When I was an evangelical, we classified Mormonism as not authentically Christian. After all, it rejects the Trinity, one of the most foundational of Christian doctrines since the early centuries of Christianity, and affirms alternative sources of divine revelation: the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Though Mormons claimed to follow Christ, we evangelicals assessed their version of Him to be a false Christ.
After I became Catholic, I reconsidered the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Yes, many of its doctrines are, according to the Catholic faith, unorthodox. But its origins in mid-nineteenth-century North America place it within the context of other religious movements: the Millerites (ancestors to Seventh-day Adventists), the Shakers, Spiritualism, the Oneida Society, and the Ebenezer Colonies. Though of course quite different (and, except for the Seventh-day Adventists, far less successful), these movements largely reflected a revivalist disaffection with older forms of creedal Protestantism. Moreover, Mormonism prioritizes personal conversion based on subjective experience, encouraging individuals to pray over the Book of Mormon to determine if it is true. LDS seemed another, but eccentric, manifestation of Protestantism.
Yet Mormon friends took issue with my assessment. No, they claimed, LDS was more similar to Catholicism than Protestantism. They had a priesthood, a church hierarchy, and even a magisterial authority—namely, the president of their church. What LDS offered, they argued, was a competing, superior ecclesial institution to that of the Catholic Church.
Which is it? Are Mormons more like Protestants or Catholics?
Though not the central question of A Catholic Engagement with Latter-Day Saints, edited by Francis J. Beckwith and Richard Sherlock, that new book will undoubtedly help Catholics to better understand LDS and prepare themselves for conversations with Mormon friends, coworkers, or missionaries at their door. Intended as a “modest contribution” to the Catholic Church’s evangelical witness, the book is a critical but good-faith effort to authentically dialogue with the LDS religion.
As Beckwith and Sherlock note in their introduction, there are indeed some qualities of LDS that make it seem more Catholic: it is not a sola scriptura faith, but relies on a sort of living magisterium in the person of the president, currently Russell M. Nelson. Alternatively, Mormonism’s rejection of the physical qualities of traditional liturgies, as well as its claims that the doctrinal and ecclesiastical developments of Catholicism are corruptions of “original Christianity” are reminiscent of Protestantism. Indeed, the difference between the classic Protestant and Mormon narratives regarding the early church is “one of degree, not kind,” since both religious traditions believe in a great apostasy from the true apostolic faith.
Beckwith cites his assessment in a previous work to describe this unusual religious character:
It [Mormonism] has all the advantages of Reformation Protestantism and nineteenth-century Restorationism (“Let’s get back to what Jesus and the apostles originally taught”) with all the advantages of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, an apostolic magisterium within the confines of a visible church. Smith has both a priesthood of all believers and a priesthood managed by a church hierarchy. He offers a new gospel unconstrained by centuries of theological precedent, yet he could claim that it is as old as the apostles. He could, without contradiction, reject tradition while claiming to be the true guardian of an ancient message. It may be wrong, but it was brilliant.
We as Catholics may take issue with an LDS version of ecclesial authority that believes the early Church apostatized immediately after the apostles — on what basis is such a claim even made, besides simply appealing to the alleged revelations of Joseph Smith? — but as Beckwith notes, this Mormon interpretation avoids having to debate Catholics on church history. Ignatius of Antioch, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas— none of them ultimately matter in the LDS paradigm, nor need to be debated or made sense of, because they are all representatives of the “great apostasy.” This gives Mormons a rhetorical edge over Protestants, whose own premises force them (awkwardly) to defend the thesis that they are returning to the tenets of the early church.
Nevertheless, as my evangelical teachers many years ago taught me, the LDS conception of God is demonstrably different from that of the Nicene Christianity shared by Catholics and most Protestants. And it’s not just that Mormons reject Trinitarianism in favor of a tritheism in which the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are separate beings. Sherlock begins his chapter on the Mormon conception of deity by noting that a core component of Western monotheistic faiths “is a conviction of the oneness and absolute transcendence of God.” Rather than being merely an organizer or manager of preexisting matter, God is both the creator of all that exists, and the origin of all things. This conception of the divine raises an immediate problem: how does a transcendent God relate to His creation, particularly human beings?
