I Believe That The Garden of Eden Was In Jackson County, Missouri

“We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.” - Article Ten of the LDS Church Articles of Faith“I believe that God lives on a planet called Kolob! I believe that Jesus has his own planet as well. And I believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri.” - “I Believe” from The Book of Mormon (musical)We did almost no planning for this road trip.The idea had been a joke I’d been kicking around for years. I can spend all day reading books about Mormons, hundreds of r/mormon and r/exmormon posts, and Wikipedia wormhole my way down the complicated-ass racist and patriarchal lore. Not to mention the hours of ex-Mormon Alyssa Grenfell videos I watch to pass the time during the workday.The only things we knew about this trip were that we had lodging accommodations at three hotels. One night in Kansas City, one night in the middle of nowhere, and one night in St. Louis. We’d get to see the city a little, but more importantly, both cities are near holy sites in the Mormon faith.(If you didn’t catch the first or second issues, go back and read it on Substack, or listen to it on the Substack app. This isn’t an ad for Substack, I’m just too lazy to put it anywhere else.)We woke up in Kansas City and ate breakfast at Dagwood’s Cafe, just across the state line in KC, KS. It was terrific and extremely affordable. 10/10.We spent the morning in downtown, primarily at Kansas City Union Station, where I enjoyed the hell out of their extensive model railroad museum. It’s honestly shocking how large the setup is given there’s no admission fee. Just an absolute blast and it’s great for kids. I also got some pics of the Western Auto building and the WWI memorial.It was really f*****g hot out. We were smack dab in the middle of the national heatwave plaguing the entire lower 48 in late-July. The only respite for the entire trip was the cool A/C of my Honda Civic. Godspeed you beautiful blue b*****d.We drove from the train station to a quick stop at the Kansas City library to take a picture of the wall styled like books. Turns out that’s just the parking garage for the library so I snapped a quick photo and we were on our way.Our time in Kansas City was a whirlwind—we stayed in the city less than 24 hours. I couldn’t point on a map where even the general area we stayed was; it was me, the GPS, and revelations from the Angel Moroni that guided me towards the various empty fields across the Great Plains we would be visiting.Welcome back to Putting the Moron in Moroni: Martyrs, Mormons, and Misery in Missouri. This week, we’re actually doing The Thing and starting our Tour de Mormon with a visit to Temple Lot in Independence, Missouri. This location is arguably the Mecca of Mormondom, especially because splinter groups largely recognize this community as Zion, while the apostates in Utah have their great and abominable church.Thanks for reading and listening.If there were a way I could baptize you to christen you as a new newsletter subscriber, I would. If you are already subscribed, please sign up for a shift cleaning the temple.Independence, MO is considered a “satellite city” of the Kansas City metro area.It’s about a 25-minute drive from downtown KCMO, and is a proper city in its own right; Independence boasts a population of over 120,000. Most Americans will recognize the name from the MN-made edutainment classic The Oregon Trail, where it’s one of the main launch points for your pioneer trek west. Yes we do need to buy four shotguns and 1000 shells and 8 oxen.The drive from downtown featured a smidge of highway before embarking on the onslaught that was Truman Road east of downtown KC. This long stretch of road connects Independence to Kansas City and is named for the Harry S. president who grew up and lived most of his life in Independence.The entire road was a mix of industrial and commercial buildings that seemed closer to a ghost town than the great avenue fit for a president. Storefronts were boarded up. It wasn’t the welcoming boulevard one would hope for on the road to the Garden of Eden.The first stop we made was Truman’s house and his wife’s aunt’s house across the street. Only the wife’s aunt’s house was open and it wasn’t particularly interesting. It’s basically just one exhibit where you get to “see how in love they were” before glossing over justifying his use of the atomic bomb. Just a small thing he did two times. I’ll give Truman some credit, it really did feel like they were in love. And the bombs also happened.We made a brief stop at the Truman presidential library to get a stamp on our friend’s National Parks Service passport and we headed toward the big shiny metal and glass spiral towering over the sleepy Midwestern city.In 1831, with his little blue book at the ready, Joseph Smith was convinced he needed to move west to try to convert American Indians to Mormonism.When we last saw Joe, Sidney, and the gang, they had just arrived in Kirtland, Ohio. Almost immediately, Joseph Smith led a missionary party to Missouri in summer 1831. Encountering what Wikipedia calls “some moderate success” proselytizing, the Saints decided to set up an extant community from Kirtland in the frontier town they ended up at: Independence, MO.In August 1831, Joseph Smith declared in a (handwritten—remember he was functionally illiterate) revelation “how to preceed [sic] concerning purchuseing [sic] Lands”:“Hearken Oh ye Elders of my Church, saith the Lord your God, Who have assembelled [sic] yourselves together, according to my commandment in this land which is the land of Missorie [sic] which is the Land which I, have appointed & consecrated for the gethering [sic] of the Saints.