Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints belongs to the Latter Day Saint movement family of churches.

Governance: hierarchical.

A body formed in 2000 by former RLDS members seeking to continue the Reorganization as they understood it.

Heritage

As the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints moved through the changes that led to its 2001 renaming as Community of Christ, some members withdrew; the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints organized in 2000 at Independence, Missouri, and in 2002 sustained Frederick Niels Larsen, a descendant of Joseph Smith, as its prophet-president — restoring, as it sees it, the lineal pattern of the Reorganization.

Theological family

By self-description, a continuation of the original Reorganization's faith: the Bible, Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants as Scripture, priesthood held as the early RLDS church held it, and rejection of the later changes, including the ordination of women. Trinitarian bodies differ with Latter Day Saint movement churches over authority and Scripture; nothing is adjudicated here.

Who decides what

A prophet-president with counselors and quorums on the RLDS pattern, with conferences of the membership.

What a first-time visitor would find

Worship on the traditional RLDS pattern — hymns, preaching, communion — in a small number of congregations, centered on Independence.

What it has always cared about

Lineal succession as it understands the Doctrine and Covenants to require; preservation of mid-twentieth-century RLDS teaching and practice.

Its gift to the wider church

For the historian of the movement, the Remnant Church preserves in living form the Reorganization as it stood before the changes — a counterpart to Community of Christ's development.

Commonly confused with

With Community of Christ, from which its founders withdrew, and with the other Independence-area restoration branches.

Range of views inside it

Small and doctrinally settled by design; its variation from the parent body is the point, not internal range.

A note from the mapmakers: This record is deliberately brief: the body is small and young. No US congregation count is published in RCMS 2020, and none is offered here. Nothing may be asserted of a specific congregation; sentences drawn from this record yield to the church's own materials.

Sources: Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints — history and beliefs (Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Independence MO) · Scattering of the Saints: Schism within Mormonism (Newell G. Bringhurst and John C. Hamer, eds., John Whitmer Books)

Where Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints churches are on the map

2 Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints congregations appear on The Church Map, across 1 states.

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