1. How I Came to Believe This

When I was a kid, I never felt like I quite fit in with Christians. They prayed differently, sang different hymns – or sometimes rock songs at church – understood the sacrament differently, and seemed to have only the Bible. At the same time, I was taught that because I was Mormon I belonged to the “One True Church”, and that the Christian creeds were an abomination. In my mind, Mormonism did not simply stand within the Christian world; it stood apart from it, and in most ways above it. Christianity, as I understood it then, was not the larger religious family Mormonism belonged to; it was the corrupted tradition that Mormonism had restored and surpassed.

Because of that, I gravitated toward the things that made Mormonism peculiar: an open canon, ongoing revelation, visions, temples, exaltation, Heavenly Parents, eternal progression, and the possibility of becoming a god. So when people asked me if I was Christian, I often responded, “I’m Mormon”. That was not merely a denominational clarification; it was an identity statement. I identified with my own tradition far more than I identified with the broader Christian world.

Even after I stopped believing in the LDS Church’s truth claims, my interest in Mormonism did not disappear – if anything, it deepened. I was still drawn to Mormonism, but not to Christianity in general. As my spirituality evolved, I eventually let go of the idea that Mormonism was above other religions and came to see it instead as one thread in the vast tapestry of world religions: beautiful, flawed, meaningful, and human. But letting go of Mormon superiority did not make Mormonism feel less distinct to me; it made its distinctiveness feel more valuable. The more I stepped away from institutional claims of exclusive truth, the more I found myself drawn to the parts of Mormonism that were peculiar, expansive, visionary, and alive.

While I was a member of Community of Christ, I loved listening to John Hamer’s lectures, especially the ones where he traced how religions evolve out of earlier traditions. In one lecture, he charted how Mormonism had emerged from previous religious movements. I already knew, in an abstract way, that religions branch off from other religions, but seeing that process visually represented helped something click for me: this is not only something that happened anciently; it is still happening, and Mormonism is one example of that process.

That helped me see Mormonism differently. Christianity emerged from Judaism, inherited Jewish scripture, reinterpreted Jewish prophecy, and worshiped a Jewish messiah, but eventually became a distinct religious tradition. In the same way, Mormonism emerged from Christianity, inherited Christian scripture, reinterpreted Christian theology, and centered itself around Jesus, but developed into something religiously distinct. In that sense, I began to think that Mormons are not Christians in the same way Christians are not Jews.

In 2024, after I had left Community of Christ, I attended the Sunstone Symposium and was able to attend Rob Lauer’s presentation, “The Mormon Theological Paradigm: How Reform Mormonism is Preserving Mormonism’s Most Valuable Heirloom.” In that presentation, Rob said:

“While the teachings and character of Christ play a central role in Reform Mormon faith and ethics, it is understood that Mormonism does not share Christianity’s theological paradigm. Just as Christianity sprang from Judaism and evolved into an entirely new religion, Reform Mormons hold that Mormonism sprang from early 19th-century Christianity and evolved into an entirely new distinct religion. Therefore, we embrace the words ‘Mormon’ and ‘Mormonism’—rather than ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’—as more correctly and properly identifying us and our religion.”

I had never heard someone articulate that position so clearly before, and I immediately recognized it as what I had already believed but had not yet known how to say.

Looking back, my view developed in stages. My childhood gave me the instinct that Mormonism was something separate from Christianity. John Hamer gave me a historical framework for understanding how one religion can grow out of another and become something new. Rob Lauer gave me the language – and, in a way, the permission – to say plainly that Mormonism is best understood not as a branch of Christianity, but as a distinct religious tradition that emerged from it.

2. What sparked me thinking about it

A few weeks ago, my friend ZigZag posted a simple question in the Reform Mormon community, both on Discord and in our Facebook group: “How do you identify?”, and they gave four options:

• Christian but not Mormon
• Mormon but not Christian
• Mormon and Christian
• Neither Mormon nor Christian

Across both platforms, 19 people responded. The results were probably not what most outsiders would expect: a supermajority identified as “Mormon but not Christian”.

