President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leads the Church's global membership as its senior apostle, prophet, seer and revelator. Latter-day Saint doctrine holds that the President alone holds the authority to exercise all priesthood keys on earth at any one time, though he delegates most administrative and doctrinal responsibility to two counselors who join him in the First Presidency, and to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which the Church regards as equal in authority to the First Presidency though subject to it in exercise.

The office grew out of the Church's 1830 founding by Joseph Smith, who held prophetic authority from the beginning but did not take the formal title President of the Church until 1832. Smith's 1844 killing by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, while he was a candidate for United States President, left the young church without a clear successor and triggered a succession crisis that produced several splinter movements, the largest of which followed Brigham Young to the Great Salt Lake Valley beginning in 1847.

Today the President is popularly addressed as the prophet and is understood by members to receive ongoing revelation for the Church, a claim that distinguishes Latter-day Saint ecclesiology from denominations that regard scriptural revelation as closed. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, the office oversees a missionary and temple-building program that has made the Church one of the largest American-founded religious bodies in the world.

Succession to the presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints follows a distinctive rule: on the death of a President, the First Presidency is dissolved and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles governs the Church collectively until a new President is set apart, almost invariably the apostle who has served longest in the Quorum, regardless of age. The senior apostle then chooses two counselors, and the reconstituted First Presidency is presented to the general membership for a sustaining vote at a solemn assembly, a ritual affirmation rather than a contested election.

This seniority convention was not written into scripture but emerged from the chaotic 1844 succession crisis after Joseph Smith's death, when several men, including Sidney Rigdon and James Strang, claimed the right to lead. Brigham Young, then president of the Quorum of the Twelve, argued that the apostles collectively held the keys Smith had conferred on them and that leadership therefore passed to the Quorum as a body; the majority of the Nauvoo membership accepted this reasoning, and Young was sustained as President in 1847. The precedent held for every subsequent transition.

Because seniority rather than election determines the choice, Presidents have often been elderly at the time of their sustaining, and the office has sometimes passed through a rapid sequence of short tenures when several senior apostles died within a few years of one another.