I understand you have been involved in collecting manuscripts and original documents that touch upon or concern the “Mormon” Church. What has that meant in your life? What perspectives has that given you?
I’ve done work in the Community of Christ Archives, which are located in the Temple in Independence, Missouri. The archives contain a number of important documents and artifacts from the early church period (1820s-1844) common to both the LDS Church and Community of Christ, including the manuscript of the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible and the Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon. It’s important to me that original documents and artifacts are preserved in publicly accessible archives so that primary scholars can refer to them for the foreseeable future.
While I do enjoy visiting historical sites to get a feeling for the place, I’m not personally very affected by the sense of touching a relic that was once touched or possessed by a historical figure. I’m much more interested in seeing the ideas and information published and made widely accessible. So while I’ve handled artifacts like David Whitmer’s seer stone, Alpheus Cutler’s sword, James Strang’s scepter, and Emma Smith’s quilts, it’s more important to me to see the source documents published in books and online, as with the excellent work of the LDS Church’s Joseph Smith Papers Project. I’ve tried to promote publishing in the field, having worked with a number of university and other academic presses, and having helped found John Whitmer Books.
You have blogged some. How has that affected your perception of things? Do you have a favorite blog?
I’ve done a fair amount of writing within the Mormon bloggernacle over the years and plan to continue for years to come. I like the medium as a way of succinctly treating a single, discreet topic and also as a way of bringing more personal and less academic reflections into writing. Blogs also have the ability to reach much larger audiences than most print books or journals — I think my blog posts on the Milk and Strippings story and on the Spaulding Theory have probably attracted more readers than anything else I’ve ever written. I appreciate the capacity to share ideas with a large, engaged audience.
Although I have blogged on and off for years, I very rarely read blogs and therefore don’t have a favorite. I’m somewhat old-fashioned as I spend most of my reading time with actual books. Similarly, although I’ve participated in a fair number of podcasts, I don’t really listen to podcasts much myself. I am almost always listening to recordings from “The Great Courses” series, which are topical lectures from university professors that I heartily recommend.
What do you believe religion and the gospel (with a small or a large “g”) should be? What is the core doctrine you believe?
I don’t believe in doctrine. For me, points of doctrine are simply elaborations of a creedal form of belief (which I think the early Restoration was correct to reject, at least nominally). Teaching via doctrine — having people memorize “answers” — was important in an era when the overwhelming majority of the population did not have access to university-level education and the tools of critical thinking. While doctrine had (and has) its place, I believe that this kind of teaching and thinking is inimical to the spiritual development of people who have received university education.
The inability to adapt away from a doctrinal perspective is leading (or has led) most traditional organized religions within Western Civilization to lose their relevance (the LDS Church included). However, I believe that organized religion can still be very relevant as a forum and network for the open exploration of meaning for individuals and communities, as well as for charitable and social action (which is what I believe “religion” should be).
The “gospel” can be many things, but to me the core of the gospel taught by Jesus is radical, equal inclusion of all persons in community (regardless of such distinctions as income, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation) and radical rejection of accepted social norms, customs, standards, with the goal of living life meaningfully as individuals in community. The fact that people who call themselves “Christians” — almost instantly after Jesus’ death — adopted petty, self-righteous, Pharisaical rules, and are today unrepentant in their bigotry is a great (and horribly unfortunate) irony.
What rule or commandment do you think is important for everyone to consider?
I think it’s important for people not to be overly concerned with rules or (so-called) “commandments.” Although we can’t know for certain which preserved sayings are authentic, the likely historical Jesus modeled very good advice here, which is to continuously re-think and overturn petty rules.
