some thoughts on Independence Temple theology

I have spent far too much time blogging this week (even before the sale of the Kirtland Temple was announced), but weeks like this don’t come often, and I feel like holding onto this week’s thoughts will be important in the years to come. So, here’s another post!

A friend recently suggested that I subscribe to the daily meditations sent out by Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation, and today’s was lovely, focusing on finding God in all things. Here’s the passage that stood out to me in particular (and perhaps you’ll see why):

The word profane comes from the Latin words pro (“in front of”) and fanum (“temple”). We thought we lived “outside the temple.” Without a nature-based spirituality, it was a profane universe, bereft of Spirit. We had to keep building shrines and churches to capture and hold our now domesticated and tamed God. Soon we didn’t know where to look for the divine, as we made God’s presence so limited. We became like fish swimming around looking for water, and often arguing about who owned the water!

The temple connection with what I’ve already written about this week is obvious, but the word “profane” also stood out to me. As I acknowledged earlier in the week, my pain about the Kirtland Temple sale has been tempered some by my recent study of Acts 10, Peter’s welcoming of Cornelius, and its invitation to rethink religious identity to follow where God is leading. However, at least in the NRSV, the word “profane” is also particularly important in this chapter. Here are Peter and God speaking in Acts 10:14-15:

But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

There’s no direct connection here with the Kirtland Temple, but I’ve been talking with a friend about the urgent need to better develop Community of Christ’s temple theology, and I do see a clear connection between “profane” and the Independence Temple. Some contrast between the Independence Temple and Latter-day Saint temples may be helpful here (though it also risks being misleading—it’s important to remember that the two denominations’ temple theologies were largely developed independently, and not necessarily in explicit contrast with each other, after the split).

Latter-day Saint temple theology relies heavily on a distinction between the sacred and the profane. The outside world is a terrible place, but there is a kind of refuge present past the recommend desk where God is present in a qualitatively different way. Recent Latter-day Saint policy (over the past 30 years, but especially in the past 5 or so) has been to build more and more temples to provide more and more such refuges.

The Independence Temple operates on a very, very different logic. There is no “profane” in Community of Christ temple theology—no sense that being outside of the temple is less desirable than being inside the temple. In fact, the often-derided spiral design of the temple is meant in part to symbolize sending those inside the temple out into the world. Here’s an excerpt from Continuing your Discipleship in Community of Christ, a document meant for those looking into Community of Christ from Latter-day Saint background:

Employing the spiral’s symbolism in the Temple is a way of creating a centering place that gathers us in, and then sends us out, to extend Zion to the entire world.

In fact, when leaving the sanctuary at the center of the temple, you exit the building by entering the World Plaza, pictured below:

To quote Katherine Hill in the excellent book Restorations: Scholars in Dialogue from Community of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Worshipers can exit the sanctuary through the peace doors embossed with the church peace seal onto the World Plaza—a map of the world created with bricks. Exiting onto the plaza metaphorically and literally has a person going outward into the world from his or her inner sacred journey.

In Independence Temple theology, the peace of the temple is not something that can’t be accessed in the rest of the world—it’s something that we have an obligation to take with us in the rest of the world. It’s not that the rest of the world is profane—outside the temple and therefore incapable of accessing the divine. It’s that we haven’t yet made the rest of the world holy; or, Rohr might argue, we haven’t yet recognized the holiness in the rest of the world.

Along these lines, Community of Christ D&C 161 uses the phrase “people of the temple.” I find this phrase interesting, because I feel like it’s also been used in Latter-day Saint contexts. In those contexts, being a people of the temple means that more and more people refuge themselves from the world in the temple. Again, though, Independence Temple theology is different. Here’s what D&C 161:2a has to say:

Become a people of the Temple—those who see violence but proclaim peace, who feel conflict yet extend the hand of reconciliation, who encounter broken spirits and find pathways for healing.

To be a people of the temple in Independence Temple theology is to make the rest of the world holy. It is to say that the outside world is not inherently profane but only profane where violence, conflict, and broken spirits are present. Yet, like Peter, we are not to dismiss anyone or anything as profane but to welcome them into the Christian fold and make them holy through peace, reconciliation, and pathways for healing.

The same friend who recommended Rohr to me also commented in a recent conversation that “We only need one temple.” As I’ve tried to emphasize in all my posts this week, that doesn’t take away the pain and grief of losing our second temple. I honor that pain and grief, I validate that pain and grief, and I acknowledge that I may not fully understand the depths of others’ pain and grief. My goal here is not to dismiss or argue against any of that.

Rather, my goal is to emphasize that we have to figure out and emphasize Independence Temple theology now that it is our only temple. Many of the building blocks are there for us, and they only require one temple—one whose primary purpose is to symbolize the work that we are doing in the rest of the world. However, if we fail to live up to that theology, we will have wasted the sacrifice of the Kirtland Temple.

In a 2022 sermon, Steve Veazey described members of Community of Christ as “becoming a holy temple spanning the earth.” I think it’s more important than ever that we live into that aspiration.

• macro
• Communities
• Richard Rohr
• Center for Action and Contemplation
• Kirtland Temple
• Independence temple
• Introduction to Scripture
• Community of Christ
• Restorations