Restoration Branches and the Remnant Church
Wallace B. Smith's 1984 revelation calling for the ordination of women, documented on Polygamy and the Temple as a turning point in Community of Christ's theology of access, produced the RLDS Church's largest schism. The dissenting movement it produced did not stay unified. Sixteen years later it split again, over a different and older question: who is entitled to lead by right of descent from Joseph Smith.
The group that broke away to preserve lineal succession from Joseph Smith later broke again, over who among them actually held that lineage.
Lineage
The 1984 break
A 1984 internal survey found RLDS membership decisively unresolved on the question of women's ordination: 32 percent in favor, 49 percent opposed, 13 percent undecided. At the same World Conference where those results were released, the First Presidency announced a document presented as revelation from God, stating that ordaining women was "in harmony with my will." Conference delegates voted to accept it as scripture. It became Section 156 of the RLDS Doctrine and Covenants.
Dissenting members began meeting independently within weeks. The first, called the Independence Branch, formed on May 6, 1984, when seven members convened, elected officers, and continued the sacrament outside institutional church control, an action its own later historians describe not as an act of defiance but as "a studied and planned event" to preserve individual conscience and continue Restoration-era ordinances. Similar branches multiplied over the following years without forming a single central organization. Estimates of total membership across the resulting Restoration Branches movement range from roughly 10,000 (Wikipedia, 2011) to as high as 40,000 alienated members cited by the later Remnant Church.
Restoration Branches sources describe the RLDS hierarchy's trajectory since roughly 1958, coinciding with W. Wallace Smith's presidency, as a "systematic replacement of fundamental RLDS beliefs with liberal Protestant theology," with the 1984 ordination revelation serving as the final, most tangible break rather than an isolated cause.
Wallace B. Smith, in contemporary press interviews, characterized the conservative movement as wanting to "freeze the church at a point they feel represents kind of an ideal doctrinal position," and stated the RLDS majority believed gospel principles could be subject to further interpretation as society changed. He framed the split as resistance to legitimate doctrinal development rather than a departure from it.
The 2000 second split
Without central organization, the Restoration Branches movement itself proved unstable. In May 1999, a group of high priesthood holders from within the branches, organized as the Conference of Restoration Elders, issued a "Proclamation and Invitation to the Faithful," arguing the wider Restoration Branches movement had drifted from the original vision of establishing a physical Zion. A Council of High Priests met that August. An assembly that October endorsed the proclamation and called for a General Conference the following spring.
On April 6, 2000, the same calendar date, 170 years after the church's original 1830 founding, that General Conference formally established the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In April 2002, the church selected as its president Frederick Niels Larsen, a great-grandson of Joseph Smith III and, by the church's own account, a lineal descendant of Joseph Smith Jr. through an unbroken family line reaching back to the founding prophet.
Doctrine and Covenants
The Remnant Church's canon matches the Community of Christ's Doctrine and Covenants up through Section 144, the last section accepted before Wallace B. Smith's presidency, then diverges, incorporating later sections revealed through Larsen instead.
Scripture accepted
Accepts the Inspired Version of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and its own Doctrine and Covenants as sacred. Explicitly rejects the Pearl of Great Price, which the Remnant Church does not treat as scripture.
Self-understanding
Considers itself, not Community of Christ, the true continuation of the 1830 Church of Christ, headquartered near the Temple Lot, directly across from the Community of Christ's own Independence Temple.
"One Mighty and Strong"
Some members hold that Larsen fulfilled an 1832 prophecy attributed to Joseph Smith describing a coming figure called "one mighty and strong," a messianic-adjacent claim of his own special standing, beyond ordinary lineal succession.
The Remnant Church's own historical account states it does "not accept any revelation after the presidency of Israel Smith," meaning it treats not only Wallace B. Smith's 1984 revelation but the entirety of his father W. Wallace Smith's earlier presidency (1958–1978) as already compromised. This is a more sweeping rejection of RLDS institutional authority than the ordination question alone, and it positions the Remnant Church's break from the wider Restoration Branches movement as its own dispute over how far back the "true" line of authority should be drawn, not merely a disagreement over which independent branch to belong to.
Reading this against the -ites pattern
This sequence is the -ite pattern from the Book of Mormon and 1844 succession crisis recurring twice within a single lifetime, inside a single denomination, over a span of sixteen years. A 1984 institutional decision produced a movement defined entirely by opposition to it, with no leader or central claim of its own. That movement then produced its own internal Speaker: Larsen, a documented descendant of the founding prophet, around whom a portion of the dissenters organized a second, more tightly bounded institution, leaving the rest as an unaffiliated, still-uncentralized "Restoration Branches" movement to this day.
Two schisms, one church, sixteen years: the first over who may be ordained, the second over who may claim descent.
Sources
- World Religions and Spirituality Project, "Community of Christ" — on the 1984 schism and its scale.
- Deseret News, "Fundamentalists Vow to Retrieve Reins of RLDS Church," July 8, 1990 — Wallace B. Smith quotations and 1990-era membership estimates.
- Oakwood Restoration Branch, "Why Independent Restoration Branches Must Remain Independent."
- South Crysler Restoration Branch, "RLDS Drift & Branches" — on the May 6, 1984 formation of the Independence Branch.
- The Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, "Our History," theremnantchurch.com.
- "Restoration branches," Wikipedia.
- "Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," Wikipedia.
- "Frederick Niels Larsen," Wikipedia.
- BYU Daily Universe, "Remnant Church president answers religious questions," February 14, 2005.
- Women's Rites (Smith College), "Background Essay: Women's Ordination in Community of Christ" — on the 1984 membership survey results.
- Grokipedia, "Wallace B. Smith" — on Section 156 and traditionalist criticism of Smith's presidency.
- Doctrine and Covenants (Remnant edition), "Introduction to The Doctrine and Covenants of The Remnant Church."