This is a true story.
They had a long and reasonable marriage with the usual conflicts over money and who was responsible for various household chores. But late in life, an issue arose that led to their divorce.
She became convinced that she had a right to the authority and position equal to that of her husband. He believed she had a vital role of importance, but a different one than he. He had the scripture on his side, she had political correctness on her side. Her insistence to obtain and exercise an authority exactly equal to the husband in the family became so stressful that her husband decided to move out of their home, leaving her in charge of what had been their mutual possessions.
Nevertheless, he continued to regard himself as a married man and provided for himself only the most modest personal items while he looked forward to a possible reconciliation. Sadly, his various efforts to discuss the possible modalities of reconciliation were always rebuffed.
Meanwhile, after courting a number of others who upheld her rights, she chose to marry again, taking a new name and a radically altered view of her role in the household. She changed the way she conducted herself in public and the past interests and beliefs she once shared with her first husband she now abandoned.
After her remarriage and the taking of her new name, he was astonished to be served by a lawsuit which forbade him to use his own name. She argued that she had long used his name and even though she no longer intended to use the name of her ex-husband, she had the right to his name because, like the possessions he had left behind, she had obtained the legal right to deprive him of his own name.
The husband in this sad story is the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The wife is now known as the Community of Christ.
The male and female heads of the household had a long and productive relationship, until the female side of the church insisted upon taking on the role previously held by male priesthood. This insistence provoked a divorce within the church, with the female side continuing in possession of all the effects of the household, while the male side was dispossessed and became known as the independent Restoration Branches.
These independent Restoration Branches continued to insist that they were a continuation of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This was their heritage and it had been theirs for more than a hundred years. Even though they were not in physical possession of the family properties, they continued to ask for a formal meeting for reconciliation which was never granted.
Meanwhile the female side of the RLDS church courted other organizations, making her commitment to the World Council of Churches and moving that process forward by changing her name to the Community of Christ.
Imagine the shock of the independent Restoration Branches when the Community of Christ went to court to obtain a legal way to ban the Restorationists from using their own name. The COC then sued two of these branches, declaring that they did not have a lawful right to use the name (RLDS) by which these branch members had been identified for more than a hundred years.
Let us appeal to justice here. This is a simple case of divorce. The Community of Christ is the former wife. The Restoration Branches, the former husband. The wife has retained all property. The husband was willing to move out of the family properties without any legal argument.
After the husband (Restoration Branches) made a plea to the Community of Christ to release the RLDS name to them, the leaders of the Community of Christ asked their lawyers to find a way to prevent the Restoration Branches from using or exercising their right to use their RLDS name.
In 2005-6 the Community of Christ quietly secured a “trademark” designation of the name of the RLDS church, and then attacked these Restoration Branches for using the name through lawsuits. It is clear that the Community of Christ has legally registered the RLDS name in order to prevent Restoration Branches from using it.
These are the facts of the case. What is justice? Members of the local community and members of the Community of Christ ought to be able to see that a grave injustice is being done to the Devon Park branch. It has cost them nearly a half million dollars to defend their right to use the name of the church in which they were baptized and have been members of for their entire lives.
Notice that at the same time as the Community of Christ has declared that the Devon Park members cannot use their RLDS name, they themselves have changed all their recorded membership to the “Community of Christ.” So members of Devon Park branch who were baptized and confirmed members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints can request their membership card; but when it is sent to the member, it will declare that they are a member of the Community of Christ. If that is not hypocrisy, it is very close to it.
Members of the local community should expect better from the leadership of the Community of Christ who claim to stand for peace and justice in the world but practice legal warfare on innocent ones they claim are part of their own membership. Members of the Community of Christ ought to be outraged by the leadership attempt to keep the ”husband” in this analogy from using his own name and that they have used the money of it’s contributors to do so.
This matter will be argued before a court of appeals this year because the tiny Devon Park branch is determined not to surrender the heritage it has held for decades and not to be bullied by the COC. But we ordinary citizens and church members ought to be able to render a sensible judgment on this matter and pressure those leaders of the COC who pursue the lawsuit to drop it.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Daniel is again being thrown into the lion’s den
From my mom's Independence Examiner guest column:
Submitted to The Examiner
Posted May 04, 2010 @ 12:08 AM
Independence, MO
By Holly McLean
Independence
What are the similarities of Daniel and the Lion’s Den and the [Community of Christ] vs. Devon Park?
Daniel was a faithful servant of God and the king. Because of his honesty and integrity, both God and the king were very pleased with him. The princes of the king knew this and were very jealous. They wanted to get rid of Daniel. They watched him closely trying to find some fault.
The only thing they discovered was that Daniel made a habit of praying every morning, afternoon and evening in an open way. Since the princes could think of nothing else, they devised a plan to use this against him. There was no law against praying to God, so they went to the king, saying they wanted to honor him by writing a law that no one could pray to anyone but the king for 30 days or they would be thrown into the lion’s den. The whole purpose was to make a law that they knew Daniel would break. The king was fooled and signed the law believing he was being honored.
As soon as the law was signed, the princes went to see if Daniel would pray, in order to turn him in for violating the order of the king. Of course, Daniel did not change his beliefs or habits, so the princes ran to the king and told him that he must keep his word and throw Daniel into the lion’s den.
How is this similar? The Community of Christ leadership knew the restoration branches were proclaiming the fullness of the gospel and continuing to practice the original RLDS doctrines under the name they have held for decades, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They did not want the restoration people to continue to do this, even though they no longer practice or teach these doctrines and are using a new name for themselves, Community of Christ. For the sole purpose of squelching the RLDS restorationists, these COC leaders devised a way to stop them by using the law.
In 2005, the COC quietly filed for trademark rights to the RLDS name, knowing that the restoration people were already using it to continue to describe themselves and their religious beliefs. Once they obtained them in December 2006, the suing of churches began. In spring of 2007, the COC filed suit against South Branch in Raytown. Next, they came after Devon Park in Independence. Once the suits began, the COC leaders started blaming the restoration branches that were being sued for violating the law.
In a recent interview with The Examiner newspaper, the spokesperson for the COC said, “Any suffering they have is self-inflicted. They made a decision that they were not going to abide by the law.”
Yet, it is obvious this law is only in place because the COC trademarked the name and therefore, the heritage of the name, in order to create a law for the purpose of stopping the RLDS restoration movement from continuing to proclaim the gospel and its true doctrines by the name they always have.
