MayorofOysterville
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User ID: 3800
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
I meant more the policies. Mao died peacefully in his sleep and the CCP still rules China. But Mao's death still hung the Maoists out to dry same with Stalin and Lysenko and his followers.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
Yeah that works great until it doesn't. Revolutions can be pretty swingy once your favored dear leader dies the next one can reverse his policies. It's totally legal to start up an opposing university now. Less so in authoritarian Catholic land.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
I'd rather not get rid of democracy to fight the libs in academia.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
if giving Ken Ham is the solution to left wing bias in universities' I think I'll just stick with annoying liberal groupthink.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
But isn't seizing the universities and gifting them to the right wing just like some sort of reverse socialism and affirmative action?
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
Don't places like BYU and Liberty university kind of disprove this? I actually don't think this would be a failure mode. I think the right wing vs neutral would be a bigger problem. Anyway BYU is accredited reasonably well regarded and kicks out students for drinking, premarital sex and homosexuality I doubt a Motte approved right wing university would be more conservative then that.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
Sure, but that also gets to the problem with Protestants. Treating a book as infallible that was created by a church you reject. You could make some apologism for this by pointing out the books of the Bible were really written separately until they were compiled but yeah I think it's a big problem for anyone not Catholic or Orthodox.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
It's not just the form but the content as well. Praying to Jesus drawing lessons from the gospels, putting up nativity scenes.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
Yes but it's more than vibes. The same prayers the same hymns, the eucharist, and drawing lessons from the Bible and gospels. It's the content too not just the forms.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
They themselves presumably agree on this principle, because as you note, they believe that all traditional churches have fallen from the faith.
I think this is the key issue we've been going round on. Mormons don't see Christianity as synonymous with the true faith. The see Christianity as a big tent full of many denominations and their own Church as the true faith within that big tent. This is also why I don't think the trinity is a useful tenant for determining what is and isn't Christianity. Because from extremely early on the umbrella of Christianity. This is my personal view as well. I see Christianity as a big movement of many mutually exclusive Christianities even from the beginning. (see Paul's letters) And I don't think removing them from the category of Christianity is much use, we'd just have to come up with another term to categorize these Jesus worshipping movements. Also for someone without a Christian background the trinity may not even seem that that important. To someone not primed to see it, the father son and holy ghost being one in purpose but not in being versus different aspects of God together and separate in divine mystery, doesn't seem THAT different. Especially compared to things like worshipping graven images or praying to the saints and Mary.
Just as many Sunni Muslims try to exclude the Shia from Islam and insist they aren't Muslims. This just devolves into silly language games. The Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Arians obviously all fit under some category with the Orthodox. Virtually every university and textbook everywhere calls that thing Christianity and if we exclude them from it then we need to create an umbrella term for them. Which again seems redundant when we already have terms for these. But this debate actually only seems to come up in relation to modern American religions because Mormons seem weird to Americans and nobody uses they word Heretic anymore so they get excluded from Christianity.
But I think Christianity is too big a tent to do that. Fundamentally woke high church Episcopalians and Independent Fundamentalist Baptists believe extremely different things and live extremely different lives if they can be under the umbrella of Christianity so can the Mormons because the word Christianity does not describe one particular tradition but rather many disparate traditions which is the whole reason we have denominations in the first place!
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
Well I think they are wrong. Mormons obviously fit a patter of American restorationist movements and just because they fall outside echumenical Orthodoxy doesn't mean they shouldn't be considered Christians.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
I'm also a nerd who is interested in doctrine. But for example in academia or in a published work it would be totally uncontroversial to refer to the Ebionites as Jewish Christianity or Valentinius' followers as Gnostic Christianity and their beliefs are (well at least the Gnostics) are surely farther from Nicene Orthodoxy then Mormons. A lot of Evangelicals insist that Catholics aren't Christians because they pray to graven images and violate the ten commandments so obviously they can't be Christians.
I think the fact that the Mormons are so inline 19th century restorationist tradition and the family of 19th century American Protestant offshoots and spin-offs as you say basically means they have to be Christians in the same way the Essenses were Jewish and the Ismailis are Muslim.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
I mean isn't that just Protestantism. That's what Martin Luther and John Calvin did and why we have something like 50,000 Protestant denominations.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
I dunno about destructive. I would say falls outside the bounds of Orthodoxy, but maybe that's inherently destructive idk.
