Stellula
1mo ago
Correct. I do not think that Mormons are Christians, and neither do most (all?) Christians. The only (practically) people who think of Mormons as Christian are Mormons who are being dishonest (hence: the motte and Bailey).
I won’t be deceptive about my belief that Mormons are not Christian. There is no hidden “meat” (to use their “milk and meat” framing) coming next.
Stellula
1mo ago
Perhaps! And if Christians referred to themselves as “Jews” and intentionally tried to create confusion about their beliefs, I would have a similar criticism of them.
I think that’s a good point btw. Mormons see themselves as something that should replace (or in their framing: fix) Christianity, not as Christians themselves.
In fact, if you follow through with their logic, it’s basically: “we’re Christians, and you’re not.”
Stellula
1mo ago
It’s a motte and Bailey (the namesake of this website).
Motte: were Christians just like the ones you’ve heard of or maybe grew up as.
Bailey: we believe Christianity is actually incomplete until a man named Joseph Smith completed it in the 1830s.
So you’re right, “secretive” or “hiding” aren’t perfect words to describe Mormonism, a better word would be deceptive or dishonest (I don’t think that Mormonism would have many converts if they were more honest about their beliefs, and apparently neither do they, which is why teach their missionaries “milk before meat”, or more in the parlance of this website: motte before Bailey.
Stellula
1mo ago
But he’s not just saying the words, he turned it into an incredibly catchy, well produced song/piece of subversive art. That’s not the same as a parrot.
What do you think Lehi did in approximate 600BC?
What do you think Joseph smith did in approximately 1830?
Who is Moroni? What did Moroni do in relation to Joseph smith?
What did Jesus do after his resurrection? Did he come to America? Who did he interact with here?
Who are the nephites? Who are the Lamanites?
Who wrote the narrative in the Book of Mormon? Who wrote the pearl of great price?
The reason that Christians don’t consider Mormons to be Christian, the reason that Mormons try to hide their beliefs, and the reason for things like trying to rename the church, or imply some sort of “latter day saints movement”, instead of just another example of the charismatic religious movement (there were MANY of these in the 1800s), is revealed in the answers to these questions.
Mormons should do whatever they want, I don’t have a problem with them, my frustration is the linguistic poisoning at the center of the religion. If Mormons were simply honest and upfront about what they believe, then cool, but they aren’t. It’s the same as men insisting they’re woman and instead of saying “I am a man who dresses and acts like a woman”, they say that they are women, and try to poison the language.
And I’m not saying that Christian beliefs aren’t also strange to an outsider. “I believe a man rose from the dead 2000 years ago” probably sounds just as crazy to a non Christian as “I believe a lost tribe of Israel sailed to America in 600BC, then hid some golden plates in up state New York, and eventually revealed them to a guy named Joseph Smith in 1830 who used them to make himself the central figure of a new religions”.
The difference is that Christians don’t try to hide this stuff. Mormons aren’t Christians in the same way that Muslims aren’t Christians and Christians aren’t Jews. The fact that Mormons are campaigning to convince people to call them “Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints” instead of “Mormons” is dishonest on its face.
Stellula
1mo ago
Yeah man, those links are exactly the problem that I'm talking about. Those links reference somebody with the name Jesus, but what they fail to mention is that they're talking about an entirely different person (who just happens to have the same name) as the person that Christians are talking about when they say Jesus.
Stuff like this:
https://news-gu.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/mormonism-101#C8
In addition to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ.
No it isn't. There is a historical person who actually existed named Jesus, and he did not write a testament called "The Book of Mormon". This isn't a debate about theological interpretations, it is a historical fact.
It contains the writings of ancient prophets, giving an account of God’s dealings with the peoples on the American continent.
It doesn't. It contains some things written by Joseph Smith in the 1830s in what he thought looked roughly like ancient egyptian.
For Latter-day Saints it stands alongside the Old and New Testaments of the Bible as holy scripture.
Yes this is true, but what they're not mentioning on this page is that it was written in the 1830s by Joseph Smith.
This stuff is just frustrating to me. If you want to claim Joseph Smith as some prophet and start some new religion about it, then go for it. But just stop lying to people.
The rest of this page is the same sort of sophistic hand waving and not worth going through point by point.
Stellula
1mo ago
Nicene Christian
This is one of my nits to pick with mormons. The idea of calling Christians "Nicene" Christians, as if there is some alternative Christianity is ridiculous semantic poisoning. As far as I can tell the only people who use this term are Mormons.
Stellula
1mo ago
Is that so accessible, though?
You don't need to read the entire bible and all of the fan fictions to figure what Christians believe.
I doubt most people, even people who know lots of mormons know that "We actually think that Jesus came to America, and that there were several large lost civilizations of Jews who sailed here in 500BC" is what The Book of Mormon is actually about.
Stellula
1mo ago
But my understanding is that the current leadership is pretty committed to burying anything that makes the faith stand out from the undifferentiated mass of non-denominational Christianity generally.
This isn't really possible, is it? I've been on a bit of a rabbit hole chasing down what Mormons actually think for the last few months (it's really hard to find, which is odd for a "church"), and from what I can tell their claim of even being "Christian" at all is a bit of an intentional linguistic trick.
Mormons believe in somebody they call Jesus, but they believe he was a guy who came to The United States of America about 2000 years ago and met with people living there at the time. The core of their religion is that there was a group of Jews who sailed to North America several thousand years ago, split into two groups which formed large, continent scale societies, and then went to war. There was a guy, Mormon, who wrote down some revelation on golden tablets, hid them, and then eventually an angel came to Joseph Smith in 1850 and told him where to find them.
Again, it's a bit tough to actually find what the Mormons believe. I think the mormons try to hide this on purpose because of how it comes across to people not familiar with it.
