Mormon Stories on RLDS History

Posted January 25, 2010 by John Hamer
Categories: Uncategorized

The Mormon Stories podcast has long been one of the most popular features of the Mormon blog universe or “Bloggernacle.” John Dehlin is an impassioned interviewer, who has elicited a number of fascinating stories from a wide variety of Mormons. Some past highlights include a five-part interview with Richard Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, and a two-part interview with Anne Wilde, a spokesperson for fundamentalist Mormonism.

After a long hiatus, Mormon Stories is back. John recently asked me to talk about the 1844 Succession Crisis and the history of the Community of Christ for an LDS audience. You can hear part 1 of the interview here.

In the second hour, John asked me about the transformation of the RLDS Church into Community of Christ. You can hear part 2 of the interview here.

Comments: 3 Comments

Veazey’s ‘Counsel to the Church’

Posted January 18, 2010 by Matthew Bolton
Categories: Community of Christ, scripture
Tags: , , , , , ,

Community of Christ President Steve Veazey presented his “Counsel to the Church” today in advance of the church’s World Conference in April. It deals with such hot topics as church membership, communion and human sexuality. Read the document here.

He also presented a “Letter of Counsel about the Presiding Quorums” regarding changes in the Council of Twelve.

Post your reactions in the comments below.

Comments: 66 Comments

Responding Responsibly to Disasters like the Haiti Earthquake

Posted January 14, 2010 by Matthew Bolton
Categories: Outreach International, Peace and Justice, disaster relief
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In response to the terrible earthquake in Haiti, both Outreach International (click here for their appeal) and the church (click here for their appeal) are calling on church members to give generously to those in need.

In times like this there is often a rush of people wanting to jet to the disaster zone and volunteer, or collect clothing, medicines and food to send to the people suffering. This altruistic impulse is praiseworthy and displays the great generosity and charity human beings show in times of trouble. However, not every well-meaning response to a disaster is a good one. In this briefing paper I wrote in light of the Asian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, I explain how, when responding to a humanitarian disaster, potential donors should keep in mind the following key principles to guide their gift:

Read the rest of this post »

Comments: 22 Comments

Devastation in Haiti! Please Help!

Posted January 14, 2010 by John Hamer
Categories: Outreach International
Tags:


Much of Port-au-Prince has been destroyed, including even the Presidential Palace (above) and the United Nations mission.

Outreach International has issued the following concerning the catastrophe in Haiti:

Thousands of people, possibly 100,000, have been killed by the earthquake that hit Haiti at 5pm Tuesday evening.

Outreach International has been working in Haiti since the 1980s and currently supports a network of 90 schools serving over 9,000 children. Some of these schools have been severely damaged or destroyed. Worse yet, schools were in session at the time of the quake. Students and faculty undoubtedly suffered serious injury or death.

Let’s work together to help Haitians in their time of tremendous suffering! Please do what you can to help! Donate HERE at the Outreach International website.

Outreach International helps people overcome the effects of poverty and develop the capacity to create a new future for themselves and their community. We do not believe in short-term fixes, but in long-term solutions. We call this Sustainable Good.

Comments: 2 Comments

Comparing the Missouri Mormon War with Contemporary Conflicts

Posted January 8, 2010 by Matthew Bolton
Categories: Mormonism, Peace and Justice, Social Science, church history
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

UPDATE 11 January 2010: Kenny and Jake Ballentine, two brothers who make films together, have just announced the upcoming release of a new movie ‘Trouble in Zion’, a documentary on the Missouri Mormon War. Several years ago, Kenny Ballentine read the essay attached to the below posting and talked with me about it while making the film. Click here to find out more about their movie.

The 1838 Missouri Mormon War (see LeSueur’s great book) resulted in at least 22 fatalities, millions of dollars worth of property destruction and the displacement of 15,000 people. Fought in a context of fierce rhetoric, sectarian and paramilitary violence, weak governmental authority and a privatization of military force, it actually bears significant resemblance to what some security scholars (e.g. my former PhD supervisor Mary Kaldor) have called the “New Wars.” These contemporary conflicts in places like the Former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Columbia, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan are characterized by the targeting of civilians; powerful non-state actors; prolonged, seemingly intractable, hostilities; connections to organized crime; and exclusivistic ethnic, religious and sectarian ideologies.

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Comments: 6 Comments

Do you get it?

Posted January 4, 2010 by sethbryant
Categories: Christmasian Rock, Community of Christ, Peace and Justice, church history, religious identity

Awesome is the only word I can think of in describing a Christmas celebration I attended yesterday.  It was indeed a worship service (although some there might not have realized it) involving loud rock, long hair, and shooting jets of fire.  The enlightened readers will immediately perceive that I speak of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra or “TSO.”

