Okay, so I've been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since just before Christmas 2004. I was 36 years old at the time I joined, twice divorced, with two kids (aged 7 and 5). I ran a modest home-based business and got along pretty amicably with my ex-wife. My first ex-wife and I married when we were 19 and never had kids but remained friendly and even close from afar. My second ex-wife was a less-active Jewish woman who nonetheless felt a very strong connection to her cultural and religious heritage.

The only time I'd belonjged to a Church previously was when I got married the first time. The 12-Step "recovery" lifestyle had become an important part of my identity. I attended church once or twice a month with my father and step-mother and really liked it. At the time, I was pretty young (18) and didn't realize or appreciate that the 12-Step movement decended from Judeo-Christianity. So I was always really impressed when the pastor of this mainstream protestant church would talk about topics that reminded me of the 12 Steps -- not knowing that was akin to hearing a lecture about psychology and realizing there were manhy similarities between that discipline and, say, philosophy.

Anyway, when I got engaged my fiance was also a 12-Stepper and was not religious so we decided to get married at my father's church. To do that we had to become members. I had no problem with this...I felt a connection with Christ and really loved our pastor and the church community. Once we got married, however, and moved off to college, my attention and involvement was much more focused on the 12-Step community than the church community.

A few years later I had completed my bachelor's degree in philosophy and had become deeply interested in how people think about right and wrong, good and bad and the ways that humanity has developed and incorporated religion into culture as a way of addressing the mysteries of life and the challenges of living together in inter-connected communities. I had become particularly interested in the Second Great Awakening, a period of American history that saw the birth of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Shakers, the Campbellites, the Seventh-Day Adventists and other "primitivist" or "restorationist" religious movements -- including the rise to prominence of Joseph Smith Jr..

After taking a few relevant classes and writing a few papers on these topics I just sort of "remembered" that my own family had played a part in and been influenced by this milleau. My thoughts weren't personally religious, yet. At the time, being then about 23 years old, my personal belief lie somewhere between agnosticism and Universalism, with a particular fondness for the specific teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. I wasn't living an especially honorable or dishonorable life. I worked in the field of public policy and was generally pretty young and stupid. But my combined interest in the Second Great Awakening, ethics and my own family history kept my personal interest and inner inquiry focussed on lerarning more...

I've heard that is is normal for young people in their early 20s who have never been raised or indoctrinated into any particular faith to start to wonder and yearn. I was at this time, being 24 or 25 years old, doing both. My marriage had recently ended amicably; I wanted to live in Washington, D.C. where I saw my career evolviong and she wanted to move home to Michigan. I was still committed to a 12-step lifestyle and she was less so. I had lust in my heart. I was adrift, co-habitating with a young lady who had been raised nominally neo-Theosophically with the teachings of Krishnamurti. This ethicist and philosopher was attractive to my existentialist leanings, but was altogether too vague (in contrast to simple Christianity) to really take hold. I began to consider Christianity more specifically. 

I recalled that both my mother and father had grown up in "Restorationist" families. Strict Mormons would call these movements apostasies. This is where a brief history rant seems relavant and appropriate, I think...

Central to the general inspiration of the Second Great Awakening was a thirst for "primitive Christianity," or faith communities and structures that resembled and reflected that which was taught by Jesus in the Gospels. No Popes. No Holy Wars. No arcane and arbitrary and robotic ritualism. You can read here to learn more about where Joseph Smith, founding prophet of Mormonism fits into this. 

In 1820 a young Joseph Smith Jr., then 14 years old, was being raised in a frontier town in Western New York. The Second Great Awakening was burning all around him. His parents were open-minded Christians, they encouraged him to read the scriptures and pray and to follow his heart. Local pastors vied for his allegiance in a way that may have implied all beliefs different from their own were wrong enough to get one sent to Hell if one chose incorrectly. This didn't make sense to Smith who, having recently read in the King James Bible the Epistle of James, recalled Chapter 1 Verse 5: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering."

Young Smith took this to the Lord in personal prayer. The result was what is known as The First Vision. Over the next 7 years of his life Joseph continued to be visited by this Angel, named Moroni, and in 1828 he was entrusted with possession of a set of Gold Plates containing inscriptions. Smith shared these developments with his family, who encouraged him to be true and faithful to his experiences. Between then and 1830, Smith working with two different scribes, translated the writing on these plates from what he called "reformed Egyptian" into English and was able to get them published, producing the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ.

Shortly thereafter the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was formally organized, with 6 founding members, accordiong to the laws of the State of New York. Over the course of the next year, armed with the Book of Mormon and a small band of followers who sincerely believed in Smith's prophethood and leadership, the church grew to include perhaps a hundred members spread over the Finger Lakes region of Western New York. In 1831 Smith called on members of the Church to up and leave, to migrate to two new centers of activity: Kirtland, Ohio and Jackson County, Missouri -- as acts of faith and necessity that would enable Smith the Prophet to build up the "reformed" or "true" church of Jesus Christ.

