I remember a time when they would have a fit if you even called them a denomination. They stood separate and apart from that abominable world, being God's Peculiar People! Now, calling themselves a denomination is common.

A couple of years ago, I was on a forum where I referred to Mormons as Protestant. Some old Mormon objected. We most certainly are NOT Protestants! We stand apart from them as the true church of Christ! And yet, it is obvious to me that TSCC is trying to penetrate the Protestant Evangelical world. No more standing apart as peculiar from those abominations out there!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/2018 11:05PM by Josephina.

Mormons in my day would object to being called protestants. Protestants would be considered to have left the Catholic church in protest. Since Mormonism did not break off of any church they didn't consider themselves protestants.

Basically no mormon I know would say they are protestant.

Joseph Smith did join the Methodist Church once, though they kicked him out fast. But having joined one does qualify the church he started as being Protestant. I remember TSCC teaching (back in the 70's) that they are not a Protestant church because Joseph Smith had never joined a church. In that so-called 1st Vision, Jesus had told him not to join any church.

They are the ONLY real church of Jesus Christ. They have the "restoration of the fullness of the Gospel."

Everything else and every other religious organization is a sham, an impostor, a failed effort, etc....

They used to proclaim this boldly.

Since the early 1980s, they've toned it down...waaaay down. You almost never hear them compare the "fullness" of Mormonism, as the one and only true restored Gospel, to the incompleteness and falseness of competing religious organizations.

They still aren't Protestants, really, even though Joe Junior borrowed many concepts from Protestants. In some ways, maybe they are to Protestants what Protestants are to Catholics, namely, a derivative that needs its own label. Some labels that have been applied to distinguish cult offshoots like Mormonism include "millennialist" (since they used to emphasis the coming of the new millennium--hence the "latter-days" appellation). They also fit loosely into the school of thought that believed a new "restoration" of lost truths was needed.

But Mormonism is such a hodge-podge of weirdness, including Freemasonry elements, Protestant elements, Folk magic elements, Old Testament nonsense, Joseph Smith's own hoaxes and so on that it really has to just be called "Mormonism." Nothing else is adequate to describe it.

As Wally says, according to themselves they are unique. But according to religious historians, who have to classify them somehow, they are a typical nineteenth-century millennial denomination, not unlike the Jehovah's Witnesses--claiming a restoration of lost authority and impending return of Christ. In my undergrad days, I took an American Church History course from Patricia O'Connell Killen that I wish now I had not been so doggedly Mormon in; it is a fascinating subject area, and the Mormons are by no means unique.

They don't want anybody to call them anything.

They do the calling. The world does the do not answer!

They don't know what to call themselves, but lost.
They call it LDS for Lost Dazed Souls, I heard, I think.

Yea, that's what they call it.

M@t

MORmONS are mostly STUPID ASSES that no body else wants to be associated with

Growing up Catholic, the word "Protestant" to me meant every other Christian (with the exception of the Orthodox, who were off in their own little world.)