We have an update on the portion of Thursday morning’s post devoted to my conversation with Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics.  I received this e-mail from Mark shortly after our post appeared:

Lowell,

I’m not doing much posting this week, so here’s a quick personal response via creaky dialup where I am on vacation.

About evangelicals themselves, I’m inclined to think that some of the reaction to Romney’s flip-flopping is at most semi-conscious. The point there is that to the extent he has moved in evangelicals’ direction on certain social issues, he may only have confirmed their suspicion of Mormons. As for me, I don’t, as a Jew, really have a dog in that fight. I think generally people should get to call themselves what they want to, and if they believe in Jesus as God and Savior, that seems Christian to me.

If I ran the nomenclature world, though, I might prefer a different word for both Mormons and those who call themselves Messianic Jews (or Jews for Jesus); namely, Judeo-Christians. For one thing, the LDS Church understands itself (or used to) as restoring ancient Israel as well as early Christianity. For another, Mormons do not profess the historic creeds. So Judeo-Christian might be a helpful way of identifying certain churches and sects. But of course that’s not going to happen.

So, as far as I’m concerned, Christian it is. As for the false pretenses part, well, there’s always a risk of that charge when at issue is a religion that has some esoteric component, and Mormonism has always had that. But Mormon missionaries never make any bones about the fact that they do represent the LDS Church, so I fail to see how the pretenses are false, except from the standpoint of those who refuse to allow Mormons the name Christian.

Cheers, Mark

Thanks, Mark.  For the record, Mormons like to refer to our faith as “restored Christianity,” but that’s not a term we use very much outside our own walls.  Meanwhile,  Bob Millet of BYU has some timely comments in response to this provocative question:

Isn’t it true the [LDS] church has changed its emphasis on Christ as a public relations ploy? Why do you want to be Christians all of a sudden?

Read the whole thing.
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