For the next several years the Church grew rapidly, absorbing an entire branch of Campellites in Ohio and proselytizing to the Native Americans and frontiers-people along the way. Slavery was a simmering issue at this time, so land acquisition and electoral demographics held a deeper importance than perhaps is appreciated today. Violently driven from their homes in Ohio and Missouri, the "Saints" as they called themselves, finally settled on the banks of the Mississippi in what was then the failed speculative development of Commerce, Illinois. In the year leading up to this mass migration, Smith had sent some of his ablest and most trusted men on a mission to England, which resulted in thousands of new members, many craftspeople, emigrating to America to join the community in what was now called Nauvoo, Illinois. One of these missionaries to England was a man who had joined the Church in Ohio, a New Yorker named Brigham Young.

Nauvoo hustled and bustled and became larger than Chicago. Some of the Saints began to practice Polygamy, the exact details of who and when and why are still debated today. Smith was Prophet to a city of 10,000, Major General of its militia, Mayor of its citizens -- in a state home to Lincoln and Douglas that would be pivital to deciding the slavery issue for a nation headed toward Civil War. A group of angry ex-members of the church, perhaps who had lost possessions in all the migration, cerainly who had lost faith in Smith, along with some violent anti-Mormons aligned with groups who saw their political interests diamtrically opposed to the success of the Mormons, started a newspaper to print anti-Smith and anti-Mormon articles. Smith, as Mayor, had that group's printing press declared illegal and destroyed as a threat to public order. Anti-Mormons flew to the cuase. A mob was formed, and Smith was killed. And this is about where my family comes into the story...

When Joseph Smith was killed, Mormonism and the Church were growing at a fantastic rate. People were streaming in from England and even Iceland by the thousands, families were gowing exponentially, and missionaries throughout the United States were having great success. The Church had been organized according to Smith's revelations akin to how how he understood these revaleations pertained to restoring the "primitive church" of Christ. There was a prophet, 12 apostles, seventies, a pristehood (which every man in good standing held and wielded). Before he died, he handed the "keys" of this restored kingdom to the 12 Apostles, which was lead by Brigham Young. 

After Smith's death, the body of the church was left to choose what it meant and who would lead them. Young stated that as presiding authority and holder of the "keys" it was his charge and duty. Various other then-present or recently-former leaders of the church laid claim, some stating they had received personal revelation or Angelic visitations or suspicious-looking letters "from" Smith declaring them the new prophet. 

When it all washed out, probably about half of the body of the church followed Brigham Young, who saw to it that the Temple of Nauvoo was completed, the Temple being the embodiment of Smith's more recent revealations and practices (which almost certainly included polygamy). The other half was divided up between those who left the church and restorationism altogether, those who followed one of the few major factionislists (including James Strang, Sidney Rigdon, and Smith's younger brother William) and the largest body of these non-Youngites, who primarily settled in the farmlands outside of Nauvoo and who migrated along the southern tier of neighboring Iowa, waiting for a Prophet to emerge, hopeful that it would be Smith's oldest son, Joseph Smith III. The year was 1846. Young led his followers to Utah, where they resettled outside the territory of the United States and prospered and grew into what is today commonly known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Most Mormons I've talked to think the story ends there. But it doesn't...not for all of us. By 1850 William Smith had proven himself unstable, Sidney Rigdon has established an ailing successor church in Pittsburgh, and James Strang, leader of a firmer band of "Mormons" in northern Michigan and Wisconsin, had suggested before he was himself assassinated in 1849 that Joseph Smith III, who turned 18 the following year, was indeed the legitimate successor. Many asked Smith to assume the leadership but he insisted he would only do so if he felt called by the Lord. Ten years passed and the midwestern community of Saints, mostly those who had never embraced polygamy or or the "temple ordinances" introduced toward the end of Joseph Smith Jr's leadership, had stuck together. On April 6, 1860, 30 years after his father had formed the church, Joseph Smith III was sustained as President of the Church in Amboy, Illinois. At this time, both Young's Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Smith's Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claimed to be the legitimate successor to Joseph Smith's Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Smith III's Church relocated to the twin centers of Lamoni, Iowa and Independence, Missouri (formerly Jackson County) in 1881, where all of the former offices of his father's church were reassembled, inclduing a First Presidency, a Quorum of 12 Apostles, Seventies, and a Presiding Bishopric. While I have no statistics to cite, it is my belief that at this point in time the two churches had similar numbers and had reasonably similar prospects.

However, the Utah church was led by Young, heralded as one of 19th Century America's towering figures and greatest leaders. The Utah was a colony or territory of the United States, under the direction of Governor Brigham Young, and Superintendant of Indian Affairs Brigham Young, charged with commercializing and colonizing a large expanse of land that now includes all of part of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico and Wyoming. 

The Iowa Church, the RLDS, had no such mandate and no such Mission. It was not bound up in commerce, or institution building, or industrialization, or settling. It saw itself as merely a church -- albeit the Reorganized Restored Church of Jesus Christ -- but a church nonetheless. When the Utah Church disclaimed polygamy as doctrine in 1890 and was admitted as a State of the Union in 1896, the country was on the doorstep of the industrial revolution. It was directed by a cadre of leaders who, under the tuteledge of Brigham Young, had been steeled in the furnace of virtual nation-building -- men suited to executive leadership, organization and getting things done. The Utah Church saw itself then as it sees itself today, as the vanguard of preparing the earth and organizing humanity for Christ's return. 

