You be the judge about what is and is not included in this article.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/04/29/us/mormon-beliefs-explained-cec/?dicbo=v2-y71jAjQ&hpt=ob_blogfooterold


Are Mormons Christians?

Mormonism does define itself as a type of Christianity. However, the answer isn't that simple.

"Here's the problem. Who decides what Christianity is?" says Matthew Bowman, associate professor of religion and history and Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California.

"Mormons reject trinitarianism -- the idea that God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit are the same entity. This is a central tenet of mainline Christianity that was decided in early Christian councils. So to a lot of Christians, believers in Mormonism are not Christian. It is an internal debate."

However, trinitarian beliefs can vary among Mormon denominations. While the LDS Church, the largest denomination of Mormonism, states a belief that "God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are one in will and purpose but are not literally the same being or substance," the Community of Christ, a smaller denomination, defines the trinity as "God who is a community of three persons," a view that more aligns with other Christian traditions.


What's the difference between Mormonism and Latter-day Saints?

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest Mormon denomination, have requested people stop referring to church members as "Mormons." However, Bowman says there is a distinct relationship between the two.

"Mormonism is a religious tradition with a number of denominations within it, but to equate the two erases these multiple other groups," Bowman says. "There are three fairly large Mormon churches: The LDS based in Salt Lake City, the Fundamentalist Church of (Jesus Christ of) Latter-day Saints, which is the group associated with polygamy, and the Community of Christ. They are the Mormons who did not go west and settle in Utah, and they are quite different theologically."

So, logically, all followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are technically Mormons. But not all Mormons are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2023 09:34AM by anybody.

They left out that 99.99% of Mormons believe that the key to heaven is by performing secret Masonic-type ceremonies in special robes in exclusive opulent buildings.

>> What Do Mormons Believe? <<

Whatever their leaders tell them.

My version: the last thing they're told.

You don't like church doctrine? Just wait a minute and you'll be fine.

Wonder how much Mormons paid for that whitewashed puff piece?

“ Because of these racist beliefs, Black men were barred from LDS church priesthood from the 1850s until 1978.

Since the disavowal of its founders' views on race, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has occasionally made statements condemning racism. Its church policies also clarify this stance.

"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else," a current LDS-issued manual reads. "Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form."

Except the belief in a God who cursed two entire races with dark skin for the sins of their fathers, since it’s still contained in the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham, which gets swept under the rug in puff pieces like the above.

>>Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse...

If this is true, they need to definitively and publicly disavow the BoM once and for all. That was not a "theory." It was "advanced" by their official scripture.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >>Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced
> in the past that black skin is a sign of divine
> disfavor or curse...
>
> If this is true, they need to definitively and
> publicly disavow the BoM once and for all. That
> was not a "theory." It was "advanced" by their
> official scripture.

Want to know what Mormons believe? Don’t listen to their lawyers prepared statements, just read what’s in their scriptures, still, to this day:

BOOK of MORMON

1 Nephi 11:13 (Mary): “She was exceedingly fair and white.”

1 Nephi 12:23 (prophecy of the Lamanites): “Became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations.”

1 Nephi 13:15 (Gentiles): “They were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people [Nephites] before they were slain.”

2 Nephi 5:21: “A sore cursing … as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.”

2 Nephi 30:6 (prophecy to the Lamanites if they repented): “Scales of darkness shall begin to fall … they shall be a white and delightsome people” (“white and delightsome” was changed to “pure and delightsome” in 1981).

Jacob 3:5 (Lamanites cursed): “Whom ye hate because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins.”

Jacob 3:8-9: “Their skins will be whiter than yours … revile no more against them because of the darkness of their skins.”

Alma 3:6: “And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion.”

Alma 3:9: “Whosoever did mingle his seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed.”

Alma 3:14 (Lamanites cursed): “Set a mark on them that they and their seed may be separated from thee and thy seed.”

Alma 23:18: “[Lamanites] did open a correspondence with them [Nephites] and the curse of God did no more follow them.”

