Monday, November 22, 2010

Politicians as leaders

So my stake was reorganized Sunday before last, and the new stake president is Sheldon Fisher. Interestingly, he has a political past—he unsuccessfully challenged Congressman Don Young in the most recent Republican primary here, running to Young’s right (which, really, is pretty hard to do).

In my memory, political figures in ward and stake leadership tend to be better at keeping politics, even to the level of code words, out of the pulpit than those who aren’t political figures.* (Maybe they know the game, so they know how to avoid it.) I’ll be interested to see if this observation continues to hold true.

* I use the phrase “in my memory” on purpose—i do realize that this hasn’t always been the case (see Benson, Ezra Taft and Roberts, B.H., among many others). My personal memories of these sorts of things, though, only go back to the early 80s or so.

1 comment:

Heather the Mama Duk said...

We have had a LOT of political types in wards in NoVa for obvious reasons (proximity to DC being #1). One bishop was even counsel to the president (W). Your experience definitely mirrors mine. We had one guy (just a regular member) tell us just before the '04 election that if we wanted peace we knew who to vote for. Of course he also told us the Lamanites - and insurgents in Iraq - were doing the right thing. That was just before they released him from being Sunday School teacher.