Nepotism in the Church

I think everybody should just let the hierarchy do what they will do and not worry too much about it. I’m sure that if you really looked at each situation individually you would see a whole myriad of things influencing decision making and calls, Nepotism being one of them. Where you find human beings, you will find Nepotism and any number of other types of favoritism.

People should concern themselves with their own callings and their own spheres of influence. When Jesus comes back then things can really get fixed. I don’t really think things are fundamentally broken as much as you have a bunch of people (imagine that! Humans) actually running things. I suppose we could put chimps in there, but then things really would never get done. When the Lord put people in there, he knew what he was doing, and was apparently aware that these kinds of things would happen.

BTW, love the J Golden remark.

Yes, John, “believing blood” was one of the phrases used for this practice, though in fairness, Brigham Young applied that same term to all non-gentiles.

Of interest, the phrase “royal blood” was also used to delineate early “chosen” Mormon lineages, particularly the Smith family. Brigham Young went so far in Nauvoo as to say that by taking the reigns of the LDS church, he was “protecting” the “royal blood,” in the person of Joseph Smith III. Brigham claimed at the time that if “young Joseph” was to become president of the LDS church, “his blood would be sought.”

Don’t forget: Elder Packer’s son was called to the 1st Quorum of the Seventy, and Pres. Eyring’s as an AA70. On the other hand, I recall hearing that there was controversy during Pres. Benson’s adminstration about calling his son the Quorum of the 12. It did not happen. Maybe the Quorum of the 12 is just too high profile.

Finally a comment on the chart. Some of the names are from a time when the church was so small that a significant degree of inter-connectednes was (as you point out) to be expected. Others are far removed from their general authority ancestors.

Nepostism (perceived or real) always rubs me the wrong way. If I were running the Church (a frightening thought), I would need a very, very direct revelation to call a sibling, child or in-law to a promnent position.

Well, my initial response to this post was “Whew! I’m certainly never going to be called to anything major.”

I do have a few questions about methodology, though. Presumably, in the early days of the church, almost everyone was related, so it wasn’t really nepotism. As the church grows, the percentage should get lower over time. So understanding the ratio over time might be useful. We would need to know what the denominator is here, probably for each position listed.

Some of these positions are much more common than others (mission president & patriarch and even 70 and GAs to some extent), so I think it makes the list a lot longer than it would otherwise be. Here’s the breakdown of what comprises your list (you had 101 on your list, making the math pretty easy):
Patriarchs – 5%
President – 8%
Women (lumped all together) – 14%
Mission Presidents – 21%
Quorum of the 12 Apostles – 21%
(As they say on Gilligan’s Island) “And the rest” – 32%

I’ll have to crack open the Almanac to see how many have held these offices to date and we’ll see what’s what.

Interesting post, Jeff. I assume you are bringing up bloodlines because, as a Levite, you are wondering when your blood right to the Bishopric will be recognized in your home ward?

A few thoughts:

1. Through great research, you’ve found 100 family connections in leadership callings. I wonder what percentage that comes out to when you consider how many hundreds of thousands of callings are in the total pool? For example, do family connections exist in 1% of callings? 10%? 25%? I think that number is the relevant one to determine whether nepotism exists.

2. I agree there are thousands of people who are qualified and worthy to be general officers of the church, but the Brethren can’t be expected to know them all. So they have to rely on the people they DO know, and that of course includes their family.

3. I think nepotism is a concern if you’re calling an UNQUALIFIED candidate to an office because of a family connection. But so long as they’re calling QUALIFIED family members, I have no problem with that; there are thousands who are capable and one is as good as any other.

4. A funny note. People often do family history to discover whether they have a royal bloodline. In my case, I discovered that as of 1880, my pioneer great-great-great grandfather was divorced and living with his mother at age 50, was illiterate, and was working as a janitor in a pool hall in Richfield, UT. How’s that for royal blood, baby?!

Well… I’ve never thought nepotism was nearly as wrong as people make it out to be…

Although in religious realms I’d be more concerned about it I guess.

Minor correction. You have to be more than just a Levite to have a right to the office of Bishop. You have to be a literal descendent of Aaron. There would theoretically be plenty of Levites who are not descendents of Aaron.

Another minor correction: David Wirthlin is Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin’s brother, not his son.

This is interesting, but not shocking. It might be easier to form a list of offices that had no relation. Also it is my understanding the Church Patriarch office does require a direct lineage to the Smiths.

I know that a Sister Winder was the General RS Pres a few years ago. She is the mother of Sister Tanner who was just released as the General YW Pres.

I am fully aware that many times callings are made in terms of who is able to best serve, and best known to the person making the call. I’m a bit confused as to how close it is kept “in the family” with as many qualified people there are in the Salt Lake area. Maybe there arn’t very many spiritual people there and so they have to go “back to the well” on a very frequent basis.

If there were 21 apostles with relationship connections (ref #16), and Christofferson being apostle #96, then one-fifth of the 12 apostles in this dispensation have family connections. This is probably the highest percentage of the callings listed. Also, given roughly 110 MP called each year and I only saw one MP from 2008 on the list, I would guess that Mission Presidents have the least family connected on the list.

