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Intro and Outro music used with permission:
“For Everyone Born,” Community of Christ Sings #285. Music © 2006 Brian Mann, admin. General Board of Global Ministries t/a GBGMusik, 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30308. copyright@umcmission.org
“The Trees of the Field,” Community of Christ Sings # 645, Music © 1975 Stuart Dauerman, Lillenas Publishing Company (admin. Music Services).
All music for this episode was performed by Dr. Jan Kraybill, and produced by Chad Godfrey.
NOTE: The series that make up the Project Zion Podcast explore the unique spiritual and theological gifts Community of Christ offers for today's world. Although Project Zion Podcast is a Ministry of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Community of Christ.
Thanks for listening to Project Zion Podcast!
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
Intro and Outro music used with permission:
“For Everyone Born,” Community of Christ Sings #285. Music © 2006 Brian Mann, admin. General Board of Global Ministries t/a GBGMusik, 458 Ponce de Leon Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30308. copyright@umcmission.org
“The Trees of the Field,” Community of Christ Sings # 645, Music © 1975 Stuart Dauerman, Lillenas Publishing Company (admin. Music Services).
All music for this episode was performed by Dr. Jan Kraybill, and produced by Chad Godfrey.
NOTE: The series that make up the Project Zion Podcast explore the unique spiritual and theological gifts Community of Christ offers for today's world. Although Project Zion Podcast is a Ministry of Community of Christ. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Community of Christ.
[inaudible].
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to another episode of Project Zion. This podcast explores the unique spiritual and theological gifts the restoration offers for today's world project Zionist sponsored by the latter day seekers team from community of Christ
Speaker 1:[inaudible].
Speaker 3:Hello and welcome to the project Zion podcast. My name is Carla long and I'm your host for this series percolating on faith, a series designed to discuss topics related to faith. Our guests for the podcast are always two of my favorites. Tony and Charmaine Chavela Smith. Welcome back. You too. Thank you so much for continually showing up and I, I've actually been speaking to my boss and we're going to start doubling what we pay you.
Speaker 4:Oh, we can hardly wait to get that check.
Speaker 3:Was that in a dollar 12? You can get yourself a hamburger, right? Well not at any place. Good. But you probably can get this hamburger somewhere. Um, today's topic from what I hear is, um, we're going to be discussing the idea, this idea of the one true church and idea that community of Christ had in the past, although that has kind of, and know that has definitely gone away. But I can even remember in my childhood that people were still talking about the one true church and how community of Christ. Then our LDS was the one true church. Um, that was in the early eighties or so. And while it takes a while for things to trickle into Kansas, how did this idea get started and how the community Christ kind of move away from that.
Speaker 4:Hmm. That's a really great questions. And there's like a historical side to them and the theological side and personal sides as well. Scary. Anshul yeah. So ask her. Yeah. Oh that's right. You're biblical. Definitely, definitely a biblical side to it. So maybe a place to start is to start with the origins of the movement that Joseph Smith Jr began and its context. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 3:if we look at the area where we're Duncan's family was all the talk about with women followed the burned over district or an area that had been,
Speaker 5:had a lot of religious activity over the space of a decade or so where there's a lot of competition between various, both denominations and groups. Um, some that are not identifiable yet as denominations. But there's a lot of, um, preaching that's going on and we call it competitive, is that in some ways, um, preachers would have seen this as a, as a field ready for harvest as, uh, as many people had left, um, behind whether in there, in the, as they immigrated or as they moved across the country, left behind, um, more, um, predictable religious life and ties to particular doc denominations. And there's this, all this ferment of new ideas and new ways of understanding God in the sense of a nation creating itself. And therefore that means that comes over into views of religion. And there's new movements everywhere that are trying to reimagine and live in new ways, um, this, this primary story of Jesus of the Kingdom. Um, so, so it's, it's a great place with a lot of potential and a lot of people who are both distancing themselves from organized religion and also longing for connection. And so this, this several sweeps of groups coming through with the camp meetings and they're, um, promises of salvation and highly often highly emotional[inaudible], um, experiences and, and worship. Um, which was, which both served as entertainment and also as, um, warning for people to get saved before they die of some direct deadly disease. Um, which were pretty common in that time. So there's, there's this, that's part of the context is these many different denominations, many different people trying to prove that their view is the most accurate. Their view is the one that leads to salvation. The kind of experience they can provide is the one that can assure you that you are good with God and that your eternity is, um, is established in some way. So that's a whole atmosphere of dialogue and debate between different, um, religious mostly here Christian Christian voices. And so proving who is the best and the truest to the original story was a sport in the time. What Charmaine's describing is the period in American religious
