Gatekeeping Christianity I
It's kind of a touchy subject in that it's hard to understand why some Christians get in the club and some get excluded. You all have different rules. Who get to be the gate keeper? Isn't it enough to believe in Christ?
I'm an atheist and this baffles me. Aren't you all in the same 'judge not' group?
I grew up going to a non denominational church that was directly next to a Mormon church, and my parents told me they weren’t Christian. In retrospect, they understood the beliefs and the history of the church in its entirety, and it was probably easier to say “they aren’t Christian,” or rather they don’t believe what we do, then to explain all of the differences to a kid.
But while it’s true that it might look gatekeepy, the vast majority of Protestant and Catholic denominations at least agree on basically the same theology and beliefs about Jesus, satan, the trinity, etc.
Mormonism turns a lot of this on it’s head, it says Jesus and Satan are brothers, that Jews and Jesus came to America and established a church, it tells people they can attain godhood after death. The source material, “history” and cosmology that Mormon churches are based on is radically different than what most other Christian churches believe, so it makes sense to me why a lot of Christians don’t like being associated with them. To agree that Mormons are Christian, would be to imply that they agree and affirm that Mormon beliefs are correct. To non Mormon Christians, the entire existence of the LDS church and their belief system is blasphemous. But, at the end of the day, what other religious group can you put them in? They’re Christians, just a weird type
I would classify them as their own branch of Abrahamic religion, like Christianity and Judaism and Islam. They introduced new scriptures and changed all the rules and changed the god-concept, like those others did, but they stem from the same initial shared background.
I would classify them as their own branch of Abrahamic religion, like Christianity and Judaism and Islam.
I would classify them as branch of Christianity. The Trinitarians were not the first Christians and the Restorationists are just another outgrowth of the same mythos, making them also a Christian subsect.
But, my most basic metric for assigning an identity is always going to be to defer to any persons self-identification. I was once teaching about the Protestant Reformation in a middle school US history class and my mix of Roman Catholic, Jehovah's Witness, and various flavors of Evangelical students started down the path of gate-keeping each others religions in out-of-class discussions. It was bizarre to see the RCs and and Evangelicals both declare the JWs to not be Christians. Then to watch the Evangelicals declare the RCs to not be Christians, followed shortly by the various flavors of Evangelicals to turn on each other for their various heresies. Yet each of them (and my Mormon friends) all self-identified as Christian, which is good enough for me.
You can’t just make up a completely new religion and name it “Buddhism” or whatever you want, and expect that to be taken seriously. Self-identification is irrelevant, terminology has to be defined somehow or it loses all useful meaning for classifying and comparing religions.
None of those points I made necessarily even rely on the Trinity. There are plenty of other differences worthy of their own unique label too. There is no need to gatekeep Mormonism by saying they have to be a subset of Christianity and aren’t unique enough to deserve their own label.
True to a point.
The issue with most of the differences you point out, however, is that you are describing an extremely distilled and orthodox set of Christian beliefs compared to the huge diversity that early Christianity used to accommodate and within which Mormonism easily fits.
If those hugely diverse religions with different scriptures, different gods, different afterlives, different creation stories, etc had all continued to develop, it’s quite likely that we could give them their own labels as separate religions by now too, sure.
The point is, Mormonism isn't just a "new religion" that is trying to coopt the Christian label. Mormonism is a culmination and reworking of many ancient unorthodox ideas from within Christianity.
These ideas were being discussed and debated heavily during Joseph Smith's time which is why he glommed onto them and created his own patchwork quilt.
If Mormonism isn't Christianity then Evangelical Christianity certainly is not either.
Without getting into the weeds, Christians denominations have to accept the Nicene Creed in order to be Christian. Mormonism reject it. So....
So there were no Christians for the first 300 years AD? Also, what about all the Aryans, Gnostics, etc who did not follow the creed, let alone the millions of Christians since then (including today) to whom the Nicene Creed makes no sense?
