[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
This leads to another question: in 100 years, will Scientology be a fringe-but-generally accepted religion, much like Mormonism is today? Will there be a handful of $cieno congresspeople, and amybe a candidate for president?
Wow, scary.
[/QUOTE]
We had a big thread on this a while back. Personally, I don’t see anything preventing Scientology from becoming more mainstream like Mormonism has, once a century or two has passed. Lots of people in the other thread disagreed, though.
Mormons caught a lot of crap in their early days, including being seen as a bunch of thugs – I don’t think Scientology has anything comparable to the polygamy or the Mountain Meadows Massacre in their history, so they may have an even easier time of it. Although as Der Trihs and others pointed out, Mormonism does have a Christian basis and shares most of the same beliefs as orthodox Christianity, so Scientology does have that disadvantage.
[QUOTE=Sevastopol]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Put another way: All Orthodox, all Catholic, and most Protestant* Christians follow the trinitarian Christianity of the Nicene Creed. Mormons are at least as far out of that mainstream as the ancient Arians and the surviving Monophysite sects.
*Jehovah’s Witnesses deny Christ’s divinity, at least as being coequal with Jehovah’s – and it is for that reason debatable whether they count as “Protestant Christians” at all; they certainly come out of the Protestant Christian tradition, but so do we Unitarians.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
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.
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Yeah. B.H. Roberts was actually the first Mormon elected to Congress (the House of Representatives) but he was denied his seat because we was, in fact, practicing plural marriage. Reed Smoot himself wasn’t, which is why he was eventually allowed to become a Senator. They were worried that the church’s official renunciation of polygamy in 1890 was just a cover to attain statehood, which was apparently justified; the church actually had to issue another “manifesto” in 1904, stating that they really meant it and polygamy was over, and even then there are records of plural marriages being performed up until about 1920 when the mainstream LDS church finally got everybody to understand that they really, really meant it … thus kicking off the fundamentalists.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Put another way: All Orthodox, all Catholic, and most Protestant* Christians follow the trinitarian Christianity of the Nicene Creed. Mormons are at least as far out of that mainstream as the ancient Arians and the surviving Monophysite sects.
*Jehovah’s Witnesses deny Christ’s divinity, at least as being coequal with Jehovah’s – and it is for that reason debatable whether they count as “Protestant Christians” at all; they certainly come out of the Protestant Christian tradition, but so do we Unitarians.
[/QUOTE]
Yes.
[QUOTE=chorpler]
Yeah. B.H. Roberts was actually the first Mormon elected to Congress (the House of Representatives) but he was denied his seat because we was, in fact, practicing plural marriage. Reed Smoot himself wasn’t, which is why he was eventually allowed to become a Senator. They were worried that the church’s official renunciation of polygamy in 1890 was just a cover to attain statehood, which was apparently justified; the church actually had to issue another “manifesto” in 1904, stating that they really meant it and polygamy was over, and even then there are records of plural marriages being performed up until about 1920 when the mainstream LDS church finally got everybody to understand that they really, really meant it … thus kicking off the fundamentalists.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=dropzone]
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.
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Re: paragraph (1). You should come here to South Korea, the home of the World Mission Society Church (also known here as the Heavenly Mother Church). Not only are they BSC, but they send out incredibly gorgeous–and I mean drop-dead, you’d walk a hundred miles barefoot on broken glass to see gorgeous–college-aged single spokeswomen well-trained in English to try to convert us foreign teachers here. So far, as the Wiki says, their success in that effort is mostly on Korean-Americans (aka Gyopo).
[QUOTE=acsenray]
Thanks for the correction, Monty. I have no interest in spreading misconceptions. I don’t consider myself an expert on Mormonism, but I thought that this was basic enough information that I was safe in expounding it. Let me just :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: for the injury I have inflicted on the Straight Dope mission.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp]
This leads to another question: in 100 years, will Scientology be a fringe-but-generally accepted religion, much like Mormonism is today? Will there be a handful of $cieno congresspeople, and amybe a candidate for president?
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
Mormonism didn’t have a Lisa McPherson. Nor is she the only one.
[/quote]
Lisa McPherson? Mormonism had much worse accusations directed against it, like blood atonement and the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where 120 defenseless men, women, and children were slain. Yet they’ve overcome all that in just a century.
You know, this could well be the defining factor. Scientology will lever live THAT down.
Well, Orson Scott Card of Ender’s Game fame … and there’s always Battlestar Galactica …
[QUOTE=Speaker for the Dead]
I would say that part of it (except for the more cultish offshoots) is that the Mormons aren’t out to suck people’s money the way the Scientologists are.
[/QUOTE]
Tithing is a financial operation. They demand tithing.
There is a kind of sociological growth pattern as cults become religions. If you look at the history of Mormonism, 50 years into their life cycle they WERE treated like loons.
The single word that answers the OP is nothing more than:
Gentrification
Scientology is making the transition from cult to religion, and people are currently resisting it. In 75 years, no one will care about Scientologists either.
