Artigo Acesso aberto Revisado por pares

Mormon Christianity: A Critical Appreciation by a Christian Pluralist

1988; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/45228019

ISSN

1554-9631

Autores

John Quiring,

Tópico(s)

Archaeology and Natural History

Resumo

I recently had an unexpected opportunity to analyze the ideas and experience the worship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Following four months of intense dialogue with a Mormon intellectual and former missionary, I had seven sessions with missionary elders, attended a variety of services in several wards, and read the Mormon scriptures as well as several hundred pages of theology.I think this exposure should warrant a fair-minded decision about whether or not to join the Church.The following remarks sketch my background, expectations, experience, and deliberations.Having reinforced the Fundamentalist, Mennonite, and Presbyterian influences in my background with studies in history of religions, my graduate work in the philosophy of religion has focused on various atheistic movements and writers that view all religion as worthless -secular humanism, the Marxisms, and Nietzsche -as well as the "widespread practical atheism" (Smart 1969, 499 )1 and irreligion influenced by the individualism and consumerism of our industrial civilization.For some time I have felt that the differences between the world's traditional religions are minor when contrasted with the enormous difference between any one of them and the post-Enlightenment atheisms.From this perspective, the differences between the various branches or versions of any one of the religions seem to me unspeakably minuscule.Access to saving experience and wisdom seems available and to some extent demonstrated in most, if not all, religions and denominations, despite apparent differences in belief.But through mutual investigation, dialogue, criticism, and appropriation, I suggest we can encourage ever more radical transforma-

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