Actually, there’s another confounding variable at work here that may not be considered. The real problem is how hard is it to call someone who isn’t related to someone in the church. Think about that for a moment. The church is relatively small still. While we are still growing, GA’s are going to increasingly come from those who come from convert lineage, but the truth of the matter is that once a convert or their child marries someone whose family has been in the church for a while, it is really hard to keep the apparent nepotism out of the church because at some point there just weren’t all that many families that went west, and once you move down the line far enough with enjoinders to marry inside the faith, you absolutely end up with a situation where everyone called to leadership has a grandfather or greatgrandfather or in-laws at the very least who was a church leader. It’s guaranteed.

Now this will happen less and less if the church continues to grow, but in our current situation, it can’t be helped. So how do you determine nepotism? First you have to determine qualification (which in the case of spiritual leadership is incredibly difficult–I know, I have a fair bit of training in job analysis, which is all about determining the qualifications for a job). Are the people being called qualified. In other words are people getting called ONLY because they are related to someone else or in LARGE part because of their relation?

Second, you have to determine the ratios–and we have four boxes–qualified vs. unqualified, people in the position, people not in the position. In a normal job, it’s all about who applied, but in the church, we don’t think of it that way–so we have look at who is considered, but we don’t know that. So for the purposes of this we would have to assume that God is considering every qualified male member of the church for any leadership position that opens and for YW/RS positions, every qualified female member of the church. We could narrow the field quite a bit by tossing out certain groups, but I don’t think we will…

Let’s say that by ‘qualified’, we mean merely ‘active’, although ‘active temple attenders’ is probably more accurate. I don’t know what the activity rates are in every location, so I’m going to say 50%. So, let’s just say 50% of 13 million= 6.5m, and 50% of that (male)=3.25m and 50% of that (which I’m sure is nowhere near accurate) is melchizedek priesthood)=1.6125m as a figure of the potential number of ‘applicants’ for all leadership positions for all church positions top to bottom, including GA’s.

There is considerably more fluidity towards the bottom (somewhat like a freezing river) in these callings, so the nepotism, if it exists is not only more severe at the top, its going to be more noticeable and problematic. So we have to see first of these 1.6 million men, what proportion are related to those that are currently serving or have served in the past in the top leadership. I’d say 2 generations as a cap (so grandfathers, but no more). In-laws of the immediate generation are also going to be included, but a grandson-in-law is not. From there, I would further need to know what proportion of the leaders fall in this category and what do not, and then what proportion of those in this category are NOT in leadership positions.

Now, having done all that hard work (okay, I haven’t really, but I would love to have the time and information to do actually do it), let’s say we find evidence of nepotism as defined by showing a clear pattern of men who are related to current or former presidents or apostles (I think we need to limit it to just the first presidency and quorum of the twelve as they are the ones issuing the calls for the most part…) being called to be GA’s. What then? What does that show? There are so many confounding variables that we have only begun to scratch the surface. Which is why sociology and psychology get a bad rap. Because human sciences are so blasted hard to deal with.

We are constantly struggling with the fact that 90% of our variables are confounded by other variables, which in turn have confounding variables. I think that of the physical sciences only meteorologists truly understand how that feels…economists, of course, are of the same stripe as us.

Physicists, having finally nailed down the easy stuff, are finally learning what hard problems really are, but they have the advantage of hundreds of years of practice. They’ve learned that a solid foundation of math is important. Psychologists (blasting my own field a bit, because I can), on the other hand, have still got to learn that. Even the psychologists that are good at math don’t think it’s all that important to make sure that we are all good at it. Oh well.

Anyway, the important thing is this: nepotism is only going to be a problem if it continues much longer. As the church keeps growing, the need to continually call fresh leaders from outside of Utah to move into that area and serve in the top leadership is essential. I think Elder Uchtdorf is only the beginning of that trend (oh, and by the way, just who is he related to?) I know–it’s because he’s successful and rich–which is true, but think about it like this–he’s obviously deserving of that position. You can’t meet the man and not know that he’s not a spiritual person.

Wow, come on guys. Read your old testament. It’s all about patriarchs and lines of authority. Thank you for the great grid. It’s a nice resource. Are you guys going to have a problem when Asian and South American GA’s kids become leaders too? Seems to me it’s the way things work in our church. You get thrown into positions of service and if you are lucky inspiration, perspiration, and memories of someone else doing the job (either from your ward family or your blood family) helps full you through. Nepotism can work as long as people aren’t jerks.

SINCE THE CHURCH WAS FOUNDED, JOSEPH SMITH HIMSELF SET THE EXAMPLE OF MAKING CERTAIN THE CHURCH WOULD BE A PLACE WHERE HIS OWN RELATIVES WOULD BE HELD UP AS “ROYALTY”, WOULD HAVE EMPLOYMENT AND RECOGNITION, ETC. A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THIS CONTINUING ON LONG AFTER JOSEPH JUN. WAS GONE: BRIGHAM YOUNG’S SONS WERE GENERALLY REGARDED AS UNDISCIPLINED, SPOILED LITTE RICHBOYS, WITH VERY LITTLE LEADERSHIP ABILITY. YET, FATHER BRIGHAM MADE CERTAIN THEY HAD ‘EMPLOYMENT’ AS APOSTLES IN THE LDS CHURCH. WHEN YOU CAREFULLY STUDY THE HISTORY, THEIR LIVES, THE WAY THEIR CONTEMPORARIES VIEWED THEM, IT IS BEYOND NAUSEATING.

How do you explain Dieter Uchtdorf? I dare you to find his nepotism connection. Reed Benson is married to one of my distant cousins. If I am called as a bishop, is it because I am distantly related to Ezra Taft Benson? I doubt it.