Scott Woodward: Among many of those Nauvoo Saints who did not choose to follow Brigham Young and the Twelve Apostles into the mountains of Utah, there was an emerging hope that someone from the Smith family would step forward and begin a reorganization of the church Joseph Smith Jr. had established. In 1851, a soft reorganization began and built up to that culminating moment of 1860 when the eldest son of Joseph and Emma Smith, Joseph Smith III, stepped forward at the age of 28 and was ordained president of what they referred to then as The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or RLDS Church. Over time, their method of succession in their presidency developed upon a different set of criteria than that of their Utah-based cousins, as did many of their practices, policies, programs, and governing principles. In 2001 the name of the RLDS Church was changed to Community of Christ, and today this is the second-largest branch of the Restoration movement. In this episode of Church History Matters, Casey and I sit down with Andrew Bolton, a friend and member of Community of Christ who served in their Council of Twelve Apostles from 2007 to 2016. Together we take a deep dive into the details of how succession works in this movement, while also considering some key similarities and differences between our two restoration branches today. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today we dive into our twelfth episode in this series dealing with succession in the presidency. Now let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hello, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: How are you doing?

Scott Woodward: I’m doing so great. How are you doing?

Casey Griffiths: So great. So great.

Scott Woodward: Good.

Casey Griffiths: I’m delighted. I think I had this episode in mind from the very first time we recorded our podcast and said we were going to have guests.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Casey Griffiths: The person—

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —that we have today is someone I’ve wanted to have on the entire time because he’s delightful, and he’s one of my dear friends.

Scott Woodward: This is a big day. We’re very excited.

Casey Griffiths: This is a big day. Coming to you all the way from across the pond, the other side of the very ocean, Andrew Bolton is with us. Andrew, say hi.

Andrew Bolton: Hi, everybody. Hello, Scott and Casey.

Scott Woodward: Hello. Hello. So glad to have you with us, Andrew.

Casey Griffiths: Andrew’s in the UK. Tell us where you’re at in the UK, Andrew.

Andrew Bolton: So we’re living in Leicester, which is two hours north of London.

Casey Griffiths: Very good.

Andrew Bolton: East Midlands.

Casey Griffiths: I can say that I have stayed in your home on several occasions. You’ve always been super gracious, and I’ve even, like, walked into your garden and walked to the pharmacist with you. The pharmacist or the chemist over on that side of the—that side of the ocean.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Either one is acceptable. Okay.

Scott Woodward: Or is it the apothecary?

Andrew Bolton: No.

Scott Woodward: I don’t know. No? Okay.

Andrew Bolton: That’s in Germany.

Scott Woodward: Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Oh, so they still do—they still do use the term apothecary over there in Germany?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. I remember seeing it when I worked in Germany for a year.

Casey Griffiths: Oh, very good. Very good. And I should mention, too, that the two of us were at summer camp together also. So I—my wife and I accepted your gracious invitation from you and your lovely wife, Jewel, and went over and spent a week at a Community of Christ—it’s called the Reunion. Tell us a little bit about reunions and what they are, Andrew, because I love this part of your tradition.

Andrew Bolton: Yes, so your tradition still has autumn and spring conferences, April and October, right? So we have the same tradition. It goes back to the early church. Then they decided just to have one general conference a year, and that was the spring one. People missed getting together for the october Conference, so they decided to just meet together anyway in the summer for preaching, worship, prayer meetings, lots of singing, being together. That’s around—was around 1880. It was the start of what we call our reunion tradition, and it’s very important because it’s like living in Zion for a week.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Andrew Bolton: So it keeps the Zion dream alive and real for us. So it’s a quirk of history that we went that way.

Casey Griffiths: And it really is like a little slice of heaven. The UK one is held at Dunfield House, which is this beautiful mansion up on a pretty green hill, and we preached, and we talked, and we sang and witnessed all kinds of marvelous events. I was telling you right before we started, it’s my favorite vacation to the UK because I didn’t really try to go anywhere or do anything: we just hung out with some lovely people, and I think we snuck off one afternoon to go to some bookshops, but outside of that, we just spent time together. It was great.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah, it was lovely. And you added to the fellowship, you and Liz. Thank you.

Casey Griffiths: Well, thanks for inviting us and for giving me an excuse to go to England with my wife.

Andrew Bolton: We should say that Dunfield House is half a mile from the Welsh border and your homeland.

Casey Griffiths: I went in—that’s where we went that afternoon. We went to Hay-on-Wye, which—is that in Wales, or . . . ?

Andrew Bolton: It’s just in England, but the Welsh border is just over.

Casey Griffiths: Well, I could see my homeland from there.

Andrew Bolton: Yes. Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Well, Andrew, let me read your bio here, and let me add, too, this is your bio from a book that you and I co-edited together. It’s called Restoration: Scholars in Dialogue from Community of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today, Andrew’s going to teach us about Community of Christ, but if you want to do a deep dive with a lot of different voices, this book is there, and I don’t think it’s priestcraft because I don’t think Andrew and I make any money off this book. It’s a scholarly book, but check it out if you can find it, so . . . Andrew Bolton, PhD, was a British schoolteacher and a college lecturer in multi-faith religious education before working for Community of Christ for 18 years, first coordinating peace and justice ministries and then coordinating the church in Asia. He has been published in Dialogue, the Journal of Mormon History, the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, and Restoration Studies. Andrew and his wife, Jewel, have two sons, Matthew and David, and one grandchild, Carson Bray. It’s two grandchildren now.

Andrew Bolton: It is. Shiloh Blake is the new addition.

Casey Griffiths: Oh, very good. Okay. So, Carson Bray and Shiloh Blake, and they live in retirement as active church volunteers in Leicester, England. And so, Andrew, we’re glad to have you here, and you were mentioning before we started recording that you’re working on a book that’s going to come out next year that has particular relevance for Community of Christ and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tell us a little bit about that.