To put it lightly, that small community poll sparked a surprisingly large amount of discussion. It also pushed me to start reading more intentionally about how other people have approached this question.

Then, by sheer coincidence, the Department of War changed its chaplaincy codes and, in the process, explicitly chose not to classify the LDS Church as Christian.

That decision caused a national stir and suddenly everyone seemed to be talking about whether Mormons are Christians. Mormon Senator Mike Lee was especially vocal in his objection, using his platform repeatedly to argue that the exclusion was unacceptable. Here is one of the 20+ posts he made on the subject:

To be clear, I do not think the United States government has any business defining who is or is not Christian, because the state should not be in the business of adjudicating theology at all. When the government starts deciding which religious communities belong under certain religious categories – especially in a country already flirting with Christian nationalism – minority faiths have every reason to be concerned.

Because of the public backlash, the Department of War revised the codes list, but the revision did not actually declare the LDS Church to be Christian. Instead, it removed the Christian prefix altogether. Mormons called this a win, because they thought the government recognized them as Christian, but the truth is the government still did not do so. Nevertheless, in my view, that was the correct governmental solution: not to decide that Mormonism is Christian, but to stop the government from making that theological classification in the first place.

The Department of War’s rapid response account framed the change this way, and Mike Lee responded approvingly:

Because this debate had suddenly appeared in my community, in my reading, and in national politics all within the same short period of time, I decided it was time to write out my full thoughts.

3. Expanded Reasons Why I Don’t Think Mormons Are Christian

There are several questions that often get collapsed into one. Do many Latter-day Saints sincerely identify as Christian? Yes. Did Mormonism emerge from Christianity? Yes. Is Mormonism centered on Jesus in meaningful ways? Often, yes. But does Mormonism belong to the same historical-theological paradigm as Nicene Christianity? I do not think so.

My argument is not that Mormons should be forbidden from calling themselves Christian, nor that Mormonism is somehow lesser if it is not Christian. My argument is that Mormonism developed far enough from its Christian origins that it is best understood as a distinct religious tradition: Christian-descended, Jesus-centered in many forms, but no longer simply a branch of Christianity. I want to explore a couple ways I think Mormonism is distinct from Christianity.

3.1. Nature of God

The nature of God is probably the single biggest theological difference between Mormonism and historic Christianity.

98.5%+ of Christians belong to traditions that treat the Nicene Creed as a foundational statement of Christian faith. That creed helped define what became the dominant Christian understanding of God: the Trinity. Because Latter-day Saints often use the word “Godhead” in ways that can sound similar to Trinitarian language, it is worth clarifying the difference between the two.

The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there is one God who exists eternally as three distinct, coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct from one another, but they are not three separate gods. They share one divine essence, substance, or nature. This is sometimes summarized as “three-in-one” and is often visually represented through the “Shield of the Trinity“.

Mormon belief, by contrast, typically operates from a very different model of divinity. There is variation across Mormon traditions and even among individual Latter-day Saints, which I have explored in-depth here, but for simplicity’s sake I will focus here on what the LDS Church teaches. In LDS theology, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not three persons sharing one divine essence; they are three distinct beings united in purpose, will, and glory. This is what Mormons mean by the “Godhead.”

The difference becomes even more significant when placed within the larger Mormon cosmology. Mormons teach exaltation, sometimes called “apotheosis” or “deification”: the belief that human beings can become a god. In this framework, God the Father is an embodied, exalted being, and human beings are literally his spirit children. Many Mormons have also understood God the Father as having a Father of his own, implying an eternal chain or “infinite regression” of divine beings. Each of these gods are entirely separate people from one another, and don’t share an “essence” even though the gods’ goals are aligned. The 3 gods that Mormons have the most to do with are referred to as the “Godhead”, which is what Mormons confuse the Trinity with. Within this model, Jesus is the firstborn spirit child of the Father (and Mother), and all other spirits are also spirit children of the Heavenly Parents. This is why Christians have often said that Jesus and Lucifer are, in some sense, brothers.

