the foundational experience of losing temples

It’s now been over six months since the transfer of the Kirtland Temple from Community of Christ to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and there’s still a lot to process for folks on the Community of Christ side of things. I remain committed to what I first said after hearing the news: that I have no interest in telling people how to feel about things, and that even if I did, I wouldn’t be on solid ground doing so. Yet, a thought occurred to me this morning that has helped contextualize some of my other thoughts over the past six months, and I did want to go ahead and share that.

The loss of temples is actually a theme in scripture, and Biblical scholarship has made observations about the importance of these events at a meta level not immediately apparent in the text. For example, the loss of the first Jerusalem temple as part of the Babylonian exile is thought to be the event that catalyzed the creation of the Pentateuch and, by extension, the rest of the Hebrew Bible as we know it today. There wouldn’t be a Hebrew Bible (or at least not the one that we know) without the loss of the first temple. Similarly, much of the New Testament was composed after the loss of the second Jerusalem temple as part of a Roman crackdown around 70 CE, and the “future” absence of that temple is a theme in some of the gospels. Early Christianity and its sacred texts would not be what they were without the loss of the second temple informing them.

In a similar way, I wonder if Community of Christ could not become what we need to be in the future without losing the Kirtland Temple. This isn’t to argue that the loss is, on balance, a good thing. The Babylonian exile and the Roman siege of Jerusalem were both very traumatic events, and even if we can appreciate the texts and traditions that came out of that trauma, it would be silly to celebrate that trauma or even suggest that it was necessary. While it’s been relatively easy for me to process the sale of the Kirtland Temple, I know that there’s a lot of individual and institutional trauma that we’re going through. Yet, I do hope that in the same way that the Pentateuch and the New Testament came out of earlier temple trauma, Community of Christ can emerge from this trauma in a form that future generations will be able to appreciate.

• macro
• Communities
• Kirtland Temple
• Community of Christ
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Babylonian exile