Mormons and the Cross

It's no accident that Mormon steeples, temples and necks are free of Christian crosses.

LDS leaders long have said the cross, so ubiquitous among traditional Christians, symbolizes Jesus' death, while Mormons worship the risen Christ. Some Latter-day Saints go even farther, condemning the cross as some kind of pagan or satanic symbol.

Now a historian at California State University in Sacramento claims in a just-completed master's thesis that Mormon aversion to the cross is a relatively recent development in LDS history, prompted in part by anti-Catholic sentiments.

"It first started at the grass-roots level around the turn of the 20th century, " Michael Reed argues in the thesis, "The Development of the LDS Church's Attitude Toward the Cross."

"It later became institutionalized during the 1950s under the direction of LDS Prophet David O. McKay," Reed writes.

Before that, Reed says, many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints used and promoted the revered Christian symbol as a potent expression of personal and collective faith.

That's a welcome conclusion, says Mormon scholar Bob Rees of southern California.

Reed's research explains Mormons' "ambiguous, confused relationship to the cross," says Rees, a former LDS bishop. "At one time there was an informal acceptance of it as an overt symbol, but in the 20th century its use has been discouraged by church leaders. Wanting to maintain its distinctive identity among Christian churches, the church essentially rejected outward manifestations of the cross, one of the most compelling symbols in all of Christendom - even though there's nothing doctrinally, theologically or scripturally that keeps us from embracing it."

Lifelong fascination » Reed came to his thesis naturally. As a Mormon child in Sacramento, Reed was fascinated by the cross. He once stole a cross necklace and wore it to church on the following Sunday. His mother viewed the theft and jewelry as signs of his apostasy, Reed says. "She asked me to put it under my shirt."

While Reed was a Mormon missionary in Baltimore, a potential convert said he had dreamed of a cross in flames, which he interpreted as a signal to join the church. Uncomfortable with the cross as divine message, Reed later sought answers in Mormon Doctrine , a book by the late Bruce R. McConkie. McConkie, vehemently anti-Catholic, equated the cross with the Bible's satanic "mark of the beast."

The missionaries also consulted the work of another expert, LDS President Joseph Fielding Smith, who compared the cross to a guillotine. Smith, who was church president from 1970 to 1972, believed that both items were merely "tools of execution."

A complex story » Early leaders of the LDS Church did not share that hostility, Reed concluded.

While Mormons, like Protestants, preferred simple buildings with little art, founder Joseph Smith used a cross to mark the spot for a future temple on his plans for the City of Zion. Many Saints used the Greek or Maltese cross common in folk beliefs, Freemasonry and other popular rituals of the time. They also used the cross from pre-Columbian America, Reed writes, as evidence that their unique scripture, The Book of Mormon, was a literal history from that era.

In pioneer Utah, crosses of various styles were common in jewelry, church art and funeral arrangements. Amelia Folsom Young, one of Brigham Young's wives, sported a cross necklace, and a floral cross was prominent on the caskets of Daniel H. Wells, Young's first counselor in the First Presidency, and John Taylor, the third LDS president. Architects designed the Assembly Hall on Temple Square in Salt Lake City as well as LDS tabernacles in Vernal and Loa, Utah, on a "cruciform" plan.

But the clearest example was Charles Nibley's 1916 proposal to place a giant cross on top of Ensign Peak as a way to honor the Mormon pioneers. Karl A. Sheid, Salt Lake City's commissioner of public affairs and finance, emphatically supported the move, saying: "That the 'Mormon' Church, which has so frequently and so unjustly been accused of not being a Christian church at all, should volunteer to place Christianity's most sacred emblem on Ensign peak - that place so hallowed by the memory of pioneer days -- is to my mind an event of first importance: One that should be and doubtless will be heralded to the four quarters of the globe, to the ultimate benefit of this commonwealth."

Others, especially Apostle Orson F. Whitney and members of the LDS 20th Ward in Salt Lake City, opposed it as a strictly Catholic symbol. The proposal eventually was discarded.

Still, for a couple more decades, Mormons continued to find meaning in the cross.

When Spencer W. Kimball was called as an apostle in 1943, for example, feelings of inadequacy rocked the future president. On a hillside hike, Reed writes, Kimball saw a "sign that gave him assurance God was with him."

It was a "huge cross with its arms silhouetted against the blue sky beyond," Kimball wrote in his journal. "It was just an ordinary cross made of two large heavy limbs of a tree, but in my frame of mind, and coming on it so unexpectedly, it seemed like a sacred omen."

