In a variety of previous posts I have reflected on the implications of the Community of Christ’s decline in its traditional geographic ‘core’ of the American Midwest, and growth in the ‘periphery’ of Latin America, Africa and Asia. I have also reflect on the ways people express discontent in the church, using the economic model of “Exit, Voice and Loyalty.” However, I haven’t really had any meaty data to work with.

This week I had a rushed visit to the Community of Christ archives for a couple hours and tried to get a little more hard data. It is necessarily inadequate because I didn’t have a lot of time. Nonetheless I think it tells an interesting story of the way “Voice” is changing in the denomination. There is a slow, but definite trend, of World Conference becoming a venue of increasingly diverse voices, while the USA and Canada remain dominant.

I went through all the Bulletins for every World Conference since 1958, when the church expressed its desire to become a “world church”, and counted how many World Conference Resolutions proposed by field jurisdictions were from each area of the world. I did not count the resolutions that came from the headquarters leadership. A less rushed scholar would have looked at how many of these resolutions had ‘policy success’ by actually being passed by the chamber and avoiding amendments — maybe one of you Saints Herald readers can take up that challenge! (See the asterix at the bottom for some methodological notes).

Proportion of Proposed Resolutions from Field Jurisdictions, by Region

Continue reading →