Absolutely Stunning News
As you have probably heard, the Church is buying out the historic restoration era properties owned by the Community of Christ (RLDS) along with artefacts from that era.
From a correspondent:
Yesterday afternoon, the shocking news broke that the Utah-based LDS church had acquired the Kirtland Temple in Ohio and essentially all of the common-history documents of Mormonism prior to 1844. These had been in the care of the “Reorganized LDS” (later “Community of Christ”) since the 1860s. In fact, they’d been the subject of acrimony for decades in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The purchase of the Kirtland Temple in particular is earth-shattering. This building was the original Mormon temple, built in 1835 and the seat of many revelations and legends. This is, within our sphere, the equivalent of Eastern Orthodoxy selling Mt Athos monastery to the Roman Catholics.
At $192M, the purchase staved off (likely permanently prevented) the pending bankruptcy of the Community of Christ. They simply didn’t have the funds to care for the facilities and fulfill their interpretation of the charge. So this becomes entangled with the massive wealth of the LDS church (a couple of hundred billion in financial instruments, aside from real estate). I have mixed feelings about all of this.
- The purchase of the Kirtland temple and the Nauvoo buildings means that the tours become managed by LDS missionaries rather than CoC volunteers. This will mean a general decline in quality, since CoC volunteers were often trained historians rather than motivated randos.
- The CoC is continuing along its trajectory of shedding the past like a skin. It seems to have no real ties to the Book of Mormon and early Mormonism, any more than your local Presbyterian Church cares what John Knox thought.
- The LDS church commands massive resources. They have been criticized by exMormons for hiding their wealth (e.g. via shell corporations) and for not giving enough of it (all of it?) to charity. These are both characteristically stupid reasons. First, they should hide everything they can from Mammon. GD TPTB. Secondly, as I’ve argued elsewhere, human-oriented institutional charity is wicked and likely evil. No, the real problem is that they aren’t ambitious enough: make the desert blossom as a rose. Plant temples on the moon. Like everyone else, they’re trapped in economic rent-seeking rather than being crazily insanely religiously ambitious in transforming the world. Terraforming the world.
Total vindication of the Church’s strategy of being neighborly with those guys. And another definite warning, given the fate of the CoC, as if any are needed, that the mainline strategy of truckling to the world and emphasizing inclusion or tolerance as your primary values is a dead end strategy. The reason this is happening is because CoC congregations are aging and shrinking.
We ourselves are doing badly (stagnant growth, plummeting birth rates) except compared to all the rest.
I am grateful this week for the blessings of tithing and for the Church having funds available when needed.
G.
March 8, 2024
I would love to be a missionary in the Kirtland Temple some day even if its probably true that to the extent I wasn’t following a banal script I would just be saying something eccentric and enthusiast.
On the ambition thing, that’s a real point, but I do see signs of real ambition/aspiration in the PEF and Pathways. Becoming the route to middle class status in the 3rd world is just such a great idea.
E.C.
March 8, 2024
Re: not being ambitious enough,
Who says we aren’t? Our church has the most privately owned land of practically any church but the Catholic; who’s to say that land will never be used for anything but camps?
The thing is, the Church currently supports a vast cadre of its members through various job opportunities and, as you say, educational opportunities. It’s not a small thing to enable an entire people to lift themselves out of poverty and want – thus helping their neighbors. I mean, they’ve created an entire constellation of summer jobs for the YSA with the FSY program just within the last few years. The Church also seems to be on its way toward an incredible media outreach – they hire people to create films (BofM videos, Bible videos, inspirational content, etc.), articles, scholarly apologetics, etc.
Nor do I think that the Church has nothing in mind as far as making the desert ‘blossom as the rose’. At the very least, every temple lot is beautifully maintained (though admittedly, some other church buildings are less so) and carefully planned for maximum loveliness.
Also, the missionaries who would likely be called to the Kirtland Temple mission may not be ‘motivated randos’. There’s no end of committed members who are deeply educated on our history, and there’s been a recent push for senior missionaries.
[]
March 9, 2024
Big difference between “who says we can’t” and “who says we aren’t!” Temple lots are nice but there used to be stake farms.
E.C.
March 9, 2024
Yes, there did used to be stake farms! And it’s certainly frustrating to me that my elderly parents are often the only ones who answer the call to go work the cannery assignments, too. Maybe with the downturn in the economy that will become more urgent to people again.
That said, every time I have signed up for a cannery assignment something has gone wrong, from major storms to equipment breakage, so I’ve given up on serving that way since I seem to jinx my assigned shifts. This is not a once-or-twice kind of thing; I’ve signed up for probably 10 shifts in the last five years and the universe finds new and exciting ways to destroy my good intentions.
Sorry, that was off-topic.
gst
March 12, 2024
In a single paragraph you praise the LDS church for its policy of neighborliness towards the CoC, and also take a big dump on the CoC on the occasion of the saddest day in its history since the martyrdom of their prophet.
G.
March 12, 2024
There is a reason they told me my competing bid would be denied no matter the number.
Too bad