Andrew Bolton: Actually, there’s two books, so let me do the first one, the one we were talking about. So this is going to be Living the Sermon on the Mount in Difficult Times. And so there’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, and then looking at how people have interpreted and lived or not lived the Sermon on the Mount. So we look at the Christendom angle, and then we look at people who’ve taken it seriously, like monks, and nuns, and the Anabaptists, and the Quakers, Bonhoeffer, and Gandhi. Gandhi always stayed Hindu, but he read the Sermon on the Mount every day for 40 years. Look what trouble that got him into.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: And then the second book is collaboration between LDS scholars and Community of Christ scholars. Patrick Mason and Taunalyn Ford are co-editors with me, and that’s called Radical Spirit: The History and Potential of the Latter-day Saint Tradition. And we look at our communitarian beginnings, how we hung out with utopian socialists and other good people. We look at how Utah was the first state in the Union to allow women to vote. So really good stuff. And we also have a chapter on war and peace that Patrick does, and then also the climate crisis. So we bring it right up to date. So we begin with a fabulous chapter by Joseph Spencer on the Law of Consecration, and then come to today. So that’ll be a good book. They’re both coming out next year.

Scott Woodward: Tremendous.

Casey Griffiths: Lots to look forward to. And Taunalyn Ford is one of my dear friends, and I’m excited to read what you guys have put together. So, Andrew, we brought you on board because you are going to be our expert for Community of Christ.

Scott Woodward: Before we get deep into the questions we have for you today, I think it’s important that our listeners know that Andrew has been a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the Community of Christ movement and is now retired. Is that correct, Andrew? Is that the right way to say it?

Andrew Bolton: Yes. Yes. I’ve been retired eight years.

Scott Woodward: Eight years. Okay. Boy, Casey, we have somebody that really knows their stuff here on Community of Christ, both in a scholarly way and ministerially. So, Andrew, we’re so excited to have you here to get into some questions about your history, about succession. This whole series we’ve been doing has been about succession in the presidency. We’ve walked through the LDS version of that, and we’d like to really get your perspective on the Community of Christ, which we have done some overview on in a previous episode, but today we want to do a deep dive with you. So if that’s okay, we’d love to jump into that.

Andrew Bolton: Very good.

Scott Woodward: So let’s start with the history of your church. We share some of that history, and you can tell us as much as you want about that shared history, and then when we get unique into the Community of Christ history alone—and especially next year, you have a major succession moment happening in the Community of Christ. Stassi Cramm is going to become your new president, the first female to hold the office of church president. And so a lot of exciting things happening in the Community of Christ movement. So where do you want to start, Andrew, as far as talking through the history of the church, building up to this great moment of succession coming up next year?

Andrew Bolton: So it starts in 1830.

Scott Woodward: Ooh, okay.

Andrew Bolton: Both churches share the first 14 years, from 1830 to 1844, from Palmyra to Nauvoo. It’s common history to both traditions, and that means our historians cooperate and share and work together often. Those that followed Brigham Young, in 1844 onwards, went to the Great Salt Lake Basin beginning in 1846, and you became the Mountain Saints. We who stayed behind became the Prairie Saints, and both Casey and I like these two terms, I think. We began as the Reorganization in 1851. We still felt called by the cause of Zion and had an emerging hope that someone from the Smith family would one day lead the beginning reorganization. Polygamy was also in the background.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: It took Joseph III, eldest son of Joseph, Jr., several years to feel the call and to have a testimony of it. But in 1860, he came with his mother, Emma, to the Amboy General Conference in Illinois, and his calling was approved by the conference, and he was ordained prophet-president of the reorganization at the tender age of 28. So it’s really interesting how young people were then.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: Grant McMurray, later prophet-president, but—in 1978 he wrote a paper eighteen years before his call to that office. He suggests that the early reorganization was advancing the argument of lineal succession in biblical ways, so like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob kind of lineal way.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: But Joseph, Jr. had four sons, and the early reorganization was open as to who might be chosen. But later on, stories that Joseph III had been set apart by his father became important. But Joseph III didn’t emphasize this. He saw it perhaps in he was set apart in a general way, rather than a specific calling, to the prophetic office, although G. J. Adams, an early church leader, and the secretary of Joseph Smith, Brother Whitehead, witnessed to the specific calling. Joseph III, in 1912, to avoid the division and chaos of 1844, gave a letter of instruction on succession to the church through the Saints’ Herald magazine, and he carefully argued several points. If a prophet-president should die or be removed for cause of moral turpitude, then the First Presidency continues until a new prophet is chosen by revelation. So the First Presidency with two people in it would continue. So there’s a transition possibility. The previous prophet can designate a successor, according to Doctrine and Covenants 43, which we share in both our Doctrine and Covenants. Or if this has not happened, the Council of Twelve can make a nomination, but this nomination has to be approved by the General Conference, now the World Conference. Joseph III’s 1912 letter of instruction ends by designating his eldest son, Frederick Mattison Smith, as his successor. It’s stated that his son, F. M. was his successor in 1902, and he was a member of the First Presidency, according to Doctrine and Covenants 127 in verse 8 section 8, in our Doctrine and Covenants, in 1908. So when Joseph III died in November or December 1914, the transition from Joseph III to F. M. Smith happened without confusion following the Doctrine and Covenants Section 43 pattern with a prophet designating his successor.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: However, F. M. Smith died in 1946 without clearly designating his successor.

Scott Woodward: Oy.

Andrew Bolton: So the nomination for this office was the responsibility of the Council of Twelve, and they decided to consult with Albert A. Smith, who was presiding patriarch then and a beloved and trusted minister, who suggested the brother of F. M. Smith, Israel A. Smith. That was fine. Then Israel A. Smith died in a car accident at the age of 82 in 1958. However, six years before, in 1952, he’d appointed his brother, W. Wallace Smith, as prophet in a statement that two people held: Leslie Dillap, presiding bishop, and then F. Henry Edwards, counselor in the First Presidency. So two people had the same statement, the same letter. And this was presented to the church after the death of Israel A. Smith. So, again, the pattern of Doctrine and Covenants 43 was followed. A prophet designating his successor. And this pattern continues with the calling of Wallace B. Smith in 1976 and then the calling of Grant McMurray in 1996, the first non-Smith.

Scott Woodward: How was that received because of this strong tradition of needing to be a descendant of Joseph Smith? How did this non-Smith succession appointment—I mean, was this controversial at all within the church?

Andrew Bolton: It was controversial with some conservatives.

Casey Griffiths: Mm. Okay.

Andrew Bolton: Others felt it was liberating.

Scott Woodward: Oh. How so?

Andrew Bolton: You’re not confined to the abilities of one family. It was a healthy move to move out of the Smith family, and it was the Smiths that decided that.

Scott Woodward: Right. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, Wallace B. Smith, who passed away just last year—

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. Right.

