This just in: Mormonism can’t be Christian because it is a religion

Now, really, I’ve heard Christians (or I suppose I should say…Christ followers) argue that Mormons aren’t Christian for many reasons. Some reasons are better than others. I could probably say which ones I find more convincing (but then again, it depends too on your definitions of Christianity — which for many practical purposes, the Christians who are against Mormonism being a Christian denomination use a very technical definition of Christianity that most people don’t care about and don’t associate with Christianity.) But that’s not my purpose on this blog. I’m not here to say Mormons are definitely Christian or Mormons are definitely not. It doesn’t really matter to me.

But a blog entry wrote an argument that I had…not seen before. I mean, I’ve seen *part* of it…but I hadn’t seen this particular iteration.

See, the traditional argument of this sort goes something like, “Aha, Christians believe in faith only…Mormons have works and so they are wrong.” Mormons will counter by saying…Faith in Jesus Christ is still central to the Gospel, so it’s not like faith is unimportant. But faith without works is dead.

And the arguers will posit, “But you have all of these strange ceremonies and ordinances that must be done that are unessential…baptism, baptism by proxy (that’s for the dead, foo’), other kinds of temple work, etc.,” I guess Mormons will try to distinguish between what is sufficient for salvation and then contrast it with instead what will net exaltation — because they are different things that cannot be really equalized.

But, because of the nature of things, I guess I can see how AncientArrow would say that Mormonism is a religion of process.

(I would just say: so what?)

The interesting thing is…he uses this idea as a proof that Mormonism is not Christianity. Because it is a religion of process, it cannot be Christian.

Wait, no, that’s not what he fully says.

Virtual Organization of the Bloggernacle

(haha, I messed this up. I meant to schedule this for tonight, but I accidentally schedule it for a time in the *past* rather than in the *future*…so it sent out pings to all of my quoted articles and even though I retracted it, the pings linked straight to this post)

I’m sure that 99% of everyone haven’t even heard about this, but with then .000001% of the internet is this debate going on…who makes the “Bloggernacle” — the online presence of faithful Mormon bloggers? What is most important to being popular in the bloggernacle?

I think that the Bloggernacle is fascinating. It keeps me interested and (somewhat) read on LDS issues, and it’s often a different atmosphere than what you’d get from the home ward (which is very good, in my opinion).

I thought I had a good idea of the Bloggernacle too…To me, the Bloggernacle is any Mormon-centric blog that is from the faithful perspective. So, I’m not really Bloggernacle, but don’t fret, because I’m in Outer Blogness (the list of not-so-faithful Mormon bloggers)!

Mere Atheism

I stumbled upon the site of George A. Ricker the other day and found an essay he had written as companion to his book “mere atheism” (which I probably need read several times). Because…quite frankly, I like most of his ideas and have tried to use them often, even though I’ve never seen his site or his works until recently.

So I guess I’d like to take the time to take a few quotes from this page and comment about them.

Atheism is best defined as the absence of god-belief. It is the opposite of theism, which is the belief in a god or gods. The theist believes a god exists. The atheist does not believe a god exists. Theists believe in a god or gods. Atheists do not. All of those statements about atheism are accurate reflections of what atheism means.

…One of the most common misconceptions about atheism is that it requires one to deny the possibility of a god or to assert the absolute conviction that no god exists. Thus, atheists are commonly accused of claiming to “know” no gods exist. The relationship between atheism and agnosticism also seems to create confusion in the minds of some. It’s not at all uncommon to hear or read the statement “atheists claim to know there are no gods and agnostics aren’t sure.”

But the relationship between atheism and agnosticism is not one of degrees of belief. The two words reflect different kinds of statements. Agnosticism is not a convenient halfway house between belief and nonbelief.

I wrote about this a little bit in my article on atheism and agnosticism; if you didn’t realize, I strongly agree with this.

Apparently, I never knew that Judaism was the first religion

…right.

Somehow, I got directed to read Rabbi David Wolpe…and so I decided to judge a book by a short article. I saw a Huffington Post article on whether faith matters. Obviously, I jumped on the opportunity to write about it.

He’s responding to Sam Harris, one of the famed “new atheists” that theists just love to hate. Sam Harris, like most of the so-called new atheists, has a bone to pick with religion. I mean, this isn’t new news. Usually, what is clear is that people like Harris and Dawkins and the rest don’t necessarily have bones to pick with all religion, but just what seems to be a popular springing of it. (I mean, certainly, they take a position that religion itself is utterly silly…but disregarding that, I think the main problem that Harris or Dawkins has is that there seems to be this tendency for some practitioners of religion to do some silly things [as I guess theists are now coming to dislike atheists more because there seems to be this tendency for some atheists {called new atheists or militant or vocal or whatever else} to do some silly things]).

So, of course, Wolpe protests that Harris and company are simply targeting a straw man of religion. After all,

Countless generations of believers regulated their lives by faith. They believed not out of fear, but out of wonder; not from a desire to judge and exclude, but to understand and embrace. Where was that truth in this bitter broadside against faith?

And you know what, I agree with his idea. (But then again, I wasn’t a new atheist to begin with, I guess?)