In the Christian tradition, the answer draws on philosophically informed theology. One way of explaining this is through the concept of the analogy, meaning that we understand God and relate to Him not univocally but via analogy. Here’s a basic example: when we read in Scripture that God spoke we do not mean that God, who is Spirit, has literal vocal chords, but rather that He communicated in such a way that humans received his message as if it was a voice. Here’s a more technical theological example: doctrinal descriptions of God—say, that He is three persons in one nature—though true, are not univocally true, as if they perfectly and fully comprise what He is. Rather, they describe God in a way accessible to human reason. Indeed, because (most) historic Christian traditions affirm God’s simplicity, we affirm that He does not have parts—somehow God is “three in one,” but this “threeness” does not undermine his irreducible “oneness.” Our various speculations regarding God are, as it were, different human ways—based on divine revelation and reason—of describing a single, transcendent reality.
In contrast, the Mormon religion presents a different understanding of God. LDS founder Joseph Smith, in his famous King Follett Discourse, asserted: “Our Father in Heaven at one time passed through a life and death and is an exalted man.” Similarly, the fifth LDS president Lorenzo Snow famously declared: “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.” Unlike Catholic (and much Protestant) teaching, God is not Being Itself, but a creation just like us, and thus the same species of being. According to LDS teaching, though “God is perfect in his person, character, and attributes,” nevertheless, “God does progress.”
If this is the case, God cannot be infinite or eternal. Indeed, the LDS sacred text Pearl of Great Price says that God is physically located near a star called “Kolob.” If that’s the case, God is in time, and His power is necessarily limited, even if, in the LDS paradigm, it is exponentially greater than our own.
This understanding of God also has implications for the Incarnation. Jesus is not that perfectly transcendent divine being—the source of all things, the Divine Word as described in John 1, Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 4:4—who is made flesh in order for God to communicate with man and ultimately reconcile him to God. He is not a single person with both a divine and human nature who, through the Incarnation, unites man to the divine. Rather, Jesus is the physical son of a physical God, who in His death and resurrection is merely reenacting previous events He had seen performed by his Father.
As Sherlock explains: “Mormonism has no serious conception of the Incarnation because it denies at the outset the nature of God and the metaphysical structure that makes the Incarnation necessary for human salvation.”
The liturgy is another area in which we can better understand the nature of the LDS religion. Former Mormon Rachel Lu notes that while it is surprisingly difficult to determine LDS theology because they lack creedal documents or a formal catechism, it’s comparatively easy to know what a Mormon Sunday meeting is like, because they follow an identical pattern across the world. The organizing principles of Mormon Worship seem very low church: there are short talks, unscripted prayers, congregational hymn singing, and sometimes a special musical performance. There is a weekly distribution of communion, referred to as “the sacrament” which involves passing of bread and water. There is no preparatory liturgical action before or after the sacrament. Mormons possess a general suspicion toward any sort of congregational recitation.
There is less information on temple rituals—since only members may attend and LDS is somewhat secretive about the proceedings—but they include endowments (an adult initiation ceremony), marriages, and baptisms for the dead. “Temples are special for Mormons, and their specialness is preserved in large part by keeping the knowledge esoteric and reserving the rituals for a proven elite,” writes Lu. In this respect, Mormonism seems to overlap with Freemasonry—Joseph Smith himself and other prominent LDS members were Masons.
Based on the informative summary and analysis of LDS beliefs and practices in the essays found in A Catholic Engagement, I will stand by the thesis I formed not long after becoming Catholic. There are good reasons to classify Mormonism as a species of Protestantism, given its many theological and liturgical similarities to various manifestations of Protestant religion (and, vis-à-vis Freemasonry, culture) found in nineteenth-century America—indeed, Mormonism’s official Bible is the King James Version.