I'm also not coming at this from a religious perspective so maybe my definition is useless to you. I'm just treating Mormons the same way I would treat Essenes, or Ismaliis or other hetrodox sects.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
Well but they celebrate the Eucharist, sing hymns, pray to Jesus, worship Jesus, put up Christmas trees, study the Bible for moral lessons, the content as well is virtually the same if you don't notice some of the books have different titles. It's not just the form is the same but the content as well. And the different scriptures thing while taken farther isn't really that unique. Protestants, Catholics and the Ethiopian Orthodox all have different scriptures. Their canon isn't the same. Catholics have Popes and Saints and pray to Mary, which Protestants don't. I agree Mormons fall outside modern Ecumenical orthodoxy. But I don't think their practices or even beliefs are farther apart then Catholics are from Protestants.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
I don't think we actually disagree very much. But I do think the word heretic describes them much better as their services are essentially just American Protestantism except they also read from the book of Mormon and the doctrine and covenants.
I agree it's different but it's very similar to a lot of other sects that sprung up in America around this time. Such as the Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists and the Shakers which are all very sectarian in character.
Mormons remind me of Ismailis many Muslims think of them as non Muslims and they are obviously a heterodox sect but essentially all non Muslims still consider them Muslims. Heterodox sects are generally still considered under the umbrella of their big religion. I think the question of whether Mormon's are Christian thing is a bit of scissor question because they fall outside of ecumenical Orthodoxy but are at the same time obviously to any outsider a schismatic Christian sect. So since modern people don't use the word heretic then things get all muddled. But I think heretics, heterodox sect, schismatic sect and similar terms are all accurate whereas non-Christian really doesn't make sense for them.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
No that's why there is a distinction between heretic and heathen. A heretic is someone who goes about worshiping Jesus in the wrong way a heathen doesn't worship him.
I feel like this view is complicated by Mormons services being virtually indistinguishable from Protestant ones. They take communion, recite the lords prayer, celebrate Christmas with Christmas trees. The high theology is extremely different but the actual church practices is virtually the same.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
But I think if you called Mormons heretics people would have less issue. I certainly would. It seems silly to exclude Mormons when their service are so essentially American and Protestant and they were just one of many sects to come of the great awakening with a founder and a new theology but those groups are generally referred to as Christians.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
Did they police the boundaries of Christianity that way? Or the boundaries of heresy and orthodoxy that way?
On the one hand, Mormons aren't Christians. Or at least, they do not fall within any historical confession of Christian orthodoxy.
What's wrong with using the word heretic? I think one of the problems with the Mormons aren't Christians argument is that their services are so incredibly Christian. They worship Jesus sing the same hymns study the the gospels. The average Protestant would completely understand everything going on in a Mormon service in a way they wouldn't in a Jewish, Islamic or even Catholic service.
I really don't think that the fact that they believe the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are separate beings rather than united but different in the concept of the trinity is enough to exclude them. Arianism is almost always referred to as Arian Christianity and no one gets up in arms when people say the Goths converted to Christianity. I think what they mean is Mormons aren't saved which is a different argument. Call them heretics or followers of a false prophet but their services are extremely recognizable as Christian.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
I think these high cosmology arguments are complicated by the fact that Mormon services are essentially indistinguishable from low church protestant ones. The average Protestant would feel more comfortable in a Mormon service than a Catholic one in terms of knowing what to do.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
Thats about what I learned approximately five years later from your timeline.
MayorofOysterville
3mo ago
I do think those traditional definitions are a bit impractical though. Everyone refers to Arianism as Arian Christianity. And it seems really hard to define a protestant church which uses the the Biblical canon, the traditional hymns, a normal communion as non Christian. I get that Unitarian Universalists aren't that, but any outside observer who went to one of those Hungarian unitarian churches would likely call them Christian.
The most unrealistic part of this is that illiterate morons could ever navigate the insane paperwork to adopt a kid.
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