Continuing the discussion from President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints passed away:
First time to do this. I’ll post more later.
There have been a number of points which we weren’t sure if we should continue in the thread about the late president / prophet Nelson, so I made a new thread to discuss changes as well as other topics concerning the church. @Monty @raspberry_hunter @puzzlegal @Author_Balk and any other are welcome to join me here.
Thanks. I’m especially interested in how the teachings of the Mormon Church differ from those of traditional Christians, and to what extent that’s changing.
@puzzlegal A good start is “Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Later Day Saints 1800 -1900” by Arlington
@TokyoBayer Great Idea! I hope you don’t mind, I made a post in the original thread linking to this one.
Is it okay to also discuss changes in the other “Divergent Paths of the Restoration” churches, such as Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints)? I ask because the two largest outfits (LDS & CoC) have had an intertwined relations for years with some decisions in one affecting some mebership in the other.
Good idea. I’ll start off with this one - dig right in.
A big difference from Mormonism (what term should I use?) from mainstream Christianity is related to the nature of God, history of God, etc. What I mean is…
I was taught that before we were born we lived in the pre-existance. There was Heavenly Father (Elohim), his wife (maybe wives?) and a bunch of us children. There was our oldest brother (Jehovah) and Lucifer and everyone who has lived, is living and will live, plus the evil spirits. Then the “War in Heaven” and we fought against Lucifer and those that followed him. Then we come to earth. Our goal was to become a God and have our own world. And Heavenly Father also lived on an earth like this and became God.
This is obviously different from mainstream Christianity. But, part of me prefers this rather than spending all eternity sitting around and praising God (or whatever will happen). And the worst that can happen in the Mormon version is a lot better than the Christian hell.(again, what term should I use instead of Mormon?
Anyway… Is this a decent depiction of what is believed (you may word it differently)? Has anything changed related to this? It seems a little strange to outsiders.
Thanks for putting a link from the other thread to to this one.
As for talking about the other branches of the Mormon movement, of course! I know they choose quite a different path but I’m not really familiar with it so anything that people have would be great.
I am interested in hearing from other perspectives. As I said in the other thread, I’m a former member, and now an atheist. I’m not interested in bashing anyone or attempting to prove anything. Rather, I hope we can have a respectful conversation between believers, former believers and outsiders.
Yes, i think the Mormon concept of the afterlife is far more humane than the mainstream Christian view. The idea that humans will suffer infinite damnation for finite sins has replaced me ever since i really thought about it.
As a Jew, i grew up with no particular teachings about any afterlife. Orthodox Jews believe that when the Messiah comes, (at least some of) the dead will be resurrected in this world. But Reform Jews just don’t talk about it. In confirmation class, one of the kids asked the Rabbi about the afterlife, and he replied, “we don’t know”. Even Orthodox Judaism focuses on this life, for 99+% of its teachings. So i didn’t think deeply about anyone else’s ideas of the afterlife until junior high school. And i didn’t learn about the Mormon version until after college. And I’m still pretty fuzzy on it.
This is my hope, as well. I’m going to learn more about the Mormon religion.
Thanks for linking, @Monty !
This hasn’t changed, and is still taught as the Plan of Salvation.
What has changed is that I feel like in the 80’s the extra-scriptural parts of this were sort of thought about and built on and speculated on a lot. I’m thinking of things like Saturday’s Warrior, which I bet both @Author_Balk and @TokyoBayer remember (for those of you who have no idea, it was this musical written in the 70’s that involves scenes in the pre-existence and I guess also after death).
These days, the speculation parts are very much de-emphasized from the pulpit. Like, we still teach that this is what the plan of salvation is and what we’re here for, and you might hear members speculating about things like “maybe we all knew each other in the pre-existence and knew we’d be in a ward together,” but instead of going “gosh what would it be like to have our own world” or whatever, we’re exhorted to follow Christ (or Jesus 
). And there’s a lot more rhetoric about becoming like God and Jesus Christ not in the sense of “we will be gods” but more in the sense of becoming really good people and wanting to live with them forever. And being with God and Jesus Christ is way more emphasized than getting our own planet… which… actually that specific thing I don’t think I’ve really heard at all recently, now that I think about it some more (don’t get me wrong, it’s still our theology, I’m just saying that it doesn’t get talked about so much).
(@Author_Balk , this is the kind of thing I mean by – the underlying theology hasn’t really changed, but the emphasis really has.)
(I actually wonder if the Book of Mormon musical helped with this transition in the sense of how it made some of these doctrines more visible to a wider audience: “I believe… That God has a plan for all of us. / I believe – That plan involves / Me getting my own planet.” When you put it that way, it sort of makes a lot of sense that the Church has chosen to move away from that rhetoric from the pulpit.)
I also like the Church’s afterlife theology more than mainstream Christianity’s, which has always seemed to me to be rather restrictive. I have an agnostic friend who also likes it because he definitely does NOT believe that the Church is true, but hey, if he goes to the afterlife and finds out differently, at least our theology gives him a second chance!
