The Shape of God, Part Two: Community of Christ
The LDS Church's doctrine of God moved, across Joseph Smith's own lifetime, from language compatible with a single undivided God toward a fully separate, embodied, formerly-mortal Godhead (see Part One). Community of Christ's theology moved in the opposite direction: away from any version of exaltation theology and toward the standard Trinitarian formulation shared by mainline Protestant Christianity, a shift documented across more than a century and formalized by full membership in an ecumenical body built on that formulation.
Where Part One traced Smith's own doctrine changing under his own hand, this entry traces a second, independent institutional movement: an organization descended from the same 1830 founding, arriving by a different route, over a much longer period, at a doctrine of God its sister church would not recognize as its own.
Two churches sharing one founding document reached opposite conclusions about what that document's God is made of. Neither institution treats this as an open question today.
Corporeal, plural
The Godhead is composed of three physically distinct personages, the Father and Son each embodied "of flesh and bones," united in purpose rather than substance. God the Father was once a mortal man who progressed to exaltation; worthy humans may do the same.
Trinitarian, one substance
God is taught as a Trinity in the sense used across mainline Christianity: a community of three persons, one God. Exaltation theology, the teaching that God was once a man or that humans progress to become gods, is treated as false doctrine, a position documented since at least the late 1930s.
Chronology
Smith III at the Parliament of World Religions
Joseph Smith III, founding president of the Reorganization, attends and speaks at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, an early, public step toward broader religious legitimacy and engagement with the wider Christian world, well before any formal ecumenical application.
First ecumenical application, denied
The RLDS Church applies to join the newly formed Federal Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches' direct predecessor. The application is denied. The denomination's pursuit of mainline recognition begins more than a century before it succeeds.
Exaltation doctrine rejected under Elbert A. Smith
During the tenure of Elbert A. Smith as presiding patriarch, the RLDS Church already regards as false doctrine the LDS teaching, drawn from Smith's late-Nauvoo King Follett discourse, that God the Father was once a mortal man who became exalted. This rejection is documented as predating the church's later, more sweeping ecumenical and Trinitarian formalizations by several decades. The doctrinal break with exaltation theology is older than the institutional turn toward mainline Protestantism.
Placed on the eligibility list
At the church's own request, the RLDS Church is placed on the National Council of Churches' "eligibility for membership" list, a formal step toward membership taken decades before the application is completed, and one some internal RLDS communications at the time reportedly downplayed or denied was underway.
Formal ecumenical legislation
World Conference Resolutions on Interfaith Organizations (1992) and Ecumenical/Interfaith Memberships (2002) formally establish the church's institutional posture toward participation in bodies like the NCC, well ahead of the eventual application.
"Claim your place," D&C 161
Section 161 of the Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants counsels the church to "claim your unique and sacred place within the circle of those who call upon the name of Jesus Christ," later cited directly as the scriptural basis for the church's 2010 NCC application.
Renamed Community of Christ
The RLDS Church formally changes its name to Community of Christ, a naming shift with its own bearing on the "Who Owns Mormon" chronology, occurring in the same broad period as its final ecumenical push.
Other Christian baptisms recognized
The church formally recognizes the validity of baptisms performed by other Christian denominations for individuals joining Community of Christ, ending a distinctive requirement that had functioned as a marker of separateness from mainline Christianity.
National Council of Churches membership approved
Delegates at the NCC's General Assembly approve Community of Christ as the council's 37th member denomination, a body whose members "confess Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord" as a condition of the council's own charter. Membership requires, in practice, a doctrine of God compatible with the mainline Trinitarian churches that make up the rest of the council.
Church leadership frames the application as a direct response to the church's own 2000 revelation (D&C 161:1b) rather than a departure from it: continuity with prior revelation, not correction of it.
Independent and critical commentary (Restoration Bookstore, representing dissenting Restoration-branch perspectives) argues church leadership publicly denied, as late as 1973, any intention of ever joining the NCC, despite having already been placed on the eligibility list in 1970, and cites a 1991 report alleging undisclosed financial payments to the NCC prior to the formal application, suggesting the ecumenical turn was managed more cautiously with the general membership than official statements described at the time.
LGBTQ marriage and ordination recognized
Following NCC membership, the church recognizes LGBTQ marriages and ordinations in the United States, a further point of doctrinal and practical divergence from the LDS Church, continuing the broader realignment toward mainline Protestant positions.
Reading this against Part One
Part One shows a single man's doctrine of God changing across fourteen years, documented in his own successive tellings and in the texts he personally revised. This entry shows a different mechanism: an institution's doctrine of God changing across more than a century, through denied applications, eligibility lists, world conference resolutions, and a final, formal vote by an outside body, with the doctrinal position itself (rejection of exaltation theology) already settled decades before the institutional and ecumenical machinery caught up to it.
Both processes end in the same place structurally, if not doctrinally: a modern position presented as continuous with original revelation, achieved through a documented sequence of institutional decisions that a reader can trace independently of either church's own account of why the change occurred. Wikipedia's own framing captures the tension directly: these shifts are often read as a broad shift in Community of Christ's theology from Restorationism toward mainline Protestant Christianity, even as the church maintains the change represents fulfillment of its own scripture rather than a departure from it.
Sources
- "Comparison of the Community of Christ and the LDS Church," Wikipedia, on Trinity doctrine, exaltation, and Elbert A. Smith's tenure (1938–1958).
- World Religions and Spirituality Project, "Community of Christ," on the 1908 Federal Council of Churches application and its denial, and the 2010–2013 ecumenical timeline.
- Stephen J. Bedard, "Community of Christ and the National Council of Churches," on the November 10, 2010 NCC vote and Doctrine and Covenants 161:1b.
- Restoration Bookstore, "Community of Christ NCC Membership Approved," Elder Larry C. Harlacher, on the 1970 eligibility listing, 1973 public denial, and 1991 disclosure of NCC-related payments.
- "National Council of Churches," Wikipedia and Britannica.
- Cougar Stadium forum, "Community of Christ Joins NCC," citing Wheat & Tares, on the April 2010 baptism-recognition guidance preceding the NCC vote.
- "Community of Christ," Wikipedia, infobox theology classification and founding chronology.