On Mormons being Christian

An interesting post from a guy that I often read:

Apparently saying that 3 does not equal 1 now qualifies as "hate speech." An episode unfolded yesterday here in town that exposed just how far gone even most conservative evangelicalism is in riding the inclusivity train right off the cliff 

A local Christian women's Facebook group, after a couple months of ambiguity, determined to update their policy to clarify that they were open to Christians only, not unbelievers. My friend politely asked what this did and didn't mean, since there were Mormons in the group as well, who by definition are not monotheists. The group admin *deleted* her comments, then, when confronted, insisted that she had somehow done so by accident. 

So my friend dutifully posted again, bending over backwards to coat her words with grace and love, and merely noting that it was important to be clear that Christians and Mormons don't really share the same faith at all, so the group should be simply be renamed for the sake of clarity and accuracy. A Mormon friend of hers cheerfully rejoined and said that actually Mormons are Christians, and another said, “Yeah, we believe the Trinity—three distinct beings in one Godhead, etc.” 

My wife piped up briefly to say, "Well, see, that's the problem. Actually Christians don't believe in three distinct beings" and quoted from the Athanasian Creed. One of the Mormons responded fairly defensively seeking to justify the Mormon view from Scripture. 

At that point, the group admin shut down the thread, declaring that it was not glorifying to God, the devil was at work, it was hateful and slanderous, and posted a general rebuke warning people not to debate their beliefs. This was the cue for the other (mostly conservative evangelical) people in the group to pile on and accuse my wife and her friend of "hate speech."

There are three points I want to make about this.  All of them are very relevant to our interactions as members of the only true church with our brothers and sisters who are Christian, but of an incorrect and incomplete tradition.  Elder Christofferson's talk from the April 2017 General Conference is an important reference too.

First; let's note the obvious error, just for the sake of posterity.  Within the Church, we believe that claiming Christ as the head of your Church is what makes one Christian, and attempting to follow in his footsteps.  This is obviously consistent with the definition as used by the Nephites and the Jews in the very early years of the Church following Christ's Ascension, but outside the Church, there are often a lot of odd qualifiers that get thrown in.  I've heard of Christians who believe that acceptance of the Nicene Creed is a baseline for being considered Christian before, although I've never heard anyone do so about the Athanasian Creed before.  To Latter-day Saints, the very existence of either Creed is evidence that the Church had already departed from true doctrine and divine principles and was languishing in Apostasy.  The Nicene Creed was adopted by political exigency, after a bunch of bishops from Anatolia got together and decided by committee what doctrines to accept or not accept.  There was a strong element of politics involved as well, as the Arians were mostly Germanic peoples, culturally incompatible with the dwindling Romans.  The Vandals, the Goths, the Lombards, etc. were all Arians (although the Franks and Anglo-Saxons were not).  Although they were tolerant of the Nicenes when those peoples ruled over the ashes of the Roman Empire, the reverse was usually not true, and much of the conflict between Arianism and Nicene Christianity was motivated by politics and not by doctrine.  The more honest and Christlike of the commentators at the link above will note that Christians have been unable to come to an understanding of the nature of the Godhead, or Trinity, in 2,000 years of struggling with the question, but needless to say drawing a line in the sand in the comments field of a Facebook group was hardly a good idea for more reasons than one.

In any case, while the Nicene Creed is ambiguous and answers very little, the actual beliefs of the Arians—as expressed by the Arians or Arianus himself—are hard to get at, since his enemies since have destroyed much of what he wrote.  With our understanding of the nature of Divinity given to us by revelation and the experiences of Joseph Smith, it's clear that the Arians were closer to being correct than the Nicenes.  But the Arians were violently oppressed by the Nicenes and either killed as heretics or forced to renounce the Arian heresy and convert to Nicene Christianity.  We should hardly be surprised that echoes of this tyranny still come down to us through the centuries; and we should not act surprised that people get really stubborn about what they would accept.  Following the Protestant Reformation in Europe nearly a thousand years after the death of the last Arian king (Grimwald of Lombardy, d. 671 A.D.) Arian thought, or at least Semi-Arian thought resurfaced.  Europeans fought what is possibly a much more devastating war than the World Wars of the 20th Century—the Thirty Years War—precisely over differences of confessional tradition (or at least that was the stated reason, although it quickly devolved into a war between Great Powers for political ends)—people feel strongly about this kind of thing and always have.

Second, many in the Church have adopted an attitude of trying to gain the sufferance of the world.  The Brethren have, of course, encouraged us to build bridges between other religious communities, and this has been misinterpreted by many into a search for acceptance.  In some cases, this manifests as pushiness (you have to accept that we're as Christian as you are!) or hurt, as expressed above.  This is foolishness, of course.  The acceptance we should seek is that of God.  The World will never accept the ways of God fully.  If we are to be persecuted for the sake of the Gospel, well, we've certainly been told to expect that, haven't we?  Matthew 5 teaches us "10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

I'm always somewhat surprised when I hear of members of the Church who are surprised and hurt, or worse, find their own strength failing, because they fail to adequately gain the inclusiveness with the world which they crave.  For that matter, I'm somewhat surprised that they crave it.  We are supposed to be a peculiar people; let's be so, then, and embrace the implications thereof.  Maybe you didn't grow up in a region where anti-Mormon evangelical sentiment was relatively high and The God Makers was shown at various churches from time to time.  But I did.  I never expected to be accepted as a Mormon in the greater Christian community, and I learned long ago not to crave it either.  And I saw how fragile our illusion of acceptance was in 2016.  In many political discussion forums, when it looked like Evan McMullin was going to get a significant Mormon proportion of the vote and potentially throw the election away from Trump to Hillary merely so that the so-called Mormons could posture about their moral superiority in not voting for Trump, even as they knew that Hillary would destroy what little is left of our freedoms were she elected, any hint of "they're one of us" was thrown to the winds.  As an aside, in post election voter data, it looks like the LDS were the group that broke for Trump in the highest numbers, even moreso than Evangelical Christians.  But we won't get any credit for saving the country or the Constitution, even though it hung by a thread.  Such is the nature of things.  Guys like Jeff Flake hardly help.

Third, Elder Christofferson also warns us of shaming and shaming culture.  Now, it's not clear to me from the example above that the LDS sisters were themselves the authors of this guilt trip (it seems, in fact, that they probably weren't), which is a clear shaming tactic.  Most likely it was the admins who decided that drawing a line between your beliefs and someone who believes something else is "hate speech" but I've gotta tell ya; I really hate to see the term "hate speech" and other shaming tactics thrown around indiscriminately.  As Elder Christofferson teaches us (if you needed him to point this out to you), it is not the Lord's way to change hearts and minds by shaming people into behavior that we want from them.  Always avoid it.  Never indulge in it.  As it says in D&C 121: "41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;42 By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—"

It is not in keeping with the commandments of God to try and shame or guilt-trip or otherwise indulge in any kind of emotional blackmail to get behavior that we want from people.  If they choose to behave badly, such is the prerogative of their agency.