According to Mormon Wasp, Stephen Veazey, president of the Council of the Twelve Apostles of the Community of Christ (formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) has been appointed prophet. That is, unless delegates throughout the Church vote down the decision of the Twelve.
When Grant McMurray resigned as president last year due to personal problem, it left an opening, and Veazey is to fill it.
Which is fine and all, but if the creation of the church revolved around Joseph Smith’s successor being a descendant and not the president of the Twelve, why are they still separated from the main body of the Saints?
why are they still separated from the main body of the Saints?
Because, they simply do not consider themselves “Mormon”.
Maybe they feel toward who’s president the way we feel about polygamy. Things change, the church changes…but that’s ok!
The RLDS church is a far cry from the original church, bearing little or no resemblance as it relates to the doctrinal foundations laid by Joseph Smith.
They rarely, if ever speak of the 1st Vision as anything other than a ‘spiritual experience’ or ‘spiritual manifestation.’ Moreover, former President, G. McMurrary stated he was uncomfortable being called a prophet, seer and revelator.
The RLDS church is a prime example of what happens when revelation does not exist, even when the correct principles lay before you!
My understanding is that there are significant doctrinal differences. There have been ever since the schism, which shows in part how much of Mormonism really postdates Joseph Smith.
The post-schism RLDS church never accepted polygamy. Joseph’s polygamy was sufficiently shadowy and hidden that they more or less denied it ever happened, and blamed Brigham Young for introducing that crazy idea.
The RLDS church never accepted temples as anything other than a unique and special worship places. Joseph Smith’s use of the endowment is not well documented and is pretty shadowy itself (in part because much of his temple use was related to plural marriages he was keeping under the radar screen). So the entire culture of temples, eternal families, endowments, is not part of the RLDS belief system.
The RLDS church remained in Zion as they saw it (Nauvoo and Missouri) and refused to leave Zion to go to Utah, a place which Joseph Smith had never once mentioned. Joseph Smith clearly said that Independence Missouri and Nauvoo were the places God wanted His people. The RLDS tended to think that Brigham was nuts to ignore Joseph’s statements about Zion and instead go out to the middle of the desert.
Recently, the RLDS church has taken further steps, downplaying the Book of Mormon and the First Vision. But even fifty or a hundred years ago, there were significant enough doctrinal differences that it is unlikely any reunification would have been successful.
In fact Joseph did say that the church would move to the Rocky Mountains. Another point is that the Majority of the Saints Followed Brigham Young is because of the experience that happened and you can find the account in many journals of those who were present where when BY was speaking he appeard and sounded like JS.
The Community of Christ bears very little resemblance to the original church because it has departed from RLDS doctrine and practice. The men controlling the church do not believe that Joseph Smith, Jr. saw much of anything in the grove. Their analysis of the Book of Mormon text and the manuscripts have convinced them that Joseph Smith either wrote it from his own imagination (without divine assistance) or plagiarized it from some other source. With these beliefs, it is obvious that these men believe in nothing that Joseph Smith, Jr. taught except one critically important fact: The leaders of the quorums of the church have power similar to that formerly wielded by the Communist Party in Eastern Europe and Russia. With that in mind, they are not going to resign from the church and give up that power merely on account of a little problem with their belief that Joseph Smith was a fraud. Their basic “paradigm” for operation is that all religion is a fraud dseigned to induce the superstitious to hand over their money in exchange for imaginary spiritual blessings. With this in mind, they feel perfectly justified in changing the teachings of the church into anything that they believe will “sell” to the members of the public.
This little pas a deux between disbelief and denial of that disbelief is the source of their meaningless prattle. All public announcements and doctrinal statements are designed to be faith-promoting without actually affirming the Book of Mormon to be true, or acknowledging the fact that their authority rests upon the certainty (or lack thereof) of the book’s truth. Resigning from the church would also separate them from the control they have over the church’s real estate holdings, which they sell from time to time to offset the drastic decrease in tithing that occurred after the truth of the practice of gay ordinations and same-sex weddings came out. The Community of Christ’s not so secret endorsement of no-holds-barred homosexuality ranks on a par with its own judgmental characterization of Mormon polygamy in Nauvoo.
Those who currently adhere to RLDS beliefs do not attend CofChrist services and maintain their own meetings elsewhere. Anyone who currently claims to be an ordained minister of the Community of Christ is not qualified to speak about RLDS beliefs, because priests who adhere to the original teachings of the church have been systematically eliminated from the priesthood.
For those who want to learn about the RLDS church, I advise them to seek out RLDS sources. Those controlling the church are not interested in anything RLDS other than the fact that the RLDS name is on the title of the deeds to the property the Community of Christ controls.
If you want an example of this denial in action, I will provide you a quotation from the liberal edition of the Book of Mormon showing how the text of the book itself has been edited to relieve the potential CofChrist convert of the necessity of accepting the book as historical truth.
Regards,
George
I don’t believe the RLDS church really held that succession MUST go through a descendant of Joseph Smith. They only held that succession HAD gone through a descendant of Joseph Smith.
Re: #6, I’d say the Community of Christ has done all they need to relieve their members of believing in much of anything. Their version of the Joseph Smith story seems to be, “A 14-year-old boy went in the woods to pray, and when he came out, he felt like he should do something.”