Books

“Maxims of the Mother” is a groundbreaking book that explores the intersections of spirituality, identity, and social justice within the Restoration movement.

The author, Evan, is a bisexual, transgender, and polyamorous woman who presents a vision of the Divine that embraces diversity, inclusivity, unconditional love, and the amplification of historically silenced voices in a way that both challenges and builds upon traditional Restoration thought and theology.

The book encompasses a wide range of topics including the nature of the Divine, the afterlife, priesthood, blessings, sacred spaces, human diversity, relationships and sexuality, pacifism, decision-making processes, and dissent.

“Maxims of the Mother” serves as a powerful testament to the unconditional love of the Divine and an impassioned call for the restoration of marginalized voices within the Restoration movement.

As members of Community of Christ, we strive to embody the Enduring Principles of our faith, including the belief in the worth of all persons, the value of unity in diversity, and the recognition that we have the ability to make our own responsible choices. These Enduring Principles are intended to go beyond mere tolerance and toward genuine affirmation.

In recent years, polyamory has become more visible within Community of Christ, as polyamorous families are present in our pews and even serve in priesthood roles. To actualize what we hold to be our Enduring Principles, we must also actively welcome, nurture, and support polyamorous individuals and their families as integral parts of our spiritual communities. However, polyamory largely remains a mystery to the leaders of our church, and they seem unsure how to proceed.

To address this need, we, polyamorous members and friends of Community of Christ, present this primer which:

1. Provides a basic and non-comprehensive introduction to polyamory
2. Situates polyamory within the context of Community of Christ theology
3. Informs about laws that affect polyamorous individuals and their families
4. Presents recommendations to World Church on how to proceed with polyamory in Community of Christ.

Faithful Disagreement: Polyamory in Community of Christ

An analysis of Community of Christ’s movement to decentralize, including previous trends and future predictions

An entheogenic ritual firmly rooted in the Restoration

In the Salt Lake City congregation of Community of Christ there was a newly-widowed polyamorous woman. Instead of providing solace and pastoral care as her and her family were grieving, Community of Christ’s leadership chose to take action to attempt to remove her from priesthood due to her being polyamorous.

The Salt Lake City congregation found this abhorrent and demanded that their apostle, Robin Linkhart, come down and speak with them. Robin spoke with the congregation on October 22nd, 2022 at 2PM Mountain Time. 

Many started seeing similarities to the LDS church’s “Rescues”, such as what happened in Sweden and Boise, and so this meeting came to be known as “The Salt Lake Rescue”. Further, like in the LDS church, members of Community of Christ were concerned about keeping the church’s leadership accountable for what was said in regards to that extraordinarily sensitive topic. Since Utah is a one-party consent state, this meeting was legally recorded and is in full compliance with Utah Code 77-23a-4.

The transcriber was given audio recordings of the meeting and went word-by-word through hours of audio to transcribe it.

In the process of transcription, names of those in attendance have been anonymized to “(Attendee)” or “(Moderator)”. This makes it a bit confusing when referencing other people or what was said earlier, but the anonymity of those in the Rescue was more important than the clarity for the reader. The only exception to this is the church’s leaders who are being held accountable and the woman who was disciplined, who upon her request is using the pseudonym “Vanessa”.

A genuine effort has been made to make a transcript of the recording. That said, this was a difficult topic, and many people were fighting back tears as they spoke or otherwise weren’t well heard, which made transcribing rather difficult. When a section of the audio just could not be discerned, the symbol “�” was added to indicate that a transcription was not possible.

The largest collection of non-canonical dreams, visions, prophecies, and revelations in the Reorganization

The Book of Abraham is associated with certain Egyptian characters. This version of the book associates the Egyptian with the English.

The Restoration is a tradition marked by the emergence of new scriptures, often involving miraculous origin stories such as discovered ancient writings. However, I believe that the stories associated with these stories merely serve to bolster their perceived divine origin, and were truly written by their “translator”. This would make many Restoration scriptures pseudepigraphic midrashes, which are literary works which expand upon previously-written scripture and whose claimed author is not the true author.

The Book of the Lavens does not have a miraculous origin story, because it was not developed with one. I considered embellishing how it was developed or outright fabricating a story in order to fit within this Restoration tradition, but ultimately I felt like it would be dishonest of me to do so and would distract from the teachings within. Instead, this scripture is presented upfront as a pseudepigraphic midrash of 3rd and 4th Nephi so we may instead focus on its profound teachings rather than its origins.

Alexander Campbell, a contemporary of Joseph Smith and former spiritual leader of Sidney Rigdon, recognized that the Book of Mormon addressed every major religious issue of the previous decade. In this way, it spoke profoundly to the spiritual needs of the people of the early-to-mid 19th century, and was able to be a unique source of solace and guidance to those who came to hold it as scripture.

Similarly, The Book of the Lavens speaks to concerns of our day, offering insights on topics such as income inequality, entheogenic usage, and the experiences of Queer individuals. In this way, it is able to be a unique source of solace and guidance to those who need it on these topics, and it does so in a way that breathes new life into old theological concepts and folk tales.

Of particular interest to me has been Queer representation. As a bisexual, polyamorous, and transgender woman, I grew up not having Queer representation in scriptural stories. The Book of the Lavens is my attempt to step into the Restoration tradition of scripture making so I may fill this void, offering stories that may enable both this and the next generation to feel seen, valued, and loved by God.

This scripture tells the tales of the Lavens, a group exiled from other Nephite tribes, who form their own tribe after the assassination of the chief judge Lachoneus the Younger. It expounds upon the lives, experiences, and ministries of those Disciples whom Christ had chosen to teach and lead in The Promised Land after He departed. All of these Disciples, in today’s terminology, would be considered Queer.