Latter-day Satyagraha

by Dr. Donald E. Pitzer, 2008 Peace Colloquy Address, Community of Christ

The Saints’ communities are part of a social phenomenon with both ancient and modern expressions. Historically, communal societies were organized as communes with common property. We easily recognize many of these: the first-century Christians in Jerusalem; monastic orders; Protestant sects such as Moravians, Mennonites, Shakers, Harmonists, Oneidans, Hutterites, and Bruderhof; and Jews still living in kibbutzim in Israel. During the last century, communal groups increasingly organized with less economic sharing as cooperatives, collectives, joint-stock companies, land trusts, and not-for-profit corporations. Members enjoyed more individual freedom and became more engaged in governance. Groups have preferred being called “intentional communities” or “planned communities” instead of “communes” or “communal societies.” We recognize these today as ecovillages, retirement centers, and cohousing projects, including Harvest Hills as a signal community of the Community of Christ right here in Independence since 1970. Variety, nonviolence, and humanitarian witness mark thousands of contemporary communities.

The Restoration Movement began in 1830 at a time of communitarian idealism in the United States, a nation inspired by John Winthrop’s vision in 1630. Winthrop believed the early English colonies were to be the New Jerusalem, a City on a Hill. Sidney Rigdon, Joseph Smith’s close associate, formerly established a community dedicated to living with all things in common. The early Restoration tried living communally with consecration of economic surplus in Kirtland, Ohio, and Independence and Far West, Missouri. In Nauvoo, Illinois, the Saints gathered to live together and to build a city. The Community of Christ (Reorganization) was cautious about gathering. In 1870 the Order of Enoch helped create Lamoni, Iowa, as such an expression of economic idealism. The dream of community was reborn there in 1910 and in 1920 at Independence. Social and economic experiments continued in the 20th century, keeping the dream of the idea of Zion alive in our time. From this tradition, Harvest Hills was established in 1970, as an intentional Christian community in the Zionic tradition.

Developmental communalism is a theory that sees each movement that adopts any form of communal living as passing through a developmental process—before, during, and often after its communal stage. This approach views communal living as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Developmental communalism also frees us from judging the success of communal groups by the length of time they remain communal. Rather, it focuses on the movements that establish communal sanctuaries during an early stage—often for security, solidarity, and survival—and then show their vitality by developing into new organizational forms and employing new methods. The communal method necessitates creating and managing a whole social structure on a small scale. This alone can pose an unbearable burden to founding movements.

First century Christians in Jerusalem chose the communal developmental process. According to Acts 2:44, 45, “all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” Some time after Ananias and Sapphira were stricken dead because they lied about sharing all the sale of their land (Acts 5:1–10), the church relaxed the communal requirement to permit believers to live anywhere and to own private property. This developmental move, combined with forsaking the Hebrew customs of animal blood sacrifice and circumcision, liberated the faith to grow into the Greek and Roman worlds. Early Christianity’s adaptability proved essential to its expansion but raises the specter of what is called a communal double jeopardy threat. Movements lively enough to develop into new organizational structures, ideas, and methods tend to save their movements but lose communal living. Witness the Moravians, Owenites, Inspirationists of Amana, Iowa, and even the Latter Day Saints. On its other side, the double jeopardy threat dictates that movements that make communal living a required commitment or tenet of faith usually discover they have injured or eventually killed their movement as with the Shakers and Harmonists. Demise is certain for groups like these and for monastic orders that demand celibacy unless they gain new members from the outside.

The Latter Day Saints’ movement provides a unique example of developmental communalism.Prophet Joseph Smith Jr. and others knew the communal example of the first Christians and likely the economic success of the Shakers and Harmonists. Early leader Sidney Rigdon had even heard Robert Owen speak about his New Moral World utopia and socialistic model at New Harmony, Indiana. But the plan revealed to Smith in 1830 and 1831 contained novel elements and justifications. It not only brought justice to the poor, it ingeniously combined private enterprise with community of goods. As practiced at Kirtland, Ohio, and Independence, Missouri, in the 1830s, the system of consecration and stewardship provided that members consecrate all their possessions and annually all their surplus earnings to the bishop. In return they received a stewardship in property and funds to use as they chose.

This arrangement was to restore the perfect social order of peace, justice, and equality that existed for God’s people of Zion in the ancient United Order of Enoch. As stated in the Doctrine and Covenants “And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them; . . .” (D&C 36:2h, i). Reviving the United Order also tied the zionic Saints to the millennial purpose of the holy city of Zion—a city built by Enoch and taken up into heaven to become the center of God’s kingdom in Jackson County, Missouri, after Christ’s return (D&C 36:3a–d). Restoring the United Order also placed the Saints of the 1830s in the tradition of the Nephites who, according to the Book of Mormon, enjoyed the blessings of the United Order when they practiced it in America in the first two centuries of the Christian era (IV Nephi 1). The United Order gave the early Mormon adoption of communal living a divine sanction and infused it with a zeal for the millennial cause of Zion. But it did not prevent the public hostility and perpetual migrations that upset the stability of the church’s financial base. These realities induced the Saints to suspend their United Order communalism. In its place at Nauvoo, Illinois, tithing became the movement’s developmental change that proved to be financially sufficient, less difficult to administrate, and more conducive to nationwide and worldwide expansion.

In its post-communal phase, the Latter Day Saints can be compared to the Amish who for 300 years have lived in tight-knit communities but without demanding community of goods. They and the Latter Day Saints both have practiced the communal ideal of close association, fellowship, and assistance without losing their movement to the communal double jeopardy threat. Regrettably, however, unlike the Amish and Mennonites, the Latter Day Saints lost their peace witness. When the Saints’ movement began, the young Smith advocated the nonviolent stand of Jesus and the primitive Christians, and Sidney Rigdon held to his previous Campbellite pacifism. But mob persecution and militia murders in the 1830s severed this peace commitment and both men ever after justified the Saints responding with “redemptive violence.”

This makes all the more remarkable the developmental process through which the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has come in the last several decades. The very change of the name to Community of Christ in 2001 announced the renewed emphasis on the zionic mission as a witness for peace and justice in community and reflects the early nonmilitant leadership of Joseph Smith III. In March 2007, guidance of President Stephen M. Veazey confirmed the priority of establishing signal communities (D&C 163:2b; 3a, b; 5a). The Council of Twelve was admonished to “lead the church’s mission of restoration through . . . the establishment of signal communities of justice and peace that reflect the vision of Christ” (D&C 163:5a). In one of the most dynamic paradigm shifts and revivals of communal usage within a movement in communal history this guidance further asserts that: “The hope of Zion is realized when the vision of Christ is embodied in communities of generosity, justice, and peacefulness” (D&C 163:3a; see also 2b and 3b, c). Thus zionic signal communities are being created anywhere, everywhere, and including anybody while not negating the prophesied single community of Zion as the future center of the millennial kingdom. According to the Community of Christ statement of faith and beliefs, signal communities are, in fact, using communalism for a new mission—to infuse the realities of God’s kingdom into every human dimension—“families, congregations, neighborhoods, cities, and throughout the world.” Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned the world becoming what he called the “Beloved Community”—“a community of love and justice” where “brotherhood is a reality.” Signal communities can move us in this direction.