In this episode of the Proclaim Peace podcast, hosts Jennifer Thomas and Patrick Mason continue their three-part series on Zion by diving into the profound teachings found in 4 Nephi. They discuss the significance of taking a deeper look at the elements that define a Zion community, emphasizing the unique contributions each individual can bring. They are joined by guest Andrew Bolton from the Community of Christ to share the importance of recognizing and appreciating the distinct parts of Zion, encouraging listeners to identify their own gifts and how they can contribute to building a more just and unified society. Join them as they explore the richness of these scriptures and the call to be peacemakers in our communities.
Timestamps
[00:01:24] Elements of a Zion community.
[00:04:41] Rich inheritance in doctrine.
[00:08:21] Peace as Zion.
[00:12:25] Seeking spiritual guidance through prayer.
[00:19:46] Discipleship and utopian imagination.
[00:24:43] Social protest in the Book of Mormon.
[00:27:30] Transformation towards Zion.
[00:31:36] Filling the hole in the soul.
[00:39:59] Community and equality in Zion.
[00:41:21] Jesus as a socialist.
[00:45:07] Spiritual democratic socialism.
[00:49:45] The fall of Zion society.
[00:54:30] Zion's influence on humanity.
[01:03:02] Zion organization and civic engagement.
[01:04:26] Peace in conflict.
Transcript
(00:03-00:05) Jennifer Thomas: Welcome to the Proclaim Peace podcast. I'm Jennifer Thomas.
(00:06-00:16) Patrick Mason: And I'm Patrick Mason. And this is the podcast where we apply principles of the gospel and read the Book of Mormon to become better peacemakers. Jen, how's it going?
(00:16-00:20) Jennifer Thomas: It's going well, Patrick. I'm excited. New year, new me, new peacemaking.
(00:22-01:02) Patrick Mason: Very good. Very good. We are wrapping up a three-part series about Zion. And I hope that everybody's listened to the last two episodes. They've been phenomenal. And so today we're going to take an even deeper dive into 4th Nephi. Just a handful of verses, but they're just chock full of meaning. And Jen, you were actually the one who really thought that, hey, let's spend multiple episodes on this. What was kind of in your heart and in your mind when you pitched that?
(01:02-02:07) Jennifer Thomas: Well, I think one of the things that I find most sad about our umbrella discussion of Zion is often because it is such a short set of scriptures, we sort of gloss quickly over the elements of that society. And I think we wanted, I at least wanted us to spend a little bit of time talking about the distinct parts of what it means to be a Zion community, because I think just like in Zion, there might be some that appeal to us and some that but might not. In other words, Patrick might be really good at figuring out how we could live in a more economically just and hopeful society. And I might be a little bit better at figuring out how we could be one heart and one mind. I just think there are elements and opportunities for each of us to bring our gifts to Zion. That's the point. And we want to spend a little bit of time teasing out what some of those elements were so that our listeners could say, hey, that's a piece that I can add to the puzzle. I don't have to be everything in Zion, but there is a part of it that resonates with me, and that's the part I'd like to start to build.
(02:08-02:14) Patrick Mason: I love that. The only thing I'll say in correction is it's not Zion if I'm in charge of economics in any way, shape, or form.
(02:14-02:16) Jennifer Thomas: It actually might be, Patrick.
(02:18-02:20) Patrick Mason: That is not a recipe for success.
(02:21-02:24) Jennifer Thomas: If it's not your besetting sin, maybe you're ready to lead out in that area.
(02:25-03:24) Patrick Mason: No, but I love that and I've loved the conversations that we've had and trying to take this seriously. I mean, I genuinely believe that I think the, you know, especially Latter-day Saint Christianity, in terms of like, what is its distinctive addition to the broader world of Christianity, right? Christians have been doing this for 1800 years, but before Joseph Smith came along. And I think we can talk about ritual dimensions and priesthood dimensions and some of those kinds of things that are really important in the restoration of certain doctrines. But for me, the restoration project is really oriented towards two basic things. It's oriented towards exaltation, towards helping us to become like our heavenly parents, and it's oriented towards building Zion here and now. So there's an orientation, a long, long eternal orientation, but there's always a sense that our feet are here on the ground, and that's what we've been trying to talk about the last couple episodes.
(03:24-04:30) Jennifer Thomas: Well, and I would just add to that, Patrick, I think in a highly functioning, really peaceful society, people might not long for Zion. But I think as our society fractures a little bit and tensions increase and insecurities increase, what we have to offer will be more and more needed. And so I hope as Latter-day Saints, we take very seriously this thing that this precious nugget of information and knowledge that we've been given, and recognize that the better we get at sharing it, and ultimately the better we get at living it, the more people will be attracted to us and desire to kind of join us. I think that might happen as much because of people's desire to come to Zion. I think the scriptures prophesy this or foretell this, as it will maybe just being able to give a list of doctrinal things that might be important to people. I think they'll come to the doctrines once they feel called to and welcomed by the society. And I would just, I think we have a really wonderful opportunity to draw on our doctoral knowledge and build something.
