MikeHickerson.com

With the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney and the upcoming release of September Dawn (a movie about a massacre of Christian settlers by Utah Mormons – with Dean Cain as Joseph Smith!), Mormonism is getting a lot of media time these days. Often, the question comes up, “Are Mormons Christian?” Many writers, who I think are not that familiar with either traditional Christian or Mormon theology, have tended to see evangelical Christians’ suspicions about Mormonism as “yet another” instance of conservative Christians displaying intolerance. Take, for example, this story from the Religion News Service:

“The important thing is, why is all this [September Dawn, questions about Mitt Romney] coming up right now?” [Jan] Shipps says. [Shipps is a professor and "expert on Mormonism" at IUPUI.] Mormons used to live largely to the West, she says, but now “Mormons are everywhere. They are making converts that the evangelicals would like to make, so evangelicals are saying Mormons aren’t Christian. All of a sudden you get this (attitude of): We’re going to look at Mormon history, and we’re going to find out what’s really there.”

In other words, evangelical Christians don’t like Mormons just because they’re jealous.

Or maybe evangelicals are more attuned to Mormon teaching than your average American. I attended a Mormon church for about a year in high school, during 1992 and 1993. I was invited by a friend, a girl I was interested in, and I got to know her and her family very well. Her father was a “stake president,” meaning he was something like a lay bishop for our region of Kentucky, overseer of several local congregations. Their family had 10 children, age 16 to infant, and the father was extremely hardworking and concerned for his children’s welfare. I remained friends with the family even after I stopped attending their church.

At the time, Mormon missionaries led potential converts through a 6-class series, leading up to an invitation to be baptized into the Mormon church. One of the first lessons dealt with “The Great Apostasy.” (Apostasy means to abandon from one’s religion.) Joseph Smith, and all Mormon prophets since, taught that Jesus’ followers abandoned his teachings very shortly after his death and resurrection. The religion known as “Christianity” was, according to Smith, a corruption and distortion of “true Christianity.” True Christianity had been absent from the earth from the late 1st century AD up until the moment in 1823 when Moroni presented Smith with the golden plates containing the Book of Mormon.

Augustine? Not a Christian. Francis of Assisi? Not a Christian. Theresa of Avila? Not a Christian. Martin Luther? Not a Christian. In fact, because “Christians” continued to follow the corrupt teachings of the apostates and refused to return to the “true Christianity” of Joseph Smith, later individuals like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., and Billy Graham were not Christians, either. Only Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and their faithful followers were true “Christians.” All others were – and are – apostate. I was taught this as recently as 1992, by missionaries using official Latter Day Saints-published educational materials.

So, instead of asking whether Mormons are Christian, maybe the press should be asking Mormons whether Christians are Christian.

I wish I spoke Italian. There’s a fascinating new film coming out of Italy – 7 Kilometers from Jerusalem. It’s about an Italian ad executive experiencing a mid-life crisis. He decides to go to Jerusalem to clear his mind. While on the literal road to Emmaus, he meets Jesus, and his life is transformed. I can’t wait for this film to come to the States.

The film has been the subject of some very minor controversy. When Jesus gets into the ad exec’s Jeep, he takes a refreshing drink from a can of Coca-Cola. The executive says something to the effect of “What an endorsement!” The Pope is perfectly fine with this – it’s Coke that has concerns. No word yet on how Jeep is reacting.

[HT: Richard Owen via Ruth Gledhill]

Twice this week I’ve run across articles in secular magazines that use “praying in church” as shorthand for “you know, that church stuff.” Here’s one, from a New Yorker article about commuting:

The source of the unhappiness is not so much the commute itself as what it deprives you of. When you are commuting by car, you are not hanging out with the kids, sleeping with your spouse (or anyone else), playing soccer, watching soccer, coaching soccer, arguing about politics, praying in a church, or drinking in a bar. In short, you are not spending time with other people.

The other article, the source of which I can’t remember, dealt with what unattractive/unpopular people did with their time prior to modern times. “Praying in church” was one of the options named.

This got me to wondering. What do unchurched people imagine that Christians do in church? “Praying” is probably the only experience that we have in common, which the unchurched would at least partially understand and respect. I’ve heard many people who don’t go to church talk about praying on a regular basis. As far as the other actions in a typical service -

• corporate singing: General American culture has now limited singing in groups to Christmas carols, and even those are on the decline.
• a sermon: Probably seen as akin to a college lecture or motivational speaker, at best. Fictional sermons on TV and in movies tend to give a message something like “Be true to yourself” or “God is on your side.” At worst, sermons are imagined to all be like Robert Duvall’s character in The Apostle.
• tithing: The closest equivalent – a group request for funds for general, unspecified purposes – might be the annual United Way request at the office.
• fellowship: The Christian friendships I have at church, with fellow members of Christ’s body, who pray with and for me, worship with me, and follow Christ alongside me, are of such a different nature than friendships based on work or common interests that I’m not even sure they deserve the same name.
• the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper: Do the unchurched even think of this when imagining church?

If you had never attended church, had never even visited one, what would you imagine the experience would be like? Would you even think of it in terms of an organized service? Or would your imagined church be more like one of those cathedral-esque Catholic churches that appear in cop shows so often, in the time between masses, empty except for a few lonely souls, presumably praying?