Not Christian, Mormon which is actually quite the distinction here.
And just because he was raised Mormon does not mean he still follows the faith of his parents.
Evidence he was strictly conservative is slim. There is good commentary about this over on (slight retch) reddit in /r/exmormon including the violent aspects of Mormon scripture and how many Mormons hate both Democrats and Republicans.
Mormons are very conservative. Especially in Utah. They do not hate Republicans, and regularly endorse them and their policies at the pulpit and encourage the congregation to do the same.
Ehhh… Not really. Are you or have you ever been Mormon? Because I was. You really shouldn’t speak on it with any authority or certainty.
They are mostly your run of the mill conservatives. And if the kid participated in all their other run of the mill conservative shit, it’s fair to assume he participated in the religion too.
That’s like saying “Christians are actually Jewish though. Just because some other Jews don’t want them in their club doesn’t make their flavor of worship less valid.”
They literally have their own holy books that don’t exist for other flavors of Christianity, just as Christianity has their own holy books that don’t exist for Judaism.
I just realized that telling people who identify as Christian that they can’t be real Christians because of XYZ is a really silly thing to be saying on this forum.
So do Muslims. Jesus is to the Quran and the Book of Mormon what Moses is to the New Testament. A recognized prophet, but not the prophet because god apparently felt the need to send a new one down to earth to clarify a few things.
I don’t personally give a shit as I’m not even remotely religious, but the only reason Mormons pretend to be a Christian sect is because it’s politically convenient to them as a US religious minority to “blend in” better. The more you learn about their beliefs, the more you realize they might be further apart from Christianity than Christianity is from Judaism.
No, Muslims believe that Jesus was a human prophet who was deified by people who strayed from his true teachings. Jesus was not the son of God, and there is no holy trinity. He didn’t die on the cross for our sins because God took him up into heaven. Mormons, however, do believe in these key aspects relating to the divine nature of Jesus and his role as savior in their religion.
Mormons also believe that what most Christians concieve of as God, is actually more of just the local demigod of this Solar System, not the entire universe, who comes from a line of other demigods before him, not being the uh, uncreated creator that existed prior to the universe itself, and has domain over all of it.
Reminds me of Dragon Ball Z.
…
Further, should you be a good and proper enough Mormon, you get to go to the super duper highest level of the top 1/3rd of Mormon afterlife outcomes, whereby you too can become a local demigod of your own solar system!
… If you are a man.
You have to be a married man to pull this off, get the secret Temple names with the underwear and all that, donate a LOT to the Church… but wifey… nah she does not get a shot at becoming a demigod, she’s just a demigod’s wife.
Basically no other Christians believe that any man can become godlike.
…
Mormons also don’t believe in the Trinity.
Their idea of Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit is more or less that they are all seperate and distinct entities, not triune paradox of simultaneous distinction and indistinction.
…
Beyond the more … historical fan fiction type additions to the existing lore, fucking with those three core tenets is sufficient for most American Christians to deem Mormons as sacreligious heretics.
…
To try and wrap this around:
Just because all Dragon Ball Z fans believe Goku ‘killed’ Frieza on Namek…
Does not mean they all consider Dragonball GT to be canon.
They do, but they also believe that Jesus and Satan were brothers.
There are some pretty dramatic departures from what most people would consider fundamental Christian doctrine, like the belief that there are three levels of heaven, and if you get to the best level of heaven you can become a god of your own planet. Then you and your harem of wives can pump out spirit babies to populate your planet for time and all eternity.
The only way to get to the best level of heaven is to participate in a series of secretive temple ceremonies. Members are kept completely in the dark until they arrive at the temple and suddenly they’re learning secret handshakes, being given secret names and vowing to slit their own throats and disembowel themselves should they ever reveal the secrets of the temple.
I think Joseph Smith would’ve had a much longer life if he’d just been a fiction writer and left it at that.
Members are kept completely in the dark until they arrive at the temple and suddenly they’re learning secret handshakes, being given secret names and vowing to slit their own throats and disembowel themselves should they ever reveal the secrets of the temple.