Because Mormons recognize multiple gods, they are not monotheists; they are polytheists. Some Mormons say they just worship the Father (which would make them monolaters), while others say that they also worship Jesus and still others also worship the Mother (which would make them henotheists).

From the standpoint of Nicene Christianity, this is not a minor disagreement; it is an entirely different way of imagining God, Jesus, humanity, salvation, and divine embodiment. Christianity insists on one uncreated God, one divine essence, and a sharp ontological distinction between Creator and creation. Mormonism, by contrast, teaches a cosmos populated by embodied divine beings, spirit children, eternal progression, and the possibility of human exaltation to godhood.

This is why the phrase “Mormons believe in a different Jesus” – while often used polemically – points to a real and a fundamental theological disagreement. Christians who say this usually do not mean that Mormons have never heard of Jesus or that they do not sincerely love and follow him; they mean that Jesus functions differently within Mormon theology than he does within Nicene Christianity. In Trinitarian Christianity, Jesus is the eternally begotten Son, fully God, consubstantial with the Father, and not a created being. In Mormonism, Jesus is divine, preexistent, chosen, and central to salvation, but he is also understood within a broader family of divine beings and spirit children.

Mormons often define Christianity primarily around devotion to Jesus: if you believe in Christ, follow his teachings, and accept him as Savior, then you are Christian. Most Christians, however, define Christianity not only by devotion to Jesus but also by a particular confession about who Jesus is. For them, Nicene Trinitarianism is not an optional theological position; it is a boundary marker of Christian orthodoxy. This is why Mormonism’s rejection of the Christian creeds matters so much. Joseph Smith’s First Vision account canonized the claim that the Christian creeds were “an abomination” in God’s sight (Joseph Smith—History 1:19). The very creeds that most Christians use to define orthodox Christianity are rejected in Mormon scripture as corrupt. So when many Christians conclude that Mormonism falls outside Christianity, they are recognizing that Mormonism works from a fundamentally different theological paradigm.

3.2. Scripture

Another major difference between Mormonism and Christianity is their relationship to scripture.

Most Christians disagree with one another about many things, including the exact boundaries of the biblical canon; Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians do not all have identical Bibles. But broadly speaking, Christians share a closed scriptural canon. They may disagree about which books belong in the Bible, how scripture should be interpreted, or how scripture relates to tradition and church authority, but they generally agree that the age of new scripture is over. Christianity is a Bible-centered tradition.

Mormonism, by contrast, is built on an open canon. The 8th and 9th Article of Faith say:

“We believe the Bible to be the word of God
as far as it is translated correctly;
we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.”

“We believe all that God has revealed,
all that He does now reveal
and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.”

That statement captures two major Mormon departures from mainstream Christianity. First, the Bible is affirmed, but conditionally: it is the word of God only “as far as it is translated correctly.” Second, the Bible is not alone. The Book of Mormon is also scripture, and in most Mormon traditions it is joined by other books of scripture as well.

Joseph Smith took it upon himself to “correctly translate” the Bible, and this revision of the Bible is known among Brighamites as the “Joseph Smith Translation” and among Josephites as the “Inspired Version”. Smith did not merely offer commentary on the Bible; he made thousands of revisions, additions, and expansions to the biblical text. Some of these changes significantly alter the meaning of familiar passages and introduce distinctly Mormon theological ideas. Such an endeavor is unthinkable to Christians, but it has been celebrated by Mormons.

Mormons also accept additional books of scripture, including the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. The LDS Church also canonizes the Pearl of Great Price, while other Mormon denominations have their own additional scriptural collections. These texts are not treated merely as devotional supplements or theological commentaries; they are scripture, often placed alongside the Bible as authoritative revelation.

The contents of these scriptures also move Mormonism in directions that most Christians find foreign. Mormon scripture teaches or supports ideas such as multiple degrees of heaven, the Garden of Eden being located in Missouri, the Fall as a fortunate and necessary part of God’s plan (Felix Culpa) (2nd Nephi 2:25), Eve being seen as wise rather than stupid and villainous, multiple divine beings involved in creation, “eternal punishment” as temporary rather than endless, the possibility of the dead accepting the gospel after death, saving rituals performed on behalf of the dead, polygamy being a divinely authorized practice, marriage persisting beyond death, God speaking to many nations beyond biblical Israel, salvation being received by grace “after all we can do”, and God’s throne being near a star or planet called Kolob.

