Former Mormon "de-conversion" stories

[catholic-rcia]

In a previous post, you stated that the mormons rejection of the cross was primarily do to anticatholicism. But I believe that this would be untrue. The cross within catholicism has always been connected with the crucifixtion. It is difficult to come across a cross within catholicism that does have the crucifixtion on it.

The mormons did reject the crucified cross but not because of catholicism or not because they were anticatholic. The cross was still part of early mormon culture mainly because the converts brought the cross with them and to my knowledge the early converts were mainly protestant. And as such, they may have had lingering anticatholic feeling rooted in WASP culture at that time but the crucified cross may have already been rejected by the early converts because of their connection to protestantism.

I question the anticatholic reason in your previous post. I think that the rejection of the cross happened over a period of time as the belief began to change into a more living christ. Call it folkore or fact but the reason for the rejection of the cross still stands: Mormons do not have the cross because it represents a dying christ, whereas in the lds faith christ’s resurrection is more stressed but no more valued than the crucifixtion itself.

It is all in the symbolism.

Dear Why Me
I want to comment on the Cruciifx but first:

This is just one of the scriptures that helped me on my Journey home. It has Trinity laced throughout it. When you start seeing it, its everywhere throughout the Scriptures. When you connect all of the dots you see Christ.
Rom 8:8-11
Brothers and sisters:
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh;
on the contrary, you are in the spirit,
if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
But if Christ is in you,
although the body is dead because of sin,
the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit dwelling in you.

I was speaking to an elderly LDS couple just a few weeks ago. I was sitting in their living room with them. They asked me to sit with them… Why? Because they posed this question to me. “Why do Catholics focus so much of their attention on the death of Christ”. They added “as we focus our attention on the Resurrection” I hear this a lot here in Utah.

Again these are the same questions that led me to the Catholic Church… My Grandmother was LDS and we inherited her King James Bible which I have just a few feet from me now. It was many years before I found an article about the Cross, about suffering and death… It’s ironic because it is Catholic. I have it on my website here:
http://www.utahmission.com/pages/Why_suffering.html

I have posted it before. I have read it many times and it never gets old. As to the Crucifixion, one thing that stands out for me is funerals I have attended in my life. My mother when I was eight years old, my sixteen year old brother when I was in my early twenties etc… something about funerals bring out the best in most people. They help you focus on what is most important in this life, the cost of loss, the whys and the reasons. I feel the spirit of Christ strong when I am at my loved ones grave.
Jesus is always close by, no movement there, but there are times when He feels closer than others. The resurrection is His gift to us, He just wants us to know, His creation that the cost of Resurrection is our own sin. That when we leave the Holy Trinity for something else we leave God behind. That until we can see the cost that our sin causes we will never want to return to this fallen state ever again. We know the cost, we come to know the lover, the one who paid for it, the cost for us to get it.

Why do we as created beings have to go through this? Simply because we are not God. Because we were created by God and we have to learn that we are not, and never will be God. We accept our place within the life of the Holy Trinity. It is a free gift to creation, try to take it as if it were our own, well….we die as a result because we cannot live apart from our Creator. Only Jesus can bring us out of this kind of death. Only Jesus. Nothing we can do will accomplish this, only our hope and surrender to Him.

The Cross is the Tree of life in the middle of the Garden
www.chooseyourcross.com

 

[zaffiroborant]

In a previous post, you stated that the mormons rejection of the cross was primarily do to anticatholicism. But I believe that this would be untrue. The cross within catholicism has always been connected with the crucifixtion. It is difficult to come across a cross within catholicism that does have the crucifixtion on it.

The mormons did reject the crucified cross but not because of catholicism or not because they were anticatholic. The cross was still part of early mormon culture mainly because the converts brought the cross with them and to my knowledge the early converts were mainly protestant. And as such, they may have had lingering anticatholic feeling rooted in WASP culture at that time but the crucified cross may have already been rejected by the early converts because of their connection to protestantism.

I question the anticatholic reason in your previous post. I think that the rejection of the cross happened over a period of time as the belief began to change into a more living christ. Call it folkore or fact but the reason for the rejection of the cross still stands: Mormons do not have the cross because it represents a dying christ, whereas in the lds faith christ’s resurrection is more stressed but no more valued than the crucifixtion itself.

It is all in the symbolism.

Silly Mike you’ve wasted your time with all that research you did for your thesis.

 

[lax16]

Children will be children. But I can almost be certain that their parents do not encourage their children to harass other children who wear the cross. You make it sound like children who wear crosses are bullied across Utah. And hearing is not exactly seeing.