(04:31-08:04) Patrick Mason: Yeah, I love that. I think we have such a rich inheritance in this area. Sometimes maybe we live beneath our inheritance, but once we grasp it, then it's an incredible thing to share with the world. And I have to say, so much of what I've learned and thought about this concept comes from our guest today, or at least has been inspired in conversations with him, with Andrew Bolton. who comes to us from the kind of cousin denomination of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He comes to us from the Community of Christ, which some people will know formerly as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And Andrew's just a great friend, and I can't wait to learn alongside him. Let me just introduce him a little bit before we dive in for this third of our three-part series. So Andrew Bolton was born in Preston, Lancashire, England, into a Roman Catholic family. He was an adult convert to Latter-day Saintism. Again, he joined the reorganized church, which became Community of Christ, while he was spending time in Germany. Professionally, he worked for many years as a high school teacher and an educational advisor in Leicester, England, which is one of the most diverse cities in Europe. He then moved and worked for Community of Christ in their international headquarters in Independence, Missouri, for several years. For 12 years, he coordinated their peace and justice ministries, and then he spent nine years as an apostle in the Council of Twelve Apostles in Community of Christ. And specifically, he was assigned to the Asia area, so he supervised over 200 congregations there and just had phenomenal experiences living among the people of Asia. Andrew is the author of lots of books and articles, most of which have to do with peace and nonviolence and Zion. I am especially excited about two books that are going to be coming out in 2025. One is called Living the Sermon on the Mount in Difficult Times. So this will be Andrew talking about how the Sermon on the Mount applies to us in the 21st century. And then a project that's close to my heart is that Andrew and I, along with Tonal and Ford, co-edited a book called A Radical Spirit, The History and Potential of the Latter-day Saint Tradition, which is a group of essays that we hope will be published at the end of this year. So Andrew and his wife, Jewel, have been married 47 years. They have two boys, Matthew and David. and he's just a dear, dear friend. Well, Andrew Bolton, welcome to the Proclaimed Peace Podcast. It's good to be here. Thank you. And I should say, so, you know, I just read your more formal bio, but I want to say also, Andrew and I have known each other for several years. And when David Pulsifer and I decided to write the book on peace and nonviolence in the Latter-day Saint tradition that eventually became Proclaimed Peace, Andrew was literally the first person we called. He came and spent two or three days with us in Southern California. we kind of hold up together, and we just wanted to learn from him and pick his brain, because he's been thinking about these issues so deeply and so well for so long. So Andrew is not only a great friend, but he's very much a mentor to me and a guide in this journey. So I'm really happy to have you here, Andrew.
(08:05-08:11) Andrew Bolton: So it's a pleasure and it's a mutual joy to be working with you.
(08:12-08:20) Patrick Mason: Thank you. Well, we always start by asking our guests the same question. How do you define peace?
(08:21-08:57) Andrew Bolton: So that's a really great question. I think peace is like Zion. the presence of just relationships. There's economic justice, there's climate justice, racial justice, gender justice. Everyone has dignity and contribute. And Zion peace is also about being stewards, not owners. Being rich in relationships, living simply. And Zion peace is good about solving conflicts. We don't go to war. So Zion is a big peace in the presence of justice, as well as the end of war. And I think also peace is a bit like Jesus.
(08:58-09:01) Patrick Mason: Not a bit. One would hope. Yes.
(09:02-09:55) Andrew Bolton: Jesus is the key to peace in Zion. Jesus is the peaceful just one. In the presence of Jesus, no one feels second class. So, and Jesus' piece is also turning over tables in the temple in a non-violent protest. Jesus' piece is riding on a donkey with non-armed disciples cheering. mocking Pilate who's coming in the other side of Jerusalem on a cavalry horse with armed soldiers. So Jesus' piece is also street theater, humor, cheek, confronting the people with power doing evil things. And then I think the third thing about peace is that peace is a will good for children, for future generations.
(09:56-10:43) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you so much for sharing that. That is, I think, one of my favorite definitions of peace that we've had so far on the podcast. And there have been some really, really good ones. But I appreciate the way that you have just right out of the bat and off the bat connected. piece design, because I think for Patrick and I, that is one of the messages that we're hoping to go deep on in the next few weeks and help people understand how much this is within our reach. So one of the things that I would love to have you share with us, Patrick is obviously an old friend, but I'm not. We have a new friendship we've just met. And I'm wondering if you would be willing to share with me and our listeners a little bit about your own personal journey towards the definition you just shared. and especially how it intersects with the Book of Mormon.
(10:45-11:13) Andrew Bolton: So I grew up in a Roman Catholic family. I was born in Preston, Lancashire, which is known to Latter-day Saints as the beginning of the church and the British Isles, the first overseas international mission. But I knew nothing about that as a Roman Catholic. Until I was 17, I never traveled more than 70 miles from home, which sounds amazing now.
(11:15-11:16) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, different world.
(11:16-11:18) Patrick Mason: You've been all over the world now.
(11:18-14:21) Andrew Bolton: Then I went to college, which was 300 miles away. And then in my first summer after my first year, I went to work in Oregon, on a lily farm, I was studying horticulture. And Jan Cooper was also working on the lily farm, and she was an elementary school teacher. And week eight, and so much fun, at 10 years older than me, and those two other British boys, she was very kind to us, lots of fun. Week eight, she revealed she was LDS. And she shared so naturally, so authentically, Joseph Smith's story of testimony, the first vision, and a copy of the Book of Mormon. And because she was a non-pushy Mormon, none of the stereotypes fitted her. right? She was just an authentic human being. She was a very fine introduction to Latter-day Saintism. So Jan Cooper, if you or your children are hearing this, a big thank you. So that's my beginning. Two years later, fast forward, I'm working in Germany, and I come across my first Mormon missionaries. They're American, very courteous, polite, quite clean, hair's well combed. And they tell me about the end of the Book of Mormon, there's this promise in Moroni, Moroni 10.5, ask God to know whether this is true or not about the Book of Mormon. So that reminded me of Joseph Smith's testimony, ask God. And because at this point in my college life, I'd become a seeker looking for something better. I liked the experimentalness of Latter-day Saintism, ask God. And I hadn't thought to ask God, I hadn't thought that God might have an opinion about where I sought and where I should end up, right? I'm a slow Christian. So there came a point when I knelt by my bed and asked if I should become a member of the Mormon Church. There were some things that drew me and some things I was quite worried about. I knew I didn't want a vision because I didn't want to be spooked. But I did want an answer. A month later, on a boat crossing the North Sea, I met somebody from Community of Christ. And that's the beginning of my adventure with Community of Christ. But I owe a debt to the beginning with the LDS tradition. So that enables me to build bridges back as well.
