Mormon offshoot goes woke, then broke

On Tuesday, the religious denomination known as the Community of Christ made a heartbreaking surrender to necessity. The community, numbering about a quarter of a million adherents worldwide, is a schismatic offshoot of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) movement of the 19th century: it is, in other words, a body of Mormons who still share scripture and doctrines with the mainstream

LDS church, but who separated from it formally in 1860. A unique thing about this schism is that it was led by Joseph Smith III, the son of the martyred founder of Mormonism. Because of this family link, the smaller church has, over time, kept control of many of Mormonism’s early holy sites and artifacts.

Notable among these is the first religious building ever erected by, and for the use of, the Mormons — the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio. Unlike other buildings in early Mormon history, the Kirtland Temple avoided destruction by the mobs who often persecuted the church, ultimately chasing it to the Utah desert which is the heart of Mormonism today. And unlike the later Mormon temples which grace the North American landscape, the Kirtland Temple, completed in 1836, is a relatively humble structure which has been kept open to the general public.

It does not have the special spiritual status Mormons assign to other temples, but in a way it is even more revered: the prophet Joseph Smith Jr. is believed by Mormons to have received several visions there, including a visitation by the Lord himself, whose feet “stood on the breastwork of the pulpit.”

The Community of Christ was founded by Mormon believers who broke away early from the doctrine of polygamy later abandoned by the mainstream denomination. Ever since that time, it has been a Mormon church that looks and behaves increasingly like an ordinary Protestant church, gradually liberalizing along the way. The community, unlike the big LDS Church, believes in the traditional Christian trinity and holds a relatively skeptical, critical position on the Book of Mormon itself. It was quicker than the main church to accept gay marriage, and, unlike the main church, accepts women in the priesthood.

You can perhaps guess that this drift hasn’t been good for the community’s numbers. (In the parlance of our time: get woke, go broke.) As author Jana Reiss writes in a piece for the Religious News Service, the sect is aging fast and has unsustainable finances. So this week it has done the unthinkable and sold the Kirtland Temple, along with other items of Mormon history, to the most motivated buyer — the mainstream LDS Church itself.

The price is US$192.5 million ($260 million), which will be used by the community to fund its own missions and ministries. As the leadership council of the church explains to the faithful in what used to be called an FAQ, the smaller group could not have obtained nearly so much without including the Kirtland structure in the deal, and although it is a staggering amount of money, it is not enough on its own to ensure the survival of the community. The LDS Church has agreed to keep the temple (a U.S. national historic landmark) open to the public, and has promised to let the smaller sect use the building for its own meetings and ceremonies six times a year.

THE SECT IS AGING FAST AND HAS UNSUSTAINABLE FINANCES.