Mormon culture is defined by its history. From 1820 to 1890, the Church experienced its foundational period. This period began with Joseph Smith, the First Vision, and the Book of Mormon. During this era, Mormons faced opposition, which created a sense within Mormon culture that they were a persecuted people. That opposition came to a head over the practice of polygamy, which brought them into conflict with American culture.
The direction of the Church changed in 1890, when President and Prophet Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto. The Manifesto signaled the Church’s willingness to submit to the laws of the United States by ending the practice of polygamy. That decision moved the LDS Church away from conflict with American culture and toward conformity with it. Polygamy did not survive, but what did survive was the Church’s identity as a persecuted people.
Today, the LDS Church cares deeply about how it is perceived by the rest of American culture. Here is one of the primary ways this concern has played out over the last generation: Latter-day Saints have been on a mission to change how they are perceived by the rest of American culture. If there is one phrase that says it all, it is this: “We are Christians too.”
When you live in Utah, there is always this inevitable question that gets raised in one way or another. People want to know whether you are a member of “the Church.” When an evangelical Christian is asked this question, most would not talk about where they go to church. Most would simply say, “I’m a Christian.” Often, the response is, “We are Christians too.”
How do we respond to that? Sometimes, it feels as though any response other than complete agreement and acceptance leaves Mormons exasperated. Some would see any failure to accept them as Christians as a form of religious persecution. After all, Jesus Christ is in the name of the Church. Not only that, but Latter-day Saints seek to follow the example of Jesus Christ. Isn’t that enough?
So, how do we respond to the statement “We are Christians too”? Jesus calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Since 1989, my neighbors have been almost exclusively Latter-day Saints. My desire is to respond in a way that communicates love to my neighbors. Love means telling the truth. My purpose in this chapter is to respond to the statement “We are Christians too” with both truth and love.
I will start with this: It is a challenge to love your neighbor when you don’t know what to call your neighbor. When we arrived in 1989, I would ask my LDS neighbors if they were Christians, and a few would say, “We are not Christians; we are Mormons.” They were not saying that they were not Christian. They were stating the obvious: They were different from us.
None of our neighbors were the least bit offended when someone called them “Mormon” or “LDS.” These terms were such an accepted part of their identity that, in 2011, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints produced a worldwide advertising campaign called “I Am a Mormon.” The campaign included a movie and advertisements featuring testimonies from famous Mormons. During that campaign, the sense was that the Church was proud of the nickname “Mormon.” It tied the Church to its history as a people.
That changed in 2018, when President Russell M. Nelson announced that the Church should be called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that using “Mormon” or “LDS” was a win for Satan. That did not make it easier for evangelicals and Mormons to talk to one another.
It also made this book more difficult to write. This book was written for the people of CenterPoint Church, but I also know that Mormons have read it. Given that, I have wondered, “What should I call my neighbors in this book? ‘Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’? ‘Mormons’? ‘LDS’?” I took my cues from members of the Church.
Not all Latter-day Saints are offended when they are identified as Mormon or LDS. Shortly after President Nelson’s announcement, I was in a conversation with one of my closest Mormon friends, and I referred to “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” He said, “Stop it. We are Mormons.”
Shortly after that, I was invited to a gathering of leaders from various religious faiths in the state of Utah at the governor’s mansion in Salt Lake City. France Davis, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, the largest historic Black church in Salt Lake City, was the speaker at the event.
At the beginning of his message, he referred to the “Mormon Church” and immediately said, “Excuse me. I am sorry. I mean The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Not long afterward, he mentioned the Mormon Church again and followed it with the same apology. This happened several more times during his talk. Finally, people got the joke and started to laugh. I looked at the representatives from the LDS Church who were there, and even they had smiles on their faces.
These experiences happened seven years ago. Nothing has happened since that time that would cause me to stop using LDS or Mormon to refer to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I really don’t believe that the ban on referring to the Church or its members as Mormon or LDS is going to take hold. As one BYU administrator recently put it to me, “The people around here care a great deal about the public image of The Church.” That is what The Church is concerned about.
