Mainline Christianity
In Christianity, the School of the Prophets (SOPs) is a movement that with personal and political conviction seeks to enact the theology of Radical Discipleship. As such its purpose is to set in motion gatherings of theological reflection and church renewal as experiments in Christian faithfulness.
It stands in the tradition of radical Christian movements both past and present; believer's gatherings like the House of the New World (Australia), Bartimaeus Community and Sojourners (North America), and resistance traditions akin to the Confessing Church's underground seminary in Nazi Germany, and the Base Communities animated by third world liberation theology - and more recently the School of Discipleship in Canberra, Australia.
Confessionally oriented, the School of the Prophets is an interdenominational grouping of people given to moving beyond the conundrums of liberalism and fundamentalism to a mainline Trinitarian theology. That is, to a passionate following of Jesus that seeks to be faithful to the biblical witness and the redeeming activity of God present in the risen and crucified One [1]
Latter Day Saints
In Mormonism, the School of the Prophets (also called the "school of the elders" or "school for the Prophets") was a select group of early Latter Day Saint leaders who began meeting on January 23, 1833 in Kirtland, Ohio under the direction of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. for both theological and secular learning. The first meeting of the school was held at the home-based store owned by Newel K. Whitney. The school provided a setting for spiritual experiences and in-depth discussions of gospel principles. A series of seven lectures presented at the school were published as Lectures on Faith, which for a time were considered canonical by Latter Day Saints. Another branch of this school existed under the direction of Parley P. Pratt in Independence, Missouri for a short while.
Brigham Young began several schools of the Prophets during his tenure as church president, beginning in 1868 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and spreading to Provo, Logan, Brigham City, Spanish Fork, Nephi, Ephraim, American Fork, and Ogden. His successor, John Taylor, also organized such schools in Salt Lake City and St. George in 1883.
The name has been used by others who had been in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In 1979 Robert C. Crossfield (whose revelations claim is a latter-day Elias) received instructions in Section 39 of The Second Book of Commandments to establish again the School of the Prophets independent of the church. This was accomplished in 1981. This group holds that the LDS Church will be set in order by the "One Like unto Moses" who is yet to come forth as prophesied in D&C 103:15-18.
References
- ^ ISchool of the Prophets website: http://www.schooloftheprophets.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=53
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