Eventually, Mormonism will grow up. Maybe a Mormon in the White House will hasten that moment when Mormonism will no longer plead through billboards and sappy radio ads to be liked, though I suspect that Mr. Romney is such a typical politician that, should he occupy the Oval Office, he’ll studiously avoid the appearance of being anything but a WASP. This could set back the cause of Mormon identity by decades.
I thought the cause of Mormon identity was to become as common garden variety as possible.
The person who is certain and who claims divine warrant for his certainty belongs now to the infancy of our species. Christopher Hitchens
Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions. Frater
Lucretia MacEvil wrote:Okay, let's say there is no desperation. Why is there any common sense or practical reason for Mormons to be accepted as Christians?
Rather simple stuff:
Christian: one who believes Jesus Christ is LORD and Savior.
An LDS believer: among other things, Believes Jesus Christ is LORD and Savior.
Love ya tons, Stem
I ain't nuttin'. don't get all worked up on account of me.
angsty wrote:as far as I know, Jews don't view Christians as a "legitimate" successor to their faith at all-- why would we expect Christianity to acknowledge Mormonism that way? Mason was making the point that Mormonism doesn't need that acknowledgment at all, that Mormons need to stop looking to "broader Christianity" for some kind of approval as if they needed it somehow-- in the way that Christians eventually came to see themselves as their own thing instead of waiting and battling for some kind of validation from Judaism. What Christians acknowledge or don't acknowledge about Mormons shouldn't figure in.
I don't think the LDS Church is worried about how Biblical Christianity as a collective unit feels about whether the LDS Church is potentially a legitimate successor to Christianity, as much as it cares about whether individual Christians feel about that, in particular individual Christians who might investigate the divine inspiration of the LDS Church. This may sound cynical, but in all honesty it makes perfect sense to me. The LDS Church wants potential investigators to see the LDS Church as an organization that centers around Jesus Christ, which is what it in fact is.
Lucretia MacEvil wrote:Okay, let's say there is no desperation. Why is there any common sense or practical reason for Mormons to be accepted as Christians?
Rather simple stuff:
Christian: one who believes Jesus Christ is LORD and Savior.
An LDS believer: among other things, Believes Jesus Christ is LORD and Savior.
Well, yeah, I already acknowledged that Mormons have a right to the title. You didn't answer my question. Why do Mormons care whether the Baptists, for example, acknowledge their Christianity or not ? What common sense or practical reason is there? Why not just bide their time, non-desperately?
The person who is certain and who claims divine warrant for his certainty belongs now to the infancy of our species. Christopher Hitchens
Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions. Frater
On the New York Times this article is currently listed as the 2nd most viewed and the 3rd most e-mailed. I expect the church to issue a press release asserting that they are indeed Christian.
I’m with Harry Emerson Fosdick, the liberal Protestant minister and former pastor of Riverside Church in Manhattan, who wrote that he would be “ashamed to live in this generation and not be a heretic.” Being a Christian so often involves such boorish and meanspirited behavior that I marvel that any of my Mormon colleagues are so eager to join the fold.
"Christian" is a broad term and his judging them such is "meanspirited." Some qualifier such as "cafeteria" "fundamental" "liberal" etc. could have saved him a backlash that is going to reverberate for years. This was certainly a tragic, yeah, a blasphemous tone that will be taken by the public as nothing but hate mongering; Mason and Mormons will pay for this in more ways than one.
Lucretia MacEvil wrote:Why do Mormons care whether the Baptists, for example, acknowledge their Christianity or not ? What common sense or practical reason is there? Why not just bide their time, non-desperately?
Let's say for a moment that influential people in the Southern Baptist Convention (as just one example) say that Latter-day Saints are not Christian, and Latter-day Saints say nothing. In that case, Southern Baptists will very possibly read the silence from the LDS Church as an indication that Latter-day Saints really aren't centered around Jesus Christ. That's not the result Latter-day Saints want. They want as many people as possible to think that they are in fact centered around Jesus.