Preach it, sister.

shouldn't the response be to object to the fact that it's an issue at all, rather than object to any particular characterization of what the doctrinal differences are?

If you are Christian, and your faith informs your political choices in very specific ways, I would think that doctrinal differences are going to be very important, for any number of reasons. I'm not sure I can see the argument that your religion shouldn't affect your political decisions.

i like how one comment thread spawns another now. very democratic, guys.

It's worth noting that this isn't a minor doctrinal issue. I mean, I guess you culd say christians and jews are separated by a doctrinal issue. and you could make similar points about christians and muslims, and hindi and buddhists. That's a bit misleading though, since normally when one thinks "doctrinal difference" they think, e.g. catholic vs lutheran.

This issue seems connected to that concerning the thoughts that mainstream Jews have about those who call themselves "Jews for Jesus." What constitutes Christianity? What constitutes Judaism?

My wife used to work for a Southern Baptist who had been a field rep for a Georgia Congressman. She was "concerned" about the high percentage of FBI that were Mormon. But LB, everyone knows most Mormons are "just folks".

I think you're right that a lot of people use Christianity (or just religious faith in general) as a sort of shibboleth to figure out who the moral people are (with an innocuous definition of "moral"--honest, hardworking, etc.) However, there are some who see it as an important issue in and of itself, because they believe that non-religious people (since they don't answer to any higher power) are a danger to society. One of the adult leaders in my Boy Scout troop held this view, made things a bit uncomfortable.

2: If your religion requires that you only vote for believing Christians who meet your standard of orthodoxy, then two things are true: (1) whether Mormons are orthodox Christians or heretics is politically important to you, and (2) you're a religious bigot. If you don't have that sort of litmus test, then your religion can influence your political thinking plenty, but the orthodoxy of Mormons (rather than the character and likely policies of the candidate in question) shouldn't be a political issue.

There definitely is a power component as to which different religions are called bullshit on their dogmas. If christianity was a small cult they could never get away with calling themselves monotheistic. I count 2-3 gods.

I'm not sure I can see the argument that your religion shouldn't affect your political decisions.

This is an important issue, and it's a bit of a problem. The point is often made that religion isn't just another hobby that someone can set aside when they're acting in an official capacity. That's fine on an individual level, but it isn't so easy to limit it to that level.

For example, the bible says pretty clearly that in order to be a good Christian, you must spread the faith. How does someone who takes that seriously ignore it when on the public stage? Religious faith isn't just a personal thing, it's tied in with how one interacts with others. The tension comes when an individual with strong beliefs also has governmental authority.

Just as my people get a dedicated thread, I have to run.

If you don't have that sort of litmus test, then your religion can influence your political thinking plenty, but the orthodoxy of Mormons (rather than the character and likely policies of the candidate in question) shouldn't be a political issue.

Except insofar as the orthodoxy implies certain likely policies. Which, if you're v. religious, you might well believe it does. Catholicism today isn't a great example, because American Catholics are pagan heathens who sex not only each other, but dogs and cats and household familiars, but Catholic doctrine appears to have something specific to say about some well-known social issues (abortion, when to go to war, death penalty, etc.). Even if you believe that the candidate believes that there must be an independent, non-religious justification, it doesn't seem crazy to think that the candidate would find certain non-religious arguments more persuasive because they accorded with the doctrinal instruction of his religion.

I'm not so sure about your read on this, LB. I think the people for whom whether Mormons are Christian is a political issue are quite simply, in your words, "religious bigots." That is, the sort of people who really won't vote for anyone other than a practicing Christian, and also the sort of people who are most concerned about the theological differences between LDS and other churches. Southern Baptist Convention, that sort of folks. Other people who wonder if Mormons are Christian aren't really looking at it as a political issue, but more as part of a general sense of wonder at the apparent strangeness of the religion (these tend to be people who don't know many Mormons) and a fair bit of ignorance about how it really works. These would be the same people who talk about the holy underwear a lot, and aren't totally clear on the Church's attitude toward polygamy. They aren't really using this stuff as a political litmus test, though, I don't think.

Sure. If we were talking about whether adherents of the First Church of Moloch (ref) were going to get a warm reception from evangelical voters, their adherence to an orthodox Molochian position on child sacrifice would be highly politically relevant -- you want to know if someone's going to legalize religiously motivated infanticide. But the doctrinal differences between Mormons and trinitarian Christians don't have a lot of policy implications -- they're huge theologically (my sympathies are with trinitarian Christians who want to identify Mormons as a member of an entirely different religion rather than just a variant sect of Christianity), but I'm not aware of any policy that would be driven by the theological divide.

That's a bit misleading though, since normally when one thinks "doctrinal difference" they think, e.g. catholic vs lutheran.

And I know plenty of Protestants who don't think Catholics are real Christians. It's easy to forget that up until fairly recently, conservative evangelicals were fairly open in regarding numerous core tenets of Catholicism as being irreconcilable with "true" Christianity"; it wasn't until the last twenty years or so that a serious effort was made to shelve those doctrinal arguments for the mutual political benefit of right-wing ideologues from a host of sects.

So yeah, Mormons don't believe in the trinity, and Baptists don't believe in Joseph Smith. But hell, most every conservative Christian I've ever met thinks praying to saints is squicky at best and heresy at worst, and don't even get them started on the Virgin Mary (shit - they don't even think she stayed a virgin! They think she, like, did it - with boys and penises and everything!), so if they can get over Purgatory and transubstantiation and confession and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin enough to develop a mighty hard-on for Rick Santorum, I think they can vote for a Mormon.

14 to 12.

To 13: Yeah, I think there's some straight religious bigotry there. The argument that I don't like, and that I haven't heard anyone explicitly make, but that I have an impression is implicitly at issue is: "There's nothing wrong with being a religious bigot -- it's just wrong of you to treat Mormons as outsiders instead of insiders. Be bigoted at other people, not at Mormons, who are decent 'people of faith' -- Christians, just like you." I'd like to see the response to bigotry be a straightforward "Quit it."

16: Where do you see that argument being implicit, though? I certainly haven't seen anyone argue anything that made me think that was the subtext.

But the doctrinal differences between Mormons and trinitarian Christians don't have a lot of policy implications -- they're huge theologically (my sympathies are with trinitarian Christians who want to identify Mormons as a member of an entirely different religion rather than just a variant sect of Christianity), but I'm not aware of any policy that would be driven by the theological divide.

Fair point. Another angle of attack, related to teo's: I believe that when I vote for someone (or choose a doctor, lawyer, car mechanic), I'm choosing an agent who I want to behave as I would if I had the training he has. If my faith is the basic set of principles around which I organize my life, then it seems reasonable that I would think that someone who professes a faith I find strange would make a bad agent for me. Or at least, I would have little reason to think he would make a good agent for me.

For example, if there must be a Republican President in 2009, I'd prefer Guiliani (gawd help us all) or Romney. Because I'm a Blue State bigot, and, in the absence of other information, I think Republicans from blue states are easier for me to understand than Republicans from red states. And I don't feel particularly bad about that sort of reasoning.

18: Not that that generally is a bad way of going about things, but Giuliani is, individually, the devil incarnate. You're right that he's from the same planet we're from: there would be moments of understanding his thought processes as he had henchmen with pitchforks drive us into the lake of sulfur. But it just wouldn't be worth it.

If you want a blue state Republican, stick with Romney. But that was all off topic.

I guess I'll come out in favor of a degree of bigotry. As the US has become more religiously plural, Americans have had to get used to people of very different beliefs. It took a long time for Catholics to be accepted. And some of the anti-Catholic feeling was just bigotry,a dn some of it was an actual concern for whether some Catholic practices were a good thing. There was a two-way adjustment, with Americans getting used to Catholics (only in 1960 in national politics) and Catholics Americanizing.

There was a big controversy within the Catholic church, with many Catholics feeling that the Church had Americanized too much. In Minnesota the traditional Catholics have been feuding with the archbishop for a century or more, and publish a newspaper (originally in German, now in English).

