Talk:Steven D. Bennion

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Possible source
I strongly suspect that Clayton Christensen and Henry J. Eyring's book The Innovative University has material on Bennion. While one co-author is a successor of Bennion as president of what is now BYU-Idaho, the book itself has an indepdent publisher, so is at least a quasi-independent source.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:29, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I am fairly convinced that Bennion's notability will rise of fall completely on being a university leader, or maybe if people can find it on his pre-university head academic scholarship, although I see no indication of that. Clearly as a bishop of a ward in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints he is not notable. Bishops are basically like Protestant pastors, although they serve on a non-paid basis, normally work at another job full time (a few are retired, I may have once had a retired bishop, although the only one I know I had retired was a full time volunteer director of finance for the Detroit Institute of Arts, so he was not devoting 100% of his time to being a bishop, most bishops are between ages 30-60, although I know of cases under 30 and over 60, Jacob de Jager was an over 70 bishop and Thomas S. Monson became a bishop at 21). congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may average bigger than the avergae Protestant congregation, but are much smaller than your average Catholic Parish. This is why I do not suggest that a bishop is anything like a Catholic rector. I would say that by size and structure a stake president in like a Catholic rector, at least one over a multi-site parish, but if you consider the number of masses a one site parish may have, than the rector may actual supervise as many weekend giving of the eucharaist/Sacrament of hte Lord's Supper as a Latter-day Saint stake president does (although in The Church of jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the sacrament is fully under the bishop not the stake president, and other sacraments are largely under the temple president who is indepdent of the stake president, although the stake president does control and monitor access). I know some writers have said a stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is like a Catholic diocese. This is true in the very general sense of being a collection of multiple units, but people who have studied it more argue that a stake is really functionally like a multi-congregation mega church, except no stake anywhere has attendance numbers to qualify as a mega church, except maybe one or two in the Provo Metro Area, the Kumasi Metro Area or the Aba Metro Area, but those maybe 5 would still be very small mega churches, and are all going to split by March of next year. Stakes are not in any meaningful way like Catholic dioceses. There are Catholic parishes that have more members than most, and in a few cases than all, stakes. A stake consists of from 5-15 wards, with a few smaller congregations called branches, but there are no current stakes above 20 congregations total, and very few above 15. It helps that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints much more regularly splits units than some other religious organizations (it also may combine units more often. The number of wards and branches discontined in the US since 1980 may be less than the number of Parishes of the Catholic Church discontinued, but the later often happen with huge numbers all at once, while the former while sometimes done on significant scales, happen much more often, and in a way that is in general more responsive to changing situations on the ground). Bishops generally serve 5-7 years (although due to other factors many serve under 5 years). There are over 30,000 bishops and branch presidents worldwide at present. I would not be surprised if there are over 50,000 living men who have served as bishops of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I would not be surprised if 100,000 have served during the entire history of the Church. It is hard to gage since the number of wards and branches, especially wards, has significantly increased over the last few decades, and before 1950 or so it was not uncommon for bishops to serve 20 years or more, and I think even until the 1970s some would serve a decade or more. There were 7,868 wards in 1980 for example. Hmm, my numbers might be too low, but still that is too many to be notable. Bennion's other callings do not cut it. There are about 3500 stake presidents, and he was not a stake president but one of the counselors, of which there are about 7000. The number of stakes his 1000 in about 1977, 2000 in 1994 and 3000 in 2013. Stake presidents serve about 9 years on average, rarely more, but in some cases less, so there have probably been in excess of 12,000 stake president in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with in excess of 24,000 counselors, although since counselors on average change more than stake presidents, the latter number may be bigger. Bennion was also a temple president and a mission president. There are only 400 mission president, but in most cases they only directly oversee missionaries, although when he was mission president he may have directly overseen all Church operations in the Bronx. They do interact with members in stakes, but are not eccesiastical leaders over them. Mission presidents serve 3 years, the only times they serve longer are in very rare exceptions of countries with high restirictions of foriegn clerics or internal security issues. Joshua Subandriyo may have been mission president in Indonesia 4 instead of 3 years, and President Joseph the current president of the Port-au-Prince Haiti Temple may have served as mission president in Haiti for 4 years back in the early 1990s. Those are probably the only 2 exceptions to the 3 year rule after 1970 anywhere. If there are 2 more I would be shocked. There are over 400 mission president. It actually is a little fewer today than it was 7 years ago, although more than 10 years ago. There are currently 405 missions, it shot up a lot in 2013, and was 334 in 2000. It was 256 in 1990, 188 in 1980, and 98 in 1971. The number incrased significantly in the 1960s. Still, with mission presidents only serving 3 years, and a few serving only 2, we come out to 3,000 or more having served since 1990. Temple presidents now only serve for 3 years, but until 2005 there were more cases of them serving 4-5 years. There will be 169 temples as of this weekend, although about 5 additional temple presidents have been called for temples not yet dedicated, when all announced and under construction temples are completed there were be about 250. It was only in 2000 that the number of temples reached 100, and only in 1997 it reached 50, it was 18 as of the day I was born in 1980. Put this together and we come up with probably about 850 temple presidents total. We have 103 biogrpahical articles in the Temple presidents and matrons category, however 5 of those were matrons, so we are down to 98. Virtually all of these people are notable for other things. One, Joseph F. Smith was president of the Salt Lake Temple during a time when that office was basically part and parcel of being President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His