(14:22-14:49) Patrick Mason: Yeah, and from our conversations, Andrew, the Book of Mormon has always remained central to you and your faith. I don't want to speak for you, but I think the New Testament is really at the heart and the Gospels are at the heart of your faith. But the Book of Mormon, in our conversations, you're just such a good reader of it, and it seems to have remained very formative for you.
(14:50-15:05) Andrew Bolton: Yes, and the scripture we're going to get to today is absolutely delicious. So yes, and I love the fact that I don't have to learn Greek or Hebrew to be able to be a scholar of the Book of Mormon.
(15:07-16:15) Patrick Mason: That's why I do it, too. I'm too lazy to really be a New Testament scholar. Well, let's dive in. I mean, you have, and in your initial answer about peace, you spoke so beautifully about Zion and its relationship to peace. And you've, over the years, have spoken and written a lot about this concept of Zion. Can you just give us a bit of a primer in terms of how you think about and conceptualize Zion, and especially the key sources that you go to, the scriptural sources that really enliven your moral imagination. And in particular, I want you to respond, you know, sometimes when we talk about Zion, when we talk about this society that Jesus invites us to create, there's sometimes a critique that it's simply utopian, that it's not for the real world. It's simply on the pages of books or something for heaven. So maybe if you could respond to that as well.
(16:15-20:33) Andrew Bolton: So I need to begin with a personal story. My dad was a British soldier in World War II for seven terrible years. He saw, experienced unspeakable things. And then when I was eight, my childhood up to eight was really quite happy and secure. But when I was eight, things started coming apart. We lost the family farm. We were kind of robbed by the person who gave us the mortgage. And that broke my dad on top of his wartime experiences. He spent some time in a mental hospital. And I don't normally talk about that. And that's when I began praying for God to make my dad better. When I'm 13, he stops drinking. and becomes a real dad, really good dad. Still a dad and imperfect as all humans are, but it was so much better. And I started to do well in school. I was looking for Zion but I didn't have the word. I wanted a world where I could contribute to making a world that was safe for little kids growing up. No little boy, no little girl would have to experience the trauma of war directly or indirectly. no child would have to experience poverty. So I'm looking for Zion. And I go to college to feed the world. I study horticulture. I come from a rural background, remember. And then I meet Community of Christ through John Menzies. And I'm introduced to a congregation near Hanover that's so loving, even though I'm a smelly Englishman. and they're interested in peace and justice. Helmut was a conscientious objector. of facing the draft board for the German military. And then I meet for the first time the church logo for Commune to Christ, which is a little child with a lion and a lamb. It's Isaiah 11. It's also the last verse of Spirit of God like a fire is burning. And the word underneath is Frieden, German for peace. I get it. So a miracle of reconciliation is happening in my life. The nation that has caused so much harm to my family is the vehicle of the gospel of peace and they give me the word Zion. So that's how it begins. And then you read the Book of Mormon. I did read the Book of Mormon before I was baptized. I read the LDS one. And then over the years, I began to pick up, Jesus is into the kingdom of God. The Sermon on the Mount, really cool. So that's how it began. Now, the question is, is this just utopia? I want to swear by the ignorance of that question. The first subversive act of a disciple is to imagine the kingdom of God on earth. Jesus comes into Galilee preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. It's an exercise, a lesson in discipleship imagination. You don't escape hell on earth unless you imagine heaven on earth. And that's what Jesus is preaching. And Joseph does a recast of that so well in the Zionic tradition. So to build a house, you have to imagine the house intellectually. before you draw the plans, before you build the house. And it's the same with Zion. So utopian thinking is the finest aspect of being a human. We can imagine a better world. And that's why it's the first essential, really important step.
(20:34-21:24) Jennifer Thomas: So I love this so much, and I appreciate the way you framed that for our listeners right off the bat, this idea that to be aspirational is almost a requirement of discipleship, right? If we truly want to align ourselves with the Savior and try to live a Christian life, by definition, we're going to have to detach ourselves from the world, look to something beyond this world, and commit to building building systems and structures and relationships that are after his pattern, not after the pattern of the world. So I really appreciate you. That was a little call to repentance for me, and I appreciate it. It was good to hear a voice saying, hey, this is not just utopian. It's not something that's beyond our reach, but it is something that we are called to follow and seek.
(21:26-21:35) Andrew Bolton: Yes, and Jesus tells parables, 38 of them, that are about the kingdom to stimulate the imagination of dumb disciples like me.
(21:35-21:36) Jennifer Thomas: It's that kind of workaday world.
(21:37-21:47) Patrick Mason: You know, most of those parables are very earthy. They're very this and that. It is meant to imagine what would it be like in your context and in the world that you know to build a different world.
(21:49-21:53) Andrew Bolton: Yeah, we're most fully human when we're imagining a better world.