American secularism is supposed to protect religion from the state, the state from religion, and each religion (or non-religion) from the other religions and non-religions. Which is pretty complicated and messy, and in my opinion consists of several layers of deals and compromises going both ways.

I guess I wouldn't call religion-voting voters bigots the way I'd call race-voting voters. Religion is a voluntary practice which also consequences in behavior. People vote on all kinds of criteria, and I don't see why that shouldn't be one, granted that none of that stuff seems intelligible or plausible to me even though I've memorized a fair amount of it.

Unfortunately it is a fact that the majority of Americans, even if not actively religious, have a deep belief in religious belief. So no atheists.

As for Rastafarians, they are still jailed for practicing their belief.

Following up on 18, while there is much strength to your point in 14 that the differences we are talking about should not make a big difference in how someone would vote, and hence should be an issue, at the same time I think that many people commenting here encourage people to vote on the basis of traits that in other circumstances most agree should not make a difference: vote for "X" because she is a woman (Emily's list); vote for "X" because he is black; do not vote for "X" because she is a fundamentallist christian. I think it is a bit anomalous to claim that the phenomenen you describe--assuming it exists--constitutes bigotry when you would not apply the same label to other, quite similar things.

17: LB's argument/claim strikes a chord with me. Look at it this way: Obama's (fairly straightforward, Protestant) church is being attacked as some sort of weird, crazy Black Power cult, while Mitt Romney's (extremely unorthodox) church is tiptoed around (the doctrine of it, not the fact that it might be politically "in play"), as if it would be unfair to question. Meanwhile, it's ahuge deal that the first Muslim just won national office (I understand that the GWOT affects that deal, but it's not only that).

Point being, people who are invested in religion in general, and Christiantity in particular, have very particular interests in what gets defined as acceptable and orthodox. And allowances are made for Mormonism that are hard to square relative to other non-mainstream religions.

[Dinner just hit the table, so apologies if any of this is incoherent or offensive; blame my rush]

17: Oh, I'm talking about penumbras and emanations -- I'm not at all certain that I'm right about the implicit argument being made. (Really, I frontpaged that comment because I'm wracked with guilt about not coming up with enough interesting posts. If I could focus this guilt on work, I'd be better off.) But look at something like this from the linked article:

But for Romney, the Mormon issue has another dimension: Some Evangelicals view the religion as a cult, and even non-Christian; there is resentment over recruitment of Evangelicals into the church formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Asked about his religion Wednesday on NBC's "Today Show," Romney said, "Well, I think I've found that people across this country want a person of faith to lead the country. And they don't particularly care as much about the brand of faith as they do about the values the person has. And my values are as American as you can imagine."

Doesn't Romney seem to be saying that some religious test is appropriate: it's not enough to have good values, you have to have them through being a person of faith? He just wants to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the acceptable group.

There's a few different threads here that I'd like to tease apart.
1) Are Mormons Christian? That's going to depend on who you ask. They certainly evolved out of Christianity, but that's not necessarily the same thing. If you're part of a sect that doesn't consider Mormons Christian, you shouldn't have to pretend that you believe they are for the sake of public discourse. And if you want to tell your congregation not to vote for a candidate because he's not really Christian, go for it; we'll think you're wrongheaded, but we thought that because you were running around endorsing candidates from the pulpit.

2) Are Mormons decent folk, and is "Christian" often used as a proxy for that? Yes (or at least as decent as everyone else), and yes, but the answer to that is to extend "decent folk" past Christianity, not to insist that Mormons are Christian. You also should, if you're just worried about electing decent people who share your values, shut up about insisting that Mormons aren't Christian, because it's really really really really really irrelevant.

3) Is someone's being a devout Mormon a good proxy for political conservatism? Yup.

4) Are a candidate's personal religious beliefs relevant? Only as a proxy for what they're likely to do while in office. To me, a conservative Mormon politically speaking is as troublesome as a conversative evangelical, and oddly, the eternality of the soul just doesn't come into it.

I think the question is not so much "Are Mormons Christian?" but rather "Are Mormons Earthlings?" The evidence points both ways.

This issue is being spun against liberals, but I think that the only reason it's important is that a certain proportion of Republicans think it's important, and Romney needs these people. I do not think that Democrats would refuse to vote for a Mormon Democrat. The Udalls are Mormons, and they aren't even moderate Democrats.

23, 24: I think Cala's (3) is a big part of it. It's an argument over whether "Christian" should be defined theologically or politically: Mormons are Christian because they believe in going to church on Sunday and living like a 50s sitcom family and voting for Republicans.

I.E., they're pretty liberal, especially the older generation (Stew and Morris).

Doesn't Romney seem to be saying that some religious test is appropriate: it's not enough to have good values, you have to have them through being a person of faith? He just wants to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the acceptable group.

But that makes sense, as that's how (I believe) we actually decide about specific candidates.

26: I can't see how it could be effectively spun against liberals -- the structure wouldn't make any sense. Democrats are going to be too bigoted to vote for a Mormon Republican because he isn't Christian?

23: Okay, sure, but that's just Nixon's "I don't care what his religion is, as long as he's got one." Lieberman does the same sort of thing. I agree it's obnoxious and unfair to atheists, but I don't see how much it has to do with whether Mormons are Christian.

"I don't care what his religion is, as long as he's got one."

This is a generally correct diagnosis. Being "religious" enough to be described as "religious", because of the severely polarized state of politics in this country, means that you are predictable on a number of political issues: abortion, gays, Iraq, family, apple pie, &c. Being "atheist" either isn't informative, or it tells, under this severely polarized discourse, that you're for mandatory abortions, gay sex, appeasment, lesbians, lattes, &c.

In both cases, perception bottoms out on the shoals of reality, but someone's being "religious" doesn't really have anything to do with their faith, but how they're likely to vote.

I agree it's obnoxious and unfair to atheists, but I don't see how much it has to do with whether Mormons are Christian.

Here's where I get vague and indefensible -- a perfectly reasonable response to what I'm going to say is that it's not thought through enough to make any sense. But first, I think the Nixon/Lieberman position you're talking about isn't honest -- what's meant by ' I don't care what his religion is' means mostly Christian, and some conservative Jews: not Hindus or Muslims or most Jews or Zorastrians or Buddhists or Shintoists or Wiccans or animists. It's a cultural/political prejudice masquerading as a religious belief and granted legitimacy by that masquerade.

I'm getting the sense that including Mormons in the class of 'normal' religions that makes you a 'person of faith' (while liberal Christian sects like the UCC get pushed out of that class as not really Christian, at least according to Tucker Carlson) is getting spun as a matter of spiritual/religious kinship when it's really a pure political alliance. I don't care how liberal Obama's church is -- doctrinally, he's much closer to a Southern Baptist than Mitt Romney is.

Eh. This really isn't coming together to make sense.

Speaking as a non-Christian, by the way, I've always found the arguments that Mormons aren't Christian to be pretty unconvincing. To me it seems like the similarities dwarf the differences.

Cultural similarities, sure, on that ground Mormons look just like a conservative Protestant sect, but the identity and number of deities is about as core to a religion as you get.

I get the sense, both from numbers I've seen and anecdotal conversations with friends from the South in the newspaper business, that one of the many outcomes of the professionalization of reporting is a disproportionate lack of familiarity with contemporary strains of American Protestantism in America's top newspapers, which in turn leads to the fact that people can't report on religion worth a damn. (See also the treatment of Obama's church mentioned above.) I suspect this is less of a problem with the Mormons out in the mountain West than it is with Mormons in New England, but maybe I'm wrong.

And 24.2 and 24.3 are both right, and from my mushy agnostic position it's crazy-making. Bill Donohue is a right-wing crank, so he gets to be the treated as a legitimate media representative of the voice of Catholicismm because he matches certain stereotypes of religious people and gives good quotes. At this point I'd be happier to see the discourse dominated by a bunch of Moody Bible College graduates than to see Barry Lynn squaring off again with a bunch of culture warriors. At least the MBC graduates might talk as though they know who Reinhold Niebuhr was.

the identity and number of deities is about as core to a religion as you get.