As the Utah Church prospered around the turn of the 20th Century, it was notable for its growth, for its unquestioned role in "civilizing the west" (founding the first colinies that would become Las Vegas, Southern California and virtually every state capitol and major city West of the Great Plains) and even notorious for its "peculiar institutuion" of polygamy, though this had been discarded 20 years earlier. The Iowa Church in many ways defined itself by how it was different from the Utah church, not wanting to be confused with it. The Utah Church defined itself by its Millenialist and missionary zeal and barely recognized the existence of the Iowa Church. 

This decision to define itself in opposition to something rather than in affirmation of something, in my opinion, sealed the character of the RLDS church and was epitomized in the publication in 1950 of a book titled Differences that Persist, by RLDS Presiding Patriarch (and Smith Jr. decendant) Elbert Smith. The book somewhat emotionally and somewhat jealously goes through point-by-point of doctrine to show how the RLDS is legitimate and how the LDS is not only not legitimate, but actually almost evil. The RLDS had meanwhile codified custom that its President should be a Smith, a descendant of Joseph Smith Jr., and the fact that it never endorsed or practiced polygamy or any of those 'dern fool' temple ordinances ebraced by the Utah kin. 

It seems as if the RLDS spent so much time being what it wasn't that it never figured out what it was...and so it became just another protestant Midwestern church, trying not to be Mormon, but also claiming to be the "one true church" by virtue of it being founded by the founder of Mormonism, and led exclusively by his descendents.

In the 1960s and 1970 the RLDS was swept up in the cultural changes that most of America embraced, in terms of civil rights and equal rights issues, growing ecumenism, "open mindedness" and the like. To the contrary, the Utah Church held fast to what it had always been. Indeed, one of its 12 Articles of Faith proclaims:

"We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory."

The Utah Church would continue to prepare the world for the Second Coming of Christ, who would govern the Earth in the Millenium. The RLDS struggled to maintain relevance and to figure out what it was.

My father's father's family came to the U.S. by way of Canada from Scotland in 1842. They lived in Canada until the late 1880s when they crossed the St. Clair River into the "Thumb" of Michigan to farm and run a hotel. I don't know when they joined joined the "Restoration" or which "branch" of it they joined, but the 1860 Candadian Census lists my great-great-great Grandfather and his brother as "Mormon". Curiously, this is the year that JS III was named President of the RLDS. So, my forebears could have been in the LDS, in the RLDS, unaffiliated former LDS, or with a Strangite or Rigdonite (or other) branch. These were the Muirs.

My father's mother's family came from England (the Greens) and Ireland (the Baileys) sometime in the late 18th or early 17th century. Family lore, told to me directly from my Grandmother, was that her grandfather, J.J. Bailey, was returning (walking) home from the Civil War when he encountered two missionaries from the "Restored" church (she was adamant that they were RLDS). This would have been about 1865 or 1866. He listened to them politley, probably wanting to keep walking and get on home, when one of them promised that if he had an open heart he would be given a sign that what they told him was true. Upon arriving back to his farmstead, he learned that the entire Thumb district, then completely forrested over, had been burned after a drought. He looked in disbelief as he saw the tracks of the fire had swept around his farm and lands and buildings, sparing them all. He took this to be the sign he was promised, and became a leading member of the Michigan RLDS under the Canadian Seventy and prominent missionary John J. Cornish.

Joseph Smith Jr. himself had a connection to Michigan. His mother, Lucy Mack Smith, was sister to Stephen Mack, founder of the cities of Pontiac and Rochester in Oakland County, which then encompassed the present-day Genesee, St. Clair and Lapeer Counties of the farming Muirs, Greens and Baileys. Smith himself made visits to Michigan in October of 1834 (specifically to Pontiac) as well as August 1835 and February of 1837. He had previously gone on a month-long missionary trip to Ontario, Canada from October 5 through November 4 of 1834. This is the period of time during which the Kirtland Temple was built and when critical doctrine was revealed to Smith and published in what became the Doctrine & Covenants, including organizing the First Presidency, the Quorums of the 12 Apostoles and of the Seventy, organizing Zion's Camp and the School,of the Prophets. Certainly at this time Smith was at his Prophetic and magnetic zenith and it is not at all out of the question that some Candaian Muirs or Oakland County Greens or Baileys would have encountered him.

The Muirs, Baileys and Greens all became established farm families and stalwart members of the Michigan Thumb-area RLDS. My great-great grandfather J.J. Bailey was a High Priest (almost the equivalent of a modern-day LDS Seventy). My great-grandfather H.E.C. Muir was an Evangelist (sort of like what an Area Seventy used to be in the LDS). My grandfather Muir was a Branch President and my father followed into his footsteps until he left the Church. In the RLDS not all men were called to the priesthood. At age 14 they were asked if they felt the call, and some of them didn't. If they felt it, they may have been called to the Aaronic Priesthood. From what I am told by my father and Uncles, only those who were "college types" were called to the Melchizedek Priesthood, generally after completing an Associates Degree at Church-owned Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa. My father, coming from a strong Church lineage, having completed both his Associates and the newly-offered Bachelor's degree at Graceland, was called to the Melchizedek Priesthood, and was appointed to a post at the Church publishing arm, Herald House (the Iowa equivalent to Deseret Books).

