Introduction and Guest Welcome

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 116

John Dehlin [00:00:00] This is Mormon Stories. I'm John Dehlin.

Guest [00:00:02] It may not be on the mountain height or over the stormy sea. It may not be at the battle's front. My Lord would have need of me.

John Dehlin [00:00:21] Today we're going to be discussing a brief history of the Community of Christ, otherwise known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And today we have with us Joe John Hamer is going to be guiding us through this very important topic. John Hamer is the editor of John Whitmer Books and the president elect of the John Whitmer Historical Association. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, John Whitmer was founded 40 years ago by members of the Reorganized Church, now the Community of Christ. John Whitmer is like the Mormon History association except that it studies all the churches besides the LDS Church, the Community of Christ, the Strangites, the FLDS Church, and the like. John is a historian whose own research focuses on this topic. He co edited a volume entitled Scattering of the Schism Within Mormonism along with Newell Bringhurst. Is that right, John?

John Hamer [00:01:16] That's right, yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] And he is currently working on a history of the Stringite Church. John is also a mapmaker and he's produced maps for dozens of Mormon history books, including the first two volumes of the LDS Church's Joseph Smith Papers. John's ancestors joined the Mormon movement in 1833, seven generations ago, and he was raised LDS, but he was never endowed, did not serve a mission, and has not been a member as an adult. Nevertheless, he is an active participant in Mormon culture, both in the historians community and in the bloggernackel where he is a columnist on By Common Consent. John Hamer, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

John Hamer [00:01:56] Thank you, John. I'm so excited that you have restarted Mormon Stories. This has been such an important, I think, venue for people and I know I've enjoyed them and I know everyone is very excited that it's coming back.

John Dehlin [00:02:12] Oh, well, thank you very much. It's my pleasure and I'm honored to have you with us.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] So John, maybe I'll just set up

John Dehlin [00:02:21] a little bit of context on why I felt like this was such an important conversation to have and to bring to the listening audience. I have to admit that for many, many years I didn't think much of the Reorganized Church. As I was taught about the Reorganized Church in seminary in high school, I kind of viewed them as kind of the quiet little brother that didn't do much, that didn't have many talents. They kind of lost in whatever game he played and was Just kind of an insignificant annoyance that was sort of to be ignored or kind of pushed off to the margins. And it wasn't until I started studying the history of the organized church and specifically the transformation that the church went through in the 60s, before I realized that the history of the organized church or the community of Christ is not only fascinating, it's not only extremely redemptive, in my opinion, but it also seems to have many lessons of interest and even inspiration for the Utah branch or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So I couldn't think of a better person to come on to talk about the community of Christ other than maybe, you know, one of their top leaders. But you were one of the first people I contacted when I decided to bring Mormon stories back. So thanks again for coming here to talk about it today.

John Hamer [00:03:51] Yeah, well, thanks much. No, I think that your impression is pretty common because I think that actually, as I've done work on several of the different churches, I think that people are innately fascinated with Strangites and Cutlerites and all the ites, and they want to hear more. But for some reason, the RLDS church, which the Community of Christ, as it's now called, gets a bad rap and people aren't interested in it. But on the other hand, I just think that their history, as you point out, has been kind of remarkable in this transformation. When I tell people who aren't inside the movement, when I go around and I'm talking to people about the work I do, and I say, well, we do a lot of work with the community, and you probably haven't heard of them, but they, you know, you're very aware of the big Mormon church with the, the guys who knock on your door and all that kind of thing. And you may be aware of the fundamentalists, the polygamists who were in the news in Texas after get, after the raids and all that kind of thing, but there's also this liberal Mormon church. It's the second largest Mormon church. They're off in Missouri, and they, you know, long ago they gave women the priesthood. They have women apostles, and they may be about to start solemnizing gay marriage. I mean, they are really kind of, you know, at the forefront of where liberal denominations are going, and people are pretty much shocked that any Mormons are out there.

The Joseph Smith Succession Crisis Explained

John Dehlin [00:05:18] Yeah, well, let's jump in a bit to their history.

John Dehlin [00:05:21] How does that sound?

John Hamer [00:05:23] Sure, of course.

John Hamer [00:05:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:24] So let me set it up so we sort of.

John Dehlin [00:05:28] I don't know if there's a better

John Dehlin [00:05:29] place to begin than the death of Joseph Smith. Is there any history relevant to the reorganized church community of Christ that sort of comes before the succession crisis or is that the best place to start?

John Hamer [00:05:44] Well, for the RLDS church, specifically before

John Hamer [00:05:48] the succession crisis, there are precedents for who the leadership is. So Joseph, when he dies, if Hyrum hadn't died with him, and I think there's no doubt that Hyrum Smith would have been the successor. Hyrum was the assistant president of the church and people I think were aware that he would have taken over, but he'd of course died. He was martyred alongside his brother. So the only thing you would say that might have happened beforehand were there

John Hamer [00:06:14] were

John Hamer [00:06:16] these various blessings that Joseph had given to his sons where he suggested like a patriarchal blessing kind of thing, where at some day you'll be a prophet of the church kind of thing. And so those, those blessings which we have like much later, we have later witnesses, we don't have the actual text of any of those happening, but we have people recalling them would have happened before his death. And that was in the, it was in the minds of a lot of early core leaders. And they definitely thought at some point or other one of Joseph Smith's sons, either his oldest son, he had four sons, including David Hyrum Smith, who was born posthumously, that he predicted would be a son that Emma would bear after he was dead, or he predicted it would be a son and then, and then after he died, she bore David Hyrum. And so people thought maybe one of them would be so that before that I would say that's what happens beforehand.

John Dehlin [00:07:15] So. And have you thought about.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] I mean, this is just speculation, but, you know, I guess there's such a, in the, in the LDS Church, there's such a clear planned out succession. You know, we tend to sort of think back on history and extrapolate backwards the assumptions that we have at present. You would think that Joseph would have had some type of legal document where he would have been very clear that, okay, the president of the quorum of the 12 is going to succeed me. So it might be a little bit shocking for people to hear that maybe he intended his children, but maybe he intended Hyrum, maybe he intended James Strang, maybe he intended Sidney Rigdon.

John Dehlin [00:07:56] What's the prevailing sense of whether Joseph

John Dehlin [00:07:59] Smith just was promising this to a lot of people or just didn't know or God hadn't told him. Why the confusion? Why the uncertainty?

John Hamer [00:08:09] Well, I think that he was actually busily saying all kinds of different Things. And so I don't think that there was any. And besides, Hiram, I don't think there was any clear path in terms of a success. Excuse me. So in terms of the legal document, there has been. I mean, the legal document for the corporation of the church that has been reviewed and found that's in the Hancock County Courthouse in Illinois. And that legally, for the property of the church and that sort of thing that says that Joseph Smith's successors will be the members of the First Presidency. So the people who are still in the First Presidency when he. When he passed away. And that would have been Sidney Rigdon. But that isn't a. That isn't a canonical. That's.

John Hamer [00:08:54] That would be civil law.

John Hamer [00:08:56] So in canon law would be Scripture. So what does Scripture say? Scripture, in fact, doesn't. Doesn't say at all who will be the president after the president goes. And even if you go into, let's say, scriptural precedent from the Old Testament or the Book of Mormon or the New Testament, there's not an occasion where let's say Moses dies and the next member of the Quorum of the twelve apostles then immediately succeeds Moses. Moses doesn't have any apostles. That doesn't happen. And, you know, prophets don't work like that in either the Old Testament or in the Book of Mormon. And even in the New Testament, a lot of people assume that Peter, as the chief apostle, takes it over for Jesus. But in fact, it could easily be read that James, the brother of Jesus, takes over because when Peter has to go to Jerusalem, he actually submits to James authority, you know, as. Anyway. So the argument was made that there were different modes of succession. Even in the New Testament, there are no scriptural precedents. Joseph didn't particularly name anybody. And there's no reason to imagine. There was no reason, scripturally or any other thing, to imagine that the Quorum and the president of the quorum of the 12 would take over upon his death.

John Dehlin [00:10:15] So did you say there was a

John Dehlin [00:10:16] civil or legal document specifying the First Presidency as the successors?

John Hamer [00:10:23] That would be the civil law. So in civil law, yes, the church was incorporated in the state of Illinois, and that corporation had in its bylaws that after that, Joseph's successors would be the First Presidency. So civilly, in the civil law, you would imagine. And in fact, frankly, in my judgment, just having read a whole bunch, the best successor in terms of an actual legal claim would have been Sidney Rigdon. And I can kind of say that because nobody really believes in Rigdon's claims much there's one church that's descended from Sidney Rigdon's people, and they also don't even really claim him too much. They're not a. They're not big fans. But anyway, so I would say that, yes, Sidney probably had the best claim, but he wasn't the best leader. And that's where kind of things stood when Joseph died.

John Dehlin [00:11:16] And what about the rumors that there was some. What about the rumors that there was some letter or some blessing or prayer on Joseph Smith iii? Is there any truth to either of those, or is that speculation or just outright falsehood, or am I getting it wrong?

John Hamer [00:11:31] Well, the letter.

John Hamer [00:11:32] So the actual document was a Hoffman forgery. Okay, so there was a Joseph Smith III blessing that, you know, that appeared in the 1980s. It was a forgery. But as we all know, I mean, Hoffman, I mean, the reason why he

John Hamer [00:11:48] was so successful was because he was

John Hamer [00:11:49] a very astute student of Mormon history. And he would make stuff that made sense for Mormon history.