Yes, well, they both claim to be monotheists, so I don't know that I really buy that.

the identity and number of deities is about as core to a religion as you get.

Again, I think you overemphasize the differences. Moreover, you are focusing on differences that might be important if one were doing an academic dissection and classification of religions from an objective position without context, but in the real world, I think the things that Mormons and other Christian would say are important about their faith would have a lot in common. But what do I know.

Which is to say that you are all correct, and the ability to mouth Republican policies has become more important than, say, the Nicene Creed as a gatekeeper for participants in media discourse about Christianity in this country.

Basically, I think Idealist is totally right about this. On any level except highly abstract theology, Mormonism's quite similar to other varieties of American Protestantism.

I am not religious, much less a theologian, but on anything doctrinal the gap between Protestants and Catholics looks far smaller than the gap between either and Mormons.

Perhaps, but the point is that doctrine doesn't matter nearly as much as a lot of people here seem to be assuming.

Basically, I think Idealist is totally right about this. On any level except highly abstract theology, Mormonism's quite similar to other varieties of American Protestantism.

Except that the entire issue, as I understand it, is that other varieties of American Protestantism disagree. I'm not sure why this isn't something of an intra-family issue akin to whether or not Obama is sufficiently "black." I'm just not understanding how people outside the various faiths involved are better placed (or placed at all) to make that sort of discrimination.

40 - But if at some level religion isn't about theology, why the hell do we still call it religion? Seriously, if it's about getting together on Sundays and feeling good about our political and ethical beliefs, we can all be Unitarians.

But isn't that just treating church as purely a familial/social thing? That may be mostly true for a lot of churchgoing folks, but the doctrine isn't trivial to most of the religious people I've known.

44: Yep. Religion gets its political power from the idea that its doctrine is in some real sense true - that it accurately represents reality, and so should control policy decisions. Simultaneously saying that (as many religious voters do) and saying "Doctrine, schmoctrine -- we all eat jello salad," is annoyingly hypocritical.

to JE in 20:

Actually Catholics aren't that mainstream as far as presidential politics goes. There hasn't been another since Kennedy. And only the one Catholic candidate (whom the hierarchy opposed). Most presidents are some sort of weird prot (so a Mormon would fit in well).

in general:

Harold Bloom devoted nearly a third of The American Religion to the LDS. There are several of these home-grown religions (Christian Science is another, neither Christian nor Scientific), American rather than imported, which nonetheless claim Christian ancestry for the sake of legitimizing themselves. It doesn't seem to me that it's worth caring about the accuracy of these claims.

Do Mormons consider other christians to be christian?

46: Which is part of why people tend to see Mormons as weirder than other religious people, because it just looks harder to wrap your head around their doctrine. I don't think it really is, but even we have 2000+ years of cultural history to make (other sorts of) Christianity go down easier.

Except that the entire issue, as I understand it, is that other varieties of American Protestantism disagree.

To varying degrees, but okay, granted.

I'm not sure why this isn't something of an intra-family issue akin to whether or not Obama is sufficiently "black."

It is, of course, or at least should be.

I'm just not understanding how people outside the various faiths involved are better placed (or placed at all) to make that sort of discrimination.

We're not, and I, at least, never claimed we were.

You know what this thread needs? More atheists opining on what really matters to religious people.

And I never said doctrine wasn't at all important. Obviously, it is, and for some religious people it's very important. They're the ones who do things like declare that Mormons aren't Christian. For others, not so much. It's there, but there's more to the religion.

1) Most Mormons think they are Christians.
2) Many Christians don't think Mormons are Christians.
3) The rest of us don't care.

Does that settle it? Or have I missed something?

atheists opining on what really matters to religious people.

They all seem to have a fetish for virgins. Beyond that, I'm not sure.

53: Nah, that's pretty much it.

Except that some people seem to think this is primarily a political issue.

And some people think LB has point that's significant but that we're grappling with how to pin down.

On any level except highly abstract theology, Mormonism's quite similar to other varieties of American Protestantism.

I really don't think this is right. The idea that Jesus came back and gave new prophesies is awfully heretical to basic Christian beliefs. Nothing esoteric or high-falutin about that. Protestants have had enough trouble consider other protestants to be actual Christians. Mormonism is several steps too far for most of them, I'd guess.

A slogan for Romney: "At least he isn't a Scientologist!"

Should they want Romney, the GOP can certainly hold up other Mormons as "good people" [read: "good Republicans"] - Orrin Hatch, for instance.

Personally, I'm waiting for a Shaker candidate. Then there would be no question of a sex scandal in the Oval Office.

This does remind me of the Kennedy dilemma of the 60's - I remember hearing my parents and their friends debate the question of Kennedy's Catholicism endlessly. [Strangely, tho' Kennedy's infidelities were pretty much open secrets, no one discussed them at length, and certainly not as a reason not to vote for the man.] Given that my parents were spiky Episcopalians, their chief concern was the plenary-power-of-the-Pope-problem.

I think it will be interesting to see how much Romney gets contrasted with Guiliani.

41 is simply insane. I'm not saying this to point a finger and cry "heretic," but:

Mormons believe in an entire additional Bible, people.

This isn't disagreement about which obscure Old Testament prophets are legit. This is a religion that believes that Jesus Christ made a separate trip to the Americas in order to save the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Beside this, debates about transubstantiation and Mary's role are piddling.

The political implications of this are a separate issue, but let's not pretend that Mormons are just another flavor of Christianity, with a slight variation on the Works/Faith divide.

Theology isn't important to most of us, but to many religious believers it is central.

Ecumenical Christianity now has two types, liberal mainline Christianity and conservative anti-abortion Christianity. One problem is that "ecumenical conservatives" are usually very anti-ecumenical on doctrine. (For example, Pat Buchanan's campaigns fizzled because the people he most wanted to reach were anti-Catholic.)

So the problem is: for conservatives Romney's politcs may be OK, but his theology is detestable; mainline Christians can accept his theology, but usually not his politics.

Of course, the real problem is that Romney isn't even conservative. The Republican pros need to find a moderate who can seem like a religious conservative in order to fleece the flock.

Moonies: Christian or not?

PS - Why do I have a feeling that, if Mormon tenets led to a pro-women, pro-gay, anti-rich stance, there wouldn't be any question in evangelical circles or in the press whether LDS is Christian?

The idea that Jesus came back and gave new prophesies is awfully heretical to basic Christian beliefs.

Yes, well, the idea that Jesus is important at all sounds pretty damn Christian to me.

56: I'm not seeing this. It only has a political dimension insofar as an influential voting bloc applies a religious test. I would guess >99% of the commenters here are outside that bloc. So how is relevant to us?

Is LB's point about the arguments that are admissible to those outside the bloc when they are attempting to persuade those within it? I.e., "But he really is a Christian!" is an inadmissible argument whereas "Drop your silly religious test!" is admissible? Are any of us actually going to waste our time making either of these arguments to any of these people? Really?

64 shows that Teo is unfamiliar with the Jews for Jesus.

61: 41 s/b 40?

I think if you take Christian doctrine seriously, it would be hard to regard the Muslims as anything other than shockingly heretical. They've added crazy new chapters to the Bible, they promise that if you are a Mormon in good standing (and a man) you can eventually become a god yourself, and that their leader is currently in direct communication with God. These are not small differences. If, as the Republicans devoutly hope, religion can be reduced to anti-liberalism than these are just threads in a beautiful tapestry of anti-abortion and gay-hatred. But if religion has any other meaning, than the Mormons are way outside the Christian consensus.

There are a number of sects in which Jesus is important along with someone else. Islam is one, the Moony church is another, and there are a fair number of such sects in China, Korea, and Japan. The Moonies actually give Moon priority over Jesus, while I think that Mormons don't give Joseph Smith priority. But they do claim a new revelation superseding the old.

Jews for Jesus are Christian.

I think if you take Christian doctrine seriously, it would be hard to regard the Muslims as anything other than shockingly heretical.

Of course, but that's neither here nor there.

More seriously, though, the parallels between Islam and Mormonism are quite striking.