Both branches of my mother's mother's family emigrated from Germany in the late 1870s, landing at Ellis Island and then making the overalnd trip by wagon to Southern California to take up as ranchers in the Escondido and Orange County areas between San Diego and Los Angeles. Presumably, they recieved the Gospel of the Restoration somewhere in Iowa or Nebraska; my great grandfather Asmus being born along the Platte River in 1881. 

My father left Port Huron, Michigan, after graduating High School in 1958, to attend Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa. My mother, graduating from high school in Escondido, California in 1959, went to Graceland College on an athletic scholarship. They were the first two members of any branch of my family to go to college. They likely would not have gone otherwise (coming from very humble, agricultural cicumstances in rural areas) where it not for their own inate ambition and the affiliation of their families with the RLDS Church. They married in 1962 and I was born in Lamoni in 1968, two years after my older sister.

So my mother and father both grew up in RLDS families of long-standing. Hopefully I have established that growing up in an RLDS family is sort of like and sort of not-like growing up in an LDS family. First, the similarities...In the RLDS church of the 1940s and 1950s, one would have very much been taught that they belonged to the "One True Restored Church of Jesus Christ," that was alone custodian of the keys of the Restoration. One would have been taught that Joseph Smith Jr. was a prophet, that he received the Gold Plates on the Hill Cumorah at the direction of the Angel Moroni, that he translated the Plates with the Urim and Thimmim and by the Power of God. One would have been taught that the translation of this book, the Book of Mormon, was scripture, and that the Doctrine & Covenants (up till the time when Smith was killed) was Scripture and prophesy. One would have been taught that the Priesthood had been restored and that the Gathering Place of the Millenium was Zion in Jackson County, Missouri. One would have been taught to obey the Word of Wisdom, and an observant RLDS member (which my parents' families were) would not have consumed alcohol, tobacco, coffee or tea. 

That's a lot of smiliarities, no? Now, the differences...

A member of the RLDS in the 1940s and 1950s would have been ministered to by a "Church Appointee," who would have been a Melchezedek Priesthood holder on salary, called and sent forth from the Church Headquarters in Independence, Missouri, to preside over a congregation. He would have been called Pastor. The Bishop of each congregation was the equivalent of today's LDS Ward Clerk. The only temple an RLDS member of that era would have been familiar with was the Kirtland Temple -- in which no "apostate" ordinances were ever practiced -- and the one they were all saving money to have built in Independence. There were missionaries, but these went on humanitarian missions to build wells in Africa and similar endeavors. The Pearl of Great Price, including the Books of Moses and Abraham, were not recognized as scripture. Brigham Young was thought of as an arch-hooligan who betrayed Joseph Smith and left his widow and fatherless children destitute, robbing them of their father's property and church and possibly conspiring to assassinate young Joseph Smith III.

As mentioned earlier, unlike the LDS, the RLDS of the 1960s was experiencing a generational clash of sorts, between the old guard and a cadre of young minds calling for honest introspection and debate about church history. These men and women were sincere (most of them, I think) in wanting intellectual (historical) honesty and equality (in terms of gender and race) to be addressed openly in the church. A lynchpin of RLDS doctrine had been absolute insistence that Joseph Smith Jr. had never practiced or advocated polygamy. Two books were published in this era which challenged this dogma.

Fawn McKay Brodie's No Man Knows My History was the first. Brody was a professor of History at UCLA, a legitimate academic, who had been raised LDS in Utah. Her father, Thomas Evans McKay, served as a bishop, was called as president of the Swiss-Austrian mission, and was also an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Her father's brother was David O. McKay, a member of the Quorum and therefore an apostle who later was to serve as the ninth president of the Church. President McKay was a General Authority of the Church for more than 60 years and served as President from 1951 to 1970.

Brodie's book was undoubtedly widely read by the upcoming generation of intellectual RLDS men who were destined to hold the Melchezedek Priesthood and serve as the leadership-in-waiting of the Church. Its scholarship was solid by 1945 standards. On the one hand, the RLDS would have been giddy at an LDS insider publishing unfavorable stories about the Brigham Young-era church. One the other hand, here was irrefutable evidence that Smith and Young were on the same page when it came to revcelations about and practice of polygamy.

The second book which weakened the "testimony" of the rising generation of RLDS leaders was Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi by Robert Flanmders, published in 1965. Also a legitimate scholar Flanders' work was published by the University of Illinois Press and was a tour-de-fource documentation of the inner workings of the City of Nauvoo, a period of LDS history when the temple ordinances were being revealed, polygamy was in full sway, and when Joseph Smith (and Brigham Young) were up to their eye-balls in very secular business and political dealings. It was just too much information for a generation of believers who had been raised on pap and dummied down history and downright propaganda.