Casey Griffiths: —made that decision. And at the time, Andrew, you were a church member. Did Wallace B. Smith address why he was making the change? Did he speak to it, or did he just announce the successor and move on?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah, he presented why this was a good thing. He continued as prophet-president emeritus. My son Matthew and I went and interviewed him about some historical stuff. So that was a good interview. And he was quite candid.

Casey Griffiths: And this was after he had become prophet emeritus that you interviewed him and chatted with him.

Andrew Bolton: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Do you remember what you talked to him about?

Andrew Bolton: We talked about Apostle Charles Neff.

Casey Griffiths: Oh, okay.

Andrew Bolton: A pioneering missionary. And Matthew went on to write a book about him.

Casey Griffiths: Oh, very good.

Andrew Bolton: There’s still a print with John Webber books. So I could say Wallace B. Smith was an eye doctor before he became called to the office of prophet-president. And I would say he was very much a Christian gentleman. And when he retired, he went back to hospital, but as a chaplain.

Scott Woodward: And by the way, speaking of retirement, when did that start to become a thing in Community of Christ tradition? Because several of those early church presidents lived until, or presided until, death, correct?

Andrew Bolton: Yes. So Joseph III, F. M. Smith, and Israel A. Smith.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: So W. Wallace Smith was the first to retire, and then Wallace B. Smith followed that pattern.

Scott Woodward: So did that cause any buzz among the saints, or did they just take it in stride and say, okay, I guess that’s something a church president can do?

Andrew Bolton: Well, apostles had always retired.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: Well, I shouldn’t say always, but it became a phenomenon.

Scott Woodward: Early on in the tradition.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There is no set retirement age for an apostle, right? I think you retired at 65, which is just kind of a normal age to . . .

Andrew Bolton: I was 66.

Scott Woodward: Ah. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: You hung in there for an extra year. All right.

Andrew Bolton: So, apostles generally retire—at the latest they retire 65, 66, some early 60s. The cutoff is 70.

Casey Griffiths: And, Andrew, where do you come into the picture? Which president of the church delivered your call to be an apostle?

Andrew Bolton: Stephen M. Veazey.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, okay, so we’re not caught up to your service in the Quorum of the Twelve yet.

Andrew Bolton: Right.

Casey Griffiths: Let’s keep going.

Andrew Bolton: So Grant McMurray resigned in 2004, confessing to inappropriate choices. He didn’t feel it right to designate his successor, so this fell back to the Council of the Twelve at that time to discern who might be the next prophet-president. And they chose Stephen Veazey, who happened to be the president of the Council of Twelve, even though he was not the most senior apostle. So that was very interesting.

Scott Woodward: And what year is this?

Andrew Bolton: So, 2005.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: So in June 2005, Steve is called, tested by the conference, and then ordained at the June conference 2005.

Scott Woodward: Hmm. What does it mean to be tested? That’s an interesting term.

Andrew Bolton: Well, the calling—any senior calling is tested by all the quorums and orders of the church, and then by the whole conference, and then—and it’s voted upon.

Scott Woodward: Okay, so it’s put to a vote? That’s the test?

Andrew Bolton: There’s discussion—

Scott Woodward: Oh, okay.

Andrew Bolton: —whether this is a good thing or not.

Casey Griffiths: It seems like Grant McMurray’s resignation in 2005 might be the most controversial succession since 1844. It came out of the blue, and by that time I was kind of coming into studies in church history, and I remember my—Richard Bennett, who was my—a professor in my master’s program, telling us about it. What was the feeling at the time that that happened? Was that seen as very controversial, or was it shocking? What do you remember feeling about that?

Andrew Bolton: So there was a staff gathering called in the lower auditorium. We didn’t know whether—what it was, but we all trooped in, and two members of the presidency, Peter Judd, from England originally, and Kenneth Robinson from Australia, read a letter of resignation from Graham, and it wasn’t so much shocking as a shock. Big surprise. Totally unexpected. And I remember I was teaching a class in another congregation, preaching the following Sunday. People were shocked and bewildered by these events. And I remember two young adult friends, a couple that had performed their wedding in Seattle: they were dismayed. They felt that Grant was very committed to the peace and justice mission of the church. Yeah, it was a big shock. Bewildering.

Casey Griffiths: And Grant is still with us today. I’ve interviewed him, and I didn’t ask about this in particular. We were talking about something else, but that must’ve been a little surprising. Were you part of the discussions after when Stephen Veazey was chosen as the next president of the church?

Andrew Bolton: No. No, I wasn’t a member of the Council of Twelve then. I would have loved to have been part of the process, but I’ve heard little bits about it. It was harmonious. The Council of Twelve were united. Steve was the best-prepared prophet-president we’ve ever had in our history.

Casey Griffiths: I was surprised to hear how young he was. He was 47, wasn’t he? When he was called?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah, he was a young thing. He was younger than me.

Scott Woodward: And why do you say he was the most prepared? On what grounds?

Andrew Bolton: Well, he’d been a missionary, and then he worked as a Seventy, served as a Seventy, was a president of Seventy, then was called to the Council of Twelve. He served in the inner city, and he was, for four years, apostle to Africa. He gets poverty. And he’s from the South, and his dad was anti-racist, and his dad was a convert to the church. And his mom was the many generations of being RLDS. Steve is an impressive human being.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And he’s led the church for—next year will be twenty years, which is a really good tenure.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But his time is coming to an end as well as I—how long ago was it that he announced that you were going to start the process of succession? And he did it a little bit differently, too, I think, than most previous presidents also. Tell us a little bit about that.

Andrew Bolton: Yes, so I think it was announced at the 2023 World Conference, so it may have been announced before. I don’t remember precisely. And he had suggested that the Council of Twelve should discern the calling of the next prophet-president. So he followed Grant, but for different reasons. I think he felt that such an important office needed a wider group of people to discern. And the Council of Twelve, which is a major part of the leadership body, should have that responsibility, as it’s theirs by tradition anyway if the prophet doesn’t designate their successor. So they met. The present Council of Twelve met in autumn 2023 and produced a name, I think in January 2024.

Casey Griffiths: And now you’re going through the process. The name’s been chosen. It’s going to be at the world conference in 2025 that the new prophet is put in place. Tell us a little bit about that process.

Andrew Bolton: So the person who’s nominated is Stassi Cramm, as you mentioned in the introduction. So I should give you some background about Stassi.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, please.