Any one of these teachings would be enough to set Mormonism apart from much of Christianity. Taken together, they reveal a very different scriptural world. Mormonism does not simply add a few extra texts to the Christian Bible; it uses those texts to construct a different religious paradigm: a different cosmos, a different plan of salvation, a different view of human destiny, and a different understanding of how God continues to speak. That is why many Christians see Mormon scripture not merely as additional revelation, but as evidence that Mormonism has moved beyond the boundaries of Christianity into a distinct religious tradition.

3.3. Temple Worship

Another major difference between Mormonism and Christianity is temple worship. In institutional LDS Mormonism, the temple is not merely a sacred meetinghouse or a place for contemplation. It is the site of the religion’s highest and most salvific rituals. These include baptism for the dead, washing and anointing, sealings, the endowment, and the second anointing.

Some of these rituals have partial parallels in Christianity, but the Mormon forms are still distinct. Baptism for the dead, for example, is not entirely unheard of in Christian history, but it is extremely rare and foreign to the vast majority of Christians. Washing and anointing also has Christian precedents, but in Mormonism it is connected to temple garments, ritual promises, and the reception of a new name. Sealings are even more distinctive, especially because they teach that marriage and family bonds can persist eternally. This differs sharply from the synoptic gospels, where Jesus says that in the resurrection people “neither marry, nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34–36). Mormonism also extends sealing beyond marriage into parent-child relationships, creating a ritual structure for binding families together beyond death.

The endowment and the second anointing are even more distinctive. They are not simply unusual Christian rituals; they represent a different ritual economy of salvation.

The endowment is a temple ceremony that early Mormons understood as necessary to enter the highest degree of heaven. It was described as being “necessary for you, after you have departed this life, to enable you to walk back to the presence of the Father, passing the angels who stand as sentinels” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 2:3). Joseph Smith taught that one could not enter the Celestial Kingdom without receiving the endowment. The ceremony ritually dramatizes the creation, the fall, and humanity’s journey back into the presence of God. Participants wear sacred clothing, make covenants, receive ritual tokens (“handshakes”), and learn associated names and signs. These are understood as part of what enables the faithful to pass through the veil and return to God’s presence.

The second anointing, also called having one’s “calling and election made sure”, is even more striking. On the surface, it involves actions that have Christian resonances, such as washing, anointing, and blessing. What makes it so unusual is not merely the ritual form, but the theological meaning attached to it. Bruce R. McConkie explained:

“To have one’s calling and election made sure is to be sealed up unto eternal life; it is to have the unconditional guarantee of exaltation in the highest heaven of the celestial world; it is to receive the assurance of godhood; it is, in effect, to have the day of judgment advanced, so that an inheritance of all the glory and honor of the Father’s kingdom is assured prior to the day when the faithful actually enter into the divine presence to sit with Christ in his throne, even as he is ‘set down’ with his ‘Father in his throne.’”
(Doctrinal New Testament Commentary, Bookcraft, 1973, 3:330–31)

In other words, the second anointing is not simply a blessing of assurance or a symbolic act of devotion; it is understood as guaranteeing exaltation. It assures the recipients not only that they will be saved, but that they will inherit godhood.

Traditionally, participation in this ritual has required a heterosexual temple marriage and an invitation from senior church leadership. The rite includes a washing of the husband’s feet, often performed by a senior leader, followed by an anointing in which the husband is ordained a king and priest and the wife a queen and priestess. The blessings pronounced include eternal life, exaltation, priesthood blessings, posterity, and divine glory. The couple is instructed to keep the ordinance sacred and secret, and a second, more private portion may be performed in a sealing room or later at home. In that portion, the wife washes and anoints her husband in a rite modeled on Mary’s anointing of Jesus, symbolically preparing him for burial and giving her claim upon him in the resurrection.

