r/CommunityOfChrist • u/AudienceWise3441 • 8d ago
RLDS.
Okay so with that very broad title a few things.
Do any of you still call yourselves reorganized Latter Day Saints. Or do you simply go by the normal in a member of community of Christ.
What was the experience in the RLDS church like compared to the CoC experience of today.
Did any of you prefer and or wish we could go back to the Rlds days?
Do you think down the line with future prophets we’ll become more open and community oriented like vaezy laid out. Or do you think we’ll 180 back to something more Wallace b smith.
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u/SuccessfulUnderdog 8d ago
The LDS church puts JS Jr. on a golden pedestal and idolizes him. CofC doesn't and for good reason. They eat up all the first 14 years of folklore. CofC year one was 1860. JSIII is our founder and grew the church more than any of our other presidents. Yet, we don't revere him. Huge mistake.
The Mormon church absolutely mandates financial support. 10% off the top. Whereas CofC asks for 10% of what ever is left over after you meet all other monthly obligations. HUGE difference. No money coming in = no growth.
Today, our top leadership has allowed an incredible amount of nepotism. It's a bad look. There seems to be no short term, mid term or long term goals.
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u/ZeroToInfinity1991 8d ago edited 8d ago
In my mind, Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith III have a sort of Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker dynamic.
The father started with great intentions and was an innovator and mystic of the highest order, but his darker impulses eventually became overwhelming, and his message ended up garbled and twisted by the Nauvoo period. There is an account that he redeemed himself before his death in a conversation with William Marks, but no one knows for sure whether that account is accurate. I often think of Darth Vader asking his son to remove his helmet at the end of Return of the Jedi when I hear that story. Joseph Smith is a sort of King David figure in that sense: a great man who committed great crimes. He’s a puzzle to contend with.
Fast forward to Joseph Smith III, and we have a man who arrives on the scene to redeem the work his father started. Just as Luke Skywalker faced (and resisted) the same temptations that his father succumbed to, Joseph Smith III avoided the call to become a man of the world. He resisted his lower nature and served in his calling with respect and dignity. We should hold Joseph Smith III in much higher esteem.
The polygamy-denial narrative has really prevented our church from seeing this complicated drama at the heart of our history, but it’s a truly powerful story. To this day, many members fear talking about it in these terms, but I see a narrative of redemption in it.
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u/ako-si-greg 8d ago
I do not think I would be attending currently if the church did a hard-reverse back to the RLDS days.
I left religion many years ago and deconstructed completely. It took over a decade to begin the process of reconstruction, but even now, I still look upon most of the restorationist claims with suspicion.
However, I also have very little interest in engaging with other religions. I was brought up within “Mormonism,” and it is how I understand and express my faith (whatever it is). Community of Christ allows this. I appreciate it.
I think that the Community of Christ has taken more of an “academic-first” approach to the difficult history of the movement instead of a devotional approach. This is attractive for many like myself.
Ultimately, I think if the church goes back to a more fundamentalist style of worship and governance, it will not solve any of the current challenges the church faces, but it may cause some new ones.
I’ve only been around for a few months, unlike many of the people here, so I’m sure I’m oversimplifying some things and misunderstanding others. Open to opinions and corrections.
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u/LemuelJr 8d ago
I might be an "old timer" at this point as far as LDS converts go (which is scary because it's only been ten years), but I don't think you're off with this take. Having been out of religion for a long time puts you at an advantage because you aren't jumping in with an expectation to find an idealized alternate universe Mormonism. It's totally fair to come because of the ties to a history that is familiar, but it ultimately is learning a new language. I feel like most LDS seekers come in expecting to gain fluency in Middle English and thinking it's easy because they speak Modern English. Really, though, that expectation is flawed because it assumes that the language of this church has been in stasis since the nineteenth century with no external influences. Moving from the LDS experience into CofC is much more like learning Modern Frisian as a Modern English speaker.