As did the princes in Daniel’s day, The Community of Christ leadership has purposefully created a situation that challenges the heritage of the RLDS restoration believers by creating a trademark infringement that they now point to as proof of law violation. Will the court see through this or will they throw the RLDS originalists into the lion’s den?
Submitted to The Examiner
Posted May 04, 2010 @ 12:08 AM
Independence, MO
By Holly McLean
Independence
What are the similarities of Daniel and the Lion’s Den and the [Community of Christ] vs. Devon Park?
Daniel was a faithful servant of God and the king. Because of his honesty and integrity, both God and the king were very pleased with him. The princes of the king knew this and were very jealous. They wanted to get rid of Daniel. They watched him closely trying to find some fault.
The only thing they discovered was that Daniel made a habit of praying every morning, afternoon and evening in an open way. Since the princes could think of nothing else, they devised a plan to use this against him. There was no law against praying to God, so they went to the king, saying they wanted to honor him by writing a law that no one could pray to anyone but the king for 30 days or they would be thrown into the lion’s den. The whole purpose was to make a law that they knew Daniel would break. The king was fooled and signed the law believing he was being honored.
As soon as the law was signed, the princes went to see if Daniel would pray, in order to turn him in for violating the order of the king. Of course, Daniel did not change his beliefs or habits, so the princes ran to the king and told him that he must keep his word and throw Daniel into the lion’s den.
How is this similar? The Community of Christ leadership knew the restoration branches were proclaiming the fullness of the gospel and continuing to practice the original RLDS doctrines under the name they have held for decades, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They did not want the restoration people to continue to do this, even though they no longer practice or teach these doctrines and are using a new name for themselves, Community of Christ. For the sole purpose of squelching the RLDS restorationists, these COC leaders devised a way to stop them by using the law.
In 2005, the COC quietly filed for trademark rights to the RLDS name, knowing that the restoration people were already using it to continue to describe themselves and their religious beliefs. Once they obtained them in December 2006, the suing of churches began. In spring of 2007, the COC filed suit against South Branch in Raytown. Next, they came after Devon Park in Independence. Once the suits began, the COC leaders started blaming the restoration branches that were being sued for violating the law.
In a recent interview with The Examiner newspaper, the spokesperson for the COC said, “Any suffering they have is self-inflicted. They made a decision that they were not going to abide by the law.”
Yet, it is obvious this law is only in place because the COC trademarked the name and therefore, the heritage of the name, in order to create a law for the purpose of stopping the RLDS restoration movement from continuing to proclaim the gospel and its true doctrines by the name they always have.
As did the princes in Daniel’s day, The Community of Christ leadership has purposefully created a situation that challenges the heritage of the RLDS restoration believers by creating a trademark infringement that they now point to as proof of law violation. Will the court see through this or will they throw the RLDS originalists into the lion’s den?
Court Order over Church Name = Same Tactic as Nazis
Why do I say this lawsuit is "evil"?
It was a vital part of Hitler's plan in taking over Germany to get "supreme directional control" over the church. He accomplished this by endorsing the campaign of bishop Ludwig Muller in the rigged church elections of July, 1933. (our 1984) Muller was a Nazi stooge. Muller's election caused the German church to not only change it's doctrines but also it's name, becoming the "Reich Church." This caused a divide between two factions, the "German Christians" (the pro-Nazi "Christians") who retained control over the old organization and the "young Reformers" (the real Christians who opposed Nazism) who had to rebuild and establish their own small independent congregations and seminaries from scratch just like the Restoration Branches have, until Hitler required all Protestant churches to be acknowledged by the Reich Church, at which time they were completely shut down or went underground.
During the 1933 election, the opposition to Muller was prevented from distributing their literature (it was seized by the Gestapo) by a court order from a judge on the basis that they were using the name of the original church - the same name used by the "German Christians." I don't want to accuse anyone in the CoC of Nazism or antisemitism but the parallel is obvious. If he hadn't gained total control over the church in Germany, Hitler would never have been able to carry out the Holocaust because the Christians would have organized and stopped it. But with their church hijacked, their independent congregations outlawed and a court order preventing them from even using their own name, there was nothing they could do. Many of the leaders of the independent movement in Germany who never gave in ended up in the concentration camps or were executed in prison. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
When the devil wants to carry out a big plan, he always has to find a way to silence the church, and this lawsuit is a very old tactic, right out of his playbook.
It was a vital part of Hitler's plan in taking over Germany to get "supreme directional control" over the church. He accomplished this by endorsing the campaign of bishop Ludwig Muller in the rigged church elections of July, 1933. (our 1984) Muller was a Nazi stooge. Muller's election caused the German church to not only change it's doctrines but also it's name, becoming the "Reich Church." This caused a divide between two factions, the "German Christians" (the pro-Nazi "Christians") who retained control over the old organization and the "young Reformers" (the real Christians who opposed Nazism) who had to rebuild and establish their own small independent congregations and seminaries from scratch just like the Restoration Branches have, until Hitler required all Protestant churches to be acknowledged by the Reich Church, at which time they were completely shut down or went underground.
During the 1933 election, the opposition to Muller was prevented from distributing their literature (it was seized by the Gestapo) by a court order from a judge on the basis that they were using the name of the original church - the same name used by the "German Christians." I don't want to accuse anyone in the CoC of Nazism or antisemitism but the parallel is obvious. If he hadn't gained total control over the church in Germany, Hitler would never have been able to carry out the Holocaust because the Christians would have organized and stopped it. But with their church hijacked, their independent congregations outlawed and a court order preventing them from even using their own name, there was nothing they could do. Many of the leaders of the independent movement in Germany who never gave in ended up in the concentration camps or were executed in prison. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
When the devil wants to carry out a big plan, he always has to find a way to silence the church, and this lawsuit is a very old tactic, right out of his playbook.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
A look back at the RLDS church of May, 1980 - Thirty Years Ago
This article was retyped by me from a Xerox copy of pages from some unknown Restoration publication from an unknown year. I think it speaks to what's happened over the past thirty years in the RLDS movement.
Professor Paul Jones - May, 1980
Professor Paul Jones was employed by the RLDS church for an in-depth Survey and Report, and Progress of New Curriculum and Research of Paper.
The following report was transcribed from a tape made at the meeting in which Professor Jones presented his findings to the Presidency, Apostles, Bishops and other personnel.