These rituals are not simply Mormon versions of familiar Christian worship. They form a distinct sacramental system in which salvation, exaltation, eternal family bonds, divine inheritance, and even godhood are mediated through priesthood ordinances performed in sacred space. For Christians that is not merely an unfamiliar ritual tradition; it represents a fundamentally different vision of salvation: one with different assumptions about embodiment, heaven, family, and the destiny of human beings.

3.4. Use of the Cross

Another way Mormonism differs from Christianity is in its relationship to the cross.

The cross is arguably the most recognizable symbol of Christianity. It appears on churches, altars, vestments, jewelry, books, graves, and artwork across much of the Christian world. Mormonism, by contrast, has historically had an uneasy relationship with it. Early Mormons did sometimes use the cross, including on funeral programs, headstones, and even on the spine of the 1852 European edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, but the cross never became one of Mormonism’s dominant public symbols. Instead, Mormons developed and preferred a different symbolic vocabulary: the angel Moroni, beehives, sunstones, moonstones, stars, clasped hands, temples, all-seeing eyes, and other imagery drawn from Mormon cosmology and temple worship.

Over time, LDS discomfort with the cross became more explicit. Part of this was because the cross came to be associated with Catholicism and with forms of Christian worship that Latter-day Saints saw as apostate. In 1957, LDS Church president David O. McKay recorded the following exchange in his diary:

Additionally, crosses came to be associated with Catholicism. David O. McKay, president of the LDS church, recorded in his diary in 1957:

“Bishop Joseph L. Wirthlin called me by telephone and asked me the Church’s position on the following question: He stated that he had been asked today if it would be proper for L.D.S. girls to purchase crosses to wear. It is Bishop Wirthlin’s understanding that there is a company downtown which is pushing the selling of these crosses to girls.

I told Bishop Wirthlin that this is purely Catholic and Latter-day Saint girls should not purchase and wear them. I stated further that this was a Catholic form of worship. They use images, crosses, etc. Our worship should be in our hearts.

Bishop Wirthlin said that this had been his opinion, but he felt that he should check with me before making a statement.”

In 1958 apostle Bruce R. McConkie spoke even more harshly of the cross, saying in the first edition of his book “Mormon Doctrine”:

“In apostate days the degenerate Christian Church developed the practice of using symbolic crosses in the architecture of their buildings and as jewelry attached to the robes of their priests. Frequently this morbid mania for dwelling on the personal death struggle of our Lord has caused these apostate peoples to put sculptured representations of Christ on their crosses, thus forming so-called crucifixes. All this is inharmonious with the quiet spirit of worship and reverence that should attend a true Christian’s remembrance of our Lord’s sufferings and death. If fact, the things to this attention of true worshippers is found in the ordinance of the sacrament.”

In subsequent editions of this book, he identified churches that use crosses as having “came into being through intermingling of pagan concepts with the true apostolic Christianity” which “developed the practice of using symbolic crosses”

This anti-cross posture continued for decades. In April 2005, Gordon B. Hinckley explained the LDS position this way:

“Following the renovation of the Mesa Arizona Temple some years ago, clergy of other religions were invited to tour it on the first day of the open house period. Hundreds responded. In speaking to them, I said we would be pleased to answer any queries they might have. Among these was one from a Protestant minister. Said he: ‘I’ve been all through this building, this temple which carries on its face the name of Jesus Christ, but nowhere have I seen any representation of the cross, the symbol of Christianity. I have noted your buildings elsewhere and likewise find an absence of the cross. Why is this when you say you believe in Jesus Christ?’

I responded: ‘I do not wish to give offense to any of my Christian colleagues who use the cross on the steeples of their cathedrals and at the altars of their chapels, who wear it on their vestments, and imprint it on their books and other literature. But for us, the cross is the symbol of the dying Christ, while our message is a declaration of the Living Christ’… because our Savior lives, we do not use the symbol of His death as the symbol of our faith.”

