Scott Woodward: After the succession crisis of 1844, not every member of the church chose to sustain and follow Brigham Young and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and many of these members eventually formed or joined alternative restoration movements, which became separate, distinct, and independent churches from one another. In fact, over the last 180 years, there have actually been hundreds of churches that have branched off from the same Joseph Smith–era Restoration trunk. Today on Church History Matters, for reasons we will explain, Casey and I have chosen to consider three such restoration branches: namely, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Strangites; The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Josephites, today known as the Community of Christ; and The Church of Jesus Christ, or Bickertonites. Our focus will primarily be on the question of how succession has developed and how it works today in each of these movements. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our ninth episode in this series dealing with succession in the presidency. Now let’s get into it. Hello, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott. How are you?

Scott Woodward: Doing great. Excited to dig in today to some really interesting stuff.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. This is technically still part of succession.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But we’ve kind of wrapped up succession in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and now we’re doing something that I have wanted to do for a really long time, which is talk about some of our Restoration cousins, some of our sister faiths in the movement, basically. So there’s a lot of them out there.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and there’ve been a lot of our listeners who have emailed us and said, we’d love to learn more about succession and then the branches of the Restoration as well, and that’s kind of what got us moving in this direction, was our listener feedback to do this series, which I think has been really fun so far.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Now we’re at that point where, yeah, we want to start talking about those other branches of the Restoration now that we’ve covered ours all the way up through President Nelson.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So tell us kind of where we’re going to go. How’s this going to work?

Casey Griffiths: Let’s start with this: If you were to give me a ballpark figure of how many churches, movements out there, trace themselves back to Joseph Smith and the coming forth of The Book of Mormon, what’s your ballpark estimate?

Scott Woodward: Oh, man. You know, a few years ago, we went to Missouri at a Book of Mormon conference there where there’s a lot of people that love the Book of Mormon, but they’re not Latter-day Saints. I was meeting people from churches that I’d never heard of. I was meeting people that were Book of Mormon believers who didn’t go to church. They did a little house church with fellow believers, or they would Zoom with a few others, and that was their “church experience,” was they would talk about the Book of Mormon, and so they weren’t really branches of the Restoration—they’re more like twigs. So we’ve got branches, we’ve got twigs, we’ve got—I don’t know. What is it? A hundred? A hundred plus?

Casey Griffiths: So the low estimate is 250.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: The high estimate is 400, and it depends on how you count movements. And so low estimate comes from Steven Shields, who wrote a really awesome series of books called Diverse Paths to the Restoration that he’s actually kind of turned into encyclopedia. And he has everybody in there that he could even, like, get an email from or find any information about. The high estimate comes from a book called Scattering of the Saints that was published a couple years ago.

Scott Woodward: John Hamer.

Casey Griffiths: John Hamer and Newell Bringhurst put that together. But, I mean, there’s a lot. There’s a lot, and there’s a ton of diversity. These restoration movements vary widely in size and beliefs, and I’m going to be honest with you: in our format, we’re not going to do all of them. We’re not going to do 400 episodes—

Scott Woodward: We are not.

Casey Griffiths: —on every one. So we had to be a little bit selective, and no offense to any of these movements out here, because I know there are some people from other movements that listen to our podcast. So we set up some criteria. Scott and I discussed this. First thing we looked at was kind of how big are they? The biggest restoration movement after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Community of Christ, and so we felt like they should be on the list.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, definitely.

Casey Griffiths: The third largest is probably The Church of Jesus Christ. This is based in Pennsylvania, but they’re a growing faith that believes in the Book of Mormon. We’re going to highlight them today. But another factor that we looked at was how influential the movement’s been on other Restoration faiths.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And because of that, we also decided to include the Strangites, and that’s another thing that I hope doesn’t offend anybody is you mentioned you went to Independence and there were all these different little churches.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And everybody kind of has their own name. There’s, like, the Strangites who are people that, you know, believe James Strang was a prophet.

Scott Woodward: Yep.

Casey Griffiths: And there’s the Cutlerites who followed Alpheus Cutler, and we’re known as the Brighamites in Independence.

Scott Woodward: Uh-huh. Yep.

Casey Griffiths: And then there’s the Josephites. Those are Community of Christ people, but they’re not saying Joseph Smith: they’re saying Joseph Smith III.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So we decided to include the Strangites as a short part of the story.

Scott Woodward: And the Strangites, their official name is Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Casey Griffiths: Yes.

Scott Woodward: So no “the” and no hyphen.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite). Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and they only have about 130 members today. That’s according to their own website, but James Strang was really influential in a lot of the other Restoration movements that sprung up after the death of Joseph Smith.

Scott Woodward: Especially Community of Christ, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, especially Community of Christ. Now, in the spirit of full transparency, too, we also chose some of these movements because we’re involved in dialogue with them, and we have friends in each one of these movements, so we were able to get direct information from them. In the last couple years, Scott and I have met with leaders from Community of Christ, leaders from the Joint Conference of Restoration Branches, which is another Restoration movement around Independence. A couple weeks ago, I went to Pennsylvania and hung out with leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ, also known as the Bickertonites, and others. We’re going to give you an overview today, but in the next couple of weeks, we’re also going to invite people from these churches to come and explain themselves because that’s how you do good interfaith dialogue is you allow people to speak for themselves and represent their own beliefs., Rather than talking about them, we’re going to hear directly from them. So over the next few episodes, we’re going to try and model good ecumenical, interdenominational dialogue by bringing in guests. We’ll let them explain themselves, and if we are inaccurate, any of our friends in these Restoration faiths, we welcome corrections, and we will make those corrections, too.

Scott Woodward: We have been—as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have been misrepresented so much, and we know how that feels, and we never want to do that to anybody else.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: That’s our commitment.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and we especially—we love these people. Like, honestly, some of them are my dear friends. There’s such a small number of people that believe in the Book of Mormon and the Restoration that we kind of want to stick together, too.

Scott Woodward: Definitely.

Casey Griffiths: And yet sometimes feelings run deep within families, and so we’re going to be very careful and try and not run roughshod over anybody’s beliefs.

Scott Woodward: Definitely.

Casey Griffiths: Since we can’t talk about everything, and we want our guests to have time to talk about their beliefs, what we’re looking at today specifically is how succession works in each one of these churches. So how do they choose the leaders of their church? And as a framing device, we’re going to go all the way back to that model that we set up in our first episode on succession, where we use Mike Quinn’s excellent article to lay out several different possible paths to succession that could have been followed in the wake of Joseph Smith’s death. Our church followed succession by Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which gradually evolved into succession by seniority.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: By the Senior Apostle, but here’s the eight possible models that I’ll review really, really quickly, okay?

Scott Woodward: Mm-hmm.

Casey Griffiths: There’s succession by counselor in the First Presidency. That would probably have meant somebody like Sidney Rigdon take over. There’s succession by a special or secret appointment, which is the method that the Strangites believe in. This wasn’t unprecedented. Joseph Smith had made a special appointment that David Whitmer was supposed to be his successor, but David Whitmer was excommunicated before Joseph was killed. There was succession through the office of associate president, which in our church was still coming up as late as Joseph F. Smith in the early 20th century, the idea that the associate president, who was Hyrum Smith, had a special role, that’s linked closely to the idea of the presiding patriarch being a successor, too. That’s plan number four, if you’re keeping count here, too. Another possible route was succession by the Council of Fifty. Some people, like Lyman White and Alpheus Cutler, advocated for this. The Council of Fifty was only two months old when Joseph Smith was killed, and so that didn’t give it a lot of momentum. We mentioned we follow succession through the Quorum of the Twelve, but there were also some people that felt like if the Twelve were equal, according to Section 107, that the Twelve, the Seventy, and the stake presidents should form a kind of parliament that would choose the new leader of the church, and then there’s option number eight, which is succession by a descendant of the prophet Joseph Smith, or lineal succession.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So some of these models were suggested but never really attempted, like succession through the presiding patriarch or succession through the three presiding councils.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Others were put into play: succession by the Twelve Apostles; there were groups that followed succession through a counselor . . . We’ve detailed how Sidney Rigdon and Brigham Young battled over who was supposed to lead the church, and one of the things we want to recognize is that while most church members followed Brigham Young and made the epic trek to the Western United States, in the years following the death of Joseph and Hyrum, several new movements began to emerge, and so we’re going to consider each one of these. And it’s kind of surprising, but after Brigham Young, the most numerically successful person was probably James Strang.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So let’s launch into this, and we’re going to start by talking about the Strangites.

