Are Mormons Christian? Latter-day Saints Say Yes, Most Other Churches Say No

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Latter-day Saints, often called Mormons, say they are Christians, for they worship God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ, their Savior. The Catholic and Orthodox churches and many Protestant churches answer that they are not Christian in the historic sense, because Latter-day Saints reject the Trinity of the Nicene Creed and add three books of scripture to the Bible.

Both sides speak of God, Jesus, grace and salvation, and both speak of them in earnest, yet they do not always mean the same thing by the words. When a Latter-day Saint and another Christian sit down together, it helps to know that before the first sentence. The church’s full name is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it asks that its members be called Latter-day Saints rather than Mormons, a nickname taken from the Book of Mormon. The difference between the names is explained in Latter-day Saints vs. Mormon.

Topic	Latter-day Saints	Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches
Are they Christian?	Yes: the “restored” church of Jesus Christ, neither Catholic, Orthodox nor Protestant	Christian; most do not count Latter-day Saints as Christian in the historic sense
God	The Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Ghost are three separate beings, one in purpose	The Trinity: one God in three persons
God the Father	Has a glorified body of flesh and bones	Spirit, without a body
Jesus	Son of God and Savior; the Jehovah of the Old Testament; the Firstborn of the Father	The eternal Son, “begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father”
Scripture	The Bible “as far as it is translated correctly,” plus the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price	The Bible; no books added since the apostles
Revelation	Continues through a living prophet and apostles	Public revelation complete with Christ and the apostles
Church history	A “Great Apostasy” after the apostles died; restored through Joseph Smith, who organized the church in 1830	No general apostasy: Catholics trace their bishops to the apostles; Protestant confessions hold there will “always” be a church on earth
Salvation	Through Christ’s Atonement, with faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost and temple ordinances	By God’s grace through Christ; Protestants stress faith alone, Catholics grace received in baptism and the sacraments
Baptism	By immersion from age 8; also done in temples on behalf of the dead	Catholic, Orthodox (OCA) and United Methodist rulings do not accept Latter-day Saint baptism
After death	Spirit world, then three kingdoms of glory	Heaven or hell after judgment; Catholics also teach purgatory, a final purification
Marriage	Temple sealing “for time and all eternity,” needed for the highest glory	No sealing ceremony; Jesus: “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage”

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The church’s essay on the question says its members “unequivocally affirm themselves to be Christians,” that they “worship God the Eternal Father in the name of Jesus Christ,” and that they acknowledge “the Son as Lord and Redeemer.” It quotes Joseph Smith, who said the fundamental principle of the faith was the apostles’ testimony of Jesus Christ, “that he died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended up into heaven,” and that “all other things are only appendages.”

The same essay states plainly that Latter-day Saints “are not Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant,” and the church’s Gospel Topics page on apostasy explains why. After the apostles died, it says, “men corrupted the principles of the gospel” and “the Lord withdrew the authority of the priesthood from the earth,” a falling-away Latter-day Saints call the Great Apostasy. They believe God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in 1820 and that angels later returned the priesthood to him. That is why the church he organized in April 1830, at or near Fayette, New York, is, as they see it, a “‘restored,’ not a ‘reformed,’ church of Jesus Christ.” One of their scriptures calls it “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:30). Converts from other churches, the essay says, “did not, and do not, perceive themselves as leaving the Christian fold.”

For the Catholic and Orthodox churches and many Protestant churches, “Christian” in the historic sense means holding the faith of the early creeds, above all the Trinity. All three traditions accept the Nicene Creed and confess with it that the Son is “begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” Catholics say it again in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons,” and Presbyterians in their standard, the Westminster Confession: “in the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity.”

Latter-day Saints reject that formula on purpose, because Joseph Smith wrote that in his First Vision he was told to join none of the churches, “for they were all wrong,” and that “all their creeds were an abomination in his sight.” So the disagreement runs both ways, and each side holds that the other departed from the faith of the apostles.

In 2001 the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, with Pope John Paul II’s approval, answered “Negative” when asked whether baptism in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is valid, reversing the church’s earlier practice of not questioning it. Fr Luis Ladaria gave the reason in an explanatory article published with the ruling. Latter-day Saints baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” the words of Matthew 28:19, but those words, he wrote, “have for the Mormons a meaning totally different from the Christian meaning.” Ladaria, not the ruling itself, added that the difference is too great even to call the teaching a heresy, since it “has a completely different matrix.”