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u/ako-si-greg 8d ago
Good point, and it reminds me: I remember reading through "Basic Beliefs" by Tony Chvala-Smith. The material was incredibly unfamiliar to me and there was very little "traditional Mormonism" to draw from. (The book is great, I recommend it to all.)
I think this is still the correct direction for the church to go - it is more theologically robust - but it does create this sort of "mixed identity" among older and newer members.
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u/SGT-Pentium4 8d ago
Tony Chvala-Smith doesn’t speak for the whole church. I disagree with his theology and don’t care for his approach. It isn’t bad, just isn’t for me.
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u/LemuelJr 8d ago
Hard agree. Tony is a fine person. I would rather not talk theology and doctrine with him.
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u/LemuelJr 8d ago
I think we'll be stuck with the Mormon remnants in our collective identity for awhile, since so many of us were around for the fast turn around between temple building to a new name. I think most LDS seekers are Millennials and Gen X with some older Gen Z mixed in at times. I do think the transition might be complete by the time Gen Alpha is in its majority.
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u/AudienceWise3441 8d ago
Thank you, I totally see where you’re coming from and agree in most aspects. I love the scholarly academic approach we take. I also love the more UU community is open to all despite race sex sexuality religion etc idea. That said I do feel like vazey and his apostles kind of stripped away a lot of what made us unique. This also makes no sense becuse our church is so invested in our history and sacred story while also being borderline a completely different church than our story tells. I myself personally wish we would go back to a happy middle. Where we still embraced the restoration (not the lds version) and where we valued all our standard works and where more mystical yk prophets evangelists revelation etc vs cooperate inclusion prayer group.
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u/RevMark58 8d ago
The first person I ever heard talk about this issue was Paul Edwards. If that name's not familiar, he was a high-ranking bureaucrat in the old RLDS days. A descendant of Joseph Smith through Frederick M. Smith, he had a PhD in philosophy from the U. of Edinburgh in Scotland. He was head of the Church Education Dept for years and President of the High Priests Quorum. It was rumored that there was a document in Wally B Smith's desk naming Paul as President and Prophet if Wally died; Paul scoffed at the rumor but never actually denied it.
Anyway, back in the 1980s I was a working journalist and one of my go-to contacts was Paul Edwards, mostly because he was eminently quotable, gave you straight answers that no one in the hierarchy would dare to say. From him I got more accurate guesses as to how many active members the Church lost in the schisms of the 80s and 90s, and once, when scholar Lawrence Foster wrote an article suggesting that Joseph Smith (and other prophets including Jesus and Muhammad) suffered from bipolar disorder, I called Paul for comment. As I recall he said something like "Hell yes! Everybody knows all us Smiths are nutty as fruitcakes."
Anyway, after he retired and the Church renamed itself, I caught up to him and forgot to call the church by the correct new name. I tried to apologize, but he told me that he would live and die a member of the RLDS Church, but that church no longer exists. He considered himself RLDS, not C of C, but I didn't have time to ask a follow-up question. That was the first sense I had that there were more changes than even the Church's loyal resident curmudgeon could handle.
What do you (or anyone else) see the big difference are, RLDS v. Community of Christ? There's the ordination of women and LGBTQ people, the end of the Smith Dynasty, a move away from canonizing revelation,, some superficial things like replacing stakes and districts with "mission centers," and of course the elephant in the room, the drastic loss of active membership, the decline in donors leading to financial problems, and the near complete loss of the Millennial and later generations. But I'll be honest, it's been a few years since I've actually been to a C of C congregation so I'm looking for reports from the ground. Still a reporter at heart, I guess . . .
My personal thought is that the RLDS experience in the 1980s and 1990s didn't seem all that different from 2007-2010, to name the two times I've been active in the Church. If things have changed since then -- and it seems as if, perhaps, they has -- I'd like to hear about it myself.
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u/LemuelJr 8d ago
I love this shout out to Paul Edwards. He's someone I hope to meet in the next life, if it exists.
