Smooth Succession?

The leadership of the Mormon Church is a self-perpetuating gerontocracy. By tradition, the presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whenever there is a vacancy, falls to the senior member of the church's governing Council of Twelve Apostles. Last week, following tradition, the council "invited, sustained and ordained" Spencer Woolley Kimball, 78, as the church's new president. Kimball thus became the fourth "prophet, seer and revelator" of the Mormons in as many years. President David O. McKay died in 1970 at 96, Joseph Fielding Smith hi 1972 at 95, and Harold B. Lee, the most recent incumbent and longtime guiding administrative genius of the church, just two weeks ago at 74.

The apparent smoothness of the latest succession was deceptive. In 1972 Spencer Kimball had open-heart surgery; 15 years before that an operation for throat cancer left him with only a part of a vocal cord. Although he arrived at the decisive meeting of the twelve with a doctor's certification that he was in good health, many Mormons were naturally concerned about Kimball's longevity. Some even would have liked to use his health as an excuse to change the line of succession. The real reason: their fear of the accession to the presidency of Ezra Taft Benson, 74, when Kimball dies.

Senior Apostle. Eisenhower's former Secretary of Agriculture, who is now senior apostle and head of the council, has flustered many Mormons with his abrasive public utterances, some of them to John Birch Society audiences. His benediction at the funeral of President McKay was so heavy with right-wing political overtones as to embarrass even the conservative Mormon hierarchy. Now the divisive Benson is next in the wings, as amiable President Kimball begins his regime.

Kimball's paternal grandfather was one of the original Mormon Twelve Apostles under Joseph Smith. His maternal grandfather was Brigham Young's business manager. His father was a Mormon bishop. The sixth of eleven children, Kimball grew up to become, like so many other Mormon leaders, a successful businessman, running an insurance and realty company in Arizona.

He has also paid his dues in church work. Since 1965 he has chaired the church's missionary executive committee, while its corps of missionaries grew from 12,600 to some 18,000. Mostly young Mormons who serve two years as missionaries at their own expense, the persistent evangelists made 78,000 converts in 1972, helping to raise the number of Mormons worldwide to an estimated 3,300,000. Mission work, says Kimball, is "a great character builder."

Kimball takes an equally pragmatic view of other Mormon practices. One remarkable doctrine, for instance, holds that the dead as well as the living can be offered baptism as Mormons. This sends troops of elderly members to the church's temples to enroll ancestors.

Kimball sees the work as a sort of spiritual WPA--a task that keeps older Mormons both busy and feeling needed.

The new president is not likely to change Mormon views on the family or race. He is a devoted husband and father (four living children, 27 grandchildren) who insists that under normal circumstances "the place of women is in the home." As for the controversial Mormon doctrine that keeps blacks from full membership in the church, he notes that the teaching "is the policy of the Lord." He adds that "we are subject to revelations of the Lord in case he should ever wish to make a change." Few expect, however, that Spencer Kimball will receive the necessary revelation.

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