Church of Latter Day Saints

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Does anyone know anything about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? I may move to Utah sometime next year, and realized I know very little about them. If LDS members will be my neighbors and colleagues, I'd like to understand what they believe, and what motivates them from a religious point of view.

For context, I was raised Catholic.

Last edited by lotuspuppy on 07 Dec 2012, 11:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Don't offer them coffee, tea or any alcoholic beverage. Their religion forbids it.

If you don't talk about religion with them, you will be just fine.

ruveyn

They pass around bread and something to drink, sort of like the Eucharist,They like to recruit quite a bit,don't drink coffee(now that's not natural).It's been along time(30 years) ,I had LDS house parents and I went to services with them. I don't remember much besides that.I was raised Episcopalian ,at least they didn't try to baptize me like those pesky Southern Baptists.Never tell them you weren't immersed,they get excited and try to baptize you.
This wasn't in Utah though.

Thanks. I'll actually be in Salt Lake City, which is only about 35% Mormon. My understanding is that there is a decent martini bar or two, and several coffeehouses. But LDS influences every other aspect of life there, so I am curious.

You will probably have missionaries knocking on your door within a week of moving.
Politely decline an offer to attend a service because they will never leave you alone after that.
As mentioned before, avoid the subjects of caffeine, alcohol, religion, and anything "adult"/sex related.
Also, not to sure about this, but you might encounter some multi-level marketing.

Well, you can pretty easily get a jist of their religion from reading about it on wikipedia.

Basically, Joseph Smith said he got a vision of Jesus Christ and God the Father when he was walking around in the woods after thinking to himself that he didn't know which church was the true church. They told him none of the churches were right and all were corrupt. So Joseph Smith eventually became a preacher for, I think...hold on, wiki time. Disciples of Christ, a Protestant church. But before that, the Angel Moroni told him the supposed location of golden plates containing the history of Christianity in America. Moroni=Mormon, where it comes from. The Golden Plates are The Book of Mormon. Eventually his congregation branched off, and he started the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The book of Mormon itself isn't very controversial, it's just like reading a very boring version of the Bible for the most part. It's claim is that Israelites got on a boat and went to America, which is hard to archaeologically verify. Eventually, darker skinned Indians destroyed the righteous white Israelites (really.) And that's why there's no Christian Israelites in America at all anymore, they all died in some big battle. There's very little doctrinally about Mormonism in the book of Mormon, actually. The actual doctrine comes from the Doctrines and Covenants. Mormons when they try to convert you, will tell you to read the Book of Mormon, and pray to get a feeling of whether it's true or not. But as I said, nothing doctrinally is in the Book of Mormon really.

Anyway, as far as how it compares to Catholicism, few differences, some similarities. Instead of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, in Mormonism, there's 3 Kingdoms. The Celestial Kingdom, The Telestial Kingdom, and the Terrestrial Kingdom, and Outer Darkness (basically hell.) This chart sums it up I guess:


The big difference of Mormonism compared to Christianity is belief in reincarnation (sorta) and multiple gods. Basically, their belief is that God was once a man, on another planet, who through obedience to the god of their planet was granted godhood for this planet. Mormonism doesn't believe in an eternal God that created matter, Mormonism believes in eternally existent matter and spirit, from which the gods evolved. The point of your existence on Earth is to learn and grow (which is Biblical, I guess) and reach godhood. The reason why Mormons historically practiced polygamy was that you NEED to be married in Mormonism. If you do not have a wife, you cannot have spirit children when you're a god (Celestial Kingdom), and thus you cannot populate worlds with your spirit children. Polygamy was scrapped so Utah could get admitted into the Union. But due to that, FLDS came about. With the Heavenly Father in Mormonism, is a Heavenly Mother, who is God's wife. This is a draw for Mormonism, as it promises basically salvation of the whole family, and reuniting of families in Heaven. It's VERY family oriented, in fact it's more or less a requirement. What generally happens is after boys go on a Mormon mission, they get married soon after.

As far as other comparisons with Catholicism, both claim to be The One True Church. Mormonism is basically the most extreme version of Protestantism around in that regard. Basically, every Protestant sect came about from some guy claiming the Church was wrong, corrupt, etc, and he needed to restore it. First it was Luther, who was well intentioned I think, and initially just wanted fairly right reforms in the Catholic church, then it goes on and on throughout history of various people claiming "aha, God told me to create the revived new church of ____!" So Joseph Smith is the most extreme version of this (though Mohamed of Islam and Joseph Smith have very many parallels, same sort of storyline of Islam.) I'm not Catholic, but I'm Eastern Orthodox, so it's more similar to Catholicism. Both Catholicism and Orthodoxy both claim "trueness" simply through history. You can look at a list of Orthodox (and formerly Catholic bishops until the split) and see the succession of bishops from Jesus Christ, Peter, St. Thomas (who started the Christianity in India) etc. But Protestants reject their roots, so they have no history to fall back on, as far as consistent doctrines and stuff go, so Mormonism "works" by appealing to their lack of historical knowledge.

