Mormon theater professor David V. Mason ruffled some dovecotes the other day by declaring in a NYT op-ed that he doesn't consider himself a Christian.
In fact, I rather agree with Richard D. Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who calls Mormonism a fourth Abrahamic religion, along with Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Being set apart from Christianity in this way could give Mormonism a chance to fashion its own legacy.
Whether or not Mormons merit inclusion in the Christian fold I leave to the interested parties. I do think, however, that Mason should not buy into Land's Abrahamic formulation. Yes, like Islam, Mormonism has a prophet and a Scripture all its own. But Muslims count themselves Abrahamic because they trace their lineage to the patriarch through his first-born son Ishmael. There's no comparable reason to consider Mormonism Abrahamic in a way that Judaism and traditional Christianity are not.
What it is, rather, is Judeo-Christian--distinctively so. Like a number of other new American religious movements of the antebellum era, early Mormonism understood itself to be restoring primitive Christianity; unlike them, it also understood themselves to be restoring ancient Israel. Patriarachal polygamy and a Temple with special rituals were central to the project.
Calling Mormonism Abrahamic à la Land lets evangelicals consider it as remote from themselves as Islam--which these days, is pretty darn remote. "Judeo-Christian," by contrast, has become a favorite evangelical catchphrase for the tradition and values they hold dear. If I were running the show in Salt Lake, I'd insist on being counted among the Judeo-Christians. That would hold the evangelicals' feet to the fire.
coltakashi | Jun 17, 2012 | 1:40pm
I am not quite clear on why you think Muslims, specifically Arabic Muslims, are distinctly Abrahamic in origin while Jews are not. Modern Jews claim descent from three of the 12 tribes of Israel, the sons Judah, Benjamin and Levi that remained in Judea after the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel took captive the now “lost ten tribes”. Jacob was Abraham’s grandson, and according to the Hebrew scriptures the son and heir of the inheritor of the original Abrahamic covenant, Isaac, as distinct from the children of the Egyptian handmaiden of Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham’s second wife, Keturah, who collectively were the ancestors of the Arabs.
And since the Jews of the First Century were Abraham’s seed, something they bragged about, the mass of Jews who converted to Christianity in the early centuries AD were also descendants of Abraham. Professor Rodney Stark has pointed out that a count of First Century Jews in the Roman Empire finds about six million scattered all around the Mediterranean, with only one million in Judea and Galilee, yet five milluon Jrws disappear over the next three centuries, despite the lack of any persecution of Jews outside the rebellious in Palestine. Stark concludes that some 80% of Jews in that era became Christians, and thus Christians in Europe are literal descendants of Abraham as much as the Arabs are.
The Mormons believe that this Abrahamic ancestry among Europeans is a reality and that when a person is baptized into the LDS Church, he is also adopted into that family under the blessings of the covenant God made with Abraham. This view resonates with the emerging history of crypto-Jews around the world, and facts such as the discovery of the Cohen haplotype in the genes of the Lemba tribes in east Africa and among 20% of Spanish and Portuguese men.
Of course, the concern of Mormons is not so much being admitted into clubs with Christians, but rather with the misrepresentation that they don’t worship Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of mankind. As one theo,ogian admitted, when he finally gotbaround to reading the Book of Mormon, he found that it is “obsessed with Christ”, the title of his essay in a recent First Things journal. Only one in a thousand critics if Mormonism has apparently read at least 10% of the Book of Mormon and made tbe same discovery. Indeed the term Mormon is originally a place where the Church of Christ is restored in its purity in ancient America, so the name’s principal association is “the Church of Christ.” If peop,e will keep in mind that Mormobs worship Christ, they can otherwise classify us as they wish.
EssEm | Jul 11, 2012 | 10:03am
If Mormons are Christians, then I, as a Christian, am a Jew.
In addition, it was Joseph Smith whose Gods told him that there were no Christian churches for him to join. This is why they “restored the (totally lost) Gospel and its priesthood and ordinances.” The real question is whether Mormons can consistently say that THEY are not the ONLY Christians. They have nothing but contempt for the dogmatic definitions of the 4th century, which are held to by 95%+ of the world’s actual Christians.
As per “Abrahamic religions”, it is a catchphrase designed to legitimize Islam.