But wouldn’t the “wine” (er, grape juice) be the stuff with the alcohol in it?
Whenever it’s time to run the Scientologists out of town at gun point like what happened to the Mormons in Nauvoo Illinois back in the 1800’s I’m ready.
I have always been confused by this too. Does it disinfect the water if you put wine in it? don’t you jsut get dirty water mixed with wine? I guess not.
My little girl was surprised just yesterday to hear that Jesus drank wine, though I’ve never ‘hidden’ it from her. I told her that everyone in Biblical times drank wine and that was OK; the LDS commandment about alcohol is a modern one, specifically for our time. I can see where it’s a tricky subject for the Baptists.
Yeah, that explanation is - back then, they couldn’t help but drink alcoholic wine as the water needed it to kill the germs & the juice alone wouldn’t keep for long without fermenting. We have good water & ways to preserve juice w/o fermentation so we don’t have a reason to drink alcoholic wine.
I didn’t say it was a GOOD explanation! G
I friend (ex-mormon) once told me that the LDS “prophets” are busily modifying the belief set of mormonism, He predicted that by 2050 or so, the LDS Church would be pretty much equivilent to anglican Christianity. So what would they do with the weird stuff? Can they just can the BOM? What about other embarrassing stuff (like the “Book” of Abraham-proven to be an unrelated egyptian funerary text?
All religions change-I expect that the LDS will, as the educational level of its membership rises.
You get water in which the microorganisms have been killed by contact with ethanol. The ancients did not know this, of course, but they knew drinking water mixed with wine was generally safer than drinking water straight.
Well, that’s one way to look at it, I guess. A primary tenet of the LDS Church is that we need a living prophet to serve as God’s mouthpiece for the entire church. He receives revelation of God’s will (as every member is entitled to do for their own stewardship; the prophet’s stewardship is thw whole church). Change is built into the LDS Church. The idea is that we should be continually learning, gradually getting rid of errors and wrong traditions and replacing them with better ways.
The current LDS prophet hasn’t moved away from ‘weird stuff’ at all; under his leadership, the number of temples worldwide has increased from about 50 to about 120. The Nauvoo temple has been rebuilt and scholarship on Joseph Smith has flourished. Since the 1980’s, when the previous prophet told everyone to focus on the Book of Mormon more, BoM scholarship has grown tremendously and it’s common wisdom that everyone should read the BoM daily (as well as other scripture). And we still like the Book of Abraham too.
From an outside perspective, the main change has been in LDS PR; there’s been a large focus on raising awareness of the Mormons as Christians (obviously that hasn’t succeeded yet) and on actively showing Mormons to be, on the whole, nice people who won’t eat you. Within the church there’s been an effort to root out old ‘folk doctrine’ (that is, Mormon ULs) that has no basis in scripture and to get everyone studying the doctrine and learning the gospel for themselves.
But I don’t see how the LDS Church could possibly “can the BoM” or get rid of the weird stuff. The entire theological bedrock of LDS thought would have to be thrown out too–not going to happen. If people want to be Methodists or Anglicans, they can go be them, no problem.
Exactly. It wouldn’t have killed the bugs if it was just grape juice.
At any rate, it seems that there are any number of rationalization one can come up with, especially if you pick and choose your historical facts carefully enough.
I suppose it can’t be repeated enough that all a religion needs to be accepted is that most of its members are nice, if rather boring. Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc? Most members are nice, if rather boring. Scientology? The most public members are obviously nuts and the ones you meet on the street are batshit crazy.
A large part of the problems the Muslims have is that too much notice is given the crazies and not enough to the ones who aren’t, but the crazies are WAY crazy and the rest are nice, if rather boring, and make for lousy TV.
Ditto - thanks for expressing my thoughts & experiences so well.
Next year all adult members will be taking a Sunday School Class on the Book of Mormon and another class, in Relief Society (for women) and Priesthood (for men) on the life and prophesies of Joseph Smith. There is a major effort in the works to publish the Joseph Smith Papers. The LDS church is trying hard to dispel misconceptions, mischaracterizations and myths about the church,but I see nothing about “running away” from the core docrines of the faith.
Only about 150 years old. History sandblasting has not been completed yet. We can still find Smiths goofiness in text. It will be erased in a century or so.
Hm, I have gotten both, and I am in eastern CT. I would take a mormon missionary over a JW any day as we can have a nice discussion, and they recognize when it is time to leave whereas a JW is heavily into badgering. When I worked nights the mormons always apologized for waking me up, and asked if there was a more convenient time to come back and left politely [on their bicycles!] where the JW wouldnt leave, kept wanting to come in and discuss my spiritual situation despite me being a night worker [it was CRUCIAL, and more important than sleep… :rolleyes: ]
It got to the point where I would hyper my dog Luke into a barking frenzy at the thought of getting to go outside and hurl open the door yelling ‘kill’ when ever I saw the JW drive into my yard. Kept them away like a charm. Of course Luke was happily barking because he got to go outside and romp around the yard and had no idea he was threatening, though he was hopeful at the possibility of being taken to the local McDonalds for a naked burger.
You might want to print this out and frame it. It looks pretty rare to me, possibly even unique.
So? Many Christian faiths don’t recognize Catholics as Christians.
Internecine conflicts aside, Mormonism is a branch of Christianity in any objective sense that matters. That is part of the answer to the OP’s question. To any disinterested observer, Mormons are Christians and Scientologists are not, so that’s why Scientology is viewed as weirder.
The Senate was more concerned with Smoot’s plural marriages then him simply being a Mormon.
The Church of Spiritual Technology owns the copyrights to Hubbard’s works. The Church of Scientology pays licensing fees to the CST which presumably come from the auditing fees that believers pay. The Religious Technology Corporation is the organization responsible for enforcement of the CST’s copyrights.
I don’t think Smoot actually had more than one wife. So far as I remember the Senate was concerned with the suspicion that although the LDS had officially renounced plural marriages that it was secretly approving of them.
It may be that other Christian faiths do not recognise Catholics as Christians, although I query whether the number amounts to ‘many’.
However, with regard to Mormons and Christians, the rejection position is universal and the causes are not not minor and historical as with Ch vs C. Instead their elementary doctrine is outside that of each Christian faith.
Actually, I’m pretty sure there are plenty of Christian churches that accept Mormons as Christians; it’s mostly the fundamentalists that don’t. I’ve never had a Catholic accuse me of not being Christian, for example. No other churches accept an LDS baptism as valid, but that’s perfectly fair–we don’t accept theirs either.
Eh? Why have they not already been published? Like, more than a hundred years ago?