In sum, its institutional, “magisterial” ecclesial qualities, though somewhat analogous to Catholicism, cannot hide what seems a peculiarly Protestant heresy.
A Catholic Engagement with Latter-day Saints
By Francis Beckwith and Richard Sherlock
Ignatius Press, 2024
Paperback, 241 pages
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We read: “This [constricted] understanding of God also has implications for the Incarnation.” Indeed. So much so that frontier Mormonism might be best compared to frontier Islam…
Yours truly proposes such a comparison in a succinct part of Chapter Two in my “Secularism or Jihad: A Triangular Inquiry into the Mosque, the Manger & Modernity” (University Press of America, 2012):
“ [….] Historical Mormonism in the Western United States is unrelated to seventh century Islam, but in many particulars Mormonism is comparable as a ‘type’ that may be historically inevitable to the human imagination in the absence of Christian orthodoxy upholding the Incarnation as fully and uniquely human and divine, both.
“Islam attributes a restored text—the Qur’an—to messages received by Mohammed directly from the Angel Gabriel beginning in 610 A.D. The founding prophet of Mormonism is believed to have been visited by the Angel Moroni beginning in 1823. The prophet Joseph Smith carries an exactly transcribed and untouchable text delivered on hidden tablets of gold. Islam’s untouchable Arabic script (Q 13:37, 42:5, 46:13) is duplicated for Mohammed from an identical text in heaven. Both religions (and many others) have a supplemental set of writings, respectively the Book of Mormon and the Muslim hadith. Both religious leaders experienced initial persecution, the mystic Joseph Smith in Missouri and Illinois and Mohammed at Mecca.
“Both migrated to a selected new base of operations, Joseph Smith west to Salt Lake and Mohammed north to Medina. Islam is preached first to the tribes of Arabia, while Mormonism initially saw its mission among the indigenous tribes of North America. Mormons have believed that the American Indians are migrant descendants from the Israelite patriarch Lehi arriving via Arabia to the New World in 590. B.C. (coincidentally, symmetrical with Muhammad’s birth in 570 A.D.) but do not reject possibly Asiatic origins [….]
“As with the Qur’an, where Christ is recast as a prophet pointing toward the coming of Mohammed (Q 61:5), the Book of Mormon also places words into the mouth of Christ. Under Mormonism we find Christ conferring unending life on three figures chosen to direct the new church in America [….] Mormonism, like Islam, claims to be a restoration rather than a new religion, and [likewise] claims an option for ongoing revelation. Mormonism would restore a corrupted Christianity while Islam would restore the earlier and corrupted faith of Abraham from the very beginning of the Judeo-Christian narrative. Mormon apologists refer to a universal apostasy by a Church extinguished under Diocletian and ravaged by later strife among Protestants. Islam is scandalized by early Byzantine Christian theological disputes of about the same early period.
[In a footnote, this]: “At an agitated moment in Missouri Joseph Smith said he would “trample down our enemies and make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean . . . I will be to this generation a second Mohammed, whose motto in treating for peace was ‘the Alcoran or the Sword.’ So shall it eventually be with us–‘Joseph Smith or the Sword!’” (Fawn M. Brodie, “No Man Knows My History,” New York: Alfred Knopf, 1995, p. 420).
But, “A defining difference between Islam and Mormonism is apparent in the writings of Elder Roberts who concludes with a non-sequitor that is poles apart from Islam: “Thus, after centuries of controversy the simple truth of the scriptures which teach that man was created in the likeness of God—hence God must be the same in form as man [!]—was reaffirmed” [“New Witness for Christ,” Salt Lake City: George B. Cannon and Sons, 1875]. Islam shuns anthropomorphism [and Mormonism, oppositely, is limited to anthropomorphism] [….]
