Are Mormons Protestant or their own thing?

[Ridgerunner]

Our equivalent would probably be “McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers”. They were for everyone in the public school system (American egalitarianism, you know.) They taught grammar and spelling, but in a context that included classic stories, history (patriotic of course) and, yes, snippets from the bible. Thus the word “eclectic”.

 

[q54332]

I meant that they agreed with the biggest claim the reformation made that the Church had no authority, at least the Catholic Church

 

[Hodos]

The Reformers never made a claim that the Church has no authority. That would be a misrepresentation of what the Reformation was about. The Reformers merely disagreed on the proper limits of that authority in submission to God’s word.

 

[tuffsmurf]

While JohnStrachans comment is a huge oversimplification of things, your grandparents hardly lived in the middle-ages, right?

 

[Angannas]

They are like Islam in that their founder wrote his own Scriptures. But Islam is very strictly monotheistic

Definitely their own thing in my opinion. I’ve heard it described as Islam for white people. At the end of the day it’s a polytheistic religion completely at odds with any true Christianity.

 

[OddBird]

Check out pro-testare in Latin. It means “to affirm”, “to testify in favor of”. That’s the original meaning of the word, which would maybe better rendered today if we spoke of Attestants rather than Protestants.

 

[Neithan]

What the reformation did was start a change in the church/state relationship so that by the 1800’s we had freedom of religion instead of a state mandated church.

Not exactly: the Reformation actually melded church and state closer together than ever, so that they actually fused in many places, and the “Divine Right of Kings” doctrine, supported by Luther, brought about an era of absolutism. Protestant and Reformed state churches proliferated and were even more oppressive in their religious enforcement. The witch hunts were far worse under these governments.

The Anglicans, while not exactly Protestant, replaced the Pope as head of the church with their King, weakening the inherent separation of church and state. Americans escaped the tyranny and were a mix of different sects (including Catholics) as well as deistic freethinkers, so they fought for an independent republic with freedom of religion. That inspired the French who revolted and started the French Revolution.

So actually the Enlightenment value of freedom of religion was a reaction against the increased politicization of religion that the Reformation introduced.

 

[AlbMagno]

I agree that, socially, serfs were treated horribly. But, in education and religion they were treated very fairly, they could apply to be part of the clergy and some feudal workplaces; they would eventually be educated and tended in matters of healthcare by Mendicant Orders.

There is even one serf who became Pope.

And now there is the hypothesis that serfs could read:

Really, many protestants here want to push the idea of the Dark Ages to support breaking from the papacy but that doesn’t add up.

Was the mediterrranean civilization better in Late Antiquity? Maybe. It depends. But sure the Church did extraordinary thing with what she got.

 

[AlbMagno]

I agree with what you say until the last paragraph, it’s true that Enlightment was a reaction against Church-state in some form, but at the same time, in a nuanced and philosophical form, Enlightment also developed from protestantism.

You see, with Copernicus started the Scientific Revolution and all was well (the Church was mostly ok with science except for the Galileo incident), in Universities, the complementary philosophical approach was Scholasticism, which could be adapted to the new sciences as demonstrated before by Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon.

However, a threat to this was in some way Reformed theologians and Reformed philosophers, including scientists themselves such as Newton, who despised the Church for theological and political reason. Add to this the whole Renaissance philosophy which dumbed the image of the Medieval Church and the result is:

Secret societies. Everywhere.

From Scotland, England, Germany: Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Illuminaties. Protestant scientists and intellectuals who began to reunite and invent some obscure rituals and alchemical language, and to think in how to overthrow the Old Regime.
From them Enlightment was born. There were obviously some good values in Enlightment, but with it came also a strong anti-catholic movement. And from that came the martyrdom in the French Revolution and other wars fought for liberty, but also for secularism.

 

[gazelam]

Thank you for your response. It is always best to listen to what an actual member says they believe.
Question: do Latter-Day Saints believe in the Trinity?

Thanks for asking. We do not believe in the Trinity as classically defined in Orthodox Christianity. We believe that God the Father has a body of flesh and bone as does Jesus Christ. Were anyone able to withstand being in the presence of Both at the same time you would see that they are separate and distinct in the same way that Stephen “saw… Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). We believe that the Father reigns supreme and that He has given all power to the (subordinate) Son. (Matthew 28:18) We believe that no one could inherit Eternal Life had Christ not atoned for our sins. We believe that the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit. One common claim is that we’re Arians. That is mistaken since in Arian belief is that Christ was created ex-nihilo at some point. We believe that Christ and each of us has existed in some form forever, so therefore we don’t accept the Arian view of Christ being created ex-nihilo. We don’t believe that Christ has two natures. I hope this helps…

 

[JonNC]

JonNC:

Thank you for your response. It is always best to listen to what an actual member says they believe.
Question: do Latter-Day Saints believe in the Trinity?