…Behold the place which is now called Independence is the centre place, & the spot for the Temple is lying westward upon a lot which is not far from the court-house. Wherefore it is wisdom that the land should be purchased by the saints and also every tract lying westward even unto the line runing [sic] directly betwen [sic] Jew and gentile and also every tract bordering by the Prairies in as much as my Deciples [sic] are enabled to buy lands.”Joseph Smith identified a 62ish-acre parcel of land known today as “Temple Lot” as the location where the first Mormon temple was to be built. He also taught that it was exact location of Christ’s Second Coming, and while it was never written as a revelation, contemporaneous accounts from other Mormon leaders (including Brigham Young) report that Smith taught that the Garden of Eden was also in Jackson County, Missouri, suggesting it was also at Temple Lot.Smith’s revelation designating Independence as Zion started a chain of events that would *spoiler* lead to his timely death in 1844. Important to note is God’s commandment that the Saints were to buy as many tracts of land as possible between what is effectively Independence and the border with Kansas to the west, which includes the entirety of modern-day Kansas City (which would not be incorporated until 1850).There was also commotion in the Mormon movement: you mean to tell me I moved whole family to join a group of fanatical converts in bumfuck nowhere Ohio, and now we’re supposed to move to Missouri? Thankfully for Joseph, God revealed a solution to the PR crisis and was able to do some damage control in September, after his return to Kirtland from his first visit to Jackson County:“[The Lord shall] retain a strong hold in the land of Kirtland, for the space of five years, in the which I will not overthrow the wicked, that thereby I may save some.” - D&C 64:21It’s important to remember that the Mormons were not rich at this point. Joseph Smith relied heavily on the generous distribution of land to white settlers as part of the Manifest Destiny-era, which enabled the church to effectively build wealth through real estate ownership. They also formalized this process in the church community, particularly via the Law of Consecration, a convenient revelation from February 1831 establishing Fully Automated Luxury Mormon Ohio Space Communism; this revelation commanded Mormons to live communally and consecrate their property and personal belongings to Smith’s church for the (stated) benefit of the poorest members of their community. Mormons = Woke?Basically, we have a series of revelations telling Mormons to move further west to Missouri, purchase as much land as possible, then give that land to Joseph Smith and his jabroni cronies.I’m sure the racist settlers advocating for slavery in Missouri would really love it if a bunch of religious Yankee nutjobs came to their town in the middle of nowhere to build a theocratic society based on a bunch of treasure digger b******t, led by a guy who made a career of sex trafficking his friends’ wives. He was also a pedophile. This is not a serious religion.The area around Temple Lot is built up today, and is noticeably lacking an official LDS Temple, y’know, the one they’re supposed to build to give Jesus a place to Second Come to.Instead, a striking, towering glass spiral rises out of the relatively flat treeline as you approach the Temple Lot area. There is no angel Moroni heralding the trumpet for the end times. That doesn’t mean it’s automatically friendly. As we drove up, the main entrance of the temple looked a lot more like a Bond villain compound than a site of holy reverence.This is not an LDS temple, but the world headquarters and temple of Community of Christ, one of multiple splinter groups from the mainstream LDS church that split off after Smith’s death in 1844. They’re the largest non-LDS denomination of Mormonism. The theological splits are frankly not interesting enough to cover, but they diverge on many of the hallmarks of Utah Mormonism. For example, women can receive the priesthood in CoC.What’s more interesting is that CoC adherents did not join the rest of the Mormon project in leaving Illinois/Missouri for Utah. The Utah Mormons vacated their land claims in 1847 and gave up on God’s commandment that they build a temple on Temple Lot…for now (they have yet to make an effort to do so).The CoC adherents spent the latter half of the 19th-century in legal battles over the ownership of the Temple Lot area, because they never really left. Their main opponent was not the Utah church, but rather another splinter group, The Church of Christ (which was Joseph Smith’s original name for the church). This splinter group won their legal battle and won claim to the lot after they squatted on the empty lot, which they do to this very day.The Community of Christ Temple in Independence is a dramatic slap in the face to TSCC in Utah. It’s CoC’s sole temple and paired with their auditorium, command the entire area around Temple Lot. The Utah Mormons have slowly purchased plots around the area, with a visitor’s center across the street, but notably not on the