General Authority

In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), a general authority is a member of certain leadership organizations who is given administrative and ecclesiastical authority over the church. A general authority's jurisdiction is church-wide, in contrast to the responsibilities of a local authority or an area authority, which relate to a particular area, unit, or department of the church. However, not all church leaders with church-wide jurisdiction in the church are considered general authorities. As of April 2010, the number of general authorities was 109.

Read more about General Authority:  Origin of The Term, Composition and Distinction From General Officers, Tenure, Common Consent, General Authority Firsts

Famous quotes containing the words general and/or authority:

    We all have known
    Good critics, who have stamped out poet’s hopes;
    Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state;
    Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause;
    Good kings, who disembowelled for a tax;
    Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy;
    Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs;
    And damned the general world for standing up.—
    Now, may the good God pardon all good men!
    Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

    The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.
    Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)