Saturday’s Warrior was about the time I left. I never saw it. For me the musical was My Turn on Earth.
I remember as a missionary we brought a church member to help teach a lesson. The church member started talking about things along the lines of becoming God. We were upset that he would bring it up. I remember thinking it was because “they weren’t ready for that yet”. Later I was thinking that was sort of dishonest. Don’t let them know the things like that until after they become a member. Kind of a bait-and-switch.
What constitutes a good tithe?
Just for the record, some Catholic theologians have floated the idea that all humans end up getting saved. And it’s not actually contrary to anything in Catholic doctrine. There’s a lot of “we don’t know” in official Catholic teaching, too.
Catholics have that purgatory thing, which is finite punishment for many. I don’t know how common that is in other branches of Christianity. Does anyone know what the Orthodox Church teaches?
This is probably the biggest difference between Mormonism and the rest of Christianity. I don’t know of any other major religion in which people can become a god similar to the Christian God.
@puzzlegal , there was a big uproar when a previous president / prophet Gordon B. Hinckley gave interviews and seemed to downplayed that doctrine saying he didn’t know that much about it.
Back in my day, this was of extreme importance.
Here is quote from an article in a pro LDS site,
Here’s the selection from a 1997 interview in the San Francisco Chronicle, wherein Pres. Hinckley affirms the divine potential of women and men:
Q: There are some significant differences in your beliefs. For instance, don’t Mormons believe that God was once a man?
A: I wouldn’t say that. There was a little couplet coined, “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.” Now that’s more of a couplet than anything else. That gets into some pretty deep theology that we don’t know very much about.
Is it possible to say a few things about it as reading an entire book may not be possible.
How much influence do you think the Broadway show made on the Mormon community? Was it a big topic of conversation for the average person? Did people chat openly about seeing it, or was it something you would be embarrassed to admit? Did missionaries watch it as part of their training?
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(When I saw the musical, I was impressed by the nice response the Church made, printing an advertisement in the program pamphlet that was given to the audience.
They had a cute ad that started with a headline slogan, an old cliche which so many people have said about so many movies and shows: “the book is always better”.
Under that was a smiling face saying "you can watch the Book of Mormon in a theater, and you’ll be entertained for an evening…But you can come read the Book of Mormon in church, and your life will be changed forever "
I liked this reaction from the official Church, much more than the typical reaction of other churches when they are made fun of in popular culture. Usually, they act haughty, and issue dry, formal statements condemning the authors for being disrespectful and blasphemous.(the Monty Python movie Life of Brian, Martin Scorsese The Last Temptation of Christ
Well, they don’t believe in the Trinity so they are Christian at all.
Did you intend to have a “not” in there?
Great Basin Kingdom is a non-judgmental book about the founding of LDS and it’s economic development from inception through statehood. Arlington is LDS but makes it clear that the book does not have the imprimatur of the church. I have purchased copies inexpensively through Alibris.
The presentation is linear and well indexed so if reading is not practical it can be a handy reference. In my view this book should be in our school curriculum. Brigham Young created the state and culture of Utah. He populated the state by importing over 80,000 western Europeans. An interesting topic of debate is: could Utah have entered the US as a communitarian theocracy; or was it Constitutional not to allow it.
In the 1950s there was some discussion of Utahs’ communitarian base, the Beehive State, being close to Communism. Ezra Taft Benson put an end to that. It’s another book I need to read.
Something I was thinking about was related to changes in general. Some examples.
Change from 3 hours to 2 hours. Great. I wish that was in place back in the day.
It seems like there was a change to emphasis on the family. (Was that started with David O. McKay?). Great. That should be expanded to everyone.
Cultural changes. I’m thinking more Bible things. The Bible talks about women being quiet in church, jewelry, hair length. It’s more what it meant at the time. So maybe today would be men wearing dresses. Maybe in 50 years all men will be wearing dresses and it won’t mean anything. Religions could change based on the culture.
But other examples.
Polygamy. My great-great..,grandfather had to go to Mexico to avoid being arrested. He was following what he believed God wanted. It just seems wrong for God to say something, then change it based on what man does. The best I could say this was implemented by God as a temporary thing, but the whole thing seems illogical.
Things like believing man can become God. It was important back in the day. If it’s not being taught or minimized, what I being taught wrong? How would I have known?
Blacks and the Priesthood. I know other religions, such as Southern Baptists had some practices that could be considered racist. The Southern Baptist me would say this was flawed men putting their personal beliefs as doctrine. However, the Mormon church is supposed to be things that come from revelation from God. I was told that blacks couldn’t hold the priesthood because they weren’t “valiant” in the pre-existence. Was I taught wrong? Why didn’t the leaders correct false teaching?
I’m okay with changes that aren’t theology changes, but some of them seem to be. Do some of these things mean that I believed in a different religion than the one today?