coming to peace with the Kirtland Temple sale

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Yesterday, Community of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that the former had sold the Kirtland Temple, other historic sites, and some important documents and artifacts for $192.5 million dollars. As the title to this post suggests, I’ve pretty quickly come to peace with the decision, and I want to explain some of that process in this post. However, there are some conflicted emotions lingering beneath that peace, and I want to make clear that the goal of this post is not to tell anyone how to feel about this.

In fact, as a relative newcomer to Community of Christ, I think it would be presumptuous and inappropriate for me to tell lifelong members (well, anyone, but especially lifelong members) that they should come to peace with the decision as quickly and (relatively) easily as I have. I was moved by prophet-president Steve Veazey’s admission that this decision brought him to tears, knowing the emotional response it would provoke. The mourning that David Howlett expressed in interviews with the Religion News Service and the Salt Lake Tribune also touched me—as I’ll describe later, his writing on the Kirtland Temple has been really important for me. I heard yesterday from one of the most historically minded apostles in Community of Christ (who, to the best of my knowledge, had been living on one of the other properties that was sold) that the decision had been emotionally heartbreaking, no matter how much it made sense on paper. I think this sorrow is all warranted and important, and I don’t want to dismiss it.

In fact, the whole reason I’m writing this post is because I expected to be sadder and angrier about this than I have been. Having been a member of both Community of Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout my faith journey, I have a particular set of weighty and complicated feelings about the transfer of the Kirtland Temple from the former to the latter. Frankly, I hoped this would never happen, so I’m surprised that I’ve come to peace with the decision, especially in such a short time. I want to write here about that peace and some of the complicated feelings—not to impose my journey on others and not even to promote my own perspective on this but mostly to share publicly some things that I want to remember for myself.

2003, and coming to peace with Mormon pettiness

I grew up a Kentucky Mormon and always kind of resented my co-religionists who lived in the Mormon Corridor, closer to church headquarters. (To this day, I’m frustrated by how many Latter-day Saint institutions and Mormon-adjacent organizations simply assume that one can easily make one’s way to Utah for a book release, a class reunion, or whatever else). The one element of superiority that I felt like I could flaunt over those who lived in the Mormon Corridor is that I lived a lot closer to important Mormon history sites than they did.

In fact, during several summers as a teenager, my stake chartered a bus, reserved some places to stay, and sent us to church history sites to get in touch with our heritage. In July of 2003, we headed off to Kirtland to visit all the historical sites there, including the temple. At the time I didn’t know much about Community of Christ—much less that I’d one day join the denomination—and I’m ashamed to say that I showed all of the pettiness of Mormons who don’t know much about their religious cousins but are dismissive of them anyway.

There’s an embarrassingly common Mormon belief that it’s somehow impossible to feel the Holy Spirit in the Kirtland Temple, simply because its not owned by “the right church.” My memories are fuzzy on the details, but my journal from back then suggests that I had some kind of spiritual experience when visiting the temple, then heard someone express that belief about the spirit being absent from that building, and then proceeded to freak out that the devil had tricked me into feeling a fake spiritual experience. In an email exchange with a close friend shortly after the conference, she voiced another common Mormon refrain: Why can’t they just sell us the temple? We’re the ones who built it! My response gently pushed back against what she had to say but admitted to difficulty believing the tour guides because of our denominational differences:

Pres. Hinckley could have said the temple was originally in hot pink and neon green and I would have believed him, but when the tour guide says they originally painted it in red and blue I couldn’t help but doubt for some reason

Theologically, it is amazing to me that Mormons so strongly believe that the Holy Spirit can so easily be constrained when scripture so clearly says otherwise. Ecclesiastically, I’m frustrated that Mormons (including myself!) can be so close-minded—even to their close religious relatives. If one thing makes me sad and angry about the sale, it’s knowing that so many Mormons are going to ignore Ben Parks’s generous call in his comments to the Salt Lake Tribune “to view the transition with ‘gratitude, rather than victory.’” There is a time in my life when I would have seen this as victory, and I know that all sorts of Mormons, from the rank-and-file to those in high leadership, are going to see this as proof of the mountain saints’ superiority over the prairie saints. That makes me mad, and it’s frankly one of the biggest reasons that I never wanted to see this sale take place.

And yet, I have to admit to myself that that reaction has just as much pettiness as my past self showed as a teenager visiting Kirtland. Not all Mormons are going to be petty about this: I frequently disagree with Stephen C. over at Times and Seasons, but his post yesterday where he expressed being “happy that the CoC will have enough money to keep paying their bills for the foreseeable future” genuinely touched me, and I was grateful for it.

Even if this post is in the minority of reactions as far as pettiness goes (and I’m inclined to think it is), it is time for my discipleship in Community of Christ to take on a maturity that goes beyond explicit contrast with my previous faith tradition. Don’t get me wrong: For all my fondness for my religious past, I reserve the right to critique the LDS Church when I think it’s in the wrong (the fact that $200 million is a drop in the bucket for the LDS Church seems to me an indication of a troubling familiarity with wealth) and to talk up Community of Christ when it does better (I was so proud when my current church emphasized its desire to lift up the marginalized and uphold the worth of all persons in the joint public statement). That said, a church membership based on thumbing my nose at my previous church would be not only inaccurate (I will always be a Mormon and cherish Mormonism) but unhealthy.

In short, my love for Community of Christ is not dependent on any kind of denominational competition. Whatever petty Mormons might think they’ve won in this exchange, I’m at peace knowing that the financial future of my current church is stronger than it was previously.