John Hamer [00:11:55] I mean, he would be a little

John Hamer [00:11:56] off, and he wanted to kind of jab at, you know, Mormon claims and all those kind of things. And so he was. He was kind of like attacking on the same time, but he was also doing stuff that made sense. And so people know that this. There's all kinds of people who attested to the fact that these blessings had occurred. There's more than one occasion. So one of them takes place in the upper, upper story of the red brick store in Nauvoo. Another one apparently took place or supposedly took place in the Liberty Jail. Joseph III was visiting his father and he gave him a special blessing that

John Hamer [00:12:32] Apostle Lyman White later attested to. So there was a couple. There were a couple occasions like that, but there is no text. We don't know what it would have been about. I think we can imagine that there would have been a patriarchal style blessing where father asserts that his son would someday fill his shoes, that kind of thing. And people remembered that sort of thing. We don't know. I mean, that. Whether that is. That doesn't constitute a legal claim. In any event, Joseph III would have been. I think he was 12 when his father was killed. So it was completely impossible for him to succeed, although several leaders said, well, one day he would. So, in fact, even Brigham Young said that to several of his followers, according to some of the witnesses we have seen.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Okay, so one last question just before we move on to Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon. Is there anything in LDS scripture today that specifies the succession? Like, did that get added by the LDS Church at some point, the way that it happens now, which is the most senior apostle.

John Dehlin [00:13:36] So that's just sort of kind of

John Dehlin [00:13:38] like the cloture, you know, the filibuster rule in the Senate. It's not really official. It's just kind of what's evolved in church policy.

John Hamer [00:13:47] It's a practice. And so there is nothing, in fact, I would say, I would call it a ritual, which is the reason why when the president of the LDS Church dies, the First Presidency is immediately dissolved, and the LDS Church makes a pretty big point of that. So in other words, the counselors go back into the Quorum, and now there's 14 apostles instead of just 12. It's because the LDS Church is ritually delegitimizing Sidney Rigdon's claims. So what they're saying, every single time there's a succession, they're saying Brigham Young was the true successor. Sidney Brigden had no claim. But there's no reason to imagine, based on anything in the DNC or anything else, that the First Presidency would dissolve when one of the members dies. And indeed, in the community of Christ, it doesn't dissolve. And simply just what it does in the LDS Church because that justifies the Brigham Young succession.

John Dehlin [00:14:45] Okay, great.

Joseph Smith's Martyrdom and Its Aftermath

John Dehlin [00:14:46] So let's move on now to Joseph's martyrdom.

John Dehlin [00:14:50] And we're in Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [00:14:51] Joseph and Hyrum have been killed.

John Dehlin [00:14:54] What happens next?

John Hamer [00:14:57] So everybody has been marshaled for Joseph Smith's presidential campaign. And I know that we don't ever really hardly emphasize this about Joseph Smith running for president in 1844, but that was really the number one thing that he was doing. And absolutely everybody who was anybody had been called, called on a mission, and they were out campaigning for Joseph Smith right when he's killed. And same thing. Sidney Rigdon, who is his vice presidential candidate on the ticket, has to move to Pennsylvania because you can't both be from Illinois. According to the US Constitution, you have to be from two different states, the president and the vice president. So Sidney rigged and moved back to Pennsylvania, where he was originally from. And so he's on the ticket as the vice assassinated, and everybody has to make their way back. On the way back, there's a couple, you know, so there's a couple options. So who's going to be the leader? Obviously, it can't be Joseph Smith, the 30s, a little kid. It's not going to be Emma or anybody in the, you know, immediately after, you know, she's a woman. This isn't that kind of time period. Hiram is dead. Samuel Smith also dies very soon. The only living Smith left there, therefore an adulthood male, is William Smith, who is by far the most unsteady Smith. People don't like William. He stays off in the east anyway because his wife is sick. So he's gone for an entire year. So, you know, outside of the family, in the church structure, what's going to happen? So the options are the First Presidency, essentially. They've lost key members recently. So William Law has been, you know, he's part of this whole reform movement that actually is the, you know, where he starts the Nauvoo Expositor. And he actually, you know, precipitates the entire, the martyrdom and everything like that that happens. And so he's out of the church. But anyway, Sidney Rigdon is still there. So that's an option. Sidney Rigdon. The other two options then, the two leading quorums are the High Council, the presiding High Council. And previously, earlier in Mormon history, the High Council had been a very important ruling body, especially in Far west, especially in the Missouri period. So just right before Nauvoo. And so, you know, we always hear about how. Well, when Joseph Smith was in prison in Missouri, Brigham Young, you know, that's when he emerges and he leads the Saints out of Missouri and he moves them to Illinois. But he doesn't take control as leader of the Apostles. He actually takes control as acting president of the High Council. And the High Council then proceeds actually to fill vacancies in the quorum of the 12. The High Council is the one that appoints people to take the place of, of Thomas Marsh and the other apostles who have left or died.

John Dehlin [00:18:10] So there's no equivalent to the High Council today.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Right.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] I mean, I don't even know how to conceptualize this.

John Hamer [00:18:16] Right. So this doesn't exist really. So what's happened in the LDS Church is when the apostles end up taking over, all of the other possible things get lessened. It's an all apostle, all the time church now. But we have to understand that in the original church, for example, even now, so right now you think of the First Presidency. Well, that's just three of the Apostles. Well, those not in the early church. I mean, Joseph sent his counselors, Sidney Brignon. None of those guys had ever been in the 12 that had nothing to do with the Apostles. It was this completely separate quorum. And so in the same way there's this High Council and the equivalent now in the LDS Church is just stake High Councils. So there's just every stake has a high Council, you know, and the stake presidency is in charge of that. But what we have in the church as a whole in Missouri and then also in Nauvoo, is what is effectively a presiding high council, high council of general authorities of the church, where the different stakes will actually, if they have a problem at their stake high council, you can appeal your case, and it will go. It doesn't go to the apostles. It goes to the high council of the church in Nauvoo. So, in other words, there's a presiding high council that is over all the other high councils. And so the head of that is William Marx, who's the presiding stake president of the church in Nauvoo. And so Marx is another possibility. So then the other possibility, of course, is Brigham Young, another leading church member, the head of the traveling high council, the Council of the twelve Apostles, who are in charge specifically of missionary work. And so they are in charge of anywhere in the church that isn't a stake. So if somebody is going to have a case in a branch, then they'll appeal it to the 12. And so those are essentially what you have. You have the first presidency, you have the high council, and you have the traveling high council. And what happens is that Emma and some of her people who agree with her think that the head of the high council should be the new head of the church, William Marks. But William Marks believes, legally that Sidney Rigdon has the best claim. So he sides with Rigdon, as, you know, in the first presidency, as being the successor. And so that essentially nullifies Marx's claim because it puts it with Rigdon. And so that's why it comes down to essentially, Rigdon versus Young.

John Dehlin [00:20:42] Okay. And was Brigham Young in town during the martyrdom or was he out?

John Hamer [00:20:48] No, he was out campaigning.

John Dehlin [00:20:49] And how long did it take him to get back in town after he, you know, to find out about the martyrdom and then come back?

John Hamer [00:20:57] Yeah, you know, I'm terrible at dates.

John Dehlin [00:20:59] Oh, no, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

John Dehlin [00:21:01] So do you think it was a year? Was it a month?

John Hamer [00:21:05] You know, whatever? They came back very quickly.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] Okay.

John Hamer [00:21:08] Sidney Rigdon beat him back by a few days or whatever it was. He was there in town first.

John Dehlin [00:21:13] Okay.

John Hamer [00:21:14] Called a meeting to. Hopefully, what he tried to do was get himself named guardian over the church. So he wanted to. To lock in that he would be the successor. The apostles made it back in town in time, and it became a showdown meeting. And so that's where this meeting that we hear about, you know, where which is essentially the first major thing that happens where, you know, sometimes referred to as, like, essentially that Brigham Young is chosen to be the successor. But in fact, what Brigham argues is, how can we have a successor? Joseph is in the grave. You know, the murder. You know, we just lost this murder. How can anyone replace Joseph? No one can replace Joseph. You no longer have a prophet, but you have apostles. And the apostles can, you know, as a whole, as a quorum, can lead the church until such a time as Joseph returns or whatever happens next. And people were okay with that, and they weren't okay with Sidney Rigdon being the guardian. So essentially, that's what. So that's what happens.

John Dehlin [00:22:18] Had Sidney Rigdon lost some credibility with the Saints over the Nauvoo period?

John Hamer [00:22:23] Sure, yeah. Well, Sidney Rigdon is routinely. I think we always talk about him as being. Having his status weakened and having him be on the outs and all those kind of things. Part of the reason for that, of course, is that we don't write the history from Sidney Rigdon's perspective. We write the history from everybody else's perspective. Sidney didn't win, and so therefore no one writes it about him. We should note, like I did, that he's the vice presidential candidate. So he is running with Joseph Smith in full fellowship. He's in the first presidency still. That said, there are things where he is a little bit on the outs with Joseph. And specifically, this is about what has become by that time in the Nauvoo period, such a core practice, important doctrine, and which is polygamy. So Joseph and an inner group of members of the church are practicing plural marriages. They think it's absolutely important to salvation, and they are teaching that and practicing it. And Sidney Rigdon is a major opponent of that practice. And so there was a proposition, I guess, before Sidney Rigdon's daughter, Joseph, proposed to marry her.

John Dehlin [00:23:38] Nancy. Nancy, right.

John Hamer [00:23:40] Nancy Rigdon. And she was completely unwilling to be a part of that. She didn't want to be involved. And Sidney also condemned that, although he didn't do it publicly. So there is a. There was a sense that, you know, I think. I think a sense still that Joseph had. Obviously he, you know, was running with him for president. There was a sense that Sidney was willing to, you know, even though he wasn't on board, he wasn't going to make a stink the way, let's say, William Law did, where William Law just absolutely refused and went public and decided that there needed to be reforms in the church. Sidney was going to work with Joseph, but that Said there is this competing. There are these competing factions. So there's the pro polygamy faction and the anti polygamy faction within the leadership of the church in Nauvoo. And Sydney is definitely seen as going to be the standard bearer for the people who are against polygamy. The problem for the people who are in favor of polygamy is that this would immediately discredit their families or actually their activities. So if your daughter, like my great, great, great, great grandparents, whose daughter Nancy Mariah Winchester married, is one of the young wives who married Joseph Smith, they, on the one hand, in a positive sense, feel sealed to the prophet for all eternity. This is an important thing that brings their family to the highest degree of glory. On the other hand, if it was to be rejected as a doctrine, suddenly this calls into question what she's been doing. You know, this marriage. You know, she could be a shamed woman, essentially in Victorian America. So it's, in a way, life or death, or at least reputation, and your entire family is at stake as to whether this doctrine is sanctified or whether it's rejected.