Scott Woodward: Right. So let’s talk James Strang: succession by special appointment. Let us back up and tell the story of James Strang. In the wake of Joseph Smith’s martyrdom, the majority of church members follow the Twelve, as you mentioned, and they head west on the westward exodus. However, a surprising number of church members remained behind, seeking other alternatives to the leadership of Brigham Young, and the leader of one of the largest schismatic groups is generally unknown among church members today. We don’t really talk about this very often today. That is this fascinating figure named James Jesse Strang. He’s also known as the King of Beaver Island, and his rapid rise, along with his tumultuous reign, tragic death, and the shameful persecution of his followers, is actually one of the most colorful chapters in Mormon history that we never talk about. And so let me tell you a little bit about his background. So he lived really just a relatively quiet life until he was baptized into the church about four months before the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. All right, so mark that: four months before Joseph died, he joins the church. And he joined after hearing the gospel from family members where he was living out in Burlington, Wisconsin. So Strang journeys to Nauvoo, where he meets Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and other church leaders, and he’s then baptized February 25, 1844 there, and then he returns home, goes back to Wisconsin. A few months later, Joseph Smith is killed. After his death, Strang journeyed back to Nauvoo and claimed that he had possession of a letter that was sent to him by the prophet dated June 19, 1844, just days before the martyrdom. And so Strang actually approaches the twelve apostles with this letter that claimed that Joseph Smith had appointed him to be the successor, and he then commands the apostles and priests and elders of the Church of the Saints, I’m quoting now, that they “communicate and proclaim this my word to all the saints of God that they may be gathered.” So he comes in with a pretty heavy hand, saying, I’ve been appointed successor. I need you to announce, proclaim this word unto all the saints of God, that they may be gathered, right? That I am to be the successor. The letter commanded the saints to be gathered to Voree, Wisconsin, near where James was living at the time, and the letter was not actually in Joseph Smith’s handwriting, which, you know, sometimes Joseph used scribes, and so maybe that was okay. Also, the signature didn’t match the signature of Joseph Smith. But, whatever. People continue to be intrigued by Strang. He also claimed to have received a vision where Joseph Smith ordained him as his successor on the very day of the martyrdom, June 27, 1844. And so that’s interesting, right? So he says the day Joseph died, he had a vision where Joseph Smith ordained him his successor. That, in addition to the letter, was all the proof he needed, right? So Brigham Young and the Twelve evaluate Strang’s claims and then excommunicate him on August 26, 1844. So they were not having it at all.

Casey Griffiths: You would kind of assume that’s the end of the story, right? Because James Strang kind of comes out of nowhere.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: And yet there’s a couple things—like this letter, for instance, is canon to them. I believe it’s in their scriptures, and if you go to their church’s website, I think you can read the letter fairly easily there, but the letter is still a big deal to members of this church, and they talk at length about it, but I mean, the question is, he comes out of nowhere, nobody really knows him, so why did he gather such a large group of followers? And not only, like—these weren’t, like, vagabonds. Some of the most influential people in the church that didn’t follow Brigham Young eventually choose to follow James Strang. So what’s this guy got going for him?

Scott Woodward: Yeah, I think part of the appeal of James Strang is in his claim of new scripture. Like, in 1845, he claims to bring forth a new record, which is informally called the Voree Plates. It’s a record written on brass plates containing writings and drawing. Strang says that he translated the record by means of the Urim and Thummim and published a text of about 200 words. Now, is this sounding familiar at all, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: You’ve got a record of plates that he translated by the Urim and Thummim. Now, it’s only 200 words, a little different than the Book of Mormon in terms of its length, but he says the plates he discovered in Voree, Wisconsin, and they contain the record of Raja Manchou of Vorito, who was a prophet whose people died in battle. The record ends with the cryptic prophecy—I’ll read it right here. It says, “The forerunner men shall kill, but a mighty prophet there shall dwell.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I should mention we have pictorial representations of these plates. You can see them, you know, in Strangite writings, although the plates themselves vanished around 1900 or so, so we don’t have the actual plates.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But they do have pictures of these plates and some of the writing that’s on them—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —that have been published by the church that are fairly official. So—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —he’s bringing forth new scripture. That’s got to be appealing to people. He’s claiming miracles and angels. That probably appealed to people that saw the same thing in the early restoration with Joseph Smith.

Scott Woodward: Right. Sounds familiar. Sounds like he is coming right in the shadow of Joseph Smith, right in the groove of what Joseph Smith had done, and so this felt familiar, I think, to many saints. And then in 1851, Strang actually publishes what he calls the Book of the Law of the Lord. He described the book as, “one of the lost books of the Bible and had been so revered in ancient times that it was kept inside the Ark of the Covenant.” Ooh! He says the Book of the Law of the Lord was from the brass plates of Laban mentioned in the Book of Mormon. It contained extensive counsel about all aspects of worshipful life and daily living. It has 47 different chapters in it, dealing with benedictions, maledictions, baptism for the dead, marriage, groves, forests and waters, highways, apparel and ornaments, social order, household relationships, tithing—everything else you can think of relating to daily life. I was actually reading it today, this morning, Casey, getting ready for this, and I happened upon the chapter on priesthood.

Casey Griffiths: Mm. Interesting.

Scott Woodward: And I found Strang commenting on the succession crisis of 1844, where he lays out his logic as to why the Twelve Apostles led by Brigham Young were illegitimate. So let me just quote a little bit from the Book of the Law of the Lord, and this is Strang’s commentary in there about the priesthood. He says, “In the present dispensation, twelve apostles were called and ordained to this ministry. In 1837 a great falling away took place at Kirtland, and the Twelve assumed authority in governing the church in derogation of the right of Joseph the prophet. But God rebuked them, saying, ‘Rebel not against my servant Joseph, for verily I say unto you, I am with him, and my hand shall be over him.’” So this is a reference to the Kirtland apostasy, right? We have about four of the apostles at the time who are falling away or excommunicated. There’s rebellion. Thomas B. Marsh counsels with Joseph, and Joseph receives what we know today as section 112, where that passage is that he just quoted, “Rebel not against my servant Joseph.” He then goes on and says, “Notwithstanding this, at the death of Joseph, Brigham Young claimed in behalf of the Twelve to supersede the entire First Presidency and stand at the head of the Church, urging upon the saints that such was the true order, and that the Twelve had not been suffered to fill their proper place during the lifetime of Joseph. And in this claim he was sustained by an immense meeting of the saints hurriedly assembled together at Nauvoo, the 8th of August, 1844. We talked about that meeting in great detail in a previous episode. He goes on, “One week later, Brigham put forth an epistle to the whole church vindicating this claim, and it was generally acceded to in the church. A very few followed the Prophet James.” That’s what James Strang calls himself: the Prophet James. “A very few followed the Prophet James, and as the Twelve could not stand against the arguments presented by his followers, they finally changed their position, acknowledged their former error, and attempted to patch it up by electing Brigham Young first president, Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards counselors, which they accomplished at Winter Quarters December 24th, 1847.”