Speaker 6:three called the second great awakening. And it's typically data's from about 1790 until roughly 1850 or so. And it's this period of like really a vigorous revival activity that starts in the period following the American revolution and one history. And I like a lot. Um, uh, Nathan Hatch wrote a book called the democratization of American Christianity. And so in this, in this culture shaped by the American revolution and the constitution and all of that, there's this new sense that the individual individual is Sri to figure it out for themselves. And it needs to be free from, from the remnants of old religious tradition that, that are now viewed as kind of binding people down. And so that's part of the context. Another part of the context, as you look back into that era, all of these, all of these Protestant revivalists, um, and this includes the people connected with the origins, the restoration with, they all had a working assumption, an assumption, by the way that turns out not to have been right, but it was their working assumption and we have to understand it for what it was. Their working assumption was it, there must have been an original Christianity, like the original real thing, your original recipe, we'll call it. And, and that you wanted, you wanted to recover this original recipe. One of the problems with this assumption is that the Bible, they all turn to, didn't support that idea very well because you could argue a Presbyterian model of church organization or a Methodist model of church organization or Baptist model, or even a Roman Catholic Molly, you could argue all these models of church organization from the Bible, but that didn't seem to face people. They all assumed there must be an original and you have to have the original to be some sense of right with God. To have the right blueprint means that you then have the right and true church. So that was one of their working assumptions that there's this one truth thing the Christianity started off with. You have to get back to it and that the Protestant reformation didn't do a good enough job getting back to it. Right. And I, and[inaudible],
Speaker 5:this is often called permit primitivism and I think we've talked about that a bit before, trying to comb through the new and create a picture of what the church looked like. Um, and probably in our movement we would've said, what the church that Jesus established look like? Um, of course, again, Jesus didn't establish a church. Um, the church grew up around those who believed that his life and death and resurrection or something special and it didn't get separated out from Judaism or you know, another 40 to 50 years. So, um, but they didn't know that. And so they're looking for this, what is the, what is the true representation of what it means to follow Jesus? And if we can do it like the first chance century followers of Jesus, then we've got it. Right. Yeah. So it was a matter of actually several levels. There's a, if we could have the right offices, um, so you know, there again combing through the scriptures to saying, well, there was bishops in, there were deacons. Well I'm put, there were also elders, you know, in some places. And so they're trying to use all of these bits and pieces to create, um, the right offices, the right structure for authority, but they're also trying to, um, pick up vestiges of, well, what, what does it mean? What are the things you have to believe to be as close to that early church as possible? And so among different groups, there were the battling, I call it the battle battling lists. So you know, you have to believe, um, you know, in the, in the virgin birth, you have to believe in certain things about who Jesus is and how his death or his resurrection brings salvation. And it would've been, you know, some nominations would have held up, some others would have held up others. And so there was the thing that began to feel and I, and our movement, uh, certainly inherited this and carried it on that your status with God was determined by whether or not you had the right list of beliefs. Um, I don't know. I think that's a, so there's those, there's um, you know, what does it look like? You have the proper structure. Do you have the proper authority then do you have the proper list? And so maybe one thing we can add in here too is that, um, Joseph Smith Jr have this experience as a teenage boy, the grove of trees in New York state. And
Speaker 6:of course there's six different accounts, six different versions of this vision. And as you, as you read them from earliest to latest, you know that he, you can notice that he develops the story as it goes in the latest version of this account. Um,
Speaker 7:cool.
Speaker 4:Oh, which is the 1842 one
Speaker 6:whole story becomes a story about restoring the original church.[inaudible]
Speaker 4:and I think that's the story that lots of community of Christ people grew up with. I'm sure pastor Mormons grew up with that story too. It's a, it's that the experience in the grove was about getting back to the original church and that nobody else had it. All their creeds are an abomination to God, et Cetera, et cetera. What's really interesting is if you look at it,
Speaker 6:the earliest account that Joseph wrote, um,
Speaker 4:in that earliest account, which is the least affected by like subsequent developments of the movement he started, um, what he describes is more like a conversion experience, very classic frontier, Protestant revivalist conversion experience in, in which he's struggling with personal sin and struggling with the sin he sees around him and in the earliest account, Christ appears to him and it's really about the forgiveness of his sins and some kind of sense of calling. It does not have anything much to do about restoring a church at that point. So that as, as he, as the church that he begins unfolds as he develops it and changes it.
Speaker 7:Hmm.
Speaker 4:Then in subsequent retellings of the story, the idea of,
Speaker 6:of how he's there to restore the original church, uh, becomes more and more important to the story. So I might also add that in what? For Community, Christ People's doctrine and covenants. Section one. There's this statement that Joseph makes about about the sting, the only true and living church upon the face of the earth with which I, the Lord am well pleased. And so this whole, this culture, this whole set of assumptions about getting back to an original and B, the, there must have been a right a right starting point. It must've been a perfect structure at the beginning. Somehow got corrupted and what Protestants did not fully recover
Speaker 4:recapture. That's, that's where, that's where the one true church idea basically finds its origins. So,
Speaker 3:Gosh, what I'm hearing you guys say, well first of all, let me just say Charmaine, what I found most surprising in what you said is that people used to go to church for entertainment. I mean, no, I'm just kidding. It's Super Fun. Everyone should come to go to church. It's fine. I believe these days, isn't it? No, not community of Christ at least. Um, there's just a little plug for community of Christ. But you know, it just sounds like what they were trying to do was kind of one up each other, right. And say, well, my church is better than your church because, and my church is better than your church because, and so people were kind of vying for followers in some ways.