Some of what you’re saying can just as easily be applied to Catholicism. They can’t be Christian because they also worship Mary and think she’s just as much a path to salvation as Jesus. They have special rules about who can get into heaven and how, and they’ve got limbo, etc.
What you’re saying about Mormonism being a cult is true, but being a cult doesn’t exclude them from being Christian.
The Old Testament is literally the Jewish Tanakh re-arranged and plus or minus some books (depending on translation/edition). Only the New Testament is fully strictly Christian
Do Christians believe that Indigenous Americans are the “Lost Children of Israel” who came to the Americas over the land bridge in Alaska and that Jesus appeared to them here in the Americas?
Because Mormons believe that, and they have an entire holy book dedicated to ideas like that beyond the New Testament just as the New Testament is beyond the Tanakh.
I honestly think Christians and Mormons would take offense to this characterization with how different their belief systems truly are while being rooted in the same ideas. Just as Jewish and Christians would take offense to being compared in the same way.
I mean, I hate fucking religion too, dawg, but this ain’t it.
Nah, Mormons absolutely consider themselves Christian. They use the term in meetings and I’m sure that I’ve seen it in their marketing material as well. They just you know, retconned Christianity to say that they were the true Christians the whole time, that the other sects mostly have their hearts in the right place but we have the only true prophet. And tbf, that’s true for all the Christian sects, the only difference really is scale.
Not to belabor a point, but even if they consider themselves Christian, there’s a big difference between having different interpretations of the same book and having a whole ass other previously non-existent book that becomes part of the religious canon. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any sects of Protestant Christianity that have a whole ass other book. They have wildly different interpretations of the same book, but that is fundamentally different than having a new prophet and gospel.
I get your point here, but just because they’re unique doesn’t disqualify them from their claim to Christianity. It’s kinda like saying a tank isn’t a motor-vehicle because it has a cannon.
In order to become Jewish, a Gentile must follow Jewish law. Christians distinguished themselves as a group from Jews when they rejected Jewish law. Some Jews actually are Christians in addition to being Jewish. Both religions (and Mormonism) are Abrahamic and worship the same God Abraham originally made a covenant with.
You really should look more into Mormonism. Calling Mormonism Christianity is like calling Islam Christian. Both believe the old and new testament the same as Christians, but both also have their own book they view as an extension and put a lot more focus on that book. Muslims have the Quran, mormons have the book of Mormon. And a lot of Mormon beliefs are heretical to most, if not all, denominations of Christianity.
Mormons are christians, they read the bible and believe in Jesus as the son of god/god, it’s just that they’re christians with the premium subscription Joseph Smith DLC.
Christianity and Islam differ in whether they believe Jesus is the son of God, and whether he died for our sins and was resurrected. Mormons do believe this. Mormons read the Bible as holy scripture while Muslims reject it as a corruption of true teachings.
They believe that when a Mormon man dies, he gets his own planet to be the god of with his potentially many wives. And that God is one of many in a long line of gods, and there was a beginning to this chain of gods. But also they still claim to be monotheistic. The first “star” was named Kolob, they have a hymn about it. They have their own idea of the after life, and before life, that are very distinct from mainstream Christianity. Mormons may claim to care about the old and new testament, and they do to an extent, but they care a lot more about the book of Mormon. They also have secret hand shakes, have to wear special underwear at all times*, and can get baptized for people that are already dead. Like, sure, they claim they are just Christianity with a DLC extension, but so much of their belief comes from the book of Mormon, and they put so little focus on the old and new testament that I think it is safe to classify it as its own separate religion.
They believe that when a Mormon man dies, he gets his own planet to be the god of with his potentially many wives.
So? Heaven being a location in physical space is compliant with Biblical texts. “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Might this not refer to countless planets in infinite space?
And that God is one of many in a long line of gods, and there was a beginning to this chain of gods. But also they still claim to be monotheistic.
