Morning brainstorm: Why mormonism is a new Abrahamic religion.

Studying mormonism using its official canon is a minefield. D&C 1:29-30 and JSH 1:19 set a baseline parameter that mormonism is the one-true-church. The verses in D&C 131 and D&C 132 lay a trap for anyone who really thinks Smith was a prophet. This has set the stage for fundamentalists believers to splinter off from the mainstream Brighamite church, i.e. FLDS, AUB, TLC, etc. Those that retreat to their desert enclaves think they are living the fullness of Smith's gospel. Anne Wilde explained it very well in her interview with John Dehlin on Mormon Stories.

Mormonism started as an explanation for native Americans being of Jewish descent, but it was still mostly a protestant derivative at its core, still tied to a trinitarian philosophy, etc. By 1844, at the time of Smith's demise, it had morphed into a new Abrahamic religion of its own.

• deity is in a pantheon of other deities, in father and son relationship. Jens Christian Weibye
• deity uses tests of moral relativism. It is Geneses 22 on steroids; it is 1 Nephi 4 on steroids; it is Joseph Smith's ego on steroids, probably best illustrated by Smith's letter to Nancy Rigdon: "That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another." and the statement from Joseph Smith as explained to John Taylor:

[John Taylor] In offering up his only son there was something very peculiar, not especially as a sacrifice, but it came in contact with every parental feeling which he must necessarily have felt for his only child. This, in and of itself, rendered it one of the most severe and painful trials that could be placed upon man; but there was something else connected with this which was explained by the Prophet Joseph Smith, who, when speaking of these things, said God was determined in these days to have a tried people as He had in former times, and that he would feel after their heartstrings and try them in every way possible for them to be tried; and if he could have invented anything that would have been more keen, acute, and trying than that which he required of Abraham he would have done it.

• deity sends an angel with a sword to coerce Smith to marry already married women: Zina Huntington Jacobs, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner. Believers must accept that free agency is over-ridden by the will of the deity. Mark 10:9 is out of the window. There are multiple instances of orphaned children and household maids being pressured to obey the will of their priesthood leaders, lest the work of the church grind to a halt. A more rational inspection reveals more of Smith's lechery. Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo

• deity rewards faithful men with exaltation to godhood and harems to populate new worlds. D&C 132:49; 132:32; 132:61. First wives who do not go along deserve a new form of punishment, "destruction." D&C 132:64. Where that fits in a D&C 76 context is unclear, because the deity has shown a penchant for being a bad parent when a third of the host of heaven were sent into the void over a disagreement.

• blended masonic rituals which give initiates signs and tokens to pass physical guards in the hereafter; as if an all knowing god would use handshakes and passwords, lest the wrong people get in.

• However, the deity allows Smith a legacy provision in his fraternity, which includes promises of exaltation for all downline descendants of the Whitneys after Sarah Ann agreed to marry him. Sarah Ann Whitney and Helen Mar Kimball

• Second anointing ritual confers on mortal men the title of future deity. This is the ultimate in-group, the ultimate fraternity of the lord's anointed, (or of those who either paid enough tithing or were lucky enough to have another club member tap them on the shoulder.)

• the christian atonement cures original sin and a smaller set of all sin by mortals. Mormonism is a new form of Calvinism where the deity only suffered for sins he knew in advance would be repented of. Other sins are left with the individual, for which they will receive a beating in the hereafter and assignment in the tiered heaven afterwards.

These all add up to new Abrahamic religion, which is only tangentially related to Christianity. Speeches from the pulpit in general conference want to present it as being just like evangelical Christianity with a loving god as savior. However, the actual theology and practice have the hard edges as exposed above. I know the faithful don't like to think about it very much because they prefer a much softer religion, and they're very prone to simply giving brother Joseph a break. The deity has already done so, per 132:49, per hymn #27.

There are probably more ways mormonism is not a simple christian derivative, but that is a start.