Steven Shields has been studying various Mormon schismatic groups since he was in Seminary in the 1970s. We’ll get acquainted with him in this first episode, and learn more about his background, and why he got so interested in our Mormon cousins. What does he know about the temple lot? There are several sections in the Doctrine & Covenants where Joseph Smith received revelations on a temple in Missouri. That temple was never built. Who owns the original temple lot on Independence, Missouri? It turns out some of our Mormon cousins own it.
Steve: The Hedrickites is a name that people use. I don’t like to use -ites or schism or break off or offshoot or splinter. I’ve tried to avoid all of that language in my new addition because I don’t think it’s helpful. All that stuff started out as pejorative, and in some ways it’s still used as a pejorative.
And so I thought, let’s try and get away from that, you know? We don’t say Pope-ites or Luther-ites or those kinds of things. So maybe we can get out of that mode in the Latter Day saint movement, I don’t know.
GT: There’s too many -ites in the Book of Mormon.
Steve: That’s where it all probably comes from. I guess. I’ll let you keep Israelites. But yeah, to be honest, my paper on the earliest church was an anti-RLDS apologetic and my seminary teachers loved it.
We’ll talk more about how Steve got interested in our Mormon cousins. Steve Shields was raised in the LDS Church and attended BYU. So why is he now a member of the Community of Christ?
Steve: I was really interested in church history and I started reading these books and pamphlets that were not approved by the general authorities and my mother warned me that if I kept reading that kind of stuff, I would lose my testimony and leave the church. She wasn’t happy that she was right. I don’t see it as losing my testimony. Did I leave one organization for another? Yes, but I think my faith in Christ is stronger than it has ever been. I’m not saying that I didn’t have faith before. By going this different route, I began to focus more on what I think matters most.
And history then, didn’t become the main focus of my faith, but became a main interest. That sort of–Oh, do I dare use the word tangent? Tangential to my faith.
GT: We like that word.
Steve: Yeah. It was a big deal to make that move. By the time I had been on my mission and, and done that, I had some pretty out of the box ideas about God.
Steve discusses his reasons for changing his religion, and we discuss the RLDS/Community of Christ hierarchy. What are the similarities and differences with the LDS Church?
GT: I know John Hamer was recently called to be a Seventy.
Steve: He’s a Seventy, right.
…
GT: He would be more like an Area Authority?
Steve: He’s like an Area Authority. Yeah, that would be. Yeah. Our Seventies are more like Area Authorities. Now, there may be some official expenses that they’re provided for travel and things like that. And I don’t know. Every jurisdiction, every mission center of the church and mission centers for us are like areas for the LDS organization.
GT: I’ve heard that they’ve been compared to a stake.
Steve: Well, but stakes are different from LDS, have always been different from LDS stakes. It’s not been uncommon for us to have 30 or 40 congregations in a stake.
Steve: And the stake presidents were full-time world church appointees. So, stake looks and feels like it might be the same in both, but it really wasn’t because of the size. So, I really think the mission centers replaced stakes, as we tried to reduce the number of levels, so we used to have the general officers and then the fields. Each apostle had a certain geographical area. Then we had stakes and regions and districts. And so, we tried to compress all of those stakes and regions and districts are now all mission centers and we reconfigured that.
Check out our conversation… Are you interested in these other Mormon groups? What do you know about them?
Wheat & Tares 
Thanks for a wonderful post that hits both of my religious worlds.
“Did I leave one organization for another? Yes, but I think my faith in Christ is stronger than it has ever been.I’m not saying that I didn’t have faith before. By going this different route, I began to focus more on what I think matters most.”
I can use this word-for-word to describe my conversion from RLDS to LDS in 1999. Steve’s route was to assuage his Liberal beliefs; mine was to maintain the Conservative beliefs of the pre-1960’s RLDS.
Steve rightly describes movement nicknames as pejorative, yet he uses the term “fundamentalist”.
He is negative about President Hinckley’s dismissal of the Joseph Smith 3rd document, even though it was later proved to be a forgery.
There are lots of questions I would put to Steve, but I assume the interview is complete.
BTW, I attended the 1990 RLDS conference when Steve was serving as a Korean translator.
Since I listened to the whole interview, I’m not sure the context of the term “fundamentalist” refers to, but my memory is that he describes Mormon polygamists as fundamentalists. However, he could be referring to RLDS who didn’ t like changes in CoC.
Yes, he was negative about the JS III patriarchal blessing, because at the time it wasn’t a known forgery. At the time, it seemed to bolster the RLDS narrative, and LDS leaders were trying hard to downplay its importance. So that seems like a significant issue. Now that it is a known forgery, the LDS narrative at the time seems strange to him.
Go ahead and ask questions to Steve. I’ll try to invite him to answer questions.
Your contact page isn’t working on your gospel tangents podcast page. How does one contact you? Thanks
Sorry about that Ed. WordPress force-upgraded me to their latest version and it broke a bunch of things on my website. You can contact me at gospel tangents at gmail dot com
Thanks for your offer, Rick. I was impressed with the interview.
Steve mentioned a single individual as Fundamentalist, but I have seen material from RLDS authorities like Wayne Ham and William D. Russell that categorize any beliefs to the right as fundamentalist while Liberal views were listed as Mainstream.
The CofChrist has divergent views within its membership, but proclaiming them is a different matter. A person may proclaim their disbelief in the Book of Mormon as Scripture with no official censure, but not so if they proclaim a disbelief in Women’s ordination.
I thought the eventual discovery of Hoffman’s forgeries soft of validated the General Authorities’ attitude toward the JS3 document.
Has Steve ever encountered a Restoration Expression that did Not accept the Book of Mormon? It seems to be one belief shared by all, along with Independence as the New Jerusalem.
I know John Hamer discussed a group that jettisoned the BoM. (I think it was led by a woman back east somewhere.) So, I’m pretty sure Steve has it in his book somewhere.
That fundamentalist reference was to a polygamist in part 1, by the way. Steve was referencing Ogden Kraut who had a least 2 polygamist wives. One was Anne Wilde, who I interviewed last year. She talks about her marriage to Ogden: https://gospeltangents.com/2017/11/annes-marriage-jesus-polygamist/