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A Small Church's Century Long Paper Trail

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A Small Church's Century Long Paper Trail

The Church of Christ (Temple Lot) has never been a large denomination, and it has never had a film made about it, or a novel, or a television documentary of its own. A search of the obvious places turns up nothing of the kind, which is worth saying plainly rather than papering over: this is a small church whose public footprint is a nineteenth century property lawsuit and its own doctrinal history, not a cultural presence.

What it does have, and has had for a very long time, is a paper of its own. Zion's Advocate is produced by a standing committee inside the church and has been published, by the church's own account, for more than a century. An academic paper on the church's decades long effort to build a temple on its own Independence, Missouri lot describes Zion's Advocate as nothing less than the primary record of that whole campaign: conference votes, financial reports, and, when architectural drawings were finally in hand, a special "Temple Number" issue announcing the project to the church's own readers.

That the paper is still being cited today, including as Wikipedia's own source for the church's current membership count, says something about small religious institutions that a film or a novel never could. A congregation this size does not attract outside storytellers. It keeps its own record instead, in its own words, issue after issue, for a hundred years and counting.

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Sources
Church of Christ (Temple Lot), Official Site
Church of Christ (Temple Lot), Church of Christ (Temple Lot)View the Source
The Church of Christ (Temple Lot) and Their Quest to Build a Temple in Zion (CESNUR)
Addams (CESNUR conference paper), CESNUR (Center for Studies on New Religions)View the Source
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