MORMONS AND CHRISTIANITY

If you check in on realclearreligion.org now and then, one of the things you may notice among the twelve articles it highlights everyday from various sources is that at least one or two  concern Mormonism from a Mormon perspective.  In comparison, Mormonism claims to the 6.1 million adherents in the United States.  The total number of Lutherans in the United States is in the neighborhood of 7.4 million.  Yet aside from the past sexuality wars, articles about and by Lutherans appear only occasionally.

Justification for this might be Lutherans are just boring folk.  (In fairness, sometimes I wonder.)  Another more likely explanation is the often cited factoid that Mormons are the fastest growing religious group in America.  (Not true.  The fastest growing are the Amish followed by the Orthodox Jews.)  My personal sense is that this is a simple case of bias on the part of the realclearreligion editors.  Well…it is their website, so they can do as they wish.  Still, the imbalance is striking.

Be that as it may, if you chance to read these articles about Mormons, one common theme is the ongoing and intense resentment that most Christians do not regard Mormons as Christians.  If a Christian should happen to say Mormons are not Christians in casual conversation, it is highly probable a Mormon will respond with insults and vitriol.  Often one will hear vicious insults against what Mormons bitterly call the "Christianity police".  Yet among Mormons themselves the contempt and distain they have for "orthodox" Christians is brutally palpable. 

The reasons for this are many; but mainly Mormons believe they and they alone proclaim the true, original faith of the early Christian Church of the Apostles.  Somehow, either through oppression of the Catholic Church, the unwarranted influence of Hellenic thought forms, or cataclysmic disaster, this "original" Christianity was extinguished--non-existent until a set of golden plates were revealed to Joseph Smith by the angel Maroni.  (No such angel exists in any version of the Christian or Hebrew Scriptures.  Neither Moroni can be found in found in the traditions of each faith.  According to Mormon documents, Moroni was once a faithful man in the ancient Americas who became an angel.)  Through these golden plates, the true Christianity of the original Apostles was again made alive among men.  After Joseph Smith translated the golden plates, he said they were returned to Moroni.  Therefore, if the golden plates ever existed, they cannot be examined.

That most "orthodox" Christians regard Joseph Smith as a liar, counterfeiter, and a false prophet would be something of an understatement. 

Two years ago, I somehow got into a long conversation with a Mormon gentleman through a series of posts on another website.  Our discussion was characteristically stern.  It began politely enough.  But soon, he began to attack me personally and his remaining messages sarcastic and snotty most of the time.  I tried my best to be firm but restrained and respectful--although he may have seen it differently.  He abruptly ended exchanges; but not before he called me a bigot. 

He began with what he thought was his trump card.  Namely by going to the English dictionary:  Christian:  one who believes in Jesus Christ.  In his mind, this settled the matter once and for all.  I responded that lexicographers were not competent to pronounce on theological doctrines.  Whatever qualifications those who compile dictionaries may have, arbiters of who is actually is a faithful disciple of the Risen Lord they are not--and no one made them so.  (Certainly it is not a role they would insist for themselves.)  This repetitively infuriated him to no end.

Of course, if someone wants to call themselves "Christian", there is little that can be done to stop them.  It is one thing, however, to claim the descriptive "Christian" for oneself.  But it is quite another to compel other Christians to agree with you.  Lest we forget, even to this date, a sizable mass of Evangelicals and Fundamentalists do not believe Catholics (and in sometimes, Lutherans) are Christians either.

But Christianity encompasses more than to "believe in Jesus Christ".  It is important to ask what it means to be Christian if one rejects the two thousand year history of what in fact is historical Christianity. Christianity is doctrinal but it is more than a collection of doctrines. Christianity is the past and present reality of the society composed of the Christians past, present, and future. As is said in the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” That encompasses doctrine, ministry, liturgy, and a rule of faith. Christians disagree about precisely where that Church is to be located historically and at present, but almost all agree that it is to be identified with the Great Tradition defined by the apostolic era through at least the first four ecumenical councils, and continuing in diverse forms to the present day.  That is the Christianity that Mormon theology rejects and condemns as an abomination and fraud.

Indeed, true Christianity is marked by the adherence and subscription to the three ecumenical creeds:  The Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and Athanasian Creed.  The Creeds do not condemn those Christians who have not been properly been taught and hold to uninformed theologies in ignorance.  Neither do they condemn those Christians who lived before the Creeds were adopted as statements of faith of the universal Church.  What they do censure and anathematize are those who reject the Creeds in informed malice.  And it is all three Creeds which Mormons refuse to subscribe--especially the Athanasian Creed.  It is true that there are Protestant Churches which do not adopt the Creeds out a sense that they are to trust only in the Bible; but they do not reject the substance taught by the Creeds.