(21:53-22:44) Patrick Mason: Yeah. So as we dive in, as we prepare to dive into the actual text, Andrea, I wonder, in our conversations together, I've always been struck by the way that you've read 4th Nephi that I think is maybe sometimes from a different perspective than sometimes we do, at least within the LDS church. So can you talk about broadly, before we dive into the particular verses, how you think about this account in 4th Nephi, how you contextualize it both historically in terms of when the Book of Mormon is being translated and published in the late 1820s and early 1830s, but also within the kind of broader canon of Christian scripture and the imagination of the New Testament and the early disciples of Jesus.
(22:44-26:46) Andrew Bolton: So this is such a delicious question. So let's look at the context in the book of Mormon narrative. So before fourth Nephi, you have the appearance of Jesus. the resurrected Jesus. And the first thing he does, he gives the Sermon on the Mount in all its radicality all over again, except it's the Sermon at the Temple. This is, you couldn't be more holy for Latter-day Saints than it being the Sermon at the Temple, right? So the Sermon on the Mount, and then there's this wonderful story about his blessing the children. It's so moving. so filled with spirit, it still catches me. And there's communion, and there's saying, Isaiah, folks, is pretty important. And Isaiah is full of wonderful passages about peace, as well as call to repentance. Beating swords into plowshares. Jesus, or the Messiah is the Prince of Peace. The government shall be upon his shoulder. And then Isaiah 11 about lion and lamb or wolf and lamb lying down together in the end of violence. So you have this introduction of the gospel. It's the fifth gospel. It's the beginning of the New Testament of the Book of Mormon. And then you have in fourth Nephi, you have a mini acts of the apostles. and it's very short and we'll come back to that perhaps. So you have a mini axe and it's axe two reworked and it lasts 200 years. The Jerusalem community in axe two must have ended by AD 70 when the Romans burnt the city, right? But here you have axe two for 200 years. and it's normal Christianity. That's really, really interesting, I think. And then I'm interested in Joseph as a poor farm boy. His family lose the family farm too. And a Quaker helps him. And I love what Nathan Hatch says about the Book of Mormon. Now, Nathan Hatch is Protestant, so he's an outside of the tradition, but this is what he says about the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is a document of profound social protest, an impassioned manifesto by a hostile outsider against the smug complacency of those in power and the reality of social distinctions based on wealth, class, and education. Joseph is on the outside, he knows what it is to be on the edge of respectability, not to have any prospects. And he creates a gospel that's good news for people like him. And he creates in our imagination in 4th Nephi, a different world is possible. And that I find quite awesome. And then after this, you have apostasy and you have one people killing another. And then Ether, the next book after Mormon, is out of sequence chronologically, but it's in sequence in terms of the narrative. And here you have two peoples mutually destroying each other. So the message is, if you follow the words of Jesus and live the Sermon on the Mount, Sermon at the Temple, you can have Zion. But if you don't, hell on earth is going to happen. And there's no more relevant message in a world with nuclear weapons, climate change, and Putin's and other despots coming.
(26:48-28:29) Jennifer Thomas: So I really appreciate this because I think that Again, sort of back to when we were talking about this message as being utopian, I think we all sort of want to find a way to live in the middle. I think it's the human condition, even those of us that are believers, that we want to say, oh, I want to have my cake and eat it too, right? I'd like to be in the world and enjoy all of its pleasures without, you know, fully imbibing, but I like the way that you set up this message from the Book of Mormon as this stark set of contrasts, where to close out the book, it's telling us you can have ultimate goodness if that's what you're willing to build towards. There's this capacity and possibility in human beings to create something absolutely transcendent, or absent that, you will end up in a place of conflict and destruction that might, in many cases, be beyond your control. So I think that's actually a really good framing for us to start this conversation, because I think sometimes we want to ignore the stakes. I love the way you kind of shared your personal experience at the beginning, because just listening to you, that's a very individual story in which the stakes of war were very high. They came at a great cost for you and your family, and I think we sometimes want to ignore those stakes. And any message of Zion, I think, has to be grounded in the reality that not only are we moving towards something good, but by choosing to move towards Zion, we're actively trying to protect ourselves and most importantly, the people around us from the excesses that can result in something so bad.
(28:30-28:46) Andrew Bolton: Yeah, and peace is such a pathetic word in English and French and Spanish, right? But Shalom is a robust word and Zion is the best of all and it's also Jewish. It's comprehensive peace.
(28:48-28:55) Patrick Mason: Yeah, so let's dive into the text. Jen, do you want to start? Yeah, let's do it.
(28:55-29:45) Jennifer Thomas: So let's just jump right into 4th Nephi and can we talk about 4th Nephi chapter 1 verse 1. I would love to hear your thoughts. Should we read it, Patrick? Do you think we have time? Should I just jump right in? And it came to pass that the thirty and fourth year passed away, and also the thirty-fifth. And behold, the disciples of Jesus had formed a church of Christ in all lands round about. And as many did come unto them, and did truly repent of their sins, were baptized in the name of Jesus. And they did also receive the Holy Ghost. So I'd love to hear your thoughts, Andrew, about how this process of conversion, is it necessary to get us to a point of Zion? What role does it play? And what does that kind of conversion look like? How does it manifest itself in us?
