I spoke with Brittany Mangelson, the Pastor for the Community of Christ in Salt Lake City the week before the sale of the Kirtland Temple. (I would have asked her if about it if we had known the sale was pending.) We’ll discuss her conversion to Community of Christ, the difference between a pastor & a bishop, and her podcast called Project Zion. Check out our conversation….
Difference Between Bishop & Pastor
The bishop and pastor roles are split in the Community of Christ. Bishops are financial officers and typically oversee several congregations. Pastors are the office of Elder and preside over the congregation.
Pastor Training
All priesthood office holders attend a temple school class to learn more about their calling. This includes deacons, teachers, priests, elders, pastors,evangelists, seventies, high priests. However, the apostles have joked, “where’s my temple school class.”
Project Zion Podcast
Brittany has been a podcaster herself with the Project Zion Podcast. However, when she became pastor, she stepped away from the podcast to concentrate on her job as pastor. She also serves on the Communications Team for the Community of Christ and has beeen involved in creating the Q&A webpage on the sale of the Kirtland Temple.
Growth of SL Congregation
Following the leaked 2015 policy announcing the LDS Church would not baptize or ordain children of gay parents, the Salt Lake congregation received an influx of members greatly growing the congregation. Attendance ranges from 30-150 each week, but the congregation has grown quite a bit since 2015. Brittany was more concerned with the Ordain Women movement and joined for that reason.
Unlike the LDS Church, the Community of Christ accepts baptisms from other Christian churches as long as the person was at least 8 years old at the time of baptism. We’ll talk more about the move to change baptism requirements and discuss priesthood ordination.
Open Baptism Policy
As long as converts to the Community of Christ were baptized after the age of 8, they are allowed to join and only need to complete a Confirmation. It doesn’t matter if the potential convert was LDS, Catholic, Anglican, etc. CoC doesn’t recognize infant baptism, and at World Conference last year, there was a passionate debate about allowing infant baptism. Many people in Europe were baptized as infants and don’t want to be rebaptized, so there is a debate in the church about whether the policy should change.
Priesthood Ordination in CoC
Only Adults are ordained in the Community of Christ, and it is not automatic like in the LDS Church. In Salt Lake City, however, due to the large influx of LDS converts, many feel the calling of a Teacher or Deacon is a demotion, so ordination can be culturally tricky.
Wasatch Front Congregations
I was surprised to learn that in addition to SLC, there are congregations in Ogden and Provo now.
In the LDS Church it is routine to ordain teenagers to be deacons, teachers, and priests. In the Community of Christ, these roles are filled by adults. How are the roles different? We’ll talk about that with Community of Christ pastor Brittany Mangelson. We’ll also talk about the roles of Seventies in the two churches.
We dive deeper into these roles, and discuss the role of a Seventy as well. Under President Kimball’s administration, the stake seventies were dissolved and men were assigned to attend with elders and high priests. Also under Kimball, assistants to the apostles were formally called Seventies and assigned to the Quorums of Seventies.
In Community of Christ, the role is Seventy is more like the Kimball-era stake seventies.
Unlike the LDS Church where unanimity is almost an article of faith, the Community of Christ has an official church position on faithful disagreement. The Church has a long history of disagreement and we’ll even allude to the Milk Strippings story, where the Standing High Council ruled against Thomas Marsh, pres of the Quorum of 12 Apostles. The CoC still has this Standing High Council. (Brigham abolished it in the LDS Church.)
Standing High Council
In the Doctine & Covenants, the Standing High Council was equal in authority to the Quorum of 12 Apostles. Following Brigham Young’s ascnesion to church leader, he abolished this quorum.
Milk Strippings & Faithful Disagreement
The most famous story of the Standing High Council is the story of Thomas Marsh and his wife who had a dispute over the Marsh’s keeping milk strippings from the neighbors. The Standing High Council ruled against the Marshes. According to LDS lore, this is the reason Thomas left the Church (but John Hamer says that story is not true.)
The point is the Community of Christ was founded on disagreement with Brigham Young’s followers and have an official policy on faithful disagreement. They are able to work through disagreement that is very foreign to LDS Church members.
What is Hard for CoC to Understand about LDS?
Lifelone CoC members don’t believe a pastor can call a church member “unworthy.” They also think “follow the prophet” mantra is strange.
Has the Community of Christ moved away from the Book of Mormon? We’ll ask that question to Pastor Brittany Mangelson of the Community of Christ here in Salt Lake City. We’ll also talk about the new female prophet, Stassi Cramm who will be replacing Steven Veazey. Finally, we’ll ask about how Brittany’s conversion affected her LDS family. Check out our conversation…
How Family Reacted to Brittany’s Conversion
Like many families, Brittany’s family struggled with her leaving the LDS Church, but has come to embrace it. They are still uncomfortable with her being pastor.
Has CoC Moved Away from BoM?
It depends. As mentioned previously about faithful disagreement, some members love the Book of Mormon like many LDS, while others think it is a fraud and should be decanonized. Yet the Church makes space for both types of members and all the members in between.
New Prophet Stassi Cramm
Next month marks 40 years since the Community of Christ ratified the revelation to allow women to receive the priesthood. Stassi Cramm was announced last month as the president-designate for the Church. She has been serving in the First Presidency and previously served as an apostle and Presiding Bishop. Brittany is really excited for this new chapter in leadership. Ratification of Pres Cramm will occur in the 2025 April World Conference.
Do you have any comments or questions about the Community of Christ? Did you learn anything?
Wheat & Tares 
Brittany: I am former RLDS, so I hope I’m allowed to be bold as well. My comments on vid 901: I watched members, groups, and entire congregations excommunicated because they couldn’t “get with the program”. Despite the claims of allowing divergent beliefs, conservative beliefs are quickly shut down.
Mark, I think things have changed a lot since 1984. Do you disagree?
I will just ask this: Are members of the C of Christ, who are referred to as conservative/fundamentalist/traditionalist, still given a voice in that denomination? For all the rhetoric of accommodating diverse opinions, beliefs which will call traditional were slowly but surely eased out of articles and essays, world conference sermons, and educational material. If a member still believed that Joseph Smith was a Prophet instead of just the church’s founder, could he or she express that from the pulpit? Could I have taught a Sunday School class about the Restoration, based on the teachings of their own Patriarch, Elbert A. Smith?
These concerns actually go back to the early ’60s. The membership’s right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. Now, with adequate support, there’s no need to disguise proposed changes in beliefs.
I would add that the beliefs of conservative members are not outside-the-box, pushing-the-envelope ideas. Sources are the scriptures and world conference resolutions, regarded as authoritative and binding on the membership. So, to have it indicated “We don’t believe THAT way anymore” or “You can’t teach THAT anymore” was quite a shock.
Mark, how long has it been since you converted LDS?
I do believe most “traditionalists” like you either left for LDS or Restoration branches. I keep hearing they’ve changed, and like I said, have a faithful disagreement policy I linked in the post. I’m not sure where you live, but it might be worth checking out a local CoC congregation and talking to them to see how accepting they are of traditional beliefs. My experience is they are quite accomodating to many different types of beliefs, but I’m sure some congregations are conservative while others are liberal. I suspect SLC is on the more liberal belief side.
I converted in 1999 at age 40. The local RLDS shut its doors in the mid-90s. We were attending a different branch. One friend who mentioned the proposed Independence temple in the context of New Jerusalem prophecy was told “we don’t believe that anymore”. I also attended a temple-school class on theology and mentioned that someone’s personal testimony might include a belief in the true church. I was told the church no longer does that because “it offends people”.