Is Mormonism Christian?

That's the title of two competing essays in First Things-- between Bruce Porter (a member of "the First Quorum of the Seventy" for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and Gerald McDermott (a professor of Religion at Roanoke College and co-author of Claiming Christ: A Mormon-Evangelical Debate)...

I've been interested in this topic for more than 20 years ago-- after having my first serious encounter with Mormonism in my first year of grad school. At that point, I mostly focused on minutia. That's where I was pointed (by the literature) and to what I was attracted (given its intellectualism and some of the more prurient aspects of my nature).

A few years after coming to IUS, I had a Mormon colleague who attended my Bible study. And my friendship with him encouraged me to focus on more primary aspects of our differences. Among other things, he and I read together through How Wide the Divide?-- a book co-authored by two NT profs (one Mormon; one Evangelical).

After that, I realized that Mormons could (easily) be Christians, independent of how one might classify Mormonism. (Likewise, self-identifying Baptists or Episcopalians might or might not be Christians.)

Back to the essays-- first, with excerpts from Porter:

Journalists, never particularly interested in doctrinal matters, tend to focus on the contemporary influence of the church or on intriguing chapters from its past history—most prominently the practice of polygamy, which officially was ended in 1890. Scholarly studies do little better, in part because they tend to focus on the history of the church, particularly its formative era from 1820 to 1890, or on its contemporary sociology and culture....

I'm surprised that Porter is surprised (or even offended) here. Of course, polygamy is interesting to journalists. (It's interesting doctrinally as well-- given its central place in Mormon theology in the early years.) And the origins of the religion and its contemporary practice must be important to anyone who would seriously consider that religion.

Our most criticized departure from mainstream Christianity is our acceptance of another work, the Book of Mormon, as the divinely revealed word of God. We regard it as holy writ: equal to the Bible in authority, a second witness of Christ’s divine mission, and a compilation of inspired writings that enlighten and clarify many biblical teachings. Latter-day Saints also count in the canon a slim two volumes of revelations and tenets revealed by Jesus to the prophet Joseph Smith: the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.

This is an important way in which Mormonism is similar to Catholicism-- in believing that they are the One True Church.

A vital aspect of Latter-day Saint theology—and its most obvious difference from traditional Christianity—is the belief that Jesus Christ is an individual being, separate from God the Father in corporeality and substance. Mormons do not accept the phrase in the Nicene Creed that describes the Father and Son as being “of one substance,” nor do we accept subsequent creeds by ecumenical councils that sought to clarify the nature of the Trinity in language describing them as one indivisible spiritual being. The Book of Mormon refers in several passages to God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost as “one God,” but Latter-day Saints understand this to mean they are one in mind, purpose, will, and intention. Their unity is the same unity of which Christ spoke in his high-priestly prayer following the Last Supper: that his disciples may “be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21). Hence, Latter-day Saints rarely use the term Trinity, but prefer the title Godhead to refer to the three divine beings who govern our universe in perfect oneness....

There is also a common misperception that Latter-day Saints believe in salvation by works. It is true that, for example, many prophets in the Book of Mormon fervently admonish their people to repent and keep the commandments of God if they want to be saved. Taken out of context, they may appear to be claiming that salvation comes by works. But the prophets are saying simply what Christ said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” The Book of Mormon itself speaks of “dead works” and proclaims “the deadness of the law” and it teaches plainly that only the blood of Christ can atone for sin. Mormons regard good works as a manifestation of faith in Christ, not as a way of earning salvation.

Nonetheless, salvation in our view is not obtained without effort on the part of the sinner. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21)....We believe that an individual obtains salvation by receiving Christ as the redeemer and exercising faith in him. Receiving Christ entails turning to him: repenting with a broken heart and contrite spirit, and striving, however imperfectly, to do his will. We also believe that the ordinances of baptism by immersion and confirmation by the laying on hands for the reception of the Holy Ghost are essential to salvation....Some theologies regard these ordinances as “works” and therefore unnecessary or even undesirable. We regard them as integral to God’s plan for our salvation.

This is an important way in which Mormonism is similar to Church of Christ.

