Reaganaut, svcv wants to know the source of your statement:
“The public distance of terms like that is part of their trying to be considered Christians ‘just like everyone else’ which started in the late 1980’s.”
Thanks.
Freegards
“The public distance of terms like that is part of their trying to be considered Christians ‘just like everyone else’ which started in the late 1980’s.”
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Thanks for the ping. I did write that and my source is my own personal experience (you can also see the change slowly occuring if you have the stomach to go back and read old General conference reports).
When I was ‘investigating’ and just joined the LDS church, I was corrected several times by saying we were Christians along the lines of “We are Mormons, not Christians”.
Then the LDS joined with others in the Vision Interfaith Satellite network (American Council of Churches etc) in the late 1980’s. The LDS used this network to help change their public persona (for propaganda). This move saw a change to the ‘we are Christians too’ spiel. I heard less and less of “Christians are Evil” and more of “We are the only TRUE Christians”.
When I was at BYU in the early 1990’s, the tone was (and to a large degree still is) “We are the only TRUE Christians, the others are fakes”. That is still their stance and must remain so since they still claim to be ‘restored’ Christianity.