Speaker 5:Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you could have that combination of um, convincing use of script, convincing use of rhetoric and convincing experience, you had a pretty powerful tool to have people follow to your way of thinking or your personality or your denomination if it was the core group at any rate. So yeah. Yeah, it was, um, and it was entertainment because, um, well except for the offering it was free and you know, you could, you could, the whole community would often come out when they came around with their tents. And so you might, you might learn some things about your neighbors you didn't otherwise know. So if I was, you know, concession as part of the service.
Speaker 6:Yeah. And, and what's not entertaining about regular threats of hell and damnation? Carla?
Speaker 3:Gosh, I can't think of anything better. Perhaps
Speaker 5:people being slain in the spirit or overcome by the spirit. So
Speaker 6:[inaudible] bibles were like, the revivals were like the worlds of fun of, of the, you know, the frontier. So I do remember a comment, a cynical commentator, speaking of the revivals said, uh, that this, uh, a contemporary, these revivals said that sometimes as many souls were created as were saved at revivals. Wow.
Speaker 5:Forever.
Speaker 6:You're hinting at what else was going on?
Speaker 3:How interesting.
Speaker 5:Yeah. Oh, that's so awesome. Yeah. So this is kind of, it, it's almost, it's a bit of a contagion though. You know, when one person or one group is trying to prove that they're right, um, the defensiveness of others or the offense, you know, taking the offense for others to then prove that there's is, you know, more, right. Um, and which means either tearing down the other's view or providing a more convincing kind of approach. It was all part of it. And when you get caught up into that cycle, then it's hard to disentangle and step back and say, well, where might God be in all of this? And that that doesn't happen for a while
Speaker 6:and, and nobody is really aware of or asking questions about the assumptions everybody holds in this particular context. Um, what scripture about scripture, about the original recipe, about what Christianity is and isn't. Um, these are Frontier Protestants and I include the Joseph Smith family there too. These are Frontier Protestants and they share a widespread set of assumptions about, about the Bible, about religion, about that they all pretty much agree that Catholicism is evil and that somehow, uh, it doesn't represent true Christianity. And, and they also all share this assumption about getting back to the original plus in this democratized environment in the United States say circa 1800 to 1830. They, they share a belief that the individual is able on their own to figure all this out. And I think, you know, for better or worse that that turns out to event a, an assumption that's, that's um, very deeply written into American religion. Um, I call it the role of your own approach to Christianity and sale. They all, they all assume that the individual is able to do the able and competent to do that.
Speaker 5:And this is back to the, to then Rukus trying to dis to convince individuals that theirs was the best. You you start out with, you know, where we have the structures or we have the offices that would have been in the earliest church and you know, here throwing scriptures back and forth could show that you have, um, the proper structures. And then, uh, within our movement there was the, the next step of proving that you have the one true authority. And so, um, Joseph not receiving his authority, his ordination from anybody from his time, but receiving it, um, from, from um, people from the past. Basically John The baptist, right? Yeah. Well, and seamless with, uh, yeah. So, so the, here's a newly established source of authority that is questionable in a way. And so for our movement, that sense of we have been, it's, we're the only ones who have to authority because it comes from an unquestionable source from, not this time, but from a past time.
Speaker 6:The idea there
Speaker 5:was to do an end run around thousands and thousands and 1500 years of tradition and that that somehow would get you back to the original way better. So, so yeah. So then, then you have to conclude that we are the only ones who have proper authority. Uh, our priests are the only ones who have authority to, to baptize in a way that brings salvation or that brings a affective connection with God. Um, our priests are the only ones who are authorized to ordain the next generation of priests. And so that then is like the ultimate arguing argument against other denominations because they're, they're very ministers are not authorized or not properly off.
Speaker 4:So other churches have been wrong from the start.
Speaker 6:That became very quickly the assumption of the early Laverty St Movement that this was a whole new thing that was getting back to the original, that nobody had been able to recover because it needed to be recovered somehow, I'll say magically by divine revelation. Right. That was the only way it could be recovered
Speaker 5:and either the other denominations, what authority they had, it was either perverted or diluted, um, perverted over time because of abuses of priesthood, you know, whatever age they wanted to point to or diluted of its rightness over time. And so this was like a new infusion of, uh, authority, um, that nobody else had.
Speaker 4:So let me back the clock up historically just a little bit to say that a lot of what we're describing is also, I'll call it leftover business from the Protestant reformation. Right? And, and, and I think that these, these Frontier Protestants in this democratized environment, they, they really did not know a lot of what we call church history, meaning the history of Christianity. They knew they knew their traditions, they knew their bibles well, they knew their current experience and they knew this and that about Martin Luther and other reformers, but they really did not know the history of Christianity. And so as you, as you back this clock up to around 1500, you see that once the Protestant reformation got started, the question, the question of where do you find authentic Christianity, uh, had been on the table for, you know, 300 years before Justice Smith's time. Thus there's a proliferation of denominations in groups each trying to articulate what they see as authentic Christianity. So the people on the American frontier inherited this, this long tradition of trying to get back to authentic Christianity and, um, goods did sewn in an environment where they didn't really know anything about development or evolution of a Christian faith from the early second century on. That's an important piece to the puzzle.
