ESO,

If this is a threadack, sorry in advance, but your post reminded me of something specific I read a while back. Jonah Goldberg wrote an article about Mitt Romney and received a sufficient number of why-we-don’t-like-Mormons-in-the-public-sphere responses to write a follow up comment, here is his summary and a link to the original article…

Most of the responses I’ve received flatly admit that there is no problem with Mitt’s conservatism, it’s the Mormonism. And it’s not what he would do in office, but the simple fact that he would be in office, that vexes some — but by no means all — Christian conservative correspondents. In short, the majority view among readers is that a Mormon president would be … too good for Mormonism. I should be very clear that quite a few evangelicals responded that they’d have no problem voting for Romney if he was their favorite and some said he was their favorite (and I’m sure more would have said so if I was taking a poll — I wasn’t, and I’m not). But pretty much no one made a serious case that Romney’s Mormonism would have a public policy impact that warrants voting against him, which I think is very revealing.

Worship of Abraham. In fact , I’m personally flattered a baptist would acknowledge our claim to such roots.

Liz–I recognize that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are all Abrahamic religions (which, of course, includes Baptists). What bothers me is that Land specifically wants to separate Mormons from Christ but allows us to claim Abraham. Christ is much more important to me than Abraham is, so I don’t like it.

MAC–that’s an interesting comment.

queuno–that would be nice.

Land has said this before. He clearly is familar with Jan Shipps 1985 book on Mormonism as a new religous tradition which is the first place that puts forth the idea that Mormonism is the fourth Abrahamic faith after Judiaism, Chirstianity and Islam

Brian J–the idea that Land may not have known what to say is a good point. I would like Land to give Mormons the right to self-define. He could have said something like “Mormons say they are Christians and while we have different ideas about what that means, exactly, I respect their right to self-define.”

I may not be crazy about Soka Gakkai, but I sure wouldn’t tell an adherent they weren’t Buddhist. I think many Christians would agree, for example, that Jehovahs Witnesses have a radically different idea of Christ than we do, but they certainly claim Christianity, and that should be enough for us, I think.

I think it is fine. We are Christian (i.e. we follow Christ, we preach of Christ, we believe in Christ and are saved by His Atonement, we take upon us His name, baptized in His name, etc.) – yet we definitely do NOT follow other Christian religions (i.e. “catholic” and it’s dissenters such as protestant and baptist and whatever other religions branch out from it). We do claim that we are the restored Church that Christ organized when He was on the earth, no matter how much of that original Church other religions take or deem important (i.e. many claim that the Priesthood is no longer necessary since Jesus was/is THE High Priest). Yet Abraham, Isaac and Jacob made many covenants with God/Jehovah and we associate that with their (and our) Priesthood. So we are a bit of both – Abrahamic, Christian, whatever. We all have our testimonies of what that means to us and hopefully by befriending those of other faiths and building on common beliefs and respecting their religions and traditions, we will also be respected a little bit more. We definitely have in some cases a lot more in common with the Jews than we do the mainstream Christians too… (i.e. Elijah, Levites, “sacrifice” (even though Christ fulfilled and ceased practice of animal sacrifice), fasting, Sabbath day, Temples, etc).

We should be glad when mainstream (ie, creedal/USA-based) Christians disavow us as belonging with them under the same Christian umbrella as they are under.

There are MANY more non-Christians in the world than there are Christians. I would very much like it if the non-Christians think of Mormons as a completely separate entity apart from the image that mainstream creedal Christians give off.

Creedal Christians (ie, Catholic/Protestant) have given Christianity such a bad name, any perception of difference that we have from them is good.

Gandhi said it well: I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/mohandasga107529.html

We need to come up with a quick sound-bite to make the distinction, like “No, we’re not _that_ kind of Christian. _We’re_ the ‘true’ biblical Christians.” But that’s not quite right, and not good enough.

I don’t know how to condense it well enough. But somehow we need to tie what we believe to pre-apostasy Christianity, and at the same time identify the Catholics and Protestants more closely with the Holy Roman Empire.

As much as Protestants like to disavow themselves from the Catholic church, as long as they adhere to the creeds of the 4th century (Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed), they are still intimately tied to the Catholic tradition.

Actually the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed can be nuanced to be in line with LDS theology. It’s only the Athanasian Creed that is irretrievably at odds with LDS beliefs.

Summary: It would be _worse_ if Land said “They’re just like us with only minor differences. The Baptist/Mormon difference is no bigger than the Baptist/Lutheran difference.”