Polygamy in Nauvoo and Member Awareness

John Dehlin [00:25:38] What percentage of the membership in Nauvoo do you suspect knew about the polygamy?

John Hamer [00:25:48] It's a pretty open secret. So I think that ever since James Bennet, who had been mayor of Nauvoo and one of Joseph's very close friends and also involved in the polygamy, he had written an expose where he named names, he described the practices and things like that. So it's a big open secret. On the other hand, people could reject what Bennett had to say. He's this apostate. They decide, oh, they believe that that was just a bunch of humbug. But what ends up happening with the Expositor? Everybody around the Mormons definitely believed the exposes, and they definitely said, okay, well, this is this horrible thing that's happening in Nauvoo. What the Expositor does, it doesn't tell people about polygamy outside. Everybody outside already knows that this is happening. They already believe it. But because William Law is respected inside Nauvoo, it does, I think, tell the membership that it's something that's more credible, a more credible witness. So I think people are aware of it. There is an inner circle that it's been taught to that's probably only going to be, I don't know, probably maybe 100 people, something like that. But it's the key leaders. So it's everybody on the High Council, it's Everybody in the 12, it's 70s it's important people that know about this stuff.

John Dehlin [00:27:12] So Sidney did know about it. He just didn't approve of it.

John Hamer [00:27:17] Absolutely. So he would be on the leadership, among the leadership who know and don't approve. And that would. And so that faction then would also include Emma. So, you know, Joseph's legal widow, obviously, and her family or whatever. They don't approve of it and they don't agree with it. And then also William Marx, who is the head of the, the High Council and also the stake president of the

John Dehlin [00:27:45] church there, he did not approve.

John Hamer [00:27:47] He also didn't approve.

John Dehlin [00:27:48] Okay, okay.

John Dehlin [00:27:50] So this, this post martyrdom standoff in some ways really was a polygamy versus anti polygamy standoff.

John Hamer [00:27:59] Right.

John Hamer [00:27:59] So if, if the wrong person ends up being the successor, you know, it's going to go one way or the other because the, this is a doctrine that is in contention and that ends

John Dehlin [00:28:11] up informing the major tension between the

John Dehlin [00:28:15] LDS Church and the reorganized Church for the next, what, hundred and fifty years, I guess, or 100 years or something?

John Hamer [00:28:21] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:28:24] I read this dialogue article like, I don't know, 10 years ago that basically challenged the common story. And I'm not trying to cast doubt

John Dehlin [00:28:37] into people's faith or testimonies at all,

John Dehlin [00:28:40] but it seemed like a pretty credible article that said that the history, the story that we're all told about Brigham transforming into Joseph in some way, that historically there's some questions about that. Can you just tell us what the traditional narrative has been and why that

John Dehlin [00:29:00] isn't something necessarily to be taken at face value?

John Hamer [00:29:05] Sure.

John Hamer [00:29:05] So, yeah, ultimately, when everybody, after the martyrdom, everybody's out campaigning for Joseph for president, Sidney's off in Pittsburgh where he has to establish residency, you know, to be the vice president. They all come back. There's a big showdown ultimately between Sidney Rigdon, who wants to be named Guardian of the Church, and Brigham Young, who doesn't want Sidney Rigdon to be named Guardian of the Church as to what the direction is going to be. And the way the traditional story goes, the LDS story goes that the Brigham, when he stood up and he gave his speech, he appeared transfigured before the audience and the audience saw him as Joseph and so that, you know, told them that he should be the successor. So that's the traditional narrative as we kind of have it now. There are a couple problems with it as a traditional narrative. One, it doesn't date to the time period itself. So Brigham does end up being in charge of all the Church's apparatus at Nauvoo. Including the Times and Seasons and all those kind of things. And he's immediately in a big succession battle against Sidney, Reagan and some of the other successors who kind of emerge on the scene. They don't cite this in the Times and Seasons. They don't make an article about that this happened, and this is proof of Brigham's claims or any such thing. So in other words, they would have the ability to immediately write about that. They don't. No one writes about it. So the story doesn't exist at the time, or at least it's not written down by anybody or reported by anybody,

John Dehlin [00:30:42] including people's private journals.

John Hamer [00:30:44] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] So there's no instance of somebody going home that night and saying, hey, something really amazing happened. None of that. Right. Never. No known instance of that story ever being written down.

John Hamer [00:30:57] The story appears later.

John Dehlin [00:30:58] Okay.

John Hamer [00:30:59] And in fact, the problem with it is that it doesn't precisely fit, in my opinion, the narrative of what happens. So, in other words, if this miracle happened, if a lot of people did see it at the time, you might imagine that, well, they would ordain Brigham Young to be the successor, that they'd make him president of the Church. In fact, he didn't argue to be made president of the Church. He immediately. He takes control of the apparatus, but he's acting president, as what ends up happening is that people place the 12 in charge of the church. And so we don't have the reorganization of the church, where there's a new president and a new first presidency in the LDS tradition until three years later in 1847, when they're off in. In Omaha, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. And so instead, they have this period of time where the 12 are simply acting as the leaders in the meantime. So I think that another problem here is that it isn't not only that there's not really any contemporary sourcing for this, but also that it doesn't really fit the narrative of what actually happened.

John Dehlin [00:32:04] Okay, gotcha. And then how do we suspect this narrative sprang forth then?

John Hamer [00:32:11] Well, so at the time, it wouldn't have been a helpful narrative because, like I said, the 12 are in charge, not Brigham Young. But later, obviously, Brigham Young is in charge. So off in Utah in the 1850s, especially the early 1860s, what ends up happening is that Brigham Young, who is now the head of a new First Presidency, who is in charge of the last real church standing church organization standing. What ends up happening is that what we call a pretender to the throne arises so suddenly, one of Joseph Smith's sons has become an adult. He has said that he's received a revelation that he should be prophet and leader of the church. And he has come in as the president. He's been ordained president of a new organization of the church back in Illinois. And so now that there is a pretender, now that there is somebody who is a threat to Brigham Young's control of the presidency, now they have to have new narratives that kind of talk about him as an actual spiritual successor. It's not just good enough to say, I'll lead this people until Joseph comes back or something like that. There's a need to say that there's a spiritual basis for this.

John Dehlin [00:33:39] And then someone tells a story in general conference, it starts spreading around,

John Hamer [00:33:45] and everybody remembers it.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] And there are even people who we have records were on missions in foreign countries at the time of the alleged event between Sydney and Brigham, who then end up writing in their journals that they were at the event and saw Brigham transformed, even though we know from correspondence that they were in Europe.

John Hamer [00:34:09] Yeah, so that. In a way that. That happens. Yes. So some of the best, some of the nicest, you know, a great narrative of it is written by somebody who definitely wasn't there. But on the other hand, that can be a trick of memory. So I remember things that I was not there for because I've heard the story told so many times, I just remember it, and then I'm shocked to find out, well, wait a second, I wasn't even there. But so, no, yeah, that definitely happens.

John Dehlin [00:34:38] Yeah. So, again, I'm not alleging fraud. I don't intend that at all. That's just the way the human memory works.

John Dehlin [00:34:45] We remember things, like you said, that sometimes we didn't experience or that we weren't there to experience.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] Okay, so let's go back. You know, Brigham wins. And I think it's important just to reiterate, as I understand it, Brigham didn't claim the title of prophet. And it wasn't until, like, David O. McKay that a president or prophet of the church allowed themselves to be called. Is that right?

John Hamer [00:35:15] Right. I think that Mike Quinn brings that out in his Mormon Hierarchy series. So, yes, that's my understanding, the way it works, too. Essentially, there is this idea, I think, in the LDS tradition all the way up until that time in the middle of the 20th century, that there is the prophet who was Joseph, and they'll call him the prophet, and then there is the president of the church, who is a prophet, a seer, and a revelator in the same way that all of the apostles are prophets, seers, and revelators. They're all sustained as such. But, for example, there's a special way. For example, Mormons still today refer to Joseph. He's the prophet Joseph. We never, ever would say the prophet George and be referring to George Albert Smith. You don't even know who I'm talking about when I say the prophet George. You know what I mean? This is nothing to. So there is a difference. And in fact, that difference was more distinct in the LDS tradition. It was more distinct up until, like you say, the mid 20th century. And now it's less distinct, probably.

Brigham Young's Followers and Those Who Stayed Behind

John Dehlin [00:36:21] Okay, so Brigham wins the share of the members. They go to Utah. Who stays behind, and how does it

John Dehlin [00:36:30] lead to the formation of the reorganized church?

John Hamer [00:36:34] So Brigham wins. He takes control of the church in Nauvoo, and so he has the headquarters apparatus. But we have to know that at the time of the martyrdom, if you take all of the Mormons who had been baptized from the foundation of the church up until the martyrdom, the majority of the members are often branches. They live all around, scattered all around the country. And then there's a whole bunch of. And in Britain and Europe. But most of the people, obviously who got baptized didn't gather to Nauvoo. It's only the very most committed people who end up gathering to Nauvoo. So there's a large number of people that are scattered all around in all the branches. And they don't immediately all become what we now call Brighamites or the lds. They don't all affiliate. You essentially have a church

John Hamer [00:37:31] that has

John Hamer [00:37:31] more than one center. So I like to make this analogy with the medieval Catholic Church when it's in schism. So there's this moment you may know about where there's a pope in Rome and there's also a pope in Avignon in France. And it's this moment of schism. Nobody knows who the real Pope is. Is it the Pope in Avignon? Is it the Pope in Rome? It's not that there's. It's not that some people are Roman Catholics and some people are Avignonese Catholics. Everybody's Catholic. It's all a church. You're not really separate yet, but there are different leaders, and you may be affiliated with one or the other. And in the broader church outside of the headquarters outside of Nauvoo, everybody in all the branches everywhere doesn't necessarily know who they're affiliated with. And they might be affiliated with multiple people, depending on who visited them last or what newspaper they happened to get. And so very soon after Brigham is in charge of the church in Nauvoo, there emerge a couple of leaders. And so Sidney Rigdon is one. He organizes a new church headquarters in Pennsylvania. It has a newspaper and all those kind of things. Church organization. It has 12 apostles. My great, great, great, great uncle, Benjamin Winchester ended up becoming one of Sidney Rigdon's apostles. And at the same time, then there's other claimants. So a guy named James Strang emerges, and he has all sorts of claims that he makes to the same kinds of spiritual powers that Joseph had had. So he finds plates. He translates the plates. They have witnesses. He has angelic ordination. There's all kinds of things. And people start to believe that he is the true successor. And he gets a remarkable array of important early Mormons who follow him, including most of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's mother and all kinds of other people.