In October 2026, BYU hosted ESPN College GameDay before the BYU–Notre Dame game. One of the hosts, Pat McAfee, gushed about his experience with BYU and the LDS Church and even read a passage from the Book of Mormon. The crowd went crazy.
Throughout the show, Pat McAfee referred to the Church and its members as “Mormon” and “Latter-day Saint.” When he did, no one corrected him or told him that they were supposed to be called “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” They weren’t worried about being called Mormon or Latter-day Saint because the ESPN College GameDay experience was a public relations coup for BYU and the LDS Church.
As I watched ESPN College GameDay, it became apparent how effective the LDS Church has been at changing the way people see them. On College GameDay in Provo, signs held up by people in the crowd behind the set appeared on TV, reflecting Christian themes. One sign used the ESPN initials to say, “Every Single Person Needs Jesus.” Those are the kinds of signs that appear when College GameDay broadcasts from other parts of the country.
I imagined someone watching from their living room in the Bible Belt and saying, “Those Mormons aren’t that different from us after all.” The experience of watching College GameDay might lead them to think that “Mormons are Christians too.”
I am not living someplace else in America. I pastored a church located at the CenterPoint of Mormon culture for 35 years and continue, post-retirement, to work with churches throughout the state. I cannot say that “Mormons are Christians too.” Yes, Mormons have every right to claim that they are Christians. The problem is the word “too.” If Mormonism is true, then Mormons are the only true Christians.
At the heart of the LDS gospel is a foundational belief in the Apostasy and the Restoration. In his First Vision, Joseph Smith asked God the Father and God the Son which church he should join. The answer was, “You are to join none of them. For all their creeds are an abomination and all their professors are corrupt.” Joseph Smith’s account presents the creeds believed by other Christians as an abomination and those who believe those creeds as corrupt.
I am one of those Christians who profess to believe in the creeds of the historic Christian faith. I have had conversations with BYU religion professors about the First Vision, and their response is usually to try to soften the idea of a complete apostasy. They will say things like, “You have a lot of truth, but just not the whole truth.” It is hard to square that with what God says to Joseph Smith in the First Vision. Our problem is not that we need more truth. Our problem is that the truth we do have is an abomination to God.
The Book of Mormon employs equally strong language. In 1 Nephi 14:10, it says, “There are save two churches only. The one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil. Wherefore, whosoever does not belong to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of all abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.” If I am reading that correctly, then we cannot possibly be Christians in the same way.
Do I understand why a Latter-day Saint would be offended when people do not affirm them as Christians? Yes. I know that many Mormons seek to follow Jesus by loving their neighbors as themselves. I would also add that there are all sorts of people who seek to follow Jesus’ example but would not call themselves Christians. There are Buddhists and Hindus who seek to follow the moral teachings of Jesus but do not consider themselves Christians.
Mormons will also say, “We believe in Christ; that makes us Christian.” The question is: Which Christ do you believe in? The reality is that Mormon doctrine does, in fact, recognize that the Christ of the Mormon Church is different from the Christ of traditional Christianity.
Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the LDS Church from 1995 to 2008, made the following statement in response to those outside the Church who say that Latter-day Saints do not believe in the traditional Christ. “The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak. For the Christ of whom I speak has been revealed in this the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times.” He then added the words, “Am I a Christian? Of course I am. I believe in Christ. I talk of Christ. I pray in the name of Christ.” President Hinckley believed that he was a Christian, but he also recognized that the Christ he believed in and followed was different from the Christ believed in by traditional Christians.
What’s the difference? I had a conversation with several BYU professors several years ago. I asked them if Jesus had always been God? They said no. they could not say that. Based on passages like John 1:1-3 we would say that Jesus has always been God. The Jesus of the LDS Church became God.
We do share some common ground. We share a religious vocabulary. We use many of the same words but give those words very different meanings. We define these words of faith differently because we have different sources of authority. Latter-day Saints believe in latter-day revelation, which includes the Bible. We believe in the Bible alone.
