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Notes -
Right-coded violence reasserts itself (?)
It's sobering, that this morning someone might have asked you "did you hear about the 40-year-old Iraq war veteran who committed a 'third space' mass murder over the weekend?" and you might have reasonably responded, "Which one?"
(Insert Dr. Doofenshmirtz meme here!)
Of course, like any normal American, the instant I heard that someone had shot up a Mormon congregation and burned their house of worship to the ground I
crossed my fingers and prayed the perpetrator was a member of my outgroupimmediately wondered if the shooter was a right-coded wingnut who somehow blamed Charlie Kirk's death on the Mormons.(I've never managed to determine whether Tyler Robinson and his family are actually Mormon, or maybe were Mormon at some point, but nobody seems to care; apparently all anyone else wants to know is whether he was really a gay furry, a groyper, or both. But living in Utah seems sufficiently Mormon-adjacent that a psychotic killer could draw the association.)
So far, no apparent Kirk connection! However the Michigan shooter indeed regarded Mormons as the anti-Christ. Perhaps that's the whole story: he just really, really disliked Mormons (sort of like everyone else). This makes Donald Trump's commentary interesting; the President immediately declared that this was a "targeted attack on Christians" and was met with an Evangelical chorus of "Mormons aren't Christians" (which to me seems a little tone deaf, under the circumstances, but times being what they are...). In any event this is probably the deadliest case of targeted violence against Mormon congregations since the 19th century.
(There was apparently a bomb threat in 1993 that could have been a mass casualty event, had the explosives been real. Other than that, I'm not an expert on hate crimes but Google does not seem to think that Mormons are very often the target of such things.)
The North Carolina shooter got less attention (he did not burn down any churches), but that didn't stop Newsweek from digging into some peculiarities of history:
This fellow has quite a colorful record, and part of that record includes the fact that
This reads like schizophrenia to me, but on balance it seems more right-coded than left-coded, concerns over "white supremacists" notwithstanding.
All this seems to have the usual left-coded social media spaces crowing; they have spent the past few weeks assuring us all that right wing extremism is far, far more common and deadly than left wing extremism. But to my mind, neither of these cases quite reach that "political extremism" threshold. The Michigan shooting appears to be genuine sectarian violence of a kind rarely seen in the United States, and the North Carolina shooting looks like a textbook mental health event. Nevertheless, I have no difficulty seeing these as right-coded, for the simple reason that they were carried out against minority groups by white, middle-aged, ex-military men. That's red tribe quite regardless of what their actual political views are--indeed, whether they have any coherent political views at all.
This got me thinking about all the other violence that I see as a blue tribe problem, quite regardless of its ideological roots. The obvious one that Charlie Kirk himself occasionally gestured toward was inner city urban gang violence; that is blue-coded violence, to my mind, though it is arguably "politically neutral." A couple weeks ago I suggested that we should be paying closer attention to the role that "Neutral vs. Conservative" thinking has to play in the national conversation on identity-oriented violence. This weekend's events strengthen that impression, for me. I do not really like the "stochastic terrorism" framing, particularly given my attachment to significant freedom of speech. But neither can I comfortably assign all responsibility for these events strictly to individual perpetrators.
I wish I had something wiser to say about that. I would like there to be less violence everywhere, but certainly the trend toward deliberately directing violence against unarmed, unsuspecting innocents seems like an especially problematic escalation, and one our political system seems to be contributing toward even when our specific political commitments do not. I don't know if drawing a distinction between "tribe-coded" and "tribe-caused" is helpful. But it is a thought I had, and have not seen expressed elsewhere, so I thought I should test it here.
This is... tricky, I think, in terms of sensitivity.
On the one hand, Mormons aren't Christians. Or at least, they do not fall within any historical confession of Christian orthodoxy. They're probably best understood as a type of heretic; personally I put them in a category that I think of as 'Jesusists', that is, religions that take Jesus as their central figure, but which are too different from historical Christianity to be understood as the same thing. The point is that "Mormons aren't Christians", as a statement, is substantially true.
On the other, it is obviously breathtakingly insensitive to bring that up at this time. Mormons believe that they are Christians, even if they are, in my judgement, in error. (I realise that technically definitions can't be wrong; even so I can and do believe that they draw the line between Christianity and non-Christianity in an indefensible place.) More importantly, whether Mormonism is a form of Christianity or not is irrelevant to this particular issue. Murdering a group of Mormons at worship is obviously very, very bad. Christians ought to respond to that by condemning the crime while offering empathy, support, and compassion to those grieving. It is not the appropriate time to engage in a confessional dispute.
But to return to the first hand - a major public figure, the president of the United States, just responded to this by asserting that Mormons are Christians, and that this shooting is an attack on Christianity qua Christianity. Now I judge both of those statements to be untrue, and though many might argue the former, the latter seems pretty hard to dispute. It is not factually true that this shooting was "a targeted attack on Christians". If nothing else, ranting about the anti-Christ suggests that the shooter himself is a Christian, albeit a very delusional one. So it seems like there is value in clarifying in this moment that Trump's interpretation of the shooting is wrong.
I suppose this is just another situation where Trump really needed to keep his mouth shut, because all his comments have done is make a tragic situation worse for everyone.
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.
I mean, I'm happy to use the word 'heretic' as well. I think there is a meaningful difference in that in Arius' time, the boundary was not yet well-defined, whereas today that line has been clearly drawn for well over a millennium and a half, but I'm not going to fight too hard over words as long as it is clearly understood that, whatever words you use, Mormonism does not belong to the same category as, broadly speaking, 'Christianity'. Mormonism is not the same kind of thing as Protestantism, Orthodoxy, and Catholicism. That's the hill I'll defend.
Personally I don't like to use 'saved' as a synonym here because I think that means something different. There are Christians who are not saved, and there are non-Christians who are saved. The saved and Christianity are overlapping but distinct categories.
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.
I do agree with the comparison to other 19th century restorationists. It seems to me that Mormons are part of a family of 19th century American Protestant offshoots or spin-offs - Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-Day Adventism, Christadelphianism, and so on. They generally share a common method (charismatic leader/writer and reinterpreter, extremely strong emphasis on scripture and dismissal of tradition, etc.), and frequently some doctrinal conclusions (nontrinitarianism, narrative of general apostasy, etc.). Go back a bit further and there are Europeans following the same model as well - the Swedenborgian New Church, for instance. Likewise there are more recent examples - Iglesia ni Cristo in the Philippines is another instance of the same model, and perhaps even the Unification Church.
At any rate, I don't think all the groups in that category are non-Christian - Adventists, for instance, seem pretty clearly inside the tent. However, I think some of them have placed themselves outside the bounds of orthodoxy.
I think you're probably correct that there's a scissor statement here. I am particularly interested in doctrine, but most American Christians are extremely ignorant of theology and embrace a number of heresies. (Though I should say that Ligonier, the people doing the State of Theology survey, themselves have a rather narrow and tendentious view of orthodoxy.) As long as Mormonism looks like church on the outside, only weird nerds like me will get stressed about what they actually believe.
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.
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