Stellula
1mo ago
It is an outrageous stretch to claim that "hinduism" has existed for thousands of years in the same way that The Catholic Church has. When this claim comes up, Hindus take the same tack as Muslims and Jews do, which is trying to claim that both there is no institution (whenever obvious problems with either of these religions come up), and that also it's the oldest institution.
There is no Hindu equivalent of The Pope, or The Cardinals, or Vatican City, or the Catechism. There are some old monestaries which have a loose connection to the modern world, some of which are almost as old as The Church.
Stellula
1mo ago
There are many evangelicals who believe that Trump is the fulfillment of some sort of prophecy.
Stellula
1mo ago
Are you Catholic? And if so: were you raised by and around other Catholics?
Being offended by this seems really forced to me. I wonder if the people taking offense just come from a different culture?
Stellula
1mo ago
Every Catholic I have asked in person has said some variation of this.
I think non Catholics have a really difficult time modeling the way that Catholics actually think about stuff.
Don't let the people online and their questionable motives disuade you from attending a Cathlic church. My wife and I went through nearly the exact journey you did for the exact reasons. I am a "cradle catholic" (that is: I was raised catholic from the cradle), and my wife was part of a non denominational evengelical protestant christian church as a child.
We both left the church for different reasons during our teens, and were both extremely annoying internet atheists for 15+ years.
The things you are feeling about The Church being a stable force in an unstable world are correct. The Catholic Church has existed as an institution for between 1700 and 2000 years, and has been a background force keeping western civilization alive through every major war, every pandemic, every crisis, through the 'dark' ages, through everything.
The tradition is extremely alluring. There's something difficult to describe about participating in a ritual that has been practiced nearly without pause, for 2000 years. There is no other way to engage with your role as a member of western society than that, and there is nothing more long term stable than that.
If you want something even more traditional, find a Traditional Latin Mass. Despite what people online say, this is very much alive and well, and growing. Even my parish, in a very progressive part of a very progressive city, has a mass which is largely in latin, with very little singing, etc.
Something I think you'll find if you pursue this (I hope you do, like I said my wife and I did for the exact same reason you are and are now somewhat vocal about what a good choice it was) is the large gap between the internet, and The Church. This is a feature imo. Good luck.
Stellula
1mo ago
As much as a lot of us complain about Pope Francis's progressivism, we can't deny that the Church has been seeing somewhat of a renaissance over the last few years: https://www.ncregister.com/news/easter-2025-new-catholics-by-the-numbers
The Pope Francis critics will say that this is despite him, but it's difficult not to see that his grace, and his kindness, likely also have an effect on the way that people view The Church.
Stellula
2mo ago
I'd be a tad bit concerned if my heart was, for example, a shade of blue.
I'm lost in the analogy now. What?
Stellula
2mo ago
Do people undergo experimental heart surgery because they don't like how their heart looks?
If there was an experimental heart surgery which changed the color of a patients heart from vaguely red to bright pink, I wouldn't support people doing it. I definitely wouldn't support impressionable teenagers who read about this on the internet doing it.
Stellula
2mo ago
Looks like Goldberg released the chats and, yeah, what Hegseth posted was inappropriate.
Stellula
2mo ago
Well today we had congressional testimony where they claim there was nothing secretive shared, and that signal was approved for the type of use they were doing.
So maybe everybody is lying. Certainly everybody involved here has an incentive to lie.
Stellula
2mo ago
I don't think the Trump admin would trust using a secure message system developed by the NSA.
Stellula
2mo ago
But it doesn't say that. In fact, when they talk about any actually sensitive military planning type things, they explicitly refer anybody in the group to an appropriate channel:
At 8:05 a.m. on Friday, March 14, “Michael Waltz” texted the group: “Team, you should have a statement of conclusions with taskings per the Presidents guidance this morning in your high side inboxes.” (High side, in government parlance, refers to classified computer and communications systems.) “State and DOD, we developed suggested notification lists for regional Allies and partners. Joint Staff is sending this am a more specific sequence of events in the coming days and we will work w DOD to ensure COS, OVP and POTUS are briefed.”
Stellula
2mo ago
The journalist says he has these, but what are they, specifically?
“We could probably hit them with a $big_cock_american_missile as earlier as tomorrow morning given that the USS American president is off the coast of goatherdistan” is specific timeframes, weapons packages, etc. and doesn’t say anything that isn’t also publicly available.
Call me skeptical.
Stellula
2mo ago
It seems like this was obviously “leaked” on purpose. Nothing they’re saying here is in any way secretive and it sounds like regime taking points, not planning.
Stellula
2mo ago
There’s a podcast called “Sold a Story” that’s worth listening to if you have a kid that age learning to read.
Basically the “sight reading” thing looks like students are progressing, but then soon hit a wall they can’t get past because they weren’t actually learning how to read just how to identify words.
Seriously check it out. Very well done, and also infuriating with regards to how education trends are pushed.
Communism and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible because Christianity’s is individualistic. Every soul matters. Every soul is redeemable. There are no chosen people. Every person is worthy of god’s love.
These ideas are destructive to communism, which is a collectivist ideology. Christians are saying that you should love each other, and that people are all, each, valuable individuals—communism says you should love each other insofar as it serves the emergent gestalt that sits on top of it.
How to integrate this into a functioning society: hardcore individualistic ruthless capitalism is in tension with the morals of the religion. Christian ethics act as a governor which serves to prevent stuff like becoming a wage slave to Amazon, and aborting your children so you can keep working.
You need both of these things, although the “hardcore ruthless capitalism” I’m talking about is not so much a “thing” as it is the base state of human existence. You have the base individualism, free association, etc. and then are Christian morals on top of it to make it all work.
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