I was listening to the audiobook The Fourth Gospel by John Spong, and he says the following (transcribed from the audiobook):
… exiled Jews were determined to return to their home someday and that desire forced them to separate themselves radically from non-Jews in overtly distinguishing ways. This is what caused them to adopt such practices as strict Sabbath day observances, kosher dietary laws, and mandated circumcision … in time when these exiles were allowed to return to their Homeland they saw themselves as quite distinct from and superior to those who remained in their conquered land, whose bloodlines were now suspect and whose religious practices were assumed to be corrupt. The term Samaritan was then applied to this group of people … the hostility between the returning Jews and the "half breeds" who populated their former Homeland was palpable. All of these feelings are captured in this Johanna episode when the Samaritan woman responds to Jesus request for a drink of water at the well of Jacob. … the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is a deep theological conversation about human boundaries and what role Jesus would play in the world of human tensions. To the woman's hostile question as to why he, a Jew, would ask her (a Samaritan) for water, Jesus responds with a new invitation. He offers her living water, a synonym for the spirit that binds human life together. The woman, not yet understanding the dialogue, notes that he has nothing in which to draw water from the well … she asks him the key question, "Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us this well?" Note the use of the pronoun … is identifying herself with the ancient covenant made with the patriarchs. …. Jesus responds … by lifting the conversation beyond this ancient division. Jacob's well provides water that sustains life but only momentarily. Those who quench their thirst with the waters from Jacob's well will thirst again he says. Jesus is offering a kind of water that causes people to become so whole they will never again know thirst ...
… people forget that this woman is a mythological symbol of Samaria …. This is a symbolic conversation about how the unfaithful region of Samaria can be incorporated into the new understanding of Christianity that Jesus is believed to present. It's about how ancient religious divisions in the human family can be overcome in the new human consciousness that Jesus comes to bring. … she is asking one she identifies as a prophet [Jesus] to settle the dispute as to whether true worship is to be identified with Mount garazime in Samaria or with the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus asserts that God is beyond that … Jesus asserts that God is beyond that sort of human limit. God is spirit, unbounded and all permeating spirit, and those who worship this God must do so in spirit and in truth. Salvation comes from the Jews he asserts but he then immediately transcends the Jewish limits to embrace all people including those who are the deepest objects of Jewish scorn, the Samaritans. … Jesus is proclaiming that even those considered worthy of rejection by the Jews, are to be included in the realm of God to which Jesus is the opening.
Compare this to the Spirit in the Book of Mormon ultimately seeking to build Zion through one shared and simple Doctrine of Christ; and avoiding all manner of "ites." From this perspective, Smith and Rigdon provided additional Scriptures that have the capacity of uniting all Smith-Rigdon Restorationists as one Vine. If there is one Spirit and one Vine, it would not matter where a restorationist saint met, whether in the Reorganized LDS Church Temple in Missouri, or the Salt Lake Temple, etc. The same Book of Mormon Spirit would be manifest in both places.
The next day I was listening to Gospel Tangents episode 712 (breaking down restoration walls), and at the 5-8 minute, Patrick McKay says he started visiting with other Smith-Rigdon Restorationists outside his own restorationist branch, and he began to realize that they shared a common spiritual ground. He started to think about Jesus going to the Samaritans (just as Spong discussed above), and he thought about how Jesus seeking to unite Jew and Samaritan, might be a call for him to go to other Smith-Rigdon branches outside his own branch and to attempt to unite everyone (all the restoration branches) as one spiritual body.
At the 15 to 18 minute mark he discusses my own belief that the restorationist branches are ultimately interconnected to the True Vine; and when you get past the bureaucracy and institutional successional claims of authority, it is the same Ecclesia manifested in different styles and varieties.
He further explains at the 24 minute that the Doctrine of Christ in the Book of Mormon is simple and shared by all the restoration branches; and in the Book of Mormon there are only two Churches or Ecclesias, the Ecclesia (or congregations/gatherings) of Christ and the congregations of the contentious and devilish. From this perspective, all the Smith-Rigdon Restorationist sects are congregations of Christ. They may have different names and ways of interpreting the use of Temples today, etc., but they all believe in the same Book of Mormon Spirit and the same Doctrine of Christ.
