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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.
The things Mormons think are not the same as what Christians think, though. This isn’t a case of like…Protestants disliking the pope but still having more or less the same core ideology, or Eastern Orthodox Christians not agreeing on “the filioque” or whatever it’s called. Mormons think god is an actual physical being with skin and bones that you could touch with your hands from near the planet Kolob, and that there were major mass civilizations in North America where most of the mythology comes from. That’s not me being hyperbolic to make point, that’s literally what they actually believe. It has almost nothing to do with Christianity. Muslims have more in common with Christians than Mormons do. “Unitarian Universalists” have more in common, as far as beliefs are concerned at least, with Christians than Mormons do. When Mormons talk about “god” they aren’t talking about a mystical unseeable unknowable entity like Christians are, they’re talking about a physical person who traveled here from another planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Mormonism
Mormons also don’t share the same creation myth as Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
It’s just seriously not the same religion. Again not because of some minor disagreements over interpretation, it’s just fundamentally a different religion.
The whole reason I’m probably being so annoying in this thread is that I had always heard of Mormons, had some ex Mormon friends, live around Mormons, and had honestly no idea what they actually thought or taught each other. Looking into their beliefs was a WILD experience to me because of how insane it all is. It’s a group of people, who are rapidly growing, who have made a religion out of what essentially comes down to worship of actual fucking space aliens. MAJOR WTF experience learning this.
Here’s a hymn about traveling to kolob: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/media/music/songs/if-you-could-hie-to-kolob?lang=eng
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