son Joseph Fielding Smith was Salt Lake Temple president while an apostle, at least 4 more were apostles while temple president. Most others were general authorities or general officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of the few who may have been temple president as their highest eccesiastical office, we have William Budge who was in a state legislator so we do not need to show he is eccesiastically notable (although he probably is, but this is probably more just from coverage than from having to analize impact per se, his biggest impact was actually baptizing Karl G. Maeser), Reed Buller who was a state senator, J. Elliot Cameron who was Church Commissoer of Education (the last before it was changed to a general authority held position), president of Snow College (a 2 year insitution, so maybe not enough for notability) and BYU-Hawai'i (it was 4 year, but is it prestigious enough to meet notability guidelines), but he also was the namesake of the 1960s Cameron Report, so while he looks about as notable as Bennion, he has a few more markers, he was also president of the Sons of the Utah Pioneers. We have Edwin Q. Cannon who was a state legislator. However arguably his role in organizing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nigeria and Ghana may have been covered enough in sources alone for him to be notable. Stephen L. Chipman is was also in the legislature. Edward L. Clissold is probalby a borderline case, although I think someone could find more sourcing on him in other works by R. Lanier Britsch, especially the revised history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints British published. Clissold was president of the Lai'e Hawai'i Temple 3 non-consecutive times, and was a key figure in the opening of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Japan. He was also head of the Polynesian Culture Center, which might be enough for notability. Robert H. Daines III held a named professorship, Donald D. Deshler seems at first glance to pass Acadmeic notability guideline 1, although I cannot vouch if this is actually so, his predecessor as president of the Winter Quarter's Temple Theodore H. Okiishi it has actually been considered, and he passes at least one academic notability guideline point. Junius Driggs may come close to being notable as a temple president. I have to say though the article misinterprets the role of a temple president. It focuses on the tasks they may do, but their actual assignment is the ensure that the temple opertes smoothly which I think is misses in the verbiage. Also the line "in large temples temple presidents normally serve 3 years" is a relic of being writting in about 2001 (at least the underlining sources, that article only dates to 2009) from 1998-about 2005 some temple presidents in smaller temples were serving roughly 5 years, but in about 2005 with just one exception all 100+ temples were placed on the 3-year president service plan. However I am not sure 3 years became even semi-standard for any temples before 1985, so Driggs serving 5 years is not what the article implies it is. The article seems to me to be trying to coatrack about Driggs. He may have been notable as a temple president, but it will probably rise of fall as a business and community leader. If you go here  you can get a list of those who served as temple president in any temple with years served. What becomes clear if you dig back is that pre-1985 temple presidents served more often 4 or 5 years than 3, and pre-1970 some served much longer than 5 years. Keep in mind that only a few temples pre-date 1985, and only 20 predate that year by more than 4 years, so of the 168 temples only 20 will even allow you to see this. The sum of my thoughts is that Bennion is not going to be notable as president of the New York New York North Mission nor as president of the Manhattan Temple. The office in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that might actually be equivalent to a diocesan bishop in the Roman Catholic Church is area president, they preside over roughly the same number of members and congregations, area presidents and Catholic bishops have large variation in the size of how many members and congregations they preside over, and Latter-day Saint congregations are on average much smaller than Catholic parishes, so this is rough. Diocesan bishops though serve longer in their assignment, area presidents rarely serve more than 3 years, although they may serve longer if you count time as counselors. On the other hand area presidents are all general authorities, and some have served as presidents of multiple areas. Area Presidents by most measures would seem to be more significant than many bishops in some high church Protestant (Anglican/Episocpalian, some Lutheran, and maybe some Methodist) groups, considering how small the size of some of the dioceses involved in some of those churches are. Some of these High Church Protestant groups have dioceses with under 1000 total members, while some areas have over 1 million members and some others have over 750,000, but there may also be issues of actual indepdent source coverage. Although in the later case I sometimes wonder if we overvalue the editorial choices of small town newspapers. Be that as it may, Bennion is not in any way going to be covered by any interpretation of the bishop notability guideline, and considering how many articles with only one blog source that is essential just a list of eclisastical dates for the subject have come about because of the bishop notability suggestion, I think we need to reconsider it. There may be leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who are similar to diocesan bishops, but those are Area Presidents, not any holders of any positions that Bennion held. Bennion will be notable or not as a leader of a major junior college and as a leader of a regionally significant university, not an eccesiatical leader.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:29, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, the above is too long. The summary, none of Bennion's eccesiastical positions are enough for notability. Even if someone could find some news sources that name drop him as temple president and mission president, that would not change it unless the news sources were substantially about that. For example another Manhattan mission president, Ronald A. Rasband, we may be able to find sources that mention him in an article about the missionaries under him volunteering at Ellis Island, and we may be able to find an aticle about the dedication of the chapel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mentioning that it was under Rasband missionaries were more aggressively located in Harlem, but neither would be substantive enough to count as an indepth coverage to make it so that article would add towards passing GNG (Rasband clearly is notable, but because he is an apostle, not because he was president of the New York New York North Mission). If Bennion is notable it is as an academic, as president of what is now BYU-Idaho (but was then a 2-year-junior college, but with maybe more academic rigor and regional recognition than most 2-year institutions in the US), and as president of Southern Utah University, not as an eccesiastical leader.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:39, 29 October 2021 (UTC)