Casey Griffiths: Oh, so he’s writing this after they’ve decided to put together the first—I guess Book of the Law of the Lord comes out in 1851. So, yeah.

Scott Woodward: That’s right.

Casey Griffiths: This is after they’ve reassembled the First Presidency, and they’re doing their thing, and . . .

Scott Woodward: Uh-huh.

Casey Griffiths: Interesting. Okay.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So he says that the formation of the First Presidency at Winter Quarters was to patch up an error where the Quorum of the Twelve did not have a right to lead the church. Super interesting. He goes on to say this—I’ll wrap it up here—he says, “This did not help their case in the least, for the same law which placed the Twelve under the direction of the first president made it necessary that the successor of Joseph should be appointed by revelation of God through him, and that he should be ordained by an angel. They only succeeded in bringing Brigham Young into the prophetic office by a revelation of the will of man and no ordination at all.” Ah, shoot. “At the same time, James,” speaking of himself, “stood in this priesthood, the heir of David, duly called by revelation of God to be a lawgiver, an apostle, and the prophet of the Most High God, ordained by the highest instituted power in heaven or on earth. Nine days before his martyrdom, Joseph Smith received and wrote a revelation containing this calling and put it in the confidential archives of the church,” he says. “At the same time, he sent the appointment to James in a letter. At the very moment of Joseph’s death, he,” James Strang, “was ordained according to the law of God and has from that time filled the office. Only two of the twelve, John E. Page and William Smith, acknowledged his calling, and the others, being tried and condemned, their places were filled.”

Casey Griffiths: Hmm.

Scott Woodward: Ooh. Isn’t that interesting? That’s his commentary on some of the history we’ve covered in previous episodes.

Casey Griffiths: Interesting stuff. And he—right in the last line of that letter, he also points out that he gathered some high-profile followers: John E. Page, who’s a member of the Quorum of the Twelve—

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —and William Smith, who’s another member of the Quorum of the Twelve, both eventually affiliate with James Strang and his movement.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He also attracts people like William McLellin, William Marks, and a bunch of high-profile leadership from Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: Even John C. Bennett.

Casey Griffiths: John C.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, John C. Bennett joins him.

Casey Griffiths: John C. Bennett, which, whoa. I mean, wow. After all the stuff he pulled.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: To bring him in is surprising, but I see the appeal. He’s producing new scripture. This is a very coherent argument about angelic authority. He says he was ordained by an angel. I could see how a lot of this would appeal, but I think there’s one more thing that really kind of made Strang appeal to a lot of people, and that was that he denounced plural marriage. He didn’t like plural marriage, and that seems to gather a lot of high-profile followers, too.

Scott Woodward: So for those who were not on board with Brigham Young and the Twelve and their practice of plural marriage, this was a viable alternative in their eyes. However, many of those prominent converts fall away when Strang actually embraces polygamy in 1849 when he takes Elvira Field as his second wife, and for a time, Strang’s going to keep that marriage a secret by asking Elvira to dress as a boy. He even takes her on a tour to the East Coast and introduces her to most people as his nephew, Charles J. Douglas. But Strang eventually takes three additional wives, making a total of five wives. It doesn’t seem like polygamy was prominently practiced by very many of Strang’s followers. Like, one historian estimates that out of 500 families in the primary Strangite settlement, only about twenty practice plural marriage.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So that’s a pretty minuscule percentage.

Casey Griffiths: We should mention, too, that the Strangites today don’t practice plural marriage either. So it doesn’t seem like it ever became widespread among them, but James Strang practiced plural marriage.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And then in 1849, Strang receives a revelation instructing his followers to establish a community on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. The revelation read in part, “I have given you the islands of the Great Lakes for a possession. There you shall dwell apart from the Gentiles, and none shall make you afraid, for my law shall be kept there, and judgment shall be rendered against those that despise it.” So following that revelation, the majority of Strang’s followers will migrate with him to Beaver Island and establish a settlement there named St. James, after their leader.

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: And though the Strangites establish themselves as a industrious, hard-working people during their stay on the island, there is going to be conflict with the local population there, and even internal dissensions among church members start to increase following the relocation. One of the major sources of conflict is going to stem from the theocratic aspirations set up by Strang, if we can put it that way. He set up an institution that he called, “The Halcyon Order of the Illuminati.” The members of that institution swore an oath to uphold Strang as, “a prince of the Illuminati,” and to “obey the said James J. Strang and his lawful successors, if any he has, each in his time as the Imperial Primate, an actual sovereign lord and king on earth.” Whoa!

Casey Griffiths: I’ve got to say, Strang excels at awesome titles for things. Like—

Scott Woodward: Yeah!

Casey Griffiths: —“the Halcyon Order of the Illuminati?” Like, that’s objectively amazing.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, the Imperial Primate.

Casey Griffiths: And Imperial Primate. Just cool stuff. Like, honestly, I just dig the titles that they use in this movement.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, so it’s very monarchical, right, what he is establishing. And he takes his role as Imperial Primate seriously. He even holds, like, a coronation ceremony after he and his followers relocated to Beaver Island. He was actually crowned in this elaborate ceremony on July 8, 1850, where one description says he was dressed in a flowing, floor-length robe of red flannel trimmed with white flannel and black specks, and he held a wooden scepter. On his breast was a large, metal star, on his head was a miter ornamented with metal stars. He was kind of dressed in a way that represented Jewish priests, Jewish high priests. On his head was a crown. It was made out of paper, but it was decorated with gilt stars and trimming, and he used his wooden scepter even to ordain some of his followers—he called his scepter the Scepter of Judah—and ordained George Adams as the prime minister of the kingdom. He also called eight other men to serve as nobles in the kingdom. So this feels very monarchical. I don’t think it went over very well in the United States of America.

Casey Griffiths: Could I add, too, I’ve seen the scepter.

Scott Woodward: Oh, really?

Casey Griffiths: The scepter is in possession of Community of Christ. We took photographs of it for 50 Relics of the Restoration.

Scott Woodward: Oh, cool.

Casey Griffiths: I asked Bill Shepard, who’s a Strangite historian, if that’s the real scepter. He says, yeah, you know, it has a clear provenance. It’s probably it. The scepter is, you know, made of pine wood. I think it’s deliberately simple. I think—that’s part of the reason why the crown was of paper was they were trying to convey, like, magnificence, but not opulence, if that’s fair to say.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But this is kind of cool. And Chris Blythe and others have pointed out that, hey, Joseph Smith may have been designated as a king in Nauvoo—I don’t think he went through any elaborate ceremony like this—but that Strang was hearkening back to some of the stuff that may have happened in Nauvoo. So this might not be as out there as sometimes it sounds.

Scott Woodward: It seems like a variation on the theme of the Council of Fifty, right? The Council of Fifty were planning to leave the United States and to go out west and to establish the kingdom of God, right? Which would be, like, the seed kingdom that would rule and reign in the Millennium, was kind of, like, setting up the precursor to when Christ comes to rule and reign, and so, yeah, this seems like a little bit of a riff off of that, perhaps, as well as the idea that in Nauvoo, Joseph was ordaining men and women, kings and queens, priests and priestesses, not to have any governmental rule here per se now, but in preparation for the millennial reign of Jesus, and so I sometimes think that gets a little bit garbled, as though Joseph was some megalomaniac.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: I think he was establishing himself as a leader of the kingdom of God on earth in preparation for the coming of Christ, at least that’s my reading of the Council of Fifty minutes, to establish an independent government because the U. S. government had failed them so many times. I’m not sure James Strang is doing the same thing here. What’s your take on that?

