Jana Riess: New LDS apostle Clark Gilbert is expected to be a strident culture warrior and doctrinal watchdog

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced the calling of its newest apostle, Clark G. Gilbert, on Thursday. He replaces the beloved Jeffrey R. Holland, who died Dec. 27 after serving in the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for over 30 years.

In some ways, Gilbert is a predictable choice. Like the apostle he’s replacing and also like Dallin H. Oaks, the new president of the church who just chose Gilbert for this lifelong appointment, he is a former president at one of the Brigham Young University schools. He represents a strain of church leadership that has been deeply involved in religious education.

Gilbert’s appointment also signals that doctrinal conformity may be a chief priority for the church during Oaks’ presidency.

After Gilbert’s stint as president of BYU-Idaho from 2015 to 2017, he spearheaded the fledgling BYU-Pathway Worldwide program from 2017 to 2021. BYU-PW is a popular low-cost, online college program through which students can complete a bachelor’s degree in three years from nearly anywhere in the world. The program’s swelling numbers have reinvigorated other divisions of the Church Educational System, which Gilbert was tasked to oversee beginning in 2021. He also served as a general authority Seventy, a church leader who assists the Twelve.

Gilbert’s business background and reputation as a family man also make him a conventional choice. He was a successful businessman before his tenure in full-time church service and has a doctorate in business administration from Harvard. He and his wife, Christine, are the parents of eight children.

But in other ways, his selection is unusual.

A fast riser

In a bureaucracy known for elderly men’s slow and steady rise to power, the 55-year-old’s ascent in the church has been almost meteoric. As I’ve discussed previously, the church’s recent pattern for calling apostles has been to select men who have already served at church headquarters for many years, joining the Quorum of the Twelve only after rising to either the Presidency of the Seventy (for example, Patrick Kearon, Quentin L. Cook, Ulisses Soares, Gerrit W. Gong and Ronald A. Rasband) or the Presiding Bishopric (Gary E. Stevenson and Gérald Caussé).

Gilbert has leapfrogged over much of that. He is the youngest apostle to be appointed since David A. Bednar, who was 52 when he was appointed in 2004.

Because of the church leadership’s practice of keeping apostles and prophets in service until death instead of retiring them to emeritus status at age 70, like members of the Seventy, Bednar and Gilbert have an excellent chance of becoming the church’s president someday and shaping its trajectory for decades to come.

Another reason Gilbert is a surprising choice is he does nothing to diversify the Quorum of the Twelve’s international or racial representation. Like the president who appointed him, he’s a white man from the western U.S. If there’s any diversity to be had here, it’s that Gilbert grew up primarily in northern Arizona rather than the church’s stronghold of Utah.

For a church that boasts of its growing internationalism, including recent growth in Africa, this is a return to baseline. Gilbert’s appointment will not satisfy critics who have accused the church of being primarily a U.S. religion with some international outposts, rather than a truly global faith.

Doubling down on orthodoxy

The 93-year-old Oaks seems concerned that his legacy will be expanding the church’s religious education programs and doubling down on doctrinal orthodoxy. Gilbert shares both of those commitments — with a zeal that has alienated many.

During his years as the church’s education commissioner, Gilbert became known as something of an attack dog. He standardized hiring practices across the BYUs, which included changes to some hiring requirements. In 2022, BYU contracts began requiring employees to affirm the church’s stances on marriage and gender — specifically, that same-sex marriage is against the laws of God and that there are only two genders, male and female, that align with sex at birth.

Some BYU employees also complained that Gilbert’s tenure created a hostile and suspicious environment. Some told The Salt Lake Tribune, without being named, that if they voiced any opinions that didn’t fully conform to the church’s positions — even on their private social media accounts or in what they thought were confidential conversations with their bishops — they thought they might lose their jobs. Toeing the line of orthodoxy, some said, had become more important than academic freedom.

Gilbert’s intense focus on conservatism wasn’t just evident in his years in church education, but before that during his brief time as president and CEO at the church-owned Deseret News. He came in with little media experience but made an enormous impact, slashing more than 40% of the newspaper’s staff and refocusing its mission on religious faith and traditional values.

Historian Benjamin E. Park said on Instagram [and in The Salt Lake Tribune] that Gilbert’s appointment was a clear indication the church is leaning toward dogmatism. “I don’t know if we’ve had someone appointed to the Quorum of the Twelve with such a clear record of culture war rhetoric and an argument for retrenchment,” Park said, “since J. Reuben Clark in the 1930s and Ezra Taft Benson in the 1940s.”

Note to readers • The views expressed in this opinion piece do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.