Also, if muslims become a majority in any western country then you can expect a Lebanon-like scenario: endless bloody civil war. Looks like a good reason to multiply for me.

Jesus was send to earth in flesh and bone form, so that we could form relationship with God in human terms. In heaven Jesus is in different form. If you think God or gods normally exist in flesh and bone form, then you must accept many human fragilities and deficiences of humans in God or gods. E.g. news from heaven: “Assassin shot god, he is dead, and now god does not exist anymore”, “God has dementia of old age, so his rule is coming to an end”, God is very limited in his capacities, so he cannot know much about people on earth, he can’t give just judgements, and you can always hide negative things from him, do what you will”. That is preposterous, and consequently that is part of the reason why Mormon religion is, unfortunately, preposterous.

The “Big Daddy” characterization and terminology is something commonly thrown at all Christians by atheists, and I reject the charge and terminology out of hand.

That Mormons are particularly ignorant of ecclesiastical history, I would deny. Most Latter-day Saints are not professional church historians by any means, but neither are most Christians. The LDS emphasis on education has led to higher education levels among LDS than in the US population in general.

There are advantages and disadvantages to living outside of the Mormon geographical core, which core is not to be confused with real core: Zion as the pure in heart (D&C 97:21). Dieter Friedrich Uchtdorf, second counselor in the Church’s First Presidency, was born in what is now the Czech Republic and was raised in Germany (East and West).

Joseph A writes, “For me, what is obviously repellent in Mormonism is its pagan theology, wherein God is not God but merely a god. Why, then, should we worship him whom we call “God”? If there is something greater than god, such as the universe in which he is a fellow being with us and whose laws he must follow, then ought we not to worship the universe instead? Mormonism, like crude paganism, requires men to succumb to idolatry.”

Of course, Latter-day Saints utterly reject this characterization. Some laws (say the law of non-contradiction) must be in a sense eternal. God and the idea of goodness must ultimately meet at some vanishing point. The good is good not just because God says it is good. If there were an infinitely powerful being, omnipresent, omniscient, etc., but nevertheless evil and commanding us to do evil while calling it good, that being would not be, could not be God and would not be worthy of worship.

Classical and conventional soteriology can also be characterized as explaining the atonement in terms of an inflexible and external Platonic principle of justice, as if God could not simply pardon fault. Would an earthly magistrate who insisted on the punishment of an innocent victim to fulfill an external cosmic need for justice or so that the guilty could be pardoned (and who otherwise could not be pardoned) be considered just?

That Mormonism in its philosophical moments considers these questions and problems and attempts to address them does not make it pagan. It places it squarely within a Christian framework. Mormonism is not a philosophical system, but then again, neither was the religion of the Old and New Testaments. Philosophical arguments are something that may follow in the wake of religion. It is something mortals work at after a revelation, but it should not take the place of, or become more important than, revelation. Philosophy itself is not a saving endeavor, and like the making of books, it is an endless and wearying task. I fear that the Orthosphere tends to appeal to a society of philosophical adepts. To distill philosophical theses out of Mormon theology is to superimpose on it a foreign structure and to engage in speculation beyond its core statements. Likewise to distill philosophical theses out of the Old and New Testaments is a speculative affair and to impose a Greek frame of reference on a Hebrew idiom seems particularly foreign. Why graft Greek philosophy onto Hebrew thought, as if the Messiah and Moses and the Prophets before Him spoke and, more to the point, thought within a classical Greek philosophical framework?

Joseph A writes: “…those who hold steadfast to the theological and moral truths of the faith have become ever fewer in number” and “…the vast majority (and I do not exaggerate) of the West’s religious leaders are not worthy of the name. They do not govern their institutions with the spiritual or even temporal interests of their flock in mind. They are the vanguards of civilizational ruin.”

Those are strong statements to be sure and widely shared views in the Orthosphere. Given that, the question is when did such apostasy begin? Did it begin in the 20th Century? With the sexual revolution? Or in the Dark Ages? Or with the Great Schism? With iconoclasm? With the bad Popes? With the Reformation? With the Enlightenment?

