Who Is President Dallin H. Oaks? Biographer Rick Turley on the Life of the LDS Church’s New Prophet

In this Informed Saints exclusive, church historian and biographer Richard E. “Rick” Turley Jr. (author of In the Hands of the Lord: The Life of Dallin H. Oaks) helps us answer the big question: Who is President Dallin H. Oaks, the 18th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? From a humble Utah childhood marked by loss, to graduating #1 at the University of Chicago Law School, clerking for Chief Justice Earl Warren, leading BYU, serving on the Utah Supreme Court, and decades as an apostle—including time presiding in the Philippines—Turley shares human, surprising, and faith-building stories that reveal what kind of prophet President Oaks may be.

What you’ll learn

• Early experiences that forged President Oaks’s work ethic and faith (including dramatic near-misses with death)

• Why he pivoted from big-firm law to scholarship and service—and how that shaped his leadership

• BYU years: academic rigor, religious freedom advocacy, equal pay for women faculty, and yes… Cosmo the Cougar

• Why the Utah Supreme Court was his “most enjoyable job” and how that legal mind informs his ministry

• The call to the Twelve alongside Russell M. Nelson—and why he delayed ordination to finish court opinions

• Family insights: June Dixon Oaks’s refining influence and Kristin McMain Oaks’s later partnership

• What “a witness of the name of Jesus Christ” means to President Oaks—and to the global Church today

Guest: Rick Turley—longtime Church historian; co-author on Mountain Meadows Massacre volumes; author on the Mark Hofmann forgeries; forthcoming biography Joseph the Prophet.

Watch next: More Informed Saints conversations on modern Prophets, Church history, and faith in action.

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