A long time ago, I remember reading this post by John Hamer about the myths LDS people hold about the RLDS (Now the Community of Christ.) At the time, the Bloggernacle hailed this post as groundbreaking. Though I had some limited awareness that the LDS Church didn’t do a very good job of disentangling fact and myth about the RLDS, I also had some misgivings about the veracity of a few of Hamer’s points.
Recently FireTag, who is a Believing member of the Community of Christ, wrote this article on the Community of Christ’s recent choice to join the NCC (National Council of the Churches of Christ) expressing at least some level of concern over their move away from their Joseph Smith Jr. and restorationist roots. Interestingly John Hamer has responded to the post defending the CoC’s move.
The RLDS made a move to try to simultaneously embrace both Conservative and Liberal view points within their Church and here we have two great representatives of both of those view points. This gives us a unique chance to see two perspectives on the same issue — both from within the CoC — and thereby tease out truth, myth, and apologetics. Based on this further information, I am going to reassess Hamer’s original “myths” in light of a fuller knowledge.