For the past several months I have been pondering David V. Mason’s New York Times op-ed piece, “I’m a Mormon, Not a Christian.” Mason, who sees himself “about as genuine a Mormon as you’ll find” and “emphatically not a Christian,” seems so radically different from how I see myself—as emphatically a Christian while also being a very genuine Mormon.
In a lecture I gave at Graduate Theological Union last December titled, “Are Mormons Christian?” I stated, “No other word [“Christian”] so accurately defines Mormons.” As Nephi, a Book of Mormon prophet, declared, “We talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ” (2 Nephi 25: 23, 26). And in spite of what some Christians contend, the Christ Nephi speaks of and whom Mormons worship is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the Savior of the world as found in the New Testament.
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