Recently I had the pleasure of spending an evening over drinks with two former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also known as Mormons. Both men had completed their two-year missions, and one had served as a full-time instructor for missionaries-in-training. Both had fathers who had served as bishops of wards, somewhat analogous to pastors of individual parishes. And both, married men with children, had abandoned the Mormonism of their upbringing, and were now religiously unaffiliated.
“When I die, I want my children to compost my body, because that will be all it’s good for,” one of them told me, declaring he no longer believed in God or heaven. I asked the other if he believed the same. “I’m getting there,” he told me. “I don’t need religion threatening me that if I’m not good I’ll go to hell. Being a good person is just common sense, common decency.”
It was amazing to hear this from ex-Mormons, though their numbers are growing in America. LDS continues to grow globally—though not as much as once anticipated—but it is shrinking in many parts of the United States. In just the last two years, twenty-one states saw a decline in LDS membership. The Washington Post in July cited a long-running survey that found the percentage of American adults identifying as Mormon has in raw terms dropped so much in fifteen years as to equal a net loss of roughly one million adult members. Even the LDS Church, which has a more positive interpretation of its membership data, acknowledges that its growth rate in the United States has decreased significantly in recent years.
Stephen Bullivant, in Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (Oxford University Press, 2022), has a chapter on ex-Mormons. “Nonversion,” the movement of people from religious observance to no religious affiliation, is occurring at significant levels even in small-town religious subcultures in Idaho and Utah, the beating heart of the LDS religion. Though nonversion is not as acute of a phenomenon in Mormonism as it is in Catholicism or evangelicalism, it is still an increasing problem for LDS. And similar to those who have departed other religious traditions, ex-Mormons can be more aggressively antagonistic towards their former faith than the average American who has little familiarity with the religion, aside from the occasional and casual encounter with a missionary.
Yet, I’ve noticed from my own experiences with former LDS members—and I’ve known quite a few—that those who have walked away don’t just have a skeptical antagonism against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They often have an opprobrium towards religion and faith altogether. When I told one of my former LDS friends that I thought some religions were more intellectually defensible than others, he cynically shook his head. According to a 2016 study, “only a third of former Mormons now identify with another organized religion.” A disenchantment with religion, one Rutgers doctoral student argued in his 2015 dissertation, is ubiquitous in the ex-Mormon community.
Why is this? I’d argue there are at least three reasons.
A fantastical origin story
Those with a passing knowledge of Mormonism likely know that the LDS Church teaches that Jesus Christ, after His resurrection, came to the Americas and preached to the indigenous peoples, who were themselves descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel. The Book of Mormon claims that among these peoples were two prominent groups: Nephites, faithful followers of God who eventually became decadent, and Lamanites, warlike and wicked people who eventually destroyed the Nephites. Mormon, a Nephite, died before finishing the Book of Mormon, but his son Moroni assumed the role of narrator to complete the text.
Fast forward many centuries to 1823, when an angel supposedly appeared to Joseph Smith in upstate New York, and directed Smith to the text inscribed on golden plates in a nearby hill. Written in “reformed Egyptian,” the plates were several years later translated by Smith—by way of seer stones or special spectacles—into English. Smith and his nascent movement then delivered to the world what is now the foremost of the Mormon scriptures.
There are, however, some glaring problems. Unlike controversies over the historicity of events described in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, there is absolutely no evidence to support the events described in the Book of Mormon. There is no archaeological information to support the claim of Nephites and Lamanites waging great battles on the American continents. There is no genetic evidence to support the claim that indigenous peoples were descendants from Semitic peoples from the Levant. And there is no record of any language called “reformed Egyptian.”
The Book of Mormon, unlike the Old Testament, is not a historical text that describes many events that have been corroborated by external historical and archaeological evidence. It is a book with absolutely no corroboration to anything described therein. And, as Jeremy Christiansen ably explains in his memoir From the Susquehanna to the Tiber (Ignatius Press, 2022), it is a text in the original English with suspicious linguistic overlap with the 1769 edition of the King James Bible, a text common in nineteenth-century American homes.
