Defense Department cut roughly 180 religion codes from previous list, with mostly Christian denominations remaining

Mormon leaders, military veterans and elected officials reacted with anger to a new Department of Defense policy that does not consider The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be a Christian religion as part of a wider effort to cut down the U.S. military’s list of recognized faiths.

“The Pentagon’s decision to list The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apart from other Christian faiths is wrong and needs to be corrected,” Republican Rep. Mike Kennedy, of heavily Mormon Utah, wrote on X on Sunday.

  • PennomiEnglish
    112·
    3 days ago

    You cannot pretend orthodox Christianity is all of Christianity. That’s ridiculous.

    • spencerwi@feddit.orgEnglish
      1310·
      3 days ago

      I don’t have to. The Christian church formalized it in 325AD. Joey Smith just wasn’t creative enough to come up with a new heresy. He moved too quick to “okay so let’s do multiple wives and also since my wife is objecting to that God says she’s no longer a prophet and is actually a false shepherd” when he should’ve been doing his homework to make his con more credible.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed

      EDIT: I think maybe you’re confused? I’m not asserting that the uppercase-O Orthodox Church is all of Christianity. I’m using the normal plain meaning of “orthodox”, which is “adhering to the fundamental principles held to be true by a religious group.” All Christians believe that Jesus is part of the Trinity and is fully God, because that’s what Christian means, in the same way that I can assert that all watercraft are things that can travel in water. The LDS faith is not Christian because their cult leader prophet decided stupidly to pick the defining trait of Christianity as a thing he wanted to change.

      • PennomiEnglish
        122·
        3 days ago

        The Nicene Creed is NOT the definition of Christianity.

        There have always (and I mean always) been sects of Christianity that reject core points in that. Even the most cursory delves into religious history makes that painfully obvious.

        • spencerwi@feddit.orgEnglish
          59·
          3 days ago

          If the best you’ve got is “the globally-accepted definition of Christianity that was agreed upon immediately after its founding millennia ago by the closest adherents of Christianity, and was formally codified within the first couple hundred years only so as to explicitly name disagreement with this definition as specifically not being Christianity, and which was only ever disputed in mid-1800s Utah by a random dude who wanted to legitimize his brand-new polygamy cult by pretending it’s part of Christianity is not the definition of Christianity”

          …I don’t think you’re in as strong a position as you seem to think.

          • PennomiEnglish
            82·
            3 days ago

            Please, even a brief cursory search proves that Mormons aren’t the only Christians that denounce the Nicene Creed. If you aren’t even willing to do a simple Wikipedia search to verify your facts, this conversation isn’t worth continuing. Have a good day!

        • spencerwi@feddit.orgEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          That’s an additive change, not a conflicting one.

          What you’re saying is like “the US amended its Constitution to give women the right to vote, so you can’t claim they grant the right to free speech.” The fact that the 19th amendment came after the 1st amendment does not mean the 19th amendment disagrees with the 1st amendment; rather, they address two different subjects, both of which independently needed fixing by addressing them in a foundational document.

          If anything, the Filioque, as I understand it, strengthens what I’m saying, because it was a change to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds not just from the Father, but from the Father and the Son (Jesus), since they’re one.

          That contradicts Mormon teaching even harder, since Mormon teaching is that Jesus is a distinct, separate god, and is not “one” with the Father (Yahweh) in the way that Jesus himself said he was (“I and my Father are one” in John 10; “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” in John 14) or that the rest of the Christian New Testament teach (as distinct from the Mormon editions, which have been changed based on Joseph Smith’s “visions” that all existing manuscripts were somehow secretly corrupted from some hypothetical original text that has never been found nor referenced in any writings prior to Smith coming up with the idea).