Andrew Bolton: She’s an engineer by training. She has a PhD in leadership. She went to work for the church, was called to be a counselor to the presiding bishopric, whose—deals with the finances of the church. I mean, as an engineer, she can count. Good. And then she was called into the Council of Twelve by Steve and served there.

Scott Woodward: Oh, so you must have served together with her for some time.

Andrew Bolton: Well, Steve, at this point, had become president of the council—president of the church.

Scott Woodward: Okay. Did you and Stassi ever serve together in the Council of Twelve?

Andrew Bolton: Yes. Yes, we were colleagues together. And then she led the US Apostles team, which was an important job. I mean, she’s very capable. Then she was called by Stephen to the presiding bishopric as presiding bishop and then into the First Presidency. So in terms of jobs, she’s really well prepared. She’s super competent, and I can email Steve, and sometimes I get a reply. I always get a reply within the day from Stassi. She’s amazing.

Casey Griffiths: She’s that kind of—that kind of person, huh?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah, so if you want to get things done, talk to Stassi.

Scott Woodward: For many of our listeners, this idea of a woman serving in the Council of the Twelve, presiding bishopric, and now president of the church is a little bit bewildering, right? Because we continue to not have women in our priesthood at any level. When did this happen in your tradition, in the Community of Christ? When did women begin to serve in the ministry officially in priesthood capacity? How was that received by church members?

Andrew Bolton: So Wallace B. Smith brought a revelation to the church in 1984 called Section 156. In that he brought two things for the church’s consideration: one was to build a temple in Independence dedicated to the pursuit of peace, reconciliation, and healing of the spirit, and the other was calling women to priesthood. So it was very divisive.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: Maybe 30,000 people left.

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Andrew Bolton: It was a very painful time for the church. And we made the decisions we normally did, approving a document, section of the Doctrine and Covenants, in two or three days. What we now do when we have a controversial issue, we sometimes take years over the decision. Lots of discussion.

Scott Woodward: Wow. There were 30,000 church members who left over this. That’s a pretty large schism. Is that the biggest in your history?

Andrew Bolton: Yes.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Andrew Bolton: So a very painful time. Costly.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: So, a prophet-president designating his successor happens four times in our tradition, and the Council of Twelve discerning the next prophet-president happens three times. So we have two methods, historically, plus the fact that the 1851-52 was neither of those, but a group of people waiting faithfully for somebody from the Smith family. They were not advocating their own candidacy. The reorganization was different from others, other splinter groups at the time.

Scott Woodward: In what key ways do you see that?

Andrew Bolton: They began with people not advocating for themselves to be prophet-president.

Scott Woodward: Oh, I see. It’s not the Quorum of the Twelve saying that we should be the leaders of the church. It’s not James Strang saying—

Andrew Bolton: Right.

Scott Woodward: —I’m the rightful successor. It’s a group saying—

Andrew Bolton: Yes.

Scott Woodward: —we believe that this other person should be. That is unique. And Casey, you teased at this question, but I would love to hear before we go on to the next section of this, a little bit about your own call, Andrew, to the Quorum of the Twelve under President Veazey. What was that like?

Andrew Bolton: So it was out of the blue. So I’m teaching church leaders in India, in Tamil Nadu, and I get an email from Steve saying, could we talk?

Scott Woodward: Uh-oh.

Andrew Bolton: He had a ministerial opportunity for me. I had no idea what this was going to be. So I rang him up. We set a time, and he talked about the calling to the Council of Twelve. And normally it would be in person, but he needed to know more quickly because I was going to be in Asia for some time.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Andrew Bolton: And so I said, okay, let me talk with Jewel, my wife, because this is a big question for us. And what might be my first field? And he said, Asia. So here I was in India, teaching these classes, and we had people from the rest of Asia there.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Andrew Bolton: And then suddenly I was conscious that I was going to be a future apostle but couldn’t talk about it to anyone.

Scott Woodward: Oh, boy. You had to keep that under the wraps while you were there.

Andrew Bolton: I had, yes. So it was daunting and exciting at the same time.

Scott Woodward: And you served from—was it 2007 to 2016?

Andrew Bolton: That’s right. Nine years. For some time I continued leading peace and justice ministries. I was also responsible for Native Americans, and then the church in Asia. Jewel and I lived in Tokyo for two years, working for the church’s school there, when we were newly married.

Casey Griffiths: And before that, you worked for the church. In fact, priesthood and ministry in Community of Christ is more similar to a Protestant church, I guess I’d say, than it is in the Mountain Saints, where we have a corps of general authorities, but Community of Christ has professional ministerial staff that maintains most congregations. Is that accurate to say, Andrew?

Andrew Bolton: No, it’s not. We’re, both traditions, dependent on volunteer ministers. So I would say 99.9 percent of congregations are led by volunteers, like in the LDS tradition. So we’re a lay-run organization, but we do have full-time ministers that—a mission center president for the British Isles is full time, for instance, and the financial officer is full time. So they’re responsible for a number of congregations. But in the States most of that leadership now is volunteers.

Casey Griffiths: Has that always been the case, or is this a later development?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah, so they—I mean, it went from volunteers to professional, back to volunteers.

Casey Griffiths: Gotcha. Okay. Okay.

Andrew Bolton: We both prize volunteer ministry. It’s one of the distinctives of the Restoration tradition.

Casey Griffiths: Well, anything else you want to say about succession before we move on to kind of the next topic?

Andrew Bolton: So it’s momentous next year that the first woman prophet is likely to happen. We’ve had apostles since 1998. We’ve had the first woman presiding evangelist since 2016, and we’ve got the second woman presiding evangelist nominated, as it were, Mareva Arnaud, an apostle, and now president of the Council of Twelve, will take that role on, if approved by the conference from next year. So, I mean, to look at the Council of Twelve, you’ve got a huge variety of races, half are women. You’re going to look at the First Presidency. Bunda Chibwe, who’s going to be a counselor, he’s been an apostle for—will have been an apostle for 25 years, speaks five languages, one of our best theologians. Brilliant song leader. So the First Presidency is going to look very different as well. We’ve had women in the First Presidency before, but this is the completion of full inclusion.

Casey Griffiths: Let’s shift gears a little bit, and let’s do some comparisons. First, what are some similarities between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Community of Christ?

Andrew Bolton: So we all go back to Joseph and Emma Smith, the Whitmers, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon, and many others. Edward Partridge is one of my heroes, too. So we—and we share a common early history from 1820, the First Vision, to 1844.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: And we’re bumping up against each other since 1844 as well.