In the midst of the lasers and fireballs and dueling electric violins, I was struck by a verse from Ecclesiastes.  While The Preacher might not have intended it to be used this way, it was nonetheless compelling:

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been,
in the ages before us.
Eccl. 1:9-11 (NRSV, emphasis mine)

While there is nothing new under the sun, many try to disguise the ways in which their creations are indebted to another. Read the rest of this post »

Comments: 3 Comments

Remembering Joseph Smith, Reclaiming a Saint

Posted December 23, 2009 by dhowlett
Categories: Community of Christ, Joseph Smith
Tags: , , ,

December 23 is the 204th birthday of the great prophet of the restoration movement, Joseph Smith, Jr. Perhaps it is unfortunate that his birthday is so close to Christmas. One almost feels a bit sacrilegious thinking about Joseph at a time when we remember the birth of Jesus. Nonetheless, if we affirm that God is present and at work with many different peoples (and indeed, I would say, at work with many different religions), we also need to do the hard work of thinking about how God has been at work with us. Appreciating the truths that others have should lead us back into a conversation about why we are true. And that leads us back to Joseph Smith.

What really got me to thinking about this was reading an edited volume Joseph Smith, Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries. I highly recommend this volume. Some of the essays are brilliant, while others, well, leave much to be desired. Nonetheless, several essayists offered reappraisals of Joseph Smith that I thought could be useful for Community of Christ members. And Joseph needs some serious reclamation by members of our tradition. We need to move beyond the stage of adolescent critique that we’ve been stuck in for the last few decades (that stage where we find out that our spiritual parents were not perfect and we act a lot like judgmental teenagers after this revelation) to a more mature appreciation for our ancestors. And Joseph has shaped us in too many ways for us to ignore him. Read the rest of this post »

Comments: 23 Comments

What if the Christmas Story Happened Today?

Posted December 19, 2009 by kevinwbryant
Categories: Uncategorized

Thought a Christmas themed post might be appropriate this time of year.  Many people, it seems, wonder how the story of Christ’s birth would be different if it happened today.  Some write their thoughts.  I’ve heard a few different versions of how things might go, posted below is one person’s take.  (I didn’t write this, merely reprinting it)

INFANT DISCOVERED IN BARN, CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES LAUNCH PROBE
Nazareth Carpenter Being Held On Charges Involving Underage Mother

Bethlehem, Judea – Authorities were today alerted by a concerned citizen who noticed a family living in a barn. Upon arrival, Family Protective Service personnel, accompanied by police, took into protective care an infant child named Jesus, who had been wrapped in strips of cloth and placed in a feeding trough by his 14-year old mother, Mary of Nazareth. Read the rest of this post »

Comments: 3 Comments

Painting an Inspiring Story

Posted December 15, 2009 by John Hamer
Categories: Community of Christ, church history
Tags: , ,

New Illustrated History of the Church
I’ve been working around the clock the past two weeks with Barb Walden and David Howlett to create a new, brief, illustrated history of the church. We want to have the book published in time for the sesquicentennial of the Reorganization next year, so time is tight.

Our goal has been to tell the church’s history vividly, using the graphic-intensive format we created for last year’s illustrated history of the Kirtland Temple. The new book will be 74 pages long. Writing a 74-page book doesn’t initially seem like that big a deal, but some times it can be harder to write a short book than a long book. Read the rest of this post »

Comments: 4 Comments

The Elect Lady

Posted December 11, 2009 by Rene
Categories: Community of Christ, church history
Tags: , , ,

Lately, Emma Smith has become quite the popular figure in Mormon history circles. I’m offering some of my thoughts about Emma, her legacy, and our modern-day treatment of her story.

During my time working at the Joseph Smith Historic Site in Nauvoo, Illinois, I’ve seen many people pick up a certain postcard depicting Emma Smith. They gaze at her photograph, the one with the embroidered shawl around her shoulders and her simple gold-plated necklace around her neck, and they say, “She just looks so tired. She had such a hard life, I can’t even imagine.” Her right eye droops and her mouth is turned down. She may look sad to modern eyes.

But Emma was in her 60s when that photograph was taken, and besides, people didn’t smile for photos back then. Back then, most women lost half of the children they bore; back then, settlers of all types, of all nationalities, all across the fledgling United States, eked out a living from the rough, stony ground and disease-ridden swamps.

Emma was no different from any of these. She might have simply been one more of those thousands of individuals whose names and stories blur together to form our collective understanding of  “the settlers.” No different, other than she was married to Joseph Smith. A decision made against the wishes of her father, back in the eastern United States, in the years of her youth, became a decision that forever solidified Emma’s name as a permanent fixture in the history books. Emma Hale became Emma, the wife of Joseph, the “Elect Lady,” and later, even after she remarried Lewis Bidamon, Emma was known as the Widow Smith. Read the rest of this post »

Comments: 7 Comments

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