65 may come across as pissy rather than good-naturedly exasperated.

64. Devout Christians are fairly willing to damn other christians to hell over much, much more trivial issues than the simple belief in the divinity of christ.

Slow night. Y'all can listen to this This American Life show which I've been listening to. The episode is "In Country"

Devout Christians are fairly willing to damn other christians to hell over much, much more trivial issues than the simple belief in the divinity of christ.

Which is why I'm not inclined to put a whole lot of trust in their interpretations.

76: Teofilo, I don't agree with Christians about much, but their judgment of who and who isn't a Christian is better than mine and certainly better than yours, which seems to be based on a lack of knowledge of or interest in Christianity.

Mormons are far enough out on the heretical end for their Christianity to be doubted by a high proportion of the world's Christians, including almost all of the fundamentalists.

As for the Rastafarians, I'm not sure. They may be more orthodox than the Mormons, but their Haile Sellasie thing is a little fishy. Further research is required.

I must echo Jackmormon in lamenting a thread about my people that happened when I was away from the computer.

48: Yes, they do.

16 (and LB's point in the last graf of her post): The people with an interest in complaining about the religious bigotry inherent in not voting for a Mormon because he's not Christian are the Mormons, not secularists. And Mormons are about as bigoted religiously as the right-wing Protestants and Catholics whose votes Romney needs. so they're not going to say, "let's vote for the best candidate, regardless of whether they're Christian or Hindu or atheist." They want to say faith matters, so the category of "people of faith" or, better still, "good Christians" is important to them as long as they can be included within it.

67: No, I did mean your post, DaveL. Teo's 40 is explicitly glossing over theology (altho' in a highly tendentious way), but your 41 is explicitly about doctrine, and, frankly, just way wrong. Although teo seems to share/be willing to claim some of the same wrongness.

15: I'm an ex-Catholic, but I still find this sentiment somewhere between offensive and ridiculous. Baptists believe that Jesus turned water into grape juice at Cana, then call themselves Biblical literalists whose beliefs, many dating back a whopping 150 years, are more grounded in Truth than the Church of Aquinas. There's a part of me that finds Protestants - especially American-style Evangelicals - who look down on Catholicism a lot like Arena football players who mock the NFL.

Which isn't to say that stras' basic point - many Protestants don't consider Catholics "Christian" - isn't true. It's to say that those Protestants are ridiculous.

Like I said earlier, there's two things being conflated. First, is whether the details of LDS doctrine agree with what other Christian groups take to be essential to the faith. The answer to this is mixed, trending no. Second, whether a worry that Mitt Romney is Christian is anything but a political worry addressed to rightwinger types who believe they have a duty to elect a godfearing Christian as President. To that latter group, Romney doesn't count as Christian, but it's about the politics of electing a non-Christian, and not anything particularly doctrinal, that's driving the worry.

The two questions are related, but directed towards purposes. In a theology classroomk, it's just categorization. In the political arena, it's not about quibbling over substantial doctrinal differences, but over whether this guy is Fit To Lead, because they've already bought into the idea that a guy must be a born-again Protestant to lead.

All I'm saying is that if somebody talks about Jesus a lot and wants me to convert, I'm going to consider that person a Christian. Not that they have any reason to care what I think.

77: I think contemporary Christians are justified theologically in arguing that Mormons are enough unlike them to not deserve the label of Christian. But from my (weak) understanding of the development of Christianity, a lot of the Mormon weirdnesses would have been within the bounds of what various Christian sects were up to before the Councils started standardizing everything. The Biblical canon wasn't always closed, for example. Kotsko I'm sure would correct me.

And I'm just responding to LB's 14, where she says parenthetically:

my sympathies are with trinitarian Christians who want to identify Mormons as a member of an entirely different religion rather than just a variant sect of Christianity

I don't think either of us gets to judge who's Christian and who isn't.

God bless JRoth. This is priceless and in the book of Cala: There's a part of me that finds Protestants - especially American-style Evangelicals - who look down on Catholicism a lot like Arena football players who mock the NFL.

Well, the Joseph Smith part and the Twelve Lost Tribes of North America part were a bit too far for the second century.

Teo, you've reduced Christianity to "annoying strangers who say the word Jesus". I think you could allow people who self-identify as Christians a little finer mesh than yours.

Thanks for the blessings, Cala. This gives me a great opportunity to let you know: The Diocese of Pgh is about to sell St. Nicholas to a developer. The developer won't say what for, but they've done churches into community centers & Senior Housing in the past. What they'll do along a stretch of highway as deadly as any in the region, I don't know. But, since it just came up here, there you go.

Ah, but there were ten lost tribes, and they didn't go to North America -- they're still lost. The ones who went to America were, if I remember, of the tribe of Benjamin, and were just your basic Jews for Jesus.

Is it along 28? I hope the developer turns it into a museum.

Teo, I think that B, damn her eyes, self-identifies as a Catholic to some extent. So her credentials are better than yours.

There are a certain number of people who are not Jews by any standard, but who claim to be Jews. Not born Jewish, not practicing Jewish, not converts. Just self-described Jews. Must Jews accept them as Jews?

Emerson: I think teo's position is that he doesn't really care about this issue. Further, I'm now really unclear about what the issue is, as I don't think it's described by #80. I thought LB was addressing whether religious discrimination (for various values of discrimination) among candidates was tantamount to religious bigotry, with all the connotations that "bigotry" entails.

88: Yes, along 28. It's a for-profit deal, so no museum per se, but probably whatever the use will include some sort of interpretive component. At least, it sure as hell should.

90: If teo really doesn't care, but has put up like a dozen combative posts, we have a word for that. I know he's not a troll, but that would be trollish behavior.

The analogy to Jews is a poor one--there's a unique hereditary-cultural thing going on with the Jews, right? If there's a group of people who worship Jesus and want to call themselves Christians, I think the thing to do is call them Christians. Even if they also think they're going to rule planets one day--I mean, Jesus never said we wouldn't rule planets one day.

I understand that that's Teo's ultimate position, but he seems to think that Christians shouldn't care either.

I think we've drifted far away from LB's original topic. I agree with her except that I think there's no hope. We unbelievers are one of the largest religious categories (3rd after Catholics and Baptists I think) but are not a voting bloc except insofar as we are liberal on social questions, and we have the unfortunate ability to unite our believer enemies into a transient anti-unbeliever bloc.

I think teo's position is that he doesn't really care about this issue.

Pretty much, although I also felt like someone should stick up for the Mormons here, and no one else seemed inclined to do it.

To be clear, I think I'm saying that teo does care, at least on some level.

92: Why should I agree to that? What if I say that for me, Jews are people who call themselves Jews?

For Teo's purposes his definition is adequate, but I don't think that it gives any insight into American politics, or into Christianity.

These arguments from heresy just don't work either. Luther was a heretic, right? It can't be that heretical beliefs equal non-Christian. Even modern Catholics have heretical beliefs as compared to Eleventh-Century Catholics. It seems like the test should be: is Jesus your main guy.

téo is not even close to a troll.

I think the analogies with Judaism are close enough, tho' banned: an ultra Orthodox Jew probably isn't going to find a guy who doesn't keep kosher and doesn't believe in God to be Jewish. That may be completely irrelevant when it comes time to put something down on the census or how it looks to someone on the outside.

Is it bigotry? I don't think it's bigotry to disagree other whether a label applies, but it probably is bigotry if your reason to not vote/hire/etc someone is just that they're not your religion.

Alright, so he cared about sticking up for the Mormons, but just for the sake of doing so.

Huh.

99: Not "just" for the sake of doing so, but because I know a lot of Mormons, I like them, and they get a lot of shit from people for no good reason that I can see, so I tend to defend them when disputes come up.

Isn't it hard to even use the word "heresy" in earnest? Doesn't it make you want to turn away from the screen or something?

an ultra Orthodox Jew probably isn't going to find a guy who doesn't keep kosher and doesn't believe in God to be Jewish

Not necessarily; this is where the ethnic/cultural stuff comes in, and where the analogy starts to break down.

