DiscussMormonism.com

Hello everyone, I just discovered this board a few days ago, and I find the things that are discussed here to be quite interesting, particularly at this time in my life when I'm going through what I suppose you would call a faith shift, or maybe an awakening; I'm not really sure yet.

I joined in the hopes that I would be able to bounce certain subjects off of the posters here in order to gain a different viewpoint than the one I am receiving from the other boards that I frequent, mostly due to the fact that I am having a hard time comprehending what some of the posters at the more loyal LDS boards are talking about on sometimes. I'm not sure if it's because I'm too old for this new age LDSism, but I just don't get why Latter-day Saints are so adamant about being regarded as traditional Christians. On a forum that I participate in often, I've recently been asked to provide links to my opinions on why I do not consider LDS Christianity to be the same as traditional Christianity. This request came through what you call a CFR. Even though I believe it should be evident that we are not part of orthodox Christianity, I can't get anyone on pro-LDS message boards to agree with me on this point. In light of this, I was hoping that I could get some feedback from the members of this forum as to whether or not my understanding of the differences between traditional Christianity and LDS Christianity is accurate. Here is a post I posted this morning for a board that claims my perspective on Christianity shifts more and more with each passing day. Is there anyone here who would be willing to read what I've posted and let me know whether I've completely misunderstood what the LDS church theology teaches?

Here's my most recent post.
"There is not more than one interpretation of the term "Christian" that I am using. But I do believe that Christians who aren't LDS and Christians who are do have a very different understanding of what it means to be a Christian. To a believing Latter-day Saint, being Christian is secondary to being LDS and doesn't really mean anything as far as getting back into the presence of God after we die. However, to a believing Christian, regardless of whether the person is a Baptist, Methodists, Presbyterian, or whatever, being known as a Christian is tied to their salvation and means everything to them. Christians have a long history, spanning more than a thousand years, of being persecuted and slain for preaching the Christian message, and Christians also have a history of persecuting and killing in the name of God. Both of these histories are intertwined in the history of the Christian faith. They battled hard to disseminate the Christian gospel, which resulted in the current population of nearly 2 billion Christians when you mix the numbers of protestant and catholic Christians. Their history is rich. As you can see, being a Christian means an awful deal to those people because of the history of the religion.



On the contrary, that is not our past. According to the teachings of our church, the True Christian faith was taken from the world not long after Jesus's death and the passing of the final apostle. Our restored Christian gospel was held in heavenly storage until 1830, when it was brought down to earth by Joseph Smith. In my opinion, this is a really significant point to take into consideration.



Why, then, would you want to claim both the restored gospel Christianity and the Christianity that has worked itself out on earth over the past two thousand years? Now that the true Christian gospel has been restored on earth and has its own history, distinct from the history of Christianity, why would you want to do this? Because of this, I have a hard time understanding why members of the LDS church are so eager to be recognised a part of the greater Christian body. It is not part of our history but rather part of theirs. They should proud of their history, it was hard fought, but it's not ours, we shouldn't pretend that it is.



Let's play a game that might help you understand why I think it would be a bad idea for us to try to appropriate the history of Christianity so that we might be accepted by Christians. Let's pretend that in the not too distant future there will be a significant gathering at which thousands of Christians will gather to discuss the doctrines that the Christian umbrella of faiths ought to teach in the not too distant future, and that our congregation will be invited to take part in this discussion. On the other hand, we learn that there will be a great deal of disagreement and that individuals will curse at one another. There will be brawls, and some of the participants will end up in jail as a result of their actions. The police will have to establish a barrier outside the building until the conference is over because there is going to be a demonstration outside the building, and the demonstrators are going to throw bottles at the building where everyone is gathering. Since we are aware that this would take place, we have made the decision not to send any representatives to the meeting; in fact, we are the only religion that does not send delegates. Then, after a period of roughly ten years, come to find out that all of the fighting and cursing that the Christians went through at the conference was worth it because they are more unified than they have ever been, and the reforms that they adopted after the meeting have turned out to be successful. Then there is us, who come up and say things like, "Wow, that's great, we LDS are happy everything worked out, we are also a part of your success, where do you guys want us to sit, where's our table," etc. When we claim that we are Christians in the same way as Catholics and Protestants, that seems to me to be exactly what we are attempting to accomplish. And I'm not comfortable attempting to pretend that the gospel preached by the Latter-day Saints has anything to do with the history of the Christian church because it doesn't! Our Christian history on earth came to an end with Christ's death, and it didn't pick up again until 1830, when the gospel was once again made available."

