Church
Restoration theology presents the church less as a building and more as a covenant community: believers take upon themselves the name of Christ and pledge to do His will.
In 1526, William Tyndale published the first English New Testament translated from the Greek in which he rendered ekklēsia as “congregation.” Thomas More, defending the traditional wording, argued for “church.” Tyndale wanted the word to describe a gathering of believers united in faith. Thomas More wanted it to name the continuous body that had carried that faith across centuries. Both senses have persisted in Christian usage, and the Restoration holds them together.
The word “assembly” in antiquity described civic gatherings. Acts 19 portrays a city crowd in Ephesus pressing a public issue at a formal town meeting.
A church is essentially a body of believers who have taken upon them the name of Christ and bound themselves through covenant to follow Him.
The word “church” and its Greek equivalent have different etymological roots. Church descends through Old English cirice from the Greek kyriakon, “belonging to the Lord,” a term early Christians applied to the house where they met. Ekklēsia joins ek, “out of,” with kaleō, “to call,” and names an assembly summoned for a purpose. The word was civic before it was religious. Acts 19:32–41 uses it for the town assembly of Ephesus.
Hebrew and Greek Origins
The translators of the Septuagint used ekklēsia most often for the Hebrew qahal, the assembly of Israel. Deuteronomy recalls “the day of the assembly” at Horeb, when the people gathered to hear the voice of God (Deuteronomy 9:10; 10:4; 18:16). Stephen calls that gathering “the church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38).
A second Hebrew term, ʿedah, usually rendered “congregation” in the King James Version, describes Israel as a community bound by shared obligation (Exodus 12:3). Ekklēsia stresses the call that draws people out of one life. Qahal stresses the gathering into another. Latter-day Saint readers will recognize both movements in the pattern of the covenant people, from Sinai to the Waters of Mormon.
Church in Restoration Theology
Restoration theology defines the church first by its members. “Whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me, the same is my church,” the Lord tells Joseph Smith (D&C 10:67). At the Waters of Mormon, Alma’s followers covenant “to bear one another’s burdens” and “to mourn with those that mourn,” and they are “called the church of God, or the church of Christ” (Mosiah 18:8–9, 17). The resurrected Christ tells the Nephites that his church must bear his name and be built upon his gospel (3 Nephi 27:8). Moroni records that members “did meet together oft” to fast, pray, and speak with one another about the welfare of their souls (Moroni 6:5).
Organized on April 6, 1830, and modeled after the Primitive Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints exists for the perfecting of the saints, building toward the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
Organization follows from that covenant life. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized on April 6, 1830 (D&C 20), patterned after "the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church" (Articles of Faith 1:6). Doctrine and Covenants also refers to it as "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth" (D&C 1:30). That institutional claim stands beside the broader definition of section 10, which warns that whoever "declareth more or less than this… is not of my church" (D&C 10:68). The Restoration movement also produced other churches, among them Community of Christ, and Mormon Transhumanism draws on that wider tradition.
Paul describes both the purpose of organization and its form. Apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers are given "for the perfecting of the saints… till we all come… unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11–13). The members form one body, in which "the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee" (1 Corinthians 12:21).
A Transhumanist Interpretation of Church
Mormon Transhumanists read Ephesians 4 as the description of a process. Mormon transhumanists regard religion as a powerful social technology that, like any technology, carries both risks and opportunities. On this view, a church is a means of organizing human cooperation toward theosis, and its value depends on how well it serves that end.
Carl Youngblood locates grace in the same community. He writes that Christ’s grace flows to us “from his body, or the divine community,” composed of all who have followed the path of the Messiah. In “Algorithmic Advent”, he describes heaven as a community of highly advanced beings who remain subject to natural law. Read together, these place the local congregation and the Church of the Firstborn on a single continuum.
Research on collective intelligence offers a secular parallel. A study led by Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone at MIT found that group performance depended less on the intelligence of individual members than on their social sensitivity and equal share of conversation. A revelation given in 1832–33 prescribes a similar model for the School of the Prophets: “let not all be spokesmen at once; but let one speak at a time and let all listen unto his sayings, that when all have spoken that all may be edified of all” (D&C 88:122).
Conclusion
Tyndale’s “congregation” and More’s “church” each preserve part of what the Restoration keeps together: a people who come to Christ (D&C 10:67) and a body organized to perfect them (D&C 20; Ephesians 4:12). Paul sets the horizon of that work “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God” (Ephesians 4:13). For Mormon Transhumanists, that horizon is a society of perfected beings, and the church is the place where that society begins to take shape.