Gospel Tangents Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Inside Cutlerite Church: Where Nauvoo Endowment Survives (John Hamer 3 of 6) Sep 26, 2026

Show notes

What happened to the Nauvoo Endowment after Joseph Smith’s death? What happens to a temple idea when a group won’t follow Brigham Young west? In this third conversation of the series, historian John Hamer and host Rick Bennett follow two small groups that carried the Nauvoo endowment in their own directions: one that kept it alive in a room above a church, and one that took it to Texas.

https://youtu.be/M-I9WmPsu7w

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-hamer/

Gospel Tangents

Cutlerite Version of Nauvoo Endowment

John starts with Alpheus Cutler, one of the chief builders of the Nauvoo Temple and a member of the Council of Fifty. When Brigham Young chose the Salt Lake valley, Cutler felt the Council had given him a special mission to lead the saints to Jackson County instead, and he stayed behind. The break produced the Cutlerites. At first they practiced polygamy like Brigham Young’s followers, but then decided it was a terrible mistake and broke apart the plural families, which John calls amazing and hard to do. Modern Cutlerites, he says, have written that chapter out of their history. What they kept was the Nauvoo endowment.

At their headquarters in Manti, Iowa, the Cutlerites set apart an upper story that John calls an endowment house, modeled on Joseph Smith’s Red Brick Store, where the endowment was first given. When they moved north, they built a two-story building the same way, with a church on the bottom floor and an endowment room above, and they did it again when part of the group regathered in Jackson County. By the time missionaries from the Reorganization arrived, about half of the Cutlerites had joined them, and John notes there are no descendants of Cutler in the Cutlerite church but plenty in Community of Christ. That makes the Cutlerites, he says, the only group outside the Brigham Young-descended churches that still keeps a Nauvoo-era endowment, which is why more people want to study them than there are Cutlerites. Rick, who has interviewed them, says only a handful remain

Nauvoo Endowment in Texas!

Then the conversation turns to Texas. Lyman Wight was an apostle who had led Zion’s Camp and sat on the Council of Fifty, which gave him an ambassadorial role with the Republic of Texas as a possible safe haven for the saints. When Brigham Young went west, Wight decided to finish the Texas plan. John says Brigham Young’s answer was that every king in the Council of Fifty had the right to build his own kingdom, as long as he didn’t take anyone from Nauvoo. Wight gathered people from the pineries of Wisconsin and founded several relatively successful colonies.

Rick notes that the Wightites built the first temple west of the Mississippi, thirty years before St. George. John agrees they called it a temple but thinks of it more as an endowment house, a space in a church building set apart for rituals, and one that predates the others. Rick adds that historian Mel Johnson says it wasn’t closed to outsiders, and John suggests the closed-door tradition grew out of the conflict in Utah, while Texans welcomed the colony. The Wightites faded after Joseph Smith III came forward, and their descendants are now in Community of Christ. John adds that Wight’s journal was held at the Herald’s headquarters until the building burned, and Rick recalls that the RLDS Church suppressed temple records because of polygamy.

Together with parts 1 and 2, these stories show how far the temple idea traveled from Kirtland and Nauvoo, and part 3 shows that a temple can be a room upstairs. Next, in part 4, John turns to James Strang, the Strangites, and their fortress temple plans at Voree. Don’t forget to check out John’s book!

Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-hamer/

Gospel Tangents

Chapters

0:43 Alpheus Cutler: Nauvoo Temple Builder & Council of Fifty
2:39 Cutlerites Drop Polygamy, Keep the Nauvoo Endowment
6:41 Church Below, Endowment Room Above: The Cutlerite Pattern
8:01 Only Cutlerites Kept a Nauvoo-Era Endowment — & Few Are Left
9:21 Lyman Wight: Zion’s Camp Captain & Council of Fifty
11:16 The Republic of Texas & the Council of Fifty’s Plan
13:11 The First Temple West of the Mississippi? Dedicated 1849
14:30 Was the Wightite Temple Open to Outsiders?
17:54 Wightites Rejoin: Suppressed Records & Lyman Wight’s Journal