3 Nephi 2:14-16: “Lamanites who had united with the Nephites were numbered among the Nephites; And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites and … became exceedingly fair.”

3 Nephi 19:25, 30 (Disciples): “They were as white as the countenance and also the garments of Jesus; and behold the whiteness thereof did exceed all the whiteness … nothing upon earth so white as the whiteness thereof … and behold they were white, even as Jesus.”

Mormon 5:15 (prophecy about the Lamanites): “For this people shall be scattered, and shall become a dark, a filthy, and a loathsome people, beyond the description of that which ever hath been amongst us.”

Pearl of Great Price

Moses 7:8: “A blackness came upon all the children of Canaan.”

Moses 7:12: “Enoch continued to call upon all the people, save it were [i.e., except] the people of Canaan, to repent.”

Moses 7:22: “For the seed of Cain were black and had not place among them.”

Abraham 1:21: “King of Egypt [Pharaoh] was a descendant from the loins of Ham, and was a partaker of the blood of the Canaanites by birth.”

Abraham 1:27: “Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood.” (emphasis added to above citations).

Mormons still, to this day, believe that the Book of Mormon is the most perfect book ever written in the history of mankind. If that were true, then Mormons must believe that the blatant racism and white supremacy still in the Book of Mormon, is perfectly fine. Nothing out of the ordinary here!

Just stopping back in after a long hiatus. Read an older version of the Book of Mormon and there is more. I don’t have the passages at my finger tips at the moment, but reading my mother’s personal Book of Mormon (she is a child of the 20s and 30s, was interesting. It’s been awhile but on my way out I found reading the various early versions of the scriptures to be a useful part of the process. And then there is the versions of the temple ceremony. Hence my username.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2023 06:02PM by Dave the Atheist.

My first impression on reading this is that somehow the Church paid CNN or pulled some strings with the religion editor to get this published. The article is not really informative or provide any newsworthy insights into Mormonism. It follows the public line that has recently been given out by Church leadership.

On looking at the construction and quotes I got the impression this was written using an AI chat program, there are finger prints of strip quoting other sources and pasting it together.

The CNN editors should look into other articles published by this author, they seem to be derivative crap.

CNN is trying hard to be the next Fox for catering to conservative views, IMO. So, fluff pieces about religions with little scrutiny fit their target audience.

AI stuff is irritating. There should be required cross referencing of sources for what it spits out attached or something. We need to see what it used and what it cherrypicked out. It's going to become more and more political and monetized to suit whichever billionaires want. Congress is hopelessly behind knowing what to do with technology regulations. But I digress.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2023 11:33AM by dagny.

When Jeff Zucker left CNN to spend more time with Jeffery Toobin, newly installed Chris Licht decided to move away from the "all anti-Trumpism, all evening long" format. I don't think that per se was an error. Sooner or later the network needed to stop letting TFG dictate their coverage.

But Licht did something else as well. He moved away from the host/interviewer model for most evening shows and created a lot of panel discussion programs. I think that was a big mistake, since it turned CNN into one big Good Morning America. In this iteration the network is a lot lighter, a lot more human-interest, and hence more vulnerable to fuzzy pieces like this one.

I hear, in fact, that CNN plans to bring in Ken Jennings to host a primetime news program. It's unclear whether his will air be before or after Charles Barkley's show.

...with the news media in the U.S. today (and I'm not including the massive layoffs that are contributing factors to these problems):

1) The news media has decided to give its audiences what they want to hear, not what they need to hear; and

2) The audience being aimed at by the news shows is the advertisers and not the actual viewers.

Both of these problems have had real negative effects on what news viewers know about actual stories, including this story about current LDS church beliefs.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2023 05:16PM by blindguy.

Yes

I remember when I was a little girl, I asked someone what Mormons believed.

I wanted to know, because I wanted to be a good Mormon, so it was important that I believed the right things.

The answer I got was priceless.

