Ask Mormons if they are Christian, and their answer often starts with a sigh.

Look at our name, they’ll say, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Read The Book of Mormon’s subtitle, “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” Examine our Articles of Faith, “We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved…”

“When we read in the press that some religious person who should know better refers to us as non-Christian, it is baffling to us,” said Michael Otterson, the church’s head of public affairs. “To suggest that we don’t embrace Christ and his sacrifice for all of us is insulting.”

Yet nearly a quarter of Americans remain unconvinced, according to a recent poll conducted by The Salt Lake Tribune. The Vatican and several Protestant churches do not accept Mormon baptisms as legitimate (neither do Mormons recognize theirs), and some conservative evangelicals call Mormonism a “cult.” Mormons, meanwhile, believe they belong to the one true Christian church.

The theological debate might have remained relegated to Sunday school discussions and interfaith summits were it not for the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon and onetime LDS bishop. While the former Massachusetts governor and current GOP frontrunner has muted religious talk during this campaign, he indirectly addressed the Mormon-Christian issue during his previous White House bid.

“There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked,” he said in a 2007 speech in Texas. “What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind.”

Stressing the similarities between Mormonism and mainstream Christianity makes political sense. Republicans who say Mormons are not Christian are less likely to view Romney favorably or support his campaign, according to a November survey by the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

During the 2007 speech, Romney acknowledged that “my church’s beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths.” But explaining theological arcana is not a politician’s job, he argued. It amounts to a religious test for office, which the Constitution forbids.

Still, the debate lingers around Romney’s campaign: Are he and fellow Mormons Christians? The question seems simple enough, but the answer is quite complicated.

Who’s in and Who’s Out?

According to “The Atlas of Global Christianity,” there are 41,000 Christian denominations. No definition of Christianity could encompass their doctrinal diversity, said Martin Marty, an emeritus professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. “I wish there was some official place where you could determine who’s in and who’s out, but there’s not. No one can speak for all of Christianity in all its nuances.”

The atlas lists Mormonism as a “marginal” Christian group, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, primarily because it deviates from traditional Christian teachings on Jesus and claims sources of revelation beyond the Bible.

The “marginal” category is not a perfect fit and rings a pejorative tone, said Todd Johnson, editor of the atlas and director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. “It’s not a category that helps you understand what these groups believe. It’s just saying that they have something besides the Bible that is quite significant.”

For centuries, most Christians have relied a closed canon of scriptures and creeds to draw the circle of membership. Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox Christians and many Protestant churches recite the 4th Century Nicene Creed, for example, which states foundational Christian tenets.

Mormonism’s founding prophet, Joseph Smith, blasted the Christian canon wide open and cast aside the creeds. At a time when religious revivals engulfed his Upstate New York homestead, a 14-year-old Smith reported a vision of God and Jesus, who told him that the Christian churches had fallen into apostasy.

A second vision directed Smith to a stack of buried golden plates, according to LDS Church history. The plates, which became The Book of Mormon, told of an ancient society visited by Jesus in North America that was destroyed by warring tribes.

With the impatience of a prophet, Smith set out to restore the Christian church. He revised the Bible; reported receiving “keys to the priesthood” from John the Baptist; rejected the traditional idea of the Trinity as three-gods-in-one; taught that God was once a flesh-and-blood man, and that men could become gods through purification and obedience to the church.

They were all — including Smith’s promotion as Prophet of the Restoration — radical departures from centuries of Christian orthodoxy. And intentionally so.

Smith’s Latter-day Saints consider The Book of Mormon as much a part of God’s word as the Bible, and continue to honor their top leader as “prophet, seer and revelator.”

“Take away the Book of Mormon and the revelations,” Smith said, “and where is our religion? We have none.”

The Fourth Abrahamic Faith?

Jan Shipps, the preeminent non-Mormon expert on the LDS church, draws a comparison between the early Christians and Latter-day Saints. Both introduced new scriptures and ideas to established religions, and insisted that their new faith fulfilled the old. Christians added the New Testament to Judaism, and Smith added The Book of Mormon to Christianity.

