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Are Mormons Christians?

Checking the credentials of the "Saints"

by John W. Kennedy

Michael B. Bennett has heard the accusations many times: Mormons are not Christians. But Bennett, who converted to Mormonism at age 18, claims the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has provided answers he did not find as a Southern Baptist.

Bennett grew up in the heavily Baptist region of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His parents and grandparents had been active Baptists, and he was baptized at age 12. He attended youth rallies and Billy Graham crusades. "I was about as active a Baptist as you can be," recalls Bennett, 40.

Yet he found the behavior of some churchgoers inconsistent. His friends at youth group fervently testified about Christ one week, then smoked dope the next. An adulterous deacon continued to hold office after a hasty confession. Gossip and backbiting preoccupied many churchgoers.

Bennett was ripe for a change. When a high-school friend told him that his church had unpaid leaders, it sparked Bennett's interest. After attending several weekly LDS sacrament meetings and experiencing what seemed to be genuine care and concern, Bennett felt "compelled by the spirit" to be rebaptized as a Mormon. Now a lawyer in Salt Lake City, Bennett devotes 20 hours a week to church activities.

While LDS theology is what separates Mormonism from orthodox Christianity, it had little to do with Bennett's attraction to America's most popular homegrown religion.

Sandra Tanner, 58, a former Mormon and codirector of Utah Lighthouse Ministry in Salt Lake City, says, "You join Mormonism because of friendship ties, a sense of belonging, a hope for your deceased family."

What do Mormons believe?
Though evangelicals generally concede that Mormons are good neighbors, the theological chasm is wide. Mormons differ from orthodox Christians in that they:

• Consider the Book of Mormon and founder Joseph Smith's other works, The Pearl of Great Price and Doctrine and Convenants, to be authoritative. To Mormons, the Old Testament and New Testament are Scripture as well, but they have been corrupted in translation.
• Reject the traditional concept of the Trinity. Mormons believe God the Father and God the Son have fleshly bodies and that the Holy Ghost is a spirit man.
• Teach that God was once a finite being who achieved his exalted rank by "progressing."

The church was founded by Joseph Smith (1805-1844). Based on supernatural visitations he claimed he had experienced, Smith intended to restore the true Christian church that he said had been lost 16 centuries earlier. According to Smith, God told him that all churches—with specific reference to Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians—were wrong, and to join none.

"On every major doctrine, the fundamental teachings of evangelical Christianity and Mormon doctrine are diametrically opposed," says Norman Geisler, dean of Southern Evangelical Seminary.

M. Russell Ballard, 70, a member since 1985 of the Council of the Twelve, the LDS church's ruling body, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY (CT), "We believe God, the eternal Father, is literally our father. He's a man glorified, exalted, perfected, resurrected."

Robert L. Millet, 51, dean of religious education at Brigham Young University (BYU), says, "Human spirits were born sons and daughters of God before this life, and if they will be born again now, they can be empowered and transformed by Jesus Christ, becoming eventually as he is. We believe in the ultimate deification of man."

Sandra Tanner, who left Mormonism at age 19 and has written more than 40 books on the religion, says, "Christians should be concerned about the growth of Mormonism. The Jesus of the Bible is different from the Jesus of the Mormons."

Behind the rapid growth
Mormons, who were much maligned and persecuted in nineteenth-century America, have not been deterred by criticism. Worldwide, there are 56,530 LDS missionaries, three-fourths of them young males, knocking on doors in 162 countries. About 318,000 people convert to Mormonism annually, primarily from Christian groups.

The LDS church is experiencing rapid growth, with 10,070,500 Mormons worldwide. Seven out of ten Mormons live in North, Central, or South America. "At any given moment, the majority of Mormons are first-generation converts," says Rodney Stark, author and University of Washington sociologist. Most have significant attachments to non-Mormon relatives and friends, who then are ripe for conversion themselves. Stark projects that Mormonism will become the next world religion, with a membership of 267 million by 2080. (In the November 16, 1998, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, researcher David Barrett says there are about 700 million "Great Commission" Christians worldwide—people who embrace evangelical beliefs.)

Mormon missionaries have had the greatest success in countries with sizable Christian populations. The key LDS doctrine of restoration of the church is more easily grasped by people who have already been introduced to Christianity.

Partly because all but 85 top Mormon leaders are volunteers, LDS missions efforts are well-funded. Mormons are the most generous of all American church members, giving on average nearly 7.5 percent of their income.

While 95 percent of Mormons in the United States are white, the church is growing elsewhere by appealing to a multitude of racial and ethnic groups. (Blacks were accepted into the priesthood in 1978.) Mormonism is spreading fastest in Latin America, where there are now 3.4 million church members, 2 million more than a decade ago.

Tanner thinks the numbers may be misleading, since LDS membership does not necessarily translate into lifelong commitment. Weekly sacrament meeting attendance is between 40 and 50 percent in the United States, and only around 25 percent in Latin America. Infants are counted as members as soon as they start attending, and adults who stop attending may still be counted.

Fervent missionaries
Mormons have increased their numbers with persistence and commitment to proselytizing. "Members of our church are constantly looking for opportunities to share the message of the restored gospel with friends, family members, neighbors, and anyone else who will listen," LDS leader Ballard writes in his book Our Search for Happiness.

