If, like you, you were baptized in a Catholic (or any other Christian denomination that is in communion with the Catholic Church)), even if you denounce the Church and its teaching, through the act of baptism they will still consider you a Catholic, and you can’t do anything about it. Yes, pisses me off too.
Basically, every church allows non-believers to remain members if they don’t bring it up to often, and are willing to go through the motions. There are tons of people who basically never think about theology. They aren’t lying, they just don’t care.
You might have to state a belief in God to convert to Judaism? I’m not sure about that. It’s certainly something that pretty much never comes up for people who are raised in the faith. I mean, sure, we pray, “Hear oh Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”. But no one ever asks you, “do you really believe that stuff?”
I’m saying that kids who are raised in some weird commune are unlikely to stay in that commune as adults, unless they really buy into its beliefs. Whereas lots of kids are raised Catholic and never really care about any of that but like the rituals or the family togetherness and stay in the Catholic Church.
Basically, i think religiosity, or maybe spirituality, is a fundamental human trait, like enjoying music or dance, that is basically irrational, and very important to the people who have a lot of it, and not very important to those who don’t. People with a high degree of religiosity care what their religion teaches, and tend to either buy into a sect or become ardent atheists. I have a friend who converted from generic Conservative Judaism to Chabad-Lubuvich. His brother converted to some branch of Christianity and became a monk or something, and his sister became a militant atheist. That’s a family with a high degree of religiosity. But a lot of people just don’t care very much. They have low religiosity. All the real religions tolerate those low-religiosity people, and have a place for them. Sometimes an important place doing stuff like organizing other members of the church to aid the sick and stuff.
Yes, and by the numbers, Mormons are almost all of the extant non-nicene Christians. And all the other groups are generally rejected in their claim to be Christian by mainstream Christians, too.
I guess having Christians tell you that you’re not a real Christian is better than Christians burning you at the stake, breaking you on the wheel, or any of the other things Christians used to do to heretics.
From the outside looking in, it seems very simple. If the most important prophet in your religion is Jesus, you’re a Christian. Thinking that Jesus is divine is optional; thinking that Jesus is the same divine entity as God is also optional.
Thanks for the explanation, puzzlegal. I’ll keep my personal attitude towards religion out of this interesting thread.
As the OP, I deliberately put this in MPSIMS to avoid “testifying” either for or against religion, Mormonism or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in specific.
I’m not trying to call you out personally, but I think that we have a really good opportunity for an interesting discussion because of the mix of current and former members as well as other people.
I am interested in what current members think (I could ask my mother, but that would give her false hope that I still have interest in returning to the Church) and can provide background to the roots of Mormonism as well as what we believed back in the days.
I would rather not get dragged down into debates or rants.
Ha, wow, I’m so deep in that I actually didn’t think about this. Because of course you’re right. But it didn’t really occur to me because of course good members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints don’t drink or smoke or do drugs! Thanks @Broomstick.
I don’t think my sister-in-law’s evangelical church follows the Nicene creed. I mean, they don’t not follow it exactly – if you said most of the lines to them they’d say, “sure, I more or less agree with that” – but I think there’s some stuff they actually don’t agree with, like “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” But I’m not absolutely sure – I’ll ask her next time I see her.
Haha, no argument there.
IDK, do you spend a lot of time (as I did, in that period of my life) asking random not-particularly-interested-in-theology Christians about it and then trying to pin them down as to what they think the “mystery” part means? It’s true that actual pastors and people who spend time thinking about this stuff didn’t say that they thought they were separate people (I asked them too).
Huh. Not…. really? It’s not lip service. It’s stuff that people truly and fervently believe, and it permeates everything they do, and people like me who don’t necessarily truly believe it all can have a tough time when every week you’re hearing about how all of this is definitely true and isn’t it great. (I think I’ve now made my peace with it, but it took a while.)
And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also asks a lot of its members. I mean, there’s ten percent tithing and having a calling (a church job) and having someone/some people you minister to, and quite a few meetings. And everyone has a calling, not just the people who want to (as in many other churches). Honestly, I don’t think it would really work if most people didn’t truly believe.
