Historical origins of hierarchy in LDS leadership 

The original LDS leadership was not hierarchical. Decisions would be made by a group of leaders who would rely on logic and revelation to decide what was best for the community. The institution of seniority in the Quorum of the 12 Apostles was not intended in revelation but was the result of political intrigue within the early leadership of the LDS church. 

In 1835, the year that the quorum was first established, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, two of the three witnesses, received a revelation that Phineas Young, Brigham Young’s elder brother, was to be chosen as one of the Twelve Apostles. Instead, Joseph Smith selected his younger brother, William, to join the Twelve. This was even though D&C 18 had given the Three Witnesses the prerogative to select the Twelve. 

William’s selection was not the product of divine revelation, but more likely, political expediency, as Oliver explained to Brigham Young in a letter dated 27 February 1848, “At the time the Twelve were chosen in Kirtland, and I may say before, it had been manifested that Brother Phinehas [Young] was entitled to occupy the station as one of the number; but owing to Brother Joseph’s urgent request at the time, Brother David and myself yielded to his wish, and consented for William to be selected, contrary to our feelings and judgment, and to our deep mortification ever since.

“Brother Phinehas occupied that relation to myself, [as his brother-in-law] that caused me to feel delicate about urging his name, and besides Bro. Joseph, about that time, was bearing down heavily upon bro. Phinehas.”

The concept of seniority – by age – was established to deal with the selection of William Smith. Thereafter, future presidents – most notably, Brigham Young, did not reverse this because it would have jeopardized their claim to the church’s leadership. 

If Joseph Smith had agreed to Oliver and David’s revelation to have Phineas as one of the Twelve, it would have far-reaching implications for the church. Phineas (born in February 1799)was older than Brigham Young (June 1801), but also David Patten (November 1799), and Thomas Marsh (November 1800). 

By the time Joseph died in 1844, Patten was already dead (1838), while Marsh had been excommunicated (1838). Brigham Young therefore only became a senior member and later, president, only because his elder brother had failed to be one of the twelve. 

Had age-based seniority been instituted, Phineas would have stood three slots ahead of Brigham and would have been the first and only senior member of Twelve from 1835 all the way to 1880. Because Brigham himself died in 1877, Brigham could never have taken the seniority rank from his brother, and thus could never have been president of the Twelve and therefore also could never have made himself president of the church.

Ironically, then the only way Brigham was able to become president of the Twelve, and of the church, was because Joseph insisted on overriding the revelation to Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer (given to them on the command of D&C 18) that Brigham’s older brother Phineas be put in the Twelve in order to put Joseph’s own troublesome brother William in the Twelve instead.

Oliver’s letter in 1848 sought to correct an earlier mistake and have Phineas considered as one of the original Twelve Apostles. Brigham Young, the recipient of the letter, had little incentive to acquiesce to Oliver’s assertion; if he accepted that his elder brother be part of the Twelve in 1835, his Phineas would have been senior to Brigham, and therefore, the leader of the church, all the way to 1880, three years after Brigham’s death. 

Had Phineas been part of the Twelve at the time of Jpseph’s death, he would have become the church’s leader. This would have had profound consequences for the church as it charted turbulent waters for the next few decades. Phineas’ demeanor and known history showed that he was markedly different from his brother. Where his brother was unquestioningly loyal to Joseph Smith, Phineas was more reasonable, also not sharing his brother’s dictatorial tendencies. There is no evidence that Phineas’s decades in church leadership positions produced complaints of his being overbearing or dictatorial. 

Had the Twelve operated either as strict equals or under Phineas’s leadership, there is simply no reason to think the same power-grabbing moves would have occurred. 

The significance of Phineas’s revelatory selection to the Twelve is even more when Thomas Marsh’s role in excommunicating Oliver Cowdery from the church is considered. Marsh was a key figure in charging Oliver as being the one behind rumors about Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger. This riled up Joseph’s feelings and may have been decisive in Cowdery’s ouster. 

In 1843 Oliver wrote to Brigham about his his 1838 excommunication, with apparent reference to Marsh: “I believed at the time, and still believe, that ambitious and wicked men, envying the harmony existing between myself and the first elders of the church, and hoping to get into some other men’s birthright, by falsehoods the most foul and wicked, caused all this difficulty from beginning to end. They succeeded in getting myself out of the church; but since they themselves have gone to perdition, ought not old friends—long tried in the furnace of affliction, to be friends still?”

Oliver identified the culprits in this matter as having themselves since left the church. Marsh had announced his exit from the church in October 1838. That Marsh was one of those Oliver had in mind is indicated by Phineas, who was married to Oliver’s half-sister.

Phineas wrote to Willard Richards in 1842 that Marsh and others had “told [Joseph] many things prejudicial to Brother Oliver which he had no chance whatever to contradict,” because they had been seeking to “break him [Oliver] down that they might rise thereby.” In 1844, Phineas again explicitly accused “Thomas B. Marsh and others at Far West” of targeting Oliver, noting that “charges were heaped upon him you know for what.

It is unlikely that Marsh have had the same leverage with Joseph against Oliver Cowdery if he had not been the designated president of the Twelve. Instead, Phineas would have been in that position. Phineas Young was Oliver’s brother-in-law and remained friendly with Oliver even while others, such as Marsh, stood in opposition to him. 

As a member of the Twelve on equal footing with Marsh, Phineas Young would have been in a much stronger position to protect Oliver. And if age-ranking still existed, Phineas would have been president of the Twelve over Thomas Marsh, likely enabling him to protect Oliver from unjust excommunication.

Thus, while it’s difficult to know for sure what would have happened, it’s likely that if Oliver and David’s revelation selecting Phineas H. Young to the Quorum of the Twelve had been followed in place of Joseph’s nepotistic decision to insert his unfit brother William, Brigham Young would never have become president of the church or have provided Joseph with a president of the Twelve who would support him in anything he did, right or wrong, and Oliver Cowdery–who served as Joseph’s conscience–may not have been excommunicated, or at least may have continued his positive influence on Joseph and the church into the Nauvoo period.