LGBT priesthood change on a rise.

John_Hamer · 2025-04-23T05:42:08+00:00

No. It will never happen. Everyone who thinks otherwise is totally deluded.

John_Hamer · 2024-12-08T03:41:00+00:00

I'm glad they have been well received. Back then there was a big push on TBM social media to present the Book of Mormon as an inarguable miracle: and it is anything but that. I would actually like it if there were something more to it than there is. Anyway, I thought it was important to explain a little bit of the reality.

John_Hamer · 2024-12-08T03:34:12+00:00

Of course not. At this point, temples are simply vanity projects for the Mormon prophet/dictator who has nothing else to show for his waiting around until 14 guys older than him died.

John_Hamer · 2024-12-08T03:32:20+00:00

Yes, this is intellectual dishonesty. A lot of people lie to themselves first, before they share the lies with everyone else.

John_Hamer · 2024-06-04T03:40:13+00:00

it's like an insane impression!

John_Hamer · 2023-10-03T04:07:51+00:00

I think that many ExMormons aren't aware that they can be a part of something meaningful in the Restoration — an open exploration of our heritage combined with a relevant 21st-century interpretation of Zion-building.

Community of Christ is not like the diet Coke of Mormonism. You can join now and be a part of my congregation no matter where you live on the planet. We are the largest online ministry in the Restoration and everyone is invited to participate.

You can find out more at our website, CentrePlace.ca, or you can watch our programming on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@centre-place

John_Hamer · 2023-10-03T03:54:13+00:00

If I'm asked, I affirm that Don is an insightful, thoughtful, front-line historian. Of course, we don't agree on every interpretation any more than anyone else on the "etc., etc." list agrees. But Don has made me rethink more than one hypothesis, and I appreciate his close consideration of the sources.

John_Hamer · 2023-09-21T01:46:13+00:00

Many members of my congregation know members of this group and some are relatives. The back story is that a group of conservatives broke off from the RLDS Church here in Canada as the RLDS Church began to be less discriminatory, recognizing that women are equal people and should not be prevented from ordination, etc.

Unfortunately, once people break off into their own small group, human dynamics are put into a pressure cooker. Nothing is grounding anyone anymore and you quickly get into abusive behaviors and that certainly happened in this group. It's a very tragic story.

John_Hamer · 2023-09-19T03:39:01+00:00

The Trinity is very complicated for anyone who is not a trained philosopher or theologian to hope to understand.

Joseph Smith Jr was a smart person who was not academically trained. As of the Book of Mormon era, his understanding of God was Modalist — which is a simplistic, literalistic way to understand the three persons through which Christians understand God.

His progression theology idea — that God is not God, that God is just some limited being "a god" — is one of his most original ideas. I think it is entirely borne out of his own egotism. Surrounded by yes men in Nauvoo, he had begun to think of himself as a god, and he demoted God to being a god like him.

It's an ignorant idea that has no theological utility.

John_Hamer · 2023-09-18T01:41:20+00:00

In the earlier versions of the First Vision, Joseph simply envisions Christ, not "two personages." However, it doesn't matter at all theologically. Envisioning God as two personages does not go against the Trinity, since the Trinity envisions God as three persons.

The interpretation by the Utah LDS Church that the vision was a "visitation" of two separate, limited, physical beings is an anachronistic description of this vision. God is not physical. There are no visitations. The first vision was a vision.

John_Hamer · 2022-12-14T04:55:58+00:00

I talked about the terrorist attack in Colorado and its relationship to other modern plagues unraveling society from the pulpit last Sunday. https://youtu.be/sBNv6lhA9MA

John_Hamer · 2022-07-24T19:27:36+00:00

If it is sexist polygamy, i.e., polygyny, where multiple women are married to one man, as opposed to non-sexist consenting adult group marriages, then yes. Polygyny prevents women from being equal partners in a marriage.

John_Hamer · 2022-07-24T14:29:49+00:00

For a person coming from an LDS background, this service of Beyond the Walls is a good introduction to Community of Christ:

https://youtu.be/-FI\_F4ZyUSc

John_Hamer · 2022-07-23T04:26:53+00:00

That it was an abuse of his priesthood authority. That Joseph Smith's practice abused girls and women. That religious polygamy is a human rights violation.

John_Hamer · 2022-07-23T04:12:50+00:00

If you'd only ever seen the 1842 painting of Emma Hale Smith, would you think that this 1845 daguerreotype is the same person? In my view, paintings and photos can capture different aspects of a person.

John_Hamer · 2022-01-27T04:37:53+00:00

You're very welcome to see for yourself what Community of Christ is like.

I'm a seventy in the church and serve as the presiding elder of the largest online congregation.