Speaker 3:I was actually thinking that, um, I have stood at the door, the castle church in Wittenberg and thought about Martin Luther Hammering those 95 theses up. Um, and you know, I was thinking about that and how new it was in 1790 when the, um, when the second grade awakening started, Protestantism was only, it was less than 300 years old. And, um, so I mean that sounds like a long time, but it's not a very long time when it comes to religions, right? The Catholic Church, like if you are a Christian, you are going to be Catholic. And it had been around for what, 1300 years, a long time, a long time to get all those right. And also the Protestants were rebels, right? And so like they're always trying to question authority and figure out things. And, and in some ways the second grade awaken a wakening might've been like, uh, another rebellion against Protestantism or did I overstate that? I don't know if I did.
Speaker 4:I think it's, I think it's just a, for a further, a further rebellion, a further revolution and so almost, and almost an echo of the reformation, but again, done, done with a set of assumptions that eventually will turn out to have been not, not very helpful assumptions. And so, you know, that we'll in our, in our discussion will get eventually here too. Um, how did community of Christ find its way out of this whole pair of this whole one true church paradigm is the, you know, the, the problem with this one from church paradigm was that everybody was saying that theirs was the one true and they had no, um, framework within which to see Christianity as something more than a collection of the right beliefs and structures, um, was very, very hard to see Christianity as something larger than their own particular version of it. They'll take, it'll take a while for that to happen.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, let's, let's move on to that conversation. Not necessarily the community of Christ part now, but, um, what does it mean to be the one true church? And I'm just going to go ahead and show my bias here and I'm going to ask the same question of how is this idea damaging? So what does it mean to be the one true church? Like what do churches who believe they're the ones who church believe or you know what I'm asking and how is this idea
Speaker 4:hurtful? Well, let's, let me just, let me do lean back. The historical clock up even farther on that one. So the idea of truth in Christianity of course is important. I mean, it's right, right from the start. Um, but the, if you, if you go back to the second, third century, in fourth century of Christianity, you'll discover that Christian communities had to identify themselves over against alternatives over against, um, Judaism over against Greco Roman traditional religions over against a phenomenon called gnosticism. And so they developed ways to say that, to talk about themselves as the holy universal church. And then when you get to the, the fourth century to the Nicene creed into the creed is, is written the statement that the church is one holy Catholic slash universal and Apple Systolic Church. In other words, what makes the church Christian is all of these things. And the primary thing that they're trying to articulate there is that the church has to stay anchored in the Jesus story as it was passed on by apostolic tradition, through scripture and through liturgy. And so the idea that there is a true, a true form of Christianity versus abberant forms was there from the second, third and fourth centuries on. So it's a, it's a very old idea. And you know, in the, in the timeframe, um, it was, it was a very useful idea because for example, forms of the s I this, um, religious McCollum gnosticism really had a view of the created world, which said it was a mistake, did not come from God came from an inferior deity, but the body was bad. That materiality was bad. The Jesus was not incarnate but, but a was wearing a, uh, human physical, the sties and they, everybody who believed, who could believe this particular version of the story was in the know and everybody else was ignorant. That's gnosticism. And the Church said, that's not really the Jesus story. And so that was okay in its context. But the idea of being the one true as it develops through history, does those have some other side effects? And that refers to what you're calling a damaging side effects?
Speaker 5:Well, I think one, um, that's probably kind of obvious, but it would be
Speaker 4:that[inaudible]
Speaker 5:if you're spending all your time trying to prove that you are the one true church or the one true way of thinking, what becomes the focus is yourself and, and your group. Um, and so it's pretty easy then for the, the actions, the sacraments, the liturgy, the beliefs of the church to become the primary focus. Uh, what you preach about, what people spend time talking about. And it's really easy to forget that it's about God. It's about price. It's about the Holy Spirit. It's about, um, the Kingdom of God. It's about God's desire for all of creation, not just for us who believe this one way. We think that we're righter than everybody else. So it becomes very, um, focused on, on self or on the denomination or, or sect. And so, um, that's I think spiritually and emotionally a huge danger because we can individually become very egotistical. We're part of the one true church. Everybody else is stupid and nobody else can have a valid relationship with God unless they're part of this particular group as well. Uh, it, it means what God is doing in other people who are in other places, other places, um, denominationally or culturally. Um, and it lifts us up. It leaves this the individual or the group up above others. And so arrogance rather than tenderness, um, demanding, um, respect rather than serving others. It does all of these things that are contrary to the example and the teachings and the in the meanings of Jesus' life, death and resurrection that um, everyone for courts to, to believe in, but they get pushed to the background and our own individuality or uniqueness as a group goes to the poor.
Speaker 6:Here's a, it's a great story in the, in the synoptic gospels where the disciples come to Jesus and they say, uh, teacher, we, we saw some other people, you know, casting out demons in your name and we told them to stop it. And Jesus is like, seriously, this is my paraphrase by the way. And she's like, nobody, nobody who does does something in my name is going to speak against me. You know, uh, it's a very interesting story that was, eat has always been easy to forget. If you're working within a framework of having to be the one right to structure it is that the, the grace of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the risen Christ is not owned by a church. Um, if it could be owned by a church, then it would be an idol and it would not be worth, uh, were worshiping at all.