A ban institutionalized » Roots of opposition to the cross were laid in the 1920s, when then-apostle McKay was president of the church's European Mission. He noted with disdain one Catholic celebration in Belgium, where people were "drinking and carousing until 6:30 a.m."

He also saw the obstacles Mormon missionaries faced in Catholic countries such as France, Italy and Spain, while having more success in Protestant areas such as Great Britain.

Tensions in Utah arose in the 1930s, Reed writes, when the state's Roman Catholic Church became more concentrated and powerful. Catholic Bishop Duane Hunt launched a radio show intended to reaffirm the faith of the state's Catholics, but the Mormon leadership -- including McKay, by then in the First Presidency -- saw Hunt's addresses as a veiled attempt to convert Mormons.

Two years after becoming president in 1953, McKay pointed to a Catholic church in California and commented: "There are two great anti-Christs in the world: Communism and that church."

In 1957, McKay established the LDS Church's no-cross protocol, saying it was not proper for LDS girls to wear it on their jewelry, saying the cross is "purely Catholic. ... Our worship should be in our hearts."

Though McKay later tempered his comments about Catholicism, his opposition to the cross became church policy. From that day to this, Mormons look askance at any member who pays too much homage to the ubiquitous Christian symbol.

"If someone is wearing a cross, we get very uncomfortable," Rees says. "Yet we believe the scars of his crucifixion is how Christ identified himself in ancient America, ancient Israel and to Joseph Smith. If Christ so openly displayed the marks of the cross, shouldn't we be more open to its symbolic possibilities?"

From the article: Some Latter-day Saints go even farther, condemning the cross as some kind of pagan or satanic symbol...Uncomfortable with the cross as divine message, Reed later sought answers in Mormon Doctrine, a book by the late Bruce R. McConkie. McConkie, vehemently anti-Catholic, equated the cross with the Bible's satanic "mark of the beast."

So Heavenly Father's plan from eternity -- the cross -- is regarded by some LDS as "satanic?"

From the article: Now a historian at California State University in Sacramento claims in a just-completed master's thesis that Mormon aversion to the cross is a relatively recent development in LDS history, prompted in part by anti-Catholic sentiments.

From the article: Reed's research explains Mormons' "ambiguous, confused relationship to the cross," says Rees, a former LDS bishop...'Wanting to maintain its distinctive identity among Christian churches, the church essentially rejected outward manifestations of the cross, one of the most compelling symbols in all of Christendom - even though there's nothing doctrinally, theologically or scripturally that keeps us from embracing it."

From the article: Two years after becoming [LDS] president in 1953, McKay pointed to a Catholic church in California and commented: "There are two great anti-Christs in the world: Communism and that church."

(This so-called LDS "prophet" was referencing the Catholic church)

I've run into other "restorationist" churches that also teach this, as well.

For example,

Today we come to the climax of our series on "Paganism in the Church," and the subject today is centered in the symbol of the cross. Although the cross has become a revered relic and often even an object of worship, I would like to explore the ancient background of this cherished symbol. In our last broadcast we discovered that the Bible describes the worship of Tammuz, the Pagan God of the Sun. Satan inspired those idolatrous people to represent Tammuz by the letter "T," the first letter of his name. It came to be a world-wide symbol of sun worship and all the moral pollutions attached to that kind of worship. The heathen actually sacrified human beings to the devil on crosses. Centuries before Jesus was born crucifixion was a method of worshiping the pagan sun god.
When sun-worshiping generals went to battle they offered thousands of human sacrifices to the devil. It is said that Alexander the Great, after a victorious campaign, crucified over 10,000 human beings on the cross to celebrate his victory. Three-thousand chief Babylonians were crucified at one time as a sacrifice to the Devil.
When the Catholics first went down into South America and Mexico, soon after these were discovered, they were amazed to find that the sun-worshiping heathen there had crosses. They were amazed because they did not know that these people knew anything about crosses. They did not know anything about Christianity, but they had crosses because they were the sign of Tammuz-the Sun God. But listen, friends, the time finally came for the Son of God to be born. The exact day of His birth no one knows. But He lived to be thirty-three and one-half when He was crucified, which was in the spring of the year at the time of the Passover. Listen friends, it is almost too terrible for words. You remember Tammuz was exalted by Satan to be the false Messiah or rival of Jesus. The symbol of the cross, the first letter of his name, "T", was the sign of sun worship. Down through the years, many times as Satan had succeeded in leading Israel into sin and Pagan sun worship, it had seemed that the sun god was victorious over the true God. Jesus, the Creator of the world, came into a world that had forgotten Him. He suffered every insult at its hands and, finally, died upon the symbol of sun worship, the cross; as Paul says, "Even the death of the cross."

