Mormonism Redux

As Mitt Romney's campaign continues we can expect to read two articles over and over again. The first is the expose by a Democrat or a supporter of one of the other Republican Nominees. In this one we will find out about all the goofy things Mormon's believe, along with a reference to the hierarchical nature of the church and the question of whether or not Romney will serve the American people or the Mormon Church.

Frank Pastore has the other kind; the one about how as a good Christian he can still vote for Romney even though Romney and Mormons in general aren't Christians.

. . . many Mormons in recent years have taken to calling themselves Christians, and a grow-ing number of Christians are willing to speak of Mormonism as something akin to another Chris-tian denomination. But, Mormonism is not a Christian denomination, nor is it merely "a non-Christian religion." To be theologically precise, though perhaps politically incorrect, Mormonism is a cult of Christianity (www.apologeticsindex.org/c09a01.html) – a group that claims to Chris-tian while denying one or more central doctrines of the Christian faith.

I don't know why Pastore feels the need to hyphe-nate so many words; perhaps that's another facet of Christianity that I, being Mormon, don't hold to.

At an rate his over all point is that he would vote for Romney over Clinton or Obama; but that doesn't mean he thinks that Mormons are Christians. Or to be more precise, by his narrow definition of Christian (which he labels the historic Christian Faith), Mormons aren't Christians. This definition does seem to boil down to "Belongs to the true Christian faith," however. And using that narrow definition Mormons would be forced to conclude that Pastore is not a real Christian either. Following such a definition to it's logical conclusion, you end up with thousands of "true Christian faith" and nobody is really a Christian.

I prefer a broad definition myself; if a person believes in Christ, he's a Christian.