A tenuous theology
Then there is the theology of Mormonism. In the Mormon version of the creation narrative, Adam and Eve are commanded to multiply on the Earth, but are also forbidden from partaking of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which would make them capable of having children. In effect, God commands man to do one thing, but punishes him when he seeks to do it. As Christiansen writes:
I was genuinely confused over why it seemed that God presented Adam and Eve with a commandment impossible to keep, commanded them not to do the one thing that would enable them to keep the commandment, and then cursed them when they broke the latter commandment to keep the former.
God is fickle, but He is also a very different kind of divine being than that found in Trinitarian Christianity. According to LDS theology, God the Father has a physical body and has a wife, the Heavenly Mother, though doctrine regarding the latter is not widely discussed in contemporary Mormon practice. LDS thus rejects Niceno-Constantinopolitan doctrine in favor of a belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct beings; this has much in common with the ancient heresy of modalism, in which the persons of the Godhead are “modes” of the divine.
There’s a reason for that rejection of the teachings of the ancient Church. While the leaders of the Reformation believed that the medieval church had strayed from its apostolic heritage, the LDS religion teaches that the church in Europe, Asia, and Africa fell into immediate apostasy after the apostles. Thus none of the Church Fathers nor any of the Church councils possess any authority in Mormon belief. This is an odd understanding of salvation history, because it would mean that true Christianity and a true institutional Church ceased to exist anywhere in the world once the alleged “true church” in the Americas died out more than a millennium ago with Moroni, and wasn’t reinvigorated until Joseph Smith in the first half of the nineteenth century.
A destructive psychology
These are hard doctrines to fathom, given their irrationality and incoherence. Thus, the emphasis on emotivism in Mormon practice. The LDS faithful are instructed to come to their belief by praying to God about the Book of Mormon and asking the Holy Ghost to subjectively confirm in their hearts that it is true. This feeling is then confirmed by constant reminders in daily LDS practice through giving one’s own testimony and listening to the confident testimony of others.
The result, for any who have sought to debate Mormon missionaries arriving on your doorstep, is a fideist and anti-intellectual religion impervious to reasoned debate. Any critiques of LDS teaching on historical, theological, or logical grounds can be dismissed as Satanic deception. The critic of Mormonism simply hasn’t had that “burning in the bosom” experience like the LDS faithful. Personal testimony trumps all arguments and evidence, no matter how thorough or persuasive.
This is reinforced by tight social networks in which people’s behavior and beliefs are closely monitored by church leadership. Tithing, for example, is not an option if you want to remain in good standing in the church (and secure your place in heaven). “One does not simply leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” observes Bullivant. “As befits an American, corporate faith, there’s paperwork involved. Not all those who regard themselves as former Mormons go through it, despite easy how-to guides and preformas being readily available online.” Part of the reason, ex-Mormons explained to Bullivant, is because if one does that, then one’s Mormon parents will be notified during an annual “tithing settlement.”
For these historical, theological, and psychological reasons, Mormonism has what might be called a peculiarly cancerous effect on its adherents’ understanding of religion. Once a Mormon begins to question the obvious historical, theological, and psychological problems of his or her faith tradition, the experience is jarring and debilitating. Scripture is not something that might be grounded in verifiable historical testimony. Faith is not to be something that can be supported by sound reason. Church is not a place that welcomes honest questions or debate about doctrine and practice, but exerts coercive pressure even on those who want to disaffiliate.
LDS amounts to an intellectual and psychological strait-jacket. In the trauma of recognizing that reality, it is little wonder that so many Mormons repudiate religion altogether. Their ersatz “faith” has seriously damaged faith, and there is often little desire or energy to pick up the pieces and investigate other religious traditions. This means many things for Catholics seeking to engage constuctively with Mormon and ex-Mormon friends and acquaintances (something I’ve discussed elsewhere). But perhaps most of all it demands a gentle hand that appreciates we are dealing with deeply damaged people created in the image of God, who need our prayers and friendship just as much, if not more, than they’ll need our persuasive arguments.
