The history of naming new apostles — from a line of LDS ‘royalty’ to a ‘surprising’ Dieter Uchtdorf

Picking new apostles is a significant and solemn responsibility for presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After all, any of the men (and, in the patriarchal faith, they must be men) selected for this lifetime assignment could one day rise to the presidency of the global religion.

Choosing new apostles also represents a way in which Latter-day Saint prophet-presidents can leave their mark on the church long after they are gone — similar to U.S. presidents when they nominate justices to the Supreme Court.

In the mid-1990s, Howard Hunter led the church for a mere nine months — the shortest tenure of any church president — yet the one apostle he chose was Jeffrey Holland, who served for three decades and was positioned as next in line to take the faith’s reins at the time of his recent death.

With Holland’s death, church President Dallin Oaks, himself a former Utah Supreme Court justice and barely three months into his presidential tenure, has the chance to name his second new apostle.

Whom might he pick? How do church leaders go about deciding? What can we learn from past apostle selections? Were there any surprise picks? Were any notable leaders ever passed over? And what might the naming of new apostles say about the current church and its future?

On this week’s show, Latter-day Saint historian Benjamin Park, author of “American Zion: A New History of Mormonism,” discusses those questions and more.