Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite)

Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite) belongs to the Latter Day Saint movement family of churches.

Governance: hierarchical.

One of the smallest churches in America — a Latter Day Saint remnant preserving Alpheus Cutler's organization since 1853.

Heritage

Alpheus Cutler, a member of Joseph Smith's circle in Nauvoo, organized the Church of Jesus Christ at Manti, Iowa in 1853, holding that he retained authority to reorganize the church. The body moved between Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri; its remaining congregation is at Independence, Missouri.

Theological family

Latter Day Saint by self-description, preserving early Nauvoo-era teaching and practice as Cutler received it; trinitarian bodies differ with Latter Day Saint movement churches over authority and Scripture, a disagreement recorded here without adjudication.

Who decides what

The church's own officers lead its single remaining congregation on the pattern Cutler established.

What a first-time visitor would find

Worship follows the church's preserved order, quiet and small, in Independence.

What it has always cared about

Preservation itself: the body has maintained its organization and records through more than a century and a half of near-invisibility.

Its gift to the wider church

A reminder of how much of American religious history survives in remnants — and of the historical value such bodies carry for everyone who studies the movement.

Commonly confused with

With the other Independence-area restoration churches, from which it is organizationally distinct.

Range of views inside it

With one congregation, the question does not arise.

A note from the mapmakers: This record is deliberately minimal: the body is among the smallest in this taxonomy and its published record is thin. No US congregation count is published for it in RCMS 2020, and none is offered here. Nothing may be asserted beyond what the church itself publishes; sentences drawn from this record yield to the church's own materials.

Sources: Scattering of the Saints: Schism within Mormonism (Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer, eds., John Whitmer Books) · Encyclopedia of American Religions (J. Gordon Melton, Gale)

Where Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite) churches are on the map

1 Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite) congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

More of the Latter Day Saint movement story · Find these churches on the map