Fundamentalist Mormon Temples: Amazing Nevada, Missouri & AUB (John Hamer 2 of 6) Sep 23, 2026

Show notes

We’re moving beyond LDS Temples and looking at Fundamentalist Mormon temples. Nauvoo gave Latter-day Saints a temple built around Old Testament ordinances, and then the pioneers left it behind. In this second conversation of the series, historian John Hamer and host Rick Bennett follow that inheritance west to Utah, where an Endowment House filled the gap until a real temple could be finished, and then to the more surprising places it landed: the temples of Mormon fundamentalist groups, including a pyramid in the Utah desert.

https://youtu.be/BGKMtxTGSQQ

John explains that the Endowment House, built on Temple Square, was a temporary but sacred place where the ordinances could be performed while the Salt Lake Temple took decades to complete. He suggests the wait was partly because the builders were aiming at something extraordinary for pioneers. We pause over a small mystery, whether the Endowment House had a baptismal font, before turning to the fundamentalist groups, who have built temples all over the place. John understands that the Apostolic United Brethren have an Endowment House in Draper and a temple in Mexico. The FLDS built a temple at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas, though the church no longer holds it. John, an admitted architecture enthusiast, wants every group to have the nicest-looking temple it can, and confesses he was disappointed by how that one turned out.

Fundamentalist Mormon Temples

Then comes the pyramid. Rick describes a pyramid-shaped temple built by Christ’s Church near Modena, Utah, a place the group calls Paquin. Someone even gave him a 3D-printed model of it, and he told them it should be the church’s icon, since who else has a pyramid temple? After it was vandalized and closed, the church moved its temple work to a second temple in Nevada, about thirty miles from Tonopah down dirt roads. Rick, who visited and stayed with members of the church, says the outside is not pretty, but the inside is beautiful.

The most striking temple may be the one built by a Missouri fundamentalist group. Rick visited the week before its dedication and, after helping install mirrors and curtains, was jokingly told he was now a temple worker. The rooms, creation, garden, terrestrial, and celestial, are covered in murals, and the celestial room’s dome is painted as a daytime sky that becomes an accurate night sky, with fiber-optic stars, when the lights go out. John says this is exactly the kind of thought he wishes every group put into its temple. Any independent fundamentalist group can worship there by appointment, yet many will not. That leads to the 1978 priesthood revelation, which many fundamentalists saw as another sign of LDS apostasy, and to the question of Black members: Rick says the Missouri group is the only one that welcomes them.

Across all these buildings, John draws a simple conclusion. Most of them are familiar to LDS eyes, built on the Nauvoo model, and groups without a temple set aside what amounts to an Endowment House, a consecrated room where ordinances can be performed. Part 1 traced the temple idea from the Bible through Kirtland to Nauvoo. Part 2 shows how the Nauvoo version spread among the fundamentalists. Next, in part 3, John turns to two groups that broke from Brigham Young, the Cutlerites and Lyman Wight’s Wightites.

Don’t foget to check out John’s book, Scattering of the Saints.

Chapters

1:40 The Salt Lake Endowment House
2:04 Did the Endowment House Have a Baptismal Font?
5:44 Fundamentalist Temples Beyond the Brighamites
6:30 FLDS Temple at Yearning for Zion Ranch
8:13 Christ’s Church & the Pyramid Temple in Modena (Paquin), Utah
9:26 Nevada Temple: Plain Outside, Beautiful Inside
10:57 Missouri Temple: Murals, Creation Room & the Holy of Holies
12:46 The Dome of Stars, in Full
14:30 The 1978 Priesthood Revelation & Fundamentalist Temples
17:14 Only the Missouri Group Welcomes Black Members
17:52 Endowment Houses: Groups Without a Temple

Where Did Joseph Smith Get the Idea of Temples? (John Hamer 1 of 6) Sep 21, 2026

Show notes

Where did Joseph Smith get the idea of temples?