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Good article, save for this:
‘LDS thus rejects Niceno-Constantinopolitan doctrine in favor of a belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct beings; this has much in common with the ancient heresy of modalism, in which the persons of the Godhead are “modes” of the divine.’
1. That’s tritheism, the opposite of modalism.
2. The Persons *are* modes of the Godhead. The heresy is to say that they are each modes of a single Person.
Agree, I was going to say that, but if you look more deeply it also outright paganism. In Mormon theology people who go to heaven become gods, actual dieties.
Religion is the cause of most wars in this world, I want nothing to do with it.
Mormonism is less of “faith” than a “belief” system–“faith” being given less to any set of teachings than to the very person of Jesus Christ as the Incarnation (and, yes, dogmas). Like Islam, Mormonism is a frontier cult, e.g., the latter focused on the lost tribes of frontier North America, the former twelve centuries earlier on the pagan tribes of frontier Arabia. The latter given to modalism, the former similarly regarding the Trinity as the triadic Father, Son (only a prophet), and Mary (no Holy Spirit).
Much to be said about similarities and differences, and how Islam diverges from the Incarnation in the direction of fideism, while Mormonism departs in the direction of naturalistic fiction. While Christianity is the narrow path of discovery toward coherence of The Faith with human Reason. Theologically, had history not mounted polar Islam on a camel and polar Mormonism in a covered wagon, a range of other accidental cultural trappings could have sufficed.
The story of one Michael Edwards illustrates the problem and the solution.
After living the intoxicating celebrity life for six years with the widowed Priscilla Presley, he laments such materialist corruption and even his failure as a father to prevent an estranging abortion. In the epilogue to his book (“Priscilla, Elvis and Me: In the Shadow of the King,” St. Martin’s Press, 1988), Edwards reports that already at an early age he had given up on “religion” altogether (like apostate Mormons), because his dying grandmother had declined medical help under her particular cult of choice: Christian Science.
Edwards confesses that he blamed “religion” for this traumatic loss. But, then reports that all he had ever really wanted in life was “serenity.” And, his one fleeting moment of serenity was also in his youth. He found himself in the quiet of a (likely Catholic) church, “. . . Above the organ was a life-sized crucifix [not an empty cross], and if I stared at Jesus long enough He came to life and smiled at me. I was filled with a warm feeling of love and understood the meaning of the words ‘My cup runneth over [!].’”
More than a pluralistic two-thirds consensus, that.
Though nonversion is not as acute of a phenomenon in Mormonism as it is in Catholicism or evangelicalism…”
I wonder why Catholics have a greater problem with issue you’re talking about than Mormons. Maybe the article should be about why Catholics have an even worse problem.
Good question, dear Chris.
Both faith systems branched out into a plethora of religious superstitions that worked OK for many of their faithful while higher education & objective analysis were rare but with today’s widespread understanding of realities, such erstwhile popular religiosities now appear threadbare if not entirely ridiculous.
In the case of Catholicism, a return to Apostolic historical truth, freed from the weeds of superstition, is always available to us in the unparalleled form of the 27 texts by 9 authors in The New Testament. We will meet our LORD & Savior Jesus Christ when we prayerfully & pertinaciously invest in and are trained by The New Testament.
Yes, this is mocked as ‘backwardist’ by those who pride themselves as ‘liberals’ & ‘progressives’. However, all those who learn to love & trust God’s New Testament will have the last laugh. See Revelation 3:11 – “Soon I (Jesus) shall be with you; hold firmly to what you already have & let nobody take your prize away from you.”
In stark contrast, are not the anti-Apostolic leadings of Pope Francis & his favorites simply a ‘throwing out of the baby & worshipping the bathwater’? The pope might just as well induct us all as Mormons! May God have mercy on us.