I believe people have written entire books on the polytheistic nature of early Judaism, and there remain a few Bible passages as evidence of prior henotheism. (“God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods”, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”, etc.) But for me what really matters is whether Christ is at the center. Sure Paul might have said that there are no other gods, but why does Paul have more legitimacy than Joseph Smith? There are Christians who question the divine nature of individual texts because they were written by humans, and because it contradicts itself on more than one occasion. To be a Christian is not necessarily to accept the entire Bible as literal truth.
mainstream Christianity.
Why make this distinction? Is western Sunday school Protestant the only real way to be Christian? I’ve pointed out in another post that Catholicism has tons of extra-Biblical beliefs, but they’re still Christians. They’re more polytheistic in practice than Mormons.
You reference details like Kolob and handshakes, and to them I have to ask, so what? Can you quote Jesus saying these things are untrue? There are so many types of Christians doing wildly different things. Some believe that witchcraft and demons are real, and some believe they’re fake. Some are acting out seizures and speaking in tongues. Some think God is found in church and others think he’s in every aspect of nature. Whole wars have been fought over whose version of Christianity is real and correct because no one agrees on any of this stuff, and they all keep making up their own beliefs on top of interpreting texts in different ways.
I think it is safe to classify it as its own separate religion.
Ok, believe what ever you want. The Mormon cult believes in a lot of batshit insane stuff, and was started by a pedophilic con man. Personally, I think they are different enough to be classified separately, but I guess you see it differently and that’s fine.
I mean, I myself at least could also start listing details of the… rather wacky set of beliefs spawned by the Nation of Islam … that I am sure most Shia or Sunni Muslims would consider to be wild … and probably heretical … which I learned from watching black leftist youtubers critiquing how off the rails a lot of that movement/faith has gone.
Same thing with ‘hoteps’.
Or, I could also go into some detail on some of the more modern religious cults from Japan or South Korea.
But nonetheless, I do hear you that broadly, yes, of course, generally speaking, much more leeway and discussion and consideration is given to the religious beliefs of white people.
Not Christian, Mormon which is actually quite the distinction here.
And just because he was raised Mormon does not mean he still follows the faith of his parents.
Evidence he was strictly conservative is slim. There is good commentary about this over on (slight retch) reddit in /r/exmormon including the violent aspects of Mormon scripture and how many Mormons hate both Democrats and Republicans.
Mormons are very conservative. Especially in Utah. They do not hate Republicans, and regularly endorse them and their policies at the pulpit and encourage the congregation to do the same.
It’s arguable that many of them are so conservative that they hate the Republicans for not being far enough extreme right.
Ehhh… Not really. Are you or have you ever been Mormon? Because I was. You really shouldn’t speak on it with any authority or certainty.
They are mostly your run of the mill conservatives. And if the kid participated in all their other run of the mill conservative shit, it’s fair to assume he participated in the religion too.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Robinson ≠ your “arguable…many…so conservative…they hate the Republicans.”
Mormons are Christians though. Just because some other Christians don’t want them in their club doesn’t make their flavor of Jesus worship less valid.
That’s like saying “Christians are actually Jewish though. Just because some other Jews don’t want them in their club doesn’t make their flavor of worship less valid.”
They literally have their own holy books that don’t exist for other flavors of Christianity, just as Christianity has their own holy books that don’t exist for Judaism.
This is not a good example, Mormons and other Christians believe the same events involving and about christ. Jewish beliefs are old testament only.
Anywho, it’s all made up anyway, but as an ex-mormon myself, Mormons are Christian.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/christian
Not all Christians study the same Bible, are they not all Christian?
As an ex Mormon i would consider Mormons Christian. All religion is made up anyway.
I just realized that telling people who identify as Christian that they can’t be real Christians because of XYZ is a really silly thing to be saying on this forum.
Christians believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he died on the cross and was resurrected three days later. Do Mormons not believe this?
So do Muslims. Jesus is to the Quran and the Book of Mormon what Moses is to the New Testament. A recognized prophet, but not the prophet because god apparently felt the need to send a new one down to earth to clarify a few things.
I don’t personally give a shit as I’m not even remotely religious, but the only reason Mormons pretend to be a Christian sect is because it’s politically convenient to them as a US religious minority to “blend in” better. The more you learn about their beliefs, the more you realize they might be further apart from Christianity than Christianity is from Judaism.