John Dehlin [00:39:23] So, Martin Harris.

John Hamer [00:39:25] Martin Harris. And so what ends up happening? Actually, the major showdown, even though there was that first major showdown that everybody's aware of, there's a second major showdown. And that happens because there's constantly. So there's the people in Nauvoo, there's the people in all the branches, and then the most important thing is there are the converts that are constantly being made in England. And so these guys are constantly making converts, and they're coming to replace all the people that are leaving Mormonism. And so there's a mission where James Strang sends Martin Harris and other Strangite missionaries to England. And so Martin Harris has his name on the Book of Mormon. He can say, I'm one of the witnesses. I knew Joseph Smith. I was one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon. And the real prophet, the real successor, is James Strang. And he does that. But the problem with it is that Martin Harris, as I think we know in Mormon history, is such a wild guy who is so unsteady and unstable that he impresses absolutely nobody in England. And so the 12. So Brigham Young absolutely wins, and the Strangite mission is a total fiasco. And so all of them, instead of sending them all off to James Strang and his colonies in Wisconsin and in Michigan, all of the converts from England go to Utah. And so that is the real victory. And that's why immediately, the Utah church becomes so much larger than any of the other churches, because they're the ones that are constantly getting fueled with new converts. And it really shouldn't be a surprise to us because the 12 were in charge of missionary work. And so they were the ones that were known. And so that was their other advantage. So they have the core group in Nauvoo of the polygamy faction, but then they also have control over the missionary work.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] Gotcha.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] Gotcha.

John Dehlin [00:41:04] Okay, so a second standoff. Brigham wins again.

John Hamer [00:41:08] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:41:09] Okay, so what happens to the remnants?

John Hamer [00:41:13] So then there are all these different organizations that are, you know, everybody that's left, so all these branches, everybody who doesn't go west or people who go west and then they come back. That happens a lot. People who go west, they don't like Utah. They decide they do like California. So all the people in San Bernardino, there's all kinds of Mormons who aren't affiliated with Brigham Young, essentially. Most of the leaders, though, all kind of fall on hard times. The generation ends, they die. They die a little earlier than Brigham Young. In the case of James Strang, he's martyred in exactly the same kind of way that Joseph Smith is. He's shot and killed, and his church is scattered and driven away from Michigan in the same way that the Mormons had been driven from Missouri. And so those churches all pretty well are in a state of collapse. And also the other thing that's happened is that most of those leaders, including James Strang, ultimately embrace polygamy. And so there's still this faction of Mormons, original Latter Day Saints, people from the very earliest times, who just do not believe in polygamy, and they don't think that should be part of it. And that includes, of course, Emma and her family who've stayed in Nauvoo. She doesn't want to go out west and become Brigham's wife or whatever she'd have to do as a polygamy, you know, in one of the polygamy factions. And so she stays. And so all of those people are still believers, and they're still opponents of polygamy. And so these guys start to gather together their congregations. They also, some of them believe that Joseph Smith's son would lead the church. And so they come and they invite him to on occasion. And so he'll say, look, I'm not going to say I'm the prophet of a church unless I have a spiritual manifestation from God that tells me I'm the prophet of a church. So he won't do it. And so they wait. And so ultimately, though, he feels that he has that manifestation, so he believes he has a revelation from God that he should be the prophet of the church. And so he comes Forward and then 150 years ago, this April 6th is the anniversary he becomes prophet and president of the Reorganized Church.

Origins of the Reorganized Church

John Dehlin [00:43:32] So my math is bad is that 1859, 1860.

John Hamer [00:43:36] 1860.

John Dehlin [00:43:37] Okay, okay. So we have a new church and they call themselves the Reorganized Church of

John Dehlin [00:43:44] Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

John Hamer [00:43:46] They call themselves the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So they don't call themselves the Reorganized Church, they claim that. They claim the original name. And so initially, in fact for a long time. So you'll see actually when you look at old pictures of RLDS congregations, even in the 30s, 1930s, they'll still say Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because they're very. That name was revealed by revelation, as you know, in 1838. And so people had a very strong feeling for that name. And keeping that name, they ultimately added that word reorganized to the name legally during the major anti polygamy laws that came through the federal government, when the federal government had its campaign to stamp out polygamy. So one of the laws disincorporated the LDS Church and also seized all the property over a certain value. And so because that law specified the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, for legal reasons, they incorporated with a different name with the word reorganized on the front of it in order to protect their property during the same anti Mormon persecutions of the the federal government had. So anyway, ultimately it was a convenient name and so it kind of stuck. But they also always, always thought it was completely bulky to say Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They were always trying to change it and I mean all the way back if you look at the records. And so they finally did.

John Dehlin [00:45:28] Real quick. Did Joseph III write down his dream

John Dehlin [00:45:32] or vision or give detail about what he experienced?

John Hamer [00:45:37] He did not reveal that as that's not one of the revelations that has been canonized in the RLDS in the community of Christ. DNC when he came to the conference April 6, 1860, I think his quote is, I come by a power not my own. He indicated that he'd had a spiritual manifestation that caused him to do it.

John Hamer [00:46:00] But I,

John Hamer [00:46:03] I don't think that there's nothing for that one. Like thus saith the Lord, Revelation, he does dictate further revelations though that are canonized and part of the community of Christ.

John Dehlin [00:46:15] So were there any big names at

John Dehlin [00:46:18] that 1860 conference that we would recognize?

John Hamer [00:46:21] Well, Emma, right. So Emma, of course, affiliates. William Marx is one of the big names. Who's there? So William Marks had been the High Council Stake president in Nauvoo and the presiding. Yeah. Head of the High Council. And so he's still been a believing Mormon. He has looked for Mormon, you know, the true. Whatever he considers to be the true Mormonism in all kinds of. All the wrong places, as we say. So he, he'd been a Strangite and a Thompsonite and other kinds of things. But anyway, he. He has affiliated with that. And in fact, he's. He's probably the guy who gets Emma to be involved. And probably there's a lot of reluctance on the part of both Joseph III and Emma because of. I mean, their husband, their father was killed for this. They'd been driven out of their homes. There was all kinds of reasons why they were afraid of getting back involved in this kind of thing. But I think William Marks, the fact that he was on board probably was helpful.

John Dehlin [00:47:22] Right.

John Dehlin [00:47:22] Okay. So when they, when they reorganized, did they. Did they form themselves in a way that was similar to the way Joseph

John Dehlin [00:47:33] was running things or different or different

John Dehlin [00:47:36] from the way we're running things now?

John Dehlin [00:47:37] I mean, was there any distinction as to how they set things up?

John Hamer [00:47:42] Yeah, so it wasn't a difference. So they do have more of the. They did set up more of the original church apparatus. So one thing that happens when the 12 take over the Nauvoo Church, suddenly it becomes kind of an apostolic church. So the first presidency is no longer its own independent quorum. It becomes an extension of the apostles. So those are 15 apostles now, and it's the senior most apostle. Well, the first presidency in the reorganized Church is simply its own separate quorum. It has nothing to do with the apostles. They have a presiding high council, just like in the original church. They. They have a presiding patriarch Evangelist. In the early church, you could use either word. And we use the word patriarch. In the LDS Church, they use the word evangelist in the community of Christ. But anyway, they had a presiding evangelist eventually. They have one now still today. So there's a couple differences like that in organization. In some cases it's more, for example, bishops. In the early church, bishops were financial officers. And that's the way it is in the community of Christ. Pastors. That's a weird one. People think LDS people like pastors. Oh, those guys are Protestants. They have pastors. But if you look at the Articles of Faith. The Articles of Faith talk about the original member. You know, the original jobs that people have that are like in the early church. And one of those is we believe in prophets. I'm sorry, in pastors is one of those on the list. And so pastors was also something that they had in the early church and they have in the. In the community of Christ.

John Dehlin [00:49:10] So gotcha. And they accepted the Book of Mormon,

John Dehlin [00:49:13] just like the LDS Church, right?

John Hamer [00:49:15] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] And did they just take the Book of. Is the Book of Commandment? Singular Book of Commandment. Book of Commandments, and they accepted that?

John Hamer [00:49:23] No, it's the Doctrine and Covenants.

John Dehlin [00:49:26] Okay, so.

John Hamer [00:49:27] So the Book of Commandments is the. Is the early version of the dnc. Dnc. And some of the churches don't believe. So there were significant changes to the Revelations in Joseph Smith's lifetime. He felt that it was possible to do that, presumably, and so they did. And so there were big changes that offended some members. And in other churches, not the Community of Christ, in the Temple Lot Church, for example, they don't believe in the dnc. They do believe in the Book of Commandments, but that's not true. In the communion of Christ, they use the dnc.

John Dehlin [00:49:59] The dnc.

John Hamer [00:50:00] Yeah. Although we should note that the LDS DNC is substantially changed. And so there was a whole bunch of different stuff that was added. It's Joseph Smith material, but it's like his letters and other things that got added to the dnc. So it wasn't in the original one. And so the community of Christ doesn't have that.

John Dehlin [00:50:22] Okay, so they get to keep Kirtland.

John Dehlin [00:50:27] Is that right?

