Trucks’ marketing department (real subtle, Ram). Instead I’ll use a biblical quote which I believe may have inspired Reverend King, “But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).