Christians casually acquainted with Mormonism—more specifically, the form taught by the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (LDS)—might assume it to be little more than a quirky member of the broader Christian family. Certainly, the LDS do a great job of crafting this image on their website. If you click their “Our Beliefs” tab, the first thing you’re told is that “all our beliefs center on Jesus Christ,” and you’re invited to “learn more about our Savior Jesus Christ.”
Digging a little deeper, you’ll discover that the gap between Mormon and mainstream Christian belief turns out to be larger than it first appears. For instance, while the LDS speak about “God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit,” the fine print is that they “don’t believe in the traditional concept of the Trinity,” believing instead that “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three separate beings who are one in purpose.” In other words, instead of believing in the Trinity, they believe that these are three separate gods who work together.
This has led to a great deal of confusion among non-Mormons. After the CDF declared in 2001 that Mormon baptisms aren’t valid, Father (now Cardinal) Ladaria explained that there had arisen a “difference of practice, insofar as those who had a certain personal knowledge of the teaching of the Mormons considered their baptism invalid, while the common practice continued of applying the traditional principle of the presumption in favor of the validity of such baptism.” In other words, Catholic priests unused to Mormonism saw that they baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and figured their baptisms were valid (since Trinitarian baptisms are valid even if not performed by a Catholic), whereas Catholic priests who understood Mormonism better insisted on rebaptizing Mormon converts to Catholicism.
As important as the Mormon rejection of the Trinity is, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Doctrine & Covenants (considered by LDS Mormons to be inspired Scripture) teaches that “the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.” This idea dates back to Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., who said that whereas “we have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity,” he could “refute that idea.” Instead, he insisted, “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens.”
Several things follow from this idea. First, the Mormon depiction of “God” is clearly not the immaterial Creator of all space and time. He is, rather, a powerful being from another planet who lived, died, was resurrected (seemingly by his own god!), and is now exalted. He lives with his wife, Mother in Heaven, who is a goddess, but to whom we’re not allowed to pray. Second, this seems to suggest that the Virgin Birth wasn’t a miraculous overshadowing of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, but the Father physically impregnating Mary. (This isn’t official church teaching but is a view held by many LDS, and one seemingly consistent with Smith’s view of God.)
Third, this understanding of God actually contradicts earlier Mormon teaching. While Smith claimed in 1844 that God the Father has a body, the 1835 edition of Doctrine & Covenants included a section called “Lectures on Faith” that taught that there were only two members of the Godhead (the Father and the Son), and that the Father was a “personage of spirit” and the Son had a body (in their words, “was a personage of tabernacle”). These lectures were cowritten by Smith and unanimously approved in 1835. Yet by 1844, a third person had joined the Godhead—the Holy Spirit—and the Father was suddenly a personage of flesh, not just spirit.
Mormon theology got stranger after Smith died, and he was replaced as prophet by Brigham Young. Young claimed that we ought to worship only one god: Adam. According to Young,
When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days! about whom holy men have written and spoken—he is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do.
This idea, called the Adam-God doctrine, was later condemned by the LDS Church as “false doctrine,” although Mormons continue to venerate the originator of the heresy, Brigham Young, as a true prophet.
Fascinatingly, Young damned all of those who reject the Adam-God doctrine, insisting that “Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven. Now, let all who may hear these doctrines, pause before they make light of them, or treat them with indifference, for they will prove their salvation or damnation.”
Where does all of this leave Jesus? As mentioned, the public relations side of the LDS church stresses the centrality of Jesus. This is behind the Mormon church’s move to get everyone to call it “the LDS Church” and distance itself from the word “Mormon.” But again, if you dig deeper, a different picture emerges. Although the LDS Church’s Newsroom creates material suggesting that they worship Jesus Christ, talks given to LDS audiences sound a different note. For instance, the Apostle Bruce R. McConkie spoke to a Mormon audience in 1982 on the doctrines that “must be understood in order to gain eternal life.” First and foremost was the fact that “we worship the Father and him only and no one else.” In McConkie’s words,
we do not worship the Son, and we do not worship the Holy Ghost. I know perfectly well what the scriptures say about worshiping Christ and Jehovah, but they are speaking in an entirely different sense—the sense of standing in awe and being reverentially grateful to him who has redeemed us. Worship in the true and saving sense is reserved for God the first, the Creator.
For these and many other reasons, it’s clear that the Mormon conception of God differs in kind (rather than degree) from what mainstream Christians believe. Rather than simply different beliefs about the same God, these seem to be beliefs about radically different gods. That was certainly the view of Brigham Young, who joked about how “Joseph B. Nobles once told a Methodist priest, after hearing him describe his god, that the god they worshiped was the Mormons’ Devil—a being without a body, whereas our God has a body, parts, and passions.” So this isn’t a subtle theological squabble. It’s a fundamental question about whom we worship.