Scott Woodward: True.

Andrew Bolton: So we both celebrate God speaking today. We both are innovators of new scripture. We both have the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants as well as the Bible, and we continue to add to our Doctrine and Covenants, and you have documents that go in there as well. We both celebrate the First Vision, that God cares about the prayers of a teenager asking for guidance. So the First Vision symbolizes God’s concern to bless all people who come and ask, seek, and ask for wisdom. We say the same communion sacrament prayers. We celebrate and practice baptism in the same way. Same words. We have confirmation, laying on of hands for the sick, marriage, ordination, child blessing, and what you call patriarchal blessing we call evangelist blessing. We have all these—we call sacraments, you call ordinances, but we used to call them ordinances as well. And we’ve already discussed, we’re a volunteer movement like you. We have the same priesthood structure: Aaronic, Melchizedek, deacons, teachers, priests, elders, Seventy, high priests, bishops, and apostles, and prophets. I like the fact that one of our elders, from both traditions, has as much sacramental authority as a Catholic or Church of England bishop. I think that’s really cool.

Casey Griffiths: It’s a little scary when you think that, in our church, some of those elders are 18. We’re giving them the kind of authority a Catholic bishop has. Seems a little crazy, but it seems to work, so . . .

Andrew Bolton: So your missionary program is something to be celebrated.

Scott Woodward: Thank you.

Andrew Bolton: With you, we celebrate the worth of souls is great in the sight of God. Doctrine and Covenants 18 for you, 16 for us. We celebrate with you that one being is as precious in God’s sight as another, Jacob chapter 2, Book of Mormon. Today in Community of Christ, we continue this tradition of human equality and celebrate strongly the equal worth of all persons. So women can be ordained as apostles and prophets even, as well as deacons, and we include in full membership those who are LGBTQ+. The phrase, “seek to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion” resonates for us from our earliest days. The cause of Zion is really important, becoming a people of one heart and one mind, dwelling in righteousness or justice. Ending poverty—I love that bit. Sometimes we say Zion is the melody of our faith.

Scott Woodward: I like that.

Andrew Bolton: I’m always thrilled to meet LDS folk who also love and seek the cause of Zion. It’s a common cause. So when Casey and I, with others, other scholars, were talking about Zion, there was no division. We were both intrigued by the tradition in both our movements.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I’ll say that’s a point that almost all restoration churches that I’ve visited with can kind of connect on. We all love the idea of a New Jerusalem and a Zion being built, and we might have differences about when or where or how it’s going to be built, but that idea of building the holy city I think is something that is in the very core of the restoration, that I’ve never had any bad conversations about it with other churches that were of the restoration.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. And you and I are going to visit Orderville one of these days.

Casey Griffiths: One of these days, yeah. One of these days when you’re over here and you have time.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. Yeah. So the Zion tradition is a strong similarity, and like the LDS Church, we’re international. You’re more international, but we’re present in sixty countries, worshipping on a Sunday in forty languages.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Andrew Bolton: And one of the discoveries from a dialogue group, again, is that the LDS Church and we have a strong sense of sacred space. We may interpret that differently, but it’s in the genes of both traditions. We both build temples, and our sacred space also includes campgrounds where we hold reunions. And then, like you, we’ll be celebrating 200 years of our tradition in 2030.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: That’ll be a joy. I hope I’ll make it. I’ll be 80.

Scott Woodward: You’ll make it.

Casey Griffiths: You’ll make it, yeah.

Andrew Bolton: So we have a lot in common.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. You mentioned the building of temples besides your temple in Independence, Missouri. Are there other locations? I am not aware of that.

Andrew Bolton: Well, we’ve just swapped a temple: Kirtland.

Scott Woodward: Oh, yeah, that’s a good point, so . . . Okay. So Kirtland Temple and then also the temple in Independence. Those are the two that you’ve claimed historically? Okay, so what about some of the differences between Community of Christ and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? What do you see as some of the major lines in the sand that we’re on the opposite sides of?

Andrew Bolton: So we begin as Mountain Saints and Prairie Saints. So geography of our beginnings is helpful to understand. Mountain Saints, to begin with, are separated from the rest of the United States.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Andrew Bolton: Gentiles and *unintelligible* are hardly present. You don’t deal with Christians as neighbors. You do on your missions, but not as neighbors.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Andrew Bolton: And today you’re still of a very significant size in Utah.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Andrew Bolton: The Prairie Saints, the reorganization, our members were surrounded by Christians from the beginning, and we have to tell our story so it makes sense to them. So in Community of Christ, I want to suggest we speak three languages: we can speak Christian really quite well.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: We speak Community of Christ among ourselves, and some of us can speak Latter-day Saint almost fluently.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Andrew Bolton: But I still have to talk with Casey to check.

Scott Woodward: I have not been able to detect an accent yet in our conversation today, so . . .

Casey Griffiths: It’s complicated. Like, I didn’t realize how much was invested in, like, a British hyphen and lowercase d in Latter-day Saint and an uppercase D in Latter Day Saint, like, we had to put—we had to put an explanation of terms in the first of our book that we edited together, because there are some ways we use languages differently, like, it’s not the Community of Christ: it’s just Community of Christ. Is that correct, Andrew?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. We don’t want to assume that we’re the only Community of Christ.

Scott Woodward: And that shift, by the way, from Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Community of Christ is fairly recent. What was that? 2005? Is that right, that shift was made?

Andrew Bolton: So the name came forward out of a leadership retreat—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: —in Estes Park, Colorado in 1994.

Scott Woodward: Oh. That’s earlier than I thought. Okay.

Andrew Bolton: Then it was tossed around.

Scott Woodward: Oh, okay.

Andrew Bolton: Then in—at the World Conference in 2000, it was discussed and approved.

Scott Woodward: Okay, 2000.

Andrew Bolton: And it was begun the 6th of April, 2001.

Scott Woodward: And the purpose behind that, I know I’ve had a lot of members in the LDS tradition ask, like, why was the name changed? Do you have a brief answer for that for our listeners?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah, so two reasons: we go from nine words to three, so . . .

Casey Griffiths: That’s nice.

Scott Woodward: We can feel that. We could feel that, yes.

Andrew Bolton: It’s not a paragraph anymore. It’s a phrase. Then we were—the early Latter-day Saint tradition, before it became Latter-day Saints, was called the Church of Christ.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Andrew Bolton: So Community of Christ is going back to the beginning of our movement. So we love it. It reminds us who we are: we’re a community centered in Jesus Christ.