Rebranding the church (a charitable view)

So, over on Main Street Plaza, there’s a discussion about how the Mormon church can rebrand itself. I think people recognize that the church has, for most of its history, had some kind of bad brand image with others for some reason. The discussion centralizes around the words of marketing specialist Gabriel Rossi:

Rebranding is a bit more than changing the design of your logo. Rebranding is a long process (usually takes years) and always requires an inside-out response. You need to craft your brand again from the inside-out. It can be quite challenging, tricky and dangerous. Do it quietly and patiently… I advise companies to invest time in sorting internal issues out first of all. Ask your employees what the company represents to them. Do they understand its story and ambitions? What kind of dreams do they have for the future? Where does your organization want to go taking into consideration the current market place?

Now, while I think that there were some good ideas and good perspectives spoken of at MSP, and I think that recently, how the church has been branded hasn’t been the best…but I got this feeling that some of the suggestions were more idealistic and aspirational rather than pragmatic. Actually, I guess if I had to put my finger on it, I guess the general tone of many comments was that the LDS church is a sinking ship that has already struck the iceberg.

I dunno…depending on who you are, you might enjoy that prospect very much. I personally think it’s silly to think of the church as falling apart by the seams.

Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy and Modernity

Just today, I got a curious article in my inbox for Mormon articles from the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship…bear in mind…this title’s a long one: “A Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy Challenges Cultural Mormon Neglect of the Book of Mormon: Some Reflections on the “Impact of Modernity”". I’m not making this up.

I got this in my mail because I have google scour the internet for things about Cultural Mormons…and you know, this seems right up my alley…It’s speaking directly to my neglect of the Book of Mormon and how I think modernity should impact it in that way. Yes, a diatribe against us wishy washy nonbelievers and how the church can rise against us.

Anyway…I was reading through it, and although I got the gist of a lot of what I was reading, I must admit that I wasn’t too particularly willing to invest the amount of time I would need to fully analyze this. So, I took a stroll over to Mild-Mannered Musings, where Chris took much more succinct (and therefore instantly better) notes.

And Janice from a Sunstone panel about the same issue gives us the sound bite:

Orthodoxy is not a useful term, was repudiated by JS. Better than Traditional Mormon Orthodoxy and MNO are the labels “humanistic Mormons” and “redemptive Mormonism”.

On atheism and agnosticism

Ah, when I was younger…

It’s good to reminisce. I know that looking back on the times when I was younger, I am somewhat proud to find that from my earliest journal entries, from my earliest conversations with others, I was one to be proudly agnostic. I guess my father was concerned about this, but I don’t really know for sure (He seems to believe that a neutral look at all the evidence in the universe must point to some deity [even if its a deist construction], so atheists must be blind or deaf or both…go figure).

But as I was looking through some of my posts on the interwebs…of arguments with others…I realized I was one of those agnostics I hate. A fence sitter.

What is fence sitting agnosticism and why do I dislike it? I guess it’s for a different reason than most people dislike the idea of fence sitting…I dislike it not because it is so neutral, but because it is utterly impossible. Fence sitting agnostics deny (or do not realize) that they actually do take a position.

See, when I was an agnostic in those years…I had made statements like these: “Why be atheist? Agnosticism is most logical!”

…argh, my younger self!

Linger Longers

Ah, another chance to reminisce…to state my thesis simply: linger longers rock.

I only really started thinking about them because of my reading of Dead Seriously, where Scott mentioned it (in context of his calling as Ward Fellowshipping Chair — haha, my ward isn’t big enough for one of those). (Speaking of which, I do believe this article counts as gravedigging…this is such an old article that reference such an old article from Dead Seriously too).

Speaking of Mormon artists

So, everyone had to jump on the bandwagon of looking out for Stephenie Meyer with Twilight, (and unfortunately, it appeared that she wasn’t able to do so much for the church after all), but why don’t people seem to pay attention to other Mormons? I guess it’s because many of them are much more low-key, and even when you find out they are Mormon, you might not think they should be the ones to make Mormonism “cool.” Maybe they aren’t good enough role models. I knew that Brenden Urie of Panic at the Disco grew up Mormon, for example…but he fails muster because he’s distanced himself from the church. And I know that if I ever got in touch with musical side, the same fate would befall me (I wouldn’t want that kind of role model responsibility anyway).

But here are some people who (I assume) are still practicing, believing members…and why haven’t these guys spread like wildfire within the church, I wonder?

All or Nothing Part 2 — Switching Dogmas

This is a followup to “All or Nothing,” where I highlighted how some aspects of the church reinforce this idea that members have to accept all of these religious propositions…or else he shouldn’t accept any of them. In my article, I gave Mormon examples, because that’s what I know — the church foundationally rests on ideas about Joseph Smith, the Apostasy of the church (and the need for its restoration), the divinity/inspiration of the Book of Mormon, and other things. From there are hinged other ideas that might be doubtful doctrinally, but which are culturally claimed as required. How did the First Vision really go? Does the Book of Mormon need to be  a literal historical account, and what is the right interpretation of such history (full hemisphere, or just localized in a certain area)?

So, there are certainly members who get their faith wrecked because of some area that is conflated to essentiality due to rogue Mormon culture. Mormons don’t believe in prophetic infallibility, for example, but due to cultural expectations, it might seem like if a prophet has said or done something off kilter, that’s sign to head for the hills.

Of course, there are sites designed to help people stay even through these difficulties, so there — I’ve given my equal opportunity time.

It was quite refreshing to see a post of a similar caliber on the blog “slacktivist.” Slacktivist speaks from an evangelical perspective — and he speaks about how culturally, Fundamentalist Christians have created a similar all or nothing house of cards on something that also could easily wreck the faith of Christians — the absolute acceptance of young-earth creationism that utterly rejects evolution. Personally, I’m glad Mormons (may) not have this problem.