Is it reasonable to consider my viewpoint in light of the LDS theology teachings that compare and contrast the origins of LDS Christianity with those of traditional Christianity?

Thanks for the question, Sara H. I think I roughly agree with plenty of what you said. I can't imagine why or how any LDS person would think their religion should be considered part of traditional Christianity. From the start of Mormonism it was considered a break from that tradition in many ways. Although I will say much of what is and was traditional Christianity has influenced and built Mormonism and continues to do so. Mormons are often found following the trend of Evangelicalism in the US on social and political issues, for instance. I think it's quite fair to point out that in many ways Mormonism is different, and one would think that should be something Mormons can find purpose and pride in, while allowing the other forms of Christianity the space to be them.

Christianity is defined as the umbrella of many groups claiming Jesus as Lord and Savior. Mormonism does that, so it is without question Christian, I'd say. But that hardly means everything associated with Christianity is Mormonism.

dastardly stem wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 21, 2023 2:21 pm

Christianity is defined as the umbrella of many groups claiming Jesus as Lord and Savior.

It's a subtle question. How much does the mere name "Jesus" matter? Try replacing Christians with Sherlock Holmes fans.

Suppose somebody has the entire Sherlock Holmes canon memorised—all the stories. Unfortunately, though, the books they read and re-read were pirated versions that for bizarre copyright reasons replaced the name "Sherlock" with "Mitchell". This person is surely a bona-fide Sherlock Holmes fan who just happens to have gotten one tiny detail wrong.

On the other hand, consider somebody who calls themselves a Sherlock fanatic, but has actually been devotedly reading the works of Ian Fleming. The stories that this person has memorised are the ones we know as being about James Bond. In another bizarre twist of copyright evasion, the pirated books that this person has been reading have also replaced the name of the hero with something else. In these bootleg spy novels, Agent 007 introduces himself as, "Holmes. Sherlock Holmes." Otherwise they are word-for-word copies of the Fleming texts.

To say that this second person is really a fan of Sherlock Holmes, one would have to adopt a pretty awkward strategy for using language. The person enthusiastically self-identifies as a keen Holmes fan, but in any manner of speaking that is going to be practical with the rest of the reading world, they are a James Bond fan with a name confusion. They couldn't make it through a page of an actual Sherlock Holmes story. Where are the guns and the girls? And who the hell is this Watson dude?

The analogy with fictional characters is not meant to imply that Jesus was fictional. My point is just that identity is more than a matter of name.

Physics Guy wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:03 pm

dastardly stem wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 21, 2023 2:21 pm

Christianity is defined as the umbrella of many groups claiming Jesus as Lord and Savior.

It's a subtle question. How much does the mere name "Jesus" matter? Try replacing Christians with Sherlock Holmes fans.

Suppose somebody has the entire Sherlock Holmes canon memorised—all the stories. Unfortunately, though, the books they read and re-read were pirated versions that for bizarre copyright reasons replaced the name "Sherlock" with "Mitchell". This person is surely a bona-fide Sherlock Holmes fan who just happens to have gotten one tiny detail wrong.

On the other hand, consider somebody who calls themselves a Sherlock fanatic, but has actually been devotedly reading the works of Ian Fleming. The stories that this person has memorised are the ones we know as being about James Bond. In another bizarre twist of copyright evasion, the pirated books that this person has been reading have also replaced the name of the hero with something else. In these bootleg spy novels, Agent 007 introduces himself as, "Holmes. Sherlock Holmes." Otherwise they are word-for-word copies of the Fleming texts.

To say that this second person is really a fan of Sherlock Holmes, one would have to adopt a pretty awkward strategy for using language. The person enthusiastically self-identifies as a keen Holmes fan, but in any manner of speaking that is going to be practical with the rest of the reading world, they are a James Bond fan with a name confusion. They couldn't make it through a page of an actual Sherlock Holmes story. Where are the guns and the girls? And who the hell is this Watson dude?

The analogy with fictional characters is not meant to imply that Jesus was fictional. My point is just that identity is more than a matter of name.

I"m not seeing the analogy very well. Both Mormons and other Christians treat Jesus' story as found in the gospels as the history of a God, or Son of God. It's more like someone claiming to be a Sherlock fanatic, reading it and memorizing it, then adding to that the stories written by Fleming about Bond, having his name replaced with Holme's, and seeing that character a continuation of Doyle's Holmes. But that'd be a pretty big stretch too, since the later stories, as in Mormon's Book of Mormon Jesus and Joseph Smith's Jesus, all reference and point to the earlier gospel Jesus. Probably more like someone writing a few more stories about Holme's while claiming to be Doyle and a reader treating the later stories as originals.