John Hamer [00:50:29] So, yeah, essentially, there's always members in Kirtland. So even when everybody leaves, there's still Mormons of some kind there. And they had been members of different churches at a certain point. The Strangites organized the stake there, and they have control of the temple. There's other different little churches that are there, but ultimately, the people that are in Kirtland, the Mormons that are in Kirtland, join with the reorganization, and so it becomes the property of the RLDS Church.

John Hamer [00:50:56] And.

Guest [00:50:56] Yes.

John Hamer [00:50:56] So they're in Kirtland.

John Dehlin [00:50:57] Okay. And at some point they go to Independence. Is that right?

John Hamer [00:51:05] Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] Did they move there from Nauvoo?

John Hamer [00:51:08] Well, the church is initially headquartered in Nauvoo, so that's where Joseph III continues to live in kind of a great story. He is actually so, you know, here his dad is assassinated by the Gentiles there. And. And yet. And people are so worried about theocracy. Joseph III ends up becoming a lawyer and is actually elected justice of the Peace by those same people. So in other words, it's not a Mormon presence anymore anyway. And he actually has a nice reconciliation, even with Thomas Sharp, who's one of the main anti Mormon leaders. But anyway, so in other words, they work on trying to get along with their neighbors and they continue to be in Nauvoo. They end up leaving Nauvoo because by the time the railroads really become important, Nauvoo becomes just a little backwater and there's nothing you can ever do without a railroad, and there's no railroad. So they move to. They moved temporarily to a place called Plano, Illinois, and then they ultimately found a colony called Lamoni in Iowa, named for the pacifist king in the Book of Mormon, because they've become interested in peace and they want to emphasize that. And so for that philosophy, they take that name and they found a colony in Iowa which becomes the headquarters of the church. And then finally, at the end of Joseph III's life, he lives an awful long time. So he's living off all the way into the 20th century. And in the 20th century, they moved to independence. They want to go back to the center place.

Prophetic Succession Through the Smith Bloodline

John Dehlin [00:52:53] And so was it Joseph the third who received a revelation that the prophetic succession should go through the bloodline?

John Dehlin [00:53:00] When did that creep in?

John Hamer [00:53:03] There's no revelation to that effect. So they don't believe that. So essentially what the community of Christ had always believed was that the prophet had the capacity to designate a successor. And it does say that actually in the dnc. So there's a point in the DNC where it says if Joseph shall fall, he'll have no power save to name a successor. And so they believe that the ordination, the claim was made anyway that there was a childhood ordination where he had ordained his son to be the successor. And so then as prophet Joseph III creates a bunch more, he does give a kind of a constitution of what should happen if he were to die. He also ordains a successor. So he ordains his son to be his successor. But it didn't have to be. In fact, there was another member of the first presidency thought it should be him. And when it. And when it wasn't him, he actually broke away from the church. And he was a Canadian. And so he actually took most of the Canadian church away with him. And there was a Canadian rlds church for a while that finally merged back in. But anyway, there was a possibility that it wouldn't be in the family right from the start. But it was initially. So it went from Joseph to Joseph III to his son, and then from his son, it went to two of his son's brothers. So actually three of his sons in succession. And because Joseph III had lived so long and had had kids way late in life, his son only died in the 1970s.

John Dehlin [00:54:40] Oh, wow.

John Hamer [00:54:42] Yeah. So there was actually a grandson of Joseph Smith Jr. Still in charge of the church all the way up till then. He retired and because he was old and he.

John Dehlin [00:54:54] Okay, wait, wait, we're in the 70s now, right?

John Hamer [00:54:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:58] Okay, let's pause and let's come back to this. Okay. So sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. So the defining difference in the, in the, you know, late 19th century between

John Dehlin [00:55:10] the two churches was polygamy, is that right?

John Hamer [00:55:12] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:55:13] And so talk a little bit about the tension between the two churches and the affidavits and sort of what. What was going on there as that

John Dehlin [00:55:23] would make Brigham Young or whoever's successors

John Dehlin [00:55:25] were even feel a bit threatened by

John Dehlin [00:55:27] what was going on in Independence.

John Hamer [00:55:30] So. Yes, there was. So the reorganized church was essentially almost entirely organized to fight polygamy. They just absolutely hated polygamy. Emma hated polygamy and her sons hated polygamy. And the members were kind of more or less all agreed. And in fact, when they went out and sent a mission out to Salt Lake, they were terrible missionaries because they essentially. The front page of their newspaper was essentially just a greed against polygamy, which is what everybody was doing as their. I mean, that was your family. So it wasn't easy to simply say, oh, yeah, you guys are right. I guess polygamy is bad. There was no way that you could. Even if you didn't like Brigham Young, there was really not much you could do when you were already a polygamist. And so anyway, so they were very, very, very opposed to polygamy. They would actually work with the federal government against polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:56:18] And they were trying to come out to Utah to convert Mormons back to the RLDS Church.

John Hamer [00:56:22] Right, right. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:25] And that made Brigham feel, or whoever

John Dehlin [00:56:26] his successors were, feel threatened and a little bit nervous.

John Hamer [00:56:30] Sure.

John Hamer [00:56:30] Yeah.

John Hamer [00:56:31] Because a lot of people believed. I mean, here's. I mean, people still, as we kind of mentioned before, Joseph had a special place. There's no doubt about it. You know, Joseph the prophet was different from other prophets, even Brigham Young, no matter how important Brigham Young had become. And so here's his son. I mean, some of those sons looked exactly like him. And so the people remembered him. So they were old time members and they were moved by that. But ultimately, the LDS church actually did a fantastic job of not losing members to the RLDS Church. And in part that was because the RLDS church was just terrible missionaries on this polygamy issue. They were just more interested in condemning polygamy than actually bringing people into communion with themselves. And so that was definitely a problem. And so what did end up happening is that. So Brigham tapped Joseph Fielding Smith or Joseph F. What should you call it? Joseph Fielding Smith. Joseph F. Smith.

John Dehlin [00:57:29] Anyway, real quick, weren't they running around

John Dehlin [00:57:33] telling people in Utah that Joseph never practiced polygamy, that that was all a lie?

John Hamer [00:57:37] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:57:37] So that would have been really troubling

John Dehlin [00:57:40] to the leaders of the LDS Church in Utah.

John Hamer [00:57:43] You know, I don't know that it was that troubling, because they were wrong. In other words, they were discrediting themselves in a way, because. So they believed that the sons were able to believe that either it didn't happen or ultimately Joseph iii. Joseph III is a lawyer, as I mentioned, and lawyers actually make pretty terrible. Well, anyway, they have problems as historians because the law has a different standard of proof than history. And so his standard of proof was, you have to give me a smoking gun. Until I have the smoking gun, where's the kids? Where's this. Whatever it is? Where's a personal. Where's something that I can have as actual legal evidence? Then I can still, in my apologetic way, deny that this happened, and I can try to make clear my father's good name and that kind of thing. And so they were definitely going around and saying that it was something that Brigham Young and the apostles had made up, but they were wrong. So, in fact, actually that discredited them, and that was actually help. It helped the LDS leaders.

John Dehlin [00:58:56] But still, it made Joseph F. Smith be appointed to collect affidavits.

John Dehlin [00:59:01] Right.

John Hamer [00:59:03] He was definitely going around, and he would actually debate his cousins. So, you know, Joseph F. Smith is Hyrum's son and Joseph III is Joseph's juniors. And so they're first cousins, and they just had a very negative relationship as a result of that. But, yeah, but then the LDS historians went around and just took all kinds of affidavits, which are very helpful to us today because it explains the entire early Nauvoo practice. And we wouldn't otherwise really know about it because it was pretty much kept secret in Nauvoo. But in order to discredit Joseph III and his claims that there was no Nauvoo polygamy, the LDS Church marshaled some fairly, actually very convincing evidence about the practice. And we now know about it based on that.

Gathering Evidence for Polygamy's History

John Dehlin [00:59:51] So they would go to Joseph's former wives and say, were you married to Joseph Smith? Give me all the details. As I remember, they would even say, were you married? In all senses of the word, as

John Dehlin [01:00:03] if to say, was there intimacy?

John Dehlin [01:00:05] Is that right?

John Hamer [01:00:07] To the extent that you could talk about that kind of thing in Victorian times, they would do it. And yes. So there would be those intimations in that you would get the impression that, yes, they were married in all the senses of the word in that way.

John Hamer [01:00:21] So

John Dehlin [01:00:23] we're grateful for that history that got recorded.

John Hamer [01:00:27] Absolutely.

Guest [01:00:28] It may not be on the mountain height or over the stormy sea it may not be at the battle's front My Lord would have need of me but if by a still small voice he calls to pass that I do not know I'll answer, dear Lord with my hand in thine I'll go where you want me to go I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord over mountain, up plain or sea I'll say what you want me to say, Dear Lord I'll be what you want me to be Perhaps today there are loving words which Jesus would have me speak There may be now in the paths of sin Some wanderer whom I should see O Savior, Thou wilt be my guide Though dark and rugged the way my voice shall echo the message sweet I'll say what you want me to say I'll go where you want me to go Day, Lord over mountain and our pl. I'll say what you want me to say Dear Lord I'll be what you want me to be there's surely somewhere A lowly place In a field so wide Where I may labor through life your day For Jesus the crucified so trust in my all to thy tender care and knowing Thou lovest me I'll do thy will with a heart sincere I'll be what you want me to be I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord over mountain or plain or sea I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord I'll be what you want me to be I'll be what you want me to be I'll be what you want me to be.

Part Two: The Community of Christ's Evolving Identity

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 117

Guest [00:00:00] It may not be on the mountain height or over the stormy sea it may not be at the battle's front. My Lord would have need of me but if by a still small voice he calls to pass.

John Dehlin [00:00:26] So what else defines the Rlds church? Sort of post late 1800s, you know, between that time in the early 1960s when I started getting really turned into the history, what else defines their journey? Sort of bridge that gap for us before we get to the early 1960s?

