- ji on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “I self-identify as a faithful Latter-day Saint, but the following statement is problematic for me: “The Latter-day Saint Jesus, however, is the firstborn spirit child of God the Father and a heavenly mother, a being who achieved His divine status through personal progression.” I know there are Latter-day Saints who believe in and proclaim heavenly mothers, but as another commenter has pointed out, there is no scriptural basis or canonical support for this — I see it not as doctrine but merely as a thread in the tapestry of Mormon thought. Indeed, in our latter-day scripture seems to proclaim trinitarianism, if I may use that term, and Jesus himself repeatedly proclaims in the first person that He is our God — and our temple endowment, the pinnacle of revelation, shows that Jesus has always stood beside the Father. When Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals argue with each other, I think there may be some error and chauvinism in participants on both sides. I am reminded of our Savior’s counsel to his enthusiastic but errant apostles in Matthew 12:30, Mark 9:40, and Luke 9:50, and even further back to Moses’ counsel to the enthusiastic but errant Joshua regarding Eldad and Medad. I also like Paul’s counsel to let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, suggesting that each of us should confidently hold our own convictions with the purpose of honoring God rather than judging others and their convictions. In other words, charity matters.” May 13, 09:01
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: ““The nature of Christ is a really big deal to traditional Christians–whole councils were called over it–so it’s a very important facet of our theology and worship.” This is a very important difference, but maybe not the one he thinks. Early Christians (but late enough to be well into what we call the Great Apostasy) had esoteric philosophical debates about the nature of God and Christ, and then the winners declared that you had to agree with them to be an orthodox Christian; i.e., the losers were going to Hell. Demanding that people agree to a set of abstract propositions about the nature of God (the creeds) remains an important part of “traditional Christianity” to this day. (In saying that, I may be falling into the mistake Jonathan points out. I really don’t know how important creeds are to Orthodox Christianity, for example.) Latter-day Saint thinking is not always as clean a break from traditional Christian thinking as it ought to be, but I don’t think any Latter-day Saint imagines someone going before the bar of Christ and being told: “Sorry, you believed in the Trinity, so no Celestial Kingdom for you.” Even putting aside that people will continue to learn after this life, it’s just not that important to us. When we worry about it at all, it’s mostly about the consequences of such thinking (“How can one truly love a God without body, parts, and passions?”). We’ll argue for the truth as we see it, but it’s always something they care about more than we do. This is why we tend to talk past each other when we debate “Are Latter-day Saints Christians?”” May 13, 08:17
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “You’re not wrong, Jonathan. It has been a thought in the back of my mind throughout reading the book too, which I kind of got at on the “Evangelical Prism” section of my book review. One thing in the book that I thought was ironic that he pointed out that Joseph Smith’s starting point for a narrative of a great apostasy was divisions in Christianity, but then he portrayed them as essentially the same on all points discussed.” May 13, 06:32
- on Why We Shouldn’t Minimize Our Differences: An Evangelical Perspective on the Restoration: “Kind of rolling my eyes here. The Evangelicals are Traditional Christians because their heresy is 300 years older than our heresy? Yeah, okay, sure. He might want to ask his Catholic and Orthodox friends if “priesthood” is just a quaint archaism for them. “My way of explaining how one is equal to three (good and correct) is incompatible with your way of explaining how three is equal to one (bad and wrong)” is comical, especially since it’s based on a few opaque creeds that took shape many centuries after the New Testament, and LDS doctrines without much or any scriptural basis – we don’t even have a complete record of what was said in the King Follett sermon, and there’s no canonical support at all for belief in a Mother in Heaven. I mean, I like the LDS doctrines and think they’re true, but maybe we could all step back and be more humble about how much we think we know about the nature of God, instead of elevating it into an area of essential distinction. I have no particular interest in being accepted by or acceptable to Traditional Christians, and I think the differences in theology are real and valuable. But I reject the idea that Evangelicals, heirs of the single most consequential schism in the Christian faith, are in any position to claim to speak for Traditional Christianity. The Protestant Reformation was a big deal! It led to religious wars for the better part of two centuries. I think an honest look deeper into Christian history would find LDS doctrine doing a lot of things – not everything, but a lot of things – that turned up at various times in various Christian communities over the centuries. Acknowledging that would do more to help Evangelicals understand their LDS neighbors than pounding on early medieval creeds.” May 13, 04:53
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “Good post, I think we need to remember there are many groups at Church we have to be careful not to take for granted. The old men in EQ sit on hard chairs in a gym segment. The empty nesters are often not engaged beyond Temple and family history work. The members in Primary and Youth are disconnected from the adults. The time intensive calling folks are near burn out. The members on the margin are at risk of falling away. Women are often undervalued by default. Building and maintaining community is hard.” May 12, 20:29
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “To be clear, the 70-year old who decides it isn’t true is most certainly not the typical experience, it was just one particular scenario I thought would be particularly hard. I get that it’s usually a more gradual process across years or decades where one gradually sorts out what they like from what they don’t.” May 12, 13:07
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: ““…I can’t imagine what it would be like to decide in your 70s none of it’s true…” I don’t think this is how it works, and I hope this is not the prevailing mindset among those who study activity demographics. I think that some (many? most?) of those who seem to disaffiliate in their later years do so because of irrelevance — they themselves are seen as irrelevant in their wards because of their age or for some reason no longer fitting the preferred pattern, or the lessons they hear in their meetings are irrelevant to daily reality. Lily’s first sentence resonated strongly with me. With regard to the second, the constant emphasis on pay, pray, and obey seems problematic. Rather than extracting from the members, it seems to me that church attendance should refresh, replenish, and recharge — rather than thinking that members exist for the church, it seems to me that the church exists for the members. It might be fruitful for the church’s demographers to shift from a true/untrue binary, if they want to better understand and to help resolve.” May 12, 11:33
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “As a current nonbeliever who left belief in the church over the course of my 30s, I don’t think you should feel too sad for people who leave religion later in life. I learned a lot from growing up in the church, and I don’t think it was time completely wasted even though I don’t believe it anymore. Life just happens, and I think people should be proud of following the truth as far as what they knew. Making a decision like that later in life can take an enormous amount of character, courage, and self-knowledge that people can be very proud of. I know I’m coming from the other side of the issue to some extent, but I wish the church spent less effort trying to “keep people in the church” at any cost and spent more effort on helping people develop skills of evaluating truth claims and build moral character regardless of where they end up. I actually don’t think very many more people would leave the church as a result and both members and ex-members would be better off as a result.” May 12, 11:13
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “The older I get the closer I feel to God and the more I think I understand His character. But the Church has made itself largely irrelevant to me with its constant emphasis on the youth and marriage and families.” May 12, 10:07
- on Every Decade is a Decade of Decision: “I suppose I get the general sense of this. But the chart needs value markings and larger type. (Former marketing research guy.)” May 12, 07:02
