I was trying to explain to a coworker how Catholics don’t really ‘worship’ Saints (but that’s a completely different thread…) and was trying to liken the confusion to that of a friend who was not brought up believing in the Trinity (i.e., how can you worship three entities, and still call the religion monotheistic by saying they’re all the same person? -again, another thread…) and she indicated that she’s Baptist and the Trinity is not part of her religion.
That kinda floored me. I thought that most Protestant religions took the Trinity with them when they gave up on Catholicism. I did a weak web search and came up with some sites like “Trinity Reformed Baptist Church”; so at least some Baptist churches have something to do with the Trinity. I know that the concept of the Trinity was controversial in early years of Christianity, but I thought that most of the non-Trinity camp was pretty much beaten into submission centuries ago. So my question is…
How many modern religions that would identify themselves as Christian have rejected the notion of the Trinity? Which ones?
In retrospect, I could have just asked the question without all of the extra rambling… well I wrote it, it stays.
Well, Catholics believe in the Trinity. Eastern Orthodox believe in the Trinity, although there’s a quibble between them and Western Christians about that whole “filioque” thing. In general, most Protestants have always accepted the Trinity. Lutherans, Calvinists (Presbyterians, Reformed Churches, and Congregationalists), and Anglicans (Episcopalians) are all Trinitarian; most Baptists and Methodists are, and mainstream Pentecostals are as well. The thing about Protestants is that there is no central authority, and so they tend to be all over the map on a lot of issues, and this applies to Baptists as a kind of microcosm of Protestantism–Baptists traditionally tend to be very congregational and individualistic. I have heard of anti-Trinitarian groups among Pentacostals, and Baptists are a diverse enough lot that you can probably find some group calling themselves “Baptists” who believe in just about any form of Christianity you can think up (I know there are both “Free Will” and Calvinistic Baptists, and there are “Seventh-Day” or Saturday-sabbath Baptists). The big Baptist groups–like the Southern Baptist Convention–are definitely Trinitarian. There are also a whole raft of “generic Protestant” denominations I can never keep straight–several different “Churches of God” which are variously Fundamentalist or Pentecostal, “Christian Churches” and “Churches of Christ” and so on. Again, usually these will be Trinitarian, but here you will find a lot of diversity among these groups, which often have confusingly similar names, and various “heresies” flourish.
One well-known group which is not Trinitarian is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mormons also understand the Trinity in a very different way from mainstream Christians.
Of course, it’s also possible your co-worker didn’t know what she was talking about, as far as the official position of her church.
I don’t know of any mainstream (meant here as tracing its origin to the various Protestant reformers) Protestant church that does not include the Trinity.
The Unitarians obviously don’t. The LDS has a different view of God than most Christian denominations and I’m not sure whether the Holy Spirit fits into their theology.
Other than that, unless the Seventh Day Adventists or the Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the Trinity, I can’t think of any other groups who might.
Certainly, the Baptists preach the Trinity (although your acquaintance’s pastor/congregation may have never made a big deal of it).
Seventh-Day Adventists are Trinitarian; Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t. Among Pentecostals, the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, which reports about 1.5 million members in the U.S., is anti-Trinitarian; the Church of God in Christ (a historically Black denomination, I believe) and the Assemblies of God, reporting about 5.5 million and 2.5 million U.S. members, respectively, are both Trinitarian. (The AOG is the largest Pentecostal denomination worldwide, with over 30 million members.) A pretty superficial search didn’t turn up any anti-Trinitarian Baptist bodies, but there are so many little splinter groups that I wouldn’t rule it out entirely.
As previously correctly stated, Latter-Day Saints don’t accept the notion of the Trinity as it’s usually understood. They believe that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three separate and distinct personages, unified in purpose but not in person. All three are considered gods, and the most common term used to refer to them collectively is the Godhead.
The Church of Christ believes the Holy Spirit ceased to operate after the original Day of Pentecost. I’m not sure if this makes them anti-trinitarian; that’s not the sort of word they’d be willing to apply to themselves even if it’s true. They won’t call themselves a denomination, or Protestant.
When I was living in Salt Lake City I found myself chairman of the Education Committee at a Catholic community (NEVER walk into a Council Meeting anywhere. They’re desperate for bodies), and had to dig up speakers. I was astounded to find that Catholics don’t consider Mormons “Christian”, despite their professed allegiance to the King James Bible. Apparently their belief in the Book of Mormon and other texts, and their widely divergent beliefs set them so far apart that Catholic and other Christian groups want to set them farther apart in the taxonomy of religions. Despite a long association with LDS folk, I’m not sure how they classify themselves.
But what has been said above is true – LDS beliefs place Christ somewhat farther from the Father than more “mainstream” Christians do.
We certainly consider ourselves Christian. I’ve never heard that the Catholic Church had a different opinion but I have heard that sentiment attributed to several Protestant denominations. That is, they (the Protestants) don’t consider Mormons to be Christians, not that Catholics don’t consider them to be Christians. Oh, you know what I mean!
This is an issue that really gripes most Latter-Day Saints. It is indisputable that Christ is the center of our religion. The official name of the church is “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”. It seems unfair to disallow our claim to be Christians because our beliefs about Christ differ from most other faiths.
We know we’re different. We’re not Protestants, we’re not Trinitarians, we’re not “orthodox” Christians, perhaps. But it seems like quite a burden on the term “Christian” to have to vote on whether the theology is agreeable or not before someone is included.
Sorry for the soapbox. Like I said, it’s a sore point.
Let me sum up: Mormons consider themselves Christians.
I thought traditionally, Catholics thought most non-Catholic Christians to be Christians, just damned, heretic, schismatic, believing the wrong thing, Christians.
Heretic was a much more heinous insult than pagan.
I have never heard of the RCC branding the LDS as non-Christian.
There is a point of technical theological discussions going back to the Council of Nicæa and a few others in the same time frame in which certain basic beliefs were hammered out as a basis for one to be considered Christian. Under that format, to be Christian, one would need to adhere to the points laid out in the Nicene Creed. In that limited context, the LDS is obviously not Christian. On the other hand, that sort of technical “Who gets to be a Christian?” debate hasn’t shown up in very many documents for a long time.
The Orthodox/Catholic split of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century each created such large internal wounds to Christianity that deciding who was or was not Christian took a back seat to trying to forcibly squelch heretical ideas within Christianity.
There may be a formal statement somewhere issued by some Catholic bishop sometime pointing out the divergence of belief between the LDS and the Nicene creed, but for practical matters, Catholics see Mormons as Christians.