Last week the Pentagon released a new list of officially recognized religions, dropping the number from 200 to just 31.
21 of those 31 survivors were listed as some flavor of Christianity: "Christian - Scientist", "Christian - Catholic", "Christian - Baptist", "Christian - Non Denominational", etc, etc
Noticeably absent from that list of Christian denominations were Mormons, who were just listed as "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints".
They did not take this lightly, seeing it - rightly so - as an announcement that the current administration does not consider Mormons to be Christian.
Now here's the thing Mormon's don't seem to ever understand - that's not a typo. It's a real thing among the evangelical community that makes up the Christian political power in this country that they do not believe Mormons to be Christians. They think they're some kind of cult that worships Joseph Smith or Brigham Young.
Chick Tracts are alive and well in the Southern Baptist belief system. I've seen multiple sermons in those churches where the preacher taught that the First Amendment freedom of religion only applies to protestants like Baptists and maybe Methodists because they're the only real 'religions' and everything else is just some kind of cult that worships one man or woman or another instead of a god. I was inflicted with thirty years of that bullshit, hit me up if you need fundy translation services.
Which is all to say: this was not an accident.
But the administration has heard their complaints and has decided to respond. But not in the way that Mormon lawmakers had hoped. Because again, not an accident.
Instead they dropped the title 'Christian' from even more denominations.
It's the same kind of response they gave when gays got equal marriage rights - you see people suddenly get the opinion that government shouldn't be involved in marriage at all.
It's like some kid on a school playground playing with a ball who sees another kid come up with an exact same ball. But instead of letting both of them play with their own toys, conservatives belief that destroying all the toys for all the kids is the acceptable solution.
For some reason Mormons just don't want to accept that mainstream Christianity only accepts them as a temporary ally. They're lower down on the Niemoller List than Muslims, but they're still on the fucking to-do list.