Judd: . . . I thought it would be interesting to all of [us] to hear his reactions to the paper that was delivered to us in March. The Foundation for the Eighties which I guess has since been revised and condensed into an outline, but still is being used as a basis of the church program for the 1980s. So I have asked Paul to begin a discussion by sharing with us what he feels about the paper. Paul has had exposure to RLDS people for ten or fifteen years and for some reason finds us interesting. He has been involved with a variety of RLDS people and so I think this will be an interesting session.
Jones: OK. Let me tell you what I've done. Do you know who I am at all? I teach at St. Paul School of Theology and my field is Philosophical Theology. I've worked with your church - twelve years ago in the Joint Council asked that I be a resource for them as an education [missing text here] as in-closed door and all that. Since then I've been involved - I know most of your operational line people more than -- er -- I know very few grass roots people. I know all of your joint councils and your bishops and your presidents and have done tutoring work with some of them and all that, and so it's kind of a strange relationship that I have with you. And I've been accused of being a closet saint by several of my colleagues and wonder when I'm going to join because I do have a certain kind of fascination with you. And I'll share some of that with you. I'll try to be as honest as i can. I'm not going to do a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of this paper. I don't think it's worth it. I've read it -- you can look at it -- I'm aware of this. And it's going to be somewhat informal. I'm going to try to challenge you some.
I want to make some more general comments about your church. As I see your church you're in a transition. You probably think that you're doing something weird that's never been done before. My regret is that you're doing something that every church like you has always done -- you're doing it just the way they've always done it and you are as predictable as any sociological analysis ever was and I resent it because I think you're unique and I get tired when you're not unique -- so there.
You're in the process of transition from a sect-type to a church-type. You're becoming respectable after a heritage of disrespect. You were outcasts; you were hunted; you were burned out; you were weirdos and you're not weird any more. Most of the people I have [met] are safely, middle-class to upper middle-class, red-white-and blue patriotic, leading in the American dream people. And as you become respectable, you're trying to make your church respected. And in the process of doing that, you are losing your uniqueness, and as you lose your uniqueness, you are losing the very thing in the name of which you've always believed been evangelical. You've always had something unique to sell people that intrigued them, that fascinated them, because you were different. But as you become respectable, some of you are embarrassed - every embarrassed - by the very things that have made you what you are. You're caught, and you don't know whether to give them up. You don't know what to do and you're caught in the middle.
Now, most of you that I know in this transition have wanted to demythologize, take the things that have been unique and demythologize them, translate them in such a way that they are acceptable, that they are modern, and for the most part they are part of the Christian heritage of the middle -- nothing in excess would probably be the characteristic of where you are.
I think that boring. I find that paper boring. It could have been written by Presbyterians or Methodists -- probably not Baptists, but most of the churches at the center could have written just about exactly what you've got. And see, I could deal with Presbyterians and say that's a nice paper, the Christology isn't bad -- a little funny on Zion, and you know the human condition is a little more optimistic than I would like. You know that I could play with the Presbyterians but not you -- you make me angry. You're better than to be like -- I don't want you to be Protestants. We've got more Protestants than we know what to do with. Now please stay out of the Protestant camp and either give up or be who you uniquely are -- that's I guess what I'm saying.
Now what that really means for me is to quit demythologizing, and what I want from you is transfigured re-mythologizing. And what I'd like you to do is to return to the spirit out of which you were founded. I don't mean you have to get all messed over with gold plates and all those kinds of stuff -- I don't mind if you wish to. But somehow you need to go through the literal letter that has offended some of you to create a spirit of how you came into being in the very beginning and then, in the resurrection to re-image what you're about that is more faithful to your uniqueness than some of these qualifications that some of you have been doing battle with.
Now I think -- now I like you better than you like yourselves? I like your heritage better than you like your heritage and i think part of that is because I have a creative distance from you. I don't have to fight all your fights; I don't have to go out to the stakes and mess with some of the trivia that you have to mess with; I don't have to work daily with fundamentalist saints that drive you up a wall and make you, you know, what you are; I don't have to mess with that. So it means I can have a creative distance from your heritage in which I can begin to dream with your heritage. I wish somehow there was some way I could help you back away from your heritage just enough -- this creative distance -- to bring a new appreciation to what you are about.
When I see what you're doing, it's stuff I see all the time -- management by objectives that just kills all that you're doing. There's just middle-class acceptability, middle-class ethos. You're in the midst of a conservative, liberal, radical split that's going to do you in unless you find some way of transcending that issue. But instead you take sides in it and insist on being liberal in the midst of it. I think you've got to transcend it with a new deal because the terms with which you're fighting your battles are past. They aren't creative and I find them boring.
I like your movement into an international focus. There's a tremendous possibility of learning what Zion means as a creative leaven in the midst of these various cultural contexts. The fear I've got is that you'll become more pluralistic and once again lose any focus of what it is you're really about.
I think you're suffering horrendously from small-church inferiority in the light of the church growth movement that is running rampant around the denominations. You're small and that makes you feel inferior so you too are going to sell the least common denominator to get more warm bodies so that you too can feel good if you're doing something significant. And you're losing your salt in the midst of your sale.
I think the key thing that's going on in your church now is that you are on a theological crisis. You really don't know who you are theologically, and because of that you're going to try, by programs, to supplement or to bypass what is really congenitally sick in your hearts. You really should discover the genius and uniqueness and what you should be on fire about as I am on fire about you - I'm excited about you. I don't find you excited about you. No wonder you have trouble selling yourself cause you don't believe it anymore -- that's what I'm sensing from you. And, you know, if you could really get your theological heart together with re-imagings and excitement, the rest is going to take care of itself. But because that's missing then you've got to have programs of this - and that's what your paper says to me in a way that drives me nuts.
Now in terms of the theological crisis I think the place of Joseph Smith - you don't know what to do with Joseph Smith. I think the legitimacy of the Joseph Smith saga is hard for you to know - and what to do with the Book of Mormon is a real cross for you to bear. But I think that mostly what I want to talk to you about is the status of the RLDS doctrines and images that infect you. I think that you're demythologizing things and that's what I want to stop.