Rather than slavishly follow the commandments of scripture, leader, or social customs to the letter, Jesus advised, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” I think the first admonition here should be read in its negative formulation, i.e., place no “idols” between yourself and the Divine. I think people ought especially to be concerned against idolizing leaders, scripture, doctrine, and social norms. If you imagine that a leader has a closer personal connection to God than you yourself have, and that a leader has authority or keys to speak on God’s behalf to you, then you are idolizing or worshiping that leader. Similarly, if you imagine that a text has universal authority to command your life, you are worshiping that text. The second admonition here is to love your neighbor as yourself, which (in my view) should be read as going further than the “golden rule” axiom of treating others as you would like them to treat you. Instead, I believe we should endeavor to treat others (inasmuch as possible) as they themselves would like to be treated. For centuries in North America, we have been living in a culture that focuses on the individual self; but I believe that focus obscures the reality that individual identity is formed through meaningful interaction with community. The fact that we’ve been dismantling our local communities and isolating ourselves from our neighbors has resulted in enormous dissatisfaction for individuals in real terms.
Do you have any other major projects or ideas? Where do you see yourself headed?
I have completely committed myself to what I believe is my life’s calling. This project is to help people equip themselves with the tools to live meaning-filled lives as individuals, in local communities, and in the world as a whole. For me, this involves helping people see their traditional conceptions and practices of organized religion (which are rooted in our own particular time and place in history) in a much broader cultural and historical perspective. I believe that honoring our heritage without being enslaved to its particulars, allows us to unshackle ourselves from arbitrary bounds, while retaining the better part of our inheritance. Within the Restoration movement, my work involves helping people of my shared heritage join or create inclusive congregations, where individuals are not kept from leadership roles or marginalized for such reasons as gender and gender identity. With this idea in mind, I helped found Community of Christ’s “Latter-day Seekers” program. (If you’re interesting in talking to me about this program, the best way to connect is to friend me on Facebook or you can visit Latter-daySeekers.org.)
Even more broadly, it’s important to me that my own immediate community is actively engaged in improving our surrounding society. As a pastor of an urban congregation and as someone who lives in the heart of a major city, I can’t help but be aware of the problems of homelessness and affordable housing. For that reason, I volunteer as president of the board of our church’s social housing charity, which helps provide housing for extremely impoverished individuals, including those with mental health conditions who might otherwise be left homeless.
If you could give one piece of advice to our readers, what would it be?
Life isn’t about memorizing a list of simple answers and obeying leaders or a set of arbitrary rules. Life (and therefore meaningful religion) is a continual process of learning and application of that learning; a process that involves openness to reassessment, frequent repentance, and continual change.
Wheat & Tares 
Too many good things here. When I read someone like Hamer I think of Homer to Bart saying (thinking of myself), “no matter how good you are at something, there are always about a million people better than you.”
“The fact that people who call themselves “Christians” — almost instantly after Jesus’ death — adopted petty, self-righteous, Pharisaical rules, and are today unrepentant in their bigotry is a great (and horribly unfortunate) irony.” To me, this was yesterday’s theme as Christians all over condemned Jenner for his transformation, without even bothering to understand the issue (which I don’t understand myself).
I know my least favorite blogger in the world, A Well Behaved Mormon Woman, had a field day with her bloggers condemning Jenner.
Outstanding – thanks.
John,
I understand you’ve recently been called as Pastor in your congregation. Can you comment on how that has affected you spiritually? How different is it than an LDS bishop?
“Pastor” is the term from the early church period (pre-1844) for “presiding elder” or “branch president” of a “branch” or congregation. In “wards” in Utah this office became displaced by the calling of bishop, which originally was only in charge of temporal concerns. (I believe the change in the LDS Church occurred because of the need to worry about supplies and property when crossing the Plains and settling new territory en masse.) In any event, the role evolved out of the same common tradition and is similar as lay ministry; my priesthood office is elder.
There are a bunch of differences in practice between being a Community of Christ pastor and being an LDS bishop. We don’t do anything like worthiness interviews or tithing settlement. All of the callings, including priesthood callings, are accomplished by common consent (as opposed to appointment) except the congregation financial officer, who is appointed by the Mission Center (which is like a large stake or diocese). In practice in our congregation that means that all the callings (including the financial officer) are pretty much conducted on a volunteer basis.
The congregational experience has had incredibly important affects on me spiritually because it’s not simply esoteric study and contemplation of ideas — it’s not just me or just me and God — it’s interacting in real-life with real-life issues in community with others. It’s sharing experiences, helping, and loving each other. It’s turned out that I really love my congregation, which has become a family to me. I look forward to going to church every week; and when I get home after, I spend a bunch of the rest of the day thinking about how great church was today.
