No description available.

For tens of thousands of contemporary Latter-day Saint pilgrims, the Kirtland Temple near Cleveland, Ohio, provides an opportunity to visit a place where they believe Jesus appeared and restored long-lost priesthood powers. The Kirtland Temple, however, is not owned by the LDS church. Instead, the shrine is owned by a related denomination that has doctrinally aligned itself with mainline Protestant Christianity--the Community of Christ (formerly known as the RLDS church). Members of both churches include Kirtland on pilgrimage itineraries yet have understood the site's significance in radically different ways between themselves and within their denominations over time. The Kirtland Temple provides an opportune case study for changing contestation and cooperation by multiple groups at an American pilgrimage shrine--a phenomena that I term parallel pilgrimage. Two orienting metaphors help focus my moving picture of parallel pilgrimage: proximity (how the site ”moves“ in relation to changing pilgrimage routes, new shrines, and new interest groups) and performance (plays re-enacting the history of the temple and tour scripts, along with the reception of these performances). My study works out these two themes across the last forty years of change at the Kirtland Temple. Ultimately, I draw three main conclusions in my study. First, parallel pilgrimage at Kirtland Temple reveals sacred places, not simply pilgrimage routes, as itineraries in motion, constantly contested and constantly changing. Second, acts of cooperation and contestation at Kirtland Temple have formed a dialectical relationship that allowed the site to function. Acts of contestation helped the site retain its heightened importance while acts of cooperation allowed members from various denominations to minimize potentially disruptive conflict. Finally, in a wider context, parallel pilgrimage at Kirtland Temple, with its moving alliances and contested narratives, may be seen as suggestive of how many late twentieth-century Christians negotiated a pluralistic and fragmented religious America.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 329-341). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 329-341). Also available on the Internet.

Mormonism is among the most studied religious phenomena of American history. Yet little attention has been devoted to one of its most telling and, at the time, most famous chapters, the “Temple Lot Case” of 1891-1896, a legal battle over sacred space, cultural memory, group identity, and judicial intervention in religion. The suit involved three rival Mormon sects: Granville Hedrick’s Church of Christ, based in Independence, Missouri; Joseph Smith III’s Reorganized Church, based in Lamoni, Iowa; and Brigham Young’s LDS Church, based in Utah. In previous decades, the churches had forged distinct identities from one another, stemming from their divergent interpretations of Mormonism’s founding prophet, Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-1844). The “Hedrickites” lionized the teachings of Smith’s early years, the “Josephites” emphasized the moderate teachings of Smith’s middle years, and the “Brighamites” institutionalized the controversial semi-secret teachings of Smith’s final years. In 1891, the Reorganized Church filed suit in the Eighth Federal Circuit Court for possession of the Temple Lot Smith dedicated at Independence in 1831. The Hedrickites owned it, the Josephites thought they had a better claim to it, and the Brighamites sought to prevent the Josephites from obtaining it. The Reorganized Church presented evidence demonstrating it was the rightful successor of Joseph Smith’s church; the Hedrickites and Brighamites countered with evidence of their own. The case produced an array of notable witnesses, including elites from Mormonism’s founding generation, leaders from its divided second generation, and figures from Missouri’s colorful past. Newspapers from the New York Times to the Anaconda Standard followed the suit closely. The present work is the first book-length study of the Temple Lot Case. It offers one of the most in-depth treatments of a U.S. religious property suit to date. It chronicles the establishment and fragmentation of arguably America’s most successful native-born religion. It examines the contestation of an American sacred space. And it traces the differentiation of collective memory and identity among competing religious siblings. / text