While Islam and Mormonism each tends to see itself as the perimeter religion that brackets all others, the Mormon religion is theologically the opposite book end from Islam. Mormonism holds that Jesus himself is limited by ‘eternal law’ which is ‘independent and co-eternal with God, just as matter is [!]’ [….] A Mormon philosopher explains that ‘God does not have absolute power . . . but rather [only] the power to maximally utilize natural laws to bring about his purposes’ [….]”
SUMMARY: Instead, the Muslim attributes everything to miracles by the One who is other than Christ and other than any supposedly autonomous [and blasphemous] laws of nature [….]” As a “type,” might we better compare and contrast Mormonism with Islam, rather than with either Catholicism or Protestantism?
Wasn’t Joseph Smith called the “Mohammed of the plains”?
Both religions are syncretic muddles.
“Intended as a ‘modest contribution’ to the Catholic Church’s evangelical witness, A Catholic Engagement with Latter-Day Saints is a critical but good-faith effort to authentically dialogue with the LDS religion.”
Bad language betrays bad thinking. It is possible to have a dialogue with a Mormon — someone who adheres to the LDS religion — but it is not possible to have a dialogue with the religion itself. You might as well try to have a dialogue with the statue of Moroni. Furthermore, there is a reason to have a dialogue with a Mormon neighbor, because Christ died to save that person, and he or she might yet make it to Heaven. The LDS religion, on the other hand, will never be found in Heaven.
This is not a merely pedantic distinction. When Brian Williams suggested that Michael Bloomberg could have used the half billion dollars he spent on his presidential campaign to give each American one million dollars, there was no need to engage in a dialogue with Williams over his error; it was sufficient to point out the embarrassingly bad arithmetic. (A “dialogue with bad arithmetic” was neither possible nor useful.) Trying to persuade a neighbor to abandon Mormonism and embrace Catholicism is a very, very different matter.
It’s worth pointing out that even “Catholicism” is not the Catholic Church. “Catholicism” is some sort of impersonal abstraction of the mystical Body of Christ, but by making it impersonal and abstract, it is made into an illusion. “Mormonism”, on the other hand, is an impersonal abstraction of something that does not even have its own separate metaphysical existence. These impersonal abstractions miss the point entirely, which is the necessity of human person in relation to the divine Persons of the Father, Son, and HOly Spirit.
I do not think the author’s conclusion – that Mormonism is a kind of Protestantism – follows at all from his own article, or from the book he reviews. If Mormonism’s recasting of Christ as a mere mortal (whether later exalted or not) situates Joseph Smith’s musings as a branch of Protestant Christianity, then not only is Islam a Protestant religion, but so is Bahaism, the Moonies, and many other creeds that feature new “scriptures” with new “prophets” who merely reference the model virtues of a forerunner prophet named Jesus.
In agreement that Mormonism is not “a kind of Protestantism,” and yet is it possible that early Protestantism is akin to Islam? Have a listen:
“There is something decidedly Islamic in original Protestantism, with its idea of an all-controlling hidden God and His infallible Prophet, its secularization of marriage, its Puritanism and messianism. Even today some of the survivals of original (i.e., pre-liberal) Protestantism in remote parts of Scandinavia, Holland, Scotland and the United States have, at least culturally, more affinity with the Wahhabis than with Catholics from which they stem. It must be borne in mind that not so much the authoritarian organization but the liberal theology [understood as free will versus the determinism/predestination of the elect] of Catholicism was the target of the reformers” (Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, “Liberty or Equality,” 1952).
The multiple wife thing, which was a major facet at its origins and still exists today if TV programming is to be believed, is why most of us consider this at best a fringe religion. Multiple spouses has NEVER been a part of Catholic or Protestant belief. It is an absolute disqualification. Recent official acceptance of publicly “out” gay clergy has been the exclusive province of the Protestants. While the problem has indeed infected the Catholic church, it remains an underground practice with no official approval and clerics found to have engaged in the practice have generally been exited from the priesthood once discovered.