It has only been since the Russell M. Nelson era that the LDS church has started accepting cross iconography in some places. For example, in 2023 the pins that Google uses were changed from angel Moroni to a cross for church houses (but Temples remained Moroni). In 2026 the LDS church also announced that there would be a statue of Jesus carrying the cross on Temple Square. Both of these represented a stark departure from the traditional Mormon relationship to the cross, and many aren’t excited about it (just read the comments here).

This difference in relationship to the cross is not only symbolic; it also reflects a different atonement emphasis. Many Christians place the crucifixion at the very center of Christ’s saving work, but mormonism, by contrast, has often placed extraordinary emphasis on Jesus’s suffering in Gethsemane, where he is understood to have taken upon himself the sins and pains of the world. The crucifixion remains essential, but in much LDS teaching it functions as the culmination of an atoning process that chiefly took place in the Gethsemane.

This helps explain why Mormonism developed such a different relationship to the cross. For many Christians, the cross is the central symbol of redemption, the place where Christ conquered sin and death. For Mormons, the cross has often been viewed as a symbol of Christ’s death rather than the fullness of his victory. Mormonism instead emphasizes the living Christ, the resurrected Christ, the temple Christ, and the Christ who suffered in Gethsemane. This is also why the LDS church has an image of Jesus as their logo instead of a cross.

On its own, the absence of the cross does not prove that Mormonism is not Christian – some Christian traditions also use the cross differently from others. But when viewed as part of a larger pattern, it matters. Mormonism did not simply inherit Christianity’s central symbols and use them in familiar ways. It created a different religious imagination, with different sacred images, and a different way of narrating the Atonement. For many Christians, that symbolic and theological distance reinforces the sense that Mormonism is not merely another denomination within Christianity, but a distinct tradition that emerged from it.

3.5. Historical Understandings

Mormons have historically been quite “othered” by white folks and Christians. Historian W. Paul Reeve is the chair of the history department of University of Utah, and he has a strong emphasis in Mormon studies. In his book “Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness”, he charts how Mormons have struggled for acceptance amongst white folks, Americans, and Christians. However, when this topic was re-ignited by the Department of War, Reeve ended up weighing in on the topic, and emphasized how Mormons were never seen as Christian, and still aren’t today:

Early Mormons saw themselves as distinct from the Christian world. I have curated a selection of quotes illustrating this:

• “If it is the whole Christian world, from Catholicism down to the latest of her daughters, that have made void the law of God… then it is the so-called Christian world, and not us, that are wrong.” – Parley P. Pratt, Journal of Discourses 1:300
• “But the Gospel of modern Christendom shuts up the Lord, and stops all communication with Him. I want nothing to do with such a Gospel…” – Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses 2:196
• “We came out here because we were disfranchised, exiled, robbed of our rights as American citizens, and forced to wander in the wilderness to seek… that freedom denied us by Christianity.” – John Taylor, Journal of Discourses 6:19
• “We talk about Christianity, but it is a perfect pack of nonsense… the Devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century.” – John Taylor, Journal of Discourses 6:167
• “The Christian world, so called, are heathens as to their knowledge of the salvation of God.” – Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 8:171
• “Should you ask why we differ from other Christians, as they are called, it is simply because they are not Christians as the New Testament defines Christianity.” – Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 10:230
• “How strange it is that we should believe differently from our neighbors! It is very strange indeed that we cannot embrace the so-called Christian religion and be satisfied therewith.” – Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 13:233

3.6. Contemporary Understandings

Mormonism’s separation from Christianity is not only something found in nineteenth-century Mormon rhetoric or in theological comparisons between Mormonism and the creeds. Many major Christian institutions today draw that boundary explicitly.

In practice, this often shows up around baptism: if a church does not recognize LDS baptism as valid Christian baptism and it accepts baptisms from other traditions, it is usually because that church does not understand Mormonism to be part of historic Christianity. This can be seen most clearly in the fact that several major Christian bodies do not recognize LDS baptisms as valid Christian baptisms. The Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, United Methodist Church, and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have all, in different ways, treated Mormon baptism as invalid or Mormon theology as outside of Christianity. These traditions represent hundreds of millions – and in the case of Catholicism almost 2 billion – Christians worldwide. That does not mean every individual Christian agrees with them, but it does show that the view “Mormons are not Christian” is not merely an anti-Mormon fringe opinion; it is a common institutional position within much of the Christian world.

