Community of Christ makes no claim to be the one true church. We have a formal policy of faithful disagreement. I have to leave for work, so I can't respond in detail to your questions now, but I invite you to explore the sidebar at CommunityOfChrist/.

I am sure you will get some other replies, and I will come back when I am able.

It may come as a shock to many of you, but I like anything having to do with Mormons. I also really like talking about spirituality/theology/religion and consider spirituality a core part of my human experience.

I have been craving a community where I feel I could comfortably express myself spiritually. I couldn't find it with the LDS,the Atheists, and even most Buddhist communities in Boise fell flat for me.

I thought about starting up a sort of spiritual community for exmormons so we could express spirituality in a familiar way. My friend, who founded the Religious Humanism organization, recommended I look into the Community of Christ (CoC), which is the Mormon sect that stayed back East after the Successionist Crisis after Joseph Smith was killed. At first I was resistant, but I quickly found that the resistance was from ignorance. I simply didn't know much about CoC. I decided to learn more. I listened to over 5 hours of the historian/pastor John Hamer talk about CoC on Mormon Stories with John Dehlin. I have listened to about 5 more hours of podcasts talking about beliefs and culture of CoC.

I have been incredibly pressed with what I've learned. They fully include and marry LGBT, women have the priesthood, there's no masonic-based rituals and the temple is open to the public, they are financially transparent, embrace a non-literalistic approach to scripture, have encouraged (via continuing revelation) to try to be aware of cultural and time biases (D&C 164), use continuing revelation to give answers to contemporary problems, and revelations are only canonized through common consent. In other words, this seems to be the Mormon church that many like myself long for.

I decided to invest in "Community of Christ: An Illustrated History" and a Community of Christ Doctrine and Covenants. I thought it was funny that the D&C is updated so often that it came with an appendix!

I am planning on reading a bunch, have about 16 more hours of podcasts I already plan on listening to, and I am planning on visiting the local Boise congregation in a couple weeks.

Here's to healthy spiritual growth!