The congregation also differs from a ward in that the congregation is its own, independent legal non-profit charity, which means we control our own money, but also have all sorts of additional responsibilities that comes with that autonomy. We’re also free to come up with our own themes, agenda, and content, which we largely do. So, for example, I’m teaching Old Testament this year in adult Sunday School because the class just decided that’s what they wanted to learn about and discuss next. Likewise we switched our focus this year during the Prayer for Peace to learn about different world religions; that’s just an initiative the congregation is doing on its own because of our church’s Encounter World Religions Centre that has its annual week-long seminar here in Toronto.
So, overall, I’d say it’s an amazing experience that far exceeded my expectations when I joined the church.
After the Kirtland Sunstone, I was able to attend a worship service with David Howlett there. It was an interesting experience to see all the musical numbers (they had 4!) before I had to leave to go to the airport. It also seemed much less formal than a traditional LDS service.
Does a pastor primarily teach Sunday School? Of course an LDS bishop (until recently) assigns sacrament meeting topics, conducts Priesthood meeting, and assigns callings. With common consent in RLDS, is there a committee who makes these decisions? For example, how is a primary/Sunday school teacher/youth leader called?
I find these insights into other branches of the restoration very interesting. Thanks!
The formality of the services varies from congregation to congregation. My congregation is relatively formal in its practice, while being progressive in its theology. Like the congregation you visited, we regularly have four hymns too.
The typical Sunday Service in my congregation is: 10:15-10:50am Sunday School, 10:50-11:00 am break, 11:00am-noon Worship Service, noon-12:30 pm Social Time.
The Worship Service begins with a prelude, then a gathering hymn, then welcome & sharing, then a call to worship (usually a scripture reading), an opening hymn, an opening prayer, a brief lesson about a world religion, a prayer for peace, a children’s story, a brief talk about stewardship and charity, a prayer concerning offerings, a hymn, the sermon, meditation music, brief closing remarks, a closing hymn, a closing prayer, a postlude.
The first Sunday of the month is Communion Sunday where the variation is: no hymn prior to the sermon; the sermon is shorter and is a communion message, this is followed by a communion hymn for the preparation of the emblems, then there is the prayer on the bread, serving the bread, the prayer on the wine (grape juice), serving the wine, and then no meditation music, prior to the closing remarks.
I was adult Sunday School teacher prior to being called to be pastor. I just kept that job because I enjoy it and I’ll probably continue to do it until somebody who’s also good at it decides they really want to do it. I don’t think it’s very common for both the pastor to do both.
The main role of the pastor is making sure everything gets done and providing ministry (or seeing that ministry is given) to anyone who needs ministry (like priesthood administration, counseling, helping folks move). But more or less any of the component tasks that need to be done can be done by anyone (in some cases like sacraments depending on whether she or he is in priesthood).
The congregation exercises common consent in business meetings which are generally held annually as a “branch conference”, where everyone individually and communally discerns who God is calling to particular responsibilities. Members then make nominations and vote for all the callings, including pastor. We also approve the budget and major initiatives at the annual business meeting. However, with notice, the congregation can have a business meeting any time.
I would love to attend and observe one of these services sometimes. Thanks for the fascinating look into the CoC church.
John, can you articulate the reasons why you decided to join the CoC?
I joined because of a vision of the need to build a bridge between two communities within the Restoration: on the one hand, those who are marginalized with the LDS Church because they can’t accept a literalistic reading of the faith claims, because they believe everyone’s giftedness should be honored regardless of gender or orientation, and because they are original thinkers, and on the other hand Community of Christ, whose members had transformed their church into something wonderful to share, but who needed some help with the finding people to share it with part. (That’s the need that I was responding to, mentioned above in answer to Stephen’s question about “major projects”.)
To what extent would CofChrist be recognized as heretical/orthodox by other Christian denominations? Is it seen as more orthodox than the LDS church, but still off? Is it seen as another liberal/mainline denomination but with a few American/restoration quirks?