(29:46-31:48) Andrew Bolton: So I think to have a transformed world needs to transform people. The two go together. They're mutually reinforcing. So when I was deciding whether or not to be baptized, it was a painful process. I thought people will mock me that I've become a Mormon, right, even though it was RLDS. I believed two things at that time, three things. The first one was I still believed in God for my Catholic upbringing and I felt a call from God. I really wanted Zion and I wanted to give my all to it. And then the third thing was the realization I also needed to change. It has to start somewhere. It has to start with me. So baptism was that for me. And baptism was something over 50 years ago now. And it's the best decision I've ever made. So it's a revolutionary decision. And I love baptism by emotion because all of you goes in. And really, our credit cards should be in our back pocket when we're baptized symbolically. Our debit cards. So all of us, every part of us is committed to this new way of living. And then to be surrounded by loving brothers and sisters that help keep you in the way is really important. So this is what's happening here. And I want to say something really important, I think. There's a hole in every human soul that only the Holy Spirit can fill. And baptism confirmation is about beginning that process of filling the hole in our soul that only God can satisfy. And if that's satisfied, we don't need material things nearly as much. We need relationships.
(31:49-32:59) Patrick Mason: Right, that's what we'll see in this story, what we see in Acts. As you said, this is kind of a mini Acts, especially Acts chapters 1, 2, 3, 4. And yeah, it does strike me that this is not a, it's it's not a kind of materialist socialist utopian project. We could see some overlaps with other social reformers throughout the years who wanna work on bettering social conditions and cultural conditions for us or bringing about peace. But as you said, this is a project that is focused on change from the inside out, but always with an emphasis on both. That it's both about transformed individuals and that is necessary but not sufficient because those transformed individuals will then go out in the world and transform the world. But it's not just a focus on material conditions absent of the condition of the human heart.
(33:01-33:18) Andrew Bolton: No, so and this is very Jewish. This is the incarnation and this is Latter-day Saintism at its very best. We're both spiritual and material, spirit and element inseparably connected, experience of fullness of joy.
(33:19-34:43) Patrick Mason: Yeah, yeah exactly. So we see in fourth Nephi these disciples who have been transformed, who have been converted, Of course, they've had this intimate and intense experience with Jesus. And the fruits of that baptism, of that conversion, that encounter with Jesus, now leads to a transformed life. And we see this in verse 2 and verse 13 and verse 15 and 16. And there's one phrase that keeps coming up over and over and over in these passages. It talks about how in verse 2, there were no contentions and disputations among them. Every man did deal justly one with another. In verse 13, there was no contention among all the people in the land. And as a result of that, there were many mighty miracles wrought. In verse 15 and 16, there were no envying, or strife, or tumults, or whoredoms, or lying, or murders, and there was no contention in the land. And it concludes there in verse 16, there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God. So walk us through that, Andrew, in terms of how that kind of conversion and transformed heart then leads to no contention and no violence. And is that, you know, and talk about that as a kind of necessary feature of Zion.
(34:44-37:03) Andrew Bolton: So I think there's a line in those passages that the love of God dwelt in the hearts of the people. So that's the hole in the soul being filled. So the first sermon that I ever heard by an apostle in Communion to Christ was very simple. It was that love releases the power to love. So when we're loved, we're really quite nice to other people. It releases the power to love in us, right? So this is what's happening here. So the love of God releases the power in converting people's souls to love others. So that's really what's going on, I think. And no ites. I think also, I think these early saints, were good at conflict resolution. I'm sure they had their tensions. but they were good at coming to agreement. They could sort things out. So let me confess my iteness. So I'm Northern English. So we looked down on the Southern English because they couldn't speak properly. And then the Welsh, Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief. Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef. And then we machine gunned Germans and Japanese people in our play. And then Americans, well, they're beyond the pale. So I made the gospel in Germany. I'm baptized by a Welshman who also marries Jewel and I. I marry an American of all people. I work in Japan for two years with Jewel, teaching English. And then some of these Southerners in the church were wonderful people. who, so the overcoming iteness is also my story. The overcoming of prejudice, of stereotyping, of narrow ethnocentricity is overcome because the love of God is working in our souls. And that's what's happening in this story.
(37:04-37:28) Jennifer Thomas: It's sort of a remarkable thing that again, Often I think it's just impossible for us to conceptualize unless we are willing to turn ourselves over to sort of a transcendent power that makes that change in our hearts, right? Where whether we ourselves can feel that love, then it allows us to feel that level of love for other people. I like very much the way you've linked that together.
(37:29-37:33) Andrew Bolton: And God's love comes to me through brothers and sisters.
(37:33-39:15) Patrick Mason: Yeah, and I think sometimes those of us who have lived all or most of our lives in church settings that have been good spiritual homes for us, and I think Latter-day Saints, both LDS and Community of Christ do this really well because of the emphasis on community. I think sometimes we underestimate or diminish how radical it is, what we're doing when we come together in these kinds of communities. So your illustration there, Andrew, is just so powerful in terms of the way that the church transcends and breaks down these national and ethnic divides among us. I remember I was in, when I lived in South Bend, Indiana, one of the new converts to the ward there, I was a graduate student, a doctoral student, you know, spending all my life, you know, thinking big thoughts and reading books and so forth. And one of the new converts in the church was a janitor at Notre Dame. And we occupied very different socials. I mean, I didn't have much money, but just in terms of status and prestige and reputation, right? We would have never encountered each other. And I remember my mom came and visited the ward once, and this brother went up to her and embraced her, having never met her, but through me and his friendship with me. And he says, isn't it amazing that in a church like this, that a janitor and a PhD student can be friends, right? And we forget the radicality of what the church does to break down these divisions and we see it here in 4th Nephi.
(39:16-39:25) Andrew Bolton: So somebody once said the church is a great leveler and it's a joyful process.
(39:25-39:26) Patrick Mason: Yeah.
