{"id":60962,"date":"2018-05-10T11:52:46","date_gmt":"2018-05-10T17:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=60962"},"modified":"2018-09-05T09:53:45","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T15:53:45","slug":"are-mormons-closer-to-muslims-or-christians-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/05\/are-mormons-closer-to-muslims-or-christians-part-3.html","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAre Mormons Closer to Muslims or Christians?\u201d (Part 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Al-Aqsa\"<\/a>
The gray-black dome of the early-eighth-century al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Behind it is the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, with the Seven Arches Hotel atop the Mount on the right and the spire of the Church of the Ascension on the left.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continuing with my hasty response to a lamentable 2012 article in the often-lamentable Huffington Post:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to lead,\u201d claims Ms. Wood, \u201cboth Islam and Mormonism<\/a> do not require formal seminary training, but take regular members and move them up into leadership roles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms. Wood seems to presume that the Apostle Peter and his colleagues were professional clergy with seminary degrees.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In any event, she\u2019s wrong about Islam. \u00a0To the extent possible, Islamic clergymen are formally trained at such places as (for Sunnis) Al-Azhar University in Cairo and (for Shi\u2018is) the theological seminaries in Qum, Iran.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOddly enough,\u201d marvels Ms. Wood, \u201cboth religions had a split after their prophet\u2019s death with one side believing that the faith should continue though the prophet\u2019s descendents and the other side rejecting that. For Muslims, this caused the bloody divide between Shiites and Sunnis that we hear so much about in the press. For Mormons<\/a>, this caused the divide between the Later Day Saints, which make up about 99 percent of Mormons, and others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Latter-day Saints<\/em>, actually. \u00a0With two t\u2019s<\/em>. \u00a0And, yes, there is a curious similarity in the two schisms. \u00a0But it\u2019s unclear that there is any real significance to it. \u00a0It\u2019s almost certainly mere coincidence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth Muhammad and Joseph Smith were taunted for their work and driven out by locals,\u201d reports Ms. Wood. \u00a0\u201cMuhammad moved from Mecca to Medina, and Joseph Smith had to move from Illinois to Missouri.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Actually, Joseph Smith was obliged to move from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois, where he was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob. \u00a0Not from Illinois to Missouri.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth Muhammad and Joseph Smith established their own city-states,\u201d says Ms. Wood, \u201cwith Muhammad ruling Medina and Joseph Smith ruling Nauvoo, Ill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Medina already existed long before Muhammad arrived. \u00a0Joseph Smith essentially created Nauvoo. \u00a0And it wasn\u2019t a city-state. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t independent. \u00a0It had a charter that was granted to it by the legislature of the State of Illinois. \u00a0For part of his time in Illinois, Joseph Smith served as the elected mayor of the city.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth Islam and Mormonism have Scripture that can justify violence and murder,\u201d asserts Ms. Wood, \u201cas does the Bible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Aurora, Colorado, gunman evidently thought that Batman<\/em> movies justify violence and murder.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Mormons have not acted violently in the U.S. for quite some time, there was an incident back in 1857 called the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which happened on Sept. 11. The massacre was led by prominent Mormon leader John D. Lee, who was trying to exact revenge on some emigrants but when the emigrants surrendered, the militia killed men, women and children in cold blood, and then tried to cover it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not quite. \u00a0The best treatment of this topic is Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley, and Glen M. Leonard,\u00a0Massacre at Mountain Meadows<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)<\/a>. \u00a0It lays out what really happened, and shows that neither Mormonism nor the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> (in which John D. Lee wasn\u2019t all that prominent a leader) had anything at all directly to do with the tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need to be experts on either religion,\u201d Ms. Wood announces, \u201cto see these similarities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Truth be told, Ms. Wood\u2019s case would be best served if no expert on either religion were within several leagues of her article, because no real expert could possibly take her superficial and cherry-picked similarities at all seriously.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey both have common ground with Christianity,\u201d Ms. Wood generously allows, \u201cand much of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just as the bullfinch and the American border collie both have common ground with the class of mammals, and much of it. \u00a0But, in the latter case, it shouldn\u2019t be missed that collies are mammal-like for the simple reason that they are<\/em> mammals.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Jerusalem, Israel<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Continuing with my hasty response to a lamentable 2012 article in the often-lamentable Huffington Post: \u00a0 \u201cIn order to lead,\u201d claims Ms. Wood, \u201cboth Islam and Mormonism do not require formal seminary training, but take regular members and move them up into leadership roles.\u201d \u00a0 Ms. Wood seems to presume that the Apostle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cAre Mormons Closer to Muslims or Christians?\u201d (Part 3)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Continuing with my hasty response to a lamentable 2012 article in the often-lamentable Huffington Post:   "In order to lead," claims\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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