Ever in the love of Jesus Christ; blessings from marty
Let your Pope stay Catholic. We don’t want him.
You and any number of Catholics, Allen.
I don’t worry about LDS theology. I have zero intention of converting. That said, over the years, I have known quite a few Mormons and every one was a good person. Indeed, some were better people than many Catholics that I have known. Why do we want to attack other religions?
How is the article an “attack” on Mormonism?
“LDS amounts to an intellectual and psychological straight jacket.” That’s a bit of an attack, I think. I personally would never convert to be a Mormon, but I hesitate to be so critical of that religion, when so many Mormons that I have known are good people.
As far as former Mormons being negative about religion, well, yes,perhaps. But I know some ex Catholics who are rather critical of religion too.
I don’t think that’s an attack at all. It’s a critical assertion based on evidence, history, and testimony, as the author ably describes. I’m sure a devout Mormon would dismiss it, or even be angered by it, but it’s not uncharitable or outlandish in the least. I’ve certainly seen this in action myself, having had conversations with both practicing and ex-Mormons.
Yes, ex-Catholics tend to be the worst when it comes to criticizing and attacking the Church. I’ve engaged with many of them. Twenty years ago, I had a lengthy written debate with the late Tim LaHaye, who had been baptized as a Catholic prior to his parents leaving the Church when he was a young boy and becoming anti-Catholic Fundamentalists (I was raised the same, and I was reading LaHaye’s book when I was a young teen.) In my experience, most ex-Catholics know almost nothing at all about what the Church really teaches and practices. Some of them had bad experiences of some form, which they then used as a reason (but unreasonably so) to leave the Church, etc.
Thank you for your uncannily accurate critique regarding issues around the exodus of Mormonism, especially impressive, coming from a ‘never-mo.’ As a former devoted Mormon (for over 40 years), your article speaks so much truth about the fallacies of the origins and tenants of the religion. You are also correct that a vast majority of people who manage to escape the cult feel so betrayed that they mistrust any notion of God being real.
Fortunately for a minority of us, my husband and I have found new life in non-denominational church fellowship, worship, and spiritual growth.
If I may, I’d like to add my take on why so many become agnostic or atheist(ic?). Weekly meetings and lessons (indoctrination) and temple promises are generally focused on loyalty to the LDS church, not devotion to Christ. Secular values are emphasized over the pulpit, such as being a good human being. Nothing is wrong with developing stellar character traits, as we love the goodness of so many of our Mormon friends and family, but those who found the faith a total fabrication and the corporation so incredibly corrupt, most abandon faith in God altogether, and embrace whatever they have become most accustomed to as mormons: secularism or humanism.
Once again, I applaud your excellent insight.
The warm feelings are mutual. I work with many wonderful Catholics and I commend their Love of Christ and His teachings.
Why no mention of the tight relationship between Mormon temple practice and the rites of Freemasonry? Joseph Smith was a Freemason. When seen from this direction some things become more clear such as the lack of historical evidence, the attitudes toward women, eschatology, etc.
Spot on, dear ‘Ann the least’. Theirs is the same “We do it OUR way, religious control spirit”.
The same rejection of King Jesus Christ as fully God-present-with-us, whose saving words & example – crystal clear in The New Testament – His elect love to obey above all else.
“Let the message of Christ, in all its richness, find a home with you. Teach each other, & advise each other, in all wisdom. With gratitude in your hearts sing psalms & hymns & inspired songs to God; & never say or do anything except in The Name of The LORD Jesus, giving thanks to God The Father through Him.” Colossians 3:16-17
Yet, let’s also face the sad reality that the same deceptive demonic religious freemason/witchcraft gnostic control spirit has also colonized & blinded many of our Catholic brothers & sisters & is strong in sections of our clergy. May God help us.
Even good clergy are submitting out of fear of the dominating corpus of counterfeit clerics. ‘Tis hard to find a Christ-faithful priest these days . . .