Casey Griffiths: I think James Strang’s followers would say he was kind of doing the same thing. At the same time, it was kind of like Beaver Island was sort of intended to be both a religious and political kingdom, but you could make the case that in Utah during this time it was sort of the same way, where Brigham Young was the religious and secular leader of the territory, so I wouldn’t judge this too harshly, just because it was a very different time, and he is in this area where, on all practical levels, he’s the spiritual and political leader of his people.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, good point. And depending on the sources, you know, Strang is sometimes depicted as, like, a really conscientious leader who looked after the needs of his people, or as the ruler of, as one of his biographers says, “a totalitarian society in which expressions of dissent were dealt with harshly.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So it depends on the source, but eventually conflict arises between the Strangites and their Gentile neighbors on Beaver Island. There was a small conflict called the Battle of Pine River that was fought between the two factions, though Strang eventually was betrayed by two of his own followers, and this leads to his death, two of his followers named Thomas Bedford and Alexander Wentworth. On June 16, 1856, as Strang was walking up the gangplank to pay a visit to the captain of the visiting U. S. warship Michigan, he was ambushed by these two apostates, and they just start firing on him. They fire several shots at Strang. One hits him in the head. Another rips into his right eye. As he collapsed to the ground, Bedford comes and shoots him in the back and then began to hit him with the butt of his weapon until the pistol broke. Both of those men then ran aboard the Michigan, the boat, who were seeking asylum from the Strangites on the island, who had begun to run toward the dock after hearing all that commotion, but miraculously, actually, Strang didn’t die immediately. Like, his physician said that his wounds were fatal, and when some of his followers found him, he was scarcely recognizable, but they take him back to Voree and nurse him back to some semblance of health, and he actually survives for several weeks in spite of those wounds, which is amazing, and on at least one occasion, one of his followers asked him if he was going to appoint a successor. Tears formed in Strang’s eyes, and he said, “I do not want to talk about it.” And then he dies on July 9, 1856, exactly six years and one day after he was officially coronated. So, wow. In terms of succession, then, James Strang does not lay out a clear path.

Casey Griffiths: Which is crazy, right? He’s alive for several weeks, but he just doesn’t name a successor, which is interesting.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Those of his movement were forcefully expelled from Beaver Island while Strang was actually still alive on his deathbed. Armed mobs come in, ranging all over the island, gathering the Strangites to docks, forcing them under threat of death to get in the ships, and causing them to leave. Most of them will head back to Voree, Wisconsin, where the movement had begun, and the crudely worded manifesto of the mob declared, “The dominion of King Strang is at an end.” And so—and one historian called the day of the expulsion of the Strangites from Beaver Island, “The most disgraceful day in Michigan history.” Without a clear successor, the followers of James Strang dwindle. According to their official website, as you mentioned, Casey, the church today only has about 130 members, mostly in and around Burlington, Wisconsin. They don’t believe that a prophet has been called since James Strang, but they do believe that one will be called in the future. And interestingly, while not many of the followers of James Strang remain today, he did gather—we have to give him credit for this—he did gather the largest Restoration movement outside of Brigham Young to that point in time, which is amazing, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And many of those who left Strang after he began practicing plural marriage and those in the aftermath of the expulsion from Beaver Island, they now start to search for a new leader, someone who can unite the branches of the Restoration, who chose not to follow Brigham Young to the West, and that leads to our next movement.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So Strang and his movement are relatively small, but they’re influential, and that’s why we’d mentioned them here.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: The reason why we do that, too, is because it’s sort of prelude to what becomes the largest branch of the Restoration outside of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and this is one many have heard of, probably the most well known. They’re known today as Community of Christ, but for most of their history, in fact, prior to 2001, they were known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They’re pretty open, Scott, in saying the reason why they changed their name to Community of Christ is because they were confused with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all the time.

Scott Woodward: All the time.

Casey Griffiths: If you’ve interacted with them, chances are it was through one of the historic sites. A lot of our listeners will have heard of Community of Christ because recently, back in March 2024, they sold the Kirtland Temple and most of their historic properties in Nauvoo, and a lot of historic artifacts like the Joseph Smith Translation manuscripts, and the Bible Joseph Smith used for his translation, the door to Liberty Jail, Joseph and Emma portraits, several letters that were important, and so this is the next biggest Restoration movement.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There’s also some good histories that they’ve written because they’re a little bit bigger. They have some good history.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So we just said that the Strangite movement was the largest Restoration movement besides The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now we’re saying the Community of Christ was, and just to be clear on that, it’s because the Strangites movement actually dwindled before the Community of Christ rose. So up to that time, Strangites were the largest, but then comes the Community of Christ, which—as you’re mentioning—which today is definitely the second largest ever in the restoration movement to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just wanted to clarify.

Casey Griffiths: I work a lot with Community of Christ, and, again, we’re going to let them represent their own story, but some of them would say, yeah, it was an outgrowth of Strang’s movement that became Community of Christ. Others of them would say, well, a lot of Strang’s followers eventually form Community of Christ, but that they don’t want to link the two movements because, to be honest, they don’t follow a lot of what Strang taught. Most of them had kind of peeled off before Strang started getting into some of his more unique teachings within his church. Okay, so the two key figures here appear to be Jason W. Briggs, who’s the leader of the church in a town called—I hope I’m saying this right, but—Beloit. It’s—it looks French. B-E-L-O-I-T, Wisconsin.

Scott Woodward: Beloit, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Beloit, and William Marks, who we’ve talked about before. William Marks is the stake president of Nauvoo. He supports Sidney Rigdon, but he kind of goes off and does his own thing after Rigdon moves back to Pittsburgh. So Jason Briggs, eventually he decides to follow James Strang, but he becomes disillusioned when Strang begins practicing plural marriage. In 1851, Briggs has a spiritual experience that convinced him that the leader of the church should be from the seed of Joseph, meaning—well, seed of Joseph I’ll leave out there, but probably saying, we need a family member of Joseph Smith to lead the church.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. A descendant of Joseph.

Casey Griffiths: A descendant of Joseph. So a few years later, they approached Joseph Smith III. Joseph Smith III is living in Nauvoo. He’s taking care of Emma Smith, who’s there. His brothers are there. At this point in time, Joseph III—this is how members of Community of Christ refer to him, so we’re not trying to be disrespectful or anything. Joseph III is affectionately how they refer to him. He actually refuses to talk to them at first. He’s kind of seen the trauma, you know, he’s witnessed and lived kind of in the wreckage of Nauvoo, and he’s not super interested in being part of it at first.

Scott Woodward: So they’re proposing to him, you should lead the church, and he’s—

Casey Griffiths: You should lead the church. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —saying, I’m not interested.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. At first, he’s not interested, but he eventually does have a spiritual experience that convinces him that he should lead the church, and at the age of 27—so he’s really young—he’s ordained at a conference in Amboy, Illinois on April 6, 1860. So 30 years to the day after the original church is organized, Joseph Smith III steps up to leadership in the church, and this is how they typically date the beginning of their church as starting. Jason Briggs and Lee Marks.