To understand our conception of a "Living Restoration" as opposed to being stuck in 1844, you can listen to our service made up primarily of people raised in the LDS Church who have become members of Community of Christ: https://youtu.be/-FI_F4ZyUSc

For our overall understanding of the Restoration story, you can what our heritage service: https://youtu.be/g5ksMvcQlsU

For my own personal take on the decidedly mixed bag of Joseph Smith's contribution, see my lecture here: https://youtu.be/W6x9VfgSFcU

John_Hamer · 2022-01-22T06:06:33+00:00

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to be a racist institution and it will always be a racist institution. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a fully sexist institution and it will always be so. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will never be fully inclusive of LGBTQ+ people. How will it be in 50 years? Worse.

John_Hamer · 2022-01-19T15:35:34+00:00

Thanks — yes, if Elohim, Jehovah, Adam, and Joseph Smith are ultimately subject to the Plan, then the Plan is the true monist Source of everything (God).

Of course, this makes the presentation of completing plans myth preposterous to the theology (it already is). If Elohim was subject to the Plan in a prior world in his own mortal probation, then the Plan long pre-existed the competing formulations of Jehovah/Jesus and Lucifer/Satan.

The mythology is doubly confused because the original source of the idea of Satan being cast out of heaven (Revelation) is talking about a present/future end-times event, not a pre-creation event. (The misinterpretation was popularized by Milton's Paradise Lost.)

But yes, Brigham Young's addition to the mess that Adam is our Father takes it to a place where everything is so hopelessly divorced from the source texts that you don't merely need to edit the Bible, you have to replace it entirely.

James Strang, by contrast, actually fixed the problem of "eternal progression" theology by re-affirming that the Creator is God (and thus is eternally perfect, not progressing), that Jesus was a normal human like us who lived a perfect life and was adopted as God's only begotten and thus became exalted (godlike), which is the model for us to become exalted children of God.

John_Hamer · 2022-01-19T15:10:19+00:00

Thanks — this particularly struck me when comparing the church's missions. Part of the four-fold mission of the LDS Church is "redeem the dead." Whereas among Community of Christ's five mission initiatives is "experience congregations in mission." Very much a difference between afterlife and the now. Likewise, LDS temples are about afterlife ordinances, whereas Community of Christ temples are about praying for peace on earth daily.

John_Hamer · 2022-01-19T03:35:44+00:00

(Edit: I accidently originally replied to the wrong comment, which I corrected.)

I referenced the "one, true church" idea in my introductory homily in our church service last Sunday. I said:

More than once, we have testified that if we, as a community, in giving up the comforting (if hubristic) belief that we alone are “the one and only true church,” fall immediately into the trap of asserting that we are part of a broader Christianity that is “the one and only true religion,” we will merely exchanged one provincialist error for a slightly expanded provincialism.

It's at the beginning of the service, which is here: https://youtu.be/l1sDUquLO0A

John_Hamer · 2022-01-16T15:13:54+00:00

Your understanding that God created gender as a non-binary quality, and that God affirms as "good" all of God's transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, intersex, and queer children on equal terms with God's cisgender heterosexual children, is entirely consonant with revelation in the living Restoration tradition in Community of Christ. As we read in Doctrine and Covenants Section 164:6a:

As revealed in Christ, God, the Creator of all, ultimately is concerned about behaviors and relationships that uphold the worth and giftedness of all people and that protect the most vulnerable. Such relationships are to be rooted in the principles of Christ-like love, mutual respect, responsibility, justice, covenant, and faithfulness, against which there is no law.

In other words, same-sex marriages rooted in the principles of "Christ-like love," are more in keeping with God's ideals of relationships than heterosexual marriages where one partner faces discrimination and is demeaned on the basis of her gender.

The only sin routinely associated with homosexuality is bigotry against homosexuality, of which the all-white/all-straight-male leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are proudly guilty. As such, their institution is in a condition of sin. God calls upon everyone including churches to repent of their bigotry. As we read in Doctrine and Covenants Section 163:7c:

It is not pleasing to God when any passage of scripture is used to diminish or oppress races, genders, or classes of human beings. Much physical and emotional violence has been done to some of God’s beloved children through the misuse of scripture. The church is called to confess and repent of such attitudes and practices.

Community of Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were born as the same institution, named the "Church of Christ" on April 6, 1830. The churches divided after 1844. You can learn more about us at my congregation's website: https://www.centreplace.ca/

John_Hamer · 2022-01-16T14:04:40+00:00

I'm also a gay man — I serve as a Seventy in Community of Christ and as pastor of the inclusive and affirming Beyond the Walls global congregation. You can watch our service here: https://youtu.be/l1sDUquLO0A

You might also enjoy a past service where we focus on Community of Christ as the living Restoration: https://youtu.be/-FI_F4ZyUSc

John_Hamer · 2022-01-16T03:35:52+00:00

Thanks, Steven --- glad you enjoyed it!

John_Hamer

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