The practice of changing one’s religious affiliation goes back more than a century in the family of W. Kevin Romer. He’s now presiding bishop of the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a resident of what the church calls “Bountiful: A New Jerusalem Community” in easte rn Jackson County. Romer’s father was one of two small children in 1924, when the family belonged to a Lutheran church in Illinois. One day his father’s toddler brother fell into a tub of just-boiled water that his mother had prepared for bathing. When the boy died from that scalding, the church’s pastor told his parents that the child was in hell because he hadn’t yet been baptized. Kevin Romer is the presiding bishop of the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a resident of the Bountiful community. (Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) When Romer’s traumatized father told a coworker what the pastor said, the man criticized the pastor’s theology and handed the grieving man a copy of the Book of Mormon. He read it all, which led him to join the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as it was then named after splitting from the main church in the middle of the 19th Century. But in the 1980s, when the RLDS renamed itself the Community of Christ and changed its rules to allow women to be clergy, Romer says, “I thought, ‘Something’s wrong with this picture.’” So he joined “Restoration” branches of the church, which include the Remnant denomination he now leads. It’s that breakaway from a breakaway church that has created the Bountiful community north of Interstate 70 in Oak Grove, Missouri. The church bought almost 200 acres of land in 2008. Three years later, the first family moved into a newly built house there. Today Bountiful has some 15 occupied homes plus a church building. Romer and Corwyn Mercer, the Bountiful church’s presiding elder, are committed to Remnant branch theology, which urges them to create what they call Zion, which means a literal version of God’s kingdom on Earth. Church documents outline three community goals: Members should create “a place of safety and refuge” with Jesus at the center, “strive to keep all of God’s commandments but walk in the spirit of grace towards all men” and be “advocates for each other and walk in the ‘Pure Love of Jesus’. . .” When I asked Romer how all that’s going, his answer revealed him to be a realist who understands the complexity of human relations: “I would have hoped that we’d be farther along.” But, he said, “that growth, that maturing takes time.” To which he adds, “If we could just do those three things (the church’s purposes), this would be a nice place to live.” And yet he is happy that, on the whole, things are working well, though all his work as presiding bishop takes much time. Mercer described Bountiful this way: “The whole purpose of this is to live in harmony together and show the world that men can do this following the directions of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.” But he adds this: “The challenges are that men are sinful.” Corwyn Mercer is the presiding elder of the church at Bountiful and says that the whole purpose of the community “is to live in harmony together.” (Bill Tammeus | Flatland) Romer has learned how complicated living together in intentional small communities can be. As he told me, “Some people came here with the idea of seclusion and more of a communist view of Zion than a market economy view of Zion. There are people who think we shouldn’t be working outside the community but be farmers. “I’ve tried to make it clear that that’s not the case. We can’t withdraw. Nor should we. We need to be involved with our neighbors. It’s got to be outreach oriented. The other thing I think has been extremely important is that usually there’s a strongman who runs these things (meaning tight-knit religious communities). But I won’t let that happen.” The softly undulating land on which Bountiful sits is agricultural in nature. A gravel road runs through it, connecting the properties to both a small park and the church. Some residents grow crops on their land while others let a community farmer plant and harvest crops on their land for what the church calls “shared crop revenue” used for property maintenance or development. It took time to get formal county government approval to build there and to satisfy neighbors who opposed the project. In one meeting with such neighbors, Romer says, “they just shish kabobbed me.” But that opposition has quieted, and Romer hopes before long to ask the county to allow homes to be built closer together than is now lawful on agricultural land. Some members of the Bountiful community farm their own land while others let a community farmer produce crops on their land, with the results shared. (Bill Tammeus | Flatland) Bountiful residents are free to choose careers outside the church. Mercer, for instance, is a deputy juvenile officer for the 16th Circuit Court of Jackson County. Others are teachers, nurses, own their own businesses or are retired. The Bountiful community is an example of something generative happening in the midst of a long history of divisions in the Restoration branches that once were part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in upstate New York. The traditional term for members of Smith’s church has been “Mormons,” but the church now discourages use of that term and prefers the denomination to be just “LDS” or the “Church of Jesus Christ.” Smith also published then the Book of Mormon, which, along with the Christian Bible (or most of it), is a sacred text for the church and for various Restoration churches. (This 2017 Idaho Statesman article describes one way splits and other changes happen in the LDS extended family of churches.) When people move to Bountiful, they’re asked to go through a process called “consecration.” As documents describing it say, that means residents “make a full accounting of our Time, Talents and Temporalities” and each year figure out what part of their total worth is “surplus,” which then is given to the church for its use. An eight-page booklet outlines the rules and regulations. Mercer calls it an “accounting to the Lord.” The history of U.S. communities based on religion is full of examples that failed and some successes. Among them have been the Rappites, Shakers, and the LDS church itself. It took a few years after the Bountiful community was formed for this church to be built, but now each Sunday it attracts dozens of members and their children. (Bill Tammeus | Flatland) That LDS, in fact, has followed the unintended model of Protestantism by splitting and splitting again in various ways. Religious freedom guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution makes space for such divisions and even for small communities like Bountiful. You may not share the theological beliefs of the Remnant Church or of the members who’ve moved to Bountiful, but the community’s existence is evidence that America’s constitutional protections of religious freedom are still holding. Romer summarizes his Bountiful experience this way: “It’s important that we as a church understand that God works for all people. Sometimes we get so involved in what we’re doing that we think we’re the only ones who have any value. And that’s just not true. God has a plan for all of us, so who am I to judge?” Bill Tammeus, an award-winning columnist formerly with The Kansas City Star, writes the “Faith Matters” blog for The Star’s website. His latest book is Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety. Email him at [email protected]. The post ‘Bountiful’ Jackson County Community Exemplifies Religious Freedom first appeared on Flatland. ...read more read less