Church of Christ (Hancock)

Church of Christ
Location of the former "basement church" belonging to the Church of Christ; now occupied by a Restoration Branch.
Classification	Latter Day Saint movement
Orientation	Latter Day Saints
Polity	Defunct
Moderator	Defunct as of 1984
Region	United States
Founder	Pauline Hancock
Origin	1946 Independence, Missouri
Separated from	Church of Christ (Temple Lot)
Congregations	none
Members	none; defunct

The Church of Christ, informally referred to as the Church of Christ (Hancock), the Basement Church, the Church of Christ (Lukeite) and the Church of Christ (Bible and Book of Mormon Teaching), was a sect of the Latter Day Saint movement founded in Independence, Missouri in 1946 by Pauline Hancock.^[1] This church, which became defunct in 1984, bears the distinction of being the first Latter Day Saint sect to be founded by a woman. Among its members were Jerald and Sandra Tanner, who later became well-known opponents of the Latter Day Saint movement with their "Utah Lighthouse Ministry".

Pauline Hancock

Pauline Hancock, founder of the Church of Christ.

Pauline Hancock was a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now called the Community of Christ), whose father had been a minister of that denomination in Salt Lake City, Utah. During the Supreme Directional Control controversy of the 1920s, she opposed President Frederick M. Smith's attempt to take "supreme directional control" over the RLDS church; she later transferred her membership to the Church of Christ (Temple Lot). In 1935, following the excommunication of her friend Apostle Samuel Wood of the Temple Lot church (who was expelled for believing in a modalistic view of the Godhead, a view Hancock supported), Hancock resigned from that organization.

Founding a church

Hancock later claimed to have had a vision in which God told her to "go and teach others." She founded her own organization to propagate her teachings and visions, which included one of Jesus being crucified that led her to believe she had become "a new creature". Hancock's organization rejected the Doctrine and Covenants of their parent church, as well as the Pearl of Great Price used by the LDS Church, retaining only the King James Bible and the Book of Mormon. She adopted a modalistic view of God, insisting that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were merely manifestation of the same, one God. The organization bought property in Independence and built a basement sanctuary that became locally known as the "basement church" because most of it was underground.

Arrival of the Tanners and demise

In later years, after Jerald and Sandra Tanner joined her organization, Hancock's church established a second branch in Salt Lake City, Utah. Though Hancock remained a devoted believer in the Book of Mormon to the end of her life, her church began increasingly to question that book following her death, and ultimately made a decision to reject it in 1973. The church continued to function for a time strictly as a Protestant denomination, but later chose to dissolve itself in 1984, after which its members mostly joined with various Evangelical Protestant churches. Hancock's "basement church" was used by a Protestant church for a time, but was later sold to a local Restoration Branch, which constructed an above-ground sanctuary atop the old structure.

Notes

↑ Shields, Steven (1990), Divergent Paths of the Restoration (Fourth ed.), Independence, Missouri: Restoration Research, pp. 152–155, ISBN 0-942284-00-3

References

Sects in the Latter Day Saint movement

Hedrickite sects

Church of Christ
Organized by: Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith's original
organization; multiple sects currently
claim to be true successor 1863 Church of Christ
(Temple Lot)
Organized by: Granville Hedrick
7,310 members

1851 1850s
^{[note 1]} 1929 1932
^{[note 2]} 1946

Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter Day Saints
(Gladdenite)
Organized by: Gladden Bishop
Defunct, Dissolved after
Bishop's death in 1865 1864
Dissolved Church of Christ
(Fettingite)
Organized by: Otto Fetting
Sect divided into various factions Church of Christ
at Halley's Bluff
Organized by: Thomas B. Nerren
and E. E. Long
less than 100 members Church of Christ
(Hancock)
Organized by: Pauline Hancock
Defunct as of 1984

ca. 1937 1943 1965 2004 1972
^{[note 3]}

Church of Christ (Restored)
Organized by: A. C. DeWolf
approx. 450 members Church of Christ
with the Elijah Message
Organized by: Otto Fetting and
William Draves
approx. 12,500 members Church of Christ
(Leighton-Floyd/Burt)
Organized by: Howard Leighton-Floyd
and H. H. Burt
approx. 35 members The Church of Christ with
the Elijah Message, The Assured
Way of the Lord, Inc.
Organized by:Leonard Draves Church of Israel
Organized by:Dan Gayman

↑ While not considered a predecessor to the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), in the 1850s, many of the followers of Gladden Bishop, also known as Gladdenites, abandoned him and joined the movement that would later become the Church of Christ (Temple Lot).
↑ While not considered a schism of the Church of Christ (Fettingite) and its founder Otto Fetting, the Church of Christ at Halley's Bluff accepted Fetting's revelations, but it did not immediately break with the Fettingites in 1929. Nerren and Long instead formed a separate sect in 1932, which was later joined by five other former Temple Lot congregations by 1941.
↑ While this sect broke from Church of Christ at Halley's Bluff Name, few Latter Day Saint beliefs or practices remain and it is now considered a Christian Identity church, as opposed to a Latter Day Saint sect.

Latter Day Saint movement

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