(39:27-41:08) Jennifer Thomas: Let's talk a little bit about leveling and let's talk about the hard kind, which I think in a relentlessly materialistic and I think just increasingly greedy society, right, where that's the way we have been trained to make ourselves feel better is to accumulate wealth and accumulate things and to go out and And not only to kind of try to fill, I think, incorrectly the hole in our souls with that, but also use it as a mechanism to sort of set ourselves up against or above other people. I would love to spend a few minutes exploring the verse in 4th Nephi that talks about the fact that in Zion, these people had all things in common. So they had all things in common among them. Therefore, they were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free and partakers of the heavenly gift. One of the things that I find always so interesting in that scripture is that rich and poor and bond and free are connected. I think we tend to think of them as disparate things, but when we are honest with ourselves, the difference between bondage and freedom in our society has almost always been an economic proposition. It's been people trying to sort of put people into bondage so that they could extract economic resources from them. And I think that the Lord is reminding us in multiple ways that if we want to be a Zion society, we have to change how we think about our brothers and sisters in terms of economics, that we have to kind of reframe what we think about them. And I would love to hear your thoughts, Andrew, about that, about what it looks like to build a Zion society and how we can do that to push back against this the pressures that we see, we kind of get from the world around us to be just these relentlessly economic beings.
(41:10-43:02) Andrew Bolton: Yeah, so capitalism is as materialistic as communism. Both are bad for our souls and bad for the world. So that's the first thing to say. Again, I love the balance, the burning bush, Holy Spirit, and the call to holy justice. Moses lead my people to freedom. And Acts 2 is Holy Spirit coming in Pentecost and then by the end of the chapter people living all things in common. And Jesus begins his public ministry in Luke's Gospel, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor and liberate the oppressed and so on. So the two are inseparably connected in Judaism, in early Christianity and in Latter-day Saintism and here. It's beautiful. So where we become stewards, not owners, that's the first move. And latter day saintism, our revelations and doctrine and covenants that we have in common are glorious, are liberating. So the first step is to become a steward. And then I'm managing my resources for the blessing of everybody, not just my family, not just me. So it's that internal revolution again, becoming expressed in tangible, material ways. This is wonderful. Jesus is a socialist. I could cry over it.
(43:05-43:21) Patrick Mason: You know, when you make a statement like that, Jesus was a socialist, you know how that lands for most people listening in the 21st century, especially in the United States. Can you unpack that a little bit more?
(43:22-45:47) Andrew Bolton: Yeah, I'd be naughty. I know I shouldn't have sinned in this way. So, socialism in Britain is not a bad word. It is for some people, but I understand. I never used the word socialist in my 18 years of ministry in the community of Christ. Never used it once. I used always biblical arguments or restoration scripture arguments, but in this podcast we can perhaps be provocative. So let me tell you a story, a British story. It's said that British socialism owes more to Methodism than it does to Marxism. and the Secretary of the Labour Party in the 1950s said that just after we'd had the wonderful Attlee government and the creation of the British welfare state, the National Health Service, and so on. So it's nonconformists and radical left-wing Anglicans and also Catholics who get it that form this coalition of Christians that create British socialism, British sharing, and that's very different from the Marxist model, very different from European socialism, intensely different from the Soviet Union with its state dictatorship communism. This is about spiritual democratic socialism and all the non-conformist chapels had a democratic culture at the congregational level. You had this bedrock of civil society, we would call it now, that was democratic and understood the social gospel and understood the aspirations of working people and were about equipping people. They helped educate people. Methodists particularly had lay preachers. So people would learn to speak with confidence on Sunday and then argue for their rights as workers Monday to Saturday. It's delicious. It's wonderful. So this is the Jesus story as well. It's a spiritual socialism.
(45:50-47:13) Patrick Mason: Yeah. I'm thinking about, I don't know if you've read the book Dominion by the historian Tom Holland. He's British, but he tells the story. It's a rather thick book, but he was raised in the Church of England, became an atheist for much of his life, and then was a scholar of early Rome and Greece, and then decided to write this book on Christianity. And he concluded that it's actually rather remarkable, and he's done a lot of podcasts and speaking. and so forth to this effect. But he said that all of the kind of the things that we see as kind of cultural goods towards human equality and caring for the poor, caring for women, caring for the marginal and vulnerable, that we've enshrined oftentimes in secular regimes, especially in the modern West. But he said the roots of all of this are in the teachings of Jesus and the early Christian community that we are still living off of. Anytime we're talking about equality, anytime we're talking about caring for the least of these, for marginalized populations, all of that has a deep Christian root, which of course then is also rooted in the teachings of the biblical prophets as well. But I'm rather persuaded by this argument.
(47:14-47:49) Andrew Bolton: So it's love your neighbor as yourself. Yes. And in Matthew's gospel, when Jesus is asked what are the two greatest commandments, he quotes the Shema, love God with all your heart, mind, and strength. And he says the second one is like unto the first, love your neighbor as yourself. And why are the two related? Because humans are made in the image of God. When we honor a brother or sister, a neighbour, we're also worshipping God. So, that's it very simply, I think. You've summarised it well.
