Community of Christ

Community of Christ is a Mormon-derived church that took shape amid competing claims to succeed Joseph Smith. Formed by prominent dissenters from James Jesse Strang’s following, it became known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and later adopted its present name. The account traces its beginnings to disputes over authority and plural marriage, and identifies it as by far the largest of the Mormon spin-off sects it discusses.

Origins in the succession struggle

After Brigham Young’s ascendancy over Sidney Rigdon, Rigdon and several hundred followers established a church in Pittsburgh, but it soon dwindled. Lyman Wright also broke away with dissatisfied Mormons to form a short-lived church in Texas. James Jesse Strang drew a larger following: seven hundred disenchanted Saints, including Joseph Smith’s mother, surviving brother, two sisters, and Martin Harris, who had mortgaged his farm to help publish The Book of Mormon.

Strang claimed that an angel had visited him at the moment of Joseph Smith’s murder and anointed him as Joseph’s successor. Fifteen months later, he said he had found an ancient religious text, the Book of the Law of the Lord, inscribed on brass folios he called the Plates of Laban. Strang presented the document as having once belonged to the plates Joseph Smith had recovered. This claim helped draw adherents into a new movement organized around Strang’s authority.

Break with Strang’s movement

Strang’s followers established a colony on Beaver Island, where he assumed the title King James I of the Kingdom of God on Earth and ruled with absolute power. He also took plural wives. Even before his death, several prominent Strangites who objected to his polygamous conduct separated from his movement and formed the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Their breakaway arose within a community already divided by rival succession claims, but it marked a distinct institutional departure from Strang’s rule.

Strang was fatally shot in 1856 by a group of disgruntled Beaver Island residents. The Reorganized Church had formed before that killing, rather than as a direct consequence of it; its emergence reflected dissent among members who had already rejected aspects of Strang’s leadership.

Smith family and institutional identity

Joseph Smith’s widow, Emma Smith, joined the Reorganites, and her son Joseph Smith III became the group’s president and prophet. The involvement of Joseph Smith’s immediate family gave the church a succession identity distinct from Brigham Young’s branch and from Strang’s personal claim to leadership. The account does not detail the church’s later doctrines or internal organization, but it presents the Smith family’s place in its leadership as central to its early identity.

Later development and significance

The church is now called Community of Christ and is headquartered in Independence, Missouri, in a temple designed by Gyo Obata and valued in the account at $60 million. With 250,000 members, it is described as by far the largest of the Mormon spin-off sects. Its trajectory—from a breakaway formed by dissenting Strangites to a major denomination bearing a new name—illustrates how disagreements over succession and religious authority produced enduring institutions, not merely temporary rival claims.