I like this “self-define” comment, but it isn’t perfect. If we think self-define is ok, then is it ok to call FLDS, or Community of Christ “Mormons”? It doesn’t seem like Pres Hinckley was very fond of self-defining a Mormon. Sometimes I think we’re just as guilty as evangelicals when it comes to self-defining.

growing up in SA with various religions that claim to be Christianity i think by default i would be mad if someone concluded that i wasn’t christian. most people just say i got to a ‘white’ man’s church… there is hardly any mention of the church or its leaders on TV, newspapers or magazines. for some reason journalists here are weary of mentioning the church in any way… the local paper came to our Helping Hands project to write and article and take pictures… it’s been 10 days since the event and nothing has come of it! so i guess the fact people are talking about Mormonism on main-stream media is a good problem to have… i guess your duty is to educate your non-Mormon friends about what it means to be a Mormon.

To connect this post and the prior post on the site, what if someone said, “I’m not sure if Obama is a Christian, but he’s certainly of the Abrahamic tradition.”

On a arc of “Christianity” Mormons are certainly more to the Protestant side than they are to the “Jews for Jesus” side.

I heard the interview when it aired and found it interesting that Mr. Land was actually very well informed about Mormonism, what he said was he would classify it as “the” *fourth* Abrahamic religion. Which theologically fits in very well with our doctrine of restoration. We recognize that Judaism, “conventional” Christianity, and Islam are all outgrowths of an Abrahamic view of the world (monotheistic), and we claim to be the restored Church (meaning that none of the other existing churches or religions are correct); therefore, saying we are the fourth Abrahamic religion is actually very accurate. And yes, if being a “christian” means I accept the version of Christ and the Gospel pushed by the “non-Mormon” Christians, then no I am *not* a Christian.

Bookslinger,

My bad. Several years ago a Jewish friend of mine referred to a group he called “Jews for Jesus” as a group of practicing Jews who believed Jesus to be a great teacher and rabbi, but that he was not the Messiah. Your post prompted me to look up the group. I learned, as you already know, the actual organization, Jews for Jesus, is certainly a different organization than I understood it to be. For those who don’t know, they’re a Christian evangelical group aiming to convert Jews to Christianity.

That said, let me take JfJ out of my post above and explain what I meant.

If all forms of broadly defined “Christianity” were placed on a spectrum where those who believe that there was an historical figure named Jesus but there was nothing special about him (thus attributing the lease “power” to the Historic Jesus) were placed on one extreme, and on the other side of the spectrum you place the Nicene Christians who believe Jesus=God the Father=the Holy Ghost (thus attributing the most power to the Historic Jesus), and everyone else with some claim to Jesus falls in between (including the Muslims who believe Jesus was a Prophet), Mormons would be closer to the Nicene side of the spectrum than Jews who believe in an Historic Jesus or Muslims because Mormons at least believe that there was some form of divinity attached to the Historic Jesus.

Was that the longest run-on sentence ever? Forgive my punctuation, I have to leave quickly to make it to mutual on time and I don’t have time to edit.

Jota, @#23, ok, got it. In that case, yes, I would concur.

The irony about denominational Christian claims about Mormonism not being Christian is that there are numerous Christian groups who claim and promote beliefs that are far more hostile to creedal Christian beliefs than anything Mormonism touches on, and yet the same people don’t make a habit of claiming those groups are not Christian.

Liberation Theology (salvation in politics and revolution) and “Secular Theology” (salvation independent of religion) both make an appearance in “Charts of Christian Theology and Doctrine” (H.Wayne House, Zondervan, 1992). Mormonism, which is ridiculously more “orthodox” than both does not.

Mark D, in #27, wrote: “The irony about denominational Christian claims about Mormonism not being Christian is that there are numerous Christian groups who claim and promote beliefs that are far more hostile to creedal Christian beliefs than anything Mormonism touches on, and yet the same people don’t make a habit of claiming those groups are not Christian.”

Exactomundo. Pentecostals/Evangelicals taught me to be much more anti-catholic and anti-mainstream-Protestant than Mormons ever did. Pentecostals/Fundamentalists look down their noses at any Christian denomination that doesn’t believe in modern personal revelation and spiritual gifts and that doesn’t go out and “witness”. (And those beliefs in personal revelation, spiritual gifts, and missionary work actually places them closer to LDS beliefs.)

Many American and British mainstream Protestants (I’m thinking mainly various flavors of Baptists) have historically been vehemently and even angrily anti-Catholic. You’d think we’d get more “love” from those historically virulently-anti-Catholic denominations/movements merely for being “not Catholic.”

So my conclusion is that deep down, the sects hate each other pretty much as much as they do us. Not much has really changed among sectarianism since the days when young Joseph Smith was investigating various churches