It sounds like a simple question, but historian John Hamer’s answer stretches from the Bible to a domed assembly hall in Independence, Missouri, and includes a temple that was called for by revelation, designed by an architect, and never built. In this first conversation of his return to Gospel Tangents, John, a Community of Christ Seventy and co-editor of Scattering of the Saints: Schism Within Mormonism, walks me through the building blocks.

https://youtu.be/1r98tnUC5Q4

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-hamer/

Gospel Tangents

John starts with the Bible. Solomon’s temple is only one model, he explains. The New Testament offers another: the idea that the new covenant fulfilled the old, along with the gatherings of the early Christians in the Book of Acts. That second vision, he says, shaped the Kirtland Temple, a building of stacked assembly halls, and it became the model for Community of Christ’s understanding of temples ever after.

When Community of Christ members regathered in Jackson County, Missouri, they wanted a temple on that Kirtland model. What they built, John argues, was Frederick Madison Smith’s Auditorium, a massive assembly hall that he sees as a 20th-century version of the Kirtland Temple in everything but name. He points to a published drawing of Joseph Smith III’s temple vision, which looks like the Auditorium with steeples added, and notes that the Auditorium was built without them. Then the story turns. Smith’s assertion of church authority sparked a schism, and a couple thousand members moved to the Temple Lot church, the Hedrickites.

Their own temple plans carried the same Kirtland DNA. Otto Fetting’s revelations called for a temple, and an architect gave it a front like a Greek temple, or a bank, and a long, thin plan with one assembly hall stacked atop another. It was never built. The Depression hit, Fetting was pushed out of the church, and the diggers had to fill in the hole they had started.

Restoration Groups Idea of Temples

Splinter groups from Community of Christ have echoed the pattern since. John describes the Remnant Church’s headquarters in an old high school across from the Temple Lot, with an inner room of Kirtland-style pulpits and a planned community center with a Kirtland-like exterior that was never built. When he asked its president whether that was a temple, the answer was no.

Then the conversation moves to Nauvoo, where something new enters. The Nauvoo temple began with Kirtland-style assembly halls but added a basin in the basement resting on oxen, drawn from Solomon’s temple. John connects that shift to the Old Testament practices Joseph Smith was restoring, including plural marriage, and to Freemasonry, whose traditions claim a lineage back to Solomon’s temple. That Nauvoo model, he says, went on to shape the other branches.

Together, these threads show two rival visions of what a temple is: the Kirtland idea of a place of assembly, and the Nauvoo idea of an Old Testament-style house of ordinances. This first conversation of the six-part series lays out that fork in the road. Next, in part 2, John turns to the Endowment House and fundamentalist temples, including a pyramid-shaped temple in Utah and a temple whose dome ceiling turns into the night sky.

Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

Chapters

0:00 Welcome John Hamer
4:04 Where Did Joseph Smith Get the Idea of Temples?
7:22 Zion, Jackson County & Plans for 24 Temples
13:14 Kirtland as the Model for Community of Christ
14:00 The Auditorium: A Temple in Disguise?
16:44 Frederick M. Smith, the Schism & the Temple Lot Church
17:57 Otto Fetting’s Unbuilt Temple: The Hedrickite Plan
21:04 The Remnant Church Headquarters: Kirtland-Style Pulpits
22:20 Nauvoo: Solomon’s Temple, the Oxen & Freemasonry
24:32 What’s Next?

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-hamer/

Gospel Tangents

Brigham Didnt Dissolve Relief Society? (Katie Rich & Heather Sundahl) Sep 17, 2026

Show notes

Brigham didnt dissolve Relief Society! That’s what Katie Rich’s recent article on Brigham Young & the Relief Society claimed. It goes against the historical consensus and won an award at the Mormon History Association. She will explain her reasons here. We’ll also discuss how Exponent II accepts multiple positions on controversial issues. Is it hard to keep disparate opinions together?

https://youtu.be/5xqbPUh1Djo

Check out this playlist for more info on this topic! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGUWDGlv87I&list=PLLhI8GMw9sJ4VKeJi6eTv4OMaRZiZnA0h

In this concluding episode, we discuss the personal impact of Exponent II and a groundbreaking re-examination of 19^th-century history with authors Katie Rich and Heather Sundal. Katie shares her personal journey from being “terrified” to publish her first blog post in 2020 to becoming an award-winning historian. She describes Exponent II as an “incubator of voices,” providing a supportive community for women to move past the fear of being perceived as critical of the Church while exploring cognitive dissonance and authenticity.

