While visiting Independence, Mo., a few years ago, a Brigham Young University religion professor attended a World Conference of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Observing the contentious debate under way during one "particularly nasty" legislative session, he was asked by a church official what he thought of the proceedings. "His eyes dilated, he said, 'Well, it was very interesting. I just can't believe people talk to your president that way.' "
Smiling at the sentiment, W. Grant McMurray says he now hears those words "with a more appreciative ear," since he is the one taking those jabs at the helm of the church, newly named the Community of Christ. He openly acknowledged the difference in treatment from members of his faith as opposed to that afforded President Gordon B. Hinckley of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, during an address to the Mormon History Association last week.
Recalling how he had to worm his way to the dais last summer in Nauvoo, Ill., during a historic commemoration hosted by his own faith, he remembered it was as if "Moses was parting the Red Sea" when President Hinckley appeared for the service.
Yet McMurray notes that the discrepancy is, in some ways, of his own making. As the latest in a series of liberal "reformer" presidents to influence the future of the faith, he has widely downplayed the concept of being a mouthpiece for God's will, preferring a Protestant-based legislative process that is but one of the many differences that distinguish his church from its former namesake.
Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, the LDS Church was birthed in a history of bitter persecution, yet early members revered Smith as God's prophet on Earth. But when Brigham Young led the bulk of Latter-day Saints to the Salt Lake Valley after Smith's death in 1844, most of the small group who stayed behind in Nauvoo, Ill., wanted Smith's son as their prophet, and waited until the adolescent boy matured enough to "reorganize" their branch of the church in 1860.
After several of Smith's progeny served as president of the RLDS Church, McMurray was named president in 1996, breaking the ancestral line of succession that had endured for more than a century. It was another major departure from a focus on the faith's historic precedent, to be followed by a change in the church's name on April 6, 2001.
He remembers joking with colleagues that members used to reel off the church's name, followed immediately by "we're not the Mormons." But defining any organization by what it is not doesn't make for strength, McMurray said. So in the 1960s, as the church began to expand outside North America and encountered non-Christian seekers, leaders began to re-examine their faith, their theology and their reason for being.
"Buddhists and Hindus began asking us what we really believed. Some of our leaders listened and realized we didn't have good answers to give." Thus the search for an identity distinctly separate from the LDS Church began.
But there was resistance from the beginning. Many traditionalists clung fiercely to historic precedent, and by the early 1980s there was a groundswell of support within the church for building a temple in Independence, Mo. — just as founder Joseph Smith had said should happen. The push raised questions in McMurray's mind, and since his faith doesn't perform proxy baptism and marriage ordinances for the dead, as Latter-day Saints do in their temples, he couldn't see a reason to build.
To him, it would be "nothing more than a place of worship, and we have plenty of those. It was hardly the stuff of which dreams are made." Yet such construction was a priority to a large body of conservative members, who believed in Joseph Smith's prophetic vision and viewed leaders' increasing move toward modernity as steps to apostasy.
In 1984 then-church president Wallace B. Smith said he received a revelation to ordain women to the priesthood and to begin construction of the temple. In one stroke, McMurray said the move "linked the present and the future" for the faith, which was undergoing a distinctly Protestant reformation process that continued to distance it from historical pronouncements of early leaders.
But rather than uniting the warring factions within the church, it was the final wedge that split them apart.
Between 30,000 and 40,000 members — one quarter of its active membership — left the faith, many to form their own churches, according to Bill Russell, who teaches history at Graceland University. They were led by members of the Seventy of the RLDS Church who believed the leadership of their former faith had fallen away from the truth. The largest breakoff group called itself the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and shortly after organizing on April 6, 1991, its general assembly voted to declare the RLDS Church "out of order" and to recognize the new church as "its lawful, spiritual successor."
By 1993, an American Indian named Marcus Juby was called to serve as "prophet, seer, revelator and translator," but within a few years, nearly all of the church's leaders had left the faith, including Juby, Russell said. The result is an even wider array of splinter groups.
In the meantime, what is now the Community of Christ turned its emphasis toward the "pursuit of peace, reconciliation and healing of the spirit," as outlined by Wallace B. Smith at the time of the temple's dedication in 1994. The building likely "looks nothing like Joseph Smith envisioned, or what most members of the Community of Christ envisioned," McMurray said.
But it was designed specifically as "an expression of how a new generation can re-birth an old symbol, connecting it to the past in ways that do not constrict" for the future. With daily prayers for peace in the temple sanctuary and a children's peace pavilion to engage youth in what it means to be a peacemaker, McMurray says the church continues to become "life-centered, rather than doctrine-centered." The focus is not on its past or an eternal future, but on needs in the present for 250,000 members in 50 nations.
Russell said much of the shift from "sect to denomination" for the church in the past 30 years has to do with the fact that many of its leaders have been through Protestant seminaries, and the shift from a working-class to a more middle-class membership since World War II. Social issues that now face mainline Protestant denominations are also under discussion, including the ordination of homosexuals to the priesthood.
A strong segment of the church is "very favorable toward respecting and recognizing committed monogamous relationships," including all members of the church's First Presidency, Russell said. But there is also strong opposition, particularly in the Bible Belt South. A 1982 policy prohibits ordination of homosexuals, but McMurray has openly admitted there have been times he simply ignored the guideline.
Two resolutions adopted at the faith's 2000 World Conference also put it squarely in line with liberal Protestant traditions, Russell said — one opposing the death penalty and another discouraging members from owning guns.
On balance, members are pleased with the reformation of the church and the distancing from its early history, though a wide range of feeling still exists regarding the Book of Mormon. "Some would say it's not history but should be in the canon because it's the founding document of our faith, and others say we should just forget about it." Many top church leaders take the former position.
As for other changes, "most of us would say, thank God we've dropped the lineage thing now," Russell said. "Along with polygamy, those were our two reasons for being back in the 1850s, and both of those issues are now gone."
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