Our trust is that God has indeed reserved among us a number of humble lovers of Jesus Christ who will never bow their knee to evil.
Ever persevering by the grace of Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
Casey I want to book you for my YouTube channel Mormon Book Reviews. Here is my email mormonbookreviews@gmail.com
An excellent book on the origins of the LDS is THE REFINER’S FIRE: THE MAKING OF MORMON COSMOLOGY, 1644 -1844 by John L. Brooke (Cambridge UP, 1994). It’s worth noting that the LDS, like the Seventh Day Adventists, emerged from the “Burnt-over District” in upstate NY, a cauldron of religious ferment in the 1840s.
The article missed the strength of the faith formerly known as Mormons. They do on-the-ground Christianity like no other Christian faith (with the possible exception of the Amish.) My wife, a Mormon, was in the hospital for 5 days. I texted someone in her church to come out. Unbeknownst to me, I texted the wrong person. Nonetheless, 90 minutes later the president of their women’s organization was by the bedside. Chatted for an hour. Every day they had someone by her bed.
My Catholic parish can’t do that. My parish doesn’t even have an after-hours phone number. I have to need (what we used to call) Last Rites during business hours (and then pray the folks running the office pick up the phone.)
I’ve seen Mormons help move people, show up with boxes of food for a month, move a bed, cut down a tree, push a rock, bring dinner for 2 people left at home while Mom and new baby were in the hospital for weeks, clean out a fridge, fix a motorcycle. If I called my Catholic pastor (presuming I could get him on the phone) and asked for any of those eight things, he’d say he’s a church, not a social services agency.
Which is why the Mormons are out-gospeling the Catholics on the street.
Dear Brice Fialcowitz.
Your example resembles our LORD Jesus’ parable of ‘the Good Samaritan’. Jesus used it to shame His listeners into putting love (even of enemies) into action as God had commanded. He was not saying they should convert to Samaritanism as a superior religion! Luke 10:33
Whilst most Catholics are aware of Faith + Hope + Love, few have been instructed that: FAITH FOLLOWS JESUS CHRIST; HOPE REJOICES IN GOD’s PROVISION; LOVE ALWAYS GIVES.
We are called to be a Christ-following/rejoicing/giving people; a living miracle on earth!
There are many Catholic individuals & communities who do that supremely well. Just one example: an Aussie Catholic Highschooler who collected just $10 to help school children in Africa. What Christ then did with her mustard seed of faith, hope, & love is astounding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemma_Sisia
Take care. Ever doing my best to follow Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
Thank you Brice. That’s a model of fellowship and charity that many Christians have forgotten about.
I’ve had two dear LDS friends and attended their monthly women’s meetings years ago. Each month the church would hold classes in homemaking skills, crafts, first aid, etc. It was a lovely experience and opportunity for learning and fellowship. Fathers were asked to babysit so mothers could have the evening free.
Last year I encountered two young LDS missionaries at a BBQ restaurant. They were very deep in hostile mission territory and were respectfully and cheerfully answering another diner who had harrassed them.
I certainly differ in theology from the LDS but we have much to learn from them in other ways. Mormons evangelize face to face. They take care of each other. You couldn’t ask for better neighbors or friends. And my Mennonite friends take care of each other plus their communities in the same ways. They even show up randomly at natural disasters to lend a hand.
Unfortunately the monthly woman’s meetings you speak of no longer exist. The LDS church knows how to do “community” very well, but it also comes with a heavy dose of guilt, comparing, othering and imperfection. They don’t teach that being a child of God is enough. You have to check the boxes to be accepted by God and Christ and if you don’t fit into those boxes to begin with, you are just out. If you don’t pay the mandatory 10% of your income to tithing, then you can’t go to the temple which they believe is not only a necessary ordinance, but you must go as proxy for your dead ancestors.