The authors also address the “big tent” philosophy of their organization. Both emphasize that Exponent II allows them to remain in a community that “speaks their language” without needing to explain their complex identities.

Brigham didnt dissolve Relief Society

The highlight of the episode is a deep dive into Katie’s award-winning research regarding Brigham Young and the Relief Society. Contrary to the widely accepted historical narrative that Brigham Young “shut down” or “disbanded” the Relief Society in 1845 due to his frustrations with Emma Smith, Katie argues that the organization actually fell apart in March 1844 due to internal conflicts over polygamy. Key insights include:

Shadow Succession Crisis: While men were publicly debating who should succeed Joseph Smith, women were influencing the trajectory of the Church through their work in the Anointed Quorum and the Nauvoo Temple.
Polygamy Tension: The organization fractured a full year before Brigham Young’s infamous “incendiary comments” because Emma Smith was using the Relief Society to police morality and oppose secret plural marriages that her own counselors and secretaries were already participating in.
The “Great Gap”: While there was a nearly 20-year gap before the Relief Society was formally reorganized as an ecclesiastical body in 1867, women continued to lead through informal spiritual meetings, blessing one another and performing temple ordinances.

Don’t miss our other conversations about Mormon feminism: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/feminism/

Gospel Tangents

Thomas Murphy’s Real Answer — Coming in Part 4 Sep 16, 2026

Show notes

Over the past three segments, Dr. Thomas Murphy, author of Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon, has walked us through his research connecting Haudenosaunee history to the origins of the Book of Mormon — from the Dartmouth/Moor’s Charity School connection, to the prophet Handsome Lake, to overlooked ties between Native nations and the Revolutionary War era. But all of it has been building toward one question we haven’t asked him directly yet: can the Book of Mormon be both fiction and scripture at the same time?

https://youtu.be/0j-GMPVf1_o

Thomas Murphy’s Answer!

In our final segment, Murphy finally answers it. He also doesn’t shy away from the harder conversations his research raises — including the ethics of archaeology and the handling of indigenous remains in the search for Book of Mormon evidence, and where he actually lands on the long-running Heartland versus Mesoamerica debate.

This is the conversation this whole series has been leading up to, and it’s one of the most personal, thoughtful answers we’ve heard on this show.

Newsletter subscribers get early access to the full segment — sign up free at gospeltangents.com/newsletter to hear Murphy’s complete answer before it goes public.

Listen to the rest of the series wherever you get your podcasts.

Don’t miss our other conversations with Thomas: https://gospeltangents.com/people/thomas-murphy/

Gospel Tangents

Check out a transcript of the interview on Amazon.

Unexpected Book of Mormon & Revolutionary War Link (Thomas Murphy 3 of 4) Sep 13, 2026

Show notes

Are there echoes of Book of Mormon & Revolutionary War? When we talk about the relationship between early Mormonism and Native American communities, the conversation usually runs in one direction: how indigenous traditions may have influenced Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. But in this segment of our conversation with Dr. Thomas Murphy, author of Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon, we explore something far less discussed — how Haudenosaunee communities weren’t just absorbing outside religious ideas, they were producing scriptural traditions of their own.

https://youtu.be/5H7qSRgK5lc

At the center of this discussion is the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake, who in the early 1800s developed a body of teachings — now known as the Code of Handsome Lake — blending traditional Haudenosaunee spirituality with elements adapted from the Christian missionaries who were increasingly present in Native communities at the time.

Murphy argues that Handsome Lake’s movement deserves to be understood on its own terms: not simply as a reaction to Christianity, but as a genuine act of religious innovation, produced by Native leaders navigating a rapidly changing world. It’s a reminder that the flow of religious ideas during this period wasn’t one-directional, and that Native communities were active shapers of their own spiritual futures, not passive recipients of outside influence.

