Bingowings said:
The Community Of Christ seemed to be moving away from traditional attitudes towards the the role of women in their church and acceptance of whales.
They also began to try to rebuild bridges with the other LDS churches.
Do you have any idea what happened to reverse some of those changes?
Sorry, nearly forgot to answer this question. The Community of Christ is the second largest branch of the LDS movement, currently with around 250,000 members (as opposed to 14 million in the primary group to which I belong). It once had about 350,000, but lost great deal of it's membership around the turn of the millennium. They have been drifting more an more liberal in their teachings for some years now. In the 80s they allowed women to have the priesthood and began constructing their first real temple they could call their own, a building of unique design quite different in function from an LDS temple. The location for this building was not quite in the correct spot either (too lazy to find a link, look up temple lot in Wikipedia, and if necessary, Church of Christ Temple Lot), which resulted in membership loss. They have further changed their name (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), do not accept the Book of Mormon as true historically speaking, altered their definition for the passing of church leadership (used to be a direct descendant of Joseph Smith, but no longer), and accept a more traditional understanding of the Trinity.
There was a great deal of animosity between both churches in the early years, and Joseph Smith's son, Joseph Smith, III actually pressed heavily for the legislation currently in place that illegalized plural marriage and contributed to the discontinuation of this policy in my church.
They are essentially a Protestant church in most regards, though an outgrowth of the LDS movement. They are now focused on community building (hence the new name).
This is all from memory, and I was not aware of any reversal. I can take a look, but I will tell you that a sizeable portion (much of that missing 100,000) still claim loyalty to the Reorganized Church as opposed to the Community of Christ and its liberalization. Perhaps you refer to those so-called "Restoration Branches." Or perhaps the pressure from the conservatives in the whole Reorganized line has actually started a different trend in their main organization. I'll look into it.