Scott Woodward: So that puts the R in the RLDS church. This is the moment of reorganization.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and we’re going to use the name RLDS mostly here because they don’t go by Community of Christ until later, but just recognize those two terms are interchangeable with each other.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: During the early years of the RLDS church, there’s a lot of emphasis on lineal succession, because that’s their big claim, is that the prophetic office was supposed to pass from father to son, which you find in the Book of Mormon and in the Bible in several situations. Just as evidence of this, and we’re working off a church—an RLDS historian named Bill Russell—Bill Russell’s a good guy; I know him—the True Latter-day Saints Herald, that’s the major publication of the church, publishes thirteen major essays on lineal succession during its first three years. And these essays have titles like “Lineal Priesthood,” “The Preeminent Birthright of the Tribe of Joseph,” “The Lineal Transmission of the Priesthood from the Days of Adam to the Last Days.” Again, you’ll see where it’s like, “lineal.” And then there’s a ton of other articles that just make reference to this, and they do send, like, missionaries to Utah to try and convert the main church. In fact, Joseph III and his brothers come to Utah—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —to basically tell everybody, hey, we’re back. This is, interestingly, when a lot of people step forward and talk about plural marriage in Nauvoo, because they’re trying to explain to Joseph III and his brothers that, no, Joseph Smith actually did introduce plural marriage. Here’s some of the people that were involved. There’s some interesting family interactions between Joseph III, who’s leading the RLDS church, and Joseph F. Smith, his first cousin, Hyrum Smith’s son, who by this point has become a prominent leader in the Utah church. And so interesting stuff going on.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, yeah. Both sides trying to convince the other side, right, that they’re legitimate.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. This kind of intra-family dispute, right? There’s even a time when they go fishing on Utah Lake together. Like, crazy stuff happens during this time.

Scott Woodward: That’s awesome.

Casey Griffiths: Now, I’m going to say this: Joseph Smith III, by any metric, is a really remarkable leader. Like, he’s pretty incredible. And his DNA, his efforts, are all over the church. In my experience, people from Community of Christ talk about Joseph III the way we talk about Joseph, Jr. Like, he’s the guy that set up everything. He leads the church from 1860 until his death on December 10, 1914, when he’s 82 years old. So—

Scott Woodward: Holy cow.

Casey Griffiths: —he leads the church for over 50 years. 54 years.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: And the other thing is, in leading the church, he brings together a lot of different groups. So there’s a lot of these groups in the Midwest that are kind of running around on their own, and Joseph III sort of unites them, but because of that, what you see in Community of Christ, in the RLDS tradition, is this very, like, strict emphasis on parliamentary procedure. We want to make sure everybody’s heard. When you go to their world conferences, it’s more of a legislative session, where everybody’s proposing things, and they’re kind of working it out and figuring things out. That comes from the fact that he had to bring together a bunch of different people that had a lot of different ideas about how things were supposed to work, where the Trek West kind of fused our tradition into this very, like, hey, it’s do or die. We’ve got to follow the leaders that we have.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Now, he also does some great things. He helps them publish the inspired translation of the Bible. They have access to the Joseph Smith Translation manuscripts, so they publish that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: We don’t even get access to that until the 1970s, so other than the parts that are in the Pearl of Great Price, we don’t use the Joseph Smith Translation until we can look at it for ourselves, and then it becomes popular. We’ve done a whole episode on this.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Another thing about Joseph III was that he strongly denied that his father was ever involved in plural marriage, and that becomes kind of an important platform of the faith. For instance, Jason Briggs, the guy who approached Joseph III, actually leaves the faith in 1886 because he wants Joseph III to acknowledge that Joseph Smith, Jr. was the originator of plural marriage, and when Joseph III refuses, Jason Briggs and several of the people that followed him were kind of invited to leave the church, and so . . .

Scott Woodward: Wow. So it’s not that Briggs was proposing that we live plural marriage, he’s just saying, please acknowledge that your father started it.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And Joseph Smith III would not.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, Joseph III denies that until the day he dies.

Scott Woodward: Do you think it’s because of his mom, you know, because he interviews Emma, and Emma says, no, Joseph didn’t practice this.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Right?

Casey Griffiths: I mean, obviously, she’s hugely influential on him.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And a lot of historians have played around with that last interview and wondered, was it carefully worded in a way that she wasn’t not telling the truth, because, again, like, the way they think of plural marriage is different than the way we think of civil marriage and things like that, but the bottom line is, it’s our religion without plural marriage, and I’ll add, too, they also don’t believe in or practice temple ordinances, because they believe those are linked to plural marriage, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They do believe in temples, but in a different sense than we do.

Scott Woodward: More as, like, administrative and gathering places for conference, right, rather than a place of ritual ordinances.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, temples aren’t for ordinances. They’re kind of dedicated to God, and they serve as headquarter buildings for the church.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Now, when it comes to succession, this is what Bill Russell, our RLDS historian we’re using here—he wrote that Joseph III understood two principles with respect to succession. 1. The president should be called by revelation, and he should be a worthy lineal descendant of Joseph the martyr. So the president calls his successor by revelation, and that successor should be a descendant of Joseph Smith.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So this is how this plays out in Community of Christ.

Scott Woodward: So do we have an unbroken chain of Joseph Smith’s successors all the way down in Community of Christ because of that?

Casey Griffiths: Sort of. Sort of. We’re going to walk you through that. But they did follow lineal succession until 1995.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Again, in our church, a lot of times, because they’re not led by a descendant of Joseph Smith today, we’ll say, “Well, they broke their own tradition,” but it’s actually more complicated than that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: For instance, Joseph III’s oldest son is Frederick Smith, and he’s ordained an elder when he’s 23, but his dad, Joseph III, was worried that up to that point he hadn’t shown a ton of interest in church work, and he also wasn’t very active after his ordination. In fact, at least one apostle in the church opposed Frederick’s ordination because he didn’t think his—he’d shown enough interest. And his dad is, like—his dad calls his son “Freddy” in all the writings—said, you know what? He’ll eventually come around. In 1902, he brings him into the First Presidency, and Frederick Smith starts to, yeah, get interested in this, show a proclivity towards leadership. So in 1906, Joseph III received a revelation, this is now section 127 of the RLDS Doctrine and Covenants, that designates Frederick as his successor.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: But Joseph III is also conscious of how complicated it was when his father died, so before Joseph III dies in 1914, he writes a long letter just simply entitled “The Letter of Instruction” that’s intended to establish the principles of succession in the RLDS tradition. You hear this referred back to all the time. They do have some messy successions, but, for instance, when Frederick Smith died in 1946, they refer to “The Letter of Instruction.” In 1995, when a major change happens in succession, they still refer to it, but Roger Launius, who wrote probably the best biography on Joseph III, notes that the letter of instruction was not endorsed by the RLDS Quorum of the Twelve, but it did become precedent. So some of the leaders don’t endorse it, but it gets referred back to over and over and over again. So we’re going through their office. Frederick Smith takes over, and he serves from the death of his father until 1946. In 1938, he gave verbal instructions to the members of the Twelve and the presiding bishopric of the church that if anything were to happen to him, if he were to pass away, he wanted his brother Israel to take over as president of the church.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And around this time, Israel Smith is called into the First Presidency to help prepare him for his future calling, okay?

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So after Frederick passes away, it’s not an instantaneous thing. The Twelve take over leading the church for a little while, they actually asked Albert A. Smith, who was the presiding patriarch and who was the first cousin to Frederick and Israel, to seek the will of the Lord. And he eventually gives his approval that Israel A. Smith should take over as leader of the church. So this is the second son of Joseph III to lead the church, Israel A. Smith. So Joseph III, Frederick Madison Smith, Israel A. Smith. Those are the first three.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And it’s kind of remarkable that coming up on the century mark, by the time we get to the 1950s, they’ve only had three leaders because Joseph III serves for so long.

Scott Woodward: 54 years.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. But Israel, Israel A. Smith is a lawyer, and he’s really familiar with the history of the church, and he’s a little bit worried about the uncertainty that surrounded the first two successions, and so he writes a really specific letter where he says in the event of his death, his brother, William Wallace Smith, should take his place as president of the church. And the letter was written in 1952, and it proves to be an inspired move, because in June 1958 Israel is killed in a car accident.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Casey Griffiths: So Israel’s gone, but they find the letter, and the letter designates W. Wallace Smith to become president of the church. So that’s the third son of Joseph III.