The Orthodox Church in America’s guidelines for clergy list “Mormons” among the “non-Trinitarian groups” whose converts “must be baptized.” In 2000 the United Methodist General Conference adopted a statement that the church “by self-definition, does not fit within the bounds of the historic, apostolic tradition of the Christian faith,” and said at the time that Latter-day Saints who become Methodists should be baptized. According to an Associated Press report on the vote, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Southern Baptist Convention had issued similar assessments. The Church of Jesus Christ replied that its members “embrace both ancient and modern revelations that proclaim Jesus Christ as the living, divine Son of God,” and that “any assertion otherwise demonstrates a lack of knowledge of Latter-day Saint doctrine and teachings.”

It works the other way as well, since The Church of Jesus Christ baptizes every convert who joins it, whatever church that person came from.

The first Article of Faith reads, “We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost,” and Latter-day Saints call the three the Godhead. The church teaches that they are “three separate beings” who are “one in purpose and doctrine,” and a revelation to Joseph Smith says, “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22).

Latter-day Saints also teach that every person is “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents,” a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother, and that people can grow to become like God. Lorenzo Snow, the church’s fifth president, put this in a couplet: “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.” The church says that “little has been revealed about the first half of this couplet, and consequently little is taught.” It rejects the charge of polytheism: “Latter-day Saints believe that God’s children will always worship Him.”

The Nicene churches teach one God in three persons who share one divine being. This is the heart of their judgment, for both sides say “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” but they mean different things by the names.

Latter-day Saints worship Jesus as Lord and Redeemer. “The Living Christ,” a statement issued in 2000 by the church’s First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, says he “was the Great Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Messiah of the New,” that “under the direction of His Father, He was the creator of the earth,” and that he was “the Firstborn of the Father, the Only Begotten Son in the flesh.” The same statement says his life “neither began in Bethlehem nor concluded on Calvary,” so in this teaching Jesus was already the Lord Jehovah before his birth.

His mother holds a place of honor in their scripture. In a vision in the Book of Mormon, the prophet Nephi sees in Nazareth “a virgin, most beautiful and fair above all other virgins,” and an angel tells him, “Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh” (1 Nephi 11:15, 18). Another prophet, Alma, foretells that Jesus will be born of Mary, “she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost” (Alma 7:10). Latter-day Saints honor Mary as “a virgin chosen by God the Father to be the mother of His Son in the flesh,” in the words of the church’s Guide to the Scriptures, but they do not pray to her. The church teaches that prayer goes to Heavenly Father alone: “We should pray to Him and no one else.” The Guide also notes, “After Jesus’ birth, Mary had other children (Mark 6:3).”

The Nicene churches confess that the Son had no beginning and was never a creature, “begotten, not made,” and that is how they read John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The difference lies in the words “of one Being.” In the creed the Father and the Son are one God, while in Latter-day Saint teaching they are two separate beings. A fuller account of the church’s teaching on Jesus is in Do Mormons Believe In Jesus Christ?

Latter-day Saints say it is, and the church’s essay notes that its title page calls it “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” The church describes it as “a record of God’s dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas,” and Joseph Smith called it “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion.”

The Bible they read beside it is the Protestant Bible rather than the Catholic or Orthodox one. The church’s English Bible has the Old Testament of Protestant Bibles and leaves out the Apocrypha, books such as Tobit, Judith and 1 and 2 Maccabees that the Catholic Old Testament includes. A revelation to Joseph Smith says the Apocrypha contains “many things” that are true and many that are not, and that “it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated” (Doctrine and Covenants 91). The eighth Article of Faith reads, “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.” Alongside the Bible and the Book of Mormon stand the Doctrine and Covenants, mostly revelations to Joseph Smith, and the Pearl of Great Price. The church teaches that the Bible’s collection of writings “is not complete,” and its ninth Article of Faith says God “will yet reveal many great and important things.” The four books are described in What are the books of the Mormon Bible?

Other churches do not accept the added books, because they hold that public revelation ended with the apostles. The Catechism says “no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and the Westminster Confession says nothing “at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.” Many Christians also point to the warning near the end of the Bible: “if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book” (Revelation 22:18). The Latter-day Saint essay answers that this warning “refers to the book of Revelation and not to the Bible as a whole,” and that the Bible nowhere says revelation would be closed.

