Mormons and evangelicals may be political allies but remain far apart on doctrine, especially the Trinity:

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/05/576082548/deep-differences-remain-between-mormon-and-evangelical-communities



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2018 05:38PM by anybody.

Probably because they’re polytheistic...

This will (rightfully) invite debate but I am somewhat sympathetic to the evangelicals on this. The heart of traditional Christianity is the proposition that God died for our sins and will judge all humans based on some combination of their works and their beliefs.

I used to think that Mormonism fit that pattern but grew more skeptical as I learned more about LDS doctrine. For instance, there are an infinite number of gods in the Mormon universe. Also, since those gods had themselves gone through mortal probations and been resurrected, they had to have benefited from divine self-sacrifices long before the birth of this world. The Palestinian Jesus was consequently not the sole universal sacrifice but one of a sequence.

More immediately, the church usurps many of the powers and responsibilities that Christianity ascribes to God. Sealing families together is a sort of sacrilege since that practice will take the children of righteous parents into the Celestial Kingdom regardless of their own faith/actions. Even worse is the Second Anointing, which, as taught until quite recently, involved forgiveness of all sins. The recipients are sealed up not only to salvation but to exaltation.

That's where I think Mormonism leaves the realm of Christianity. Not only does it posit an infinity of Gods, it also says that church leaders get to extend forgiveness, salvation, and exaltation to individuals. Jesus and God become irrelevant.

Another thing with traditional Christianity is that Easter is the most important date on the calendar, as it celebrates Christ's resurrection. Mormonism barely acknowledges the day, and when their April conference falls on that weekend, they have conference instead of moving that to another weekend.

Or Christmas and Mormons spend more time on JS, temples, the Wof W etc than the do on Jesus.

Also, Mormons reject grace in favor of works and reject the Trinity. Both are basic Christian beliefs. Whether or not posters think either Christian principle is right or makes sense isnt the point. These beliefs are important to how Christians identify themselves and many Christians are going to take issue with people who claim to be Christian and reject them.

Yes, but I think on some of this we need to think about Orthodoxy, too. Obviously a lot of Orthodox ideas about the human nature of Christ, the nature of the Trinity, etc., would put it outside the bounds of Roman Christianity.

I'm not sure where to draw a line. But if we agree that the Easter Churches are legitimately Christian, then the boundaries have to be fairly wide and some of the Western cults/sects may fit within.

This is naturally a problem whenever one tries to categorize Islam, atheists, or any other group of people. Damn humans just won't toe the line!

That is one reason why I dont make judgements on which beliefs are necessary to be considered a Christian, but those are reasons why evangelicals are skeptical.If Christianity is true, God can decide. If not, it doesnt really matter since it is just opinion.

I may cast the net even more broadly than that, but we are on the same page. You know how much trouble I have with strict boundaries between groups since they break down so quickly empirically.

I do tend to judge Christians on how well they follow Jesus in respect to loving and helping each other though.By that standard, many fail.I will leave politics out of it so I dont get deleted.

Before I make my comment, let me preface by saying that I come from a mixed religious background. While my mom and her family were Roman Catholic (how I was raised), my late father and his side of the family were Nazarenes. While my dad dropped organized religion entirely (though he did believe in a God and Satan), many of his siblings and cousins are now Baptists.

The reason I bring this up is that one thing I've learned about Protestantism over Catholicism is that if the flock doesn't like what the minister preaches, then the flock can get rid of him/her and find another who will give more of the kind of preaching they want to hear; in other words, it really doesn't matter what the Old or New testaments may have to say on a given subject; what matters is what the flock believes about that subject.

Case in point from the recent news cycle. About a week after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this year, The great-grandson of Civil War southern General Robert E. Lee was removed by his flock from pastorship of his North Carolina church after he gave a sermon denouncing white supremacists. One of his former parishoners was quoted as saying that the "good pastor should have stuck to what the Old and New Testaments said and not brought race into it."

Amen to what has been said. Why do evangelicals get to decide everything?