Identity seems best applicable when it is self-identity on this kind of stuff.

"I'm a Christian"

But as we all know, Jesus the Christ is just a fictional character. Just have to throw that in to comment on your last line.

Some other Christian comes along..."No you aren't. You're a Catholic. And there's no way in hell I'm going to stand Idly by and let some Catholic claim to be Christian".

I mean...silly, if you ask me.

Hi Sara,

Welcome to the forum!

I've written a few things on this topic that you might find interesting:

My false, pagan, so-called Christian church of men (note: I was married to a Mormon when I wrote this; I am not anymore)

On the Christianity (or lack thereof) of Mormonism

I'd say more but I'm on mobile right now.

I hope you stick around.

dastardly stem wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:36 pm

It's more like someone claiming to be a Sherlock fanatic, reading it and memorizing it, then adding to that the stories written by Fleming about Bond, having his name replaced with Holme's, and seeing that character a continuation of Doyle's Holmes.

Yes, that would be a closer analogy for the specific case of Mormon Jesus. My analogy was just to illustrate the general point that identity is more than a name.

I think the general point remains the essential one, even if a third, Mormon-like reader has both the Sherlock Holmes and the James Bond stories all under the name of Sherlock Holmes, and if furthermore Fleming's novels have been edited to make 007 and other characters refer now and then to Baker Street and Moriarty. Suppose this third reader says that they really love their whole (piratically expanded) Holmes canon, but they consider The Adventure of the Casino Royale to be the classic, definitive Holmes story, while those bizarre early texts with hounds and violins and stuff must have been unreliable editions. They say they're a Holmes fan, but they really just aren't.

This kind of thing really does happen in fan fiction. It happens in professional fiction when new authors write new stories featuring already popular characters after the original authors have died. Heck, it even happens when the original author substantially changes the character. In A Study in Scarlet Holmes is a deliberate Philistine who doesn't know that the Earth orbits the Sun, and doesn't want to know it, because it doesn't affect him. In later novels by Doyle himself, though, Holmes is a cultured polymath who drops quotes from Goethe.

Having the same name isn't enough to make two characters really be the same character.

There are enough similarities and differences to suspect these stories occurred on parallel earths.

Sara H wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 21, 2023 1:31 pm

but I just don't get why Latter-day Saints are so adamant about being regarded as traditional Christians.

When I was being taught as an investigator in the mid 2000s, it was a way for Mormons to ease someone who is already a Christian into Mormonism.

It’s a subtle advertising tactic at its core, in my opinion. And it’s incredibly misleading. They frame it as every other church not having the fullness of Christianity, rather than Mormonism going off the rails and inventing its own religion.

The thing is, born-again Christians will often also exclude Catholics from being "Christian" and so it's not just about number of years and history.

Mormons are playing the same marketing game as born-agains when they insist on journalistic guidelines that say refer to the Church as "The Church of Jesus Christ". As if anyone is so stupid to fall for that.

What's going on here in my opinion has less to do with history or connection to certain doctrines and more to do with co-opting terminology for the sake of marketing. Specifically, it's taking a positive, general term that people recognize and claiming exclusive ownership of it. I would bet my last dollar that born-again Christians wouldn't be so bent out of shape over the label referring to people other than those who follow a loose collection of saved-by-grace doctrines if Christianity was a much smaller movement.

Once "Christianity" becomes an umbrella term that covers hundreds of millions of people in the Western world and in fact, is the largest container of Western people, and this isn't just per theology books, but dictionaries, encyclopedias, and secular sociology, and the label is generally positive especially as it's wedded to the biggest holidays people in the West observe; Christmas and Easter, then it's ripe for co-opting. "Put your Christmas tree away you heathen, the only people really celebrating the Lord's birthday are people who think like I do".

"Those who don't belong to my race aren't human!" Same thing.

The Pious Fraud theory fits well the actual situation of having a true Book of Mormon. Sidney Rigdon acquired the transcript and Parley P. Pratt brought it to The Prophet Joseph Smith who fabricated many fables to get it published. One of which, was that Moroni was a visiting angel. Fortunately the Davidic Servant cooperated with The Spirit and a 5.7 magnitude earthquake landed said supposed angel’s instrument. It struck on March (C) 18th (R) at 9 (I) minutes after the hour. Those are the first three letters of keyword CRIST. Further light and knowledge is available via diligent searching of said keyword and/or March 8 Miracle.