MARCH’S SALE OF THE KIRTLAND TEMPLE by the Community of Christ (CoC) to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has put me in a lasting, reflective mood about the history of my own LDS arrogance. It’s memory unsettles me and compels me, these many weeks later, to make a confession of my pride and apologize to Community of Christ members, as well as members of other churches I previously thought myself above.

As you may remember, I converted from Catholicism to Mormonism in 1978 while still a teenager. Because my conversion experience was powerful, I raced down the slippery slope of assumptions, grabbing all the markers of elitism available to me as if they were flags stuck in the snow. The wrestle with elitism seems inevitable in a religion that teaches it is the one true church. Needless to say, in the forty-five years since my baptism, I’ve learned that those flags of elitism I snatched up were self-serving weight I never should have carried, much less waved. I’ve let go of them but not without conscious effort.

The memory of my arrogance resurfaced as I watched the joy my LDS friends expressed at the acquisition of the Kirtland Temple, sometimes seemingly unaware of the pain CoC members felt at its loss. I remembered how complicated the relationship between the two churches has been, how superior I once felt to the CoC and their people, and how that sense of religious superiority limited my own access to divine light.

Today, I consider members of the Community of Christ part of my religious family, but I didn’t start that way. When I joined the LDS Church, I had no awareness of their existence. Then I enrolled at BYU. I’d take the bus along University Parkway, where I’d first seen a church building wearing the strange sign “Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” the former name of the Community of Christ. So I asked about it—and I was warned. The history of the schism was explained but a lot was tacked on. “Stay away from them. They’re in apostasy but enough like us that it’s easy for them to deceive even the elect.”

As a new convert, I was eager to be thoroughly Mormon, which meant I was highly impressionable as I moved among the Saints in Utah Valley. I accepted the accusations and their ungenerous assumptions without examination and unconsciously provided them a protected place in my psyche, where they lived, safe-guarded, for much too long. The RLDS church on the diagonal became synonymous with evil in my young mind, and I’m so sorry.

It’s good to grow up. And it’s good to study Mormon history for the way it can soften the heart and broaden spirituality, even if such study is often jarring. My desire to be thoroughly Mormon drove me to learn about Mormon history and its complexities. It brought me humility. It showed me the dangers inherent in Mormon arrogance and pomposity and taught me that masking hard truths may be the most prideful act of them all. But eliminating Mormon elitism from our thinking is a task akin to picking dog hair off your clothing when you live with a dog everyday. Once you notice it, you just keep finding more and more and more clinging to you.

If you’re unsure to what arrogance I refer, I mean things like the sadness we feel for people in other religions because, as Brad Wilcox has said, they’re only “playing church” without the true priesthood. Or the idea that our babies are more valiant than all babies born to non-LDS parents, and that they come to us because we are highly favored for our superior devotion to God. Or the belief that the points I just stated are Truth rather than arrogance. I could go on and on listing points of pride because I was deeply infected with it, not that I knew it while in the throes of it. It can be hard to see when, as they say, it’s the water we swim in.

In the late 1990s, my husband and I took our school-aged children to LDS Church history sites, including some in Missouri owned by the RLDS Church. I declined to listen to the RLDS tour guides because I’d been conditioned to distrust and fear them. My husband told me later my behavior had been embarrassing and condescending. That stung. But, I reasoned, I had my children with me and who knew what the tour guide might say in front of them.

That becomes funny when you know that, at the time, I was already well-versed in the underbelly of our shared, early history. In fact, the purpose of the trip, from my point of view, was to situate my kids at these historic sites and there tell them the stories of Missouri and Nauvoo with transparency and clarity, with the version I knew they’d never hear in an LDS classroom. It wasn’t inoculation I was after but to develop in my children both a recognition that good humans can do stupid, harmful things and an attitude toward history that is unafraid and curiosity-based. In other words, I was already teaching my young kids things that were likely more problematic, from an LDS viewpoint, than anything those RLDS tour guides would’ve said. But my early conditioning bore sway. I shake my head at the foolishness of my former self and mourn the loss of what I missed learning from those tour guides. I couldn’t rejoice in our commonality because I was living my superiority. I regret that so much.

As I continued to grow spiritually, I began to recognize my pride. That recognition surfaced  during a particular Gospel Doctrine class. The topic was temple service, and class members were proclaiming the peace they feel and inspiration they receive in LDS temples. A few chairs down from me sat a Latina convert. She raised her hand, concern clear in her expression. She asked us what was wrong with her because she didn’t have these moments of spirituality in the temple. It was boring, she said. She felt the spirit the strongest when she lit a candle in her own home and prayed. “Something the bishop tells me I need to stop doing.”

The class was quick with their responses. “Just keep going!” and “It’s so much better in the temple! You’ll get there eventually!”

It struck me that they didn’t seem to think it possible that God would attend to her personal, spiritual needs in this foreign-to-them way. How odd, considering we often teach that we should strive to make our homes feel like a temple. This sweet convert from Catholicism had berated herself and then had the class berate her for profoundly experiencing the divine inside her own home. My own errors became clearer at that moment. As a convert from Catholicism, I understood the reflective, holy nature of Catholic rituals.

I spoke up. “I don’t think we’re listening to what this sister is saying. She’s telling us her home feels as sacred as the temple. If we felt the Holy Spirit more strongly in our homes than in the temple, wouldn’t we assume we were doing something especially righteous for that to happen? Maybe she has something to teach us.”

I had tried to create space for her differentiation but I wasn’t successful. Within months, she was no longer practicing with us, though I’m unsure exactly why. I set a conscious goal to never again miss the light in those who worship differently than I do.

There’s a fine line between commitment to God and pride. Those who aspire to live and love as Jesus taught will probably often straddle one and then the other. At least, that was my experience. I’ve heard LDS parse the word “pride” to determine what is acceptable pride and what is not. That’s a lot like the wealthy Christian who tries to determine what degree of wealth is acceptable to God and then concludes their degree surely is. People find ways to hold on to what allows them comfort. But comfort isn’t a signal of righteousness.

As I observed the joy and pain unfold over the sale of the Kirtland temple, I found myself wondering what Jesus would think of it all. I imagine God is less concerned about the ownership of property than about the ownership of the attitudes we take toward another, about the responsibility we take for our attitudes and behaviors toward those who differ from us. The temple is the small thing in this unexpected parable.

Property lines will always unite or divide people. But the unity of Christ has never been about where we stand in relation to these mortal boundaries, despite what we may think. Unity is a matter of the heart; it is simply grace superseding ego. I’m grateful to have learned that pride and humility can’t coexist in the same heart. Maybe someday I’ll live up to this understanding. For now, it’s important to me that I apologize to all members of the Community of Christ (and to members of other Christian sects) for ever thinking myself above you, for blinding myself to your light, and for failing to live the golden rule.

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