Overview
The city of Independence, Missouri became important to the Latter Day Saint movement starting in the autumn of 1830, only a few months after the religion was incorporated in the State of New York in April 1830. The movement's founder, Joseph Smith, had received revelations designating this city as the "Center Place" of "Zion", and many early adherents apparently believed that the Garden of Eden had been located there—including later LDS leaders Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, who claimed to have been told this by Joseph Smith. Alexander Majors, who was a sixteen-year-old resident of Independence in 1831, wrote in his memoirs:
| “ | Nothing of very great note occurred in the county of Jackson, after the cyclone of 1826, until the year 1830, when five Mormon elders made their appearance in the county and commenced preaching, stating to their audiences that they were chosen by the priesthood which had been organized by the prophet Joseph Smith...They selected a place near Independence, Jackson County, Mo., in the early part of the year 1831 which they named Temple Lot, a beautiful spot of ground on a high eminence. They there stuck down their Jacob's staff, as they called it, and said: "This spot is the center of the earth. This is the place where the Garden of Eden, in which Adam and Eve resided, was located, and we are sent here according to the directions of the angel that appeared to our prophet, Joseph Smith, and told him this is the spot of ground on which the New Jerusalem is to be built, and, when finished, Christ Jesus is to make his reappearance and dwell in this city of New Jerusalem with the saints for a thousand years, at the end of which time there will be a new deal with reference to the nations of the earth, and the final wind-up of the career of the human family." | ” |
However since Smith never issued an official revelation to the effect that Independence and the Temple Lot were the site of the Garden of Eden, Latter Day Saints (other than some adherents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) traditionally do not formally accept this claim as doctrine. While Smith later issued a revelation indicating a spot named Adam-ondi-Ahman (fifty miles to the north of Independence) as the place Adam and Eve went to after being expelled from the Garden, he never officially confirmed or denied the idea that Independence had been the location of Eden itself.
Although Smith had designated the Temple Lot site as the heart of his new City of Zion, the Latter Day Saints were expelled from Jackson County (late 1833) and later from Missouri (early 1839) before a temple could be constructed. Ownership of the property later became the subject of court challenges among some sects of the Latter Day Saint movement that arose from the succession crisis following Smith's assassination, most notably between the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) and the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In 1891 the Reorganized Church, founded by Smith's son Joseph Smith III, sued in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri to take possession of the property. It won in lower court, but lost in the United States Court of Appeals. The United States Supreme Court refused to review the case.
The Temple Lot is currently owned by the small Church of Christ (Temple Lot), which acquired the land in 1867. This organization made a failed effort in 1929 to build a temple of its own on the property, which represents to date the only attempt to erect such a structure since the time of Joseph Smith. Currently this body has its headquarters on the site, which has twice been damaged by arson attacks. The Temple Lot church has insisted since about 1976 (when final attempts at conciliation by the RLDS took place) that it will not cooperate with other Latter Day Saint or Christian denominations in building a temple, nor will it sell the Lot, regardless of any price that might conceivably be offered. Some members of other Latter Day Saint groups have described the Temple Lot church as "'squatters' on the location," but that organization steadfastly defends its right to possess the property as its physical and spiritual "custodian".
The Community of Christ, the second-largest church within the modern Latter Day Saint movement, now owns the bulk of the original 63 acre (26 ha) property around the Temple Lot, often referred to as the greater Temple Lot. This land had been purchased in the 1830s by Latter Day Saint bishop Edward Partridge to be the central common and sacred area according to the Plat of Zion. It maintains its world headquarters in this area, opening its Auditorium to the south of the Lot in 1958, while in 1994 it dedicated its Independence Temple just to the east.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) operates an interpretive visitor center one block east and south of the Temple Lot. It also maintains a Stake Center, LDS Social Services center, and mission headquarters on its portion of the greater Temple Lot.
Read more about this topic: Temple Lot