526: John Hamer on Community of Christ as a Church Home for Transitioning Mormons Pt. 1

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2015

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mormon Stories alumnus John Hamer returns to talk about Community of Christ as a viable spiritual home for transitioning Mormons in this two-part video series. John Hamer was raised LDS, but became a doubting teenager and left organized religion altogether as an adult. In 2010, he joined Community of Christ and currently serves as pastor of its congregation in downtown Toronto, Canada.

In part 1, John Hamer sits down with John Dehlin and makes the case for "non-literalistic" religion. (The presentation is illustrated with John Hamer's amazing diagrams, so the podcast audience is advised to watch the YouTube version.) John Hamer describes how a church with Restoration roots has evolved beyond doctrine and dogma to become inclusive of the LGBT community and a wide diversity of individual beliefs.

In part 2, John Dehlin challenges John Hamer with tough questions, including whether it is possible for some transitioning Mormons who feel real betrayal to join a church that traces its origin to Joseph Smith, or, indeed, any organized religion. The resulting dialogue was wide-ranging and intensely fascinating. Regardless of where you are in your own Mormon journey, you'll surely find John Hamer's case for Community of Christ thought-provoking.

In the course of their discussions, John Hamer referenced the "Latter-day Seekers" facebook group and the website Latter-daySeekers.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:01.0	Warmest Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation.
0:10.0	All donations to Warmest Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping
0:14.3	the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you.
0:19.0	This podcast is also available in high definition video at youtube.com slash warmestories.
0:24.8	Come, come, you say no toil nor labor fear but with joy when you're way.
0:40.8	Hello and welcome to another edition of Warmest Stories Podcast.
0:44.8	I'm your host John DeLin.
0:46.8	We're coming to you live in a sense from the community of Christ building in Salt Lake City
0:55.8	in Mill Creek.
0:56.8	I'm told what's it a today?
0:58.8	It's February what?
1:02.8	24th at 7pm and I'm delighted to be here in front of a live studio audience and to be here with
1:11.8	John Hamer.
1:12.8	To give a little background on why we're doing this presentation.
1:18.8	I've been working with an advisory board of the Open Stories Foundation to try and figure
1:24.4	out what our new direction is going to be for 2015 and going forward.
1:30.1	And the way we've kind of started to parse things out is in the following way.
1:36.9	You know there's probably 5 million active LDS church members across the world and then
1:42.9	there's probably another 10 million or so that are either inactive or have left the church.
1:47.9	And since the LDS church does a really good job of taking care of many of those who attend.
1:54.4	We think that's great but we see sort of a very large audience of people who are trying
	...

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