Many top evangelical leaders also reject Christianity as Christianity. They've fabricated various marketable theologies they call Christianity but reject much of what Jesus actually taught.

Exactly, which was my point above. How can you claim to be a Christian and refuse to help the poor and needy while enriching the already rich? WWJD?

There are evangelicals who reject Catholocism as Christianity.

but not TOO many !!!

I think you might be able to trace the rift back to this little word smithing...

"And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth"

Mormons call themselves Christians because they are told to believe that...does anyone recall a single session that talked about being Christian??

"Jul 10, 2007 - Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches."

Anglicans consider their church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Orthodox churches as "branches" of the one true church. The Roman Catholics and Orthodox churches reject the Anglican assertion.

The Augsburg Confession found within the Book of Concord, a compendium of belief of the Lutheran Churches, teaches that "the faith as confessed by Luther and his followers is nothing new, but the true catholic faith, and that their churches represent the true catholic or universal church." And that Roman Catholicism does NOT represent the "true catholic faith."

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church (SDA Church) holds itself to be the one true Church. It specifically teaches that it is the "it is the 'final remnant' of His true church [spanning] the centuries."

So, what's "true christian" depends on whom you ask.
And when.

How about that.

ificouldhietokolob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Jul 10, 2007 - Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted
> the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic
> Church, approving a document released Tuesday that
> says Orthodox churches were defective and that
> other Christian denominations were not true
> churches."

Benedict was mostly right. He was just off by one church.

To accept Mormons theologically as Christian is to say that their own churches are wrong. So of course they don't accept Mormons. Similarly Mormons say the rest are wrong anyway.

Why does any of this surprise any one?

Not quite the same thing as most Christians will accept other churches. This especially true of protestants where you can attend a different denomination with no issues.

Many top evangelicals still reject Roman Catholics and members of Eastern Orthodox religions as Christians as well, even though one of them, depending upon whose story one believes, HAS to be the organization of original Christianity. They also reject mainline Protestants, from whom many of them broke away in the 1800's, as Christians. Many of them also reject each other as Christians. as christians. Evangelicals are so full of b.s. that it hurts. Who cares what they say or think?

I'm not the Biblical scholar that I should be, having slept through more sessions of seminary that i'd care to admit, but I'm not sure where in the Bible it decreed that anyone should be concenrned with judging who is or is not Christian. Don't affiliate with a particular church if its teachings don't seem to be in keeping with the Bible or the teachings or spirit of Christ, but we as individuals haven't been charged with separating the wheat from the chaff. That's for God to do.

scmd not logged in Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...even though one of them,
> depending upon whose story one believes, HAS to be
> the organization of original Christianity.

Well, actually...they don't.

There very well could have been an "original christianity" that was overtaken by the later-coming "orthodoxy" that was codified at the Nicean council. And with the campaigns against "heresies" that ran for so long, which included burning copies of heretical "gospels" and other documents (like Gnosticism, Arianism, docetism, and more), we don't really know which "flavor" came first. It may even be something we know absolutely nothing about.

What????? That's crazy. Almost all the Mormons I know follow Jesus' teachings just as well as the Evangelicals. You know, starve the hungry, kill the sick, make the poor even poorer, freeze the homeless, judge everyone, make the rich richer. You can't tell any difference between them. By Evangelical standards, Mormons ARE "Christian." Ok, by Bible standards, none of them are. But that's beside the point.

I never understood why there are so many denominations of Christianity. Did God really want all these different denoms?

I think they all are started by a person who is full of themselves and wants power.

Nottelling Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I never understood why there are so many
> denominations of Christianity. Did God really
> want all these different denoms?
>
> I think they all are started by a person who is
> full of themselves and wants power.


Who knows if God or Jesus even wanted a single religious deomination based on Jesus' teachings. Perhaps it was merely an attempt to reform what Jesus or God found flawed in Judaism.

They still reject Mo'ism as non-Christianity.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2018 11:44PM by steve benson.