This contemporary Christian boundary-drawing also helps explain the recent controversy over military chaplaincy codes. When the Department of War initially categorized the LDS Church outside the Christian grouping, many Mormons saw it as an insult or an act of exclusion, but to many Christians that classification likely seemed obvious, because they already understand Mormonism as theologically distinct from Christianity.

Pete Hegseth’s own religious world helps illustrate this. He is associated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a regressive Reformed body whose leading figures have repeatedly argued that Mormons are not Christians. Doug Wilson, one of the most prominent voices in that orbit, has said on multiple occasions that Mormons are not Christian and therefore cannot meaningfully be described as Christian nationalists. Given that theological background, it is not especially surprising that a department led by Hegseth would reflect assumptions common in conservative evangelical and Reformed circles.

None of this means the government should decide whether Mormonism is Christian. In fact, that is precisely the problem. The state should not be adopting one theological framework over another or sorting religious groups according to contested doctrinal categories. But the controversy does reveal something important: many Christians, including many Christian institutions, still do not accept Mormonism as part of Christianity, and instead they understand it as a separate religious tradition that emerged from Christianity but departed from it in decisive ways.

4. Conclusion

I do not think Mormons are Christian. I do not say that as an insult, slur, or an attempt to demean Mormonism; quite the opposite in fact! I think Mormonism provides an interesting, beautiful, peculiar, and meaningful enough approach to spirituality that it can (and does) stand on its own. I do not think Mormonism needs to be folded into Christianity to be legitimate, and it certainly doesn’t need the approval of Christians to exist.

Christianity came out of Judaism; it inherited Jewish scripture, reinterpreted Jewish prophecy, worshiped a Jewish messiah, and yet eventually became a distinct religious tradition. Islam came after Judaism and Christianity, reveres many of the same prophets, and yet is not simply another form of either. Religions branch, mutate, inherit, reject, restore, revise, and reimagine. Mormonism did the same thing. It emerged from the Christian world of early nineteenth-century America, but it developed new scripture, new priesthood claims, new Temple rites, new cosmology, new views of embodiment, new understandings of God, new possibilities for human destiny, and new ways of imagining heaven and earth. At some point differences become distinctions. I do not think that Christians reject Mormonism simply because of bigotry or ignorance. For many Christians, Mormonism does not merely add a few extra beliefs on top of Christianity; it alters the entire theological paradigm.

That does not mean that I am going to stop Mormons from calling themselves Christian. I know that identity is complicated, and people should be allowed to describe themselves in the language that feels most truthful to them. If someone believes that following Jesus is enough to make them Christian, then I understand why they would claim that label. However, for myself, I do not identify as Christian and don’t think my tradition is Christian either.

That said, when the government begins deciding who counts as Christian, or which religions deserve recognition, or which theological claims are legitimate, it has already crossed a dangerous line and no minority faith is safe. Mormons should understand this better than almost anyone. Our history is filled with exclusion, suspicion, exile, disenfranchisement, and violence at the hands of a Christian-majority nation that saw us as alien, dangerous, and un-American. We know what it means to be treated as religious outsiders. We know what happens when the majority decides that our marriages, temples, scriptures, prophets, and communities are too strange to tolerate. That history should make us wary of Christian nationalism, not eager to participate in it. The way conservative Mormons have cozied up to Christian nationalism reminds me of the “I Never Thought the Leopards Would Eat My Face” song. Mormons should have been coming to the defense of minority religions, not siding with the oppressors.

So yes, I believe Mormonism is not Christianity. I believe it is a separate religious tradition that grew out of Christianity in the same way Christianity grew out of Judaism. But I also believe the state has no authority to decide that question for us. Theologically, Christians and Mormons can debate the boundaries of Christianity forever. Religiously, Mormons should identify however they feel called to identify. But politically, the answer should be simple: the government has no business deciding matters of faith or who gets to stand under the umbrella of state-recognized Christianity.