I am one of those members who is leaving after 45 years of attending, teaching, leading… I did it all. I am probably agnostic at this point. I think it is hard for True Believing Members TBM’s who leave to not feel disgust and betrayal. I am sad I didn’t know the history, the real history not the glossed over history, and I am sad I wasn’t smart enough to have figured it out earlier. How do I trust myself about spiritual matters when I was so lead down the wrong path and I thought I was on the right path?
Beloved ‘CoCoBee’, your life story has me, an 80-year-old male, crying.
The true narrow road of our King Jesus Christ has precipices on each side: on the left we can fall down the cliff of presumption and disregard for God’s ways; on the right we can fall down the cliff of self-performance and legalistic bondage (the LDS bondage you were imprisoned by for so many years).
Jesus’ Way is safe & eternally secure, His yoke is easy, His burden lite. Asking Jesus into your heart and believing He hears and answers you is what will bring PEACE to your soul, a peace that is unknown to both the presumptuous sinner and to the rule-bound legalist.
The next step is to humbly ask Jesus to shepherd your life and to guide you to friendship with loyal members of His Church. He will show the way to a loving community of Catholics. There you can unburden it all to Jesus, represented by a good Catholic priest. The culmination of this faith journey is when you receive The Body and The Blood of Jesus Christ, incorporating you into His eternal joy.
Please trust: it is no accident that you posted on Catholic World Report and that ‘by chance’ i happened to read it this morning. Dear ‘CoCoBee’, God has long prepared this safe haven for you and may even, please God, empower you to guide others out of bondage and into the peace & joy of uniquely Christian Catholicism.
Since God is for you, beloved sister, who can be against!
Ever following Jesus Christ our loving Savior; blessings from marty
All I know is that a fine, dutiful, hardworking young man jumped off a cliff after years of heartfelt struggle with his dyed-in-the wool LDS parents over his wanting to leave the Mormon church. May he, and his kindred souls, now rest in peace.
Yup. That’s all you know, apparently.
I think you have reached mostly the wrong conclusions.
Ex mormons used to turn into evangelicals, but now that the cultural field has shifted in favor of secularism, what we are seeing is very different.
A casual anecdotic glimpse into Utah neighborhoods and exmormons show that much of the disaffection seems to come from cognitive dissonance relating to poitical or cultural problems, such as feminism va. Male oy priesthood. And the biggest one is LGBT issues, the Church’s initial strict opposition and political lobbying, and how these trends are viewed especially in wealthier or more educated areas. Most of the vocal exmormons on social media have departed on political grounds and they address those often. The exmormon movement nowadays is very “progressive ”
Yes, feelings of being duped and rational claims do exist, but we are facing a secular trend throughout the Western world and it is affecting many religions, especially in wealthier areas and areas with more access to higher education.
Mormons are highly educated as a population, and even in BYU, that puts them in contact with a lot of secular theories.
The trend
Elder Tad R. Callister: How the Church (of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints) ruins its members for any other church:
While serving on assignment in the Pacific, a mission president contacted me about meeting with a missionary who wanted to go home early. Evidently, the missionary had read some anti-Church literature and felt he no longer had a sufficient testimony to teach the gospel. I met with the missionary and asked if I might ask him a few questions. He consented. The questioning went essentially as follows:
Do you believe in the pre-mortal existence — that we lived with God as His children before we came to this earth? He replied that such doctrine was taught in the Bible and he believed it.
Do you believe in the doctrine of the spirit world — that everyone will have a fair chance to hear the gospel in its fullness either on earth or in the spirit world before they are judged? He said that that seemed fair and right to him.
Do you believe, then, in baptism for the dead? “Yes,” he replied. “That is in the Bible.”
Contrary to the doctrine of the Trinity as taught by most of the Christian world, do you believe that God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ are two separate personages with glorified bodies of flesh and bones? He replied in the affirmative.
Do you believe in one heaven and one hell as taught by most of the Christian world, or do you believe in three degrees of glory? He replied, “Three degrees of glory.”