(47:50-49:34) Jennifer Thomas: Well, and I think we live in a material world, right? Where we have to find food and shelter and we need to work to earn that. But I really do believe in my heart that I think there are all sorts of people that would dismiss this as saying, again, these are just utopians talking. These are just people who want us to go to a crazy extreme. And I think I would argue that there are thousands of small steps and thousands of small choices that we as Christians take every day that can either bring us more into alignment with Christ's teachings, even within the systems as they're currently constituted, or can take us small steps away from Christ's teaching. And we have the opportunity as You know, when we are employers, we have that opportunity as caregivers, as politicians, there are all sorts of ways that we can make small decisions that bring our society better into alignment with these teachings, or we can choose not to. And so I guess I would just encourage our listeners, if you're feeling a little bit like, ah, I am not going as far as these three people are suggesting I should go, we would just encourage you to maybe go a few steps closer to ask yourself if you identify as a disciple or think about yourself as someone who believes in these teachings of Jesus. on any given daily basis without abandoning your bank accounts and walking away from your houses and becoming an ascetic that lives in the wilderness, what are the small steps that you can take to bring your life and your economics into better alignment with the, I think, the principles that are taught here? I think if we all did that within a very short period of time, our society would be quite significantly transformed.
(49:37-49:43) Patrick Mason: So Andrew, What goes wrong in 4th Nephi? How does it all fall apart?
(49:45-51:26) Andrew Bolton: So this is a really sad story. I think they After 200 years, I think it's the third generation have passed away. They're losing the story. They're losing contact with the intimate Jesus that the first generation had experienced. The description of the falling apart further illuminates what's been happening wonderfully. So they begin to have classes. There weren't classes before. They began to dress in fancy clothes and expensive clothes. They didn't do that before. Clothing was utilitarian and could have been pretty or handsome, whatever, but it wasn't a thing to divide people. So that's illustrative of equality breaking down, people wanting to get ahead, that's the sin. Coveting, coveting is the sin that's going on. And then you have violence is increasing against a persecuted minority faithful group of disciples. And what's really intriguing for me is it says they smite the people of Jesus, but the people of Jesus did not smite back. There's still a core group. They still are soaked in the Sermon on the Temple, the Sermon on the Mount, love your enemies, don't retaliate ethic. So that's really important and something to hold on to, I think.
(51:26-51:45) Jennifer Thomas: So Patrick and I have wrestled a lot with this, and I would love to hear your thoughts. Why do you think, when this is the apex of human civilization, why do you think that this description of Zion is so short, but the Book of Mormon spends so many pages chronicling the ways things went wrong?
(51:46-52:28) Andrew Bolton: So it's really interesting, I think, that we have this phenomenon. So I say two things. Fourth Nephi, the story of 200 years of peace is the climax, the apex of the narrative, right? And to make it so brief is shocking and increases the intensity of the experience in a literary way. So it's a brilliant move, I think. Because you stop, you're not exhausted by reading this story. You have to think about it.
(52:28-52:33) Patrick Mason: Nobody's ever said, I need to just skip forth Nephi. It's too long. Like they do with the war chapters, right?
(52:33-52:36) Jennifer Thomas: You're giving me too many details about these goody goody people.
(52:38-53:23) Andrew Bolton: So then there's something else that's really, really helpful. There's a book called Picture Imperfect, Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age by Russell Jacobi. Here's the book. So he talks about two kinds of utopia. He says there's blueprint utopia and there's iconoclastic utopia. So blueprint utopia, it's all laid out. It's a bit authoritarian, right? And he said that could lead to dystopia. Now he says, all utopian thought is redemptive. So he's not so hard on it. But blueprint utopian is over-managed, over-organized, too idealistic at the beginning, right?
(53:23-53:26) Jennifer Thomas: Takes agency out of it for the people who are actually participating.
(53:26-54:18) Andrew Bolton: Absolutely. And that was a problem with some of the utopian projects. And then iconoclastic is you just hold up a vision. And then the people have to work out the details. and it's rooted in the realities that they're coping with and the people are experts on their situation and they have to negotiate. It's working things out by common consent. You build community. So what we have here is not blueprint utopia. You have iconoclastic utopia, which is casting a wonderful, stimulating, challenging vision, but then we have to implement that together in all our humanity and all the difficulties of that.
(54:20-54:29) Jennifer Thomas: So, tell me how we make more people want that, Andrew. How do we help people? How do we stimulate a desire to do that work?
(54:30-57:38) Andrew Bolton: So, I have a theory that Zion's written in our DNA. For 95% of human history, we were egalitarian hunter bands. It was non-hierarchical. So our evolution has equipped us for this moment. We're just dealing with an aberration of the last few thousand years, the development of agriculture and the development of the city and pharaoh, pharaohs. So, Zion is in our bone marrow. It's in our DNA. And it's about enabling that to be uncovered and come to the fore in a human's life. And that's the spiritual journey. And it really helps to see practical examples of that. It's not just a theory, it's not just imagination. So you have the monastic tradition, 1600 years of doing this. Now I'm not very keen on celibacy, it's not for me, but I am inspired by their witness. And then the Hutterite community, Anabaptists this year are celebrating 500 years, the Hutterites are Anabaptists. And they're in the prairie provinces and prairie states. And there's 60,000 of them, 600 communities living all things in common. What a fantastic witness. You know, there's never been a murder amongst the Hutterites. They don't go to war. They look after everybody. They don't need the state. It's a very fine witness, although it's become ethnocentric, but they still don't murder their neighbors. So their witness is important. Jule and I lived in the Bruderhof, which is a 20th century Hutterite Anabaptist story that begins in Germany. We lived there for a year. First time I went to one of these Bruderhof communities, I thought, goodness, I've walked into fourth Nephi. Jewel and I lived in Harvest Hills in Independence, a Zionic, experimental Zionic community for 20 years. So we know all about the rough and tumble and difficulties of living this, but also the huge satisfaction, especially with the children. A little story, Jewel would give out cookies to any child that knocked. And all the houses face the green, right, our front doors. And so it's really clearly supervised by 60 eyes, right? So Jewel was known as the cookie lady. And I was known as the cookie lady's husband. So it's a simple thing, but it brought us into relationship, right? It's good for kids.
