Recently a national evangelical christian leader called my church a cult and denounced us as Christians. It began a debate amongst friends and family about how to deal with this kind of attack.
Despite the fact that there should be no religious test for office and the campaigning process in this country burns more bridges than it builds I will not talk about the debate or people like him.
We are called LDS, Mormon, a cult and many more things. Our official name is
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We are obviously Christian in the basic sense of the word: We are followers of Christ. This man I am sure was trying to warn others of a perceived danger to traditional Christianity. That is the caveat; we are not a traditional Christian faith we have a living prophet, temples, and we have additional scriptures. This is scary to those who have not met our people. Yes, I say our people. We are a people apart from those around us and yet we are still engaged in our communities be them in an area with a high LDS population or where there are only a handful of families. Theologians often denounce our Christianity because we may not fit into the required checklist of what a christian should be. Because of that I tend to straddle the line when people ask me. I will say we believe in Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we follow His teachings and everything we do is to live a more Christ-like life. I will then say, but to scholars we are not Christian we are a different faith altogether. Some call us the fourth Abrahamic Religion, following Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Sure we have differences what's so new about that?
Last night my 13 year old asked me if we are Christians. True to form I over complicated the issue. I tend to have a hard time editing my thoughts. I wish I had said, "Yes and No. We follow Christ but some don't like how we do that". But instead I flippantly said, "No"
Cris this morning kindly broached the subject with me. He told me that I need to see that to a regular person especially children to follow or believe something makes you that thing. We follow Christ so there for we are Christian. The discussion became heated me coming from the camp of "we do not live in a religious vacuum and need to deal with that fact that others don't agree with us" and Cris from the "If we say we are and we act like we are WE ARE" camp.
I concede he is right. Still feeling I also am right. The requirements, as Cris pointed out, to be a Christian has changed through out history, we are sticking to the original, that happens to be the first: we follow His teachings , we are Christian.
So I hope I didn't confuse too many people out there. Those who look for truth should not be bombarded with hatred, bigotry and lies on the news.
Recently I attended a business conference. There is too much to update on that now but one over whelming thing I did see was that total strangers could peg me for Mormon every time and were kind to me and full of questions. They had great things to say about friends they have or service an LDS person did in their lives. One called me a "super Mormon" because of all the things I do. They too were appalled by this man and his hatred.
Joseph Smith said it the best from The Articles of Faith :
1) We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
3) We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.
11) We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.
13) We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
Marlo