Porter's conclusion:

Are Mormons Christian? By self-definition and self-identity, unquestionably so. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints affirms that it is a Christian-faith denomination, a body of believers who worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and who witness that salvation is possible only by his atoning blood and grace. By the simple dictionary definition of a Christian as one who believes in or worships Jesus Christ, the case is compelling. To the title Christian a critic of Mormonism may add any modifiers he deems appropriate—unorthodox, heretical, non-Nicene, different—but blanket assertions that we are not Christian are a poor substitute for informed argument and dialogue.

Here's McDermott's response, starting with the wrong reasons to say Mormonism is not Christian:

Most Christians say Mormonism is not Christian—though their reasons are sometimes awkward. Thus, for example, the most common explanation given by evangelicals and Lutherans is that Mormons teach salvation by good works. Since Mormons stress the necessity of works, they conclude that Latter-day Saints must not understand grace, which means, among other things, that God saves us by his work in Christ.

One problem with this line of thinking is that Christians who level this charge sometimes forget that Jesus also teaches the necessity of works as a fruit of true faith...Another problem is that the Book of Mormon and important Mormon writers actually teach salvation by Christ’s work of grace: “For we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23)....

A second charge sometimes made by Nicene Christians is that Mormons are modern-day Arians who reject the deity of Christ. This is untrue in an important sense. Mormons do not believe Jesus was always God but that he was fully divine in the incarnation and continues to be God the Son today....

A third accusation sometimes made is that Mormonism is more about Joseph Smith than Jesus Christ. It is true that Smith is central to Mormons’ view of reality, but it is also true that Jesus Christ is central to the Book of Mormon....

As for the valid reasons:

No, the true distinction between Mormons and non-Mormons on revelation is not whether God still speaks to his people but whether he spoke to Joseph Smith in a way that reinterprets what he said to the first-century apostles. The question of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon is the first of two principal distinctions between the Latter-day Saint faith and orthodox Christian theology....

What are we to make of this history of Jesus [in his supposed appearances in America]? Can we believe that the same Jesus who preached and healed and was crucified in Palestine came just a year or so later to the Americas and said and did all these things?

There are four reasons this is unlikely. First, there are many voices testifying to what I will call the Palestinian Jesus....In contrast, there is only one voice testifying to the authenticity of the American Jesus...

Second, the testimonies we have to the Palestinian Jesus date from the same century as that Jesus, but the single testimony to the American Jesus comes eighteen centuries later....

Third, there are inconsistencies between the Palestinian Jesus and the American Jesus....

A fourth reason that keeps us from identifying the Jesus of the Book of Mormon with the Jesus of the New Testament is that there are intratextual inconsistencies, if you will, between the Jesus of the Book of Mormon and the Jesus of later Joseph Smith prophecies....

The basic difference lies in the relation between Jesus and the Father. Mormons say Jesus is a different being from the Father, and in fact a different God. Mormons therefore say Jesus is one of several Gods. The theologian Stephen Robinson denies that Mormonism is polytheistic, and strictly speaking he is right. Polytheism portrays a world in which competing gods either vie for ultimate authority or have delimited provinces over which they rule. The Mormon picture is closer to henotheism, which posits a supreme God over other lesser, subordinate gods....

In this sense, Mormonism is close to many versions of Hinduism.

McDermott's conclusion:

In sum, then, Mormon beliefs diverge widely from historic Christian orthodoxy. The Book of Mormon, which is Mormonism’s principal source for its claim to new revelation and a new prophet, lacks credibility. And the Jesus proclaimed by Joseph Smith and his followers is different in significant ways from the Jesus of the New Testament: Smith’s Jesus is a God distinct from God the Father; he was once merely a man and not God; he is of the same species as human beings; and his being and acts are limited by co-eternal matter and laws.

The intent of this essay is not to say that individual Mormons will be barred from sitting with Abraham and the saints at the marriage supper of the Lamb. We are saved by a merciful Trinity, not by our theology. But the distinguished scholar of Mormonism Jan Shipps was only partly right when she wrote that Mormonism is a departure from the existing Christian tradition as much as early Christianity was a departure from Judaism. For if Christianity is a shoot grafted onto the olive tree of Judaism, Mormonism as it stands cannot be successfully grafted onto either.