Mormon Defender Skirts Christian Question; Instead Calls for Unity
Saturday, Jul. 14, 2007 Posted: 3:36:25PM EST
The chosen defender of Mormonism in a much talked-about online debate avoided the challenges posed by one of the nation’s preeminent evangelicals Wednesday on why Mormons cannot be considered Christians. Instead, well-known science-fiction writer Orson Scott Card called for unity among believers of Jesus in his latest blog.
The former Mormon missionary spent an extensive amount of his essay detailing how he was seen as an outsider by some Mormons who considered a good Mormon to be a Republican and someone that holds a steady day job. Card, a democrat and writer, noted that these Mormons were from a town in Utah where 98 percent of the population was Mormons.
However, when he moved to the east coast where Mormons are the minority, fellow Mormons there embraced him and accepted his differences.
The long personal narrative was given as a micro-example of how one’s point of view can change depending on if people feel they are in the minority or majority.
Card contends that the major Christian denominations view Mormons as the odd minority group and thus thinks they can afford to reject it. However, when these Christian groups consider the secular world as its opponent then it is the minority and therefore all believers of Jesus Christ should band together to confront the opponent.
“Instead of ‘mainstream Christianity’ seeking opportunities to shun and exclude and deny the Christianity of Mormons, it might be more helpful for us to admit our irreconcilable differences but then recognize that in this world, today, right now, we can gain more for the cause of Christ by treating each other with respect and honoring each other for the degree to which we do live up to his teachings,” wrote Card in his second blog entry.
The Mormon author and Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, have been engaged in an ongoing “blog dialogue” since June 28. The debate is sponsored by the Web site Beliefnet.com and confronts the question whether Mormons can be considered Christians.
Though Card’s long essay does provide points why Mormons should be considered Christians, it avoids responding to Mohler’s second blog, in which the evangelical scholar asked why Mormons now want to be considered part of mainstream Christianity when at Mormonism’s founding it declared itself as the only true church and denounced all other churches as corrupt.
“Why would Mormonism now want to be identified as a form of Christianity, when its central historical claim is that the churches commonly understood to be Christian are part of the Church of the Devil?” questioned Mohler.
In addition, Mohler had explicitly stated in his second blog that Beliefnet had asked him to debate whether Mormons can be considered Christians based on Christian orthodoxy. In other words, the arguments as set by the sponsor site should revolve around Christian orthodoxy and theology.
Mohler noted that if Christianity was defined in terms of sociology, the history of religions or other disciplines, then an expert from that field should take part in the debate rather than himself.