Thanks for asking. We do not believe in the Trinity as classically defined in Orthodox Christianity. We believe that God the Father has a body of flesh and bone as does Jesus Christ. Were anyone able to withstand being in the presence of Both at the same time you would see that they are separate and distinct in the same way that Stephen “saw… Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). We believe that the Father reigns supreme and that He has given all power to the (subordinate) Son. (Matthew 28:18) We believe that no one could inherit Eternal Life had Christ not atoned for our sins. We believe that the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit. One common claim is that we’re Arians. That is mistaken since in Arian belief is that Christ was created ex-nihilo at some point. We believe that Christ and each of us has existed in some form forever, so therefore we don’t accept the Arian view of Christ being created ex-nihilo. We don’t believe that Christ has two natures. I hope this helps…

Thank you for your answer. With what you say in the first part of your response, do Latter Day Saints consider themselves to be Christian?

 

[Kaninchen]

And now there is the hypothesis that serfs could read

What?

By which I mean that there’s a difference between a basic ability to read a few important words and an ability to wrestle with copied texts housed in religious houses or (rarely) in the Manor House.

 

[whatistrue]

but the masses were hardly a bunch of imbeciles

Be fair. I don’t see a claim of stupidity in here…

99% of the population as they were uneducated, ill-informed, not-well-traveled, simply (in mind and activity) and easily impressed with superstition.

Simple does not mean stupid. Uneducated does not mean incapable of being educated. Easily impressed with superstition - well a large percentage of people in the present fall into this category - still doesn’t mean stupid. Not well-traveled - kind of speaks for itself given transportation technology at the time.

 

[stoplooklisten]

The OP presents a false dichotomy. A group can be both Protestant and do their own thing. Every Protestant / protesting group eventually gets into some form of doing their own thing. Otherwise, they wouldn’t split into their own group. After all, they chose not to be under the authority of the bishops including the Bishop of Rome. Therefore, by definition, being apart from external authority, they are doing their own thing. How could one possibly answer the question: What do Protestants believe? Because, they do not subscribe to a central authority and, by definition, are doing their own thing. Neither Billy Graham nor R.C.Sproul nor anyone else has truly represented the Protestant / protesting cause. Splits within Protestantism began while Martin Luther was still alive. Many doctrines and practices of the LDS church and other dissenting groups were not there at their origins but developed over time.

 

[BT3241]

They have Joseph Smith bringing salvation to the world not Jesus so how are they Christians when Jesus failed in their faith.
Completely different.

 

[MarkRome]

According to Joseph Smith, Jesus failed not once, but twice because, according to Smith, Jesus appeared a second time in South America to a group of Nephites. They also fell into apostasy.

 

[JonNC]

Splits within Protestantism began while Martin Luther was still alive.

This assumes that there was once a singular Protestant movement, which is not true. The Lutheran reformers, Zwingli, the Anabaptists were never one movement that divided. The Marburg Colloquy was an attempt to bring Luther and Zwingli together, not to bring them back together.
The fact is that, while there are disagreements within Lutheranism, there are very few spinoffs from it.

A group can be both Protestant and do their own thing. Every Protestant / protesting group eventually gets into some form of doing their own thing.

The first sentence is true because the term Protestant as used this way is just a broad category, not a religious or doctrinal one.
The second part is, again, a misuse of Protestant as meaning some form of protest against the Catholic Church. It is not. The formal protest was against government limits on religious exercise. Most modern communions/traditions/ denominations were not there for the protest. Even the Anglicans were not part of it.

 

[Duke12VonFalkenburg]

Mormonism is heresy and blasphemy dressed in nice clothes. Founded by a false prophet. I also noticed that Islam and Mormonism have a lot in common.

 

[JonNC]

Mormonism is heresy and blasphemy dressed in nice clothes. Founded by a false prophet. I also noticed that Islam and Mormonism have a lot in common.

I don’t see how this advances the conversation.

 

[AlbMagno]

But they could send letters between them and communicate through announces. For the life they have that’s pretty useful.

Bear in mind, as the video says, that language wasn’t standarized.