Former judge is likely the next leader of the Mormon church and its 17 million members

Salt Lake City – Dallin H. OAKS, former judge of the Supreme Court of Utah known for his sensitivities of lawyers and traditionalist condemnations on marriage and religious freedom, should be the next president of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Holy Days and his more than 17 million members in the world.

The leadership transition follows the recent death of President Russell Mr. Nelson and comes, because many American members of the Church are in shock from a deadly attack against a Congregation of Michigan and a very publicized assassination in UTAH where the name known widely under the name of the Mormone church has the headquarters.

Oaks is the oldest member of a set of leaders called the quorum of the twelve apostles. This then does it online to be president under a tradition established more than a century ago to ensure a gentle transfer and prevent any lobbying internally or in public. The official announcement will probably take place at one point after Nelson’s funeral on October 7. He was 101 at his death on Saturday.

At 93, Oaks will be among the oldest presidents. Seven of the last nine served in their 90s, including five beyond the current age of oaks.

For a faith that favors reception – especially in local churches on Sunday – the attack on last weekend against a cult in Michigan was shocking.

The services in the canton of Grand Blanc had just started when a former sailor struck his van in the church and started to shoot. Four people died and eight were injured in the attack on Sunday at around 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of Detroit. The striker lit a fire before being prosecuted and killed in an exchange of gunshots with the police.

“We are all looking for answers and understanding in the wake of trauma, shock and sorrow. We are grateful to all those who reach out to service, prayers and support words during this difficult period,” Oaks said in a statement that also paid tribute to Nelson.

Nelson’s “timeless teachings” help people find comfort in the middle of suffering, said Oaks.

Utah is also still in shock from the death of the September 10 of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk at the University of Utah Valley. His alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, grew up as a member of the church.

Violence could be a subject of discussion this weekend at the church’s twice annual general conference in Salt Lake City, said Matthew Bowman, a professor at the graduate university of Claremont specializing in American religious history. Church leaders often approach the major problems of the moment while leaving room for nearly 100,000 participants in person and many others who look at a distance to interpret religious doctrine for themselves.

Church policy authorizes only law enforcement agents to bring firearms and other fatal weapons to the ownership of the Church. It is not known if new measures are coming.

A long -standing voice in the church, Oaks joined the quorum of the twelve in 1984 at the same time as Nelson.

When Nelson became president, he raised oaks at the first presidency, the best director.

“I suspect that Oaks has contributed to a fairly strong leadership thanks to the presidency of Nelson,” said Bowman. “I think we are not going to see a very huge pivot.”

At the beginning as an account, Oaks was involved in a repression of extreme right extremism which led to certain excommunications. In 2020, he delivered a discourse on faith in elections without resorting to radicalism or violence.

While Nelson focused on the global footprint of faith, in particular by choosing apostles with international and immigrant history, oaks can refocus on the United States and its policy, said Bowman.

With the death of Nelson, there is a vacancy in the twelve quorum that Oaks would fill as president – one -way church presidents can leave their footprint. Some wonder if he will exploit the church church commissioner, Clark Gilbert, who has led to the university campuses of Brigham Young, belonging to the church, to enforce the orthodoxy of the church, said Bowman.

Oaks was an engine against homosexual marriage and in maintaining teaching that homosexuality is a sin, creating anxiety and concern among the faithful who are gays, lesbians and transgender.

He has often pronounced speeches strengthening the position of faith, one in which he said that the desired meaning of the “genre” in the doctrine of the Church is “biological sex at birth”. Church policies introduced in 2024 have considerably restricted the involvement of members who transferred physically or socially, such as changing their name or pronoun.

Some remember the surveillance and repression of gay students Brigham Young University while Oaaks was president of the school in the 1970s. A church spokesman recognized in 1979 that Byu’s security had marked gay bars, but said that Oaks put an end to practice when he discovered it.

However, in recent years, Oaks has been one of a few key church movements that suggest that he could not make the subject a centerpiece of his administration, according to experts.

Oaks was the closest advisor to Nelson in 2019 when Nelson canceled a policy that prohibited baptisms for gay parents and labeled the same sex couples as a sinners eligible for expulsion. This decision denied a devastating and confusing decision for the members of the Gay and Lesbian Church that had been supported in previous years by the calls of the Church leaders to more love and understanding of the LGBTQ +members.

“It would be really unlikely to come back, you know that when he was one of the decision -makers to eliminate this restriction,” said Paul Reeve, president of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah.

OAKS also helped the Church to put a compromise in 2022 in which faith supported federal legislation to protect homosexual marriages as long as these laws have not brought religious freedom or to force faith to make homosexual marriages or to grant them an official sanction of the Church.

Noah Hanson, who is gay and grew up in religion, worries the ascent of Oaks will lead to a greater corner between LGBTQ + people and their members of the devoted family. Under Nelson, the Church has greatly fell by speaking of homosexuality, said Hanson, giving his parents space to “do some progress”.

“They started to tell my husband that they love her,” said Logan 27 -year -old Utah.

If Oaks is as frank on LGBTQ + people as in the past, Hanson fears that progress will slip. His parents worship the presidents of the Church, who are considered to be prophets by members, even if their policies are harmful to their own children, he said.

“If Dallin H. Oaks does not soften his positions on the way in which marriage is only between a man and a woman, or that the act of homosexuality is a sin, as if he were depositing this hammer, I have the impression that it will ruin my relationship with my parents,” said Hanson.

Well known for dry sermons and speeches that use reason than on emotion, Oaks brings the sensitivity of a lawyer to his work. Compared to Nelson’s sentimentalism, Oaks is cooler, more precise and lawyer, said Bowman.

Becoming president, however, could inspire him to adopt a more personal approach, suggested that Patrick Mason, professor of religious studies and history at the Utah State University.

“It is a very different thing to be president of the Church and to recognize that now you are supposed to be everything for everyone in the Church,” said Mason.

Oaks was frank on the maintenance of civilian public speech, urging people shortly before the 2024 presidential election to “avoid what is hard and hateful” and to be artists in their communities.

After the anti-vaccine reactions of the members of the Church after having celebrated COVVI-19 vaccines on social networks, Nelson and OAKS began to speak more about the need for moderation, political dialogue and avoidance of conspiracy and hatred theories.

“It’s really, I think, alarmed Nelson, and it alarmed Oaks,” said Bowman. “I think it is back on the radar of Oaks, that political extremism in the Church is a problem. And it may be, I think that because of his training and because of his history, perhaps more willing than Nelson had to take concrete measures. “

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Gruver reported to Fort Collins, Colorado and Meyer de Nashville. The company archivist AP Sarit Hand in New York contributed to this report.

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