Actually, the stories are quite common. I will ask the permission of those who have told me their stories then I will post them.

Hearing is not exactly seeing? If you told me something, I would believe it. These are things that have happened to some of my friend’s children or to them as children.

How can anyone who is a Mormon question those who believe what they have heard and not seen?

 

[TheosisM]

Silly Mike you’ve wasted your time with all that research you did for your thesis.

LOL that’s exactly what I was thinking but decided not to say anything. Thanks!

 

[lax16]

LOL that’s exactly what I was thinking but decided not to say anything. Thanks!

It makes you wonder if people know what a thesis is?

 

[Mike_Reed]

The cross was still part of early mormon culture mainly because the converts brought the cross with them and to my knowledge the early converts were mainly protestant.

At the time the LDS church was first being organized American Protestantism (generally speaking) rejected the material symbol of the cross. I’d suggest reading Ryan K. Smith’s Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), and “The Cross: Church Symbol and Contest in Nineteenth-Century America,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 70, no. 4 (2001): 705-734.

I question the anticatholic reason in your previous post.

Well… you’ll have to read my book then. The evidence that leads to this conclusion is overwhelming.

 

[why_me]

At the time the LDS church was first being organized American Protestantism (generally speaking) rejected the material symbol of the cross. I’d suggest reading Ryan K. Smith’s Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), and “The Cross: Church Symbol and Contest in Nineteenth-Century America,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 70, no. 4 (2001): 705-734.

Well… you’ll have to read my book then. The evidence that leads to this conclusion is overwhelming.

As a Christian symbol…
…it is sometimes referred to as the Western Cross to differentiate from cross designs favoured in the East. The Latin Cross is typically used as the basic floor plan of Western churches1. It can be the identification mark for a church or chapel, hence the alternative names: Chapel Cross or Church Cross2.

As a representation of the Trinity, the three shorter sections represent the Three Persons of the Trinity and the longer, lower portion signifies the One Divinity.

It can also be called a Protestant Cross because it is plain, without any corpus3 attached. It does not deny the suffering on the cross but focuses the mind on Christ’s resurrection and is mostly used in Protestant churches.

Baptists, for example, tend to favour the empty Latin cross to emphasize the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. (See also Baptist Union Logo)

When the cross includes a corpus, it is usually referred to as a crucifix and emphasises Christ’s suffering and sacrifice which gives meaning and sense to His resurrection.

For many Catholics, the corpus is sacramental and its removal would be heretical4. Protestantism initially prohibited the corpus as a graven image and idolatrous. Rood screens were pulled down to allow closer access to the altar by lay worshippers and Altar Crosses were removed as illegal ‘Ornaments Rubrics’.5 This helped Protestants distance themselves from Roman Catholics and even today, crucifixes are found more in Catholic churches than Protestant churches6

seiyaku.com/customs/crosses/latin.html

 

[why_me]

Silly Mike you’ve wasted your time with all that research you did for your thesis.

Maybe he did or maybe he didn’t. All argumentative papers or theses can be challenged and debated. And yes, conclusions can also be challenged.

 

[why_me]

The cross, a traditional symbol of Christianity, is displayed extensively in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. In each tradition, the symbol of the cross focuses the worshiper’s attention on central elements of the Christian faith. However, different theological points may be emphasized. For example, in Catholicism the crucifix (the cross with the dead Christ hanging on it) symbolizes the crucifixion of Christ and invites meditation on the Atonement. In contrast, the plain cross used by Protestants symbolizes not only the crucifixion but also the resurrection of Christ, for the cross is empty. The Eastern Orthodox crucifix is a symbolic concept somewhere between those of Catholicism and Protestantism: Christ hangs on the cross, but as the living Lord, his head not bowed in death but raised in triumph. Thus, the crucifixion, the Atonement, the resurrection, and the Lordship of Christ are all graphically presented in the Orthodox crucifix. (See Interfaith Relations home page)

Latter-day Saints do not use the symbol of the cross in their architecture or in their chapels. They, like the earliest Christians, are reluctant to display the cross because they view the “good news” of the gospel as Christ’s resurrection more than his crucifixion.