Scott Woodward: Third son of Joseph Smith III. Wow. So this isn’t father to son, this is father to brother to brother to brother now.

Casey Griffiths: Father to son to brother to brother to brother. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: W. Wallace Smith becomes president of the church. He’s the one that starts to make major changes. So . . .

Scott Woodward: Okay. Like what?

Casey Griffiths: During his presidency, they start to become a little bit more open, especially towards members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some historians in the church started to acknowledge that Joseph Smith played a role in plural marriage and the introduction of temple ordinances. That causes kind of seismic shifts within the church.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: To our benefit, W. Wallace appoints a new church historian, Richard Howard—Richard Howard’s awesome; I’ve interviewed him—who allows people from the Utah church to come and look at their holdings, and this leads to Robert Matthews and the Joseph Smith Translation coming into kind of our discussion, our discourse surrounding the scriptures.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He’s super progressive, and he also does something that’s unprecedented, too: Instead of serving until his death, in 1976 W. Wallace receives a revelation that he’s going to retire in two years, and that his son Wallace B. Smith is going to become prophet and president designate. So he’s the first RLDS leader to not serve until death. He’s going to retire, and his son’s going to take over.

Scott Woodward: A revelation that he should retire in two years.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And that leads to Wallace B. Smith. And if I say Wally B. or Wallace B., this is how members of Community of Christ refer to him. Like, very affectionately. Not trying to be disrespectful here. Wallace B. Smith is incredibly progressive also, but his presidency is also really controversial.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So in 1984, he announced a revelation stating that the temple would be built in Independence, Missouri. He also granted women the right to priesthood office.

Scott Woodward: Whoa. That’s a big deal.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, these are huge things, and a lot of people that you and I are friends with, Scott—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Split off from the church during this time. Bill Russell, the historian we’ve been quoting, estimates that about a third of the church may have left.

Scott Woodward: Because of these innovations.

Casey Griffiths: These innovations and changes that happened.

Scott Woodward: So it was granting women the right to priesthood office, and, if I remember right, it was relegating the role of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, Jr., correct?

Casey Griffiths: I mean, I don’t know if there’s an official movement that kind of does that. That might be unfair for us to say. It seems like the ordination of women and—a lot of the people that we have talked to that left the church during this time do say they felt like the Book of Mormon was being de-emphasized.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: A lot of the people that left were kind of of the more conservative end of the spectrum in the church. They saw Wallace B. and his presidency as super liberal, and they were uncomfortable to change it. And honestly, some of them I’ve talked to, and this isn’t across the board, were uncomfortable with the idea of lineal succession ending, which they had started to talk about. So Wallace B. Smith, the final controversial things he does is he chooses to retire rather than serving to death like his father, and he appoints a president of the church that is not a Smith for the first time, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Not even related to Joseph Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Not even related to Joseph Smith, no. This guy’s name is W. Grant McMurray. Again, the first president of the church to not be a Smith, but he was, like, really well trained. Like, he’d served as the world church secretary for ten years, he was a counselor in the First Presidency, and according to Bill Russell, there were protesters outside when this happened, but when the decision was actually made in world conference, it wasn’t controversial, but Bill says it may have been because everybody that would have objected was already, like—

Scott Woodward: They were already gone.

Casey Griffiths: They were already gone.

Scott Woodward: So Wallace B. Smith is bringing some serious innovation: it’s women and the priesthood, it’s that the president of the church no longer needs to be a Smith, and some relegation of the importance and role of the Book of Mormon. Wow.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: I should clarify a couple of things: first, priesthood is treated differently in the church in RLDS Community of Christ tradition, where they follow more of a Protestant model, where there’s, like, a pastor and a limited—like, most members of the church don’t hold the priesthood. It’s more like a Protestant church, where there’s a couple people that do, but everybody else is considered kind of a lay member, and so in dialogue with Community of Christ, we asked, you know, how many people hold the priesthood total in your church? Their estimate, and I hope I’m not misquoting, was about 10 percent total.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So it was that women could be ordained to the same offices as men. So now they have, like, you know, female pastors and evangelists, and they use a lot of different names than we do, though some names, like elders and teachers and priests and deacons, are the same.

Scott Woodward: Okay. So then Grant McMurray becomes president.

Casey Griffiths: Grant McMurray. And he serves from 1996 until November 29, 2004. And this is where it gets even twistier. This is why I would say this is the most controversial succession in the church. So in November 2004—and, by the way, he’s the one that changes the name to Community of Christ. In 2001 they announce that’s going to be the official name of the church, even though the incorporated name of the church is still the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Scott Woodward: Okay, so Grant McMurray changes that.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, he does a lot of things that are sort of controversial, like he institutes open communion, which is the idea that anybody can come to their church and take the Lord’s Supper. Prior to that time, they had closed communion, where you had to be a member of the church to take the Lord’s Supper.

Scott Woodward: What are we? Are we open communion or closed communion?

Casey Griffiths: I think we’re open communion because I’ve never heard it come up, and I don’t know if we ever were closed communion, but at least in my lifetime, and I’m not a spring chicken, I’ve never seen anybody refuse to serve the sacrament whether they were a member or not. I think we would just say, hey, you know, if they haven’t made the covenants, then it’s a simple act of devotion on their part, so I think we’re open communion.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, I was just thinking about that. That’s interesting.

Casey Griffiths: McMurray also expresses his openness to the idea that the Book of Mormon isn’t historical, that it might not be an actual history. He also expresses that maybe the church should have been a little more cautious before canonizing new revelations to see if they meet the test of time. This is all according to Bill Russell and his article on succession.

Scott Woodward: Can you imagine the church president saying, we’re open to the idea that the Book of Mormon may not be historical?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, this would be a huge thing in our church, but just to provide a little context, McMurray actually is super open about his faith, and he talks about how by the time he was a student at Graceland University, which is kind of their church’s official university, he hadn’t read the Book of Mormon, and when he went and talked to the religion faculty there, none of them had read the Book of Mormon, either.

Scott Woodward: Oh. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And so it doesn’t seem like the Book of Mormon was ever emphasized as strongly in the RLDS tradition as it was in our tradition, and some people would argue that the Book of Mormon being emphasized as a source for doctrine is really something that started, you know, say, in the 1950s and sort of reached its apex under President Benson in the 1980s, so, again, he’s not a radical if he comes out and says this. I think a lot of church members were thinking the same thing, and a lot of church members that felt more strongly about the Book of Mormon as a historical record had left by the time he becomes president of the church, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Interesting.

Casey Griffiths: Here’s where it gets to controversial succession. So McMurray shocks a lot of people when he announces his resignation, and in the resignation, he just references some health problems that he’s having, and he also mentions some inappropriate choices that he’s made.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Casey Griffiths: And he declines to name a successor. So for the first time in the history of this church, a president left without naming a successor.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And that makes it probably the biggest succession crisis in their history.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Talk about being left hanging.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: What are church members to do in that case, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So the church is led briefly by the two counselors in the First Presidency. That’s Kenneth Robinson and Peter Judd. They lead the church from the time McMurray resigns until a special world conference that’s held the following year, and at the conference, the two counselors announced a process of discernment to obtain God’s will for who should lead the church. They also note that they’re consulting with the Quorum of the Twelve, they quote Joseph III’s letter of instruction, and they invite members of the Church to give input to the process. They even call for a special day of prayer to resolve the question in the months leading up to World Conference. So . . .

Scott Woodward: Whoa, so this is, like, a big shift.

Casey Griffiths: This is huge, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So what happens is they hold a meeting March 2, 2005, and announce that Stephen M. Veazey, who’s 48 years old, would lead the church. That’s just a kid in our perspective of things, right?