I don't have any sense at all how these books impacted the LDS community. But I do know that they represented deep blows to sincere, intelligent coming-of-age Priesthood holders in the RLDS, who began to feel that they could not take the reigns of an institution that was built on self-deception or anything that could not be professionally documented. If Smith was a polygamist, then was he really a Prophet? Did the gold plates exist? Was the Book of Mormon true? Was their church and its leaders legitmate?

The President of the Church at this time (1958-1978) was Joseph Smith III's son W. Wallace Smith. His focus was on missionary work in Third World countries. As the Church's website states as of this writing:

But as the church began to move into these cultures, there were "growing pains." Leadership had to look closely at history and theology, working to determine what beliefs and practices were only culturally based and which were basic foundations. Those were not easy questions to answer. In trying to better understand and state the basic beliefs of the church, W. Wallace appointed a Committee on Basic Beliefs whose task was to develop some useful theological statements on God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the gospel, revelation, the church, scripture, and other topics that they found necessary.

W. Wallace Smith handed this bee's nest to his son, the last descendent of Joseph Smith Jr. to be called as President of the RLDS, in 1978. Wallace B. Smith immediately set a path toward greater ecumenism and further away from the Mormon roots by calling on "the church to a revitalization of its worship experiences" in 1981. In 1984 Wallace B. Smith proclaimed that all offices of priesthood could be held by both men and women.

This was a bombshell and split the church apart. Estimates are that as many as 50 percent of Church members left at this time, some joining the LDS and others forming increasingly disparate splinter groups with various Raisons d'etre such as having to be led by a Smith to not allowing women to hold the Priesthood or needing to be located in Jackson County, Missouri or Kirtland, Ohio. What was left was pretty much a smallish Midwestern Universalist church with an accidental historical tie to Joseph Smith Jr.  Wallace B. Smith slammed the door shut on the past by naming W. Grant McMurry, a coffee-drinking non-Smith with a degree from the Wesleyan Seminary. McMurry presided over the first ordination of a female Apostle and changed the same of the Church to the Community Christ. He then resigned citing "inappropriate choices" of a personal nature, which have never been explained.

The Church now has perhaps 250,000 members. On its website the church has a lengthy section on "Basic Beliefs" which states:

"The Community of Christ uses the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants—not to replace the witness of the Bible or improve on it, but because they confirm its message that Jesus Christ is the Living Word of God. When responsibly interpreted and faithfully applied, scripture provides divine guidance and inspired insight for our discipleship."

This section refers readers via link to specific section on "Scripture in the Community of Christ," which states a Preamble and Nine Affirmations. The Book of Mormon is mentioned only in Affirmation Nine, whcih reads:

With other Christians, we affirm the Bible as the foundational scripture for the church. In addition, the Community of Christ uses the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants as scripture. We do not use these sacred writings to replace the witness of the Bible or improve upon it, but because they confirm its message that Jesus Christ is the Living Word of God (Preface of the Book of Mormon; Doctrine and Covenants 76: 3g). We have heard Christ speak in all three books of scripture, and bear witness that he is “alive forever and ever” (Revelation 1:18). For our time we shall seek to live and interpret the witness of scripture by the Spirit, with the community, for the sake of mission, in the name of the Prince of Peace.

When my parents married in 1962 at the RLDS-owned Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, they were both believing members of the Church. Knowing my mother, she was probably more there as a way to get the heck out of Escondido and find her way in the world. She grew up in a dysfunctional home where her monther and aunts and uncles were devout RLDS, but in a home probabaly very un-church-y. Probably the one positive constant in her life was attending RLDS youth camps with her cousins. She was very bright, very determined, and realized that she could put her athletic talent and brains to work and get a scholarship to Graceland, the only way of which she was aware to get out of Escondido and have a shot at an education.

My father, I suspect, was far more sincere, or direct and in touch with, a relationship with Jesus Christ and a real belief in what he had been taught about the role of the RLDS in Christ's Kingdom, and subsequently, his place in that world. His father and grandfather had been well-known RLDS ministers. Perhaps he was raised with an expectation that he would go to Graceland, because in his world that was the path to the Melchezedek Pristhood and a role as a professional pastor in the church. 

However it happened, my parents questioned the foundations of their faith. I think my mother quickly realized that the Church and Christianity were not important to her sense of being, though she found herself in the most RLDS place one could possibly be in the entire universe at that time. She focussed on being a young mother and completing her bachelor's degree. My father finished his B.A. at Graceland and then from 1963 to 1965 they moved to Boston where he started work on his M.A. at Boston University. He got stuck on his dissertation and they returned to Lamoni and the Graceland community. He was called to the Melchezedek Pristhood and was given a job teaching English at the college and then in Church public relations. He was under the wing of a respected Church Appointee and it seemed pretty sure he would be named one himself soon.

However it came about, he began preaching and writing about the need for women to hold the priesthood and for honest reflection about the facts of Joseph Smith's life -- and what these things meant for the legitimacy of the church. This was 1973 and he was shown the door, asked for the return of his Elder's card. 

