Sunday, December 10, 2023

Unique LDS doctrines and practices?

I always found these this interesting:

Unique LDS doctrines and practices - most of the Mormons I know would say that these are in line with LDS teachings:

1) Belief in an apostasy in the early church, which the Reformation did not adequately correct, necessitating a further Restoration

2) Belief in the necessity of believers’ baptism by immersion for salvation

3) Dependence on Acts 2:38 for the sequence of saving actions, which include faith, repentance, baptism, forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and appropriate good works to demonstrate persevering to the end, upon which eternal life can then be assured

4) A rejection of all the historic creeds and confessions of faith of the church

5) A desire to separate from all other existing forms of Christianity but to unite as the one true church of Jesus Christ

6) Using a name for one’s church that referred only to Christ and not to any human leaders

7) Strong anti-Calvinism; against all five points of the “TULIP”—total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the (guaranteed) perseverance of the saints

8) Preaching against “faith only,” especially in light of James 2:24

9) Ambiguity whether or not the Holy Ghost is a person

10) The necessity of weekly Communion, but avoidance of wine due to teetotalism

11) Against paid clergy, clerical titles, and the facetiousness caused by denominationalism

12) A spirit of self-reliance, a stress on tithing, and a strong concern to care for the genuinely needy in Christian circles and elsewhere

13) An emphasis on Sabbath-keeping and the restoration of morality to a church and culture widely perceived to have become antinomian

14) The generation of a new translation of the Scriptures

15) The ultimate harmony of science and religion

16) A sharp distinction between the dispensations of the patriarchs, the law, and the gospel

17) Belief in the establishment of God’s kingdom in America in a more complete form than in any previous era of church history, described as “building Zion”

18) a renewed missionary zeal

19) A charismatic, iconoclastic founder

Yet..... Every item was a central tenet of the preaching of Alexander Campbell, from which the Disciples of Christ movement was formed.

One of Campbell’s brightest followers, with whom he discoursed extensively, was Sidney Rigdon [this was in the early to late's 1820s], who later became Joseph Smith’s “right hand man.” George Arbaugh, who chronicled in detail Smith’s career-long doctrinal pilgrimage increasingly away from orthodox Christianity, was even able to say that at its inception, Mormonism was a “Campbellite sect.”

Of course, Campbell strictly limited his sources of authority to the Old and New Testaments. Joseph Smith had other influences for his revelations.


Sources:

LDS author Richard L. Bushman (Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism)

Lester G. McAllister, ed., An Alexander Campbell Reader 

Alexander Campbell, The Christian System, in Reference to the Union of Christians, and a Restoration of Primitive Christianity, as Plead in the Current Reformation

Walter Scott, The Gospel Restored: A Discourse

Leroy Garrett, The Stone-Campbell Movement 

George B. Arbaugh, Revelation in Mormonism

Beckwith, Moser, Owen The New Mormon Challenge.

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