Do you believe in the eternal nature of families? He said he had always believed in such a doctrine.
Do you believe that Christ’s Church today should have Apostles just as existed in Christ’s mortal ministry? He replied that that seemed right to him.
Do you believe in on going revelation today or believe that it ceased at the time the Bible ended and thereafter God left us on our own? “No,” he said. “I believe we should have revelation today.”
In all, about 10-12 questions were discussed. I then asked this fine young missionary, “Can you think of any Church that teaches one, let alone all of these doctrinal principles?”
I will never forget his response: “I hadn’t thought of that before.”
In truth, this Church ruins its members for any other church, because, like this missionary, they know too much. If people leave this Church, they will usually end up traveling down one of two paths — either they will become a church unto themselves (because they will never find another church that has more truth than they already have) or they will head down the road of agnosticism. Recognizing this, I asked the missionary, “Are you willing to give up all this doctrine you know to be true, to throw it all away, because you have a few questions you can’t answer?”
It reminds one of the observation, “Don’t lose faith in the many things you know because of a few things you don’t know.”
Someone can’t very well embrace the doctrine of the Church on one hand and then reject the prophets and scriptures through which it came on the other, any more than someone can claim that good fruit comes from a bad tree. If the fruit is good, the Savior taught, the tree is good. Accordingly, if the doctrine is true, then the prophets through whom it came are true.
Once we have crossed the line of doubt and come to know that the doctrinal teachings of the Church are true, then we don’t have to agonize over and dissect every statement of the prophets. We don’t have to weigh them against our finite standards of justice or our limited understanding of eternity — instead we can accept them as the will of God and move forward in a positive, constructive way. The profound doctrinal teachings of the Church are a powerful witness that our prophets are inspired, and thus, we can trust their counsel.
Sadly, dear Jared Gardner, re: “It reminds one of the observation, “Don’t lose faith in the many things you know because of a few things you don’t know.”
Sorry: Is it not the little insects in the nice-looking pot of ointment that make it obnoxious!
The true Church of Jesus Christ proclaims its two millennia of Apostolic truth: that our beginning was in the cleansing Blood of Jesus Christ, obedient to His Father God who He as true God is One with, opening the way for Their Holy Spirit to miraculously transform a small band of Jesus’ followers into the seed that has spread God’s Good News all over the earth, and is now professed by over a billion people as their Catholic Church.
Of course, there are lots & lots & lots of other, contending claimants; Jesus Christ, God-With-Us & Prophet-above-all-prophets, warned us (see Matthew 24:5).
Take care. Ever in the glory of Father, Son & Holy Spirit; love & blessings from marty
Spot On. As one who woke up and graduated from Mormonism and landed on Christianity, this article clearly articulates both the mass Mormon exodus (due largely to the Internet and flow of information) and the bleak statistical chance that an exMormon will land on a healthy religion. One must remember that from a young age, Mormons are repeatedly taught that God told Joseph Smith that ALL other religions are wrong. ALL creeds are an abomination, and ALL other religious professors are corrupt. While millions are leaving Mormonism – too many cling onto this old Mormon dogma. But we must be kind and patient with exMormons. It takes 27 exposures to heathy concepts to re-wire old, bad neurology.
Dear Dr Randall Bell: “It takes 27 exposures to heathy concepts to re-wire old, bad neurology.”
Even exposure to the 27 texts of The New Testament . . .
You keep bringing up the New Testament. How about the Old Testament? That was the “Scriptures” mentioned most heavily in the NT. What’s your view on the importance of it in salvation history? How many books do you believe comprise it?
Also, the “superstitions” you keep mentioning: What are they? Please give an example. The concept that somehow the Catholic Church has added to God’s public revelation given us via His only-begotten Son Our Lord Jesus Christ isn’t a new one. Many have made such claims over the centuries.
Frankly, neither of those things is that relevant to the article. At one time, Mormons were leaving their church for evangelical Protestantism. That has changed. It’d be fascinating to understand better the reason.