So I was about to turn five then and knew noithing of any of this. We moved to St. Louis, where dad got a job as a fund-raiser for Washington University and mom finsihed her BA at Northwest Missouri State. I barely remember St. Louis. A couple of years later dad got a job as a fundraiser at Georgetown University and we moved to the Washington, D.C. area. A couple of years later dad got a job as a fundrasier for the University of Michigan, and we moved there, where dad worked for the next 25 years and where mom earned her Masters Degree. 

During this time my only awareness of the RLDS or Mormonism came through overhearing discussions between by dad and his brothers or old collkege friends or when we would visit my Grandmother on my dad's side back in Port Huron -- she remained a devout RLDS woman who supported the church's move toward opening the priesthood tyo women but who maintained her firm belief in Joseph Smith's prophecy and Brigham Young's skullduggery.

As far as my religioous life, there was none. I recall once or twice being taken to Universalist-type churches for servcies. Grandma's house had a lot of pictures of Jesus and there was always a lot of talk there about "the Church". We usually went to a service with her when we were there. I asked my dad who Jesus was and he told me he was a great teacher like Martin Luther King or Ghandi (as if I knew who they were) but he gave me nothing to go on as far as dogma or scripture.

My parents definiely taught right from wrong and raised us in a very ethical home. They worked hard, didn't drink or smoke or swear, taught us honesty, the golden rule, and the importance of education. But they left religion or lack of it completely up to us. My first real brush with a sincere question about the meaning of life and whether God existed came when as a young delinquent in 1985 I was forced to go to a 12 Step meeting and was confronted with:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Those steps carried me to my agnosticism/universalism, led me to meet my future ex-wife at a 12 Step meeting, which lead us to join a mainline Protestant Church. A few years later my marriage had fallen apart, I was in love and co-habitating with a young woman who professed to be a Theosophist, and I made a call to one of the 800 numberrs on a Mormon public service ad on my local television. A few weeks later two elders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints knocked on my apartment door across the street from the Library of Congress on Washington, D.C. The year was 1994.

My parents had both lef the church, as had theris siblings. My grandmother was the only active RLDS person I knew and she was very devout. In our family being RLDS was sort of like being Scottish...we had never been to Scotland, we didn't speak Scots or eat haggis, but we were Scottish. We were culturally RLDS in a way that is hard to explain. I get the sense it is like being culturally Jewish or Jack Mormon. It's there in the backgound.

My parents were never anti-religious and always encouraged me to find the heartbeat of the universe in my own way. They were both very narure-ey and John Muir was a big influence in my house. I read a lot of John Muir growing up and the sense of connection to God through life and the natuaral world he conveyed was something I definintely felt. My dad's two brothers had both left the Church in a kind of bitter way, feeling perhaps that they had been sold a bill of goods as kids, feeling perhaps that the RLDS community put too many expectations and limitation on them and their intellectual development. A cousin who was my dad's age who I always considered an uncle went on to become a faculty member at Graceland and a leading reformer in terms of the Church's doctrine and historical perception. 

My parents divorced when I was 12 and this was a tough time for me. The divorce was amicable and I remained friendly with both parents, but I coped with the loss through substance abuse and ignoring school. I took on the persona of a neo-hippie, metaphysical transcendeltalist. But I had no spirit in it -- it was all about medicating my fears and anxieties with alcohol and other substances. My father remarried a few years later and joined a protestant church. I think he has always felt a connection with a nameless, beneficient God of the Christian mold but I have never had the imporession that he feels that Jesus is the Messiah or his Savior. My mother has sort of followed the John Muir route of spirituality, a sort of agnosticism.

In coming to terms with my alcoholism at 17 I embraced the 12 Steps of AA, which caused me to think more specifically about the concept of God and His role in my life. I always, always felt a connection to God, felt His presence in my life as one who watched over me, cared for me and had a plan for me. He was avuncular and distant but I always felt his love and warmth and definitely felt like He wanted me to do good things andf help people and be honest -- and that he could and would at times help out, but mostly I was on my own. 

So for that period between 17 years old and 26 I just stuck with that. I didn't identify with Jesus, I had a lot of negative impressions about organized religion, and I was happy to be in my relationship with the nameless God I knew and try and muck through life as best I could. I studied seriously Buddhism, Theosophism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Animism, New Age stuff, but none of it made a connection with me. It all felt foreign and forced. But I did have this yearning to get it right, as if I knew there was a mkissing piece to the puzzle if I could only figure out what it was...I thought I'd recognize it or feel it if I looked and came across it. The only thing that kept popping upm in my mind was Mormonism.

At this point I didn't understand or appreciate any of the subtleties about the various branches of Restorationism. It was all Mormonism in my mind, and my family had a connection to it and I wanted to know more...I definitely felt drawn to it. I had some casual conversations with my parents and uncles about what made the RLDS distinct and their expereiences with it. Next was to learn more about the LDS. I had always noticed and kind of appreciated the public service announcements that the church ran on television and radio, so one daqy I called the number to request my free copy of the Book of Mormon. A few weeks later two young elders knocked on more door near the capital building in Washington, D.C.

