I realize that not is written about the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ, especially in its latter years. I have been trying to preserve its history, but a fair amount of what I have learned has also been an oral history. Realizing that its important to preserve oral histories, I have decided to write down this brief history as to why RCJC collapsed.
In April 1830, just days after Mormonism was formally organized, one of the most pressing questions that was asked was whether people had to be rebaptized. Doctrine and Covenants RLDS 20 / LDS 22 was the answer to this question, and we were told that people DID have to be rebaptized.
Many Mormon churches have continued to require rebaptism to join their church. However, the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ, “The Gay Mormon Church”, had a unique implementation of this: anyone who had previously been baptized into a Mormon church didn’t NEED to be rebaptized and only needed to be confirmed a member. However, those who were baptized in a non-Mormon church or were never baptized needed to be baptized and confirmed to become a member in RCJC.
Community of Christ had wrestled with rebaptism since the 1960s. They finally received continuing revelation on this topic in 2010, and they canonized this revelation as Doctrine and Covenants 164. The 2nd verse specifies that rebaptism was only necessary when we were a very young church and were still forming our own distinct identity. Since Community of Christ is now an international church with its own history and identity, previous revelation was no longer pertinent. The new policy became that rebaptism wasn’t required anymore regardless of denomination, and it even clarified that we would accept non-immersion baptisms, but you had to have been baptized after the age of 8.
Now, this left RCJC in an interesting position, because they accepted cannons from both the LDS and CoC churches. Some members of RCJC felt it was time to re-examine their own church’s policy surrounding rebaptism. The epicenter for this push was the Salt Lake City congregation, which had a powerful spiritual experience that this needed to happen. They communicated this to their prophet-president, Robert M. McIntier, who was not receptive. Because the congregation had such a powerful experience, he was pushed to reconsider.
Not long after this, McIntier approached the Bishop of the SLC congregation, Mark Dexheimer, and said they the First Presidency had discussed the rebaptism topic and they decided together that this section of the CoC D&C was NOT authoritative and binding upon RCJC. Dexheimer was disappointed, and began preparing to deliver the news to his congregation. However, Sebastián Fabio Cruz, who was a counselor in the First Presidency, called Dexheimer to tell him that he thought that the policy should be updated to be in line with CoC’s. This confused Dexheimer, because McIntier told him that the First Presidency agreed unanimously. Cruz and Dexheimer came to realize that McIntier likely lied to the Bishop to end discussion on this topic and not have the church as a whole undergo a discernment process.
This disturbed Cruz, who decided to resign as a member of McIntier’s First Presidency. That same week McIntier decided to resign as the prophet-president.
After this, RCJC quickly fell into disorganization. The different congregations, including Salt Lake City’s, largely became independent churches, but they all fizzled out within a couple years.