Speaker 5:And that's one of the other dangers is that it can easily become, um, see what's the word? Um, not spoken out loud but kind of clarified. Thank you. It quickly can become an implication that in order to be okay with God, however you see that, or the only way to have salvation is to be part of this one. True. Whatever it is. And so then some ways you are holding God's action hostage by basically saying, God can only act through this body. Um, what God wants is only what we want. And so it really does become a worship of, of ourselves or structure and assuming that we alone because we're so right or true or whatever, um, are the ones with those words or actions or beliefs that brings salvation.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I think these, these strong theological systems do kind of form a strong communities, have a set up with this very carefully protected sense of identity. And I mean, someone could argue that's a good thing. The problem is that then the system that you, the humans have created out of bits and pieces of scripture and tradition and experience and so on, the system becomes the worship object. And any way you slice that, certainly from biblical terms, that's, that's the description of an idol. Um, so it's, it's possible to say instead what, what I want to want to do is I want to be as faithful to the Jesus story as I can be. And that I recognize this. This Jesus story has a large relational component to it. It's not about just a bunch of ideas. And so, um, there's a relational side, there's a communal side to it and there's my desire to live as faithfully as I can by that story. That's, that's different from saying I have the one true system. If you're not, if not buying my system, somehow you, you are upside the pale.
Speaker 5:Yeah. You don't have access to God.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But that idea is so intoxicating though, isn't it? I actually remember when I was a child growing up in Kansas, our pastor was an older gentleman and I remember him in a sermon sharing about a dream that he had. And it was about airplanes and all of these airplanes were flying at this really low altitude except for the RLD s church, which was flying at this rate or altitude, a much higher altitude. And the idea that, you know, because we were flying higher, we knew more. We were, um, we were better than, and, and I'm going to quote my friend Monica in here in Salt Lake Con Congregation who likes to quote Nadia Boltz Weber who says, you know, every time you draw a line in the sand, Jesus is on the other side of it. And so[inaudible], which is a great quote, you know, but once you draw that line in the sand, right, it's like we're better, we're over here then that's when Jesus steps over. Right? Right. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, it's just, it just sounds like when you, when you think you know everything, that's when you realize you actually don't know anything.
Speaker 5:Right. And that's one of the problems for our denomination of becoming so one, it's so focused on being the ones who church is that it, it forced us to have to, um, focus on and defend Joseph Smith Jr because if we were the one true, then every part of our story had to be immaculate. It had to be perfect. And so we could only look at one way of describing our beginnings. We can only look at one way of, um, understanding who Joseph was and what he did. Otherwise it would cause everything to crumble because the one true had to have the perfect beginning. And so it was like, it's a trap as well. When you are the one true, you have to descend everything and you can't, you can't be a group of sinners following Jesus. You have to be, uh, you have to have it all right
Speaker 4:and you have to then protect what you see as an original vision. Right. Um, and that anything that moves away from the original vision must be wrong, even if it's even if it's a more appropriate unfolding of that. So that's a real trap. You mentioned Carla, the idea of the one true church or the one true something as an intoxicating idea. That's a great image, I think. And let me, let me push back my historical clock even way farther now and say that this is something I learned from the new testament scholar Luke Johnson. The idea that there's this one singular ultimate, absolute true is actually not a biblical idea at all to Greek idea. Huh Is it's a Greek philosophical idea and Christians have like for centuries constantly taken this philosophical idea and overlayed it on Christianity when in fact if you act, all you have to do is say, gee, why do we have four gospels and not one and why are there two creation stories in genesis one, two and three and that one creation story, the biblical authors were, we're far more comfortable with multiplicity and parality of meaning. Then the Greek philosophical tradition was, and yet that tradition has been used to interpret Christianity for centuries in a way that then creates this idea that there is a one true pure original that you have to hold and get back to and protect when in fact it, it's, there's so many dangers tied up with it and it's not even really a very biblical idea to start with. It's kind of interesting you think about it.
Speaker 3:It is interesting. So I mean you guys are kind of both alluding to, I'm moving into kind of a community of Christ. I'm part of this podcast, so let's, let's talk about that. When and how did community Christ let this idea go? I mean, I mean it was, it was hard and it was painful. And, um, so I think part of it has to do with us taking our blinders off when it came to Joseph Smith Jr but, but what else had to happen in order for us to decide that there was truth? There's a lot of truths.
Speaker 5:Well, I think that some of it was out of necessity. We talked a little bit, um, in the one about the three areas of how as the church was being pulled into new areas, we didn't know how to talk about Christ, how to bring Christianity to people who didn't have an idea of a single God and how our church members and our leaders were learning from other Christians. And in, we had been so good about creating boundaries of fear for our members. No, you don't want to go to another church and other denomination because your faith might be weakened. You didn't want to marry somebody outside of the faith because you'd be unequally yoked and your face would be weakened. And, um, you know, so there was all of these things that we created fear about interacting with other Christians. And, and yet in this situation, in different, different countries in Japan and Korea, we're learning from other ministers and experience shows us, tells us in the spirit bears witness that these are people whose sense of call is as real as our own, that God is at work in them. And that some of the things that we have have come to know about God or about Jesus or about the spirit is, is deeply rooted in them as well. And we no longer can we say, you know, we're the only ones who have some kind of authority. That's one
Speaker 6:of the[inaudible]
Speaker 5:things is exposure and interaction and,
Speaker 6:um,
Speaker 5:and maybe newly opened eyes to what God is doing in the world.
