Temples and the Visual Culture of the Reorganization
2024; Volume: 11; Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/21568030.11.02
ISSN2156-8030
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Antiquity Studies
Resumothe reorganization tradition has several enduring images and symbols that are meaningful to Community of Christ (the former Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and its more conservative offshoots. In recent years, the cross and spiral have dominated in Community of Christ symbolism, the latter being connected to the design of the Community of Christ Temple in Independence, Missouri. The traditional enduring symbol across the Reorganization has been the church seal of the Lion, Lamb, and Little Child, featuring the word PEACE. But perhaps the most historical and rich symbol shared by all is that of the Kirtland Temple.Through these various symbols, the visual culture of the Reorganization has invoked a common ideal across generations. Lauren Schleimer states that visual culture overlaps “the boundary between cultural studies and the study of aesthetics,” meaning that “if aesthetics is what they [a people] consider desirable (beautiful or ideal) and cultural studies is their all-encompassing ‘way of life,’ then the collective expression of the two makes up their visual culture.”1 For the entire Restoration, but especially the Reorganization, Zion is the beautiful ideal, and the temple is its architectural and visual representation.However, the concept of temple is never static. How the Kirtland Saints in the 1830s understood temple is not synonymous with the understanding of contemporary Latter-day Saints. Nor is the 1830s understanding synonymous with that of early Reorganized Latter Day Saints or the contemporary expressions of the Reorganization. Only by triangulating all three—1830s Saints, contemporary Latter-day Saints, and traditions within the Reorganization—do we begin to appreciate the meaning of the space across several generations and communities.The Kirtland Temple has proven to be an enduring visual symbol across generations and different expressions of the Restoration because it is a symbol of Zion. It is architecturally laid out to shape the community as a symbolic Zion, and it is remembered through an idealized Zionic story of how the community came together in the midst of hardship and God received their offering.Each of the symbols mentioned previously—including the Lion/Lamb/Child image as well as the spiral and cross—might be considered zionic and even templic. They are zionic in that they invite participants into sacramental community where the Divine is manifest through the token of peace among diverse peoples as miraculous as a lion at peace with a lamb. They are templic in that, like temples, they pull participants in to knit them together into a sacred center or axis mundi, and then send them outward to find loose threads and keep weaving, fulfilling a scriptural mandate: “that your incomings may be in the name of the Lord; that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord; that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord, with uplifted hands unto the Most High” (Doctrine and Covenants 85:36c).2The staying power of Kirtland Temple as an enduring Reorganization symbol became clear recently when Community of Christ updated its museum archives software. A basic search for 1830s Kirtland-related material quickly revealed that any digital query for “Kirtland Temple” was virtually meaningless because so many entries were connected to twentieth-century artifacts. Images of the Kirtland Temple were emblazoned on plates, pendants, pins, clips, and ornaments, as well as countless paintings, prints, embroidery, and carvings.Since 1830, Saints have looked forward to when the temple in Zion would be built, which Community of Christ accomplished in Independence in 1994. In those intervening 164 years, the symbolism of temple as zionic space enthralled Reorganized Latter Day Saints. Specifically, an idealized remembrance of the Kirtland Temple served as a lodestar for Reorganization hopes and vision. Today, this legacy of the Kirtland Temple lives on, both through its own image as well as through the Temple in Independence.Latter-day Saints in Utah remembered the Kirtland Temple for both similar and different reasons. Their sacred narrative included an emphasis on spiritual keys from the visions on April 3, 1836, of Moses, Elias, Elijah, and Christ. Perhaps not owning the literal keys to the building heightened the importance of claiming those spiritual keys. Fights over ownership of the Kirtland Temple (physical versus spiritual keys) are symbolic of and directly connected to the larger battle over lawful succession or legitimacy. A study of how both traditions produced imagery of Kirtland might expand our understanding of these competing claims.3For Reorganized Latter Day Saints, those supposed spiritual keys—connected to eternal marriage and, by extension, polygamy—were never considered appealing or important. The evolution of temple ordinances and meanings in Nauvoo, and later Utah, whereby temples and polygamy were connected through eternal sealings, made the very concept of temples both essential and difficult for the Josephites. Where their cousins celebrated the Nauvoo Temple as a necessary stepping stone, Reorganized Saints experienced it as more of a stumbling block. Still, an 1897 print entitled Pioneers of the Restoration features the Nauvoo Temple alongside other important RLDS buildings and portraits of leaders.Joseph Smith Jr. layered several biblical themes brimming with potential meanings in the Kirtland Temple dedication. Historian David Howlett notes that the Saints’ “temple cultus can in part be approached as the outworking of an iconic reading of scripture. They read scripture as a living picture that they could recapture again in their