Do the links between the saints of the last days and the evangelicals change after Charlie Kirk?

The massive commemorative service of Charlie Kirk in Phoenix, Arizona, felt like an evangelical renewal for many. His religious messages deeply resonated With some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Last Days who looked at him from provo.

Even if the feeling can be different from what the saints of the last days are used, Utah gop President Robert Axson told Kuer: “It is still only a reminder of turning to Jesus.”

The choice of Axson’s words was “interesting enough” for Matthew BowmanPresident of Mormon Studies at the Claremont Graduate University. This is because the two religious traditions have strong theological differences. “Jesus” is a common way to refer to Jesus Christ in the evangelical movement, he said, but even less in the LDS Church.

“It is, I think, a signifier of ways in which, in the past 50 years approximately, these two traditions have come together,” said Bowman. “In large part, I think, by political affinity.”

Despite the link between the two at the moment, Bowman does not think that there will be a permanent change in the relationship between the evangelicals and the saints of the last days.

This interview has been modified for duration and clarity.

Ciara Hulet: Why don’t you think there will be a permanent change?

Matthew Bowman: There has been this kind of worried relationship that has been going back for a very long time since the 1970s, when many leaders of the religious movement came out of the evangelical world, people like Jerry FalwellConsidered the saints of the last days as a useful ally there. And because, of course, they believe very similar things on questions of abortion, sex and sexuality, etc., and therefore they forge, a kind of working relationship.

But at the same time, there are many other evangelicals in the 1970s and 80s who were very angry with these leaders of religious law to forge this relationship because they said: “These people are not Christians, they are cultists. We cannot trust them.”

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were allies as Republicans, right? But at the same time, Huckabee did not believe that Romney was really a Christian And was quite vocal about it. So, this same kind of double mind, I think, will not disappear anytime soon. It has already lasted 50 years.

CH: Why do some evangelicals say that the saints of the last days are not Christians?

MB: They mean by these two things. First of all, they mean that the people of the LDS do not subscribe to the traditional Christian Trinity, which therefore means that they do not believe that Jesus Christ is fully God. And so evangelicals can say that LDS people love a different Jesus.

The other thing they will mean is that in many aspects of the evangelical world, if you call yourself Christian, it means that you were born again – you have received this special experience by which Jesus Christ revealed to you that you are saved. And of course, this is generally not part of a holy practice of the last days. LDS people don’t talk about salvation that way.

CH: The Last Day saints would dispute that they are not Christians. A commemorative spectator of Provo told Kuer that he did not like how the speakers compared Charlie Kirk to Moses or other biblical characters.

What could be strangely on the messages of the Kirk Memorial for the Saints of the Last Days?

MB: Yes, it’s an interesting question, right? And I think that happens to the charismatic movement, of which Charlie Kirk was part, which was quite dominant in the commemorative service. The Holy Spirit will appear at various events. People will begin to speak in languages, people will practice the healing of faith as they feel inspired. And I think that everything is a little too unbuttoned for many LDS, which are more used to a system of regular authority and a real sense of what the people of the LDS call the “reverence”, which has become very popular in the LDS church in the last 60 or 70 years, stressing that worship services should be solemn and dark. It is very, very unknown for charismatic Christians.

CH: The Apostle of the Last Days Ronald A. Rasband gave a Brigham Young University Discourse on devotion to the importance of the family This week, which was also one of the messages to the Kirk Memorial. Rasband sentenced the assassination and said the controversial church Family proclamation should be a guide for governments.

What is it said, if necessary, how does the Church position itself politically at the moment?

MB: In some respects, it is not very different from what the LDS church has been doing for 30 years, on the right, since the release of the proclamation. In fact, the proclamation itself stipulates that governments would be well advised to follow this. But what exactly? What does that mean? What are pro-family policies? And there is a lot of disputes on this subject, but for, I think, people who are part of the religious right, it generally means policies on culture, not policies on the economy. Which means that we should have laws, what makes divorce more difficult, right? We must have laws that promoted and specifically raise heterosexual families. But this kind of ideas about what these policies are one of the reasons why many evangelicals, in particular politically active evangelicals, have been willing to work with the saints of the last days, because they tend to believe that the same types of policies are important.

CH: from 2023 to 2024, Pew Research Center I found that the decline of American Christianity may have accumulated. Another person from Provo told Kuer that he had returned to church for the first time after the years after the shooting.

This is just one example, but do you think that this moment could still change the trajectory of American Christianity?

MB: Probably not. It is, I think, too early to say if it is a temporary break or if it is the new normal. There may be signs, I think, that it is a temporary break. One being that all these surveys are in total of the American population. But if you look at the youngest in the United States, the 18 to 29 year olds in surveys, they continue, I think, to gravitate more towards the “none” – people who say they have no religion in general – than older generations.

That said, I think there are interesting things that happen with the youngest religion. Perhaps, although I think it is very, very early to say, we could see among this young generation the idea of ​​organized religion becoming cool and counter-cultural.