Another point of common ground is that we both believe we are called to “love our neighborhood as ourselves.” If I put myself in the shoes of a Latter-day Saint, I can understand why Latter-day Saints feel excluded when we object to the statement “We are Christians too.” What they have a hard time seeing is how exclusive their own beliefs can be. This exclusivity is evident not only in what they believe but also in how they put their beliefs into practice.
The reality is that Mormons are willing to draw lines when it comes to other Christians. President Dallin Oaks made this point when he spoke to LDS Church mission leaders at a conference in June 2026. He “...affirmed the distinctive truth claims of the restored gospel while cautioning against the ‘fashionable opinion’ that all churches are equally true.” He made it clear that those truth claims are the reason the Church is so invested in sending missionaries all over the world. This was meant to be an in-house talk, not for public consumption, but it was reported on and made public by the LDS Church-owned Deseret News. Frankly, I found his honesty in drawing those lines to be refreshing.
It is not just a matter of the Church drawing lines when it comes to words. It draws lines in the way it puts those words into practice. In 2023, the new Orem Temple opened across the freeway from our building in Orem. The CenterPoint pastoral staff was invited to tour the inside of the temple before it was dedicated. During the tour, it was explained that when people are married in the temple, they are married for time and eternity. What happens in LDS temples is central to the LDS gospel and God’s plan for happiness.
After the temple tour, I was approached by a man who was a leader on a local level for the LDS Church in Orem. His daughter and my son had gone to school together. We talked about our families and what we had in common as parents and grandparents. At one point, he remarked that it was great to see how much we had in common as fellow Christians. I told him that I believed we did have something in common. We both believe that we should love our neighbors as ourselves.
I added, “If I am going to love you as my neighbor, then I need to be honest with you. The tour we just took gives me clarity on how different we are.” What I had been thinking about was that next week, after the temple was dedicated, someone who was a “Christian” like me, would not be able to enter it. Once a temple is dedicated, only worthy Latter-day Saints can enter.
If I accepted that Mormons were Christians too, it would mean that there were two types of Christians: those who were worthy to enter a temple and those who were not. Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” There is only one kind of Christian, someone who is in Christ.
I also thought about a woman named Heidi who showed up at CenterPoint a few years before this. Heidi had begun to read the Bible on her own. As she did, she encountered a God different from the one she believed in as a Mormon. Heidi gave her life to Jesus, and it changed her life. Heidi became a Christian.
Maybe you have heard the question- “If being a Christian were against the law, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” There would be enough evidence to convict Heidi. 1 Peter 4:16 is one of three places in the Bible where we see the word “Christian.” It says, “However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.” A willingness to suffer for Jesus gives evidence that someone is a Christian.
Heidi paid a price to follow Jesus. Every mother looks forward to being there for her children’s weddings. Heidi has had two daughters and a son get married in LDS temples. She not allowed to enter the temple and attend those weddings. To do so she would have needed a temple recommend. These are obtained through a worthiness interview with one’s bishop.
Heidi could not, with integrity, answer her bishop’s questions where she affirmed that the LDS Church was what it claimed to be- the one true church. As a pastor I stand with Heidi. I have no desire to go into a place where Heidi would not be welcome. There is more to it than that.
The good news that the LDS Church has to share, God’s plan for happiness, is anchored to what happens in the temple. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:23- “We preach Christ crucified”. The cross is central to the faith. This was illustrated when Jesus dies on the cross that the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom. In that moment, God made the statement that, because of Jesus’ death on the cross, all who belong to Him are welcome into His presence, not because they are worthy but because Jesus makes us worthy.
Through the years, I have had this great privilege to pastor people like Heidi. CenterPoint is a church where a majority of people come from LDS backgrounds. Many have paid a price to follow Jesus. Some lost marriages, jobs, family, and friends. Others were no longer allowed to remain students at BYU. These people have experienced rejection from their own people to follow Jesus.
How does a Christian respond to rejection? Jesus was rejected. John 1:11 says, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” Here we get to the heart of what it looks like to follow Jesus. It should not surprise us that following Him will mean that we experience rejection. Jesus never stopped loving people. Now Jesus gives His people the power to love people in the way that He loved them.