{"id":654,"date":"2008-01-17T22:22:14","date_gmt":"2008-01-18T06:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katylee.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/17\/mitt-romney-and-the-mormons\/"},"modified":"2008-01-17T23:45:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-18T07:45:00","slug":"mitt-romney-and-the-mormons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/17\/mitt-romney-and-the-mormons\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitt Romney and the Mormons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that there is a Mormon, Mitt Romney, running for President this year, the Mormon Church has been in the news<\/a> much more than before. More questions about whether Mormons are a cult continues to be argued.<\/p>\n

First, what is a cult?<\/p>\n

I was part of the beginning of a cult<\/strong> in the late ’80s. The pastor who officiated our wedding, who used to the pastor of an evangelical church, started his own church with good intentions. After about a year, the teachings began to get weird.<\/p>\n

To make a long story short, the group dwindled down to about a dozen people who all moved into the house of the pastor and his wife. They had a big house, and it was set up as a commune. Those who worked put their earnings together to support the entire household. That was the time we wisely left the church.<\/p>\n

Since we still lived in the area, we heard about what was going on with the group. They practiced all the typical cult techniques including isolation from family and friends, fasting to make members vulnerable to suggestions, strong group pressure, and total dependence on the group for daily living. This group was written up in a cult book, so I won’t go into details. Eventually the group disbanded, and the last I heard, the pastor and his family were seen in Utah.<\/p>\n

The point I am making here is, Mormons do not practice such methods of a “cult” like this one or the Jim Jones cult<\/a>. They are not a cult in this sense.<\/p>\n

However, there is another common usage of the word “cult”. A cult is a religion regarded as unorthodox.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mormons consider themselves Christians, but their teachings are “unorthodox”. They do not adhere to the teachings of classic Christianity.<\/p>\n

You don’t have to know all the doctrines of Mormonism to realize that their beliefs are not what the Christian Church believes. Take a look at just 3 of their beliefs:<\/p>\n