Now, let me just look at your paper and then I'm going to tell you where I am. I find that the paper has typical middle-class church goals. Your key is growth and expansion. How unimaginative you can be. You know, it's not like you work for McDonald hamburgers or something. You will not very little sense of faithfulness, commitment - any of those kinds of stuff, very very little. You even choose the liberal theology terms! No wonder your conservatives don't trust you! My goodness, you're not even subtle about it! You know - evangelism for you is care, call and process. You call your program Faith to Grow - we should know that when we water the daisies. It's programmaticly oriented and what I'm saying is that this is theology of the church of the middle. There's very little sense of justice in it. All you want to talk about is reconciliation. There's a linear sense. Your whole movement has been linearity movement, becoming and so on. The emotion is fixed, growing depth of continuity, potential. Somebody has dead processed theology right through this whole thing, realizing the potentiality where you find yourself. There are vague principles - love, peace, equity, harmony - they are your basic principles. You know, it sounds like Unity Village. "The word for today is baloney," that kind of stuff. In fact, there is very little controversial about that whole document except in the face of the conservatives. Then that becomes conservative. Remember the old days of the Protestant church when the Protestants didn't know what they believed; they just knew they hated the Catholics. If the Catholics painted it blue, we like red; if they ere for the Eucharist, we beloved in the Word. You know, without the Roman Catholic Church we couldn't survive because we had to be opposed to something else. And oh, we weren't anything because we didn't stand - I'm beginning to sense this with this - that you make sense only in being anti-conservatives. This document doesn't make any sense without the conservatives that you're trying to either dupe, fool, change, cuddle or evangelize. I doubt it - you know it really doesn't, this is only half of your church. Now I just want to bypass that whole talk you know, and see what we can do.
Now, what I like about you in this document. There's a very open view of scripture, sense of ongoing revelation, there's a very liberal but not a particularly bad view of Zion - and that was good. I think the major thing I liked in that paper was the intensification of the vision of grace. You've been so works-oriented. You've had such a hard time believing in the grace of God who forgives and initiates. That's kind o works-drivenness. I like the feel of grace at the close of that paper, and I think it is something of a new dimension in your heritage and I welcome that. OK, so much for that.
Now, where am I with you? I'd like to talk a little bit about what I see in your heritage that I'm excited about. I'd like to try to excite you about it; I don't see it in the paper very much because when you talk about Zion you really don't get excited about Zion - you try to show that the conservative view of Zion is inadequate. And that's really what this paper is about. Now these are some of the things that I see about your background and your heritage - just excites me with new possibilities. If you'll just come alive and sell it, I'll join because you are what you're supposed to be, the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of the churches that have lost it. And most have lost it, including you, and the task is the task that Joseph Smith set for you - the restoration of the gospel - to all the church.
One of the key things is certainly Zion. You know it's beautiful and what I like about Zion is the fleshly quality of it. Many people - most theologians talk bout the kingdom and it's very ethereal; it's a principle, you can't get a hand on it. Joseph Smith knew that it had flesh and blood and concrete. It was genuinely incarnational rather than spiritual. He really understood Zion and it really seems to me to be the truth of the Biblical understanding. So when you start talking about Zion for me I think there are five dimensions of it that I see in your heritage that are absolutely essential.
1. One is what I call Zionic Personality. I think (hope) there is such a thing as a human being that's Zionic in nature, and that's what you're talking about when you say sanctification, transformation and so on. You know, is there such a thing as being Zion - it's a matter of being a whole and complete human being. It's to get away from the idea of the Christian faith being spiritual or one dimensional because you're really talking about being to the glory of God, driving to the glory of God [missing text here] talk about what you get away from [missing text here] itself. An upset male, female crying, articulate, you know, the whole human being that we split in half between male and female, feminine and masculine - all that kind of stuff - to really begin to understand what it means to be Zion, to have a Zionic personality, a new person to creative a new human being.
2. Second, Zionic Principles. If somehow you could take the principles of what Zion is all about and begin to place it everywhere - I don't know a whole lot about what you do at the Sanitarium but what a unique place that would be to begin again to talk about preventive health rather than crisis intervention. You talk about wholistic existence; you talk about the spiritual, the physical, the economic, the social - and the medical as part of one who is whole and complete. And what you do is to do medicine by teams not by technology alone, and that's a new approach to one's body, one's self - that's Zionic. That's using the Zionic principles that you can put them into architecture, into law in every dimension of the human being is a cry to be Zionic and what it's about and so on.
3. Third, Zionic Process. I think there is such a thing as a Zionic process. Jesus talked about it and said it was the leaven, the loaf, the seed, the mustard seed, the salt and so on. Learn what it means to be a leavening process in everything that you're about.
4. Fourth, I believe in Zionic community. I believe you need to create communities that are signal beams communities, foretaste communities. TWA does better in creating, corporate, communal, and other kinds of living contexts that appeal to the wholeness of the human spirit; they excite me with what they are doing with mortar and with glass and with sound and so on to instill and make ecstatic the human spirit. OK Zionics, what are you doing? Do you know the condominiums and cardboard boxes and kitchen cabinets of Zion? America is producing homes that frustrate the human spirit. And as the people of Zion, you know. You know in Nauvoo the way in which the street plan was understood. Now America's crying for people like you who have a sense of what that means.
5. Fifth and last, I want to talk about the Zionic Kingdom. You know, I really do want to talk about historic promise. I think what this country has longed for [is] a sense of vision, a sense of promise, a sense of ongoingness - you know there was a call to his nation - it was of a Kingdom nature - we lost it; we don't know where it keeps us going; we don't know if it's going now, but you are the people that believe what the promise of history is for.
But I want to say that without it the Old Testament makes absolutely no sense and the New Testament is baloney!
Some other principles that I see - your of storehouse and stewardship - oh, that's exciting kind of stuff if you get away fro the literal reading of it all. Take a careful look at economic sharing. I think that you are fundamentally socialist at heart. I'd like to see you demonstrate the degree to which "to each according to their ability, from each according to their needs" can become a working way of lifestyle. r country is dying because we have lost it. The storehouse idea.
OK, the idea of ongoing revelation. I think the church is really questionable because we somehow understand revelation as complete and finished. But I think what you do is have a strong doctrine in the Holy Spirit, even at the point of vision, and with that there's the capacity to learn how to discern what the spirit is about. Instead of going back to doctrine go back to this. What you are about is the belief that the Holy Spirit isn't an it; the Holy Spirit is the Living God now in our world, talking to Peter and talking to each one of us; pulling the church, luring the church. It's a matter of discerning at this point in history what the Lord would have your church to be about. You really believe that; you are led by the ongoing word of the Spirit. Your heritage is filled with it.
Fourth, the idea of a chosen people. That's a very biblical understanding that God chooses people for a special purpose. Now what happens is that every time that the chosen people believe that they're the only ones - they can say they are blessed or something of that sort, they relish the benefits God has honored them with. No, God is the one that calls them to death, to cross over, to the Red Sea and to fail.
