Pastore Won’t Let Up
Jonathan Rowe on Apr 29th 2007
His last anti-Mormon column provoked a slew of angry reactions from Mormon readers on Townhall. This one is even harsher.
Mormonism has almost nothing in common with Christianity. Mormonism is polytheistic, it denies original sin, it teaches that both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit have physical bodies, that Jesus was conceived through sexual intercourse between God the Father and Mary, that Jesus was the spirit-brother of Lucifer, that Jesus was a polygamist, that Jesus traveled to the Americas during His three days in the tomb, and that every Mormon male will one day become a God ruling over his own planet, accompanied by multiple wives, just as the God of this Earth, named Elohim – who was once a man – has done here.
Each of these claims are rooted in primary source documents of the Mormon church (see my Cults Study Guide .pdf available free here.) Another good link to start an examination of Mormon theology is here.
However, you will not find this information located on the “Basic Beliefs” page of the official L.D.S. website (here). It is the “meat” you will learn once you’re able to digest the “milk” of basic Mormon theology. There is a lot of Christian terminology on the official website, but upon examination, you come to understand that though the terms are familiar, the meanings of those terms are foreign and heretical.
For now, in the spirit of clarity and to honor brevity, a simple overview of the birth of Mormonism must suffice.
In 1820, a 14 year old farm boy named Joseph Smith went to the woods to pray about the religious turmoil going on around his hometown of Palmyra, New York. Revivals had broken out, and young Joseph didn’t know which of the denominations to join. So, he prayed for guidance. God the Father and Jesus appeared to him in bodily form, and he was told, “I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” (Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith History, 1:19).
Joseph claims he was told all Christianity was heretical, and that he would be correcting eighteen centuries of error.
The Mormon message is clear: historic Christianity false, Joseph Smith’s visions true.
Three years later, on September 21, 1823, in another vision, the angel Moroni appeared and told him of an ancient book written on golden plates buried nearby in Hill Cumorah. He was shown the location, but was prohibited from taking the plates. Moroni told him the plates recorded the history of an ancient American civilization written in Reformed Egyptian Hieroglyphics – an utterly unique language for which there is no evidence – and that he was to translate them with the aid of two magical seer stones called the Urim and Thummim. Moroni had been given the plates by his father Mormon, and Moroni had buried them prior to his death in the final great battle between the Nephites and the Lamanites that took place near Cumorah in 385AD. After 1,400 years, Moroni – now an angel – had returned to direct Joseph Smith to the plates.
In 1827, Smith was finally allowed to take the plates just long enough to finish the translation before they were to be returned to Moroni. In May 1829, while Smith and Oliver Cowdery were praying in a forest near Bainbridge, Pennsylvania, John the Baptist appeared and conferred the Aaronic priesthood to them. Later, Peter, James, and John appeared and conferred upon them the Melchizedekian priesthood. The translation was completed in three years, and the Book of Mormon was published in March, 1830. On April 6, 1830, Smith and five others formed The Church of Christ in Fayette, New York. After two name changes over the next four years, they settled on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mormonism is not Christian, from its birth it has been anti-Christian.
The first Christians believed they had met the promised Jewish Messiah in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies. It is both correct and proper to say Christianity is the completion of Judaism.
However, Joseph Smith considered both Judaism and Christianity not incomplete but false, choosing instead to write his own versions of the Old and New Testaments while also adding additional holy texts. Had he not claimed to be the “corrected” version of Christianity, Mormonism would be a false religion. Yet, by claiming to be the “true” Christianity, he created the archetypical “cult of Christianity.”
Filed in The Belfry, The Bureau
His recounting of the birth of Mormonism is actually pretty accurate.
That first paragraph is technically true, but filled with some inaccuracies, misunderstandings, overemphasis of minor points that aren’t “doctrine,” and of course presenting them in a unflattering light when there is a much more flattering way to present them.
For example, Mormons aren’t polytheistic. Technically you could call Mormons henotheistic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism) but that’s not quite right either.
It’s this part that really gets me:
“Mormonism is not Christian, from its birth it has been anti-Christian.”
The first half of that is debatable depending on how he wants to define Christianity and I suspect his definition leaves out a lot of people other than Mormons that consider themselves Christian (heck, a lot of Fundamentalists don’t consider CATHOLICS Christian).
The last half is bull. Or at least it’s no more true than saying “Christians are Anti-Jewish” or “Christians are Anti-Buddhist” or pretty much that “Christians are Anti-everything”… or at least his brand of Christianity.
trey wrote:
‘The last half is bull. Or at least it’s no more true than saying “Christians are Anti-Jewish” or “Christians are Anti-Buddhist” or pretty much that “Christians are Anti-everything”… or at least his brand of Christianity.’
It is a matter of ultimate importance to many religions that people accept the Truth has defined by that religion (as interpreted by those who claim to speak for that religion). I am entirely unsympathetic to this, but I do see his remarks as being a logically consistent result of Christian religion. From a dogmatic Christian point of view all of those statements above are true. From my point of view, religions tend to endorse and promote exclusivistic dogmatism. Those anti-Morman remarks are faithfull to non-Morman, biblical Christianity. Dare I say it? Yes. The problem here is Christianity itself.
Actually, Pastore completely glossed over one of the major features of the Latter Day Saints. While THE authoritative source of LDS beliefs isn’t the Bible, it’s isn’t the Book of Mormon either. Nor is it Doctrine and Covenants or Pearl of Great Price. The most important source of LDS beliefs is the Living Prophet. This is how the LDS church is able to adapt; even if Joseph Smith or Brigham Young said that polygamy was desirable on earth, a subsequent Living Prophet declared that belief to be incorrect.
The most interesting case of the dependence on a living prophet was the Worldwide Church of God, a church that many Christians considered out of the mainstream, but which subsequently went through a major belief change and became more orthodox (from a Christian point of view).
Mormonism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, bears no resemblance to historical Christianity. It accepts none of the Nicene Creed, the authoritative statement of the Christian faith. The Triune Deity in Christianity is three separate “human” gods in Mormonism.
It practices Baptism of the Dead, which is a foreign accretion or syncretism It asserts humans become divine like their gods. It does practice baptism (including of the dead), polygamy (Jesus is strictly monogamy), and the “sacrament,” the Lord’s Supper as a memorial meal (cf., Eucharist, in which Christ’s Real Presence co-exists with the bread and wine); it does not have the Apostolic Ministry. It is inherently racist The Temple activities would horrify a historical Christian.
As a set of religious vis-a-vis familial and social values, one still appreciates its strong familial and community orientations, its effectual social support network (among believers), and healthy lifestyles. But none of these are “Christian” in a normative sense. Racism is opposed by historic Christianity.