Recent political events have once again brought the “Mormons aren’t Christians,” “Mormons are a cult” epithets into the national spotlight. In his “On Faith” commentary this week, Church Public Affairs managing director Michael Otterson suggests why people make such claims and shares his own experience of being labeled not Christian.
Otterson says one problem is that half the U.S. population knows very little about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, he says, this may be changing.
“Research shows that people have a far better view of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they know a member personally,” Otterson says. “There is a point when those people who have seen Mormons caricatured in their Sunday School classes realize that the second-hand prejudices they have learned don’t fit with their first-hand experiences with faithful Latter-day Saints.”
To better understand Latter-day Saints, Otterson recommends you visit a Latter-day Saint church on any given Sunday. Regular Sunday worship services are open to everyone. To find a local LDS church, use the address locator at LDS.org.
“If you try to track the number of references to Jesus Christ in the service, you may lose count,” Otterson says. “So just observe the families, listen to the prayers, leaf through the hymn book to see if any of the hymns seem familiar, and make up your own mind as to how Christian our people are.”
Read more at “On Faith.”