Naptastic

First off, I call them Mormons. I was actively LDS from birth until about 24 years old. I don't refer to myself as “a former member of the LDS church.” I am a former Mormon. If it offends anyone, that's on them.

I'm going to use the term “Universal tradition” when speaking of the set of mainline Christian churches who recognize each others' baptism. This is based on my own confusion about the terminology. Correction is welcome, as long as you can make it make sense and not complicate the text too much.

The first thing to clear up is a document by E. Brian and Jennifer L. Hare-Diggs (with a study guide by Gayle C. Felton). The title is Sacramental Faithfulness: Guidelines for Receiving People From The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it was adopted in 2000 by the General Assembly of the United Methodist Church (UMC). It is therefore authoritative, and as a former Mormon, I must address it.

To be blunt, this is not a serious document. It was delegated to a low enough level by both the UMC and LDS churches, and the conversation between them was so obviously unproductive, it's hard to imagine it was meant as a serious effort by either church. Neither party came away with a correct or complete understanding of the others' position. I suspect that nobody involved learned anything at all.

Elder Jay Jensen of the Quorum of the Seventy represented the LDS church. It's worth noting that Elder Jensen was honorably released from the Quorum in 2012, and subsequently granted emeritus status. (Per Wikipedia.) By 2000, he did not have authority to speak on issues of Mormon doctrine beyond his own testimony, personal experience, and individual beliefs.

His career, both professional and ecclesiastical, was spent almost entirely in the LDS Church Educational System (CES). LDS church members frequently and pejoratively refer to the CES as “the other church.” Its theology is so divorced from anything scriptural… I'm just going to stop there. The point of this essay is not to insult the CES (though it is absolutely worthy of insult.)

The point is, if this had been a serious attempt to either gain an understanding of the Methodist position, or to answer questions authoritatively, the LDS church should have sent someone with current authority to speak, and whose viewpoint was not so corrupted by CES influence.

From the first paragraph, I see basic errors of grammar (LDS is an adjective, not a noun) and a presupposition that a baptism into the LDS church is not a “Christian baptism.” The question is never even asked. The answer is assumed, and later stated explicitly: the LDS church is not a Christian church; Mormons are not Christians. This is absurd.

The LDS Articles of Faith are a concise, simplified overview of LDS theology, written by Joseph Smith himself. Modern times might call it “The LDS FAQ.” They are not a creed; they are a simplification. They're not meant to be parsed. Their use should ensure that, as one studies the doctrines of the church, they are unlikely to be led away from the “plain and precious truths” at the core of Mormon theology.

Sacramental Faithfulness makes no reference to any of them, instead digging into obscure and dubious sources to find anything objectionable.

The first Article of Faith is simply this:

1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.

The mental gymnastics required to say that such a church is not Christian are almost impressive.

Sacramental Faithfulness confuses salvation with exaltation. Salvation means the same thing for all of us: Jesus Christ was the son of God; begotten, not made. He atoned for our sins, was crucified and died, came back to life on the third day, and is now seated at the right hand of God. Exaltation picks up where Salvation leaves off: once we have been saved from death and Hell, and have returned to God's presence, it tells us what we will be doing for the rest of Eternity.

But I digress.

Mormonism is at its core a Unitarian theology. (This has nothing to do with the modern Unitarian Universalist church, which has almost totally secularized itself.) “Unitarian” in this context simply means that Mormons reject the Trinity in favor of a view that, um… makes sense.

If you live in the 18th Century, and the universe you inhabit is built from the essences of things and the relationships between those essences, then yes, you can build a Trinity and it works just fine. But it is the 21st Century, and we live in a universe made of objects made of particles made of quantum wobbles. In such a universe, a Trinity is not possible. There is no set of definitions you can choose for the verb “to be” and the adjective “the same” that allow a Trinity to exist without rendering the rest of existence meaningless. This is my way of saying that the Aristotelian argument against the existence of the Trinity holds.

John Wesley also held that the Trinity was an essential part of Christianity and denounced unitarian belief. That's fine. I think that if he saw the same things I've seen, he would come around to my point of view. But as I'll explain better later, this difference is mostly academic. We will find out the whole truth someday, and then go back to singing.

There had better be singing.

One important difference between LDS and Protestant culture is how differently certain terms are used; Mormons only use the term “sacrament” in the singular, in reference to the ritual performed (almost) every Sunday. It closely resembles the Holy Communion, with differences large and small, none of which I will get into here.

What

As far as I know, the LDS church has always maintained the position that it alone has the authority to administer sacred ordinances.

• The Nicene Creed must not come before the words of Christ Himself
• Arbitration of who counts as “Christian” is assumed, not real
• Neither tradition actually has authority to baptize
• Baptism is a fundamentally different thing in each tradition. Rejecting the baptism of the other tradition is pointless. We are better served by appreciating them both. Mormons should do their own baptism as should Methodists. One does not invalidate the other, nor are they in conflict. The merely accomplish different things. (And a few same things.)
• Does being Unitarian exclude me?
• Does being Universalist exclude me?