The NOI has no connection at all with Islamic theology or practice. They don’t follow the pillars, they have a different prophet, and they have a completely different set of creation and afterlife beliefs. They are not permitted into Mecca because they don’t fit any of the criteria which would define them as Muslim.
LDS, on the other hand, fits every criterion which would define them as Christian (salvation through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, etc.)
LDS is not comparable to NOI. A better analogy would be something like the white supremacist “Christian Identity” movement which has its own bizarre race mythos entirely off the reservation from anything that could be considered core Christian theology, and in that way, entirely comparable to NOI.
I’d bet this was the theater’s main motivation. That they felt they had to take it upon themselves to protect their customers from potentially being exposed to points of view they don’t already hold is pretty damn sad to me. I’d be curious to know if people would have in fact complained about not being warned if the theatre had simply sold tickets and said nothing (which doesn’t make it any less sad, although the target for my head-shaking might shift).
Re: the Ticket Seller
Perhaps the ticket seller beleiving that Mormons have a different view of Christ than many other Christian churches, wanted to let people know what they were buying a ticket for. I personally think that “The Passion of Christ” should have had warnings. I know people who took children thinking it would be a sunday school lesson type movie and then complained about the brutality of the movie.
Re: Christian -vs- Mormon
The LDS beliefs are fundamentally different as to who Jesus and God are. If you disagree on who and what God is, you cant agree on who and what the Son of God is.
Re: Mormons are nice people
I have known really nice people of the LDS faith, of the Baptist faith, Catholics, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan and shoot I have even know some folks who claimed to be Satan worshippers who were basically nice folks who took care of their families. They thought Satan got a raw deal and was misunderstood by the writers of the Bible.
Re: Mormons as Polygamist
The reason the church discarded the doctrine is it was a condition for Utah to become a state. Not because the Mormons thought it over and decided polygamy was doctrinely a bad idea. [EMAIL=http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/statehood_and_the_progressive_era/partypoliticsandutahstatehood.html]link
I agree. I can only see this as a misguided attempt by the theater employees to protect the sensibilities of theatergoing members of non-LDS sects, whom, they may have feared, might become offended upon discovering that the Christian movie that they went to view wasn’t about their own particular brand of Christianity. I further see it as an over-reaction to the “family values” and “culture wars” memes. They were essentially informing patrons, “This movie portrays Mormonism is a positive light. If you’re going to be offended by that, leave now. Don’t later claim that you were misled into seeing this movie.”
Unfortunately, they attempted to direct this message only to those who were, I suppose, the target of their concern. Perhaps it would have been better if they had passed this message to all patrons, regardless of their religious beliefs. Personally, I’d still it offensive that they perceive that such a message is necessary. But that, I suppose, goes to the heart of the whole culture wars thing – I don’t think it ought to be necessary to warn people that their beliefs may be challenged by what they are about to see. Others may, and do, disagree, and from that disagreement stems the motivation for what you see here.
It’s not the ticket seller’s job to worry about the ticket buyers belief system. The ticket seller’s job is to sell me a ticket. If I have any questions, I’ll ask. Other than that, they can shut the fuck up. I don’t need to hear their ignorant commentaries.
This is patently untrue. LDS beliefs regarding Jesus are exactly the same as other Christian denominations.
The relevance of this paragraph is what? Some satanists are nice people, therefore it’s ok to ask inapprpropriate questions out of a cinema box office and offer unsolicited (and inaccurate) warnings about the religious content of the move?
I read the article, and it seemed to have a back-story that it assumed people already knew about. What is this movie about, and why woudl the ticket-sellers ask about the customer’s religion? I just am not understanding what went on?
The movie States of Grace is about Mormon missionaries in Los Angeles. As Giraffe and Kyrie and others have suggested, the non-Mormon ticket-sellers were probably assuming that some non-Mormon moviegoers were assuming that the film would be about non-Mormon Christians.
Personally, if I were one of those non-Mormon moviegoers, I’d be a bit offended by the ticket clerk’s implication that I was dumb enough to shell out 9–12 bucks for movie theater admission without even knowing what the fucking movie was about. But I guess some moviegoers actually are that dumb, and the ticket clerks were probably picturing an exodus of indignant customers ten minutes into the movie, all demanding their money back.