That being said, I’ve known a few people who come regularly even though they don’t believe, often (but not always) to support a family member.
I am interested in religion, and have asked a lot of people about their religion. No, i don’t try to “pin down” anyone. I’m curious, not attempting to convert anyone. But I’d suggest that if you were doing that, there would be a strong bias among many people who just don’t think about it much to say what they hope will satisfy you, so you’ll go away. I think the true answer for most of those people was, “I’m not sure and don’t really care”.
I think so. It’s too much of a commitment. We went through the time commitments in the other thread, and it’s so much more than simply casually attending.
An analogy is the difference between two sports my son participates in. I’ll hide it because it’s not directly related to the topic and only an analogy.
Summary
In one, we travel two hours (each way) every Sunday and participate in a number of several-day races (mostly within a few hours, but also several in other locations in Japan and we’ve gone abroad for international competitions. It requires a lot of commitment from parents, and I have been on the race committee / race management for a dozen races. I have to research all the necessary equiment and such. It requires a huge time, emotional and mental commitment, even as a parent.
In the other one, one of the parents is the volunteer coach and does everything. The coach even drops my son off after practice and the kids travel together for matches with parents taking turns or the kids taking the train. While I’m thrilled he’s doing well and enjoying the experience, it just doesn’t require much of a commitment from me as a parent.
I found a survey of Mormons by Pew Research released in 2012. Keep in mind this is 13 years ago and so there may be some changes.
More than four out of five Mormons (82%) say religion is very important to them, compared with 56% of the general public. Mormons closely resemble black Protestants (86% of whom say religion is very important to them) and white evangelicals (83% very important) on this question. Mormons are significantly more likely than Catholics (56%) and white mainline Protestants (45%) to say religion is very important in their lives.
Upwards of three-quarters of Mormons (77%) say they attend religious services at least once a week, and in response to a separate question two-thirds (67%) say they are “very active” in the LDS Church. Mormon rates of worship attendance are well above the national average, with 39% of the general public saying they attend religious services at least weekly. Mormons’ church attendance exceeds that reported by white evangelical Protestants, among whom nearly two-thirds (64%) say they attend church at least once a week.
For example, Mormons are nearly unanimous in the view that God the Father and Jesus Christ are separate, physical beings, with 94% expressing this view. Identically large majorities of Mormons affirm that the president of the LDS Church is a prophet of God (94%) and that families can be bound together eternally in temple ceremonies (95%). Mormons are also united in the belief that the Book of Mormon was written by ancient prophets and translated by Joseph Smith (91%); by comparison, less than one-in-ten say that the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph Smith himself (8%).
Note that this servey was only for people who considered themselves Mormon, so people like me would not likely to have been included.
In my experience the vast majority really do deeply believe, and the number of “cultural Mormons” are much less.
I can’t speak for @raspberry_hunter , but one of the things that is attractive for a lot of Mormons is that the Mormon religion claims to have answers for everything. Or at least it used it.
It started back with Joseph Smith and his revelations. One commentary at the time noted that the Book of Mormon answered all the burning questions of the time.
JS had a large number of revelations and that everything would be revealed. He taught that the truth was known before but lost due to corruption.
I was just talking to my siblings about Mormonism (they are also out) and we were agreeing about how much emphasis the Church placed on facts and knowledge.
It’s a completely different way of thinking and I can see someone being surprised that other religions are not as detailed.
It would have been his bishop, the lay leader of the ward (congregation).
Like a lot of other organizations, you get leadership roulette where it depends on the leader.
Being gay or even openly gay isn’t grounds for excommunication. However, having sex outside of a heterosexual marriage is serious and would be grounds for being sanctioned.
It could have been a case of don’t ask if you are having sex or perhaps either he was celibate or he wasn’t candid with the leader.