Despite the sometimes insistence that they could agree to the Creeds, Mormons emphatically will not.  If Christian doctrine is summarized in, for instance, the Apostles' Creed as understood by historic Christianity, official Mormon teaching adds to the creed, deviates from it, or starkly opposes it almost article by article.

Mormons have insisted that the Creeds are formulations written years after the Apostolic age and thus are illegitimate and heretical.  The claim is that the "so-called" Christian Church was fraudulent, corrupt, and populated by impostors and the true Church did not exist after the passing of the Apostles.  With the revelation of the golden plates to Joseph Smith, the true Christianity of the Apostles was restored to mankind.

As a matter of course, all Christian Churches profess to preach the faith as taught by Christ and the Apostles.  Catholics especially claim a direct lineage and consistent teaching of the Apostles through the past to the present.  That the Mormons preach the Gospel of the "New Testament" Church is the matter of contention.  In its particulars, the faith of Apostles as recounted by Mormons is at serious variance with is known.  That Joseph Smith rewrote the Bible to reflect the "true faith" opens up the issue of whether Mormons and the historic Churches are using the same Scriptures.

A fair question would be to turn the inquiry around: according to Mormon theology, are any non-Mormons Christians?  This is a touchy matter.  But the consistent answer from the founders of Mormonism to the present day is "no".  Only in the Mormon Church is salvation to be found.

On the bottom line, Mormons are anti-Trinitarian.  They believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not one God--the "three in one".  Instead, Mormons believe the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate Gods.  They do not like the application that they are polytheistic.  Rather they prefer to be described as “henotheisic,” meaning that there is a head God who is worshiped as supreme.  Further Mormonism claims that God is an exalted man, not different in kind as Creator is different in kind from creature as taught by both historic Christians and Jews. The Mormon claim is, “What God was, we are. What God is, we will become.” Related to this is the teaching that the world was not created ex nihilo but organized into its present form, and that the trespass in the Garden of Eden, far from being the source of original sin, was a step toward becoming what God is.  With the possible exception of a few lone Process theologians and peculiar mystics, no Christian theology has ever made anything like such a claim.  Most would not hesitate to condemn these doctrines as heretical and blasphemous.

If Mormons wants to say they are Christians, no one can or will stop them.  That they are an exemplary people in many, many ways is beyond denial.  But while they agree that faith in Christ is necessary for salvation, they categorically reject the doctrine by which the Lutheran Church stands or falls: that we are saved by the Grace of God alone.

I leave it to you to decide for yourself whether Mormons are Christians.  But the weight of the evidence indicates they are not.  One doubts that the Christ they speak of is even the same Christ Lutherans and the rest of the universal Church worship as Lord and Savior.

DEBT, HEALTHCARE AND THE SHUTDOWN

Say what you will about the Republicans and the government shutdown (and thousands already have), it is indeed true that Obama refused the negotiate over the continuing resolution to fund the government or the debt ceiling.  The bottom line is that the Republicans got nothing for giving the President what he wanted.  Most Republican insiders--even those associated with the "tea  
party"--have pronounced the entire enterprise a massive failure for the party--one that will hurt them in the months to come.  Of course, those same Republicans were against the showdown strategy to begin with.  And maybe they were and are right.  Many hope this disaster will temper the hopes and movements of those Representatives and Senators who maneuvered the showdown.  And perhaps it will.

I have my doubts that this disaster will linger long in the memories of all involved and the public in general.  Politics has a short cycle.  Soon we will all be off to the next thing. 

My suspicion is that Obama and the Democrats never had any intention to deal and negotiate legislatively with any of the proposals the loyal opposition had in mind and are not inclined to do so now--especially on drawing back or delaying the implementation of Obamacare.  Even the proposal the Republicans had to eliminate all the exemptions Obama had given to some businesses and unions in the scheduled implementation has only a snowballs chance in hell..

Was it all worth it?  Most say not.  I mostly agree except I have one nigling thought in the back of my mind and it has to do with the tactics Liberals themselves employ in other avenues.

In my experience in Synod assemblies, Liberals bring forth many proposals which have no chance.  They can be resoundingly defeated and resented for wasting everyone's time.  But…and this is the big "but"…they will be back the next time with the same proposal.  They will do this again and again until they win.  The point in these fruitless efforts is to continually keep the issue before the assemblies and all future assemblies.  They will work through the various minor meetings and committees to advance their cause.  You have hand it to them:  they are relentless.

Conservatives in contrast typically will make their proposals once--convinced of the obvious rightness of their cause--and when they are defeated they will slink away, grouse about it, and that's that.