From there, Murphy turns to something that surprises many readers: possible echoes of Onondaga language, geography, or tradition embedded within the Book of Mormon text itself. While these connections remain a matter of scholarly debate, Murphy lays out why he believes they deserve more serious attention than they’ve typically received, especially given the documented presence of Haudenosaunee students and communities in and around the Smith family’s world in upstate New York.

Book of Mormon & Revolutionary War

The conversation then shifts to a period most listeners will recognize from American history class, but rarely connect to Mormon origins: the Revolutionary War. Murphy highlights the often-overlooked role of the Oneida Nation, one of the few Haudenosaunee nations to formally ally with the American colonists during the war, and explores why this alliance — and its long-term consequences — matters for understanding the world the Smith family grew up in decades later. It’s a piece of history that rarely gets mentioned in conversations about the Book of Mormon’s origins, but Murphy argues it shouldn’t be treated as a footnote.

Taken together, this segment challenges listeners to think about the relationship between Native American history and early Mormonism as something more complicated — and more mutual — than a simple story of influence flowing in one direction. Murphy’s research suggests a much richer, messier picture: one where Native nations were simultaneously responding to colonization, encountering Christianity, allying with revolutionary movements, and building their own theological frameworks, all while living in close proximity to the very family that would go on to produce the Book of Mormon.

This is part 3 of our 4-part series with Dr. Thomas Murphy. In our previous segments, we covered his background and the controversial DNA research that first made him a controversial figure within LDS scholarship, along with the Dartmouth/Moor’s Charity School connection between the Smith family and Haudenosaunee students. In our next and final segment, Murphy tackles perhaps the biggest question of all: can the Book of Mormon be both fiction and scripture at the same time?

Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

Don’t miss our other conversations with Thomas: https://gospeltangents.com/people/thomas-murphy/

Gospel Tangents

Check out a transcript of the interview on Amazon.

1:21 – Indigenous Response to Christianity & Handsome Lake’s Visions
6:36 – Jesus in Haudenosaunee Tradition & Comparison with King Lamoni
9:40 – Three Nephites, Four Thunders & Joseph Smith’s Christianization
12:01 – Zelph, Onondagas & Giants
16:17 – Oneidas, Lafayette & the Book of Mormon as Revolutionary War Allegory
19:07 – Amalickiah & Ammoron as Sir William Johnson & Joseph Brant

Native American Seer Stones & Hats (Thomas Murphy 2 of 4) Sep 10, 2026

Show notes

Did Native Americans use seer stones? What if the roots of the Book of Mormon’s narrative trace back not just to revelation, but to a classroom?

Book of Mormon Ties to Darmouth?

In this second part of our conversation with anthropologist Dr. Thomas Murphy, we explore a detail of Smith family history that rarely gets discussed: Hyrum Smith’s education at Dartmouth’s Moor’s Indian Charity School, where he studied alongside Haudenosaunee students. It’s a small historical fact with potentially large implications for how we understand the origins of the Book of Mormon.

https://youtu.be/9nNErpiSeb8

Don’t miss our other conversations with Thomas: https://gospeltangents.com/people/thomas-murphy/

Gospel Tangents

Check out a transcript of the interview on Amazon.

Shared Classroom, A Shared World

Moor’s Charity School was founded with the explicit purpose of educating Native American students alongside colonial settlers. Hyrum Smith — Joseph Smith’s own brother — sat in classrooms with Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) peers! This raises a compelling question: how much of the cultural and spiritual knowledge exchanged in that setting might have made its way, directly or indirectly, into the Smith family’s later religious project? Murphy doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he makes a compelling case that this connection deserves far more attention than it has historically received.

Seer Stones and the Zelph Story

Zelph was a supposed ancient warrior whose bones Joseph Smith claimed to have identified during Zion’s Camp. Murphy examines whether these practices and stories reflect genuine Native American spiritual traditions, Mormon religious innovation, or some blend of both — a question that sits at the heart of his broader research.

