God's lawyers.

There are obviously exceptions, but in general Lds Church leadership is composed of businessmen and lawyers.
While I always found it uncomfortable, it was easy to understand why so many leaders came from a business background. The leadership and organizational skills which allow a person to be good at running a business would translate into running a similarly arranged large organization such as the Church.

What was never clear to me is why lawyers? Aside from their tending to be wealthy and powerful, something which tends to be prized within the Church, I didn't see an obvious connection between being a lawyer and Church leadership.

Then it dawned on me, the role of a lawyer is to convince people of things which may not be obvious or even true, as well as understanding technicalities, and using these technicalities to their advantage.
Considering this, it seems obvious why a lawyer might seem like a good fit. Much of any religion is about trying to convince people of things which are not obviously true. People need to be persuaded of it through clever and often counter-intuitive ways, which lawyers are skilled at. Plus being able to handle the various technicalities which religions are composed of.

However, while it may be understandable why businessmen and lawyers would be good at running a large organization such as a religion, they strike me as being far from the ideal. Neither business or law is primarily concerned truth, sincerity, humility, wisdom, beauty, compassion or the other great human values, but rather making money, being perceived as right (versus being actually correct). (I do not wish to be overly critical of lawyers or even business people. I know several people who go into these field with noble intentions. I am just trying to say that what makes a good lawyer or business person seems to often be at odds with what one would expect of a religious organization).

Imagine how different the Church would be if it were run by Scientists, Artists, Philosophers, Social workers and Poets? People who chose to dedicate their lives to things like truth, beauty and charity. Maybe the day to day operations wouldn't be run quite as smoothly and they wouldn't have enough money to build billion dollar malls in downtown Salt Lake, but that would probably be a good thing.