From the moment of their children's birth, many LDS parents hope to send them out as missionaries. In a world of shifting values, a well-attired, smiling, confident teenager can be a persuasive advertisement for the church.

Three years ago, Matthew R. Tate, then 19, reached the age where tens of thousands of Mormons radically alter their lives. He left his family in Salt Lake City and went to New York City for a two-year missionary assignment. The church paid Tate's airfares to New York and back, though his family had to provide daily living expenses.

Tate spent 12 hours a day, six days a week, witnessing for his faith. Another two hours each day he prayed and studied the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Tate lived in an apartment with three to seven other missionaries, and he could telephone home only on Christmas and Mother's Day.

"All I did for two years was eat, drink, and sleep religion," Tate says. "You don't worry about yourself. You worry about other people."

Gospel according to Smith
Mormonism's doctrines are at odds with Christianity. One of the most persistent critiques of Mormon doctrine focuses on their teaching that ancient Hebrews immigrated to the Americas.

According to their doctrine, in 1827, Moroni, a resurrected angel, instructed Joseph Smith to unearth golden plates buried in New York. For two years, Smith translated the "reformed Egyptian," which told of the migration of Israelites to this continent. Their descendants divided into Lamanites, the ancestors of today's Native Americans, and Nephites. Mormon, the last surviving Nephite leader, inscribed the race's history before their demise. Moroni, Mormon's son, whisked the plates back to heaven after Smith's translation.

Historical verification is lacking. Smith's version is the only record of Israeli immigrants living in the Americas between 600 B.C. and A.D. 400.

While Smith's Book of Mormon is considered infallible by Mormons, the Bible is not. "We accept the Bible as the Word of God as far as it is translated correctly," Ballard says.

"The Bible has been through countless translations from the time its chapters were originally penned to the present," Ballard writes in Our Search for Happiness. "Along the way there have been changes and alterations that have diminished the purity of the doctrine." On the other hand, "the Book of Mormon offers pure, concise doctrine that hasn't been tampered with by religious philosophers, councils, panels, and kings."

But LDS scriptures are not pristine, Tanner says. She cites Smith providing different versions of his visions in 1833 and 1835. "Revelations are suddenly twice as long as before, bringing in new concepts such as the priesthood," says Tanner. "Why would he have to rewrite it after only two years?"

Ongoing revelation
Mormons also believe their top leader (president) is a living prophet, able to change existing doctrine.

New revelations can reverse earlier LDS teaching, the most famous example being the 1890 discontinuance of polygamy. Forty-seven years earlier Joseph Smith had declared it a command of the Lord.

"What God has said to apostles and prophets in the past is always secondary to what God is saying directly to his apostles and prophets now," writes Stephen E. Robinson in the book, How Wide the Divide?: A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation. The book is a discussion between Robinson, BYU professor of ancient Scripture, and Craig L. Blomberg, a Baptist and professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary.

When the president of the church dies, the member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who has served the longest automatically succeeds him, usually leaving an aged leader to head the religion founded by a 24-year-old prophet. The last three presidents have started service at the average age of 86.

Multi-tiered paradise
In the LDS church, males confer everything required for a family to gain eternal exaltation. At 12, boys begin through the Aaronic priesthood offices of deacon, teacher, and priest. Males in the higher Melchize-dek priesthood can advance through the offices of elder, high priest, patriarch, seventy, and apostle.

Among Mormon leaders, temple activities are focused in part on the controversial practice of vicarious baptisms and marriage in which living members stand in proxy for the deceased.

"How do we know whether or not your great-great-grandfather, who never heard the gospel as it was restored, nor ever had the opportunity to be baptized by the priesthood, is going to accept?" Ballard asks. "We don't. But we do the work anyway." Under LDS doctrine, not just baptism, but salvation itself is available to the dead.

"We don't believe in a heaven and a hell," Ballard told CT. "We believe in degrees of glory. People are not going to live into the eternities in misery."

Those Mormons who aspire to the top of three tiers of heavenly paradise must be baptized according to the LDS priesthood and live a worthy life.

The LDS doctrine that husbands and wives are married "for time and eternity" allows some high-achieving Mormon couples to have eternal offspring and create and populate their own world.

Winning through friendship
The Mormons' doctrines of baptism, salvation, and the afterlife place them at odds with centuries of Christian teaching in the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions.

Professor Blomberg, among others, holds out hope that projects such as How Wide the Divide? can help move Mormons to orthodoxy. "I still believe in respectful, courteous dialogue," he says. "As LDS church membership continues to increase, and friends and relatives convert to Mormonism, it will behoove evangelicals to befriend rather than attack."

Today, Protestant leaders have limited official contact with the LDS church. The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is typical, calling for openness to interfaith dialogue with Mormons and telling members they "should not hesitate to share the gospel with people of Mormon background."

For evangelicals, a faithful follower of LDS doctrine is at eternal peril. "Mormonism is either totally true or totally false," says John L. Smith, Southern Baptist founder of Utah Mission. "If it's true, every other religion in America is false."

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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