And I really believe that that's what you're about - you are a chosen and special people - not because you're better but that God has called you to a task that you must do, and if you do nothing then it's against God. I think you're called I really think you're called; I think you're also ashamed of the call.
Next, the whole idea of linear pilgrimage. As I read scripture, what is so important the people of God move. Now when God came to Abram and said saddle up, we're moving out and Abram said where are we going and God said I'll tell you later. That's your heritage. You don't pitch your tents. You're forever moving, living. The whole idea of pilgrimage is so important.
OK, next I like your idea of a disciplined, faithful community. You know - no you don't - you know what the cost of discipleship means.
When Bonhoeffer suffered, you know that the Grace of Jesus Christ is expensive. It will cost you your life before it is done; it costs you money; it costs everything. It is a total way of life. To be bitten by Jesus Christ is a horrendous thing because you have to give your whole life... There is no lukewarm stuff. You get this in one sense in the people who were waiting supposedly for the call to move from Australia to the gathering place. Now what do you want to do with that? Listen to what that is. The willingness to pitch in and lose everything.
OK, the idea of prophetic leaven, that somehow your task is to be taught in being a leaven in every dimension of human life that you're in. Incredible power.
Next, martyrdom. Your church is a martyred church. If any kind of a church should be able to identify with the suffering and oppressed it ought to be you. Because you know what it is to be burned out and raped and have no home. Any idea of how sensitive you can be to the women's issue, the black issue, the liberation stuff.
You ought to have a tremendous sense of compassion about he world's hurt.
OK, next - the whole idea of the kingdom as being of this earth. I think I have mentioned before, Jesus prayed thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. I don't know of any church that has believed that more than you. You went over half this continent trying to find it as a matter of fact.
Next, your passion with and intrigued by and compassion for the native American. I think the Native American people, it's life-style, it's religion, their ecology about the Earth, their sensibility to death and creation, the oneness of spirit and body - the church is crying to discover that. I think you are somewhat unique in having a sensitivity to the part that the native American can play. And I think it goes or can go into your kind of sensitivity to the indigenous cultures of the world. You are more sensitive and more able to relate to them.
There's something about you, and I don't know what it is, that makes you more interested -
Next, you in your heritage have known what it is to be in but not of this world or any world. It doesn't mean you're worldly, but it means that you refuse to be fundamentally American. That's what I call radical monotheism. You refuse all idolness. You haven't always done this well, but in the heart of your faith you will permit no idols. You march to another drummer in the midst of all the people of the world. You were a separate nation, you were a separate people, and you were accountable only to God. That's why kings and queens and so on would come and see you - you have to be dealt directly. They didn't go through the State Department. The State Department had no control over you. You were not of this kind of nation. You were of your own specialty. You were a sanctuary in the midst of insanity in the culture.
Next you have an incredible capacity for full sacramental life. You know most Protestants only have two sacraments and the only reason they have them are they are the only two Jesus is reported to have served. You have many. And I like what is en-christened in your sacraments, that somehow the word of God is to be known and heard and experienced and blessed in the sacrament that is physically affirmed at every defining joint of life, of being, from the beginning to the end. There's the liturgy; there's the marking of passage. There's the whole, whether it's baptism, funeral, or whether it's health or whether it's sexuality - you have an incredibly full and rich sense of the sacramental.
Next, whatever number it is - you've always had a unique concern for the poor in your midst ----
Next, I think you have tried not to have a theology, you have tried to understand what it meant to theologize. For your theology isn't a belief, it is a series of I believe this, I believe that. It seems to me at your heart, it is a total orientation. Your theology is how you do what you do and it's a good thing. It isn't like you got an education and you're got a social this and you've got a religious dimension. Religion is not one dimension of youre life; it 's the total oriented program. It's what you really are.
Next, I'm almost done -- I like you; I like what you are about. It's your mission to all the church. The whole idea of restoration to me is the fact that in one sense your mission is to the world but in another sense your mission to the faithful. To the fact that they are in a state of apostasy, and therefore a willingness on your part to move your life in the tasks set out for you. Restoration is the name of the game. It doesn't mean that you're to be restored; it means that your task is to see that the church is restored with the hope that in restoration you won't be needed by God anymore. It is your willingness to empty yourself for the sake of the restoration, of the total giving, nothing restored in place of this.
Next, you seem to have a unique capacity for the aesthetic. I don't understand that. I don't know where that comes from exactly. Maybe it is because for you body is always spirit in a sense that cement and bricks always are to the glory of God.
That's part of you, that's important. I don't know why, but to have great ... and so on - it's to be a saint - that's all, whatever it is.
----
Professor Paul Jones was asked by Peter Judd in May of 1980 to share his reactions to the subject paper regarding the "Faith to Grow" program. He has/had been used by the Church for 10 to 12 years, as a resource person in the field of religion.
The paper, "Foundation for the Eighties" is a very diluted form of the Gospel as revealed to the Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr. in the 1800's. The paper was delivered by Clifford Cole.
Professor Jones after having worked with the Church of several years, knew the complete background int he preparation of the subject paper. The paper itself does not take a stand as forcibly as he does in his critique. The background for the above paper can be found in the Position Papers (1967) and the Presidential Papers (1979).
He accuses the church leaders of losing their uniqueness. He indicated that many of them are embarrassed - very embarrassed by the very things that made them what they are. And as he makes his remarks, he finds them boring in their approach. He indicates the "Paper" could have been written by Presbyterians or Methodists. He suggests that they should reverse their course of activity or they could run their vessel ashore. They are in complete perplexity about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith Jr.
What can we do as we read this report? Bear your testimony, be vocal and demand that the truth be taught and adhered to!
I don't agree with everything Professor Jones said. I didn't post this to lift him up but in hopes that people will read this and think about what's happened with the Community of Christ and Restoration Branches movement today. What a different path we could have followed if we had kept steadfast in what made us who we are! It is this unique RLDS position he mentions that is important to Devon Park, that makes us willing to risk everything to keep the name of the church. It is the unique RLDS position that the Community of Christ leadership want to destroy - to make illegal, and it appears that they will stop at nothing to accomplish this.
Despite how black things look right now, I believe that the church will be organized again. I have no doubt about that right now. As we move forward, I hope we remember our first love and do not become lukewarm or lose touch with what makes us who we are.
Professor Paul Jones - May, 1980
Professor Paul Jones was employed by the RLDS church for an in-depth Survey and Report, and Progress of New Curriculum and Research of Paper.
The following report was transcribed from a tape made at the meeting in which Professor Jones presented his findings to the Presidency, Apostles, Bishops and other personnel.
