Your (14.) largely resolved my issues with the post–most everything after that was just responding to other comments, not the post.

I believe that there are only 15 people who are able interpret the scriptures and declare doctrine in any kind of meaningful or binding way in our Church.

From the perspective of the individual member, your statement indicates to me that the authority of the leaders in the LDS Church takes primacy over that of the scriptures, since the leaders enjoy the sole right to interpret and reinterpret scripture for the church. That belief would be utterly alien to the Strangites, whose religion authorizes and even demands that individual members challenge the leadership’s interpretations of scripture. Mike’s example illustrates how this idea plays out for individual members. The teacher he mentioned went on to admonish the then-current Presiding High Priest of the Strangite Church for what she saw as failures of his leadership. Her arguments may well have contributed to the course change that soon followed, and she remains in full standing in her priesthood and membership today.

Since I still haven’t been entirely sure about the distinction you’re trying to make, I’ll speculate that you may be suggesting that in either scenario, the churches as whole have to have some mechanism to decide among competing interpretations of scripture. In the Strangites’ case, the mechanism is the General Conference, which has the capacity to pass resolutions for the church, to silence priesthood, and to remove or replace presiding officers, including the Presiding High Priest of the church.

“Functionally,” therefore, you could argue that the Strangite General Conference provides the same filter separating the individual member from the authority of the scriptures, which the fifteen apostles provide in the LDS Church. However, the fact that the individual Strangite member is a full, co-equal participant in the General Conference, while all but fifteen members of the LDS Church do not share in apostolic authority, detracts somewhat from that argument.

I agree that comparing individual believers in a small organization to individual believers in a large one is complicated. However, both philosophies and systems of church government are potentially scalable. Fifteen men could rule an organization of 300; their connection to individual members would simply be more personal and direct. Likewise, individual members in a large church could still publish their scriptural interpretations and arguments widely, and then pass resolutions in General Conference, which (like the Community of Christ) would likely need to be composed of representatives, elected by the various branches or Stakes of the church.

Now I’ve seen everything!! Quick, m&m, get a screen capture of this thread! ;-)