Why mormons are not christians

Research Topics. Mormons from Pew Research Center surveys: 1 The LDS church typically places very high importance on families and traditional gender roles. Share this link:. Aleksandra Sandstrom is a former senior copy editor focusing on religion at Pew Research Center. Mormons more likely to marry, have more children than other U.

Big majority of Mormons including women oppose women in priesthood. A fifth of Mormons express doubts about some church teachings. One reason why is that Mormonism isn't, in fact, Christian. But its relationship to Christianity is similar to Christianity's relationship to Judaism. Christianity grew from Judaism, but it soon distanced itself in fairly dispositive ways that whole business about God having a son, for example.

Mormonism reached escape velocity from Christianity virtually at the moment of its creation. There are more reasons why I believe that Mormons are not Christians, but rather than filling an entire newspaper, I will limit my writing to these three reasons for now.

I welcome dialogue on the subject, especially from Brown. Helena and volunteers as a deacon at Highlands Christian Fellowship in Calistoga. The fact that Mitt Romney represented the Republican Party in the presidential election raised many questions about his religion, Mormoni…. Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!

Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Sign in. Terms of Service Privacy Policy. Back to homepage. He revised the Bible; reported receiving "keys to the priesthood" from John the Baptist; rejected the traditional idea of the Trinity as three-gods-in-one; taught that God was once a flesh-and-blood man, and that men could become gods through purification and obedience to the church.

They were all -- including Smith's promotion as Prophet of the Restoration -- radical departures from centuries of Christian orthodoxy. And intentionally so. Smith's Latter-day Saints consider The Book of Mormon as much a part of God's word as the Bible, and continue to honor their top leader as "prophet, seer and revelator.

We have none. Both introduced new scriptures and ideas to established religions, and insisted that their new faith fulfilled the old. Richard Land, an ethicist with the Southern Baptist Convention, goes even further, calling Mormonism "the fourth Abrahamic faith," after Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Evangelicals like Land tend to be the most eager to keep Mormons from the Christian camp. In addition to doctrinal concerns, Johnson said, conservative Christians worry about sheep-stealing Mormon missionaries. Mormons do not deny their differences with traditional Christianity. According to a recent survey, Mormons are as likely to say their religion resembles Judaism as it does evangelical Protestantism. Otterson says Mormons cherish their distinctiveness, much as Catholics or Methodists show special devotion to their traditions.