Outside of the “Latter-day Seekers” efforts, how much do you think that LDS Mormons would find themselves at home in a CofChrist service (theology/terminology-wise as well as practice-wise?) — what sorts of things do you find a lot of LDS folks have to “unlearn” if they participate with CofChrist (as part of Latter-day Seekers or elsewhere)?
John this is wonderful. Thanks.
Would my LDS baptism and priesthood ordinations be recognized if I joined the Community of Christ? Does the church practice an open communion?
Also what kind of service mission opportunities are available from the church? Could I send my kids away to a different part of the world for 2 years?
Until John has a chance to comment here, I can offer a couple answers to questions. As a point of reference, I’ve served as pastor of a 300-member congregation, was employed as editor of the CofC’s family magazine “Herald,” and currently hold the office of high priest.
mike: The Community of Christ would accept your previous full-immersion LDS baptism. If you so desired, you could ask to be rebaptized. In either case, you would need to be confirmed a member by CofC elders. Your LDS priesthood would not be recognized, however, because it was granted by authority of another religious institution.
Andrew S: The CofC has been a full member of the National Council of Churches in the USA for several years now. That organization is made up primarily of Mainline Protestants along with the Orthodox Church in the US (not sure what it’s official name is at the moment) and several other Protestant churches. Evangelical, fundamentalist, and pentacostal churches do not participate in NCC activities.
There is such variety among CofC congregations that it’s impossible to predict just how familiar LDS folks would feel there. I think they would probably notice before long a lack of emphasis on the BofM and what I’ll just call fawning over Joseph Smith Jr. It would probably seem a lot like a Methodist worship service (with frequent reference to revelations in our D&C) to the LDS. Within the past couple decades there has been an increasing emphasis on social-justice themes, pursuing peace, and the spirit of ecumenical cooperation.
And while there’s really not much opportunity to “send [your] kids away to a different part of the world for 2 years,” there are more limited mission opportunities for shorter periods of time.
That’s interesting that CofC has less emphasis on the BoM, despite the fact that it is main-line protestant. I’ve spent a lot of time in recent years with main-line protestants and recently I’m rediscovering the BoM and how consistent it is with old-fashion protestant values. The emphasis is not on religious ceremonies but on the personal connection to God and spiritual gifts. Moreover, liberal protestants can be OK with non-literal scriptures, so that should make it easier for them to accept the BoM. So I guess I would say that CofC has the opportunity to be unique among main line protestants by embracing the protestant-like message of the BofM.
Thanks for those answers, Rich.
Mike: Although Community of Christ is recognized as Christian by the National Council of Churches (NCC) — an ecumenical group dominated by the mainline Protestant denominations — Community of Christ is not itself a mainline Protestant denomination. Just to have another example, the Coptic Orthodox Church in America is also a member of the NCC. That doesn’t mean that Coptic Orthodox folks are mainline Protestant — they are actually Oriental Orthodox (which is not to be confused with Eastern Orthodox). Most of the members of the NCC are not mainline Protestant; however, the biggest churches in the NCC are the mainline Protestant denominations.
Community of Christ and all other Latter Day Saint tradition denominations including the LDS Church are offshoots of Anglo-American Protestantism, specifically a subgroup called “Restorationism” — i.e., churches that attempted to restore or revive Christian primitivism. This group includes the Disciples of Christ and other denominations that grew out of the Stone-Campbell movement that Sidney Rigdon had been affiliated with. Nearly all of Mormon doctrine is based on Protestantism; however, the places of divergence also very significant.
To mainline Christians, the question “are Mormons Christian?” is not primarily about the Book of Mormon (many Christian churches have deuterocanonical scripture that is not recognized as part of the canon in other churches). The core issue is the LDS Church’s doctrine that teaches that Heavenly Father is a being who was once a human, who is thus increasing in glory and wisdom. This is functionally a rejection of the concept of monotheism, since such a being logically cannot be said to be infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. The question therefore is whether Mormon doctrine rejects a part of Christianity’s theology that is so central that it has become a new religion. (Since Community of Christ has always rejected late Nauvoo theological speculation on Heavenly Father as a human, the major stumbling block to recognition wasn’t there.)