Both sides say salvation comes through Jesus Christ and by God’s grace, and where they differ is on what a person must do. The third Article of Faith says “through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.” The fourth names the first steps: faith in Christ, repentance, “Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins,” and the laying on of hands “for the gift of the Holy Ghost.” The church calls grace “divine help or strength” and teaches that through it “everyone who has lived will be resurrected.” A verse in the Book of Mormon joins grace and effort: “it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23).

Latter-day Saints also distinguish being saved from being exalted. After the resurrection, they teach, almost everyone will receive a place in one of “three kingdoms of glory: the celestial kingdom, the terrestrial kingdom, and the telestial kingdom.” Exaltation, the highest place in the celestial kingdom, requires temple ordinances, and the church teaches that “the covenant of eternal marriage is necessary for exaltation.”

The Nicene churches teach that God’s grace saves and that the saved will live with God forever. The Catechism calls grace “the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God,” and Protestant confessions add that faith is “the alone instrument of justification,” though never “dead faith.” None of these churches teaches three kingdoms of glory, or that the highest reward depends on a marriage ceremony.

Sunday worship takes place in meetinghouses. The temples, which the church calls “literally houses of the Lord,” admit only members with a current temple recommend, which a member receives after two interviews about personal conduct. In a temple, members receive the endowment, a ceremony of instruction and covenants, and couples are sealed “for time and all eternity.”

Members are also baptized in temples on behalf of the dead, and the church teaches that the dead “are taught the gospel and have the opportunity to accept or reject the ordinances performed on their behalf.” Latter-day Saints connect the practice with Paul’s question in 1 Corinthians 15:29: “what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead?” Other churches do not practice proxy baptism. In 2008 the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy told Catholic bishops not to let the church’s genealogists copy parish registers, because doing so “would involve cooperation in the erroneous practices” of the church.

Both sides read Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees about the life to come: “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30). Other churches take it to mean that marriage belongs to this life. Latter-day Saints take it to mean that no marriages are made after death, so a marriage meant to last must be sealed in this life (Doctrine and Covenants 132:15–16). A temple sealing, they teach, continues after death if the couple keep their covenants.

The answer depends on the church: The Church of Jesus Christ allows it, the Catholic Church allows it only with a dispensation, and the Orthodox Church in America does not allow it. Each church’s rules also shape what the marriage can be. The Church of Jesus Christ encourages its members to spend time with “those who have high standards” and, when choosing a spouse, to look for someone “who shares a similar testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

A temple sealing requires both partners to be members with a temple recommend, and the church asks that people be members “for at least a year” before they are endowed or sealed. So a Latter-day Saint who marries someone of another faith marries in a civil ceremony. The church’s handbook allows this and says a civil marriage “is valid for as long as a couple lives. It does not endure beyond mortal life.” The couple can be sealed later if the other spouse joins the church.

For Catholics, the 2001 ruling means a Latter-day Saint counts as unbaptized. Canon law says a marriage between a Catholic and an unbaptized person is invalid unless the bishop grants a dispensation, and he may give it only after the Catholic partner promises to do all he or she can to have the children “baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church” and the other partner is told of that promise.

The Orthodox Church in America is stricter. Its clergy guidelines say that toleration of mixed marriages “does not extend to marriage between an Orthodox Christian and a non-Christian person,” and they name Mormons in the list. Protestant churches set their own rules.

You can, and you will be welcome. The church’s handbook says, “All are welcome to attend sacrament meeting, other Sunday meetings, and social events” of the church. Sacrament meeting is the main Sunday service, and visitors are asked to respect the sacred setting. Temples are open only to members with a recommend.

So many conversations between Latter-day Saints and other Christians turn on words with two meanings. Latter-day Saints use “salvation” in several senses, from the resurrection that everyone receives to “eternal life, or exaltation,” the highest reward. Grace refers primarily to “enabling power and spiritual healing” in Latter-day Saint teaching and to “the free and undeserved help that God gives us” in the Catechism. And “God” means the Godhead of three beings in one, and the Trinity of one being in the other.

The kindest way into that conversation is a plain question, asked as a friend: when you say his name, whom do you mean? Each will open the same Gospel to answer, and read the same first line: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

• Are Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons the Same? How the Two Religions Differ
• Mormons Vs. Catholics: How Do They Differ?
• Bible Study: The Bible Vs The Book Of Mormon
• How Many Mormon Temples Are There?
• FLDS vs LDS: What the FLDS Is and How It Split From the Latter-day Saints
• Is Jesus Eternal? What the Bible and the Nicene Creed Say

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