The LDS conception of the Plan of Salvation is comprehensive. It encompasses a Council in Heaven; Jehovah’s (Jesus’) acceptance of his role as Savior; the virgin birth; Jesus’ life and ministry; his saving suffering, beginning in Gethsemane and ending with his death at Golgotha; his burial; his preaching to the spirits of the righteous dead; his physical resurrection; and his exaltation to the right hand of the Father. No one symbol is sufficient to convey all this. Moreover, the cross, with its focus on the death of Christ, does not symbolize the message of a living, risen, exalted Lord who changes the lives of his followers. Thus, President Gordon B. Hinckley, counselor in the First Presidency, stated that the lives of people must become a “meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship” (p. 92). (See Taking the Name of Christ)

While the symbol of the cross is not visually displayed among the Latter-day Saints, the centrality of the Atonement is ever present in their observance of baptism, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (see Sacrament Prayers), and the temple ordinances, and in their hymns and testimonies. Without the Atonement of Jesus Christ, there is no hope for the human family. Scripture is replete with the admonition that disciples of Christ must “take up their cross,” yielding themselves in humility to their Heavenly Father (D&C 56:2, 14-16; 112:14-15), releasing themselves from the ties of worldliness (3 Ne. 12:20), and submitting themselves to persecution and even martyrdom for the gospel of Jesus Christ (2 Ne. 9:18; Jacob 1:8).

lightplanet.com/mormons/basic/christ/cross.html

 

[why_me]

We recently held an open house in the Arizona Temple. Following a complete renovation of that building, nearly a quarter of a million people saw its beautiful interior. On the first day of the opening, clergymen of other religions were invited as special guests, and hundreds responded. It was my privilege to speak to them and to answer their questions at the conclusion of their tours. I told them that we would be pleased to answer any queries they might have. Many were asked. Among these was one which came from a Protestant minister.

Said he: “I’ve been all through this building, this temple which carries on its face the name of Jesus Christ, but nowhere have I seen any representation of the cross, the symbol of Christianity. I have noted your buildings elsewhere and likewise find an absence of the cross. Why is this when you say you believe in Jesus Christ?”

I responded: “I do not wish to give offense to any of my Christian brethren who use the cross on the steeples of their cathedrals and at the altars of their chapels, who wear it on their vestments, and imprint it on their books and other literature. But for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the living Christ.”

He then asked: “If you do not use the cross, what is the symbol of your religion?”

I replied that the lives of our people must become the only meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship.

I hope he did not feel that I was smug or self-righteous in my response. He was correct in his observation that we do not use the cross, except as our military chaplains use it on their uniforms for identification. Our position at first glance may seem a contradiction of our profession that Jesus Christ is the key figure of our faith. The official name of the church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We worship him as Lord and Savior. The Bible is our scripture. We believe that the prophets of the Old Testament who foretold the coming of the Messiah spoke under divine inspiration. We glory in the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, setting forth the events of the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father in the flesh. Like Paul of old, we are “not ashamed of the gospel of [Jesus] Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation.” (Rom. 1:16.) And like Peter, we affirm that Jesus Christ is the only name “given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (See Acts 4: 12.)

lightplanet.com/mormons/daily/holidays/easter/symbol_christ.html

 

[Mike_Reed]

As a Christian symbol…
…it is sometimes referred to as the Western Cross to differentiate from cross designs favoured in the East. …

What is your point of this post? Is this supposed to undermine any conclusion I have made? If so, it would be helpful for me if you were more specific as to what you are trying to get at. Thanks.

 

[Mike_Reed]

Latter-day Saints do not use the symbol of the cross in their architecture or in their chapels. They, like the earliest Christians, are reluctant to display the cross because they view the “good news” of the gospel as Christ’s resurrection more than his crucifixion.

Strange. This remark is not substantiated by evidence. Why do you think that is?

The LDS conception of the Plan of Salvation is comprehensive. It encompasses a Council in Heaven; Jehovah’s (Jesus’) acceptance of his role as Savior; the virgin birth; Jesus’ life and ministry; his saving suffering, beginning in Gethsemane and ending with his death at Golgotha; his burial; his preaching to the spirits of the righteous dead; his physical resurrection; and his exaltation to the right hand of the Father. No one symbol is sufficient to convey all this.

And yet, signs of the nails (symbolic of those with which Jesus was crucified) is part of the temple ceremony.

Moreover, the cross, with its focus on the death of Christ, does not symbolize the message of a living, risen, exalted Lord who changes the lives of his followers.

So? Neither do angel Moroni statues on LDS temples.

Thus, President Gordon B. Hinckley, counselor in the First Presidency, stated that the lives of people must become a “meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship” (p. 92). (See Taking the Name of Christ)

I am quite aware of Hinkley making such an assertion. Does it therefore follow from his logic that material symbols (like the cross) should not be used?

 

[Mike_Reed]

Maybe he did or maybe he didn’t. All argumentative papers or theses can be challenged and debated. And yes, conclusions can also be challenged.

