Sounds like the theater handled things pretty poorly, but I guess I can understand why somebody would try that. It would suck to get complaints from people who don’t like Mormonism … but why would anybody go to a religious movie without checking to see what religion it was about?
I was raised LDS, and it just blew my mind that anybody could claim we weren’t Christian. Now, though, I think I’ve figured out that it’s essentially an issue of semantics. When Mormons say they are Christian, they’re using “Christian” to mean “believe Christ is the savior of mankind and the son of God, and in traditional Christian values.” When Catholics or Protestants or other folk who are usually designated “Christians” say Mormons are not Christians, they’re using “Christian” to mean “believe Christ is the savior of mankind and the son of God, and in traditional Christian values, in accordance with the doctrinal traditions that people known as Christians have had for the past couple thousand years,” which includes things like the non-corporeality and infinitude of God, the lack of any other deities, etc.
In the early years of Mormonism, the leaders actually seemed quite proud of the fact that they weren’t exactly Christian in the traditional sense, because “Christianity” was really a counterfeit gospel that had totally perverted the true gospel of Jesus. In fact, they were the only real Christians, and they would be victorious over the apostate Christians.
Obviously, that didn’t happen, so I think now there’s a much greater emphasis on presenting Mormonism as … as something not incompatible with or a replacement for traditional Christianity, but simply a more complete version of Christianity. They used to emphasize the differences, and now they emphasize the similarities.
I think the whole thing is just silly, but it clearly has real-world ramifications for the ability of Mormon missionaries to convert Christians, so I can see the point of both sides. Mormons feel that calling them non-Christian is insulting and ridiculous; they know they believe in and worship Jesus Christ just as much as other Christians do, and they share identical values now that mainstream Mormonism has been officially polygamy-free for ~116 years and actually polygamy-free for ~85 years. Why on earth would they be relegated to the status of a “cult of Christianity” just because of some doctrinal differences? On the other hand, Christians feel that the doctrinal differences are significant, and that the Jesus that Mormons believe in differs from their Jesus in too many ways to allow them to be considered “real” Christians.
Anyway.