This is part 2 of our multi-part conversation with Dr. Thomas Murphy on his book Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon. Subscribe to Gospel Tangents to follow the rest of the series, where we’ll explore Onondaga and Oneida connections, the ethics of Book of Mormon archaeology, and the long-running Heartland versus Mesoamerica debate.

Gospel Tangents is dedicated to exploring Mormon history, science, and theology through in-depth conversations with scholars, historians, and researchers.

Chapters

0:00 Dartmouth / Moor’s Indian Charity School Connection
4:00 Cultural Context, Not Plagiarism
9:27 Susquehanna Valley & Indigenous Prophetic Movements
12:20 Seer Stone Divination & Haudenosaunee Parallels
15:58 Catalyst Theory
18:38 Handsome Lake as Parallel Scripture

Don’t miss our other conversations with Thomas: https://gospeltangents.com/people/thomas-murphy/

Gospel Tangents

Check out a transcript of the interview on Amazon.

Book of Mormon’s Hidden Connection to Native Americans (Thomas Murphy 1 of 4) Sep 07, 2026

Show notes

Can rigorous DNA research and religious scripture coexist? Years ago, Murphy’s groundbreaking DNA research directly challenged traditional Book of Mormon claims about Native American origins. It was a stance that put him at odds with his own stake president and nearly cost him his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For many in the Mormon studies world, Murphy’s name has been synonymous with that controversy ever since.

Now, Murphy returns to Gospel Tangents with something new: his first full-length book, Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon. And this time, the conversation isn’t just about DNA — it’s about history hiding in plain sight.

https://youtu.be/NYOCqWRKC6w

Don’t miss our other conversations with Thomas: https://gospeltangents.com/people/thomas-murphy/

Gospel Tangents

Check out a transcript of the interview on Amazon.

Book of Mormon Connection Few Have Considered

Murphy’s central argument in this episode is striking: the Smith family had real, documented contact with Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) communities living near Palmyra, New York, in the years leading up to the Book of Mormon’s publication. Rather than treating the Book of Mormon’s narrative as emerging in a vacuum, Murphy asks what it means that Joseph Smith grew up in close proximity to a living, sophisticated Native nation with its own oral traditions, history, and worldview. It’s a question that doesn’t get asked nearly often enough in Mormon history circles — and Murphy brings decades of anthropological training to bear on it.

Why This Conversation Matters

Whether your interest lies in:

Mormon history and the origins of the Book of Mormon
DNA and genealogy research as it intersects with religious claims
Native American history, specifically Haudenosaunee/Iroquois communities
Or the broader question of how faith and scholarship can coexist

— this conversation offers a rare perspective from someone who has spent his career at the intersection of all three.

Chapters

0:00 Thomas’s Background in Indigenous Studies/DNA
3:29 DNA Research Impact
8:10 FARMS/FAIR attacks, taking a break from Mormon studies
12:02 Unsettling Scripture Overview
16:31 Parallels between Book of Mormon and Haudenosaunee narratives

Watch or Listen to the Full Conversation

This is the first of four segments in our conversation with Dr. Thomas Murphy. Subscribe to Gospel Tangents to catch the rest of the series, where we’ll dig into topics ranging from seer stone divination to the ongoing Heartland versus Mesoamerica geography debate. Or you can get the whole episode at Patreon.com/gospeltangents

Unsettling Scripture: Iroquois and the Book of Mormon by Dr. Thomas Murphy is available now.

Don’t miss our other conversations with Thomas: https://gospeltangents.com/people/thomas-murphy/

Gospel Tangents

Check out a transcript of the interview on Amazon.

Remembering David Nielsen (Full Interview) Aug 27, 2026

Show notes

David Nielsen passed away a couple of weeks ago when he fell off a ladder. His death was a very sad surprise. He leaves behind 3 wives, a wonderful family, and a shocked and saddened community of friends. We’re remembering him in this video. He served as an apostle for the Nielsen-Naylor Group. In this 2025 interview, he gives an introduction to this Mormon fundamentalist group.

https://youtu.be/vaglaO6_lFk

David Nielsen

David Nielsen was an apostle for his church.