With Luther I hold that Popes and Councils could and did err. The LDS position is that there is not an unbroken tradition from a past golden age to the present, that the tradition was broken (evolved if you will) at multiple points and early on in the process began to go astray. Given the current state of Christianity, this does not seem like a far-fetched position.

That (mis)understanding is less fringe among the evangelicals than you may think it is.

With everyone else, though, it seems like their separation is pretty evident. Anglican and confessional Protestants have drifted farther from apostolic teaching and practice as the centuries have passed, where those who hold steadfast to the theological and moral truths of the faith have become ever fewer in number. And even they cling to poisonous errors, as Protestantism is the spiritual side of modernity. As for pious individual Protestants, clearly there is something to their faith. Kristor and Alan here are good examples. I distrust loosey goosey kumbaya ecclesiology, but there is power in the gospel, in the reading and reflection upon the scriptures, in the name of the Lord, and in the external signs of the Church that light the darkness even apart from their proper setting (in the Church). Perhaps, this truth lies behind Augustine’s and the Roman Church’s understanding of validity — whereby there may be sacramental efficacy beyond the visible Church.

In The Confessions, Augustine writes about the importance of the name Jesus, even in the wildly heretical setting of the Manichees. I think that the same must be true of all fallen away sects. When the Mohammedans show respect toward Mary or when they acknowledge the holiness and authority of Christ, they thereby reap blessings and draw closer to the truth. When the leftist ideologues envision humanity as a family of mutual support and love (and let’s be honest, that does happen), they dip their toes in the river of life. When the young Kristor entered into a state of awareness of God’s presence in bread, he truly witnessed God and the grace of the mysteries, though I do not think that the Anglicans as a group are the Church or that they perform the rites of the Church. I guess that I remain an ecclesial exclusivist who acknowledges the truth that folks like Rahner and Lewis (and Kristor and Charlton) see, though I think that they err in not complementing those insights by solid ecclesiology. “Mere Christianity” is mushy hooey with bits of wisdom.

Just so, I think that the Mormons truly experience the gifts and benefits that God bestows to the extent that they worship him, though they are extraordinarily confused. Most “mainstream” Christians find odd things to criticize about Mormonism, such as that Jesus preached in the Americas, the Mormons’ ethno-mythical understanding of American Indians and negroes, the three heavens, their history of polygamy, or their special underwear. One even hears denunciation of Mormons’ morality, family centeredness, and patriarchy in some quarters. I find those objections wrong or uninteresting. For me, what is obviously repellent in Mormonism is its pagan theology, wherein God is not God but merely a god. Why, then, should we worship him whom we call “God”? If there is something greater than god, such as the universe in which he is a fellow being with us and whose laws he must follow, then ought we not to worship the universe instead? Mormonism, like crude paganism, requires men to succumb to idolatry.

What also troubles me about Mormonism is both the widespread ignorance of its basic theology among its members and the widespread disinterest in this theology (and in the phenomenon of the nearly universal ignorance thereof). Mormons just don’t seem to be bothered by fundamental questions, as in the problem of god regression. Mormonism appears therefore a more wholesome form of Epicureanism, which seeks to guide its practitioners to live decently but without any interest in transcendence. God has been transformed into a Big Daddy in the sky, who, along with Big Mommy, rules over our world like benevolent royalty while, presumably, hanging out in the Celestial Kingdom with other deities (which my brother has affectionately named the God Club). Mohammed simplified monotheism for the masses, but Joseph Smith created a religion wholly appropriate for Americans who have no perspicacity outside their daily lives. As another commentator (A Lady) noted, Mormonism is the most essentially American religion.

As far as the lamentable history of the Puritans’ children, well, I think that their original Calvinist and egalitarian errors have evolved into the chief perversions of American society. Look at the intellectual history of New England since the eighteenth century, and you will find one malady of the spirit after another. Those WASPs have done much to destroy the world. Had they been mediocre or weak folks, they would not have done as much damage. So, I suppose that Mormons were part of this story, yet their own mutations were far more beneficial. I would rather live in a country populated by Mormons than one populated by Unitarians or the average congregants in the United Church of Christ — those religious cultures most directly descended from the Mayflower.