"an ultra Orthodox Jew probably isn't going to find a guy who doesn't keep kosher and doesn't believe in God to be Jewish."

Is this right? I'm a total goy*, but I've been lead to believe that Jews consider each other to be Jews across the board--it's just that for Orthodox Jews, everyone else is a bad Jew.

*But I did read The Chosen.

"Baptists believe that Jesus turned water into grape juice at Cana, then call themselves Biblical literalists whose beliefs, many dating back a whopping 150 years, are more grounded in Truth than the Church of Aquinas."

(1) No, they really don't. (2) No, they really don't. (3) No, they really don't.

Off topic: Any admins hanging around? Because, man, I could sure use me a good hating-on-Valentine's-Day thread.

In the immortal words of Xander Harris: "Yeah. Okay. Do you know what's a good day to break up with somebody? Any day but Valentine's Day."

In other contexts I stick up for Mormons, but they really are a thing to themselves theologically. And it wouldn't surprise me if the conservative Christian Republicans nix Mitt.

If I were a Christian I would probably believe in heresy. As it is, my past Christian education makes me like to chat about this stuff.

Martin Luther did not declare himself to be a prophet the way Joseph Smith did. His theology was near-Catholic, but he had major disagreements about church government. Lutherans, Catholics, and Episcopals have somewhat settled their differences can now sometimes go to church together.

It's possible to define a generic Christianity including Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox, or about 95-97% of the world's Christians (loosely speaking), but Mormons wouldn't fit under that tent. The conservative-Christian tent is much smaller still.

X Trapnel is not my sock puppet.

We need to bring back the idea of heresy. "Defining deviancy down" applies to religions.

Sure, and it's also possible to define a Christianity that includes Catholics, Mormons, and Protestants while excluding Eastern Orthodox but what's to be gained from making the distinction?

I think we all believe in heresy inasmuch as it's a word that means something, it's just a loaded word to throw around, and with regard to the debate, unhelpful, in that each division is heretical to the others in some way.

104: The term Baptist encompasses more than one group of churches. But as for the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest and most politically prominent group:

104.1: Tell it to Fred Clark, who went to an evangelical Bible college

104.2: It's all about the Biblical "literacy."

104.3: Tell it to Darby, LaHaye, and Jenkins.

107: huh?

Okay, okay, I'll read the thread and contribute something. But I just got dumped, goddamnit.

"The term Baptist encompasses more than one group of churches."

Yes, it does.

Awwww, X. I'm sorry. That blows.

We could make this the hating-on-Valentine's thread.

And look, to be clear (don't read this, Cala): I think they're all wrong about everything. But in terms of the various belief systems, I know what I'm talking about better than 90% of lay people. And when I see comments like 41, it's clear to me that people really don't understand what it is about Mormons that set them apart.

You can only hold so many different beliefs and still insist you're the in the same club. Maybe it would be useful to think of Mormons:Christians as Christians:Jews. After all, Christians all believe in the Torah, and Jehovah. So what if they happen to believe in some additional stuff?

I'm not in the business of drawing the lines, and I know a lot of blood has been spilled over the drawing. But I don't think the alternative to bloodshed is happy-crappy ignorance that says that anyone who ever said "Help me, Jeebus" is a straight-up Christian.

It's probably a useful fiction (for all of us) that Mormons are just another harmless group of Protestants. I'm not aware of anything in their beliefs that leads them to being worse citizens than other, no-question groups of Christians. But I suspect that it's worthwhile to recall which things are true, and which are useful fictions.

We could make this the hating-on-Valentine's thread.

Only for like 15 more minutes on the east coast. But if X is out west, there's plenty of time left to get the hate on.

114: I don't want to threadjack, really. I'm still reading, but damn this is a long thread.

116: East coast, but I'm a phd student--the day isn't over till I go to sleep, no matter what hour. Anyone in lower Manhattan want to do whiskey shots and karaoke Journey?

109: It really wouldn't be possible from a religious point of view. Religious people have actual beliefs that are intelligible to them, no matter how ridiculous we think they are. There might be specific transient local coalitions where Mormons, Protestants, and Catholics lined up on one side and Orthodox on the other, though I can't imagine how that would happen. In a religious context the three Chalcedonian churches would gang up on the Mormons.

"What is accomplished"? Well, I'm trying to shed a little light on why many Christians have problems with the idea that Mormons are Christians, even though non-Christians think they're Christians. "Heresy" is, of course, a religious concept which most Christians (not all) accept, so I use it.

And look, to be clear (don't read this, Cala)

???

X-Trapnel, I am Mr. Anti-Valentine's-Day. Welcome to Unfogged, and if you keep coming here, I'll explain the Relationship-Free Life (TM) to you.

We may hate on Valentine's Day. I do not celebrate it, for it is a stupid holiday.

Reasons it is stupid: restaurants that serve good food on other days will serve poor food on Valentine's Day but charge more.

Next?

And also, Valentine's Day perpetuates the hellish belief that relationships are a good thing.

It has my roommate moping, though she does not normally mope for being single.

119: Oh, just because you were God-blessing me upthread, and here I am saying I don't buy any of it. Just a little joke.

Very little.

98: No, they call those people "bad Jews."

But there are people who self-identify as Jewish that the orthodox wouldn't, namely converts who don't through an orthodox conversion. So your analogy stands.

And all you can get in bakeries are mediocre sugar cookies with pink sugar.

Really, Emerson, it's nice for you to tell me what religious people think. "Heretic" is simply not a meaningful way to separate Christian from non-Christian. Plenty of Christians have also been heretics.

There is nothing qualitatively different between a Catholic calling a Mormon a non-Christian and a Protestant calling a Catholic a non-Christian. If they like, Baptists can call Methodists non-Christian. But nobody's going to listen to them, and it sounds like an excuse for bigotry, in every instance.

I don't think any of us need the history lesson as to how Mormons are different from other Christians. The point is, differences aren't enough.

Okay, finished reading the whole thread. And damnit, as a born-and-raised atheist ("Daddy, what's going to happen to me when I die?!?" "Well, it probably won't happen for awhile, so don't worry."), I've got nothing useful to contribute. I'm vaguely bothered by the implied 'only Christians are good folks', but Locke himself even wrote it into his 'Letter Concerning [Religious] Toleration', so what can you do?

Meanwhile, this port is mighty tasty.

And good chocolate often costs more. Stand not between the Grad Student and her prey.

I think the underlying implication is more, "people should be called what they want to be called."

Have a mediocre sugar cookie, text. It's pink!

Text, why don't you explain your own point? You disagree with me in some way, but I have no idea what you're trying to get at.

now you're trolling me, Emerson. My point is rather succinctly summed up in 130. I will eat a pink sugar cookie.

105: X, you could go threadjack Labs' "Travel Advisory" comments thread. There doesn't seemto be much going on over there.

130 wasn't up when I did 132,

What I understand you to be saying is that anyone can say what religious group they belong to, and that no one should be able to exclude anyone else from their group.

Almost all Christian (and other religious) groups are exclusive, though. So while I can claim to belong to any group, I can't have any definition of the group I belong to; it's just everyone else who claims to belong to the group. You also seem to think that no one (e.g. Roth) should ever say things about the characteristics of any group (e.g. Baptists) they don't belong to. You might just as well say that there should be no religious groups and that, if there are, no one should talk about them.

I might as well just say there shouldn't be any people at all, hadn't I?

Look, here's what I'm saying. Mormons are a group of people who worship a guy named Jesus. That's enough to get them into the Christian camp. It doesn't do to say, "rulers of planet josephsmithium! that's heresy!" Because do you know what else is heresy? Heliocentrism, John. It's a bankrupt term. All of the groups are heretics with regard to each other, though most of the members are hip enough not to use the word "heretic." And no, they aren't very hip.

Roth or whoever can say whatever he likes about whoever. What he said was incorrect, and I pointed that out. As a matter of doctrine, most Baptists don't believe any of that crap he said they believed, is all. The fact that increasingly large numbers do is scary, sure.

