Posts Tagged ‘ Community of Christ ’

The headline is clear. Community of Christ will provide sacramental ordinances of marriage, commitment ceremonies, and ordination independent of sexual orientation in the USA. Specifically, after two days of discussion, the USA National Conference formally approved by a required 2/3rds majority the following recommendations to the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve: The 2013 USA [...]

The Ten Commandments was one of the first Biblical epics to command a mass audience, and so my parents took me into downtown Detroit as a boy to be sure I saw it in its full widescreen glory in one of the few theaters capable of so screening it. The movie was well worth the [...]

Human brains naturally use locations in space and time to make sense of events. Why should we expect eternal spirits to follow that protocol? The question has always bothered me. What follows is speculation about a different way of looking at the relationship between the physical and the spiritual than the Restoration faiths adopted in [...]

Salt Lake City sees General Conference every six months. In the CofChrist, “World” Conference occurs every three years, and 2013 is the lucky year. A Community of Christ World Conference is far more of a legislative exercise than its Utah LDS analogue. It features worship, of course, and normally will have approval to changes and [...]

The Community of Christ has begun “crossing the Rubicon” on LGBT issues, and there can be no reversing the action taken. CofChrist is committed to the theological precedent that priesthood can be compatible with participation in a legally recognized same-sex sexual relationship. On June 2nd, the Australian National Conference approved the following recommendation to the [...]

At the end of April, Community of Christ released to the church at large a “Draft Statement on Sexual Ethics” for public review and invited comments to be made by e-mail to the First Presidency. This Statement will be considered by the International Leaders Council (which has no strict equivalent in the LDS) in May [...]

Community of Christ is attempting to form a tradition — now that its World Conferences are held every three years instead of at six month intervals as is customary in LDS practice — of having its Prophet address the church in non-Conference years in something of a “state of the church” address. Community of Christ [...]

The following comments were recorded at the 1993 Sunstone Symposium.  Bill Russell spoke on the recurring theme as Sunstone called “The Pillars of my Faith”. He is a past president of the Mormon History Association.  I don’t know who introduced him, but this is what the person said when he introduced Bill Russell. Introduction, “William [...]

Community of Christ does not follow its LDS cousins in having secret temple rituals. So I read last week’s post by Bored in Vernal, on the “Sacred Embrace As Five Points of Fellowship” with the curiosity of one who has never even been inside an LDS Temple. Much of the terminology was unfamiliar to me [...]

As I was researching a post last summer on some of the organizations that have sprung up in the stead of the RLDS movement as fundamentalist alternatives to the Community of Christ, I discovered that a childhood friend had become one of the leading officials of one such organization, the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of [...]

“Finally have put a finger on an issue I have with the priesthood of this church. A lot of you want us to embrace, uphold, accept and defend the practicing homosexual. Why is it that because I do not agree with you that you try to paint me as hateful to everyone else?” Thus began [...]

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” That’s a somewhat simplistic, but nevertheless effective way to teach the law of conservation of momentum, and I think there’s actually some metaphorical version of that law which applies to churches. When someone leaves a church, his/her absence allows/pushes the church that remains to go [...]

The LDS church is an Apostolic church. It has a Prophet, but the Prophet is chosen according to seniority of his position among the Apostles upon the death of his predecessor. Further, the Twelve in Salt Lake City are considered successors in office to the Twelve originally called by Jesus in Jerusalem. It’s a bit [...]

In response to revelatory guidance accepted at its 2010 World Conference, the Community of Christ scheduled a US National Conference for the summer of 2012 specifically to deal with questions of sacramental marriage and priesthood ordination for GLBT members of the church. On May 25, the church announced a delay in the US National Conference [...]

I wrote last week on the vacancy occurring in the Apostolic Quorum of the Community of Christ due to the resignation of James Slauter in order to assist in caring for his grandchild. As noted by Rich Brown in a comment to my earlier post on the vacancy, the President of the church has now [...]

The Community of Christ announced on May 5 that the President of the Quorum of 12, James Slauter, will resign effective August 1, 2011, in order to be in better position to help his family deal with a serious illness of his 5-year-old grandson. Apostle Slauter will be ordained to the office of an Evangelist [...]

I was in high school when the original Star Trek television series premiered. As nerdy then as I am now, I watched every episode, and every re-run, and every afternoon syndication for years. I finally stopped — not because I wasn’t interested in the Star Trek universe, which was infinitely expandable (as multiple incarnations have [...]

During the past several weeks, as rebellion spread from country to country in the Middle East, a local evangelical church — whose members include several business clients and personal friends of our family —  has been advertising an “end-times” series on the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy regarding the Latter Days. Some of the advertising has [...]

One hundred and fifty years after the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, the Community of Christ (then the RLDS) celebrated that event with a set of worship services in the main court of the Temple. My wife was asked to be the accompanist for the services, and so we made plans to drive from Maryland [...]

.            ”…Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Matt. 7:14 KJV Well, that’s the way it works at the macroscopic level, anyway.  When you get down among the weeds, things are a lot more complicated. However [...]