Saturday, June 11, 2011

The "Mormon Moment"

You may or may not have been following the lame-stream media's (ha ha) coverage of Mormons lately. It's been interesting. I enjoyed some of the articles, others not so much. Now that Mitt is official, Mormonism is the big "could destroy his chances" issue. Not, say, healthcare or the economy...

Here are a few of the articles I've read--let me know if I'm missing any:


And then there's this one which really irritated me: A Vote for Romney Is a Vote for the LDS Church

It drew many responses, from all sorts of different people, and several of them were not LDS I'd point out:
Evangelicals can (and should) support Mitt Romney
LDS Spokesman's response: Evangelicals, Mormons and the beliefs of the president
Mormons & Romney Presidency “Dangerous” According to Evangelical Author: A Conversation with Warren Smith

And there's also this interview with the original author, which is very interesting too (Incidentally, he keeps talking about how "dangerous" Mormon beliefs are, but he doesn't give a single reason why...). This particular article really irritated me for one reason: the author says Mormons aren't Christians. And he clarifies that point in his follow-up interview above, but I still disagree with him. I am fully aware of the fact that the LDS church does not have all of the same beliefs as other Christian churches (Much like other Christian churches differ in their beliefs too...). For example, we do not understand God or the Trinity in the same way as established by the Nicene creed. Specifically, we envision God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as being three separate and distinct beings acting for one purpose, that God is the father of all our souls and that Jesus Christ is His Son, which logically makes him our brother. We also believe that God has a physical body, although an exalted one and perfect one, and that Jesus Christ also has a physical, resurrected body. "Normal" Christians believe that all three are three beings acting as one but that they are spirits and do not have distinct bodies.

That's all well and good, but... first of all, if we want to talk about true and pure Christianity, I'd like to point out that the Nicene creed not only happened several hundred years after Christ's life, but it was also revised several times. And evangelicals, for example, criticize our principle of continued revelation (the idea that we still receive revelation from God today, both personally and through His living prophet) but if they think "mainstream" Christianity hasn't changed in 2000 years... eh, I won't go down that road.

Perhaps we do not define Christianity in the same way... Because I thought being a Christian meant striving to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Things like Compassion, SacrificeCharity, and a pursuit of the divine... I thought that my true test as a Christian is not what I am called but what I do. And above all, I imagine that you can call a Christian someone who understands that salvation is only possible because of God's plan for us, that salvation comes through Jesus Christ.

A person who believes that must be a disciple of Christ. Can we not agree on that?

3 comments:

  1. "For example, we do not understand God or the Trinity in the same way as established by the Nicene creed." Well, technically, neither do they. The Nicene Creed, in a nutshell, says, "We don't know anything about God at all, but we stand as the world authorities of that lack of knowledge."

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  2. Do I have your permission to re-post this blog post with full credit to you?

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  3. Sure Sarah! As long as you link to the post that's fine with me :)

    And Gray Knight... A very good point.

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