I was definiely in seeking mode. I was tired of my job in the city. My relationship with the theosophist was dying a slow death. I had a sister who'd moved to Oregon and I liked the idea of moving there and starting over. I don't remember much about the missionaries' visit, but I think I talked a lot about my faily's connection to the RLDS. Looking back, I was way to intellectually pretentious and emotionally immature to have taken their convesation and questions seriously. It was more like I was interviuewing them. I think they were way too specific about Jesus for me, Him being the Messiah, and the specific plans and rules and machinery and purpose of religion as they saw it. I came away with a favorable impression of them, but just couldn't imagine devoting as much time and energy to an enterprise like that as it sounded.

I wanted a sort of answer, an enlightenment that would awake in me some untapped resivoir of knowledge and being. This Mormonism thing sounded like another job. So I let it pass.

I did end up moving to Oregon and a couple of more relationships fell apart. I fell away from my sobriety but in the process of earning it back I landed in a fantastic group of smart young people, all my age, all recently out of college like me, all from the midwest or northeast...and all in AA. This was a really vibrant group of people in roughly the same place as me in life -- we'd all tried it our way for years and generally made our lives worse, not better. We'd all ended up in Oregon to pick up the pices and see what else was out there -- maybe grad school or a new career or a closer relationship with and access to nature. We all explored together. 

One of these people was a devout unabashed Catholic. Another was a former Catholic who had been born again into an evangelical church led by a pastor who rode a motorcycle. A couple were new-agey, a couple agnostic. The most important of this group was a neo-hippie cultural Jew who was to become my wife and mother of my kids. When we took up together we held hands and prayed together each night; going to AA for us in our tight nit group was not much different than going to some sort of universalist church. She would often tell me that she never really understood the whole "son of God" thing" -- I would try and explain it to her but since I didn't really understand it myself I wasn't much help.

When we got married, we had a non-demoniational service. My father, her mother and sisters, and a few of our closest friends stood in a circle in our backyard while three other friends played fiddle and guitar versions of Amazing Grace and It's a Wonderful World. That morning I had typed onto sheets of paper quotes from John Muir, Shakespeare, Kahil Gibran, Tom Robbins and others. We folded these up, placed them into a brass bowl, and when the first song ended, passed the bowl around. Each person in the circle picked and read a quote, then passed the bowl on. When only she and I were left, we read our own vows to one another. It was a beautiful service.

When our son was gestating we discussed names...we both liked Hebrew names, and picked one. She wanted a Hebrew naming ceremony and a bris, which I was fine with. We met a Rabbi at a congregation called Geshar, which means "bridge" in Hebrew. I was moved by the bris and my encounters with Judaism. We enrolled our son into a Hebrew pre-school. We went to Passover dinners and celebrated Hannukah. I felt the Hebrew YHWH calling to me and the scent and feel of the wind that He blew over me felt very familair. Then our daughter was born, followed shortly by marital difficulties, an early mid-life crisis, a separation, a reconcilliation and a relocation from Portland to Buffalo, her hometown.

The last two years of our marriage were strained. We didn't pray together anymore. I had drifted from AA and she had drawn closer to it. I was working from home. One of my projects was managing and editing an online blog that hosted 6 main writers, myself included, who went back and forth on topics of the day from exaggerated, stereotyped, half-tongue in cheek cultural viewpoints. I was the agnostic/hedonist. We also had a libertarian, a Catholic, a scientist and a protestant.For two years I spent several hours a day researching various topics and then editing together articles presenting polemic viewspoints from these positions on so many issues. I think I literally went half crazy doing it, and when my marriage finally, finally ended I was spent in every way imaginable. I was exhausted, empty. It felt as if everything I had built myself up to be, everything I had filled my own vessel with, had been scraped out from the inside with a steak knife. 

I was heartbroken that my marriage had ended; I thought highly of my wife but we drove each other crazy. I was disgusted with myself that my own immaturity and selfishness and short-sightedness had contributed more than my share of the asphyxiation of our love and admiration and affection for one another. I knew I had to grow up, make some changes, stop doing some things, and start doing some other things. The things I needed to stop, I knew. But I didn't know what I needed to add to my life...however I knew I was empty and had to be replenished, re-occupied by something more than just me. 

I earnestly prayed for an open mind and to be shown the way. My Catholic friend and my Born Again friend had both been on me for years to accept Christ. One evening when I literally couldn't imagine going on, when I felt like a total failure and waste of space, I prayed. I told God that if Christ was his Son, my Redeemer, the Messiah, that my heart was open to Him. And immediately Jesus came infused me like the scent of a most beautiful flower, rested in me, and has been my compasnion ever since. That same day, my ex-wife, the non-practicing Jew, who happened to be a librarian, picked the kids up from my house and handed me a book.

"I know your family was Mormon and you were always interested in it," she said. "Here's a book we had in the throw-away barrell I thought you might like." 