John Hamer [00:00:46] Well, one thing that they had was that they were not separated from the US when the Civil War happened. And so I was mentioning that they reorganized in 1860. Well, that's on the very eve of the Civil War. And so they are there during this horrible internicene time of violence. And I think that that informed their belief in peace. And in fact, in the very first church seal, when they make the church seal, the word just says peace. And like I said, when they make the colony in Iowa, they name it after the pacifist King Lamoni. So I think that they have that happen because it's different by living through that experience, by being with the rest of the country. And then they're also around. They aren't isolated. And so they are open to some of the changes that happen in mainstream Christianity, and they have to deal with those. And so they also are aware of those and are dealing with those and adapting to those more. One of the things that they are excited about that doesn't happen in Utah is regathering to the center place. So as we know that Jackson County, Missouri has kind of a primal importance in Mormonism and going there to build Zion. We're not just waiting for the Second Coming to happen. We actually have to build the city there. We have to ultimately build a temple there. And so there was a strong program. So Joseph III's sons would emphasize the importance of building Zion and they would try to modernize the idea. So it was modern when Joseph Smith was doing it. They were trying to make agricultural communes and these other kinds of things that they were doing in the early 19th century, in the early 20th century, they tried to adapt other kinds of communitarian systems that are now available. Farmers, cooperatives and other kinds of things as they're trying to build Zion up. So they're very interested in Zion.

John Dehlin [00:02:49] Fascinating, fascinating stuff. So it's a very different sort of spirit or flavor than what comes out of Utah. I mean, just the feel, the vibe, it's pacifist. It's, let's try and bring back, you know, Zion Very different feel, right?

John Hamer [00:03:09] Yeah, I think that there has been a different feel. I don't want to emphasize the separateness too much because in the end what I find is so surprising when I go around to actually all the different Mormon churches, the smaller churches, how when you have the ancestors that go all the way back, there's actually family connections everywhere. And so they're related. There are so many things that you find are the same. You'll go into a sacrament service, they have the same prayer, there's all these things that are all going back to the same. They have all the same priesthood offices, everything like that. But on the other hand, like you say, there are all these differences because everybody has been out of communion for over 150 years.

John Dehlin [00:03:52] Right. So if it's not a huge disservice to history, why don't we jump to the late 1950s, early 1960s and talk about. Well, yeah, so if that's the first point where the polygamy issue starts to unravel, talk to us about what led to the big changes in the late 60s, early 70s.

John Hamer [00:04:15] Sure. Well, America transformed after World War II. We went from being a farming society and a working class society to suddenly being a college educated society. And a lot of these, a lot of churches had to undergo a lot of transformation too when they encountered college thinking and graduate thinking. People had been vernacularly trained before, but now suddenly they have encountered all of this scholastic thought. And so the LDS Church as you know, kind of underwent a whole bunch of turmoil with that, with the founding of Dialogue, the whole new order. I'm sorry, the new Mormon history, the way that went, the kind of reaction that the leaders had to assert control over that, to not let that get out of control in the community of Christ. It went almost exactly the same process, completely different results. So what ends up happening is that the young Turks, the leaders, the intellectuals, and if we take, let's say Leonard Arrington's group of guys and women that are all around him and they're all go getters or whatever, what happens if they actually win? If they take over the church, if they become the church and in the community of Christ, that's what happens. And so essentially all of the young people, all of these young thinkers, they become the leaders of the church.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] So as I remember Bill. Is it Bill or Richard Russell?

John Hamer [00:05:56] Which is it Bill Russell?

John Dehlin [00:05:57] As I remember Bill Russell telling the story, he talks about some magazines that were created in the early 60s and some discoveries about Book of Mormon historicity and polygamy. Do you know Anything about sort of the scholarship and the players involved at the RLDS University, that sort of started leading to the leaking and the opening up of some of these central issues that started staring the church in the face.

John Hamer [00:06:27] Sure, yeah. So the RLDS Church was exactly same part of the New Order. I'm sorry, I keep saying New Order, New Mormon history. The New Mormon history. They are playing actually a central role so out of proportion for their membership. They've always had more people who are writing and doing scholarship on these things, but they're also participating in the general dialogue and the general conversation. So our RLDS members are at the formation of the Mormon History Association. They're, you know, contributing to and also subscribing to Dialogue. So they're all part of that, and they're also doing their own research. And so they found the early 70s, their version of dialogue, which was called Courage, and it was probably way more out there than Sunstone has ever been, but they were already in the early 70s, and so people were analyzing this stuff, and so they were looking at the evidence, and there was all kinds of unsettling things, as you know. So, I mean, there's unsettling things about the Book of Abraham that wasn't canonized for the community of Christ. So they were able to look at it a little bit more. But, you know, they deciding, well, wait a second, is this a real translation from Egyptian? Or. And again, with the different issues with the historicity of the Book of Mormon that's taking place all through the 70s, and people are starting to reject the historicity.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] Is it 70s or 60s?

John Hamer [00:07:58] Well, 60s and 70s. So people are becoming aware of it. The thinkers are becoming aware of it in the 60s. They're publishing stuff in the 70s. And then finally they found the John Whitmer Historical association in the late 70s. I'm sorry, in the early 70s. And then the Journal in 1981. And in one of the very early issues of the journal, in the third volume, the church historian, who would be the equivalent of Leonard Arrington for the LDS Church, has the position of church historian, who is. Richard Howard, publishes kind of a very crucial article which essentially makes the case that polygamy originated with Joseph Smith. That was obviously startling for people who had come to take it as an article of faith that this was something that Brigham Young had made up. So that obviously was a major change. So there was just a general embrace of the new Mormon history, as, you know, the church's history. So as opposed to the church shutting it down and being Opposed to it or trying to figure out a way to explain it or whatever it is. The church ultimately embraces the new Mormon history and it becomes the church's history.

John Dehlin [00:09:19] Yeah. And you know, what a shocking and incredible sort of thing for this group of people to. To face. I mean, they base their beliefs and their foundation on Joseph and on the Book of Mormon and on the polygamy. Didn't happen fast forward and all of a sudden some of these major pillars that they had founded their beliefs on sort of begin unraveling. It must have been a terribly destabilizing time for these people.

John Hamer [00:09:59] Well, it absolutely was, yeah. So a lot of people went through all kinds of struggles of faith about this kind of thing. The problem in terms of polygamy. They were very opposed to polygamy right from the very start. And Joseph iii, I think he was, I think, relatively aware. And he would say things that are pretty ambiguous. So he would say, if my father had been involved in such a thing, it would be wrong, that kind of thing. But by the time it got to his sons, especially Israel, a smith who is one of the prophets from the middle of the 20th century, he hadn't heard that nuance in what his father had told him. And so he was much more ardent. And he would just say that this had never happened and he was the prophet. And why would the prophet have said that this never happened if it had? And so that was something that people had remembered. And so that was.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] What was the nuance? Say the nuance one more time.

John Hamer [00:10:52] Well, Joseph III would say, if my father had been involved in polygamy, it would be wrong. It would have been wrong.

John Dehlin [00:10:59] Okay, okay, okay.

John Hamer [00:11:00] So in other words, it's wrong. There's no doubt it's wrong. And I'd say my father wasn't involved, but if he had been involved, he would have been wrong to have done so.

John Dehlin [00:11:09] And that morphed into my father.

John Hamer [00:11:14] So his son didn't hear that. His son would just say, I can tell you from the pulpit, as the prophet of the church, as a smith, as the grandson, he was not involved in those rotten people. Brigham Young, he made it up and all that kind of stuff. So that was remembered. Those sort of very strong decryals from the mid century obviously was remembered by people. And of course, the prophet doesn't. He doesn't have any more historical knowledge there than the historians do. It's something that he had been taught and something he believed. But ultimately, when history, you know, when there started to be professional history for the first Time that came at odds with this folklore that had become doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] Unfortunately, right now I'm just going to pause and I'm going to reference the listeners to episode 110, 10 of Mormon Stories. I love this episode so much. It was stolen from an old Sunstone presentation by Bill Russell, but it's called, I called it Lessons on the Costs and Benefits of Big Church Changes from the RLDS Church to the LDS Church With Love is what I called it back then. But Bill Russell gives this wonderful accounting in depth of these discoveries that these historical discoveries, how unsettling they were, how they were slowly let out so that the members could learn them, and then what the leadership did as a result. And what I remember is that even in the late 60s, the leadership realized that they were going to have to move in the direction of sort of mainstream, I don't want to say evangelical, but mainstream sort of Protestant Christianity. And there was even a point where they started sort of going to training by non rlds, sort of mainstream Protestant clergy so that they could start preparing to move the church in a fundamentally new direction. Do you remember any of that, or am I just.

John Hamer [00:13:26] Well, yeah, I guess I wouldn't use that characterization of what needed to happen or what they decided to do. So in other words, I wouldn't say that they are moving in a mainstream Protestant direction, but they did go to seminaries because Mormonism is part of a broader tradition of Christianity. So if you want to do New Testament research, you don't have to invent all these wheels yourself. You can actually read centuries and centuries of Christian thought on the subject. There are some very highly educated thinkers in these languages and in these traditions who are working on these things. And you can learn all kinds of wonderful things from them. And there can only be so much done in the community of Christ, which has only got 250,000 people. And so they themselves can only do so much original research on the New Testaments. And so they definitely went to seminaries, regular Christian seminaries, but I don't think it's with the agenda of moving the church to becoming Protestant.

John Dehlin [00:14:32] Okay, but so in some ways you could almost say they took a turn even closer to Christ and to Christ's original teachings. Is that right?

John Hamer [00:14:43] Well, I would say that, yes. So in other words, I think that that's something that Bill Russell likes to emphasize, which is. I think it's just important for him. And I think it was important for a lot of members of the community of Christ, which is moving from being a Joseph Smith centered Church to trying to be more of a Jesus centered church, more of a Christ centered church. And in part, I think one of the ideas in terms of the name change, when they decided to go back to a name that is more similar to the original name of the church that was organized in 1830, the Church of Christ. Obviously that name has been taken by lots of different churches of Christ, but they wanted to emphasize one. What do Mormons and Latter Day Saints, what do people here in the community of Christ and in our tradition do? Well, we form community together very well. That's something that we all have in our DNA somehow. So community is important to us. And then we want to be a Christ centered church. So community of Christ. I think that's why they went in that direction.

