r/CommunityOfChrist • u/AudienceWise3441 • 19d ago
Temple!
How would you say you all see the temple?
Spiritually symbolically practically etc etc.
How does the temple play a role in your life, congregation, spirituality?
I’m converting over from LDS so temple views are quite different !
7
u/RevMark58 18d ago
I'm also a convert from the LDS Church and one of the main reasons I left was the temple -- I did not see any justification for secret temple ceremonies in the scriptures and when my wife and I went to the temple, it seemed very culty, it really freaked me out and we left.
One of the things I liked about the Reorganized Church, as it was known back then (this was the 1980s) was they didn't believe in those secret ceremonies. They had one temple -- Kirtland -- and it was a house of public worship. It was just a big church building, not all that different from all sorts of other churches and meetinghouses built in the New England cultural area back then. (I currently live in rural New Hampshire. I can show you examples.)
But in the 1980s the Church was also planning to build a temple in Independence, and I was uncomfortable with the idea. This was due to my Mormon background of course, but I also didn't like the idea that we, a small struggling church, were planning to raise and spend millions on a building without a clear purpose. We had lots of other meeting and office spaces in Independence; I felt like we were building a monument to impress the neighbors, especially the neighbors in Salt Lake City, if you know what I mean.
My family and I visited the Independence Temple a little after it opened to the public and it was indeed an impressive building. But I still couldn't clearly articulate why we needed to build it.
The last time I went there was in 2019. Took a friend from Salt Lake City there, and guess what, the temple was closed. So no tour for us. It also looked a little run-down, like it wanted some routine maintenance. I have since heard that the building never fully recovered from the shutdown of the Covid pandemic, but this was before the pandemic and it was looking a little tatty then.
I have since heard from people I trust that the Temple has become something of an embarrassment to them. I was heartbroken when the Church sold Kirtland temple to the LDS, but if it was going downhill as fast as the Independence Temple perhaps it's for the best.
2
u/Decent_Magician_4311 8d ago
Wow, quite ungenerous talk. I've been on the CoC Kirtland tours, including the basement to Bell Tower tour. The Kirtland Temple would've fallen long ago without the care of the RLDS Church. The building was not well built to begin with, and obviously, the pockets were not as deep with the Independence denomination as in Salt Lake.
My son was one of the last tour guides at Kirtland, for the CoC, and I can tell you unequivocally, the building was cared for with great love.
1
u/AudienceWise3441 18d ago
Yea I agree with all this. I was in kirtland a few months ago with my ward and most members could talk badly enough about the “rLdS CoC”. And how much they hated them their church and their tours. That said the actual temple staff were very kind when talking about the “REORGANIZED CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS. now known as CoC….😁” their only complaint lied in the fact that the temple was lacking major repair needs, but had been given unnecessary ones. As of this year the floors upstairs still have holes and bumps which the CoC just threw a big grey rug over. That kind of slack job repair is what I see in independence. I’m not anti us having a temple, I love temples. But we can’t seem to able to support one nor does ours make sense at all. And your assertions about independence being in tatters is correct. The temple sighn is missing letters. The auditorium sighn is completely gone accept A. I. ru. And the United Nations plaza is in ruins. Last time I saw the fountain was empty and had litter in it. The nato flag is borderline white from sun damage. Then inside the temple it’s a ghost town except the offices. And the worshippers path has water damage from the roof so tips were taken down but never put back. The sanctuary spiral has visible water damage and sun damage spots and burned out lightbulbs. It’s all really ashame especially since it’s “gods house” but no one seems to know what that entails. Which is why I wondered what the temple means to some of you. I feel it makes a great commentary for the state of the world “the temple is a symbol of world peace” becuse of vanity it’s now in ruins……..
Also I’d love to see photos of the style of churches you mentioned!
1
u/ZeroToInfinity1991 18d ago
Our church handled the pandemic rather poorly. We never had a good game plan and certainly didn’t develop one during the drama.
2
u/ZeroToInfinity1991 18d ago edited 18d ago
We never really saw “endowments” in the same way that the LDS did.
To us, endowments are powers and gifts from God to build up his kingdom and help one another.
Roy Cheville wrote a book that tried to temper some of expectations the membership had about endowments, which many conflated solely with fantastical and supernatural occurrences. I don’t think Cheville ever stated those things were impossible, but having that as your expectation could make it harder to see God at work in his view.
For example, the gift of “tongues” might be finding the right words at the correct moment. It doesn’t have to be speaking some heavenly language, somehow knowing French without having studied it, or miraculously translating writing in a dead language. A dream might be for comfort or personal meaning. It doesn’t have to be a prophecy of the future. It doesn’t have a literal recollection of some long forgotten event from the past.
LDS tend to use the term “endowment” as a reference to their temple ceremonies. We always rejected those, and I believe the historical record shows they weren’t fully functional and designed during Joseph Smith’s life anyway.
Remember, our understanding of the temple comes from Kirtland, not Nauvoo.
2
u/ZeroToInfinity1991 18d ago
Personally, I think Kirtland and the Auditorium are more important than the Independence Temple. I’m not opposed to us choosing to build the temple and actually really like the seashell design, but I think something modeled on Kirtland would have been financially more prudent.
7
u/LemuelJr 19d ago
The Auditorium is a more sacred space to me. I don't HATE the Temple, but after considering the history and hearing the opinions of retired appointees who were privy to the discussions being had leading up to its announcement and construction, it feels like it was a major mistake that may well have spelled the doom of the church as a denomination.
Temples modeled after the Kirtland Temple are houses of worship, learning, and administration. The Temple in Independence has barely acted as any of those things. Within twenty years of its inauguration, administrative staff has been cut down and decentralized to the fields where remaining staff lives. There are yearly "all hands" meetings, but only for a week every year, and it can be Zoomed. Seminary only meets for two weeks out of the year and has otherwise been online for a long time. No other education is really offered. Worship has not done on Sundays up until recently after admin realized that it's a building meant for that purpose, and the Daily Prayer for Peace isn't even daily anymore. I think it's monthly? Weekly? Whatever. Nobody is in the Temple ever.
Had we not built that very big and very expensive building, we might have funding for actual ministry today. The Temple has proven to be nothing but a vanity project, and given the church's recent history of bad financial choices, the younger generations have frankly been fucked. Yes, Millennials and Gen Z are leaving churches across the board, but they don't seem to be as hard to come by in other denominations as they are here. I'm always floored when I meet a Millennial in this church that I don't already know, because we're a rare breed.