With the Gov. of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, in the hunt for the Republican nomination for president, the question of "What is a Mormon?" will start to be asked by everyone. It is instructive to know a little bit about Gov. Romney's faith.

To answer the question in the title, one must say a flat out "no," Mormonism is not a Christian religion. In fact, to many Christians it is a cult of the highest order. Still, feelings that it is a cult are not easy to prove and may, in the end, be just that: feelings. Perhaps those who feel it is a cult are too influenced by the long antagonistic history that the Protestant religions have with the Mormons. Many still have a pang that Catholicism is idol worship even though that religion has been around longer than many others in the USA and longer, of course, than Protestantism itself. And this is truly an American point of view, too. I , too plead guilty to being swayed by those feelings and I deal with this national past every time I confront both Mormonism and Catholicism.

There is also the faith's problematic history to contend with as to its being considered a cult. In the 1850's the Mormon Church in Utah was responsible for murdering an entire wagon train of settlers from Illinois that were passing through their area of influence. The Mormons dressed like Indians, killed every man and woman above the age of 13, and then took the children to raise as their own, in the Mormon faith. They also had a branch of their church, the so-called Avenging Angels, who would go about and murder people who left the Church and moved elsewhere, turning away from the Church. Just these two aspects of their history alone makes their past not just a bit extreme.

But, be that as it may, the non-Christian status of Mormonism is far easier to establish than its status as a cult, emotional feelings not-with-standing. After all, it is easy enough to realize and accept that Mormonism is a legitimate religion all its own, whether it is truly a part of Christianity or not. So, we can start by agreeing that it deserves to be called an "official" religion by who ever it might be that keeps track of such things.

I feel compelled to also say that many Mormons are the nicest people you'd ever want to meet. They are heavily invested in family and are generally good strong conservatives filled with conservative values. So, do not misunderstand me to be saying that Mormons should be hung from the highest tree or torn asunder and burnt at the stake for their apostasy.

I started with these first paragraphs to lay out my own biases up front, but with the tempered position of a general acceptance of Mormonism's status as a "legitimate" religion, in hopes that we can get beyond the name-calling phase of this subject. To get beyond that "You are just a bigot" place that many who don't really want to take the time to actually consider the points usually default to. And, if after reading this, you still want to just rave on about everyone else's bigotry, then perhaps you might want to stop reading right now.

It should be noted that without question Mormonism is based on Christianity. Love or hate the religion it can be said it is entirely a fiction made up out of whole cloth by one Joey Smith of old world America. Smith was an extraordinary con man who warped a traditional religion and turned it into a self-made bid for godhood. He did so by taking the King James Version of the Christian Bible and plagiarizing it to fit his "vision" of a new creed. Then, with his messianic charisma, he got a few easily led folks to follow him from travail to travail until his progeny made Utah their own.

This claim of his theft from the KJV Bible is not just "opinion." Mr. Smith claimed that his "Book of Mormon" was first written sometime between 600 BC and 421 AD. Furthermore he claims that the re-emergence of it as given him by some divine television broadcast was a word for word, nay letter for letter, copying of that original book. (He claimed that he put a "seer stone" in a felt hat and held the thing over his face, blocking the light, so he could see a magical parchment upon which he read this ancient book and dictated it to scribes who wrote down his words)

Now, this translation would seem to claim perfection (And Smith and many other high placed Mormon leaders have so claimed, of course). After all, God himself gave Joey a word for word translation of the "Book of Mormon." Yet, it is easily documented that between 1830 and the late 1900s over 4,000 changes have been made to the "Book of Mormon." That is a pretty substantial amount of changes in only 150 some years.

Still, one could easily point to the many alterations the Christian Bible has had over the many centuries since it first appeared on the papyri of ancient times. Fair enough. But, in defense of the Christian Bible, we have centuries upon centuries of human meddling with the text to deal with whereas the Mormons claim God handed Joe Smith the actual word of God less than 200 years ago! Perhaps merely "aging" does not legitimize a religion, but so many changes in so short an amount of time in the "Book of Mormon" is hard to defend.

Now, remembering that this book our pal Joey was divinely inspired to recite to his waiting stenographers was supposedly a re-telling of one originally created in 600 BC, we may also see that his manuscript has dozens and dozens of directly plagiarized sections copied from the KJV Bible. So, here is a problem. If this "Book of Mormon" is really the text of a book written in 600BC how can it possibly have word for word copies of whole sections of the King James Bible, a book that was written over 1200 years later?

A sticky wicket for Mormons that.

But, let's get back to whether this is a "Christian" religion or not. It is rather easy to see that it is not.

While Christian religions differ on many things, one of the things that they do not differ on is the status of "God." Christians believe that God is the one and only God, that there are no others, and that man is a permanently wicked and sinful creature that can never be as perfect as he.

Christian religions also believe in the trinity - God is the Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost. They believe that they are one and the same. And they believe that Jesus was God's living son sent to Earth and born of a virgin mother, Mary.

Mormons do not believe any of the above.

They believe that "God," the one who made the Earth and all its inhabitants, was just one of many other Gods of the beginning times.

They do not believe in the trinity. They believe that God, the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are three distinct and separate gods.

They believe that God had a mortal body in which he attained perfection, a perfection that all mortals can achieve through multiple plains of learning and existence.

They believe that God had physical sex with Mary to conceive Jesus. But, paradoxically, they believe that Mary was still a virgin because "sex" is just something that we lowly humans do. And since God is no longer strictly human, a technicality would state that Mary was still a "virgin" until Jesus' birth.

On the afterlife, they do not claim that Jesus is the salvation but that he merely showed us that all men will be resurrected to one form of heaven or another after physical death. They hold to the idea that there are several levels of heaven to which they claim we are destined to end up in and we get there by our works on earth and our "faith" and piousness alone. Jesus hasn't a thing to do with it.

The differences I mentioned above are only the few, easiest to discuss. There are dozens and dozens of differences that would fill dozens of pages.

In the end, the most basic tenets of Christianity are denied by Mormonism. These denials by Mormons of such basic Christian ideas drive it far away from Christianity and into its own sphere, its own completely separate faith. So, in closing, Mormonism is simply not a Christian religion. It simply cannot be as it denies the most basic aspects of Christianity. It denies even the pivotal importance and position of Christ. And need we point out that CHRISTianity is all about the Son of God, without whom Christians would be just wayward and confused Jews.

Whether you believe that Mormonism is a cult, or not, it is simply beyond possibility to term it a Christian religion despite its grafting of certain Christian text into its tenets. Again, this is not to say they are evil. The vast work they have done of genealogical research alone is a service to the country. But, to say they have done some good works does not equate to their acceptance as a Christian religion. If age alone does not "make" a religion, being good folk certainly doesn't "make" one a Christian.

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