About polygamy, historical Islam is partly an eclectic accretion of this and that…
For outlier Mormons, polygamy carries over from a non-metaphysical belief in the earthly/eternal family thing. Whereas, under literal Islam, heaven likewise remains an earthly event, but decorated with dozens of new and daily-renewable virgins and such. Today, Muslim polygamy is uncommon, confined mostly to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and is illegal in at least Tunisia and Turkey.
Eastern and Western scholars both agree that Muhammad was atypically monogamous until the death of his first wife Khadijah, fifteen years his senior, in 620 A.D. when he was 53 years old. Very countercultural in Arabia. Thereafter, most of his multiple marriages sealed tribal alliances needed for defense in the Arabian culture of clan reprisals (think the dynasties of Europe, or the American Hatfields and McCoys!). Although there’s the highlighted case of the young A’isha whom he wed when she was still a child (the daughter of his nephew and later successor, Abu-Bakr). Otherwise, several of the multiple wives were also the widowed and otherwise destitute wives of defeated tribal chiefs. And, none of them seemed young enough to produce even one child by Muhammad. (All of his four earlier sons died too young for any to serve as a successor.)
The tribal and non-sacramental definition of marriage is a signal feature of non-Christian Islam, and (!) resurfaces today in much of our post-Christian, “spiritual-but-not-religious”, and pagan-like secularist culture:
“Islam has not wanted to choose between Heaven and Earth. It proposed instead a blending of heaven and earth, sex and mysticism, war and proselytism, conquest and apostolate. In more general terms, Islam proposed a blending of the spiritual and the temporal worlds which neither in Islam nor among the pagans have ever been divided” (Jean Guitton, “Great Heresies and Church Councils,” 1965, p. 116).
Why can we not just call poppycock “poppycock”?
Maurice Caillet, a Catholic convert from Freemasonry, claimed in France that he lerned both Jéhovah’s Witnesses and the Latter Day Saints were deliberately founded by freemasonry to confound the Catholic Church at the end of time… A simple AI research on chatgbt states that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons was indeed a freemason and that freemasonic ritual permeates the “Church”. So dialogue with this Freemasonic Poppycock is an esoteric rabbit hole?
Thank you. That’s what it is. Stick with true Catholic teaching instead of esoterical nonsense.
Because it is Freemasonic Poppycock.
Joseph Smith was initiated as an Entered Apprentice Mason on March 15, 1842, in Nauvoo, Illinois, and Master Mason degree the next day, March 16, 1842.
Because it is Freemasonic Poppycock.
Joseph Smith was initiated as an Entered Apprentice Mason on March 15, 1842, in Nauvoo, Illinois, and Master Mason degree the next day, March 16, 1842.
“Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances” (2019) by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw.
Given the caliber of these comments, it is apparent that Catholics will have little impact on converting Latter-day Saints to the Church. Having studied religion for over sixty years, I believe that the most effective evangelical tool is to reflect the love of Jesus Christ to others, regardless of their beliefs.
More importantly, unless an individual is a student of the Bible, it is best not to engage in scriptural discussions with Mormons. These are people who are typically avid students of scripture and can often quote them or refer to them chapter and verse in conversation. Attempting to attack their beliefs will only result in them turning away and wishing you a good day.
Love them, share with them the joy you find in the Church, the power you receive from saying the rosary, recount the stories of the saints, and share what is important to you in the Church. In their minds, they do not see how any other church could be true except their own or the Catholic Church. This dichotomy stems from their beliefs in an apostasy and the priesthood.
In my personal relationships with them, I have always found them to be charitable and unfailingly devoted to Jesus Christ.
Why does the Catholic Church have to “dialogue” with a sect, or anybody outside the Church? A perfect example of extreme ecumenism indeed.
They do a lot of missionary work, including disaster aid here in the states.
When their missionaries knock on my door they are polite when I refuse their conversion efforts.
They just bought up a lot of farm land.