Either that, or they were trying to “protect” their fellow non-Mormon Christians from being exposed to any potential Mormon influences even in a fictional portrayal. Which, IMHO, would make them self-righteous, interfering assholes.
Really? Pray tell how is Catholism, for example, any less bullshit than Mormonism? Do Catholic bulls eat mint leaves so their bull have a minty-fresh smell?
No offense, but you’re indicating some major ignorance about the topic. For one, the idea that Islam was spawned from Christianity is ridiculous; prior to Islam, Arabs were certainly not Christian - they were polytheist. And while Christianity and Judaism were both present in the region, the Qur’an was a separate revelation entirely. And while Muslims hold the Torah (and perhaps the other Hebrew scriptures - I’m not certain) to be somewhat sacred, they don’t consider Christian scripture to be sacred at all. But Islam was not directly spawned from either Judaism or Christianity in the way that, say, Mormonism developed from Christianity, or that Christianity developed from Judaism. Mormons still consider the Christian scriptures sacred; most of the new Mormons had been Christians previously; Mormons consider themselves Christian. None of those things are true of Islam. It’s a terrible analogy.
If they were trying to make sure people knew what the movie was about, they were already way overstepping. You seem to be trying to explain away some of their actions but the idea of a movie theater taking it upon itself to warn the audience about a movie is already ridiculous. I suppose next a theater will try to make sure people know Brokeback Mountain is a gay movie before they see it.
:rolleyes: Please.
It’s certainly an unusual belief - that’s why I mentioned it. It’s one of the particularly odd beliefs that Mormons hold, when compared with other Christian beliefs. But your question is a definitional one - how do you define “Christianity”? The nature of God is important, but I would argue that it’s not central the way Jesus, His sacrifice, and His resurrection are. The concept of salvation through the Christ is the central tenet of Christianity, not what God was doing back before the creation.
I had thought that Islam considers Jesus to be a minor prophet, and also that it considers both Jews and Christians to be “People of the Book”. Am I wrong?
Not sacred exactly, no ( well kinda, sorta - holy without being sacred as it were, due to its supposed flaws ). But they do accept those parts of the New Testament not directly contradicted by the Qur’an. Some Muslims when speaking ecumenically will refer to the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Final Testament ( i.e. Qur’an ).
FWIW - I spent a summer in Idaho Falls - a town which is 30% Mormon, 30% Evangenical Christian and 30% everything else. It was very much like what living in Northern Ireland must be like. The amount of resentment and ill will between the Mormons and Bible thumping Christians was huge.
At the time I had a 0, 2, and 5 year old. So, when I went to the store, I looked like a good Mormon woman. Many of the folks would smile at me in a knowing way, the others scowl and look angry. I “won” a free manicure and the person who did my nails told me that she had 4 kids, “but not for the reason you think.” The reason I was supposed to think was because she was a Mormon. She wanted to make it VERY clear that she wasn’t one of those.
About the first thing I’d be asked (either directly or obliquely) was whether or not I was Mormon. When I said I wasn’t folks that were not Mormon would go on about how they are a sect not really Christian, etc. etc. Many would read the home town of products they were planning to buy. If the address was in Utah, they’d assume it was a Mormon-owned company and buy another brand. I had several parents tell me that they home schooled because they were not Mormon. Their perception was that Mormon’s controlled all the schools. They were run as basically Mormon parachial schools, and non-Mormon kids were descriminated against.
So - for something like the OP described to happen in a place like Idaho Falls would be fairly typical.
I did see fairies! I did! They had diaphanous wings, and shiny wands, and silver tiaras. They gave me tiramisu and a little rainbow flag and told me that my necklace was fabulous. Then they left, saying that Xanadu started at 7 and they did not want to be late.
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So when did this whole “Mormons aren’t Christians” idea, and mutual resentment between Mormons and some non-Mormon Christian sects, hit the cultural big time? Seems to me that I don’t remember such nation-wide awareness of evangelical/fundamentalist anti-Mormonism (except for hostility towards Mormon polygamy) going on, say, twenty years ago. Has this been a constant phenomenon that just slipped under my radar till relatively recently, or is it part of the recent growth of conservative/fundamentalist Christian sects?
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