Like Charlton, I am impressed by how Mormons have semi-corrected many of the problems inherent in the Protestantism of their ancestors. Mormons respect and acknowledge hierarchy, reject iconoclasm, and have some sense of sacramentality, though without decent metaphysical support. Mormons do a fine job in seeing one’s life as the setting of both spiritual warfare and the preliminary taste of paradise rather than a mere test that determines one’s everlasting fate in “real life.” Mormons abandoned the bibliolatry of their forebears, though they kept the mistrust and outright ignorance of the continual apostolic tradition of the Church. In other words, Mormons are extremely fascinating.

But every ecclesiastical leader worthy of the name looks out for the interests of his flock.

Surely, Leo could not mean this! Perhaps, he saves the sentence by adding “worthy of the name.” Well, the vast majority (and I do not exaggerate) of the West’s religious leaders are not worthy of the name. They do not govern their institutions with the spiritual or even temporal interests of their flock in mind. They are the vanguards of civilizational ruin.

Concerning Leo’s point about regional culture, even if most Mormons now live outside of “Zion,” the leadership appears to be from and focused on the Mormon heartland. Mormons elsewhere are colonial outposts, working to transform their new frontier into an extension of the promised land. It is a good strategy. Anyway, perhaps LDS is becoming globalized, but that is not a good sign for its future health. There is an advantage in being raised in Zion.

As far as traditions, we, of course, are called to follow the tradition handed down to us by Christ through the apostles and not to follow the meanderings and traditions of men. How may we tell the difference? In the early centuries, the Church Fathers defended the gospel and the apostolic tradition while arguing against various heretics who wished to alter the Christian tradition to appease some philosophical or cultural obsession that Christianity offended. When the gnostics claimed special, secret knowledge of Christ, the Fathers pointed to the consistent public witness of the Church in every generation, where they preached the faith delivered to the apostles. Naturally, life is messy, and an examination of Church history is sometimes trying. Consider the history of Origen’s popularity and unpopularity. However, there is a generally clear witness of the Church’s teaching from the first century to today. It is not obfuscated by translations. (And what is it with Mormons and translations? Do they not know that people know Greek? That some Christians have always known Greek? That some Christians still speak Greek [yeah, yeah, it’s not koine, but still!]?) Mormons’ account of a post-apostolic apostasy is as historically ignorant and — not to spare words — stupid as that of the Seventh Day Adventists or fringe Baptists who think that Constantine invented Catholicism. One cannot worship God in spirit and in truth when one’s basic understanding of God and of God’s dealing with man is based on falsehood.

He credits the success of Mormonism to sturdy WASP stock, sons of Puritans if you will. Puritans are now as scarce as Native Americans in New England. New England’s liberal Episcopalians are descended from WASP stock; indeed, they are the embodiment of the white Protestant establishment. Hedonistic Nevada and the liberal West Coast of the U.S. were settled by very similar stock.

He credits the success of Mormonism to its leadership looking out for its interests. But every ecclesiastical leader worthy of the name looks out for the interests of his flock.

Finally, he credits the success of Mormonism to social pressure inside the Mormon corridor in Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. But only about one in six Latter-day Saints lives there. The majority of Latter-day Saints now live outside of the U.S.

For an alternative hypothesis, see http://archive.org/details/vitalityofmormon00talmrich

“…we are traditionalists, are we not?” I am very partial to tradition, but that only gets us so far, and Christianity itself had to overcome Jewish traditions. Not all traditions are equally good, and not all traditions reflect the true original. Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants all differ over what is the fully correct tradition. And some Protestants even have used Alan’s argument to claim that Catholic’s worship a different Jesus with negative consequences. It is easy to find that argument with a Google search.

I agree in the end that the issue is where one can find Christ, the truth, and a path to holiness. I would argue that the Book of Mormon and the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embody the truth and that path and lead one to Christ. See http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/25.26?lang=eng

While LDS theology is not identical to Russian Orthodox theology, the concept of “theosis” resonates in both traditions as do some aspects of Orthodox liturgy that don’t particularly resemble a Protestant service. See http://www.amazon.com/Great-High-Priest-Christian-Liturgy/dp/0567089428