Scott Woodward: Has a little bit of that Zion ring to it. That Community harkens to the Zion ethos, doesn’t it?

Andrew Bolton: Yes. Absolutely. And community is a better word than church, which can imply building. But church in the New Testament sense was a people, a community.

Scott Woodward: Got it. Okay, very good. That was a little tangent, but . . . So back to differences. What else do you want to say about differences?

Andrew Bolton: The LDS Church is very much a continuation of the Nauvoo era, 1839-1844.

Scott Woodward: Very fair, yes.

Andrew Bolton: And Community of Christ is critical about our church history anyway, including the Nauvoo story, so we reject, for instance, the militarization of the church, the Nauvoo Legion. Joseph III was very loyal to his dad, but he was critical about his dad and the Nauvoo Legion. We rejected polygamy. We rejected Nauvoo theology, especially about many gods. And we’re very cautious in those early reorganization days about gathering into large numbers because it had previously provoked violence with neighbors.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: Some of us wonder if Joseph, Jr. went off the rails.

Scott Woodward: When do they pinpoint that? Was it late Missouri? Was this as an effect of Liberty Jail? What’s the thinking on when he went off and perhaps why?

Andrew Bolton: It’s a good question. So I’ve done a paper about surviving Nauvoo, so I want to be pastoral about Joseph.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: He’s experienced horrendous things. You mentioned Liberty Jail, right?

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Andrew Bolton: He didn’t know whether he was going to be executed at one point, shot by a firing squad. General Donovan rescued him and other church leaders.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: So I think he was traumatized in Nauvoo. And at the same time, Nauvoo thrived, the second largest city in Illinois, just behind Chicago. Twelve thousand people in Nauvoo in just a few years. Four thousand of those came from the British Isles.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: Speaking with an accent similar to mine.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Andrew Bolton: So on the one hand, wonderful success, but a traumatized people, and it traumatized the prophet. So I think some things went wrong because of that.

Scott Woodward: Somewhere between Liberty Jail and early Nauvoo?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. And he—Joseph never claimed to be perfect anyway. I mean, there’s sections of the Doctrine and Covenants that we share where he criticizes himself, has the Lord criticizing him.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: Rebuking him.

Scott Woodward: Being forgiven lots of times, yes.

Andrew Bolton: Yes, though we do him a disservice if we don’t see him as fully human. Lach Mackay, who’s historian, and now a member of the Council of Twelve, doesn’t think he’s a fallen prophet: he’s a human prophet.

Scott Woodward: What other kind are there?

Andrew Bolton: There’s fallen prophet.

Scott Woodward: Oh, OK. That’s the other category.

Andrew Bolton: Well, there’s faithful.

Casey Griffiths: That’s the other kind. Andrew, I’ve had a member of your church sum up the differences between the two churches by saying it goes back to how we think about temples. I think a lot of our listeners might not understand, and probably haven’t had the chance to visit the temple in Independence and understand how different it is from how we picture and how we use temples. Can you talk about that just a little bit as one of the differences?

Andrew Bolton: So both are sacred space. The model for us is biblical. So when Jesus says, “my house shall be a house of prayer for all nations,” we see the temple as a house of prayer for all people. To take a group of Jews through is to tell them, this is your space, your sacred space, too. I took a group of three Hindus through and told them, this is your sacred space, too. So we’ve had the call to prayer, the Muslim call to prayer, in the sanctuary of the temple. So it’s a, first of all, a place of prayer for all nations and then the second image to bring up—both these images are from Isaiah—is Isaiah chapter two, all the nations streaming to the House of the Lord, beating swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, and learning war no more. So the temple is a place of peace. And if it’s a place of prayer for all people, you can’t be at war with each other anyway. But the image of a place of peace, of learning about peace, is something we draw perhaps from that Isaiah passage.

Scott Woodward: So rejecting the Nauvoo theology would certainly be a rejection of the way that Latter-day Saints today look at the temple. It goes back to that, as was mentioned, to, like, things like the ordinance of endowment, or washing and anointing, or sealing couples together in marriage. You don’t have any of that, correct? And the reason for that would be because that’s part of the Nauvoo theology that came after Joseph—I don’t know the right word to say. Went downhill? Was no longer viewed as inspired in your tradition? Help me work through that, yeah.

Andrew Bolton: So I think for the early reorganization and the Nauvoo period, the temple wasn’t controversial. When Casey got us to go through the Jordan Temple, which was in transition—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, I should mention you and a group of leaders went through the Jordan River Utah temple while it was having its open house, and they were actually gracious enough to let us use one of the endowment rooms to have a discussion. It was a really, really cool experience, but go on. I just wanted to clarify what temple.

Andrew Bolton: So that was a good experience where we mutually discovered that sacred space is important for both of us, but we don’t do the ordinances that you do. I would say the temple for us is also a place of learning and a place of worship, as Kirtland was.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: Kirtland was a place of instruction, education about priesthood calling, and it was also a place of worship.

Scott Woodward: So the Kirtland-style temple you have no issue with, 100 percent harmony with, it sounds like, but the Nauvoo-style temple is where we find some significant differences because of the theology that that was based on.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: While we’re on the subject, and if you don’t want to talk about this, it’s okay, but would you mind talking about the transfer of the Kirtland Temple, the swap, you called it, and how that’s been received in your church? I know that was probably difficult.

Andrew Bolton: Yes. So it’s very painful, because it’s—Kirtland is greatly beloved in our tradition. It was a symbol of that Pentecostal spirit, a real go at Zion, communitarian living in the 1830s. “Spirit of God like a fire is burning” is a hymn that we both sing with joy. Kirtland was a place from which overseas missions began, first of all to Britain. Like Christianity began in Jerusalem, it spread out from there. So Kirtland’s greatly beloved, so it’s very, very painful. There are tears about it. But I have to say, Scott, that Casey wrote a wonderful, compassionate, empathetic article about that event, and I’m very grateful that Casey did that in such a loving way. Thank you, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Well, and let me say, I wrote it, but we sort of coauthored it together because I sent it to you and you made changes, and a lot of what you suggested ended up in the original article, but—I never miss a chance to promote something that I wrote, so let me just say the gist of the article, which was in Public Square Magazine, which is an online magazine, was that the transfer of the Kirtland Temple really should be looked at as an extraordinary event, where a holy site was exchanged between two different faiths without any blood being shed. And that’s not to say that there wasn’t emotional and spiritual trauma that people are still coping with, but the fact that a holy site changed hands peacefully, I felt demonstrates that Community of Christ really does live up to its ideal of being a church of peace and a people of peace, and so—

Scott Woodward: That’s beautiful.