From Remnant of God (looks like an Adventist-type group to me)

I don't want to get into the LDS arguments (just not my style one way or the other), but attacking the lack of crosses hits the same with other denominations, as well.

Interesting idea. Goes against everything I was taught. I am going to try to get a copy of this and see his logic and sources.

I suspect it is “faith promoting” history designed to show that “yes, the LDS really are Christians”, however I could be wrong.

If the LDS didn’t shrink from the cross until the 1930’s then why is are there NO crosses on early LDS architecture and Temples?

Why do they say the shedding of Christ’s blood for their version of the Atonement took place in the garden, not on the cross?

A great book on the importance of the Cross to Christians is “The Cross of Christ” by John R.W. Stott. It shows why, both historically and theologically the Cross should be the center of our faith.

As a Catholic mackerel-snapper Romish Mary-worshipping Papist, I find this thread just too funny for words.

“The Great and Abominable Church” is the usual Nazi-Mormon term for the Roman Catholic Church, as spoken by their General Authorities and Apostles.

OBTW, Mormon theology doesn’t like Protestants too much either, referring to them as the “lewd daughters” of the Church of Rome.

Both groups venerate the Cross of Jesus. Mormons seem to instead worship the Angel Moroni who surmounts their temples in lieu of the Cross of Salvation.

Questions, anyone?

The Old Rugged Cross

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.

Refrain

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.

O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
Has a wondrous attraction for me;
For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above
To bear it to dark Calvary.

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me.

To the old rugged cross I will ever be true;
Its shame and reproach gladly bear;
Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away,
Where His glory forever I’ll share.

(1912) Music and Lyrics by evangelist and song-leader George Bennard (1873-1958).

A rather large "chunk" of the first Mormon groups transferred intact from the Christian Church Movement (SEE: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Church and Church of Christ (non-instrumental))

They took with them an interest in buildings, and always (and still do) have a cross on the inside, but many of their earliest Christian Churches didn't have crosses outside, or even complete "steeples".

Used to be the exterior crosses and steeples were the most expensive part of the building to complete and these Christian Church movement congregations were usually flat broke so they simply never put up the steeples or the crosses on top.

End of story.

There's no religious significance to it at all but it does attest, in part, to the influence the early Christian Church movement had on the operations side of Mormonism.

bTW, over the years as we've traveled around the country we've always taken a look at any Christian Church buildings we've encountered to see if they have steeples and crosses, and most don't ~ actually, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY don't, particularly the ones built like office buildings.

I can only imagine the Disciples branch will shortly be overwhelmed with demands for steeples and crosses with the influx of Puritans.

For the Cross - Matt Redman

I will love you for the cross
And I will love you for the cost
Man of sufferings
Bringer of my peace

You came into a world of shame
And paid the price we could not pay
Death that brought me life
Blood that brought me home
Death that brought me life
Blood that brought me home

Chorus:
And I love you for the cross
I’m overwhelmed by the mystery
I love you for the cost
That Jesus you would do this for me

When you were broken, you were beaten,
You were punished, I go free
You were wounded and rejected
In your mercy - I am healed

Jesus Christ the sinners friend
Does this kindness know no bounds
With your precious blood you have purchased me

Oh the mystery of the cross
You were punished you were crushed
But that punishment has become my peace
Yes that punishment has become my peace

Chorus

By your wounds I am healed

For the cross, for the cross, for the cross I thank you
Oh Lord, for the cross, for the cross

Message of the Cross - delirious?

This is the message of the cross, that we can be free,
To live in the victory, and turn from our sin,
My precious Lord Jesus, with sinners you died,
For there you revealed your love and you laid down your life.

This is the message of the cross, that we can be free,
To lay all our burdens here, at the foot of the tree,
The cross was the shame of the world,
but the glory of God,
For Jesus you conquered sin and you gave us new life!

You set me free when I came to the cross,
Poured out your blood for I was broken and lost,
There I was healed and you covered my sin,
It’s there you saved me, this is the message of the cross.

This is the message of the cross, that we can be free,
To hunger for heaven, to hunger for Thee,
“The cross is such foolishness to the perishing,
But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God!”

You set us free when we come to the cross,
You pour out your blood for we are broken and lost.
Here we are healed and you cover our sin,
It’s here you save us,

You set me free when I come to the cross,
Pour out your blood for I am broken and lost
Here I am healed and you cover my sin,
It’s here you save me, this is the message of the cross.