It was a middle school book called "The Mormons." Written for eighth graders by a non-Mormon, it told an Americana, how-how-the-West-was-won, Social Studies version of the founding of the Church, the Fall of Nauvoo, and the Trek to Utah. As I was reading the book the words were whispered into my mind and heart:

"This is true."

I got on the internet and went to the church website. I requested a Book of Mormon and a visit from the Missionaries. Every day I waited for them to come, but my doorbell never rang. Every day I would read more of their website just to see if I could find something I could definitely disagree with. But I couldn't. I called the 800 number again and asked why my missionaries never came, as if I had ordfered a pizza. They said that I was on the list. This was a Wednesday. I looked online for the address of the closest LDS church and called to find out what time servcies were. That Sunday I walked through the doors.

"Where do I sign up?' I asked the first person to approach me.

So I found out that one didn't just walk into an LDS meeting house and sign up. People were thrilled to see me, however. Somebody signaled to the missionaries at the back of the room, and they made their way over to me pretty quickly. I say next to Brother Norbert, who said "Welcome to the Kingdom." He still sits in the same spot and is one of my favorite people at Church. A while later he helped me to prepare to visit the Temple for the first time.

There were several things I liked about the service:

1. First, everybody looked happy. Nobody looked grumpy or stressed out. 
2. Second, there were lots of little kids there and nobody was scolding or shushing them. 
3. Third, there was lots of reverent and appropriate PDA between husbands and wives in the form of hand-holding and arms-around-shoulders. 
4. Fourth, the sacrament was water, not wine. 
5. Fifth, nobody asked me for money. 
6. Sixth, everybody generally had an easy manner about themselves, and things didn't seem staged. 
7. Seventh, there were no spirit bands or clowns on the riser. 
8. Eighth, the "sermons" were given by people from the congergation, and seemed very sincere and homespun.

After the service several people came up to me to introduce themselves. I was invited to stay for Sunday School, but I declined. The missionaries took my info and promised to visit me that week. Sure enough, they did. I learned that to join the Church I would have to take some lessons and make some commitments and covenants of a serious nature. Over the next few weeks I learned about the Word of Wisdom (no coffee, tea, tobacco or alcohol), the law of Tithing (contributing to the Church), the Law of Chastity, church history, the Restoration, Eternal Marriage, the Plan of Salvation, how the Church is Organized with Jesus at the Head and the role of the Pristhood, and a few other things. Something I liked was that each week the Elders would bring over somebody different from Church to join us for these talks. Each week they made sure I would be at the following Sunday's service, which I really enjoyed and always attended. 

After a few weeks the Bishop (volunteer pastor) interviewed me. I really liked him right off the bat, and he is still one of my favorite people (he's no longer Bishop). He seemed a little suspicious that I would just walk in and be already to go, but he warmed up to me. He asked me some pointed questions. He asked if I believed in the Book of Mormon. We met a few weeks later and my Baptism was scheduled.

My Baptism and Confirmation were amazing. I surely felt the presence and warmth of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? I felt a presence and comfomt and confirmation in my mind and heart that I was drawing closer to the companionship I had always felt -- but never really known -- as God in my life. This was the same awarness I'd felt as a little kid when alone and scared, but comforted. This was the security I felt when in my mother's lap at home as a youngster, or in my father's arms, or at my grandmother's dinner table -- only amplified, magnified, enunciated.

So what is life like as a convert? Well, there is as much to do at church as one has time to do it. There is a basic code of living which I, as a member, agree to strive toward and live. Informally and in no order, this includes dressing modestly, Proclaiming Christ as my Savior, living clean, not swearing, being honorable with respect to my wife and marriage, no porn or strip clubs or gambling, giving of my time and resources to the less fortunate, helping out at church (cleaning, teaching, volunteering, etc), going to Sunday School, being an active part of the men's quorum (Priesthood), helping members out when they need a hand, being part of a community that cares for and prays for and supports one another. 

There have been periods of time when I have felt overwhelmed with too many commitments at church. But I have never been given a hard time about needing to pull back. There have been times when I have felt I deserved more blessings and fewer trials because of my faithfulness and obedience. But then I remember that the Atonement and the companionship of the Holy Ghost and the privilege of being part of this community are blessings far beyond what I can actually fully comprehend. There have been times when I have tried to grapple with the Adversary without calling on God to help me -- and have lost.

But there have always been kindly reminders from Church leaders to repent and be humble and ask for forgiveness. There have also been times when an individual affiliated with the church has annoyed me or said something I disagreed with. But then I think of how patient the Lord has been with me and if there's one thing I've learned through the Restored Gospel it is that there is a lot I don't know and a lot more to be revealed.

Basically, I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have been blessed with membership in the Lord's Church. There are things I am not sure of. And as a convert I am still a little uncomfortable with the whole "this is the one and only true church" thing -- because I feel that God speaks to his people in many different languages and in many different ways and that this whole world is His.

But I am so grateful to be a member of my ward, my congregation, my stake, His Kingdom, with the responsibilities and Covenants I've taken on and all of these smiling faces, strong backs, forgiving hearts, amazing examples, and brave humans I can call my brothers and sisters.