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.

Second, 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.

This should not be confused with the modern Unitarian Universalist church, nor with universalist theology. This is a drum I will beat repeatedly throughout this essay.

Third, an 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 with bread and water (almost) every Sunday. It closely resembles the Holy Communion, with major and minor differences. I will touch on some of these later.

Mormons use the term “ordinances” where other churches say “sacraments”. As far as I can tell, they are synonymous, except that Mormons enumerate a lot more of them. (“The Sacrament” also counts as an ordinance but that's not really important.)

Lastly, I don't have much of a distinction between sacred and profane. Don't be fooled by the snark and bad jokes. I mean all of this quite sincerely.

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, Sacramental Faithfulness 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, I don't believe 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.

We use so many of the same terms to mean different things, and vice-versa, a good chunk of this essay is just going to be an explanation of what's meant where. Mormons and mainline Christians talk right past each other, then walk away thinking the other is an idiot.

No, no, no. We're all the idiots.

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 certainly deserves to be insulted.

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 broad enough to reach across the linguistic and cultural gaps.

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 first assumed, and later stated explicitly: the LDS church is not a Christian church, and 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. If you are honestly trying to understand Mormonism, READ THEM FIRST.

Sacramental Faithfulness makes no reference to any of them, instead digging into obscure and dubious sources to find the most objectionable material it can. It puts gnats under a microscope while ignoring the camels in the room.

The first three Articles of Faith are:

1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
2. We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression.
3. We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

The mental gymnastics required to say that such a church is not Christian are almost impressive. Mormons usually phrase it differently, but Mormons must accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and be born again. Jesus is the way and the light. (?) The plain and precious truths of mainline Christianity are just as true of Mormonism. They just like to say it differently. It's a way of “othering” the rest of Christendom, as the rest of Christendom has “othered” the LDS church.

Am I being too harsh? No; the section on authority is too harsh.

Mormonism is at its core a Unitarian theology. (Again, 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. The early Christian church was also Unitarian, and there is a long tradition of theologians both pointing that out, and making the point in their own way.

Just… once more for the people in the back: Unitarianism is an explicitly Christian theology. Mormon theology is explicitly Unitarian. Mormons are, in fact, Christians.

Here is my take.

In Old Testament times, substantial confusion arose because Jehovah and Elohim had to speak out of the same mouth. Even if you read the Old Testament with this in mind, I don't think you can parse out who is saying what, because the authors themselves didn't always parse it out correctly. As soon as Christ is born, however, the ambiguity is removed. Jesus speaks of His father, and the Holy Spirit, in the third person.

Oddly, Mormons do not describe themselves as Unitarian. I believe this is simply because they've never heard the term. Such is their bubble.

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 a universe built on this substrate, 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 existence meaningless. You can't add dimensions and make it possible. You can't plug it into Einstein's field equations and get a valid result. In our universe, The Trinity is inherently self-contradictory. In short, the Aristotelian argument holds.

Jesus Christ has run the entire race: He began as a non-corporeal being, got a body basically the same way we did, lived as a mortal human just like us, died as we all will, got himself resurrected, and is now an exalted being. Jesus' dad started out exalted, is exalted now, and will be in the same state of exaltation through the end of time. The Holy Spirit is non-corporeal and will remain so until the end of this eternity. This does raise questions but they are outside the scope of this essay. (In particular, anyone who asks me about the carnal implications of a physical God fathering a physical Son gets the same answer: I don't want to think about it.)

John Wesley 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. I could be wrong, and that's fine too. Regardless, we agree that Jesus is the Christ, our Savior, and that his Father is the God we worship above any other. We will all find out the whole truth eventually, hug it out, and then we will go back to singing.

There had better be hugs and singing.

There is substantial confusion within the LDS church about whether they're a “saved by grace” or “saved by works” church. The most common explanation I heard growing up was that we are “saved by grace after all we can do.” In my opinion, far too much emphasis is placed on the “all you can do” part. So much so that it's really hard to find grace among church members. (For example, if a man shows up to church wearing anything but a white shirt and necktie, he is definitely going to hear mean comments about it. God forbid that men should wear earrings. Such is the their puritanical culture. But I digress.)

Attending Methodist services and studies have shown me that divine grace is always within reach. Whatever happens next, I am grateful for that education.

(Now back to being snarky.)