For anyone interested, here is a book available to read online from Jerald and Sandra Tanner, two ex-Mormons who became evangelical Christians. What led them to convert was an examination of Mormonism’s doctrinal changes over the years.
http://www.utlm.org/other/changingworld.pdf
Many thanks, dear Patti Sheffield. Great to have such searching questions.
Emphasis on The New Testament & its 27 texts by 9 Apostolic authors echos its citation over 3,500 times in The Catechism of The Catholic Church. It is the major source defining Catholic theology, dogmatics, & ecclesiology.
Ignorance of & lack of loving obedience to The New Testament = bad Catholic or even ‘counterfeit’.
Let’s remember: “Before Abraham was, I AM” John 8:58
Also, good to recall that Jesus Christ, our LORD, defined John the Baptizer as greatest of all humans (i.e., greater than Abraham, Sarah, Izaac, Jacob/Israel, Joseph, Moses, David, Bathsheba, Solomon, & all the other great women & men represented in The Old Testament). Luke 7:28
Yet, The LORD said that even the least of us born again of The Holy Spirit are greater than John the Baptizer (and hence of all who preceded him).
The New Testament is the only Scripture we have that enables us to comprehend the magnitude of what it means to be born again, as a new, spiritual creature, by The Holy Spirit of Christ, into The Church, with Mary our most Blessed Mother & all the saints & martyrs in Glory.
Properly constituted Catholics are aware that Jesus Christ instituted the long promised New Covenant, that far exceeds the Old Covenant & was so central to the longings of Old Testament prophets.
Out of many informative comparisons, one could contrast celebration of the Jewish Passover (itself healthy & full of historical meaning for them) with Catholic celebration of Christ’s saving sacrifice, where The LORD miraculously feeds us, of every nationality, with His Sacred Flesh (Real Food) & Precious Blood (Real Drink). Jesus, a Jew above all Jews, fulfils the deepest desires of Judaism, as – praise God – is being recognized by Messianic Jews, everywhere.
It is only The New Testament that enables us to comprehend the origins and cosmic implications of this miracle at the very heart of Catholicism.
As regards the books of The Old Testament, may I recommend the ‘Contents’ pages of the NRSV where 39 texts are listed under ‘Old Testament’; 17 under ‘Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books’; and, of course, 27 ‘New Testament’.
As regards the superstitions of the church of Joseph Smith, please read its founding process in any objective history. Around the world one cannot but be astonished at the incredible range of superstitions maintained by some Catholics, in blunt contradiction to Christ’s instructions.
Thanks again & hoping this goes at least some way to responding usefully to your excellent questions, dear Patti.
Ever in the grace & mercy of Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
Outstanding reply. After living in Utah for 10 years I had come to understand their modus operandi. In simplist terms two things are taught to Mormons throughout their indoctrination. “Mormon church is true. ALL other religions are false.” In the Mormon Institutes located adjunct to various university campuses long diatribes are given to students about the corruption of the medieval papacy et al. Unfortunately when an acolyte rejects the concept that the “Mormon church is true” what is left? The only thing left is “All other relgions are false and satanic” The ex Mormon often finds that intellectually he now has no where to go, hence disaffiliation and cynicism.
As a former Mormon believer, I think this overall misses the mark. Simply, in its efforts to establish itself as the one true church, Mormonism accurately describes the inadequacies of all the others. This article points out the ‘irrationality and incoherence’ of Mormonism, apparently oblivious or unwilling to admit that Catholicism has its own irrationalities and contradictions (could anyone really say that transubstantiation is ‘rational’, that the Bible is completely coherent, or that Catholicism’s own history is bereft of serious problems?). So once a Mormon decides to look honestly at Mormonism and finds its claims aren’t convincing, why WOULD that person want to join another church? That would be leaving one power structure to join another.
https://scripturecentral.org/evidence
This link has evidences of the Book of Mormon