Perhaps the value in the shutdown is that it puts the national debt, excessive borrowing against the future, and the government increasing intrusion into this nation's healthcare "system" repeatedly before Congress and the public.  I don't know.  I don't know if it would ever work.  As with everything else, even with bad and detrimental policies, there are thousands who benefit and will fight hard to keep it that way.  Make no mistake, there are thousands who stand to make a lot of money and build careers from Obamacare--many have been positioning themselves for years to reap the benefits from government imposition into healthcare.

But nothing is gained by doing nothing and promising "we'll get 'em next time".

Just a thought.

ATHEISTS, INTELLIGENCE, AND WHAT MATTERS

An item that hit the web, various newspapers, and other media reports of a study completed by psychologist Miron Zuckerman at the University of Rochester concerning the relationship between religious belief and intelligence.  After reviewing sixty three scientific studies from 1928 to the present, they have concluded that there is a "reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity".  The take-away is that the brighter one is the more likely one is or will become an atheist.  The more mature and educated an individual with a high IQ becomes he will dispense with belief in a supernatural being--or as atheists are apt to say, a primitive. archaic "sky-god".

The authors of the study reason that atheists generally have IQ's in the 130-plus range (greater than 95 percent of the general population) and thus they have higher ability to reason, plan, solve problems, comprehend abstractions and complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.  There is a clear perception on their part that they are in control of their own destiny.  As intelligent people, they tend to have greater self-control, self esteem, and self-generated supportive relationships--all of which obviates the need for the purported benefits religion provides to its adherents.

To add insult to injury, since high IQ's are established to be the single most reliable predictor of success in the modern world, the extrapolation is that non-believers will make more money and acquire the more prominent positions in the professional spheres.

What is surprising is that they needed to spend good money for a study to inform us of this fact.  We already knew this.  How do we know this?  Why...because atheists themselves feel compelled tell us at every turn how smart they are.  Of course, if they say how more intelligent they are than the ignoramuses who believe in God, who are we to doubt them!

But Zuckerman himself is careful to point out that this review — known as a “meta-study” because it examines a range of other studies — does not mean only obtuse people believe in God.

“It is truly the wrong message to take from here that if I believe in God I must be stupid,” he said. “I would not want to bet any money on that because I would have a very good chance of losing a lot of money.”

The study also indicates that more intelligent people are less likely to believe in God because they are more likely to challenge established norms and dogma. They are also more likely to have analytical thinking styles, which other studies have shown tend undermine religious belief.

On the other hand, Zuckerman provides an additional contrast:  “The functions we cover imply that in many ways religious people are better off than those who are nonreligious,” he said. “There are things about self-esteem and feeling in control and attachment that religion provides. In all those things, there are benefits to being religious, and that is the take-home message for those who are religious.”

(This last part was not included in most accounts provided by the various media outlets)

A possibility which may provide a partial explanation to the correlation between non-belief and elevated intelligence and higher education is the insular culture typical of centers of advanced education.  That is, non-belief could be a response to a certain peer pressure as one moves up the educational ladder to dismiss all religion as primitive fundamentalism. In other words, atheism (conscious or functional) is socialized "into them".  We cannot say this definitively as there has been no study within cultural anthropology appears to have been done to explore this hypothesis.  For many of us who have dwelt and toiled in the halls of college and graduate schools, experience provides a certain intuitive sense that this is true.  At the very least, we can note that there is a definite lack of support networks in higher education for religious belief, practice, and discipleship.

Setting aside questions of intelligence, atheists protest that there are several stereotypes about them they wished the "religious folk" would disabuse themselves with.  One is the standard protest that one does not need religion to be a moral person.  Indeed, if they do say so themselves, atheists are more moral than most of their religious countertypes.  Be that as it may, Chris Stedman at CNN's Belief blog clarifies what is at root:

[I am reminded of] of a conversation I once had with a Catholic scholar.

The professor once asked me: “When I talk about God, I mean love and justice and reconciliation, not a man in the sky. You talk about love and justice and reconciliation. Why can’t you just call that God?”

I replied: “Why must you call that God? Why not just call it what it is: love and justice and reconciliation?

Another stereotype atheists dispute as thoroughly wide of the mark is that atheists have no awe of "creation"--meaning the natural order of the universe and the majestic wonders of the material world--or gratitude toward the gift of life.

As Carl Sagan remarked:  "When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.”

Or as Diana Nyad  recently explained to Oprah Winfrey:  “I think you can be an atheist who doesn’t believe in an overarching being who created all of this and sees over it,” she said. “But there’s spirituality because we human beings, and we animals, and maybe even we plants, but certainly the ocean and the moon and the stars, we all live with something that is cherished and we feel the treasure of it.”

