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In his 56 years as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Kim B. Clark had met the church's president exactly once and had never had a real conversation with him.

But for Mormons such as Clark, 95-year-old Gordon B. Hinckley is not just the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, not just the holder of the keys to all of the ordinances of salvation. He is also a prophet, a seer and a revelator.

So when Hinckley called Clark on May 25 to ask him to leave his post as dean of Harvard Business School and take a job heading a Mormon college in Idaho, Clark knew the answer before Hinckley posed the question.

The answer was yes.

And now Clark, who at Harvard holds one of the loftiest jobs in academe, is heading off to Rexburg, Idaho, to become president of the newest outpost of Mormon higher education: Brigham Young University-Idaho, a proud name for a campus that until four years ago was a two-year institution known as Ricks College.

Clark is the second Harvard dean in four years to leave the pinnacle of his chosen profession at the behest of his church. In 2001, the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, the first Catholic priest to head Harvard Divinity School, resigned at the request of Cardinal Bernard F. Law to head an umbrella association of Catholic Charities organizations in Washington.

Clark and Hehir each had spent much of his adult life at Harvard — despite the obvious potential tensions between conservative faiths and some of Harvard's progressive policies — but each managed to defy expectations twice: by rising to the top echelon of the university's administration and then by walking away for jobs many of their colleagues could never imagine doing.

"Personally, if President Hinckley called me on the telephone and asked me to do something, I would do it," Clark said in a recent interview.

"There's no confusion in my mind that this is a responsibility which comes to me from him, and it comes from the Lord, and at the same time it's a professional opportunity and I'm going to have to use all the professional skills that I have to try to make it as good as it can be."

For Hehir, who left several years earlier, the role of church authority in his career was even more direct. Hehir is an ordained priest who promised obedience to his bishop.

"It works for me, because I knew what I was walking into from the beginning," Hehir said. "I committed myself to serve the institution and the community of the Catholic Church as a diocesan priest, so I expect that my career choices will be directly influenced by the life of the church."