Temple Lot itself.The Temple is also host to the United Nations Peace Plaza, which sits directly across from Temple Lot. This very literal worldly presence alone (“worldly” is how Mormons refer to apostates who don’t follow the Book of Mormon) demonstrates how Community of Christ functions differently from the LDS church. Joseph Smith’s LDS church would eventually form an organized militia that, much, later, became today’s Utah National Guard.I did not visit the LDS visitors center or any of the buildings in the area. There were no pilgrims and I certainly did not see Heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, the angel Moroni, or even a single Elder or Sister missionary! At the a holy site that is supposedly the location of Jesus’ second coming! NOT A SINGLE PERSON! This is NOT a serious religion.Meanwhile, in the 19th century, Smith would not stay in Missouri…this time. Back to Ohio it is.1832 was a big year for Joe and his confederation of con men and rubes. Joseph and Emma Smith were staying in a town called Hiram, Ohio starting in November ‘31, about 30 miles south of Kirtland. TSCC claims this was a nice time of missionary work and love for his church and that he was creating his “inspired” version of the bible. TSCC claims that Joseph’s work was pissing off the local yokels.These are the facts: on March 23rd (or 24th) 1832, Joseph Smith would be dragged out of the home he was staying at and tarred and feathered by an angry mob and “left for dead,” as we were told at Liberty Jail.TSCC portrays this as unjust mob violence by ignorant people who hated Joseph because he told the “truth.” They argue this was because, during his “translation” of the bible, he had a revelation that gave us the confusing theology of Mormon heaven (I know I got it wrong in the first edition: let it be known that I do not respect Mormon theology enough to learn it accurately, and you, the reader, get what you pay for).There’s not necessarily contemporaneous evidence, but much speculation has been made that Joseph allegedly angered locals by maintaining an inappropriate relationship with Nancy Johnson, a 16 year-old daughter of the couple he was staying with in Hiram. What supports this, to me, is that Nancy, despite already being married to another convert, would follow the Saints to Nauvoo and go on to marry Joseph Smith as a “plural wife” in 1842, 10 years later. There were also multiple reports that the angry mob demanded Smith’s castration, but a local doctor refused.Apologists will argue that because Sidney Rigdon was also attacked, there’s no way it couldn’t be because of Joseph’s testimony of his revelations from Heavenly Father.Another piece of apologist trash about this incident is that TSCC will depict it as hot, black tar but it’s far more likely it was pine tar (which is not black) and was almost certainly cold. I find it very difficult to believe that a 2nd-or-1st-Degree-Burn-Victim Joseph Smith would be able to begin a journey back to Missouri on April 1, just a week later. Have you ever seen a burn victim? I’m fairly confident most do not recover in a week, and certainly not well enough to do a pre-car, pre-train 900-mile trip to the American frontier. Tarring and feathering usually kills people. But maybe that was just Heavenly Father looking out for his Prophet.Temple Lot is a curious case that punctuates how church history and theology is conveniently retconned to match the current whims of church leadership. Come Outer Darkness or high water (literally: a bridge on our way to Adam-ondi-Ahman was washed out by a flood, LMAO), Independence was Zion and Joe Smith had to make it a reality.Simultaneously the aggressor and the victim, Joseph Smith’s hubris would boil over as more and more people joined TSCC. He would test what his followers would be willing to do for his race-science cult project: he already got them to give up their worldly possessions. Would they be willing to fight and die for him?Community of Christ’s real estate holdings throughout Mormondom have extorted millions from TSCC and serve as an unavoidable, uncomfortable reminder for LDS Mormons that Brigham Young was not unilaterally accepted as the next prophet after Joseph Smith’s timely death which would mean that maybe, just maybe, the Church is not true,The post-Smith LDS church has diminished the religious significance of these locations for strategic reasons: Zion now refers to almost anywhere a lot of Mormons are, a far cry from God’s very specific revelation to Joseph Smith where exactly Zion is to be in Jackson County, MO.If the the musical The Book of Mormon is right, and the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri, I know god-damned well I didn’t see it. The closest place to heaven on Earth sure as s**t felt like hell.Thank for reading and listening this week. Next week, we’re going to learn just what the hell happened to get the Saints kicked out of Jackson County, Missouri. I’m sure it is purely religious persecution and nothing else. We might get to the gift shop, but no guarantees there. No matter what, everything is far out in Far West, Missouri. See you next week.Bear testimony to your loved ones: you know The Uffda Times-Picayune is true. I discovered the golden newsletters and translated them. Share the restored gospel now or be prepared to atone eternally in Outer Darkness. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit uffdatimespicayune.substack.com