I don't see anything wrong with discussing them either. And, admittedly, I am an outlier in my views. My running hypothesis about Mormonism's relationship with larger Christianity is that it deliberately draws from a broader swath of the Western tradition than Protestantism and that it can't really be understood without reference to the larger Christian body. I think it is an unfortunate byproduct of the emphasis on revelation that the materials from which that revelation was culled were deliberately suppressed.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:10 amThanks Reverend. What is interesting to me is that, in the LDS Church I grew up in, it never would have occurred to members to bristle over what you describe. Our religious identity was based on the differences between our religion and that of other churches. We were one and only true church of God on earth, and we were proud of the differences between Mormonism and all other churches.
We were a peculiar people and were damn proud of it. We didn’t want to be seen as being like other sects. It was common knowledge that the Catholic Church was the Great and Abominable Church, and was referred to as the GAC. The “Christian” churches were in apostasy. The Christian Churches with their paid ministers were corrupt and were doctrines of men (and even the devil).
We learned and memorized the verses in the Bible that showed we were “right” and other churches were “wrong” through scripture chase competitions. Missionaries would Bible Bash against missionaries from other sects.
As the only and only true church on the face of the earth, we didn’t want to share labels with all those false churches in apostasy. We were Mormons, and we were damn proud of it.
I’m not a religious historian or scholar. What I’m describing is a difference I personally observed between how the Bible was used in Mormonism and how it was used by other Christian churches. I think that the way Mormonism approaches the Bible is heavily influenced by the qualifier “as far as it is translated correctly.” It allows for what I described as a cherry picking approach to the Bible. Any part of the Bible that appears inconsistent with Mormon doctrine can be simply ignored.
Other Christian sects don’t have that qualification. I think that’s part of the reason I noticed non-Mormon Christians grappling with the text as a whole in a way that I had never experienced in Mormonism.
From my atheistic perspective, I think of Mormonism as a Christian religion. But I also think it has unique characteristics that differ from other Christian sects, and see nothing disrespectful in discussing them.
Interestingly, the suppression of them is part of the pattern of doing these things, but those who engage in it do so with a knowing wink, and I would imagine that often their target audience had some idea of what was going on. In this case, the rupture between Mormonism and Christianity was fixed in its myth of origins and identity in such a way that it hardened into a kind of theological hostility. I think, however, that this is more of an accident of history than it was completely intentional at the outset. People who grew up in Mormonism take for granted that the relationship as they experienced it simply is the relationship.
So, I see nothing wrong with your experience, and I am not intending to criticize your impressions, which are accurate, but I do take any opportunity I can grab to trot out a viewpoint that challenges the historical mutual animosity between Christians and Mormons to note that Mormonism is fundamentally Christian and that there is more than one way to approach Christianity, not just among the heterodox and heretics, but even among the major mainstream players.