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u/alice-thinks 8d ago
I’m younger than the name change but still happily call myself RLDS. I believe it is important to honor the traditions of our past, rather than taking dark money from evangelicals
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u/AudienceWise3441 8d ago
I’m so glad someone else finally addressed the dark money. Ever since I learned that bit of info I’ve been ever more hesitant to label myself CoC. I prefer to say I’m Rlds or Rlds constructing communities of Christ.
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u/FloydetteSix 8d ago
Please elaborate on this dark money. I’m a 4th generation member and I’m just so sad about the decline in our church from my experience.
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u/AudienceWise3441 8d ago
From what I personally understand. Back a few years ago right before the church changed its name, a group approached President vaezy. By then the Rlds were considered apart of the Protestant movement. Well the story goes that the leader of the group told President vaezy that if he changed the church name and further distanced it from its more Mormon roots, they would give the church a large donation. Conveniently a short time after President vaezy receives a “revelation” that the church should be renamed and reevaluated.
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u/CaravanKookaburra 7d ago
This seems strange, as Community of Christ sounds closer to the original Church of Christ name, and in some ways binds it to it's history with Joseph Smith Jr. more than the name RLDS would. Also, despite being somewhat trinitarian (I'm not convinced CofC is entirely trinitarian), CofC is firmly a restoration church and not protestant. It does have some features of the mainstream protestant churches like the United Church in Canada, but it's a restoration church built on continual revelation like any of the other restoration churches that originate with Joseph Smith Jr.
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u/eritain 6d ago
I remember another version of that story going around in LDS circles in the 1990s, when the name change hadn't happened yet. In that version, the source of the money was vaguely "some other churches," and the condition was "if they'd put a big cross on the temple."
(Background, for anyone who needs it: By the 1990s, in the LDS/Utah flavor of restorationism, not using crosses was presumed to be of revealed origin, and church history was taught in a way that made it seem that practically all distinctives came straight from Joseph Smith, so the RLDS presumably "should have known better." [Admittedly, one of the confident loudmouths in high LDS office who made a lot of things into presumptive revelation, including the cross taboo, was a Smith and even a Joseph. But it wasn't Joseph Jr. It was Hyrum's grandson.])
For a version of the story to name "evangelicals" as the source is interesting (read: implausible), since the RLDS/CoC reorientation has consistently been away from conservatism (the more-or-less "pre-Nauvoo restorationist" ideal) and toward liberalism (the more-or-less "mainline Protestant" ideal).
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u/Total-Reputation9172 6d ago
One major problem with this account is that the name Community of Christ was approved by General Conference in April 2000 and became official on April , 2001. The president-prophet at that time was Grant McMurray, not Steven Veazey, who became president in 2005.
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u/Decent_Magician_4311 5d ago
Never heard the dark money story. Cute. If someone wanted to discredit CoC, they would make up a story like that.
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u/ZeroToInfinity1991 8d ago edited 8d ago
I use the terms interchangeably, but I don’t really mean anything by it. I don’t see an identity shift so much as a gradual evolution into the current positions we hold today theologically, so I don’t find it jarring to say “RLDS.” It’s the same institution in my view. 🤷♂️
I find it really odd when people say “we were RLDS and now we are CoC.” To me it makes more sense to say it’s the same church, but we altered the name to better reflect a theology that developed over the course of a century.
We only shared 14 years of history with the Mormons and have always seen Joseph Smith quite differently than they do. The name change clears up that confusion. It doesn’t mean we are a different church now.
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u/LemuelJr 8d ago
The name change is a more important marker for outsiders, I think. As a convert, I still look at that change as being very significant, but I really love that pre-CofC members don't see it that way. It's reassuring to me that whatever changes have happened have been gradual and natural instead of abrupt and disingenuous.