Speaker 6:So another thing that happened, and this was in the 1960s, is that the church are LDS church leaders became aware of these various issues and problems and started seeking, seeking guidance from other Christians here in the United States. And so in 1967 68, there was a series of meetings called the joint council seminars in which our LDS leaders invited three theologians from a Methodist seminary to come and in, in our churches, words help us enter the 20th century. Now this is in 1967 by the way. Um, and, and learn, learn Christian history, not from this narrow apologetic, uh, framework that we'd had and learn New Testament, not from this neuro apologetic framework, but what's, what can scholarship tell us about these. And so I'll take you to the year 1968 when the reunion material reasons are, are adults felt like family church camps. Um, 1968, the football was used for reunions called body of Christ written by a young adult who had some seminary training. His name was Harold CNI Beck. And in this book helps me back, argues that you very clearly lays out that we cannot look to the new testament for a model of how the church internally is supposed to be. Because if you look at the New Testament, historically what you see is that there never was an original church. There was early Christian communities connected to Jesus and these communities evolved their, their shipment from each other. Yeah. They're, their structures and forms differ. They changed through time. The church, the church is form structure changed to meet new contexts, new cultural settings and so on. And so that book made it impossible for us to say, Oh, we have elders, deacons, teachers, priests. See, I can prove, text us from the new question. And the early, early Christian Church had these two because no, there was no such thing as an early Christian Church that had all of these offices and structures. Um, a they evolved and changed, uh, as Christians met new cultural settings. So that book was really revolutionary and raised a lot of questions and for church members about, well, Gee, if we, if our structure's not the original structure, what, what does it mean for us to be a Christian Church? Maybe we need to look elsewhere.
Speaker 5:Another, another thing that was happening in that same time period is that there's a lot of changes socially. So one of the other, um Huh. Temptations dangers maybe of the one true church is that yes, there's a sense that we're the only ones with authority, the proper authority. We're the only ones who have the proper sacraments. We're the only ones with the proper set of beliefs. And then you start adding other things onto that too. You start adding on. We're the only ones who are living appropriately. And so there was a lot of rules about social kinds of things. And so I think back to the old preaching charts from like the 1920s and earlier that, you know, explicitly say no card playing, no dancing, you know, no revelry, all of these things.
Speaker 3:And,
Speaker 5:and so that was one of those 10 patients is that you not only say you have the right beliefs, but now you're going to tell everybody what is the right way to live their lives, all aspects of their lives. And that really started being challenged in the 60s with a whole generation who is questioning the structures around them and they're saying, well why can't we dance? What, how has that evil? Um, and, and challenging some of the, um, the social laws about, um, racial relationships and, um, questioning why there's poverty and why there is, um, so such an equity and how can that be justified by church bodies. So there's, there's all of that happening too. And um, you begin to see within the church, um, and even at Graceland, Omi, um, dances and even what I know and in the church and uh, maybe even Bingo, that was another one of those things. You don't play Bingo cause that's what the Catholics do. And so the, there, it's very close to gambling and you know, I mean,
Speaker 3:yeah, the Catholics know how to have fun.[inaudible]
Speaker 5:so, so you know, when, when, when, when pink singe, what part of hardy don't you understand? For about 120 years, we didn't understand any part of that.
Speaker 3:It sounds like it. I mean, and let's be honest, like the second that a church starts saying, this is what you can do. This is what you can do is this second that they're already outdated because somebody else has already thought about something else that they probably shouldn't be doing. So the man people are very creative,
Speaker 5:right? Yeah. That's,
Speaker 6:that's about, that turns religion into behavior control rather than keeping it grounded as first and foremost a relationship built on grace and love. And that's, that's another thing that was helping community of Christ, our LDS move away from the one true church pattern is that we increasingly began to understand grace and that God's God's relationship to us as always prior to our best thoughts and actions. God has sought us out, claimed this before we could even respond to that. That's God's goodness and grace.
Speaker 5:So we can't earn God's reward. We can't earn God's love. We can't earn God's acceptance because those are the gifts that God already has given. And that bias by thinking that even well being the one true church is in a way is a kind of works righteousness, right? You're doing everything right, you're part of the one's true. And so in some ways, you are under valuing the gifts that God has given us in, in Jesus, in Jesus' life and Jesus' teachings in his life and his resurrection. Um, so, you know, I think there was a, a growing awareness that there was more, there could be a whole lot more in our relationship to God besides being a good member of the church. Um, and that there were whole new depths, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, that were there and that, um, that we could begin to accept an access. Um, and, and they were unconnected with whether or not we were the one true church.
Speaker 3:Right. So it sounds like it's not only damaging to think that you're the one true church that holds all truth, so on and so forth, but it actually holds you back from the limits. Yeah. Limits your discipleship.