Casey Griffiths: —you helped me. Almost every idea in that paper was something that I’ve learned from you at some point or other. And, again, you were just a coauthor, so I should have put your name on it, but . . .

Andrew Bolton: I only did a little bit.

Casey Griffiths: I think I mentioned you, and I quoted Lach Mackay and a few other people, and I use some of your photographs in the article, too, so thank you for that.

Scott Woodward: Oh. That’s great.

Andrew Bolton: So that demonstrates the power for good of continuing dialogue between the two traditions.

Scott Woodward: Absolutely.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I think it could have been a lot more painful if we hadn’t been engaged in that dialogue for all those years before it happened, and I hope the dialogue continues even after that that’s happened.

Andrew Bolton: And I’ve really appreciated some of your colleagues. I mean, Scott Esplin is right up there in my view.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He’s such a good man.

Andrew Bolton: But others as well have been very good partners.

Casey Griffiths: So, Andrew, you mentioned we have the First Vision in common, but I believe, like, our views on the Godhead are a little divergent, too. Can you explain some of the differences there?

Andrew Bolton: I guess Community of Christ is monotheistic, and we don’t have every good Latter-day Saint becoming personally a god. So that would be one of the major differences. We think we become transformed, sanctified. Eventually, one day we’ll be free from sin, but we don’t become gods.

Scott Woodward: Because, again, that’s tethered to the later Nauvoo theology, which is part of—

Andrew Bolton: Yes.

Scott Woodward: —that group of teachings you reject.

Andrew Bolton: Yes. So the King Follett sermon is a brilliant sermon for people of the poorest of the poor. To say people who are nobodies are somebodies, you’re going to be a God—it’s a brilliant sermon, but we reject it as scripture.

Scott Woodward: Yes. So I hear mixed messages, and so glad to have you here to help clarify. Some people say that in Community of Christ the Book of Mormon has been denigrated below, or I should say, lowered somewhere in its significance below, the Bible. And I’ve had others push back on that and say, no, not really. Many of us still view it as equal with the Bible, and, I mean, is that the current standing of the views on the Book of Mormon within your tradition? It’s kind of varied among people, or is there kind of a community standard of, we view the Book of Mormon this way, it is the Word of God, or has it been denigrated over time?

Andrew Bolton: So the first thing to say is we’re a non-credal church, non-dogmatic.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: People can hold a variety of positions on the Book of Mormon. So it’s never been a test of faith. And people have wanted to make it really important to World Conference resolution, and the First Presidency’s always said, you can’t do that. We can’t prescribe faith to the membership by World Conference action. We have a clear theology that we keep working on from generation to generation. It’s not that we don’t have a theology—we do—but we don’t prescribe beliefs. So you can’t be kicked out of Community of Christ for heresy. Otherwise I would have long gone. I’ve come to orthodoxy, but as—in a voluntary way, unalienated, discovering, and lots of people, that is a continuing conversation. So that’s the first thing to say: the Book of Mormon is not a test of faith.

Scott Woodward: Okay. That’s a helpful way to say it, yeah.

Andrew Bolton: The second thing is, I want to take you to the London Chapel. This is London on the Thames in Canada, in Ontario, Canada.

Scott Woodward: Oh, okay.

Andrew Bolton: And there’s a window there, I think it says “1915,” and the Bible is above the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Bible is bigger. So this is 1915, so there’s some theology being expressed about the merits of the three scriptures in that stained glass window.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Andrew Bolton: I really want to get a photograph of it. Today we say the Bible is our foundational scripture, but the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants is also scripture. So the Bible is more important than the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s foundational.

Scott Woodward: In what way is it more important, if you could . . . ?

Andrew Bolton: Because it’s foundational.

Scott Woodward: In terms of your theology.

Andrew Bolton: Yes. We would have to check things by a biblical theology.

Scott Woodward: Is there a test of faith when it comes to belief in the Bible?

Andrew Bolton: No. We’re consistent.

Scott Woodward: So members could hold a variety of views on the Bible, and that would be okay.

Andrew Bolton: Yes, and they do. So I personally think the Book of Mormon is really helpful. I love the passages that speak about justice for the poor and the marginalized. It’s stupendous in the Book of Mormon. It’s a dated witness of the prophetic tradition in the Bible, adapted for the 19th century, and still speaks to us today. I love 3 Nephi, the New Testament of the Book of Mormon.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: The coming of Jesus. I love 4 Nephi, the beginning of 4 Nephi, which weaves the spirit of Zion in 200 years of peace, without mentioning the name. So I think it’s scandalous that we have extra scripture, but it’s so very healthy, because we’re saying, both traditions are saying, God still speaks today.

Casey Griffiths: And Andrew, just to clarify, too, it also wouldn’t be a test of faith if the Book of Mormon is historical or not. You would be okay with either view.

Andrew Bolton: Yes. Yes. And depending on the audience, I’ll—I try to avoid that question. For us, it’s scripture, which the Holy Spirit bears witness on. The promise at the end of the Book of Mormon is that you ask God, and God’s Spirit will reveal whether this is scripture or not.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: That’s the only evidence I trust.

Casey Griffiths: Could I ask about the Doctrine and Covenants? Our Doctrine and Covenants are quite a bit different. Even though we both start with the 1844 Doctrine and Covenants, ours has gone in one direction, and yours has gone in a different direction. And there is no Pearl of Great Price: that comes after the split between the two churches. But how is the Doctrine and Covenants different?

Andrew Bolton: Doctrine and Covenants is revered, I think, by most members of the church. That’s the first thing to say. The second thing to say is to assure your audience that there’s so many sections of the Doctrine and Covenants that we have in common. Sometimes the numbering’s different, the versification is different—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: —but lots of sections from Joseph Smith, Jr. are present in both Doctrine and Covenants.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and excerpts from the Joseph Smith Translation. Like, there’s big chunks of what we call the Book of Moses that are actually sections in the Doctrine and Covenants, too. And some people might not be aware of that. So there is kind of a little Pearl of Great Price in the Doctrine and Covenants as well.

Andrew Bolton: Yes. Yes. And the Pearl of Great Price was invented in Liverpool, wasn’t it? It’s a British Isles thing.

