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All you’ve done is mistake familiarity with openness, and mistake newness with secrecy. They are not the same. Obviously if I were to convert to Islam, I would have more homework and research to do than if I were to become a Southern Baptist, but that doesn’t somehow mean that Islam is a secretive religion trying to hide things from you…
Ironically, the push to call ourselves by the mouthful “members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” was prompted by a desire to be more transparent, not less. The reason being that sometimes people thought we worshipped a god named Mormon. That’s not linguistic poisoning. It’s accuracy. Our church’s name has been identical since 1838 (first 8 years had a few variations, but never Mormon, not internally, though Smith was known to use the phrase “Mormonism” from time to time.) A fact that is betrayed by your own words (!): Joseph Smith is not “the” central figure. It’s still Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith is by our own doctrine like, maybe third at best? Joseph Smith to Mormons is definitely a weaker link than Muhammad to Muslims, for example.
The precise degree of and debate over what doctrines are essential and core vs merely informative is common to all religions, but it seems surprising to me that you think you are better suited to answer this than an actual member?
Funny enough, unlike many other religions, we do actually have a standardized “worthiness interview” that asks about basic questions of faith. You can look them up. They are quite simple and are, generally, yes/no. On that basis I’d argue we are MORE transparent than other religions, where beliefs vary widely within a congregation (let alone sect or branch) even on self-admitted core topics with little to no effort at correction, and where most members wouldn’t even know where to look to find, for example, what makes a Baptist a Baptist and not a Methodist instead (at least that’s my personal experience).
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.
To be fair, this is basically how it went between Jews and early Christians.
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.”
Correct. And in fact, this is exactly what you're saying to them.
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.
No. Most people in the world, non-christians, think mormons are christians. It's difficult to tell them apart if you're not in it. They fit in the broad category "christians".
The work the word “practical” is doing in that sentence is: anybody with even a passing understanding of Christianity.
You’re right: to a person who has no understanding of Christianity, Mormons are Christians because what they vaguely look like.
This is the same true for people who think Buddhists are Hindus. Or Jains are Buddhists. Or any of the many tiny middle eastern religions are all Muslims.
But they aren’t. While there are definitely various flavors of Buddhism, and various flavors of Hinduism, these are not the same thing. In fact, even the Mormons own propaganda about “the Latter Day Saints movement” where they talk about the various flavors of Mormonism aligns with the “Hindus aren’t Buddhist, Mormons aren’t Christians” point I’m making here.
They’re trying to have it both ways. Both that it is a separate religion revealed to Joseph smith when an angel showed him some magical golden tablets in 1830, and also that they’re Christians.
Muslims, who also recognize Christ as a prophet, affirm the virgin birth, and acknowledge some of the Miracles, but they aren’t Christians, although some Muslim evangelists may try to claim some alliance with Christianity when recruiting people in the same way that Mormons do.
I think the man who classifies muslims as christians will make more mistakes in his daily predictions (ie, navigating daily life) than the man who classifies mormons as christians.
The validity of the categories is independent of the subject's self-identification, or of the ur-trope-namer’s decision as to who is allowed to use the name.
To make the obvious analogy, some kid may think they're 'nonbinary', but to the outside world, and to me, they will be put in one of the two original buckets, I'm not creating a new bucket for this nonsense. And in this case I'm not creating an extra mormon bucket when the christian bucket will do.
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