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.