WHAT IS MORMONISM? A BAPTIST ANSWER

What Is Mormonism? A Baptist Answer
By DAVID VAN BIEMA 27 minutes ago
Richard Land, the head of the gigantic (16.3 million-member) Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and its most influential political operative, has dived headlong into what has become a favorite Baptist parlor game: What exactly is a Mormon? It's a question that has special significance right now, since it relates to how religious conservatives regard the Mormon candidate Mitt Romney.
On Wednesday, the EthicsDaily.com newswire, which is written by and for Baptists with views more liberal than the SBC's, reported that Land, expanding on remarks he made last week at a gathering of political conservatives, told Al Hunt on his Bloomberg TV show Political Capital that he considers the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormons know themselves, as "being the fourth Abrahamic Religion," in addition to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of which trace roots of race or belief back to the patriarch Abraham.
The Mormons regard themselves as Christians, and Jesus figures prominently on the covers of LDS publications. They believe that after the death of Christ's apostles his church became confused, a period that ended only with the restoration of the Gospel by the presentation of another book of scripture by an angel to LDS founder Joseph Smith.
Most Christian theologians, however, disagree, not just because they disbelieve the angel story and the Book of Mormon that resulted, but by pointing to Mormon concepts including the ability of humans to become godlike entities after death. Most perturbed have been conservative Evangelicals like the Southern Baptists, who share many of the Mormons' conservatiave social values yet have a very strict view of what is and what is not scripture, and find themselves in competition with the LDS for congregants. For more click on:


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