Clark Gilbert has long been known as a “disruptive innovator” — particularly at the church-owned Deseret News and Brigham Young University — but this week’s lifetime call as an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did not disrupt any of his future plans.
“In some ways, the path to this started in Boston, when we were first asked to pray about a different route,” Gilbert told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday. “I was up for tenure at Harvard Business School and had offers to go to other schools. So when Kim Clark asked us to come to [Brigham Young University-Idaho] that really pivoted our life from then on.”
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Newly ordained apostle Clark Gilbert conducts an interview with The Tribune at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026.
That doesn’t mean Gilbert, who has been serving as the church’s education commissioner, wasn’t taken aback (at 55, he’s the youngest apostle in two decades) when church President Dallin H. Oaks called him Wednesday to join the faith’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Gilbert and his wife, Christine, “were really overwhelmed,” he said. “You see those paintings of the apostles running to the Savior with both fear and joy hitting them at the same moment? That very much describes how I felt since this call.”
In a wide-ranging interview, the new Latter-day Saint leader offered his thoughts about the church, its members and contemporary issues.
Same-sex marriage and the family proclamation
When asked whether members who support same-sex marriage or disagree with parts of the family proclamation should be given a temple recommend, his answer was more opaque than the one offered by apostle D. Todd Christofferson — who gave a qualified yes.
Under Gilbert’s direction, though, BYU faculty could be in danger of losing their jobs or applicants might not be hired if they took those positions.
“The recommend questions are clear and straightforward, but this is a big tent church,” Gilbert said in the interview. “We want people to feel a sense of belonging and inclusion, but we also are true to the teachings of the Savior Jesus Christ. … [Apostle] Jeffrey Holland once [pointed out] that Christ never once said, ‘because I love you, you are free to choose which commandments to keep,’ but [Jesus] also had an infinite capacity to forgive when we made mistakes. ... Christ was the one who taught God’s laws and never once backed away from them.”
The faith’s prescribed temple recommend questions do not ask about the family proclamation or same-sex marriage.
From faith to women to immigrants
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Newly ordained apostle Clark Gilbert conducts an interview with The Tribune at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City on Friday, Feb. 13, 2026.
Here are some of the new apostle’s other remarks (lightly edited for clarity and length):
• When asked about keeping people in the faith, he said: “Beyond anything I could do with my own thoughts, it’s always to point people back to the Savior. People who are doing well and progressing in the gospel need to be focused on the Savior. And people who [are struggling], the answer for them is to come back to the Savior. Now this calling is to be a witness to the name of Jesus Christ and all the world.”
• When asked about being a bridge builder and peacemaker in a fractured world, he said: “In this time, where so many agendas would take over on all sides of political perspectives, we have to be anchored in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and not any one partisan or political view. That is so hard to do when people try to take anything you say and put it through the lens of one or the other political agenda.”
• When asked about his insistence of a particular view of the faith and religious observance at BYU, he said: “I’m not the arbiter of orthodoxy. It’s really the doctrine of the church, and the safety in being grounded in those teachings. One of the things I’ve always tried to do is point people to a living prophet, and that prophet’s teachings. When I taught the words of President [Russell] Nelson, I would have that in my responsibilities as commissioner of education [and] … in my teachings as a general authority. When he passed away [in September] I had to pivot and turn to a new prophet and teach what the Lord was giving him.”
• When asked about what more could be done to elevate women in the church, he said: “When I was a bishop, we were in [a ward council meeting] and we weren’t getting an answer. I just closed my eyes and [prayed], ‘What are we supposed to do here?’ And I heard the Spirit say, ‘There is an answer to this. I gave it to your Young Women president. Ask her to share her voice.’ It was amazing how that council couldn’t work until everyone felt safe to share their feelings. I was the key holder in that meeting, but the Lord didn’t give me the answer. He gave it to someone else. … It’s not just women, but people who are shy, people who didn’t think they had a lot to offer, people who felt uncomfortable. All of them had to contribute.”
• When asked how the church can help its immigrant members, he said: “The challenge for us is to respect the rule of law while treating people with dignity and kindness and respect and opportunity. If you look at the efforts of the church, they’ve tried to do that. You hear all the time [about] the Utah Compact, the Utah solution, but so much of it comes from the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints trying to be true to our doctrine.”
(Leslie Nilsson | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) New apostle Clark Gilbert, with his wife, Christine, on Thursday.
Witnesses of Christ
The couple were “very, very humbled by this call,” Christine Gilbert said in a Thursday video, “but also very grateful that we have an opportunity to witness of Jesus Christ. We love him and we would do whatever he needed us to do.”
On Wednesday night, after Gilbert accepted the call but before it was announced Thursday, he and his wife stayed up late, going over in their minds each of the apostles.
“They’re all so different, such different personalities, different talents … backgrounds and predispositions are different,” he said. “We realized what was common was their testimony of Jesus Christ.”
Now he will “have to overcome all of my unique personality background experiences and realize there’s only one anchor role in this: to be a witness of Jesus Christ,” Gilbert said. “When I said there was still joy in the trepidation, I knew I would be pulled in that direction.”