Usually people READ papers/theses before they try to debunk them. Seems you are jumping the gun.

 

[Mike_Reed]

We recently held an open house in the Arizona Temple…

I responded: “I do not wish to give offense to any of my Christian brethren… But for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the living Christ.”

Hinckley promoted this rationalization long before he became the president of the Church. When he first made this argument, he was echoing a rationalization that he had heard from someone else.

Hinckey was no historian. He tried to give his best PR answer, but that answer didn’t accurately explain the basis for the aversion.

 

[Mike_Reed]

delete

 

[TheosisM]

They, like the earliest Christians, are reluctant to display the cross because they view the “good news” of the gospel as Christ’s resurrection more than his crucifixion.

What is the evidence that the early Christians viewed the “good news” of the gospel as Christ’s resurrection more than his crucifixion?

I never understood why some Christians don’t like the crucifix. The argument about focusing on the resurrection doesn’t hold water, because that seems to imply that those who don’t use the crucifix somehow focus on the resurrection more than those that do. The fact is that the resurrection could not have happened if Christ was not crucified, and the crucifixion is a very important part of the Atonement. Catholics and other Christians that wear or depict the crucifix/crucifixion do not only depict Christ in such a manner, but show Him in various ways reflective of his life, including the resurrection.

So, I never understood the “we like to think about the resurrection more” argument, because the crucifixion is SO important and a fundamental part of Jesus’ atonement, and Catholics/Orthodox/other Christians will always wonder “who said we are limiting the depiction of Jesus to just the crucifixion?” The resurrection isn’t more important than the crucifixion. They are both equally important and linked events.

 

[TheosisM]

Usually people READ papers/theses before they try to debunk them. Seems you are jumping the gun.

This is typical of Why Me. He also doesn’t want anyone to think that some Mormons could possibly be anti-Catholic, or have based their personal cross aversion on anti-Catholicism.

 

[zaffiroborant]

Hinckley promoted this rationalization long before he became the president of the Church. When he first made this argument, he was echoing a rationalization that he had heard from someone else.

Hinckey was no historian. He tried to give his best PR answer, but that answer didn’t accurately explain the basis for the aversion.

Come on Mike admit it Whyme’s research has yours beat hands down. And his method is … well what can one say about google, copy, paste repeat?

 

[lax16]

What is the evidence that the early Christians viewed the “good news” of the gospel as Christ’s resurrection more than his crucifixion?

I never understood why some Christians don’t like the crucifix. The argument about focusing on the resurrection doesn’t hold water, because that seems to imply that those who don’t use the crucifix somehow focus on the resurrection more than those that do. The fact is that the resurrection could not have happened if Christ was not crucified, and the crucifixion is a very important part of the Atonement. Catholics and other Christians that wear or depict the crucifix/crucifixion do not only depict Christ in such a manner, but show Him in various ways reflective of his life, including the resurrection.

So, I never understood the “we like to think about the resurrection more” argument, because the crucifixion is SO important and a fundamental part of Jesus’ atonement, and Catholics/Orthodox/other Christians will always wonder “who said we are limiting the depiction of Jesus to just the crucifixion?” The resurrection isn’t more important than the crucifixion. They are both equally important and linked events.

Good points, Theosis.
Also, meditating on the suffering and passion of Jesus on the cross for our sins is so important. It really reminds us how much he loves us and wants us to be in Heaven with Him.

Then, to meditate on the meaning of His resurrection and what that means for all of us - He really is the Messiah and we have the hope of eternal life!

 

[why_me]

So, I never understood the “we like to think about the resurrection more” argument, because the crucifixion is SO important and a fundamental part of Jesus’ atonement, and Catholics/Orthodox/other Christians will always wonder “who said we are limiting the depiction of Jesus to just the crucifixion?” The resurrection isn’t more important than the crucifixion. They are both equally important and linked events.

It would be interesting to know just when the crucifixtion became a part of the symbol on the cross. Now we need to understand that the symbol of christ hanging from the cross can be misleading since we have no idea just what christ looked like. Most crucifixes have christ with white skin looking rather european.

What I was trying to stress with mike is his understanding that the rejection of the cross was because of anticatholicism. I take issue with that. Now it is true, that early mormon leaders suffered from their own biasnesses and they were fomer protestants. I don’t recall a single former catholic early mormon leader but since for protestants, the crucifixtion on the cross was the problem and not the cross itself, I think that we need to make a distinction between the two. And that is my point with Mike. He states the cross but did not make a distinction between the protestant and catholic version of the cross.