Richard Land, an ethicist with the Southern Baptist Convention, goes even further, calling Mormonism “the fourth Abrahamic faith,” after Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Like Islam, Land said, Mormons receive the Old and New Testament as sacred texts, but not as the final divine word. Like Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, Smith is considered an authoritative vessel of God’s word.

“Whatever it is, Mormonism is not Christianity,” Land said. “They do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, they do not believe in God the Father as he is recognized in the orthodox Christian faith, and they believe that ‘As man now is, God was once.’ The only thing right about that sentence from the orthodox Christian perspective is the punctuation.”

Evangelicals like Land tend to be the most eager to keep Mormons from the Christian camp. In addition to doctrinal concerns, Johnson said, conservative Christians worry about sheep-stealing Mormon missionaries. “It’s a pragmatic decision to call (Mormons) non-Christian, to protect church members from Mormon evangelism,” he said.

But even Catholics and more liberal Protestants, such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church, do not consider Mormon baptisms valid.

“The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, by self-definition, does not fit within the bounds of the historic, apostolic tradition of Christian faith,” the Methodists wrote in 2000.

Cherishing Mormon Distinctiveness

Mormons do not deny their differences with traditional Christianity. According to a recent survey, Mormons are as likely to say their religion resembles Judaism as it does evangelical Protestantism.

Otterson says Mormons cherish their distinctiveness, much as Catholics or Methodists show special devotion to their traditions. But Mormon leaders have also sought to tie their unique theology to the earliest Christians, using the ancient past to sanction the present.

For example, arguing that Mormons are not Christians because they do not recite the Nicene Creed would leave Jesus and his disciples outside the Christian fold as well, argues Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, a member of the LDS Church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles. And, Holland says, the idea of a flesh-and-blood God should not sound strange to Christians, who, after all, believe in the bodily birth and resurrection of Jesus.

Christians who insist on a single, closed canon forget that Catholics and Protestants use different versions of the Bible, argues Stephen Robinson, a professor of religion at Mormon-run Brigham Young University in Utah. And didn’t differing interpretations of the Trinity contribute to the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches in 1054?

Mormon theologian Robert Millet has been laboring to convince Christians that the Mormon idea of deification — humans becoming gods — resembles the mystical union with the divine taught by early church fathers like St. Augustine. But Millet said he worries more about the opinions of Christians in the pews than the specialized scholars who read his books.

“When people call Mormons non-Christian, they might believe that we do not accept Jesus Christ as Lord and savior, or believe in the New Testament,” Millet said. “We don’t want to fight about this. We just wish people would get it right.”

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Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, one of the most prominent Baptist churches in the country, caused an uproar recently when he said Republicans shouldn’t vote for potential Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney because he’s in a cult.

Jeffress made the bold statement before introducing White House hopeful Rick Perry at the Value Voters Summit in Washington D.C. Friday.

Perry distanced himself from Jeffress’ remarks later, saying “No. I don’t think it is,” Perry said when asked by a journalist if he believes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a cult.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, whose group put on the Values Voter Summit, said that Jeffress’ use of the word “cult”  was unfortunate and that Jeffress’ remarks on Mormonism shouldn’t have been blown out of proportion because the comments were made during a sidebar conversation with the media.

The summit’s purpose is not to discuss theological matters, but rather to unite faith-based voters, Perkins said.

In an interview on CNN after the event, Jeffress clarified his remarks saying, “Historical Christianity has never embraced Mormonism as a part of its faith,” and that Mormonism “doesn’t embrace the historical tenets of evangelical Christianity.”

Romney, a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, was also a speaker at the event.

He did not respond to Jeffress’ remarks, but he did lash out at fellow speaker, Bryan Fischer, Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, who has said in the past that Mormons have “a completely different definition of who Christ is” than the founding fathers did, and do not deserve First Amendment protections as a consequence.

In response Romney said, “One of the speakers who will follow me today, has crossed that line,” Romney said. “Poisonous language does not advance our cause. It has never softened a single heart nor changed a single mind. The blessings of faith carry the responsibility of civil and respectful debate.”

He added, “The task before us is to focus on the conservative beliefs and the values that unite us – let no agenda  narrow our vision or drive us apart.”