Judd: . . . I thought it would be interesting to all of [us] to hear his reactions to the paper that was delivered to us in March. The Foundation for the Eighties which I guess has since been revised and condensed into an outline, but still is being used as a basis of the church program for the 1980s. So I have asked Paul to begin a discussion by sharing with us what he feels about the paper. Paul has had exposure to RLDS people for ten or fifteen years and for some reason finds us interesting. He has been involved with a variety of RLDS people and so I think this will be an interesting session.
Jones: OK. Let me tell you what I've done. Do you know who I am at all? I teach at St. Paul School of Theology and my field is Philosophical Theology. I've worked with your church - twelve years ago in the Joint Council asked that I be a resource for them as an education [missing text here] as in-closed door and all that. Since then I've been involved - I know most of your operational line people more than -- er -- I know very few grass roots people. I know all of your joint councils and your bishops and your presidents and have done tutoring work with some of them and all that, and so it's kind of a strange relationship that I have with you. And I've been accused of being a closet saint by several of my colleagues and wonder when I'm going to join because I do have a certain kind of fascination with you. And I'll share some of that with you. I'll try to be as honest as i can. I'm not going to do a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of this paper. I don't think it's worth it. I've read it -- you can look at it -- I'm aware of this. And it's going to be somewhat informal. I'm going to try to challenge you some.
I want to make some more general comments about your church. As I see your church you're in a transition. You probably think that you're doing something weird that's never been done before. My regret is that you're doing something that every church like you has always done -- you're doing it just the way they've always done it and you are as predictable as any sociological analysis ever was and I resent it because I think you're unique and I get tired when you're not unique -- so there.
You're in the process of transition from a sect-type to a church-type. You're becoming respectable after a heritage of disrespect. You were outcasts; you were hunted; you were burned out; you were weirdos and you're not weird any more. Most of the people I have [met] are safely, middle-class to upper middle-class, red-white-and blue patriotic, leading in the American dream people. And as you become respectable, you're trying to make your church respected. And in the process of doing that, you are losing your uniqueness, and as you lose your uniqueness, you are losing the very thing in the name of which you've always believed been evangelical. You've always had something unique to sell people that intrigued them, that fascinated them, because you were different. But as you become respectable, some of you are embarrassed - every embarrassed - by the very things that have made you what you are. You're caught, and you don't know whether to give them up. You don't know what to do and you're caught in the middle.
Now, most of you that I know in this transition have wanted to demythologize, take the things that have been unique and demythologize them, translate them in such a way that they are acceptable, that they are modern, and for the most part they are part of the Christian heritage of the middle -- nothing in excess would probably be the characteristic of where you are.
I think that boring. I find that paper boring. It could have been written by Presbyterians or Methodists -- probably not Baptists, but most of the churches at the center could have written just about exactly what you've got. And see, I could deal with Presbyterians and say that's a nice paper, the Christology isn't bad -- a little funny on Zion, and you know the human condition is a little more optimistic than I would like. You know that I could play with the Presbyterians but not you -- you make me angry. You're better than to be like -- I don't want you to be Protestants. We've got more Protestants than we know what to do with. Now please stay out of the Protestant camp and either give up or be who you uniquely are -- that's I guess what I'm saying.
Now what that really means for me is to quit demythologizing, and what I want from you is transfigured re-mythologizing. And what I'd like you to do is to return to the spirit out of which you were founded. I don't mean you have to get all messed over with gold plates and all those kinds of stuff -- I don't mind if you wish to. But somehow you need to go through the literal letter that has offended some of you to create a spirit of how you came into being in the very beginning and then, in the resurrection to re-image what you're about that is more faithful to your uniqueness than some of these qualifications that some of you have been doing battle with.
Now I think -- now I like you better than you like yourselves? I like your heritage better than you like your heritage and i think part of that is because I have a creative distance from you. I don't have to fight all your fights; I don't have to go out to the stakes and mess with some of the trivia that you have to mess with; I don't have to work daily with fundamentalist saints that drive you up a wall and make you, you know, what you are; I don't have to mess with that. So it means I can have a creative distance from your heritage in which I can begin to dream with your heritage. I wish somehow there was some way I could help you back away from your heritage just enough -- this creative distance -- to bring a new appreciation to what you are about.
When I see what you're doing, it's stuff I see all the time -- management by objectives that just kills all that you're doing. There's just middle-class acceptability, middle-class ethos. You're in the midst of a conservative, liberal, radical split that's going to do you in unless you find some way of transcending that issue. But instead you take sides in it and insist on being liberal in the midst of it. I think you've got to transcend it with a new deal because the terms with which you're fighting your battles are past. They aren't creative and I find them boring.
I like your movement into an international focus. There's a tremendous possibility of learning what Zion means as a creative leaven in the midst of these various cultural contexts. The fear I've got is that you'll become more pluralistic and once again lose any focus of what it is you're really about.
I think you're suffering horrendously from small-church inferiority in the light of the church growth movement that is running rampant around the denominations. You're small and that makes you feel inferior so you too are going to sell the least common denominator to get more warm bodies so that you too can feel good if you're doing something significant. And you're losing your salt in the midst of your sale.
I think the key thing that's going on in your church now is that you are on a theological crisis. You really don't know who you are theologically, and because of that you're going to try, by programs, to supplement or to bypass what is really congenitally sick in your hearts. You really should discover the genius and uniqueness and what you should be on fire about as I am on fire about you - I'm excited about you. I don't find you excited about you. No wonder you have trouble selling yourself cause you don't believe it anymore -- that's what I'm sensing from you. And, you know, if you could really get your theological heart together with re-imagings and excitement, the rest is going to take care of itself. But because that's missing then you've got to have programs of this - and that's what your paper says to me in a way that drives me nuts.
Now in terms of the theological crisis I think the place of Joseph Smith - you don't know what to do with Joseph Smith. I think the legitimacy of the Joseph Smith saga is hard for you to know - and what to do with the Book of Mormon is a real cross for you to bear. But I think that mostly what I want to talk to you about is the status of the RLDS doctrines and images that infect you. I think that you're demythologizing things and that's what I want to stop.
