I believe you have been misleading in your article in that you have implied that it is peculiarly Southern Baptist to be anti-Mormon. The Southern Baptists are only one of several or many faithful to the bible evangelical Christian denominations, not to speak of many thousands af independant bible believing fundamentalist and also pentecostal churches which I am confident would completely concur with the Southern Baptists' conviction that Mormonism is a radically anti Christian cult, teaching another gospel which deprives its adherants of salvation and dooms them to an eternity without Christ and heaven, however much they may in recent years cloak themselves in a false claim to be Christian. Their "Christ" is another christ who in vital particulars is a counterfeit of the real one. Their founder was a crack pot boy whose vain imaginings and their consequences make him one of the more serious anti Christs of history to date. I myself am not a Southern Baptist but a graduate of an independant Bible College, Washington Bible College, and I learned a lot of this there. But it is common knowledge among those who care about the gospel of Salvation, namely Christians.

Oh please.

I have seen more personal re-interpretations of scripture than I can count and in every case it was to justify judgement of others and in some cases murder, destruction, and worse.

David Koresh read his Bible every day, lest we forget.

I do believe in God and in the goodness of Christ, but I also believe that scripture is NOT the way to go. Christ did not ask us to go forth and judge others-he asked us to go among our fellow beings and to live by example-not try to create authoritarian laws based on scripture to be enforced at gun point.

Indeed most christians I know are the kind who treat church like a social club-they are there to be seen and to network. Their lives are often quite contradictory to their claimed faith.

I attend no church, but were I to find someone on the side of the road, I would be the Samaritan. I dont read the Bible much-and when I do it is out of curiosity-I read other books, philosophy, etc too-and I see much wisdom in Christs words-too bad that to many, only his being supernatural gives him authority-and personally I highly doubt the man lived after his crucifiction. yet we learn much about ourselves by what happened to him.

No, I didnt attend a Bible College-I learned about each subject without a frosted lense or an agenda.

Religion MUST be kept from our government or we will end up being the Taliban of the Christian world.

Religion MUST be kept from our government or we will end up being the Taliban of the Christian world.

Exactly. Harry Reid is a Mormon. Mike Leavitt, secretary of HHS is a Mormon. I haven't noticed either of them channeling for church headquarters. After 9/11 President Bush invited leaders from all faiths to the White House, including Gordon B. Hinckley, the president and prophet of the LDS church. I think the White House is still standing.

I wasn't sanguine about Mitt Romney's chances when he decided to run because of this very thing, but he is too good a manager/administrator to just ignore because of his religion.

If Huckabee gets the nomination (doubtful), he'll seriously damage the Republican Party with his disingenuous playing of the religion card, if he hasn't already done so. He'd get maybe three states and give the Democrats complete run of Washington.

Why? Because our media has already been promoting complaints that Bush is too overtly religious, when all he does is mention God. The MoveOn.Org and Democratic Underground crowd are already accusing Republicans of trying to establish a theocracy. Huckabee has made his being a "Christian Leader" part of his campaign. If he was the teddy bear he wants us to believe, he would have kept theology out of his campaign and told his supporters that they had better, as well.

Romney's father ran for President forty years ago or so, and nobody questioned his religion, although maybe it was just too taboo at the time. Have we slid this far since then, that we're making arcane matters of theology a standard for politics?

It's part of Mormon scripture that it is unjust "to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied."

Thanks to Slate for publishing the rest of the story.

If Slate was publishing the rest of the story it would have mentioned the Mountain Meadows Massacre and why it matters.

LDS planned it and tried to cover it up. It was as organized as anything Hitler or Saddam Hussein did, right down to trying to cover it up.

Faith? Not at all. It is humans with power over others, people trying to build their own little kingdom on earth-and LDS is perhaps the most organized cult there is. Of course Romney and other like him try to distance themselves-but the fact is the eventual discovery is being made now that Romney and Huckabee and others have every intention of taking their religion into the seat of power and trying to legislate their beliefs onto others. And we need to remember the Mountain Meadow Massacre because it tells us what one of the churches was willing to do to maintain its power-and this doesnt excuse Huckabee or others either-no lynching is any better than the MMM. The fact is that faith or a cult of peronality of any kind, when coupled with power brings out the absolute worst in humanity.

PS--

Recommended viewing-see "With God on Our Side" and learn how proudly the evangelicals speak of their taking over government. Bush is their masterpiece. It isnt some media illusion.

Can't we all just get along?

I mean, we Christians forgave the Jews for killing our Lord. Why not the Mormons for writing a book of fiction?

:)

True Christians, understand that Christ died not because of the Jews, but because of each one of our personal sins.

That is something I never quite understood about the traditional Christian antagonism towards Jews for supposedly killing Jesus -- given that according to their theology, his death was required.

you need to remember there is christian then there is Christian.

Th Paine:

That is something I never quite understood about the traditional Christian antagonism towards Jews for supposedly killing Jesus -- given that according to their theology, his death was required.

I think anti-Semitism extends further than the murder of Jesus, though that's the common justification. When a society needs a scapegoat, they can't do much better than the Jews. They've always been pretty insular, resistant to assimiliation with the culture they reside in, faithful to their religion and their language, and it probably doesn't help that they tend to be highly educated and oftentimes quite prosperous to boot, despite the obstacles they face. They're the perfect target for any country reeling from social upheavel or degradation.

Anse:

Th Paine:

That is something I never quite understood about the traditional Christian antagonism towards Jews for supposedly killing Jesus -- given that according to their theology, his death was required.

I think anti-Semitism extends further than the murder of Jesus, though that's the common justification. When a society needs a scapegoat, they can't do much better than the Jews. They've always been pretty insular, resistant to assimiliation with the culture they reside in, faithful to their religion and their language, and it probably doesn't help that they tend to be highly educated and oftentimes quite prosperous to boot, despite the obstacles they face. They're the perfect target for any country reeling from social upheavel or degradation.

So maybe the Mormons are "the new Jews" to the SBC? A convenient new group to persecute because they don't believe the "right" way?

I generally don't give a rip what religion someone is as long as they don't try to convert me and, much more importantly, don't demonize people of other faiths.

Religions are superstitious nonsense for the most part but many do offer advice on living a good life, loving your neighbor and living peacefully. Too bad many choose to ignore the important message and rather focus on arcane doctrine.

So maybe the Mormons are "the new Jews" to the SBC? A convenient new group to persecute because they don't believe the "right" way?

Any religion that calls for holy underwear has it coming in my book...but all joking aside, the problem with Mormonism is that it doesn't have the dusty patina of ancient roots to make it seem legitimate to a lot of modern Christians. Souther Baptists are an offshoot, an extension of the old Christianity, while Mormons are claiming a whole new scriptural text. It's not quite the same thing as mere Protestantism. Luther didn't produce a new Bible, he just put a new spin on it.

Oh hell, I shouldn't defend the Mormon-bashers. I think they're all nuts anyway.

Of course SBC members are easy pickings for LDS. Sheep follow the nearest bell.

Why are the dreams of Joseph Smith any less real than those of any of the OT authors? Or of the guy who wrote Revelations? Same proof in both cases.

And san opens his anti semetic, pro theocratic shit hole again.More proof of the fact that not only did he drink the coolaide, he went back for seconds.