Ezra Taft Benson had not appeared in public for two years. Toward the end, he could not leave his apartment and had to be fed by nasal tube. Yet he remained "Prophet, Seer and Revelator," the supreme authority of the Mormon Church until his death last week at the age of 94. A group of dark-suited apostles called the Council of the Twelve will gather this week in the central Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, to "set apart" a new prophet from among themselves. If tradition is a guide, they will select the chief of the council as Benson's successor and the Mormon Church's 14th president -- in this case Howard Hunter. At 86, Hunter, who had open-heart surgery eight years ago and a gall- bladder operation last year, will be the first head of the Mormon Church born in the 20th century.
In spite of this gerontocracy, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remains vibrant. Its sedulous missionary work has made what seemed to be a quintessentially American faith extraordinarily successful both at home and overseas. The church has nearly 9 million members, up from 5.6 million in 1984. Though a slight majority (4.6 million) live in the U.S. and Canada, the Mormon Church's biggest success story of the past decade is Latin America, where it claims 2.7 million believers. "One of the major themes of 20th century Mormonism has been accommodation," says Richard Bushman, a professor of history at Columbia University and a practicing Mormon. And by doing so, it has flourished spectacularly. Although its members were persecuted nearly to the point of extinction for its advocacy of polygamy in the late 19th century, the Mormon Church is now the epitome of family values and commands an estimated $8 billion in assets even as it accumulates the annual tithes from its millions of believers. Its current challenges: feminism and historical revisionism that pound away at the faith.
That faith is an exotic mixture of innovative Americana and unconventional Christianity. Indeed, while Mormon teachers speak increasingly of "Mormon Christianity," most Christians would blanch at the actual theology. Mormon history states that Joseph Smith founded the church in Fayette, New York, in 1830 after being directed by the angel Moroni to unearth a set of inscribed golden plates. These provided him with revelations that ancient Hebrews migrated to North America around 600 B.C. Later Jesus Christ, after his ministry in the Middle East, came to preach to these lost tribes of Israel in America. The tribes eventually split into warring factions, the Nephites and Lamanites, the latter being the ancestors of the American Indians.
Smith, who was assassinated in 1844 in Carthage, Illinois, taught that the trinity is not a triune God as Christians believe but rather "three gods." Meanwhile, God the Father was once a man who achieved divinity. As church prophet Lorenzo Snow, who died in 1901, put it, "As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become." In fact, Smith wrote in Doctrine and Covenants, men whose marriages are sealed and approved by the church will become gods in the hereafter.