Mormonism is not something I could accept as a faith — you will never get the Catholic out of me, even if I attend an Episcopal church in Georgetown.
Mormons believe in the salvation story that makes Christianity a separate faith, not merely a separate sect, from Judaism. However, Mormons also believe mortals possess the potential for divinity — to live a life like God in the hereafter — if they live a truly just life here on earth.
The potential for our own divinity sounds farfetched and cult-like to rigid and inflexible Christians, such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry supporter Rev. Robert Jeffress, but no more so than did the divinity of Christ and the Christian salvation story to First Century Jews or their Roman rulers. What is more important is what Mormons believe and teach to their children about what God expects from each of us in our relationships with our fellow human beings — or what it takes to live a good life.
He makes an excellent case that Mormons are a separate faith, which like Trinitarian Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, share many common beliefs and virtues. Whatever differences I have with Romney, his faith is not one of them.
This author might want to stick to writing about economics rather than theology!
Amen, No. 2. Yikes.
At another ‘Romney’s religion’ post on this blog Creedal Episcopalian, in agreeing with a comment by BlueOntario, responded:
“Mr. Stevenson seems to be saying that the Mormons are at least as christian as progressive Episcopalians are, an argument with which I can find no fault. ”
Here I could just as well say “Mr. Morici seems to be saying that the Mormons are at least as christian as progressive Episcopalians [i](of which Morici appears to be one)[/i], an argument with which I can find no fault. ”
Morici states that Mormon beliefs’ development was [i]like[/i] that of Christians’, and also Jews’. He spends some effort on explaining that Mormonism’s tenets must be good because they urge their followers to good behaviors – [i]like[/i], say, Unitarians or Christian Scientists, or Masons or any number of other quasi-religious benevolent groups.
However, [i]like[/i] something else is not at all equivalent to being identical or identifiable with it. So ultimately, Morici argues that Mormonism is a [i]separate faith[/i] altogether from Christianity or others, not merely a sect or denomination (of Christianity, or anything else), and implicitly tells the reader that it is just as good a faith as the older Abrahamic ones since its results are similar in some ways. As a separate faith it is entitled to Constitutional and Bill of Rights protections – as are the (apparently developing) beliefs of TEC.
This is a fruit of our Culture of Relativism, in which belief of any uniqueness or authoritativeness of one faith is assumed to be philosophically unsophisticated and therefore untenable. Actually he makes a good case that Mormonism has a Pelagian basis, since Pelagius taught, against Augustine, that in effect man can be good enough so as to become god-like through his own efforts with God’s assistance – obviating a need or role for grace. Wasn’t that Lucifer’s lie to Adam and Eve in the Garden? Any such belief system, though, inevitably marginalizes God in its religious universe, whereas in authentic Christian belief and practise the Trinitarian God is found ever more at the center.
And I wonder, do Mormons all think that the Abrahamic faiths are just as good as theirs?