{"id":104102,"date":"2024-03-06T11:01:27","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T18:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=104102"},"modified":"2024-03-07T11:31:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T18:31:27","slug":"a-few-more-thoughts-on-the-kirtland-temple-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2024\/03\/a-few-more-thoughts-on-the-kirtland-temple-deal.html","title":{"rendered":"A few more thoughts on the Kirtland Temple deal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Although I\u2019ve experienced nothing but friendly kindness from members of the Community of Christ, theirs is not the path that I wish for my own church.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amidst the general rejoicing among Latter-day Saints at our church\u2019s recovery of the Kirtland Temple (and other properties in Kirtland and in Nauvoo) \u2014 joy in which I enthusiastically share \u2014 we should probably not forget that the transaction has caused deep sadness among not a few members of the Community of Christ, including at least some (and maybe all) in its leadership. \u00a0For example, please listen to the honest and touching statement on the matter from Lachlan Mackay, one of the twelve apostles of the Community of Christ, and \u2014 I\u2019ve had a few interactions with him \u2014 a good, sincere, and kind man. \u00a0It can be found at the following link, and it\u2019s not quite three minutes long: https:\/\/cofchrist.org\/faithfully-funding-our-future\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Community of Christ has been a good steward of the properties and artifacts that are now being transferred, and I\u2019m grateful to it and to its members for their care during the many generations of their custodianship.<\/p>\n

That said, I suspect that there are other members of the Community of Christ for whom the sale of the Kirtland Temple and of other properties and artifacts pertaining to the Joseph Smith era of the Restoration has been largely a matter of indifference if not, indeed, of quiet pleasure. \u00a0One obvious reason would be the considerable expense that caring for old buildings and their surrounding properties represents.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not only that. \u00a0There has been an enormous theological evolution within their ranks, much more pronounced among some (including the leadership) than among many of their members. \u00a0I well remember a then-prominent intellectual from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as it was then called, expressing to me his satisfaction at his church\u2019s conscious distancing of itself from the Book of Mormon and other aspects of early Latter-day Saint doctrine and practice. \u00a0\u201cNow,\u201d he said, \u201cif we can only get rid of other notions, like \u2018priesthood.'\u201d<\/p>\n

But such changes caused genuine, wrenching pain for many other members of the Reorganized Church. \u00a0They had been taught to reject the claims of \u201cUtah Mormonism\u201d or the \u201cBrighamites,\u201d but they continued to venerate the Book of Mormon and to respect Joseph Smith. \u00a0And when the leaders that they called \u201cprophets\u201d began to jettison much of that, they felt bereft, orphaned.<\/p>\n

Many years ago, my wife and I were visiting Palmyra, New York. \u00a0While we were at the gravesite of Alvin Smith, Joseph\u2019s older brother, my attention was caught by another visitor who, like us, was using a popular guide to historic Latter-day Saint places that had been published in Utah. \u00a0And yet, given the way that she was dressed, she was obviously not a temple-going member of the church headquartered in Salt Lake City. \u00a0I wondered what her story was.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, as luck would have it, we struck up a conversation. \u00a0From the way she spoke, I figured that she was probably a member of the RLDS Church. \u00a0(I should, of course, have thought of that earlier.) \u00a0But then she surprised me by saying some very negative things about RLDS leadership, which was based in Independence, Missouri.<\/p>\n

She belonged to an independent \u201cRestorationist\u201d congregation, she said, which no longer recognized the leaders of the RLDS Church and which refused to send its tithes to Independence. \u00a0The RLDS First Presidency and the RLDS apostles, she told me, were apostates who had abandoned fundamental beliefs of her faith, which continued to be based upon not only the Bible but the Book of Mormon and the revelations of Joseph Smith.<\/p>\n

I found her situation quite sad, and I wanted to invite her to consider the claims of a church that had remained faithful to Joseph\u2019s revelations and to the Book of Mormon. \u00a0I didn\u2019t feel right about doing so in that moment, though. \u00a0Still, I prayed then that she and others in like straits would eventually find their way home \u2014 to the church that had gone west in the 1840s.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

