Does age determine seniority in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles?

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A reader recently asked a good question in the comments section of one of my stories. Researching the answer revealed some interesting nuggets.

Here’s the question, from CougarBlue:

“Since the first apostles in this dispensation were called and seniority was based on age, there have been times when two or more (were called at the same time). They were sustained and ordained according to age. When Elders Rasband, Stevenson and Renlund were sustained, Elder Stevenson was sustained as senior to Elder Renlund, who is older. Has this occurred before?”

There is a lot going on here, so let’s tease apart the different pieces.

Age originally determined seniority

First, yes, when the original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established in 1835, seniority in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was established based on age, according to “Acts of the Modern Apostles” by Wilburn D. Talbot.

Elders Thomas B. Marsh and David W. Patten were both 35 years old, but Elder Marsh became the senior apostle because he was 13 days older.

Date of ordination was cemented as the pattern

Second, as each successor to a member of the original quorum was added, he took his place by date of ordination. The newest apostle also became the junior apostle.

In 1875, Brigham Young reordered the seniority of some of the original members of the Twelve. John Taylor was younger than Wilford Woodruff, but of the two future church presidents, President Taylor had been ordained first. The other changes aren’t relevant to this study, but you can read more here.

Date of ordination was further cemented as the pattern for seniority in the quorum.

What happened when more than one apostle was called at the same time

The final piece of the answer to CougarBlue’s question is about multiple apostles ordained on the same day since 1835. It has happened 14 times.

Here is the list; see if you can identify some patterns. Future church presidents are designated with an asterisk:

You’ll notice above that these two callings during World War II resulted in the only time two future church presidents were ordained as apostles on the same day.

President Nelson and President Oaks were called as apostles on the same day and their callings were announced on the same day, but they weren’t ordained on the same day. The reason was that President Oaks was serving as a Utah Supreme Court justice and needed to finalize rulings on some cases in which arguments already had been made before him.

That played no role in the seniority between the two. A previous ChurchBeat shared the remarkable story about how President Kimball assigned seniority to President Nelson when he gave their callings to President Gordon B. Hinckley.

While you no doubt saw other patterns, let’s return to the relevant one for CougarBlue’s question, which was whether a younger apostle had ever been sustained and ordained as senior in the Quorum of the Twelve to an older apostle ordained on the same day.

The answer is yes. It has happened three times in the 14 instances when multiple apostles were called at once.

The first time was in 1906. The second was 1934. The third was 2015.

Returned missionaries in March Madness

In case you missed it, 24 returned missionaries played in either the NCAA Tournament or NIT last week, according to the Church News. All of the teams with RMs have been eliminated from those single-elimination tournaments.

But with that many returned missionaries — and even more Latter-day Saints, like Michigan State’s Jaxson Kohler, whose team is still alive in the NCAAs — playing on good teams all over the country, it seems church ball is alive and well.

Here is a list of the 24 returned missionaries:

Utah Valley University

• Isaac Hawkins, Puerto Rico San Juan Mission.
• Jackson Holcombe, California Sacramento Mission.
• Braden Housley, Texas Fort Worth Mission.
• Trevan Leonhardt, who served in the Arizona Scottsdale Mission and in Chile.
• Tyler Medaris, who served in Houston, Texas, and in Peru.
• A.J. Riggs, England Leeds Mission.
• Jaxson Roberts, Spain Madrid South Mission.
• Tyler Weaver, Brazil Porto Alegre Mission.
• Hayden Welling, Arizona Gilbert Mission.

BYU

• Richie Saunders, Washington Seattle Mission.
• Dawson Baker, Micronesia Guam Mission.
• Jared McGregor, Washington Spokane Mission.

Hawaii

• Hunter Erickson, North Carolina Charlotte Mission.
• Isaac Johnson, Ohio Cincinnati Mission.
• Tanner Cuff, Kentucky Louisville Mission.

Clemson

• Jake Wahlin, Lithuania.
• Carter Welling, New Jersey Morristown Mission.

TCU

• Tanner Toolson, Florida Jacksonville Mission.
• Adam Stewart, France Paris Mission.

Utah State University

• Mason Falslev, Arizona Scottsdale and the Brazil Santos missions.
• Drake Allen, Philippines.

Arizona

• Addison Arnold, Argentina.

Kentucky

• Collin Chandler, Sierra Leone and London, England.

Virginia

• Dallin Hall, California Fresno Mission.

About the church

• Our Amy Ortiz looked at what’s new for April 2026 general conference, plus how to watch and follow.
• The First Presidency updated the location of the Charlotte North Carolina Temple and released renderings for Austria’s first temple and one of Mexico’s 27.
• Super Bowl champion coach and Latter-day Saint Andy Reid will be the guest narrator when the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square celebrates America’s 250th anniversary in July.
• The latest Temple Square renovation update shared information about taking down a crane and scaffolding and putting up art-glass windows.

What I’m reading

• I love Chuck Norris jokes. He liked them, too. But our Jacob Hess found that the greatest strength Chuck Norris had was his faith.

• Some of you will remember “Saturday’s Warrior” and the way it pushed back on the fears of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s that the world was overpopulated. In fact, those fears persist, Jacob Hess writes, even though we now know that those prophets of doom were wrong: More children in the world didn’t trigger mass starvation.
• Harvard and BYU scholars released a report about how faith supports public education.
• We have a report on the trumpet that fell from the hands of Angel Moroni when an earthquake rocked the Salt Lake Temple. Where is it now?

Behind the scenes