Jeffress is not the only evangelical to make headlines for discussing Romney’s Mormonism.

In an interview published Saturday to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Chairman Pat Robertson said he liked Mitt Romney’s political beliefs and viewed the potential Republican Party nominee as an “outstanding Christian.”

In addition, Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, penned a column for CNN’s Belief blog in which he said he doesn’t think Mormonism is a cult.

In a recent Pew Research Center poll 34 percent of white evangelicals said they would not vote for a Mormon candidate, and a quarter of all Americans said they were less likely to do so.

There are many other doctrinal differences between evangelical Christians and the Latter-day Saints. These differences include views on topics such as the Trinity, the Bible, Satan and the Deity of Christ.

The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry has a fact sheet on the differences between Mormonism and historical Christianity.

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Five months post former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the perpetrators of the bombing of Two Saints Church, Alexandria, last New Year’s Eve remain unknown–and the government seems to stall its investigation.

The suspects who were arrested shortly after the bombing have been released, and there is a prohibition against publishing information about the bombing that continues to be in force since January, even after Mubarak stepped down the following month.

On New Year’s Eve, a bomb was lobbed onto the front lawn of Two Saints Church, a landmark cathedral, while a service was ongoing. Some 25 died, and 100 were injured. (See http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2011/01/egyptian-coptic-church-bomb-kills-21-wounds-79-14956/).

Speculation contends there may be links between the bombing of the church, and threats that were sent to the Coptic Church eight hours before the blast. Murmurs abound that the Salafists and the State Security collaborated in the bombings.

“[The] majority of Copts believe … the Salafists in collaboration with State Security carried out the bombings of the Alexandria Church,” activist Edward Fahmy told AINA.

Heightening suspicions that State Security was complicit is the fact that the security personnel and officers who were assigned to the church were not at their posts when the blast occurred.

Joseph Malak, attorney for the Coptic cathedral, said in a press conference at the Church of St. Mark in Alexandria that they have filed a case requesting that former interior minister Habib al-Adli is questioned about the incident.

They also asked in their lawsuit that reasons be disclosed as to why the suspects were released, and seek cancellation of the ban on publication about the bomb blast, which had been imposed since January.

The lawsuit also seeks to require that the investigations are completed by the Ministers of Justice and Interior, and that the perpetrators are sentenced as quickly as possible.

Malak said in the press conference that the lawsuit names the president of the Council of Ministers, the Attorney General and the Interior Minister. It demands the reopening of the case.

For some time, a long list of affidavits had been submitted to these government officials, and relatives of the victims have expressed willingness to testify. However, the government has not responded.

In the press conference which took place at the church’s Egyptian Center for Development Studies and Human Rights last Sunday, Malak said, “We will demand the Attorney General to take determined action to complete the investigation into the case and to speed up detection of the perpetrators and bring them to trial,” AINA reported.

Appeal to media

Also present at the press conference was the pastor of Two Saints Church, Father Makkar Fawzi, who appealed to media for help. “You are our last resort, we have talked with many officials without any answer.”

Rev. Abraham Emil of St. Mark Church said at the press conference that the government of Egypt has the capability to find the perpetrators, adding that the families of the victims are Egyptians, too. “They have the same rights as victims of the Revolution.”

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Pope Benedict XVI announced recently that a new office will be opened to re-evangelize parts of the world, including Europe, where Christianity is being overtaken by secularization, the Associated Press reported.

Benedict announced the opening of the new office on the feasts of Saints Peter and Paul, which is a feast day that by tradition is celebrated together with the Orthodox church, the AP said.

Although there is no confirmed head of the new office, media in Italy have said it may be Monsignor Rino Fisichella. Conservatives criticized Fisichella last year when he pleaded mercy in defense of Brazilian doctors who performed an abortion on a 9-year-old. The child was raped by her stepfather and pregnant with twins, the AP said.

The Catholic church, even as it has created the new office, is in the midst of a number of controversies.

One involves Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, former head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (tasked to work in areas where the Catholic church is relatively unknown), regarding corruption in relation to some of his business transactions, the AP said.

Another controversy involves the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was found to have committed abuse with some seminarians, and was discovered to be the father of at least three children, the AP said.

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