No, Muslims believe that Jesus was a human prophet who was deified by people who strayed from his true teachings. Jesus was not the son of God, and there is no holy trinity. He didn’t die on the cross for our sins because God took him up into heaven. Mormons, however, do believe in these key aspects relating to the divine nature of Jesus and his role as savior in their religion.
Mormons also believe that what most Christians concieve of as God, is actually more of just the local demigod of this Solar System, not the entire universe, who comes from a line of other demigods before him, not being the uh, uncreated creator that existed prior to the universe itself, and has domain over all of it.
Reminds me of Dragon Ball Z.
…
Further, should you be a good and proper enough Mormon, you get to go to the super duper highest level of the top 1/3rd of Mormon afterlife outcomes, whereby you too can become a local demigod of your own solar system!
… If you are a man.
You have to be a married man to pull this off, get the secret Temple names with the underwear and all that, donate a LOT to the Church… but wifey… nah she does not get a shot at becoming a demigod, she’s just a demigod’s wife.
Basically no other Christians believe that any man can become godlike.
…
Mormons also don’t believe in the Trinity.
Their idea of Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit is more or less that they are all seperate and distinct entities, not triune paradox of simultaneous distinction and indistinction.
…
Beyond the more … historical fan fiction type additions to the existing lore, fucking with those three core tenets is sufficient for most American Christians to deem Mormons as sacreligious heretics.
…
To try and wrap this around:
Just because all Dragon Ball Z fans believe Goku ‘killed’ Frieza on Namek…
Does not mean they all consider Dragonball GT to be canon.
They do, but they also believe that Jesus and Satan were brothers.
There are some pretty dramatic departures from what most people would consider fundamental Christian doctrine, like the belief that there are three levels of heaven, and if you get to the best level of heaven you can become a god of your own planet. Then you and your harem of wives can pump out spirit babies to populate your planet for time and all eternity.
The only way to get to the best level of heaven is to participate in a series of secretive temple ceremonies. Members are kept completely in the dark until they arrive at the temple and suddenly they’re learning secret handshakes, being given secret names and vowing to slit their own throats and disembowel themselves should they ever reveal the secrets of the temple.
I think Joseph Smith would’ve had a much longer life if he’d just been a fiction writer and left it at that.
Basically Freemasonry.
Some of what you’re saying can just as easily be applied to Catholicism. They can’t be Christian because they also worship Mary and think she’s just as much a path to salvation as Jesus. They have special rules about who can get into heaven and how, and they’ve got limbo, etc.
What you’re saying about Mormonism being a cult is true, but being a cult doesn’t exclude them from being Christian.
The Old Testament is literally the Jewish Tanakh re-arranged and plus or minus some books (depending on translation/edition). Only the New Testament is fully strictly Christian
Do Christians believe that Indigenous Americans are the “Lost Children of Israel” who came to the Americas over the land bridge in Alaska and that Jesus appeared to them here in the Americas?
Because Mormons believe that, and they have an entire holy book dedicated to ideas like that beyond the New Testament just as the New Testament is beyond the Tanakh.
I honestly think Christians and Mormons would take offense to this characterization with how different their belief systems truly are while being rooted in the same ideas. Just as Jewish and Christians would take offense to being compared in the same way.
I mean, I hate fucking religion too, dawg, but this ain’t it.
Nah, Mormons absolutely consider themselves Christian. They use the term in meetings and I’m sure that I’ve seen it in their marketing material as well. They just you know, retconned Christianity to say that they were the true Christians the whole time, that the other sects mostly have their hearts in the right place but we have the only true prophet. And tbf, that’s true for all the Christian sects, the only difference really is scale.
Source: exmo
Not to belabor a point, but even if they consider themselves Christian, there’s a big difference between having different interpretations of the same book and having a whole ass other previously non-existent book that becomes part of the religious canon. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any sects of Protestant Christianity that have a whole ass other book. They have wildly different interpretations of the same book, but that is fundamentally different than having a new prophet and gospel.