Also, Baptists, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Lutherans, Catholics, they all get to decide who is a member of their respective groups, but no single one of those groups gets to decide what the word "Christian" means. So whether or not any given member of one of those groups thinks he or she is going to rule planet josephsmithium one day doesn't really answer the question: whether a different, self-described Christian group should be allowed to call themselves Christian.

I still have no idea what you're getting at, except apparently to say that we should pretend that intolerant groups are tolerant when they're not,

--or that we should be tolerant of intolerant groups while telling them that they're morons for thinking that their beliefs are worth a shit,

-- or that if I say that I understand why group A to which I don't belong rejects group B to which I also don't belong, I'm being intolerant myself,

-- or maybe that anyone who uses the word "heresy" in a sentence for any reason is wrong, wrong, wrong!

If I'm a Lutherna and a Christian, why can I say who is and who isn't a Lutheran, but not who is or isn't a Christian?

Because Lutherans aren't the only kind of Christians, and in fact, there are many other Christians who disagree with Lutherans about a great many things? John, if this sounds pompous, I'm pompous, but I really think you should just read this thread a few more times.

I can't believe you guys are still talking about this.

Me neither. Let's talk about something else.

I always knew that B and Teo were soft on heresy.

I slept with Anna Nicole Smith.

I certainly won't do that!

I understand that tolerance is a good thing, but as far as I know tolerance is not a prime Christian value at all, so most Christians will have some kind of standard for who is a Christian and who isn't. This is very rarely limited to the boundaries of their own sect, but is also very rarely loose enough to include everyone who says they're a Christian, or everyone who honors Christ in some way.

And a lot of Christians exclude Mormons from Christianity, even though Mormons wish to be included, and their reasons for doing so are not mysterious to me. It's a pretty moot point for me, since I am neither Mormon nor Christian, but my Christian past helps me understand why they do that, and why such a high proportion of Christians reject Mormons.

John, you know text is a practicing Christian, right?

Which sect?

144: Yeah, and?

Is Valentine's Day really a holiday? I mean, sure there's cards and stuff - it's a special occasion that many celebrate - but people don't get the day off from work. Sure there are federal holidays that some organizations don't celebrate - not everyone gets the day off for Columbus Day or Martin Luther King's birthday - but they've still been given official recognition as holidays.

But Valentine's Day? Sorry, there's only one holiday in February and that's Presidents' Day. I plan to celebrate by eating enough chocolates in the shape of a stovepipe hat to make it so I'll need false teeth when I grow older.

I guess I disagree that (1) a high proportion of Christians don't think Mormons should be called Christians, and that (2) there's a compelling argument for not calling Mormons Christians.

This doesn't arise from my overwhelming sense of tolerance, though there is that, but from the elegant definition of "Christian" as "person who worships Jesus." Whether Christians are tolerant or intolerant isn't particularly relevant, and I don't need it explained to me why some Christians don't want to call Mormons Christians. That is, I understand that we will need a working definition for "Christian." You can craft one to exclude Mormons, as with any other single group, but it will come out tortured.

methodist, but I often go to hippy churches that aren't really anything.

she was cold and unresponsive.

and no, they aren't unitarian churches.

eb, everyone knows that "holiday" is a corruption of the phrase "holy day", which the feast of St. Valentine most certainly is. By contrast, there is nothing holy about your beloved Presidents' Day, a paradigm non-holiday.

Well, mostly I was just arguing, but Mormons with their new Scripture and new prophet, along with other groups with new prophets and new scriptures, strike me as those most easily excluded if you're going to exclude anyone.

Get back to me when Blessed Abraham has a second miracle.

And I have to go to bed.

154 is probably true. If all the sects were going to vote a band off the island it would probably be the Mormons.

So I think we're done. I think this stacks up with one measly fetus in a barren womb.

Federal Abraham, who is said to have remarked that while he'd like to have God on his side, he must have Kentucky, knew that miracles were no longer what kept days sacred; rather it was the Union that must be preserved, for without a Federal Union there can be no federal holidays. Is it merely a coincidence that Washington's Birthday, still the official name of Presidents' Day - the celebration of Lincoln having been incorporated over time, a fact that some separatists still do not recognize (their celebration eschews the stovepipe hat in favor of powdered sugar wigs) - became a holiday shortly after the Civil War?

79/115/JRoth: I'm late coming back from dinner and haven't caught up, but I'm lost and wondering if you just misread 41, which contends that Catholics and Protestants have much more in common theologically than either does with Mormons. It doesn't really matter, but I don't often get held up as "simply insane," and when I do I try to sort through it. Am I completely misunderstanding you when you seem to be strongly arguing that Mormons are very different, or did you misread me and then keep pounding on it instead of re-reading?

Weird, I misread 41 in exactly the same way JRoth seems to have done, although now that you point it out, your meaning was clear.

Thanks, ogged. I'll cop to sloppy writing now and then but I try to maintain at least a tenuous grip on sanity.

Had an interesting time recently discussing Mormon theology with a Muslim. There is no God but God and Joseph Smith is his prophet . . .

"As for Rastafarians, they are still jailed for practicing their belief. "

Well, since they believe that homosexuals are reanimated corpses who should be destroyed, there's a certain preemptive logic to it.

"I don't approve of a society where arguments about points of religious doctrine are politically important. "

This is one of the reasons that Byzantium is one of my favorites.

What's the passage? "If you ask for change, they tell you the Father is greater than the Son..."

I'd rather enjoy seeing some discussion on the Sunday morning talk shows about some basic Mormon doctrine.

The good shit, like all about the steel sword waving Jews riding horses around Guatemala in 500 B.C.

Reform Rastafarians believe that homosexuals are reanimated corpses who should be lovingly accepted as our brothers in Limbo.

It strikes me as incredibily trivial and mean spirited how important it is to be labeled "Christian."

You are either with us or against us!

I'm with Emerson. mormons are nice people and good replublicans, but if that stuff isn't heretical vis-a-vis what everybody thinks of as mainstream christian belief, then daaammn, what does a person have to believe to be a heretic around here? I've read some of the book of mormon, and let me tell you, that is some strange king-James pastiche weirdness. as an episcopalian altar girl who spent services in the vestry eating leftover consecrated hosts and drinking leftover consecrated wine I feel uniquely well-placed to comment on these issues. (I hasten to point out that this is what you're supposed to do with the leftovers, since it's sacreligous to put them in the trash, although the cathedral has a special well leading directly to hallowed ground down which the excess can be dumped if no proto-alcoholic schoolgirls can be found.)

Alameida:
Finally! You have just explained to me what all of those priests were doing. T

To belabor this already belabored thread, what about the Moonies? Tucker Carlson gets to insult Barack Obama's perfectly normal mainline Protestant church, but nobody except the feverswamp bloggers ever point out that one of the biggest funders of the American right is a Korean dude who church holds him to be the Second Coming.

I've been baffled at times here by the claim that it's intolerant for religious believers to exclude non-believers or wrong-believers. Exclusion isn't quite a necessary definition of "belief", but pretty close.

I'm quite willing to say that religious believers are wrong in what they believe and do, but I'm not really willing to say that their wrongness is their intolerance or exclusivism. If they were right, their intolerance would be right too. And if tolerance were their first rule, they wouldn't be believers. They'd be secular liberals. The tolerance required of them isn't part of their religion, it's an accomodation to American law.

To me tolerance, etc., are messy compromises allowing people who disagree to minimize the mutual bother. It's not the same as universal love or a big group hug. And there will always be contested issues, because messy compromises are only expedients minimizing trouble, not once-and-for-all solutions to conflict.

To return to LB's original question, the conservative anti-sex anti-woman anti-atheist religious right is exclusivist and hostile to secular liberals, and the way the US system works they're more powerful than we are at the moment even though they're not really musch more numerous (one survey had it about 30% -- 20%).

Partly this is because a lot of actual liberals are accepting not at all politically self-aware and just go about their lives, tolerating wingers as "a point of view" and trying to make compromises.