2021, and coming to peace with losing a symbol

In late August of 2021, a friend and mentor of mine in Community of Christ gave me a framed picture of the Kirtland Temple to celebrate my confirmation into Community of Christ. He had worked with a number of people transitioning between the LDS Church and this denomination, and he knew how powerful of a symbol this temple is for demonstrating shared ground or transition between the two. Community of Christ’s website for seekers from a Latter-day Saint background uses Kirtland Temple imagery. I put a picture of the Kirtland Temple on the equivalent page on my congregation’s website. As of this writing, I use the Kirtland Temple as a symbol of faith transition on the appropriate section of my website. The excellent book Restorations: Scholars in Dialogue from Community of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the Kirtland Temple on its cover. It’s such a good shorthand for a shared space between these two faiths.

In fact, David Howlett’s book on the Kirtland Temple takes this idea of shared sacred space as its main theme. As I suggested earlier, reading his book played an important part in my faith transition. Reading about Joseph F. Smith’s pettiness when he visited the temple in the early 20th century helped me recognize and deal with my own past pettiness. His careful history of the temple helped me tease apart how Kirtland-era Mormonism differed (so, so much) from Nauvoo-era Mormonism and Utah-era Mormonism—in so doing, I could deconstruct my understanding of Mormon history in a way that deconstructed my fears about exclusive Latter-day Saint claims on truth. I don’t want to overstate the effect the book had, but it was a big one! The Kirtland Temple was the intersection in the Venn diagram between Community of Christ and the LDS Church, and reading about that intersection smoothed the transition. The fact that this building was so easily recognized as that Venn diagram intersection made it such a powerful symbol.

It’s a bit strange to still have my friend’s gift on my desk right now, because it’s not as clear that the Kirtland Temple still serves as that intersection. I believe (and agree with) the Community of Christ First Presidency when they emphasize that selling the temple does not mean abandoning our Restoration heritage, but it can’t help but feel something like that. Losing a tangible symbol of the shared heritage that helped bring me into this denomination is hard for me—harder than any resentment of petty Mormons crowing victory over the sale.

And yet, I had an interesting experience Tuesday morning, just hours before the announcement, that has helped me come to terms with this. I don’t like the idea of an intervening God—I’m increasingly unsure of my belief in God in any traditional sense—but this felt like a real moment of divine providence. I’ve been working on the Introduction to Scripture class out of Community of Christ’s Temple School, which means that over the course of eight lessons, I’ve been working with Peter’s vision in Acts 10, where God is trying to tell him to get ready for Cornelius, the first Gentile convert, and Peter’s first response is “nope, that’s not how we do things here,” so God has to really get at him to convince Peter that even if it means entirely rethinking his identity as a believer, this is the right move to move the early church into the future.

I don’t love how quickly this passage can become an anti-Jewish screed by Christians, so I’ve been working hard over the course of the class to think about what this passage means for Community of Christ today. So, for example, Peter’s hungry when he has his vision, but he’s still ready to turn down the meal he’s offered even though God is offering it to him; Community of Christ is hungry in the sense of needing members and money that it doesn’t have, but would we turn down the meal God is offering us to meet our needs? Peter has to rethink the signs and symbols of his religious identity in order to respond to this vision; is Community of Christ willing to reconsider (more than it already has) what the signs and symbols of our collective religious identity are?

As I was thinking about these implications of this passage, I recognized the ways it might mean putting less emphasis on our Restoration heritage to better welcome those seeking something else in a church. At the same time, though, I was trying hard to keep the focus on “oh, what this means is tossing out traditional Sunday services and getting out in the community.” As soon as I read the announcement, though, I found myself caught by the observations and notes about Acts 10 that I had just sent to my pastor earlier that day, feeling excited about them at the time. Selling the Kirtland Temple is a hard meal for me to sit down to, but I believe the church’s leaders when they suggest that this is where God is leading us in the future.

Just like my love for Community of Christ needs to grow beyond its contrast with my former church, I think it’s also time for that love to grow beyond its past. I love the Restoration heritage of the church, and I will always advocate for lifting it up, preaching from it, and cherishing it. Yet, like Peter, I recognize that God may be leading us in another direction, and I want to be as excited about my church’s future. As I texted a friend this morning:

I’m saddened by the decision, but as much as the Kirtland Temple represented my decision to come into Community of Christ, I do feel like the Independence Temple [with its focus on being a global church, proclaiming peace and justice, etc.] represents the future I want to have in this denomination.

conclusion: 2024, and looking forward

I am going to miss the Kirtland Temple (even though it’s obviously still there).

The tiny, local group of Community of Christ people I meet with once a month had just been talking on Sunday about taking a trip up there together sometime soon. We still can, but I’d been excited about going as a group of people from Community of Christ with a tour guide from Community of Christ. It’s weird to think that now, I’ll never have visited the temple on a tour with someone from the same denomination as me. I promise not to be petty to the LDS tour guide in the way I was in the past to the Community of Christ tour guide (or at least to try!), but it’s going to be hard to never have had that experience of touring it “on the same side.”

I also don’t know what to do with the picture of the Kirtland Temple that’s sitting on my desk right now. It’s still a special building to me, but it can’t symbolize the same things that it used to now that it’s owned by the LDS Church. I don’t mind finding other symbols of my faith and religious heritage, but I miss this one! The Independence Temple is lovely, but there was nothing better than Kirtland for showing that connection between my past and present faith traditions.

And yet, despite all of that, I feel at peace, and I’m glad for it (if surprised by it). I’m glad to feel some additional hope for the future of Community of Christ. I feel more like a believer today than I have in several months—like God has given us this difficult moment related to our past to prepare us for an exciting future as a church. I’m eager to be a part of it.

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