I was told that Mormons believed in TRUTH. If something was TRUE, we believed it. If something was NOT TRUE, we didn't believe it.

I went away feeling VERY happy with the answer and very proud to belong to THE ONLY TRUE CHURCH!!!!

Of course, the Mormon -- (we called ourselves "Mormons" back then) -- anyway OF COURSE it was true.

I was very pleased until someone else told me that Mormons did NOT believe that angels had wings.

ANGELS WITH NO WINGS!!!!

There was NO WAY I was going to believe that.

So I guess that is when my doubts started.

loislane Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was very pleased until someone else told me that
> Mormons did NOT believe that angels had wings.
>
> ANGELS WITH NO WINGS!!!!

So how do they fly then? Huh? Huh? :P

Thanks for backing me up.

Even as a little girl, I knew that that couldn't POSSIBLY be true.

Everyone knew angels had wings same as everyone knows Tinkerbell has wings.

They wouldn't be angels if they didn't have wings.

So I kept my ears pricked up for other suspicious stuff we were supposed to believe.

As for me, I made a resolution to stick to my guns. From now on would believe only TRUE things, and I would be the judge of what was true.

loislane Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> .., believe only TRUE things, and I would be the judge of what was true. >

Of course! The individual decides. That's why a 'church' can't be "true" but only a person (deciding) [what is true].

Think of it this way. Wings are developmentally the same appendage as arms, depending on how they evolved. So, if an angel had arms AND wings, that means it would have 6 appendages instead of 4. An angel with wings is more like an insect and less like a human or bird.

I like to hope when they make stuff up, they at least try to make sense. But no.

:-)

The important question is whether angels, of either variety, will survive your eventual demise.

And how about insects? Will cockroaches truly inherit the earth?

They all go poof, as do all of WC's descendants.

Doh!

Is there a relationship between Angels and Insects?

Someone wrote a book called "Angels and Insects" but I haven't read it yet.

Isaiah talks about the "Seraphim" who have SIX wings, so that sounds kind of insect-like.

Two sets of wings are for covering body parts. The third set is for flying.

Cherubim only have one set of wings, but they get to guard the Ark of the Covenant, which is awesome. They also have the body of a lion. They look kind of like a sphinx.

I don't know who invented those naked baby cherubs, but it wasn't me.

>>I don't know who invented those naked baby cherubs, but it wasn't me.

LOL loislane.

Maybe they are quite tasty. They seem to be difficult to find, even in February (their peak season). Best served with truffles.

loislane Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is there a relationship between Angels and
> Insects?

> Isaiah talks about the "Seraphim" who have SIX
> wings, so that sounds kind of insect-like.

Flying Rods!

https://youtu.be/phJ_7rXnuuQ

Whatever their misleaders tell them they'll believe.

They don't believe all things
They don't hope for all things
They don't really know anything

Had to laugh at this line.

" . . . Smith, with his visions and controversial ideas, became increasingly unpopular outside his Mormon community and chose to relocate several times."

Hah haha ha Hah. Chose? How do you not "choose" to "relocate" when an angry Mob is sick of your conniving ways and are chasing you with torches?

And they were retaliating against Mormons, not persecuting. Big difference.

I didn't read the article, but here's my outline.

1. Lying for the Lord is okay.
2. Religious freedom is darn important for members to run their morality down the throats of others.
3. Taking advantage of others is inherent to being a member.
4. Mormons attend a temple which makes them superior to everyone else.
5. Mormons have a word of wisdom that they themselves can't explain.
6. Non members are expected to accept a Mormon invitation to attend a church activity. However, don't expect the invitation to be reciprocated because they will need special permission to attend a non Mormon church.
7. Don't ask to see Mormon underwear. They will deny that it's weird because it's too sacred to discuss.
8. The most exciting dialogue revolves around church callings. Non-members are expected to look up their assigned ward by using the church locator on the website.
9. Most of the members believe that most of the world's problems could be solved by outlawing all forms of pornography and giving more money to the church.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2023 05:35PM by messygoop.