Scott Woodward: Who’s Stephen M. Veazey?

Casey Griffiths: Stephen M. Veazey at the time was the second youngest Apostle, but he was serving as President of the Quorum of the Twelve. So president of the Quorum of the Twelve becomes leader of the church. President Veazey is held in high esteem at World Conference. He’s sustained, according to Bill Russell, with fewer than ten people opposing his sustaining as leader of the church, and so . . .

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: The fact that in 2005, the president of their Quorum of the Twelve becomes their leader of the church prompted a lot of people on our side of things to be like, oh, you guys finally found the right way to do it, though Bill Russell emphasizes, hey, it’s not the same as the pattern of succession—

Scott Woodward: No.

Casey Griffiths: —in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so . . .

Scott Woodward: We saw some superficial similarities, but Bill clarifies.

Casey Griffiths: Bill sets us straight. So here’s what Bill writes. He says, here’s the differences: first, church members outside of the Twelve are eligible for the office.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: We’ve never chosen a president of the church that wasn’t part of the Quorum of the Twelve, and we’ve already said this is part of our process now.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Second, Veazey was not the senior apostle, and by chronological age, he was the second youngest apostle. Veazey called the youngest apostle, David D. Schall, age 47, to be one counselor in the First Presidency and retained as his other counselor Kenneth N. Robinson, who had served in the First Presidency throughout McMurray’s tenure. Thus, the two youngest apostles in the Community of Christ were chosen to be the president and a member of the new First Presidency.

Scott Woodward: Interesting.

Casey Griffiths: Then he adds, finally, Veazey’s selection occurred only after a period of discernment, in which not only the Twelve and other leading officers, but the entire Church membership, was encouraged to submit names and to pray for divine guidance in the discernment process. Therefore, it was not an automatic appointment of the senior apostle, but an unpredetermined choice by the Twelve. It was an open process, which Community of Christ members see as guided in significant ways by the Holy Ghost.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: And so . . . It does appear, though, that this idea of discernment and the entire church seeking discernment is something that might stick around, because Stephen Veazey has led the church since that time to the time of this recording, and when he announced that he was going to retire, which he did last year, he announced a period of discernment as well. In fact, it wasn’t even last year: it was at their last world conference. He announced, I’m thinking about retiring. I’d like the church to start entering into discernment about who the new leader of the church should be.

Scott Woodward: Okay, so a “period of discernment” means it’s a time for church members and church leaders to begin praying for the Holy Spirit of God to make manifest who the next leader should be. Something like that?

Casey Griffiths: Correct, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And I will point out, I’ve met Stephen Veazey. He is a very, very nice guy, and he’s led the church through some major challenges. Like, in 2017, they announced that they were having budgetary issues, that they had $115 million budget shortfall, that they were going to consider selling historic properties to help meet the needs of their employees, and so even prior to that time, they had sold a couple things, like Joseph Smith’s home and Haun’s Mill, to the church. That was a few years earlier. Shortly after he makes that announcement, they sell the printer’s manuscript to the Book of Mormon, which is the earliest complete manuscript of the Book of Mormon, to our church, and then all of this kind of culminates this year, in 2024, when they sell the Kirtland Temple, their Nauvoo properties, and all those historic artifacts that we’ve talked about.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So he kind of gets the church on a more stable financial ground so that they’re able to meet their needs and have an operating budget, and then in 2023, March 6, 2023, he announces that he’s going to retire in 2025. So we’re up to the present, and then he announces this period of discernment. Let’s take some time and think about who the new president of the church should be. Earlier in this year, January 18, 2024, Stassi Cramm was announced to be his successor after several meetings of key quorums in the church, and she’ll officially be the first female president of Community of Christ, so—

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: —they do return to that pattern of the prophet designates his successor, but they also add in this idea of discernment and that the decision is going to be made by the leading quorums of the church and not the president solely by himself.

Scott Woodward: And what do we know about Stassi Cramm?

Casey Griffiths: Not a ton. Everybody that I know of speaks highly of her. Again, I work with a lot of people in Community of Christ, but I don’t know a ton about her personally, and I haven’t met her personally.

Scott Woodward: Okay. Actually, I just googled Stassi Cramm, and it says on the Community of Christ website that she serves currently as a member of the First Presidency and counselor to the president of the church.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Scott Woodward: In the past, she has served as a presiding bishop, as a member of the Council of Twelve Apostles, etc., so, yeah, she’s been in church leadership for several years now and is soon to become president of the church in 2025. How about that?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. She seems like she’s seasoned church leader, steady hand.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And just to bring this back, you can see succession’s undergone some changes in Community of Christ, but it’s not quite as inconsistent as sometimes members of our church characterize it to be. It’s clear—it’s clear—that Joseph III believed in lineal succession. However, he also believed that the president of the church would designate their successor, and that seems to be, other than 2005 and Grant McMurray, the consistent thing that’s happened, is that the leader of the church has had a hand in choosing their successor. They’re our largest restoration faith behind us, and their process of succession often comes up, but I think they’re a little bit more consistent than we give them credit for.

Scott Woodward: So the consistency is that the president designates his successor, not so much that the successor always needs to be a descendant of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay. There you go. That’s Community of Christ. All right, to wrap this up, we want to cover one more movement of the Restoration that is based in Pennsylvania. This is the third largest denomination that believes in the Book of Mormon, though they do not use the Doctrine and Covenants or Pearl of Great Price. Members of this church believe that Sidney Rigdon was the rightful successor of Joseph Smith. However, their tradition is more complicated than that.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Casey, tell us who we’re talking about here.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, so this is The Church of Jesus Christ, and I’m going to refer to them as the Bickertonites. I just went to Pennsylvania, actually, and hung out with the Bickertonites for a day and visited a bunch of their churches, and I just peppered them with questions the whole time. Like, as soon as I stepped out of the car—I read Larry Watson’s history of their church and said, hey, you guys only baptize in natural settings? And they were like, yeah, they only baptize in natural settings. And I was like, what about a reservoir? Is that natural? And they were like, yeah, close enough. So wonderful, wonderful people, and by the way, Scott, while I was with them, the day I spent with them, they actually gave me the two-volume history of their church—

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Casey Griffiths: —and I’m reading through it right now—

Scott Woodward: That’s awesome.

Casey Griffiths: —but a lot of what we’re going to say here comes from an earlier article that Larry Watson, who I’ve met as well—he’s a great guy—wrote about their church. So, Bickertonite friends, I’m going to use the word “Bickertonite,” please be—don’t be upset, and I’m going to be using Larry Watson’s history, so call him if I get anything wrong. We welcome corrections.

Scott Woodward: So how does it start?

