Mormon leaders, military veterans and elected officials reacted with anger to a new Department of Defense policy that does not consider The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be a Christian religion as part of a wider effort to cut down the U.S. military’s list of recognized faiths.
“The Pentagon’s decision to list The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apart from other Christian faiths is wrong and needs to be corrected,” Republican Rep. Mike Kennedy, of heavily Mormon Utah, wrote on X on Sunday.
They believe that Jesus was God Himself (not another god, or a dude who became a god, but the one God Himself) who came down to die so that humanity could, depending on Christus Victor or Penal Substitutionary Atonement, either be saved from the cursing effects of death or else have their sins atoned?
Or do they instead believe that Jesus, an entirely-separate god that the God and some other “Divine Mother” gave birth to, died to pave a path to becoming a god yourself?