Now, let me just look at your paper and then I'm going to tell you where I am. I find that the paper has typical middle-class church goals. Your key is growth and expansion. How unimaginative you can be. You know, it's not like you work for McDonald hamburgers or something. You will not very little sense of faithfulness, commitment - any of those kinds of stuff, very very little. You even choose the liberal theology terms! No wonder your conservatives don't trust you! My goodness, you're not even subtle about it! You know - evangelism for you is care, call and process. You call your program Faith to Grow - we should know that when we water the daisies. It's programmaticly oriented and what I'm saying is that this is theology of the church of the middle. There's very little sense of justice in it. All you want to talk about is reconciliation. There's a linear sense. Your whole movement has been linearity movement, becoming and so on. The emotion is fixed, growing depth of continuity, potential. Somebody has dead processed theology right through this whole thing, realizing the potentiality where you find yourself. There are vague principles - love, peace, equity, harmony - they are your basic principles. You know, it sounds like Unity Village. "The word for today is baloney," that kind of stuff. In fact, there is very little controversial about that whole document except in the face of the conservatives. Then that becomes conservative. Remember the old days of the Protestant church when the Protestants didn't know what they believed; they just knew they hated the Catholics. If the Catholics painted it blue, we like red; if they ere for the Eucharist, we beloved in the Word. You know, without the Roman Catholic Church we couldn't survive because we had to be opposed to something else. And oh, we weren't anything because we didn't stand - I'm beginning to sense this with this - that you make sense only in being anti-conservatives. This document doesn't make any sense without the conservatives that you're trying to either dupe, fool, change, cuddle or evangelize. I doubt it - you know it really doesn't, this is only half of your church. Now I just want to bypass that whole talk you know, and see what we can do.
Now, what I like about you in this document. There's a very open view of scripture, sense of ongoing revelation, there's a very liberal but not a particularly bad view of Zion - and that was good. I think the major thing I liked in that paper was the intensification of the vision of grace. You've been so works-oriented. You've had such a hard time believing in the grace of God who forgives and initiates. That's kind o works-drivenness. I like the feel of grace at the close of that paper, and I think it is something of a new dimension in your heritage and I welcome that. OK, so much for that.
Now, where am I with you? I'd like to talk a little bit about what I see in your heritage that I'm excited about. I'd like to try to excite you about it; I don't see it in the paper very much because when you talk about Zion you really don't get excited about Zion - you try to show that the conservative view of Zion is inadequate. And that's really what this paper is about. Now these are some of the things that I see about your background and your heritage - just excites me with new possibilities. If you'll just come alive and sell it, I'll join because you are what you're supposed to be, the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the face of the churches that have lost it. And most have lost it, including you, and the task is the task that Joseph Smith set for you - the restoration of the gospel - to all the church.
One of the key things is certainly Zion. You know it's beautiful and what I like about Zion is the fleshly quality of it. Many people - most theologians talk bout the kingdom and it's very ethereal; it's a principle, you can't get a hand on it. Joseph Smith knew that it had flesh and blood and concrete. It was genuinely incarnational rather than spiritual. He really understood Zion and it really seems to me to be the truth of the Biblical understanding. So when you start talking about Zion for me I think there are five dimensions of it that I see in your heritage that are absolutely essential.
1. One is what I call Zionic Personality. I think (hope) there is such a thing as a human being that's Zionic in nature, and that's what you're talking about when you say sanctification, transformation and so on. You know, is there such a thing as being Zion - it's a matter of being a whole and complete human being. It's to get away from the idea of the Christian faith being spiritual or one dimensional because you're really talking about being to the glory of God, driving to the glory of God [missing text here] talk about what you get away from [missing text here] itself. An upset male, female crying, articulate, you know, the whole human being that we split in half between male and female, feminine and masculine - all that kind of stuff - to really begin to understand what it means to be Zion, to have a Zionic personality, a new person to creative a new human being.
2. Second, Zionic Principles. If somehow you could take the principles of what Zion is all about and begin to place it everywhere - I don't know a whole lot about what you do at the Sanitarium but what a unique place that would be to begin again to talk about preventive health rather than crisis intervention. You talk about wholistic existence; you talk about the spiritual, the physical, the economic, the social - and the medical as part of one who is whole and complete. And what you do is to do medicine by teams not by technology alone, and that's a new approach to one's body, one's self - that's Zionic. That's using the Zionic principles that you can put them into architecture, into law in every dimension of the human being is a cry to be Zionic and what it's about and so on.
3. Third, Zionic Process. I think there is such a thing as a Zionic process. Jesus talked about it and said it was the leaven, the loaf, the seed, the mustard seed, the salt and so on. Learn what it means to be a leavening process in everything that you're about.
4. Fourth, I believe in Zionic community. I believe you need to create communities that are signal beams communities, foretaste communities. TWA does better in creating, corporate, communal, and other kinds of living contexts that appeal to the wholeness of the human spirit; they excite me with what they are doing with mortar and with glass and with sound and so on to instill and make ecstatic the human spirit. OK Zionics, what are you doing? Do you know the condominiums and cardboard boxes and kitchen cabinets of Zion? America is producing homes that frustrate the human spirit. And as the people of Zion, you know. You know in Nauvoo the way in which the street plan was understood. Now America's crying for people like you who have a sense of what that means.
5. Fifth and last, I want to talk about the Zionic Kingdom. You know, I really do want to talk about historic promise. I think what this country has longed for [is] a sense of vision, a sense of promise, a sense of ongoingness - you know there was a call to his nation - it was of a Kingdom nature - we lost it; we don't know where it keeps us going; we don't know if it's going now, but you are the people that believe what the promise of history is for.
But I want to say that without it the Old Testament makes absolutely no sense and the New Testament is baloney!
Some other principles that I see - your of storehouse and stewardship - oh, that's exciting kind of stuff if you get away fro the literal reading of it all. Take a careful look at economic sharing. I think that you are fundamentally socialist at heart. I'd like to see you demonstrate the degree to which "to each according to their ability, from each according to their needs" can become a working way of lifestyle. r country is dying because we have lost it. The storehouse idea.
OK, the idea of ongoing revelation. I think the church is really questionable because we somehow understand revelation as complete and finished. But I think what you do is have a strong doctrine in the Holy Spirit, even at the point of vision, and with that there's the capacity to learn how to discern what the spirit is about. Instead of going back to doctrine go back to this. What you are about is the belief that the Holy Spirit isn't an it; the Holy Spirit is the Living God now in our world, talking to Peter and talking to each one of us; pulling the church, luring the church. It's a matter of discerning at this point in history what the Lord would have your church to be about. You really believe that; you are led by the ongoing word of the Spirit. Your heritage is filled with it.