Speaker 5:Yeah. It really does because you think you've already arrived, right. And so there's no need to go deeper and, um, more sincerely into your relationship with God because you've already achieved what needs to be achieved. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Not Able, you're not able to do self criticism inside of that framework. You know, it's like I in some ways being a quote, one true church and being a prophetic church or oxymorons they don't fit together because a prophetic people will always be looking for new and better ways to respond to God's call in the world. And we'll also be on afraid to be critical of where they've been. Um, but if you're the one true and are protecting an original idea or model you, you, you can't say, you know, we were totally out to lunch on this particular thing. Um, so I, I think, I think we should both add here that once this deconstruction process started in the 1960s it was gonna put Community of Christ our LDS into a kind of wilderness zone for 40 years, 40 years in the wilderness. I mean, like you said Carla, if you've been intoxicated by the idea that you're the one true and then through a variety of ways you learn. Actually no, that is not a, that is, that is based on wrong assumptions. It's not helpful spiritually. It's not good. Theologically. We cannot be the one true. Then you have to answer the next question. So why should we be at all? And so it, it, it's taken us a while as a community to come up with really viable answers to that. And I'm, I'm excited by the answers we have come up with to that which will someday be deconstructed in favor of other ones.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm sure that the later on they'll be a podcast about maybe this podcast. It'd be like, oh my Gosh, those people were idiots. Yes. Oh go ahead.
Speaker 6:When I say we anticipate that, that we also anticipate we'll be dead by then.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank goodness. I kind of want to move on to s a a different type of topic that definitely relates to this. Um, we all know our, maybe our listeners don't know, but I'm a Kansas girl, moved to Utah and Utah has a, a different kind of animal completely is what I've learned. And since I've been out here, community Christ bishop here in Utah, I have heard the word apostate more in the last eight months than I've ever heard it in my entire life. And so, I mean, can we talk a little bit about the word apostate or apostasy? Like why would somebody call me that, for instance? And, um, what's the, what's the point of doing that?
Speaker 6:Okay,
Speaker 5:well, I would say one of the, well, from my experience growing up in the church that you were describing it at the beginning, um, as what you remember growing up as far as spending so much time, um, identifying how others aren't, what we are and how we are something more complete. Um, often the, the quickest way to make someone not a threat was to call them apostate was to say, you are outside of the realm of, of my one true truth. And that way, uh, makes you not a danger to the individual. Um, if you're called and you know, if someone's calling you in a class state than you are, then it's their way of saying you are, um, you are so far outside of the realm of the truth that, uh, I don't have to see you as a threat. I don't have to take you seriously. Um, that's not the original of
Speaker 4:apostate, but it became kind of a working, uh, and useful tool, at least with it within, um, within our LDS circles
Speaker 3:saying I shouldn't wear it as a badge of honor out here in Utah.
Speaker 5:It's really an interesting thing, but it is made, it's something to distance. It's something to dismiss. It's, it's[inaudible]
Speaker 4:it's cool to say you are outside of the realm of my rightness, um, to, to make, to, yeah, she diffused who you are and what you mean to say. It's kind of like a sound like a boundary marker. You know, I, I don't know if this is true in all the circles, but certainly in our LDS circles for, for ages and ages, our missionaries talk about an event they called the apostasy. And this was all in the one true church paradigm. They believe the true church was restored to Earth 1930. And so when did the original church disappear? And they use the term, the apostasy to describe the time when they believe the original church started by Jesus, uh, disappeared from the earth. And in all our LDS theology that was identified with the year five 70,[inaudible] 70, back after the year five 70, there was no longer any vestiges of the original church and it wouldn't be destroyed, would be restored until, uh, for 1,260 days, which they got from the book of revelation. And they interpreted those to me in years. So 1260 added on to five 70 would mean that the church was restored in 1830. So they, they took their belief that they were the one true original church restored, which means then that everybody else is wrong. And they historicized it into a story about when the original church disappeared. And so, um, I'm not sure that was going around and Joseph Smith Juniors time at all, but, but certainly the idea that other Christians were connected to an apostate costing. Yeah. Apostate churches are apostate forms of the church. That's, that has some early restoration roots. Um, so that's part of where it comes from. And the tradition, but you know, it's was typically used like Charmaine with describing it as, uh, a way to say I'm inside your standing outside. I think the word op was the sia in Greek literally means standing away from her. So, so you have, you stand away from because you've walked away from the truth is kind of what's, what's behind the word and some that is so interesting.
Speaker 3:I, you know, I'm all for math and religion. I am 1000% behind that. But why in the world that they come up with a number five 70, it just because five 70 plus 1260 equals 1830 or was there some event?
Speaker 5:It's really, it's really, it's the other way around. It's because 1830 minus 1260 equals five 70. Yeah. So if the, the church, their assumption was that the church was restored in 1830 and this number from revelation said, you know, that the, the woman was taken up the church, um, taken into the Wilderness for wilderness and then would be gone for 1,260. So, so yeah, it's starting backwards actually. It's and it's subtracting that. And so then there must've been something that happened in five 70 that was so terrible that the, the true, you know, the, that the church as it should have been just was, um, hoadly distorted.
Speaker 3:How interesting. I mean, do you think the people who lived in the year five 70 are like, listen here, people do not blame this on us. It's your math, not ours. It's funky math. What it is.
