A fun personal anecdote. When I was doing my postdoc at Baylor I was made aware that there was a dataset at the Kirtland Visitor’s Center that had information on early converts that would be useful. After back-and-forthing it with the missionaries there it became clear that it would be much more feasible for me to just go there in person and download the materials myself, so I scraped together some funding and flew out. During my time there I had the opportunity to stay as a guest of Karl Anderson, who is a local Kirtland legend, essentially the Church’s man in Kirtland for decades. He had one of those homes that feels like a temple and makes you want to be a seminary teacher with 20 kids. He graciously drove me around to the different sites, and somehow we started talking about Wallace B. Smith, the last Smith prophet of the Community of Christ who effected its change to a more Mainline Protestant model, and who Brother Anderson personally knew. As a fellow Brighamite, I was expecting at least a nod to the problems and complications that arose from them de-emphasizing the Book of Mormon and other restorationist claims, but I got none of that. Instead, it was clear that his main emotion was love for the man as a friend, and empathy and sadness of him being in a situation that he clearly did not want to be…
