Am I an anti-Mormon bigot for simply raising this question?

In this column two weeks ago (available here), I stated I would vote for Mitt Romney should he win the Republican nomination, and that “though I am willing to unite with and befriend Mormons in common cause to advance our shared values, I am hoping to be a voice of clarity – unwilling to allow Mormonism to be mistaken for orthodox Christianity and unwilling again to disqualify a candidate simply because he is from a faith tradition so different from my own.”

I also stated, “many Mormons in recent years have taken to calling themselves Christians, and a growing number of Christians are willing to speak of Mormonism as something akin to another Christian denomination. But, Mormonism is not a Christian denomination, nor is it merely ‘a non-Christian religion.’ To be theologically precise, though perhaps politically incorrect, Mormonism is a cult of Christianity.”

The Romney candidacy is both good news and bad news for Mormonism. It is the greatest opportunity in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to win converts because hundreds of millions of people from all over the world will be exposed to the teachings of Mormonism for the very first time.

However, that’s also the bad news.

I say this with no animus towards Mormons. I am neither “anti-Mormon” nor a bigot. But, words mean things. And we are in danger of losing a perfectly good word to the forces of political correctness.

“Cult” is in danger of becoming the new theological “n-word.”

If you winced when you read the title of this column, you’re already feeling the pressure.

Most Christians and many Mormons do not know Mormon theology, if the emails and responses from my last column are any indication.

“A cult of Christianity is a group of people, which claiming to be Christian, embraces a particular doctrinal system taught by an individual leader, group of leaders, or organization, which (system) denies (either explicitly or implicitly) one or more of the central doctrines of the Christian faith as taught in the sixty-six books of the Bible.” – Alan Gomes, Ed., Unmasking the Cults (Zondervan, 1995).

If Mormonism can no longer be called a cult of Christianity, then neither can the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the United Pentecostal Church, or the Unification Church (to name but a few). If this is to be the case, then books will have to be retitled, libraries and bookstores will have to relabel their shelves, and colleges will have to rename their courses. And, perhaps my seminary degree will be declared illegitimate since I had a course in “Cults” at Talbot School of Theology under Professor Gomes (homepage), whose Unmasking the Cults series linked above is simply the best thing on cults in print. The pertinent volume on Mormonism is written by Kurt Van Gorden and is available here, or from his website here.

So, though I am willing to unite with Mormons in common cause to advance our shared values, I am unwilling to allow Mormonism to be mistaken for Christianity.

Mormonism has almost nothing in common with Christianity. Mormonism is polytheistic, it denies original sin, it teaches that both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit have physical bodies, that Jesus was conceived through sexual intercourse between God the Father and Mary, that Jesus was the spirit-brother of Lucifer, that Jesus was a polygamist, that Jesus traveled to the Americas during His three days in the tomb, and that every Mormon male will one day become a God ruling over his own planet, accompanied by multiple wives, just as the God of this Earth, named Elohim – who was once a man – has done here.

Each of these claims are rooted in primary source documents of the Mormon church (see my Cults Study Guide .pdf available free here.) Another good link to start an examination of Mormon theology is here.

However, you will not find this information located on the “Basic Beliefs” page of the official L.D.S. website (here). It is the “meat” you will learn once you’re able to digest the “milk” of basic Mormon theology. There is a lot of Christian terminology on the official website, but upon examination, you come to understand that though the terms are familiar, the meanings of those terms are foreign and heretical.

For now, in the spirit of clarity and to honor brevity, a simple overview of the birth of Mormonism must suffice.