So a lot of believers in mutually-incompatible beliefs, people who tend to hate one another, have banded together specifically against us. (Let's hear it for us! Uniters!) And we're at the bottom of the list of eligible Presidential candidates.

And given the messiness, even though their motives are all religious, if they're doing their rightwing-ecumenical job right, the laws they are proposing will be framed in a secular non-denominational way, and if they have enough oomph they'll succeed in ramming them through. They seem to be slipping though.

Let me conclude by reminding my effete bicoastal friends that Minnesota is the state that elects Muslims and atheists to office. "Religion is a crutch for weak minds".

snarkout: excellent point.

"accepting and not at all politically self-aware"

"Exclusion isn't quite a necessary aspect of 'belief', but pretty close."

Granted that my parents are a poor yardstick to use, given that they in most ways defy what many people (myself included) when they discuss "Southern evangelicals" in a political context despite being Southern evangelicals, but I can say that the religious differences would have the potential to be a significant factor for them when it came to a Mormon candidate. I think the best expression of this is the following hypothetical: they would vote for a Mormon if s/he were the Democratic nominee but they would not vote for a Mormon in the primary. It's not that they can't vote for someone of a different religious sect, Christian or otherwise, or someone absent a religion; I know for a fact that they have voted for candidates who fit at least two of those three qualifiers. Rather, they think of Mormonism as a cult whose members are actively harmed by the Mormon church and would shy away (quietly but nonetheless actively) from supporting that candidate if they had the chance. I'm not here to defend that view of the LDS Church, I'm just saying that's how they see it.

That said, the political/partisan differences would matter much more to them when it came to election day. My parents would vote for my cats were they the Democratic nominees before they would vote for any Republican of any religious stripe.

I don't know much about doctrinarial differences of various groups. I'm pretty sure many of the christians I've met aren't very christian though.

Besides that snark; seperation of church and state, both de facto and de jure, is one of the best ideas anyone has ever had.

You don't have to know doctrinal differences. You aren't a real Christian is a game anyone can play. You can play by sect and doctrine. You can play by cultural differences. You can do play by behavior. Atheists can call out Catholics as individuals or by institution. Catholics can anathemitize Baptists. &c. The fun thing about telling other people that they are wrong is that there are so many rationales. National Brotherhood Week is only one week thank _____.

178:

Outstanding. Let's play "you aren't a real unfogged contributor if..."

"you aren't a real unfogged contributor if..."

...you haven't emailed me naked pictures of yourself. So, congratulations to Labs, Brock Landers, and BitchPhD. I'm still tolerating the rest of you but you need to get cracking.

This raised-Baptist non-believer says Mormons are Christians only in the very most expansive definition of the term. That is to say, Mormons are Christians as much as Christians are Jews.

Be careful what you wish for, apo.

Don't let me down, Emerson.

Argh. This conversation is an example of why one shouldn't argue against strawmen, which is what I was doing -- that is, I was trying to address an inchoate impression I was getting, rather than an argument I'd explicitly heard being made. And none of this is a huge matter of justice -- it was a flip comment that I promoted to a post because I was feeling like I hadn't been writing enough.

Let me try and unpack what I was thinking:

(1) We live in a society that explicitly strongly values a high level of respect and tolerance for people's specifically religious beliefs and practices. Someone voting or acting according to their conscience, framed religiously, gets a certain amount of deference on that basis (and to be clear, I don't think this is a terribly bad thing. I'm not going to agree with someone, necessarily, because they're voting the way they think God wants them to, but I don't think it's an illegitimate basis for making decisions, and I'm not generally going to be rude about it.)

(2) Most Americans are some form of trinitarian Christian, so point 1 has a tendency to turn implicitly to 'we can respect and tolerate any religious beliefs or practices that look normal from a trinitarian Christian point of view -- but if yours don't fit that category, you're an untrustworthy weirdo'. This makes me cranky, because my personal religious beliefs aren't included there, and neither are those of plenty of other people who I think make perfectly fine and trustworthy American citizens. There are religious beliefs that I'd get judgmental about -- the First Church of Moloch, with the throwing the babies into furnaces, would be a problem, but my comfort and tolerance level is, I think, significantly broader than the American standard as revealed by polling. (I'm not claiming to be a particularly tolerant person overall, just to have broader categories of people I'd, say, vote for than the American public generally does.)

(3) There's a certain amount of pressure to treat point (2) with tolerance because of point (1) -- someone who has a problem with voting for a candidate because of that candiate's religious beliefs is voting their conscience, and it's rude and wrong to pick at or interrogate that choice -- it's a religiously based decision, so second-guessing it is wrong.

(4) Liberal Christian denominations tend to get rhetorically edged out of the category that gets tolerance and respect on a religious basis. Tucker Carlson questioning whether Obama's church is really Christian, the weird little conversation we had here about whether the churchgoing Howard Dean had broad contempt for the religious, because apparently UCC doesn't count -- that sort of thing.

(5) Mormons are, as a doctrinal matter, way way further away from the trinitarian churches that form the American 'norm' than liberal Christian denominations are. A southern Baptist minister talking to a UCC minister and a Mormon elder (? My vocabulary failed -- I know 'minister' isn't the right word) about God, and religious belief, and the nature and eventual fate of the soul, is going to have some picky differences with the UCC guy about matters of emphasis, and is going to think the Mormon is from another planet.

This isn't a slam at Mormons -- there's nothing wrong about being a member of a religion very distinct from trinitarian Christianity. And I'm not the 'proper use of the word Christian' police, so anyone who wants to call themselves anything can, for all of me. But a trinitarian Christian who wants to say that Mormons are a member of a very different religion, in a way that other Christian sects aren't, isn't doing anything wrong. They are recognizing a simple reality about the two religions, and under the principle of tolerance toward religious beliefs and practices described as my point (1), shouldn't get a hard time for it. (If they're saying "Mormons are freakish cult members", that's intolerant and they should stop. But saying "Mormonism is a religion that does not closely resemble mine," is, from a trinitarian Christian, just a true statement of their own beliefs.)

(6) Here's where it gets political. Mormons, culturally and politically, vote pretty much like evangelical Christians. While they're very religiously disitinct, they're politically very similar. The sense I'm getting, from language like Romney's about how Americans want to vote for a 'person of faith', is that there's an attempt to spin the political alignment between Mormons and evangelicals into a natural outgrowth of their religious commonalities, in a way that it would be rude to pick at or interrogate because it's a matter of faith.

If that's what's going on, it's really kind of bullshit. The religious commonalities between Mormons and evangelicals are very weak compared to the religious commonalities between evangelicals and liberal Christian sects. Evangelicals and Mormons vote similarly because they tend to share policy preferences (perhaps religiously informed policy preferences, but policy preferences) rather than religious beliefs.

I just prefer having it clear that nattering about religious values, and people of faith, and so on, in the context of explaining why evangelical voters should vote for a Mormon, is an attempt to cloak a straightforward political policy preference in religious cant. There's not a thing wrong about voting for policy preferences; that's how I vote. But an attempt to convince a Southern Baptist that they should be more comfortable with and feel closer to Romney's religion than Obama's (as distinct from preferring Romney's likely policies to Obama's) is nonsensical as a religious argument.

Mormons are Christians as much as Christians are Jews.

I'm a member of the tribe of Ephraim!

Whatever, goy.

Perhaps I am merely repeating ideas from Teo and text above (I haven't read the full thread) but I find it really hard to believe that this trinity stuff is an essential element of Christianity for American Christians. I was always told that what was important was your Personal Relationship with Jesus and that Jesus had to Enter Your Heart. (And nest in the left ventricle?) American Christianity is focussed on belief, but belief seems more like a mental act than a doctrinal checklist.

Of course a lot of the problem here comes from who is setting the standards. Do we mean the standards of most non-Mormon Christians? Protestants? Likely Republican voters? Likely religious Republican voters? The last probably has especially incoherent standards.

Still, I many of these people could be placated with a discussion of your Personal Relationship with Jesus.

Salt Lake City: where Jews are Gentiles.