John Dehlin [00:15:44] Gotcha. So that's sort of how the name got formed.

John Hamer [00:15:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:15:49] Okay. So what an amazing time. A church is staring itself in the face, realizing that many of the foundations upon which it was built are turning up to be non historical or non credible. And this may sound somewhat familiar to members of the LDS Church today as we start coming to grips with our own history. What does a church do? Do they just fold up the tent? Do they just say goodbye? Do they try and apologize or excuse? Do they take a full new direction? And it sounds like what they decided to do was what? I'll let you fill in the blank.

John Hamer [00:16:34] Well, out of those options, take a full new direction probably is the one that is what happened in terms of, like you mentioned, like, well, do we fold up the tent? That has actually happened in a different restoration church. There was a. The very first church which has the same Mormon origin as everybody else, was led by a woman named Pauline Hancock. And the first time that a woman was ever the leader of a Latter Day Saint church, ultimately she died. And then her successors, they ultimately had decided that none of the foundational claims of the Book of Mormon were credible and they ultimately voted to disband. So people have, there is, you know, people have ultimately decided to do that sometimes in these traditions, but no, with the community of Christ. What I think the decision has been with the members that have stayed with the church and with the leaders has always been to say, we have something that's been wonderful here. We have this tradition that's been going on for generations. We've created a wonderful community. We are doing great things. What is it that we have and why is it so good and how can we emphasize that?

John Dehlin [00:17:46] Right, right. And so that's where they take the name community, because they're good at building communities in Christ because it's where they're going to focus. And that becomes their new emphasis. What do they do about the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants?

John Hamer [00:18:03] So the Book of Mormon, obviously the Book of Mormon is scripture community of Christ people. The church itself considers it scripture people and the church. One thing that's very different in the two churches at this point is that I think that with the LDS Church, I think you can say that there's like a common set of beliefs, not that everybody believes the same thing, but at least there's a page that you maybe ought to be on that you might be able to list off of things that you would expect a Mormon to believe or a good Mormon or a true believing Mormon or at least a kind of Mormon to find that out. With the community of Christ, they take very seriously the idea of not having a creed at all. And individual members can believe anything. And they believe all kinds of different things. They all do. And so there are community of Christ members I know who are literal Book of Mormon believers. They believe that it's a history. They believe all of the characters are historical figures that did stuff that is important. There are members who believe that it absolutely is a 19th century document that's written by Joseph Smith and their conclusion is that it should be gotten rid of. I mean, there are people who definitely won't say that. And then there are community of Christ believers who will say. And it is therefore very important for us to look at as scripture and to see those revelations, see that inspiration and see what we with that additional knowledge, how that's important in our lives. And so there's that too. And so with the Doctrine and Covenants, I think there's probably actually a greater emphasis on Doctrine and Covenants than in the LDS Church because they continually add to the doctrine and covenants in the community of Christ. There are 163 sections and there's going to be another one in a couple months here probably. And so the new prophets are always adding new revelations. And people actually spend a lot of time on what the new Scriptures have to say. But you have to understand when you start to have a more nuanced view of scripture in general. There are problems with the New Testament, there are problems with the Old Testament. I think most scholars believe that, for example, the book of Deuteronomy doesn't date to the same age at all as the rest of the books of Moses and can have been written at the same time. And in fact, a lot of people believe that The Book of Deuteronomy is a pious fraud, you know, which is what Dan Vogel's argument is about the Book of Mormon. Well, there are all kinds of these problems, you know, with, with the New Testament and the Old Testament. And so I think that essentially what community of Christ, people in general, but not all of them, obviously everybody, they believe different things is they have a more nuanced view of scripture.

John Dehlin [00:20:55] Right. So talk a little bit about their decision to allow women to have the priesthood generally when that might have happened about if you can remember and the myths about how that affected or didn't affect the church.

Women and the Priesthood in Community of Christ

John Hamer [00:21:14] Well, we just had the 25th anniversary of the priesthood revelation that extended priesthood to women. What I would say about that is that in terms of affecting the membership. So we've been talking about all these changes that had been occurring in the 1960s and the 1970s and there were all kinds of changes. We've talked about some of these, just these ideas, this awareness, starting to have the capacity even to view the Book of Mormon as a non literal history that was new for people, the idea that Joseph might have instituted polygamy. So all of those things had started to be a big deal for the more conservative members. And so when the revelation came to extend the priesthood to women, that revelation was given in conjunction with the revelation to finally build the temple in independence. And in a way I think that was designed, inspired to be an olive branch where we can have something traditional and we can have something new. We'll walk forward together, but we'll also embrace our heritage. What's so important to us, our past. But whatever reason, it wasn't for a lot of people it wasn't enough of an all branch. And for them it was the last straw. And so for a percentage it looks like variously figured, it depends on what you say. But essentially it's a minority, let's say maybe 20% or a quarter of the population, depending on how you want to count it. It's more of the tithe payers, it's more of the people in North America and especially in the independence area. And so they were more vocal in that way. That minority ended up going into schism from the church. They decided that the church was in a state of disorganization and apostasy. They formed independent branches, which we call restoration branches, restorationists. And they held kind of aloof, kind of waiting for the church to stop being so liberal and terrible in their view.

John Dehlin [00:23:29] So they did lose a decent chunk of their membership as a result of that decision.

John Hamer [00:23:36] I would say, it's in the last straw sign it kind of sense. So in other words, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. The camel was already. Those people were already almost out of communion. And it was just that moment that they decided they had drawn this line in the sand. And they said, I won't go any further. And so that was a defining moment.

John Dehlin [00:23:57] Therefore, how many members do they have today?

John Hamer [00:24:00] About 200,000.

John Dehlin [00:24:02] About 200,000. Okay. And do you have a sense that they're growing, shrinking, or kind of going flat?

John Hamer [00:24:11] So they're growing internationally. And so in the same way, the LDS Church is experiencing so much growth all around the world. Likewise, the community of Christ has big growth. And I mean, there's lots of members. And poor Haiti now is one of the places where they've had a lot of members. But anyway, in Africa, in India, in Latin America and everything. But at the same time, the core membership in North America has been in a state of contraction. So they don't have as many members in North America as they once had.

John Dehlin [00:24:51] Right, right.

John Hamer [00:24:54] So the overall population is probably either the same or gaining. But anyway, there's a problem, as this would happen for the LDS Church, too. I mean, what's the percentage in the LDS Church of tithing that comes from the United States?

John Dehlin [00:25:07] Gotcha. So you wrote a really good post on Mormon matters, I don't know, a year ago or however long it was, and you gave a few myths about the reorganized church that you kind of wanted to dispel. Some of them we've talked about. The first was the RLDS Church gave only women the priesthood because they ran out of male smiths to lead the church. And that's a silly rumor. I've actually never heard it. Is that a pretty common one that you hear about?

Common Myths About the Community of Christ

John Hamer [00:25:37] I had heard people say that a lot, just LDS people. I think maybe it was from the old days. I think that maybe that was more present long time ago. But anyway, it's not true. They've got lots of smiths. So anyway, they could have. They could have picked a smith every, you know, last several times.

John Dehlin [00:25:54] And that's a pretty remarkable thing that at some point they decided themselves to end the blood succession. And they did that without being forced because as you just said, there were other cousins or, you know, relatives or descendants of Joseph that they could have picked and they didn't.

John Hamer [00:26:10] Right. There's dozens and dozens. No. Yeah. Wallace B. Smith, who was the final smith prophet who's still alive. He's the emeritus prophet of the church. He essentially. I think his counsel to the church on this question was that he didn't think that there was any reason why a modern church or a church nowadays, we should have a monarchy where you just have one family that's having a dynasty. In some ways, I think that the church benefited from having these kind of enlightened Smith prophets who were always, in a way, like Joseph, just a little bit too far ahead of what anybody really wanted to do. So it kind of made them do more than they otherwise would. But no, definitely at the end of that tradition, it was ended by a Smith prophet himself.

John Dehlin [00:27:07] That's pretty remarkable because one of the lessons of the civil rights movement, the Martin Luther King advanced was that power never abdicates itself voluntarily. And in this case, it actually did.

John Hamer [00:27:18] Actually did. And like I said, he's still alive. He's still emeritus prophet of the Church. He's very. He does a good job of not second guessing his successors. So in other words, he doesn't say, oh, I would have done it this way, I would have done this or that or anything. He's just very, very supportive.

John Dehlin [00:27:39] Right. That's great. Okay. The second myth was the community of Christ scrapped the Book of Mormon in order to join the World Council of Churches. And as you said, they have not scrapped the Book of Mormon, right?

John Hamer [00:27:50] Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [00:27:51] Yeah. They see it as scripture, maybe there's some who see it as literal history and others who don't. That's what you said before, Right.

John Hamer [00:27:59] I would say that there's none of the leaders probably see it as literal history, but there's a bunch of the members who maybe do. But definitely the leaders consider it to be very important. So I have listened to several apostles preach about the Book of Mormon and recovering it as an emphasis, emphasizing different parts of it for our lives today. So there's an apostle named Andrew Bolton who has been the chief proponent of developing a further peace and justice theology for the church. And he routinely preaches on the Zionic part of the Book of Mormon when there's the reign of peace and justice on the earth.

John Dehlin [00:28:40] Right. Okay. The third one that you mentioned was that the LDS Church changed its name because it wants to become another Protestant church. And you touched on this a bit. It definitely wanted to keep its Mormon identity and its heritage and its roots. It was more about it. How would you characterize? Just trying to make it more aligned with its new mission. Right. Its new focus and mission.

