Saturday, August 13, 2011

Is it because they are not Trinitarians?

Or because they are polytheists?

I've followed the "Mormons are not Christians, but they call themselves Christians" issue and related it back to America's Founding, for some time. (If you have to believe in the Trinity to be a Christian, our 2nd and 3rd Presidents militantly rejected that doctrine, even though they called themselves Christians, and the evidence that the first and fourth Presidents were Trinitarians sorely lacks.)

So as Mitt Romney again throws his hat in the Presidential race, this theme will occur here again.

This time it's a hard core Roman Catholic, as opposed to a conservative evangelical who normally makes this claim, of the problem with a Mormon who claims to be Christian running for President:

"Note that I’m not in principle opposed to voting for polytheists. I could see, for example, voting for a pro-life Hindu over a pro-abortion monotheist. But a Hindu does not claim to be a Christian and thus does not risk confusing people about the core doctrine of Christianity the way Mormonism does,"...

3 comments:

Angie Van De Merwe said...

Am I understanding that social policy trumps religious commitment? That seems reasonable, unless one assumes a staunce stance that their policy position should be supported because it is "God's way" or "way of thinking"!

All policy is determined by certain values of personal/poltical commitment, which are really philosophical dilemmas, not moral absolutes.

Whenever one goes down the road to absolutism, then, one dismisses many nuances that protects and grants rights. Such as these believe that the law is a useful means of "catching" another in a positive way, rather than the law being a tool to protect liberty.

Angie Van De Merwe said...

Laws protect society's social order that is to protect all people within its bounds (the nation). Therefore, legislation encumbers and limits liberty and where liberty is limited should only be where society is undermined apart from such law(s). Otherwise, we regulate too much and become a land of the unfree and the home of the fearful, instead of the land of the free and home of the brave!

Tom Van Dyke said...

The consensus in the [conservative] comments was they'd rather have a socially conservative Mormon than a Ted Kennedy, John Kerry or Nancy Pelosi, all Catholics.