One of the problems here is that people mean two vastly different things when they say "christian." Many people take a sociological/comparitive religion approach. A christian could mean someone whose beliefs are more similar to christianity than to other religions. This is where text's "well they worship Jesus" point comes in.

On the other hand, to many people, a christian is someone whose name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. This is something objective, their name is either there or it isn't. Now, to be sure you can't know for sure where any particular person's heart is, but if someone actually believes what the LDS church teaches then that person is damned to an eternity of hell, that person does not have the wisdom of the holy spirit in them, and that person is blasphemer actually worshipping an idol they merely call Jesus. This isn't a little thing.

186: The bolded part from 61 is the difference maker for me. That is to say, the Torah is sacred to Christians too, but the New Testament pretty definitively makes them not-Jews. Similarly, The Book of Mormon makes Mormons not-Christians, but rather something that evolved from Christianity. This is a much larger difference than Orthodox/Catholicism/Protestantism.

LB, I sometimes find it convenient thinking of myself as a foreigner even though I grew up here. If I lived in Turkey I wouldn't bother myself with the local theologies. (Are the Alevis really Muslim? Answers differ.) I wouldn't expect the Turks to give much consideration to my beliefs, or be hurt if they didn't. I'd just tried to do what I could on policy matters.

There's a potential historical linkage between Mormons and a lot of fundamentalist Protestantism such as dispensationism (Armageddonism). Both are home-grown and stem from Nineteenth Century American (or sometimes British) craziness. However, Mormonism is an extremely social religion and doesn't have the individual born-again thing, I don't think. (And I don't know whether Mormons cultivate the Personal Jesus Relationship. I know that hellfire is not a factor.)

186 makes a really good point, which is that if you say "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" enough people will be willing to convince themselves that you don't *really* believe all that heretical mormon stuff, deep down you actually believe in Christ who will forgive your association with a heretical church. This is how most of the christians I know think of catholicism. The church is heretical, but a lot of its members are christians.

And let's get right down to it -- Mormons may not "believe" in hellfire, but hellfire is there waiting for them.

I think 186 is probably right. On a recent NPR show about Romney's Mormonism, a crusty Republican evangelical minister said that his association was going to meet with Romney and ask him a lot of questions about his relationship with Christ. Romney should have no difficulty in formulating phrases like: "Christ is my personal savior" and "I pray to Christ." It's possible that some or even many of them will kick, and endorse Brownback instead, but he should be able to pass the "I like Christ" test.

Of course, he could also flub the phrasing. Those phrases above didn't roll tripping off this LDS-raised tongue.

Yeah, things might be going fine with me in one of those interviews, and then I'd say "Screw Christ" and it'd be all over with. Gotta remember those buzz words, unimportant as they may seem to you personally.

Mormons may not "believe" in hellfire, but hellfire is there waiting for them.

Totally doesn't compute, dude. Outer Darkness is cold.

The church is heretical

How is the one that came first heretical? Or are your friends Eastern Orthodox?

That's what you think.

197: It gradually *became* heretical, which was why the reformation was necessary. The reformation *restored* the church as christ intended it. Augustin and St. Paul would have been protestants, of course (not to mention Jesus Christ).

Actually, Mormons pray to God, the Heavenly Father, and close their prayers by invoking the name of Jesus Christ. I wouldn't really know what to say to Jesus himself; he was a little scary as Yahweh, and while I know he had a bit of a steep learning curve after his incarnation, he's still more distant than I'm comfortable with.

And it wasn't until the Council of Trent that the Catholic Church really went beyond the pale and actually excommunicated people for holding true christian beliefs.

197 - Why you gotta hate on the Copts, Copt-hater?

I wouldn't really know what to say to Jesus himself

"Can you still walk on water with those holes in your feet?"

Praying to God the Father in the name of Jesus sounds pretty orthodox (small-o) to me. "Whatever you ask for in my name..." yada yada.

There do remain pre-Catholic Christians in Egypt, Ethiopia, the Middle East, and India. Their Trinitarianism is different or non-existent. Some have moderated their theology in order to accomodate the Western churches.

An Armenian once told me that Armenians are Unitariarians, though Unitarians are ani-Trinitarian heretics so that doesn't help the Armenians much.

NOTE: While researching Unitarians, I found a Catholic site denouncing the present Pope as a Unitarian-lover (the first Unitarians were Polish).

The Catholic shrine dedicated to Unitarian martyrs is at Bydgoszcz, if you need a Scrabble word.

Challenge! Proper noun.

No, they made it into a verb. "Let's bydgoszcz this week."

Those phrases above didn't roll tripping off this LDS-raised tongue.

Unlike, for example, "In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

In 183 LB gets it right, I think.

I think the "policy-preference-similarity-cloaked-as-religious-similarity" is creepy but I'm not sure what to make of it: does this mean that religion really is a part of effective political pandering (more than we'd normally thought), or that religion is so inessential to the thought processes that undergird political thinking that politically-similar animals can be grouped as religiously-similar because religion has attained some political supervenience, ie it simply doesn't matter, so why not use it as a blunt political tool? What is more causally effective, religion or the religion-simulacrum?

Meh, in the final analysis, I suppose one can't go wrong with "politics is everything and everything is politics".

See, all of this (in politics, I mean, not in the thread) just strikes me as shockingly inept. Go back a while and people were seriously questioning whether Kennedy could win because he was Catholic? It's functionally impossible to elect a President in who doesn't pay the right lip service to ritualistically `going to church' but empirically clear that their true value systems can be all over the map.

From the outside, it looks like someone just said `hey, lets make up a joke version of democracy and see who'll go along'.

There is clearly nothing wrong with a politician allowing their personal values to color how they practice politics (as long as they are up front about it --- you are there to represent your constit. wishes, not your own. No pretending allowed). And there is nothing wrong with a religous person using their own world view to decide the right way to vote based on actual performance....

... but reducing it to arguments about nominal membership in the `right' sort of church as a basis for political alliance? That's not just stupid, it's dangerous. National politics in this country is somewhat screwed until it doesn't matter what church (if any) a presidential candidate goes to, much like gender shouldn't matter.

@ 187:
Yeah, "Jews for Joseph Smith"?

I have a very close friend named Joseph Smith, so every time the Mormon founder guy comes up, I have to do a mental double-take. My getting-in-trouble-mate during my adolescence was named Larry Johnson. Aside from the ex-CIA agent and the two all-star pro athletes, I've met three other Larry Johnsons since high school. This practice is confusing and should stop.

There's a hockey rink in Edmonton that bears my name. If you're ever there, tell 'em I sent ya.

"Hey, lets make up a joke version of democracy and see who'll go along".

See, this is the original-intent fallacy. That isn't what they tried to do. That's what they actually did.

213: Right around 1990 sometime, there was a long-running news story about someone with the name I had then. Not surprising, given that both halves of it were common as dirt, but it threw me every time. If I remember correctly, the high point was seeing my name onthe cover of Time -- very disturbing.

Hm, Xtreme Zone is your name?

215: Oooh, there was, wasn't there?

She was a doctor, right? That case was creepy; it was obsessively covered in the legal press, which I don't think you were reading at that time.

215: I didn't think there were that many people named "Gennifer".

Xtreme Zone is my Muslim name.

218: That's her. And yeah, I wasn't reading the legal press -- I was dropping out of MIT at the time.

LB, this post just got picked up and lengthily excerpted over at Eschaton. (I knew it addressed something that was floating around in the blogborg.)

Yeah, Ogged emailed me with it. Thanks for prodding me to pull the comment up to a post.

Hey apostropher, I liked "Rule of the Bone", but the patois was a bit unconvincing. And "Cloudsplitter" was way too long.

So I'm minding my own business, surfing the blogosphere like a good member of the VLWC, and what do I see on Atrios' site but a post referencing this very thread!

This place is getting too cool for me.

I would like to submit this as evidence that Mormons are not all smiles, JellO, and suburban family values.

I dunno, Ned. I'll submit this as evidence that even their teenage-boy-chasing former bishops are goody two-shoed in how they go about it.

And I love this, from the comments: "Any guy that says he hasn't been poked with a foot long wooden penis is lying."