CHAPTERS
0:00 FLDS Splits
7:35 One Man Rule
21:03 Changing Succession
24:37 Council of Friends/High Council
30:05 More than One True Church/Priesthood
32:34 Young Men Ordination/Missions
39:48 Women Propose Marriage
56:52 Mission to FLDS?
1:01:31 Rosetti’s Book on Musser
1:05:00 Church Services
1:17:48 Temple/Priesthood Theology
1:37:32 Black Ban in Nielsen-Naylor
1:45:55 Black History of Priesthood
2:04:55 Consecration
2:13:49 Going on a Tangent

Don’t miss our other interviews with David: https://gospeltangents.com/people/david-nielsen/

Non-LDS Temple Q&A (Rick B 4 of 4) Aug 24, 2026

Show notes

In this engaging temple Q&A session, host Rick Bennett fields questions from a Community of Christ group following a presentation on restoration temples inside and outside the LDS Church. The discussion spans a wide range of captivating topics in Mormon history, theology, and architecture:

https://youtu.be/vn7odpxo7Kc

Don’t miss our other conversations on temples: https://gospeltangents.com/mormon_history/lds-temples/

Gospel Tangents

What you will discover in this presentation:

Temple Q&A: Mormon Pentecostalism & Speaking in Tongues

The group discusses how early Latter-day Saints in Kirtland rolled on the ground like “holy rollers” and how Mormon Pentecostalism actually predates modern Pentecostalism by about 70 years. They examine how the Book of Mormon’s unique doctrinal connection between the baptism of fire and “speaking in the tongues of angels” laid this early groundwork.

LDS Fundamentalism & Temple Practices:

The discussion explores why fundamentalist Mormon offshoots (like the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the Neielson Naylor group) are often seen as having preserved original Nauvoo temple components more closely than the mainstream LDS Church has.

Stonehenge as a Jaredite Temple?:

In a fascinating segment on international restoration branches, Bennett shares the beliefs of Philip Gill’s group in England, which claims Stonehenge was actually built by Jaredites who traveled through Russia. The group also discusses temple traditions in Mexican and Brazilian restoration offshoots.

Nemenha Records & Heavenly Mother:

The Q&A highlights a highly obscure set of records from Manti, Utah, known as the “Mantino archives” or “Nemenha record” translated by Philip Landis. The records contain an entire temple endowment ceremony that is almost identical to the LDS ceremony, with one major twist: it refers to a Heavenly Mother.

Where Does God Dwell?:

Members debate whether physical structures or individual human bodies are the true temples. Drawing from the Book of Mormon’s teaching that the Lord “dwelleth not in unholy temples” but in the hearts of the righteous, they discuss the personal spiritual temple versus the physical buildings that eventually “get torn down”.

Future of Kirtland & Salt Lake Temples:

Bennett answers questions regarding the LDS Church’s purchase of the Kirtland Temple and the 15-year agreement to keep it as-is. He also expresses deep heartbreak over the seismic upgrades of the Salt Lake Temple, where historic pioneer murals were gutted so the structure could be placed on ball bearings and reinforced with steel rods.

Chapters

0:00 Introduction/Welcome
0:41 Community of Christ Temple Clarification (1984-1994 timeline)
2:08 Glossolalia & Speaking in Tongues in Kirtland
5:09 Fundamentalist Mormons & Nauvoo Temple Understanding
6:05 Remnant Church of Jesus Christ Discussion
9:02 International Mormonism & Temple Traditions
17:52 Nemenha Group / Manti Archives
19:58 RLDS Auditorium Temple Question
23:17 Emma Smith & Baptism for Health
23:56 Hagoth & Polynesian Temples
25:04 Kirtland Temple Future & LDS Church Plans
29:26 Structural Issues of Historic Temples (Ogden, Provo)
32:47 Kirtland Temple Restoration Discussion
35:57 Manti Temple & Recent Renovations
37:30 Cardston Temple

Don’t miss our other conversations on temples: https://gospeltangents.com/mormon_history/lds-temples/

Gospel Tangents

What you will discover in this presentation: