It’s interesting that I should get back from Salt Lake City and see this post on my Bloglines.

I was actually asked by one of the women on my tour if I thought Mormons were Christians when I was at the LDS Conference Center. My answer: “yes”, mostly because a.) I was in the LDS Conference Center surrounded by about 20 people, b.) I was in SLC which is the Mormon Mecca, and c.) we were on the roof and I didn’t think I’d be fond of the sudden stop that would happen 4 stories down if I were to be thrown off. 🙂 (No… I don’t believe anyone would have thrown me off but I didn’t really want to rock the boat when I was on their turf.)

So what is actually my true answer? Well… I hate to say that my answer would be “no” and it would be explained that they deviate from historical Christianity in their doctrinal understanding of salvation, the nature of God, and Scripture. It’s a painful answer because I had good friends while growing up who were Mormon and they were definitely more “Christian” than many of the people I knew who claimed to be Christians. I just find the LDS Church leadership to be incredibly deceptive and dishonest about doctrine in that they don’t let a lot of their laity know everything about the teachings of the faith — if I was going to stake my life on something, I’d want to know EVERYTHING about it and not just what the leadership of my particular church wanted me to know. There’s also the supercessionist attitude of the people toward regular Christian groups — they believe that we’re not Christian and seriously inferior because we don’t believe in Joseph Smith and all the stuff he did.

Temple worship is based on Masonic rituals, not Scripture. If you don’t believe me, go look at the temple worship script online. It’s linked off of ExMormon.Org and if you know anything about Masonry, it’s copied from it. I also just wonder how a faith can deny 70% of its membership the ability to do something so necessary to their salvation as only 30% of Mormons hold a temple recommend. It just doesn’t add up for me. Oh… and only requiring 6 lessons on doctrine before baptism? Not enough information to make that kind of choice.

So why do I go to Temple Square when I visit Salt Lake City and go through all the exhibits??? Well… it’s a beautiful place, very peaceful, and it is very necessary for me to understand the teachings of the LDS people because I live in the Intermountain West where they’re fairly numerous. (We have 4 missionaries splitting their time over my county and the next one over — apparently we’re important enough to warrant that many people so there must be some Mormons up here.) There are at least 4 temples within 6 hours of driving (Billings, Idaho Falls, Edmonton, and Cardston, Alberta) and the nearest city over the Canadian border (Lethbridge) has a MASSIVE Mormon community.

I think the next time I’m there I’ll probably spend an afternoon at the various visitor’s centers on the square, if for no other reason than to gather ammo for dealing with the Mormons in my midst (who ironically enough keep to themselves).Â? If nothing else, it’s interesting and the little missionary girls from all over the world are very nice.