I think in many ways appeal for Orthodox ideas like Theosis, which is becoming part of God himself, the Mormon parallel is becoming a God. Purgatory/prayers for the dead is another thing Protestantism doesn't have. The Mormon parallel for Purgatory (well Orthodoxy doesn't officially have Purgatory, but it's more or less the same idea in Orthodoxy) is the 3 Kingdoms instead of just the Heaven/Hell split Protestantism has. The parallel for prayers for the dead in Mormonism is Baptism of the dead by proxy that Mormonism does. Mormons will have someone baptized for a dead person, so they can be saved.

I could go on all day about this, and I believe I've been a bit too lengthy already. I debated with Mormons quite a bit, I had Mormon neighbors, and Mormon missionaries would visit me and debate me/try to convert me. So I researched their religion quite a bit, and they posed some interesting questions to me. In the end, they did end up rustling my feathers a good deal, but they actually oddly enough made me look into the Orthodox Church, due to the questions they raised to me, so yeah.

Overall, Mormons are nice people actually. Many act more Christian than most Christians do. Look at this chart here, for example: http://i.imgur.com/lFgW8.jpg. So you should be able to get along with them fairly well. As far as whether or not they're saved or not, I don't know, only God knows that. Laity of Mormonism often doesn't really know the whole Eternal Matter/Gods thing too well, and for all intents and purposes are fairly Christian in their outlook.

So, again, sorry for writing so much, hope I'm helpful.

Damned!

I knew alot about the general history - persecution, moving to Utah, and chucking polygamy to get into the Union.

But this theology about "becoming a god"- and gods on other planets is news to me.

Sounds like Joseph Smith spiced his theology with a little science fiction- foreshadowing the space opera foundations of scientology dreamed up by L. Ron Hubbard a centurey later.

Well, Battlestar Galactica was written by a Mormon. Kobol is Kolob, planet closest to God in Mormonism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_ ... _Galactica

As I said, too, some Mormons don't even know their own theology like that. But you can press most missionaries and you'll get what I told you. They'll be like "Yeah, but we don't need to concentrate on that right now" and they keep telling you to read the Book of Mormon and pray if it's true and show you the plan of salvation chart I showed you.

As far as Mormonism's roots, it's in Gnosticism actually. In fact, a parallel is, Joseph Smith actually has the keys to the kingdom of Heaven, and you need a password to get into Heaven. Gnosticism had a similar idea of passwords to Heaven. Gnosticism was about finding the secret knowledge for salvation. From the tree of Gnosticism comes a lot of things. Masonry is one, the Mormon Temple Ceremony (they have a separate private/secret temple ceremony) is more or less a copy of the first Masonic ritual, so much that Masons called Mormons irregular lodges when they first started.

Lastly, one I guess one unique thing about Mormonism is it's a distinctly American religion. Mormonism considers the US Constitution as an inspired document (note Glenn Beck is a Mormon.) Also, Book of Mormon takes place in America. The Mormons' original intention was establishing Zion out of whatever states they got stuck in (Kansas, Montana, and Utah I think) and eventually having a Mormon Kingdom of God on Earth stemming from America. So it's VERY good for American/patriotic sensibilities, as it appeals to the "America is the center of the world" mentality, as in Mormonism, America is the center of the world, it's where the "True Church" is, not the Middle East. You get the Vatican a drive away (maybe a long drive, but still) in Mormonism if you live in USA.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46PXaJxzuDE[/youtube]

Less eloquent than my paragraphs, but yeah.

Expect to be treated like an outsider unless you join their church. With the way they treat each other, it's better to be an outsider. If you live there long enough, expect the Mormons in your neighborhood to start asking you to buy alcohol for them so they aren't seen doing it. Mormon store clerks have been known to make notes on who buys alcohol and keep their local church leaders informed of it, but they can't do anything about non-members' activities.

They all wear magic underwear that protects them from things like temptation, fire and even bullets.
You can see pics and a youtube clip here:- MAGIC UNDERWEAR LINK

That is a canard.

ruveyn

the term "latter day saints" to me invokes an image of "earlier day sinners" that were booted in the arse by their imaginary deity, and so they became "saints" at the last minute to avoid damnation.

the other night i thought of an hilarious situation where i print out a large notice to post in my front garden that says "if you are black or gay or mormon or stupid, then do not knock on my door"
the amusement i derived from that imaginary scenario was the concept of how angry everyone would be with me if i really did that, and it would just lead to uninvited aggression from all walks of life, and so i thought it would be a spectacularly stupid thing to do and i laughed through all my mental impressions of possible dis pleasurable social evolutions that could be instigated from the seed of that idea.

i have nothing against blacks and gays. i just enjoy thinking of disastrous social behaviors that grizzle the faces (scrunch their faces into impassioned expressions) of my audience.

anyway, mormons usually do not stay long on my verandah. they usually calculate that my mindset is not open to negotiation, and they excuse themselves relatively rapidly from my company.

They do believe that God has a wife,but her name is not revealed because man will take it in vain,so God kept it hidden.
Thanks for prompting my memory on that 1000knives.
It seemed like you had to keep a years worth of food around also.

No, it's actually true. Because once you become old enough in Mormonism, you become a "priest" to go to the Temple Ceremony, and you get the underwear so you can be a priest all the time. A Mormon explained it as being the same as a priest's collar or something, but only for you to see, not the public, to remind you that you're a Melchezidek High Priest.

That said, Mormon underwear comes in different styles, and now they've gotten a bit more lenient and are allowing, say, soldiers, to just put the LDS symbol on regular underwear.

But yep, underwear.