Sacramental Faithfulness confuses the LDS conception of 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. (Again, Mormons use different language, but they mean the same thing.)

Exaltation picks up when Salvation has finished its work: 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. They are not incompatible; they are orthogonal. (Look it up.)

The LDS church has always maintained the position that it alone has the authority to administer sacred ordinances. Sacramental Faithfulness fully addresses this point. Unfortunately, everyone quickly developed an attitude of superiority.

“We don't recognize your authority.”

“Yeah, well, we didn't recognize your authority first.”

“We don't recognize your authority more.”

“But we have apostles. Where are your apostles?”

“Apostles! We can trace our authority straight from Jesus' hand-picked apostles.”

“But you're apostate. God said so.”

“YOU'RE apostate! We'll excommunicate you!”

“You can't; we're not members of your church, and we'll excommunicate anyone from our church who joins your church.”

I'm bored.

For decades we've joked that the Utah State Motto should be “Our Jesus is better than your Jesus.” But it's the same Jesus. We forget that.

We also forget that prophets only ever appear sporadically. From the time of Abraham, the mantle has never passed from father to son, though there may be a familial component to it. There is no “line of succession” as Mormons and Catholics maintain. Prophets pop up, call a people to repent, they accomplish their little part of God's plan, and then get too popular. The Church and The World change each other. They apostatize.

Authority is a way of being right about things without having to work at it. Churches worldwide maintain claims to authority despite being in a state of apostasy. I believe that both the LDS and Universal traditions are in their own states of apostasy. Neither the Pope nor the LDS Prophet really have authority to speak for God. Prophets are not hard to spot, if you know what to look for, and I see no evidence of prophesy in any church I've found. There is goodness, there are failures to be good, there is no divine mandate to any of it.

So what authority do churches have? The same authority as any other worldly institution: they derive their authority from the consent of the governed. That's it. Our divine mandate comes from scripture. We all have authority to interpret scripture for ourselves. If God is speaking to us, He is doing so at an individual level. With your permission, He guides your stewardship, whatever its scope may be. But none of us has authority to speak for God to another. Parents may be guided in raising their children, for example, but once the children have been baptized and confirmed, they are responsible for their own relationship with God and Jesus.

This is what I believed as a Mormon. It is not universally held within the LDS church; in fact, there is an ongoing struggle between those who believe that you should have a personal relationship with Jesus, and those who believe you should have a relationship with your Priesthood leader, who has the relationship with Jesus on your behalf. (I feel a need to wash my hands just from typing such a ridiculous idea.)

Judging by the state of the world, this much agency is a disaster, but it's the disaster we all signed up for.

This is where Sacramental Faithfulness really loses the plot. While I don't consider myself a “Red Letter Christian,” I admire the sentiment, and I definitely value the actual Word of God above any other words. Jesus Himself was explicit on this matter: Anyone teaching more or less than [this] is not teaching My Gospel.

The Nicene Creed is a compromise document. All the Creeds are. They the Church and the World changing each other. They are evidence of apostasy.

As you are making a list of Creeds, please include the LDS Family Proclamation. It doesn't even claim to be divine; it starts out “We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim…” and so on. We declare, we warn, we call upon… and who the hell are they that I should pay attention to their prattling? Apostles? Hah!

I personally reject all these creeds, and focus first on the words of Christ himself. This brings us to the Canon.

Sacramental Faithfulness, in my opinion, steps far out of line with regards to the Canon. The idea that it should be closed is spurious. The Bible was assembled, and a lid put on it, for the simple reason that books can only get so large, and compromises had to be made.

Catholicism (and other churches?) include the apocrypha in their canon, but we don't object. In fact, the book from which Methodists derive their lectionary includes references to the books of the apocrypha. They're treated as first-class, as if they were from anywhere else in the Bible.

There's so much else that's worth reading and considering, I simply refuse to close the Canon.

I've read all the Mormon fan-fiction. I'm fully aware of the problems. Despite the obviousness of the 19th-Century thinking that created them, they leave me with enough questions answered that should not be answered, I'm willing to put them on the same shelf as most of the Bible, sorted by weight, not by volume. Saying even this much will lower some peoples' opinion of me–pearls before swine, you know–so I'll stop marching up this particular hill.

• 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?
• Does my acceptance of other scriptures exclude me?