John Hamer [00:29:06] Right. I mean, I did touch on. The fact is, frankly, the name the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is actually a terrible name for a church all by itself. And so now add on to that, Reorganized, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. There's a biography John Whitmer Books published of an apostle, very important community of Christ, reforming apostle named Charles Neff, who was actually a convert to the RLDS Church. He wasn't raised rlds, and when he first heard the name of the church, his first reaction was, that is a terrible name for a church. Which it was. So I think it was a terrible name for a church. For a whole long time in the 70s, they experimented with branding, using the word saints. So that's in there, so you can see their logos. It'll say the church of, you know, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints Church. Just like putting Jesus Christ really big in the LDS logo now. And so they were trying to do that. No one liked that. The fact of the matter with the name saints is no one feels comfortable calling themselves a saint.

John Dehlin [00:30:17] Right? Yeah.

John Hamer [00:30:18] Nobody. I mean, I don't think you probably call yourself a saint to people.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] No, no, no, no.

John Hamer [00:30:23] You feel comfortable calling the people who suffered in Nauvoo or Missouri or whatever. You feel comfortable calling them the early saints. The saints did this and that, but not so much today. Are you willing to do that? So it was too. People didn't like that anyway. They ultimately came up with a name, like I say, that comes back to what close to the original name, but then they pick up on this community as an important value, too.

Priesthood Discrimination and the Case for Change

John Dehlin [00:30:48] Okay. The last myth that you list, you actually call pernicious. And it's the myth that the LDS Church should not end priesthood discrimination based on gender because it will hurt the church just like it did the RLDS Church. Tell us why you feel that's pernicious.

John Hamer [00:31:11] Well, I think it's pernicious because I think that it's a justifying bad behavior. So not ending the ban, not ending this current priesthood discrimination, I think is wrong. That's a personal belief on my part. I think that discrimination is wrong. So I think it's the same now as with the race ban. But why I think it's pernicious, to use that example, is that the RLDS Church has always had a completely different basis essentially than the LDS Church because it's always been the smaller church. It's always been the more fractious church. So it's not, you know, when you're dealing with a, like a brand dynamic, we're dealing with, you know, Something that is so much bigger and something that is so much smaller. It's completely, they're completely different organizations. And also the one is based on people who are very leader focused and obedient to authority. There's a lot of emphasis on obedience to authority in the LDS Church. There was never that kind of. People were definitely leaving all the time when they would disagree with the leaders. They're very casual with the leaders. They're very. In the community of Christ, people are very quick to point out that they don't give deference to their leaders. If I call President Veazey, who's the current prophet, if I call him President Veazey, people get mad at me and they want me to say Steve. Steve wants me to say Steve.

John Dehlin [00:32:45] So that'd be like calling President Monson Thomas or Tom.

John Hamer [00:32:50] Exactly. And so it's a very. And so, I mean, I'll talk to people and it's like, why, you know, I would. I'm. I play racquetball with him. What are you calling him president this and that for? So in other words, they have that. There's that difference already. And so I don't think, you know, so whereas there was a big change and there was, there was a fracture. I mean, there's been fractures throughout history when they make any, when they do anything that people leave. That happens all the time. And so that did happen with, you know, it's kind of a straw that breaks the camel's back with the, between the conservatives and the mainline church and the community of Christ over women's ordination. But it did not happen in the LDS Church over ordination of blacks. There were not a whole bunch of people who immediately got up, you know, from their stake center and walked out and said, I'm not going to, you know, be in a church that gives priesthood to the blacks. I mean, it just simply wasn't there. And I don't think there would be if it was definitely if it was prepared. In other words, if you. I'm not saying that they should announce it in April and just out of the blue and everything like that, although I think people probably wouldn't. Wouldn't leave over it in the LDS Church. But anyway, I think that you could get it set. You could do it in such a way that it wouldn't actually cause apostasy or schism.

John Dehlin [00:34:08] So don't use the RLDS church as an excuse to continue to do wrong. Yeah, right. Okay.

John Hamer [00:34:15] So in my opinion, do right. Anyway, so even though it did cause people to leave the community of Christ ultimately do what is right, let the consequence follow. And I think that they did what's right and it's been a, they're a remarkable beacon for having done it. They're doing what they believe and it, it may at its costume in a lot of cases.

John Dehlin [00:34:36] Yeah. So I'm going to ask you in just a second to close by just telling me what you love most about the community of Christ. But before I, before I ask you that question, I'm going to tell you what I love most about this story. And that will buy you some time to actually write down some bullets because I didn't tell you ahead of time. But you know, if you think about sort of Christ central message, or maybe even the central message of the atonement, at least for me, it has to do with the fact that we make mistakes. But there's a way to work through it. You make a mistake, you feel bad about it, you confess it, and then you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off and then you try to, to reorient yourself to be a better person and to march in a new direction and to sort of, you know, when you take the sacrament or when you're baptized or whatever, there's a rebirth where you get a chance to try again with sort of a new life and a new birth of freedom. And for me, if I think about the LDS church, which I love and I'm a member of, I almost think of it like, you know, IBM, you know, in the 70s, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. You know, if you wanted to get computer set up or if you wanted to get your business going, you call IBM. They're professional, they are well staffed, they're well resourced, they'll come in, they're methodical, they're experienced, they're seasoned, they'll come in, they'll implement a system, they'll make it right, they'll do a good job. It may be kind of expensive, but at the end of the day, you know what you're getting and you get what you wanted and they set you up nicely to be efficient and effective in what you want to do. It's probably not a fair characterization, but for the sake of this comparison, I'm going to invoke it.

What Makes the Community of Christ Distinctive

John Hamer [00:36:45] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] As I think about how I would personify the community of Christ, it's like the church itself has taken seriously the admonitions of Jesus and they've said, you know what? Yeah, we're going to admit that we had it wrong. We'll just fess up. We'll confess that. And like you said, we're going to do what is right and we'll let the consequences follow. And instead of trying to create the impression that things aren't, you know, that things really aren't what they seem or to try and hide, they're going to say, we're going to admit it, we're going to confess it, we're going to forsake it, we're going to pay the penalty of those mistakes. But then we're not going to just quit. We're going to stand up, we're going to look ahead. We're going to define ourselves not by the mistakes of our past. We're going to figure out what we want to be in the future, and then we're going to try and live true to that future vision again, returning to Christ and being as Christlike of an institution as we can possibly be. That's what I love about this narrative. And I don't mean it to call the LDS Church to do what our LDS Church did. I don't mean it to disparage the LDS Church because I love the LDS Church. But there's something tender and special to me about that arc and that narrative and that personification of what the church has done. Now that I've droned on, maybe let's end.

John Hamer [00:38:27] No, I think that was wonderful. No, I think on what you're saying, you're mentioning, okay, admitting your errors, you could start tomorrow. John, a perfectly innocent church that would have never done anything wrong. You never didn't go back in the past, and it didn't have a Spanish Inquisition or any other error. But it would also be totally innocent. It would be able to fall into error the next day. And so one of the things that is wonderful about humans and earth life and the entire experience, I think, is what we're supposed to be learning from error and experience. And so admitting your error, learning is part of the beginning of learning from it and moving forward in such a way that you do better to begin with in the future. And so in the community of Christ example, one of the ways that you can be an effective peace and justice church, perhaps, is because you have this example of the militancy of the church taking up arms and losing and also suffering as a result of that error in the 1830s and 1840s. So that's definitely, I think, something that could be said about it for me, if we were going to bring it to what's the most important thing here that I See out of this. So what caused me as a longtime seventh generation person who was a cultural Mormon who was very defined my life as Mormon as a kid, as a teenager, what caused me to leave was sexism. I just couldn't square that. I was able to not be as worried, I think even about the different truth claims. Ultimately those weren't the things that it wasn't my reading of the book of Abraham and deciding, well there's no way that this is what the Egyptian here says, which I also did at the time. But what was the most important thing to me was the fact that my mom, who I thought was the smartest person in my ward, had this incredibly subordinate position within it and it was more than I was willing to put up with. And so that was the thing that, that caused the rupture for me personally. And what I find in the community of Christ has been something that I can say, wow, this is an expression of my heritage that I think so much of that I can really be proud of with what these guys have all done. So anyway, that's my finding with them and when I did encounter them I've just been, been impressed.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] What's it like to see a female apostle sort of minister to the congregation or a female bishop or whatever the equivalent would be? I know for me it was powerful at Sunstone to see a female apostle walking around, but what's it been like for you?

John Hamer [00:41:36] So I attended a congregation, a community of Christ congregation in Independence where it just happened that one of the female apostles, they were doing ordinations that week and to have her in the regular Mormon just er, vision, it's like an archetypal vision of the person putting their hands on the head with the other priesthood holders and giving a priesthood ordination blessing. It just makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It's very powerful. Like I said in that way there's things that are exactly the same. When you go all the way back, we have the same DNA and then when you see that it's very powerful.

Reflections and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [00:42:25] Well, John Hamer, this has been a wonderful ride through a brief or maybe not so brief history of the RLDS Church and the community of Christ. I just want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing this story with us and maybe I'll just ask you one favor and that's that maybe you'll consider coming back on at a later date and telling us more of your own personal story. Would that be something you're willing to do?

John Hamer [00:42:50] Absolutely. Thanks so much, John. I really really enjoyed this.

John Dehlin [00:42:53] All right. Thanks, John. And you guys, take care.

Guest [00:42:56] It may not be on the mountain height or over the stormy sea it may not be at the battle's father My Lord would have need of me but if by a still, small voice he calls to pass that I do not know I'll answer, dear Lord with my hand in Thine I'll go where you want me to go I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord over mountain or plain or sea I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord I'll be what you want me to be Perhaps today there are loving words which Jesus would have me speak There may be now in the paths of sin Some wondrous whom I should see O Savior, Thou wilt be my guide Though dark and rugged the way my voice shall echo the message sweet I'll say what you want me to say I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord over mountain or plain or sea I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord I'll be what you want me to be there's surely somewhere A lowly place in our sin of his field so wide Where I may labor through life's short day For Jesus the crucified so trust in my all to thy tender care and knowing Thou lovest me I'll do thy will with a heart sincere I'll be what you want me to be I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord over mountain or plain or sea I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord I'll be what you want me to be I'll be what you want me to be Be I'll be what you want me to be.

John Dehlin [00:46:09] Sam.

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