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| | #REDIRECT [[Question: Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a "cult"?]] |
| ==Criticism==
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| Critics claim that the Church is "a cult."
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| ===Source(s) of the Criticism===
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| * ''The Utah Evangel'' 31 (May 1984): 1.
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| * ''The Utah Evangel'' 33 (May 1986): 3.
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| * Walter Martin, ''The Kingdom of the Cults'', revised and expanded, (Minneapolis: Bethan House, 1985), 173.
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| * James R. Spencer, ''Beyond Mormonism: An Elder's Story'' (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 1984), 138.
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| ==Response==
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| Websters Dictionary defines cult as a “great devotion to a person, idea, or thing”. So as
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| the Jews revere Moses, Lutherans revere Martin Luther, Seventh-day Adventists have Ellen G.
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| White, and mostly Christians reverence Jesus Christ. That would put them under the category of
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| cult also.
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| Alan Gomes, who teaches at BIOLA University’s Talbot school of Theology, admits
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| right up front that “our English word cult comes from the Latin word cultus, which is a form of
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| the verb colere, meaning ‘to worship or give reverence to a deity” (Alan W. Gomes, Unmasking
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| the Cults, pg. 7)
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| Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw said in Nov. 14 2004 conference in Salt
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| Lake City for the unity of Evangelicals and Mormons that “I know that I have learned much in this
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| continuing dialogue, and I am now convinced that we evangelicals have often seriously mis-represented
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| the beliefs and practices of the Mormon community. Indeed, let me state it bluntly to the LDS folks here
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| this evening: we have sinned against you. The God of the Scriptures makes it clear that it is a terrible
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| thing to bear false witness against our neighbors, and we have been guilty of that sort of transgression in
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| things we have said about you. We have told you what you believe without making a sincere effort first
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| of all to ask you what you believe.”
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| The true Church has always come under the criticism of being a cult. Even the early
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| Church was regarded as a cult. In Herbert Danbys, "The Jew and Christianity" on pg. 8, it
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| reads “This new Jewish-Christian party in the eyes of the religious leaders of the time was, at the
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| worst, simply regarded as guilty of minuth (cultism), namely, a variety of Jewish heresy, or
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| rather, Jewish sectarianism...early passages in the Talmud still contain hostile references to the
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| minim (cults), among whom were numbered the Jewish Christians...”
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| Pliny, an early Roman leader also said that Christians were a “superstition, a foreign
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| cult” this was re-iterated by two more Roman writers, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus said that is
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| why the Christians were being killed, and also because “of their hatred toward mankind”. Tacitus
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| also said that they were “an enemy to mankind”, and a “deadly superstition”. And also Suetonius
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| who said that they were a “mischievous superstition” or in other words, a cult. (The Christians as
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| the Romans Saw Them, pg. 22,49-50,66)
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| ==Conclusion==
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| A summary of the argument against the criticism.
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| ==Endnotes==
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| ==Further reading==
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| ===FAIR wiki articles===
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| *Logical fallacies
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Ad_hominem | Ad hominem]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Appeal_to_authority | Appeal to authority]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Appeal_to_belief | Appeal to belief]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Appeal_to_the_majority | Appeal to the majority]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Appeal_to_tradition | Appeal to tradition]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Argument_from_repetition | Argument from repetition]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Argumentum_ad_numerum | Argument ad numerum]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Bandwagon_fallacy | Bandwagon fallacy]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Begging_the_question | Begging the question]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#False_analogy | False analogy]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#False_premise | False premise]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Ideology_over_reality | Ideology over reality]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#No_true_Scotsman | No true Scotsman]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Poisoning_the_well | Poisoning the well]]
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| ** [[Logical_fallacies#Straw_man | Straw man]]
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| *[[Latter-day Saints aren't Christians]]
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| ===FAIR web site===
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| *FAIR Topical Guide: [http://www.fairlds.org/apol/ai042.html LDS Church as "a cult"]
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| ===External links===
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| *Orson Scott Card, "Hey, Who Are You Calling a Cult?" [http://www.beliefnet.com/story/49/story_4906_1.htmlhttp://www.beliefnet.com/story/49/story_4906_1.html *]
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| *{{aremormonschristians}}
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| ===Printed material===
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| *Printed resources whose text is not available online
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