more thoughts on Independence temple theology

This past week, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the opening of RLDS (now Community of Christ) priesthood to women, the Community of Christ YouTube channel posted a video that was originally recorded back in 1984, during and after that year’s World Conference. From the very first second, it is very clearly a product of the 1980s, and I love it for that. Here’s a link, but I have more to write afterwards on a specific part of the video:

The same revelatory document that allowed for the ordination of women was also the one that announced that it was time to build the Independence Temple, which would be dedicated a decade later. Some of the conventional wisdom about the coincidence of these two announcements is that Wallace B. Smith was trying to keep conservative members of the church happy at the same time that he was making a controversial move (which, of course, would eventually alienate a large portion of the conversative membership o fthe church, temple or no temple).

Yet, there were also concerns about what it meant for the RLDS Church to build a temple at that time. In short, was this going to look like the Kirtland Temple? The Nauvoo Temple (and subsequent LDS/Mormon temples)? Or something altogether different? Thus, Smith’s declaration that it was time to build the Independence Temple was accompanied with a description of what that temple would be built for. Here’s the relevant passage from D&C 156:5:

a. The temple shall be dedicated to the pursuit of peace. It shall be for reconciliation and for healing of the spirit.

b. It shall also be for a strengthening of faith and preparation for witness.

c. By its ministries an attitude of wholeness of body, mind, and spirit as a desirable end toward which to strive will be fostered.

d. It shall be the means for providing leadership education for priesthood and member.

e. And it shall be a place in which the essential meaning of the Restoration as healing and redeeming agent is given new life and understanding, inspired by the life and witness of the Redeemer of the world.

I’m pretty familiar with that passage, but as I watched Perspectives ‘84, I was struck by this comment by Alan Tyree of the First Presidency at the time:

Because our temple ministries would be available to the public generally, they are not uniquely or solely for Latter Day Saints, of course, and we see the ministry of reconciliation being a ministry which would include all those efforts toward peace in all forms of interpersonal relationships—Individual to individual, for example—and [it] could very well be the ministry that would bring persons in personal conflict together for reconciliation. We would expect that that ministry, while perhaps having some major focus in the temple per se, would be nevertheless a basic ministry of the church so that the quality of ministry that we might consider a temple ministry is something that the entire church in all of its congregations will participate in.

There’s a lot going on here—for one, there’s a clear anticipation of the difficult time that the RLDS Church was about to go through—but I’m struck by the way that this resonates with what I wrote a month ago about Independence Temple theology in the wake of the sale of the Kirtland Temple: We only need one temple, because this temple is about going out into the whole world and making it holy (rather than restricting the holiness of the temple to our own people who qualify for it).

Forty years on, I think we’re still figuring out these aspects of our temple theology. We’ve made great progress toward becoming a church of peace and reconciliation, but I think we have more work to do. As we figure out what temples mean to us now that we only have one, I think Tyree’s comment from forty years ago has some importance for us.

• macro
• Communities
• Community of Christ
• Independence temple
• peace
• reconciliation
• Wallace B. Smith
• Alan Tyree