The LDS Church recently came out with a new ad campaign
called the “Introduction to Mormons” series (link here: http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/mormon-introduction-videos).
Specifically, I'm looking at the video titled "What Mormons Believe." In the series, the people in front of the camera say things very similar to
what I said when I was a believing Mormon speaking to non-believers. What interests
me about this campaign is that it appears to be a campaign largely targeted at
Christians. Some of the wording caused me to raise an eyebrow or two,
especially the claim that for Mormons, “Jesus Christ is the centre of our
faith.” Having been involved in both Mormonism and born again Christianity, I
feel the need to highlight a few differences between what the LDS Church calls
a Jesus-centred faith, and what we in the evangelical stream would call a
Jesus-centred faith.
“We worship Christ”
I do not remember ever “worshipping” Jesus as an LDS person.
I do not remember ever calling our services “worship” services (even though the
church markets them as such to non-members) – we called them “sacrament
meeting,” “priesthood meeting,” etc. I do not remember a tone of “worship” of
Jesus. You will never hear a Mormon say “Praise God!” or “Hallelujah!” However,
you will hear LDS hymns like “Praise to the Man” (referring to Joseph Smith).
Sure, I have been to many LDS meetings where Jesus is referred to with
gratitude and honour, but you will find a near equal measure of gratitude and
honour for the church president, other leaders, and for Joseph Smith.
LDS friends and family, next time you’re in a testimony
meeting you should try the following exercise. Make a chart kind of like the
one below, and keep a tally of how many times someone expresses “worship,”
gratitude, etc., for one of these things.
“I am so grateful
for…”
|
|
Joseph Smith, for restoring the gospel
|
8
|
Latter-day prophets
|
7
|
The Book of Mormon
|
3
|
A particular church program (missionary work, welfare,
young men’s, etc.)
|
4
|
A church standard (word of wisdom, food storage, etc.)
|
4
|
The pioneers
|
1
|
JESUS, for saving me from my sins and granting me eternal
life by his grace and mercy!
|
?
|
The numbers on the side are just for example, but let me
know what your results are! Then tell me whether you think that constitutes
worshipping Jesus, because let me tell you – it is a completely different story
in the evangelical churches I have attended. We cut out all that other stuff and
focus completely on our Lord and our God, Jesus Christ. You may not care for
contemporary style of evangelical worship services, but you must admit that the
focus of our “worship” is completely different from what you find in a typical
LDS church meeting.
“He is our Saviour”
Again, this statement begs for contrast with a
Bible-believing born again congregation, because it means completely different
things to each group.
For the LDS, every mortal person is “saved” by Jesus in that
they will be resurrected to one of three kingdoms in the next life. But not
everyone will live with God in the next life – in order to reach that degree of
glory you must earn it through obedience to the laws and ordinances of the LDS
church.
For the born again Christian, saying that Jesus is our
saviour is a completely different thing. When I say that Jesus “saved” me, I
mean that he paid it all so that I can live eternally with him in the next
life. “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the
uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession
for them” (Hebrews 7:25). He didn’t just save me a
little bit so that I could try really hard to do the rest – he saved me all the
way. Jesus paid it all.
Closing
thoughts
Good read, but I would like to give you a hard time about the condecending title of article. "Mormonism: a Jesus centered faith?"
ReplyDeleteMany biased news outlets use a similar technique. Fox news would run an article with the title "Is president Obama a socialist who hates America?" Clearly the article is trying to defame Obama but journalism demands neutrality. So just by adding a question mark at the end, puts a more objective look to the article.
Your blog is all about being an evangelical Christian. Obviously most of your readers know you are not Mormon. Clearly you are trying to say that Mormonism is NOT a Jesus centered faith. Or at least not as Jesus centered as your faith. So to have it titled sounding like journalistic inquiry is a bit pretentous in my opinion.
An Interesting comparason. Although you are asuming the end goal of the Mormon religion is the same as the end goal of the evangelical religion.
You may use (most of) the same holy books to prove that your religion is correct. But you both use them in different ways. As an outsider to both, I have observed that your visions of the afterlife are vastly different. So then why do you asume that the purpose of the Mormon life is the same as the evangelical life? You emphasize the need to be born again and being saved, while the Mormons emphasize being baptized by the church and faith in the Book of Mormon.
When I talk to my missionary friends they do not especailly emphasize the saviour, Jesus in their attempts to convert me as a non-theist. So because of that I have never really thought of Mormonism as a "Jesus centered faith". I would suppose the new campaign regarding a focus on Christ, is to put a familiar face on the somewhat alien Mormon Church. The name of their church may be "The Church of JESUS CHRIST..." but that may also be a way to put a familiar face on the church.
I would like to show this to my missionary friends if they only were allowed to read non-LDS material!
Thank you for your comments, Scott!
ReplyDeleteWith the title, I simply thought it was more polite and would have a better appeal to my target audience than something like "Mormonism: NOT as Jesus-Centred as they say." I was trying to avoid alienating my audience before they read it - as you said, people know I'm not Mormon, so it may not have mattered, but it seemed better at the time. Also, I think the title is appropriate because although I have a clear opinion on the matter, I purposely left the question somewhat open-ended because I want LDS people to answer the question for themselves. I did not intend for it to be condescending or misleading, but I can see how it can be taken that way - my apologies!
I think your perceptions about the Mormon missionary tactics are accurate. They clearly have a skilled marketing team and know how to present their organization to different groups of people. In this case, they are trying to appeal to Christians, so they are packaging themselves as particularly Jesus-oriented; the point of my article was to question that claim.
I agree that the end goals, purpose, and ideas surrounding the afterlife are vastly different between Mormons and evangelicals. However, Mormons do not like to present it that way - they seem very interested in downplaying the differences in order to appeal to Christians. That's basically what I am trying to correct with this blog post.
That would be fantastic if you could share this with your missionary friends. Let me know if that ever happens!
No need to apologize. My comment seems more harsh after reading it several hours later.
ReplyDeleteAs I can recall from their lessons, "The Atonement" is pretty much all they bring up about Jesus. But for me they focus more heavily on Alma 32.
Its very interesting how various churches try to pull certain groups in with ads. For example, I saw this website advertized on a youtube channel.
http://www.alphacanada.org/
I had to dig for a while into the website before I realized that it was a Christian site. There were no crosses or bibles anywhere, no mention of Christ or god until further reading. Clearly this is supposed to pull in a secular crowd who would be otherwise scared away with looming crucifixes and bible thumping.