The Community of Christ\u2019s temple (a public worship and education center) in Independence, Missouri, was dedicated in 1994. \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One concern that I have seen expressed by some, including members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>, is that guides at the sites in Kirtland and Nauvoo that are now being handed over to the custodianship of that church will no longer be of the same quality as those that were provided by the RLDS Church in the past.<\/p>\n

I understand this worry. \u00a0At least in my experience with them, the RLDS guides have generally been quite well informed, historically speaking. \u00a0They have typically been full-time interns or even professionals, and they have often had a lot of good information to pass on.<\/p>\n

By contrast, I\u2019ve sometimes been quietly irritated by the young missionary guides at some historical sites controlled by the Latter-day Saints. \u00a0On more than a few occasions, I\u2019ve visited such sites and tried to make it clear that I was already a member of the Church (and, for what it\u2019s worth, even a member of the faculty at the Church\u2019s university), only to receive the same canned and ultra-basic proselyting presentation that would have been given to somebody who had wandered in off the street with absolutely no knowledge of the Restoration at all. \u00a0I\u2019ve come not because I was curious to know who Joseph Smith was but because I wanted to see and learn more about, say, the Sacred Grove or the Oakland California Temple.<\/p>\n

But I have to say that my experiences with RLDS guides haven\u2019t all been positive, either. \u00a0I think most particularly of what was perhaps my first visit to the Kirtland Temple. \u00a0I was, as it happened, with others whom I didn\u2019t know but all of whom were plainly members of the Salt Lake City church. \u00a0The guide told us a very great deal about architectural styles and various features of the building. \u00a0She even mentioned that the business tycoon John D. Rockefeller, who spent much of his life in nearby Cleveland (where he is also buried) had been so fond of one of the main windows and some of the paneling in the Kirtland Temple that he had offered a significant sum of money in order to purchase them. \u00a0(His offer was turned down.)<\/p>\n

But, even by the time that we were substantially into the tour, that particular guide had said nothing whatever about the specifically religious significance of the Kirtland Temple or about the magnificent divine manifestations that Latter-day Saints (and, I presume, most or at least many RLDS) believe to have taken place in it.<\/p>\n

One of our group, apparently bothered by the same strange absence of religious content that I was feeling, raised her hand and (referring to Doctrine and Covenants 110<\/a>) asked, \u201cCan you please show us the place where the Savior appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, standing upon the pulpit?\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never forget the response of the guide. \u00a0\u201cOh yeah,\u201d she said. \u00a0\u201cThat.\u201d \u00a0Whereupon she directed our attention to the place in question.<\/p>\n

Now, I have no idea whether other RLDS guides at that time were so . . . \u00a0well, secular<\/em> in their approach to the Kirtland Temple. \u00a0I\u2019ve been back several times since then, and my experiences haven\u2019t been so pronouncedly poor. \u00a0But I wanted to push back just a little bit, at least, on the idea that having Latter-day Saint guides at historic sites rather than RLDS guides will necessarily represent a drop in quality. \u00a0I\u2019ve encountered some Latter-day Saint guides (typically senior missionaries) who have been pretty good historically, but none who have been drily secular. \u00a0May their tribe increase.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Amidst the general rejoicing among Latter-day Saints at our church\u2019s recovery of the Kirtland Temple (and other properties in Kirtland and in Nauvoo) \u2014 joy in which I enthusiastically share \u2014 we should probably not forget that the transaction has caused deep sadness among not a few members of the Community of Christ, including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":37001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18260,13682,37343,37337,18254,37340],"class_list":["post-104102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-community-of-christ","tag-kirtland-temple","tag-lachlan-mackay","tag-reorganized-church","tag-rlds","tag-rockefeller"],"yoast_head":"\nA few more thoughts on the Kirtland Temple deal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Amidst the general 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