I get your point here, but just because they’re unique doesn’t disqualify them from their claim to Christianity. It’s kinda like saying a tank isn’t a motor-vehicle because it has a cannon.
In order to become Jewish, a Gentile must follow Jewish law. Christians distinguished themselves as a group from Jews when they rejected Jewish law. Some Jews actually are Christians in addition to being Jewish. Both religions (and Mormonism) are Abrahamic and worship the same God Abraham originally made a covenant with.
They’re more like scientologists that got more traction in the 1800s.
You really should look more into Mormonism. Calling Mormonism Christianity is like calling Islam Christian. Both believe the old and new testament the same as Christians, but both also have their own book they view as an extension and put a lot more focus on that book. Muslims have the Quran, mormons have the book of Mormon. And a lot of Mormon beliefs are heretical to most, if not all, denominations of Christianity.
Mormons are christians, they read the bible and believe in Jesus as the son of god/god, it’s just that they’re christians with the premium subscription Joseph Smith DLC.
Christianity and Islam differ in whether they believe Jesus is the son of God, and whether he died for our sins and was resurrected. Mormons do believe this. Mormons read the Bible as holy scripture while Muslims reject it as a corruption of true teachings.
They believe that when a Mormon man dies, he gets his own planet to be the god of with his potentially many wives. And that God is one of many in a long line of gods, and there was a beginning to this chain of gods. But also they still claim to be monotheistic. The first “star” was named Kolob, they have a hymn about it. They have their own idea of the after life, and before life, that are very distinct from mainstream Christianity. Mormons may claim to care about the old and new testament, and they do to an extent, but they care a lot more about the book of Mormon. They also have secret hand shakes, have to wear special underwear at all times*, and can get baptized for people that are already dead. Like, sure, they claim they are just Christianity with a DLC extension, but so much of their belief comes from the book of Mormon, and they put so little focus on the old and new testament that I think it is safe to classify it as its own separate religion.
So? Heaven being a location in physical space is compliant with Biblical texts. “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Might this not refer to countless planets in infinite space?
I believe people have written entire books on the polytheistic nature of early Judaism, and there remain a few Bible passages as evidence of prior henotheism. (“God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods”, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”, etc.) But for me what really matters is whether Christ is at the center. Sure Paul might have said that there are no other gods, but why does Paul have more legitimacy than Joseph Smith? There are Christians who question the divine nature of individual texts because they were written by humans, and because it contradicts itself on more than one occasion. To be a Christian is not necessarily to accept the entire Bible as literal truth.
Why make this distinction? Is western Sunday school Protestant the only real way to be Christian? I’ve pointed out in another post that Catholicism has tons of extra-Biblical beliefs, but they’re still Christians. They’re more polytheistic in practice than Mormons.
You reference details like Kolob and handshakes, and to them I have to ask, so what? Can you quote Jesus saying these things are untrue? There are so many types of Christians doing wildly different things. Some believe that witchcraft and demons are real, and some believe they’re fake. Some are acting out seizures and speaking in tongues. Some think God is found in church and others think he’s in every aspect of nature. Whole wars have been fought over whose version of Christianity is real and correct because no one agrees on any of this stuff, and they all keep making up their own beliefs on top of interpreting texts in different ways.
Christianity isn’t a singular religion.
Ok, believe what ever you want. The Mormon cult believes in a lot of batshit insane stuff, and was started by a pedophilic con man. Personally, I think they are different enough to be classified separately, but I guess you see it differently and that’s fine.
I appreciate that we do all of this research and investigation when folks are white. /s
I mean, I myself at least could also start listing details of the… rather wacky set of beliefs spawned by the Nation of Islam … that I am sure most Shia or Sunni Muslims would consider to be wild … and probably heretical … which I learned from watching black leftist youtubers critiquing how off the rails a lot of that movement/faith has gone.
Same thing with ‘hoteps’.
Or, I could also go into some detail on some of the more modern religious cults from Japan or South Korea.
But nonetheless, I do hear you that broadly, yes, of course, generally speaking, much more leeway and discussion and consideration is given to the religious beliefs of white people.