Let us rejoice at the foot of the cross,
We can be free, glory to God. (repeat)

Thank you Lord, thank you Lord,
You’ve set us free, glory to God. (repeat)

bTW, over the years as we’ve traveled around the country we’ve always taken a look at any Christian Church buildings we’ve encountered to see if they have steeples and crosses, and most don’t ~ actually, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY don’t, particularly the ones built like office buildings.

- - - - - - - - -

It is not just exterior Crosses the LDS reject. They reject the use of the Cross in all forms.

Our church does not have a cross on the outside (we have a dove), but in the foyer we have a huge empty cross with blood dripping from it that you must pass under to get into the Sanctuary. It is a powerful piece of art.

When I was LDS, I was told that the cross was only a method of execution, and asked “if Jesus was beheaded, would you wear a guillotine?”. At the time it made sense. Now, my response is “If that is how my Savior decided to die for my sins, then YES, I would!”

If I see a man with an axe attacking me and my (insert religion here) I will stop the attacker... STOP. The enemy is within.

Well, when it comes to setting cultural priorities, who are we going to follow...Jesus and the apostle Paul? or Mirkwood?

Here's Jesus:

"I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him." (Luke 12:4-5)

>So does Jesus say, "fear the axe wielders?" (No)
Does Jesus say "fear the 'enemy' within our borders?" (No)
Instead, does He say to exercise fear of the One who has authority to cast somebody into hell? (Yes)
So, indeed, our "fear" is on behalf of those who are placing their eternal spiritual lives at risk.

Jesus was harshest on the religious legalists of the day -- not the axe-wielders -- those, Jesus said, who would traverse land & sea to make them "twice the son of hell."

We are being systematically divided. I am seeing the religious against the non-believers. Will we fight against each other while GOD is ripped away from every part of our once beloved country?

You know, I could probably guess that the folks who the apostle Paul warned the church @ Ephesus about had the bulk in common with the sheep there. Both groups were "religious." So, did Paul play the "allies"-game-don't-divide-us-you're playing? (No)

As Paul was leaving the church of Ephesus, he warned them with this high-priority alert:

"I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears." (Acts 20:29-31)

Paul's cultural priority? (Defend against the false disciples who will proselytize the flock and draw away men unto themselves!)

Tell me something, mirkwood: If you did something tearfully night and day for three years, do you think it's rather important? So what? We're just to conclude, "Oh, the man who contributed a good chunk to the New Testament -- what does he know about cultural priorities?"

I'll take Paul's and Jesus' already-revealed priorities, thank you.

I have the CD iof Kenneth Copeland singing this but I’ve loved it for many years..

When He was on the cross, (I was on His mind)

I’m not on an ego trip, I’m nothing on my own
I make mistakes I often slip, just common flesh and bone
But I’ll prove someday, just why I say, I’m of a special kind
For when He was on the cross, I was on His mind.

Chorus
For He knew me yet He loved me
He whose glory makes the heavens shine.
So unworthy of such mercy.
Yet when He was on the cross, I was on His mind.

The look of love was on His face and thorns were on His head
The blood was on His scarlet robe and stained a crimson red
Though His eyes were on the crowd that day, He looked ahead in time
For when He was on the cross, I was on His mind.

Chorus
For He knew me yet He loved me
He whose glory makes the heavens shine.
So unworthy of such mercy.
Yet when He was on the cross, I was on His mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6rtjebGvrA&feature=related

We sang this when I was little

It was in the Anglican Hymnal...

There is a green hill far away

There is a green hill far away,
outside a city wall,
where our dear Lord was crucified
who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell,
what pains he had to bear,
but we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
that we might go at last to heaven,
saved by His precious blood.

There was no other good enough
to pay the price of sin,
He only could unlock the gate
of Heaven and let us in.

O dearly, dearly has He loved!
And we must love Him too,
and trust in His redeeming blood,
and try His works to do.

Words: Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895), 1848

Words: Cecil F. Alexander, 1847. Music: George Stebbins, 1878 Alexander wrote this hymn as she sat up one night with her seriously sick daughter. Many times, traveling to town to shop, she had passed a small grassy mound, just outside the old city wall of Derry, Ireland. It always made her think of Calvary, and it came to mind as she wrote this hymn. She published it in her Hymns for Little Children in 1848.

This is the tune we sung it to..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KixEwWVE6_k&feature=related

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