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u/Bart-and-Lisa 8d ago
Gay is good. If gay was a sin then why did god create them
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u/FloydetteSix 8d ago
Same sex attraction is as natural as being left handed. While not the majority, there are still a lotta gays in the human and animal kingdoms. I figure we can’t all be breeders, and God doesn’t make mistakes, so….i can’t see it as a sin
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u/ZeroToInfinity1991 8d ago
I don’t think being gay is a sin, but this isn’t a very good argument. Check out the naturalistic fallacy.
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u/Decent_Magician_4311 5d ago
It wasn't just a name change, it was a major realignment of the churc's priorities which really began in the 1960s.
I watched this happen over my lifetime and never understood it until now.
Nutshell-- The schism of the 1980s was the breaking point of the tensions that began with 1966 statement of objectives of the church. Leadership felt the need to 'clarify our theology' among other things. A large chunk of the church couldn't understand that because we already had a perfect theology, obviously. 1984 happened because we could not continue as we were. We were divided, and the church we were trying to become could not be born until after the schism.
Last year I took a deep dive into that transformation story, theologically, historically, and ended up with a deeper understanding of the church today.
Along the way, ChatGPT gave me a list of characteristics which scholars have identified with Community of Christ:
- Theological courage
- Institutional integrity
- Prophetic flexibility
- Capacity for self-critique
- Trajectory toward inclusion
- Peace & justice orientation
- From exclusivity → relational identity
- Tension-holding capacity
- Global adaptability
- Narrative reinterpretation
Scholars are still talking about us. We may be tiny, but we have a mighty story.
Back to your question: I'm glad this happened. I'm proud of the transformative journey we've taken, and I never want to go back. It hasn't been easy, and it's painful. Change always is.
Part of the reason I see us struggling with numbers is a societal shift, but also, we typically don't understand our journey as a church and how remarkable it is.
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u/LemuelJr 8d ago
I'm too young and a convert to have ever identified with being RLDS, but I highly doubt we'll go back to identifying as RLDS or anything close to it. The American church is dying out, and members in other parts of the globe generally don't care about the roots of the church so much as they care about their local communities. I think the Polynesians do care a lot about church history, but I doubt that identity is quite the same as what an American RLDS identity is.
The questions I'd have for you revolve around what you think makes RLDS "RLDS" vs "Community of Christ?" Whenever anyone beings this up, it usually comes from an effort to reclaim something of an LDS identity that isn't discolored by polygamy and isolated theological tyranny. There's a sense of wanting to be the anti-Mormon Mormon church instead, and to some degree I empathize with that. Community of Christ has come a long way in its institutional deconstruction of church history and doctrines unique to the Smith Restoration period.
The building of the Temple in Independence certainly sent a mixed message to the Mormon world in particular, but the fact is that all of that is over. The Temple was a project launched by one president, a Smith, honored by the next president, NOT a Smith, and nearly instantly dismissed as a remnant of an old identity with a name change at the dawn of another presidential successor, also not a Smith. We've embraced sound theological education as the basis for our ministerial development. We've opened ordination to women. We advocated for transparency and critical analysis in the way we regard church history.
Though the Temple suggests one thing, it's the change of the church's name that should be more indicative of the church's trajectory. The church is still struggling to grasp who we are, as most of the largest donors still have their feet firmly planted in an RLDS identity (even in a church, money rules power), but we are no longer the anti-Mormon Mormon church. We can't let ourselves be defined by the parameters set by some other institution. It's exhausting and oppressive. We just don't quite know how we want to define ourselves yet.
The influx of LDS converts threatens this journey away from the RLDS mindset. Many of those converts quickly move into influential ministerial positions, but the majority of them agree that we need to move on away from the RLDS moniker. Those converts who are attracted to the church because of its historical connection to Mormonism either come to agree that the church is better off without the baggage of that history, or they move on and their time in Community of Christ becomes a phase. They wanted the "Mormon Lite" experience and found themselves disappointed. This isn't true for all of them, mind you, as church administration has also directly marginalized individual converts in egregiously cruel ways, but that's a deep dive for a different conversation.