Fourth, the idea of a chosen people. That's a very biblical understanding that God chooses people for a special purpose. Now what happens is that every time that the chosen people believe that they're the only ones - they can say they are blessed or something of that sort, they relish the benefits God has honored them with. No, God is the one that calls them to death, to cross over, to the Red Sea and to fail.
And I really believe that that's what you're about - you are a chosen and special people - not because you're better but that God has called you to a task that you must do, and if you do nothing then it's against God. I think you're called I really think you're called; I think you're also ashamed of the call.
Next, the whole idea of linear pilgrimage. As I read scripture, what is so important the people of God move. Now when God came to Abram and said saddle up, we're moving out and Abram said where are we going and God said I'll tell you later. That's your heritage. You don't pitch your tents. You're forever moving, living. The whole idea of pilgrimage is so important.
OK, next I like your idea of a disciplined, faithful community. You know - no you don't - you know what the cost of discipleship means.
When Bonhoeffer suffered, you know that the Grace of Jesus Christ is expensive. It will cost you your life before it is done; it costs you money; it costs everything. It is a total way of life. To be bitten by Jesus Christ is a horrendous thing because you have to give your whole life... There is no lukewarm stuff. You get this in one sense in the people who were waiting supposedly for the call to move from Australia to the gathering place. Now what do you want to do with that? Listen to what that is. The willingness to pitch in and lose everything.
OK, the idea of prophetic leaven, that somehow your task is to be taught in being a leaven in every dimension of human life that you're in. Incredible power.
Next, martyrdom. Your church is a martyred church. If any kind of a church should be able to identify with the suffering and oppressed it ought to be you. Because you know what it is to be burned out and raped and have no home. Any idea of how sensitive you can be to the women's issue, the black issue, the liberation stuff.
You ought to have a tremendous sense of compassion about he world's hurt.
OK, next - the whole idea of the kingdom as being of this earth. I think I have mentioned before, Jesus prayed thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. I don't know of any church that has believed that more than you. You went over half this continent trying to find it as a matter of fact.
Next, your passion with and intrigued by and compassion for the native American. I think the Native American people, it's life-style, it's religion, their ecology about the Earth, their sensibility to death and creation, the oneness of spirit and body - the church is crying to discover that. I think you are somewhat unique in having a sensitivity to the part that the native American can play. And I think it goes or can go into your kind of sensitivity to the indigenous cultures of the world. You are more sensitive and more able to relate to them.
There's something about you, and I don't know what it is, that makes you more interested -
Next, you in your heritage have known what it is to be in but not of this world or any world. It doesn't mean you're worldly, but it means that you refuse to be fundamentally American. That's what I call radical monotheism. You refuse all idolness. You haven't always done this well, but in the heart of your faith you will permit no idols. You march to another drummer in the midst of all the people of the world. You were a separate nation, you were a separate people, and you were accountable only to God. That's why kings and queens and so on would come and see you - you have to be dealt directly. They didn't go through the State Department. The State Department had no control over you. You were not of this kind of nation. You were of your own specialty. You were a sanctuary in the midst of insanity in the culture.
Next you have an incredible capacity for full sacramental life. You know most Protestants only have two sacraments and the only reason they have them are they are the only two Jesus is reported to have served. You have many. And I like what is en-christened in your sacraments, that somehow the word of God is to be known and heard and experienced and blessed in the sacrament that is physically affirmed at every defining joint of life, of being, from the beginning to the end. There's the liturgy; there's the marking of passage. There's the whole, whether it's baptism, funeral, or whether it's health or whether it's sexuality - you have an incredibly full and rich sense of the sacramental.
Next, whatever number it is - you've always had a unique concern for the poor in your midst ----
Next, I think you have tried not to have a theology, you have tried to understand what it meant to theologize. For your theology isn't a belief, it is a series of I believe this, I believe that. It seems to me at your heart, it is a total orientation. Your theology is how you do what you do and it's a good thing. It isn't like you got an education and you're got a social this and you've got a religious dimension. Religion is not one dimension of youre life; it 's the total oriented program. It's what you really are.
Next, I'm almost done -- I like you; I like what you are about. It's your mission to all the church. The whole idea of restoration to me is the fact that in one sense your mission is to the world but in another sense your mission to the faithful. To the fact that they are in a state of apostasy, and therefore a willingness on your part to move your life in the tasks set out for you. Restoration is the name of the game. It doesn't mean that you're to be restored; it means that your task is to see that the church is restored with the hope that in restoration you won't be needed by God anymore. It is your willingness to empty yourself for the sake of the restoration, of the total giving, nothing restored in place of this.
Next, you seem to have a unique capacity for the aesthetic. I don't understand that. I don't know where that comes from exactly. Maybe it is because for you body is always spirit in a sense that cement and bricks always are to the glory of God.
That's part of you, that's important. I don't know why, but to have great ... and so on - it's to be a saint - that's all, whatever it is.
----
Professor Paul Jones was asked by Peter Judd in May of 1980 to share his reactions to the subject paper regarding the "Faith to Grow" program. He has/had been used by the Church for 10 to 12 years, as a resource person in the field of religion.
The paper, "Foundation for the Eighties" is a very diluted form of the Gospel as revealed to the Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr. in the 1800's. The paper was delivered by Clifford Cole.
Professor Jones after having worked with the Church of several years, knew the complete background int he preparation of the subject paper. The paper itself does not take a stand as forcibly as he does in his critique. The background for the above paper can be found in the Position Papers (1967) and the Presidential Papers (1979).
He accuses the church leaders of losing their uniqueness. He indicated that many of them are embarrassed - very embarrassed by the very things that made them what they are. And as he makes his remarks, he finds them boring in their approach. He indicates the "Paper" could have been written by Presbyterians or Methodists. He suggests that they should reverse their course of activity or they could run their vessel ashore. They are in complete perplexity about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith Jr.
What can we do as we read this report? Bear your testimony, be vocal and demand that the truth be taught and adhered to!
I don't agree with everything Professor Jones said. I didn't post this to lift him up but in hopes that people will read this and think about what's happened with the Community of Christ and Restoration Branches movement today. What a different path we could have followed if we had kept steadfast in what made us who we are! It is this unique RLDS position he mentions that is important to Devon Park, that makes us willing to risk everything to keep the name of the church. It is the unique RLDS position that the Community of Christ leadership want to destroy - to make illegal, and it appears that they will stop at nothing to accomplish this.
Despite how black things look right now, I believe that the church will be organized again. I have no doubt about that right now. As we move forward, I hope we remember our first love and do not become lukewarm or lose touch with what makes us who we are.
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