Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite)
denomination of the Latter Day Saint movement headquartered in Independence, Missouri, United States
The Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite) is a denomination of the Latter Day Saint movement headquartered in Independence, Missouri, United States. The church derives its epithet from its founder, Alpheus Cutler, a member of the Nauvoo High Council and of Joseph Smith's Council of Fifty. Cutler justified his establishment of an independent church organization by asserting that God had "rejected" Smith's organization—but not his priesthood—following Smith's death, but that Smith had named Cutler to a singular "Quorum of Seven" in anticipation of this event, with a unique prerogative to reorganize the church that no one beyond this group possessed. Hence, Cutler's organization claims to be the only legitimate Latter Day Saint church in the world today. Currently, it has only one branch, located in Independence. The Cutlerite church retains an endowment ceremony believed to date to the Nauvoo period, practices the United Order of Enoch, and accepts baptism for the dead, but not eternal marriage or polygamy.
History
Alpheus Cutler
Alpheus Cutler was a Latter Day Saint leader and contemporary of Joseph Smith who converted to Smith's Church of Christ in January 1833, being baptized in western New York by David W. Patten. Cutler attended Smith's School of the Prophets in Kirtland, Ohio, and assisted in the construction of the Kirtland Temple there. In 1838, during the dedication of cornerstones for the (never-built) Far West Temple, Cutler was named by Smith as "chief architect and master workman of all God's holy houses". Cutler was later appointed a member of the Nauvoo Temple construction committee, after enduring the expulsion of the Latter Day Saints from Missouri.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite)” is denomination of the Latter Day Saint movement headquartered in Independence, Missouri, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Church, Jesus and Christ, not as a finished interpretation.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1742590. VIAF identifies the subject as 157134815. The Library of Congress control number is n82165651. Authority coordinates are 39.084, -94.427. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1833 and 1838.
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This entry incorporates text from “Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.