In the aftermath of the tragic shooting at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, something troubling emerged alongside the grief: renewed debates about whether Latter-day Saints are “really” Christian. This tendency to exclude, delegitimize, and invalidate the faith of millions who worship Jesus Christ reveals a deeper problem in how Christians treat one another – and it’s contrary to everything Christ taught about unity and love.
The Gaslighting Problem
When a Latter-day Saint says, “I am a Christian; I believe in Jesus Christ as my Savior,” and another Christian responds, “No, you’re not actually Christian,” something insidious occurs. This is gaslighting: denying someone’s lived experience and causing them to question their own reality.
But is it really gaslighting to say Mormons worship a “different Jesus”? Yes, because it denies the lived reality of what Latter-day Saints actually believe and experience. They worship Jesus Christ: the son of God, fully God and fully man, born of a virgin in Bethlehem, who lived a sinless life, taught divine truth, performed miracles, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, rose from the dead on the third day, ascended to heaven, and will return to judge the living and the dead. That’s not a different person; it’s the same historical and Biblical Jesus of Nazareth whom all Christians worship. What differs is the theological understanding of His metaphysical relationship to the Father, an understanding that wasn’t formally defined until centuries after the apostles. To tell someone they worship a different Jesus because they understand His divine nature differently is to prioritize theological constructs over the actual Godhood, person and work of Christ, and to invalidate what believers know to be true about their own faith.
The Latter-day Saint knows they pray to Jesus Christ, worship Him as the Son of God, the Creator of Heaven and earth, study His teachings, partake of the communion in remembrance of His atoning sacrifice, and believe salvation comes through Him alone. The very name of their church centers on Jesus Christ. Yet they’re told their experience of their own faith doesn’t count; that outsiders get to define their religious identity for them.
This isn’t merely theological disagreement. It’s the invalidation of another person’s relationship with Christ based on disagreements about metaphysical formulations developed centuries after the New Testament was written.
What Jesus Actually Said About Christian Identity
Jesus gave clear markers for identifying His disciples, and they had nothing to do with accepting post-biblical creeds. In John 13:35, He declared: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Not correct Trinitarian theology. Not adherence to Nicene formulations. Love.
When Jesus prayed for His followers in John 17:21, He asked “that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” He prayed for unity, not uniformity of theological understanding. In fact, He used the same language of “oneness” for believers that describes His relationship with the Father, suggesting that unity in purpose and love matters more than identical metaphysical understanding.
Paul’s Warnings About Division
The Apostle Paul spent considerable energy combating division among believers. In 1 Corinthians 1:10, he wrote: “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.”
He was addressing believers who were forming factions: “I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:12). His response: “Is Christ divided?” The modern equivalent might be Christians dividing into camps of Reformed, Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist, Pentecostal, and Latter-day Saint, with each declaring the others outside the faith. Paul would ask the same question: Has Christ been carved up among you?
In Galatians 5:15, Paul warned: “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” He saw Christian infighting as genuinely destructive to the faith itself.
Perhaps most striking is Romans 14:10: “But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.” Paul’s point is clear: we are not the final arbiters of others’ faith. That role belongs to Christ alone.
The Historical Reality of Doctrinal Development
Those who claim Latter-day Saints aren’t Christian because they don’t accept the Trinity often present Trinitarianism as the timeless, obvious definition of Christianity. But this erases historical reality.
The doctrine of the Trinity as formally defined didn’t exist in the first-century church. It was developed over centuries through councils at Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD), nearly three centuries after Christ and in response to various competing interpretations. The Nicene formulation became “orthodox” through a combination of theological reasoning and church-state power under Constantine.
Early Christians held diverse views about Christ’s nature. Groups like the Arians believed Jesus was created by God and thus subordinate; different from Nicene orthodoxy, yet they considered themselves Christian and centered their faith on Christ. The “winners” at the councils declared their view orthodox and others heretical, but this was a human process involving politics and power.
When Christians today insist that accepting fourth-century creedal formulations is essential to being Christian, they’re reading history backwards and imposing later developments as timeless requirements.
The Inconsistency of Exclusion
Many Christians who exclude Latter-day Saints readily accept other groups despite significant doctrinal differences. Protestant evangelicals often acknowledge Catholics as Christian despite Catholic beliefs in transubstantiation, papal authority, praying to Mary and saints, and purgatory; all doctrines Protestants historically considered heretical. They accept Orthodox Christians despite different views on crucial theological points. They accept other Protestants who disagree fundamentally on baptism, predestination, and biblical interpretation.
But Latter-day Saints, who affirm Christ’s divinity, virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, bodily resurrection, and future return, are uniquely excluded. This inconsistency feels like (and potentially reveals) that the issue isn’t really about doctrinal deviation, but about selectively drawing boundaries to exclude a particular group.
