Are Catholics, Jews, Mormons considered Christians?

@calicuz Christianity is not an Abrahamic religion. Although the Bible incorporates scriptures of Judiasm in the Old Testament, they are not relevant to the teaching of Jesus.

@calicuz Mormons believe that God, Jesus, and the holy spirit as three separate entities working as one.

@sree251 Jesus was a Jew, so to say that the scriptures of Judaism are not relevant to the teaching of Jesus is ridiculous.

@calicuz Actually alot of Christian denominations are not trinitarian.


As for Judaism you also have Messianic Jews which seems to be a mashup of Judaism and American style evangelicals which makes it a bigger mes.

@sree251 Catholics accept that Jesus was Jewish... so, what's your problem with it???

@Zeusdelight The teaching of Jesus expounds moral values opposed to those of Judaism. Jesus was branded an apostate and his crucifixion was demanded by Jewish religious authorities in Jerusalem. The Old Testament included Jewish scriptures to provide a context for Jesus' ethnic origin.

@HootyTheNightOwl Nobody is disputing that Jesus, the man, was born to Jewish parents. His teaching was not Jewish and has nothing to do with Judaism.

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@HootyTheNightOwl @HootyTheNightOwl Technically, the Jesus character was not a Jew but a Galilean. He was an Israelite. Jews were native to Judea. Jesus was a vacation baby . He got the association of being a Jew when the wise men came to visit him in Matthew chapter 2 and when he was crucified and called the king of the Jews. The Jews were just a subset of the Israelites.

@Diotrephes I like your observation. It has merit, and gives credence to my own opinion that Jesus taught a spiritual philosophy that has nothing to do with Judaism. The Jesus story in the Bible was spun by early followers of Jesus creating a connection to Jewish cultural tradition. Those followers would likely have been Jews. Jesus was viewed as an usurper, a trouble-maker, by the religious authority of Judaism.

@sree251 A lot of the story has to do with the political environment of the times. The Jews had two insurrections against the Romans, in the 70s and in the 130s. As a result of the 70 resurrection the Romans took lots of Jews to Rome and had them build the Colosseum. In the 130s Hadrian made his dead boyfriend Antinous a god and built temples for his worship. In the old days anyone could become a god, although it was usually reserved for the emperors and major kings. So, it was only fitting for the Jesus character to become a god (or at least the son of a god) since he was the king of the Jews.

There is also a theory that the Romans created Christianity to blunt the Jewish drive for independence.

"Christianity was created by the Roman state, and the New Testament was Roman propaganda designed to pacify fanatically rebellious Jews. This is the boldly original thesis James Valliant and Warren Fahy present in Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity.

The Romans dominated a vast polyglot, multicultural, religiously tolerant empire of conquered nations. They adroitly co-opted the gods and customs of subjugated peoples as a means of assimilating enemy tribes under their political hegemony.

Jews, on the other hand, are known to have been fanatically monotheistic, ferociously nationalistic, intensely xenophobic, and fiercely intolerant of paganism. Ancient Judea was a seething hotbed of Jewish fanatics determined to overthrow secular Roman governance and establish an independent state ruled by strict orthodox Judaism. The Jews utterly repudiated Rome’s vision of a religiously tolerant empire. In their view, God’s “chosen people” held “the truth” denied to lesser faiths and tribes."
https://theobjectivestandard.com/2021/04/creating-christ-how-roman-emperors-invented-christianity-by-james-valliant-and-warren-fahy/

@Diotrephes You are presenting the argument in the James Valient/Warren Fahy book that claims Jesus as a Roman government propaganda device to destabilize the Jews in the Roman province of Judea. This is a blatant attack on the credibility of Christianity as a legitimate religion. Who are they trying to fool? Christian spiritual philosophy is right up there on par and consistent with the wisdom teachings of India and China. There is no way Roman politicians, who were hedonistic and barbarous pagans, could have cooked up a religion teaching love and goodwill among men.

Besides, the Roman Empire has bitten the dust and long gone while Christianity is a world religion of billions of people, and second to none. Valiant and Fahy have taken the playbook of US foreign policy to convince their readership that the Romans were just as devious in their tactic to destabilize countries that resist America's hegemonic world domination. This is creative writing for entertainment. They obviously have neither regard for freedom of worship nor respect for people who profess the Christian faith.

@calicuz Do Protestants believe that Jesus was "God in the flesh?"

@sree251 I wrote that it was a theory, not a fact.

BTW, just because billions of people have believed various fairytales does not mean that the fairytales are true. It has been estimated that humans have worshipped about 33,000,000 deities at various times. Why should the Jewish or Arabian deities be more credible than any of the other ones?

The biblical fairytale details how the Moses character created Judaism as a way to enrich his buddies and for him to gain power. Religious bigwigs have been following his playbook ever since.

@FrogManSometimesLooksBothWays The Jesus character was an ethnocentric bigot. He plainly said in Matthew 15:24 (NKJV) = "24 But He answered and said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

So, I personally don't give a damn if he was a god.

@Diotrephes Look, my friend, fairy tales are one category of things. It is facetious to equate them to spirituality that has inspired the formation of social cultures that gave us ways to articulate affection for one another: between man and wife, parents and offspring, brothers and sisters, friends.

You may not give a damn about religion but that is you. And you are free to do with yourself any way you want. If you think religion is fairy tale, that is your right.

@sree251 Thank you for agreeing with my opinion.

@FrogManSometimesLooksBothWays

Yes, I believe, they believe in "The Trinity."