Tuesday, July 15, 2008

lds church admits that it should not call itself christian - or - oh the hypocrisy!

the following was presented as a commentary on the lds newsroom website - "the official resource for news media, opinion leaders, and the public.

It just doesn’t seem right that the LDS Church can overturn more than a millennium and a half of common usage simply by virtue of the fact that it established itself a millenium and a half after the Christian faith was born, and adopted many of its early principles. By declaring that any group professing Jesus Christ and the Bible can rightly be called Christian is akin to declaring that any religious group that Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon can rightly call itself Mormon.
wow. i'm simply amazed.

15 comments:

  1. I enjoyed this very much!

    But I actually agree with argument. Traditions have the capacity for self-definition and that places parameters on what can appropriately be called by that name.

    On my take, mormons are not Christian, regardless of how much they protest, and FLDS are not mormon no matter how much they protest. Sure, they can be related, but not the same.

    Your take?

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  2. i agree to an extent, the more i study the more i feel that the technical definition of 'christian' includes a belief in the homousian (consubstantiality of christ and god) trinity. however when the 'mormons aren't christian' call is made, there seems to be a different language game used that employs the technical definition to exclude someone from using the ordinary (follower of jesus) definition.

    even if this is not the case, the lds public relations team is being awfully hypocritical in their desire to have their cake and eat it too.

    i think a little asterisk* could solve everything. latter-day saints can claim that they are christian* and flds can call themselves mormon*

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  3. christian* and mormon*

    -agreed

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  4. Is this a subtle stab at Barry Bonds*? I hope not. :)

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  5. Looks like someone else made the catch too. The portion you quoted has been altered.

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  6. Wait, never mind. I'm an idiot.

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  7. I think the difference was not well articulated. I don't think the church would have a problem with them saying they are Mormon if the word Mormon defined a group of religions that believe in the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, a word to describe that does not exist. The church does not like the FLDS defining themselves as the same church as the LDS. There is a big difference between these two points and though the second is what they are trying to say, it does sound hypocritical w/o clarifying the first.

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  8. They can call themselves Christian all they want, aye? ;)

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  9. carson,

    john hamer (who i got to pick up at the airport a few months ago for a conference) wrote an excellent post on by common consent pointing out the problems of the notion that 'mormon' is exclusively tied to the CofJCofLDS.

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  10. Thanks for the link.

    I'm always amazed at your integration within the LDS intellectual hierarchy!

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  11. I saw that post you referenced for me when I got caught up on my google reader and it made me wonder, do you still reader common consent and times/seasons? I noticed a long time ago that you used to post, just curious.

    BTW, I also noticed on Chris' blog your comment about bloggin' since yonder days gone by, you beat me by about a year and a half!

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  12. sort of like homosexuals are trying to redefine marriage?

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