It's not quite that simple, though I think it's a good, valid question. Many Christians may not get this, but those who are aware of historical theology and its implications do. You may be one of those who thinks this is all nonsense and silly quibbling, but I can try to give you an explanation from an orthodox point of view.
The issue is not an necessarily an individual being aware of or correctly understanding the Nicene Creed or the Trinity. But in the NT (particularly Galatians), we see the authors concerned that certain beliefs could undermine a person's trusting in Christ for their salvation. This was the concern with the Gnostics in the 2nd century, though that's another topic that I won't get into to avoid getting too lengthy.
In response to Arius' denial of Christ's true divinity and relegation of him to a created being, St. Athanasius argued that its logical conclusion was that Christ lacked the power and authority to save. And this is how it's actually played out in history. When groups deny Christ's deity, he becomes an example to save oneself in some way, rather than the savior you can trust to save to the uttermost (Heb 7:25). It's been the case with Mormonism. You end up with law, not grace.
So those creeds didn't imply that all who lived before then weren't Christians, but meant to safeguard the message of salvation for the church in the future. Some of those earlier fathers may have spoken in some ways not consistent with Nicea, but other times they did. The councils sought to iron out those issues.
I don't disagree with this, but the question is, what do call unorthodox followers of / believers in Jesus Christ if not Christian?
Obviously, historically they were simply called "heretics," "witches," or "dead", but what do we call them in modern times?
John 8:58
Look I'm not a scholar in the field so I don't want engage in a long discussion where we ultimately come away in disagreement. I personally believe that the whole Arian thing to be a red herring.For approximately 1500 years, Nicene Christianity was the only form of Christianity. What people believed in the Apostolic period will remain a subject of speculation and debate.
What do you mean Arianism is a red herring? You mean it didn't exist or wasn't significant? Do you say the same for Gnosticism? Sabellianism? Marcionism? Docetism? Adoptionism? Montanism? Nestorianism?
There was never a time when Nicene Christianity was the only form of Christianity. It's just the only form of Christianity that you personally accept. It could also be called "mainstream" since it is the most popular version by a long shot. But the only form? Far from it.
However, looking at the history of how it became the dominant version of Christianity should give you pause. It wasn't a spiritual conviction that led most people to it by any stretch.
Let me guess... you happen to belong to one of the denominations that accept the Nicene Creed?
Perhaps you should look up the "no true Scottsman" logical fallacy.
The only three major nontrinitarian/non-Nicene self-proclaimed Christian groups are Jehovah's Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals/Apostolics, and drumbeat, Mormons. If you add them all together, they're probably not even 50 million. Compared to over 2 billion Nicene Christians, they're the fringe and extreme minority.
You missed Christian Scientists and Unitarians, but sure - trinitarians are the majority... and considering such beliefs were a death sentence for a thousand years, it's not too surprising.
You are committing another logical fallacy here: an appeal to the majority.
Just because people with different beliefs are persecuted within Christianity doesn't make them non-Christians.
Certainly they are Heretics to you, but your beliefs are heretical to them.
Anything different enough needs a separate label after a certain point, sure. Different gods, different scriptures, and different concepts of creation and afterlife seems like a reasonable separation point to me.
The problem is that every individual person has a different conception of all those things, and any official delineation by a church is just artificial.
As long as people claim to believe supernatural things about the same semi-historical figure, I don't see the point in saying some are Christians and some are not.
The finer distinctions are already contained within the various denominations, and everybody understands that some groups are more closely related than others.
Do we just call them all “Buddhism” then and not draw ANY lines between religions?
Do we just call Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all the same religion because they share the same God?
It's simple. You call them what they call themselves. You ascribe to them exactly the beliefs that they claim for themselves.
Buddhists don't generally focus on Jesus or even believe in any sort of exclusive nature of his divinity. In other words they don't claim to be Christian, so I do not consider them Christian.
Some forms of Islam, such as the Nation of Islam, see Jesus as a divine figure and come close to worshipping him with some even recognizing salvation in some sense through him, so that is a better example. However, even they don't call or consider themselves to be Christian, so I wouldn't call them Christian either, but obviously Islam (like Judaism) is a sister religion.
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