lives.” Howlett then states that “we can understand the Kirtland Temple rituals as performances of biblical stories that would transform the world. In other words, performing the rituals was not about remembering a day of Pentecost. It was about living Pentecost in the latter days.”4As recorded in Acts 2, Pentecost was the endowment of the Spirit that Jesus promised just before his ascension (Luke 24:48–52). To use King James language, the earliest Saints “tarried,” or intentionally gathered in community; and when God's Holy Spirit was manifest as a mighty, rushing wind, they then began to speak in tongues so that peoples from other nations could understand them. That is, gathering inward to be clothed in God's Spirit culminated in being equipped to preach to the nations. The final verses in Acts 2 record that “three thousand souls” were baptized and joined the saints “in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. . . . And all that believed were together, and had all things common; . . . And they continu[ed] daily with one accord in the temple” (portions of Acts 2:41–46, KJV).This sacred story about the nascent Christian church experiencing pentecost was the blueprint for 1830s Latter Day Saint experience in Kirtland. It is why they built a temple, attempted a united order, and placed so much emphasis on the ancient, apostolic order of things. The Kirtland Church was a latter-day pentecost.Hearkening to the Luke-Acts pentecostal arc, Joseph Smith Jr.’s early revelations called the church to “go to the Ohio” (D&C 37:1a, 2a; 38:7b; 39:4c–d),5 as well as promising “there you shall be endowed with power from on high, and from thence [. . .] shall go forth among all nations” (38:7c).6 In the summer of 1831, elders were recalled from their missions for a proto-temple experience in a schoolhouse near the united order at Morley Farm. Called an “endowment,” the June 1831 conference involved casting out evil spirits, speaking in tongues, and attempts at miraculous acts like healing the dead.7 These types of endowment experiences continued with the School of the Prophets, which added a sacrament of the washing of feet.The Kirtland endowment culminated in a space designed specifically for preparing their hearts and minds for God's empowerment, as the House of the Lord was dedicated in 1836. The Kirtland Temple contained a lower court where the Saints could tarry in solemn assembly, and an upper court for the washing of feet in the “School of Mine Apostles,” which drew on the imagery of Jesus and the apostles in the upper room. Within those stone walls, the Saints were re-creating the sacred narratives and stories of the Bible until they were as real in 1836 as they believed them to be in past dispensations.In Joseph Smith Jr.’s dedication of the Kirtland Temple on March 27, 1836, he prayed: Let the annointing [sic] of thy ministers be sealed upon them with power from on high: let it be fulfilled upon them as upon those on the day of Pentacost [sic]: let the gift of tongues be poured out upon thy people, even cloven tongues as of fire, and the interpretation thereof. And let thy house be filled, as with a rushing mighty wind, with thy glory.8After Smith's dedicatory prayer, “The Spirit of God,” a pentecostal anthem was sung. Near the conclusion of the service, “Elder B[righam] Young, one of the Twelve, gave a short address in tongues.” Those who participated referred to this day as their moment of pentecost.9As a way of reclaiming the symbol of the Kirtland Temple from any polygamous connections, Reorganized Latter Day Saints tended to lift up the theme of a latter-day pentecost versus a return of Old Testament figures presenting sealing keys. In the 1880s, they utilized the Kirtland Temple for much the same reason as their parents and predecessors: to hold church conferences and educate the Saints. But they also sought to relive biblical sacred stories and sacred stories of the restoration. They were, in a sense, restoring the restoration.RLDS Apostle Gomer Griffiths recalled that, in 1887, “Joseph Smith [III] had a meeting of priesthood in the upper auditorium. Angels were present in our midst; visions were had, and under the power of the Spirit present strong men broke down and wept like children. It was a pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit of the Lord.”10 Roger Launius, however, notes that the Saints’ Herald account of the meeting was “somewhat more restrained” than Apostle Griffith's narrative, the article stating simply that “God was there.”11Conferences were held in the lower court as they had been in the 1830s, specifically the 1883, 1887, 1891, 1896, and 1904 General Conferences. On April 7, 1883, the opening conference session—a prayer service—was presided over by William Smith, brother of Joseph Smith Jr., who had recently joined the Reorganization.12 Having the eldest Smith presiding mirrored Joseph Smith Jr. placing his father in the highest center pulpit at the original dedicatory service in 1836. Like the Saints in the 1830s, the Reorganized Latter Day Saints were seated between twelve Melchisedec pulpits and twelve Aaronic pulpits.13 This was a symbolic shaping of the community into Zion as envisioned by Joseph Smith Jr., with twenty-four temples representing the two priesthoods at the center of the Plat of Zion. Further, true to the pentecostal spirit of the sacred narratives they re-enacted, the Daily Globe account of the 1883 RLDS General Conference reported that “a woman pretending to ‘have a gift of tongues’ sang a song in a foreign language at the Latter Day Saints’ convention at Kirtland, Ohio, yesterday.”14Seeking a pentecostal endowment continued in the Reorganization throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Earl Curry, long-time temple caretaker, perhaps best captured this hope in his 1957 work entitled The Endowment.15 Curry identified this small booklet as inspired