He may have been sanctioned. He was not a practicing Mormon when i met him, either. But he said he wasn’t excommunicated. And i believe that he did pray about his sexuality, did hear an answer that he was okay, and that the bishop gave that some weight. Also, he may have been celebate at the time, he didn’t say.
That is really interesting to this nonbeliever. I think I had sorta thought that the believers in all the different religions pretty much just picked whichever “story” and community out of convenience, family/friends, whatever. I hadn’t really thought that some mainstream religious communities trended “more zealous” than others. Unless we are talking about snake handlers or speaking in tongues evangelicals - which IMO might get close to the religion vs cult border. Or, on the other hand, seekers of christianity-lite, who happily belnd with woo.
It is hard to say this without being insulting, but the Mormon story seems especially hard to believe, compared to other mainstream religions. I don’t know a lot of Mormons, but I know a lot of christians who pretty much think most of the supernatural stuff in their religions is hooey. Somehow a vague christianity strikes me as - um - less assertive than believing in the Joseph Smith story. That Mormon appeals to the “highly religious” in my mind nudges Mormon at least slightly cultward.
There are other sanctions for sins related to sex that are short of excommunication.
I donno. The whole idea of a god favoring one particular group of sheep herders doesn’t seem logical to me but again, that’s not the focus of this thread. Perhaps a tread in GD would be more appropriate?
Yeah - sorry. In my mind, the vagueness allowed by the passage of millennia kinda smooths out some of the rough edges - blurring th eline from belief to custom. But I’ll keep any further such thoughts from this thread. It is just that this informative thread has spurred such thoughts in my fevered heathen brain. 
I don’t think the Mormon story is any weirder than the weird details of most other religions I’ve studied. The only thing that makes it less believable, imho, is that we have pretty good contemporary evidence that Joseph Smith was a con man, and used similar cons in secular settings before he discovered religion. 
I mean, have you read Revelations? Job?
Again, if you are interested in have the active members participate in answering your questions, keeping the focus on the beliefs may be better. ,
I think for outsiders some of the stories of many religions would seem farfetched.
From my previous Southern Baptist life. if you asked me what Christianity meant, I would give things such as beliefs about God, Jesus, the Bible, Salvation by Grace and so forth. There would be significant differences with that and what I believed as a Mormon. If I needed to accept Mormons as “part of the club” that would basically negate everything that was important to me.
And in my previous Mormon life, I would say that the other religions were good and would probably result in going to the 2nd kingdom (Mormons should know what I mean) (except for maybe me, since I’m an apostate). But, to make it to the highest level would require things like a Mormon baptism, going through the Mormon temple, etc.
Unless things have changed.
Well, sure, they’re heretical Christians (to Nicene Christians, obviously Nicene Christians are the heretics to non-Nicene Christians).
If you told a hardliner Shia that they had to accept a Sunni as “part of the club”, they may very well tell you that this would ‘basically negate everything that was important to them’ about Islam. And vice versa.
It doesn’t mean that an outsider needs to agree with either of them that the other guy isn’t really Muslim.
And an Anabaptist would tell you that a Catholic’s baptism doesn’t count because only an adult consciously choosing to be baptized can undertake the solemn ritual, while a Catholic would tell you that the Anabaptist’s baptism is invalid. But neither of them gets to tell the outside world that they can’t view the other as a real Christian.
I believe that a Catholic would accept an Anabaptist’s baptism. The Catholic Church wouldn’t consider that person to be in communion with the Catholic Church, but would likely be considered validly baptized.
From www.catholic.com:
Those who have been validly baptized outside the Church become Catholics by making a profession of the Catholic faith and being formally received into the Church. This is normally followed immediately by confirmation and the Eucharist.
I don’t know much about Anabaptist belief, but i believe they would consider a Catholic to be a Christian who isn’t doing it right, rather than a non-Christian. (Much as a Mormon might view a Catholic.)
I don’t know about today, but traditionally they used to torture them to death, put them in cages, lifted them up the Cathedral and let them rot. The cages are still hanging there for everyone to see.