Franklin Graham on Mormonism: "calling people names doesn't work"

He doesn’t deny they are a cult but thinks calling them one is a barrier to evangelizing them. (But what about people you’re trying to evangelize who are also listening to the Mormon’s message?)

If one defines “cult” in a rather narrow sense, one might argue that Mormonism has now ascended to the level of a full-blown religion. Of course, it’s a false religion. Question would be whether it’s necessary to publicly label every false religion as a cult.

That said, I was very grieved when I heard the BGEA shuffled their online discussion of Mormonism out from under the cult rubric. And I was disappointed at points of Franklin G.’s response above.

Walter Martin’s definition:

By cultism we mean the adherence to doctrines which are pointedly contradictory to orthodox Christianity and which yet claim the distinction of either tracing their origin to orthodox sources or of being in essential harmony with those sources. Cultism, in short, is any major deviation from orthodox Christianity relative to the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith.

The only problem I may have with Martin’s book (if were going to be adamant about what to call a group of people), is that he leaves out the biggest cult in the world ie, the catholic church.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with any false religion being labeled a cult, I’m just not sure we need to be all up in arms when someone like F. Grahm, suggests we may want to be more careful with how we deal with unbelievers.

I don’t believe it’s the proper thing to do while trying to evangelize the lost, whether in a cult or not, to out right blast them with the statement “YOUR IN A CULT”( and that is exactly the way I used to handle it myself), I don’t see Christ, Paul or any other of the Apostles doing so.

Sure we point out the facts of their false works based salvation, as all cults proclaim, but we should do so in a loving and long suffering manner.

Mormons do not consider non-Mormon Christians as true Christians. Joseph Smith alleges that an angel warned him against joining any of the existing Christian churches of his day because they had all become perverted in their doctrine. He was instructed to start a new church that would be the “restored” and correct version of Christianity. Labeling Mormonism as a cult is an accurate description. This doesn’t mean that, when witnessing to a member of that religion, we must be antagonistic or offensive in our approach. I think the thing for which the BGEA is being criticized is their removal of Mormonism as a cult from their website precisely during the 2012 presidential campaign after Romney’s visit with Billy Graham. It was an obvious endorsement, and Franklin Graham should just be honest about it.