Are Latter-day Saints Christians?

Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a Christian?” While these are the words of a hypothetical objector in the preface of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, they aptly sum up the feelings of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) following the Pentagon’s efforts to streamline certain religious classifications in the military. The government omitted the LDS Church from the “Christian” designation—a move that elicited strong objections from LDS politicians and members alike, including Utah senator Mike Lee. Ultimately, the Department of War dropped the designation altogether.

One of the few things Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox agree on is that Latter-day Saints are not Christians. But why? After all, Latter-day Saints claim to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the only path to salvation. They claim to believe that he is divine and that we must follow his teachings. I can personally confirm they believe these things because I was born and raised in the faith, was a missionary for two years, was married to my wife in an LDS temple, served in local LDS leadership positions, and lived the faith actively for many years until I converted to Catholicism in 2018. I agree with the historic Christian consensus, not out of spite or animus, but out of a conviction that it is both historically necessary and spiritually prudent for safeguarding the Christian faith.

As Lewis’s objector questions, “May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who do?” In other words: Mormons are really good people who claim to follow Jesus and live many basic virtues better than many Nicene-professing Christians. The problem is, as Lewis observes, this line of reasoning is “in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive,” but indeed, “has every available quality except that of being useful.” Membership in any group—including the LDS Church—requires an authoritative line defining who belongs and who doesn’t. When “Christian” is stretched to mean nothing more than “being good,” the word is rendered essentially empty.

Even the LDS Church’s specific affirmations—that Jesus is divine, that he is our only Savior—aren’t enough.

According to the Gospel of Truth, a document influential with Valentinian Gnostics, Jesus is “the Logos” (the Word) and “the Savior,” “since that is the name of the work he must do for the redemption of those who have not known the Father.” But for St. Irenaeus of Lyons, this so-called gospel was full of “blasphemy.” When the Gnostics spoke of Jesus and the salvation he offered, they meant something very different from, and opposed to, what was affirmed by the deposit of faith. If uttering the words “Jesus is my Lord and Savior” is sufficient to be Christian, we wind up having to identify as Christian numerous groups the early Church would deem not only wrong but spiritually dangerous. Whatever benefit it may have for sociological purposes to lump Gnostics, Mormons, and Catholics together as “Christians,” sociology is not a matter of our salvation. So when we speak as Christians, it matters whom we do and do not acknowledge to be Christian. The Christian faith is grounded in a real person, not merely in the words a religion bears in its name, the symbols it displays.

It is for that reason that when I became Catholic, I was baptized. Not re-baptized, but baptized. Much like the Valentinians, Latter-day Saints mean something very different when they baptize their members “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” I will not digress here on the complexities, and indeed, diversity, of LDS theology, but in a nutshell their views boil down to either polytheistic or henotheistic worship, neither of which is consistent with the historic Christian faith (and indeed, would make Arius himself blush). For that reason, among others, the Catholic Church, in a 2001 response to a dubium, declared baptism conferred by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be invalid. Thus, a person so baptized is not, in the Catholic Church’s eyes, sacramentally Christian. What the Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox hold in common about the nature of who Jesus Christ is serves as the basis of their rightly held consensus on the question of whether the Latter-day Saints are “Christians.”

Some dispute the pragmatic evangelical effect of this posture toward Latter-day Saints, who are famously nice and conflict-avoidant, and who take great offense at being doggedly refused the title of Christians. To that I would suggest there is actually a twofold usefulness to this consensus: First, it may well serve to keep in the fold our Christian brothers and sisters who are at the margins, given that the overwhelming bulk of converts to the LDS Church are lapsed or poorly catechized Christians of one sort or another. If the LDS Church is “Christian,” it will make it that much easier for those whose faith in the Christian message is not where it ought to be to turn away from the faith. Second, Christians of the past were willing to be exiled, even die, over strictly maintaining orthodoxy regarding who Jesus Christ is. Perhaps our own willingness to respectfully maintain that line can help the LDS Church to understand that belief in the Triune God is positively non-negotiable to the Christian faith. I know it is possible to cross that line with one’s love for Christ not merely intact but deepened. My hope, and my prayer, is that many more will follow.