Casey Griffiths: So how does it start? Okay, Sidney Rigdon, after what happens in Nauvoo, is excommunicated, and then he leaves, and he goes back to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where he had been living for several months before the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum. So while he’s there, he converts this guy named William Bickerton, a local coal miner. Bickerton is a good leader and a good teacher, but he very quickly becomes disillusioned with Sidney Rigdon and doesn’t think that Sidney Rigdon’s on the right track. He actually writes this: he said, “Sidney Rigdon went wrong after he came to Pittsburgh. He wanted to make a gathering in the Emlenton Valley of the Allegheny Mountains. At the same time, he had organized the school of the prophet or solemn assemblies, and many things were revealed to us showing things were going wrong. After Rigdon went wrong, all that followed him fell away, and I was left alone.” And so at this point, William Bickerton’s flying solo, and he’s wondering if he should just give up when he has an experience. He says the following: “In the vision, I was on the highest mountain in the earth, and God told me that if I did not preach the gospel, I would fall into a dreadful chasm below. The sight thereof was awful. I was moved with fear, having the Holy Spirit. Here there was none to assist me, and without learning, popular opinion against me, and the Salt Lake Mormons stood in the way. I should not return back into Methodism again. No, I knew they had not the gospel. I stood in contemplation. The chasm was before me, and no other alternative but to do my duty to God and men. I went ahead preaching repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Some believed my testimony and were baptized, and we met together.” So he has a visionary experience that convinces him to continue. Some years later, in fact, around 1851 or 1852, he did become affiliated with our church, but the story goes, and some of this is controversial history, that Bickerton was wary of plural marriage and asked if our church was practicing plural marriage. He was told by the local missionaries that we weren’t because we hadn’t publicly announced it—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —but then when the church publicly announced they were practicing plural marriage, Bickerton decides to leave our church. So he publicly splits with the church. He openly declares it in his congregation, and it’s around this time that Bickerton decides he’s only going to teach from the Bible and the Book of Mormon. He doesn’t accept the Doctrine and Covenants because he feels it introduces doctrines that were contrary to the gospel, like baptism for the dead and plural marriage. So he’s going to do his own thing, and he formally organizes the Church of Christ, and early on, they were going by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They eventually simplified. They’re formally organized in 1862, and then a couple interesting things happen: members of The Church of Jesus Christ, the Bickertonites, believe strongly in the destiny of the American Indians. They try to set up a gathering place in Kansas where they can more easily minister to, do missionary work among the Native Americans. However, this leads to kind of a schism in the church, too, where William Bickerton is the leader of the church in the west and William Cadman, another prominent church leader, becomes leader of the church in the east.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And this kind of comes to a head in 1880, when William Bickerton is accused of improper conduct by a member of the church. The cause is “causing a separation in his family and for acting in a manner that was not becoming a church member.”

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: This is still controversial among Bickertonites because Bickerton basically said he didn’t do anything wrong, he was counseling a woman who was in a difficult marriage. However, a church-convened council ruled against him, and he’s suspended from the church.

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Casey Griffiths: During this time, a lot of the church follows William Cadman. Some people follow William Bickerton, and there’s actually a schism in the church that lasts for around 20 years or so.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: So . . .

Scott Woodward: So they eventually come back together twenty years later?

Casey Griffiths: They eventually come back together. Yeah, I’ve had one Bickertonite historian say William Cadman and William Bickerton both, you know—William Bickerton was getting to the end of his life, and he didn’t want schism to be his legacy, so he comes back into the church in 1902. He dies in the faith in 1905. William Cadman officially is the leader of the church during this time. He serves until 1905, when he passes away. Then Alexander Cherry takes over as leader of the church. And all along the way they’re having discussions about, you know, how they should lead the church. One of the biggest controversies when Alexander Cherry was the leader of the church is, should the First Presidency be separate from the Twelve, or should they be within the Twelve, which we had that discussion in our history.

Scott Woodward: Each movement needs to make their decision about that, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They decide ultimately that the First Presidency will be within the Twelve. It’s not going to be a separate organization. They’re going to choose three apostles, but they’ll still be kind of a part of the Quorum of the Twelve. So Alexander Cherry leads the church until 1921, then William H. Cadman, who’s the son of William Cadman, takes over. He extends missionary work into Native American groups in Canada. They start to do missionary work in Nigeria. A lot of the membership of the Bickertonite church is outside the United States in places like Africa, Central America, South America. He serves until 1963, so a long stretch for William H. Cadman.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: When Thurman Furnier takes over for just two years, he’s followed by Gorie Ciaravino, who leads the church from 1965 to 1974.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Then Dominic Thomas leads the church from 1974 to 2005, and this is getting us up to the current era, where when Larry Watson wrote his history, Paul Palmieri was president of the church. However, in 2018, Paul Palmieri was succeeded by Joel Gehly, who actually was one of the people I met with when I went to Pennsylvania. President Gehly’s a great guy, wonderful guy. But around this time, when they’re doing the succession for President Palmieri to Joel Gehly, they decide that the leader of the church should have term limits.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Essentially, the leader of the church—the general president is the title they would use—who heads the First Presidency is going to serve for roughly an eight-year term with a possible two-year extension.

Scott Woodward: Oh, okay.

Casey Griffiths: So this happens around 2018.

Scott Woodward: Very recent.

Casey Griffiths: That would mean that in two years, President Gehly’s going to come up for—they could extend his presidency for two years.

Scott Woodward: Release, or . . .?

Casey Griffiths: Release, I guess you’d say, and I’m being more formal than they are. When I was there, I kept saying, President Gehly, what do you think about this? And he was like, it’s just Brother Joel, you know?

Scott Woodward: Brother Joel. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And Brother Bob and Brother Josh and—all the people that I met with were on a first-name basis. They know each other relatively well. They hold general conferences in a little—in a conference center they have in Pennsylvania that I was able to visit while I was there, and we walked through a lot of their beliefs, but in a couple weeks Josh Gehly is actually going to be here and explain their beliefs. So . . .

Scott Woodward: On our show. We’re excited for that. That’ll be awesome. Josh is a great guy.

Casey Griffiths: So they’re like us in a lot of ways, but different in crucial ways, too. Like, I know people from the Bickertonite Church that know the Book of Mormon as well as any religion professor at BYU. Like, they can quote chapter and verse. They know their stuff.

Scott Woodward: Mm-hmm.

Casey Griffiths: They don’t use the Doctrine and Covenants. They don’t build temples, though they do believe in the city of Zion. They don’t necessarily believe that there’s going to be a temple at the center of the city of Zion.

Scott Woodward: Mm.

Casey Griffiths: They have a lot of other kind of cool beliefs that we’ll let Josh kind of explain.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: That’s the third-largest branch and one that we’re just barely establishing relationships with, and we’re learning a ton about them right now, so this process of the restoration family kind of coming back together is happening right before your eyes. In fact, you know, a lot of you could help with this. A lot of scholars and people right now are playing a role in helping us learn what they believe and correctly represent them.

Scott Woodward: Build bridges, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Build bridges, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Wow, Casey. That was fun.

Casey Griffiths: It’s a lot.

Scott Woodward: It’s a lot, yes.

Casey Griffiths: It’s a lot, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay. Let us summarize what we just talked about.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So, okay: today we reviewed three different restoration denominations. We talked about the Strangites. In terms of succession—that’s what we were kind of honing in on today—the Strangites believe in succession by a special appointment, and since James Strang did not tap a successor, they believe there has not been a prophet since his time, but they believe that one will come at some point.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, they’re open to the idea of future prophets, yeah.

Scott Woodward: Community of Christ has evolved in its succession practices. They no longer emphasize the importance of lineal succession, but they have consistently throughout their history believed in and followed the principle that the president chooses his successor, or at least plays a role in choosing the successor. And then third, in The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonites), succession has evolved as well, to be up to today where the First Presidency serves within the Quorum of the Twelve and has a standard eight-year term with a possibility of a two-year extension. So that’s how they do succession, which is interesting and unique. Okay, so each of these churches, and ours included, has seen a series of changes, I think it’s fair to say, to how succession happens.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I think it’s fair to say that every one of the churches would say the changes came by revelation. We’ve kind of explained that our development of succession has been complicated, but we believe that the changes happened under the direction of the Holy Ghost—

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: —that it was inspired, that it was revelatory.

Scott Woodward: So there you go. So in the following weeks, we’re going to invite representatives from each of these churches to come onto the podcast and have their own say. We look forward to learning directly from them. We hope you’ll join us as we learn more deeply about our cousins in the Restoration.

Casey Griffiths: Restoration cousins. Here we go.

Scott Woodward: Awesome. Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. In our next episode, Casey and I sit down with Dr. Kyle Beshears, a friend and expert researcher on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangites) to take us deeper into understanding that movement. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.