Casey Griffiths: It’s a British book, yep. So you guys can claim that one, too.

Scott Woodward: Franklin D. Richards, I believe, yeah, was the apostle.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: And then we continue to add to the Doctrine and Covenants by sections from all our prophets. So Steve brought three. I don’t know how many Joseph Smith III did, but all of them have brought new sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, and there’s excitement when a new section is being considered. But all the quorums and orders look at each paragraph, discuss it, take it apart, then approve paragraph by paragraph, and then the document as a whole, and then that’s replicated again by the World Conference. So there’s a real vetting of the new section, and it’s like 1835: the Doctrine and Covenants, the first Doctrine and Covenants, was approved by a conference there.

Scott Woodward: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew Bolton: So we follow that pattern.

Scott Woodward: And it goes through such a careful vetting process because church members would then be considered to be bound by what’s in those revelations? Is that a fair way to say it? It’s binding once it’s in the canon?

Andrew Bolton: We share the responsibility to live it out. That’s well put, I think, Scott. And then I think the other thing to say is that we do all important things generally by common consent.

Casey Griffiths: And can you elaborate a little bit on what common consent means, because I’ve been to a world conference in your church. It’s really different than a general conference in our church.

Andrew Bolton: For simple tasks we use parliamentary process. So people speaking for and against something, and then a vote or amendments and then a vote. So that’s a parliamentary process. Common consent is more rigorous than that. It’s living with something for a while. So, for instance, we’re at the moment considering a statement on non-violence.

Casey Griffiths: You’ve done a lot of work to forward that. I think that’s—it’s fair to say that you’re one of the key figures behind that statement.

Andrew Bolton: So I’m one involved in it. I wouldn’t say I was the key.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: But I’m involved. And so this has gone through lots of groups before it comes to conference next year, and then it could be changed at conference next year as well. So common consent deals with controversial issues in particular. So the LGBTQ question of inclusion was a common consent process over a decade at least.

Scott Woodward: And what is your current standing on that? Is it full inclusion regardless of marital status, or—for those of our listeners who don’t know the current stance, you say you’re very open and welcoming to the LGBT community. How far does that go?

Andrew Bolton: So we ordain, we call and ordain LGBTQ brothers and sisters, and we marry LGBTQ brothers and sisters as well.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: So we—it’s full inclusion. There’s no difference.

Scott Woodward: Full inclusion. Okay.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. We have a sexual ethics statement, so we’re still discussing that.

Scott Woodward: A sexual ethics statement?

Andrew Bolton: Yes. We are trying to hold each other to a common standard of sexual behavior.

Scott Woodward: Like a Law of Chastity kind of an equivalent is what we call it in our tradition.

Andrew Bolton: So it’s more nuanced than that.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Andrew Bolton: The original document was 68 pages, I think.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Wow.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Wow.

Scott Woodward: That’s involved.

Andrew Bolton: And celibacy is one of the options that we hold up.

Casey Griffiths: Because it’s such a complex issue. Would it be treated the same way in a country, like, somewhere in Africa, as opposed to how it would be treated in somewhere like the United States? Would it be the same, or is there variance?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah, thank you. I oversimplified. I’m grateful for you pointing that out. So it, first of all, was approved in Australia, and then Canada. Those are our most liberal countries. We didn’t know which way the US conference would go in 2013, and it went for full inclusion. So I think lots of people surprised us. And then the British Isles followed, Europe followed. So French Polynesia has just, last year, I think, approved. So it’s area by area, or sometimes nation by nation, decides it.

Casey Griffiths: And there are areas that haven’t approved it yet. Is that correct?

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. So in Africa it would be more controversial.

Casey Griffiths: Okay. That’s a good clarification. Thank you.

Andrew Bolton: Yeah. Dialogue’s important, eh?

Scott Woodward: Absolutely. Yeah, this has been so good. I have been learning things and having my understanding nuanced of things I thought I knew, which apparently needed some updating, and this has been so wonderful.

Casey Griffiths: Andrew, one last question, and some variation of this question we ask all of our guests, but how does your church help you stay centered on Jesus Christ?

Andrew Bolton: So it’s a brilliant question, really important, so I’m happy to have a go. So our simple, short name, Community of Christ, has really helped. Our scriptures help us stay centered on Jesus Christ, especially the Gospels, the whole of the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible, First Testament, the Old Testament, speaks of the Messiah. The Book of Mormon is another witness of Jesus Christ. I love that. I love the New Testament, as I’ve already said, of the Book of Mormon. And the Doctrine and Covenants has the Spirit of Jesus speaking to us at its best. The First Vision reminds us that Jesus is the Living Christ, calling us to discipleship. Apostles, Seventies, Evangelists are special witnesses of Jesus Christ, according to the Doctrine and Covenants. And we have apostles, so the whole church becomes apostolic, special witnesses also. We have priesthood that help us be centered. In conflict, the church is promised in Matthew 18 and the end of section 42, that where two or three are reconciling, Jesus is with the group, present, helping make us make peace. The Lord’s Supper, communion, sacrament, centers us on Jesus Christ wonderfully. I love the shared communion prayers, sacrament prayers. Their radical discipleship, to take upon us the name of the Son, always remember him, keep his commandments, prayer of the bread, with the promise that we’ll always have his Spirit to be with them, is wonderful. So there’s lots of things that we share that call us, time and time again, in our life as disciples together, to remember Jesus.

Casey Griffiths: Thank you for that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, thank you.

Casey Griffiths: Thank you for that, and thank you for all your willingness. We know that actually, it’s afternoon where we’re at, but it’s late where you’re at, so you’re probably going to go straight to bed after this conversation, and we appreciate you being willing to accommodate our schedules, Andrew. It’s just always a joy to talk with you.

Andrew Bolton: Thank you, Casey. Wonderful to meet you, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Yes, likewise. Thank you, Andrew. Really, really appreciate your time. Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters, and another big thank you to Andrew Bolton for being on our show today. In our next episode, Casey and I sit down with Dr. Brian Hales, an expert researcher on the Mormon Fundamentalist movement. The fundamentalists broke off from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints beginning in the early 1900s over the issue of the cessation of the practice of plural marriage in the LDS church. We have not yet spoken of the Fundamentalist movement in this series, but thought some of you would find it valuable to learn from an expert how the FLDS church came to be. If you’re enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it, or by taking 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, 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. 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.