How to Love Instead of Gaslight
If we’re serious about following Christ’s command to love one another and Paul’s warnings against division, here’s what must change:
1. Acknowledge their Christian identity
You can disagree with someone’s theology while acknowledging they are genuinely following Christ according to their understanding. “I have different beliefs about the nature of the Godhead, but I recognize you as a fellow believer in Jesus Christ” is honest and charitable.
2. Listen to their own testimony
When someone tells you about their faith in Christ, believe them. Don’t tell them they actually worship a “different Jesus” because they understand His metaphysical relationship to the Father differently than you do. The Jesus born in Bethlehem, who taught in Galilee, died on the cross, and rose from the dead is not multiplied by theological interpretation.
3. Practice humility about certainty
As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” We all understand imperfectly. The mysteries of the Godhead are, by definition, beyond complete human comprehension. Humility about our own limitations should temper our tendency to declare others definitively wrong.
This doesn’t mean doctrine is unimportant or that all beliefs are equally valid. Truth matters. Understanding God’s word correctly matters. We should engage in theological discussion, study scripture carefully, and yes, even correct false teaching when we encounter it. But we must do so “in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves,” as Paul instructs in 2 Timothy 2:25, recognizing that “if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know” (1 Corinthians 8:2).
None of us possesses perfect knowledge of God, His mind, or His plan. We are finite beings attempting to comprehend an infinite God. This should make us humble in our certainty and gentle in our corrections. When we disagree with another believer’s doctrine, we can address it thoughtfully and biblically without stripping them of their Christian identity or treating them as enemies of the faith.
4. Prioritize what Christ prioritized
Jesus didn’t give lectures on the metaphysics of the Godhead. He taught about loving God, loving neighbors, showing mercy, caring for the poor, pursuing righteousness, and having faith. When we make fourth-century metaphysical formulations more central to Christian identity than the actual teachings and example of Jesus, we’ve lost the plot.
5. Remember the “one anothers”
Scripture is filled with commands about how believers should treat one another: love one another, bear one another’s burdens, be kind to one another, forgive one another, pray for one another, encourage one another. None of these are conditional on having identical theology.
6. Unite against real evil
When a gunman attacks a house of worship, the Christian response should be unified grief and support, not debates about whether the victims were “really” Christian. Evil doesn’t discriminate based on our theological categories, and neither should our compassion.
Where Division Leads: A Humble Warning
The recent deaths of Charlie Kirk and the four victims at the Grand Blanc LDS chapel (and others killed or harmed for ideological differences) should serve as stark warnings about where dehumanization and division ultimately lead. Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, while conducting a campus debate at Utah Valley University. Just eighteen days later, a gunman attacked an LDS chapel in Michigan, killing four and injuring eight.
These tragedies have something in common: both were acts of violence rooted in hatred toward specific religious or ideological groups. The more we dehumanize others, the easier it becomes to justify violence against them. When we declare entire groups of people “not really Christian” or “enemies of truth,” we contribute to a climate where some will conclude that such people deserve to be harmed.
This pattern repeats throughout history. We’ve seen it in religious wars, in sectarian violence, in political assassinations. It begins with rhetoric that delegitimizes and dehumanizes. It escalates through increasingly hostile language. And sometimes, it ends with bloodshed.
The Apostle Paul warned of this in Galatians 5:15: “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” His warning was prophetic. When Christians turn on each other with bitter rhetoric, when we question each other’s faith and salvation, when we create enemies out of fellow believers, we all lose.
Consider the response to these tragedies. Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, in her grief, publicly forgave her husband’s alleged killer, saying “The answer to hate is not hate”. Her response models what Christ taught in Matthew 5:44: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
Yet the rhetoric surrounding both deaths has often moved in the opposite direction: toward more division, more “us versus them” thinking, more demonization of perceived enemies. This cycle will not end until we choose to break it.
We must recognize that every time we dismiss another person’s faith, every time we declare someone “not really Christian,” every time we use dehumanizing language about those who disagree with us, we contribute to a culture where violence becomes thinkable. The distance from “they’re not real Christians” to “they’re enemies of God” to “someone should stop them” is shorter than we’d like to believe.
The Greater Witness
Jesus said in John 13:35 that the world would recognize His disciples by their love for one another. When Christians spend their energy declaring other Christians non-Christian, what witness does that bear to a watching world? It suggests our faith is more about being right than being loving, more about exclusion than grace.
Paul’s vision in 1 Corinthians 12 is of a body with many diverse parts, each necessary, each valuable. “The eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you” (1 Corinthians 12:21). The body of Christ is meant to be diverse yet unified.
When we stop gaslighting Latter-day Saints and recognize them as fellow followers of Christ, even with theological differences we consider significant, we don’t compromise our own convictions. We simply acknowledge reality and practice the love Christ commanded.
The question isn’t whether we all agree on every doctrine. The question is whether we will honor Christ’s prayer that His followers “may be one” and His command that we love one another. Everything else is secondary.
As Paul concluded his great chapter on love: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Corinthians 13:13). It’s time we started acting like we believe it. It is my prayer, offered in the very name of Him whom we speak, even Jesus Christ, that we can live one another as He loves us.