Speaker 5:It just, the funny thing is, is that when you go back and you look at five 70, there's not some great, terrible thing that happens within Christianity at that point. So you'd have, you'd have a hard time proving it. I mean, there are some people who will pick out one, one, you know, one item that happened in that time period and say, well that must've been it. That must've been it. But it's, yeah, it's five 70 is really, it just happens to be your, what you get when you subtract.
Speaker 4:But, but notice again, the assumption behind this is if there was an original perfect blueprint and that people messed it up and that Joseph Smith got it right and this, this is an assumption that comedian Christ rejects. This is not it. This is, this assumption has no historical basis. It's bad theology too. And so, um, we don't, we just simply don't hold to it anymore. Um, we say that our ancestors taught what they knew and they knew, they thought they knew that, but we're, we were willing to be a bit more humble. Yeah. And we just simply can't, can't, can't, uh,
Speaker 3:the claim that particular view anymore. No. I've already had bad dreams about like someone going back to the year 1977 and saying that's when the apostasy, the second apostasy started because Carlo long was born or something like this. Like, this is what I'm feeling going to happen very soon.
Speaker 4:So ad 1,260 on the 1970s, seven come up.
Speaker 3:Oh man, we're in trouble. Well, this has been an excellent conversation. I have really appreciated hearing more about this because I mean, it really was something that was kind of out, um, as I was growing up in, in, um, you know, like in my formative years, I didn't really hear that much about it. And, and I do hear more about it, um, nowadays. So I really appreciate these ideas that you've discussed and I can't wait to talk to more people about it. So are there any closing thoughts that you have about the one true church or a prostates or anything like that?
Speaker 4:Um, yeah, I think I've one, one other thought and that is to say the question may be for community of Christ today, is what does it mean for us to be faithful to the message of Jesus that's more important than whether we represent an original blueprint or not, except that the message of Jesus would be as close as we could get to anything like the original, what, what was Jesus about and what does it mean for us to be faithful to that? And you know, we have our, our communities picked up again and again on Jesus as a inaugural sermon. According to Luke in the fourth chapter of Luke. You know, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. He's anointed me to preach good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind. The, the message of spreading the peace of Christ, the justice of God, and of the Kingdom of God. I mean that, that being faithful to that is our mission. Not Trying to, to, uh, you know, recreate something, some mythical things in the first century,
Speaker 5:right? In other words, if we can, um, let go of the focus of being the one true church, then we can clear the decks so that we can live out Christ life instead of being south. You know, south focused and preoccupied about our rightness, but can be honest about our, um, our weakness. And yet our deep desire to, to follow Christ into, to with Christ, helping the spirits presence, um, do the things that Christ did in the world that God's will in the world is, might have more room instead of our own image of ourself taking up all that space,
Speaker 4:Matt that can allow us to be good partners with our ecumenical friends, with our Roman Catholic friends or Lutheran friends or Presbyterian friends or math. It was friends. And, and even in the interfaith context, working with people from other world religions to create a different kind of world. So we, it really is, it's really important for us to claim what Shermaine is describing there.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It doesn't separate us from people. It's, it connects us and unites us with others.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 5:Within our, our common rootedness in the Christian tradition ecumenically but also in our belief that God is about something for the whole world. And, um, and we're not the only ones that have pieces to that, that God's at work
Speaker 6:in all kinds of ways. So I think if people wanted to read more Alicia historical point of view. Um, third volume of marsh shearers three volume history and journey of a people can describe in more detail some of the things that can be a Christ went through in the 1940 fifties, sixties and seventies that has helped, uh, re reform us, recreate us as a different kind of church. That's a place historically you can go. Can you talk about the democratization of the book? I mentioned that, uh, Nathan Hatch's book, the democratization of American Christianity is a wonderful study of the grit, the second great awakening. And he, he also includes in that his own analysis of Joseph Smith and the book of Mormon within that context, which I think is a lovely, a lovely, very context based analysis. Um, no, as with all historical books, it's got its own issues and flaws, but it's a really fine early fine book to understand the middle you out of which the restoration cane sound. Those are a couple of other places people can go for reading.
Speaker 3:That's very helpful. Thank you. Again, Tony and Charmaine for being part of this podcast. I always, I say this every time I think, but I always learn so much from you guys and again, you know, I don't, I'm not really careful. Listener here learns anything. I've learned a lot. So I appreciate your time and, and your efforts in this and, and your words and your thoughts. I, I just really am glad that there is a place that we can go to learn more about this kind of stuff. So thank you again.
Speaker 5:Well we thank you and thank you for your, your really good searching questions and relevant questions to what people are wondering and, and experiencing. Your whole question about the being called apostate is, uh, that's a very relevant question because of what it does to us, to the speaker and to the one who's receiving that. It's, that's, um, to be able to put it, let it go is you're going to be really
Speaker 2:well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we appreciate the chance to, to share and look forward to another time. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:[inaudible].
Speaker 2:The views expressed in this episode are of those speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the letter de seekers team or of community of Christ. The music has been provided by Ben Howington. You can find his music@mormonguitar.com
Speaker 1:[inaudible]
Speaker 3:Charmaine, you use the words unequally yoked and I almost made a joke about an unfair breakfast. Luckily, I believe I've been unequally yoked here.