writing. Fitting the prophetic spirit in which it was written, it at times takes on the tone of revelations of Joseph Smith Jr. as Curry longs for when the time of Endowment will come once again. This booklet was used for several decades by the then-RLDS Church, and continues to be used by members of the more conservative Restoration branches.Later generations of Reorganized Latter Day Saints wove unique elements of the Kirtland Temple into worship spaces as a way of reliving the sacred story. Several congregational sanctuaries incorporated a simplified version of the Kirtland Temple's pulpits, having a Melchisedec pulpit at one side of the rostrum and an Aaronic pulpit at the other. In the 1836 configuration of the Kirtland Temple, worshippers had to slide the benches in each pew box and reorient 180 degrees to face the opposite priesthood pulpits; in the RLDS configuration of the twentieth century, conversely, the congregation would always face one direction and simply have to turn their heads to the left or right.This simplified Kirtland Temple layout with two pulpits can be found in various mid-century Community of Christ worship spaces, including the Auditorium in Independence where World Conferences are held. The two pulpits look similar to a more mainline liturgical setup of a pulpit on one side of the altar for the minister's Gospel sermon, and a lectern at the opposite side for laity to read epistles and psalms. But the RLDS setup of two pulpits also has a uniquely Latter Day Saint flavor.As fractures within the Reorganization developed over issues like ordaining women to priesthood, many progressive congregations responded by removing the second pulpit as a sign of letting go of old-fashioned peculiarities. In congregations where the two pulpits remain, two approaches can be observed: either restrictions have all but disappeared on only certain priesthood officers using certain pulpits, and speakers pick whichever pulpit is most convenient; or, strict traditional use of the pulpits by only certain officers is encouraged, if not enforced, as a sign of traditional values and noncompliance with the world church leadership in Independence.As plans were being made to build the Temple in Independence, President of Seventy (now Apostle) Bunda C. Chibwe of Zambia said, “Much of what we preach about Jesus and the gospel is abstract. The world needs a concrete demonstration of the gospel message, and the Temple will be such an example to the world.”16 After architect Gyo Obata initially met with Community of Christ leadership discussing the vision behind the proposed temple, he told a colleague on the plane ride home that the design would evoke a seashell. “On this project the idea came so quickly,” Obata said, “it's like an inspiration, and I'm always surprised where that comes from. Suddenly: an idea.”17The spiral is a visual representation of the pentecostal journey of a sacred gathering inward to be endowed with power from on high and then sent outward into the world. Superficially, the Temple in Independence looks nothing like its predecessor in Kirtland; but in terms of form and function, both serve three primary purposes with one overall intent: a place for the body of Christ to gather inward for worship, to receive education, and provide administrative spaces for the leadership, with the intent being an endowment of Holy Spirit that equips the Saints for their mission to go forth sharing the peace of Jesus Christ with the world.The spiral shape of the Temple in Independence evokes the pentecostal experience of the earliest Saints in Luke-Acts, just as 1830s Saints sought to capture the same spirit. Those who experience the Temple in Independence are invited to walk “The Worshippers’ Path”—complete with symbolic stations depicting the Sacred Grove and scenes from scripture—winding upward along the spiral until it reaches the sanctuary at the center. Once gathered for worship and prophetic instruction, disciples are sent forth through doors emblazoned with the church seal, the Lion, Lamb, and Child, with the word PEACE. These doors open up on a large brick courtyard that represents the continents of the world. Once the Temple in Independence was built, the spiral shape and image of the temple became widely used among progressives as a symbol of the church's identity and mission.As director of the Kirtland Temple, I was often asked when we were going to sell the temple back to its “rightful” owners. The persistence of the Kirtland Temple as a symbol of Zion explains why it would be disastrous for Community of Christ to sell one of its enduring tokens of peace for money. Some things are simply not for sale. This value and importance is not just among midwestern baby boomers, but can be seen in visual culture outside of the United States.David Howlett has written of a Community of Christ church building in a small Philippines village “with peaked gothic windows” as an homage to the Kirtland Temple and “large wooden doors on the chapel feature a carved relief of a lion, a lamb, and a small child, with the word ‘Peace’” to invoke the Temple in Independence.18 An expression of templic and zionic ideals, this congregation is but one of the latest examples of how generations of Saints in Community of Christ have lived out the sacred story in their unique spaces, culture, and time, making the Restored gospel both “new and everlasting.”In the enduring symbol of temples, Latter Day Saint heritage is distinctly on display in Community of Christ. The Reorganization's zionic and templic symbols point to the Restoration's original and primitive understanding of earliest Christianity as recorded in Luke-Acts. As a models of Christ and Zion, temples invite those who experience them to gather in to be shaped accordingly, and to go forth empowered by the Spirit to transform the world.
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