Religious Authority

In The Next Mormons, religious authority is the book’s recurring framing question: when young Mormons’ social values conflict with those of their religious leaders, “whose opinions will they privilege — their own or the institution’s?” Jana Riess frames modern Mormonism as holding two ideals in tension. At one pole is the rulebook of following the prophet, encoded by church president Ezra Taft Benson as the “fourteen fundamentals” — a living prophet supersedes a former one, is “more vital than the standard works,” and will never lead the church astray. At the other is personal conscience and spiritual experience, illustrated by the convert who concluded his vegetarianism was “inspired by God” and learned to separate what leaders taught from what he believed.

The survey data complicates the simple secularization story. Millennial Mormons are paying less attention to general authorities, but they are not replacing institutional authority with their own conscience — they are “much less likely than Boomer/Silent Mormons and GenXers to regard their own conscience or spiritual promptings as authoritative.” Riess connects this to system-justification theory (members defending structures that constrain them) and to forced-choice dynamics around LGBT issues, where churches have “made people choose” between personal values and institutional obedience. The book ties the theme to Obedience and the drift of Millennials away from the general authorities.

Context: The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church (2019) by sociologist Jana Riess draws on the Next Mormons Survey (NMS) to study generational change in belief, practice, and attitudes toward authority within the LDS Church.

Where this appears

• The Next Mormons — the central question of whose authority Millennial Mormons privilege (institution vs. conscience vs. personal spiritual experience), set against Benson’s “fourteen fundamentals”