But from a Lutheran point of view, atheists testimonies of moral character and natural spirituality are beside the point.

Too many Christian apologists act if it would a major accomplishment to get otherwise intelligent non-believers to see the light and say that there is a God.  Entertaining atheists with speculations and proofs for the existence of God as well as dangling enticements involving the benefits belief brings to one's wellbeing have nothing to do with the Cross.

It is a cliché to point out that the God of the philosophers (or in this case scientists) is not the God of the Bible; but it is a cliché that happens to be true.  Instead of a general, abstract notion of a Supreme Being, the God of Christians is a particular deity with a specific name--an actor in real history--revealing Himself in concrete places and times.  A God that defies our notions of God:  a divine Spirit that does not shun the material--an utterly Holy "Otherness" which dwelt and continues to dwell among and within impure and corrupt men and women.  As Luther remarked in his Catechism, we cannot of our own power believe in such a God--and, even if it were possible to choose this God, we would not choose the Triune God.  A good, healthy, pagan pantheism is more our style.  For us, for all men, we cannot believe, accept, and follow this God unless the Father calls us.  The one true God is not discoverable to men by means the reason or observation.  So to convince an intelligent, well educated non-believer/atheist of the existence of God?   Big Deal.  As St James wrote:  "Even the demons believed in God". 

The "spirituality" which Sagan and Nyad speak when standing in awe of the universe or "communing with nature" (that which some outdoorsmen refer to as the "cathedral of the forest") also has nothing to do with the encounters with the Living God by His faithful children.  Oprah Winfrey, replying to Nyad, believes such natural experiences are in reality profound meetings with God.  But these experiences are not what so many believe them to be.  The Germans have a phrase which roughly translates as "unhealthy health".  "Unhealthy health" refers to the events where the terminally ill person temporarily will have a rally of well-being in which he appears to be getting better--only to be followed by a swift slide into death.  In the same way, the awe and perception of these "sacred" moments is in reality the false sign of life in the soul.  It is not a sign of health.  It is a salient sign of spiritual death.

The run-of-the-mill atheist/non-believer may or may not be more intelligent than the run-of-the-mill believer.  But that question is irrelevant to the life of faith and being claimed by the one, true God.  The meaning of life is not about "success", attaining wise "life lessons", acquiring profound understanding, or living by a superior code of ethics.  The meaning of life is a Person.

THE POPE AND THE NEW PRESIDING BISHOP OF THE ELCA

A friend and I were discussing the new Presiding Bishop (yet to be installed as of this date) Elizabeth Eaton.  After some length, he concluded his letter:

Speaking of Bp. Eaton, so far I’ve liked just about everything I’ve read from her and about her.  Gutsiness, intelligence, and humility seem to be her best features, much like the new Pope.  Is the Spirit at work here, do you suppose…??

On this, I shared a few thoughts:

There are things I like about Pope Francis' demeanor.  For now, I am reserving judgment.  I have a warm spot for both John Paul II and Benedict XVI; so you might understand my reticence at this point.  It is said that Francis is as conservative/orthodox as his two predecessors.  Nevertheless, interviews with "secular" journalists seem to be his nemesis.  Something is apt to pop out of his mouth followed by articles touting his departure from established doctrine.  These are followed by more articles explaining what he really meant or said.  A bit of back and forth, ending with more Catholic pundits saying that what Francis said has been Catholic doctrine all along.  (One correspondent wrote to me that universalism is in fact conventional within Church tradition!)  So I don't know whether the Francis I am getting is the actual Francis much of the time.  So, we'll see.  Time will tell.

Far less ambiguous is Bishop Eaton.  My sense is that despite far less news coverage, what you see is what you get.  I expect good things with her for the ELCA in the years to come.  Particularly gratifying is her stated intension to reach out and bring back into the fuller life of the Church those who disagreed with "2009".  She seems to genuinely understand the pain and estrangement "2009" caused.  Most who profoundly disagreed still remain in the ELCA--but not out of any particular love for it and certainly not out of any sense the ELCA loves them.

How she plans to do this and how much cooperation she will get from the rest of the Church is another kettle of fish.  Be that as it may, it looks like it is possible by her own charm, style and persuasiveness she might be able to accomplish what Bishop Hanson has not been able to achieve on this score.  (By the way, I trust Pastor Hanson isn't simply going to hang up his collar and go fishing.)

Movement of the Spirit?  I don't know.  As we are reminded, God has His own purposes.  Maybe those who come after us will be able to say better than we.