Mormons rightly answer that early Christianity had wildly different competing conceptions of the Divine and that the Mormon view is within that broader universe of what constituted Christianity prior to the victory of proto-Orthodox Christians by the time of Constantine.
Mike: Regarding the Book of Mormon:
Like you say, it seems like something would be a good fit here, since the Book of Mormon doesn’t really include the bulk of Mormon doctrine (which developed after it was composed), and instead reflects a kind of Protestant theology — indeed, the Book of Mormon teaches a kind of Protestant theology way more explicitly than anything that exists in the New Testament, since the New Testament was written before these ideas were formulated.
Unfortunately, there are two problems which prevent the Book of Mormon from being useful in that way or used extensively in Community of Christ congregations. The first is that a huge proportion of the people in Community of Christ who now understand that the Book of Mormon is 19th century scripture haven’t found a way to comfortably fit the Book of Mormon into their conceptual framework of scripture. It does fit when read in light of the general Community of Christ understanding of scripture expressed in our “Statement on Scripture” and in D&C 163. However, many people have not successfully recaste it for themselves comfortably in that light. Also, many members still consider believe in the historicity of the Book of Mormon and almost all people on all sides don’t want to revive fights on the issue or hard feelings. One doesn’t have to; I think we’ve very successfully navigated the issue in my congregation; but not everyone has had the tools and the desire to blaze that trail, which is why the easier path is simply to neglect that part of the canon.
The other issue that spoils your equation is the type of Protestantism that the Book of Mormon embodies, which is Second Great Awakening Revival Protestantism: essentially Evangelical Protestantism. Since there’s a huge diversity of Community of Christ congregations, there may well be many in the Southern US that are comfortable with Evangelical theology, but it’s pretty alien to my personal thinking and doesn’t have a lot of resonance with folks in my congregation, whose theology in general is way more cutting edge.
That said, Community of Christ is quite unique among Christian churches in a more important component of our scripture — our canon that is truly open and continually expanding. We have plenty of new scripture that speaks directly to our time in the recent sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, which are probably among the most quoted scriptures in Community of Christ congregations.
Andrew: I think most transitioning Mormons would be able to successfully integrate into almost any Community of Christ congregation. However, it isn’t something that’s easy; nearly all of the things one has to “unlearn” are unexpected cultural results of the core divergence in the early Restoration tension of “by common consent” vs. “follow the prophet”.
A Mormon visiting a Community of Christ congregation generally comes with the expectation that they will find one of two things: (1) they perhaps hope to find something exactly like the correlated ward program they know in the LDS Church, except one that is correlated by liberals, or (2) they perhaps think that they might something that is just another Protestant church and might as well going to the Methodists. Since they will not experience the former, they may well decide they have experienced the latter — esp. if that week there were no familiar hymns, no references to Joseph Smith, and no quotations from the Book of Mormon. The transitioning Mormon herself or himself may actually be somewhat uncomfortable with the Book of Mormon and seeking a church that is less focused on Joseph Smith. In my congregation, Joseph Smith probably gets a shout-out once every 4-6 weeks; but you wouldn’t know that if you only came on one of the weeks where he didn’t get mentioned.
Essentially, with the first hopeful expectation is like growing up going to McDonalds and imagining you will have a largely similar experience when they decide to visit Wendys. But the actual experience in a Community of Christ congregation is more like going to a make-your-own-pizza joint. It’s not correlated and the individuals are largely doing their own thing.
The congregations have their own culture, and that culture is massively effected by the individuals in it. People aren’t expected to be on-message the way they are in LDS wards. The cool part of this seemingly chaotic liberty is that you can eventually have a huge effect on the congregation itself. In other words, if you’re not immediately finding what you actually want in a church, you yourself by your membership in the church can over time cause that thing to exist in the congregation by your own presence.
So I think the big thing for a transitioning Mormon exploring Community of Christ is trying to transcend your own expectations, to go multiple times just to observe the culture and individuals and understand it for what it is.
You join the prestigious ranks of Mark Hoffman and others who buy and sell supposed ” LDS Historical documents.” I’m sure you have the purest motives, no doubt! Lol