[GraceChristianChat] Latter-day Complaints

Wed Jul 12 12:22:07 MDT 2006

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/007/22.50.html

     
            Christianity Today, July 2006

            WEBLOG IN PRINT
            Latter-day Complaints
            Mormons and evangelicals fret over movies, politics, and each other.
            by Ted Olsen | posted 07/06/2006 09:30 a.m.

                 
                  • Related articles and links

                    
            The Da Vinci Code wasn't the only movie sparking protests and religious debates this spring. Some filmgoers were surprised by States of Grace, a film advertised as "a quantum leap forward for Christian cinema," with music by gospel artist Kirk Franklin. It turned out that States of Grace was a sequel to the 2000 film by Mormon filmmaker Richard Dutcher, God's Army, and both movies focused on Mormon missionaries.

            Filmgoers in San Diego were especially surprised when a ticket agent asked them, "Are you a Christian?" After answering yes, they were told that States of Grace is "being advertised as a Christian film, but it's really a Mormon film."

            Outraged Latter-day Saints from across the West descended on the theater, ready to protest with signs: "MORMONS ? JESUS, Too" and "MORMONS ARE CHRISTIANS, TOO." Organizers called off the protest only after a last-minute call from the film's director.

            "I was kind of riled up," Steven Greenstreet, another LDS filmmaker who had helped to organize the protest, told The Daily Herald of Provo, Utah. But, he said, "the way we were approaching it wasn't the most Christian way. We decided it would look better to turn the other cheek."

            Mormons have had plenty of reason to be riled up this spring. HBO's drama Big Love, about a polygamous family, and the real-life drama of the FBI's pursuit of polygamist Warren Jeffs and his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have sent the church's media relations department into overdrive. It has had to remind reporters that the Mormons outlawed polygamy after a "divine revelation" in 1890.

            That didn't stop Fox News's Andrew Napolitano from suggesting that if the Utah attorney general pursued Jeffs, he would risk a Mormon backlash. Or stop CNN from displaying an image of Jeffs superimposed on a photo of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City.

            LDS church officials bristle when asked about Jeffs. "There is no reason," the LDS church said in a press release, "why the church would wish to comment about a legal action concerning a group with which it has no affiliation or connection."

            Expect more objectionable questions in the future, especially as Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney considers a run for the presidency. Noting that Mormons didn't allow blacks to become priests until 1978, one critic asked, "Where is Mr. Romney on those issues, in terms of equality of race prior to 1978 and other kinds of issues in question?"

            The critic was Ted Kennedy (along with his nephew Joseph), and the question came during Romney's 1994 Senate campaign. After Romney invoked John F. Kennedy's response to anti-Catholic concerns in the 1960 presidential race, the Kennedys backed off. Now, Ted Kennedy says, America has "moved on" from religious tests for politicians. Still, Romney says that if he runs, he will, like JFK, publicly explain the relationship between his faith and his governing.

            But evangelicals won't listen, said columnist Robert Novak, who reported that they "are adamant, saying there is no way Romney can win them over." He cited unnamed "prominent, respectable evangelical Christians" who told him "that millions of their co-religionists cannot and will not vote for Romney for President solely because he is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If Romney is nominated and their abstention results in the election of Hillary Rodham Clinton, that's just too bad." This despite the fact that Mormons are more likely than evangelicals to support conservative Christian political causes.

            As the National Association of Evangelicals' Richard Cizik told The Washington Monthly, "Most evangelicals still regard Mormonism as a cult." Even more see Mormons as non-Christians—or worse—while seeing liberal Protestants as "bad Christians"—though both groups equally deny classical Christian doctrine on revelation, the full divinity of Christ, the nature of man, and other key points.

            With their strong family values, constant Jesus talk, and passion for evangelism, Mormons seem almost like evangelicals' cultural twins. In some ways, they represent our ideal.

            Maybe that's one reason why so many evangelicals are more comfortable with liberal Protestantism than with Mormonism. We like our differences stark, with red-and-blue color coding. We'd rather see The Da Vinci Code than States of Grace.
           
     
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