Are Mormons Christian?

The Department of Defense recently caused controversy when it stripped the classification “Christian” from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its official list of Religious Affiliation Codes for service members. Most Christian denominations don’t recognize Mormons as Christians, but most Mormons embrace the label. After all, don’t they too worship Jesus? The decision has sparked interest in the almost 200-year-old debate as to whether Mormonism warrants the label.

Latter-day Saint Theology Among Christian Theologies (2025 Eerdmans, 635 pp.), which is written from the Mormon perspective, can help Christians understand the differences between the Mormon faith and historic Christianity. Grant Underwood, a Mormon historian at Brigham Young University, offers his readers an account of Mormon thought that situates it in relation to the various streams of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox doctrine and practice with which most of us are familiar.

The first two chapters address the most fundamental question of all—who and what is God?—as well as several issues that arise from that inquiry regarding the Trinity, creation, providence, and theodicy. Unlike classical Christian theism, Mormonism is far more modest in its claims about the divine nature. In its view, God is not that which has underived existence and from which all contingent reality receives its being (as in classical Christian theism); rather, God is an embodied divine person with whom human beings share the same nature. And God does not refer to the Trinity, but primarily to God the Father, with the Son and Holy Spirit having separate existences. Mormons believe that God is eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and so forth, but God Himself is ultimately not responsible for those attributes. The Latter-day Saints teach that God was once like us and eventually progressed to Godhood, though Underwood cautions that Mormon scripture is silent on the particulars of what it means for God to have been like us.

Traditional Christians will bristle at this account of the divine nature, but Underwood points out that some contemporary non-Mormon philosophers and theologians, including some evangelicals, have defended ideas about God that are significant departures from what Nicaea, Augustine, Aquinas, or Calvin embraced, and thus resemble the Mormon view. For example, recent arguments for the so-called Social Trinity, open theism, divine temporality, process theology, and the eternal subordination of the Son are quite congenial to certain acceptable interpretations of Mormonism.

The remaining chapters concern the person of Christ and His work, human nature and salvation, ecclesiology and priesthood, sacraments, eucharist, and grace, and eschatology and the afterlife. Underwood introduces the reader to Mormon thought on each of these topics by way of comparison and contrast with the many different ways Christians have conceptualized them. He explains similarities (e.g., Eucharistic nonrealism with low-church Protestants, baptismal regeneration with Catholics and Orthodox), stark differences (e.g., eternal progression vs. theosis, posthumous eternal marriage vs. the beatific vision), as well as some family resemblances (e.g., the Reformation, Restorationism, Catholic sacred tradition). This book is neither a work of systematic theology nor apologetics; rather, it’s a nontechnical explanation of comparative historical theology with an eye toward mutual understanding.

Virtually every reader will find, as I have, some historical or philosophical explanation or interpretation with which to disagree. But Underwood’s sophisticated yet accessible manner will aid readers who wish to understand where Mormon thought differs from historic Christianity.