(57:39-57:52) Patrick Mason: Yeah. That's phenomenal. As you were, and I love all of those concrete, real examples. Those things actually exist in the world. It's not just words on a page.
(57:53-57:57) Andrew Bolton: Historically, there's Audeville, there's Kirtland.
(57:58-58:49) Patrick Mason: Yeah. Yeah, it's in our own history if we'll look for it and be inspired by it. I love your answer about why 4th Nephi is so short. It makes me think of Joseph Smith when he was sketching out the plat of the city of Zion. It was literally just on one page, right? It was not a several hundred page document, you know, a blueprint document. It was literally just sketches and some words around the edges and so forth. And that is like, here's the idea for what Zion can look like. And for me, the implicit message there, maybe the explicit message is, Now you go and build it. You fill in those blanks. You figure out what it actually means to do it. And so maybe that's exactly what Fourth Nephi is.
(58:51-58:56) Andrew Bolton: Yeah. Jacobi was a discovery last year for me.
(58:56-59:37) Patrick Mason: Yeah. Well, as we come to an end of this conversation, Andrew, and this has been so inspiring and enlightening. Thank you. What tangible, concrete, practical steps could our listeners take in this direction? If they're not quite ready to go join a Hutterite community, what would it look like in concrete ways for a person to take that first or second step towards the ideal of Zion as we see illuminated in 4th Nephi?
(59:38-01:02:11) Andrew Bolton: I think going to church is really important and congregational life is really important, so do that. I think it's really simple that if you love your neighbor as yourself and you measure everything by that, that brings treating of immigrants into perspective. It brings racism into perspective. It brings wealth and poverty into perspective. So it's very simple. Love your neighbor as yourself. And you can do that informally. You can use your bishop if you're LDS. This is a donation to help this family. And they don't know it's you giving it to them. So when you meet, they're not beholden to you. So there's secrets in Zion that dignify. So you don't have people beholden to one another. There's equality. So I think that's the beginning. And then I think to care about how you vote, to care about how your tax dollars are spent. according to love your neighbor as yourself is really, really important. The plans for the National Health Service were seen by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1944, and his name escapes me, at William Temple. And he said, this is the most Christian thing this nation has ever done. So to implement love your neighbor as yourself and through government policies is a deeply Christian thing. So that's the big picture. Begin locally, begin with your neighborhood, begin with your congregation, begin with people that you're meeting with, and then think also about the bigger picture. And then the other thing I would say is I found that it only takes two people to disturb the whole world. When you're with a partner, Jesus sent out the first 17 pairs. Mormon missionaries go in pairs. You're much stronger with two and two people can start the process of creating Zion.
(01:02:12-01:02:23) Patrick Mason: If only there were an organization of say Mormon women who are committed to bringing these principles into government. I don't know, Jen, you have any ideas?
(01:02:23-01:02:26) Jennifer Thomas: That's a good idea. It's a good idea. Somebody should start one of those.
(01:02:28-01:02:34) Andrew Bolton: I want to say I've only just met your organization, but it's a splendid organization.
(01:02:35-01:02:58) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you, Andrew. It's splendid women. They are splendid, amazing souls that are doing, I think, exactly what you've suggested to the best of their ability and across the ideological spectrum, trying to do their best to make sure that their civic engagement aligns with with their deepest held beliefs. And it's beautiful to see how that manifests itself.
(01:02:59-01:03:02) Andrew Bolton: So your organization is a Zion organization.
(01:03:02-01:03:39) Jennifer Thomas: We're trying. We always talk about how one of our main objectives is to build the beloved community. So yeah, we're working on it. So I think we'd love to close with one question, acknowledging that we've just talked about some lofty goals and ideals. You started out with one of the most beautiful definitions of peace, which is Zion, right? How in this world of conflict and violence and confusion How do you find peace? How do you, since we don't exist in Zion, how are you finding peace in your life today?
(01:03:40-01:04:37) Andrew Bolton: I find peace at the communion table, Lord's Supper. I find peace, we have a week-long camp every year called Reunion. It developed in the 1880s from us dropping one of the general conferences. You meet April, October, we drop the October one. So that week long experiences and experiences Zion. We have worship, we have classes, it's almost monastic, except we have kids everywhere disrupting that wonderfully. And there's time for relationships, for conversations. So that's a big peace week. And then there's peace in conflict. So pursuing the cause of Zion causes so much conflict, but is so deeply peaceful at the same time.
(01:04:38-01:04:54) Patrick Mason: That's fantastic. Thank you, Andrew. What a gift. Thank you for all that you've shared with us today and with our listeners for helping us read these familiar texts in new ways and think more deeply about what it means for each of us to build Zion. Thank you for being here.
(01:04:54-01:04:59) Andrew Bolton: It's been a real joy meeting both of you, being with both of you. Thank you.
(01:05:02-01:05:21) Patrick Mason: Thanks everybody for listening today. We really appreciate it. We just want to invite you to subscribe to the podcast and also to rate and review it. We love hearing feedback from listeners, so please email us at podcast at mweg.org. We also want to invite you to think about ways that you can make peace in your life this week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.
(01:05:26-01:05:42) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you for listening to Proclaim Peace, a proud member of the Faith Matters Podcast Network. Faith Matters holds expansive conversations about the restored gospel to accompany individuals on their journey of faith. You can learn more about Faith Matters and check out our other shows at faithmatters.org.